Monday Night Group Interview

Date: 2011-08-03

Author(s): Carolyn Dailey, Bruce Fetzer, Mike Gergely, Sister Elizabeth Reis, Rob
Lehman

Category: Oral History

Interview Date: August 3, 2011,1:30 PM to 3:30 PM
Place: Fetzer Institute, Kalamazoo, Michigan
Carolyn Dailey (CD)

Bruce Fetzer (BF)

Mike Gergely (MG)

Sister Elizabeth Reis (ER)

Interviewer: Larry (LM) and Priscilla (PM) Massie, Tom Beaver (TB)

Attendees: Interviewees, Larry and Priscilla Massie, Tom Beaver, Rob Lehman
(RL) ... (towards the end)

Topic: John Fetzer's Spiritual Search
Draft: October 24, 2011
Edited: January 20, 2018

TB Let me start with an intro here, seeing as you have all been interviewed and have
done really good, really nice interviews with us. The reason we’ve put you
together as Monday night groupies is that I’m hoping it can be like you’re all at
dinner, and this is like a Monday night group reunion, something very informal;
just a dinner or after dinner gathering, pretend we’re not here (Ed. Note: meaning
the interviewers), and tell your stories about John like you would tell over dinner
if we weren’t here. What we’re hoping to hear, or I’m hoping to hear, is: Do you
remember this one? Do you remember when this happened? Do you remember
this one? Try to jog each other’s memories about the funniest thing that ever
happened, the most profound thing that ever happened, the scariest thing that ever
happened, the goofiest thing; or, do you remember this one? Just any stories that
you guys can think of in those Monday night group years.

CD That was quite a few years ago.

TB I know it was.

CD That was a little over 30, wasn’t it?

PM Yes.

BF Because the group actually started meeting around 1982. There are elements of it
in ’81, because I came in September of’81; then Jim started submitting some
materials later on that fall. The group kept meeting until the fall of 1985.1 know
that date, because that’s when John went down to Phoenix, and in October of ’85
is when the contract on this building was signed.

LM Then it started up again, didn’t it, after he came back from Phoenix?

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BF The group met a couple of times without John, but then really stopped meeting.
Then there was a message from Jim after that, and I don’t recall whether we met
when John got back in town or not. I don’t know -1 don’t think we continued the
group in ‘86.

TB There weren’t any Monday night group meetings by the time I got there, which
was June ’86.

BF June of ’86 was when you came on, right.

TB But Jim would still do channelings, for what was called then the Core Group of
the Foundation: Carolyn, Bruce, Lloyd (Swierenga), and Chuck (Spence), and
that’s where some of the questions were asked back and forth.

BF But there’s grist for lots and lots of stories. Because from ’81 to ’85 there were

lots of sources of material, the conversation itself. Then we engaged materials like
A Course in Miracles, the channelings, the Aquarian gospel. And then Sister Liz
did several workshops for us.

ER I did it at Nazareth.

BF In Retreat?

ER Yes. In Retreat. He stayed at Nazareth all night for three days.

BF Tons of stories there. We could start with that.

ER I could. I’d like to start with Bruce: Do you remember the day when you first
arrived?

BF I’m trying not to.

ER I was telling someone

MG If I could interrupt? One thing that comes to my mind is we always called in the

light of the Holy Spirit when we would have a Monday night meeting, or anything
that happened. I’m so reminded of that being here, that we could take a minute to
do that. We would call the light of the Holy Spirit to be with us for this time and
to our remembrance.

LM Mike, could I just ask you one question? Not to take away, but I get the

impression from rereading your transcript that you maybe sat with John on
Monday nights, before the entire group was assembled. Was it just you and John
for a while?

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MG Yes.

LM Is that the way you remember it?

MG Probably it was about 1979 or 1980.1 didn’t keep a diary, but after a meeting with
John at the Park Club for dinner, and the next day at Clovelly, where we had a
Burger King sandwich, John asked me to be his legal counsel, his personal
lawyer. I said, “John, I don’t know what you’re doing.” He said, “You’ll learn,”
and we had a long discussion.

CD Was that before Jim came on the scene then?

MG Yes. That was one night.

CD Must’ve been ’79-80 because Jim showed up in ’81,1 think.

MG Actually, it was me that brought Jim on board. We had dinner, and then we had

lunch at John’s and Rhea’s home on Clovelly. Then over the next period of time, I
would come to Broadcast House on Monday; why Monday I had no idea, but it
would be in the afternoon about 3 o’clock. I had a very busy schedule in all the
courts. But for some reason Monday would open up in the afternoon about 3
o’clock, whether I was in one place or another, and I would come to the Broadcast
House. No one ever knew about this. No one ever knew I even knew John.

CD You used to come in the side door.

MG I would come to the front, I’d say I was here, and then he would call for Carolyn,
and she could come down and get me.

LM Carolyn, would you participate, too?

CD No, not with those meetings with Mike and John.

MG John and I would go into his office; he would sit behind his desk and I would sit
on the couch. We would talk for a couple three hours. Carolyn would come in,
and we’d look at A Course in Miracles.

LM So it was spiritual matters.

CD Yes, we did do A Course in Miracles.

MG Yes, it was an opportunity.

CD It wasn’t business.

MG No, was never business.

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CD It was business, it was spiritual business. God’s work.

MG Yes, spiritual business. I made some trips for John, but that was to Detroit on
different things. But really, it was just conversation about the vision and the
dream. I just listened and absorbed, and there was an open and free discussion
about what John was thinking about in terms of who he was.

TB Did he ever bring Ken Killick into the meeting?

MG Not into the meeting, but I did meet Ken Killick. We talked about Ken Killick,
and that was at a time when things were going on a little bit with the baseball
strike, and things were happening. That went on for about probably a year.

PM You were doing A Course in Miracles the whole time.

MG We did some of it, yes. It’s hard to describe, because it was very informal. We
were getting to know each other.

PM Bruce and Liz weren’t involved yet?

MG It was just John and myself.

PM And Carolyn would come in.

MG And Carolyn would come in.

CD Probably when you weren’t talking about the business.

MG Yes.

CD I was excluded from those.

PM No, I mean on in the evening.

CD Or later in the—

PM 4:30 or something.

ER I remember A Course in Miracles was John’s and your way of being grounded in
spirituality before your day even started. You would read a section of it, and pray
with it and talk about it, and it was the kind of thing that some nuns do before
they start a meeting. It was exactly what you did just now, Tom, when you said,
“This is what I kind of had a hope for.” Because I was reading A Course in
Miracles at that time, and we were talking about that; that was probably when you
began to use it.

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TB Mike, did he mention to you about getting a group together?

MG What happened was that one day I was in my office, and Mike Wunderlin was

there. He said, “There’s somebody coming in named Jim Gordon.” I said, “I’m not
interested in seeing any psychics.” He was coming in because he was with the
Grand Rapids the group—the Coptics. We talked a little, Mike (Wunderlin) and I.
Mike was a friend of mine, and we talked a little bit in the office, and then the
next week I got a call from Mike Wunderlin. He said, “Jim Gordon’s at my house.
He’s in Vicksburg and he’s just a couple miles from my office.” I said, “Well I’ll
come over and meet him.

Then we met and we talked, and after a few minutes Jim said, “Oh, you’re the
reason I came here.” I don’t believe I mentioned John Fetzer, but he said, “You’re
the reason I came here.” He handed me the symbol that became the symbol of
Fetzer Institute. We still have this here, it was the triangular St. Michael the
Archangel. The next week, Monday, while I was in the office with John in his
office at Broadcast House, I said, “Oh, by the way, here’s a symbol. Here’s
something that I just got from someone over the weekend.” He took a look at that
and he said, “Man, how long have you been holding onto this?” I said, “Well
geez, for a couple of days.”

He said, “I’ve been looking for this for 20 years.” He said, “Who gave this you?”
And I told him, Jim Gordon, and I happened to have a number, a phone number,
where he worked. I don’t know how -1 don’t remember that part of it. Then
Carolyn came in; John had a little speaker phone on his desk and called the
number, and Jim picked the line up. He had been at a store, and he was waiting at
the telephone for the telephone call and picked it right up.

We started talking and after a few minutes Jim said, “John, I’m having problems -
I’m feeling dizzy. Are you having problems with your carotid artery?” Which was
interesting because I’ve had two carotid artery surgeries. I should’ve probably
gone on chelation. But John had just had a study and was having problems with
his carotid arteries, and no one knew that. If John went to the hospital (he did not
go into the hospital) then everybody would know that John Fetzer went to the
hospital. It was very quiet. John said to Jim, “How soon can you get down here?”
Jim said, “I can get there for the weekend.” John looked at me he said, “Can you
put him up?” I thought, “Yes, okay, I’d better go home and tell my wife we’re
having a psychic from Texas come,” but I said sure.

Jim came that weekend - there’s a lot of story around that - and met with John.
Then I don’t think it was that weekend, but it was shortly thereafter Jim came
back, and we had a meeting at Broadcast House. You might recall that was where
Jim called in the spirit hierarchy prayer.

LM That was just three of you then?

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MG At that point he had Margaret Zolen, Frank Henry —

CD That was right after he met Jim.

MG It’s after he met Jim.

TB Margaret had recently become Rhea’s doctor. That was probably through you,
too, (Mike).

MG Actually, Margaret knew John through Rhea, which is interesting because he had
talked to her —

TB Margaret Zolen was Mike’s former law partner’s widow, and she had just become
John’s doctor.

LM So this group gradually formed then. Other members were being added as we
were moving forward.

CD Yes, then Margaret Zolen—

MG I think we came up with dates on this.

BF On August 26, 1981, there’s a conversation with John, Mike, John, and Carolyn.
And then the first transmission, channeling transmission with Jim Gordon, was in
December, December 20, 1981.

TB Who came through, did it say?

BF That was Frank, Margaret, Lynn, Mike, John, and Jim.

LM So there’s the group is formed then.

BF It says so.

LM You came later, Bruce, right?

BF And Sister Liz.

CD And Sister Liz.

ER I can add a little piece here: Margaret and Frank had taken the Silva Mind Control

course that I had been teaching. I was not their teacher, but I had been teaching it
in Detroit, and I moved here and began teaching it here. Margaret and Frank,
knowing that I had taken the Silva course, introduced me to John at that time; they
wanted John to take the course. I hadn’t started at that time with the group, but it

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was right around that same time, because Michael also took the course. Many of
the group had taken the course, that they wanted John to take it. So he asked me,
and I came to his office every week: It was Carolyn and Chuck and John, and I
taught them every week for how long? Until we were finished with the 24-hour
course, so it was about two or three hours every week. I taught them until we did
it, and it was right. It was the kind of thing that John really wanted to know how
to do it, wanted to experience it. It was during those weeks that I became part of
the group, and Bruce and I were about the same time.

LM Jim Gordon told me that he advised John to form this group, as an advisory group.
Is that correct?

MG I’d never heard that.

LM Because there was an actual name for the group, Spiritual Core Advisory Group
of the Fetzer Foundation. That was the name of the group. I’m wondering if you
thought about what purpose were you getting together for, other than your own
spiritual growth. Did you think of yourself as helping to form the Foundation?

CD No, I don’t think we knew that.

ER My experience of that was in talking to John, I don’t remember if it was with

anybody or alone, that John knew that he wanted these kinds of things. He needed
a group that understood it, and these are individual people who understood it. He
wanted it to be a support personally as well as professionally, and we ended up
being at his place for Thanksgiving, for Christmas, because he had no family.

CD We did little Christmas parties.

ER We did the Christmas parties, decorated the house. About the same time, Rhea

had fallen and she was losing her ability to handle the kind of things she’d always
been his partner for. I think it was a divine order, is all I can say, just divine order,
where the pieces John needed to establish his dream came from many different
spaces, because some were being lost. Ken Killick was not a healthy person at
that time for John. Jim kind of picked it up.

LM Was there any overlap between those two, by the way?

ER You would know that better, overlap between Ken and Jim?

CD No, there wasn’t really. Ken was fading, and John was losing his trust in Ken at

the time, and Jim helped him disentangle. He came spiritually.

ER Part of it was the condition of Rhea.

CD He was vulnerable at that time.

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ER He was so vulnerable. Ken was telling him things as though he was running the

show, and it wasn’t fitting. The whole of it is the way I would put it, not just John,
but Chuck and Rhea and other pieces that were coming together. That’s what I
could feel.

