As a rule, we humans spend the greater part of our lives immersed in the mundane mire of everyday mediocrity, balanced somewhere between what we wish were possible and what our day to day experience tells us is possible, with very few remarkable days or experiences in-between to prove otherwise.

Fortunately for me, I have been blessed with another sort of fate, where my actual experiences often have far-outreached even my wildest imaginings; this story is the telling of just one of those incredible experiences.

Throughout my life, I have been so blessed with, what I can only call, hands-on, irrefutable, incredible demonstrations and spiritual proof --- not only by others, but also through my own, direct participation --- of supernatural phenomena and experiences.

These experiences were so remarkable and profound that had you told me that there was still more to come, even more demonstrative and phenomenal than I had already experienced, I simply would not have believed it was possible; but through, what I have come to call, "the unlimited possibilities of spiritual demonstration," it did happen. And it happened suddenly and quick one bright and sunny Saturday morning in 2004. As I learned latter that morning, and as you, too, will soon come to see: never put a cap on the lid of spiritual possibility, for truly "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." (Hamlet, Act 1, scene 5)

That Saturday morning I was teaching an advanced meditation class on using such ancient psycho-spiritual tools and techniques as a Hebrew-Chaldean talisman to make actual contact with the higher, astral (or as some might call it, angelic) realms, in order to seek and receive spiritual, or angelic, help and intervention in one’s everyday circumstances and affairs of life, practical things such as how to get spiritual help in resolving loneliness, lack, and limitation, whether in health, finances, or whatever. And as strange and far-out a subject for a class as this may sound to many of you now, you have to keep in mind that I had discovered over the years, through actual experimentation, through actual cause and effect, hands-on results, that certain ancient methods, regardless of how bizarre or strange their instructions might at first appear to otherwise rational and reasonable people, and certainly irrespective of any appeals to logic,… did indeed work, and they often worked miraculously to bring about the desired effect, the changes and manifestations that one might seek in their life and circumstances. I have never been one to argue with results, that is, results that you can touch, taste, and feel, and indeed in many circumstances, actually… spend ( I will have much more to say about this in the chapter, Miraculous Results.) I have always been one who believed that whatever the course or method of our spiritual approach, the bottom-line is always the same,…real, physical results that will bring about not only a deep, emotional conviction of the validity of spiritual methods and their manifestations, but also an actual, practical improvement of your physical life as well as your spiritual. As Jesus said, "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." (John 10:10) He was not only talking here about one’s spiritual life, but also one’s physical life as well.

To me physical, quantitative results that you can see, weigh, and/or measure have always been a part of my spiritual pursuit; to me, they are a veritable requirement to convince me of the utility and validity of any and all spiritual practices, as well as the principles which support those practices. As I often say, "One must put their physical proof where their spiritual mouth is." I am not saying here that the increase of personal wealth, physical comfort, and happiness should, in any way, be the exclusive goal and pursuit of spiritual practice ( though a good argument can spiritually be made for all three), but they are certainly an excellent way of measuring the actual effectiveness of your spiritual methods and the value and applicability of the principles behind their spiritual practice and teaching --- as the New Testament so aptly puts it, "…confirming the word with signs following. (Mark 16:20)

At any rate, we certainly had a good showing that Saturday morning, with thirty-seven, bright eyed and eager students of every age from nineteen to eighty-two years, all sufficiently advanced to at least understand and certainly appreciate the value of the unusual, but powerful, psycho-spiritual information that they would be learning that day. Why else would they be here? It was a community cross-section, a hodge-podge of folks from all walks of life: housewives, corporate executives, college students, etc… with even a fully ordained Methodist minister thrown-in to balance the batch. Truly, it was a gala gathering of like minded souls, seeking the addition of another level on top of their spiritual foundation.

The class was being held in an older four-story building next to the University of Tennessee campus in Knoxville. And while admittedly not a class for everyone, those at the university or otherwise, this was a sizeable turn out for a class on such an esoteric subject matter.

