CHAPTER I:

The Cow Girl From Never Never Land

Dear Duncan,

Thank you thank you thank you - I love your book. The practice of radionics has held me fascinated the last 29 years. I long ago accepted the loneliness of my work, which is my passion, my art, and my school. I do radionics out of love - love of the research and appreciation for the never-ending learning process. I was born a month before you, in the sandhills of Nebraska. Once I discovered there was a world outside of Nebraska, I gloried in a life of adventure and exploration - always wanting to learn more about our evolutionary process, art, magic and earth energies.

I appreciate immensely your clear, concise, wise perspective and description of radionics. I am out of touch these days with life in the U.S., as I've explored the world a bit for the last 23 years. My home has mostly been Yucatan, but for various lengths of time I also lived in Thailand, Fiji, Crete and New Zealand. I've always been curious about the boundaries of human potential - who are we and what are we capable of? I wanted to see how different and how similar other cultures were. I found in radionics, also, an excellent tool for this exploration. The radionics I learned was primarily concerned with healing, but even while I was being taught 29 years ago, I was in my head, changing the rules. I could see immediately that radionics was an opportunity to capture more of the magic of life, the natural magic of flow and synchronicity and synergy. So over the years I have used my radionic practice to gather data about life. And that process never ends. From the beginning I made my own cards, worked my own way. I also bought cards from England. They have an amazing array. I use the Malcolm Rae style cards and system.

Eight years ago found me working with race horses in England. Long story, fun and exciting work. Performing subtle energy work in the sports industry pushed me to new levels and working with top-rate vets was both interesting and productive. (btw, our first "project horse", taken off of a truck on its way to the dog meat factory, was later named "the most improved horse in England's racing history" by the English Jockey Club. Working with one injury or issue after another forced me to look for a bigger view, a more comprehensive way of working with performance. I developed a program for raising consciousness based on David Hawkin's Consciousness Chart. Give me a chart or a graph of anything and I can build a radionic program for it. It worked, it did indeed raise consciousness. And that led to the next chapter of my work.

I became embedded in the concept of "process", and in particular, our human process of evolution. I next developed my own chart and program for the cleaning and evolving of the Morphogenetic Field. The key moment that inspired me to do this was hearing that Rupert Sheldrake had said that the Morphogenetic Field EVOLVES. Well if it evolves, then we can help it along, I thought. Radionics is a fantastic supportive technology. The entire research on this took me a couple of years and was a satisfying experience.

My only sadness has been that I've never really had anyone to talk to. I've known a few other professional radionic practitioners,— for several years I attended the Psychotronic Conferences, until I moved out of the U.S. - but since then my work has been solitary. And then along comes your lovely, perceptive, incredibly informed, well-written book. Refreshing. Thank you.

Whatever radionics is, it encases a marvel.

Laurie:

How good it is to learn of you and your very fascinating career! I certainly would enjoy "talking" to you via email, should you desire a willing ear. I am always fascinated by how people take radionics and begin to improvise. You seem to have done that from the very beginning of your career.

My effort has been to convey a sense of that process to artists and other creative people. I would be very interested in learning more about your work and innovations. I took a break from radionics and writing following the completion of the book. I needed to focus on closing out some other projects, and was a bit burned out. Gordon's work and mine in the lab had turned toward to examining subtle energy and Nature Intelligence. Gradually that work internalized within me and I ceased doing the outer research. I was never a radionics practitioner, but only approached the field philosophically. To the extent I used radionics, it was to understand what it was and how to apply it in personal ways. Naturally, the work of experienced practitioners like yourself presents me with a learning opportunity not readily available.

It's getting late here at the moment, but do lets continue corresponding as the impulse dictates. I'm always very pleased to hear that the book has found its way into peoples' lives that can work with what I'm trying to convey. Thank-you for your encouragement.

Cow Girl,

How nice to hear from you.

I certainly understand taking a break after completion of the book. As you say, "the relationship to radionics lies in the discovery of added dimensionality hidden within normal experience." It takes energy to hold onto this focus. This subtlety, this added dimensionality is exactly why I have difficulty talking about radionics, and yet you were able to hold the concentrated intent long enough to communicate it thoroughly and on many levels, in your writing.

You brought out new information that excited me. I thought I had thoroughly researched the historical path radionics took. I see in your acknowledgements that you knew Eldon Byrd and Peter Kelly. I knew them as well, from the early Psychotronic days. Both were very fine men and scientists and are greatly missed. Peter Kelly especially provided expansive inspiration to me in the early days.

Yes, examining the nature of subtle energy has long been my passion before I discovered radionics or it discovered me. I was thrilled when I learned there was a system that worked with the subtle realms. One of my first surprising experiences was communicating with a person in a coma. And then to discover how easy it was to tune into the field of an animal, when there was a need to do so. And now from your research, learning of the sensitivities of plants and rocks, this opens a whole universes of possibilities in communication and extending our understanding that thrills me.

Most likely all my weird ways are exactly why I found such a home in radionics. My work, too, is almost completely internal, although my clients often want more external or outer effects or events, which is good for me, to keep the balance. So many experiments over the years, I will try not to blab too much, but appreciating your thankfully receptive "willing ear", I'll proceed.

First, I have a question from your book which is relevant to a program I am presently building. You mention twice, once on page 128 and again on page 180, that plants and rocks respond almost 100% of the time to a friendly adolescent whereas they may be inert for us adults. Yes, I understand this, I have been thinking about this for the past year - what is it we lose as we "grow up"? You mention on page 179 that "it is a spontaneous process. Occurring when we are happy and having fun and all but disappears when we try to engineer it into being." This is the clue, I know - but I'm trying to think of a word or phrase that describes what a friendly adolescent has that we lose, as we grow older. Would you call it Life Force?

I started working professionally as a radionics practitioner (in New Mexico) with an office in a wellness center building along with other professionals - Rolfer, Feldenkrais, etc. But of course the more successful I became, the more paranoid, too...this was back in the early 80's when radionics was still highly persecuted in the U.S. I went to the New Mexico School of Natural Therapeutics the year after I learned radionics, to get a Natural Therapeutic Specialist License (I have a couple of college degrees), a license under which to practice. Then not long after, I moved to Yucatan, to a small beach town south of CanCun. I'd always promised myself I would live outside the U.S. when I turned 40. It's a big beautiful planet and I wanted to experience as much of it as possible, so the timing was perfect.

At one point I and a couple of friends decided to see if we could raise our I.Q. radionically. Ha! Yep, it worked. And magnificently. But this was before I ever considered the consciousness work, and now in retrospect I see that simply raising one's I.Q. but not attending to other factors such as consciousness—was like building a table with three legs! One friend was in NYC and the other two of us in Yucatan. We all had very similar experiences, an expanding perspective, understanding more and more of the big picture - it was very exhilarating and exciting - until one day, after our I.Q.'s were showing a high reading, we all three simultaneously experienced a big crash. Ooooh, it was like becoming Neanderthal all over again. Pretty funny in retrospect but I'm so glad to have learned this lesson! Eventually we leveled out to where we started from and I've never attempted such a thing since. It's not necessary. Intelligence is nice, but the real gig is consciousness. Being conscious. Waking up.

Within radionics I've worked with color, Bach flower remedies, homeopathic remedies, subtle bodies, chakras, symbols, sigils, tarot cards, I Ching hexagrams, etc. etc. etc. You name it, anything that was out there that I could get my hands on, I've probably made or bought a card for it. I've worked extensively with animals (in my twenties I was fortunate to have a personal instructive-relationship with European herbal veterinarian Juliette de Barclai Levy. I became her agent for the U.S. This was after I quit teaching school with the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Over the years my work gradually focused more and more on words and concepts that I made into cards, Malcolm Rae style. I feel good working within a progression. Testing the % of something, and then bringing it to 100%.

I once worked for three years experimenting with the cleaning of water bodies. I was very interested in the part of your book that mentions other people doing this and would like to hear more. I only like to work with the positive - building something up. Not focusing intent and attacking (as with the insect story in your book). I was able to rid my property in Yucatan entirely of invading little guys like ants and cockroaches by clearing and raising the consciousness and the morphogenetic field of the house and land.

This is also what I did with water. It works, but takes too long. Now I'm working on a new, faster technique. I was once shown at a Psychotronic Conference the example of an ear of corn. A stalk of corn was hermetically sealed off from the outside environment. Then the plant was stressed... not enough water, inadequate nutrition. Now believe it or not, in this experiment the worms visibly came from WITHIN THE PLANT to devour the corn. This indicates that living things have within them a set of processes that kick in when the decay force is stronger than life force. Their job is to clean up and get rid of the decay debris. To change this program, the life force has to be reinforced. So rather than trying to kill off the offending worm or insect, why not put our energy into building up the life force, raising the frequency of life back up to a healthy beat? Then the agents of decay disappear on their own, as they're not needed anymore. And you end up with a much healthier organism. win/win You mention this same approach in your book. It works with agriculture, animals, us, buildings, land, etc. I love the mention you make in your book about people who can reverse immense earth damage. I am so thankful! and want to hear much more about this. It's important and necessary.

I don't do healing work anymore. I call my work Advanced Radionics because it is designed to explore our potential. I like to look for the biggest fulcrum I can find where the trickle down effect will have the greatest impact, and do the work there: clearing blockage, nourishing our finer nature and giving direction to rejuvenate. Then each being's evolutionary program takes its natural course. Working on the race horses taught me that. These days, after meeting you and learning about your work, I am fascinated too with the world of bio-communication. A new frontier that can only offer direct positive results.

My equipment: very light, the lightest tech. I use the 1975 Malcolm Rae Analysis and Treatment boards connected to the black box where the cards go in for Factor, etc. No electricity needed. For broadcasts I used to use the black boxes, witness in cup, card in slot, you set the dial to potency. But they require electricity and sometimes I've been living in places without electricity, such as the island of Taveuni in Fiji. Besides, I've always liked rocks! So I developed a way of working with quartz crystal towers as broadcasting frequencies. Stack up the cards being broadcast. Place witness on top. Crystal tower on top of witness. And if I want extra power, I place a brass wire pyramid large enough to cover entire broadcast, over the crystal. This works beautifully. Quartz crystal vibrates at Schumann Resonance of 7.8 Hz; the brain is receptive to this; and very low frequencies circle the earth rather than shooting out, so a suggestion is held in the Field, giving constant subliminal suggestion for change. It is believed in esoteric circles that the patterns in your field are your future realities. This is the premise under which I work.

I wonder how you became interested in radionics and what caused that interest to persist?

Laurie:

I'm enjoying your rambling, familiar style of writing, so don't worry about tightening it up; it's quite coherent as stated. You certainly have an interesting story. I appreciate that you are willing to share it. When it comes to mounting a reply, I'm a bit overwhelmed. I want to answer your questions first. I can't seem to find a copy of my book around, but let me address the question about the plants and the young man. Gordon and I were not working with radionic equipment at that time, but with various devices that changed small voltages on the surface of the leaves of plants into pitch shifts. From there, further sonic enhancement could take place through digitization.

We had seen before that certain people could promote more elaborate responses from the plants (and rocks). Ditto, when it came to plants relating to other plants and rocks. The evening I mention in the book was special because we had a large group of people at the studio watching the new Queen Mary arrive on her maiden voyage. They weren't there to see the plants sing at all, and the plants reacted by going silent, that is, until two very special friends and their son show up! Then the plants went bananas! It was great. Just for him alone.

We have so many stories.

You ask, "Why an adolescent? What do they have that's different?" I look at it through the model Wilhelm Reich left us—armor. An unarmored person has a completely uninhibited flow of life energy through their body. By contrast, modern man has all these complexes, various factors clamping down on muscle groups, clamping down in the mind; on love and freedom, etc. Destinies of pain and confusion. Kids have less armor; probably babies much less. Animals too. Many young folks don't inhibit their love or repress their feelings as much as when older. More than anything else I learned from plants is that they can teach you honesty. Really, it is Nature talking, the Higher Power, the Master within.

My youngest daughter could see UFO's everywhere around us until she was about 11. Saw other stuff too, like nature spirits. We lose it. As we get old we contract; our minds contract with our muscles and our bones and it becomes easy to lose touch with love, hope, gaiety, spontaneity. We try to make up for it in other ways that often are addictive. But that original source of beauty, of contact with the universe, that came with us when we were born, is still there, just buried under memory and the horrid task of survival. So nothing is lost exactly, it's just dimmed or dumbed down as the ego grows. We create an identity to navigate the world. Ironically, the better we learn to navigate the world via the ego, the farther we travel from the source. Go figure.

I didn't exactly go too far with this notion in the book, but I suggested that perhaps the reason radionics works for certain people today is based upon their understanding the role of Nature Intelligence. When you say you are bored with healing, I hear myself saying, I'm bored with art. What we are bored with? Ourself. Being the doer. So, the radionics I began to learn from the plants was that of non-doership; taking oneself out of the equation as far as possible. Just about impossible, really, but it still feels right.

I'd love to hear more of your life on the Rez. I used to hang out in Arizona/New Mexico in the 70's & 80's. We probably walked by each other on the street.

So long ago now. But as to why I became fascinated with radionics? I don't know why. I just loved it; the irrationality, the obsessiveness, the dials, the kooky people...it was so nuts it had to be right, at least in some respects—especially artistically. A gold mine for artists nobody else could see...or maybe they did...

10/14 Cow Girl,

"A gold mine nobody else could see." I'm glad you could see it! What you say about non-doership, taking yourself out of the equation as far as possible, I believe is essential for highest results. The Lakota Sioux call it "Hollow Bones". The pattern is set in the Field and the Field knows what to do. At that point best thing we humans can do is get out of our own way. It's hard to let it be that easy, but I find when it happens, when we don't over-intellectualize, when we can just relax and observe, miracles can and do happen.

I have appreciated and enjoyed getting to know you a little and it does make me more comfortable expressing myself. Btw, your artwork of the Tourbillion haunts me. Very few works of art do that. All of your pieces are wonderful, but for some reason that one in particular gets under my skin. I equate it with mystery, power and energy.

You ask about my interactions with Native Americans. It's definitely true that the native peoples have informed my outlook and my approach and interaction with life more than anything else. As I said, I grew up in the sandhills of Nebraska, which is Lakota Sioux country. The author Jim Harrison calls the Lakota Sioux the "aristocracy of consciousness" and I certainly find this to be true. If you have any doubt, read any of the books by Vine DeLorea, Lakota turned attorney turned author. A highly intelligent and highly visionary (and humourful) people, albeit nearly decimated for a while there through deadly exposure to us. But they're still there and as a child I would seek out any Sioux I could to have a conversation with. Their stories were magic to my ears. With their view of things, the world began to make more sense to me.

After university I harassed the B.I.A. into hiring me. They sent my husband and I to the most isolated school in the continental U.S. - the place where no one else wanted to go - deep in the Sonora desert. The two of us, very naive and young, ran three Native American villages, one of them right on the border of Mexico, which was simply a barb-wire fence. They had a village well for water, no electricity, no vehicles. It was the Papago (at that time, now called the Tohono Oodham), desert people. An isolated people on govt. relief, as there aren't many ways to make money out in that great stark natural expanse, although the women do weave beautiful baskets. A very taciturn people. That was shocking to me. Our house and the school were one large stone building. Sometimes in the morning I would step outside for a breath of fresh air before entering the classroom. There on certain mornings of the week I would face a group of women sitting on the school bench, waiting for the school bus to take them to town. Me: Good Morning! Them: Nothing. Quiet. No response. They'd look at me and all was silent. It was spooky and unnerving! I wasn't used to people who were quiet. I didn't know what to do if words weren't flowing from mouths. Christmas lunch we'd invite all the parents to come have a meal with their kids in the school dining room….a room full of long tables and benches. On Christmas it would be a room filled to overflowing with Indians of all ages. And yet you could hear a pin drop it was so quiet! Not a word spoken during the entire meal. This was simply normal for them, they're not much for talking.

My husband and I were the only teachers, I taught Kindergarten, first and second and he taught third, fourth and fifth. After fifth grade the kids would be sent to a govt. school 100 miles away (on the worst dirt roads in the world). Papago is not a written language. Nobody in any of the three villages had a phone, or a vehicle, only one almost-kinda more modern man had a half-working car. So once a child was sent away to school that was it - there was no way for a parent and child to communicate anymore. We had a government telephone in our house, and of course, a truck. If there were a family emergency, the parents would knock on our door wanting to call their child. Of course we'd let them. Also, we had a gas dispensing machine, as we were really out in nowhere - so isolated that migrating Mexicans would die in our area as they tried to cross the border and reach a U.S. town. They'd either be found lifeless with an empty water jug in their hand or lying somewhere half-eaten by a mountain lion. So once somebody - god knows what they were doing out there - ran out of gas not far from us and made it to our house seeking a few gallons of gas. Of course we gave it to them. We were then investigated by the FBI - an Agent came to our house and stayed for several days to investigate us. Our crime, letting parents call their children, plus giving a couple gallons of gas to someone in need in the desert.

We were to learn: Absolutely no unauthorized phone calls from our govt. phone (all calls were long-distance) and no gas used except by authorized U.S. Govt. personnel! It was a big deal. I was young and idealistic, had just read Castenada's first Don Juan book, ha. Here I was in love with all things Indian and the cold brutal reality was that I was an arm of government enforcement. It was difficult, I was young and caught between two worlds.

Still, all in all, it was an incredible year. The children taught me so much. They came to school speaking no English. Once a week I'd take my class walking in the desert so they could teach me things for a change. One day one of the little girls in my class was missing. I asked the other kids where she was. "Pablo punched her." So after school I went to her house. She came to the door with her face swollen as a basketball, bandana wrapped from puffy chin to top of her head. I asked if they wanted me to take her to the doctor - there was a govt. clinic about two hours away. They said "maybe" - first we take her to the medicine man, tonight. So I went back the next morning - she was perfect. No swelling, all smiles, ready for school.

I asked her: What did the medicine man do?

"He sang," was her reply.

That's it. He sang.