LM Carolyn, did Killick give him some bad advice about the baseball strike? Could
that have been about that same time?

CD I think he did, but I’m not really sure. Like you said, he got involved more than he
should have.

TB He eventually told John that Rhea would not recover when she fell and broke both
of her wrists.

LM Out in Arizona.

TB Killick evidently told John that she would not recover, and she did recover.

BL Two things John shared with me about Ken Killick, when he was upset: Lirst, that
Ken gave him some bad advice on the baseball strike, then John took that advice
into one of the baseball owners meetings; he said it created a great embarrassment
for himself. The second thing was that Killick declared to John at one point in
time that he was the embodiment of Melchizedek, the supreme source, and John
was very distraught about that.

The third, as I recall this now, was that Killick asked John to buy him a car. The
easiest way to get on John’s short list is to ask for a favor. Those three things I
remember John sharing with me that were indications that were the end for
Killick.

LM This is before Jim made his appearance?

BL I have no idea.

TB It would be after, because Jim was in the picture when you showed up, wasn’t he
Bruce?

BL Jim was in the picture, because I came in September of 1981; that baseball team
meeting that I just cited in the conversation with Jim was August 26th. So I came
up on Labor Day weekend in 1981.

MG The one thing of this—with Jim advising John—

BL Ken Killick.

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MG I’m not talking about Killick. I’m talking about Jim advising John with respect to
the group in the advisory. I don’t question if Jim said that that’s accurate; but with
respect to our Monday night group, I would describe it more as family. There was
no agenda and everybody was there to share; we all grew together, and it was a
very beautiful time. I looked forward to every Monday. There were so many
wonderful experiences that we had together. I don’t ever remember any harsh
words.

CD We were talking about that earlier, that there were no harsh words and no in¬
fighting, no agendas. It was just a coming together loving.

TB Except when Bruce first showed up, and he went after Sister Liz.

ER He did. He did.

TB Which is where we were 20 minutes ago.

BF I tried to change the subject.

CD He was fogging that over, wasn’t he?

ER I’ve got to tell this story, Bruce. I’m sorry. It’s a perfect example. The word
family is good. It’s really good.

CD Perfect example.

ER Yes it is, because poor John. I loved John.

BF I’ve got to say that I’m thankful that you are a Sister, and very practiced in
forgiveness.

TB But Sisters know how to rap knuckles.

ER We’d been coming together for a while, and we knew each other at different
places, and it was John’s birthday. I sat next to Bruce, and I was introduced to
Bruce as his nephew.

CD It must’ve been the spring after he came (Ed. Note: Spring, 1982).

ER Yes, it was after he came.

TB It took a while for John to even bring Bruce into —

ER We had all been there together in different roles; Bruce came and he was sitting
next to me, and he found out that I’m a Sister of St. Joseph and I’m a Christian.

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We’re all sharing what we’re doing, and he’s wondering why I’m in that group,
and he said, “Don’t you believe in the great admonition?

CD Great commission?

ER The great commission from the gospel? I looked at him. The Great Commission
is.. .Go teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son
and the -1 wasn’t doing that. I wasn’t baptizing people in the name of — and
Bruce said it with this attitude of “Really?” I’m used to the fundamental literal
Bible belief system that was part of your tradition, right?

BF Momentarily.

ER Momentarily. Of course, Bruce had just come here. John didn’t know Bruce any
better than I did. John called me later to apologize, because he felt that I’d been
offended by it. I said, “John, I’ve taught high school kids, I’ve taught college kids.
Bruce is just one of those people who’s trying to find out what’s going on, and
I’m supposed to be a part of it. Don’t worry about it.” That was good for us. That
was really good for us.

BF Absolutely.

EM That was before you had the palm reading experience, right?

BF Yes. Over the course of the subsequent years I was exposed to a lot of things that
were mind bending, and very experientially transformational. Part of my history is
when I was in engineering school, it was very rule-based and very rote. I also
attended a Southern Baptist church in Raleigh, North Carolina, a very
fundamentalist church that even got in arguments with other Baptist churches. We
had ridiculous arguments about things like we didn’t have an organ in our church
and so other churches that had it, do you kn ow what I’m saying? You get into the
form rather than the substance, and it causes all kinds of issues.

EM This family analogy is good then, because you as a member of this family were
growing yourself, and that’s the way families operate.

ER John had to grow, too. That was the other piece. Not only was Bruce growing, but
John was growing because he had to let go of some things.

LM Like what? Can you think of any specifically?

ER John had his expectations that his dream was what the world needed. Many of us
were ready to test if it needed it, but it wasn’t anything at that time I would die
for. I would be more likely to be willing to die for the great—

CD Commission.

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ER I’ve even forgotten that. I’ve been in the psychic world too long. We were all

growing, including John, and John needed to and wanted to learn from all of us.

It was a really a good way to begin the group. It wasn’t a group of arguments—
right-wrong. It was a group wanting to understand. Would you say that Bruce?

CD Let’s go back a minute to John growing, because we talked earlier, Liz, about
how we were just a mixed bag. We had all kinds of people from all kinds of
backgrounds coming into this group, so he could learn from us. I think one thing
that he learned was unconditional love, and that’s what we were talking about in
A Course in Miracles. It was really a practical way to put that. We all had learned
to love each other regardless of our backgrounds, or where we came from, with
assistance of the Course, and with Jim and some of the channelings that came
through.

TB Jim would sometimes be on the phone; what would that be like then? Talk about
when he was on the phone.

ER The thing I remember of him being on the phone was, we would work on the
papers he had sent us.

CD He might send us papers ahead of time.

LM There was somewhat of an agenda, wasn’t there?

ER There was a format of prayer, as Michael (Gergely) said so well. There was a

format of meditation and quiet. There was always A Course in Miracles and often
material from Jim.

LM Which would be given out beforehand?

ER We all had A Course in Miracles book.

LM No, I mean Jim’s channelings?

ER Jim would send it and it would be run off and we’d all have it.

LM Beforehand, and then you could discuss it.

ER The first time they started in A Course in Miracles, it was a teacher manual and
I’m a teacher. That’s what I’ve done since I was six, and I loved that teacher
manual. What I think kept us personally in some harmony is the Course in
Miracles teaching was, Everybody’s a learner and everybody’s a teacher. That
was the first rule in the book, and that was what we built our meetings on, always
with a page from A Course in Miracles, and starting with the text of the teacher
manual.

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LM Was there any disparity between A Course in Miracles and Jim’s channelings?

ER We were always looking. I was always looking for the harmony, because that’s
what I do with every belief system. I’ve taught world religions and I always want
to find out what is it that—

There’s an energy in this universe, which was what John was seeking, from the
whole radio experience of energy that you couldn’t see. That’s always what I
knew my life and my faith and my family was built on this energy. My dad was a
radio maker, repairer, and we all as little kids made a radio, crystal set, so we
knew this energy. We used the image of God for that, and that was one of the
things that I found myself always loving the group for: We would seek what is the
thread mnning through.

CD Not the differences but the similarity.

ER Not the difference. I taught the Scriptures in the colleges here in the area. Every

once in a while we’d get that, and I’d say, “That’s so biblical, that’s so biblical.”
John needed to know that, too, because he had a Christian foundation. He wasn’t
going to let himself get stuck in a box, but he wanted it grounded, and so did I.

So did all of us. Our question was to have that grounding, and I think that’s what
kept us open to, what is the common truth? And, how can we share it?

TB Then there would be a letter from Jim. We’ve seen a lot of these letters, I think. It
wouldn’t be, “Hi everybody, this is Jim,” and then he’d give us a couple pages. It
would be, “Greetings to all from the Archangel Michael.” The letter would be a
channeled letter, right, or “Greetings to all from Jesus,” or “Greetings to all from
Cato.”

CD Cato. That was one of the bigger ones, yes.

TB Isn’t that true though? The letters would be channeled, channelings.

BF Absolutely.

MG I think that the channelings and the discussions with respect to A Course in
Miracles and the prayer was, for John and for us, the top of the learning
experience. There was an evolution of what John’s ultimate thought and dream
was, and that is: The organization is not simply in the physical realm, that the
physical is not the alpha and the omega.

It was combining the notion that there was no question that we are right here,
surrounded by our archangels and by our angels. To John, this physical was one
vibrational pattern. I’ve said this many times: When I asked John, “You can get in
a spaceship and you can go as far as you want, but you’d still be in this physical.

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You don’t get to the so-called other side.” John would say, “That’s right, because
it’s a different vibrational pattern. We are in the physical, but what we call the
spiritual, is of God, is around us.” We would say, just like the television, you turn
to a different channel. You have different frequencies, but it’s sort of the same set.
I think for John, at that time in this world I don’t think the multi-millionaires were
talking about spiritual matters. They may have been, but I don’t think there was a
comfort level with respect to that.

CD Not to each other.

MG That’s why when I talk about family, this is really John’s family in terms of how
the dream was going to be evolved; it was evolved in the combination of the
spiritual and the physical that John wanted to have, as a basis with respect to the
Institute, at least from my perspective. Now we have love and forgiveness as the
mission, and it’s a challenge.

TB When you guys would get a letter from Jim, and you would go through that, what
were the messages like? What would a message from Jesus or from the Archangel
Michael or from Kato, what would they be like? Were they fascinating, were they
really interesting, and were they profound?

ER All of the above.

TB What would they say?

ER I brought, and I’m sure we all brought, what we had experienced that week, what
we carried in our memory from the other parts of our life. If you were to ask me
today what did I read, this morning I read a book called The Meaning of Mary
Magdalene with the Gnostic Gospels. I’m still reading the kind of stuff we
presented 20 years ago, 30 years ago, but I’m not reading it in a way that would
translate the way we did it 20 years ago with John.

So when you ask, Larry, what was your format, the format was for me to have a
common source from which we spoke and the route to that source was what each
of us experienced in our own life.

CD Yes, and that was the glue that held the group together.

ER It was.

CD That was it because it was a practical—it was like a Bible study group, only we
were studying other things. Then we’d ask, “How is that practical in our own
lives?” It was a total growth experience for me.

ER It was a respect for every person’s life, every person’s belief system. Every

person’s perception was honored, just as much as the course was honored, and

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Jim’s material was honored. Once in a while and toward the end, John was
bringing in his architectural maps of how he was going to build this place. We
would take crystals and go to the property, pray, and have rituals where we buried
it. It was the moment that we were dealing with; that experience was what we
brought to it.

LM There’s no question in my mind that A Course in Miracles was a very important
part in his spiritual search and growth. But there are other things before that,
meeting with mediums and spiritualists and meeting with the astronaut.

TB Edgar Mitchell.

LM Edgar Mitchell. It seems to me that he would incorporate what he wanted to out of
those various things, building his own edifice. But then Jim Gordon, to mix
metaphors, became his guru the last part of his life, the last five years or so, and
A Course in Miracles didn’t become quite so important. Would you go along with
that?

ER No, I don’t think Jim ever wanted to be a guru. I don’t go with that. My

experience with Jim was such humility; it was what we all brought together as the
Monday night group, and even what Jim received was not Jim. Any of you can
add to that, but that was never my experience. I wouldn’t use the word guru.

LM It’s a bad word.

CD I think that’s the difference between Ken Killick and Jim. Ken moved in on that
word and Jim backed away from it.

LM Jim became very much a spiritual advisor to him. Wouldn’t you agree with that?

CD Oh, spiritual advisor, I think that would be—

LM Guru was a bad choice of words.

CD I think that would be a better word, advisor, and really, friend.

ER He was there for a lot of us.

CD The trust that developed, too, in a group that was so confidential, so confidential,
the trust was an important aspect of it. I never saw Jim trip him up or anything, so
that was the integrity of what came through. As we said, the greetings from Kato
and Archangel Michael, Jesus, it wasn’t Jim. You knew it wasn’t Jim.

ER It wasn’t just John either. It was for all of us.

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CD It was for all of us, yes. I don’t have those writings anymore, because I felt it was
so confidential, I didn’t want anyone else getting into that stuff. I didn’t want to
have it around.

TB Did they talk about the Foundation?

CD Yes, they did.

TB Were they messages for the Foundation? Or were they messages for the eight of
you? Did those letters talk about the mission?

ER You know Jim well enough, I think. My experience of Jim was more, “This is
something possible, what do you think about it?”

CD I don’t think it was like a directive.

ER No.

LM He wasn’t pushing it.

