INTRODUCTION

Once I realized I was involved in an event of immense importance, I began to retrace those incidents in my life which brought Uri and me together.
The first of these concerns Dr. D. G. Vinod, a Hindu scholar and sage from Poona, India, whom I briefly met by chance in New York City in December 1951. Two months later, on February 16, 1952, I had my first serious meeting with him. At that time he surprised me by asking permission to hold my right ring finger at the middle joint with his right thumb and index finger. He said that he used this form of contact with a person to read his past and his future. I agreed. He did this for about a minute, whistling between his teeth as though he were trying to find a pitch. Then he leaned back in his chair, and for an hour told me my life story with utter precision, as though he were reading out of a book. His accuracy about the past was extraordinary. He then predicted such a rosy future for me as an Arjuna figure that I was embarrassed. Nevertheless, I realized that here was intelligence on a scale I had not imagined to exist. I promised Dr. Vinod that I would call him to the laboratory in Maine as soon as my next experiment was ready.
As it turned out, this promised meeting was not to be held for nearly another year. On December 31, 1952, Dr. Vinod and I took a plane from New York to Maine. We landed in Augusta at 7:30 P.M., and Hank Jackson, the administrator of the laboratory, the Round Table Foundation, was there to meet us. We drove over the country roads in the snow, chatting all the way. We entered the great hall of the laboratory, and without saying a word or even taking off his overcoat, Dr. Vinod found his way to the library and sat down on a sofa. Hank and I followed him. We realized that he had gone into a trance. We sat opposite him, waiting expectantly. Curiously enough, the house was always bustling with activity, but on this New Year’s Eve there was not a sound in the house from child, man, woman, or animal. There was the hushed silence of expectancy as Hank and I watched our entranced sage.
Then, at exactly 9 P.M., a deep sonorous voice came out of Dr. Vinod’s mouth, totally unlike his own high-pitched, soft voice, saying in perfect English without an accent:
M calling: We are Nine Principles and Forces, personalities if working in complete mutual implication. We are forces, and the nature of our work is to accentuate the positive, the evolutional, and the teleological aspects of existence. By teleology I do not mean the teleology of human derivation in a multidimensional concept of existence. Teleology will be understood in terms of a different ontology. To be simple, we accentuate certain directions as will fulfill the destiny of creation.
We propose to work with you in some essential respects with the relation of contradiction and contrariety. We shall negate and revise part of your work, by which I mean the work as presented by you. The point is that we want to begin altogether at a different dimension, though it is true that your work has itself led up to this.
I deeply appreciate your dedicatedness (sic) to the great cause of peace which is a fulfillment of finitesimal existences. Peace is not warlessness. Peace is the integral fruitage of personality. We have designed to utilize you and thus to fulfill you. Peace is a process and will be revealed only progressively. You have it in plenty, I mean the patience which is so deeply needed in this magnificent adventure. But today, at the moment of our
advent, the most eventful and spectacular phase of your work begins.
Andrija Puharich (AP ): “It is helpful to have your guidance.”
We don’t guide, nor do we seek guidance, although we appreciate the sense in which you mean it. All of us, including yourselves, can claim no better than being the expressive instruments and avenues of this purpose.
Einstein has privately felt the need of correcting himself, Infinitization of any mass, M1, according to him,(1) can be achieved by equating it with:
An implication of this theorem, as yet unrevealed, will solve the problem of the superconscious.
The whole group of concepts has to be revised. The problem of psychokinesis, clairvoyance, etc., at the present stage is all right, but profoundly misleading – permit us to say the truth. Soon we will come to basic universal categories of explicating the superconscious. Just as Jesus said, “It is not work, but grace.” A fruitful, creative approach to the superconscious is indeed a progressive reception of grace.
We cannot really go on with experimentation in this direction, but if we get seven times the electrical equivalent of the human body – if we get it seven times – do you know what would result? It would result in sevenon of the mass of electricity. That’s a very strange term, but it’s true. If it gains sevenfold, corresponding approximation to light velocity will be ninety-nine per cent. That is the point where human personality has to be stretched in order to achieve infinitization. This is one of the most secret insights.
See Appendix One for the philosophy of the Nine.
(1) This is a form of the well-known Lorentz-Einstein Transformation equation where c^2 is velocity of light squared, and v is velocity. Here, M1=E, energy.
When Dr. Vinod awoke from his trance after some ninety minutes of speech by the Nine, he had no recollection or knowledge of what had been said. Hank and I worked for a month with Dr. Vinod, listening to the profound wisdom of the Nine. It was a deeply moving experience, and we really believed every word that we heard based purely on the internal evidence. This work was interrupted in February 1953 when I had to serve as a captain in the U. S. Army during the Korean War.