And then there were a few young Indian men my husband's and my age (we were in our early twenties) who would take us walking into the desert while letting us see a few of the Indian ways. Their relationship with nature was so incredibly different from ours, from how I was taught growing up. I learned from them unequivocally that all nature creatures, from insects to snakes to mountain rams and mountain lions are our brethren, and are to be treated with respect. My husband and I lived in the desert one year and then left...the people had come to understand us, and even to like us and actually asked us to stay, but I was too young and not prepared for a life of such contradiction and isolation. The Tohono Oodham are a brave people. The children are trained not to acknowledge pain. If a child breaks his arm, he does not cry. There is a lot we can learn from people who face the unforgiving desert, without electricity, without telephones, every day and every night of their lives.

So we moved to New Mexico. The Pueblo people have a different life than the Papago and other Arizona tribes. They're more prosperous, closer to towns, have vehicles, life has been a bit kinder to them. I remained an employee of the BIA and was a substitute teacher the first year for all of the Pueblos. This was marvelous - as I got to visit each Pueblo, all very different from the other. I immensely enjoy Native American children. At the end of the year I had my pick and chose Isleta Pueblo, where I taught for the next several years. The Papago had taught me never to kill a rattlesnake, whom they say are sacred and our friends. In a nervous fit once my husband had killed a snake while we were out walking with our N.A. friends. It was coiled up in the middle of the path, me, stupid gringa, didn't see it, almost stepped on it, and it rattled it's tail a little to warn me not to step there, giving no posture or indication whatsoever of striking. Husband picked up big rock and smashed its head. N.A. friends jumped back, appalled and shocked - now, they said, we have angered the Snake God and they made us hang the dead snake over a tree branch to appease the gods and ask forgiveness.

And then the Pueblo taught me about ants.

One day there was a big strong young brave out in the school yard doing something with a line of sugar on the ground. I asked him what he was doing. He showed me a big fire ant hill - I don't know if you know those big red fire ants of New Mexico but their bite is as bad as a bee sting, hurts like crazy. They wanted the ant hill out of the children's playground, but, he told me, we would never kill an ant. He said that during the last Earth Change (like the one coming upon us now) the Pueblo people survived by going underground to live with the ants, up in Taos. So the ants are their brothers and they would never kill one - he was showing them with the line of sugar another/better place for them to live. It worked, next day the ants had moved. I've tried it since and it worked for me, too. As you say, Go Figure.

The Maya are also an amazing people, I could go on forever talking about the Maya. I have deep appreciation for them. They've always been very kind and generous with me and one of the things taught me by a Maya curandero was brilliant. I've been so fortunate that incredible teachers around the world have shared their own special views and techniques with me. You know, during the Caste Wars, the Mayas of Yucatan who didn't want to fight just left and went to Belize. Reminiscent of Jews who left Germany. I strongly believe that the ancient Maya, being such masters of time, astronomy, predictions and cycles, - the elite ruling class - I believe they knew something was coming, and just left - very likely to a parallel dimension or reality. We know now from quantum physics that these parallel dimensions do exist. The Maya culture as a geographical zone is actually more or less intact, except for this vanished class of priests and rulers. Maybe someday they will return.

I hope I haven't worn out your 'ear' or rather your eyes. I'm not a real computer person and actually try to avoid spending too much time on my computer - so I'm not experienced with getting to know someone completely over the internet. How do people do this? :-) At my age, or our age, there is TOO much, too many stories, too many lines. I'm used to seeing someone's energy, or looking into their eyes, hearing their tone, seeing how they live in their body, all that stuff. It's weird to try to squish a whole life and meaning and vision into these symbols on a screen. However, who you are has come across quite refreshingly in your expressions - and it's been wonderful to see your art, as well. Thank you for that.

Laurie

When I got to your long email of October 14th, where you describe your early life at Papago and other rez worlds, I realized that I hadn't really answered those stories or shared any feelings about what you had taken you so long to write. Dumb. But I think I was just a bit overwhelmed. You certainly had a very strong and early introduction to the Native American experience. So, to get back in the mood of my days out west, I put on some music, which I rarely do these days, a contemporary artist compilation of old Hank Williams songs, called "Timeless". My thought: rather than comment on what you have said, instead dip back in the pile of journals of my days out west and reply, across time, from then.

The time is 1982 or thereabouts. I am living in the Brewster Hotel on W.86th in NYC. The journal opens with a dream about the Tourbillion: "As I begin the Tourbillion is in my cabin in Jamestown, almost like a shadow as I see it. Slowly it grows until I am able to observe it, feel its outline in my hand. I watch as it goes down through the the rug into the electrical wires, so I cut the mass of rope and wire that are twisting together under the floor. Next, someone drops a match under the house to look around, and a puff of fire, gas, begins to spread under the beams. I realize the Tourbillion has done something dangerous and with a friend try to to cover the ground below with water, ruining others' possessions in the process. The person helping me is someone I never expected much of. At the end, another person brings me a weather instrument and tells me to measure the velocity of the whirlwind next time. They are all old acquaintances from Detroit whom I do not know or trust very well, which is surprising. I realize then the dream is a warning about the use of sexuality."

7/22/82 Indian Monument—Navajo Rez: "People are all aliens to each other, fragments of something suspended in the solution of this world. The earth is closer than a person to me, the air a more reliable friend. If I didn't feel so close to these two, supported and nourished by them, life would be a terrifying experience of loneliness. Our lives are like the whiff of my cigar smoke carried off through the brush pines...

Thunder shakes the ground and rain tramples the earth. Through feeling love for another, for friends and for my daughter, I cancel out the void of images. Love is sustained by an image, but passes through the image to meet the universal force operating in the air and the earth. These sweet friends protect the the love from emotional distortion and jealous, cold hearts bent only on destruction. These are my thoughts by the campfire. Waves of darkness roll across the plains, night stealing in upon this beautiful mound of twisted pines. Ancient Indian drums roll across the valleys, ancestors grumbling against mans' present pretentiousness.

Here, lightening striking all around us, food sizzling on the campfire stove and children laughing and screaming in the twilight. I await You, the unknown, and see coming by night the ecstatic embrace of your obsidian eyes."

Later, I was having dinner in the pouring rain with Ben, our guide, who commented it was the first downpour in over 10 weeks in the area. He also mentioned we would be visited by a Navajo medicine man and his family tomorrow evening.

We Took a 16 mile round trip ride to the Keet Seel ruin on horseback. Wonderful ride. Back at camp Ed and Bertha Austin and family had arrived for dinner. Ed was a Navajo "witch" now reformed into a medicine man and tribal Elder. Had a spectacular moment when Anglo-Indian tensions dropped; his kids came up to me with the nick-name "Slick" (for my hair) and then started teasing me. I had begun to make friends with a little Navajo girl (5 or 6) of the same family, name of Bertha. I told all the kids they would have to pay 25 cents to touch my hair. Finally I got someone to give Bertha $1.00 to convey the secret of my slickness to the group. Bertha and I went over to the truck and I pulled out a can of of hair spray I used to "fix" pencil drawings. The kids went crazy and started spraying and yelling and howling until I organized a game to determine intelligence; which was greater, boys or girls? In the mean time the Navajo adults were really getting a charge out of the whole thing, especially Slick getting wasted by the kids. This broke tensions and Ed and his family sang and drummed while the rest of us did Navajo circle dancing.

Later, the kids sang for him and he gave us all a blessing—to live and work in Harmony, in Beauty, to complete the circle of our trip and our lives in that fashion. The girls from our group sang some madrigals for him, and in the twilight evening with the crescent moon rising from the east, it was most beautiful, a sublime experience. 1982.

10/13 Laurie

Your stories and life on the rez as a young woman are really appealing. I wish I'd had more time there, especially in a professional capacity, and not as an interloper. But no matter, I found other outlets.

I'm really enjoying corresponding with you, but like you, I'm not that adept with the computer and it takes a long time to type anything. My thinking about shared correspondence is along these lines: We meet each other through radionics. But what is radionics, exactly? For many, it's these healing techniques and devices. For others, it's an expansive new metaphor for curative potential. For others, it's a business opportunity or even a con of some sort. But for some, myself included, it's an elusive category that combines all sorts of unusual elements, personal, aesthetic, spiritual, pragmatic. It's the very mystery of what it is that makes it so important to describe. That's what I'm trying to get to on the website. What is it that we experience in life, that makes radionics vivid? That's the information that others can use, not just the tools and techniques. Anyway, that's my thought for the moment.

But I'm lazy. So I think, why not just assemble some of these radionics people and let them tell their story. That's where I'm going with all this...

10/19 Cow Girl

Thank you so much for the encouragement to write. I love writing. It's always vied in my affections with radionics. I was taught by the Maya that the path up a pyramid is serpentine, not direct. ("Never approach Power directly.") So I appreciate the gentle nudge toward subtlety and innuendo. My take on the world of people has been that I need to be more blunt, in an attempt be understood (antidote to subtle energy equaling bluntness? :-). And then with you I see that one way of speaking about subtle energy is to speak subtly. Brilliant. Why didn't I think of this? One can be such a dullard when left alone too long in the woods. I'll have to reach deeply inside myself and bring my inner subtlety - out.

Dates: Tohono Oodham—'70/'71. New Mexico/Pueblos—'72 thru '76?

Because, to answer your question, for me, personally, my life has always been driven by Mystery. The mystery of life is the thing that gives me the juice. For this reason I have more or less escaped the fate of becoming fixed in one personae that you so clearly describe. For better or worse. There's always cost and benefit with everything. My battle cry in youth was Surprise me Holy Void.

My path has demanded certain sacrifices, such as it is difficult to carry a large library around. One lets go of some of the financial success inherent in focusing on one or two acceptable linear disciplined efforts. However, I've always been comfortable in the shadows. I cherish quietness of mind. Plus, I had my eyes wide open that this course, this earnest pursuit of wildness, of mystery, was made easier for me by being a woman, by not having children, and by being endowed with a blind faith in eternal hope and a trust in protection and in some kind of evolution, that is still with me today.

So, there's a question I'd like to ask of people like Don Gerrard, whose book (The Paper Doctor) is so brilliant in its simplicity and functionality. I can feel the energy of the symbols. He's got it. So I'm a big fan now, he gets my attention. I wonder what he has done since publishing of this book, because where my mind jumps to is to ask him: Once you realize fully that you can make a card for anything, then isn't the next logical step to ask yourself: What do I really want to make a card for? Don't any other radionic professionals want to get past the bumps and bruises - healing and health - phase of existence and get on to pushing the envelope? Finding out how far we can really go? Because personally I'm itching to find out what is possible, to chart the unknown boundaries of existence.

What is it that we are?

So far I've never found anything in life that I can't answer or do better with radionics, than without. So by combining a respect for spirit with a cooperative attitude using the tools and techniques of radionics, I have explored, in my own way, this question. Once one engages with the subtle realms - the key is in "listening", not necessarily in "knowing". The tapestry of life is woven richly, and there is always more than one aspect, more than one way of looking at things. I found if I can keep an open mind life would often surprise me in mysterious ways. We are the most amazing beings.

11/8 Cow Girl

You ask what I mean when I say that I've never found anything in life I can't do better with radionics? What comes to mind is the concept of radionic thinking and radionic living, as they apply to every situation. Radionic thinking is dimensional. What I call radionic thinking is not only the way I work, but how I live - i.e.,loosely, seeing what comes up, what wants to be done as I go along, being a conduit for this, and then observing results. I think this is similar to the way you sculpt, yes?

In radionic living, everything has a solution. If I don't know the solution, well then I just tune in and ask, and quiet myself down enough so that I can hear the answer. The answer is always there, eventually. To me, looking at things through radionic eyes means looking through the language of frequency. It is a common language. I bet baby's first observations and communication are frequency based. I can still remember, as a child, how clearly I could read people and situations. Much better than I do now, and I consider myself at least slightly adept at this now. What kind of memories do you have from your childhood?

Do you remember when, instead of taking things personally, you just saw them for what they were?

Here is an example of living radionically: For some reason recently my home, which sits atop a hill, with a veranda 360 degrees around, became the nesting home of wasps. Personally I don't mind wasps or insects. They don't bite me and I respect and admire their cultures. But this was too much. There were over 15 nests total, under the eaves of my house, and they were very active and robust. I decided perhaps the energy of my home and property had become low or depleted. So I did a series of broadcasts to raise the life force of my house and property. Within two weeks, all wasps were gone. First I noticed their level of energy and activity going down. Finally one day I checked and every nest on my property was vacated. Not a wasp in sight. I didn't kill the wasps, my intention was simply to raise the frequency to someplace where they did not exist, or where they were not comfortable. In this way I not only lose the wasp situation, but conveniently get a boost in energy that feels really good on the property. When one resorts to fighting the wasps, you lower the frequency of the environment.

Radionics is an excellent tool with which to dialogue with subtle energy emanations and patterns. Eventually you learn to track and surf these added dimensions until it becomes a way of life.

Working with the horses was a tremendous exercise. In its early years, the Natural Horse Racing Yard, which was my friend's invention, was a delight of experimentation and trust. As long as it was natural and good for the horses, we would check it out. Professional experimentation was the rule of the day. So when something came up, my friend would ask first if there was anything I could do about it radionically. He bought a beautiful farm in England and after much renovation it gradually became a glorious state of the art race horse training and housing center. The lengthy circular training track was discovered, come spring, to stand beside a neighbor's rape seed field.

I knew nothing of the rape seed plant at the time, but my friend told me that when it blossomed, it's pollen specifically targeted the lungs and bronchial tubes in a malign way. And yet this is right where the horses would be breathing heavily as they came around the track. He asked me if I could do anything. So I told him I'd look into it and asked him to take a photo of the rape seed field and email it to me. (I was half way around the world.) I printed out the photo, set it on my radionic board, tuned in with my pendulum and the plant was right there, ready to speak to me. I had quite a nice dialogue with the field of rape seed plants, who spoke as one voice. I expressed the concern that when the plants blossomed in the spring, the pollen will cause great problems for the horses' respiratory systems. The plant told me it was sorry. It said it didn't want this aspect of itself. That it had been artificially manipulated (I found out later it was genetically modified) and this was a result and that it was very sorry. I asked if it was okay to put the field on a broadcast - I don't remember anymore what I put it on, probably a list of good things like peace and well-being and balance, maybe harmony. That spring, the plants blossomed for just one day, instead of for much longer, which is normal, and my friend happily proclaimed that virtually no pollen was released, at least if so in an amount so infinitesimal that it was not detected by the horses. I think later that year, the farmer sold that field and it was used for something else, so that particular problem never came up again. For this one season, the plant made an effort to cooperate with us, and was able to do so. I believe that in nature cooperation is a much larger component than we are presently aware of.

To address your question, Duncan: "I think it would be fascinating for readers of the site, (there are 16,000 so far this year) to hear from seasoned practitioners like yourself about what you think radionics really is, where it has led you, and how it has effected the many people you have come in contact with throughout your life."

I find that people who come into contact with radionics begin to live with more trust in their inner voice and in their process. I believe as children, before we are programmed and conditioned, we follow the endorphin train (whatever that may be or mean personally), doing what feels good. I wonder if this can be correlated with following one's inner voice? There's a question to ponder. As adults we follow the money trail. ha Is it any wonder we lose our way? Presently I am experimenting with following the endorphin trail once again. Not through drugs or any substances, but through radionic thinking. I do it by manipulating my inner chemistry. First I find within myself the tone or mood of a really good feeling. Then I go through, in my mind and body, what makes me feel like that (what, when contemplated, gives me a whiff of that feeling.) Then I simply follow the lead of the endorphin feeling and engage in the outer life that follows the trail of how I want to feel. The use of the mind as a tool, with practice, allows enough distance, wiggle room, to make informed choices. I guess it goes without saying I believe in an inherent goodness. Radionic life is solution-oriented. Radionic thinking is dimensional thinking. Combine the two and hopefully it leads to a bridge of communication and cooperation between dimensions (and species). Are there actually people who want this? That would be advanced of us.

You mention in your beautiful book about recognizing the "hidden added dimensionality". This phrase stuck in my mind. Very beautiful way to express it...As this sunk in I realized for myself that I've not considered the "other" dimensions to be hidden, only thought myself more or less able to access them, as well as that there are "places and locations" where the veil between dimensions is thinner, for easier access, in an emergency. I think these dimensions are right in front of our faces all the time. We have such an abundance of veils in place, shielding us from seeing and hearing clearly our relationship with ourselves, each other, life.

Here's a frivolous example:

I have a friend named Betty who told me a funny story. She was in a quaint beach town south of XXXXX and had the duty to attend a cocktail party. I say duty as she really didn't want to go, she found these events immensely boring, but it was necessary for her husband's business. Betty is a writer, so she decided, well, if I have to go, I'll take my small hand-held tape recorder, and the next time I need dialogue for a scene that involves a boring cocktail party, I'll be ready. So, once arrived, tape-recorder in hand, she proceeded to mosey from group to group as they engaged in the usual small talk, and she recorded their conversations. No one noticed. Except, one of the couples had a four yr. old daughter, who was in attendance because it was at her home. She IMMEDIATELY noticed the small tape recorder in Betty's hand. The four-year-old, we'll call her Angie, was intrigued by what Betty was doing. Betty actually had to hold her fingers up to her mouth and give Angie a shhhhh! Not only did no one notice their conversations being recorded, but no one noticed the perp being followed around by an inquisitive little girl. A duo of obvious spies in their midst, moving and tape-recording freely in a conversational ring, all night long, and no one saw a thing right in front of their faces. Eventually Betty Jo got very sloppy about hiding it - the party-goers were so oblivious she could relax and just tape them openly. Because they didn't expect to see her doing this, they didn't see it. Is this how we treat subtle energy and added dimensions? If so then they're not hidden, we just don't see them. It's all there, all around us. My friend Betty is silly and fun and she calls it Stalking the Textures in the Field.

You say, "Maybe other voices will join in. There are so many people in the world that are completely without any information of this kind, especially written in such a way they can relate to it in their own lives, or the lives they would like to have." This is where you will have to help, guide me, Duncan. I'm out of touch with what lives people would like to live, and what they can relate to. Maybe you can teach me that.

11/9 Cow Girl:

What kind of lives would people in the United States like to have?

11/9 Laurie

I'm working on a longer reply to your always stimulating thoughts. But...to answer the question, let me attempt to do do so in two ways.