CD No, it wasn’t a directive.

ER It wasn’t. It really wasn’t.

CD It was kind of a philosophical overlay.

ER Yes, a bigger umbrella than anything specific, and he was available to any one of
us, for any of us, Jim was. It was a group growth with John’s dream, very clearly
what we wanted to support. We all wanted to support his dream. We were not
there to judge it, to criticize it, to add to it. We were there to support it.

BF Going back to a couple of questions here and weaving them together, here’s one:
How did we receive the channeled materials? But the fundamental one is the
purpose of the group. I’d like to draw the rest of you out and flesh this out a little
bit more. I think that there was something more substantial going on in the group,
in terms of John being able to try to figure out and think out loud about where
he’s going with this, but then also to engender a group process.

What I experienced John doing was asking a lot of questions, not dominating the
floor, and saying what he wanted to say. An example of a question might be.
What’s new this week? Or, what dreams have you had? That’s why Sister Liz was
offered some workshops with us, in terms of listening skills, and Silva Mind
Control. We did workshops in dream analysis, and we didn’t just digest materials;
it wasn’t all revolving around the channelings. It was revolving around a
spiritually formative process in the group. That served and was referenced a lot of
times in the channelings as “holding the light.”

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ER It was done at a time when few in the world were open to this. I did this a lot, but
I had very few in my life who, if I would say it, they would say, “Well, isn’t that
demonic?” It wasn’t only John, but it was something we all brought to it as part
of our soul growth.

LM Your fellow Sisters would say demonic, right?

ER Depending on which one was formed by what kind of Biblical reading.

CD It was so Bible based.

PM There were so many different growths going on. So many interests.

ER I just have to laugh. One of our presidents said to us as a community, “Every one
of you knew that you were called by God to be a Sister of St. Joseph, and when
you got here and you met everybody else, you wondered how God could’ve called
them.” It’s not because we didn’t believe in our own call, but because if we
looked around, we were so glad, I was so glad to be with a group that that
question wasn’t even raised.

CD For you that was a new experience.

ER For anybody, any of us. For Bruce it was an experience.

CD I was a Sunday school teacher when I started working for John Fetzer.

ER So you had some of that background, too.

CD Right, so it’s like—

ER You talked a lot about—

CD I’d had one kind of point of view, you know?

PM And Michael was Catholic.

LM Still is.

ER And Mormon, by gosh.

PM You had fundamental and Catholic and Sister.

CD Margaret Zolen, was she — ?

ER Margaret was funny.

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CD She was a doctor and she did hypnotism.

ER She was the first woman doctor in this town.

CD She did hypnotism.

TB She was into a little more, and Frank was a Christian Scientist.

LM But there had to have been a plan to get diverse people into this.

ER The plan was divine. There was no looking up in a book, and saying, “Who’s
talking about this at a workshop?”

PM You were trying all these different things, A Course in Miracles, Silva Mind

Control. You were open to anything, which I think is just wonderful, and all of
you were growing at the same time.

ER Oh my gosh, there was no human plan.

CD You know how coincidences are, but if you look at the divine order in the

universe, it all just kind of came together. It was John’s antenna that said, “This
would work, this wouldn’t work,” as he met people. I can still remember when
Margaret Zolen introduced Sister Liz to him, out at the Beacon Club. He would
just home in, like one certain little question; I can’t remember one exactly, and
then how that was answered. It didn’t look direct, but then he would intuitively
know that that would be the right person to include in his little closed circle.

ER He did, he did that.

LM Do any of you ever remember suggesting someone that didn’t fit the bill?

MG What did Chuck say—

BF Chuck asked for Cleora to join the group. That’s the only one I was aware of and
was asked.

MG Something’s really coming to me in terms of the group. When I met John and

came to his office, and I said this before, John was about 79 years of age. He was
bom in 1901. In 1980 he would’ve been 79. There was no Foundation, there was
no Institute. I was going to say that if the John E. Fetzer Foundation had been
started earlier, it’s for reasons that foundations are started.

As far as really getting off the ground, in terms of the dream, there were a few
files in the filing cabinet. That was it. I look around here now, I can’t believe it.
The discussion started and why it started I don’t know. We talked for a year, but

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still the dream was there. John was 80, one of the richest men in the world,
looking at the fact that he felt he was the guardian of this fortune. He wasn’t
going to go out and fly around in a jet plane, not that it’s a bad idea, but I’m
simply saying. We were still saying, when along came Jim. I think that sort of
opened a door.

Then the Monday night group. As we are talking about incidences, all of a sudden
I can remember being at Clovelly at the house, and they put a new elevator up
there for Rhea so she could go upstairs. Chuck Spence was there. He said, “Now
we’re going to have an office over at the Comerica Rank building.” This is the
first time that there was ever an office outside; we met at Broadcast House. Now
the Fetzer Foundation, Fetzer Institute, is going to have an office. This is like,
“Wow.”

ER May I add a piece of mine?

MG Yes.

ER When that was going on, it was still the Fetzer Foundation. John came to me, and
he came to me and he said, “I’m ready to start all the paperwork for that, and I
would like it to be connected with Nazareth College.”

MG That’s what he was thinking of Nazareth College at that time.

ER He said, “Now I’ve read your purpose of your college, and it’s every single thing
that’s the purpose of the Foundation. Could you arrange a meeting with your folks
at Nazareth?” I arranged a meeting with Sister Betty who is on the board and
Sister, and the president, the vice-president, and the academic dean. And they
talked about it. I didn’t have Sister Eugene; she was our financial manager. She
was a good friend of mine, too, and I didn’t have her there. The people were at the
meeting. I said to John, “Let them work on that and see where it goes, but the
president’s going to have to take it to the board.” I waited a couple of weeks and
they had a board meeting. I called Eugene because she was on the board and said,
Did the president present this offering of John’s?” And she said, “No, I’ve been at
two meetings since then and nothing was presented.” Then John got a letter saying
that it was not going to be, that they were not going to go through this process for
the college. John was so disappointed and I said, “John, this work is not yours and
it’s not mine. It’s God’s. Don’t push.”

LM The president had made that decision unilaterally?

ER Without any recommendation and without any discussion. Eugene said, “I don’t
know where that was coming from, but he never asked any advice.” And usually
they asked her; she had been our treasurer for 50 years. She’s on 23 bank boards.
She knows everything.

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LM She was running Borgess, too, wasn’t she?

ER She was running Borgess [Ed. Note: Borgess Hospital.], too. She said, “He never

brought it to me.” I said, “John, trust me, trust the Lord. This is not yours, this is
not ours.” I was partially disappointed, and partially thinking, “I’ve done too
much in my life that my push ruins it all, so I’m not going to push.”

MG That really trips me historically, as I remember that going on at that time. We

were talking about the Monday night group, and how all of this fits together. That
was kind of the impetus for John, the fact of that group and he was now sharing
and had a place to share in a family, and then make that decision.

Now we were going to go over to the Comerica Bank building. Chuck Spence had
an office and there was a little waiting room. We’d go over there and I thought,
“This is absolutely fantastic. We’ve got an office here, we’d meet and do crazy
things. He’d take out a crystal and we’d take a hanger and twist the hanger
around, and someone else would stand at the other end of the room and hold the
crystal over the heart and the hanger would move. And John would say, “See?”

TB Were you guys all there?

ER We were all there. We had a man who did dousing, he came. It was all

experimental. But as you’re talking Michael, it reminds me of the unfolding of
John.

MG That’s right.

ER The unfolding of John that he wanted. I’m not sure he trusted himself enough.

CD We talked about that earlier.

ER We did, and he was always looking for something bigger than him.

CD Better.

ER Better than him. That’s why he went to the college, because we were pretty darn
good and had some incredible women. It was each move, to the Comerica Bank,
and then the Skyrise.

MG Then the Skyrise.

CD Went to Skyrise.

ER With each move, he became much clearer, much stronger, much more ready to be
his own spokesperson.

MG That’s right.

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ER He started the paperwork for the Institute, for the Fetzer Institute.

LM He trusted himself implicitly in business deals, but why was there a difference

with this? I’m just wondering about your theories on that.

ER I can only speak for myself. When you have a community with the same focus,
you have a support system that can feed your own strengths. The business world
didn’t do that for John in this area. We did.

CD Did you have an answer to that, as you were thinking, percolating there?

BF Yes, I have a couple of points here. One is, going back to the channelings which I
think is important. I’d like to have some discussion about this, because here’s my
take on it. And maybe I’m too purist about it, but in my opinion the channelings
didn’t present a lot of new material. The channelings were a transcription of kinds
of conversations I had with John. John wasn’t articulate about where he wanted to
go or how he wanted to do it. When the channelings came through, it was like an
illumination for him.

CD It was like a feedback, a mirror.

BF Then he took it as a directive. It was his intuition to begin with, is the way I
experienced that, and I would like to check that out with the rest of you. It’s a
fundamentally important point, historically, to address this question. It goes to
your question about, Was Jim a guru? What was Jim’s role relative to the
founding of the Institute, and so forth? John was essentially self-made, a very
decisive and intuitively driven individual; he had a sense on this calling, and the
channelings were the articulated precipitation of a lot of those thoughts. It was
organized in ways he didn’t talk about, and it was also elevated to a higher
standard, by saying, “This is Jesus speaking,” and so it came with authority that he
then felt like he had to respond to. Fet me address this one first, and then we’ll go
back to the merger topic, which is a different one. But I’d like to check that out
with everybody else.

ER It comes to me as you’re talking, Bruce, is what I find in most human beings:
There’s an intuitive spiritual life in them. There’s the presence of God in them.

It’s either fed and extended by the surrounding atmosphere, by your own
strengths, by your major support group, or it’s not. I think John had all that, all
that wisdom. I think we all do. What I found in watching and listening to John,
whether it was the channeling, or the Course, or us with our comments, he knew
his own truth. It was affirmed by those sources. Is that a good way to put it?

BF Absolutely.

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ER I don’t think he fed it. I think he already had it, as we all do, and it was affirmed.
If any of us have something in our heart, our soul, our passion, our fire, that you
test on people and their reaction is humor or sarcasm or putdown, we’re less
likely to trust it. But if it’s affirmed and exciting to people around you, and they
have had part of it in their life, and share it every Monday night, then yours is
deepened, stretched, and raised.

LM Because he had been forced to be so guarded about this whole idea—

ER That’s it.

LM He had put up defensive—

MG Absolutely.

ER Exactly.

LM That makes sense.

ER He didn’t share it with everyone. Carolyn and I talked a little bit about this. He’d
give little pieces of his life, because he was ahead of himself in everything. But in
the business world, it was more respected than in the spiritual world, and we
respected it in our own lives.

TB So we’ve read these letters. I’ve read many of them, Larry has read many of them,
too, and the letters do talk about the Foundation; but they talk about the
importance of the mission. They don’t dictate what the mission should be. They
talk about the importance of it.

BF Let’s get back to this, because it’s important for me to hear you articulate that.

I’m concerned that historians in the future will look at the channelings and say,
“This is just one of hundreds of advisors that he had, who steered him in a certain
direction.” For me, fundamentally John was pretty articulate; but what we have in
writing are his public speeches, and he didn’t go to that detail as was expressed in
the channelings. I think that if we were to point to a source to say, “All right, this
is an articulated expression of the kinds of conversations,” I think that (the
channelings) would reflect it better than any other source.

ER IT was in John. It was IN John. It was not directed to him by somebody else.

LM But he wasn’t doing the channelings, so I don’t quite understand what you’re

saying there, Bruce. Jim was doing the channelings.

TB When John would read them, these letters talked about the importance of the

Foundation and the importance of the mission. They weren’t specific on what the
action had to be, but they were very emphatic on the importance of the mission

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and that John should be doing this. I think I’m with you, Bruce. I think John took
that as very strong confirmation that this is where he should be going now.

LM It validated his—

ER It was a call.

LM It validated what he had been planning?

BF Absolutely.

CD After all, he had to put millions up for this. It goes along with his other
philosophy of, this is the last chance, he’s got to make this happen.

TB So all those general things were in the letters.

ER Yes.

PM Then A Course in Miracles was weaved in there somehow, or how does—

ER No, it wasn’t weaved into the Foundation at all. It’s like any group that comes

together that calls themselves Christians and use a Bible as a foundation reading;
and if it’s got another book that’s better, they’ll use that.

TB A Course in Miracles was like a world view.

ER Good, global.

