Encountering the Theory

I met Arthur Young in the fall of 1969 when he gave a lecture at the University of Pennsylvania, where I was a medical student. I then began going regularly to seminars at his elegant town house in Philadelphia. What struck me about these gatherings was that Arthur would have physicists, mathematicians, astrologers, physicians, and psychics all talking with each other. It was very exciting—truly a case of Main Line Philadelphia meets the new age.

In early 1970 I went to Switzerland to the Jung Institute. Arthur’s manuscript for The Reflexive Universe was the only book that I brought with me. I read it and reread it, made many comments, and sent it back to him.

In summer 1970 I began graduate work in the clinical psychology program at the University of California at Berkeley, but Arthur and I continued our work together. I began telling people in California, including Hal Puthoff, then a physicist at Stanford Research Institute, about Arthur and his work. Hal was fascinated, and we decided to invite Arthur and Ruth to come out for several seminars—at UC Berkeley, and Stanford Research Institute. Soon it was clear that there was sufficient interest in Arthur’s work for Arthur and Ruth to spend some time each year in California.

We held a meeting at the Psychology Department at the University of California, Berkeley, which led to the formation of the Institute. Among those who attended were Hal Puthoff, Alison Kennedy, Bob Ornstein, Mel Piestrup, Joan Schleicher, and myself. Arthur walked into this gathering of new age academics and blew everybody away. He could speak math to the mathematicians; astrology to the astrologers, physics to the physicists, and psychology to the psychologists.

Arthur’s ability to exhaust and exceed the knowledge of each individual in his or her area of specialization has never ceased to amaze me. He brought rigor and discipline normally reserved for the “hard sciences” into areas that had been devoid of rigorous thinking—into psychic phenomena, parapsychology, and astrology. He was a true Renaissance man.