First, the lives I think we want are the fulfillment of the ideals or fantasies we have developed for ourselves, however implausible or potentially damaging to our overall wellbeing. In time, a higher powers steers us toward inner peace and bliss, rather than just outer fulfillment. So, it's a tug of war. The downward tendencies, from a radionics standpoint, one could look at as inertia. Think of inertia as a force that causes us to sink or remain stuck in self-limiting habits and concepts. Radionics, as you seem to live and espouse it, is by contrast, neg-entropic; it's a tool for arousing both latent powers in nature and higher awareness. Awareness effectively negates our own inertia, thus freeing us up to gradually ascend to higher consciousness. Personally, I believe this process of ascension, if understood and practiced with guidance from a living Master, thwarts the downward tendencies. It replaces compulsion and delusion with the bliss of being in harmony with higher self and god, however one assigns or interprets that power. (I consider that power to be inner light and sound, the knowledge of which is established initially through developing a relationship with a living Saint.)

Secondly, having the correct tools to accomplish a transformation of being is what I mean, when I speculate on what type of lives people really want to have, after all is said and done.

Radionics, in this context, goes beyond being a technology designed to accomplish a specific end and purpose defined by the operator, such as healing, crop augmentation, etc. It becomes instead, more like a metaphor for de-conditioning ourselves from self-limitation (brought on by ego driven behavior). Artistically and philosophically, you can't actually accomplish that by yourself, it has to involve self-surrender and purposeful living for others.

Your explanation(s) of how you use radionics were so cogent and clear that after I read your email a chill went down my back. It's not that I don't expect there are people out there using radionics the way you do, so much as the thrill of encountering someone, out of the blue, that is expressing in their own terms exactly what the potential of this technology is in day to day life. You really have the knack of putting very subtle things simply.

The element of your style and experience that I like the best are the way you use radionics to refine your relationship with nature. I keep talking about radionics as a de-conditioning process. No one but me really knows what I mean by this, but as you describe it, instead of just responding to life in our habitual way, with the usual consequences, what if we opened up our bandwidth a little and just started asking for help? That's exactly what I mean. It's scary, because it suggests life is more malleable than we are conditioned to believe, more like a dream. Who really wants to assume full responsibility for changing their circumstances? Especially if they can be changed simply by focused intent? The concept is very daunting; you mean we aren't just little machines humming along in concert with our creator's design?

Radionics, the way you practice it, necessitates surrender of a large part of one's ego to something else. That is the warp and woof of what I am urging you to explore here in this text—the component of faith; how it works and the tools you use. The horse story was brilliant. You demonstrate radionics applied to circumstances where a problem for horses, rapeseed, is countered by your very simple (and humble) procedure of contacting the crop and asking for mitigation. Now, do you do this through making cards with rates on them, or can you simply will yourself into communication with the seed? Where do the radionic procedures—cards, boxes, etc. become more appropriate versus just direct communication with the condition by word, thought or intent? I think this question is very fundamental to how one approaches a radionics such as yours. I could add to this question, to what degree does nature direct an outcome versus the operator and their chosen technology?

Yet, I sense there is another component to your radionics that involves internal awareness. When people talk about radionics as a technology, the theme is usually so and so did this or that; so and sos machine did this or that, and so on. Not usually do you find anyone willing to discuss what type of awareness was necessary to complete the task, and how much of the credit goes to nature/god/love. It is this missing component that you articulate in your stories so well. This is the "missing dimension of radionics"; at least from my point of view.

Other statements of yours that need to be clarified: "Radionics is an excellent tool with which to dialogue with subtle energy emanations and patterns. Eventually you learn to track and surf these added dimensions until it becomes a way of life."

This could use some embellishment. Just how does radionics function as a tool to surf and dialogue with subtle energy? The implication is that "subtle energy" is an intelligent co-party to the process. Are you talking about Nature Intelligence or just energy manipulated by the operator's intent? Where does the tire meet the road in this methodology of operator meets subtle energy & Nature to accomplish a task? How does perception of "frequency" lead to dialogue with the subject? I know you have called it "Hollow Bones", a wonderful metaphor; how about a few more Hollow Bones stories or incidents?

Ahhhh, the endorphin trail; now there's an analogy that fuses radionic mysticism with common experience. Like pheromones pulling us to others, endorphins lead us out of negative emotions into better states of being. It sounds plausible, but do you have some more examples?

Like the little girl at the party, people are beginning to see the microphones. But they don't really know what they are looking at or what it all means (me included). So, the magic of our creative writing experience is to dial in what we see, as esoteric radionicists, and interpret it for the benefit of others (that might care). It is one thing to practice radionics as a healing art, and quite another to practice it as tool of higher awareness...

11/16 Cow Girl:

I am working on an answer to your email. So far it's rather unwieldy and long so while it's gathering itself, thought I'd throw a few lines out there that are conversational thoughts and questions.

You mention "part and parcel of a relationship with a living lineage of Saints." I love the sound of this, you have such a facility with the language sometimes your sentences read like poems. Since you say this is your personal philosophy, can you explain what it means to you, how it plays out for you?

Okay, now in all seriousness...honestly, do people not want full responsibility for changing their circumstances? How is improvement expected to happen? Does this mean that freedom is not a desirable concept? I'm asking because saying people don't want responsibility for themselves is a shocking concept to me. While I am grateful and respectful for expertise and wisdom and always ready to learn, my foundational thought is that my life, my life path and my body are my responsibility.

I do humbly acknowledge that we all need help from one another and from above at one time or another. I'll get back to this in more depth in my later email, but you say it's scary to think life is malleable, like a dream. That is so funny. The exact opposite is the scariest thing I can think of - to imagine one could NOT effect change with focused intent, that one is set on a path determined by others and there is no bending or altering the rules, said rules also set by powers one cannot fathom or dialogue with. I don't want to live on that planet! ha Who would want to be little machine pieces? I respect you tremendously or else I'd think you were kidding...are you kidding?

Yes, yes, open the bandwidth and ask for help. That's the gist of my entire life's path. I have received consistently that help is always available, but cannot be given if we don't ask. It's the same with my work, so I understand...even if someone in my family has a problem or an issue, or someone who is a friend has - and I have within my repertoire a tried solution, I cannot effect this solution unless the person asks for my help. I've been taught you can't go around meddling in people's lives, they have to ask. So I just imagine it's the same with the gods. Ask for help. Dialogue. Keep the channel open.

Okay, that's enough...I'll get back to whipping my other wanderings into some kind of shape. But I'll end with a story, just for fun. An example of life pre-radionics...indicating life always gave me this subtle interaction as a natural occurrence. My life is punctuated with events similar in spirit. Radionics gave me tools. Wonderful tools. Which enhance interaction with the subtle realms because they represent a "system". And this system gives one parameters within which to work, making interesting projects more accessible. Also I realized, through our conversations, a curious thing. I've always talked to spirits, animals, trees. But until radionics I never heard replies. Actions yes, but never voices, which seem to come through effortlessly with the system radionics offers, when there is a true need or a spontaneous moment.

Several years before I heard of radionics I was living in New Mexico, in a small mountain town north of Albuquerque. My girlfriend and I were having fun at a magical spring, where fresh pure water pours out of the mountain. We were playing with nature, did a little ceremony, danced, holding hands, around a big oak tree, singing, I think it was some hokey country song. Which made us laugh. The ceremony was for Transformation, which we were both seeking at the time. I'm sure there was a little Benedictine sipping involved, as well. All fine and well, we had fun, then each went to our respective homes. The next morning I awoke and prepared to take my dogs for our morning jaunt in the hills. As I stepped outside my door I noticed a beautiful, large rattlesnake, coiled up around the rose bush, within my patio, just inside the gate leading out.

I understood immediately what it meant. Snakes are the symbol for Transformation. My playful supplication had been answered. It was a great honor, and as I walked past the sleeping snake for our hike, I silently thanked it. That snake stayed coiled around the rose bush for the next week. I never saw it do anything but rest peacefully, my three large dogs, an Irish Wolfhound, a Wolfhound/Great Dane cross, and a coursing hound which is Borzoi, Greyhound and Scottish Deerhound mix, all completely ignored it.

We had a yard of snake and roses and no one minded. Until, after a week had passed and my husband (now ex) said to me: "I'm going to kill that snake."

"NO you're not. It's there for me. It's a good sign."

"But", he replied, (husband was in the process of discovering his drinking problem, and often stayed out late, coming home drunk) -

"I'm afraid I'm going to come home drunk some night and step on it and it'll bite me."

"Okay," I said, sadly, as I was very fond of the snake, "I'll talk to it."

So I went outside, knelt down beside the snake, and said softly, that I immensely appreciated its visitation. However, my husband, sigh, was not comfortable. And you, dear snake, I'm afraid you'll have to leave now. I don't want you to be in danger from him.

The next morning the snake was gone. I always sorta wished I had asked that husband to leave instead of the snake, but oh well, live and learn. :-)

11/17 Laurie

I always enjoy reading your emails.

This part of Maine retains the old magic of Nature lost throughout much of lower New England. One can actually feel the boundary between the two cultures, new and old; then sense crossing from the former to the latter at certain points on the road. You can see the difference in the foliage, dwellings and atmosphere. It takes about six to six and a half hours drive from my home in R.I. before that transition occurs. What is so different about the world of my home in RI, I can't truly say. It's also a very beautiful place, but it's like it has been processed or filtered to the point only certain acceptable elements remain. When I babble on about machine people and all that, I am only speaking in generalities, basically about becoming habituated and tamed by the obligations and assumptions of the culture. Sucked through the filter. Of course, and regardless of such insinuations, people remain dynamic and deeply invested in their own processes, loves, beliefs and grow accordingly. But if as a culture we weren't basically stuck, then why do movies and stories about fuck-ups, loaners, criminals, neurotics and psychopaths hold so much compelling joy and appeal? Isn't it because on some level, societal or psychological, these outsiders pull the plug and just let go of everything? If true, doesn't that imply the rest of us are desperately holding on to some deadening type of reality that stifles our life and happiness? Earlier in this correspondence, you also referenced this same frustration, when you explained how people become so attached to their illnesses that they define their whole lives.

You, obviously, do not feel constrained in these ways, and may not have lived recently in an environment populated by people who are. But I do, and it is part of the reason I retreat up to Maine, which remains ripe with solitude and raw beauty.

I realize I'm in the midst of a transition. I've recently completed a number of complicated, long term projects on a number of levels. Some were self-imposed, like the radionics book, but others were imposed on me, by my circumstances. In the process, I lost interest in art and many other obsessions that powered me through my days. So much so, that now I question my former preoccupations and seriously doubt the relevance of "self" directed activity. I know it must sound strange, and believe me it is. At night, I find myself in strange dream locales, often with familiar people, but not ones I know in waking; I'm thinking thoughts, going places, doing things just like I am doing here, all very vivid and conscious, even to little details and subtle moods. I exist and act, knowing on some level the "I" of the dream is just a point of reference that is grounded in absolutely nothing beyond a perceiver inhabiting a bodiless state.

So, if that's the case in my dream, why would it be so different here? I'm still center stage in my own dramas, most of the time, unless the needs of another or some huge storm of events shifts me out of this self-referential loop.

As a young artist, I fought to define my own identity—that which differentiates one from all else. When learning to make art, one begins to realize how derivative ones work is of other artists. You think you have made something really unique, and then someone says, wow, that's a lot like Henry Moore or Brancusi, or Arp, and you look at it closer, and yes, it is. The whole time you are developing this piece of work, you don't really see it is an expression of a subconscious image your mind found particularly compelling. Unconsciously, the slow process of learning to make things in the real world with your hand and tools extrudes these images until we empty ourselves of them. And so it seems to be the case with so much else we think we do.

So this realization, beginning as it did over 40 years ago, led me to wonder what is there in life that is not derivative of other things in the world and my mind? That question led me to the Saints, particularly the one I was to meet and follow. I discovered that at all times on the earth, a true saint of the highest order has been in attendance. They aren't figures of the past; they are a perpetual continuity fixed in the creation, a living connection to that which lies beyond form, mind and the ego. A personification of absolute love. One has only to find such a being here, become satisfied they are what they seem, and follow their instructions.

I had that experience over 40 years ago, and I've never been the same. Stupidly, I've fought this process and rebelled against it almost the entire time since. Gradually I have been worn down, crushed at times, and have acknowledged defeat at some level, at least in word. It's why I'm spinning out here in the Maine wilderness, loosing interest in people, places and things; adrift among the currents.

How can I explain it? There is no rationale. There is no destination. There is no pay off or capitulation or return to childhood. There is no relief, nothing but the occasional bliss of cessation of identity, arriving without warning at certain times. You realize later you were "gone"; as in deep dreamless sleep, now somehow re-emerged, refreshed and revived. This glimpse is the handiwork of the saints.

Your story of the snake is so good. I immediately identified with your ex-husband. Only, I would have stepped on it; that's what my life has been like; stepping on every snake in my path.

11/17 Cow Girl:

Before I begin I have a question for you - about a decade into this work, I began to wonder why the heavies of radionics, at that time David Tansley and Malcolm Rae were my examples, why do they die so young? (For Tansley I think it was 57, Malcolm Rae I don't remember exactly, but it wasn't much later.) And now we can add Peter Kelly, Eldon (Byrd), and the scientist still working for the govt. with whom you have interesting dialogues on your webpage (John Norseen). With all the knowledge and tools at their disposal, why do they die relatively young? I've always wanted to be careful not to fall into the same grouping. I wondered if it was something about the way they worked, or if it was the work itself?

You mention "energy manipulated by the operator's intent". I've never thought of it that way, for me it's always been a cooperative venture. (myself and the powers that be...you call it Nature Intelligence, I usually call it the Field.) For starters, I had Bob Monroe's Gateway Affirmation printed out and taped to the wall at my worktable, at the level where my eyes rested whenever I looked up as I was working. I would repeat it every day before I started:

"I am more than my physical body. Because I am more than physical matter, I can perceive that which is greater than the physical world. Therefore, I deeply desire to Expand, to Experience; to Know, to Understand; to Command, to Use such greater energies and energy systems as may be beneficial and constructive to me and to those who follow me."

"Also I deeply desire the help and cooperation, the assistance, the understanding of those individuals whose wisdom, development and experience are equal or greater than my own. I ask their guidance and protection from any influence or any source that might provide me with less than my stated desires."

I no longer use this as I have set out on my own path with my own personal and individual guidance, but I used this for the first 20 years. It set the tone.

You ask how I contacted the rapeseed field. I hadn't actually talked to a field of plants before, and haven't since. It was one of those Need to Know situations. The process was very simple. By the way, I don't use rates. I don't relate much to numbers, more to words and their definitions, or symbols. These days I also use some frequencies in my work. Specific frequencies whose definitions I really like. Anyway - I place a witness, in this case, a photograph of the field, on my radionic board, stand in front of it with an empty mind, bring my pendulum to hang over the photo - and something automatically happens. No "willing", I guess if anything, it's more like an "allowing". After almost three decades of consistently repeating this system (it was 25 years at that time), it's just automatic. I show up and things happen. Maybe like: I show up and they show up. The rapeseed plants were right there with one voice and I could hear it, and so we dialogued.

In other cases, even if there is no verbal dialogue, once I stand there and apply my pendulum to the witness, I seem to be able to feel what the animal, human or plant is feeling. I've never had occasion to work on a rock, but see no reason why it would be any different. I could feel what the Gulf of Mexico felt like a few years back when I checked in with it. By the way, it felt awful. And that was before the spill. This is one of those gift/curse situations I guess. Walking around in daily life I don't feel these things so much, only if they're exaggerated and very strong for some reason. Everything is sentient, so everything is able to have a dialogue with us, if there is a need. A willingness to listen is necessary. And for me becoming quiet makes it possible. Once you "feel" somebody, be it plant, animal or human, a feeling of familiarity and kindness comes into play. And speaking of play, nature likes to play.

Nature and nature spirits love to play and it's a great way to join with them. We all have telepathy, it's just a muscle we seldom use, as our style of living doesn't accommodate it. Not so for some native peoples I have lived around. In XXXX the native people are naturally telepathic, shockingly so. They're also cannibals, so it's not because there's a great deal of kindness or respect there, in that case. They're just NATURE personified, in a way that was extremely hard for me to understand at first. It took over a year before I could begin to see them more clearly. Their rules are different.

11/18 Laurie

I'm not sure how tactful my answer to the healing/early death question will be, but in the spirit of honesty I suppose I must risk stepping on another snake. First, many practitioners of radionics were stressed into early death or retirement by legal harassment, and no doubt professional harassment as well. It doesn't make for lovely life experience to fly in the face of authority and also not be able to prove how one does what one does. Even the clients balk at anything less than miraculous after a while. Abrams watched his wife die of cancer before he created a treatment protocol. Kelly was just too overweight and unhealthy. Eldon was always under tremendous financial and emotional duress. He won a libel suit against Randi, but only after he was essentially crushed. He died of cancer. Norseen predicted his own demise, and the way it would transpire, a few months before it occurred. He was probably talking too much about things he shouldn't have been, but his family felt the death was natural—a blood clot. Norseen did have such a clot and suffered from bad knees, and extensive knee operations that never seemed to get better. He was also way overweight and consumed far too much alcohol and pain medication, to remain healthy, from what I could see.

But none of these individual instances actually answer the question you ask. For my part, I don't practice healing (assuming I even could) because of prohibitions against healing and the risk of taking on others' karma, which is frowned upon in the teaching I follow. My guess is that if you are a healer and it feels like you are nothing but a conduit to Nature Intelligence, then the ego doesn't participate in the healing or the karma. However, if one believes they are the healer, then the energy of the transaction gets dumped to some degree on the individual healer. This is simply a guess on my part, but also based on some observation.

In one instance I was demonstrating some radionics for my sister-in-law. I can't remember what it was, but it involved a lot of emotional energy. I forgot to ground the box, and I felt a lot of the energy from her task flow into me, and it was difficult to dissipate. Later, when the device was grounded, I never felt the transaction affect me personally.

On another occasion, I was hosting author Gerry Vassilatos, Mike Theroux of Borderlands, and Michael Bradford, inventor of the Genesis, a sonic radionics device, at my studio in Rhode Island. These were three very informed guys, and we were having a good time. The studio was still under construction, and we were experimenting in the basement (shielded by rock and cement, fortunately). At one point, Gerry put an old Cesium radio tube into the input well of my Kelly radionics device. The cesium tube had a radioactive component, and we all suddenly experienced a huge DOR (Deadly Orgone Radiation) reaction, much like those Wilhelm Reich and his associates described when they put radium in an orgone accumulator.

