Richard Bach, the author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Illusions, etc., who became a friend of mine a few years ago, sent me a series of emails as he was reading Babe in the Woods, and he is very generously allowing me to quote them here. Some excerpts:
“I’ve begun reading at last, and have to tell you again what a pleasure is your writing! You catch me on paragraph one, have me fascinated and at the same time at ease with that homey comfortable style of yours….”
If you ever wondered what it would be like to go through a program with a couple of dozen people all looking for extraordinary potential — here’s an easy way to get the idea.
Babe in the Woods is about a skeptical news reporter’s entry into a world that he had always assumed did not exist. As he goes through the program he is surrounded by others at very different levels of being. Some are beginners, some are experienced. Some are skeptical, some credulous. Some are able to go with their experiences, some are not. Kind of like real life….
Chapter One
March 18, 1995
Saturday Evening
My first thought was: What in the world am I doing here and how am I going to last the week?
I got off the plane in the early evening darkness, walked through the automatic doors and there I was in the Charlottesville airport, finally. Up the escalator, through the empty second-floor lounge, and down the escalator to the main floor, wondering if my van ride to the institute had waited the extra hour, and if not, how I was going to get out there. I suppose if the rental car agencies are closed, I’ll have to call a cab, I thought. A 40-mile taxi ride will make an impressive addition to the tab.
Wasted anticipation, because as soon as I came out of the secured area through the revolving door, a guy came up and said, “You must be Angelo. I’m Mick. I’m your transportation to the institute, and I’ve got two of your fellow participants over here,” pointing behind him. He was maybe 50, a youngish 50, pretty average looking.
“Yes, I’m Angelo. How did you know?” I wasn’t the only man from the plane coming through the door.
Mick smiled. “I can generally tell. Let’s get your baggage and get on the road so we can get you some supper.” He led the way to the airport’s only baggage carousel. “You guys can introduce yourselves. You’re going to know each other a little better by the time I bring you back here next week, you might as well start now.”
Many years ago Bob Friedman, John Nelson and I put our heads together to try to solve a problem for the publishing industry, and for the metaphysical (New Age) community. We were unable to have the impact he hoped to have, but perhaps the cause is not quite lost.
The problem is this. Suppose you’re someone new to metaphysics and you come across, say, “The Celestine Prophecy,” or “Jonathan Livingston Seagull.” You go to your local bookstore (assuming you still HAVE a local bookstore and probably you ask what else they have by the same authors. But after a while, when you’re read everything James Redfield or Richard Bach had published, you might want more of the same, by other authors. You know (or anyway you assume) it exists. But how do you find it?
It’s taking a while to get the website completed. While we wait, I thought I might as well provide a preview of coming attractions. Here is one, the novel I recently completed.
Babe in the Woods
We’ve all heard of mystery schools, places where people can go to further their psychic and spiritual development. In our day, there are not a few people claim to be able to provide such training, but – as in most things in life – caveat emptor. Let the buyer beware.
But – how can the buyer beware? On the one hand, you don’t want to be giving your time and your money and your sincerity to something that is only self-delusion, or, worse, a sophisticated con. On the other hand, how can you judge something that (if real) is by definition beyond your ability to judge it? Sometimes there’s nothing to do but to jump in and see for yourself, and hope for the best.
As it happens, I have been fortunate enough to attend a sort of modern American shorthand version of such a mystery school, namely a series of week-long courses at The Monroe Institute. (A week is not a lot of time, but in the right circumstances it can be enough time to get you the tools you need. Then you spend the rest of your life applying them.) This novel is my attempt to give readers the flavor of the experience.
This is from a newly tweaked passage in the novel that I call Babe in the Woods, based on my experiences at the Monroe Institute’s Gateway program back in December, 1992. I wrote it in a couple of months (or in 15 years, depending on how you wish to count) and sent it to friends for a critique, and am finishing revising it. I am surprised, a little, at how much I had wanted to say that I neglected to say, and at how many things I never thought to say in the first place. Ah well, little by little….
There’s a thought. I came to a fir tree just as a prolonged burst of wind began tossing it back and forth. I moved to Interface, and instantly thought, this is another life form, after all, as alien to us as anything else, but no more so. Why shouldn’t I be able to communicate with it?
Continue reading An alien life-form