This is the first of pieces about my Lifeline experience in July,
1995. I'd apologize for the length, but I'm always doing that....
-Frank DeMarco

         In December, 1992, when I returned from a shatteringly
productive Gateway Voyage at The Monroe Institute, I made the
effort to recreate the experience on paper, using as source
materials the journal I kept there, the audio tape I made during
various exercises, and my indelible, burning memories.
         I did not repeat that effort three months later, after
taking Guidelines, yet the consequences of Guidelines developed
and extended those of Gateway until I was in important respects
quite a different person. Those changes were captured in audio
tapes made in close association with my psychic friend Kelly, as
together we explored past-life memories. Until July 1995 those
tapes, and the experiences spanning the months March 1993 through
August 1994, formed a curiously incomplete and shapeless mass.
         Then -- just a few days ago as I write this -- I attended
the Lifeline course held July 15-21, 1995. Now I can see that the
three courses form a natural trilogy, progressing from initiation
through transition to closure.
         In the months since I posted my Gateway experience to the
Internet (where it ultimately wound up on TMI's World Wide Web
page), I have repeatedly been contacted by individuals who found
it of interest. And in that time I have fully realized that what
we have of value to offer each other is not chiefly theory but a
record of experience. I hope this proves of equal interest. I
think it is at least of equal importance.
         Last time, returning from Gateway, I said:
         "So much happened, in so little time. I accessed past-life
memories, acquired new mental powers (if I can keep them), gave
up my old pattern of hiding light under bushels, and excelled,
seemingly effortlessly. Most importantly, I did the right thing
instead of what would have seemed to be the prudential thing. I
loved -- really loved -- and everything was added. And the
implications for mind-scientists are startling."
         This time I would say:
         "So much more happened, in so little time. Yet the pattern
was different. I certainly accessed other memories and acquired
new abilities, but the old pattern of hiding light under bushels
is long gone, and by this time I knew all about the necessity and
potential of love, in theory and in practice. But the
implications for mind-scientists are still startling. More so
than before, perhaps, as the outlines become clearer."

                                          Background
1) Ed Carter. I am Chief Editor and part owner of a book
publishing firm concentrating on works of metaphysics,
alternative medicine, and visionary fiction. Among the authors
who have become my friends, not least is J. Edwin Carter, former
CEO of Inco, Ltd. In the years since we first met in early 1991,
Ed and I have spent many hours in conversation on many topics
mundane and esoteric. Our association spans a period of nearly
two years before I took Gateway, then three months til I took
Guidelines, then more than two years after Guidelines until the
summer of 1995 when he suggested that we take Lifeline together.
We did so not least on the advice of The Gentlemen Upstairs.

2. The Gentlemen Upstairs. The very first Guidelines exercise,
Paired Intuitive Questioning, challenges participants to pair off
and each write down five questions. One asks a question and the
other, going to the appropriate focus level, attempts to answer
it by describing whatever information comes to mind, whether in
words, images, or "a knowing." At Guidelines, I paired up with a
psychotherapist in her sixties, and her surprise at receiving
meaningful answers was exceeded only by her outright astonishment
at being able to *provide* meaningful answers. That was inner
guidance-on-demand.
         In the months after Guidelines, working closely with Kelly,
I got into the habit of talking to this Guidance, which, perhaps
with the idea of removing the bow-down-to-the-word-from-the-
other-side factor, I somewhat irreverently came to call The
Gentlemen Upstairs, then TGU. They don't seem to mind; certainly
they themselves are irreverent enough, and have a keen and
sometimes cutting sense of humor. Talking to TGU, either to a
tape recorder, or on a computer or in a journal, represented a
distinct advance of my previous exercises of automatic writing
which I used to call talking to "The Boss." And Ed was among
those who came to appreciate the value of TGU's shrewd, sometimes
caustic, always helpful input.

3) Other lives. From September, 1992, two months before Gateway,
to August, 1993, Kelly and I did Paired Intuitive Questioning on
tape, piecing together past-life experiences. We didn't always
know why we were working so hard at it, but TGU -- both mine and
hers -- assured us it would be worthwhile, and not just for us.
Working steadily, we found a whole series of lives in which our
paths had crossed to greater or lesser degree.
         Perhaps the closest of these were Marcus and Katerina.
Marcus (Kelly then) was the older brother, and Katerina (I then)
was the younger sister, born of a Jewish father and a Polish
mother in the 1930s. The mother died of tuberculosis before the
war. The father, a scientist, worked for the Nazis until they
betrayed him (as they did everyone). The boy and girl wound up in
the camps. Kelly could recall Marcus' last days; in fact, wrote a
beautiful and moving poem capturing the sense of his last day. I
could provide many details of Katerina's short life, but my only
sense of her last days was a mixture of dread and bewilderment.
         There were also many lives in which the connection between
us was tenuous or non-existent; among these my most prominent
were John Cotten (1749-1792?), the Virginian whose cabin I found
after Gateway; Josiah Smallwood (1819?-1867?), whose appearance
in the first Focus 15 tape persuaded me that the techniques
actually worked, and David whatever-his-name-was (1871?-1932?), a
Welch journalist and member of the Order of the Golden Dawn who
knew Yeats (among others) and investigated psychic and occult
societies in several countries in Asia around the turn of the
century. My experiences prior to Lifeline had convinced me that
we live many lives down here, not just one.

4. Preparation. After Guidelines I started to gain weight,
eventually putting on about 15 extra pounds and finding myself
unable to lose them. On June 10 I awaken to find that somewhere
within I have decided to go on a three-week juice fast. I don't
make three weeks, but I do lose most of the pounds and inches,
and (more importantly) don't go back to the eating habits that
had put them on. I am still watching my habits as I arrive for
Lifeline, and this attitude serves me well in other respects.

