***image9***
Santa Fe's Message Company seems pretty out there-but what the (bleep) do we know!?
Matthew Cross is about to pop The Question.
It's barely 10 am, but the 100 or so people sitting in the New Mexico Room at La Fonda Hotel have been waiting all day, all week, maybe even all their lives to pounce on these four precious little words.
"Why are we here?" Cross asks the crowd.
"Intellectual stimulation!" someone in the audience shouts. "To awake!" another yells. "Knowledge!" "Sacred geometry!" "Inspiration!" "Finding truth!" "Inner consciousness!"
Technically, they're all right. And wrong.
The less cosmic reason they're here is because they've each paid upwards of $745 to listen to Cross decipher the scientific implications and real-world applications of
The Da Vinci Code
during the first of more than 40 presentations scheduled for the five-day International Conference on Science and Consciousness.
Cross, a business consultant for Fortune 500 companies and co-author of
The Divine Code
, is as
***image11***
conventional a speaker as the ICSC gets. Thanks to the popularity of
The Da Vinci Code
, his presentation is also arguably the most accessible-if you consider Chaos Theory, the Fibonacci Sequence and the equation "A+B is to A as A is to B" accessible.
The conference, hosted each year in Santa Fe, is one of the largest gatherings for avant-garde academics, radical theorists and New Age freakouts this side of Burning Man. The ICSC is more than a conference; it's an out-of-body experience filled with mind-warping speakers discussing everything from crop circles and quantum physics to 9.11 conspiracy theories and spiritual mediums.
James Berry is the man responsible for keeping the conference two curves ahead of its competition. Berry is the founder and president of the Message Company, the Santa Fe organization that spawned the ICSC and a slew of other conferences intended for people who relish wiping their feet on the fringes of conventional wisdom.
The conference-and the Message Company itself-brazenly tackles topics that would make most ivory tower academics cringe. Flying saucers, psychic powers and transcendental meditation are all in a day's work.
Berry's willingness to provide an official forum for exploring the unknown effectively puts him a couple rungs above
Yanni and a few below Stephen Hawking in the pantheon of New Age/New Science heroes heralded by those standing on the banks of the mainstream world.
"It's good to be around kindred spirits," Jan Johnson, an ICSC volunteer and former IBM advertising executive
***image1***
from Boca Raton, Fla., says. "It's nice to know there are other people out there who understand that things like consciousness and the energy field are how we're going to heal ourselves."
But the conference and the Message Company also have their share of critics. Some dismiss the conference as a giant metaphysical circle jerk for wealthy yahoos and
bookish crackpots while accusing Berry and the Message Company of milking spiritual commerce for personal fortune.
Berry expects that kind of a reaction to a conference-and a company-intent on toeing the logical longitudes of science, spirituality and wither the twain shall meet. It's a fine line, Berry admits, but he insists his company accomplishes the task without plunging over into what he calls "woo-woo land."
"I think of it as walking along the razor's edge," Berry says. "We try to push the envelope as far as we can without falling off the deep end."
Freddy Silva is teetering on the edge.
It wasn't always this way. He also used to be an advertising executive. He used to be married. He used to be your average, respectable citizen leading an average, respectable life. Then things took a turn for the weird.
"I have no idea how I got here," Silva chuckles.
How he got here-standing in front of 600 people packed into the Lumpkins Ballroom at La Fonda for his
Saturday evening keynote address-is a little complicated. A passing fascination with crop circles in Silva's native England
became a full-fledged obsession. Before long, Silva was spending most of his time standing in fields, photographing mysterious balls of light and questioning his
***image2***
own sanity.
"It was a challenge for me and my own ego to wake up and realize that perhaps I don't know it all," Silva says. "Since I have taken up this work, I have witnessed things that I would have thought were completely mad. But when you see it, you believe it."
Silva is considered one of the world's foremost experts on crop circles. As such, he endures more than his share of incredulous skeptics and condescending critics.
Luckily, this conference specializes in Silva's peculiar brand of whiskey. He doesn't presume to know all the answers regarding the genesis of crop circles, but readily offers some intriguing possibilities. The audience listens intently as Silva explains how many crop circle formations adhere to universal principles-Phi, the golden ratio, etc.-and how the physical makeup of plants within a crop circle can be
***image12***
substantially, although inexplicably, altered by the experience.
Silva peppers his discussion with sly Monty Python references while articulating his theory that
crop circles are not formed necessarily from extraterrestrial imprints but from the receiving end of complex sound waves.
