JEFFREY MISHLOVE, Ph.D.: Hello and welcome. I'm Jeffrey Mishlove. Today we are going to explore the "Adventures of the Spirit." With me is noted author Richard Bach, author of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Bridge Across Forever, One, Illusions, and most recently, Running from Safety. Welcome, Richard. 

RICHARD BACH: Thank you, Jeffrey. A delight to be here. 

MISHLOVE: It's a pleasure to be with you. It truly is. 

BACH: Thank you. 

MISHLOVE: We were talking just a few moments ago about the distinction between fiction and nonfiction, and particularly in your writings it's interesting. 

BACH: Isn't it terrible that books have to be split? Someone please define what is fiction and what is nonfiction. In the world of imagination there are so many
gifts that come to us, and if we were to turn to them and say, "You are fiction. You do not apply in my life," we would be turning our back on showers of gold
and diamonds. No; no fun. 

MISHLOVE: You have discovered a gold mine in your writing. You move through time; you move through multiple dimensions. It gives me a sense that your
novels are sort of a walking metaphysics text. 

BACH: That's fascinating. To me, there is so much. If I look back now, on the last 20 years of my life, and say, "Richard, what have you been doing?" What I've
been discovering is the power of the imagination, and how it translates -- how ideas translate into what we call the real world around us. 

And it translates in so many ways that are so fascinating -- that we gauge the quality of the friends we have by their ideas; we are attracted to certain ideas and repelled by others. Are those things fiction or are they nonfiction? I no longer care. Tell me what's going on in your mind; tell me what's going on in your heart, and I will feel the
magnetism that will make me cherish you for a friend or make me say, "Well, I want to keep my distance from him." There is something within me that says,"You have something to learn from what Jeffrey has to say. Listen carefully." I like that feeling. I have spent my life gradually closing my mind, and I've chosen to do that. I'm closing my mind to all kinds of ideas that are not interesting to me. I'm not interested in experimenting with drugs; I'm not interested in driving high speed along very narrow roads, along the edge of steep cliffs. The things that I'm interested in, it's what does someone else know about the power of their
own imagination? How has it changed their life? How can I steal ideas from them to use in mine? 

MISHLOVE: One of my big interests is psychic research, and I know you've had an interest in this field and have been involved even in laboratory experiments
going back 20 years. 

BACH: Yes. For years and years. I believe that we are creatures not of bodies. I think we are expressions of life, we are expressions of spirit, and that we are not
chained by gravities, by walls, by limits. And so I fascinate in any avenue that suggests, "It's true, Richard." So when Russell Targ has his tests in remote viewing, I am there: "Please, can I help you find this? Give me some tests to do that I can practice." 

MISHLOVE: Can you talk about that a little? 

BACH: He had some fascinating tests years ago, in remote viewing. 

MISHLOVE: This was at SRI International -- a big military-industrial think tank in Menlo Park, California. 

BACH: That's right. He said, "Richard, next time you're on the West Coast, stop by, please." I did, and I walked into this room, and they shut the door behind me and they closed the blinds. I said, "What's going on here?" "A fellow experimenter, Hal Puthoff, is somewhere in the Bay Area. You have no idea where.

Now just relax, Richard, and tell us where he is. Describe, what is he looking at this minute?" "Wha... what do I do? Do I open my eyes? Do I close my eyes? What am I supposed to do?" "If you want to leave your eyes open, that's fine." So I closed my eyes, I opened them again, I said, "Russell, I'm making it up." He said, "That's right. You're making it up. Tell us what you make up." And I saw, as I closed and said, "He wants me to do this. I will do it. It will be fun. And I can't be hurt. This is not an electrical chair." So when I closed my eyes I saw Hal Puthoff walking into a tiny little building, and as he walked into the building, it was a travel agency. There was a counter; there was a map behind the counter, and there was some large company logo on the wall. And I was saying this into Russell's tape recorder: "It's a city map, Russell." Russell said, "Don't call it a map. If it is a complex, if it's a maze of lines, call it a maze of lines. It be a maze of lines but not a map." "All right, so it's --" 

MISHLOVE: Watch out for the intellectual overlay. 

BACH: Exactly right. "And don't call it travel agency." "All right, all right. Well, this is what I see." And then I reached a point where it just stopped. I said,
"Well, no, wait, there's one other thing. There's a strange colored light at the roof of this place, and I have no idea what it is. It is blues and greens, and what's it
doing at the --? It's not electric lights. And this is very important. It's not electric lights." And he said, "Very well. Anything else?" I said, "Nothing else." He said,
"OK." Then we began chatting, because he had looked at his watch and he knew that Hal was on his way back. So I was now getting nervouser and nervouser, wondering where -- I mean, was this true or not? It didn't feel like anything strange or weird. 

Presently Hal Puthoff knocked on the door, walked in, and Russell, instead of saying, "Where were you?" played the tape. Hal listened to it, and every once in a while he'd say, "Hm!" And here I'm just a bundle of knots, saying,
"Tell me, tell me, what was it?" He hadn't been in a travel office at all. He had gone to a church. He had gone to a hyper-modern church, and he had walked to the altar. That wasn't a counter; that was an altar. Behind the altar was a filigreed wooden inlay work, very complex. 

It was not a map of the city, but it was a complex line. The company logo was not a company logo, it was a cross, a giant cross. Up at the ceiling, stained glass -- blue and green, not electric. And I could just feel, whether it was the blood draining from my face, or electrical shiverings going through me -- as you said, had I tried to intellectualize, to label what these things were, I couldn't have done it. And the company logo; I had to laugh! What kind of playful part of me has these wonderful capacities? Is it attached to us like a balloon by a string to a child? Does it come with us wherever we go? Does it have this power, and we don't feel it because we never ask? That was really the first time that I recognized that, for me, I said "Yes!" -- exclamation point -- "I want to get to know that part of me that's not trapped in my body." 

Part 1 of 3 parts
 
 
 

Previous "Dolphin Relationship Lagoon" pages:
 

#1	How to Develop Self Esteem
#2	Love Them, Anyway
#3	Perf Measurements at Call Centers
#4	Staff Empowerment
#5	Team Training for Your Teams
#6	Handling Confrontations
#7	Social Support
#8	The Power of Influencing...
#9	Expectations
#10	Impression
#11	Learning Through the Ages
#12	Instructions for Life
#13	More Instructions for Life
#14	Inner Feelings with Virginia Satir
#15	More conversations with Virginia Satir
#16	What I've Learned in Life
#17	What Do You See?
#18	If the World Were a Village...
#19	Lessons from Noah's Ark
#20	Discussion with Albert Ellis, Part I
#21	Discussion with Albert Ellis, Part II
#22	Discussion with Albert Ellis, Part III
#23	Discussion with Albert Ellis, Part IV
#24	Discussion with Albert Ellis, Part V
#25	Discussion with Beverly Potter, Part I
#26	Discussion with Beverly Potter, Part II
#27	Discussion with Beverly Potter, Part III
#28	Discussion with Dennis Jaffe, Part I
#29	Discussion with Dennis Jaffe, Part II
#30	Discussion with Dennis Jaffe, Part III
#31	Discussion with Dennis Jaffe, Part IV
#32	Discussion with James Kouzes, Part I
#33	Discussion with James Kouzes, Part II
#34	Discussion with James Kouzes, Part III
#35	Discussion with James Kouzes, Part IV
#36	Discussion with Cynthia Scott, Part I
#37	Discussion with Cynthia Scott, Part II
#38	Discussion with Cynthia Scott, Part III
#39	Discussion with Richard Bach, Part I

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