Sanctuary written by EMC² Founders
Stephen Lewis & Evan Slawson
Table of Contents

All rights reserved © 1998 Stephen Lewis & Evan Slawson. This material may
not be reprinted for a fee without the written consent of the copyright owners.



Prologue

WHAT IF one day you woke up and realized the world was different than you thought -- vastly different? What if you found yourself in the middle of a scientific and spiritual revolution that challenged the very foundations of everything you know about the world around you? What if your sense of certainty about your separateness in the universe could be shattered by the direct experience of oneness with all things? What if that scientific revolution was really a revolution in human consciousness?

How would you feel if the things in your life that block you, slow you down, stop you from being what you've always wanted to be could be vanished? What if your awareness of your connectedness to all things became an earthshakingly positive experience of the flow of energy in the universe through your mind, body and spirit? If the path to consciousness could be traveled in an instant, would you be ready? Could you step through the looking-glass to see the world as it really is if it meant throwing away your old ideas?

This book is about how I experienced beyond a shadow of a doubt that the world is the way the mystics have said it is. It tells the story of a journey I took. It was a literal and a metaphorical journey in which, step by inexorable step, I came to a place where the truth about the way things really are could no longer be denied. In this place, the energy of the universe surged through me and moved me like a breaker at the beach moves a surfer on a board. You can fight it if you want, and sometimes you manage to get through the breakers to the waves beyond, but there's always another big one coming, and sooner or later it'll get you.

This is the one that got me.




Jane
IN JANUARY of 1996, the size of Jane's universe was precisely defined. It was exactly 4.5 centimeters and located in her uterus. Her greatest fear was that her universe would expand as was already suspected. Apparently, it was expanding into her breasts, her lungs, her brain and her bone marrow. She took no comfort in the fact that the more it expanded the less she would weigh, like some kind of blimp. By now, this 4.5-centimeter asymmetrical tumor was her entire universe: physical, mental, emotional and spiritual. She had no capacity for pleasure. All she had left was this single dark center of consciousness.

In the cold light emanating from the center of that universe, love was out of the question. Even sex... If her universe demanded motion, she went from doctors to gurus to faith healers to charlatans. Now she was on her way back to her doctor. Six weeks of chemotherapy had left her pale, drained and hairless. She felt shaky, weak and alone as she pulled her car into the parking lot at the Pasadena Cancer Clinic.

The glass doors slid apart, admitting Jane from the warm afternoon into the fluorescent overdesigned sterility that felt something like that cold light inside her. Odd how pale the receptionist seemed, looking up and reflecting a wan smile as she recognized Jane from many previous visits. Automatically, numbly, Jane took her usual position in a corner chair, near the magazines, with their hopeful pictures of perfect houses, futures that might be hers, if only they could fit into that tiny universe inside her.

"Doctor will see you now." Another familiar face, a nurse, Jane couldn't think of her name as she dutifully followed into the catacomb of examining rooms. But they turned as soon as they entered, and instead of an examining room, Jane found herself in the doctor's office, staring at a brown desk with a few clinical forms scattered on the glass surface. The wall behind the desk was plastered with degrees, licenses and certifications from the most respected institutions and authorities, as if to reassure that she was in the best of hands, that the care she was receiving was the finest possible within the scope of human knowledge, even of human possibility. The nurse closed the door behind her and Jane waited out the "now" she was promised. That now was an eternity while she carried that universe inside her, but how could these people, these health professionals know. Their job, Jane knew, was to grease the gears in a machine that was bigger than any of them. Her unvoiced fear was that it was a machine that was out of control, that would run over them -- run over her -- at any moment.

The door opened again and Dr. Walker walked in behind her, crossed to his chair and sat down composing his face. Bad news. Jane knew it immediately. She'd seen it enough times. His mouth started moving but no sound came out. There was a ringing in Jane's ears, like the roar of a train or a waterfall, maybe the amplified rush of blood through the capillaries in her eardrums. Maybe it was her own voice screaming......



The Road
AN HOUR LATER we were heading east out of Los Angeles in my Jeep. Terry had wanted us to drive her Volvo, but based on the vague directions Max had left me, I thought we needed something that would go anywhere. Jane was sleeping fitfully in the back seat and Terry was staring out into the night. That left me alone with the road, the car and the thoughts in my head.

I hadn’t seen Max in months. He left for the wilderness like some modern John the Baptist. Unlike John the Baptist, he had not yet returned and he also left a standing invitation to join him at any time. A full schedule of being a shill for dancing toilet paper and singing mayonnaise had prevented my embarking on that particular adventure, though I had managed to cultivate a sunburn in Mexico on one otherwise forgettable weekend away from the grind. Now, things in the gee-whiz biz were suffering, or maybe I was suffering, so I had backed off from the greater cause of building media careers for assorted consumer goods in order to scale the mountain of self-doubt and ennui. Jane’s crisis was a first-class excuse for me to attempt my acrobatics of consciousness in some quiet corner of the great outdoors. Max’s preliminary descriptions of the rustic accommodations on his newly purchased hideaway left me vaguely hoping he had at least fixed the roof.



As the low rumble of the Jeep’s V-8 floated us far into the great western desert, I thought about how far things had come to be headed this way at all. My friend Max had been a successful doctor with a large and still-growing practice when his interests in various healing practices led him into other areas. Over time, he covered many disciplines in great depth. These disciplines included acupuncture, biofeedback, oriental medicine, ayurveda and homeopathy. Gradually, these interests eclipsed his more conventional training.

Little by little he incorporated previously-existing methodologies and systems and then developed his own methods of analysis. He began measuring what he called “subtle energies.” These energies, though incredibly tiny and difficult to measure, combine in the infinite multiplicity of the universe to become the greatest and most powerful energies, ranging from the nuclear holocaust that we call the sun, to the breath of life in our bodies. Each thing that existed could be identified by its unique energetic “fingerprint,” if only one knew how to read it. Max had figured this out to an unprecedented level of detail. Using his knowledge of physics and electronics he began delving into the application of computers to this new area.

His system made it possible to do phenomenally complex energetic analysis very rapidly. Most remarkable, expanding on techniques which had been used by homeopaths for over a hundred years, Max developed the ability to use frequencies to identify and neutralize the unique energetic signatures associated with many maladies. Well, that’s not strictly true... The strict truth is that he’d developed the ability to use subtle energy frequencies to identify and neutralize the energetic signatures associated with virtually all maladies. Though, as he constantly emphasized, it was not considered scientifically correct to presume that the frequency and the physical disease were the same thing.

I had met Max through a mutual friend. Through Terry actually. At that time, I was a rundown mess. I was physically and emotionally burned out from long shooting schedules, doing work that often wasn’t aligned with what I really wanted to do. Yoga, which I had practiced for years, fell out of my life because I was simply too tired. Then my digestion went awry. Food didn’t agree with me. My skin suddenly changed from smooth and elastic to scaly, dry and itchy. I had never had allergies to anything, but it seemed like I was becoming allergic to everything. I constantly had a sore throat. My back hurt. I felt lousy all the time. I didn’t know where to turn, either.

I had given up on MD’s nearly twenty years earlier. Sometime in my early sex life, I had contracted a disease which manifested a small amount of pus for a few days, along with painful urination. No, it wasn’t gonorrhea. Too obvious. So for a year, I underwent culture tests and blood tests and took antibiotics and shots of gamma globulin. The results were always the same: no change. The diagnosis was always the same, too: “nonspecific urethritis.” This meant they agreed I actually had a disease, but they had no idea what it was. Though the painful urination went away, the disease didn’t.

A period of employment as night librarian at a medical school gave me an opportunity to pore through textbooks and course materials as well as watch instructional videos on techniques and procedures. Slowly it dawned on me just how much doctors had to know in order to know nothing at all. Their detailed explanations of metabolism and body function and neural function, etc., were at best merely descriptions of biological processes. These descriptions substituted detail for understanding. Comparing the dogmatic authority doctors wield in our lives with the information I had at my fingertips, I finally realized the pointlessness and uselessness—and sometimes dangerousness—of the advice and potions they dispensed. Even their primary weapon, antibiotics, had lost its power, a fact that epidemiologists freely acknowledged. I found myself further discouraged by their willingness to march blindly and obediently in lockstep with the party line: Though most people weren’t aware of it, MDs weren’t allowed to make their own judgment about handling their cases. Instead, they were forced by state, federal and insurance company regulations to hew a narrow course of prescribed solutions to almost every condition, whether those solutions worked or not. In addition, they were unwittingly perpetrating a sinister conspiracy, that their dogma was the only truth. Their work as healers was over and their work as minions of a technocracy had begun. In my case, despite their assurances, platitudes and prescriptions, my symptoms persisted. Inevitably, in the absence of being run over by a truck, I gave up on MDs for good.

