In college, Thanksgiving was a great excuse for me to escape from the pressures of schoolwork. The traditional rituals of the holiday were secondary to my need to blow off steam and space out watching the latest action flicks. I never suspected my soul would cast me in an action movie of my own adventures featuring extraterrestrials and inner space.
Lisa, Sylvia, Jacob, Chris and I were good friends and fellow film students at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. We were very thankful for the chance to skip town and reconnect with living as normal human beings instead of college students. When the holiday neared, we went our separate ways across the country to spend time with our families and simply vegetate. As so often occurred in my young sojourn on the planet, my inner coach had a special, secret agenda for me on this particular holiday.
Returning to Ann Arbor after the school break, I discovered my friends and I had independently latched onto the same idea for a co-created film. Each of us came back to town wanting to do a documentary on “multidimensional travel.”
As was my usual manner regarding spiritual breakthroughs, I backed into this one with no idea of what I was getting into. If I had suspected the divine disruption of my life lying ahead, I probably would have postponed this adventure another few lifetimes!
My friends and I didn’t consider ourselves spiritually inclined people. We were an unlikely crew of metaphysical explorers. None of us had ever heard of multidimensional travel before. Nonetheless, in diverse ways in different parts of the country, we were each connected with the same esoteric topic at the same time.
One member of our group, Lisa, picked up a book on “astral projection.” Jacob met a new acquaintance who shared her theories about “journeying to different levels of awareness.” Chris was fascinated by a lecture on “past life regression.” Sylvia came back from vacation bubbling with enthusiasm about “communicating with your Future Self,” which she read about in a metaphysical magazine. I, personally, was riveted by a film documentary on “multidimensional realities.” Reuniting after the holiday, we marveled at the synchronicity of our separate, independent discoveries and took it as a sure sign this subject was meant to be our next film project.
A few days later, I was hanging out with my rock musician friend Rhone who, in an intoxicated state, let slip that he had a relative in Montreal who was part of a very unusual organization. “My Uncle Gaston is the head honcho of a real mysterious group,” he blurted out. “It’s an international, secret spiritual society that teaches yoga and meditation publicly and more esoteric, mystical arts behind closed doors.” Seizing the opportunity, I told Rhone about our documentary project.
“Uncle Gaston knows a lot about multidimensional travel,” Rhone replied. “He refers to it as ‘soul travel.’ He even showed me how to do it. But it got too scary for me, man. Too weird. I stopped seeing him and quit answering his phone calls.”
As much as I inquired, Rhone wouldn’t share the details of his paranormal experiences with his uncle. In fact, the subject was closed by Rhone as quickly as it was opened by a few cans of Bud. Undaunted by Rhone’s fear, my friends and I wanted to contact Rhone’s uncle in Montreal immediately. We weren’t intimidated by the nature of the subject because our interest—so we believed at the time—was purely artistic and journalistic. It never occurred to us for one moment we would actually do any multidimensional travel.
Intellectually intrigued and psyched, we simply wanted to make a film about the fascinating topic. Our standard journalistic modus operandi was to not get personally involved in any way with the subject of our investigation. We considered ourselves professionals. We would be objective observers, not participants. Ah, the blind arrogance and naïveté of young journalists!
After the shattering effects of his past tutelage with Uncle Gaston, Rhone was loath to contact him ever again. Finally, after much pleading on our part, he agreed to give us his uncle’s telephone number. Since Rhone refused to call his uncle, I phoned the group leader in Montreal myself.
I rang Rhone’s uncle at his home. As soon as I mentioned my name, Gaston instantly replied, “Yes, we’ve been expecting your call.” Being certain that Rhone had not previously phoned him to tell him about us, I felt the Frenchman’s super calm, knowing response was like an overused line from a cheap “B” horror flick.
Gaston added to the mystique of his reply by coupling it with an invitation that seemed overly hospitable to strangers. Before I had an opportunity to mention our connection with his nephew Rhone, or our interest in making a film, Gaston volunteered, “You can all come and stay at our house for as long as you like.”
A red warning light went off within my suspicious personality. Why such over-zealous hospitality? Hiding my uneasiness, I responded to Gaston’s offer with polite, professional decorum, “Great. My four friends and I would like to meet everyone in your group and film a documentary about your endeavors.”
