NOTES OF A FRINGE-WATCHER MARTIN GARDNER

Jean Houston: Guru of Human Potential

utside New Age circles, the pub- with what Carl Jung called the "collective through the woman's lips. At the same lic knew little about Jean unconscious" of the human race. Deep time, they are overwhelmed by the OHouston until Bob Woodward, inside our minds are the "eternal arche- beauty and wisdom of her messages and in his 1996 book The Choice, devoted ten types"—unconscious memories created the messages that come through other pages to how Houston and Hillary by our evolutionary history—memories "channelers" when they make contact Rodham Clinton became good friends. that are the sources of great wisdom. with the collective unconscious. As everyone now knows, Houston and Masters began their Hillary Clinton may not be aware of had many sessions widi Houston during careers by experimenting with LSD and Houston's belief, shared by Masters, that which, as a mental exercise, the First Lady other hallucinogenic drugs as a way of persons in a trance state can have height- held imaginary conversations with tapping the collective unconscious. Their ened powers of ESP (telepathy, clairvoy- and Mahatma first book, Varieties of Psychedelic ance, and precognition). Gandhi. She balked at conversing with Experience (1966), created a sensation These views of Houston and Masters Jesus, calling such a dialog "too per- among young people then experimenting are covered in some fifteen books they sonal." with such drugs at the urging of the late have written independendy or together. As Houston and Mrs. Clinton later Timothy Leary. After LSD was legally The two most influential are Mind made clear, in no way did the First Lady banned, Houston and Masters turned to Games: The Guide to Inner Space (1972) think she was in touch with the spirits of nondrug techniques for exploring what and Listening to the Body (1978). Earlier Mrs. Roosevelt and odiers. It was no they called the "inner self," especially books authored or coauthored by more than what Houston calls one of her techniques based on hypnotism and Masters include The Cradle of Erotica "mind games." She describes herself as a mental imaging. (1963), about sexual practices in Africa philosopher and psychologist who never For three decades Houston and her and Asia, and Eros and Evil (1962), on attended a seance and has not the slight- husband conducted thousands of the relation between sexual beliefs and est interest in spiritualism. pseudochanneling sessions with subjects the burning of medieval witches. This is true. Nevertheless Houston at their Foundation for Mind Research, A good account of the psychic opin- and her husband Robert E. L Masters now in Pomona, New York, located in a ions of Houston and Masters can be have an abiding interest in channeling. house built by actor Burgess Meredith. found in Jon Klimo's Channeling: Famous channelers such as J. Zebra Subjects are put into a trance state during Investigations on Receiving Information Knight claim to be transmitting messages which they seem to speak with the voices from Paranormal Sources. The book was from actual discarnates or endues in of persons long dead. For example, one published in 1987 by the New Age pub- higher worlds, but Houston and Masters woman patient transmitted striking mes- lishing firm of Jeremy P. Tarcher, hus- see channeling from an entirely different sages diat purported to come from an band of the ventriloquist Shari Lewis. perspective. They are convinced that ancient Egyptian goddess called Houston told Klimo: channelers, while in trance, are in contact Sekhmet. Masters' 1988 book The Goddess Sekhmet (reprinted 1991) is These [channeled] "entities" as we call them—Seth or Saul or Paul or about these sessions. Martin Gardner's latest book is The Night Jonathan—arc essentially "goddings" Is Large: Collected Essays, 1938-1995 Neither Masters nor Houston think of the depths of the psyche. . . . They (St. Martin's Press), published in July 1996. an actual Egyptian goddess spoke are personae of the self that take on

