My Library

Together with HOOVER’S F.B.I. (1970) by William W. Turner, I took the above two books with me when between June 18-23, 1972, I went to give lectures at the annual retreat of Spiritual Frontiers Fellowship held at the Carleton College Campus, Northfield, Minnesota. I had decided to support Spiritual Frontiers because one of its missions was to re-introduce psychic phenomena into religious contexts. But I had decided I’d not talk about myself, rather I’d focus on what was going on in larger-picture kinds of ways. A little over 400 people attended this retreat. This was the first time I was to mount a podium and speak. I was terrified, uncertain. There were 31 speakers. The business of the retreat began at 6:30 a.m. with meditation and prayer and did not conclude until 10:00 p.m. I gave two seminars a day, and three major lectures in the evening. For this I was promptly reimbursed my airfare and, if I remember correctly, paid $200. The people were wonderful, individually and as a group, as was to be the case with SFF people everywhere. But by the end of the retreat I had begun to realize the larger dimensions of a situation I already knew existed. People really don’t like to have their realities or visions tampered with no matter who or what they are. They accept what fits with their realities or visions. They may listen to what doesn’t fit, but they don’t really hear it. Whomever it was who coined the maxim "Pissing into the wind" knew what they were talking about.