                                Saturday July 15, 1995
         In mid-afternoon I am interviewed as a form of preliminary
stock-taking, and I realize that the tremendous amount of
sorting-out accomplished within the past week at work reflects
the sorting-out I had been doing internally. My inner state had
sorted itself out, and my outer state was doing so. Nice hopeful
note to start on. I chat for a while with some other
participants, and take an afternoon nap. At supper I content
myself with a light salad.
         After supper we meet at David Francis Hall and pair off,
interviewing and then introducing each other. In our first pre-
tape meeting, I am struck by something one trainer quotes: "An
attitude of gratitude creates a space for grace." It sticks with
me throughout the week, as I repeatedly see the gifts we are to
each other.
         That night we do "Focus 10 reset," a refresher tape. I don't
push anything, don't worry about whether anything happens or not,
and it is fine. Nothing earth-shattering occurs. At first I don't
put anything into the Energy Conversion Box. After a long time I
put all of me in, except a naked part of me, and I experience a
sense of the endless layers of self we have available. It's a
visual looking like buildings or walls, one layer in front of the
next, with broken-out places through which you can see through.
         After the initial tape, some people go to bed, others stay
up to socialize. I stay up with the latest of them.

Sunday morning July 16, 1995
         And I am up at about 5:30 a.m., before any other, continuing
the little-sleep-here pattern of prior programs. This morning,
showering, I am pleased to find my body only slightly overweight
now and somewhat under-exercised -- which I figure trainer Larry
Lorence will help me to cure. My fellow Lifeline voyagers are
already a little clearer than a blur, faster than I remember
Gateway or Guidelines people coming out of the mist of
undifferentiated other-ness. But this may be poor memory. Our
half-hour exercise program is strenuous and satisfying, as
always. As last time, it is among the best things I do each day.
Then it's time for breakfast, and to work.
         First is a tape introducing the Dolphin Energy concept, a
first form of helping others in the physical before going on to
those in the non-physical. We visualize turning our Energy Bar
Tool into a dolphin (representing non-human intelligence), and
learn to go up to the frequencies used by healers. (As discovered
by wiring healers healing and finding the frequencies they had in
common.) We form our Living Body Maps, including the blue mental
body map and the green emotional body map. In March 93, at the
time of Guidelines, I was working with Kelly at healing and so
had resisted Monroe's techniques -- but I see now that they are
worthwhile.
         I receive a vision of a shape almost like a skull, starting
just below the nipples and ending at about the navel. With the
vision comes the distinct sense that this is a message for the
group in general, not just for me; that we need to put more
mental energy into the area of our chest and upper abdomen. In
de-briefing the tape I mention this, and find that the message
and location it is meaningful to least one two others.
         In the process of reshaping the EBT, I create a VCR remote-
control unit to control the EBT's pulsing, color and on/off. This
technique of creating a gadget to do a job proves quite helpful
later on.
         Our second tape of the morning is a Free-flow focus 12
(expanded awareness of the physical and non-physical), with
periods for reporting on tape. We are reminded that it is good to
have a purpose ahead of time. One thing that strikes me, or is
told to me, is that I should be observing and reporting and
weighing the forces around me, the way a politician would -- the
way Abraham Lincoln did. Weigh the strengths of various forces to
show what's going on and what's happening. The competing thought
comes, that of course if you do that you have to sacrifice time
and attention spent strictly on the internal. But I don't know
that that's true; it's what comes to me. At my second opportunity
to record, I have a real sense that we are all surrounded by
invisible influences from the thoughts and emotions (the
influences direct and indirect) of others -- not just people --
and that it's a matter of being open to it but also monitoring it
and deciding "what is mine, what is for me, what do I want to
create" -- which implies, "what materials do i want to use and
which materials do I reject, what building plan, what ultimate
shape?" And perhaps I haven't been doing that. It's another
variant of what was said earlier about weighing opposing forces;
in this case it's internal, to weigh what I want to become, and
what I want to allow to shape what I become. And I keep
remembering that "an attitude of gratitude creates a space for
grace."
         I emerge with a sense of the need to pick and choose among
alternatives -- thoughts, influences, emotions -- from all my
environment. We shape our own towers with holes or windows from
which to see the rest of the world. We shape them by choosing
which things to make part of ourselves, and which to reject. I
get such influences, such guidance, chiefly by words, not
pictures. TGU come in through words -- if they are asked; if I
turn on the switch that allows them to come thru.
         After the focus 12 tape, we go without debriefing into a
focus 15 reset tape. As this is the vibration of "no time" some
people experience it as a void; it requires that we initiate. Ed
says he knows why; because all time is around us but it requires
that we *move* toward something. I seem to see people's reaction
to Ed's statement move from toleration to realization that he
knows what he's talking about.
         Despite my new ECB tool, not much happens. I create images
to put in my Energy Conversion Box, tools to overcome past
problems: a wastebasket with discarded sketches (symbolizing my
inability to visualize), and a broken tiller (symbolizing
inability to steer; the unbroken tiller is under my right arm as
I go forth), and a third tool, unremembered now. But I try
counting back from 1945, and when I get to the '20s, "awaken"
with a start to realize that I am picking for lunch, from a
buffet, four pieces of roast beef! What? Meat? After being four
years a vegetarian? So I realized I was visioning. But what does
it mean? And I have a headache. So much for the morning. It's
time for lunch.
         After lunch Ed and I talk to TGU, which is fascinating.
[Anybody want a TGU excerpt here?]  And I talk for the first time
to one of our fellows of his dream of a world university.
         After the day's long break, tape 5 is free-flow 21. I do a
lot of drifting; have some small visuals and some pseudo-
conversations that keeps distracting me from what isn't going on.
I see a road, and sense I can't travel that road straight into
the woods, I have to go a longer way round to the left, making a
half-circle, rather than the path into the woods that would lead
me to the same place. Definitely TMI connected.] But in the midst
of this, a sense of drifting, almost daydreaming. Speculation
about past connections with people. There is one woman I like a
lot. TGU say she and I have been friends and lovers before, then
add a sense of "but who here hasn't been?"
         After supper, tape 6 is a tour of 22 and 23, our first
excursions beyond 21. I have some experiences I later describe to
the group at debriefing, and one which I tell no one, for fear of
appearing to suffer from delusions of grandeur or exhibitionism.
But it rings very true to me. [And now, in typing this up, the
fact that I, who am so little discreet in such matters, did not
dare describe a meaningful encounter for fear of skepticism *in
that group* makes me wonder what else was experienced and not
acknowledged.]

