FIRST CONFERENCE OF THREE BEINGSOne day in 1958 John entered the tank room, put on the mask, and immersed himself in the water for the last time at the National Institutes of Health. He had finally realized that within the government it was impossible to do the research that he wished to do. Inevitably, subtly, those in charge of research for the National Institute of Mental Health were asking to control the isolation-tank work. And those in charge of brain research in the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Blindness were beginning to exert controls on the work on the brain. In this session in the tank, he planned to review what he had learned over the last five years in regard to research on the brain and the mind and the support of this research.
John went through his now more-or-less standard procedure of relaxing every muscle in his body while floating in the water. He then relaxed his mind and let go of the residues of the day's activities. Quite suddenly he was in a new space, a new domain.
He left his human body behind. He left his human mind behind. He became a point of consciousness, of awareness, in an empty, infinite space filled with light.
Slowly two presences, two Beings, began to approach him from a distance. There was a three-way exchange of direct thought, of direct meaning, of direct feeling with no words.
Later he was to write up the experience as if words were used, as if the two Beings had spoken to him in English, as if he had become the Third Being.
The conference of the three Beings was taking place in a dimensionless space, the spaceless set of dimensions somewhere near the third planet of a small solar system dominated by a type-G star. The organization which they represented he would later call the Earth Coincidence Control Office (ECCO).
The First Being speaks: "We are meeting at this particular space-time juncture in order to review the evolution of a vehicle that we control on the planet Earth. He is at another transition point in his training. We need to review what he has done, what he is thinking, what his motivations are. We must determine what the future of his mission can be within the evolutionary speed limit allowed the humans on that planet."
Second Being: "You, the First Being, and I, the Second Being, have been controlling the coordination of coincidences of this agent on Earth. I feel it is important that we state all of this very clearly for the benefit of the Third Being, who has been responsible for that human agent. It is important that he not exceed the evolutionary speed limit at this particular time; however, we realize that there is a certain discrepancy existing among the humans, that their evolution is proceeding extremely rapidly in certain areas and is going backward in others. It is the purpose of this conference among the three of us to make sure that the Third Being controls him so that he stays within certain wel]-defined limits and avoids the kinds of catastrophes certain other agents of ours have experienced o:n that planet. Let us listen to the report of the Being who has been in charge of the vehicle on the planet."
Third Being: "Currently my agent is in a quandary. I need this conference to know in what direction he is to move next. The vehicle that he inhabits is now in a deep trance state and is willing to share with us the sources of this quandary.
"As you both know he has a carefully constructed cover story in which he has invested a good deal of time, effort, and training. All three of us are well acquainted with the rather arduous steps that he has been taking in his human form. There have been many times when he has lost contact with me, has repressed his knowledge of me, and has had to be guided through his unconscious mind. There were times when he had too much knowledge of me, necessitating repression so that he could continue to function as an acceptable human being in the society in which he lives. His main worry at times was being made persona non grata by his fellow humans in various fields of endeavor. "He went through a process which humans call psychoanalysis. Psychoanalysis to us is a means of educating humans in how to remain human, at the same time keeping sufficient independence of that state so as to be aware of our existence. Psychoanalysis also furnishes the human agents with the current rationalizations and basic assumptions upon which humans operate. It helps them develop their cover story so that they will not reveal our existence or our influence. It allows them to reconstruct their past history and understand it in terms of the present human society.
"In the area of self-awareness, his awareness of me, of his deeper self, our agent is on the threshold of recognizing us and our influence on him.
"In his brain research he has discovered the difference between small brains (monkeys) and large brains (human and dolphin). He has realized that in order to do research on the brain and the mind, he must work in an institution which he himself controls, insofar as is possible in the current human reality. He sees that human society interacts with him in a way that allows certain areas of research and not others. He realizes that the laboratory work in relation to the isolation tank is difficult to support. He has learned that the brain work can be supported openly and that the tank work must be done covertly. As long as the tank work was done in solitude, he was unimpeded in the directions in which he could carry it. "He is becoming aware of the political and social realities of what he is doing. His mission to thoroughly investigate the brain with thousands of electrodes and with feedback between his own brain and its recorded activity has implications which he knows he cannot reveal at the present state of development of the human species. His analyst taught him to look more critically at this particular aspect of his mission. His work for the last five years has been in the direction of perfecting electrodes so that he can use them safely in his own brain. He found on monkeys and dolphins that this was not a safe procedure. The brain sections revealed damage along every electrode track to the extent that he would not wish to insert electrodes into himself or another human.
"From his interactions with the government agency in which he has worked, he finally realizes that the isolation tank gives him more information in more dimensions than can be absorbed by those in control.
"He now wishes to abandon the study of electrodes. They are too damaging to brains. He wants to pursue other methods not including brain electrodes or damage to either his own brain or monkey or dolphin brains.
"His work to date with dolphins has convinced him that they are quite as intelligent, quite as ethical, quite as sentient as humans.
"He realizes that his first marriage is to a person with whom he cannot share any important considerations. He wishes to obtain a divorce and hopes that he can find a dyadic partner who will share his particular aims and his particular mission."
Second Being: "What are his basic beliefs about the existence of the Third Being and about us?" Third Being: "He is oscillating between two belief systems. In the first he believes that the mind is the computational software of the brain, that the brain evolved on the planet Earth from the forebears of Man and generated Man's consciousness. In the second s,ystem, he believes in us. This belief is contaminated by his childhood faith in the soul. He has yet to develop a pure, integrated view of the mind as an entity not contained in the brain. He has yet to give up the view that the brain contains a computed :mind plus access to w through means at present unknown on the planet Earth. When he is in the isolation tank for a sufficient period of time, the second belief system begins to take over. When he is in the laboratory or dealing with the realities of the support of his research, the contained-mind belief system takes over."
Second Being: "I would like to suggest that we arrange for his education in more profound ways. He still needs to penetrate into his own mind deeply in the areas of interest to us."
Third Being: "He is making progress in that direction. Currently his plans are to establish his own laboratory in an isolated location in the Virgin Islands in the Caribbean Sea for research with intact dolphins."
First Being: "When he leaves the government and goes to the Virgin Islands, I suggest that we control the coincidences in the direction of encouraging the dolphin research. He has much to learn about the Beings known as dolphins. We must also control the coincidences in regard to his seeking a female partner for a dyed. He has much to learn here, not all of which can be taught him without some pain. He is not yet in sympathy with the female mind among humans on his planet. He projects too much of himself, not realizing that there are two universes of humans, male and female. Nor is he aware that in the human social reality there are many substructures of the male-female relationship. In his first marriage he was more or less detached. He must now learn to attack negatively to find the parameters of balance in the dyadic domain."
Second Being: "It is felt that coincidences must be regulated to help him continue the isolation work under better circumstances. We shouldalso arrangeforhimtouse LSD-as inthe tank."
Third Being: "We must continue our cover of our existence in his mind: if he is too aware of us at his current stage of training, he will be unable to operate in the human realities. I suggest that we temporarily cut off his awareness of us until later, when he is better prepared to deal with our existence."
First Being: "Let us adjourn this conference and :meet at some future time in regard to our business with this agent."