So I suffered with my ailments and sadly chalked it up to the aging process. But I knew it was something else, something more concrete. I just didn’t know who might be able to identify it or deal with it. That was where Terry came in. I had met Terry when she played a very nice-looking can of tuna in a national spot that I was directing. We became friends. One day over drinks she told me about Max, a doctor she was going to who could deal with allergies effectively.

“So he’s some kind of allergist?” I asked. “I’ve been to them.”

“Not exactly,” she replied. “He actually deals with anything. That’s his specialty. For example, I used to have herpes and now I don’t.”

“He cured you of herpes?” I asked, cynically.

“He says he didn’t,” Terry told me. “But all I know is I don’t have outbreaks anymore and I don’t take drugs for it.”

“How does he explain that?”

“He says the frequency of herpes is gone and if I want the disease diagnosed or treated, I should go to a doctor.” She shrugged, coyly, and took a sip from her mai-tai. “But why bother since I never have outbreaks. I’m sure you’re glad to hear that.”

I was. “Did he take you off your drugs?”

“No,” she said, “he’ll never do that. He says it’s between me and my doctor. But I just didn’t think I needed them anymore and I guess I was right.”

I’d heard enough. “I want to see this guy.”

“And I want you to see him,” she said, “if you’re going to be seeing me.”

She gave me the phone number and said she would provide the necessary referral, because he accepted new business only via direct personal referral by existing clients.

I called immediately and was told that there were no appointments available until October. It was February. I booked it anyway. It might be great, I reasoned, if I lasted until October. In the meantime, I got worse. Every month or so I called to see if somebody had canceled, hoping an earlier appointment might open up. On a particularly bad day when my face was swollen and my throat was sore and I felt like I’d been sleeping in a poison ivy patch, I called again. Still nothing. But luck was on my side. Half an hour later, Max’s office called back to tell me that someone had canceled an appointment for the next day.

I showed up at the office which was in a small building in Santa Monica. For a change I was on time. I had been warned that being late was unacceptable and missing my appointment meant I would never be seen again. The attitude in his office was that those transgressions endangered others who might have used the time to improve their own well-being.

“People sometimes die before they get their chance to go to him,” Terry had confided.

When I was led into his office, it was nothing like I expected, though I had no idea what to expect. It was pleasant and simple and I was offered a chair on the opposite side of Max’s desk. Max was nothing like I expected either, though my expectations of him exactly matched my expectations of his office. He was powerfully built, in his fifties, with short dark hair and a steady gaze.

“Let’s see your thumb,” he said.

Confused, I hesitated.

“That’s the finger closest to your shoulder,” he said pleasantly.

“I know which one it is,” I said, sticking it out like a hitchhiker.

“Just trying to be helpful.” He looked at my thumb. “Great. Now open your other hand.”

I did and he dropped a shiny metal cylinder into it. The metal cylinder had a wire attached to it. He hit a few buttons on a keyboard and the computer monitor on his desk filled with a spreadsheet-like grid full of cryptic abbreviations. He grabbed my thumb with one hand, and picked up a pointing device with a brass tip attached to another wire with the other hand. He pressed the brass tip against a spot on the side of my thumb. The computer made an electronic whooping noise. I stared at the monitor, trying to comprehend what he was doing.

“What does that mean?” I asked.

“It means you’re still alive.” he replied.

For the next forty-five minutes, Max tapped keys on the keyboard, pressed the pointing device against my thumb and listened to the whooping noise. It was accompanied by a visual reference, a kind of meter on the side of the screen. Screenful after screenful of the abbreviations flitted by and he made comments occasionally as he worked.

“What is your dominant weakness?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I replied.

“I wasn’t asking you.” Max grinned. “I was telling you what question I was asking the machine.”

A few screens later he said, “You have back pain, right?”

Definitely not, I told him.

“Sure you do. Up between your shoulder blades.”

I insisted that my back was fine. I was thinking about my lower back, which I gratefully had always been on good terms with.

“No, no. Up higher, between the shoulder blades,” he repeated.

Suddenly it clicked. “You mean thoracic pain,” I agreed.

“How am I supposed to know if you know a thoracic vertebrae from the exit to your gastrointestinal system?” he laughed.

I explained that I thought he was talking about lumbar pain. Then I told him that for years I’d had regular chiropractic adjustments for a thoracic vertebra that refused to stay adjusted.

“It’s hard to adjust and the pain comes back in about an hour,” he offered.

I was amazed. How did he know?

“You have a frequency imbalance which usually manifests itself like that,” he said. “It’ll be gone in a few days.”

Well, okay. What could I say? I thought I was going to some kind of allergy specialist. I had no idea what I was in for. I tried to follow the screens as he flipped through each one, applying the pointer to my thumb. It was nearly impossible. Too much information on each screen made for quick overload. Meanwhile, Max kept telling me about myself.

“You have the frequency of cancer on...” Max paused as he flipped to another screen. “Your mother’s side.” He put the pointer down. “Is there cancer in your mother’s family?”

My mother had been battling cancer for ten years, I acknowledged.

“You should understand that the things I am finding don’t constitute a clinical diagnosis of disease.” Max studied my reaction as I waited for him to continue. “What I do is find energetic imbalances, i.e. subtle energy frequencies which various alternative practitioners may have associated with disease, but are not in themselves evidence of disease.” He waited again.

I didn’t understand, if understanding meant some profoundly deep grasping of the ideas he was presenting, but I had done yoga for many years and had some interesting experiences of both subtle and not-so-subtle manifestations of the movement of inner energies. These inner energies and their movements are largely unexplained outside of the yogic disciplines. So I nodded and he expounded further.

“Your body is telling me that you have the potential — let's call it the energetic potential — for cancer. In other words you have a certain pattern of energy in the field of energy that makes up your bodymind. It is my belief that this particular pattern is a precursor or seed or template that can manifest over time as the energy of an actual cancer. This energetic potential is hereditary and you got it from your mother’s side of your family. The energetic potential can and will be removed. As a result of its removal, I believe it will be difficult for your body to support the energy specific to manifesting an active physical cancer. In classical homeopathy, this energetic potential for disease has been recognized for more than a century. Homeopaths call hereditary energetic potentials miasms. The frequency which indicated your back pain is different. It isn’t a miasm. It’s an energetic imbalance which, energetically speaking, you acquired and has become active. By application of the correct balancing frequency to counter the active imbalance, the imbalance disappears.” Max paused. “Technically, of course, since I don’t diagnose or treat disease, if your back pain goes away, you should consider it a coincidence.”

I looked at him, questioning.

“Just trying to be helpful by putting it in the right box,” he shrugged. “Seems most people view life as an unwieldy clump of coincidences. The ones who think things happen on purpose are probably just paranoid.”

Back to the machine: More of my long-time complaints were identified by Max. He looked up. “You have the frequency of an infection in the frequency of your urethra.”

For a moment, I was dumbfounded, then I remembered the so-called non-specific urethritis. In the midst of all my more current woes, I had forgotten about a sexually-transmitted infection I had contracted so long ago. I had always known it was there, but after giving up on doctors I had given up on the non-specific urethritis.

“You’re finding that in the frequency of my thumb?” I waved my hand.

“No,” he said. “That’s actually your thumb.”

Max pressed a few more buttons, ran through a few more screens. “You’ve had this a long time. Maybe twenty years.”

I told him about the history of my unidentified infection.

“The vibrational imbalance that I’ve detected will go away within a few days,” he said.

“How about the symptoms?” I asked.

“I believe you can look forward to experiencing a coincidence.”

After Max was done with me, his girlfriend Jennifer took me into her office, where she produced a series of bottles of clear liquid which had droppers in their lids. She punched up each of the energetic things Max had identified on a similar computer at her desk. One at a time, she placed each bottle on a metal plate which was wired through some electronic boxes to the computer she was using.

“These are your remedies,” she said. “The computer is imprinting subtle energy frequencies into the bottles. They are balancing energies which help you to counteract and remove your energetic imbalances. The energetic imprint lasts about a month. Don’t expose the remedies to magnetic fields, like airport metal detectors, because they can erase the imprinted frequencies.”

She explained how to take the remedies by first “activating” the energy in them by tapping them against my hand, then putting ten drops under my tongue. I had to do this every half hour for the first day, every two or three hours on the second day, then three times a day for the next four days. Some of the bottles were smaller and were to be taken on a different schedule.

“These are for your hereditary frequencies. Take three drops before bed, but only use one bottle per night.”

I was curious why. She told me that some people found it uncomfortable when miasms were being released. “Many people report that they have very vivid dreams and often they have aches and pains generated by the release of their miasms.”

Not knowing what to expect, other than Terry’s tireless advocacy of whatever it was Max did, I began what was to become a ritual as I took these drops day and night for the next few weeks. In addition, I had to avoid mint before and after taking the drops. I had to avoid food for half an hour before and after and avoid water for fifteen minutes before and after.