We were wiped out for the duration of the visit, and everyones' emotions turned very negative. Gerry and Mike kept to themselves, and ditto for Michael and I. I was extremely surprised Gerry would do such an impulsive thing, because he, more than any of us, understood ground energy and orgone (or so I thought). Not long after Gerry completely abandoned his writing and experimentation and went invisible to friends and associates alike. I have no idea if there is any connection between the two circumstances, but the "instant karma" of the transaction was unequivocal and heartfelt. Again, the intent seemed important: putting the tube in the device without group consent or consultation. A rash and willful act in retrospect, with an alarming outcome.

No doubt your affirmations have helped to mitigate any untoward reactions from your radionics work. Some people just have a gift of healing, and it is natural and appropriate to them. Others may have conflicting motives that generate an unhealthy feedback loop; I don't know. Part of the reason I'm trying to expand the discussion of radionics beyond healing is to explore that intuitive, harmonious relationship with nature you describe so well. Certainly there must be a point where the harmony of the transaction cancels out whatever pride or ego the experience generates. It's a bigger discussion, that's for sure, and one we may never resolve with our intellect.

Knowing more about how everything "works" from the correct equilibrium is what I'm asking you for information about. Intuitive Radionics.

11/20 Cow Girl

I'll think about this.

Once we can feel life and nature to such a degree, where is the gain in potentially spoiling the experience through greed and inflation?

Thank you for these other statements. It really does clear up some rather long deliberations for me. The irony is, as I understand it, a radionic broadcast is just as easily made to attract money, clear disharmony or discord, tune and tone the body, as it is to clear disease. These learned men, the ones in our time, at least, had the tools and the means in their hands and minds to better their situations - only requiring I guess a more expansive view of what the tool can do. And maybe the will to do it.

Again, as I understand it, a broadcast holds a pattern in the field of the person or entity receiving. Within this dynamic is the belief that the patterns in your field are your future realities. This is why radionics is claimed by some to be capable of ridding the body of serious disease before it manifests...first, it can be detected in its subtle stage, and then eliminated while still in the field, the etheric body, the astral body, whatever, before it becomes physical. And is therefore easier to manage. Once the physical is involved, work can still be done, but the process is more arduous.

With recent (very exciting) advances in understanding in both neurology and epigenetics, science seems on the crest of accepting that most illnesses, and even many accidents, have a strong emotional and/or psychological component. This is somewhat similar in that it is from the unseen to the seen. All of these states of being can be accessed and tuned into with radionics. The physical world is really the last post, so to speak.

Regarding the ill effects from the broadcast in your story, it was a rather odd act on his part. I'm familiar with DOR. You're lucky the effects were short-lived. When I was taught, my mentor stressed strongly the part about having a great deal of respect for the power of the broadcasts. Never taking the effects for granted, and never being sloppy.

12/2 Laurie:

I wanted to share a couple thoughts that popped out of a novel I read some time back, Neuropath, by R. Scott Bakker. Around half way through the book, Bakker uses his male lead, a college psychologist & brain expert to discuss recent discoveries in neurology and perception. His thinking: "Consciousness is an end user, and a poor one at that. Out of all the information our brains crunch every second, only a tiny sliver makes it to conscious experience—less than a millionth by some estimates."

The Professor is discussing the discovery that we live primarily in a black and white world, with only a narrow ring of color immediately in front of us. The brain itself fills in the rest, he states. The upshot is that the point is made that "consciousness is a deceptive mess." He sites recent discoveries like inattentional blindness, change blindness, masking, perceptual asynchrony, processing lags, etc. to further his point. "The gap between the environmental information we THINK we take in, and the actual information we have access to is nothing short of staggering. It's so bad that most cognitive scientists refer to the experience you're having now—your sensorium, as they like to call it—as the 'Grand Illusion' "

If you've ever read anything about hypnosis, you can get a great sense of this. Personally, I like the work of George Estabrook, a Colgate Professor in the Korea war era, who first researched hypnosis following reported 'brainwashing' of returning GIs from that war. (Remember how that blew every ones' mind then??) Anyway, the degree to which he was able to manipulate his experimental subjects (under hypnosis) was astounding.

"But," the Professors companion counters, "It doesn't FEEL that way...I mean, I think therefore I am, right?"

"That's really a philosophical claim; scientific research suggests otherwise. Something like 'it thinks therefore i was' would probably be more accurate. There's actually no one place where consciousness comes together in the brain, but in terms of the information it can access, it's very localized. It seems particularly hard for us North Americans to swallow given our bogus can-do indoctrination, but if you really attend to the decisions you make, even things like dragging your ass off the couch, you can clearly see how AFTER THE FACT conscious experience is. You wanna get off the couch, and you credit yourself after the fact. So much of what we do—all of it in fact—simply pops into conscious experience, where 'we' take credit for it."

So, thinking radionically, do these statements about consciousness, assuming they are true, also imply the operator's intent can act as a force capable of intervening in the cognitive space that exists prior to things becoming conscious in the subject, suggesting the instant the treatment occurs, the subjects consciousness has already been modified to accept the new, healthier condition? Also, the thoughts suggest that in meditation, attaining a state of momentary bliss serves to re-calibrate consciousness at a higher level, however incrementally small and short lived that may be. Perhaps in art driven by visionary experience, the content of the vision takes control over the creative process until it becomes integrated into consciousness?

"So really think about it now," continues the Professor, "Everything you live, everything you see and touch and hear and taste, everything you think, belongs to this little slice of mush, this little wedge in your brain called the thalamocortical system. The neural processing that makes these experiences possible—we're talking about the most complicated machinery in the known universe—is UTTERLY INVISIBLE. This expansive, far reaching experience of yours is nothing more than a mote, an inexplicable glow, hurtling through some impossible black. You're STEERING THROUGH A DREAM..."

Certainly, if this author's research is correct, the manner by which radionics alters physical reality seems more feasible and makes more sense than skeptics would suggest. I dare say it also implies we have a lot more responsibility for the circumstances we find ourselves in than most of us would like.

Anyway, I would suggest these ideas are the premise on which not only contemporary neurophysiology, but spiritual science are based. With former, however, this condition leads to an incredible sense of existential loneliness (unless, I suppose, you have top dollar contracts with the NSA or CIA to weaponize the mind), but for the latter, it is an incredible window of insight.

So the upshot is that because we are all conscious of ourselves to some degree, we must, even subconsciously, realize the dilemma posed by being hopelessly split between two worlds, the sensorium dominated by survival and self-gratification, and that of an intangible and enigmatic "self", possessing love, longing and hope.

And all of these emotions? These images, people, loves, children, friends, what of them? It's incredible to imagine. And now what?

12/14 Laurie

I get the impression we are beginning to write about radionic techniques and insights not normally committed to words.

Writing with you in this manner is both challenging and experimental. More so, because our common theme, radionics, is all about exploring the meaning and use of subtle energy. Using 'subtle energy' has to include using words to convey imagery and meaning, don't you think? Here I am asking you to try and extend the boundaries of radionics in a way that it becomes a more familiar tool people can understand and use in daily life, and what happens, but we begin actually fielding this energy through the internet, using words as witnesses, painting impressions in each others minds? Do you think this correspondence could extend our own understanding of radionics?? I don't know about you, but I feel the experience of delving into these topics is having a restorative and healing impact on me. I feel happier and freer for it. Thank-you for your role in making this happen.

I also never responded to any of your descriptions about your technique and inventions. These are very interesting, and I would beg you to further elaborate. From my perspective, the impediment many people face in trying radionics or personalizing an approach to using subtle energy, are numerous and onerous: the cost of the equipment, the arcane methodologies, the complex and confusing rhetoric, and the plethora of approaches one must sift through to find something suitable. But, if you come at radionics from the vantage point of art, it is possible to sidestep many of these problems. Looking at The Paper Doctor, we see very simple tools and techniques being used to great end. No boxes, wires, blood samples, etc. No wonder the book was squelched! But even here, one must rely on his drawings, which doesn't allow for any creative improvement or digression from the scope of his orientation.

What you have shared about your work is a capacity to sidestep the normal equipment impediment, through adding the ability to make both ones' own cards and broadcast equipment to suit whatever purpose is desired. To me, this lands your radionics squarely in the world of art. If you can share any insights about how these cards and crystals can actually be used—to connect to earth energy and perform healing and other tasks, then the curious can explore these methods as a baseline for establishing their own personalized methodologies. I can sense this potential would free radionics from a lot of pre-conceptions about how radionics works, especially those approaches that insert a toll booth between the technology and the end user. I don't fault anyone for trying to make a buck, and the device is an excellent starting point. Then there is the gifted healing professional that employs the techniques that has to survive financially. But too much reliance on technology puts at risk the whole emphasis of radionics being something "free" in the sense that these cures are magical in their simplicity and effectiveness—a gift from Nature. The last thing we want to see is radionic technology pharma companies with numerous branches and applications, which in a sense, continue to mimic the corporate medical business model at the expense of the individual. Isn't this a bit like putting a church between yourself and god?

Cow Girl 12/13:

To address your questions, it seems I've always had inner guidance, of one sort or another. In my twenties my guides consistently advised me to avoid becoming too dependent on things in life that can be taken away, like electricity and pharmaceuticals, among other things. They're good things, all the conveniences. But what if you have studied for years and know and have all the tools for any circumstance, but they all depend on, electricity, or a pill or product that comes from a manufacturer far away. Then one day right when you need them the most, those exact tools your skills are basedon are taken away by natural or unnatural occurrences. What then? So I was always taught to also know another way. This has been a longterm lifeterm project for me, the very elementary freedom of being able to take care of my self at least in a basic way, and I'm sure this has influenced my radionic path.

When you say: "the actual information we have access to is nothing short of staggering." How true! There is so much information, on so many levels. How does one not be overwhelmed. For me this is where inner quietness comes in. If I become overwhelmed with too much information I just toss it all out and become quiet inside and wait. Sometimes I wait and wait and wait. But eventually what is true surfaces, be it a direction to information or a precise and specific answer. I think I'm in preschool though because this doesn't come easily. It's not that hard to become quiet sitting on the grass in a beautiful meadow by a trickling stream, alone and happy. To do so in a room polluted with electromagnetic madness and a group of active people, this is beyond me. I have to have quiet. We live these crazy lives. We're complex. Isn't it lovely?

Looking at your statement: "So, thinking radionically, does this imply the operator's intent is a force capable of intervening in the space prior to thingsbecoming conscious in the subject, suggesting the instant the treatment occurs, the subject's consciousness has already been modified to accept the new, healthier condition?"

That's a tricky question, part of me wants to say, I wish it were so easy. Another part agrees with what you say. And then yet another part feels personally, for me, I do not feel my intent is a force, but rather a conduit. A conduit like a telephone line through which the subject's Field receives the frequency food or message (broadcast) it needs to achieve its desired result. But the subject still chooses to pick up the phone or not, to receive the message or not.

However, I think what you describe is possible, sounds like (the film) Inception to me, and if indeed this can be done, taken to its extreme, it's scary. "Prior to things becoming conscious in the subject" speaks to me of the Field. Yes, I believe the broadcasts hold a pattern of information in the Field of the subject. But it is not there to modify the subject's consciousness, that sounds too much to me like orthodox medicine. Other things are involved than just the subject's consciousness. Outer circumstances come into play, bringing in opportunities - Spirit, the Field, Nature Intelligence, God - the invisible is involved, too. While within the Field of a person's consciousness, suggestions are offered, or the means to dissolve barriers provided, re: the subject's request, which he/she can then choose to incorporate, or not. No modification takes place without conscious consent. This is all happening in the subtle realms, but I think we can develop consciousness in the subtle realms - now that's a tricky statement - to say we have a bit of consciousness we're not conscious of! I have to laugh at myself. What does physicist Amit Goswami call it? Local and NonLocal Consciousness. Changes takes place first in nonlocal consciousness, then moves to local consciousness where it begins to affect the material. I may be nitpicking at words here. I want to say that on this planet we are in the atmosphere of Spirit (the Field, Nature Intelligence, the Holy Ghost, call it what you will) and within what you call Intuitive Radionics, we move and act and engage in this invisible atmosphere. Engaging with and cooperating with Spirit. That's one thing that defines radionics from orthodox medicine.

And yes, absolutely, I agree that in meditation, attaining a state of momentary bliss serves to re-calibrate consciousness at a higher level. Some neuroscientists are doing interesting studies with this, confirming exactly this through the latest brain activity-imagery monitoring.

Last thing you said in Dec. 2nd email that I want to comment on here: "I dare say it also implies that we have a lot more responsibility for the circumstances we find ourselves in than most of us would like." Speaking only for myself, I know without a doubt that I feel completely and totally responsible for circumstances I find myself in. Don't you?

Laurie: Could anyone eat a lamb if they did?

Cow Girl: Isn't that the truth!!

Laurie 12/9
You must be able to type much better than I, either that or the words come easier. I'm happy you feel comfortable just letting your thoughts out, it makes it easy to just drop in anywhere with a thought or two of my own.

You wondered about my own introduction to radionics. I met the Psychotronics people through my friendship with Josh Reynolds, the last R.J.R III. He came to a show I had in NYC with a painter friend, Aymon de Sales. Those two had been friends a long time, and Aymon thought Josh would like my show and the whole gallery set up, which was owned by a young couple deeply involved with Tibet. This was 1980 or so. Both Josh and Aymon are dead now, but as a result of that meeting, Josh and I became very good friends. We were born on the same day, ten years apart. He was a great character, and loved alternative energy technology. He introduced me to Andre Puharich, who lived on his estate, Devotion, in western North Carolina. Later he made the introduction to Tom Bearden. In return, I introduced Josh to Peter Kelly, Preston Nicholas, Eric Dollard and others, a few of whom I brought to Devotion.

I was looking for something I could actually use in my art work, so I gravitated to radionics, I studied with Peter Kelly, and later brought Josh and Aymon there as well. Kelly had previously bought Michael Bradford's sound bed, the Cotleydon, later called Genesis, and retrofitted it to his own technology. I couldn't stand the contraption initially. It seemed like the device was designed to basically broadcast radionic intent into the listener with bad music and subliminal frequencies. But I was a guest, and kept my mouth shut. Then one day Aymon was on the bed and I was laying on the floor in one of those domes where it was housed, listening to We Are The World. Relaxed, I began to see images of musicians playing instruments, and I began to wonder if the images were of the actual recording session, imbedded on the CD along with the sound, but liberated by the radionic technology directly into the imagination? That thought was a revelation.

Then later, Josh was having a private session, and he swore that a Kachina appeared in the room, standing alongside the bed. I'd have to go back to my journals, but I think he also had a wild vision about his brother then as well. He was sold on the device. Later, he purchased it from Kelly and had it transported to my house in Long Island City, for Aymon and I to experiment with. That was a fun time. (LIC was a really funky place in those days, almost like another country. Local menus in numerous foreign languages, an East Berlin vibe on the street, but I had this beautiful little row house, three rooms stacked one on another, the bottom being a story and a half below street level, opening on to an amazing, huge garden—pine trees, vineyard, berries, magic pathways, you name it. I also rented the garden apartment of the building next door, so the 'Music Machine' as it came to be known, had its own basement apartment. We could lie in this mini jungle at night, listening to weird sounds from the machine and watch the elevated subway winding its way down across the 59th St. Bridge.) Anyway, Josh was a big H.P. Lovecraft fan, and far from seeing this technology as something useful for us artists to develop, he hoped it would act like a portal that would flood New York City with inter-dimensional tulpas!

So, my introduction to psychotronics and radionics was a bit different than some, but potentially it looked interesting, and that turned out to be the case. That machine, now called The Purr Generator, has been continually chopped and re-worked ever since. It took us on many adventures; incredible things happened with it. Later, I got to be good friends with Michael Bradford, the original inventor, and his gang who claimed to use it for physical time/dimensional travel. It didn't work for me, but we had a great time together trying! Last year it finally wound up in a big art show, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness at the American Museum of Visionary Art in Baltimore. Today it's on loan to the Gregg Museum in North Carolina. It has fulfilled the purpose of its acquisition many times over, creating devilry and amusement wherever it goes.

Cow Girl 12/15

D.L: "Yes, I never got around to writing you about the very important '10/14 again' email where you mention Synergy. It is within this email I have really found the most important information about what I am trying to know more about; Hands on Testimony, so to speak." Good, I'm glad we're going in the right direction. There is much more to say, I guess slowly it evolves. A big part of my broadcasts are the definitions of the cards I make. For years I struggled over the definitions, researching from Patanjali, David Hawkins, and various other esoteric and not so esoteric sources, to have the definitions be just right. It would take me a month to research and make one card. Now my guidance gives me all the definitions. I can get the definitions for five cards, make the cards, and do the broadcasts all in one day. This would have taken me a minimum of three months work previously. So of course it becomes more fun, and the definitions are original, not synthesized from someone else's thought. This has made a big difference in my work taking off in a personal direction.

D.L: "In it you discuss the difference between traditional radionics where a rate is hammered into a subject with intent, a "force-directed broadcast" as you put it, versus the gentle co-creative synergy formed, as you explain, "...a process where you engage the Field, and allow it to work within but also over and beyond what you know to do - brings magic." Yes. Magic is what is missing and what is sought."
Oh Good. Let's include magic in.

D.L: "This is the radionics that I think artists can relate to. It is what I am trying to articulate. You go on to give somber examples; how much of this can I share with others?"

Of course, you can give this technique to anyone. Anything I give you is to be shared.

D.L: "Anything that you care to share, at any later date, about how you left force-directed radionics and evolved into what you do now would be very helpful. I would say my approach is similar, but I've never healed anyone. It's always better to write about how other people work.

Yes of course, I understand it is easier writing about other people. However, between you and me, I would love to hear more about your work, as well. As we've said: you can save it for a rainy day, but I am extremely interested in hearing everything and anything about your approach.

