The Stargate Conspiracy

by Lynn Picknett

  It is also curious that — as the two main proponents of the Mars — Earth connection — Hurtak and Hoagland should completely ignore one another, even when discussing each other’s work. For example, Hoagland manages to elaborate on the Elysium pyramids in The Monuments of Mars without mentioning Hurtak even once, despite the fact that he was the first person ever to talk about them publicly. The compliment is returned: in Hurtak’s The Face on Mars, Hoagland’s name is completely absent, even when discussing the City and the Fortress, features that he discovered and named. And the two men have other connections, most significantly perhaps being their links with SRI International, both having worked closely with Lambert Dolphin Jr.

  Surely it is too much of a coincidence that the two major proponents of the Mars-Earth theory in the last twenty-five years should be involved with the same group of alleged extraterrestrial intelligences - the Council of Nine? This is a somewhat disturbing scenario: between them, these men have great influence, a wide variety of contacts, and many disciples, culled from New Age, intellectual, scientific and political circles, even the intelligence community. Yet they and their many followers clearly believe that they are in contact with the Nine, either directly or indirectly. So who or what are the Council of Nine?

  Enter the Nine

  The Council of Nine are not some recent channelling fad. The story began almost 50 years ago thanks entirely to the work of one man whose name has already appeared in this investigation. He was Dr Andrija Puharich, Uri Geller’s mentor and the ultimate eminence gris, whose disturbing talent for creating belief systems has - we were to discover — helped to shape events in the last years of the twentieth century, and may well even mould the way we think after the Millennium.

  This American doctor, born in Chicago of Yugoslavian parents in 1918, was a reasonably successful inventor of medical gadgets such as improved deaf aids. But that was only part of his life, his more public face. He was also known as a brave pioneer in the ‘Cinderella science’ of parapsychology, or — as many have come to view it - the study of the hitherto unplumbed powers of the human mind.

  From 1948 until 1958 Puharich ran a private paranormal research centre called the Round Table Foundation in Glen Cove, Maine, carrying out experiments with several famous psychics such as the Irish medium Eileen Garrett and the Dutch clairvoyant Peter Hurkos (Pieter van der Hirk). In 1952 he took an Indian mystic, Dr D.G. Vinod, to the laboratory, although apparently not so much to test his abilities as to listen to his teachings, which came by what is now known as ‘channelling’: more or less identical to old-fashioned trance mediumship, in which the medium becomes a conduit for various discarnate spirits.

  The first of these sessions took place on 31 December 1952. Vinod entered the trance state and at exactly 9pm, spoke. His first words were, portentously: ‘We are Nine Principles and Forces.’ One of the ‘Nine’, who identified himself only as ‘M’ (a second communicator, ‘R’, also appeared over the next few months), furnished some extremely detailed scientific information concerning a variant of the Lorentz-Einstein Transformation equation (relating to energy, mass and the speed of light).9

  Puharich worked with Vinod for a month, then had to return to service with the US Army, which kept him away from the Round Table Foundation for several months, returning later in 1953. A final seminal session with Vinod occurred on 27 June that year, when a circle of nine people, led by Puharich, gathered to listen to the disembodied nonhuman intelligences known as the Nine. Two of the ‘sitters’ on that momentous occasion were the philosopher and inventor Arthur M. Young and his wife Ruth, who also have key roles in this curious scenario. Another sitter was Alice Bouverie (née Astor), daughter of the founder of the Astoria Hotel in New York. Already the message was percolating through to the upper echelons of American society.10

  The Nine presented themselves as a kind of collective intelligence or gestalt, consisting of nine entities or aspects that together made up a whole. Puharich said that the Nine are ‘directly related to Man’s concept of God’, and that ‘the controllers of the Universe operate under the direction of the Nine. Between the controllers and the untold numbers of planetary civilizations are the messengers.’ 11 The Nine themselves - speaking through Dr Vinod - said: ‘God is nobody else than we together, the Nine Principles of God. There is no God other than what we are together.’12 The group disbanded when Vinod returned to India. That, however, was by no means the end of the Nine.