CD More global.

TB That the world is spiritual, and so it keeps reiterating that the world is spiritual.

CD And the Foundation has to be love. He’s got that on his quote. Everything is

founded on love.

TB So there’s no course of action with A Course in Miracles. It’s an ontology.

ER That’s it, totally.

[Rob Lehman enters the room]

LM We saved a seat for you, Rob.

CD I knew there was one more coming.

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TB These channeled letters were calls to action, I think, for John, but they just didn’t
say now do this, this, this.

CD And there was no timeline given or anything.

TB This is very important.

ER When you think that John was his 80’s, John had all the money, John wanted his
last chance, he wasn’t going to squander it, and all of this combination was
supporting the dream.

LM Tom, there were some specifics that gradually emerged from the channelings.

TB Yes, but those were later. I think the channelings that John did in late ’84, ’85,

and in ’86, when it was the core group with Carolyn, Bruce, Chuck, Lloyd, those
were different. Those were more specific.

CD Yes, those were.

TB They were more directed towards what the Foundation should be doing, questions
and answers. Bruce would ask a lot of questions. I think it’s hard. We see these
channelings as this big book, but you have to put a dividing line in them and say,
these were for the core group of the Fetzer Foundation, and these were the
Monday night group channelings which were very general, but very much do this,
do this, and they were very much a call to action.

BF There was a fundamental quality, and not just to the channelings, but to anything
else that Monday night group did which had an inner dimension. That’s
essentially what was different than the business world, to get back to your
question.

ER When John would bring the architect’s drawings of the building, he brought them
to us. We saw them. I can remember them spread out on the table. We didn’t get
spiritual input. That wasn’t the purpose of that. It was to say, “This is exciting.
You’re on the path. It’s really going to be—.”

CD Was that by the time you were in the high rise, the Skyrise?

ER We were in Skyrise.

MG Skyrise.

CD When they brought the architectural drawings.

ER Yes.

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CD I’m just trying to get a timeline here.

MG I think it was—

CD Didn’t they even do a model for us?

ER They did. They did everything, and we got excited, so that he could go back then
to the architects and—

LM You didn’t make any suggestions about the drawings?

ER I don’t remember that we were even asked to.

CD I think it was just the enthusiasm.

ER It was our excitement. Maybe this is a good way to say it: When John designed
the building, he designed it as a triangle deliberately, spiritual, educational,
scientific. If you would say that John had parts of his life—he had each of them
in boxes. He did. The enthusiasm of our spiritual excitement of his dream was
vital to the building of it. It wasn’t whether we told him how to make the walls. It
was the mission, Tom.

MG That’s right.

ER It was the mission.

CD I could see that, too, because all of you had been so close and had been together
as a group all these years. You were family, and look what we’ve come to by this
time. This was years after you started, in ’81.

LM Do you remember if this was the revised blueprints, because as originally

conceived it was going to be a pyramid, but then it couldn’t be done that way,
right?

BF It was going to be a triangle. This was the floor plan right from the start. There
was only one minor change.

CD I remember what the change was, and that was going to be all glass, and we
decided we couldn’t do it.

BF No, the education center was actually put here.

MG When we talked about history, we talked a little bit at the beginning with three
files in the filing cabinet, with Jim coming on, and then we were meeting. But
there was that moment when John went from the Foundation when the Comerica
Bank building was there, and Chuck Spence was president. That was sort of a

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beginning. Prior to that, as I said, John had put three files in the filing cabinet. It
was John and he was there.

There was the Monday night group at that point in time, and Chuck was a part of
the Monday night group; this was also now the beginning of the organization.
There was now a president, there was a secretary, and now we have one of the
presidents right here.

TB Talk about looking for the building, I mean the land . . .

MG Historically that was kind of—

LM Looking for the site?

TB Is that why Joey Jochmans came in and did the stuff with the coat hangers and the
crystal?

MG I don’t know why—

TB The search for the building, the search for the site.

CD Yes, we had dowsing.

MG That goes with the dowsing story. I’m just going to add to this: When John was
trying to find a site for the building, he first looked at the land across from the
Broadcast House, the land across from his house on Clovelly, and then it was
decided to do a search. To narrow the search, Joey Jochmans was brought in.

CD We found him through John Demos.

LM Who had the tarot cards though across from 590?

TB Joey Jochmans.

LM So he was already involved in that.

MG Not Joey.

CD From Nazareth?

MG Joey was working with Jim Gordon and Cleora Daily on a travel company called
World Light Travels. Joey was brought in to dowse global maps; by that time, and
this would’ve been in 1984, because I believe history would show this, we
actually closed on this property in August of ’84.

TB The big trip to Egypt with Joey was the end of ’83.

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MG It would’ve been in the spring of ’84. Joey came in, dowsed out different regions
of the world. It was limited down to Kalamazoo. He originally selected Bimini.
But the point is that everything the Monday night group did was experiential. It
was hands on. The majority was brought in and, of course, we’ll have a workshop
in dowsing and not just talk about it. Isn’t that true? So, you guys want to take it
away from there?

ER I went with Joey to the Middle East with one of his trips. I was given the job to
take the group with Joey and Joey went with us for both of these. I went to the
Holy Land. He brought all of his measuring equipment. He had all kinds of
equipment to measure the energy.

TB You know what year that was?

ER That was probably ’85, ’86.

TB Was Jim there or was this later?

ER Jim was not there. This was Joey.

TB This is a later one.

ER John Davis was there. I was asked by the Coptic community to be the Holy Land,
the Israel section, and Joey was the Egypt section. Joey took all of his equipment
to the Holy Land; I took him to the holy places and he measured them. Then we
went to Egypt, and he took them to all the holy places. After we got back, this is
interesting, we made the listening workshop. Jim Gordon was there. John was
there, and the Advisory Group (Ed. Note: the Monday Night Group).

Jim was sitting in the dining room at Nazareth and he said, “What’s that building
over there?” He pointed to our chapel. I said, “That’s our chapel.” He said,

“There’s an energy in that building that I would love to go feel.”

We went over there and, of course, this is Holy Roman Catholic Elizabeth looking
through that Eucharist, so down the main aisle. He said, “It’s not there, it’s behind
it.” We went into the reliquary chapel and the holy stairs where we have relics of
places in the Holy Land. Jim stood on that place and said, “This energy center is
huge.” He said, “I’d like to bring Joey Jochmans here.” Then he looked over to
the reliquary chapel and he pointed to that, and he said, “There’s an energy in that
reliquary chapel that’s going right down the stairs and out the door to the
backyard. What’s that relic?” I went over, and it was a relic of the holy cross, a
piece from the cross. Jim said, “Joey Jochmans’ got to come to Nazareth.”

LM Is he the one that measured it with that device?

ER He measured Nazareth with that device, and he measured the property. I’ve been
going to Israel forever, so I don’t know what year it was but, you know—

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TB It is in Jim’s next channeling then. Talks about that, and he said that that spot in
the chapel was a teleport to the astral plane.

ER Yes.

TB In his next channeling. Similar to the Tibetan Shamballa.

ER He said it was stronger than he ever felt in Egypt.

TB In his very next channeling. I showed that to Larry.

ER I’ve told that story to a few of the Sisters, and they’d say, “You’ve got to write
that for our history, because we don’t have it in our history.

LM At least put a plaque up there.

TB Talk about Joey taking guys across the street from Broadcast House.

MG Yes, that was an experience. We were out there with tarot cards, across from the
Broadcast House, and we had crystals. Cars are going up and down the street. I
said, “Geez, somebody’s going to see me out there.”

CD We were planting crystals over there.

LM Was it just the Monday night group?

CD All the kids from the store are going to see you.

MG I didn’t think of that. I was thinking about somebody coming from the courthouse.

CD Some of your clients or something, on your golf course, from your golf class.

PM That’s true, with Bronson Boulevard right there.

MG It was a lot of fun. It was a great time.

TB Because Mike probably had the tin hat on, didn’t he?

LM Was it only the members of the Monday night group that were there?

MG Yes. Joey was there.

LM He was giving you guys a lot of credit for helping to determine where the site
was, right?

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MG Yes, I guess so. It’s hard to—when you say that, we just did it. We were just

there. I don’t remember that there was a reason we were there. We were going to
go out to see.

ER Do you remember anybody being part of our group except the speakers they
brought in?

MG No.

ER I don’t ever, never.

TB So what did the tarot cards say?

CD Cleora came later.

MG Oh, she was there.

ER There very early on. She was there early on.

TB What did the tarot cards say?

MG I don’t remember. I just know we were there, because John wanted us to be there.

TB So Joey flipped out some tarot cards and then—?

CD That was a total reading? Or was it more individual readings? Or how did that go?

Do you remember?

BF It was a conversation. I remember Chuck and I were talking to John, saying,
“There’s not enough space to put it here.”

ER Where was that?

BF Across from the Broadcast House, just like across from Clovelly there was really
not enough buildable land there.

TB But what were the tarots saying?

CD The tarot cards—was there any general consensus of them? Was it recorded what
tarot cards were saying?

BF I don’t remember.

RL Is it where the Girl Scouts—?

ER That’s where the Girl Scout thing is.

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CD Excuse me. Was there any recording anywhere of who got what tarot cards?
Didn’t Kay Collins do something with that?

TB I haven’t seen it.

BF I don’t know. There are photos in the archives.

TB Of that experience?

BF Yes. At least they have photos somewhere.

TB Was it Joey that did the coat hangers and the crystals?

MG That was just us at the Comerica Bank building. I took a hanger out of the closet,
bent it one way, like that, and John went over and held it, or I held it or
something. I started thinking, and all of a sudden the crystal started to move. I
said, “Come on, you’re moving it!” He said, “No.”

FM It was like a dowsing.

MG It was the dowsing thing we did.

BF Joey did a workshop with us, Tom. We talked about the theory of dowsing, and

John shared a story about the Tucson properties, and looking for water. We had an
implied process. Joey he would draw symbols on the board, a clockwise spiral
and counter-clockwise spiral; then we’d dowse and see which way the energy
went.

The right-hand rule seemed to be like following engineering. The vortex would
either come in or out, depending on the direction of the spiral and different
shapes. That’s when there was a substantive discussion about the power of shapes
and symbols. That was important, because that is also consistent with some of the
earlier channelings: Symbols of the Institute all the way back in ’82, different
shapes and symbols and their meaning.

ER There was one other one that I don’t know. Maybe you’ll help me with it, but I
remember when we had crystals in the dowsing bows; each of us would hold the
crystal and the dowser would back up to see how far the energy of the crystal
extended from the holder of the crystal. The interpretation of that was that the
person holding the crystal had a stronger energy before the dowser would operate.
We started laughing, because we never knew who was going to have the farthest
length. I don’t remember that it really mattered to any of us.

MG I can’t even remember it, quite frankly.

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BF Yes, that was part of it. Absolutely, that happened. Exactly. As always, it was
good humored.

ER And it was always experiential. You don’t know what’s going to happen. You’d
read about it, then say, “Can we do it?” Then you’d do it in a crowd that was open
to any kind of adventure and made no judgment on it, but was willing to
experiment. You don’t learn beyond the human knowledge if you don’t step out.

TB John was out there doing it, too, or was he watching?

ER He was there doing it.

CD Oh, he was doing that. I remember that part. He always participated.

TB Then you guys all schlepped off to Nazareth to do the listening workshop. Talk
about that weekend, because Jim Gordon was there, too. That’s when he saw the
chapel.

CD The whole group went out and stayed, Monday night group going out to Nazareth.

ER They stayed all night at Nazareth. They took it for three days, Friday night and all
day Saturday and Sunday.

PM Did they take it from you?

ER They took it from me. Ate at Nazareth with all the good Sisters.

LM You were all with Jim Rogers. Jim Gordon, I mean.

BF Yes, it was Jim Gordon.

LM That must’ve been interesting.

PM Were you guys all in the dorms out there or something? Is that what they put them
up in?

ER Did we have our guest rooms at Nazareth at that time? I think we did.

BF Our room was double occupancy.

ER Yes, I think we had guest rooms at Nazareth.

BF It had a metal radiator in it. I remember Jim Gordon asking me, “How does
radiation work?” He wanted to know how it heated the room.

ER You could hear the rattling all night.

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BF I was explaining radiation, convection, conduction. That’s what was interesting
about having Jim in that workshop: Because it was an on-site in retreat, we also
had the dream part of it. At the end of that workshop, we actually had a separate
workshop out there.