I left what we're calling force-directed radionics the nanosecond it was taught to me. You have to understand that previously I was fortunate to have a personal relationship with Juliette de Barclay Levy for about five years before I studied radionics and she was a Naturalist par excellence. So she encouraged and reinforced what was already my natural tendencies plus what I had learned from the Native Americans. Juliette lived with the Bedouins in Northern Africa and the Gypsies in caves in Spain to learn the original natural manner in which they cared for their animals - and then she taught me. Originally through volumes of letters between us, and then when I was living for a time on Crete and she was living on the island of Leros, I was able to spend time with her. She was an intensely private person and only let me come to Leros and visit her after I pleaded and pleaded plus I was already there in Greece. However, once she allowed me in she was a gracious and giving person, even inviting me into her home where I stayed for several days. After that training, it seemed ridiculous to try to squeeze radionics into a tiny box resembling the Newtonian view of medicine. I couldn't even pretend to do it. I would go home quietly after class and begin developing my own way. My mentor in radionics was a wise man and had his own way, too. He learned from Hazel Parcells, a famous radionics woman in Albuquerque. She taught many doctors and others about radionics. It was all Malcolm Rae equipment, so I was never exposed to rates and the more highly mechanized way of doing radionics until later at the Psychotronic Conferences.

DL: "I wonder if you've thought how important this information may turn out to be in nurturing a certain type of creativity?"

I've not thought of it before but anything that nurtures creativity is something I'll give my energy to.

Cow Girl: One more specific question...when speaking of your friends, why radionics might have helped and perhaps can be of help to similar souls, you say that "hands on testimony" is my category. What precisely do you mean, what kind of example or testimony do you want? I'm willing to comply.

Laurie 12/15

Our correspondence initially, for me, was pretty simple; I would ask things from you about radionics that have eluded articulation and then try to interpret them as inspiring tools for artists. Artists are often more focused on process and materials than speculation, and that appears to fit your approach very well.

But you have kept asking me how I use radionics, and I kept wondering, do I use radionics? I've never thought of myself as a radionics practitioner, even while I was fooling around with it, or when Gordon and I were testing the boxes and working with plants and minerals. Certainly not in the same sense you are, or the inventors I wrote about. Then, when you asked me again, a strange thing happened: A series of images began to self assemble in my mind. I saw that they were in part, an answer to your question. Of course, how could I expect you to give me your take on radionics, if I couldn't do the same? To do so, I need to give you some family history. A sense of place and ancestry factors strongly into the way I understand radionics today.

The imagery I saw was centered around my maternal grandmother. Odd, because I rarely think about her anymore. I recalled that as a child I had heard she had engaged in a correspondence with a man on one of the early expeditions to the Antarctic. I began to sense what those letters might have meant to each of them. Every word scratched on the paper with ink, every image created by those words in the mind of the other, would have been full of resonance, pregnant with subtlety and innuendo, assimilated and savored slowly in solitary moments. They would have compressed massive amounts of meaning and feeling into simple narratives and descriptions, and, when accessed, would have filled each other with much, much more than could have consciously been understood or spoken.

Next, I began seeing my grandmother from my current vantage point, meaning as someone her age now, and not as a young boy—she died when I was about 15. It began to dawn on me that she must have been very lonely often during her life. She was an only child. Her father was painter, of the Hudson River School, and they lived only as good as the sale of one painting to the next. He was first a student and later close friend of George Inness, the great American landscape painter who had such a huge mystical component to his work (G.I. was also a Swedenborgian). But Monks was best known as a painter of sheep, and even though his work is owned by the Metropolitan and the Boston Museums, his reputation has not surpassed what it was during his lifetime.

Monks and my great grandmother divorced. He was a rambler and a womanizer, and had at least one other child from another lady. Among other places, Monks maintained a studio on this island where I now live. As a little girl, my grandmother lived part of her life in his studio. In those days this island was possibly at its most beautiful—old growth forest long gone, replaced by endless fields of hay mowed clear by sheep and cattle, giving rise to beautiful ocean vistas from all sides; no electric wires, few vehicles, and a small, rural population with an ambience like the French countryside. Wealthy Quakers from Philadelphia were beginning to construct large summer residences on the south coast, and Newport, across the bay, was becoming the playground of the Astors & Vanderbilts.

My grandmother was schooled as a concert violinist, and later was a nurse during WWI. Afterwards she met and married my grandfather, who was to become a powerful industrialist. He even became a bit notorious for turning down FDR's request to become Sec. of Defense during the war. Whatever their marriage was at one time, I think it eventually became very hard on my grandmother. My grandfather, though brilliant, was cut from a coarser cloth. I know my grandmother often travelled abroad; I can recall heated dinner arguments in front of many guests, some of whom lived with my grandparents for extended periods of time. As these images began returning, I pictured her as someone on a hejira, a flight from personal pain, but bound by Victorian convention to live as someone she was not. It sounds soapy, but she was a very regal person, and became even more so in later life. She possessed an acetic, aesthetic mysticism which impressed me deeply. I vividly recall her standing at dusk on the rocks beside her house (where my studio stands today), throwing bread crumbs high in the air as dozens of seagulls swooped down to grab them. That ritual, which she completed so often, and other equally compelling images, are how I remember her.

At that time, in the summer, she and my grandfather inhabited a huge old Queen Anne "Cottage" of stone and shingle construction with a huge red dome. To my great distress, it was torn down in the late 60's. But for a long time, we spent a few months there each summer, often among other relatives and family. The site, a peninsula surrounded by the sea on three sides, was filled with elemental wildness. But the huge house "capped" the energy and filtered it into our lives in a wonderfully joyous, bright way. I spent years writing about this place in my 20's, the exceptional experiences I had there. For my grandmother, the environment became a mirror to her soul, and she blossomed in its company. For me, the house and land were a source of endless fascination, though now I've mostly let it go. It was a compelling being, an actual persona, that my child's mind began to sense and feel. The place was like a stain that seeped into my perceptions, and I felt nurtured and protected by it. By contrast, the rest of the year I lived in a suburb of Detroit in a beautiful but modest neighborhood home, then later at boarding school, which were quite dull by comparison.

The sense of Nature that I caught from my grandmother and this place was definitely not the same sense of nature I experienced in most other locations. This Nature was tempered with human aesthetics, filtered through a sense of loss and longing, and more precarious and transitory than most other notions of nature I am familiar with. The Spanish flamenco artists speak of duende in similar terms. In fact, I often wonder about nature. Isn't the nature most experience one where beings must prey on each another to survive? What's so damn inspiring about that? It's like a hell region; like finding oneself on the beautiful, deserted tundra of northern Canada when the swarms of black flies arrive. What is worse, man destroying nature, or nature consuming itself? No, I am sure I am certainly talking about something else.

This other Nature exists "in" nature, like it exists "in" man, to the extent it spontaneously arises (in the wild) or is cultivated (by man). It is profoundly sensitive and shy; a wisp of beauty that permeates the forest like the scent of sandalwood or pinion. I don't think words like love, power, meaning, spirit, soul, pneuma do it justice.

In my grandmother, I felt a certain other-worldliness, especially as she approached death, but what I couldn't understand as a child was how this was related to sorrow. Sorrow, as in loss of love; as in separation from the source of our being; as felt through the death of a child. Is sorrow a magnet to this mysterious energy? Do we have to be humbled by life to attract it? I don't know, but in art, sorrow can be transmuted into form. We feel it broadcasting through the materials and expression. Of course not all art expresses or references what I am trying to describe here, but when it does, the art becomes extremely compelling. Some energy flows from the art into the senses of the observer and moves emotion, often with profound, healing consequences. I had close but indirect experience with this.

In 1987 I had a show in Manhattan of a series of glass paintings based upon travels in your neck of the woods and beyond. One showed the profile of a young woman at the wheel of a car, all in grey on black, while a garish, gold leafed, color infused face of a demon stood at the window outside the car beside the girl, looking in (it had actually been a mardi-gras mask in real life.) Well, this small painting was hanging on the wall along with about twenty five others, when a woman dressed for mourning came in. (I wasn't there at the time, so this is second hand.) When she came to this work, something happened. One person in the room said later that light seemed to enter or expand from her countenance. As the woman in question later explained, she had been in mourning for over a year for her deceased husband, but when she saw the picture, she identified with the girl at the wheel, and the masked figure with death. She realized at that moment she had to stop mourning and go on living. Her mourning ceased at that moment.

I saw this experience as an energetic transaction of some kind. Maybe she projected herself into the work and it acted like a cypher to unlock her capacity to go forward in life. Maybe something in the painting triggered the reaction; it's hard to tell. But, it was a healing, and so it resembles radionics in some fashion. It was also related to sorrow.

My feelings for my grandmother further led me to dwell on my ancestors, and the meaning of their lives. I was struck by our collective failure in deeply loving one another, whether expressed through failed partnerships or broken in other ways, with children, parents or friends. My grandmother read every book she could find on mountain climbing; she could describe from memory all the famous ascents of the great Himalayan peaks, though she never climbed herself. Could she have sensed her oldest son would one day die climbing?

You see where I'm going. Radionics isn't just about healing to me. I wonder if the more we heal, the more we become aware of our separation.

Cow Girl 1/18/11

Truly appreciate the stories of your grandmother. Beautifully illustrated, I can see the images you describe like paintings.

In my experience Sorrow does access, yes, a deep pure conduit. But it is not alone. If we replace "sorrow" with "strong emotion", we can broaden the field. Deep quiet and peace of mind can also be conduits. "...to this mysterious energy. Do we have to be humbled by life to attract it?" In my "humble" observation, yes, that's one state that does it. Like everything in life, I'm sure there are many ways. Playful might work just as well.

I love the story of how your broadcast encased in a glass painting was received and activated within the mourning woman. Yes, this is radionics! A beautiful example.

Goodness I hope the more we heal, the less Separation we feel. Isn't that what healing is, a movement toward Wholeness? At least in my head that's what healing is. Years ago I was told in meditation that Separation was the state that brought about the fall of Atlantis. Whether or not one thinks of Atlantis as real history, it's a great metaphor. So for years I've been pondering: What exactly is this Separation? And has it always been there with or within us, the human species? Or did it enter the human story at some time? Is it in the nature of Earth? I don't think so. Nature seems to work within a grand synergy.

Dec. 17th

Does ego get crushed? I think Ego has too big a reputation. Sure, within people who are asleep, i.e. most of us, the ego may run amok. I think ego feels it has to run the show, or at least try its darndest, because waking consciousness has been lulled into some kind of numbness. Then the ego gets carried away thinking it's everything. I don't figure ego's to blame for this. The real problem is that there is no captain at the wheel, so it steps up to the plate.

If we are conscious, consciously awake in every moment, seeing what is really happening, making conscious choices, ego has a strong leader and does what it is told. In reality ego is more a gofer than a captain - it's great for driving the car so we can think about other things, answering the phone, checking things off the to-do list. All ego needs is a bit of training and boundary clarification, which is consciousness' job. It's like a dog, it needs training or else it will misbehave. There are as many people whose problem is a weak ego as there are those with excessive ego. The lack of balance is harmful in either extreme. In that way it's like blood sugar or blood pressure - a balance is important for optimal functioning.

Suffering - teacher and best friend. I've found the majority of us humans will do anything to knock out the pain, and equally anything to avoid looking more deeply at why it may be there. I get into this sometimes with my clients, because I was taught 'strongly' that I have no right to take away anyone's pain or suffering, as this is how we learn and grow (at least one way we learn and grow). I'm impressed you came to this on your own. Think that's quite rare.

I tell my clients that pain or a symptom is a message. They don't always understand that. I tell them if they can interpret the message then they will get to the root of the problem and resolve it once and for all. Otherwise, if one simply stops the pain or symptom, all is well for awhile, but the message is still there foaming away, and will find another avenue to release its cry for help. Things suppressed always resurface, usually at very inconvenient times. But then that's a metaphor for life, isn't it?

Re: cease identifying with being the "doer". ...Physicist Amit Goswami describes a desirable state of being that is equal parts Doing and Being. Do Be Do Be Do Be Do Be Do Be—ha! When I was younger my guides trained me ruthlessly, trying to get me to slow down, stay home, and practice a bit of Being in with all the Doing. I am naturally kind of a tightly wound girl and slowing down didn't come easily to me, so the lesson was hard. Meaning lots of pain. The longer one ignores the message, the greater the pain. Like the Universe saying: "Get it? Do you get it yet? Ahhhh, still resisting. Okay - turn the dial up on the pain. Get her attention!" Laugh. (Universe always laughs when it's toying with us, in my imagination.) To this day, when I slip from the path…..Doing can be so satisfying, it "feels" like you're accomplishing so much, tying up all those loose ends, doing this and doing that, doing 'til you drop: Wham! Another lesson.

It once said to me, this vicious self-humoring endearing Universal Voice: "You wouldn't slow down, so we took your driver's license. (lost my license) Then you wouldn't slow down so we took your car. (HORRIBLE car accident. (and me driving without a license.) NOW, if you don't slow down, we'll take your legs." I SLOWED DOWN. I finally relaxed into Being and to be honest it felt so good. But a few years ago I got going again, taking such pride in doing, doing, doing. They took my legs. literally. I was in bed for two months, couldn't move, then two months on crutches, and then a slow, slow recovery. All I did was fall down, but in a weird way, over a two foot cement wall, and practically destroyed both knees. Never went to a doctor. - I knew what I had to do. Today I'm good again - but I remember. Pain has a way of deeply imprinting the message. :-)

To the discussion of dowsing...I'm a bit confused, because as I work, there isn't any "desired result." I have a hard time understanding what that means, in this context. There is a Result - period. The result is the result, and therefore I guess it's desired, as a result was asked for. One dowses to answer a yes/no question. The answer is unknown, that's why I'm dowsing. So how can it be the "right" or "desired" answer or result - it's implicit in the process that you don't know what the right or desired answer is. See the circle I'm in? So for me any answer is the desired answer. I figure it's always right. Always has been in 30 years. What's right? I guess it's right if it works. So far it always seems to work. So I trust, even when I don't understand - which is much of the time. I've enjoyed getting answers or results I don't understand, implementing them, and then watching. Observing and observing over the years, all the many times I've set up broadcasts that I don't understand, has taught me much. Gathering data. One thing it's taught me is that the Field knows infinitely more than I do.

I don't think of it ever as doing my bidding. That would mean I would be "doing" during the work, during the formation of the broadcast. But how would I know what to bid? I feel more like I go into a state of "being" and "it", whatever "it" is (nature intelligence, the field, God, etc.) shows me what to do. Otherwise why would I be dowsing, if I already knew what to "do", what to bid? When I dowse sometimes I feel a current move down my arm. Sometimes, these days, because I've been doing it for so long, I feel the current and feel the answer before the pendulum has time to swing. My perception at this stage in my development believes that I am contacting the Field. I'll probably believe something else 10 or 20 years from now. I don't feel selected from millions. Anyone who wants to can dowse. I relate it to playing the piano. Anyone can learn to play the piano, with practice. Some will be virtuosos and some just play for their own entertainment, but all can learn to pound a rhythm out on the keys. Everyone can also learn to contact this silent aspect of ourselves. Anyone can do this who decides its important enough to give a bit of disciplined time to, become neutral and slow down enough to feel the current. We're all made of and connected to and exposed to this current every day of our lives. There's nothing special about it. It's in slowing down enough, becoming quiet enough. And then practicing the art of listening.

This is the challenge, isn't it? in our society.

I don't feel at all like I'm connected to a power with ambitions in creation. Unless you define evolution as an ambition. If others feel that way, then in that case, perhaps its a valid statement for them. The Nature I understand and see and feel every day is based on interconnectiveness. Cooperation, synergy, the lubricants of life, are carried out in radionics on a more subtle scale. That's all.

How do we discern this from falsehood? To me, that answer is simple: by how it feels. Our Field or Self or God or Guides feel Good. Falsehoods don't feel so good. All that stuff, self-destruction, addictions almost to the death, obsessions - all the exaggerated behavior that yes I too had to try out and have my fill of, they're fine. Extremes teach us about ourselves. But how do we tell the difference between destructive versus the life-affirming choices? I have to say there is only feeling. They FEEL different. This to me in the end is the only truthfinder we have - our true feelings.

And this brings me to the discussion of what inspired me about radionics in the first place. From the beginning, and this has never changed, radionics to me was like discovering the Chalice - finally a technology that actually dissolves barriers to growth. I believe we possess a natural evolutionary curve or spiral toward our highest potential, and that radionics can assist this magnificently by removing barriers and facilitating the process. I'd never found anything before that cleared the way. That, plus radionics the way I do it, can be done anywhere, anytime, with things you find around you. This had tremendous appeal.

Laurie 1/18/11

Thanks for taking the time to consider the various questions posed! I only have one tidbit to add to your very clear thoughts, and that has to do with loss of identity.

There could be a connection between your current effort to free yourself of conditioning and the reality of subtle radionic signals emanating from higher consciousness. If you had a 'live feed' of these signals and you no longer needed to rely on thoughts or reflexive responses to act in any given situation, you would achieve this objective, no?

There is a very deep yoga that is based around such a supposition. When the "I" is traced back to the source through a process of inquiry, locating where the impulse to identity arises in consciousness, identity and its manifestation, thought, is said to collapse into the heart and the "Self" to arise in place of identity. Is this what you are looking to accomplish?

A similar process exists when we enter deep sleep, as I may have mentioned already. But the real clues to the waking version of same lies in the moments just before rising from sleep, where momentarily we experience being without identity becoming fully formed. It only lasts an instant and as soon as you are aware of yourself the whole world is back in a flash. I mention it as a point of access you might target radionically, to open that door more and more as days go by. I find meditation does this as well. The net effect is a re-calibration of consciousness along an increasingly rising vector. Ego based activity becomes 'highlighted' as essentially counter-productive to the process; the net effect being not dissimilar to tracing the 'I' to the source.

Or something like that...

Cow Girl Afterthought:

The last couple of years in my work, I sent out quarterly newsletters to my clients. Since the work is so invisible, I wanted to give them something tangible to help them understand what we were doing together. The newsletters were pretty didactic, mostly explaining function of body systems, interesting recent scientific tidbits. Then the last newsletter concerned the Mitochondria. It was in three segments and it's the final segment I'm sending to you now.

+++++

In the Mitochondria Newsletter I gave you the latest conventional medical/scientific information. We discussed Mitochondria and its role in our body, health, energy-level and longevity, as contemporary Science sees it. Now I'd like to branch out a bit to wrap this UP.