What was lacking in our study of Dr. Vinod and the Nine was some kind of external evidence for the reality of what was being said. Such evidence was forthcoming and occurred when I returned to the laboratory in Maine on a military leave.
On June 27, 1953, nine people met with Dr. Vinod at the Round Table Foundation in Maine. They were Henry Jackson, Georgia Jackson, Alice Bouverie, Marcella Du Pont, Carl Betz, Vonnie Beck, Arthur Young, Ruth Young, and I.
Dr. Vinod sat on the floor in the lotus posture holding in his hands a string of sacred beads, called rakshas. On his lap was a simple copper plate nine inches in diameter. On the floor to his side was a small statue of the Hindu god, Hanoum. Thus, Dr. Vinod was in the center of a circle made up of the nine people listed above. He entered a trance state at 12:15 A.M. He spoke for about fifteen minutes and then one of the Nine, R. spoke through him, saying:
Tonight we want to create Brahmins in this world. Brahmin means a person dedicated to Brahman.
At this instant all nine observers in the fully lighted room saw the appearance, in an instant, of what appeared to be a pile of cotton threads about three feet from Dr. Vinod. It seemed to this observer that the pile of thread had just popped right out of the wood floor. Dr. Vinod, still in a trance state, leaned over to pick up the threads. When he untangled them, he brought forth loops of finely woven cotton cord. He handed one to each person and there was exactly one loop for each. He asked each person to slip the loop over the right shoulder and under the left arm.
What we had witnessed was the appearance of a material sub
stance from nowhere! All present were quite sure that the large ball of cotton material had come from the floor and no place other than the floor.
R spoke:
Has everyone received one? This is called the Yadnyobavita. These are the sacred threads which Brahmins wear on their necks, as soon as they are through with the ceremony. We have to be born twice; unless we are threaded, we don’t become Brahmins. This is the sacred thread which makes the human being the Brahmin. Each one of you becomes a Brahmin on this full-moon day.
Alchemy had three different areas of function. It really wanted to solve the problem of deterioration, disease, and death. All metals are really gold in one way, but deteriorated gold. So transformation of the lesser, grosser metals into gold was one idea. The second was to find an elixir to eliminate all disease from the human body, and the third was to produce the nectar to eliminate death. These three threads on this sacrificial thread stand for each of these functions – altogether there are fifteen threads. I don’t know how many you have, that’s perhaps the symbol of the full moon. Of course, you all know that alchemy is actually operative whenever we are forcing a crisis on ourselves, or permitting a crisis to be forced on us, we are exposed to alchemy. Of course, “Al” means God, and “Kem” means Egypt; therefore Alchemy is God of Egypt, and God of Egypt was this.
It’s very strange that the life of Buddha had these same three crises in it; the sight of disease, and the sight of death, and the sight of old age, which is deterioration. He had never been exposed to these crises. He lived like a plant in a green room. Suddenly he came across these three instances, as he was passing through a street in a chariot. He came home and he couldn’t rest and asked himself, “Why must the human body deteriorate? Why disease? Why death?” And he went out of his palace at midnight. He left a wife and newly born son.
I don’t know why I’m speaking this, but I think it has some reference to some of you already exposed to emotional, spiritual,
and perhaps financial crisis. An Alchemist process to which we are addressed – let us welcome it….
I cannot go into all the details of the meaning of these trance utterances by Dr. Vinod. The material that was given would fill another volume, and only a small sample is presented in Appendix One to give a synoptic view of the philosophy of the Nine. We took every known precaution against fraud, and the staff and I became thoroughly convinced that we were dealing with some kind of an extraordinary extraterrestrial intelligence. But for this belief we had no solid proof in 1953.
Three years later, I was called to Mexico to help solve an archaeological problem. With me was Peter Hurkos, one of the great telepathic talents of modern times. Peter and I arrived in the colonial village of Acambaro, Mexico, on July 26, 1956. Rooms had been reserved for us at the only hotel in town. When we got there, we found that the only two good rooms in the hotel had been given to an American family by mistake. But it was late at night, so we accepted two strange windowless rooms and planned to get more decent accommodations by discussing the problem the next day with the Americans who had been given our rooms.