         First, what I *did* describe:
         1) We go to 21, then 22, Bob's voice guiding us to "see" the
souls unconscious, delirious or drugged in 22 (which I did not
really experience) and then to the new arrivals in 23.
         2) I see a waiting-room sort of place, then another room off
of it. Gradually I see that the place is packed like railroad
stations, like airport terminals. And there is a huge restaurant.
People eat while they wait. Or think they do, perceive they do.
An outdoor place. A waiter passes in front of me with a tray of
glasses. I take a glass, he not noticing, and drop it on the path
behind him. But *because* no one notices, the glass never hits
the path and shattered; instead it is back on the tray. [I don't
know why the fact that no one notices makes it not happen, but
the causality, though not the reason for it, is clear at the
time.] The food looks different from ours, in the way foreign
food would be different. I smear butter on a roll-like thing I
break apart, and taste it. Tastes good, and not all that
different-tasting.
         Now, what I did *not* describe:
         3) It is as if something pushes my face to the left, and
pushes me out of the restaurant. I ask to see someone I know, and
am taken to Britain, then up to a northerly part of an island,
and I know it is the west coast of Ireland up by Sligo, and I
know it that the person I see wandering alone by the sea and the
mountains is Willie Yeats, [W.B. Yeats, the poet] still there
after all these years. I remember that I'd known him in my David
life. I establish contact. "It's Owen," I said, surprising
myself. (Was my name really Owen? But I think it was his name for
me because I was Welsh.) I tell him, I'd been younger than him
then, had died earlier, had come back after he was already dead
and now had returned to find him still there. It's time for him
to move on. I said come with me, make your presence known. I will
give you a renewed taste of conscious life and then you must go
on. The first words on my CHEC unit debriefing tape are "Make
your presence known, remember the physical, and then go, my old
friend." Our agreement is that he is to get a brief taste of the
physical again and then go on, but he is to make his presence
known before he goes. In the CHEC unit afterwards I recite what I
can remember of one of his poems. The correct poem follows.

TO BE CARVED ON A STONE AT THOOR BALLYLEE
         I the poet William Yeats,
         with old mill boards and sea-green slates,
         and smithy work from the Gort forge,
         restored this tower for my wife George;
         and may these characters remain
         when all is ruin once again.

         After supper we debrief at David Francis Hall, practice some
healing energy, and then we have our choice of watching a movie
or repeating the Focus 22-23 tape (tape 6). Instead, I paint my
PIC symbol, with indifferent results. I am restless, silently
waiting for any contact from WBY, which does not come. I stay up
talking -- and snacking, dammit.

Monday morning, July 17, 1995

         Awake only when I hear Bob's voice say he is going to count
back to 1 from 27. Meaning that I recall nothing between going to
sleep and awakening.

         Exercise class and breakfast, then tape 7, our first tape of
the day. Back to F23. I have a productive left-brain/right-brain
discussion: How to make LB part of it without running it. But
there comes an intuition to get TGU -- collectively -- to help us
sort all this stuff out and go further. [At debriefing, I say so,
and make a note to myself that we will see if anybody picks up on
it.]

From my CHEC tape: "I'm going to have to rely on the Gentlemen
Upstairs to tell me the meaning of that tape. Gentlemen?"

"You go into focus 23 expecting visuals and expecting to be tour-
guided through and find other entities and other scenes and
potentials but find yourself disappointed because you have to
wait for something that doesn't occur; you have to work and you
wonder why you are distracted by thoughts of other people.... And
you wonder ... what if anything is to be done about it. Our
suggestion to you is that the universe unfolds as it should and
you just continue. Your idea -- it's not necessarily *your*
idea -- about having several people talk to us together would be
a very productive thing. Pick them carefully. Or rather, let them
pick themselves. This has all been scripted in advance, just as
you know. Your intuition about Yeats not being here any more is
correct and this leaves you without validation at the moment, but
the validation will come and when it comes you will know. It will
be quite unmistakable. It will be quite unmistakable. Little as
you believe it at the moment."
         I got the distinct sense that Yeats got one flash of reality
and realized he had to move on. I cling to the thought that
confirmation will come to me, an unmistakable confirmation, they
said -- in time.

         Our second tape of the morning is an intro to focus 25.
Before 24, at 10, 12, 15 as we are on our way up to 23 I am given
instructions about how to do the paired intuitive questioning
after lunchtime. Then I see a flash of a woman -- a nun? --
against a background of a mountain, then the mountain becomes a
landscape seen from the sky -- complete with city, building, tree
shapes. A sense of the expanse and diversity of the terrain of
24, perhaps. I am floating in space, and then Bob says look for a
point of light; I go for one direction and find it. But after we
get to F25 I am gone and I mean gone. I ask TGU what were the
things I saw in F25 that I can't remember, and they say merely,
"Keep working, you aren't missing anything."

         During the long break after lunch I sit in the lounge with
the HRPC tape recorder, ready to meet whomever shows up. Ed asks
how anybody will know, but TGU had said they would self-select,
and they do. All told, seven people participate, though not all
at the same time, as some arrive and some leave. We do paired
intuitive questioning. We use up damn near 90 minutes of tape.