Jovially, Gaston agreed to us visiting over our Christmas vacation and staying at his sprawling home in the suburbs of Montreal. It seemed almost too easy.
Gaston’s excessively gracious response should have been my first clue that my friends and I were getting involved in an adventure with greater implications for our future than the making of a documentary film. His words haunted me for days. Rhone confirmed he hadn’t told his uncle about us. “Why such a generous offer of his home to people he’s never met, before I even fully introduced myself and my motives for phoning?” I queried many close acquaintances. Nobody had an answer that quelled my uneasiness.
However, in keeping with my youthful innocence and inner trust, I ignored my personality’s urging to investigate further before I proceeded. Had I hesitated or inquired more, I may not have undertaken that fateful, fortuitous journey to Montreal.
A few days after Christmas Day, we five intent filmmakers drove from Ann Arbor to Montreal to shoot a journalistic record of the teachings and operation of an esoteric spiritual society. About halfway there, I became violently ill with nausea, dizziness and diarrhea. I chalked it up to a combination of over-excitement and intestinal flu. In retrospect, I realize my condition had nothing to do with the flu. My body was reacting with trepidation to the prospect of the total life upheaval awaiting me in Montreal.
When we arrived, we were warmly greeted by Rhone’s Uncle Gaston and Aunt Edith, who appeared to be a very unassuming, sweet, vibrant French couple. They could easily have passed for totally ordinary Quebecois. The two made a very cheery pair, alive with the Gaelic spirit and joie de vivre. They invited us into their typical suburban home, which we later discovered was called “the clubhouse,” a meeting place for an international spiritual group of about two hundred people.
A short time after we arrived, it began to snow . . . and snow . . . and snow. It snowed heavily all night. When we opened the front door in the morning, we found six feet of snow had blanketed the city overnight. The powdery white fluff had drifted up above the opening of the front door. The storm was severe, even by Canadian standards. The whole city was at a standstill. It would take days for city plows to clear the streets. We were, in effect, shut in with the extraordinary subjects of our film.
My co-journalists and I reasoned it was the perfect opportunity to better know the people who were to be the focus of the documentary. Rhone’s relatives, however, had other plans for us! Their intentions differed vastly from ours.
After a restful night’s sleep, my friends and I eased into our first whole day with the congenial couple. We were still under the comforting illusion that we were there to make a film. After breakfast, Gaston and Edith calmly confided that they headed a secret international, or, as they described it more accurately, “intergalactic” spiritual society. “Our group meets and operates in secret,” they shared, “because as an underground organization, we won’t attract a lot of attention and can function more freely. Our membership consists of a wide spectrum of ordinary citizens comprised of all ages, races and backgrounds that includes doctors, lawyers, bankers, artists, truck drivers, post office workers, housewives, college professors and students. Most of our members feel it’s best if their relatives, casual friends and work colleagues are unaware of their membership in such an extremely esoteric metaphysical society.”
The talkative French pair elaborated on the inner workings of their society, and we were gathering a wealth of information for our film project. Listening politely, the five of us sent silent, bemused messages back and forth between us with our eyes. Their story had all the trappings of an old, classic mystery movie.
When Gaston offered to acquaint us with the group’s spiritual practices, we quickly accepted his offer. After all, the more we knew about what these people were up to, the more thorough, accurate and affecting our documentary would be.
Having our complete attention, Gaston then informed us that he and Edith were not human! We five humans took a collective, lengthy breath. We remained silent. What could we say to that! In a casual tone, with a straight face, Gaston stated, “We have taken human form for the purpose of increasing the comfort level of the people with whom we interact. Our intentional guise of familiar human appearance makes communication so much easier, you see.”
“Yes, of course,” we agreed in stunned unison, attempting to hide the skepticism in our voices. My “flu” symptoms—read as “suppressed terror”—had been lessening up until I heard this mindblower. Now, my body as well as my mind was sent reeling! But, since the snowstorm had paralyzed travel in the city and trapped us inside with these folks for a few days, my friends and I felt we needed to reserve our opinions about the factual basis of these extraterrestrial revelations. Thus, we nodded diplomatically as Gaston began to unfold his version of the true history of Planet Earth and the cosmology of the universe. I was able to calm my nerves and nausea by reminding myself that I was only there to record and document. As a professional, I shouldn’t get personally involved, I reminded myself.