1 4 January/February 1997 SKEPTICAL INQUIRER acceptable form so that we can have reports Houston as saying: for months to complete. In the early days relationship to them and thus dia- of their collaboration, Houston and logue. . .. [T]hc traditional archetypes If the holographic theory has any proof Masters conducted experiments in dream do not have for many people the to it, then it suggests that everything is power they once held. People are in a ubiquitous [omnipresent] with every- telepathy with the parapsychologists then kind of free-form archetypal search. thing all the time anyway in this simul- running the dream laboratory at And so you get the Seths and the taneous-everywhere matrix universe. Maimonides Medical Center. Salems and the myriads of very per- And that would take care of a great Houston likes to tell about an inci- sonal guides that ate filling the psyche. deal of the channels . . . Certain indi- viduals are able to raise the gates or dent that occurred when her father Jack lower the ice or become diaphanous, was a professional comedy writer for Bob In 1979 Ken Carey, a young Missouri be stretched very thin, so that this Hope, , Henny Youngman, farmer, began channeling an entity ubiquitous, simultaneous-evcrywhere- and other comics, and for the ventrilo- named Raphael (perhaps the Bible's al!-the-time information is available to quist Edgar Bergen. I quote again from archangel) and later Jesus himself. Carey human beings . . . Then you've got to project a persona [a source] to contain Klimo: published his channeled gibberish in two the ubiquity of the information, other- preposterous books: The Starseed wise you're not going to take it. One time my father and I came into Transmission: An Extraterrestrial Report Edgar's room. He didn't know we were (1982) and Vision (1985). "As I com- watching him. Edgar was talking to The Foundation for Mind Researcch Charlie and we thought he was muned with these spatial intelligences," was originally headquartered in an apartirt- rehearsing, but he was not rehearsing. Carey wrote, "our biogravitational fields ment in Manhattan on East 86th Street:et. He was asking Charlie questions: seemed to merge, our awareness blend, Its laboratory contained, and my nervous system seemed to perhaps still does, become available to them as a channel for biofeedback equipment communication." and a sensory depriva- Carey's channeled material swarms tion chamber in which with the usual New Age buzzwords— subjects meditated in unity, vibrations, wholeness, harmony, silent pitch darkness. love, and so on—without conveying any- Another piece of equip- thing significant. Nevertheless, Houston ment was a strobe light assured Klimo that the Starseed box—you would put Transmissions are "perhaps the finest your forehead against example of 'channeled knowledge' I ever the box, eyes shut, while encountered." the flickering light came Although Houston repeatedly denies through your eyelids to that channelers are in contact with indi- enhance meditation. viduals who have died, she comes close to The most bizarre appa- saying that they are in touch with minds ratus was called an outside their own brains. Here is how she ASCID (Altered State of put it to Klimo: Consciousness Induc- tion Device), often 1 think the universe is filled with intel- ligence. Some is embodied, some is referred to as a "witch's disembodied, and ultimately probably cradle." Subjects sat on none of it is disembodied. It may have it blindfolded while it minus n-dimcnsional structure or go swung back and forth through a black hole to a negative par- like a pendulum. ticle structure. But I think everything has structure or pattern. And I think it Houston and Masters is how you define embodiment. If it's believe that such devices embodiment of protein or computer can make one's brain or chemicals, then we have a problem. work faster, compress- If you think of embodiment as perhaps of frequency which is pulsed, they may ing an hour's work not even be in space, they may be into just a few across time. minutes. A nov- elist, for exam- Houston is fond of what is called the ple, might see holographic universe. Like a hologram, in a flash how every portion of a holographic universe to finish a novel in some way contains the whole. Klimo he had been trying

SKEPTICAL INQUIRER January/February 1997 15 "Charlie, what is the nature of life? Houston is tireless in conducting Paramount Pictures, she participated in Charlie, what is the nature of love?" workshops around the world in which digs in Egypt and Greece, but soon aban- And this wooden dummy was answer- ing quite unlike the being I knew on she uses a bewildering variety of tech- doned archaeology to concentrate on the radio. A regular wooden Socrates, niques designed to raise the "human what she calls "the archeology of the self." he was. It was the same voice but it was potential" of her students. In 1989 at a Houston claims an ability to read Latin, a very different content altogether. conference at the Oasis Center, in Greek, and Egyptian hieroglyphs. She And Bergen would get fascinated and say, "Well, Charlie, what is the nature Chicago, her workshop was organized writes of friendships widi such notables of true virtue?" and the dummy would around the concept of Pangaea. This is a as Teilhard de Chardin, Martin Buber, just pour out this stuff! beauty, ele- name for the massive continent that Aldous Huxley, Reinhold Niebuhr, Paul gance, brilliant. And then we got existed two hundred million years ago Tillich, Helen Keller, Joseph Campbell, embarrassed and coughed. Bergen looked around and turned beet red before it broke up into the present conti- and . and said, "Oh, hello, you caught us." nents. Houston took Pangaea to symbol- There is no doubt about her close And my fadicr said, "What were you ize the primitive races which, in the mother-daughter-like relationship for doing?" And he said, "Oh, I was talk- words of a brochure for the workshop, ing to Charlie. He's the wisest person I many years with the elderly and ill know." And my fadicr said, "But that's "contain DNA-like codings that can lead Margaret Mead. Mead was a strong your mind; that's your voice coming us back to an understanding of who and believer in psychic phenomena and the through that wooden creature." And what we truly are. Jean and her associates reality of visits to Earth by extraterrestri- Ed said, "Well, I guess ultimately it is, devise exercises, processes and practices to but I ask Charlie these questions and als in UFOs. She became a director of the he answers, and 1 haven't the faintest reawaken our senses and our memories of Foundation for Mind Research. Houston idea of what he's going to say and I'm these codings throughout our body/ is also a good friend of Mead's daughter astounded by his brilliance—so much brain/mind systems. We find ourselves Mary Bateson, who accompanied more than I know." To me that was a quickened and empowered to join as classical channeling instance where the dummy was used as [an] amanu- Houston on many of her sessions with ensis of depth structures of Bergen's partners in the evolutionary process, and Hillary Clinton. mind. to claim our place as true citizens of Now fifty-seven, Houston is still a Panga[e]a. . . . [0]ur time at Oasis this striking woman who likes to say that the year will be spent on empowering the Greek goddess Athena is her "archetypal archetypal creator of, and dweller in, predecessor." Her speech is in a flowery An ad for Houston's 1980 book, Paradise." New Age jargon, so vague and murky Lifefbrce: The Psycho-Historical Recovery of The brochure continues, saying that that it is often difficult to understand. Self, is headed, "For the first time in workshop participants will study "the Here, for example, is a typical passage human history we can become fully wise ones of primal cultures such as, per- from The Possible Human: human." By using the special exercises in haps, the Bushmen of the Kalahari and, this book, the ad continues, "we can also, perhaps, those huge-brained mam- Like sunlight and nutrients of earth relive the whole of human history in our and air organizing around the buds of mals who millions of years ago chose to springtime, in creative states the bud- own lives—healing the traumas of ages return to the sea, the whales and dol- ding intentions are in resonance widi the h o l o n o m i c reality, evoking from past and present as we resolve and heal phins." the primary order the proper nutrients needed to allow for the emergence of the crises of our own emergent selves. As In The Possible Human, Houston says a result, what may have been lost of the promise and potential of these historicathel physical expression of the crearive diat when she was a junior at Barnard intention, be it a novel, a symphony, a and personal ages may be found again— College she was "president of the college dissertation, a relationship, a business, and used to restore the balance between drama society, a member of the student or a community enterprise. our inner and outer space." senate, winner of two off-Broadway crit- ics' awards for acting and directing . . . Houston's 1982 book, The Possible and had just turned down an offer to There was what Houston calls her Human: A Course in Extending Your train for the next Olympics." (She had "messianic period" during which she Physical Mental and Creative Abilities, been a fencing expert in high school.) motorcycled "all over east saving was reviewed this way in a psychic maga- The deaths of family members and people, and preaching and doing 'mira- zine called New Realities (Vol. 5, No. 2, friends plunged her into a profound cles' like curing people of stuttering." She 1983): depression. She says she felt like Job, even says she was once thrown out of New calling out to God, "Where are the York's High School for the Performing Houston maps out a route leading from the diminished realm of theboils?" h u m a n - a l l - t o o - h u m a n to anArt expansivs "fore trying to convert students to a sensory-intellectual-mystical sphere of Houston attributes her recovery to purer lifestyle." On several occasions she the superhuman, what the great con- classes taught by Jacob Taubes, a Swiss has claimed to have a doctorate from temporary Hindu mystic Aurobindo professor of religion at Barnard. After Columbia University. According to termed Gnostic being or what that, she writes, "I was off and running Newsweek ("Soul Searching," by Kenneth Houston likens to the Yiddish arche- type, the Mensch. and haven't shut up since." After turning Woodward, July 8, 1996), she refused to down a seven-year contract widi make changes in her thesis and the degree