         After break, we do a Focus 21 tape aimed at helping us
concentrate on examining our beliefs. I don't do much with this
one. I have so many beliefs, some of which contradict each other.
But who knows which will turn out to be right or wrong? At the
moment I'm not worried about it.

         Then, the most amazing thing. After supper, in the dining
room I start to talk to "J" about Katerina, and I refer to "the
father" and "the wife." She, puzzled, asks if I'm referring to my
mother, and I am instantly filled with the devastating emotion of
loss, which, though it hurts, is a confirmation of the reality of
what I'm talking about. But the emotion is cut off by my internal
control unit, and there's nothing to be done about it.

         We assemble in David Francis Hall and we see a film titled,
"Conscious Brevity," about Dr. Edgar Wilson. I find the title
ironic, given that it goes on forever. It was obviously put
together by people who loved him and couldn't bear to cut
anything even after it had been said three times.

         We emerge from David Francis Hall into the most magnificent
thunderstorm. It's lighting the entire sky, with great horizontal
discharges, flashes behind clouds, like heat lightning, great
flashes and booms. We are to listen to a tape from Going Home
called "touring the interstate," but Ed had lent it to me a while
ago, and it made no particular impression on me at the time, and
anyway there's no way I could leave that magnificent storm for a
CHEC unit. I listen to the tape (tape 10) while sitting at my
desk looking out the window. Horizontal lightning -- as much as 5
parallel horizontal strands. Fabulous! And it goes on throughout
the entire tape.

         At night, in a few minutes, "R" and I together work with "J"
to take away the extra energy that is preventing her from
sleeping. She is surprised we can do it and that the energy
exchange is so strong. I tell "R" we're now in vampire mode.

Tuesday 7-18-95
         Wandering around barefoot long before others are up; the
world changes irretrievably after the sun is well up. A beautiful
morning, misty and fog and spider webs and flowers and fir trees
and the quarter moon. And bird sounds and otherwise silence.
         Exercise class continues to get better and I continue to
surprise myself. Not physically dead nor totally decrepit yet. At
breakfast, "I" talks of her inability to deal with focus 25, and
then says that when she sees the churches of Europe she thinks
only that they used to burn people. I tell her that when I see
them, I think of how nobles pulled rock to help build them; how
they were a collective expression of spirituality. (In other
words, that her reaction was not a natural inevitable reaction,
but a highly personal one.) Sitting at the breakfast table,"D",
"J", "R", "I" and I hold hands in a circle and we accompany her
as she goes to F25; we reminding her that she is not alone now
and wasn't alone then, though she thought she was. She comes back
surprised with an image of herself backed against the wall, with
the bishop leading the community against her. I hope she will
pursue it later, but that's all we can do at the time. Then we as
the same group of five give "J" energy.
         The first tape of the day, free flow 25, is a great success
for me. The specifics that I saw aren't important but the sense
that the territory is there, there to be explored and
experienced, is important.
         From my CHEC tape: "Bob Monroe channeled through Ed an
admonition to go slower because we would remember more, and take
notice and stuff, and it really worked. I saw several things
including a culture in which there were nails outward on the
outside of the building designed to make it hard to climb, and
painful, and yet some did.
         "And there was a scene of the inside of The Monroe
Institute, or like it, and somebody said, `well there was no joy
in the center,' and I felt they were referring to "I"'s
experience and the church in the middle ages and others, and I
think actually I was getting a sense of the possible future of
Monroe Institute as a kind of a religious belief system, of
what's good and bad about that.
         "... was much more and I don't recall it but I'm not
distressed about recalling because it is still there and will
be -- it's a vast territory to explore, and there will be plenty
of time...."
         After the tape, we met in a split discussion group, half
with one trainer, half with the other. Neither "I" nor "J" is in
my group. [In fact, every single woman is in one group, though we
divided by the "chance" of where we were sitting.] I can't help
wonder how "I" did with 25. I won't find out til lunch -- if
then.
         Tape 12 is free flow 27. I click out totally, just about
when we get to 27. From the discussion that followed, I remember
only these snippets: one says he asks questions to avoid clicking
out. Our trainer says Bob Monroe said there is a real similarity
between Earth and F27, which I think is worth thinking about. And
I get a laugh out of "V" calling our exercises "spiritual rock-
climbing." Midday consists of lunch; Talking to TGU with Ed; "J"
interpreting the drawings I made in a previous exercise; a walk
with "R".
         Before tape 13, "Second run to 27," I comment in my journal,
"We'll see if this gets any better results." Well! When we meet
to de-brief, I ask first, "Was it real?" Between novelty and
content -- it's almost too much.
         I decide to go to Focus 27 in a train and have my PIC and
focus number flash by as station-stops do. I wind up in 30th
street station, in Philly. I go outside and start to get a cab,
realize I have no idea where I want to do. The taxi driver points
me toward a phone book nearby. It has so many pages (thousands)
that it spills down onto the cement. I decide there must be a
better way to do this. I use a computer terminal I find, and
enter names and dates:
         Giovanni DeMarco 1876-1957
         Joseph Cirelli 1889-1940
         Mary Vassell Cirelli 1889-1958
         Jennie Mastrogiovanni 1889-1974
         Joseph DeMarco 1949-1979
         David Joel Schlachter 1947-1970
         After each name, I get "not known."
         I enter Frank DeMarco 1915-1985 and get "E15" [which
immediately puts me in mind of my poem "E15, Line 21," written
for a friend who got killed in Vietnam; a poem about the dead, in
short.] I return and to the cab and ask the taxi driver "Does E15
mean anything to you?" He says it's in South Jersey (where I grew
up). I get in and he starts driving me. Along the road I ask him
some question like "How many years since you died?" whose
phrasing alerts him to the fact that I'm not dead. He turns
around and states that; I tell him this is a test-drive of a new
kind of program, which seems to satisfy him.
         He pulls up; we're at Grandmom's house, only looking new,
and with the barn and tractor shed restored. [My grandfather and
father were farmers.]
         "I'll be damned," I say. I ask the cabbie, "How do I pay?"
and he tells me, "Bring another one. You're already one up so
this brings you back to zero." I know somehow he's talking about
the help we earlier gave "I".
         And in front of the tractor shed, there's dad, younger than
I am now (in his mid-40s, say), looking good. He is working on a
tractor, wrench in hand. We each say a casual, "How you doing?"
         Soda machine is there again. I get an Ale and Quail orange
for him, Grape for me. [in my description I call them Nehi; don't
know why.]
         "Where are grandmom and grandpop?"
         Shrug. "Not here. Nobody else here yet.
         Uncle Charles?
         "Charlie's here. He's a banker in Philly."
         I can't get over that. Bankers here? What would they *do*?
Amused idea from him of them going to lunches and feeling
important and enjoying each other's company.
         I remember the joke we told about dad probably showing up
when Uncle Charles died and saying "We're going to the races,
Charlie. Where have you been?" He says heard us make the joke,
and used it himself.
         I ask about Bub, my cousin who died in 1978.
         "He went back before I got here."
         [something very private here, which affects other living
people, so I can't write it]...
         Then Bob's voice calls me back. Told Dad I'd be back when I
could.
         Was it real? I can't get over the feeling of the reality of
it, but it's all so strange! In debrief, I read out my notes.