  As far as outsiders can ascertain, the Nine - when speaking through Vinod - never identified themselves as extraterrestrials, but that was to change. Three years later Puharich and Arthur Young went to Mexico with Peter Hurkos to use the Dutch psychic’s powers to locate certain artefacts at the ancient site of Acámbaro.13 In the Hôtel de Paris they met an American couple, Dr Charles Laughead and his wife Lillian, who were working with a young man who claimed to be in telepathic contact with various alien races. Shortly after his return to the United States, Puharich received a letter from Laughead - a copy of which they sent to Young - giving communications from the extraterrestrials. And this referred to the Nine, giving the correct date for their first contact via Dr Vinod as well as the same information about the Lorentz-Einstein Transformation.14 This appeared to be exciting independent corroboration of the Nine’s existence, and confirmation of their ability to make contact with people other than Dr Vinod. (Perhaps significantly, Laughead’s letter was signed ‘yours fraternally’.)

  Over the next twenty years, Puharich devoted himself to more general parapsychological and medical research. He set up a company, the Intelectron Corporation, to market his many patented medical inventions. On the parapsychological side, apart from testing various psychics, he made a special, in-depth study of shamanism. He was particularly interested in shamanic techniques for altering states of consciousness, including the use of various hallucinogenic plants and ‘sacred’ mushrooms. Never one to stand on the sidelines, Puharich threw himself into these studies, even being initiated into the mysteries of Hawaiian shamanism, emerging as a fully fledged kahuna. At least as significant - in the light of what was to come - was his personal training in hypnosis to the level of master hypnotist, at which stage are revealed such mysteries as the ‘instant command technique’ so often used, and arguably abused, by stage hypnotists. Out of this admirably ‘hands-on’ research he wrote two books, The Sacred Mushroom (1959) and Beyond Telepathy (1962).

  Throughout the 1960s, Puharich investigated the extraordinary ‘psychic surgeon’ of Brazil known as Arigó (José Pedro de Freitas), whose trance states led to some highly unorthodox treatments of the sick, who flocked to his door by the thousand and, in many cases, were inexplicably cured. Puharich found Arigó’s work and psychic abilities genuine, though this was to be overshadowed by his discovery of a new, excitingly paranormal, talent from another part of the world.

  In 1970 a stage act by the young Israeli Uri Geller was causing a stir in the nightclubs of Israel and had already attracted the interest of the Israeli authorities. Through an Israeli Army officer, Itzhak Bentov, Geller came to the attention of Puharich,15 who had spent some time in Tel Aviv earlier in 1970, training Israelis in the workings of his medical devices, especially one for the ‘electrostimulation’ of hearing for the deaf. Puharich returned to Israel to meet Geller to evaluate him as a potential subject for further testing. The rest is history - although some of it was, until now, secret history.

  In November, Puharich carried out a more detailed study of Geller - this time with Itzhak Bentov, who was present when Puharich hypnotised the young Israeli in an attempt to discover the source of his powers. Writer Stuart Holroyd later (rather worryingly) described hypnosis as ‘a routine procedure in Puharich’s investigation of psychics’,16 which raises some ethical questions about his methods. The altered state of consciousness known as hypnosis is by no means fully understood, but it is well known that entranced subjects are notoriously eager to please their hypnotists by creating fantasies that comp
ly with his or her own predilections or agendas. Hypnotist and subject can soon become partners in a strange and wild dance in which sometimes one person leads and sometimes the other, although it is usually the hypnotist who calls the tune.

  In deep trance, Uri described being three years old, seeing a light in the sky and encountering a shining being. Then a voice spoke through him (in English), telling the researchers that Geller had been ‘programmed’ on that occasion, and that Puharich was to take care of him. The voice also warned of a serious threat of war between Israel and Egypt, which – if it took place – would escalate and ultimately lead to a Third World War.17 Further hypnosis sessions followed. The entities explained that Geller had been programmed for a special mission to Earth – ’He is the only one for the next fifty years to come‘18 and announced that they were a form of conscious computer, living aboard a spacecraft called Spectra. After a few sessions, Puharich asked: ‘Are you of the Nine Principles that once spoke through Dr Vinod?’ The reply was: ‘Yes.’19

  Puharich had another subject in mind, one that would assume a much wider appeal – virtually becoming a new religion – as the twentieth century draws towards its close. He asked the communicating entities: ‘Are you behind the UFO sightings that started in the United States when Kenneth Arnold saw nine flying saucers on June 24, 1947?’20 Again, the answer was affirmative.