"One of the things we look for in our presenters is that they not only know their stuff-that they are leaders in their fields-but that they can present the information to a layperson," Berry says. "We look for people who can take that complex information and explain it in such a way that a person who never took a physics course in their life can understand it and have those
eureka!
moments themselves."
Silva brings out fellow presenter John Reid to illustrate his point. This is the world premiere of Reid's CymaScope invention. Using an overhead projector attached to the device, Reid shows how different sound frequencies can transform an innocuous layer of sand into distinct and complex patterns that mirror many of the crop circle formations Silva previously showed in a slide show.
Eureka.
This conference was built for revelations. Berry says more than 80 percent of this year's presenters hold doctorate-level degrees. Most come from reputable academic institutions and research think tanks. But much of the material is still too controversial to gain
***image13***
widespread acceptance, which is why speakers like Peter Russell-who studied
theoretical physics under Stephen Hawking at the University of Cambridge-flock to the ICSC.
"I think science and its relationship to spirituality is beginning to be explored by a small but growing number of scientists," Russell says. "It isn't mainstream-at least not yet-but I think the success of this conference and what I have seen in journals are signs of where things are going in terms of questions that need to be looked at and asked. For now, this is one of the few conferences where you can address that legitimately."
That depends on your definition of legitimacy. Over the course of five days, Onye Onyemaechi heals people with music, Liviu Nuteanu explores the possibility of stopping hurricanes with bio-energy and Konstantin Korotkov uses his Gas Discharge Visualization device to show how the "energy" of dead people can be captured on film days after their demise.
And then there is JZ Knight. Out of the conference's nearly 50 presenters, Knight arguably takes the fruitcake. She claims that in 1977 an entity named Ramtha-a "spiritual warrior" who lived as a man 35,000 years ago on the lost continent of Lemuria-appeared in her kitchen in Tacoma. Knight has since made a living channeling Ramtha's spirit in order to deliver his nuggets of wisdom to the masses.
Knight-or rather Knight channeling Ramtha in a funky Zsa Zsa Gabor accent-was featured in the 2004 movie
What The (Bleep) Do We Know!?
, the most mainstream attempt to describe what many of the theories expressed at the ICSC are all about.
The movie-and, in essence, the conference-is rooted in the mysteries of quantum physics and discusses physiology, spirituality and consciousness while explaining how things like love are simply chemical addictions to particular emotions (which might explain why Knight has been married five times). But it's exactly those kinds of themes that draw people like Lynn Weitzel-a retired hospice nurse from Larkspur, Colo.-to the ICSC.
"I just find that my mind is opened more each time I come here," says Weitzel, who is attending her fifth conference. "Some of this stuff isn't going to make it into textbooks for another 10 years, but these people are already understanding and utilizing this technology and these ideas."
Unlike many conferences,
there is often little intelligible distinction between the ICSC speakers and the conference participants. It's a mix perhaps best described as LANL meets flannel,
***image3***
scores of lab rats and earth children happily treading the outer boundaries of physics and metaphysics.
It's an atmosphere Silva says has made the conference a globally renowned phenomenon-even though most Santa Feans have never even heard of it.
"It's actually quite famous," Silva says. "I heard about it back in England and you have people from all over the world here. It transcends national boundaries I think. It quite literally is an international meeting of minds. There's also something about Santa Fe and its mysticism, I think, which allows you to be in a much more receptive state to believe in the unbelievable."
Indeed, Harriette King-the Message Company's marketing coordinator-says nothing is too strange for this conference and its congregation.
"Nothing is ever too far out there," King says. "The further out there, the better, because that's what busts up those established paradigms and beliefs. For those of us who are drawn to the adventure of the unknown, this is our soul food for the year."
Berry is the chef of this provocative spread, but his personality
doesn't exactly fit the mold of an overt provocateur. The gaunt, balding 55-year-old typically exudes enough tranquil calm to fuel an entire Tibetan monastery. Only natural,
one might suppose, for someone who spent the first seven years of his life in a leper colony in the isolated region of India called Assam.
It's an atypical life story. Mother is a medical doctor, father is a sanitation supervisor, son's first language is Assamese. Family moves from India to rural Pennsylvania to live as "poor dirt farmers." The son studies physics at nearby Shippensburg University before
***image4***
eventually relocating to New Mexico where he builds one of the most potent-and peculiar-New Thought businesses on the planet.
