The Ph.D. – Nearly every summer for the past decade I've gone to Montreal to attend my favorite conferences, sponsored by the International Institute of Integral Human Sciences (IIIHS), which explores the frontiers of science, spirituality and culture. The event generally consists of two 3-day conferences with a 5-day College Week in between.

Students of many cultural backgrounds have passed through the organization's International College Program, enrolling in courses and workshops in Montreal and at affiliated colleges in various countries, attending the annual conferences, and taking educational and cultural tours to exotic lands. The worldly and other-worldly focus of IIIHS is right up my alley!

In 2003, the group's founders arranged for me to receive a doctoral degree from an affiliated university in Sri Lanka. It's an honorary Ph.D. awarded to me for my extensive research and writing over the years.

The Award – In 2003 I shared the Swiss Prize for Epipsychologywith my friends Jacques and Monique Blanc-Garin of France. That was for our research and writing in ITC (Instrumental Transcommunication), the use of technology to get in touch with the worlds of spirit. 

INIT – My greatest honor was the opportunity to work with The Seven angels, or ethereal beings, as a member of the International Network for Instrumental Transcommunication. They communicated directly with some of our members through phones, computers, and other modern devices. From my book, The Project:

"The Seven Ethereal beings…identified themselves to us as "gatekeepers" between the spirit worlds and our world. They didn't reveal to us the full scope of their gatekeeper duties, but those duties certainly include control over the miraculous communication bridge that opened up for our group. Our spirit friends (deceased humans) told us that being in the presence of The Seven is like standing before a bank of living supercomputers that exchange oceans of information instantly. These entities provided vast energies to facilitate the miraculous contacts that our spirit friends made with us. Occasionally The Seven themselves spoke through the ITC channels, delivering messages to us through most of our communication technologies that boggled our minds, and I would trust the validity of those messages with my life (which, frankly, is a small risk, considering the timeless nature of the Ethereals and the fleeting nature of human lives). To say their information is as good as gold is an understatement. As a reliable source, then, messages from The Seven through ITC devices are number one in my book."

So, the ethereals would sometimes lower their vibration to enter the astral world of our spirit friends, who said the angels glowed in rainbow colors. I'm sure those angels could enter our world, too, in a way that we could see them in all their glory. Although they didn't grace INIT in such a "face-to-face" way, I believe they've done so at various times throughout our ancient history. Down through the ages there have been plenty of sightings reported in early cultures and religions from around the world. From Time Magazine, 1993-Dec 27, in an article, ""Angels Among Us," by Nancy Gibbs and others:

"ANGELS ACROSS THE AGES. If there is such a thing as a universal idea, common across cultures and through the centuries, the belief in angels comes close to it. Jews, Christians and Muslims have postulated endlessly about angels' nature and roles, but all three religions affirm their existence. There are angels in Buddhism, Hinduism and Zoroastrianism; winged figures appear in ancient Sumerian carvings, Egyptian tombs and Assyrian reliefs. Visible or invisible, in disguise or in full glory, angels appear in more than half the books of the Bible: it was an angel who told Abraham to spare his son from sacrifice, who saved Daniel from the lion's den, who rolled the stone away from Christ's tomb. Muslims believe that angels are present in mosques to record the prayers of the faithful and to testify for or against people on the Day of Judgment. Medieval theologians believed that angels had to exist to fill the gap between God and humankind. In ancient civilizations, whose multiplicity of deities socialized freely with mortals, there was little need for divine intermediaries…"

In particular, there are many references to a group of seven angels

·         In wikipedia…

·         In astrology…

·         In apocalyptic writings…

·         On artistic websites…

Are The Seven angels who spoke to our INIT group the same as the seven archangels of yore?

The more I reflect on the experiences of our INIT group and the messages we received from The Seven (as I reported in our Contact! journal, especially the Fall 1996 issue), the more I'm inclined to believe that, yes, they are the same seven.

Talk about an honor!