In the morning we met the Americans, a Dr. and Mrs. Charles Laughead from Whipple, Arizona. We could not understand why they were so happy to see us and why they so gladly gave up their lovely, sunny quarters in exchange for our drab, dark ones. When Dr. Laughead, who was a medical doctor, found out that I was an M.D. and that Peter was a psychic, he was beside himself with joy. He then told us the following story:
“Through the assistance of a young man, who is a very fine voice channel or medium, we have been in frequent communication for over a year with the Brotherhood of one of the ancient Mystery Schools in South America. These sessions covered a wide range of subjects, from ancient history and life origins on this planet to science and religion. This Brotherhood also served as a communication center for contacts with intelligences on other planets and star systems and on spacecraft. Some of these intelligences obviously were not human and operated on energy and life support mechanisms entirely foreign to our
thinking. Their knowledge and wisdom far exceeded our comprehension. For simplicity, we referred to them as Space Beings or Space Brothers.
“In one of these sessions our attention was directed to the story of the arrival on earth of men from outer space in very ancient times. This landing took place on a small island near Easter Island, called Mangareva. We were then told that the clay figurines at Acambaro, Mexico, would corroborate by certain clues the story about these early space travelers. We were then directed to search out a possible location for continuing study and research in Mexico, and on this scouting trip we naturally came to visit the library of figurines at Acambaro.
“Because of the unusual nature of this meeting with you gentlemen and the work under investigation, we feel you must be related in some way to the unfolding story of the ancient mystery of man in space, even though at the present time you may not have recall of previous life cycles on this and on other planets.
“The voices of our mentors speaking through our young channel sounded so authoritative that we felt impelled to follow through with their suggestions and come to Mexico. And here we are, having arrived only an hour before you. Are you not brothers from space?”
Dr. Laughead stared at us so intently as he said this that for a moment I thought, “Maybe I am.” But then Peter and I looked at each other and burst out laughing. The whole idea was just too absurd. Peter hastily said in his broken English, “Meester, I’m born right in my modder’s bed. I’m no space mensch!”
We talked for an hour to these charming but naive people, to no avail. They were firmly convinced of the authenticity of their message. They coaxed us to admit our true space origins. We gently but firmly backed away. We then bade them good-bye and went off to take care of our business. During our stay there we carefully avoided seeing the Laugheads again. This space-brothers talk was just too wild for our tastes.
On August 15, 1956, I received a letter at the Round Table Foundation from Dr. Laughead, mailed on August 12, from Whipple, Arizona. The envelope was addressed to Dr. Andae Poharits (misspelled). The letter, labeled by me as ‘`Test No. 1, read as follows:
Test
No. I
Dear Dr. Pharits [again misspelled].
It was indeed a pleasant surprise for us on our recent Mexican tap to discover and make the acquaintance of others interested in the same things we are interested in, particularly to find another M.D. interested in and working in the field of parapsychological research.
As you well know, a professional man that dares to venture into this area is certain to have a lot of “pot shots” taken at him, and I admire your courage in devoting your full time to this study.
On the evening of August 11th, we received the two enclosed communications, each through a different channel, and we were instructed to forward them to you at once. [Author’s note: I have labeled these enclosures “Test No. 2.”]
We were told that you would understand and would know what to do concerning them. We were also instructed to send a copy to Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Young.
After leaving Acambaro we visited the Chicomostoc ruins near Zacatecas where I had a pick up that my wife Lillian and I had lived there about 1200 A.D. as Indians and that we had been brothers at that time. We had started from there north on a journey which eventually took us as far as Mesa Verde in Colorado, visiting Indian tribes along the way. At Mesa Verde a great spacecraft landed and contact was made at that time with the brothers of space.
We trust that our paths shall cross again and that which began so strangely in an ancient Mexican town is but the beginning of an interesting association.
Fraternally,
[signed] Charles
Laughead
I just couldn’t believe what I was reading, especially when I read the enclosures that I shall describe shortly. I decided to use Peter Hurkos’s proven ability at psychometry to assess this note.
“Psychometry” is an old term used to describe a form of extrasensory perception. In psychometry Peter takes an object in his hands and simply recounts whatever mental impressions he gets from it. (This is the way in which Peter would work with the police; by touching objects belonging to missing persons, he could get enough information so that the person would often be found. ) With us was Harry Stone, another telepathic talent, who often worked with Hurkos.
At 2 P.M. I handed Peter Dr. Laughead’s letter, Test No. 1, sealed in a brown opaque envelope. Here are Peter’s psychometric impressions in English:
“I must tell you, Andrija, this is not a fake. No, it is not a fantasy. These people have found out something. There is a professor here. There is a doctor in here, engineers. They don’t get pay from another country.”
At this point Harry Stone wanted to participate in the reading. So we handed him the Test No. 1 envelope.
“I see two lines, like a blowtorch, but it is two jets. It was red in the beginning, but the fire fumed blue. I see two rows of fire all shooting out with jets. The fire gets so violent that it starts searing me.”