         After our long break, tape 14 is "revisit Focus 27" and we
are given a specific mission: set up a place of our own design in
F27, create it, and put a PIC on it. Well, I begin designing my
place, my house there, but it's very strange: I feel like it
already exists and I'm just discovering it, not creating it.
First there is the setting. I'm up on a hill. To the north is a
great vista of two forested hills across a river. To the
northeast, a river flows from near or beneath the house to a vat
lake like Lake Zurich, and these two vistas are very clear. To
the southwest, part of the house overlooks an immense drop at the
bottom of which is a city and behind which are mountains. Reminds
me of Chattanooga.
         First I try to create a room in which to paint. But the
clearest room is a log-cabin-like living room, fireplace,
bookshelves, all wood and comfort and 1800s like Teddy
Roosevelt's Dakota house. And I swear, it has its own reality.
(So does the painting desk I started there. I discover it has a
shallow shelf designed to hold brushes. I've never seen anything
like that, nor do I know if it would be practical. But it's
there.) I see that living room, from one precise perspective, as
clearly as looking at a magazine illustration. Started to design
a room for baths, and a bedroom, but not nearly as interested in
them as in that living room. I was tempted to have no roof, but
decided I might want storms and cold and snowstorms, so settled
for a large glass panel in the roof.
         I invite Dad to look at the house, and his reaction cracks
me up, it's so typical. He says, "It's pretty but why did you
make it so far from town?" !! I say, "Dad, there's no distance
here!" and get a sense of him being embarrassed at being caught
being "practical" out of habit.
         Ran out of time. But I figure, I'll be back.
         At supper, I eat alone, trying to figure out how to get at
this overwhelming sorrow that is just over my horizon. Just as
the meal is over, "J" leaves her table, gets a cup of coffee, and
comes to my table and asks if she could join me. I had been
praying that she would, but could not have asked her to. She asks
to hear the rest of the story and told me some more of hers. (She
herself had been a Jewish woman who killed her own children to
save them from the Nazis, including a daughter named Katherine;
hearing the name Katerina gave her a start.) Talking to her
helps, but I can go only so far.
         Then we meet at David Francis Hall and the first thing was
doing another healing circle. I ask for healing for myself this
time. "J" says she was going to ask for it for me if I hadn't;
says I took better care of myself than she did of herself. No
immediately perceptible results, unless you count the results all
night. After the healing circle (and a wonderful film of dolphins
playing, jumping, diving, doing somersaults, etc.) a movie, a
fluffy Hollywood thing called "Defending Your Life."
         We emerge from the hall to a phenomenally clear starry
night. Awesomely clear. I go prowling around in the darkness,
looking for greater darkness, away from the lights of the
building. In the dark I find the picnic table I'd been looking
for -- find "R" lying on it, silently absorbed in it all. Prowl
around some more after a while, trying to will my internal demons
into coming where they could be dealt with. I wander to another
picnic table and find "V", who had earlier expressed interest in
looking at it all with me. He reminds me strongly of a friend I
had long ago. When I mentioned Ed's name a while ago he said,
feelingly, "he is a great man." "S" comes by and shows us many
stars like Vega and constellations like Scorpius and the Northern
Cross, a great gift. (For instance I never could figure out how
we can both see the Milky Way and be in it -- and he explained it
without my asking, by saying we see another arm, the arm next
farther in -- and pointed toward the center of the galaxy.
Interesting stuff to know.)
         But all night I wrestle with demons in the form of a long
slow-motion nightmare, partly involving me trying to kill
somebody and having no luck with it.

