Jean Houston: Guru of Human Potential
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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, Hillary Clinton 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- Eleanor Roosevelt 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, George Burns, 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.