AP: “Harry, look into that fire.”
Harry: “Now I see the eye of a hurricane fuming around. I see two men – I think they are two men, but they don’t want to show their faces to anyone. They were covering themselves somehow.”
AP: “You said that you think they were men. Why did you say that? Can you draw what they look like?”
At this point Peter said he would like to make a drawing of what he saw. His drawing showed a figure in black with a pointed cap, but no arms or legs. Harry said that this is the same thing he saw.
Hurkos: “These are people in black, but I also couldn’t see their faces. They are in a costume which can withstand thousands of degrees Centigrade heat. This is nothing to laugh at. It is all quite serious.”
AP: “Is that all you get?”
Peter and Harry both said they were tired and didn’t want to work anymore. I handed Dr. Laughead’s letter and the two enclosures to Mrs. Ida Gold, the secretary, and asked her to transcribe them and the tape of the experiment into typescript. She went ahead with this task immediately.
An hour later she came to me in great puzzlement and said, “Dr. Puharich, I have been a bonded court secretary for thirty years and have never seen what I have seen just now. Here is the material you asked me to type. It covers twelve and one-half pages. I did not change the carbon paper but kept using the same one over and over again. Now, look at each of the carbon copies. Notice that page one carbon is black and clear. Pages two to nine are good but getting lighter and less clear. Note how pages ten and eleven are getting very light and still less clear. This continues on the top of page twelve where the first ten lines are really light and faint. Then as soon as I began to copy the first enclosure, Test Number Two, the carbon copy from line eleven and on got black and clear – just as it was on page one when the carbon paper was fresh. This is impossible – how can carbon paper suddenly get rejuvenated?”
I examined the sheets and she was absolutely right: the carbon copy of the first enclosure, Test Number Two, from Dr. Laughead was in clear bold black typescript:
Test No.
2
M calling:
At the moment of our advent, December 31, 1952, your most spectacular phase of work began. We are Nine principles and forces. The nature of our work is to accentuate certain directions as will fulfill the destiny of creation.
We used the body or brain of Dr. “V.” We can and are using other bodies also.
Remember the formula:
It is vital that you have a personal conference with Dr. “L” as soon as possible, for it was not accident that you met him in Mexico. We will have more – much more for you.
A very similar message (as the reader will recall) was given through Dr. Vinod almost four years before. I tried for two years to find out if this material had come into Dr. Laughead’s hands from someone connected with my laboratory, but the search was fruitless. I talked thereafter many times with Dr. Laughead, and he stoutly maintained that the material had come directly from the mouth of a medium whom he did not want to name.
But even if Dr. Laughead had tried to commit some kind of a deception, it could not account for the rejuvenation of a worn-out sheet of carbon paper. I could only conclude that some kind of an intelligence had created this black imprint by means entirely unknown. I was even willing to admit that there might be some reality to Dr. Laughead’s “contacts” with spacecraft.
But the second enclosure that came with Dr. Laughead’s letter was an even deeper mystery. I could not understand this piece of writing until many years later when I was in Israel in 1971. I now give a faithful copy of this piece of writing sent to me by Dr. Laughead:
Received evening of August 11,
1956
Laughead apartment
Whipple, Arizona
Test No. 2
M: We are in the place where the first of the prophets have had their origins and wherein they shall be gathered in. And they shall be put into a place wherein are the people from the planets of many galaxies; and they shall be the gods which shall create worlds without end. And ye shall see them and ye shall be within the holy mount which is within the Galaxy of the Milky Way and the forest wherein the earth shall be put when she is anchored and wherein is the new berth which is prepared for her, and so shall the earth be delivered up. And the people therein shall be freed from the earth and they shall
be
put into another place wherein they shall be awakened.
These events, and those related to Dr. Vinod, were totally beyond my imagination to comprehend completely. At this point I was not fully convinced that these “intelligent beings” existed independently of the imaginations of all the witnesses who had shared these experiences. When this question was discussed with all of my colleagues – which we did many times no one ex pressed the conviction that what had been said was really true and could be accepted as such. It boiled down to the simple fact that there was not enough proof to accept the explanation of the Nine for what they were. Now, although proof and therefore total conviction were lacking, I still found myself continually asking, “What if it were true?”
It was nearly six years later that I was to have my own experience with what seemed to be “other-worldly” sources. In 1963 I was living in Ossining, New York, commuting each day to New York City where I was working on an electronic invention which would help people with a hearing problem. On March 15 I came home from an exhausting day in the city with a splitting headache and, without eating dinner, fell asleep in a second-floor bedroom at the rear of the house.