The essence of Gaston’s presentation was focused on the true nature and meaning of life. He declared, “All beings are, in essence, Spirit. As individualized aspects of the Oneness, people incarnate on Earth—and in other worlds and other dimensions—for the sole (soul) purpose of exploring creation. All beings leave the Unified Field of Consciousness, Oneness, by deliberately buying into the belief of separation and duality, the cosmic play of opposites: the polarities of right and wrong, good and bad, light and dark, up and down, and yin and yang.
“This deliberate forgetting of our connection to the unity of all things in Spirit allows people to create and play in a world of front and back, visible and invisible, and form and essence. The front—visible form—is the universe of physical matter, which you can see, touch, smell, hear and taste. The background—underlying invisible, essence reality—is made of nonphysical energy, which you can contact through multisensory perception.
“The majority of people have yet to open their senses to this more fundamental, causative aspect of life—the nonphysical, vibrational level of reality. This behind-the-scenes energy is primal life force, which is the creative power that animates all forms of life.”
In elaborate detail, the lively Frenchman described Planet Earth’s role in the cosmic unfolding of the Universal Plan or Game. He emphasized, “My explanation of the true nature of the universe will be heard and absorbed differently by each of you. Each person’s perception will vary according to his or her individual personality with its unique belief filters and cultural conditioning. Every year or so, I will reiterate this same basic information to you, but in different terms and on a higher level of understanding. As each of you grow in wisdom and personal power, you will be able to absorb more truth. And I will be able to explain the workings of the cosmos in a more and more accurate way.”
“However,” he forewarned, “the account I, and other spiritual teachers, share with you at each successive, higher level will make the previous level of information seem to you, on the surface, like a lie. But each new, more accurate version of the human story will only appear to contradict the last version, because your understanding of the true nature of life will have changed so radically. You’ll be in such a new place—a place of greater clarity and truth—that your old ways of understanding life will seem overly simple, naïve—even false. You will be seeing life through new eyes—a fresh, expanded perspective that will render your old points of view obsolete.”
I will interrupt my tale for a moment to tell you that, since my time with Gaston, I have, in fact, been told and retold essentially the same cosmology in many different forms. Not by Gaston, but rather by other spiritual mentors: Indian guru Sai Baba, Ascended Master St. Germain, macrobiotic leader Michio Kushi, spiritual teacher Lester Levenson, and Hopi medicine man Medicine Cloud, among others. As Gaston had predicted, each new depiction of the truth of existence made the preceding rendition seem like fiction to me. That aside taken care of, I will continue with our experience with Uncle Gaston.
Gaston talked to us for a full day, breaking only for one meal. After hours of trying to integrate the incredible human adventure Gaston was positing, we were finally excused. We crashed for twelve hours of heavy slumber.
The next morning found the city of Montreal at a standstill, frozen in the grips of the blizzard. But not Gaston! He had a momentous journey in store for the five of us. When we awoke, the cheery, avowed extraterrestrial announced he was going to assist us in experiencing the full spectrum of our soul’s cosmic existence. He was taking us “soul traveling,” also referred to as “astral projection,” “multidimensional awareness” or “exploring one’s Akashic Record.”
Having come to Montreal specifically to film a story about this fascinating procedure, we readily agreed to give it a shot. Mind you, none of us really believed the otherworldly technique was valid, or that it would work for us, so we were fairly cool and collected about such a weighty undertaking. Imagine our shock when, under the skilled direction of Gaston, we spent the next five days soul traveling through the multidimensional universe!
While lying fully clothed on a bed, each of us was cajoled into allowing our inner coach, or soul, to open to an awareness of various lifetimes on Earth, on other planets and in other dimensions. In some of the lifetimes, we didn’t inhabit physical bodies as dense as our bodies on Earth; we had energy bodies that were translucent, very light and fluid.
