The Believing Brain - Michael Shermer [5]
I had an experience.
An experience. Okay! Now we’re talking my language—the language of belief systems grounded in experiences. What type of experience?
Chick clammed up again, but I pushed and prodded for details. When was this experience?
Back in 1966.
What time of day did it happen?
Four in the morning.
Did you see or hear something?
I don’t want to talk about that aspect of it.
But if it was a profound enough experience to be driving you to this day to explore such big questions, it is surely worth sharing with someone.
Nope, it’s private.
Come on, Chick, I’ve known you practically a decade. We’re the best of friends. I’m genuinely curious.
Okay, it was a voice.
A voice. Um.
I know what you’re thinking, Michael—I’ve read all your stuff about auditory hallucinations, lucid dreams, and sleep paralysis. But that’s not what happened to me. This was clearly, distinctly, unmistakably not from my mind. It was from an outside source.
Now we were getting somewhere. Here is a man I’ve come to know and love as a dear friend, a man who otherwise is as sane as the next guy and as smart as a whip. I needed to know more. Where did this happen?
At my sister’s house.
What were you doing sleeping at your sister’s house?
I was separated from my wife and going through a divorce.
Aha, right, the stress of divorce.
I know, I know, my psychiatrist thought the same thing you’re thinking now—stress caused the experience.
A psychiatrist? How does a bricklayer end up in the office of a psychiatrist?
Well, see, the authorities sent me to see this psychiatrist up at Agnews State Hospital.
What?! Why?
I wanted to see the president.
Okay, let’s see … 1966 … President Lyndon Johnson … Vietnam War protests … construction worker wants to see the president … mental hospital. There’s a compelling story here for someone who studies the power of belief for a living, so I pressed for more.
Why did you want to see the president?
To deliver to him the message from the source of the voice.
What was the message?
That I will never tell you, Michael—I have never told anyone and I’m taking it to my grave. I haven’t even told my children.
Wow, this must be some message, like Moses on the mountaintop taking dictation from Yahweh. Must have gone on for quite some time. How long?
Less than a minute.
Less than a minute?
It was thirteen words.
Do you remember the thirteen words?
Of course!
Come on, Chick, tell me what they were.
Nope.
Did you write them down somewhere?
Nope.
Can I guess what the theme of the message was?
Sure, go ahead, take a guess.
Love.
Michael! Yes! That’s exactly right. Love. The source not only knows we’re here, but it loves us and we can have a relationship with it.
The Source
I would like to understand what happened to my friend Chick D’Arpino on that early morning in February 1966 and how that experience changed his life in profound ways ever since. I want to comprehend what happened to Chick because I want to know what happens to all of us when we form beliefs.
In Chick’s case the experience happened while separated from his wife and children. The details of the separation are not important (and he wishes to protect the privacy of his family), but its effects are. “I was a broken man,” Chick told me.1 “I was broke in every way you can think of: financially, physically, emotionally, and psychologically.”
To this day Chick maintains that what he experienced was unquestionably outside of his mind. I strongly suspect otherwise, so what follows is my interpretation. Lying alone in bed, Chick was awake and perhaps anxious about the new dawn that would soon break over his day and life. Away from his beloved wife and children, Chick was troubled by the uncertainty of where