I slept for about two hours. When I awakened, I looked at the luminous dial of my wristwatch in the dark and saw that it was 9:40 P.M. I lay there, awake and fresh, thinking about getting up and having some dinner. From my position in bed I could see the wintry clear night sky, full of stars. Then suddenly among them appeared a bright light. My first thought was that an oncoming plane had just turned on its landing lights. I slowly got out of bed, keeping my eyes on the light, and walked to the window. I now saw that the light was stationary and was located just over the first hill to the west, which was about three hundred yards from where I stood. The light was like a flattened egg in shape, about the size of a full moon and of a steady blue-green color. The color, in fact, was the same color as one sees in a mercury vapor streetlamp. I stared at the light object.
I began to have a profound feeling of the gravity of this moment. I knew that the light was very, very real, and it gave me the feeling of a living thing. Normally in this kind of situation I would have taken my movie camera and gone outdoors to take pictures of the thing I saw. But now I had no desire to prove anything or to document what I saw. This was for me “pure experience.” It was like nothing that had ever happened to me before, nor was there anything that I could associate with it.
I stood there for twenty minutes (by clock time) staring unblinkingly at this light object. I saw that it was only light; there seemed to be nothing solid associated with it. I could see nothing inside of the light as I stared at it Suddenly the light was out. There was no movement; it just went out. I stood there staring at the bright night sky for another hour, but the light did not return.
After I had recovered from the emotional intensity of being in the presence of the light, I tried to analyze what this meant. I first thought of all the reports I had read about or had been told about concerning unidentified spacecraft. I concluded that what I had just seen and witnessed did not fit the general description that went with the most commonly reported types of UFOs. I recalled what Dr. Laughead had given me as a description of the spacecraft he had seen. I again recalled what Peter Hurkos had once described to me as “flying saucers” he had seen (or, the way he pronounced this phrase, “flying sausages”). None of these descriptions fit my experience. I finally concluded that what I had seen had to stand by itself, that I could not fortify it by getting assurance that others had also had the same experience.
The experience to me was very real, and the memory of it stayed with me. But I talked to no one about it. It was too private to reveal and, besides, it had no objective corroboration. I simply filed it away in my memory. But this kind of experience was to recur in Brazil.
I first heard of Arigo, the Brazilian healer, from an intelligent, articulate doctor named Lauro Neiva, who practiced in Rio de Janeiro. Dr. Neiva told me that Arigo was a man in his early forties who performed major surgery on humans without using any known form of anesthesia, bleeding control (hemostasis), or antisepsis. I was told that Arigo had become a “court of last appeal” for hopeless medical problems in Brazil and that his rate of success was phenomenal. On August 21, 1963, I set out from Rio de Janeiro for Arigo’s village, Congonhas do Campo, which was about three hundred kilometers to the north of Rio in the state of Minas Gerais.
Arigo was of medium height with a powerful muscular build. He had a hearty outgoing manner which radiated confidence to all around him. Although I did not understand Portuguese, it was obvious that his speech had a rough peasant quality. I shall not go into details of his background or his present social situation because this material has been adequately covered in other writings.(2)
I was warmly welcomed and given free rein to observe his work, to interview patients, and to ask any questions I wished. On August 22 I observed Arigo handle about two hundred patients over a period of four hours. Arigo worked in a small dilapidated espiritista church. First he addressed the assembled patients and said that he himself was not the healer but that he acted only as an agent for a higher power, which, he said, was the spirit of one Adolpho Fritz, who had died in Germany in 8.
In order to assure the patients that he would not harm anyone, he said he would demonstrate the safety of his work. He took by the shoulder a man standing next to him and without a word plunged a paring knife (a very sharp, four-inch stainless steel blade with a cocobolo wood handle) toward the man’s left eyeball.
The knife was skillfully inserted under the upper eyelid, and the sharp point plunged deep into the eye socket. The patient was calm and relaxed, and when queried as to possible pain, he answered that he felt nothing. Arigo then pressed the point of the knife up through the upper chamber of the eye socket so that
(2) John G. Fuller, Arigo: Surgeon of the Rusty Knife (New York: T. Y. Crowell, 1974), with an appendix by Andrija Puharich, M.D.
the point lifted the skin above the eye (supraorbital forehead area). Arigo asked me to feel the point of the knife through the skin, which I did. I affirmed that I could palpate the sharp tip of the knife. This exercise lasted about twenty seconds. When the knife was withdrawn from the eye socket, I asked the patient how he felt. He replied that he felt normal. Examination of the eye did not reveal any laceration, redness, or other signs of irritation. I was stunned at this demonstration of surgical and medical power.