Gradually over the next three days, the awareness dawned on us that we were no longer simply exploring our subject for objective investigative journalism. We were, in fact, undergoing a very subjective spiritual initiation and transformation. By the time we realized this, we were so thoroughly engrossed in the fantastic journey that it was too late to turn back, or to attempt to return to being solely objective, journalistic observers.
I was so absorbed in the adventure of it all that my physical and emotional discomfort almost completely vanished. The little bit of queasiness that remained actually assisted me to soul travel. Because being out of my body was so much more comfortable than being in it, I responded immediately to Gaston’s suggestions to travel to other lifetimes and dimensions.
Each of us went on a dozen or so of these extra-dimensional awareness journeys. Whether we were truly experiencing actual other lifetimes was not important to us at the time because whatever we were doing was very real and inspirational for us. We experienced being physically in each body and lifetime with a level of concreteness equal to that of our everyday reality. We were aware of a small portion of our consciousness in a body lying on a bed back in Montreal on Earth in 1969, but most of our attention was riveted to very realistic, sensory, emotional and physical events in another time and place.
The experiential authenticity of these adventures was teaching us profound emotional and social life lessons. We didn’t care if these other lifetimes were, in truth, our own previous or future existences, the lifetimes of someone else or something else altogether. The relevant wisdom and direct insights we were gaining from these explorations were so valuable, we gave little concern for the factual basis of our exploits. Our thoughts, feelings and sensations during the journeys were more pronounced and acute than those of our “normal” reality. This heightened awareness made our experiences during the soul travels even more genuine, engaging and enriching.
During each lifetime, Gaston would guide us through birth and death in that existence. The births were very visceral, tangible and emotional. The deaths were equally physical, palpable and dramatic. Over and over, we each experienced our soul coming into a physical body at birth and then leaving the corporal body at death.
We also connected with the interactions that generally take place for most people between lifetimes. We met with spiritual advisors, talked about what we learned during the last lifetime, and then chose our next lifetime. For the next round on Earth, we could elect to be a woman, man, farmer, artist, peasant or prince. The choices were as endless as the universe.
The cumulative effect of these realistic and fascinating journeys was immense. We were acutely aware that the purpose of each revisiting of a lifetime was for our soul to learn more about the true nature of life—the debilitating consequences of greed, selfishness, revenge, jealousy and dishonesty—as well as the nurturing influences of joy, innocence, humor and compassion. We’d stumbled into a treasure house of direct knowing about the most significant aspects of human existence.
Each lifetime allowed us to directly—and more consciously than in everyday life—absorb what happens when we stay overly focused on and obsessed with fame, power, money, sex or security for a whole lifetime. We saw firsthand how being stuck in a certain narrow point of view in one lifetime dominated and decimated our aliveness and humanity in that lifetime. We assimilated palpably the healing and liberating power of exchanging genuine kindness, intimacy and laughter with other people. The many soul journeys were explorations of all the various human strengths and frailties that exist on the planet—and in our personal past and future lives.
Every lifetime we visited also had significant, synchronistic relevance for the challenges we were, in fact, facing in our current life on Earth. Each of us intuitively chose issues to confront that were pertinent and timely for us to examine in terms of our weaknesses and strengths in our present daily lives. The lessons I learned were ones I’ve not forgotten. In fact, the revelations from those soul trips changed forever how I live my life.
After five days of soul travel, Gaston demonstrated how to open the chakra energy centers of the body. The chakras are an East Indian term for the specific areas of the body in which creative life force is stored. The vast inner reserve of natural vitality and raw aliveness released from these sessions was sublime. Each of us felt vibrant and open to the power and majesty of the universe in a way none of us had ever felt before in our lives.
As if the lifetime journeys and chakra revitalizations were not enough transformation for one week, Gaston then gave each of us an extensive, personal soul history. For hours, he candidly revealed to each of us who we really are as eternal spirits, what our souls have come to do on Earth this lifetime, and how well to date we were accomplishing our spiritual goals. Gaston did not pull any punches. He was blunt, direct and specific. He knew events in our lives none of us had ever told anyone before—not close relatives, not even our best friends. He spoke facts about our lives, and truths about our feelings, we hadn’t even admitted to ourselves! It was quite shocking to all of us that anyone could know these extremely intimate details. This wasn’t hit-and-miss fortunetelling. This was in-depth soul truth.