ER You had two of them. You had the dream workshop, which you didn’t stay all
night for; but the listening you stayed all night for.

BF It would’ve been that one, because I remember Jim concluded one of those

workshops with a meditation; then Mike shared a story about traveling into the
starry skies that led to an interesting interpretation on Jim’s part, because it was
the same vision that he had after John passed.

LM You had an astral projection experience, Mike?

MG You did have to bring it up didn’t you (laughing).

BF I was going to if he didn’t. That was my next question. I want you to talk about
that, if you would, because you’ve hinted at it.

MG Yes, I don’t know if it was an astral experience or what. After John had passed
over, we were embarking upon the estate and questions that we had to resolve,
which were wonderfully resolved, thank God. It was very intense at that time. As
I was falling asleep, I can only say I was probably half asleep, and I heard John’s
voice say, “Everything is going to be okay.” I clearly heard it in my mind. It
wasn’t like listening audio, but I clearly heard it.

I looked over, and I saw a hand over my wife with stars, and I looked at the end
and I thought I saw -1 don’t know what. A figure. I closed my eyes, and the next
thing I knew I was in the stars, the stratosphere. I’ve just very privately shared
this story, so that’s something that I’ve talked about. When I mentioned it to Jim,
he said, “Basically, you went into the astral of the Holy Spirit.” I don’t know if I
was asleep, I was asleep, or if I was dreaming, or whatever. If it was a dream, it
was a dream. If it was there... But it certainly calmed me down; then we went
about things, and everything worked out extremely well.

EM Was it fleeting, or were you up there for a while?

MG I would say a little bit. I was traveling around and it was like a zillion, zillion,

zillion stars. It wasn’t just a little star. I’d say it was probably a pretty good dream
anyway.

TB What was the one at Nazareth?

MG I can’t remember. I think it was the same thing.

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TB Was it at the end of the dream workshop?

MG Yes. I had that same vision. I had another vision that I’ll share with you. I don’t
exactly remember what part of the workshop it was at, but we had a lot of other
people who were there. We were all meditating, and we came to a break. Some
people that theoretically had disabilities, and the person that was in front had
problems seeing. I don’t know if she was blind or not, but she had a dog. Another
person had a speech defect, and they walked up to the person and said, “What a
beautiful dog.” The person comes there and is very touching.

I saw in my mind the picture of Jesus that I had in my room as a child. Sister was
at the front. I walked up, and she had a book open, and in it was the picture that
I’d seen in my mind, exactly the same picture.

When you were in these classes with Sister, you started to meditate, so I’m sure
that’s what also happened to me. We were all taken into another place in our
lives, and I’ve shared the thematic effect of this. John was there, and that was the
beauty of it, because there was John sharing this with everybody else. He wasn’t
there as John Fetzer, the owner of the Tigers. He was there in Sister Liz’s class, as
a part of the Monday night group. That was family.

LM Was the Ouija board ever brought out in any of these Monday night meetings?

MG I’ve never seen one, no.

ER If it’s with me, I’m absolutely sure, and would die for, the reality of another

dimension in this world that we can all be in. I would die for that reality. I truly
pray, when I’m working with groups, that they will add to their belief system. I
can see when I do a meditation, I can visualize and see the more coming, bringing
out. I always say, “Reach out and let the Lord give you a gift. It’s another
dimension. It’s not just a dream or a vision. It’s another dimension.” The only way
that I can explain that is the vision that Jesus had on Mount Hebrew with Peter,
James, and John. They saw Moses and Elijah. How did they know they were
Moses and Elijah if there hadn’t been a real honest belief and trust that these were
the two people, and the energy of those two people, that take the form that we
need to know who they are? That happens a lot when I work with people in
prayer.

BF But that was the whole premise of Silva Mind Control.

ER It was the whole premise in Silva first.

BF Talk a little bit about that, because that was very consistent with the whole—

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ER It was a very strong. When I took that course, it was recommended by a priest
who I worked with in Detroit, and I took it in Detroit. It was a course in which
you are trained to be totally at rest. You’re in a place where there’s no noise, no
confusion, no other thing going on, and you were there anywhere from 8 to 12
hours in a group of three or four sets of studies. You create the quiet and the
rhythm of meditation, centering prayer, contemplating, whatever name you want
to give it, but it’s used in every belief system. When you can enter that space, —
and I train people to do that within a few minutes, there is nothing around that
detracts from it. You’re in that center, and that’s the center at which you then
move people to healing, to visualizing people. We give them a name of someone
who’s sick and tell them where they live, and they can visualize the person,
describe the person, see what’s wrong with them, and send energy for healing.
I’ve taught that for 12 years, and I used to say, “I’ve never had a failure, because
it’s not me that’s doing it. It’s you in that dimension with the creator of the
energy.” I know that, and I think that’s what John knew, and that’s what we
contributed to.

BF I know John and I took that workshop at Nazareth; we also went over to Detroit.

ER Yes, with the graduates.

BF We took it with Jose Silva himself.

TB In Detroit.

BF I’m trying to remember if the entire Monday night group went and took that
workshop.

ER They had taken it before I came.

BF We took it at Nazareth, right?

ER Yes.

TB John took it with you.

ER John and Chuck and Carolyn took it from me. Kurt Butters taught it here in
Kalamazoo and Detroit. I taught it in Detroit, but I wasn’t teaching the group.

TB That was you and John, because probably you hadn’t taken it yet.

BF I went to Nazareth and took it from a Sister. I know you taught it.

ER I taught it at Nazareth.

TB With another group, with a large group of people.

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BF Exactly. I know that John, Margaret, Frank, and I went to Detroit for Jose’s
workshop.

LM Elizabeth, isn’t there an element of distance communication?

ER Yes, there is.

LM I’ll bet John liked that.

ER He loved it. He loved it. Carolyn and John and Chuck took it from me. When I
took it, I didn’t kn ow what was going to happen. It was my first exposure to that
other dimension. I was given the name of an older woman, where she lived; when
I was at that level, that other dimensional level, it was just like my grandmother—
so I thought I’m not doing this right. It’s my grandmother.

But I thought, “Well, I’ll just tell them what I’m seeing.” And it was exactly where
the woman lived, and it was a perfect description of her. Some people would
visualize, and some people would hear them talk; most of the time I would talk
and listen, because that’s how I get my information. I can get it from listening
more than I do visualizing.

But I knew what people looked like because I was getting Technicolor. I always
gave everybody three different names, and by the end of the three names they
knew it wasn’t just a chance. They got all three of them. People could tell when
somebody’s illness was due to an accident and their brain had to be repaired,
they’d see the dark side of the brain and a metal piece; they could describe what
was there. And the person would be six states away.

LM Would there be auras, too, that you could see?

ER Some people could see auras, some could not. Some heard it, some saw it. It
depended on whether you were audio strength or visual strength or intuitive
strength. I could tell them which gift they had by the way they described it. I
could tell them how the spirit spoke to them. It’s like Paul saying, “There are
many spirits but the same Lord.”

TB So the group took Silva mind control, but at different times. They all came to

Nazareth for the dream workshop, and they all came to Nazareth for the listening
workshop.

ER And the Silva, when I taught the Silva.

BF Did you know that John used that to part clouds? Did he ever share that with you?

ER Oh, my God.

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BF Did he ever share that with you?

ER No.

BF He didn’t?

ER No, God love him.

BF How is that possible?

ER Well, anything’s possible.

BF Is there an explanation?

ER Yes, it’s energy. It was very easy to talk to John about energy, because of his

radio work, television work, my dad’s television work, my dad’s radio work. I had
no problem. I don’t have any doubt in that.

LM But the energy would be coming out of his finger, is that it?

ER It would depend. You could look at it and change it.

LM Oh, he would?

ER I changed it by visualizing. I still do that today. If somebody gives me something
to pray for, I’ll just close my eyes immediately and go where they are, send them
the energy, visualize the health happening; then I check about three or four days
later and say, “How are you doing?” “Oh, it just got a whole lot better when you
prayed.” I know the power of prayer. I know there’s another dimension. When
Jesus said, “The kingdom is here,” it’s here.

MG That’s right.

ER It’s not somewhere else.

TB It is a little ironic. John l ik ed to use psychics. There was a part of him that didn’t
quite trust the direct inner experience; but he was a demon with the pendulum,
like nobody’s business, where nine people out of ten aren’t.

LM And dowsing.

TB And dowsing, he could dowse like a demon. And he could part those clouds. He
would show me that all the time, and it worked every time. He could part a cloud
just like that, and I couldn’t do it. So, he had certain talents. He knew he could do
them. He could do those pendulum things.

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ER If you read the biblical stories of Jesus, it’s very interesting if you start doing it
seriously. Sometimes Jesus says, “Your faith made you whole.” When he has the
story of the miracle in Capernaum, they take the roof off and leave a man go
down; Jesus looked up at the four that had him on a cot, and the man was on the
floor in the house and they’re up on the roof. Jesus looked at the roof and said,
“Your faith made him whole.”

There’s got to be faith somewhere. It doesn’t always have to be in the person
being healed. It can be in the group. It can be in the person praying. It can be in
the person being prayed for. I love this story. We just had it yesterday for Mass,
the story of the Syrophoenician woman who asked Jesus to heal her daughter,
who had a demon. It was just the reading for yesterday’s Mass. Jesus is ignoring
her and the disciples said, “Tell her to shut up. She’s following us and she’s
yelling.” So he turned, and she said to Jesus, “Lord, Son of David, heal my
daughter.” And he said, “I’m here for the lost children of the House of Israel.”

He’s not going to do it. She says, “Even the puppies under the table get the
crumbs.” And he says, “Woman, your faith did it.” The next line is, her daughter
was healed at that moment.

I love those stories. When you say, “How do you do it? Do you do this way, do
you do this?” I say, “You don’t do it any way. You trust that something is going
to happen, and you pray from the faith that you have.”

TB In the Rosicrucians they call it the Law of Assumption.

ER Yes. We don’t know what person’s going to do it, we don’t know when it’s going
to happen, we don’t know how it’s going to happen, we don’t know the technique.
There is no technique.

TB John got to do those things with you guys, because certain things you do in a

group. Certain things you do by yourself, the meditation maybe, but certain things
you do in a group; and the group energy creates a psychic phenomenon. This
spiritual phenomenon creates an energy, the type of energy just like is here now.

ER You can feel it in this room. It took us a while to get here.

TB You couldn’t see it. It took us a little while, not too long.

ER It doesn’t matter. God’s in no hurry.

TB Ten or fifteen minutes.

BF But that’s another example, right? Just bring more tools in to help expand the
experience.

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ER The source is always divine energy. That’s one thing Jim knew. Ken Killick did
not.

TB So I’m going to share this then. Part of that same weekend when Jim was there, I
think it was the listening class, where he had this experience with the chapel. He
did this channeling to John or a letter to John, but it was channeled. He talked
about that spot being a teleport. He didn’t use your name, Sister Liz. He said,

“The nun at Nazareth,” or something. He didn’t say Sister Liz, so he didn’t know
you that way, at that time.

ER He knew me. He knew that I had been silenced by many of the church. He didn’t
want to get me in any more trouble.

TB It was a channeled letter, so it wasn’t Jim anyway. It was a channeled letter; it
also said that Jim was struggling with “a bad influence.” I wondered what year
that was, because I thought that he didn’t know Ken Killick. Ken Killick’s name
was not in the channeling, but I thought that Jim was struggling with Ken for that
energy.

CD I wasn’t there. I don’t think that it was a listening class when the chapel incident
happened. It was on a weekend experience, and I couldn’t go because of a family
consideration.

ER Yes, Jim was there, but Joey came the following—

CD Back to the Ken Killick and Jim: It seems to me that I recall with Ken Killick and
Jim Gordon that there was a psychic warfare going on. There was a battle royal on
the other side, and it was very, very serious.

LM I thought we said that there was no overlap about the two.

TB Oh, there was, at least energetically.

CD On the other side.

LM They weren’t here at the same time in person.

CD But to get the energy dissipated, there was this royal battle. It was kind of scary.

PM Really? For example?

CD I don’t know. I didn’t hear all the details of it, so I don’t know. Tom or Bruce, if
you know any more information about that? I wanted to get that on the record,
that there was a psychic battle on the other side.

LM Dueling psychics, huh?

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CD Yep.