The morning began uneventfully enough, even considering the unusual subject matter and the techniques being taught. About a third of the way into the material, I was at the podium, reciting the Twenty-Third Psalm in the original Hebrew, as part of the demonstration of the actual, ancient technique used to summon angelic help, when I kept noticing the odd movements of the Methodist minister who was video taping the session at the back of the classroom. He would look into the camera’s viewfinder, then he would just as quickly look away to the side, back up at me at the podium, as if to make sure that what he was seeing in the camera’s viewfinder was what he himself was actually seeing without the viewfinder. Apparently somewhat stressed and confused, he reminded me of a windshield wiper, going back and forth, up, now down, again and again. Obviously not satisfied with what he thought he was seeing, he repeated these strange antics over and over. Finally, in an apparent surrender to his own confusion, he motioned for my wife, who was sitting quietly nearby, to come over. He pointed her authoritatively to the camera’s viewfinder with his index finger, as if saying," See what you make outa this." Slowly, she got up from her seat and went over to the camera and looked through the viewfinder, and as quickly as the minister had, she looked up to make sure that what she was seeing was actually what was taking place at the podium, as she later said, " To see if somehow the camera lens might be distorted or damaged." She just couldn’t believe that what she was seeing was really what she was seeing, as nonsensical as that might sound.

Now, while all of this was happening at the back of the class, I was at the front, of course, seemingly trying to balance my attention, like a tightrope walker on a wire, between all of what was going on in the back of the room and the lecture I was trying to give at the front. Then, suddenly, I began to feel as if there were a warm breeze blowing on my neck, a strange sense of, what I can only call, "comfortable enclosure," like you would feel if someone slipped a blanket around your shoulders on a cold, cold day.

A man, sitting on the front row, whom I later learned was a medical supply salesman and completely new to the class, not to mention the subject matter, had been fidgeting in his seat since the beginning of the class, obviously somewhat uncomfortable, if not out rightly bored, at least up until now; but strangely now, at least since all of the commotion had started around the video camera at the back of the class, he appeared to be suddenly very attentive, if not enthralled, while seemingly to stare, not so much exactly at me at the podium as to be looking curiously around me like someone watching a fly, if there had been one, buzzing around my head. I could not help but wonder what it was, or what I had said, that so lately entranced him. Suddenly, he would look directly at me, then just as suddenly to my right side, then to my left, then again back at me, jerking his eyes back and forth, again and again, obviously now totally consumed with watching the fly or whatever it was that had mysteriously captured his total attention. Surprisingly, as I later learned, he was the only student in the class who had not had any other previous, spiritual training, other than mainstream Christianity. His girl friend had slipped him under the fence, so to speak, telling him that the class would help him to de-stress his life. As he later said, "I mean, after all I’m a Baptist for God’s sake. We don‘t do weird." He then went on to say," If you had told me before the class, that what actually happened in that class --- I mean, what I myself saw with my own eyes --- was what was going to happen, I would have said you were nuts,…but I have to admit, it happened. I was there. I saw it --- I mean,… them --- with my own eyes."

By now, besides the way the minister, my wife, and the medical supply executive were behaving, others in the class were strangely staring, once again, not so much directly at me, as around me. I continued on with the lecture, thinking whatever it was that I had said or had done that had caused all the stir would soon pass; I did not realize then that it was not me at all, but rather what was around me that was causing all of the apparent excitement.

Fortunately, after about ten minutes into all of this disruptive activity, it was time for one of our scheduled class breaks. I had no sooner announced this fact, barely getting the words out of my mouth, before the Methodist minister was the first to reach me from the back of the room. Appearing very excited, if not somewhat frantic, as he ran up to the podium, he said,

"Did you see them? --- Did you see them? He was almost yelling. Others, just as excited, were beginning to gather around me, waiting to see what I would give as an answer to the preachers question. I guess they were somewhat perplexed that I did not seem as excited as they all were, but I have to admit, other than all of the uncharacteristic behavior that had been going on among the students, I had seen nothing, though, admittedly in retrospect, at least while all of this sudden excitement had been taking place, I mean, around the camera at the back of the room and the odd looks from the students, I had felt and had had a sudden, inexplicable feeling of "safe enclosure," as I earlier pointed out, like a child feels when it is picked up and hugged by its mother.