But as the weeks passed, I found that all the problems I had been experiencing fell away. For the first time in years, I had lots of energy. Emotionally I felt great. The long-time symptoms related to the non-specific urethritis were gone. My reaction to all this was amazement.

A month later, I went back for a follow-up visit. He found a few more things. Everything he found was accompanied by a description of what I should be feeling according to the presence of that particular energetic frequency. He was always right on. Max told me that energetic work was like peeling away the layers of an onion. As each outer layer was removed, it revealed another layer underneath it.

I wanted to know more about what he was doing. Jennifer recommended a book on “vibrational medicine,” which I purchased on my way home. As I sat back to take my drops, I started reading. The book described a large body of well-documented historic and recent techniques for energetic diagnosis and for remedying accompanying imbalances, and gave illustrations that were easy to understand and on some level made sense. The techniques described weren’t the same thing as what Max was doing to me. But they showed me that there were others who believed in and worked with subtle energy phenomena. Max seemed to have achieved an undreamed-of level of precision with his approach to this work. My reaction to the information in the book was mixed: I knew that if I hadn’t already experienced for myself that Max’s techniques worked I would think that the book was the biggest load of crap I had ever read. But now, in the face of the reality I had already experienced, it provided information that helped me understand that the incredible work Max was doing was at least possible.

In the years before I got into the commercials business, I had worked with computers and had developed an unusual set of skills. As I watched Max work, I was alternately amazed at his accomplishments and appalled at his relatively primitive tools — by my standards, that is. I urged him to allow me to make some changes. At first, Max ignored everything I said. Finally one day, I irritated him enough that he actually asked just how I would do it. I suggested a number of procedural changes, to start with. I came back the next day with some floppy disks and installed some software on his computer. He tried it, looked at me and said “You’re actually right.” It was faster, better, more efficient. That began a new dimension in our relationship. And eventually Max routinely asked my advice about implementing changes. Ultimately, Max became dependent on me to keep up with a technology that changed schizophrenically. And even though I was out of the computer business, I continued to provide my expertise for his particular and very unusual applications. In the process we became close friends.

In the years since I had first met Max, it was as if a plague had begun to take over the world. AIDS had become one of the biggest killers in the country, crossing lines of gender, sexuality and location. Recent murmurings from various official sources began to hint that it was no longer just limited to transmission by bodily fluids like blood and semen. The sinister word was that saliva was a threat as well and that HIV, the rapidly mutating retrovirus reputed to cause AIDS, might have even mutated to become an airborne strain, as was possible with any retrovirus. Tuberculosis was ubiquitous to the point where television news reports warned about contracting the disease on long plane flights. Some news reports called Southern California the tuberculosis capital of the United States, saying the incidence of infection there was as high as eighty-five percent of the population due in part to lax inspection practices in Southern California’s beef slaughterhouses. According to these reports, carcasses with visible sores could not be disqualified as sellable until a lab report proved the presence of TB. The necessary tests took weeks; in the meantime the carcasses were butchered and sold. Other diseases, like the Hanta virus and Lyme disease and the dreaded African hemorrhagic fevers including Marburg, tacaribe and Ebola were found throughout the United States, although reported only in relatively isolated cases. Headlines blared news about people getting hepatitis from infected strawberries, hemorrhagic E. coli from hamburger, mercury toxicity from fish, and aluminum from grated cheese. All over the world, people would read the paper and, in desperation, delete one food after another from their diets. An entire high-priced food industry had arisen by advertising “disease-free, contaminant-free” food. Food processing companies were alternately scrambling to add preservatives to extend the shelf-life of their products, then scrambling to remove them when they proved to be carcinogenic. In California, forests were routinely closed to campers due to epidemics of bubonic plague, a.k.a. yersinia pestis, the scourge of medieval Europe, in the rodent populations.

I remember Max laughing about that.

“If they’re going to close the campgrounds, they have to close the Hollywood Hills and the Santa Monica Mountains and the whole of Los Angeles—especially Beverly Hills and Malibu—while they’re at it,” he said. “They think the fleas and squirrels don’t migrate? That they stay in the parks and forests, respecting the boundaries? Maybe they think the rats can read. If so, they should make little signs, in Rode-ish, saying ‘Achtung rodents und vermin! Private property! Verboten!’”

The medical system was overwhelmed and, worse, was usually unable to identify or treat the diseases which were traveling throughout the country. Though the doctors in the trenches of the war on disease routinely prescribed antibiotics, they failed to obtain the tests required to accurately identify the infecting organisms. Because antibiotics are relatively specific to each organism, they were rarely matched correctly. Even worse, the improper use of these drugs, both in humans and in the animals grown for meat, had resulted in the once-susceptible organisms becoming vaccinated against the effects of antibiotics. Now, almost laughably, some microorganisms had become dependent on antibiotics and would thrive until the patient stopped taking the antibiotics, at which point the organisms would die without them. Medical researchers in the field of epidemiology had concluded that all antibiotics were now totally ineffective, despite their continued use by medicine men. Nobody I knew felt well anymore. Nobody, that is, except Max’s clients. His energetic practice had grown to several thousand people who depended on his energetic balancing techniques to sustain them.

Though Max continued to stress that energetic imbalance was not necessarily correlated to disease, it appeared not to be unrelated. I knew that whenever I felt unwell, a visit to Max and the dutiful taking of drops always resulted in feeling better. The frequencies he detected usually were associated with some disease, though they were not, as Max pointed out, the disease themselves. But if these frequencies were any indication, the prevalence of serious disease was even greater than that recognized by medical authorities. After all, without explicit and specific testing, doctors could only guess at the organisms underlying such vague descriptions as “cold” and “flu.”


* * *



We were hours out of the city. A stream of signs blurred by, trumpeting the colorful names of the one-horse desert towns which dotted the series of desert basins we were passing through. Their names usually told the story of their origin. Garlock and Ludlow and Amboy were old whistle stops where steam trains had stopped for water long ago, now reduced to ruins sometimes decorated with rusting automobiles and a few mobile homes. Others with names like Lodestone, Leadville, Goldfield, Iron Mountain and Silver City once supported the mining of the rich mineral deposits which made the sparsely vegetated land both so stark and so majestic. South Fork, Deep Valley and Devil’s Hole were named for their geography. Names like Caliente and Baker were wry comments on the local weather. As the sun began to wash the sky in the east, we turned off the main highway following the vague directions Max had given me. This turn was the last of the actual instructions. From this point, the directions were some form of riddle. “Get the monkey off your back” was the next clue.

The stiff springs in the Jeep betrayed every bump on the shoulderless two-lane road and Terry soon stirred in the passenger seat beside me. I glanced at her as she stretched herself, then turned to look at Jane, sleeping deeply in the back seat. She turned back to me, her face creased with worry.

“Should I drive faster?” I quipped, trying to cheer her up.

“Just keep your eyes and the car on the road,” she said without a trace of humor.

She stared out into the desert, watching it light up in the pinks and golds of dawn. We were in an area of gently rolling land, laced with arroyos and spotted with outcroppings of granite the size of small houses, rounded smooth by millennia of exposure to the harsh desert winds and the floods which sometimes bore down out of the mountains looming up ahead. The road had been arrow-straight for more than twenty miles, but now it was starting to twist and curve gently as it headed into the hills. Ahead of us, it snaked into the distance and disappeared.

“This is the middle of nowhere,” Terry commented.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” I replied.

“How much farther?”

I glanced at her. “I have a confession to make. I don’t have any idea where we’re going from here.” I tossed her Max’s letter. “Check this out.”

She scanned the letter. “This is weird. Is he out of his mind?”

“Maybe this is the only way he knows to get there,” I teased.

“Maybe he’s trying to prevent lesser beings from finding him,” she answered. “And he’s succeeding, I think.”

Ignoring her, I scanned the pre-dawn horizon looking for some solution. The distant ridgelines were going to be our destination, it seemed.

“Look for something shaped like a monkey.” I indicated the edge of the sky.

Her eyes followed the highway until it dissolved in the shadowy depths of the desert, then on to the mountains. We drove in silence a bit, then she pointed a slender finger.

“What about that?”

I tried to make out the shape she was indicating. “I don’t see it.”

“Look at the flat-topped mountain—”

“The mesa...”

“The mesa,” she continued. “Then follow it to the left, there’s kind of a dome-shaped part. Maybe that’s it.”

“I don’t buy that’s a monkey. How about that set of spires over there? Can you picture it as a monkey raising its arms?”

She looked and laughed. “It looks like a collection of sea shells.”

“Maybe we just have to drive further.” I stepped into the gas pedal so the jeep would eat the miles and quickly spit them out the back.

“We’re not lost, are we?” Terry looked concerned.

I tossed her the map and quickly tapped our location as she unfolded it. “We’re here.”