Rob It’s interesting to think about the difference between Jim, whom I know very well,
and Ken Killick, whom I’ve never met, what they’ve got differently.

LM Oh, yes, very much.

Rob That’s an interesting—for them.

ER When you claim yourself as the source of your power, then you’ve got a royal
battle between the dark and light side of life.

Rob That was the distinction there.

BF Right. Ken Killick said that he was Melchizedek, and Jim said that he was a
vehicle. He was not the source. He was a channel.

LM Ken was pushy, wasn’t he? And Jim was not.

BF To answer your question, Tom, the listening workshop had to be in the fall of ’83,
because it was before Joey Jochmans came up here. That would be consistent also
with the engagement, the entire engagement of the Monday night group and
helping to create some vehicle of holding the light.

One thing, we kind of glossed over this, but if I could have everyone check in on
this: I remember the format was very loose. It usually included the elements of:
we would come together, we’d take our crystals out, put them on a table, light the
candle, have a prayer, a meditation, some type of a reading, and then just
conversations. We’d always end with the Great Invocation, and then go to dinner.

ER Chicken Charlie’s.

LM If you had been given a channeling or letter from Jim, that would be the agenda,
wouldn’t it?

MG It would be discussed, but as we have talked about so many things here, that’s the
way it was with the Monday night groups.

ER We just jumped around.

MG It was nuts. You had something on your mind, you would just kind of start talking
about it. It would then be discussed. Then someone else would bring something
else up, and before we would know it, it was time to go to Chicken Charlie’s.

BF A common subject was, there are no coincidences.

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TB A channeling may be a two or three-page letter, but it wasn’t like something you
could study as a class. It was an energy. It was an encouragement. It was giving
importance of the mission of the Foundation, but it wasn’t really anything you
could spend an hour going through, like A Course in Miracles.

CD You wouldn’t sit and analyze it. There might be something, a sentence or two that
you would focus on, because it was relevant to what was going on.

PM So you did study A Course in Miracles at times in the group.

CD It was brought in. Yes. Readings were brought in, as part of a meditation. You
know what I’m saying? Readings were brought in, so it was always kind of a—

ER Occasionally we had a meditation. We got a meditation on tape from Jim, that he
created.

CD Right, we would do that, too.

MG John would have Judy Skutch, for example.

ER Oh, yes, she came to dinner with us.

MG She had dinner at the Beacon Club.

ER She told us about A Course in Miracles.

MG We all had an opportunity to spend some time with Judy.

LM Why didn’t he take her to Chicken Charlie’s?

ER That Judy Skutch story is really—I’ve got to add this one. I went to a workshop in
Chicago given by Judy Skutch, whom I didn’t even know, and Rabbi Joseph
Gelberman who I did know. He was a Jewish rabbi I’d studied with in New York.
I went to it and it was just fabulous. I had just had a class with John and Carolyn
and Chuck the week before, and John showed us the picture of Judy Skutch; and
who was the woman there who was the channel?

LM Helen Schucman.

ER And Helen. Their picture was on the wall; John had told me about his relationship
with Judy Skutch and Helen, and he said, “Something happened between us, I still
don’t know what it was, and I wished I could repair whatever has happened
between us.” The next weekend I went to that conference, and Judy was talking
about A Course in Miracles. Afterwards, I went up to the stage and I said, “Judy, I
have a message from John Fetzer,” and I told her what he said. She started to cry,

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and she said, “Oh, my God, this is my miracle for the day.” She’d always say,
“Everybody has a miracle.”

She said, “This is my miracle for the day.” Then I met Rabbi Gelberman. He
hadn’t taught me yet. I had read some of his writings. I met the Rabbi, and he
gave me a piece of paper, it was kind of coincidental, about a new seminary he
was going to start for interfaith counseling. I was a counselor at the time. He gave
me the paper that was inviting anybody who wanted to get this Masters in
Spiritual Counseling to go to New York. I took it (the paper), and I said, “I would
love to go to this class.”

I went home that night. The next day I was writing, I wrote a book on biblical
story telling. I was going to write about the Bible. I had a Sister going with me, to
type it up. I had a week set aside in Port Huron. The day I woke up to begin my
work, I was paralyzed. I couldn’t walk. I was taken to St. John’s Hospital in
Detroit and got a CAT scan. I had Guillain-Barre syndrome, remember?

MG Yes.

ER I thought, “Oh, this is a good time to go to the seminary in New York, and it said
you could do it by phone or do it by traveling.” When I was there (Ed. Note: In the
hospital) for about a week, I was getting it under control, I called the Rabbi. I sent
my paperwork in, and I went to the new seminary for a class in studying 40
different religious belief systems; I got a Masters in Spiritual Counseling. I had to
go there twice at least, to show up so it wouldn’t be merely a paper degree.

During that time Judy Skutch called John Fetzer and reconnected with him. She
was just crying; John then invited her up, and I thought there is never any—

MG No coincidence.

ER No coincidences. We really had some marvelous miracles in our group, because
of the spirit of openness, the desire to support John’s dream and ministry. Just to
be a part of it, I know darn well that none of that for any of us was by chance.
John’s work has to go on, just has to go on, because the world needs it, wants it, is
ready for it, has the place for it. But this staff has to be prayed for, too. This place
has to be prayed over.

BF Talk a little bit about it, because you had mentioned earlier, Sister, that the quality
of the meetings 30 years ago is still with you. I can think back on myself how
enormous the impact those were for me. What impact did it have on your life?
Because you have a lot of different experiences from many different sources.
You’re in a retreat, you meet all kinds of dynamic people. What was
transformational about that?

ER If you were to ask me of all the groups I’ve been part of, and I’ve been part of
hundreds, family would be it. Not every group has the luxury of every Monday

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night for five to eight years. They don’t. All in the same area. Seeking to support
a man who has no family. Rhea herself was losing it, and you could see the pain.
She wasn’t remembering where she was. We were at his home for a party and she
said, “John, take me home,” and that’s where she was. We saw that, and we ached
for him. We were there for him and for each other, with no ownership but only
love and support. Not every professional group gives you that. If you would ask
me, I guess at this point that would be my response.

LM Do you feel that now, the family’s reunited?

ER Are you kidding? Watch us come in. Do you have to ask?

LM I just want it all on the record.

MG It feels like we’ve never been apart.

ER The only thing missing is Chicken Charlie’s.

LM Do you any of you recall that Jim Gordon would make his presence felt when he
wasn’t there, through the TV?

MG Yes, I’ve actually been.

LM The TV would pop. It wasn’t even turned on evidently, but it would make a noise
like click, click. John would ask, “Jim, are you here?” or something. Is that how it
would happen?

MG Jim said he had some ability to make the TV clicking, and I heard it click
sometimes when we were there, click, click, click.

CD That was a thing between John and Jim.

TB But I would hear it, too. I heard it today.

LM You did?

TB Mike, I figured you probably heard it today.

LM What was clicking?

TB It was clicking a little while ago.

ER If there’s one principle that I know it’s—

TB John would hear it.

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CD Click, click.

ER There’s one principle that I know is true, and knew before this experience, it is
love is not about geography. There is another dimension in this earth and we can
be there.

MG That’s right. That’s exactly right, another dimension.

TB What’s your most profound moment that each of you can think of? In the Monday
night group, what’s the one, not overall philosophical thing, but one moment that
you can think of, one that was profound for you during those years in the Monday
night group?

CD I remember one. It opened me up to different dimensions and then A Course in
Miracles and TM. I remember one time Jim was there and we had a meditation;
and I realized at that point that he had been Anthony of Padua. I said, “Were you
Anthony of Padua?” And he smiled. That was the first time that I had an
awareness of who he might have been. That was a profound moment.

LM How did you know about Anthony?

CD I didn’t. It just came to me, it was an intuitive moment. It was an affirmation for
me that maybe that I could tap into that other kind of dimension. Intellectually I
didn’t need to know. I just knew that.

LM Who he was.

CD Who he might have been. There were other profound moments. I think the

camaraderie for me was important, too, because my family was very distant. It
was my family for me, too, that fulfilled a need and unconditional love and the
sharing and being part of something bigger. That was all wrapped up within the
vision of Institute for me.

LM Would you have special sessions, if it was John’s birthday, or it was Christmas, or
something like that?

ER Always. We always had a birthday party for him. We had Christmas and
Thanksgiving. We decorated his house at Christmastime.

PM Was that for all of you?

ER All of us were there. Anybody could be there if it wasn’t interrupting the family.

MG I have pictures of that, at Clovelly in the library with the Christmas tree. We were

all there.

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LM It was very much like a family, wasn’t it?

MG Oh, yes. We had a lot of gatherings all over. I have lots and lots of pictures of
things, of times that we were together.

CD We didn’t do it for our own birthdays. It was for him. We could see the
loneliness, and it felt it was kind of a service.

ER He never asked us to do that. We just knew that hole was in him. I knew,

particularly when I could see his wife becoming less and less aware. I know they
started out very good partners in their commitment to Kalamazoo.

LM She was very active in the social network.

ER She was a good wife and business manager.

PM She was on a lot of boards.

CD What were some other profound moments? I’d like to hear the rest of other

profound moments. Well, Mike he shared about the starry sky. That was pretty
profound.

MG For myself, it’s hard to pick out a specific because the entire time, even to now, to
me is a journey. It’s been a journey of life, a journey of part of my life in a family.
This has been family. The vision of John has become our vision. It’s profound,
and it’s been very shared, and I feel very privileged and honored to be here with
you. I know that with respect to that time with John, that sharing that Liz talked
about here was, I think, very important.

It provided the catalyst to begin, for want of a better word, to really start to share
the dream. I think that’s when the dream really started to share, and it blossomed.
Every time I walk in here, I just have this, “How did this happen? This kid from
Lafayette, Indiana. How did all this go up?” It’s how the seeds have been planted
and how they’ve been watered and how they are here. Things have been done for
the years, for all of us. Rob was president. The times have really grown to what
happened, and now where we are. It’s a journey. It’s a beautiful journey to be on.

PM When you had your Monday night meetings, did you have one last one? Or was it
when John got ill, and that was it? What happened?

LM He didn’t announce this was our last meeting or something.

MG We did have a meeting upstairs, where the meditation room is. We just talked.

ER We were very much a part of the Fetzer Institute as it unfolded. When they had
the 1988 conference, we were all part of that, a welcoming part of that. We were

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known as the Monday night group. He had the dedication. Then he had angels
designed for each room, and we were part of those being brought together. Ay
time anything happened that was another movement in the Fetzer Institute, we
always knew we could be here and we came. But it didn’t have the confidentiality
or privacy of the early years.

CD As it got bigger.

ER As it got bigger, as the Institute got founded. John’s attention was in the setting, it
was deep enough, strong enough in the people working here that our job
continued to be personal but not professional. That’s how I felt it.

MG That’s a good way to put it. That’s right.

CD And as I look back at the group, our Monday night group, that was a foundation

for all of us to draw strength from, as we went on our own journeys within the
Institute. We’ve all had, and Elizabeth, even with you with your community, we
have all had our struggles here. But that Foundation was so much a part of my
soul that I would’ve done anything here to make sure that it continued. I would’ve
taken the blows and stings and arrows. There were some tough times here for me.
As you said, Mike, you had your challenges in the group, you did, too. It was
almost like a spiritual watering hole or something, a spiritual fountain that we
could continually draw from. I’m just saying this.

LM To nourish John.

CD That nourished me and kept me going here.

ER I can say this: If you were to say what was one thing, I can say one thing. I can
say that there has been a deep, deep awareness in my life of the truth of the
biblical stories, the Buddhist stories, the Sufi stories that I’ve taught ecumenically
all over the world.

CD The Hebrew Midrash.

ER The Hebrew Midrash, all over the world. I’ve been to the Middle East, I’ve

studied, I’ve taught there. I’ve been in Egypt. I’ve been in Jordan. I’ve been in the
Philippines. I take the title “ESP and the Bible” all over the world. When I first
started, it was in a world that didn’t believe it.

What John was strengthened by, so was I. When you have enough foundation,
there is no question of truth. When Matthew’s Gospel says, “Blessed are you who
are harassed and brutalized and picked on for my name’s sake, be glad and
rejoice,” I could do that. I couldn’t have done that before the [Monday night
group]. I couldn’t have done it as well, as strongly, as assuredly, and as non-
defensively as I can now.

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PM You gained strength from each other.