Berry's home-and the Message Company headquarters-sits among the piñon trees and low, rolling hills scattered off Route 14 south of town. Down a dusty gravel road mottled with ruts is the nondescript epicenter of one of the biggest clearinghouses for esoteric ideas in the country. On the surface, it's just a moderate adobe home with a couple rusty vans and a large white trailer parked along the driveway. But inside the walls there is a busy office cramped with cubicles, filing cabinets, bookshelves and eight employees bent over keyboards and talking into phones.
Berry created the Message Company in 1994 as a book publisher peddling a niche selection of "New Science" titles. Then he had an epiphany about building something greater while he was attending a business conference in the Caribbean.
"I had been exploring the idea of how to run a business with progressive, spiritual principles," Berry says. "That's when I thought to myself, 'Mmmm, somebody should really do a conference on that.'"
That somebody turned out to be Berry. In
November 1995, 85 people from six countries attended the first Business and Consciousness Conference in Mazatlan, Mexico. The following year, 185 people came. Then 485. And a business was born.
Berry estimates that his staff now works on at least six conferences-ranging from Shamanism and Sound
***image14***
Healing to Sacred Sexuality and Altered States of Consciousness-at any given time. But the ICSC is the flagship.
"The very first science convention [in Albuquerque in 1999] had 500 people," Berry says. "It just hit a chord with
people and has been successful from the very beginning."
The conference has either sold
out or come close every year since. Berry says many attendees have changed their career paths, explored new interests and even met their spouses at the
***image15***
conference.
"I look at it as we're providing a service to people," Berry says. "The reward is when we hear that people are
having a great time and they're learning new skills they can use maybe in their life, their work or in their health or education."
Leland Lehrman spent a year working as a Web master at the Message Company before resigning last May to pursue political activism through his
Web site. Lehrman says his tenure at the Message Company provided him with the intellectual fodder and connections to transition into politics.
"Working at the Message
Company was the equivalent of getting a very advanced degree in college," Lehrman says. "If you're a naturally avant-garde spiritual or scientifically motivated person, it's sort of an ideal environment to gain exposure to a vast variety of spiritual and scientific thoughts, particularly where the two converge."
But while the Message Company's "soul food" is nourishing for its supporters, it leaves a decidedly bitter taste in the mouths of the company and conference's critics.
Dr. Jack Sarfatti purports to be many things, including a distant
relative of both Benito Mussolini and Jesus Christ. Indisputably, he is one of the more controversial physicists to ever don a lab jacket, due primarily to his claims on time travel and UFOs.
Sarfatti is also known for his neoconservative connections-if not his bonus commentary on the
Star Trek IV
DVD-that extend back to the Cold War and his supposed role in developing Reagan's "Star Wars" defense program. When he isn't giving lectures on space
***image5***
migration, writing treatises like
Emergent Gravity: String Theory Without String Theory
and serving as a consultant (no joke) to the CIA, Sarfatti is busy setting the shoelaces of mainstream science ablaze.
In short, he is a seemingly perfect candidate to speak at the ICSC. And, when Berry extended an invitation for Sarfatti to speak at last year's conference, the good doctor accepted. Sarfatti delivered two presentations. One on quantum physics, dark energy, flying saucers and time travel. The other-a last-minute slot-looked at
The Da Vinci Code
and author Dan Brown's discussion of secret societies and the theoretical birth line of descendants (of which Sarfatti claims to be a part) spawned by Jesus and his baby's mama, Mary Magdalene. But it wasn't until Steven Greer delivered one of the conference's keynote addresses that Sarfatti turned the ICSC on its ear.
Greer is infamous in his own right as director of the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence, an organization that canvasses the globe documenting UFO phenomena. Greer had just finished talking about a myriad of alleged government cover-ups when Sarfatti addressed Greer during the subsequent Q&A.
"It was very paranoid, conspiratorial, extreme left-wing kind of stuff," Sarfatti says. "I just started politely asking some leading questions of Steven about where he got his information from and that's when Jim Berry walked up behind me."
What happened next depends on who you ask. The general consensus is that-after Sarfatti had asked Greer some questions that may or may not have been "polite"-Berry attempted to take the microphone away from Sarfatti and a minor scuffle ensued.
"Let's just say that it was a confrontation," says Harriette King, the Message Company's marketing coordinator. "[Sarfatti] was very off-balance and apparently suffering from a wounded ego. He started verbally attacking our keynote speaker in front of 600 people. Our James is a very smooth, graceful person and he just tried to take control of the situation."
Sarfatti says he instinctively
shoved Berry before acquiescing the microphone and walking out of the
ballroom along with "at least a 100" members of the stunned audience who disagreed with Berry's handling of the situation.