All the information we've discussed to date concerning Mitochondria and energy is left brain information. It is said amongst some circles that, "the left brain is the enemy of the Field." So let's look at the Field's point of view. We will do this primarily through questions...as, yes, some "facts" about the Field have been documented through new very sensitive machinery. But still, it is a very new topic and mostly conjecture and theoretical. Let's start with the premise that Spiritual Development demands freedom - like wild nature. And, through Spiritual Development, or call it - cleaning and disciplining the Field - one can learn to access the Field. We do this through: Intent (Mind Mastery) plus dropping down into the Heart, i.e. Quieting ourselves.

To access the Field, it helps to have a big Reason or a Great Desire. This is why risk-taking often works. Example is the story we've all heard, car on top of child, Mother lifts car. She accesses the Field to make this happen? A very big reason = new things happen. The rules change or bend, momentarily.

There are places on the earth where one can more easily access Universal Truths. There are states of being where one can more easily discover Universal Truths. I believe athletes call it The Zone. Others - Nirvana; Native Americans - Vision Quest, or Hollow Bones; some - Transcendental State; Don Juan - Silent Knowledge. Whatever terms are used, for our purposes we'll call it accessing the Field. Just as a prism can bend light, I propose that when one can successfully access the Field, the rules, as we know them, bend.

For instance: Yes, Science says that, in the body, energy expenditure requiring production of ATP by Mitochondria produces 40% energy, 60% heat. We have all experienced this, when we work out, or run, we sweat. And yet, a quote from Valerie Hunt, in her book Infinite Mind:

"Emilie is an American dancer who had discovered mystical happenings while she lived and danced in Haiti. At our first meeting, she spoke in esoteric words that confused me. Unable to understand her words, I asked her to communicate by movement - to let me watch her "do her thing." Spontaneously, I checked her heart rate and blood pressure before she started. She then danced strenuously, even acrobatically, for 30 minutes with a perfection and repertoire superior to any I had seen in a single dancer. Her movements took in all directions, large and small, were fast and slow, with complicated neuromuscular rhythms flowing through various parts of her body. She demonstrated amazing flexibility and strength as she effortlessly glided about. Beyond her technical elegance, I sensed that she communicated powerful feelings and ideas.

"I was not prepared, however, for the shock that came. My long studies did not help me to understand what I observed with Emilie. I rechecked her heart rate and blood pressure. To my surprise, neither the heart rate nor blood pressure had elevated; in fact both had dropped slightly. To make things worse, she was not perspiring nor was she breathing heavily. With total disbelief, I asked for her explanation, not anticipating her simple answer.

"She said, 'I create a field of energy and ride it.' She seemed to be trying to tell me that there are other ways to move that are beyond the the classical neuromuscular contraction that we physiologists accept."

When one is able to access the Field, things happen that normally don't happen. Bending the rules. For me - this perspective, this slice of Truth, of Life, needs to be added to the big perspective. There's this. And then there's this. They both exist.

Let's go further. How does one trigger accessing the Field?

First of all, I think one has to be careful that one's cup is not "too full" - of words, opinions, witticisms, knowledge, information - to receive true insight - from the Field. You must Empty yourself. Through:

 Intent
 Meditation
 Purpose
 a Strong Reason
 Silence
Humility

Get out of your own way. Empty your Cup.

A few things to ponder if you wish to walk this path...It is important what you do in your free time. You might ask yourselves - do my associations nourish my higher nature? Do I spend time often in nature, or with nature - walks where nature sings, time spent gardening, or with animals? It is said that the Field expands in nature, and shrinks in cities and urban areas.

These are some things that I believe:

Through the Field we can refine and rejuvenate all our tissues and biological systems. Remember that your Field holds the template...the pattern, for regeneration. The power of the mind combined with your heart are the most powerful tools you have.

I believe the radionic broadcasts work, regarding the Mitochondria (or anything else) because they, the cards, are sending signature frequencies -frequency food. When we direct a broadcast to the Mitochondria, first we clear away blockage, and then frequency food, frequency supplementation is held in the field.

This is in theory only.

The Australian aborigines say, "We sing the world into being." Through our broadcasts, we sing to the Mitochondria in frequency song. A quote from Infinite Mind, Valerie Hunt: "The condition of your Field is the ultimate indication of your health."

XXXXX sent me this story in an email, something he read in the news..."Hi. I read a story about women who dive 100 meters into the ocean, holding their breath. The Russian Champion said this: "You have to decide to do it. There can be no doubt. As I go down, I concentrate on the edges of my body. If you are aware of the field, there is no place for a negative thought to exist."

There are no conclusions here - only questions and theories - speculative - as is much of what we know or think we know about the body, even what we accept as gospel truth. The issue at hand is: a better understanding of our selves, who we are, why we are and how we function, and what we can do, possibly, to step beyond our present selves and gloriously expand our horizons and explore our inherent divinity, while in these bodies.

"The fully conscious mind trumps both nature and nurture." - Bruce Lipton

The Secret Art of Radionics: An Interview with Duncan Laurie

by Jenifer P. Borum

I’ve known Duncan Laurie for 16 years. We’re part of an artists’ retreat that meets every few years up in the mountains near Asheville, North Carolina, and our best conversations have taken place sharing a dishwashing shift in the industrial kitchen in the lodge of our site. There, scrubbing industrial pots with brillo pads in steaming hot water, he’s kept me updated on the progression of his art practice and his maverick experimentation with “radionics,” a controversial field dedicated to studying subtle energy (radiation) given off by matter, and the application of this energy, through directed intention, for the purpose of healing. Laurie has been exploring the link between radionics and art, specifically the potential to integrate it into an expansive creative process. Over the years, I’ve watched him measure radionic responses from plants when he plays them Jazz in his state-of-the-art Dragonline Studio overlooking Jamestown Bay in Rhode Island. More recently, I participated in his interactive installation entitled Purr Generator, now on display at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore. This work invites guests to make a wish and then lie down on an elevated bed, engulfed in the amplified sound of a cat’s purr while activating intention to fulfill that wish. I can’t tell you what I wished for, but so far, it’s coming true.

Laurie’s new book The Secret Art: A Brief History of Radionic Technology for the Creative Individual is a visionary articulation -- and call for further exploration -- of the creative potential of radionics. Grounded in a thorough history of the field, this book offers a blueprint for artists interested in connecting to subtle energy (also called Nature Intelligence), or for artists who have already been doing this, and who would value the clarity this book offers.

Laurie and I recently conducted a rambling email conversation, which moves something like our dishwashing conversations -- by tangent and whim -- for the purpose of bringing radionics to the attention of open-minded artists. Laurie is an artist’s artist, a man dedicated not only to making his own work, but also to facilitating a meta-discourse about creativity. This book, shared with the hope of expanding our understanding of what art is, is a timely gift to all artists, arriving just in time for the rapid acceleration of human consciousness that defines our moment.

Jenifer P. Borum: Over the years, you've come to understand the euphoria of the art making process as "a feeling guided by an intelligence within nature." You understand the transfer of subtle energy to be an implicit part of any creative act, and you envision a potentially anarchic practice of radionic artmaking in which this transfer becomes explicit. Very cool. I’ve heard you talk about the powerful vision of a tourbillon (whirlwind of fire) you experienced when you were younger. Would you talk a bit about how your vision of the tourbillon shaped your understanding of creativity and radionics, and the potential for consciously integrating the two?

Duncan Laurie: When I began studying radionics, the assumption I began with was that some skilled, medical professionals over the years had devised a class of instruments that involved the application of directed intent into a device, which through various subsequent procedures, promoted a diagnosis or a cure in their patient. I was interested immediately for two reasons. Perhaps, I surmised, radionics was a technological analogue to shamanism, where electrical circuitry functionally replaced ceremony and design? The other attraction was that radionics was being currently taught and I could buy a device and go learn from a teacher or manufacturer how to use it, which I ultimately did.

In the process of this investigation my assumption about radionics changed in a number of ways. For the last hundred years -- roughly the modern period of electronic design -- a group of very different people developed radionic instrumentation fashioned in the spirit of their own education and skill sets, much the way artists make art. Some instruments were electronic, some were mechanical and some were just diagrammatic, but they all functioned in a similar fashion. Now either all these inventors and practitioners were completely deluded, including those numerous individuals who were cured of serious diseases by these devices (around the world over that hundred year span of time), or there was some other explanation. The alternative explanation that appealed to me was that some "higher" agency worked through radionic practitioners and their devices to affect the cures. Call it nature intelligence, subtle energy, higher power, faith, radionics; it doesn't matter to me. All describe aspects of an energetic transaction from different vantage points. Some names favor the operator, some the device, some the higher power. It also seems unlikely the native shaman had one set of abilities and the radionics professionals another. More likely, both shared access to a common pool of knowledge, but evolved different tools for their curative and agricultural procedures. Likewise, when an artist speaks of following a muse or being guided by a vision or an inspiration, could they be talking about something completely different, just out there guiding artistic activities alone?

As you mentioned, my interest in the connection between visionary art and subtle energy was piqued by an experience I had in my mid 20's. In that deep state of repose one reaches following lovemaking, I encountered a completely unexpected vision, of a powerful overwhelming presence that took the form of a vortex of energy. Later, I made a drawing of the experience. Upon showing it to a knowledgeable friend, I was told, "Oh, that's a tourbillion--a whirlwind of fire!" From that point on, tourbillion it was. Artistically, it was an extremely important moment, coming at a time when I was just beginning to develop. Up to that moment, everything I had ever made had been derivative, based on some external influence. There was nothing that I could draw, carve, model, paint or design that didn't have its source of inspiration in some other artist, teacher or style. But the tourbillion came out of nowhere, a fully formed dynamic, multidimensional image; it was inimical to previous experience, artistic or otherwise. In that sense, it was freedom. It was like making contact with the core energy behind the individual personality, but I didn't realize that at the time.

The experience of the tourbillion returned in other visions. It also manifested in other significant ways over the next twenty years. It took different forms under different conditions, but each one was both overwhelming and deeply instructional. When you (JPB) and I met (in 1994), I was trying to find a way to discuss the energetic component of art and meet some other artists who may have had the same type of experience.

Forces like the tourbillion are transformative; they make you get up and go. Literally, it is energy. The energy comes from inside us; it is not metaphorical, it is not chemical, it is not electrical, it is not mechanistic, it is not material. It may take a visual form, but it is alive; it is conscious, it is intelligent. It pervades matter and can appear in any guise, in vision, dream or waking. It can be interpersonal. I think artists are prone to experience it because it is connected to the creative force. But, it does have one aspect that goes beyond pure creativity, the eclipse of identity.

When I eventually found out about radionics, my reaction was “Wow! Here’s a technology that employs this mysterious force.” My thinking was, if a device works the way a radionics device purports to do, then some force from inside the operator must find its way through the device into the patient. I didn't see this process as being all too different from art. A force or dynamic inside the artist compels them to create work that imparts emotional meaning (or something) to the viewer. That process can evoke a powerful reaction, so energy must be involved. Problem being, no one can read it on a meter. The Greeks called the experience catharsis. I say it's what we call "art", in the highest sense of the term. My guess is that the better the experience, the more it de-conditions one from previous assumptions.

I didn't get into the experience of the tourbillion in the book. In the end, I decided that most artists and creative people would want to focus on tools and techniques. It's a lot to ask another person to listen to your own ravings. Better to give them the means they to find out for themselves.

Your book is an attempt to connect to all artists about subtle energy -- not just the Howard Finsters of the world who always knew they were channeling. What kind of resistance have you encountered? What kind of resistance do you expect? Are artists ready to admit that they are not the sole creators of their work that they are co-creating with this energy force you are investigating?

To answer your questions about the book and whether or not it will meet with resistance; I doubt it. The ideas in the book are still very marginal to the vast majority of people out there. The people who will likely benefit from the book will eventually find it and figure out what it means to them. I’m already seeing that happen. Radionics won't stop any other art making agendas in their tracks, for certain. The book is really for those artists that risk slipping through the cracks, because they can't relate to the modus operandi governing the art world, the standard approaches and expectations about art. Believing that some other intelligence is at work in ones' creative process is very personal. I don't think I can generalize about it. If someone practicing art finds bliss in the experience, or senses a relief from the burdens of life, or even has a sense of cosmic longing, isn't that an indication something beyond oneself is at work?

One of the common denominators linking art to radionics seems to be healing. It's something I've seen with many self-taught visionary artists, who, guided by various cultural and religious ideas, were conscious of their intention to heal through art. Bessie Harvey -- an African-American root sculptor whose work can be traced to the Diasporic tradition of root medicine—intended her art to heal people through the spirit she activated. She called it "the spirit in the wood." Yet nobody takes this literally -- it's reduced to some feel-good notion of good vibes from a sweet old grandma. I knew Harvey and she was indeed shamanic. Nothing cute or delusional about it. She paired with a universal energy to charge roots she found in the Tennessee woods. Why can't people wrap their minds around the possibility of a work of art carrying a literal charge of energy? How might a new practice of creating radionic artwork for healing purposes differ from what Miss Harvey was doing in her house in Tennessee? Or perhaps how might these practices be similar?

Well, I imagine it's about education and conditioning, for the most part. Self-taught artists exist in a place maybe half way between the pure shaman and the schooled artist. Many like Miss Harvey are gripped with a force or energy that is quite tangible to them, whatever it may be. No doubt, it seems plausible that if the same energy can lead them to make art, it can also do other things, including healing. Connect the two potentials in your mind, and you have art that can heal.

On the other hand, if making art with the objective of becoming famous and financially successful as the goal, it isn't too unlike any other business enterprise. It requires talent, work and luck. Visions and energy and all that might be a good come on, but potentially a big distraction to making money. The pay-off of a successful art career in our culture is well known; the artist, essentially, is minting their own currency. You might say they are on the level of a small nation state. Add fame to the equation, and the whole world is at one’s feet. Some would say that's also an expression of energy, but it is driven by ego or other factors.

The difference is in the intent. Whatever happens to the artist undergoing the onslaught of a vision, I think it's safe to say it's a de-conditioning process. It may even become more, as in a shamanic annihilation of the original self in favor of the visionary personality. There are examples in artistic dance disciplines, like in Yoruba, where the deities, the Orishas, are said to completely take over the dancer's body during the performance. This is the case in classical eastern dance forms, like Indian dance, Kathakali. It's more than possible Bessie Harvey was influenced by African religion, in which case there is a direct connection to healing with energy. But to me, her approach to art seems very different than the career-driven one. There is an underlying assumption in the visionary process that that the ego is going to be eclipsed by a more powerful experience. In the successful commercial artistic career, the opposite is the case. The artist’s ego becomes the repository of all the energy, super-sizing it and transforming it into a "brand", full of great charisma and power.

By contrast, I am imagining radionics being used by artists as more of a de-conditioning technology, to free up energy and develop a deeper understanding of nature and self. In a sense, that is already what great art does, isn't it?

Functionally, there is commonality between what Miss Harvey did radionically and what a skilled radionics operator is capable of, but there are also great differences. The radionics instrument, of whatever ilk, has the capacity to be calibrated to the need of the occasion. Because of that capability, the instrument can be designed to both diagnose and heal. However, to do either task consistently, one must have knowledge of medical procedures and safety concerns. Most people will never accept that a radionics device can heal, anymore than they will believe an artwork can heal, so in actuality, it's a moot point. What happens in the artistic context with individuals like Miss Harvey I would characterize as similar to faith healing. It does happen to people, and it involves faith and a higher power entering the transaction. Traditional radionics is more empirical, systematic and deductive. Perhaps that was the only way that deeply rational and scientific inventors could get their heads around the miraculous.

I am interested to hear about your ideas for a new mode of artmaking that intentionally activates subtle energy. Can you talk about your own work with with Gordon Salisbury -- your practice of sharing music with plants and rocks, and also the Purr Generator, which has been installed for one year at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore. How do these projects provide a model for bringing radionics and art together?

Let's look at the question of intention. In radionics, whatever goal is tasked, is initiated through intent, directed into a device, that assists by calibrating and focusing the outcome. But, there is also the aspect of talent and training. While I may have the intent to walk out on the end of an “I” beam far above the city of New York to drive a rivet, in practicality, it will never happen. I lack the talent, balance and fortitude that would make that possible. Some gifted humans, however, have no such difficulty. In fact, some innate ability, plus practice, gives them a command of an environment that seems almost super human to the rest of us.

I think this is the way one has to look at the ability to make a radionics device work. Some people can do it well; some can't at all, and many have a measure of skill. This fact was born out in a very public way in the 1950's when John W. Campbell, editor of Analog Science Fiction magazine, began to popularize the Hieronymus circuit -- the first psychically operated device ever to be awarded a US Patent. Scientists and curious readers all over the country began building and testing Hieronymus machines with varying degrees of success. Skilled scientists couldn't get the thing to work, while their children succeeded; other scientists did, challenging their accepted paradigms; the stories are endless. Campbell, himself a scientist, was able to make the device perform using only the schematic itself with a Vernier dial! The whole issue of radionics almost made it into the front lines of scientific research, and then it collapsed. I write about how and why in the book. The point is this: radionics takes you to a world where a different set of skills are available for use.

I became convinced that art making contained a hidden energetic component the first time I saw a Hopi dance ceremony bring in a thunderstorm, which was the objective of the dance. It happened out on the Mesas in the late 70's. Of course, the Hopi and Navajo reservations were themselves very magically inclined environments, where such things did not seem out of place. It is well known that the Navajo employ sand painting in curative ceremony, though I never saw one myself.

Eventually, for the sake of courting some objectivity, about 10-12 years ago I asked Gordon Salisbury, a scientifically trained and now retired electronics engineer and instrument designer, to explore the issue of subtle energy with me in an informal way. Gordon was a thorough skeptic. We began work by making an examination of several radionics devices in my possession. We both wanted to know if they produced a measurable radiation or could be slaved to a repeatable task. I can tell you, we never found the device capable of moving a meter, but we did see a healer do it. Likewise, I've not seen it capable of say, changing the Ph in a solution to color a litmus test. Once, however, I employed it to drive rats and cockroaches from my home in NYC. While I can't prove that the radionic treatment was the only contributing factor in getting them out; they did leave and did not return.

However, when radionics was combined with music, a lot of unusual energetic things appeared to take place. My exploration began when I acquired the BETAR sound device from radionics inventor Peter Kelly, who brought it to New York, through the good graces of the late R. J. Reynolds III and painter Aymon de Sales. Kelly was my radionics teacher. He was also an inventor. The BETAR was a sound bed through which music and radionic treatment could be combined and focused upon the individual laying on the bed. The invention was originally the brain-child of Michael Bradford, who later marketed it as the Genesis Device. We became friends, and I learned a lot about sonic radionics from Michael and his associates. Before long, I began experimenting myself.