For the rest of the four hours I watched Arigo’s mode of handling patients. The patients stood in a long line waiting to see Arigo. When one stepped up, Arigo looked up at him or her from his desk, asked no questions, and in a few seconds began a definitive treatment, either surgical or medical, on each of the two hundred patients. He sent a dozen patients away, saying that their problems could easily be handled by any medical doctor. He performed eye surgery and ear surgery on ten patients, each operation averaging about thirty seconds. He used the same knife on each patient and wiped it on his shirt after each operation. No attempt was made to give any anesthesia or hypnotic suggestion; no sterile precautions were used; bleeding was minimal; and each patient walked out of the room by himself after surgery. The rest of the patients were given long complicated medical prescriptions which used proprietary pharmaceutical preparations from well-known drug houses. Arigo never charged for his healing services; he worked at a full-time job as a civil servant to earn his living.
I was in a state of shock as I witnessed his apparently successful handling of these patients while violating every rule of medicine and surgery in which I had been indoctrinated. I simply could not believe what I was seeing and experiencing.
At the end of the day of August 22, 1963 I pondered how I could prove to myself and my colleagues that we were not hallucinating. It occurred to me that if I could persuade Arigo to operate on a tumor on my right forearm I could get a personal and realistic evaluation of what he was doing. I approached Arigo with this request on the morning of August 23, and he cheerfully agreed to operate on me. I arranged for Jorge Rizzini to film my operation.
I had a lipoma on the elbow over the right ulnar head which measured by palpation about 0.5 inches X 1.2 inches X 1.4 inches. It had been there for seven years and had been checked regularly by Sidney Krebs, M.D., of New York City, during the past two years.
We appeared before Arigo at 10 A.M. There were dozens of patients crowding the room. I rolled up my right sleeve. Arigo asked if any of the surrounding patients could lend him a pocket knife. One man offered a knife, but Arigo said it was too dull. Another man offered a Swiss army knife; Arigo said, “This is a good knife.”
Arigo told me not to look at the surgery. I turned my head toward Rizzini on my left, who was running the movie camera, and gave Osmar, my translator, some advice about the lighting. At the same time I felt Arigo grasp my arm at the tumor area with his left hand. All I could feel was something like a fingernail being pressed into the skin. Within five seconds Arigo displayed an elongated egg-shaped tumor for all the patients to see and handed it to me with the pocket knife. I had felt no sensation of pain. When I looked at the wound, there was a trickle of blood from the incision, which was about a half inch long.
Arigo then said that Dr. Fritz had told him to make the following statement: “This is a demonstration only – so that people will believe. I think every doctor in Brazil should come here and do what you do. After the legal prosecution against me is over, you must come back, and I will do major surgery for you.”
Immediately after the surgery I took black and white pictures of the tumor and the knife. I then asked Altamiro, Arigo’s assistant, to place a dressing on the wound. He took some unsterile gauze squares and taped them over the wound.
I felt that my surgery was not adequate for scientific purposes, as I was not able to observe it properly, nor did I experience enough significant data points to evaluate it. However, given the unsterile conditions of the surgery, I would have a real test of
Arigo’s powers if the wound did not get infected. Hence I determined not to use any antiseptics on the wound nor to use any antibiotics, in order to test the postoperative course with respect to possible infection.
I therefore changed the bandage once a day so that I could photograph the healing and infective course. By the third day the wound had healed by primary intention, and not one drop of pus had appeared. I did not develop any symptoms of blood poisoning or tetanus. By the fourth day I dispensed with the bandage. With this evidence I was now convinced that Arigo had extraordinary powers in surgery, bacterial control, and anesthesia.
Six days later I visited Jorge Rizzini in Sao Paulo and saw the developed movies of my surgery. The film clearly proved that there had been an operation, and thus personal and mass hallucinations were ruled out. The film showed that Arigo had made six “saw like” strokes of the knife through my skin to make the incision. This alone should have been painful. And strangely enough the tumor popped out of my arm without Arigo having dissected it. The entire procedure lasted five seconds.
It is now ten years since the operation. The surgical scar remains; the tumor is still in a bottle of alcohol; there have been no complications.
In September 1967 I went to Brazil to continue my studies of Arigo. I had seen him many times since that operation in 1963, and it had never occurred to me to ask him for personal help. One day as I was working with Arigo, he suddenly fumed to me and said, “You have otosclerosis.” I replied, “I don’t know about that, but I have a chronic infection and drainage in my left ear from a cholesteatoma.”
Arigo said, “Yes, you have had that for a long time, but the otosclerosis is new. Check it when you get home. I will give you a prescription that will cure both of your problems.”