The executive came up to me, shaking his head from side to side and looking down at his shoes as if they might have an answer, while he said, "I wouldn’t have believed it! If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I just wouldn’t have believed it."

Then the minister, looking straight at me, said "Do you not realize what just happened? Did you not see them?" He seemed obviously agitated and a little confused that I was not jumping up and down on the podium, screaming like in the movie Poltergeist, "They’ h-e-r-e, they’re h-e-r-e!"

The whole episode had happened only about an hour into the class, just as I was beginning to recite the Twenty-Third Psalm in the original, ancient Hebrew; I had just begun to demonstrate to the class how to perform an invocation as part of the consecration of the talisman. As I later learned, it was just at that moment when seventeen members out of the class of thirty-seven had seen a strange appearance, up at the podium where I was starting the recitation. Some said the whole thing had started as a faint white light, first appearing around my forehead and that it kept getting bigger and bigger; then there was this emergence of, what they could only call,… four spiritual entities: individual beings, all cowled in some sort of white robe with monk’s hoods pulled over their heads, with faces that were distinctly humanoid but with reddish-toned skin like a person’s face looks when they‘ve just come in from the cold. They appeared to stand about three feet above the classroom floor, yet their form seemed somehow non-corporeal, almost translucent as if they could somehow superimpose themselves over any matter in our dimension of space and time, and yet still in spite of all of this, they seemed as real and solid as you and me; but somehow, you just knew they were not. If they were indeed angels, they had no wings --- at least not what we normally think of as angel wings --- though, there was an almost constant swirl of energy over and around them that would certainly look, at least to your artistic right-brain, something like wings. One student, a small, frumpish looking school teacher from Nashville had said after it was all over, "Maybe that’s where ancient artists got the idea that angels had wings,… I mean,… the energy and all, swirling over them." They seemed just to enter as if there were an unseen, invisible, inter-dimensional doorway somewhere near the podium. One, who appeared to be some kind of head-honcho and was somewhat larger than the other three, stood out to the front, next to me at the podium, almost, or so the student witnesses had said, engulfing me. They said it was eerie to watch, but at the same time there was this pervasive feeling of peace that seemed to spread slowly over the entire room.

What happened next, after the class break, seemed to me, anyway, in retrospect, as remarkable as the initial appearance itself: Immediately following the class break, the spirit beings, entities, angels ( or whatever) reappeared… and stayed,… standing silent and still just where they had first appeared and entered the class room… for the next entire, four hour duration(or "visitation," if you prefer) of the remainder of the class.

The entities (or whatever) had not spoken before the break,… nor did they speak after the break,… so much as a single word. Standing and simply gazing, they seemed to be merely there as observers.

I have often wondered since that day just what it was to begin with that prompted their visitation: Was it me and my teaching methods that they were observing, checking-up on, if you will? Or was it the class as a whole, or something else that had brought them there to this particular class room, on this particular day? Perhaps I will never know. But what I do know is that it did take place just as I have described it, and that since those angels (or whatever) first entered that room and blessed myself and those thirty-seven students with their supernatural presence on that particularly bright and beautiful Saturday morning in 2004 that life has not been --- indeed, could not be --- ever the same again.

In a humorous aside to all this, one of the attending students, a long, tall, bearded physical-therapist from Kentucky, who had attended several of my classes before this eventful day, had said after it was all over that they ( the spiritual visitors) looked really more like four Obi-Wan Kenobis than anything else: one tall, three short. And indeed, if you look close at the photograph I have (that my wife took with a digital from the back while it was happening) at least the one in front, the head honcho, as I affectionately call him, does indeed look remarkably like Obi-Wan Kenobi, if not something even more bizarre out of a Hollywood prop room.