She studied the map. That gave me an idea.

“Those markings,” I showed her, “Those are the topographical shapes of the mountains. Look for a monkey shape in the contours of the mountains as seen from above.”

She pored over the swirling lines. “There’s nothing here,” she concluded.

“It’s got to be here,” I replied. “Max wouldn’t just lead us on some wild goose chase.”

“No,” she pointed to the map. “Nothing. It’s a town. It’s near here. There’s another one called Empty. Dry. Rhesus. Gorp. These are weird names.” She looked closer to read another name.

“Wait!” I shouted. “What did you say?”

“I said these are weird names.”

“Before that!”

“The names—Dry, Gorp, Rhesus—”

“That’s it.” I slammed my hand on the wheel. “Rhesus is a type of monkey.” I looked at her. “There’s really a town called Rhesus?”

She showed me the map and sure enough, it was there. It lay at the end of a tangled web of back roads leading deep into the high desert mountains.

“Keep your eyes on the road,” she cautioned.

“You navigate,” I replied.

Rhesus. Jesus. I didn’t want to know what it was named for. I was just glad we were on track. The miles howled away behind us. We followed a series of turns and the road began to climb. As we crested the last of the low foothills, a green valley spread out below us, an oasis in the desert. Pleasant rectangles of cultivated crops checkered the bottomlands. On the other side of the valley lay what I presumed was the town of Rhesus. It sprawled part-way up into the hills behind it, gleaming white in the light of morning. From this distance it looked like a hillside village in a mythical land that time forgot, Mykonos or Corfu for instance. I glanced at Terry. She was smiling, more comfortable at the sight of civilization after miles of nothing. We soon lost our view of it as the road took us down to the valley floor.

Twenty minutes later Terry and I were comfortably ensconsed at a table in a sterile chrome and glass cafe that could be mistaken for an operating room, if not for the large view windows overlooking a lush nine-hole desert golf course and the steaming bowls of cappuccino on the table in front of us. Jane was still asleep in the truck; we had elected to let her rest, leaving a note on the dashboard telling her where we were.

To Terry’s dismay, Max’s new abode was not in town. He had used this place as the jumping off place for a further series of riddles which would lead us to him. Not knowing how long it would be before we found him, I filled the gas tank and suggested fueling our stomachs before continuing the journey. The town turned out to be a conglomerate of modern and Spanish-style buildings. None of the restaurants around the town square was open, so we drove around until we stumbled across the golf course and its cafe.

Our fellow diners had an average age of a hundred and seven, judging loosely by the gray hair, wrinkled skin and nightmarish pale plaid, white-shoed outfits they wore in preparation for their tee times. We got a few stares but they soon returned to their lost-ball-in-the-rattlesnake-infested-mesquite stories. The narrow greens dog-legged through rough terrain featuring ocotillo, tall cacti, jagged granite and, one would presume, the occasional rattlesnake. Terry stirred her coffee and I stirred my oatmeal, hoping the cereal would settle the queasy stomach I had developed on the long ride.

“Why did he leave?”

She was asking about Max. I pretended to ignore her, poring over the rough scrawl which held the clues to our destination. A light but well-placed whack on the shin shifted my attention.

“Don’t ignore me,” she said. “He must have told you.”

But I wasn’t sure I should tell her. Max had taken me into his confidence and explained a lot of the depth of the energetic work that he was doing.

All along, he insisted that it was something other than medicine. That was a point that was always a bone of contention between us. To me, it was medicine, even though the explanations were more esoteric and used substantially different methodologies. When he said “frequency” I heard “disease.” But he steadfastly denied it. These arguments would invariably end with an agreement to disagree.

Little by little, though, I realized Max was taking a path even I couldn’t understand. At first, I thought he was just plain wrong. The resistance he encountered from the medical community led him further and further into his energetic alternatives. Finally he declared that the western system of medicine was incurably limited by its false beliefs in a universe governed by Newtonian physics. Material realism is what he called it. In principle, I agreed, but urged him not to abandon attempts to get academic recognition of his work, so it could be made available to the endless hordes of the sick.

“You get it and you don’t get it,” he said. “You abandoned your own beliefs in western medicine long before you met me, then try to tell me you want me to waste my time convincing them that they’re all wrong. Why don’t you do it yourself?”

I didn’t have an answer.

“Your problem,” he continued, “is that you’re still stuck in paternalism: You still want to please them. You still want agreement from these so-called authority figures. We’ve been through this over and over. Nothing has changed. You’re like a Model-T mechanic trying to fix a supercomputer. Why is it unacceptable for you to have a negative frequency? Why do you have to give it a name like Hansen’s Disease? Did Hansen give it to you? If you can’t breathe, who cares if it’s called a Koch bacillus? I identify frequencies, not micro-organisms. Maybe there are problems which have no frequency associated with them, in which case you need to see an MD, because I deal with frequencies. If you have a problem with no frequency, I can’t help you. On the other hand if you have a frequency imbalance I can help you, but I can’t tell you whether or not you have a micro-organism because I don’t measure those. Maybe you’re tired because of a frequency you have, or maybe it’s because Mr. Epstein and Mr. Barr attacked you. If it’s the latter, you should pay them a visit.”

He went on to talk about Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle: In the late 1800’s, Werner Heisenberg, a German scientist, had developed a mathematical model which showed that we could only know either the position or the momentum of an electron, but never both, because to know one factor not only destroyed our capability to calculate or know the other factor but it did so because it actually eliminated the existence of the other factor. Though it described subatomic phenomena, it applied equally well to so-called “real-world” events. For instance, if we know how fast a train is moving, we cannot say with certainty where it is, because it is, in fact, moving. In order to determine the precise position of the train, we must destroy its momentum, its forward speed. At the moment we fix its position, its speed can no longer be known with certainty. As soon as we try to determine its speed again, our certain knowledge of its position evaporates.

“Oddly enough,” Max pointed out, “many of my clients have experienced a parallel to this. Medical diagnosis of their condition seems to become more ambiguous as their energetic balance changes.” He smiled. “Perhaps we should think of their medical diagnosis as their position and their energetic balance as their momentum.”

Over time he went further and further out there in terms of his work with frequencies. He told me about measuring frequencies of more ethereal things, metaphysical things.

“Are they real?” I asked him.

“What does that mean?” he challenged. “Every frequency is real. Your question is ‘Is it relevant?’”

“Your work with identifying real physical things using subtle-energy techniques is fine,” I said, as if my approval was needed to validate his work. “But now you’re identifying frequencies of things which otherwise aren’t known to exist. How do we know these things are real?”

Max eyeballed me and I couldn’t tell whether he was even taking me seriously or not. Finally, he replied. “You’ve opened a can of worms if you really want me to address your question. First we have to ask: Is reality an objective fixed thing or is it culturally biased, something created out of consensus? If it’s objective, then are we capable of perceiving it objectively? Linguistically, you’re in a bind because you might be implying that you can subjectively see something objective and you’re caught in a paradox.”

As I struggled to come up with a rebuttal, he continued. “Can you perceive the universe? It’s bigger than your vision. It’s bigger than your concept of it, unless you expand considerably. If you can’t contain it, or stand outside of it to see it clearly, you lose all hope of true objectivity. In other words, to answer your question, if it can be detected it has reality. Even if you can only perceive an abstract of it, rather than its entirety.”

“What do you mean by ‘detected?’” I asked.

“Perceived,” he replied.

As I thought about it, he continued: “We’ve been using the word see as a synonym for perceive. That’s an important point as well. What if you can’t see it? What if it has to be perceived in another way? Thousands of years ago, Plato said ‘Take a look round, then, and see that none of the uninitiated are listening. By the uninitiated I mean the people who believe in nothing but what they can grasp in their hands, and who will not allow that action or generation or anything invisible can have real existence.’ So your dilemma isn’t new, is it?”

Still, his new direction didn’t sit right with me. “What’s wrong with maintaining a focus on a subtle-energy interpretation of the world as we know it?” I asked him.

“The world as we know it is an unnecessary limitation,” he explained. “Where would the world be if Columbus had stuck to the world as it was known then, or Galileo, or Newton, or Einstein, or Edison? We’re exploring a new frontier. I want to see how far things can go, how far the unknown river will take me.”

Finally, his exploration took him to the point where he abandoned the world of orthodox medicine altogether and totally immersed himself in the metaphysical implications of his work. He put his medical license into inactive status and closed his hugely successful medical practice. For a little while, he ran an “energetic consulting” practice which quickly became as well attended as his previous medical business. But he grew impatient with it. “I’m wasting time with the small stuff.”

“Small?” I exclaimed, incredulous. “You’re curing cancer.”

“I cure nothing. I only direct your energy. And if I can do that, why live with the limits of your perceptions?”

“What are your limits?” I asked Max.

“Hopefully, I’ll never know,” he said. “I can be satisfied with my work, but I’ll never be content with it.”