There is not much need to explain the items in the prescription except to state that the first drug was an ear drop solution, the second was a bile salt, and the third was gabromicina, a primitive form of streptomycin, which had largely been dropped from use by physicians. The prescription involved two successive treatments.
When I resumed to the States, I had the audiologist in my own laboratory run a hearing test on me with an audiometer. When the test was done, she volunteered the diagnosis: “You have otosclerosis.” I checked the audiogram. Arigo was right; I did have otosclerosis, a hardening of the bony tissue over the stapes in the middle ear chamber. I decided then and there to start Arigo’s prescription.
Because of my odd working hours, it was easiest for me to give myself the gabromicina injection just before I went to bed each night. I started the first treatment series on October 7, 1967 – including the injection of the gabromicina once a day. By October 14 I had developed a reaction to this form of streptomycin. I had a swelling and tenderness of my hands and palms and on my feet and toes. Therefore, I had to stop the injections and wait for the allergic reaction to go away. By October 25 I was in good enough shape to begin the second treatment. In my opinion it was too dangerous to try to continue with the streptomycin. Therefore, I never did fully complete the first treatment. I finished the second treatment on January 11, 1968.
I was now free of the ear drainage problem that had plagued me all of my life, and have continued so to this day. Over the next six months my audiograms showed that my otosclerosis had disappeared. My hearing improved. I want to make one other point here, for the record: I never told another human being that I had not finished the first treatment because of an allergic reaction. ( See page 159. )
In early 1968 I was busily engaged in preparations to lead a team of medical researchers to Brazil to study Arigo. We arrived in Congonhas do Campo on the afternoon of May 22, 1968. To house our group we had rented a large fazenda, or ranch, some two miles out of the village. As the sun set, we all assembled on the huge lawn to observe the incredible brilliance of the wintry stars. The night was cold and the air very dry. At 6 P.M. one of our researchers, John Laurance, noted a bright white light moving across the sky from south to north. He brought it to our attention because, as he explained, it was not a plane or a satellite. John could make this statement with some authority because he worked for the Astroelectronics division of RCA in New Jersey, designing and building satellites for NASA. For about six minutes we watched this light move slowly overhead, resembling a very bright star. It was impossible to determine its distance from us. Then it suddenly winked out in mid-course and was gone. We discussed what it could possibly have been and concluded that it was an unknown type of aerial light. The owner of the fazenda, Walter de Freitas, joined us, and we told him what we had seen and asked for clarification of our observation. He laughed and told us the following story.
“You see, the common folk around here always see what you just saw, mostly between May and August. They call them Rivers of Gold in the sky because they believe that these lights will lead you to gold. I don’t believe these superstitions, but I have an idea why they believe such things. One day, two years ago, I was standing where we are now, and I saw one of these lights slowly come down from the sky. It landed about five hundred meters from here, in that direction by the river. It was just after sunset, as it is now. I could see pretty well in the dark, so I started to walk toward the light to see what it was. When I came to within fifty meters, I could clearly see moving figures under what looked like a metal craft, looking like a giant lens. I still am not sure whether the creatures were more like people or more like animals. But I could see and hear that they were digging in the earth. As I got closer, about thirty meters away, three or four of these figures suddenly disappeared into the metal hull which I now saw was standing on legs. The lens hull shot out fire and smoke and rose straight up in the air. When I examined the ground where the metal hull had been, I saw many small fresh holes. I went there the next morning looking to see if there was any gold, but I didn’t find any.”
We quizzed Walter for a few minutes, and then Dr. Luis Cortes called out, “Hey, there is another one!” Again we saw a very bright white light at an indeterminate distance, going
slowly overhead from north to south. It, too, lasted for a long time – twelve minutes – and then winked out.
I immediately set up my Hasselblad camera, but I had only an 80-mm lens. But fortunately I had a Polaroid back for this camera and very fast 3000 ASA black and white film, which allowed me the possibility of getting some pictures. I set my camera on a stable tripod, and we all sat watching the skies. Fortunately, being in the country, there were absolutely no streetlights around to mar either the viewing or the photography.
Soon another light appeared, moving slowly from east to west, and I was able to photograph it, as a streak, through time exposure. Moreover, the film was so sensitive that I was able to get a background star map photo as a reference frame. We set up a night watch, and I was able to get three more photographs that night. After comparing our collective observations we all agreed unanimously that the lights we had seen and photographed were indeed unidentified aerial light effects.