ER That’s where we went, with John going to Hawaii, and then leaving here. We
continued that in our own life, personally and for the Institute.

BF One thing I would say—Did you have more to say?

ER No.

BF Because I would build on that. To the question about what was the most profound
experience, it was the experience of the power of pure support around the spiritual
calling. What I mean by that is: Let me draw back into something you said earlier,
Sister, which is part of a formation, a practice. Pray for the Institute, pray for the
staff. It’s a call to the past. It’s been a long time since I’ve done that. It was part of
my daily devotional ritual; this is not a job. It’s a calling, and that we’re aligned.
I’m fully engrossed in it, and the continuity of this.

If there is anything that continues out of the experience of the Monday night
group, it is the power of pure support and supporting each individual wherever
they are. But also it’s a collective that’s non-denominational and that is spiritually
based. I think that’s profound, because that can provide the context for continuous
growth.

Rob One thing that occurs to me is, what a wonderful conversation, being kind of a
step back from the Monday night group forward in time.

TB Early Tuesday morning group (Ed. Note: This interview was on a Tuesday
morning.)

Rob Yes, really. How, as a family, the space that was created with the Monday night
group for John, and for everybody, that was a safe space. I think of two things,
two tensions, that he had in his life and we have as an Institution, which didn’t
exist in the Monday night group: that was a safe space for him. One is a place
where you could really delve into the paranormal with a real exploratory mind, in
a free way, and talk about that in ways he could never talk with his business
colleagues about it, in a free way. Even in the scientific world he couldn’t talk
about it. We have the same issues today with the Institute, and we have that
tension, which I believe is a creative tension.

We know how to live in it, but this was a safe space. It was like a family where
you could talk about anything. The other thing that occurs to me, and this was big,
and I’ve seen this play out at the Institute over these years in huge ways: John was
always in this huge tension between great material wealth and great spiritual
yearning. That tension was always at play at the Institute all the time. There was a
great spiritual purpose and great material wealth, the dynamic that plays into: You
either have to be a tiny camel or a big needle to get through that.

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With you, he felt safe. You weren’t asking for money. You weren’t challenging
that in him at all. That was a safe space. Everybody needs a family, a safe space
for things like that, it seems to me. But in the world of the Institute, where he left
his money and his spiritual purpose, we’ve got those challenges all the time. Part
of the miracle is to transform that into a creative relationship, which I think can be
done. But he needed a place. He was constantly challenged on both those fronts,
and how to live in that tension. When I talked to him, it was part of the challenge.
He did tend to compartmentalize his life to avoid those things.

CD He did.

LM Rob, he’s been gone for 20 years now. Do you see it any easier to broach some of
these esoteric subjects with the public at large since that time?

Rob Yes... I don’t know where the wisdom is on that yet. There is a challenge of

going public with these kinds of things. The background I had was: we were three
people who were very prominent people in the mainstream, Norman Cousins, the
council foundations, and the guy who is the head of Sloan-Kettering. At the time
all had these same types of esoteric interests and they all desperately had to keep
it quiet in order to live.

MG That’s right.

Rob John wanted to find a way to bring it mainstream. It seems to me it’s more a

language problem today than ever. With Jan Walleczek we’ve been working with,
he’s demonstrated that very nicely in the stages of development.

LM For language do you mean semantics?

Rob And context, and how you talk about it, how you understand it.

ER Even the jargon you use.

Rob Yes, even the jargon. And whether you treat things as magical or miracle is a big
difference, too. John always had a sense of mysterious mystery. I think that’s
where the sense of humor came from. He never tried to use these things in a
way—he always had a detachment around those things.

LM He didn’t evangelize.

Rob No, no, and that was part of the miraculous part of his relationship to the
unknown, it seems to me. He wasn’t so attached to a belief. He was always
exploring something in the unknown. For me the big thing that keeps coming
back for the Institute now, even more so than the issues of the esoteric -1 think

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over time we’re getting to deal with that - is the issue of money and spirit and
how that changes people; how to reframe that.

I was reading Flannery O'Connor this morning, and she talks about a lot of people
think religion has no cause. But faith is not an electric blanket, she says. It’s
really, as we all know, the cross, and this is where the cross occurs, here, at least
at Fetzer, is money and spirit, and how to have the resurrection.

ER Not to lose the true focus.

Rob Yes, exactly. He stressed—he didn’t know—he struggled with that.

TB I think he had the fortune of having started with nothing, so to John that was a

great gift. That was a tremendous gift; he had the tremendous wealth, but he also
had lived with nothing. I think that’s a precious gift, and somehow we can’t have
that gift here, and I think that creates the problem.

John struggled with it, but he had this part in him that also knew the world of
being penniless; I think that brings a great gift. At least my living with him, that’s
why I never felt uncomfortable, because I saw him as this person who was like
my dad, who had lived these times when he had nothing.

Rob He could trust. He was very trusting.

TB He could trust this group. In the 70’s and the 60’s, those two decades were very

intensely spiritual for him, with lots of spiritual experiences, lots of spiritual
interests; he traveled incessantly. He and Rhea had traveled several times a year,
he was on the road, coming and going all the time, so he was free to go and find
these groups. Whether it was Jean Dixon, whether it was Judy (Skutch), whether
it was Ed Mitchell, whether it was even the group in Allegan here, he was free to
get on the road and travel around.

Once Rhea had her fall in ’80, and his health was in decline as well, once he got
more stationary here in Kalamazoo, that’s when I think he very wisely created this
group around him. Muhammad couldn’t go to the mountain anymore, so he had to
bring the group to him. I think that’s why he did it. As far as the Monday night
group, I think it was wise of him to do it.

Rob Before forming that group, was there ever in his history such a group?

LM Yes, A Course in Miracles group.

TB He had A Course in Miracles group in the mid ‘70’s that lasted just a year or a

little over a year; there was a lot of drama in that group, so I think the drama made
it short-lived. He was connected with this group in Allegan, the Hardys, that Ken
Killick came out, Lloyd Swieringa came out of that group.

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CD Jim Keating was there.

TB Jim Keating was in that group. But I think they were a little too kooky for him.
That was pretty kooky, and I think a little too much so for him. That’s what I
would say, although Ken Killick was in some ways a closer advisor than Jim,
because he would give Killick his medical histories. Killick was giving him
financial advice, and at first John was very open to it. But I think this was the first
group like this that he found.

CD He created it himself, really. It kind of came to him as we talked about it. It came
to him because he needed it.

TB He’d go to the West Coast, he’d go to Chicago, he’d go to Detroit, and he would
get it out there, but he never had it in Kalamazoo.

MG One thing is: When you look at the other situations, the flow was coming from
without. With the Monday Night Group, I think this was the opportunity for it to
come from John, to really have him express what his dream was, what his vision
was. It was his feeling that it was totally a safe situation, so he would never have
concern about putting something out there to discuss or hear.

As I said, when I met him was 79 years of age, and at this point in his 80’s, this
was—

TB He was selling everything he had accumulated ...

MG That was now coming. He was now putting this forward in terms of laying the
seeds that he wanted to lay for the Foundation. I see the others as a learning
experience, but at that point in time, the five years with the Monday night group
and then going on, as Rob was coming on as president, that’s where the seeds
were being laid. Now the question is, how do we continue to cultivate the seeds
with respect to the spiritual foundation?

TB He was fishing around in the 70’s for how to do it. In ’73 he had his board pass
this resolution that Fetzer Foundation would support parapsychology. That
happened in ’73. Then he went to Europe and he sent letters all over the world to
universities all over the world; he went to Europe, and went to universities there
looking for who was doing parapsychology, how might he hook this up, what
might he do himself. He got the IONS board, maybe he would do it through them.
He’d do it with Nazareth. He had all these different ideas.

CD Kalamazoo College was one of them, too.

TB K College was one of them.

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LM The Speaker’s series.

CD He was trying to hook up with—

TB He got this group around him and he would just do it himself. Jim came in and

delivered the AMPRA materials, which made it something concrete to work with,
and it just all came together for him.

LM But, he had a hard time in the 70’s relinquishing the power. He had a board, but
they were a figurehead board, right? He would send out the minutes and they
would sign them; it had already been decided what was going to happen. Then he
learned to get people on board that could do their own thinking, to take over some
of the power, I think, because it went around.

MG I can still distinctly remember walking in at Clovelly and we were there, and he
was saying (inaudible), “Now there was going to be an office, and that was kind
of like”—

CD Jumping around.

MG That was it.

TB Instead of doing it at Nazareth.

MG That was the jumping off point.

TB That didn’t work out.

MG He’s going to put his own. Now we’ve got an office at Comerica Bank building.

CD By then he’d hired Chuck; Chuck and I were sharing an office and he really didn’t

like that, because he thought maybe Chuck would get into his personal business.
We had an office half the size of this and we were sharing it.

PM At KZO?

CD Yes. We were outgrowing our space.

PM So did he get a secretary for Chuck? Or were you doing the work there, too?

CD No, but then he eventually got—

MG He got a secretary.

CD He got Ann.

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BF The first office was in the ISP building on Rose Street; then it was Comerica
Building; then it was the Skyrise.

The other thing I would say to an earlier conversation, and this is a matter of
record in the minutes, is that there were a number of legal organizations in the
‘80’s and it wasn’t just Nazareth. There were three or four different legal
organizations that were being explored at the time, for various reasons.

TB There was Dick Williams, too. Dick Williams, his interview was about that time.
It could’ve all happened with him, too. It was a moment in time, so it might have
happened with him.

BF Right, so at least we—

MG It would’ve killed it.

BF We were 509(1), 509(2), 509(3), different organizations of 509(1).

CD Yes, we did all that tax research, looking for
PM He’s getting a headache from it.

BF Nazareth was just in a category under an educational institute.

PM John never jumped into anything.

TB There was paperwork put together with Jim Keating, too. There was another
possibility, but that was also in Nazareth.

BF That’s just a matter of record.

TB An early iteration of that.

BF The Luptak trials - we could look up that history if necessary. That’s just an aside.
Regarding the question about what was profound about the Monday night group
was that it was free-falling. The lack of structure was really important. And then
also it was fun, too. It was fun.

MG It was fun.

BF We probably wouldn’t have come if it wasn’t.

ER There was the general structure. We knew there was, but there wasn’t a box
within that structure that had to be—

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TB Did John come up with the ideas, the kooky ideas, or could it have been any of
you?

MG Any of us.

ER That’s why I say there wasn’t a certain box. The structure was the prayer, the

meditation, some content (and it could be John, it could be The Course, it could
be a speaker), and then the dinner.

CD What was it about a speaker? I don’t remember any speaker.

ER When Joey Jochmans came, when I was giving some of the workshops at
Nazareth; a ‘presenter’ is probably better to say.

CD Were there any more of them?

ER George Meek that came.

BF George Meek, Fred Levin, who else came?

LM If they were town, they did—

TB What did Fred Levin do? Who was he?

CD He’s in transpersonal psychology. That was his interest.

TB What was the program?

BF He would travel to India, and John wanted to ask him and find out about his
travels.

TB George Meek, what was his?

BF George Meek was a guy who developed - in theory - a telephone to the astral
plane. George was actually supported [Ed. Note: Funded.] in three of the early
dockets at the Institute. One was just to replicate this telephone. This is back in
the 80’s, when he was working with a psychic who was supposedly channeling
Einstein.

What’s interesting is, in the channelings was material about the awakened
scientist, the scientist who is both intuitive as well as scientific. The idea is that
there’s a parallel universe, and a lot of these things already exist in another plane.
If some of the schematics can be channeled through, and the diagnoses and
treatments can be made in a non-invasive way, it would also then give rise to the
balance of the physical, emotional, and mental, which would help spiritual
awakening. That was the goal, to foster the spiritual global awakening.

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ER What it was in George Meek’s presentation that struck me was he said that when
Galileo knew that the world wasn’t flat, then the world didn’t believe it; there was
a flat earth society, he got a lot of repercussions, the church got in the middle of it,
and everything was going crazy. George Meek wanted to prepare the people for
what could be ahead, even if it wasn’t perfect yet; he was going around giving
little bits and pieces of what could happen, so that people would begin to think
about it ahead of time. That’s what Bemie Siegel did, that’s what Rachel Remen
did. It was preparing people for what isn’t yet completely known, so that when it
became fully perfected, people would be ready for it.

BF Meek’s work, yes absolutely. Meek’s work is documented in the book you
brought in, Wouter Hanegraaff s New Age Religion and Western Culture:
Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought. Meek has a chapter in that book.