We debated further and he asked, “How many times have you told me you feel better than you’ve ever felt?”

"More than a few."

“Does each time you said that include the previous times?”

I acknowledged they did.

“What makes you think that next time won’t include this time?” he demanded.

I laughed and said I figured at this point I was perfect.

“This is serious,” Max said. “I’m on the verge of a breakthrough. I’ve found a much more subtle, tenuous and promising path and I need you to walk it with me.”

“What are you saying?” I asked.

“I’m not sure yet,” he said. “I’m still thinking it through.”

I had no idea what he was talking about, but without hesitation knew I had to be part of it.

“So where are we going?” I asked.

“We’re not sure,” he said. “But we know how to get there.”

What I knew was that he had worked miracles on me. I felt better than I ever had, so I had no need to visualize anything else. But Max was convinced that the true value of his work had not yet been realized.

Then suddenly, he disappeared. My phone rang non-stop as his clients that knew me called to ask where he had gone. I was clueless. A few weeks later I got a letter from him containing cryptic directions to his location and an equally cryptic note of triumph claiming dramatic and powerful new discoveries, along with what I can only call a “summary invitation” to see for myself. As it happened, Jane’s impending demise hastened my immediate departure.

Terry’s voice brought me out of my reminiscence.

I spooned the last of my oatmeal out of the bowl, finished my coffee and said “Let’s get out of here.”

We walked to the car. As I opened the door for her, Terry turned before getting in and grabbed my hand. She smiled at me. It felt really warm in the cool desert morning. The smile, I mean. I smiled back at her.

“You know what?” she said. “It’s really great to see you again.”

I felt the same way.





Epilogue One: The Evolution of AIM
Max and I had been working together for several years, and I had come to share his absolute passion for our work, because I couldn't imagine being involved in anything else. He had surrendered all hardware and software considerations to me, which allowed him to focus his attention on his research on developing frequencies...for balancing, increasing life force, retarding aging, immune enhancement, greater consciousness. In his words, I enabled him to "fulfill my destiny to be an idiot-savant."

We worked sixty to eighty hours a week, implemented massive, extraordinary changes in the QED, and still felt we were falling short. Max's mantra became, "We had a good day. We're only a little more behind than yesterday."

The problem was that we were caught up in an alarming trend, and it was increasing exponentially. Some imbalances were becoming so prevalent in the population that it was impossible to avoid them. Everyone had them and, unfortunately, they were willing and able to share.

For Jen, Max, the choir, our pets and the "lab rats" (close friends on whom we tried out new frequencies), and me, the problem was insignificant. We simply checked our imbalances daily on the QED and imprinted them daily.

Eventually and inevitably, we had a proprietary tray which Max called "The Hit Parade." It contained all of those pandemic, ubiquitous frequencies, many of which tested out to be either mutated, recombinant or pliomorphic, which made them difficult to identify. Every day, Jennifer would dutifully imprint our pictures for all of the fifteen or so imbalances du jour. And every day we got rid of them.

It became a casual source of surreal, dark but familiar humor among us:

"I just got the frequency of TB again. Can you feel it?"

"Sure can. Can't miss that stiff shoulder. How about you guys over there?"

"Not yet..."

"Well, wait a few minutes. It'll get there."

We weren't concerned. Jennifer and her assistants had us "cooking" on the Hit Parade tray.

Unfortunately, our clients didn't share our devil-may-care attitude. More and more often we heard, "When I'm on the computer I'm fine. As soon as I'm off, it comes back."

It didn't come back. We knew that. We could measure the time frame. They had acquired the frequency again . But they couldn't understand that -- understandably , because they lacked our privileged perspective.

Max had a growing list of people who responded to the daily grind of imbalances by asking to be checked and imprinted every day. Many more who couldn't afford the luxury of daily evaluations had themselves checked and imprinted two or three times a week.

Max was clearly frustrated by the endless hit parade of imbalances and by the growing legions of people who were suffering from them.

One day, thinking about the various things Max and I had been talking about, I had a sudden brainstorm. I went in to Max's office and sat down to talk with him. I stuck out my thumb.

"Here," I said, handing him the probe, "check me."

"I checked you this morning," he said.

"Check me again now," I insisted.

"Is something specific bothering you?" he asked.

"I've got a couple of minor issues that I think you can deal with."

Max ran through the evaluation process with me and came up with a few energetic imbalances that he said I did not have earlier.

"But those aren't exactly serious imbalances," he said. "They would go away on their own without energetic balancing."

"They'll go away quicker with energetic balancing, won't they?"

He acknowledged that they would.

I went over to one of the imprinting machines, grabbed a photograph of myself that was lying around, and put myself on for the imbalances he had just found.

Then I sat back down at Max's desk and put my thumb out again. "Check me again," I demanded.

"Are you feeling unusually paranoid today?" Max asked.

"I want to make sure I'm perfect," I said. "Or at least as perfect as possible."

Max was waiting for me to make some sense out of what I was doing, so I explained. "Is it possible that I've already acquired a new imbalance since the evaluation you just gave me?"

"Of course," he said.

"I want to deal with my imbalances as soon as I get them."

"Who wouldn't?"

"Look, Max, I basically want to get energetic balancing twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year."

"You'll have to find somebody else to do the evaluations," he said. "Because there are other people who need my help."

"I have a plan," I said.

I carefully outlined the idea I'd been thinking about.

"As I see it," I ventured, "one of the problems we have with energetic balancing is that it's difficult and expensive to deliver the balancing energies. Because of this, among other reasons, it is only possible to deliver a limited number of balancing energies at a time. Since we can only deliver a limited number of balancing energies at a time, it is mandatory to do an energetic evaluation to find out exactly which energies a person needs at any given time."

"That about sums it up," Max agreed.

"What if we built a machine that could deliver all of the balancing energies for every known imbalance?" I asked.

"What makes you think I haven't considered that?" Max snapped at me. "There are three reasons it can't be done. First of all, we can't fit that many imbalances in one imprinting computer."

"So use two computers, three...five," I answered. "Who cares how many machines it takes?"

"Fair enough," he replied. "Second, our present power settings don't support that many imbalances. But, I know. You'll change the power settings. Right?"

"Of course."

"Okay. Now, lets cut to the chase. If anyone is imprinted with thousands of frequencies at the same time, the net result of each imprinted frequency would be negligible. It's more information than consciousness can process."

"That's easy, Max" I answered. "Get a Rosetta Stone."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"Do what you do best, Max, and what only you can do. Figure out a frequency that will let each person -- via their photo -- select only those frequencies that are appropriate and ignore all the others. Just like the Rosetta stone provided the key to translating Egyptian hieroglyphics, this frequency or combination of frequencies would provide the key for the higher consciousness to select among the thousands of energies it is receiving."

Max gave me a funny look. "You're proposing an organic interaction between artificial intelligence and good taste. Is that right? Neils Bohr meets Charlie the Tuna?"

"Exactly!" I replied. "The Energetic Manifesto: To each according to his imbalance. Think about it. First of all, it would mean that it was no longer necessary to do an energetic evaluation, since the main point of the evaluation is to determine exactly which energies are needed. Second, it would be like getting an energetic evaluation many times a day. An infinite number of times, in a way."

He looked at me and said, "Congratulations. You're a quantum physicist. Now no one will understand what you're talking about."

That was the beginning of months of trial and error, measurement and experiment... always on us, because we had sullenly agreed to give up our personal trays and place our trust in AIM, which was an acronym for All-Inclusive Method. But it was AIM, because, ultimately, it was about taking aim against our imbalances, focusing our consciousness to remove the disturbances in the energetic matrix. We built new equipment, designed for the specific purpose of delivering the AIM energies with the highest possible efficiency. The new equipment was dubbed the "QID" for Quantum-Consciousness Imprinting Device.

Every few days Max would change the Rosetta Frequency, put it in the QID, then demand "more virgins," the term he used for subjects who had never had energetic balancing. Our secretaries were frantically phoning their friends and relatives, getting permission to use pictures of them and their pets for AIM.

We monitored, daily, the energetic progress of our four test groups:

1. IVs - Informed virgins, who were told about the nature of their energetic imbalances.

2. UVs - Uninformed virgins, who, obviously, were not.

3. CGVs - Control-group virgins, who had been evaluated only for eligibility, and were checked daily, but only for the frequency levels of their life-force and consciousness.

4. US - which stands for Max, Jennifer, the choir, and me.

What we found, to our delight, was this: With the addition of the Rosetta Frequency, we could provide a virtually unlimites number of balanicing energies simultaneously, and the participant, the person receiving AIM, achieved energetic balance without ever having to know which imbalance he or she was detoxing.

As Max continued to improve the efficiency of the Rosetta Frequency, and I implemented the other changes required for AIM, we began to notice some extraordinary changes.