***image16***
"The hypocrisy was not lost on me,"
Sarfatti says. "Here's all this supposed spirituality and goodwill and then Berry comes down like some Stalinist commissar wanting to control everything. It was completely unnecessary."
In the weeks and
months that followed, Sarfatti talked of filing a lawsuit against the Message Company for breach of contract after Berry reportedly refused to send Sarfatti videotapes of his presentations per the speaker's contract. Eventually, he decided it wasn't worth his time.
"It was a tempest in a teapot more than anything," Sarfatti says. "I don't think there's any point in pursuing it further except I would have liked to have gotten my videos. That's the only thing that really upsets me about the situation."
Well, maybe not the only thing. Sarfatti is also critical of what he sees as suspect business motives. The Message Company has an enlightened approach to business, but it's still a business. And it isn't alone in its choice of clientele.
Aside from channeling Ramtha, JZ Knight is the CEO of JZK Inc., a multi-faceted enterprise that handles her promotional tours, sells CDs, DVDs, books, clothing and high-end furniture while also operating Ramtha's School of Enlightenment in Yelm, Wash. Thousands of students have attended classes-or "events"-at the RSE for up to $1,500 a pop. Visa really
is
everywhere you want to be, metaphysically speaking.
The price tag for attending
***image6***
the ICSC isn't exactly
cheap either. A single conference pass ranges from $595 to $745 with transportation, room and board sold separately. Berry estimates that up to 95 percent of conference-goers come from outside the state.
Since it began, the company has expanded to include the online
Business Spirit Journal
, the Visionary DVD Club, an inventory of "unique and practical" reference books, an investment company specializing in postage stamps and a myriad of conferences, workshops and seminars. The company also boasts impressive media production capabilities. Hours after a speaker delivers a presentation at the ICSC, participants can buy a DVD of the talk for $29 in the bookstore.
"There is no reason why Jim Berry shouldn't be making money," Sarfatti says. "But the Message Company thing is really just all about making money. It's fun for rich people who have nothing better to do. As my friend Michael Savage would say, it's a Mecca for rich liberals with mental disorders."
The controversy-and the Rumble in La Fonda between Sarfatti and Berry in particular-nonetheless serves as a catalyst for a company intent on challenging people and
***image17***
their presumptions.
King says the tussle between
Sarfatti and Berry was "the hit of the conference," a sentiment echoed by Peggy Dugas, another Message Company employee who also happens to be Berry's partner.
"Sometimes that's the energy that provides a spark for people," Dugas says. "It's great to have that stirring up of emotions because then you know that people are really being challenged. Of course you don't want to have something totally out-of-control but Jim is a master at knowing how far he can take it."
David Ray Griffin is about as far as Berry can take it.
On the surface, the accomplished author, theologian and professor at the Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University seems ill-fit to be a conspiracy theorist.
Berry acknowledges that Griffin's subject matter-9.11 and the government's alleged complicity in it-is "a little outside what we normally do," but Griffin has drawn a large crowd because of the explosive nature of his material and the liberal bent of his audience.
"The resistance by the mainstream press has remained about as strong as it was in the beginning," Griffin tells the crowd. "It's still pretty much verboten to talk about this in polite company."
Present company excluded. Many crowd members nod their heads and mutter encouragement as Griffin asserts that the government knew of the impending attacks and, moreover, were directly involved in their execution.
"The evidence is pretty strong that they orchestrated this," Griffin says. "It's so cartoonish-the official story-when you look through it."
Griffin suggests the attacks were a "false-flag" operation used to justify increased military spending, orchestrate global imperialism and to strategically target rogue, oil-rich nations like Iraq. He proposes that Flight 93 was shot down by the military, the "collapse" of the World Trade Center towers was really a controlled implosion and that the 9.11 Commission report was a "571-page lie."
After the speech, audience members heap praise on Griffin for his courage and determination in exposing the truth.
***image7***
One woman, a New York trauma therapist who has led tours of Ground Zero, breaks down crying, saying she'll never look at 9.11 in the same way again.
"This is extremely difficult
when people hear the truth for the first time," Griffin notes solemnly.
Not everyone is buying it.
Frederick Larmor questions Griffin's account during the Q&A. Afterward, the psychiatrist from Long Island watches with bemusement as fans swarm around Griffin.
