ASM: As I understand it, you had a very good job as vice president of AAIS, Inc.
NEA: But not the vice president. One of three. I was in charge of theoretical explorations.
ASM: Perhaps we should establish what AAIS stands for.
NEA: Advanced Artificial Intelligence Systems. The acronym, incidentally, is pronounced ace. It's a major firm in its field.
ASM: After graduating from the University of Toronto in computer science, what came next?
NEA: I went to work with AAIS as a research assistant on an adjusted workweek, while going to grad school part-time. AAIS encourages continuing education. At age twenty I was promoted to research associate, and worked up from there. I became a vice president at age twenty-five. [Chuckles.] I'm afraid I was a workaholic.
ASM: And you resigned at age thirty. Why?
NEA: The job itself was no longer enough. I was experiencing spiritual changes, though at the time I didn't think of it that way. I simply knew that I very much wanted time to do other things. But I still wanted a reliable income, so I continued with AAIS as a consultant, with the understanding that I wouldn't put in more than twenty hours a week.
ASM: Didn't that mean quite a reduction in pay?
NEA: Sixty percent. But forty percent left a comfortable paycheck. I'd been living well below my means since age twenty, developing an investment portfolio.
ASM: So how did you invest your newly won free time?
NEA: [Laughs.] I joined a zen group, and for some while practiced meditation from 6 to 8 o'clock at the zendo each morning. I still meditate regularly. For a time I belonged to an evening group that practiced dance as worship. And I read: biographies, history, philosophy, and a broad spectrum of sciences. And religion, especially eastern religions and new-age spiritual philosophies.
On an impulse, at age thirty-two I took a week-long workshop in NLP—neuro-linguistic programming. Which has nothing to do with computers. And things began to—let me repeat began to—come together for me. On how I wanted to invest the rest of my life. NLP is a psychotherapy, and I found it exciting. After that I spent two evenings a week providing free NLP treatments for street people, at bowery missions in Rochester, New York. I lived only fifteen miles from downtown Rochester.
The next summer I flew to Seattle, and took an intensive five-week course in an early form of Life Healing, another psychotherapy, from psychiatrist Dr. Peter Verbeek, who'd developed it.
ASM: And then?
NEA: If you passed the course, and a four-to eight-week internship, you were certified to practice.
ASM: And apparently you did.
NEA: Not right away. First I went home and did some work I'd promised AAIS. Then I turned in my consultant hat, and drove back to Seattle to do the internship.
ASM: Which left you unemployed. Even if you could afford it, you must have felt at least a little uneasy.
NEA: Not really. I'd learned to trust the voice of my essence, my inner self. A few months earlier, while driving through the Finger Lakes region, I'd experienced a powerful epiphany. Powerful enough, I pulled off onto the shoulder. For several minutes, everything looked different. Trees and cows had auras. The grass and flowers glowed along the roadside. Auras weren't all of it, not even the major part of it, but they're something we have language for. I was seeing energy fields not normally visible to human eyes.
ASM: Do you still see them?
NEA: [Laughs.] You look quite nice in your pastel glow, Mr. Cochran.
ASM: Had you been on any—uh, medication at the time?
NEA: [Grinning.] Not then, not now. I've enjoyed excellent health all my life, and I've never been interested in mood-altering substances. After that experience, I realized I no longer wanted to continue in artificial intelligence research, useful and remunerative though it is.
ASM: So that's effectively when you decided—what? To be a spiritual teacher?
NEA: No, I wasn't ready to know that yet. But it was then I knew—really knew—I needed to invest my life in people.
ASM: Could you live on your investment income? Until you developed a psychotherapy practice?
NEA: Adequately, yes. And I intended to practice pro bono, or largely pro bono. Many of the people who most need Life Healing have little or nothing to pay with. And as I practiced, I became more and more excited by the potentials. That's when I conceived of the Hand Foundation.
ASM: You know, of course, that some people say you're a charlatan, a con man. But what do you think of the ones who say you're a messiah?
NEA: That's almost inevitable, when someone teaches as I do.ASM: And that is?
NEA: As one who knows, Mr. Cochran. As one who knows.