First of all, every one of us had significant, measurable increases in the frequencies of our life-force, consciousness and immune-resistance levels.

Max attributed this to, "The more time you spend resisting an imbalance, the more of your life-force you're allocating for that purpose. When you deal with the frequency of an imbalance the moment you acquire it, it takes very little time for you to remove it, and you have more life-force available for the real purposes of your existence."

"Which are...?"

"Achieving your highest consciousness and life-force. Minimizing the separation between you and the universe. And, to do that you've got to have energy available for just that. Otherwise, it's like trying to run a marathon carrying a bowling ball. You may conceivably finish, but your time will only impress the other bowlers."

The second effect of AIM was, according to Max, even more significant, but according to all of us, far less enjoyable...and all of us, including Max, had to go through it. We called it "Energetic Detox."

We each had deep, hidden imbalances, invariably hereditary, which Max had never found under the Evaluation Method (we were already calling it the "old way"). We knew we had them, because even thought Max never found them, they were inexorably found by AIM and the Rosetta Frequency. For each of us, those base imbalances, as Max called them, began to surface, and we endured the consequent detoxing, some of us with more dignity than others.

For several weeks Max's arms and legs had an itchy rash, and it was disconcerting to talk with him while he scratched, particularly since I was in a constant state of ill humor and irritability because of the hereditary liver imbalance frequency spewing out.

Jennifer, a serious athlete, could barely get in and out of her chair as she removed the frequency of her hereditary multiple sclerosis.

"Why can't the pain just be in my picture?" she whined.

"How do you know it's not hurting?" Max asked. "You're probably just too separated from your quantum consciousness to perceive it." Then he walked over to the AIM tray and began scratching his picture.

Jennifer stalked out of the room in a slow-motion snit.

"What all of us want," Max said, "including me, is the proverbial free lunch. We want our imbalances removed without the experience. For better or for worse, it doesn't work that way. You can't become conscious of something and remain unconscious of it at the same time."

His observation was small comfort to us, as each of us grudgingly accepted the inevitability of our energetic detox process.

Interestingly enough, while some of us complained our way through our detox, others were detoxing and felt almost nothing. Inevitably, we became three distinct groups. Max dubbed one group "the insensitives." The insensitives felt nothing—no detox, no honeymoon, no good, no bad. Max said he called them the insensitives out of a sense of sour grapes, since he was part of the second group, which included Jennifer and me as well, which the insensitives referred to as "the whiners."

"The advantages to being an insensitive is obvious," Max told me. "You get the energetic benefits without a dramatic detox. We should all be so lucky."

I whined my agreement. Max laughed.

The third group was a sub-group of "the insensitives." Max call them "the doubters." Terry was a doubter. She showed up at Max's door with her thumb out, complaining she had been on AIM for a few months and hadn't felt a thing.

Max sat her down and performed a brief Energetic Evaluation. He soon learned that her life-force was rising and her hereditary imbalances were being removed, even thought she didn't feel it.

"My problem is that I'm from Missouri," she said "If I don't feel anything, I have a problem believing it's happening."

"Some people," Max said, "need more drama than others. Didn't somebody say that if you has as much faith as a mustard seed you could move mountains?"

"What does that have to do with energetic balancing?" Terry asked.

"You said you need to feel something to make you happy with your experience of AIM," Max replied. "You would see a sign."

"Right," she nodded.

"Put out your thumb again," Max said.

Terry grabbed the probe and put out her thumb, but Max shook his head.

"Put it on the desk," he told her.

She dutifully followed his instructions, pressing her digit to the melamine.

He opened his desk drawer and pulled out a hammer.

"If you need to fulfill some kind of pain quotient, hit your thumb wit this," Mad deadpanned as he handed her the tool.

When he told me about his meeting with Terry, Max was philosophical.

"Regardless," Max said, "you know you have to experience these imbalances and you want them removed now, because they are going to come out someday, one way or the other."

The "other" way Max was talking about meant this: Energetic imbalances impede the flow and expression of life force. For each of us, fighting our active and hereditary imbalances is an ongoing drain of life force energy. The normal pattern is that we use up our energy in this battle. Then when we are older and weaker and we no longer have the energetic strength to repress the expression of our hereditary imbalances, they become active imbalances, and express themselves to their fullest potential.

"I believe that this shift of hereditary imbalances to an active status is one of the biggest causes of aging," Max said. "And the loss of life-force that we experience as a result of fighting those imbalances at the hereditary level speeds up the process of aging and brings us more quickly to the day of reckoning when we lose the battle against those imbalances."

Finally, after about six months or so, the primary phase of our energetic detox was over. Max didn't itch, I wasn't angry and Jennifer reached the highest athletic performance levels of her life. And, for each of us, our life-force and consciousness levels took quantum leaps to the highest levels of our lives. Some people said that what they used to consider "feeling good" was like being sick compared to the way they felt after finishing their primary energetic detox.

Of course, we had to deal with periodic episodes of energetic detox again when Max found some previously unknown, previously unrevealedimbalances and added its balancing energy to AIM. We quickly learned that each person who had that new imbalance began detoxing it. If the imbalance was strong enough, the detox could be uncomfortable. At time, this was discouraging, but we all knew that the temporary discomfort was a small price to pay to achieve our shared goal, which was to get rid of each imbalance as soon as possible.

Max reminded us that no matter how uncomfortable is was to detox a hereditary imbalance, the discomfort was a mere shadow to the havoc it could wreak if and when that imbalance fulfilled its potential.

Max has since pointed out that we may never know all the benefits of AIM. "As soon as we find a frequency that increases the measure of life-force, consciousness, or immune resistance, or decreases the measure of aging, vulnerability, heavy metals, or parasites," he said, "it is added to AIM, and, if you need it, if it benefits you, you'll select it for as long as necessary. The energetically imprinted frequency of your universe will have changed, if your consciousness causes it to change.

For each according to his imbalance.



Epilogue Two: Up To Date
One day, almost two years after the evolution of AIM, Max and I were in his office discussing one of the most common questions people asked us as we shared with them the energetic ministry of EMC², the Energetic Matrix Church of Consciousness, which we had founded to provide Energetic Balancing in the spiritual context it demanded.

“Why do many energetic imbalances have names that are the same as or similar to many diseases?” I asked, echoing their question to Max.

Max smiled. “Everything is energy, of course. Even diseases. But in our case, we don’t actually deal with disease, as you know. That is the realm of doctors. We deal with energy and spirit, which is to say, Consciousness. As you also know, we measure energetic imbalances, which are, by definition, spiritual, which means that they exist in Consciousness. That’s the basis of our Spiritual Technology. We call it Spiritual Technology because it deals with the spirit, which is Consciousness with a capital C. If an energetic imbalance which we identify as the frequency of HIV or cancer exists in someone’s consciousness, we believe that it disturbs their energetic harmony. We also believe that it has a negative effect on their overall well-being. Obviously, we have no means to identify or treat disease. In fact it is not even relevant to us because diseases are issues to be dealt with between each person and their qualified health practitioner.

“On the other hand, if you have a frequency that we believe is the conscious resonance or spiritual essence associated with what might best be called a ‘disease entity’ in your consciousness, what we do is help you remove it by giving you the right tool. That’s why when people ask if they have a disease, I say I have no idea. And if they ask whether they should they continue taking their medications, I say, 'How would I know? Ask your doctor.' But I sincerely believe—and this is the doctrinal belief of our church—that if someone has an energetic imbalance in their consciousness and this imbalance has been identified as an energetic frequency with a disease name, I have no doubt that it affects their sense of well-being and it affects their Life Force as we measure it—that is, in units of consciousness. And anything that lowers the Life Force also lowers a person’s ability to achieve the spiritual goal of higher consciousness.”

“Or any other goal,” I added.

He pointed to several dozen photos on his desk. “I’d like you to see the results of your revelation.”

“My revelation?”

“Yes. I told you I didn’t think that the Rosetta frequency was possible, but you were obsessed with it, you were dreaming about it... and you were adamant. I know a little bit about revelations, and in the face of your absolute certainty, and considering my experiences and values, I had no choice but to assume the source of your certainty was from something bigger than you, whether I shared your vision or not. I persisted because I saw it was something you knew. And now we know that you were right, that it was right. It was revealed to you, and consequently, the AIM Program is a reality. Let me show you what I think it’s going to mean.”

Max handed me the QED ground, and I, in what was by now a Pavlovian response, stuck out my thumb.

He checked each of the photos, and each was positive for three energetic imbalances, expressed in units of consciousness on the Quantum Index, the scale that had been revealed to Max years earlier.

“So what are those three imbalances?” I asked.

“Actually,” Max replied, “they amount to one imbalance.”

“How can that be?”

“Because they are recombinant,” he said. “You know what that means, don’t you?”

“Well, recombined, obviously, but...”