  Puharich wrote: ‘Now I was totally convinced that Uri and I had been contacted by such a local cosmic being; by this I mean some representative or extension of the Nine Principles.’21

  On his second trip, Puharich stayed in Israel for almost three months, in daily contact with Geller and bombarded with demonstrations of paranormal phenomena nearly every day. Messages from Spectra/the Nine continued, either channelled through the hypnotised Geller or appearing spontaneously on audio tapes, but in every case the tapes either erased themselves or vanished before their eyes. Unfortunately, that means that only Puharich’s written transcripts survive as records of the events.

  It was undoubtedly a weird time. Puharich and Geller saw several UFOs, and witnessed the teleportation of objects from one place to another, often through solid walls, besides experiencing a series of bizarre synchronicities. This, however, was merely window-dressing. Their mission was to pray and meditate to prevent the predicted Israel — Egypt war, as tension between the two countries increased over Christmas 1971. Eventually, President Sadat of Egypt made an astonishing climbdown, and the war was averted in the nick of time. (Two years later an Israeli-Egyptian conflict occurred with the Yom Kippur War of October 1973, but when Puharich queried this with the Nine he was told this was fine; there was no risk of the conflict escalating and ‘the war will be fought just like an ordinary war’.22)

  When Puharich returned to the United States in February 1972, determined to have Geller’s wild talents evaluated scientifically, he contacted SRI International. Significantly, although SRI supremos Targ and Puthoff were in charge of the testing, the key figure in this scenario was former lunar astronaut Edgar Mitchell, the ‘funding and contracting agent’.23 Significantly, the Geller experiments at SRI coincided exactly with the first CIA involvement with psychic experiments there, specifically their sponsorship of research into Ingo Swann’s extraordinary talent for remote viewing. And in Uri Geller they had the golden child of the Israeli secret service, Mossad.24 Is it too unlikely that Geller, also, was being investigated by the CIA? Geller has gone on record as admitting he worked for them.25 And, as we shall see, Puharich himself was on their payroll, at least from time to time. And a further connection with intelligence agencies lay in Hal Puthoffs former employment by the National Security Agency (NSA), an even more secretive organisation than the CIA, and with powers at least as great.26 In an interview in 1996, Geller made the telling comment: ‘And probably, I believe, the whole thing with Andrija was financed by the American Defense Department.’27

  When Geller arrived in the United States in August 1972, the Nine recommenced their antics with more messages on instantly wiped tapes and teleportations. Significantly, Geller himself was not a convert to the Nine, even at this stage. He found their pranks childish and ultimately unimpressive. He was to say of them in August 1972: ‘I think somebody is playing games with us. Perhaps they are a civilization of clowns.’28

  At the time that Geller began his SRI tests, in November 1972, the Nine — through their representative Spectra in those early days - started to describe their plans for an imminent mass landing of spaceships, claiming that Puharich and Geller’s roles were to prepare mankind for this momentous event. The Nine described the ‘Knowledge Book’ that they had left hidden in Egypt some 6,000 years ago, during one of their previous visits to Earth. They then began to talk about another extraterrestrial race, called - somewhat unfortunately - Hoova, who had come to Earth 20,000 years ago, specifically to the area now called Israel, where they had encountered Abraham, claiming that this meeting was the origin of the Biblical story of the ladder joining Heaven and Earth.

  On 27 February 1973, Puharich took Geller to meet Arthur M. Young at his house in Philadelphia, thus completing a circle that had begun twenty years before with the channelling of Dr Vinod. Sadly there are no accessible records of what happened at this meeting.