Rob That’s a whole field, where multiple universes are in modern physics are much
more accepted today.

ER Yes, that’s what he was trying to do for the ordinary person in the street.

LM There’s an example of the—

Rob Which is a big fundamental here.

TB The end result may not be anything different; the physical and the astral plane,

and the quantum notions of parallel universes, may be identical. Fetzer’s role may
be helping to bring those languages towards each other.

PM Would everyone like to take a break now, and then come back in ten minutes,
stretch your legs, get some coffee?

ER We would like a picture the four of us here.

PM I might take a few pictures while you’re sitting around.

ER What I’d really like you to do is to take pictures of the four of us with Tom, so it’s
with the Fetzer crew.

(Camera instructions, photos)

LM I don’t know how much longer we want to go on, but I thought I’d throw this out.
This may be another way of looking at a profound experience: Carolyn, what you
described was an epiphany when you recognized Anthony of Padua. Do any of
you, can you think of any particular epiphanies? You don’t have to have just one -
that might have been associated with this Monday night group?

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ER Carolyn and I were mentioning the fact that just coming back together today, and
reflecting on each of our experiences, for me has been an epiphany; when we
were there at Monday night, we didn’t stop and ask each other, “What does that
mean to you?”

MG How profound was it.

ER Yes, because John was our focus, his mission was our focus, support for his

dream was our focus. And now it’s a shift. Can you feel that? This is precious all
right. If you want to call it an epiphany, I would, because the effect it continues to
have on our life is a precious thing to recognize. Sometimes we don’t recognize
the effect our parents have, ‘til their gone and we’re still here.

BF I would concur with that totally. I’ve had experiences where I leave a church and I
don’t ever want to go back. This is something that was not rules based, but it was
basically supporting in love my personal and our collective growth. For me the
epiphany is, again, the power of peer support, the power of intention, and the
power of love, so it’s the example. There’s a reference point that was created, and
that will never go away.

ER Exactly.

CD Our intention then was to support John. We had no ego. I have no ego
involvement, except to help him find his way somehow.

ER We didn’t kn ow the outcome of any of it.

PM But you’ve all grown so much from this experience, and cherish this growing
experience basically.

LM I think you guys ought to continue to come together periodically.

PM I mean, it was like a—

LM Maybe not every Monday night, but once or month or something.

CD I think just us. I think we should do that. We need to do that.

TB I think there was a difference—

PM When you’re in town.

TB There’s a difference between you guys and the other groups which we’ve been
studying. Most of the other groups in the end would want something from John.
Usually it was his money, but they wanted something from him, for them, and

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then he would end it. You guys never went there. You just supported him, so
that’s probably a very unusual thing for any of us.

PM The other thing that I get from all of you is that you don’t say, “This is what John
was thinking,” or, “This was what he wanted.” You all speak as individuals, but
you were part of this group, and you all were helping each other. You all tried so
many different things, and were open-minded the whole time, so open-minded at
a time when there was some—

ER There’s something else that came as you were talking, Priscilla. What I’m going
to add is my little piece, and then direct it to some other pieces. I knew a lot, we
all knew little bits and pieces of John’s health. I work at Borgess Hospital. Our
Sisters founded Borgess Hospital, and I know a lot of the doctors there. I know a
lot of the Sisters there.

I talked to John one night and I said, “John, you’ve got about four doctors and
they’re all giving you . . .” He was going to get the chelation therapy and all that
stuff. I said, “Why don’t you get one doctor, and I know a doctor who has taken
the Silva Mind Control class, he’s open to anything, he’s doing therapy with
medical pieces in France. He could be a fabulous doctor for you.” I recommended
and called Dr. Michael Graff, and Michael Graff and his wife, who is a nurse,
went with him to Hawaii.

MG And he was Hungarian.

ER Who knows?

CD He’s Russian.

ER They grew to love John Fetzer, and they didn’t have any agenda for him.

CD John’s recommendation.

ER That was so important, that he had one person, with one set of pills and one set of
tests, and they asked nothing of him. I’m not sure they even talked about their
position in his life, which was confidential. That’s what I’m hearing here, are the
things that you did, Mike; the way the things you were doing for John; and you,
Carolyn. These things were little pieces in my life. There was never competition.
There was never comparison. There was no expectation. It was just service. I
think that’s the other piece that might differ.

TB That he never found. At least in the 70 ’s and 60’s, when he was starting to think
about, “What do I do with my legacy,” he always found organizations that
welcomed him in; but then in the end, it was what he could do for them, instead of
what they could do for him.

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CD Oh, yes, he used to come back from IONS board meetings, so damned mad,
because they would just pass the hat. It made him so mad, because he was
wanting to be of service, and to connect with other individuals. At one time he
went, he had to plunk down another $10,000. There was an expectation about
that. You’re on our board, that’s what you do.

LM Because of the circumstances of his life, he was always looking for family.

TB Exactly, and he was always looking—

LM He lost his father when he was two, and all kinds of things like that.

CD His mother was certain—

LM That’s why he sought out you, I think. You were as close to family as real family.

CD He was like a son. We were talking about it—Bruce was like a son.

ER Did you know how much a son you were for him? Even if he was sometimes hard

on you? Did you know that?

BF No, he said I was his protege.

ER The biggest gift you could have given him, I think, was your daughter named after
his wife. You could never have done that if you hadn’t come to Kalamazoo. Little
things like that, which is a giving, not a receiving.

MG I think the other thing, too, that I would share is that the spirit and experience of
our Monday night group is the hope to share that with the staff. We’ve had sort of
one lead-in. I’m not sure the Sister was in that. I don’t know. (Inaudible).

We’re looking to have the same type of openness and discussion with staff to help
to have a forum. It’s kind of in the air right now, but at least we’re talking about
it, we were there and we were sharing; we were there to get something, but
hopefully now we’ll be able to share that experience.

You also just mentioned us being together, we may even have that potentially,
and have others join us to have a discussion almost like this, hopefully. Because
as Rob was saying, there’s got to be that balance of spiritualities, but also there is
the Institute. How to maintain the seeds, and how to grow the seeds that were
planted with respect to the vision, and at the same time in this material world, is a
challenge.

But I think that this Monday night group experience is at least one opportunity.
Several trustees have been very supportive of it. Most or all of them have been,
quite frankly, so hopefully this will be carried on in some way.

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CD I’m not sure, Michael, that we can replicate the Monday night group. I think that’s
too high of an expectation. But we’ve got the elements of the Monday night
group, that we could bring together folks in a safe atmosphere, it’s not tied to their
job, who really want to grow spiritually - if you look at the elements - who want
to grow spiritually.

MG That’s what I meant.

CD Hold for each other with sharing in an unconditional way. I think that would be a
nice way to put it. For me, I can’t see us doing a Monday night group. Do you
know what I mean? It’s maybe how we might present that.

LM You can’t go home again.

CD You can’t. We don’t have John Fetzer, but maybe again the elements. It’s a
different time, a different place.

MG That’s what I was talking about, an opportunity with openness, with no sense of
judgment, no agenda, being done in love, being done with joy.

ER Hopefully that’s being done with the love and forgiveness program here.

MG Yes, with the ideas, yes.

ER I think that’s what that was started for.

MG That’s where the whole idea is.

ER Am I right?

TB Well, I guess so. But what happens is like with any other organization. The staff
gets too busy to practice what they’re manufacturing. You know how it goes.

ER I do. I taught a class on prayer and meditation here. It started out with about 12,

15, and they ended up with about five; it wasn’t because they didn’t love it. They
did. It was because of priorities of working in the same building.

TB That always is an ongoing quandary here.

CD They work hard, and then stay after for another meeting? I think it’s good to put it
out there and see what we can do. If we all can support that, and if we do it again,

I think we ought to try and get Elizabeth if she would like to come.

MG I’m just saying that the idea we’re looking at is, through the legacy committee,

that the experience of the whole agenda, the experience of having and sharing a
safe space, that’s what I’m talking about. You can’t replicate the Monday night

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group, because that’s something that’s entirely different; but some of the
elements, that’s what we’re maybe talking about.

CD I think that that would be good, and maybe have a spiritual focus of some kind of
reading material that everyone’s reading about.

MG Look into some things like that, yes. Bruce, you want to say something?

BF I was going to mention one question worth engaging: With any intention that has

a spiritual focus to it, or the intention for light, there’s always a shadow as well.
One of the things I’ve experienced in the Monday night group was that we would
convene, and it was a closed-door group. We would go and close the door. As the
staff grew, then questions would come like, “What are you guys doing in there?”
And, “Can we come?” and that kind of stuff.

I think the shadow side of any type of a group is the need for confidentiality and
community as opposed to an intention with having it open. I experienced this in
other forms of study groups, too. As we say, “All right, let’s go to a series.” And at
that point in time, we open it up and let people in, so that we can create some
momentum in the process.

LM Let me ask you: When you had a speaker come, would the dynamics of the group
change?

CD Sure.

LM Because you had accepted a stranger, more or less?

CD Of course it does. Yes, definitely.

BF That’s just one thing to keep in mind. I think the values and virtues have been
well articulated, and what the experience meant with John in there as the
inspiration. I think that’s important to carry that forward; and it’s also mindful to
understand group dynamics, in the sense that can create exclusivity, which is
really the opposite of what we’re trying to do.

MG It will have to have openness. That’s the idea.

TB What ever happened to Joey Jochmans? I never met him. Is he still alive?

MG I have no idea.

ER John Davis would be the one, and John is still alive. He still has the Coptics.

CD What about John Davis? His name came up, can we revisit again? Did he have

any influence on John? I remember that he did John’s numerology. He did John’s

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and my numerology at one time. Did that ever come forward? Did we ever find
that piece of paper or anything like that? Because he was really big on that
numerology.

TB Did John ever go to the one Coptic conventions?

BF I believe the first time John Fetzer met John Davis was Pokagon, Indiana.

ER John Davis had the Coptic workshops that I went through.

BF I was there, too, and that’s when John first heard Jim (Gordon) speak. He had

known Jim before, but this is the first time that he heard Jim speak. Jim came up
to give his lecture and said, “Oh no!” he started crying, and then he channeled.
Then he left the room, and John went into the hall and consoled him. But that’s
the first time I think that John met John Davis; I don’t know that there was a
history before that.

CD I know he had a few meetings with him, and I know that—

BF Afterwards, of course.

CD After, right. A couple of times. I remember coming to the office a couple of times,
and I do recall that he did our numerology.

MG He did my numerology, too, John Davis.

PM Where is he located?

CD He was in Grand Rapids.

MG Yes, Grand Rapids.

BF His organization is SUN, Spiritual Unity of Nations.

PM I wonder if that’s someone who should be interviewed.

LM We should try and find him.

ER He’s still putting out mailings. I got one this past year.

CD So you had an address or something?

ER I don’t think I kept it, because I was doing my own thing, while John was doing
his.

BF Steven McAfee came from SUN, so he would know how to get a hold of John.

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ER But Spiritual Unity of Nations would have it, if you check the website and Google
it.

LM While we’re talking about what happened to some of these people, we learned
something from the Hardys. Do you know what happened to Ken Killick?
Committed suicide in 1997.

F Really? In 1997.

ER And one of his partners died of AIDS; one of my friends was involved in that
group in Canada.

CD Les Initiates?

ER He was an Initiate.

CD Les Initiates.

BF Are there any other concluding thoughts or questions about the Monday night
group?

TB This has been a nice afternoon.

LM It has been.

LM Thank you guys. It’s been wonderful.

BF This turned out to be as good as could’ve possibly hoped for.

ER Really.

CD Could you get a little bit more?

TB Anything else from you guys? Any concluding words from any of you four?

MG Except one.

BF Oh, the Great Invocation.

CD I was hoping someone would bring it.

BF I’ve got it.

PM I have it in my office.

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MG [The Great Invocation]

From the point of Light within the Mind of God
Let light stream forth into the minds of men
Let Light descend on Earth.

From the point of Love within the Heart of God
Let love stream forth into the hearts of men.

May Christ return to the earth.

From the center where the Will of God is known
Fet purpose guide the little wills of men—

The purpose which the masters know and service.

From the center which we call the race of men
Fet the Plan of Fove and Fight work out
And may it seal the door where evil dwells.

Fet Fight and Fove and Power restore the Plan on earth.
Amen.

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