During the next few days we discussed for the first time the theory that Arigo’s powers may not be due to a Dr. Fritz, but to some intelligent beings associated with spacecraft of extraterrestrial origin. This seemed to be a perfectly logical hypothesis, but, of course, there was no way to test it. We spoke to Arigo about this possibility, and he just laughed away the question.
For the next three years I made plans to undertake a concentrated study of Arigo’s powers, but other work intervened. At about 11 A.M. on January 11, 1971, I was working in my office at Intelectron Corporation in New York City when the telephone rang. Normally my secretary, Lorraine Shaw, would pick up the phone first. But this time, for no reason, I picked it up, and a woman whose name I don’t recall blurted out the following: “I am looking for Dr. Puharich.”
I replied, “This is he speaking.”
“Dr. Puharich, I just got a telephone call from a TV station in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, asking for you to make a comment on the death of Arigo.”
“Would you please repeat that? I don’t think I clearly heard what you said,” I stuttered.
She repeated her statement. I said, “Are you sure of what you are saying, that Arigo is dead?”
She replied that all she knew was what had been relayed to her. I told her I could not then reply because of my shocked state. If she would give me her name and telephone number, I would call her back. This she did, and I wrote these items down on my desk calendar pad.
I sat back in my chair. It did not seem possible for Arigo the greatest healer in the world – to be dead! He was too young, too vital. Besides, he was the hope of thousands, perhaps millions, of people who looked to him as the witness for higher powers. “There must be a mistake,” I thought. “I will have to check this out myself.”
I called the Brazilian consulate in New York, and they had no such news. I called the Brazilian embassy in Washington; they had no such news. I called the various press services; they had no such news. Finally by 4: 30 P.M. I called friends in Brazil, who finally confirmed the dread news that Arigo had been killed that very morning in an auto accident
I proceeded to return the phone call from the woman, and looked at my desk calendar pad. Her name and phone number were not there; the sheet was clean. I thought I had perhaps written the information somewhere else. But I could not find any such paper. I checked with my secretary; she had not heard the phone ring at 11 l A.M. nor had she logged any incoming calls at that time. Then I began to worry; had I really received the call as I remembered it? Perhaps she would call me again. But she never did call back.
In any case, I was personally despondent over the loss of Arigo. Humanity had lost its great luminary. It was as though the sun had gone out. The shock was so deep to me that I decided to go on a fourteen-day fast and re-examine all of my life and weigh the meaning of Arigo, both in life and in death.
During my fast my sorrow was lightened by information I received from Dr. Juscelino Kubitschek, the former President of Brazil. Kubitschek said that he had visited Arigo two weeks before his death, and in the most simple and casual way Arigo had said, “I do not like to say this, Mr. President, but I will soon die a violent death.”
The former President was shocked and disturbed. “You don’t mean that,” he said.
Arigo nodded and repeated in a sad, soft tone, “I am sure I will die violently very soon. So I say good-bye to you with sadness. This is the last time we will meet.”
Later Arigo said to Gabriel Khater, editor of the local paper, O Propheto, “I am afraid, Gabriel, that my mission on earth is finished. I will leave soon.”
But two years later I was to learn from John G. Fuller, who wrote a book about Arigo, that he had received a report that Arigo had been killed at exactly 12:15 P.M. in the car crash. Since the time in Congonhas is one hour earlier than New York, he had been killed at 1 l :15 A.M. New York time. How did I get the news of his death at least fifteen minutes before the event occurred? This mystery was not solved until my experiences with Uri in Israel. But the answer will be given later in this story.
The knowledge of Arigo’s foreknowledge of his death helped me a great deal. That his death was not the result of blind chance eased my pain. Near the end of my fast, I came to some strong conclusions. The first was that I had failed both Arigo and humanity by not completing my studies of Arigo’s healing work. I realized that I should have dropped my other work in 1963 and concentrated all of my efforts on Arigo. I was sure there would never be another Arigo in my lifetime. But if there were, I would not fail the next time.
I looked back over the ten years since I had moved to New York. I had become a slave to my company, to my inventions, and to a complex and costly way of life. While it was true that I had been issued some fifty patents for my inventions, which promised to help many people with deafness, I could not really make any more creative contributions in this area. Others could carry on what I had started. But most of all I wanted to get into the full-time study of the mysterious powers of the human
mind. One day I made my decision. I would resign from all my duties and jobs from foundations, companies, and laboratories and give myself two years in which to find a new place in full time research on the mind.
When I informed my family and colleagues of my decision, they tried to talk me out of it. But I was determined in my course. By April 1, 1971, I had freed myself of all these ties and began my new way of life. I had two goals: one was to develop a theoretical base for all of my mind researches, and the other was to find human beings with great psychic talents who would cooperate as research subjects.