“Let’s put it this way,” Max continued, “You have a goldfish and a lapdog. When you leave the house, you never worry about them mating and presenting you with a lapfish or a golddog. In nature, it’s not a threat you have to consider. What we have here are lapfishes and golddogs, which in nature are really hen’s teeth. In other words, they don’t occur in nature.”

“Don’t you think you’re being a little cryptic?” I asked him.

He laughed and said, “Probably so. This first energetic imbalance is one that we identify with the energetic frequency (not the disease) we call HIV, but it is way outside its normal range on the Quantum Index. In fact, it has properties that make it an airborne energetic imbalance.”

“Wait!” I interrupted. “Airborne energetic imbalance? What does that mean?”

“Energetic imbalances can move around in a number of ways, and many of them are similar to the ways in which diseases move around. Sometimes they are acquired the good old-fashioned way: hereditarily.”

“Just like karmic imbalances,” I added.

“Karmic issues are more subtle than the imbalances we are discussing,” Max replied. “We’re talking about gross imbalances, which can have links to karma, of course, but often are just circumstantial. But even when they’re circumstantial, you still have to deal with them.”

“So airborne imbalances are circumstantial?” I asked.

“You interrupted me,” Max said patiently. “I was about to say that in addition to acquiring imbalances hereditarily, they can also be present environmentally, meaning in people, animals, water, food, air—whatever is around you.”

“But I thought the energetic imbalances exist in Consciousness,” I remarked.

“Everything is energy and everything is conscious,” Max told me. “Most, if not all, of the great spiritual traditions say that God is in all things and what is God if not Consciousness.”

I nodded and pointed at the QED’s screen. “So after the HIV frequency, what are the others?”

“The second one has the energetic frequency of a particular hepatitis imbalance (again, and as always, not the disease), which is also capable of being airborne. The third is a totally harmless energetic frequency which shows up on the Quantum Index in the range we call ‘viral.’ When we use the QED to reveal its affects on a person’s energetic matrix, we find that that affects the energy or ‘orb’ of the skin—or, more precisely, that portion of the energetic matrix that we believe is the underlying Consciousness that manifests as skin. But this frequency has only one extraordinary property.”

Max put his hand on mine, then pulled it away and said, “It is an imbalance that is so transferable that if I have it, now you have it.”

“But if it’s harmless...”

“It is harmless, but it doesn’t exist by itself. It is recombined with these other two imbalances which are energetically far from harmless. In fact, I estimate that the entire country will have these three imbalances in a year or two, because they are recombinant, and exist as a team.”

“What does that mean?” I asked

Max probed my thumb again, and picture after picture showed the frequency of “immune deficiency imbalance.”

“Let me tell you what an energetic immune deficiency imbalance means,” Max said. “We are all born with a template for our personal energetic disaster. That template is called ‘hereditary imbalances.’ Understand that every hereditary imbalance will become active in everyone—if they live long enough.” He hesitated. “In other words, as one becomes older and weaker, one’s energetic ability—one’s energetic immune system, as it were—becomes weaker and weaker. Eventually, it gets weak enough that your disaster template, your hereditary imbalances, get the upper hand and begin to manifest themselves. That might not be too bad if somebody’s hereditary imbalances become active when they are 110 years old.”

“Unless you were hoping to have a robust old age,” I replied.

“For most people,” Max said, “that would be pretty good. But have you noticed that people are starting to fall apart at younger and younger ages?”

“You read about it all the time. Kids with cancer, that sort of thing.”

“I’m not talking about disease, of course,” Max said, “I’m just talking about energy. But what I’m seeing is that something is happening to people that is causing their energetic immune systems to be compromised at a relatively young chronological age. This means that they suddenly become biologically old. And their hereditary imbalances start to manifest because of their weakness.”

“But we don’t have any hereditary imbalances to become active, do we?” I asked.

“That’s us,” Max said, “because we’re on AIM.” He gestured at the pictures we had just tested. “But they’re not.”

“Yet,” I said.

“If you have an immune-deficiency imbalance, every hereditary imbalance becomes active within about a year, no matter what your chronological age is.” Max picked up a picture of a young boy and put it on the tray. “That’s why he now has the frequency of active malignancy, and a Life Force of seventy-one. A Life Force that low always indicates the frequency of active malignancy. And low Life Force is becoming more and more common. An interesting thing revealed by the QED is that Life Force doesn’t drop in a linear fashion. It goes from seventy or so to the mid-sixties, then goes to the forties. It skips the fifties altogether. And below forty, you're ineligible.”

“Ineligible doesn’t mean Energetic Balancing won’t work,” I pointed out. “We’ve had quite a few ineligibles whose Life Force has skyrocketed in the months after participating in the AIM Program.”

“Right,” Max said. “Ineligibility just means that we're not confident that a person has enough personal power to effect their own Energetic Balancing, even with the added boost from the AIM Program. Perhaps we should just call it ‘Low Life Force’ as a way of notifying people. But when we first started the AIM Program, less than half of one percent was in this category. Now it is almost five percent.”

“That’s amazing!”

Max was somber. “Around 10 percent of the people who have gone on AIM lately have a Life Force of around forty-five.”

I was stunned. “They’re on the edge.”

Max nodded. “And most of them know it. The good news is that now, because of AIM, we can provide Energetic Balancing for millions of people instead of only thousands.”

“But these recombinant energetic imbalances only exist in their consciousness, right?” I asked.

“Absolutely correct,” Max said. “But I find it interesting that this recombinant imbalance did not exist in anyone’s consciousness until recently, and soon it will exist in everyone’s consciousness. I’ve never seen the proverbial hundred monkeys gather so quickly before. I assume they’re using some kind of high speed communications technology.”

“The AIM Program came along just in time,” I said.

“In my experience,” Max replied, “revelations, like miracles, occur as they’re needed. It’s one of the most compelling arguments for life being a spiritual process. Now we know why your revelation was needed... and why you were so adamant about it...and why it prevailed. More coincidence. Let’s just hope our monkeys are faster than theirs.”

“How widespread is this imbalance?” I asked.

“Someone built it, so it came,” Max said. “As of now, over 98 percent of those who receive an Energetic Evaluation show the frequency of an active energetic immune deficiency imbalance in their Consciousness. Consequently, over 84 percent have the frequency of not just hereditary but active malignancy, as measured in units of consciousness, irrespective of their chronological age.”

* * *

When I first met Max, he did full, in fact, exhaustive, evaluations on every client. Of course, each client required either a separate computer or energetically charged drops. With the AIM Program, the individual computers and the drops were no longer necessary. But as the number of applicants for Energetic Balancing grew and grew without an end in sight it became logistically harder and harder to provide evaluations. Max and the “choir” switched from performing full evaluations to performing mini-evaluations, and the number of applicants continued to grow. Even the mini-evaluation became too time-intensive so Max and the choir began doing Life Force evaluations only. Still the number of people seeking Energetic Balancing continued to grow.

“Ultimately,” Max said, “there will be so many people that there won’t be any time even for Life Force evaluations.”

“What do we say when people want to know what imbalances they have?” I asked him.

“Each person gets the same AIM Program, regardless of which imbalances are found,” Max replied. “We’ve seen over and over again that you detox your imbalances at the same rate, whether or not you know their names. And the names are mostly meaningless, anyway.”

“Actual diseases are often named after the person who first identifies them,” I said.

“With energetic imbalances, I have turned that tradition on its head,” Max said. “When a previously unknown imbalance is finally revealed to us, I name it after the person in whom it was found. But the names are useless as an aid to energetic detox, and since we don’t reveal the names of participants in the AIM Program to the public, it is inappropriate to share them.”

I again grunted something about people “wanting to know.”

“What does this mean for people who are on AIM?” Max asked rhetorically. “Not a thing. Except that their curiosity will not be satisfied. In my mind, the decision is obvious. We have no choice but to help the maximum number of people, even if it means we can no longer discuss the specifics of each individual’s imbalances. Remember, an imbalance is no longer removed as a result of my finding it. It is removed because you inexorably select the balancing frequencies for each of your imbalances.”

Inevitably, some people were dissatisfied with this, and chose not to participate in the AIM Program. Max said (and I concurred), “It’s still a no-brainer. Our choice is to help as many people as we possibly can. Particularly when we consider the kinds of energetic imbalances that are prevalent in the world today. If a few people don’t want to play because they can’t have as much attention as they want, we regret their absence, but we can’t put everyone else’s ability to receive Energetic Balancing at risk because a few people want more attention.”

* * *

“I have a question.” Dr. Michaels was a surgeon who, with the rest of his family, had been participating in the AIM Program for almost a year. He had come to EMC² to see the AIM trays for himself.

“Ask away,” Max said.

“I consider myself something of an aficionado of energetic devices,” Dr. Michaels said. “I actually have a small collection of such devices that have been made over the last fifty years or so.”