As time went by, lots of other artists and inventors contributed their ideas to this platform. For me, the "Music Machine" as we termed it, became a very happy and joyful form of artistic exploration. Because it was non-commercial and experiential, we never got caught up in marketing or healing issues. People mostly felt way better when they got off the machine. As art, this seemed very positive. The overall impression I received over the years watching people experiencing the Music Machine, was that they felt their lives enhanced in a non-invasive, self-directed way. It was as if the Machine created an opportunity, a space, in which a person could take a few moments to explore themselves, better themselves, or just relax. There was no pressure, no force, nor manipulation. The experience supplied energy and opportunity to use in whatever manner one selected. The operator was essentially a DJ, and not someone doing radionics. It was mainly fun and experimentation. Michael's radionic technology was reflexive and sonic, sampling the electro-static field of the person on the bed and feeding it back to them as orchestrated sound. Whatever a person could handle, that's what they experienced.

Then, a few years ago, Gordon was reading about the healing effects the cat's purr had on bones. He came across a schematic that gave him the idea he could incorporate the purring effect into the Music Machine. The result was a control panel that allowed the operator to dial in various purring effects that were experienced through big transducers under the bed and speakers above. There was also a magnetic component, sent through a coil under the pillow. I added a radionic input well, that allowed the user to add intent into the sonics via a short written note. With the radionic function working, the dials controlling the purr became the calibration for the radionic transaction. In other words, any treatment could be self-directed by the operator, (through sonic feedback) provided by changing the purr sounds.

The Purr Generator at AVAM is a second-generation device. We kept the bed, the transducers, and the audible purr, but dropped the radionics component. In its place we added a "Wishing Well" coupled to a pre-programmed purr frequency and a digital LED display, designed by Todd Thille. The person lying in the bed can add a wish to the experience of hearing the purr on the bed. The original concept of sound plus intent is preserved. The device has an amusing, frivolous character to it that is far different than its earlier Sci-Fi manifestations. It seemed to make people laugh and enjoy themselves at the opening.

What about the rock and plant experiments?

Gordon and I were disappointed that we didn't find any measurable energy coming from the radionics devices. We decided to try the opposite tact, find out where subtle energy radiation had already been detected, and reproduce those experiments. That took us to the work of Wilhelm Reich, L. George Lawrence and Cleve Baxter.

Gordon made it possible to reproduce Baxter's technology for examining plant voltages and semiotics. We went further in that direction by employing Masahiro Kahata's IBVA brain wave analysis hardware/software rig, which let us both graph and sonify the small voltages appearing on the surface of the plants. IBVA also gave us the ability focus in on and articulate the specific frequencies that produced the most activity. We also wound plant material into small home made orgone blankets (W. Reich) based on a design by Michael Theroux, longtime editor of Borderland Sciences Magazine. Michael had also done a lot of research on L. George Lawrence. Lawrence's work in biological signaling was as early as Baxter's, but in some ways even more mysterious. It was Lawrence's technology that first brought Gordon and I together for discussions, but as soon we began designing and constructing our own bio-sensors, it started to feel like art.

Much later, we shared our sonic experiments with a fine group of electronic musicians brought to the studio by Steve Nalepa. That collaboration allowed us to see how other artists would interpret these experiences. For one, the plants and rocks provided a compositional ingredient--information directly from nature-- that was generated completely outside of either computer algorithms or the artists’ imagination. In a very real sense, the sensors and plants were equally artist, instrument and song.

Our work was all very informal. In spite of that, we both were impressed with how well the Theroux sensors seemed to communicate with each other across space. Touching one even fifty yards away caused a discernible sonic reaction in the other, even though they weren't connected in any way except visually. Later, it seemed the plants also communicated with each other and responded differently to different people at different times. We took a very long look at these anomalies. We also began to notice that plant signals that were given instrumentals, occasionally but not consistently, would appear to play along with music.

Later we discovered that certain rocks also produce voltages in the same intensity and spectrum as plants (0-30Hz. in millivolts), ironically, the exact zone where the brain conducts its own electrical activity. Now people may accept that plants can communicate and produce signals, but rocks? Yet, rocks produced sonic material that was every bit as mysterious as plants, but quite different in character. Fortunately, rock petro-voltaic activity had some science papers written by T. Townsend Brown. Brown has become famous for his work in anti-gravity design and propulsion, and is considered a legend among underground scientists. Brown discovered rock voltages followed a diurnal cycle (confirmed by Gordon), and also appeared to respond to events at the galactic core. His thesis was that rocks convert gravity to electricity.

Who would think that rocks were capable of extremely unusual activity, (one has been putting out a steady .5 volts for several years now)? Some writers have called art that utilizes electronics, Radio Art. But in a pure sense, what we study isn't about employing electricity or radios in art, but more about exploring consciousness in design. For one thing, the plant or the rock is a co-creator of the work. After all, aren't they putting out the signals? For another, it's far from clear how much one's own consciousness may affect the process. Does our mind act as a link between one plant or rock and another? Does our skepticism suppress the signal, as it appeared to do in certain cases? These are only two of many unresolved questions that came up during our research.

Ultimately, experimenting with radionics and subtle energy challenged our assumptions about nature, spirit and identity--complex questions well within the province of artistic deliberation.

You mentioned the Hopi dance ceremony, and the deep connection to nature that this practice requires. The Hopi understand that humanity is out of balance with nature, and that this could have a disastrous effect for all of us. Could a radionic practice of artmaking in which nature is understood to be a co-creator begin to heal this imbalance? If so, how? What could we learn about our mistakes, and our identity through such a practice or practices?

This could be difficult to answer well, but let's start with the Hopi. First of all, Hopi is not a uniform society. At the time I visited the Mesas, (mid 70s to mid 80’s) there were two distinct groups. One was the group at Hoteville, who practice the strict, original teachings. The rest were more acclimated to secular American culture and accepted some degree of compromise with modernism. The traditional group manifested the kind of pure mystical integration with Nature I found extremely inspiring—but impossible to emulate. Both groups participate in ceremonies that are designed to restore the world to harmony. My understanding is the Hopi believe their ceremonial work is a critical component in maintaining the balance of the whole world. Without their sustained efforts, everything will fall apart. To the extent these practices involve a reflexive arrangement with Nature Intelligence and can be considered radionic, we will never know, because they are extremely secret. If they do, then Hopi art forms would be a perfect example of co-creative radionic art.

On the surface, it would seem implausible that the rituals of a small tribe would be crucial to maintaining the continuity of the whole world. But, perhaps there is a group of human beings evolved enough to interact with Nature Intelligence directly and regularly, and in so doing, actually keep the planet balanced?

So, radionics may appear to be an intuitive healing practice, but does that mean there's nothing more to it? My impression is that radionics just begins with healing and evolves toward something like what I imagine is going on in Hopi--something deeply spiritual. In between, it becomes more like art, taking many forms as people develop their own creative relationship with Nature. Ultimately, it's all about regaining balance on different levels. The visionary component is one aspect of the process that happens to lend itself well to artistic expression. Because the process is cathartic, it leads to self-knowledge and eclipses false notions of identity. That is, if you don't go nuts in the process.

If the Hopi practice you mention is a good example of radionic co-creation with Nature Intelligence, what about the intentionally harmful marshaling of this energy? Daniel Pinchbeck has talked about trickster groups who might try to bring about harm, or at least some kind of global chaos in 2012.

I don't want to imply that I have any profound understanding of Hopi culture, religion or practice. My impressions are intuitive, based only on what I witnessed and have learned since; they are certainly not authoritative. But lets use Hopi again to consider what the harmful use of radionics might entail.

At one point the Bureau of Indian Affairs made the decision to electrify and bring plumbing to the Hopi mesas. Given their remote location and inaccessibility, developing basic infrastructure was considered a very positive step by the government for this impoverished tribe. Many of the villages accepted the improvements gratefully. But the traditionalists at Hoteville didn't want government help and didn’t want the improvements, but they were still forced to put them in. You can see on a film made the day the contractors left, that no sooner than the dust from their trucks had settled, the villagers set about digging up the pipes and tearing down the wires. For the residents of Hoteville, these modern conveniences represented a corrupting influence that completely went against their traditional teachings.

So, what is good for you and me might be just the opposite for someone else. That being said, the fact that people can potentially use radionics for destructive ends can't be ignored. In The Secret Art we took a long look at where those possibilities can go. Eventually I lost interest in learning more about the negative side of radionics; it is already widespread in our society. Just consider the power media has over our perceptions and lifestyle choices. Emotionally, my conclusion was that embracing negativity just feeds it. However necessary it may seem to understand and confront the ugly truths of radionic manipulation; it's better to promote the opposite; that's the lesson of the people of Hoteville. Those who desire to use these forces coercively have plenty of opportunity today. What isn't readily known are the ways they can be used creatively and in harmony with Nature.

Do you envision radionic art to be a mostly individual practice, or a collaborative one? It seems to me that most of your work as a radionic artist is essentially a collective process.

I don't have any preconceptions about how radionics in art may develop, or even if it will develop. If it does, I'm sure whatever form it takes will surprise me more than anyone. We're talking about an activity that is very anti-authoritarian, very personal, extremely unpredictable and quite hard to assess. My own efforts were initially somewhat solitary. They became collaborations in the hope of learning more and sharing what had been discovered with others.

Most dominant world religions separate God from nature. It feels like this is part of what is killing us all. In this sense, it's helpful to talk about indigenous perspectives, a way of living that does not impose human existence on nature, but which co-exists with nature, respectfully. Australian Aboriginal art of the Western Desert reveals a oneness of identity and land, and the abstract forms in their paintings feel radionic, activated, and healing. I recently witnessed a young man leave an exhibition of Pintupi paintings. He coverd his eyes as he walked, saying: "these things are making me sick, I'm dizzy, I have to leave." The only way I can make sense of this reaction is that the paintings' healing energy was too much for him, a child of the west. Is there a reaction of rejecting healing radionic energy before one becomes aligned to it, in the way we often feel sick early in a detoxification program? Do we feel more comfortable with our disconnect, even though it is killing us?

Well, it always perplexes me to hear that people (us), described as somehow separate from nature. I guess that is the core of the problem. Wilhelm Reich certainly thought so, and he developed an excellent model for treating this malaise. He called that sense of separation "armor". Armor is the shell of repressed emotions and impressions that encapsulates our natural self. Armor is stasis, an inhibiting factor to the free flowing energy of the universe moving through our body and mind. Armor implies a treatable condition, or at least a life without armor. Reich believed that in the armorless state we did not experience a sense of separation from either God or Nature. The implication is both god and nature are essentially for us, mental concepts generated by ourselves to describe an idealized sense of freedom and bliss. "Nature" became the immanent manifestation of that freedom, while "God" fulfilled the transcendent component. Whatever methods are applied to the analysis, the problem remains that the sense of separateness from God and Nature persists. As such, anything that attempts to bridge that existential loneliness, or even bring it into sharp focus, is bound to cause anxiety. Reich said anxiety signals movement of energy, which is positive and therapeutic. Reich's goal, and by extension the goal of saints and mystics throughout time, is freedom from mentally imposed constraints separating us from the absolute. However, the armor, which is the sum total of our complexes, resists the threat to its own existence, and a fierce battle in the psyche ensues. In classical mysticism, the soul seeks union with the Lord, or a state of liberation. The mystic or teacher signifies the role of the life energy, which eventually frees the disciple from limitation. The student develops an understanding of that energy through association with the mystic and by practicing their teachings. In any case, whatever challenges the stranglehold of the armor is naturally going to be treated as a threat, even though the long run benefit is understood.

Any manipulation of energy argues for using techniques like radionics carefully, and certainly not invasively on others, without medical and psychological certification. It also demonstrates why any visionary de-conditioning process proceeds in such a contradictory manner, with one part of the psyche supporting it while another resists. However, when going through these trials, tools like radionics can be helpful in maintaining balance and perspective throughout the ordeal.

Art can also provoke a great deal of anxiety, especially when its subject matter offends. Look at the mess and outrage the European cartoons of the Prophet caused among Muslims. How could we not think art moves energy? By contrast, art that truly informs and inspires has the opposite effect. If your friend that was shaken by the Pintupi painting had it hanging in her house, I have to think gradually the power of the artwork would reach an equilibrium with her, and whatever meaning it contained would infuse itself into her being.

Let's talk about art and magic. When I say magic, the word sounds like it belongs to the realm of make believe, of Harry Potter. In fact, it's something that can be real, if one considers the equation you discuss in your book: I > E, or "Information moves Energy." You call your book a manual for the way I > E in the sphere of art. You also use one of our Paul Laffoley's paintings in this chapter too: Anthe Hieronymusox Two. Of course, this painting is a direct reference to the Hieronymous device, but can you talk about how Paul literally activates I > E, and how this equation functions differently in art than it might in the strict methodology of radionics?

Magic. Well, there are very different meanings to that word. In radionics, let's consider magic a component of the experience that defies rational understanding, but also may have a plausible explanation when seen from a very different perspective.

Consider the following: Three men come to a hotel and each ask for a room. The innkeeper takes $10 from each of them and gives them a key. Then he remembers that a discount applies and asks the bell hop to return $5, making their total cost $25. When the bell hop encounters the men, they each take $1 back from him and leave the bell hop with a $2 tip. So, how much did each man pay for the room? Each paid $10 and got $1 back, so you could say they each paid $9 for the room. 3 (men) x 9 (dollars)= $27 plus $2 for the bell hop, right? That makes $29. What happened to the extra dollar?

So, did the dollar disappear by magic or is there a plausible explanation that is beyond our immediate understanding? Don't ask me. I don't know. I do know the example is what a lot of people think of as magic.

I see magic in the way life force animates matter. Conversely, one minute the body is walking and talking, then death intervenes, and it's a pile of useless flesh and bones on the ground. What changed with death? The information of the individual and the energy it took to live left the body. So from that perspective, magic and life are linked, if not identical. When we think, we split off from what's going on around us and create a virtual world inside our head. In that world we create terms like information and energy and all their symbolic manifestations. However, when we make a painting or a work of art, we leave our thought world somewhat and direct intent into materials and form. It's like we are pumping life force into the inert body of the materials. That life force is what we feel when we experience the art. However, my comments here are just thoughts made into words. The experience of I > E is in doing it.

Paul has made several paintings containing radionic circuits and metaphors, and at least one working device. He is very familiar with the field. Whatever he put into those works energetically, only he knows for sure. To me, they are beautiful illustrations of the artistic potential of radionics. I don't know if the drawings were ever meant to function as devices, because they behind glass and are drawn using Letterset, which is very fragile and should not be touched. However, Paul has also constructed functional three dimensional radionics devices that were put to use in healing. I don't know all the circumstances, but clearly, Paul differentiates between the two approaches, though each is part and parcel of his art. He is one of the very few artists I’m aware of that actually uses radionics by name in both the intended manner to heal, and as a metaphor, as visual art.

The only difference I can see between radionics and art objects used to heal is cultural conditioning. If I > E is a good equation it would apply under either (or any) circumstance to describe a radionic transaction. E > I on the other hand, would describe the visionary experience, "I" becoming the art. It's confusing, isn't it?

I agree that cultural conditioning in the west has split off the shamanic experience, re-labeling it as demonic from a Christian perspective, or simply make-believe from the more common, jaded, intellectual perspective. This is why I have been asking so much about the perception of radionics, because I do believe that it's our conditioning that is blocking us from really accepting Nature Intelligence and allowing ourselves to be healed.

Yes, Paul is an anomaly as an artist. And you make a valuable point about his art practice encompassing both painting and proper radionics. Why split the two apart? Again, we are always splitting art away from other life practices. There's that cultural conditioning; we end up moving art into the sphere of intellect.

We have both known Paul for years. He is an ET Contactee. I am banking on the RS readership to follow me on this one, because if I don't ask, I am not being true to myself: To what extent does ET intelligence come into all this? I know there is a connection but I can't put my finger on it. How might this experience be related to what you describe as Nature Intelligence? Is this part of the radionic equation?

The question of Nature Intelligence versus Alien Intelligence--as manifested by abduction experiences, etc, is a good one. Honestly, I do not have a smart answer. Many people think of abduction experience as being psychotic, something in the netherworld of fractured identity. I find that explanation impossible to believe.

I don't claim any particular insight into the phenomena of alien abduction, but I have been lucky to know a number of people, besides Paul, who have had or are currently having that experience. These individuals would include a number of the subjects in Bud Hopkins' and John Mack's books, people thoroughly vetted by competent researchers over a long period of time. A few are artists and have used their work to emotionally come to terms with their experience. My impression is that the abductions are completely genuine to the individuals involved. They are an amazingly brave and intelligent group of individuals. Whatever happened to them, it has had an extreme emotional impact on their lives.

Some abductees remain deeply hostile to the experience. Others found in repeated encounters a gradually evolving education into higher consciousness. To a listener like myself, all their experiences seem deeply invasive and terrifying. The memories of the event are often wiped from conscious recollection, and only surface later. It seems deeply cruel to me, but so does the way we treat the animals we eat.

As such, the violence of alien abduction doesn’t square with Nature Intelligence in the sense I perceive it, but it does have elements in common with visionary immersion. When considering aspects of an invasive manipulation, any relationship to spirituality just vanishes, in my opinion. That's not to say that an abductee or anyone experiencing psychic rape can't be nurtured by nature after the fact, to the point the rape appears to be part of a higher learning curve of some kind, including an artistic one.

The point being, there are all kinds of powerful, identity destroying experiences out there--powerful psychedelics, hypnosis, kundalini, ecstatic immersion, schizophrenia, cult abduction, mental and physical torture and abuse, etc. You can't equate them with transcendental experience or the spirit in nature. The former are fractured and torturous while the latter are blissful and profound. Anything in- between may just be a mixture of ego and identity coming in contact with liberating forces the individual can't tolerate.

I wonder if you have ever been concerned with the Golden Ratio, and the Fibonacci series? WG Sebald's The Rings of Saturn is a book that explores meta patterns found in nature. Do geometric patterns and mathematical ratios manifest some way through subtle energy?