1 6 January/February 1997 SKEPTICAL INQUIRER was never given. Later, in 1973, she did Houston has close ties with the Apollo capable scientists, philosophers, and obtain a doctorate in psychology from a 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, founder thinkers of our period." school in Cincinnati called The Union and head of the Institute of Noetic It is usually impossible to know the Institute. The school was not accredited Sciences, in Sausalito, California. core beliefs of a president and his wife until 1985. Mitchell and members of his institute until long after they leave the White Houston taught at Marymount Col- buy almost everything on the psi scene. House. Bill Clinton belongs to a south- lege, a Catholic school in Tarrytown, Houston says she assisted Mitchell in ern Baptist church. Hillary Clinton New York, from 1965 to 1972. Although readjusting to life on Earth after he attends a Methodist church. This tells us not on the faculty, she was a visiting returned from space. After the flap with nothing about whether either one of scholar at the University of Oklahoma in Hillary Clinton, Mitchell was quoted as them shares the paranormal convictions 1980 and a lecturer at in saying: "I would like to support Jean of Jean Houston. It would be interesting 1961. Houston as one of the more worthy and to know.

kth Anniversary Conference 1 "Science in the Age of (Mis)lnformation" N TAPES Firs* World Skeptics Congress

'* ••'• Number of Price Per Session J • Qty Sessions Session Title Cassettes Session Total J ! Opening/Welcoming Remarks S7.95 2 Role of the Media in (Mis)lnforming the Public 2 $15.90 3 CONGRESS ADDRESS—Leon Lederman $10.00 4 The Growth ot Anti-Science 2 $15.90 5 CONGRESS LUNCHEON—Chris Carter, creator of The X-Files $10.00 6 UFOIogy $7.95 7 Astrology $7.95 8 Homeopathy $7.95 9 Therapeutic Touch $7 95 10 Chiropractic $7.95 11 Creation/Evolution $7.95 12 KEYNOTE ADDRESS—Stephen Jay Gould 2 $20.00 13 Parapsychology: Recent Developments 2 $15.90 14 CFI LUNCHEON—Sir John Maddox $10.00 15 Mechanisms of Self-Deception S7.95 16 Alternative Health Cures $7.95 17 Philosophy and Pseudoscience $7.95 18 Psychoanalytic Theory and Therapy S7.95 19 Critical Thinking in Education $7.95 20 Spiritualism, the UB Expose $7.95 21 The Paranormal in China $7.95 22 AWARDS CEREMONY AND ENTERTAINMENT (Steve Allen) $10.00 23 World Skeptics Update 3 S23.85 COMPLETE SET S242.85 TOTAL ORDER

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SKEPTICAL INQUIRER January/February 1997 17