“I’ve owned quite a number of them myself,” Max noted.

“Well,” Dr. Michaels continued, “I’ve been wondering why you say the QED and QID are not medical devices, even though the early energetic devices are medical devices.”

“Actually,” Max said, “historically there has been quite a consensus that energetic devices are not medical.”

“What about Rife and Voll and others like them?” Dr. Michaels pressed.

Max smiled. “Their devices were decried by the medical establishment as useless for medical purposes and, frankly, we agree with them. We believe that these devices were always spiritual in their nature, even though they were rudimentary in comparison with the state of the art that we have achieved. We believe that the earlier experimenters with energetic devices were misguided because they confused medicine with healing. Perhaps it couldn’t be helped because many of them came from medical backgrounds.”

“You yourself have a medical background,” Dr. Michaels noted.

“I have transcended it,” Max said. “And I have transcended its limitations. I was interested in medical things because I am interested in healing, but I know now that consciousness, spirituality, and healing are inseparable, although the same may not be true of medicine and healing and it certainly isn’t true of medicine and spirituality.

“I believe that all human problems—mental, emotional, and physical—as well as aspects of your life that may not at first glance seem ‘connected’ to you, are spiritual at their core. It is this core that the ministry of EMC² addresses. We call that core the ‘Energetic Matrix.’”

“But how did you take what started as a medical interest and turn it into a spiritual path?” Dr. Michaels asked.

“The exploration started with medicine,” Max said, “but the path was always spiritual, and it led me away from the medical sciences. As to how it happened, let me ask you: If a scientist has a vision or thought about God, is that vision or thought scientific or spiritual? If there is an equation involved, does that eliminate the possibility of spirituality? If a mystic is given an equation in a vision, is that equation spiritual or scientific? Does the use of technology mean something is scientific? If a holy person offers a blessing over the telephone or via television or in a book or magazine, is the blessing still spiritual? Or has it become an artifact of technology or the science that produced the technology?”

“I guess I see your point,” Dr. Michaels acknowledged. “Spiritual things can make use of technology and still remain spiritual.”

“Exactly,” Max said. “And in our case, technology and spirituality have merged. When I started working with the various kinds of energetic devices that had been created over the years, I felt there was a potential that went unfulfilled. So I relentlessly began building my own devices, but even they fell short. Until the key revelation came that transformed the equipment and the data into the Spiritual Technology it has become, the other devices were just not enough. The spiritual revelation was necessary in order to fulfill the vision I had.”

“So the earlier energetic technologies don’t work?” Dr. Michaels asked.

“Can we say that the earlier devices are unhelpful? Of course not,” Max replied. “Like a Model T Ford, the earlier devices still provide a basic service, but, like the Model T, they are obsolete. The earlier technologies can’t fulfill what is possible today with the AIM Program.”

“You said that the AIM Program acts on karma,” Dr. Michaels said. “Aren’t you concerned that you’re messing with something that shouldn’t be messed with? Something that each individual is supposed to wrestle with for him- or herself?”

“I’ve been asked this question a lot,” Max said. “I have to point out that helping people deal with karma is one of the primary tasks of religious traditions. This work follows in this time-honored practice. And let me ask you this: What if many lifetimes ago you made a pact with yourself that this path was the one you would choose to remove the karma that has been with you for incarnation after incarnation? Wouldn’t that make this work part of the fulfillment of your own destiny? Also, doesn’t the fact that you made the choice to participate in Energetic Balancing put the responsibility on your shoulders for your karma?”

“I hadn’t thought about it like that,” Dr. Michaels said.

“We always tell people to seek their own inner truth about the energetic ministry of EMC²,” Max told him. “Each person should ask whether it is in their highest interest and greatest good to participate.”

* * *

“A few weeks before Christmas of 1999,” Max said, “the QED started revealing information about ‘prion’ frequencies. So I started doing re-evaluations on people with persistent energetic imbalances. And this is what I found.” He pointed to a page that listed more than a dozen new imbalances, all in the range of prions on the Quantum Index. “Every one of these,” he pointed out, “was found as an hereditary imbalance.”

“You’ve always said ‘There is always more,’ ” I acknowledged.

Since then, Max had found one or two new prion imbalances a week, almost always at the hereditary level. Of course, as soon as the imbalance has been revealed, its balancing energy has been added to the AIM Program. As a result, the phones started buzzing. As these hereditary prion imbalances came to the surface, anyone who had one of them was calling to complain about the discomfort. In fact, the hereditary prion frequencies turned out to be unusually dramatic as they came to consciousness as part of the process of Energetic Balancing.

Finally, by mid-spring of 2000, the revelations of new prion imbalances slowed down. And an amazing thing happened as people finished the energetic detox of their prion imbalances. Max had always believed that none of us would reach a Life Force of 100. Most of us had reached a Life Force of 99 and stayed there, with the exception of his beloved cat, Fearless Fosdick, who had a consistent Life Force of 100. This high Life Force is why Max said he suspected that Fosdick was an alien, sent here to keep an eye on him. But now as these hereditary prion imbalances finished their energetic detox, more and more people were joining Fozzy, achieving a Life Force of 100.

There were some people who, despite reaching a Life Force of 100, still had discomfort. Max explained it this way: “Energetic imbalances are not diseases. Energetic Balancing is not medicine. But nonetheless, they have some things in common because they pertain to life. As you know, in medicine, some diseases produce no pain whatsoever, no matter how severe the ailment is. That’s why some people have heart attacks and strokes and die peacefully in their sleep. On the other hand, the pain of arthritis—or even worse, a toothache—can be unbearable, although they're not generally seen as life-threatening. As a matter of fact, your Life Force can be perfect and yet you may be in a great deal of pain. For example, medically, you may have the pressure of a bone hitting a nerve. Energetically we cannot change that problem...yet.”

We encountered another illustration of energetic imbalances when a young athlete came in and described a problem he was having.

“I keep having a strange feeling in my heart,” he said. “I call it a burble. I’ve been to several doctors including two heart specialists, but they tell me there’s nothing wrong with me. I’ve even had EKGs, and everything appears normal.”

“That may be a good example of an energetic imbalance,” Max told him. “When you feel you have a problem, but there is no physical or medically acknowledged manifestation, it's quite likely that there's an energetic cause for the problem. Let me ask you, are you having trouble sleeping?”

“I wake up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep,” the man admitted.

Max performed a brief energetic evaluation using the man’s picture after he left. It confirmed Max’s suspicion that there was a hereditary problem in the frequency or “orb”, of the mitral valve.

He pointed out, “This imbalance often reads as ‘restless Shen’ to an acupuncturist. Restless Shen is thought to cause sleeping problems. I’ve always thought it was interesting that to an acupuncturist, waking up at three or four in the morning indicates an imbalance in the heart meridian, but Western medicine generally doesn’t associate the two. Perhaps that is because the energetic domain is outside the domain of medicine.”

I pointed out that there were often conflicts between medical diagnoses and our energetic evaluations. There were numerous examples where people told us that their doctors had pronounced them cancer-free, yet Energetic Evaluation had revealed the frequency of malignancy.

“That’s because we don’t diagnose, treat, or cure disease,” Max said. “We don’t practice medicine. We don’t claim that this is the same thing as medicine, or that Energetic Evaluation or Energetic Balancing is a substitute for medical care. In fact, as you know, we say the opposite.”

“Eastern is Eastern, and Western is Western, and never...et cetera et cetera,” I said.

“Exactly,” Max agreed. “Time and again, people have a Life Force of 99 and are told by doctors they have cancer. I can tell you this: Even though I can't tell you about the existence of a disease, it is impossible to have the frequency of active malignancy and a Life Force of 99. What is curious is that every one of these people came up positive for one or both of two prion frequencies. Do those prion frequencies manifest physically, in a manner that appears similar to cancer? Could be. I’ll never know, because I don’t practice medicine. I can tell you this, though: Even though I would never dispute a medical finding, we are the sole authority regarding the ministry of Energetic Balancing. Simply put, there is nobody else who does the same thing we do, in the way we do it. We simply don’t believe that anybody else is qualified to make judgments about energetic matters. Just as we’re not qualified to discuss medical conditions, the medical profession is not qualified to discuss energetic imbalances.”

Ultimately, we had come to believe that if the Life Force was less than 100, there was an imbalance that was not yet detoxed, and it was probably hereditary.

“Anything less than perfect is at least suspicious and probably unacceptable,” Max said. “In fact, I’ll probably have to measure Life Force on a scale of 1 to 200.”

“Why is that, if 100 is perfect?”

“Well, suppose I do it, and Fosdick turns out to be 200, and you’re only 198,” Max said. “Are you willing to be his energetic inferior?”

The question was rhetorical, so I gave him the mandatory response: “Let Fosdick, the alien kitty, continue to be an inspiration to all of us.”



* * *