As to Golden Ratios, let me mention in an extremely abbreviated fashion something I learned from John Michell, the late, great British author/philosopher and expert on sacred proportions. His perspective was that sacred ratios, like phi (1-1.618...) represent the clearest examples in nature where higher, divine forces are defined and expressed in form. We experience sacred proportions as aesthetically pleasing, and they are incorporated into beautiful forms such as the conch shell (as a Fibonacci series), and in many aspects of human anatomy. Electrically, sacred proportions occur among spark and lightening bolts, and biologically in the veins of leaves and branches, and in thousands of other places in nature. What interested me was John's observation that sacred geometry employed in architecture constructed over power places on the landscape, served as a resonant tuning mechanism for the people that came to these buildings to worship.

The net result was the beautiful proportions of the structures, coupled with the use of the same proportional systems in art and music sung or played inside these buildings, effectively restored those inside back into harmony with Nature and God. So, if you had a difficult week and felt really bent out of shape, you could look forward to the experience of having your cares and woes assuaged by spiritually healing earth energy, translated by the proportions and aesthetics of the music, art and architecture of the church or temple you attended. Over time, as John pointed out, regular exposure to such harmonious experience led to social stability and the development of culture. Other researchers have suggested the periodic application of sacred music and architecture across the landscape served to augment crop fertility, growth and wellness.

My conjecture would be, based on John Michell’s work, that sacred geometry is itself a radionic informational structure, designed by nature intelligence to express higher consciousness through harmonic relationships.

Radionics has to date been the province of a few, but the potential applications--creative and utilitarian--are endless. What advice do you have for potential readers of your book, who might connect with your research and your insights, using this material in their own work, their disciplines and inquiries?

There is enormous historical precedent for radionic healing methodologies in all cultures around the world. Most were developed before the advent of science and technology, before mechanistic and deterministic thought came to dominate our world-view. While there is no reason to abandon the numerous benefits of science, there is also little harm in exploring other options, especially artistic ones, based upon the creative power of consciousness. So, Radionics becomes a place where mind, spirit, nature and human intent converge. Radionic ability flows from a deeper perspective on life.

For the artist, radionics has the potential to expand creativity. To look at Radionics as merely an antiquated medical technology is to do it a disservice. Radionics has the potential to be so much more. Today, radionic techniques are employed in environmental re-certification, to replace pesticides and fertilizer in agriculture, for therapy, dowsing for natural resources, and even to improve the functionality of mechanical systems and devices. That’s just the practical applications. The metaphysical implications go much further. Think of the enormous opportunity for creativity that becomes possible by expanding the boundaries of what we define as the human condition.

Look at the history of Radionics as a place where clues to this process have been left for posterity. After all, these inventors made devices that worked, as testified by hundreds of people who were cured where mainstream medicine failed. Today’s radionics is very open ended, as you will see in the book. I've been prone to advance it as an artistic methodology, since both art and radionics are empirical and self-referential disciplines that are understood best through application. If a few musicians can raise a whole stadium to their feet in joy and happiness for several hours, why not consider other inertia defying possibilities as well?

I'm a conceptual and sound artist and an unwitting practitioner of radionics. An early fascination with the natural world and a lust for learning about it drew me toward a study of marine biology. At some point during my undergraduate education, however, I discovered that my passion was for the parts of phenomena that were not inherently scientific - the intuitive, the mysterious, the aesthetic. I loved tidepools, test tubes, the clanging of bell-buoys and the drone of foghorns in the distance. I craved the dizzying sensation of overwhelm that accompanied learning about highly complex, intricate, and elegant processes such as photosynthesis, the Kreb's cycle, and DNA replication. Raised to consider a range of religions and philosophies without particular alignment to any, the study of biology, chemistry, and physics provided a deep overarching sense of the breathtaking intricacy, profound elegance, and harmonious balance of the elements that must coalesce in composing our reality. The study of science also instilled in me a sense of its own limitations - the scientific method functions very well for certain types of inquiry, while (inadvertently or not) completely discounting others. I became interested in developing hybrid, holistic, non-discipline-specific systems for accessing intangible forces and sensations I could feel but couldn’t see or measure. I knew this would require further education, but hardly knew where to begin. A graduate program in scientific and technical illustration - a methodical study of the beauty of science and nature - seemed like a logical way to proceed.

Feeling compelled to use installation, performance, graffiti, sound, and video in my “scientific illustrations”, I soon found myself in the printmaking, sculpture, and textile studios. I began to think of my work as “subtle reality technologies” - laboratory equipment designed to access and analyze the unquantifiable. I learned about kindred systems used by Peruvian shamans and Tibetan Buddhists, Beuys, Duchamp, Goethe, Steiner, homeopaths, permaculturists, and radionics practitioners. All of these groups, individuals, and techniques are concerned with social and environmental healing through the development of special sensitivities to unseen natural forces.

At first I imagined that my mission would be to simply convey a sense of the miraculousness and wonder of science through art. I certainly never set out to become any sort of healer. However, like Joseph Beuys and many others, I came to realize that any technique that has the effect of reconnecting society with the natural world may have extremely broad and profound implications. At a time when so many people have become disassociated from relationships not only with their environment but from an intuitive connection to their physical bodies, restoring a sense of union with nature could have a transformative, healing effect on humanity and the environment at large. Goethe believed that this sort of understanding could be achieved through prolonged empathic observation, and referred to this method as “delicate empiricism.” Beuys believed that the connection with nature is not only essential for the enhancement of one's own potential as a conduit for creative forces, but also in order for one to contribute to society as uniquely, efficiently, and joyfully as possible. In Beuys’ words, “Everyone is an artist.” I couldn't agree more.
I built the satellite dish hat ten years ago. It was the first three-dimensional piece of conceptual art I ever made:

It's my understanding that radionics, like shamanism, is the development of highly refined technologies for the deliberate wielding of intention, inspiration, and other subtle energetic forces for the purposes of healing. While shamans tend to employ very ancient, traditional implements in their ritual and ceremony, radionics devices often take on a retrofuturistic laboratory gadget-like form.

From certain perspectives, both radionics and shamanism are illegal to practice. On the one hand, the intention to heal is taken extremely seriously by the legal profession (this is a matter with severe implications and punishments for those found to be practicing healing without appropriate licensing), and on the other hand, the concept of healing via intention is considered quackery by the medical profession. Could it be that lawyers understand and appreciate the power of intention, while doctors do not? I find it very odd that intention isn't taken more seriously in medicine, since music, painting, film, dance, and other forms of creative expression are known to evoke a wide range of emotional states in the audience. I would argue that most forms of art are, in fact, intention-enhanced technologies.

This is precisely why artists are fortunate, and why radionics is the Secret Art! Artists are exempt from many spoken and unspoken laws, doctrines, and rules typically applied to scientists, holy people, and healers. Declaring oneself an artist provides a number of handy loopholes, including freedom from obligation to uphold the scientific method, and release from the need to abide by the regulations of the medical and legal professions.

Until reading The Secret Art, I was unaware that I was a practitioner of radionics. For all these years, I have been reluctant to wholeheartedly embrace the notion that my work may contain healing properties (perhaps I should attach a warning label?), although this has long been implied. After all, being a healer comes with great responsibility. “The Secret Art” is at once a wake-up call and an invitation to all who have cultivated healing potential in their work. The time has come for those of us who wield the Secret Art to ramp up its power by applying it with conviction!

The realization that I had been inadvertently constructing radionic devices initially came as quite a shock. Although to a great extent I have always believed that my apparatus are “real”, “The Secret Art” made me aware that I had been harboring some level of residual, subconscious doubt held over from training as a scientist. As I finished the final paragraph of the last chapter of “The Secret Art”, it suddenly struck me that not only are my pieces (and every element of the reality in which they exist) real, they are alive, autonomous beings. Outcroppings of nature-intelligence, they moved me to help create them in order to communicate their message.

Examples of works created pre-radionic-awareness (PRA) include the Homeopathic Remedies for the 5 Ills of Society and a giant “attunement” apparatus complete with proclamations that, “The entire universe is in tension” - R. Buckminster Fuller and “You ARE the technology!”

One of my own more recently-created inadvertent radionic devices is in the form of a necktie that's made from sonic fabric (http://www.sonicfabric.com), a textile woven from audiocassette tape that's recorded with an intricate collage of sound. The “good vibes” with which the tie is imbued are discretely radiated out into the vicinity of the wearer.

I honestly don't know as yet how my artwork will change in light of recent revelations. I can only hope, as “The Secret Art” posits, that in the future my work will become “a relentless anarchy experienced as art.”

While I believe there are myriad specific ways that radionics can be applied to current situations around the world, from soothing victims of natural disasters to ending wars and helping crops grow, I hope that, by highlighting the connections between disciplines, my own work can act as a general catalyst for others who may be on the verge of realizing the potential power of their own brainwaves. Not only do I believe that everyone is a radionic practitioner, I believe that everyone is a radionic device as well.

We're living in a topsy-turvy world where all manner of strife makes things seem upside-down.
Turning it all around - making things right - begins with a simple mental shift.

This is the first in what we hope will be an ongoing series of interviews with persons working with subtle energies. I met Horia Cosmin Samoïla in September 2007 at the Live Performers Meeting in Rome. He immediately impressed with the assortment of equipment that he had brought with him from France, and in talking with him, the breadth of esoteric topics he was conversant in.

Cosmin, can you tell us a little bit about your background?

Well, I was born in Romania in 1975. When I was 8 years old, my mother, brother and I left for France. I think this "uprooting" is capital in the choices I made later in my studies and my life. All expatriates have a sense of this.

After my general studies I became more interested in art, so I began art studies in the Villa Arson school in Nice. I remember that I was a bit of an anomaly at school. My interests were in alchemic philosophy, shamanism and magic. Not typical subjects. But I have fond memories there, and good contact with everyone, especially with the painting teachers. There are some strange links between Painting, magic and ritual. Looking back, I'm conscious that I was surely considered an extraterrestrial at the school.

You started Ghostlab in 2003, how did that come about?

I have always been attracted by the paranormal; myths and mysteries of our world, like another world just beyond our own. This might be a part of the hidden soul of Romania that sleeps inside me. During 2003 I had a series of paranormal experiences, in an old Cathar castle in France. The events lead me to try to understand these phenomenon in a rational way. So I decided to create the GhostLab.

The focus of this project was originally to explore the electromagnetic landscape and it's interaction with consciousness and cognitive processes. For this I acquired some useful devices which helped me to perceive the invisible side of our world. At this point, I remember that I was fascinated with the complexity and omnipresence of electromagnetic fields, both natural and artificial. I started to make recordings, invisible sculptures and even music with these immaterial sources. No traditional ghosts were tracked down, but an incredible world of radiation, rhythms and pulsations were revealed to me.

You extended your work to include collaborations with others under the name Spectral Investigations Collective (S.I.C), how did the work expand?

The S.I.C started officially in 2006. The initial target of the S.I.C was to explore the effects of electromagnetic pollution on humans and life in general. The collaboration started in Paris, with Gabin Noir and was more focused on live experimental music. Gabin, at the time, was the editor of the Prism Escape freezine (2002-2004), and was passionate about ufology, and alternative music. Following this, we collaborated with Bureau d'Etudes, initiating a series of discussions in methodic criticism of our modern society. Later in 2006, I met Ewen Chardronnet, and we decided with the Bureau d'Etudes, to name our collective the S.I.C.

You have been exploring a wide range of subjects over the years, which areas are still under active investigation?

The electromagnetic spectrum has kept my focus. I've realized that the most important thing is not the strength of a signal but the information modulated and carried within it. Information can be thought of as the third compound of reality with Matter and Energy. This informative process seems curiously to be "non local", as if outside of the considerations we have on space and time. There at the edges, it starts to become interesting.

I recently came to review my old intuitions about ancient paradigms being more closely tied with the nature of magic. The only difference between magic and technology is that magic is a technology linked with the Cosmos, where known technology is a comparable practice but without this essential link. But this fact doesn't mean that commonly known technologies are not a part of a huge magical process.

Nowadays, fascinated by the growth of our technologies, we have a false vision of what our technological items really are. Living organisms are incredibly more sophisticated than our own creations. We may well be the High-Tec biological receptacles of Consciousness, in its own extra-territorialisation. Now, in a material process, we only repeat this phenomenon through the emergence of our technologies of Information and Communication. This is why the Internet and virtual reality, for example, are so close to the idea of the traditional astral layers or inner worlds. Web browsing should seem very familiar to a shaman from Gabon or the Amazon who has explored the realms of thought and might and beyond.

But this materialization process is really disturbing. In a way it is as if Consciousness, risking a more dense prison in matter, tries to come back to it's origin through the process that we have initialized with our own technologies. Paradoxically, this is why our technologies become more and more immaterial.

As in magical practice, alchemic philosophy and even art, the model was and is in Nature. Human existence is something between the inner and the outer path of Nature. It is as if we were in a lucid dream. By imitating natural processes, we can have power over them.

Radionics is a perfect example of the redefinition of modern magical practice. I do not know a lot about these practices, but I know somebody in the south of France who practices radionics. He heals people with it. It seems incredible but it works. To the outside observer, he just takes some matter impregnated with the "information" of the target, uses crystals, turns mysterious potentiometers linked to each other with simple wires, touches conductive plates, and that's all. But from the inside there is a complete coherence of thought focusing on precise intentions. Maybe this technology, repeats in a way an "imago mundi" necessary to crystallize the thoughts. Completely magical, but so technical!

With the "Invisible Sculpture," you give form to the electromagnetic waves and forces that bathe the earth. What exactly is being shown with the sculpture?

The Invisible Sculpture is a tentative method to re-link with the idea of mental art and to place the observer in the role of creator, simply because the observer uses the power of their own imagination. Art always was and always will be mental. Its essence is purely referred to an immaterial state of being, like emotions, mental or even spiritual conceptions.

This mental construction to be more precise, is paradoxal, because it's formed belong geomagnetic fields, so in a way a concrete formation, but invisible. 100% objective and 100% subjective.

I've tried several ways to concretize the shape of isolated portions of the geomagnetic fields, in happenings, trough oral transmissions, maps, drawings, photo-montages, notifications and videos. I consider that like sculptures, invisible but virtually present and concrete, that emerge with the visualization of the others.

I saw your "Elements" audio visual collaboration with Gabin Noir and Marie Christine Driesen in Rome at the Live Performers Meeting 2007. I was very curious to see you setting up for the performance, with a random number generator, a wired plant and what appeared to be a pick-up coil. Can you tell us what the piece was about and whether it was a 'success'?

The results of this performance were completely unexpected, and at the end it looked more like pure noise experimental music. I remember that all the people except for four or five left the room. Also, the cadence of the video projection made it particularly hard to make out its images. The mix was so bad that it was impossible to discern the plant biofeedback from the RNG. Wrong place and wrong time I think to work with plants and psy experiments. In a way this happening was closer to the magician of the tarot or like a Hieronymus Bosch painting. Something was happening, but no one knew what.

There has been study of the influence of human consciousness on Random Number Generators, first at PEAR and the Global Consciousness Project, and later by Peter von Buengner. You have used the Orion RNG in some of your works over the years. How have you incorporated randomness into the works? Have you seen any incidents where there were abnormalities in the randomness?

True random systems are ideal, both for parapsychological experiments and more exotic broadcasting of the noosphere. The first experiences I had with random number generation was more based on the influence of psyche on electronic devices, like laptops. This phenomenon is called micro-pk or micro-psychokynesis. I don't know if in this case, we are confronted to a micro-pk phenomenon or a ESP one. But it works, and in a way it's common.

After that I tried more to create sound experiments, like the Random Phonetic Coherence works. It was more to confront a random flux of phonemes and cognitive processes. Sometimes I had weird "messages" that emerged from this flux and its understanding, like something close to EVP.

(Image courtesy of Ghostlab)

Can you talk about your experiments in parallel with those of Cleve Backster's work with plants from the 1960s? What sort of data were you getting from the plants and what kind of circuitry were you using to collect it?

I've basically reproduced the Baxter Experiment. I used a simple electronic lie detector. According to my empirical observations plants tend to react more to intentions and emotions, but the deeper ones. If you try to bluff the plant by miming that you want to cut it, it doesn't display any stress signals, because of course that's not your real intention. But if you are nervous or stressed yourself, the plant will feel it and variations of signal will occur. Plants also react abnormally to cell phone proximity and to electrosmog in general.

I remember one day a strange event. I've start the RNG and let it running. I've forget the RNG and I did a series of tests with the lie detector signals. Finally I attached the plant to an oscilloscope via the lie detector to find some signal patterns. Once I saw the RNG data recordings and I was stupefied. The RNG data was reading under 0.01% probability for the exact 20 minutes the plant was connected to the oscilloscope. I suppose that the "ghost ground" of the oscilloscope may have gone directly to the plant and generated a stress factor. But what was incredible was that this event modified the random generation itself for 20 minutes. In my experience, the RNG, by nature, doesn't react to any electrosmog influence.

Who are the researchers, scientists, or artists that inspire you the most?

I find inspiration in a number of eastern european scientists, like Tesla and Russians; Kozyrev, Grebennikov, and others like Thomas Townsend Brown who explored, in their way, the science of Aether. I'm also interested in old traditions like sacred geometry, astrology, cabal and gnosis.

Generally I investigate which inventor or scientist worked on a special subject that interested me at a specific time and within a specific context. Recently I was with Marie Christine in Labomedia in Orleans. We worked on the remake of Hodowanec's gravitational experiments and other ways of sensing the global earth rythms. We wanted to create an emergency cell counterbalancing the next CERN experiment, that potentially could generate a black hole in the center of Europe. I like this kind of shift between potentiality and reality. Purely cartesian in a way.

Do you have a favorite piece of technology or equipment?

All the devices I use in the Ghostlab protocol, are like extra-sensesorial prolongations that offer, by their typical function, an idea of invisible and inaudible. My favorite one is a simple VLF detector: the NASA Inspire one. I have walked through a lot of countryside searching for some natural ionospheric surprises. You feel the wildness of nature and the invisible realm just out of sight.

Are there any upcoming events or projects you could share?

Actually I am preparing with Marie Christine an installation in Singapore during the ISEA 2008 programme. This installation, "Aurora Consurgens", is supposed to work with brain waves and archetypal visualizations. The ultimate battle of our modern world is the battle for control of our minds. I think it's important to take a position with that.