  Unfortunately for the Nine, their carefully laid plans for Geller never came to fruition. In October 1973 he appeared on The David Dambleby Show on British television and was launched into overnight psychic superstardom. Geller and Puharich went their separate ways soon afterwards, and the former has distanced himself from the Nine ever since. Although he admits that extraterrestrial intelligences might be responsible for his powers, he — very sensibly — points out that he cannot vouch for what the Nine said through him, as he was always in a hypnotic trance at the time.29 He thinks that his own subconscious fantasising may have played a large part in the communications - which is often the case during hypnosis - although he does corroborate some of the other events related by Puharich, such as their shared UFO sightings in Israel and Sinai.

  The Nine, it transpired, did not really need Geller, despite having told him that he was to be ‘the only one for the next fifty years to come’. They continued seamlessly after Geller’s departure, with other channellers and a new group of devotees. The key people who now entered the story were Sir John Whitmore and Phyllis Schlemmer. The new group formed an organisation called Lab Nine, based at Puharich’s estate at Ossining in New York State.

  Puharich and Lab Nine had many wealthy and influential backers, including members of Canada’s richest family, the Bronfmans (the owners of the Seagram liquor business) and an Italian nobleman called Baron DiPauli. It is portrayed as an almost hippy-style commune — with a loose band of hangers-on moving around the central nucleus of Puharich, Whitmore and Schlemmer - but what hippy commune attracts quite so many rich people or such a sprinkling of members of the intelligence agencies? And what other community could boast a fully qualified kahuna shaman and master hypnotist like Puharich - with none other than James Hurtak as his de facto second-in-command?

  It was at this time that Puharich also carried out a series of experiments with the so-called ‘Geller Kids’ or ‘Space Kids’, children with pronounced psychic gifts. Ostensibly, this was to investigate the extent of their powers — such as metalbending - but significantly, Puharich soon had them remote viewing and hypnotised them to tell him where their powers originated.30

  One of the most useful and colourful characters with whom Puharich surrounded himself at Ossining was Phyllis Schlemmer (née Virtue). Born of Italian and Irish ancestry in Pennsylvania, from an early age she was aware of her gifts as a medium. At her Catholic college the priests often asked her to accompany them on exorcisms, as she could ‘see’ possessing spirits leaving the victims. As she grew older, she regularly channelled a number of spirit guides. After the break-up of her first marriage, she moved to Florida where she developed her career as a psychic, working for the police and mining companies, and e
ven broadcasting her own television show. She founded the Psychic Center of Florida in Orlando, a school for developing psychics, in 1969. Her main spirit guide was an entity called ‘Dr Fiske‘, but in 1970 a new control simply named ‘Tom’ ‘came through’. She assumed it must be her grandfather Thomas, who died when she was just five.

  Phyllis Schlemmer met Puharich at a conference in the late 1960s, and the two were in regular contact thereafter. In January 1974, a cook from Daytona Beach, who is referred to in Nine-related literature only by the pseudonym ‘Bobby Home’, enrolled at Schlemmer’s Psychic Center, developing healing talents so remarkable that she recommended him to Puharich as a potential subject for further study. It was not to be a fortuitous recommendation for poor Bobby.

  Puharich travelled to Miami to meet Home in March 1974. On their first meeting — as was Puharich’s habit, as we have seen — he hypnotised the young man, who began to channel an extraterrestrial entity called Corean. Puharich was delighted, believing he had found a worthy successor to Geller in his quest to establish regular contact with the Nine. He went on to have several channelled ‘interviews’ with Corean, but refused to let Home himself hear the tapes of these sessions, claiming that this specifically followed Corean’s own instructions.31 It was decreed that Home should be told neither the identity of the entity nor the content of its communications. Puharich behaved in a highly unethical way for a hypnotist, asking obviously leading questions of Corean, such as if he was connected with Hoova, the civilisation supposedly in contact with Uri Geller. In fact Corean had not mentioned Hoova, but afterwards this became a regular subject of discussion for him. Then, amazingly, Puharich compounded his already extraordinarily unethical behaviour by implanting a posthypnotic suggestion in Horne’s subconscious mind to enable Schlemmer to continue to put him into trance in his, Puharich’s, absence32