Jack Sarfatti

"In 1975, Sarfatti co-founded the legendary Physics-Consciousness Research Group with Esalen Institute’s Michael Murphy, funded by EST guru Werner Erhard. Murphy was investigating revelations of the USSR’s intensive parapsychological research projects, later setting up the Soviet-American Exchange Program at Esalen in the 1980s, which attracted the likes of Boris Yeltsin during his 1989 U.S. visit.

"Sarfatti gave seminars at Esalen, serving as a guiding influence behind Fritjoff Capra, Gary Zukav and other proponents of the 1970s “New Physics” movement, which explored links between quantum physics and Eastern mysticism. Sarfatti brought Zukav to the Esalen Institute, where he conducted the research for his bestselling The Dancing Wu Li Masters (New York: Morrow, 1979), a book which captured worldwide attention. Sarfatti ghost-wrote major parts of the book, but a bitter feud eventuated when Zukav reneged on promised royalty payments. A notable ‘paraphysicist’ (physicists who investigate ESP phenomena), Sarfatti co-authored the lurid paperback Space-Time & Beyond with Bob Toben and Fred Wolf, later withdrawing his name from the updated edition. Sarfatti also contributed material to futurist Robert Anton Wilson’s Cosmic Trigger I: Final Secret of the Illuminati (Berkeley: And/Or Press, 1977), and Jeffrey Mishlove’s The Roots of Consciousness: The Classic Encyclopedia of Consciousness Studies (Council Oak Distribution, 1993). Current editions of both Zukav and Mishlove’s books have deleted much of the original material, which he wrote for the first editions. “Not a very smart move on the part of the authors!” replies Sarfatti...

"Stanford Research Institute’s Electronics & Bioengineering Laboratories were assigned to the project under the direction of Russell Targ, parodied in the film Ghostbusters (1984)... Sarfatti initially supported Geller’s claims of psychic ability after Geller’s famous Birkbeck test, attended by Arthur Koestler, Arthur C. Clarke and David Bohm (engineered by Brendan O'Regan). He later labeled Geller a fraud after discussions with magician James Randi. Martin Gardner has captured this strange period in his book Science: Good, Bad & Bogus (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1979). With the publication of Journal of Scientific Exploration (Vol. 10, No. 1), and new papers by researchers Edwin May, James Spottiswoode and Jessica Utts, Sarfatti no longer dismisses much of the research as “pseudo-science.”

"Increasingly disturbed by Werner Erhard’s authoritarian tactics and his 1984esque ‘psychobabble,’ Sarfatti warned of “KGB spies within the New Age movement.” The disagreement with Erhard alienated him from many New Age devotees. It was after Erhard ended funding for the Physics Consciousness Research Group, replacing Sarfatti with his assistant Saul Sirag, that Sarfatti exiled himself to the Caffe Trieste, where he lectured on time-travel techniques and consciousness research.

"Contact with Lawrence Chickering of the policy think tank Institute for Contemporary Studies (ICS) led to Sarfatti acting as a consultant for the Reagan Administration’s fledgling Strategic Defence Initiative (or Star Wars project). This brought Sarfatti into the twilight world of half-truths, where the obsessive apparatus of State security interlocks with sinister forces from big business.

"“I spent a lot of time with Marshall Naify in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He is a billionaire and was Chairman of United Artists back then. He was a Hollywood mogul and certainly knew Reagan. Naify, Lawrence Chickering and I had lunch at Enrico’s maybe in 1981, where Naify spent at least half an hour describing in detail what would later be Star Wars SDI. Chickering worked directly with Ed Meese. [In the early 1980s Meese was a confidante of Reagan. Meese’s Institute for Contemporary Studies think-tank was admired by Reagan, Caspar Weinberger, and Chickering. He became U.S. Attorney General under Reagan but was caught up in the Iran-Contra scandal.] He asked me to write a memo based on this lunch and some of my own ideas. Around this time, I I had a correspondence with Igor Akchurin of the Soviet Academy of Sciences on all of this – so the Soviet Intelligence were getting from us that SDI would really work!"...

"During the 1980s, Sarfatti concentrated on investigating superluminal, or faster than light (FTL) communication. Jung’s synchronicity meme (“meaningful coincidences”, or John Lilly’s ‘Cosmic Coincidence Control’) challenges causality and suggests that quantum-mechanics theory is incomplete."

Affiliations

 * Advisory Board, Lifeboat Foundation

Related Sourcewatch

 * Jack Sarfatti, "SARFATTI'S ILLUMINATI: IN THE THICK OF IT!", MindNet Journal - Vol. 2, No. 2A.