Gaston explained, “When the Oneness deliberately fragmented into separate aspects of consciousness, each individual being ended up embodying more of one aspect of consciousness than the other qualities of the Oneness. Some people mainly embody and emanate the vibration of love. Others radiate more the essences of strength, innocence, transformation or courage. We each carry all the different parts of the Totality, but express different aspects to varying degrees. We each have different jobs to do here.”
My personal reading was most encouraging. The Gaelic seer told me I’m here on a multi-lifetime mission of peace. I’m here to observe humans and society to see how people behave and interact in a multitude of challenging, everyday human situations. “Then, when you’ve watched and learned enough, you’re going to apply your observations to help people deal better with their regular, daily lives. Using various psychological therapies, you’re destined to assist people to make peace with their inner demons, and in the process, with other people. You are also here to help develop successful approaches to conflict resolution in our society.” Eventually, Gaston foretold I’ll embody and radiate the vibration of peace to such a degree that if people who are arguing come within five hundred feet of me, they’ll simply quit quarreling and move into a tranquil state. Gaston informed me that I was from a place, or timeless space, called Xeros, a planet of peace.
My closest friend in our group, Chris, also received a favorable reading. Gaston described to him in detail how he was progressing very well toward his life mission of sacred service. Chris’ reading tied together many seemingly disparate events in his life into a cosmic mosaic of purposeful design. Soon after our collective adventure in Montreal, Chris’ human journey would lead him to Findhorn, a spiritual community in Scotland. He went there initially to seek assistance in understanding the momentous events in Montreal. After integrating his radical tutelage with Gaston, Chris has been involved in spiritual healing and teaching in Great Britain ever since.
One particular aspect of Gaston’s soul readings impressed me: the content of his life readings was not entirely complimentary. In fact, for three members of the group—Sylvia, Lisa and Jacob—the revelations of the frank Frenchman were very unflattering and disturbing. From my perspective, Gaston’s appraisals of the soul expression of each of us were very loving and non-judgmental. However, my three friends felt they received very derogatory assessments of their lives.
Gaston was extremely honest and specific. My comrades weren’t ready to hear reckonings as direct, accurate and detailed as he shared. He was quite explicit about each of them being “caught this lifetime in a very narrow band of egotistical self-interest.” In retrospect, I feel his intention in his harsh delivery was to shake up and shock my friends so they’d look inward and refocus the direction of their lives. At the time, his stark truth telling had the opposite effect. All three of them became intensely angry and resistant toward Gaston and his suggestion they go within to intuitively review their present lives. They’d definitely had enough self-truth reflected to them by the candid extraterrestrial. After their life readings, the three were ready to revolt and bolt!
Chris and I were ready to split the scene as well. We’d reached the “outer limits” of our ability to absorb any further social or personal revelation. By then, Montreal’s sturdy army of snowplows had cleared the streets of the city, and we could leave. As if of one intention, the five of us packed our belongings to return to Ann Arbor and familiar environs, both geographically and psychologically. It would be a gross understatement to say we felt completely overwhelmed by our experience with this secret, intergalactic society.
None of us had a way of adequately dealing mentally, emotionally or physiologically with the events of that week. What was left of our minds was blown into almost unrecognizable pieces. We were drained emotionally. Our bodies were reeling with the stress and strain of having our worlds rocked and exploded beyond recognition. Not having metaphysical backgrounds at the time, we’d never read or heard anything resembling the types of experiences we had just gone through. We had no frame of reference in which to fit our week of spiritual initiation. We’d totally forgotten our original plan to shoot a documentary film in Montreal. Our overriding desire was to put as much physical and psychological distance between us and the source of our overwhelming encounter as possible!
Driving the ten hours back to the good old USA, we had time to rehash the week’s dramatic events in detail. And the privacy of a car allowed us to recount the traumatic ordeal with great emotion and depth. Together, the five of us considered at length every conceivable way to view the preceding week’s extravaganza.