"He was a very smooth talker," Larmor smiles. "But they say the devil has a slippery tongue…I think most of the people here are predisposed to anything that's anti-establishment but I frankly found most of what he said pretty unbelievable. In fact, a lot of the stuff here seems to just be super-sophisticated bullshit."
Peter Russell-the ICSC speaker and Cambridge scholar-says many who attend the conference, particularly those from the scientific ranks, listen to the presentations with an ample dose of "healthy skepticism."
"I'm a scientist by training so I look for evidence or at least really good arguments for understanding something," Russell says. "I'm not a person to take something on faith just because somebody stands up and makes a great presentation. Some of these things are too far out there for me and some my jury's still out on but there's other stuff here that's been really valuable."
Moreover, it's still science. A point underscored by Liviu Nuteanu, a senior neurosurgeon at Bagdasar-Arseni Hospital in Bucharest, Romania. Nuteanu is also a senior research associate with the Enigma Group in Paris, and a specialist in cellular biology, who says bio-energy can destroy cancer cells and potentially reduce or even stop earthquakes and hurricanes. Nuteanu says, contrary to many assumptions, most of the research presented at ICSC is rooted in solid scientific methods.
"People should know that this is real," Nuteanu says in broken English. "These are not theories, these are practical applications. All the speakers I listened to were very precise and scientifically sound. I could even take from some of their experiences and use it for my own work. I gain years and years of excellent experience in five days."
Even if the research is cemented in conventional science, Silva says most conventional thinkers shy
***image18***
away from making such radical departures from the status quo.
"Some people are so stuck in an old mode of thinking that they don't want to accept the fact that science is incomplete," Silva says. "If, 300 years ago, somebody said they were going to catch the sun in a little glass enclosure and call it a light bulb they would have been burned at the stake. Just because something doesn't fall into the realm of your experience doesn't mean that it isn't necessarily valid."
Furthermore, according to Russell, what is being said at the ICSC may not be quite as important as the fact that it's being said in the first place.
"But the important thing at this
conference is that there is an openness to explore things and find out if they are valid or not instead of just dismissing them as rubbish without any exploration whatsoever," he says.
The expedition is almost over.
The end is nigh and you don't have to understand physics, spirituality or why Ramtha-via JZ Knight-has a Hungarian accent to see the writing on the wall. You just have to look inside the ballroom at La Fonda.
Only 100 or so people remain in the conference's final hours. They have gathered together to sit in a huge circle and share their feelings on the conference.
It's kind of like a huge Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, except most AA meetings probably don't start off with the emcee-or "conference weaver" in Message Company parlance-singing a song about intergalactic tolerance called "My Ride Home From Neptune." Then again, as the weaver Greg Tamblyn notes in his song, "I'm a New Thought, metaphysical kind of guy."
These are New Thought, metaphysical kind of people. And the gravity of the conference has taken hold even as it creeps to a halt. One by one, attendees approach the microphone. There are tears. Laughs. Revelations about finding the courage to come out of the closet, remove a mask and recover from…shoulder surgery. Then a woman from Colorado named Nathalie Nguyen stands up.
"I am leaving my dream and now I'm part of my reality of my dream," Nguyen says. "The feeling I had
***image8***
when I got here was, 'Oh, I'm not alone. Here's the tribe. Everybody else wants love. Everybody else wants peace. Everybody else wants to share joy'… It's not a dream anymore, it's a reality that I can live my dream and make it a reality."
Ashley Rowan, the elfin man with the ponytail who led the conference's daily yoga sessions, takes his turn at the microphone to thank everyone-and to recommend buying the DVD from the speech on necrophilia-before announcing he wants to lead everyone in a "heart sound."
"Now, everybody breathe in," Rowan instructs, "and….haaaaaaaa. Now, let the next one reach the far corners of the earrrrrrth…and…haaaaaaaaa."
Hah.
Finally, Tamblyn wraps things up with a sing-a-long. The group stands, holds hands and sways back and forth as they pick up the chorus.
…I am one with the heart of the mother/I am one with the heart of love/I am one with the heart of the father/I am one with God…
A few minutes prior, Donald Friedman from Philadelphia had stood up and confirmed his Oneness with God to the 100 or so closest friends he never knew he had five days ago. In the process, he inadvertently answered the Matthew Cross Question from the beginning of the conference:
Why are we here?
"I came to this conference with a certain amount of trepidation," Friedman admits. "I questioned how much of a spiritual person I really was. I had trouble understanding even some of the titles of the talks, let alone some of the content, but I discovered by being here that I am indeed a very spiritual person."
Which is perhaps why they were here all along.