  Wednesday July 19, 1995
         Early morning prowling, then exercise and breakfast and it's
time for our first exercise. We are told that tape 15 will start
with dolphin energy, then fade into our first attempted
retrieval. Suggestion is, put left-brain aside -- make agreement
with it so you can participate in the experience. Observe without
comment. Then comment after the fact.
         I take the train, telling LB to record, using LL-Remember. I
get a view of treetops thru window of TMI; then a snowy hillside;
then a cabin by a river, a place to be (but to get there I have
to walk around a sort of trailer with a log-cabin-like base.) (?)
I get the sense that an entire community of me lives in the area,
and I am not the most important part, but everybody thinks they
are because we're each in the center of consciousness.
         I am very conscious of the help of "I", "J", "S", "R", "D",
our trainers, others, as I head down to 23: There's a strong
feeling of help from them. I know I am there to retrieve
Katerina.
         I call her to me. She was dissociated at end of long
torture, sodomy, rape-- Didn't even know she was dead. I call her
to me. Say we would go find Marcus, her beloved brother. Look for
mama, don't find her. She and I go up to 27, I telling her not to
fall asleep or get distracted, and we'd find Marcus. I know where
he is: He is with Kelly! As we ascend (to put it that way) I am
calling Kelly to have Marcus there. Get to 27 with her. Marcus is
there, and she is gone from my side in a heartbeat! I tell her to
visit me sometime.
         Love.
         Tears from the moment I found Katerina. Large quantities of
tears, quiet tears overflowing my eyes and running down the sides
of my head. *This* is why look for past lives, to make ourselves
whole.
         This is what I'll do next -- concentrate survivors, bring
them up. It came to me, if we bring forth the trapped "past
incarnations" of those who are in the body now, we will lighten
their consciousness without them necessarily knowing thing one
about it. "We'll lighten the whole world," is the way it comes to
me. This is a task TMI can help do.
         This time, at least, I have no doubts about the reality of
what's going on. I lay there feeling the tears flow, and the
emotional reality is far too intense for me to bother to try to
question it.
         We do a second retrieval tape, and at the end I find that I
am without my journal, which I had left downstairs. But I got it
on tape. From my CHEC tape, with minor silent editing: "I went
back [to the camp where I'd found Katerina] and I formed them up
[the women prisoners. I was wearing a German uniform, to get
their attention.] I formed them up in rows and lines, and then I
told them, I showed them. I showed them. I snapped my fingers and
got rid of the guards and then the towers and then the barbed-
wire and then my German uniform. And I looked to them like an
Angel. I looked to them like an angel, and I brought them up,
telling them that I was not an angel, that I was just a person.
[I had them hold hands in a gigantic circle, these skeletal
wraiths, and told them it was important they not fall asleep or I
couldn't bring them to the place I wanted to bring them. Told
them to concentrate on sending love to the two people each of
them was holding onto. Never did succeed in telling anyone this
detail without choking up.]
         "After I retrieved the women I went down and found the old
man. I looked first in 24, and then in 25, and in 26 I found a
section reserved for Jewish atheist socialist scientists and
found him. [Had to argue with him. "You stubborn old man," and
finally, I said, "you've got lousy research facilities and I said
I can take you to a place where there's better research
facilities and no Nazis." And he said something, I forget now,
and finally I told him I loved him, but he was a stubborn old man
and he had sacrificed his children and his wife and his life to
his theories and that's enough. Then he came with me and he met
Katerina and Marcus.
         "Then later I found the mother -- found mama -- among the
Polish Catholic section of focus 25 and persuaded her that there
were some people who would be happy to see her. That she didn't
need love, she had so much, but she could certainly give some,
and I was able to bring her up after persuading her that in fact
she hadn't seen judgment day, so maybe it was different than they
said. And she came up with me and God that family was reunited.
It's fabulous.
         "And then I was going to go down again but then I said no, I
just felt like I'd better just rest, and as it happens I'd
scarcely gotten back into my cabin when Bob said it was time to
go back and start on back. Wow, what a wonderful day!"
         I knew that one secret is to go after one type of person or
vibration. The more closely focused, the easier to find somebody.
         After the first tape I learn that "I" did indeed go back and
successfully deal with the situation in the middle ages. And I
tell "J" what happened with Katerina.
         Our briefing after lunch tells us that tape number 17,
"vibe-flow," contains no instructions but is designed to help us
bring various parts of ourselves into consciousness. Integration,
in other words.
         The vibe-flow tape produces no particular images, and I
expend no particular effort. In fact, at the time I think I am
daydreaming. Later I realize I was in fact integrating things.
Among my thoughts, a sadness that, this being Wednesday, the week
here is nearly over. It's almost not worth doing the program just
to avoid the pain of dissolving again. Almost.
         And I remembered, during that long period of integration,
that vision from Gateway of being sad and alone and going down
the ramp that developed -- going in my bare feet -- to a table
where I was joined by people popping in, a long table with
endless room, and people appearing and filling it.
         What parties we are going to have in F27, just of my other
parts alone! Let alone guests!
          After a short break and no debriefing comes tape 18, a
"free-flow 27" tape designed for us to explore who we are &
what's our purpose. I spent some time in my house, in the living
room, and looking at that magnificent view. Spent considerable
time in TMI-There where I constructed a Spanish patio on the
lower level which I would love to see in this reality. It would
become every introvert's favorite outside spot. Then I felt
called to go rescue the men of Treblinka, which I had barely
enough time to do, then Bob called us back.
           Then lunch and the long break. I wound up "flying" down
the hill several times: running downhill, gaining so much speed
it was all I could do to keep my footing; having to spread my
arms a couple times to slow down slightly. Fabulous experience,
particularly barefoot as I was. Then followed a healing session
in David Francis Hall, and a period of giddy silliness by all of
us, then tape 19, another free flow 27 retrieval tape.
         I came across one John of Penmorthy, an arrogant s.o.b.
killed on a battlefield in 1424. I said what country are you
from, and he said "Perth." I was very arrogant with him in
return, else he would not have paid me any attention at all. At
one point I tricked him into jumping up to show me that there was
so a battlefield around us -- at which time he realized that
being dead was a little more complicated than he had thought.
Brought him and he called for "Mary" after I told him he could
maybe find the person dearest to him who had been in the world.
She thanked me for bringing him. I told her to come visit me --
and bring him too.
         Up to 27. Fooled around some at my house. Visited Katerina's
family and persuaded her hard-head father to get them a better
house -- solid floor, more light to windows, larger. It hadn't
occurred to him that it was possible, I suppose. Told the kids I
was proud of them; told mama a child loves his mother, her
mother. Told her to keep the lessons, give up the pain. It's
still in her face. Told the old man to be easier on his son; that
the son's Biblical beliefs weren't any wronger than his own.
         Back to my place for a little bit, then down again.
         ECB empty and open as usual. My attitude: there aren't any
"worries, anxieties or concerns that will interfere." Left-brain
recording LL-Remember faithfully and well. Wish I'd thought of
this technique years ago.