By the time we arrived back in Ann Arbor, Chris and I were awakening to a more compassionate and spiritual framework from which to view our life experience. However, the three who disliked their life reviews—Sylvia, Lisa and Jacob—reached a different point of view.
The three had concluded that Gaston and Edith were evil, or, at the very least, part of a cult that was very dangerous to their physical and spiritual safety. They reached a state of hysteria. Feeling they needed protection from the people in Montreal, they sought advice and defensive rituals from a “white witch.” The day after our return to Ann Arbor, all three came over to the house where Chris and I lived. In a fervent frenzy, they sprinkled holy water and salt on our heads, and on every doorstep and doorsill in the house. They claimed being blessed by these sanctified natural elements would ward off the evil spirits connected with the “satanic” Montreal cult. They screamed and railed at Chris and me to awaken to the danger of the demonic spell cast on us by Gaston.
The frantic, bizarre scene unfolding in front of us resembled a skit from a cosmic, comic “Three Stooges” skit! Our three frightened friends had twisted every word of Gaston’s presentation into a fanatical, ironclad indictment of the whole Montreal group and their motives. Chris and I didn’t know whether to cry or laugh. Confused and bombarded by our friends’ frenzy, we alternated between reacting with horror and humor. Certainly, it wasn’t funny to witness our close friends in such a state of panic and terror. However, the extremely righteous and sanctimonious way they denounced the whole philosophy of the Montreal group verged on the absurd and ridiculous.
I might add here that throughout my subsequent decades of working with people undergoing spiritual initiations, I have discovered that the personality will often project an illusion of “evil” upon any person, event or source of information that rocks its boat, threatening its insulated, controlled world. I have also found that what people fear most is authentic love, which often comes in the form of radical truth telling.
Chris and I, conversely, were experiencing a spiritual healing and awakening from the initiation in Montreal. Our friends’ fearful overreaction to the miraculous spiritual gifts of Gaston was challenging us to evaluate our experience even more thoroughly. Yes, Chris and I were also freaked out on a psychological level. However, we viewed our mental resistance as a normal, expected reaction to a mind-blowing experience. Our everyday paradigm was busted wide open by Gaston. The familiar security of our mainstream perceptual framework was shattered. Stretching our cultural envelope beyond its limits, we were thrust way outside our box of normal experience.
Contrary to our three hysterical friends, Chris and I were extremely grateful. We were unnerved, but not undone, by our expulsion from ordinary reality. The stark truth telling was freeing us. And we were thankful at being liberated from the prison of our old, rigid, narrow world. When our alarmed friends burst upon our home, Chris and I were celebrating our spiritual emancipation, not seeking a way to invalidate and reverse the effects of the Montreal encounter.
Naïvely, Chris and I tried to intellectually discuss our different point of view with our three fear-stricken friends. Unfortunately, they were long past the point of a philosophical resolution to their perceived predicament. They felt their very survival was at stake. They were afraid their souls were in danger from demonic forces.
There was nothing Chris and I could say or do to mollify their terror. Before our metaphysical adventure in Canada, we felt our three friends were fairly strong, stable individuals. However, the experience totally shook their grasp on a safe reality. All three eventually sought psychiatric counseling to help resolve the disruption of their worlds caused by the Montreal trip. They broke off communication with us. Unfortunately, I’ve lost track of all three of my former cinematic compatriots.
I’ve not had any further contact with Gaston either—that is, that I am aware of! On other levels of consciousness, I’m certain he’s been assisting me. After my encounter with him, I needed an extensive period of time to absorb the expansive spiritual opening he afforded me—a pursuit that has become an ongoing project to this day. The only request Gaston made of us was to share what they revealed to us with whomever it felt intuitively right. As I integrate the wisdom and tools Gaston gave me in Montreal, I pass on these treasures through my workshops and personal coaching.
The central focus of the secret spiritual society in Montreal is the same purpose as that of my Dream Workshops. Our common goal is to bring people together as peers to assist them to awaken to their connection with the Infinite, and to empower them to use their natural spiritual powers for the good of humankind, as well as for their individual soul growth. The way Gaston helped us to open to direct communication and guidance from our inner coach laid the foundation for the intuitive soul journeys that are so valuable now for people in The Dream Workshops I facilitate across the country.