But, looking back on the whole episode, and perhaps nearly as remarkable as the appearance of the entities themselves, was the way the class so quietly and unremarkably settled-in after lunch, after the entities had once again appeared, and they (the students) with their same, former (that is, before the visitation) uneventful state of mind, the state of mind they had before all of this happened, gave, what at least seemed to be, their full attention once again to the lecture that I was presenting from the podium --- yes, the same podium, with the same appearance of the same spirit entities, as was there before lunch. This was what was truly remarkable!. If there was anything even more surreal than the appearance and visitation itself, it was this surreal and nonchalant attitude on the part of the attending students, who, after lunch, and in spite of the phenomenal reappearance of our four, supernatural visitors, went on with the class-business as usual, …just as if nothing unusual had ever happened. The students went on listening to the lecture, just as attentive as if these supernatural guests were simply all part of the class experience, or, as if they were just simply four more attendees (albeit supernatural) to the lecture.

After lunch, everything was, once again, business as usual. No more excitement. No more commotion. No more questioning "who" or "what", just a casual acceptance as if this were just any other, normal class with nothing really remarkable or unusual going on. It was a particularly odd, surreal thing to watch unfold over those last two hours. How truly odd and unpredictable human reactions can be; how casually we seem to deal with even the strangest events, reacting to the most bizarre situations in such normal, inconsequential, and unexpected ways.

After the class ended, I discovered, not surprisingly, that those students who had not witnessed all of these events, felt somehow cheated, like they had missed an important part of the class. Remember, out of the entire class of thirty-seven students, only seventeen had actually witnessed the appearance and manifestation of the spirit entities. My telephone rang for three days straight with questions and after-thoughts from both, those who had witnessed the appearance, as well as those who had not.

As phenomenal and singular as all of this occurrence was to myself as well as the students who actually witnessed the whole event, neither myself, nor they, knew just how remarkable the whole thing would really prove to be,… for there was still, though none of us knew it then,… even more supernatural surprises to come. Surprisingly, this was not to be the only appearance that our supernal visitors would make, but the beginning of many visits to this select little class of developing mystics. For during the next four months, at each of the scheduled class meetings --- which, by the way, were at different locations than the first (hotel conference rooms, etc.) in different locations around town, still our supernatural visitors dropped in for four more repeat appearances. Each time they came, they stayed for the entire four-hour duration of the class, and each time the response of the students attending was always the same: casual to the point of being surreal, as if the appearance and attendance of such other worldly guests were the norm, the expected, rather than the phenomenal manifestation of supernatural visitation which it really was. The entire attendance of each class, which was obviously by this time, through the exponential word of mouth, not only the original students who were in that first class, but now, as you can well imagine, others who had just heard about what had happened.

Looking back on all these events, even considering how unpredictable human nature can sometimes be, still to this day, I cannot give you ---or even myself --- an adequate and sensible explanation as to why everyone acted as casually as they did . I mean, at each class, even the new participants, who had never so much as attended one of my classes on any subject before, well less the phenomenal subject that was drawing all the attention, acted simply as if this sort of thing happened all of the time. Indeed, after the initial excitement of the first class, had you or anyone been passing the classroom door of any of these later classes, you would never have suspected in a thousand years --- at least not from the actions of those sitting quietly in attendance --- that supernatural events were unfolding just beyond that classroom door.

Of course, as you might already suspect, this story does not entirely end here, but really just begins, because since that first class, so many miracles, signs, and wonders have happened that to recount them here would require an almost encyclopedic effort.

Why, or for what ultimate reason these spirit beings came, I cannot say with absolute certainty. I only know that these events did happen just as I have recounted them, and that this was just the beginning of a series of supernatural events and circumstances that have not stopped from that day until now,… and for that I am most thankful.