         At debriefing it comes out front and center that both "S"
and "V" were facing -- not facing? -- major problems they
couldn't get through. I remain somewhat frustrated that with all
the channelers of higher selves available, the resource is not
used, but don't make an issue of it. But after I talk about what
"D", "J", "R" and I had been able to do for "I" -- and at the
breakfast table! -- one trainer asks if I'd be comfortable doing
that for them, which I with no hesitation said I would be. So
"D", "S", "J", "R", "I" and I sit in a circle with "V" and "S"
and do what we can. However, our experiment fails, so far as I
know.

Thursday July 20, 1995
         A lovely walk, pacing through the dew-soaked grass under a
last-quarter moon. I am up before sunrise because I half-expect
that "V" will be up looking for someone to talk to.
         I ask myself, who is being given insufficient attention? It
is a difficult thing, to adequately apportion attention. It
occurs to me that, by writing the events of this course we
could -- will? -- objectify some of what I know we learned as
individuals, some of what has been given me, and to others, as to
the next direction for us to go. Perhaps TMI needs next to
develop a course in loving effectively -- though it might have to
be ostensibly aimed at something else.
   Then comes our last morning exercise class, and breakfast, and
our morning briefing. We are told (what I should have
anticipated) that we will have a morning of silence, doing three
tapes in a row without debriefing, and then to lunch -- lunch
also in silence if we choose.
         Tape 20 begins as a DEC tape. I use my image in the mirror
of exercise class. Concentrate on teeth, sternum area --
prostate, I think. Emotional; I get the knack and underlying idea
of smoothing out differences in energy flow, finally and all of a
sudden. Mental map, I realize to send energy from right brain to
left brain to equalize. Which is the point, of cuss. Perhaps now
I can cease to drive my friends and family crazy. LL-Remember
works like a champ and I'm using it at this moment to recall all
these details. Details and overviews.
         The tape moves into rescue and retrieval. I get up to 27
smoothly. My living room. That lovely view. Three views. Down to
the river. I put in a wharf and think (in response to "E" having
found her son fishing from a fishing pier on my river), "It
*could* be a fishing pier, I guess."
         I get a canoe. Big river, a long way, so I make it thought-
powered, like Ed's boat. Fast smooth silent. I come to a house
upriver on left side. Shack-y, sort of. A family there to get to
know. I'll be back --
         Back to my house. Too dark in living room for daytime; need
new room. Unsatisfactory nature of unplanned house. (This in wake
of TGU's commentary on Ed's having contracted out his house.)
         To see dad, back at same moment I'd left. Why are you
         working on the tractor?
         I like to do it myself, do it right.
         I'll help sometime if you want. Planting together
         (tomatoes).
         Would like that
         Anybody else around?
         Colombo. Vince. Santos Carli, Charlie Nesi. Others I don't
know, from K of C and others
         How did so many escape the Belief System territories?
         A smile. A sense of Catholic Church as hollowed-out tree.
"You have to live with your wife. You should know." A sense of
silent dissent, silent disbelief
         ...
         [Again a subject to sensitive to record here.]

         Violently suddenly pulled to another place (not pulled by
someone but by a change) and was hearing some woman's voice
talking about something erudite and educated. Just before Bob
told us to start our retrieval run.
         I had determined to go to Russian prison camp next time,
don't know why. I go scouting-- All over Russia, to Siberia, then
drifted west, looking for the one that felt right. Siberian gold
mine above Arctic Circle? No. Urban prisons in Moscow or
Leningrad as in Solzhenitsyn? No. Where?
         Wound up in Poland near Czech border. Asked for any Polish,
Russian or Czech prisoners. Got a ragged bunch. Tried snapping my
fingers to show them it was illusion; didn't work. Couldn't get
them to form circle either. Felt quite unprepared. Finally told
them war over, Russians gone, could take them to better place,
line up with hands on shoulders of man in front of you (all men).
Brought them out, feeling myself lose some of them at every step,
as we passed thru belief systems. Got them to the top, to 27 and
told them to call for loved ones. Asked what nationality they
were, was told Russian, Czech and Pole, as that is what I'd asked
for. Resolved to be more ready, more careful.
         Bob called us back. As usual I spent the count-back time
journalling this. [Seems to work okay without my paying conscious
attention of the count.] While I was retrieving Bob said get
details for verification if possible but I thought, the hell with
that, I'm not interested in verification, somebody else can do
that.
         After the tape, in our restful, meditative silence, there is
time and space for journalling. I make note of a few things.
         -The world of 27 has objective existence just as, in the
same way as, our world of C1 does. That's something of a
surprise, as there's always the temptation of regard it as a
creation of imagination here and now rather than, perhaps,
imaginations other places, other times. That house with the poor
people, on the river, came to my consciousness; I did not create
it any more than I did that living room which I did not create,
but discovered.
         --A strange sensation, sitting here in the CHEC unit
journalling this as Bob counts us back, and as he gets about to 5
or so suddenly feel my consciousness -- my focus -- change as I
look at the other wall and suddenly I am "here."
         --This morning of planned silence is very restful. As
always, in my attempts to communicate with one and all, I talk so
much. Started to say "too much" but I don't know if that's true.
"So much" is definitely true. I write the first draft of a poem.

