Another year has passed on this troubled planet of ours. And as I look back on the many years I have been writing about topics beyond mainstream science and religion, I recall the interesting and unforgettable personalities I’ve met along the way from whom I’ve learned much.

They were a varied lot, many of whom were world-famous religious and political leaders, scientists, psychics, researchers, writers, etc. who contributed new knowledge or something unique to the world.

First of these was the late St. John Paul II, whom I met in a special audience at the Vatican in 1986. He had a strong and magnetic aura which made some people cry inexplicably just by being in his presence.

I gave him a copy of the German edition of my book on the faith healers of the Philippines. As I handed him the book, he said, “Faith is what we need most in the world today.”

I also met the world-famous Israeli psychic Uri Geller, who made spoon-bending using telekinesis a household concept.

But what Uri demonstrated before a thousand people during a conference on alternative healing in Dusseldorf, Germany, in 1995 was something more extraordinary than bending a spoon through telekinesis. He germinated radish seeds in his palm within a few minutes by merely asking the audience to mentally command the seeds to grow. He could not have done this through trickery or sleight-of-hand because he did not move his extended open palm.

Complete trance

Luiz Gasparetto is an extraordinary Brazilian psychic whom I met in Buenos Aires, Argentina in the 1990s. He could paint works of the masters like Van Gogh, Picasso, Modigliani, Rubens, etc. in five to 10 minutes while in a complete trance and without using a brush, but only his hands.

His works were investigated by Elsie Dubugras, editor of Planeta magazine in Brazil, who could not find evidence of fraud or forgery. I had a long interview with him, where he explained how he did those paintings.

I also met the world-famous endocrinologist, wellness guru and mystic, Dr. Deepak Chopra, in the late ’80s during an international conference held in Tokyo, where we were both invited as resource speakers.

Dr. Chopra attended my talk and I, in turn, attended his talk about quantum healing. At that time he was not yet that well-known worldwide. He must have written more than 15 books since.

In an international conference held in Sao Paolo, Brazil, where I was invited to speak about Philippine healers, I had some very interesting conversation with the late Dr. Karl Pribran of Stanford University, who was also a resource person.

Dr. Pribran developed the Holographic Theory of the Brain, which says that memory is not located in specific parts of the brain, but is spread throughout, just like how a hologram stores memory or images.

Also at the international conference on alternative healing in Dusseldorf, was Dr. Rupert Sheldrake, the famous British biologist who proposed the theory of Morphic Resonance, to explain how an idea spreads across the world in a short time when a certain percentage of a population has learned it.

Another world-famous researcher I met was Dr. Hiromi Shinya, who developed the Apparatus for Meridian Identification or the AMI machine which proved the existence of the meridians and acupuncture points in traditional Chinese medicine. He also, by accident, discovered the existence of the seven psychic or energy centers in the Indian yogi system.

There are so many other interesting and world-famous personalities I’ve been fortunate to meet, but let me save those for future articles.

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