TCI - SP- 4 - Influences - Rick Phillips

Already, three of The C Influence writers have provided their essay about influences - please make sure to read each of the essays this week. Some of the best, most personal paranormal writing on the internet this week for sure. That said, I will be providing a slightly different approach to this weeks `seed idea’.



Two weeks and one day after my first `remembered thought/experience’ which happened on my third birthday - Albert Einstein died - and I remember my mother crying and saying he was the smartest man in the world. Somehow to me, it was a worrisome event.


In 1958, I remember going to the movies to see The Blob which instilled an interest in `alien life’ and that mankind might be threatened by such creatures. That said, I loved it - didn’t have nightmares or anything of that nature and saw all the great B film classics of that era as a kid. And, by the age of about 12 I was avidly awaiting my mothers subscription to Fantasy and Science Fiction (magazine soft cover) and also to it’s monthly column by Isaac Asimov. And, during those same years I remember my grandmother often saying whenever they mentioned UFO’s on TV or in the newspaper `oh I wish they would take me with them’.


Indeed, while growing up (before age 12 even) I remember the `ghost’ stories our family would sometimes tell around the kitchen table at a Christmas dinner or such - and the one I remember was about an old coal miner walking along the road up ahead of one of my relatives who was walking alone going home from the coal mines of PA. And, as my relative called out to the man walking ahead and as the relative ran up - the `miner’ vanished. And, it wasn’t long until our family got to experience the same.


Shortly after turning 12 my grandfather died - and at the time my mother and I lived with my grandparents (divorce). Not long after that my mother married her boyfriend and my grandmother got her own place. And, not a month or two later - in the empty attic room (fully finished) that they slept in - `backward footsteps’ started to pace the floor - multiple times a week. Heard by the three of us repeatedly (often when my stepfather went up they stopped before he even reached the top - and they never continued with anyone in the room). We moved not long after.


Now, since I was the proverbial `pre-teen-teen’ and that is what is often associated with Poltergeist Phenomena who is to say what was going on - I always felt he was looking for my grandmother. That said, I knew inherently that it was NOT me but knew of those stories - even then at the time the idea that teens were always involved in the PP was pretty commonplace.


This was (the ghost steps in the attic) pretty much the only paranormal events I was a participant in until my early 20’s. Indeed, my interest in `esoteric’ ideas didn’t blossom until 1973 when I discovered a book by Joseph Chilton Pearce called `The Crack In The Cosmic Egg’ - and for me - it literally was a crack that opened and has yet to fully close. (Eventually, I attended a lecture with another writer of TCI - J.S. Flower - in 1976 or so to see Pearce - and I asked him a question that I can still paraphrase till this very day - `How would you compare the controlled Lucid Dream states of CC with the mutual hypnosis states induced by Dr. Charles Tart?‘)


Indeed, because of that book - I couldn’t get my hands on or read fast enough any number of books (including Alan Watts, Tibetan Book of the Dead, etc) - but, most especially Carlos Castaneda. Especially the first book and especially the back of the book called The Structural Analysis - which laid out a Phenomenology for a Special Consensus reality which included what most folks would say paranormal events.


While the group into CC that year was significant (and we were reading more than the first book) - one close buddy of mine and I were VERY into The Structural Analysis. And, one time, just he and I went into a place well into the woods around Athens Ohio that the group of us had called the Power Spot. It was the ONLY time my buddy went and the only time I ever went with just one person as we normally went in groups. And, during that event, in which I had taken my `Heavy’ writings notebook with us, (that is how geeky I guess I was) - and my buddy started to almost DO a beckoning in a sense. He was almost in a trancelike state and was focusing on sounds only he could hear (saying out loud - do you hear that?) and when I answered and he opened his eyes - my notebook moved about 2-4 feet on its own accord. Something we both witnessed.


But, it was between 1973-1977 that I was discovered Ouspensky and then Gurdijeff (have read much Ouspensky) and


`The work’. However, concurrent to that - somehow, somewhere, words and concepts started to come to me - Phenomenology words and concepts - that I wrote down as they came to me (almost always in a stoned state). An entire Phenomenology - without ever encountering it until late 1975 after reading Kant, others and then eventually discovering Husserl and Sartre. Indeed, my Phenomenology (which I call the Phillips Phenomenology - it is Google able) is a near dead ringer for the basic ideas of Sartre. And, when I discovered Sartre - I realized I had been writing Phenomenology. And, like Duensing - I have never let my Husserl Book leave my side of my bed and I take it usually when traveling. I cannot suggest more highly `The Phenomenology of Internal Time-Consciousness’ by Husserl. (The book Man And Time - by J.B. Priestly was also influential to me.)


Then, `C’ Influence type of stuff - lost a bit of importance in early adulthood and all of those gigs. (A funny side story is also how J.S. Flower and I went to some `Work’ groups in 1976-77 or so - practicing the ideas for an hour or two - with a strange group of folks.) That said, I was still reading CC but now didn’t really believe his full tale - having read the DeMille books. However, one thing I knew to be TRUE - and that was CC’s Controlled Lucid Dreaming - of which I had about 10 or so experiences between 75-80. I could readily see that CLD was some new form of reality.


I’ve also had more paranormal experiences:


In 86 - again with J.S. Flower (and another person) we/I had a `missing time experience’ of the first degree - which I will describe when TCI focuses on that phenomena. Followed by my one and only UFO sighting in 1991 (close up) - and a telekinesis event (which we beckoned) (again with J.S. Flower) in about 2004 which I’ve described to Sally Rhine of the Rhine Institute. (I also had one possible Doppelganger event, like Duensing, but my doppelganger - if it was one - was only a minute or so `ahead’ of me - and went into the same retail location. I’ve described that in my blog The Heavy Stuff too.


These events, and specifically my UFO experience - once again got me to reading all I could find about UFO’s and other strange phenomena. But, in the 2000’s - only three books break thru above the rest for me - Julian Barbour’s - `The End of Time’ -- Lujan Matus’s book `The Art of Stalking Parallel Perception‘- and `Quantum Evolution’ by JohnJoe McFadden. (That said, I loved the 90’s book by Alan Guth `The Inflationary Universe’ - and Hunt For the Skinwalker).


Finally, all the above influences moved me to start my Phenomenology blog in 2006, my Squidoo presence as The AnomalyMan, and to start The Heavy Stuff blog too. In 2007, I started UDCC - Ufo Disclosure Countdown Clock and in late 2009 Barf Stew - and on all of these sites I provide occasional raw and new material.


Lastly, it was during a post on THS - not long ago - that J.S. Flower and Duensing and I had a very cool commenting session after my last post - that literally inspired The C Influence Blog to be set-up. And, hopefully, in some manner - TCI hopes to bring `ideas’ to the world to be discussed - BIG IDEAS - and we are all glad to have you along for the ride too.