                                                        Quilting
                                        I talk so much. Too much?
                                        Well, so much. Definitely,
                                        wearisomely, "so much."
                                        But to weave means talk.
                                        Can we weave without thread?
                                        And so I talk and talk, and
                                        not for me alone or even,
                                        sometimes, primarily. Thread
                                        that molds the separate cloths,
                                        binding them to one pattern,
                                        one neighboring relationship,
                                        creates a quilt. Too much?
                                        Who notices the thread
                                        that makes a quilt? If noticed,
                                        it's too much.
         Tape 22 is "free-flow 27." Afterward I ask Left brain (who I
suspect now of being more of a personality than we commonly
suspect) "what went on this time? You did a hell of a lot of
recording. Did you get it all?"
         Went up smoothly & rapidly to 27. In fact, by the time Bob
says you're in 27, I have already been down to 23, found John
Cotton and retrieved him. John knew me as a voice he'd heard in
his head, during his life. It takes some persuading to convince
him he was dead. Finally I have him reach behind and realize the
arrow was there.
         That must have broke my back!
         You'd better believe it did. And you bled to death. But
dying isn't what people think it is, etc. (Getting sick of making
the same explanation all the time.)
         I bring him up, he holding my hands with his. He trusts me
from past contact.
         In 27, we talk about all this. It isn't accurate to say he
is one of my past lives, or I his future life. He and I are
connected somehow, that's all. This bears exploring. There is
some access to shared memory but the real nature of the
relationship isn't clear. I ask him to give me full access to his
memories & I'll give him access to my memories. I believe he
agrees. [Those memories -- like Kelly has, like others have --
aren't here yet, are they coming?]
         There are interruptions. A woman with a joyous (Joyce) face
looking westward with a window behind her, much green trees and
grass. Reminded me of Mary Cormier, but, interestingly, I
couldn't remember Mary's first name for the longest time. Knew it
was two syllables ending in the "y" sound but couldn't recall
which. Betty, etc. Reminded me of Kelly's "Names are hard!" in
one of our tape-recorded sessions. This is just like that, only
retrieving names from this side to that, instead.
         I take John to that shack I found by the river earlier; he
takes it to be his cabin. Maybe it is, though of course he was in
the mountains of Virginia and this is on a river. But *that* way
of thinking won't go far here!
         I tell him about the complications between "Clara" and me
that might make it hard for me to find Lara, his wife (who
apparently isn't in 27, or didn't anyway answer the call). We'll
figure out how to deal with all this. He and I will do some
working together, I see. I invite him to come over for supper
sometime.
         I get back to my cabin to rest -- cabin? Well, it has
something of that flavor -- and soon Bob says it's time to leave.
         In the dining room, "J" asks me if I was able to survive a
morning of silence, and I smile at her. She says she thinks it's
hard for people like her and me to deal with silence sometimes. I
am not offended by her original statement, but how can I explain
without talking? Which I very much *don't* want to do. I go to
the "silence" table.
         Sitting silently eating lunch while writing in my journal, I
think:
         - Talking can be from ego or it can be a giving. Our tasks
are twofold -- to keep ego out of it without ceasing to give. I
know that it is a tremendous rest for me right now to be silent.
Yet I talk constantly in my attempt to weave, weave, weave.
         - Some interesting things to ponder. If I can get John's
memories, verification will be possible -- but it means a hell of
a lot more than that. It means increased integration. It means
the various parts of myself -- of so many of us -- can be put
together to form -- what? Something unprecedented? Or something
often described and misinterpreted and forgotten? Retrieving past
parts of ourselves that are stuck (as Katerina was) is
significant enough in its possible effect on the world. But to be
able to integrate those memories actively--
         John could be here with me now, enjoying a silent lunch as
part of me. And eventually I could enjoy his life as well, which
may have entirely as much immediacy and "life" as mine always
has. After all, no part of our long lives are ever "here and now"
except for one moment. Yet each of these moments in turn are
experienced (at best) as "here and now." That is a paradox
stemming surely from incomplete perspective.
         - Then what happens as each of us becomes more closely in
touch with our other facets (if they may be justly considered as
such) and in turn interact with others who are also in closer
touch--?
         - Tomorrow I return to the world of HRPC and endless
complications and troubles of dealing with life in this world,
and I sure don't want to. The funny thing is, I didn't
particularly want to do the third tape this morning. Thought
about skipping it entirely. Not dread but weariness. I don't know
that I could have done this forever either.
         Silence through lunch. After lunch "J" apologizes for
interrupting my silence. I point out that she hadn't, as I hadn't
spoken, and show her, as my reaction to her remarks asking me if
I had survived the silence, the poem about talking I had written
earlier. She likes it.
         After our break, we do "tape" 23, a tapeless tape.
         To 27 by myself, rapidly by train. The house is still
there -- what I've constructed of it. The landscape is there,
though one of the views is a little blurred now. I find a new
place upriver beyond John's cabin. Tidal marsh, sort of.
Wetlands.
         LL-Remember still works.
         I find WBY in F26 with others of the Order of the Golden
Dawn (I specified British, Irish, English, etc.) but I do not
find David (who Willie calls Owen) with them. I take at least
some of them up to F27 and tell them they are free. Ask WBY to
wait for me, to get me verifications. He says he will. I run out
of time, as the tape kicks in and I have to run to F10 for the
color breathing and integration tape. There was a time when F26
and F27 got sort of confused with each other. I expect this
happens when the tuning wanders.
         There were a couple of young girls acting as ghosts
somewhere. Mischievous and bored. Maybe early teenagers. Took
them to 27 and released them telling them they were free,
suggesting they find boyfriends or whatever.
         A lot of random motion on my part, Thursday night. Finally
an unforgettable long night walk with "V", barefoot, all the way
up the road to the llama farm, then back "at the bottom of the
sea" (beneath an eerie layer of mist and fog), then up atop the
building via the tower, til 1 a.m. Then finally to bed.


Frank DeMarco                                demarco@infi.net
Hampton Roads Publishing Company                 804-296-2772
134 Burgess Lane
Charlottesville, VA 22902