Although John-Roger has often woven stories of his boyhood and later life into his discourses to underline points he is making, there is no hagiographical literature about a miraculous birth or a sainted childhood as there is for the founders of some new religions. Briefly, the bare facts are that John-Roger was born Roger Hinkins on September 24, 1934, to a Mormon family in Rains, Utah. Rains is a mining town and Hinkins’ father was a mine foreman. While growing up, the spiritual-teacher-to-be was more interested in girls and sports than in spirituality. The only unusual aspect of his childhood was that he could see “auras,” the colorful energy fields that traditional occultism pictures as surrounding the human body.

He held down a number of jobs, including a short stint in the coal mines. While in college, he worked as a night orderly in the psychiatric ward of a Salt Lake City hospital. Later he held a part-time job as a PBX telephone operator and dispatcher with the Salt Lake City Police Department. After completing a degree in psychology at the University of Utah in 1958, he moved to southern California and eventually took a job teaching English at Rosemead High School.

The turning point of his life occurred in 1963, during what we might today call a near-death experience. While undergoing surgery for a kidney stone, he fell into a nine-day coma. Upon awakening, he found himself aware of a new spiritual personality - “John” - who had superseded/merged with his old personality. After the operation, Hinkins began to refer to himself as “John-Roger,” in recognition of his transformed self.

Around this time John-Roger was a seeker exploring a variety of different spiritual teachings, including Eckankar, a Sant Mat-inspired group. Parallels between Eckankar and the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness have prompted critics to accuse him of plagiarizing Eckankar. During an interview with J-R, I asked him about his relationship with Paul Twitchell, the founder of Eckankar. His response was:

I’ve been asked, “Were you a student of Eckankar?” Yeah, if you can consider I was a student of the Reader’s Digest and National Geographic and the Rosicrucians and some other churches all at the same time. I went to some of the churches to see what they did - [I was what they refer to as] a metaphysical tramp. I call those my “meta-fizzle” days because none of those ever worked out.

No way do I have anything negative with Eckankar. No way. I had a private interview with Twitchell, and he said, “You have the sound [and] the names of the Gods on every realm.” I said, “They’re all the same God, it’s just a different vibration.” He said, “You know them?” I said, “Sure I know them.” And we discussed the initiation words, and he told me a sampling of his. And I said, “I don’t use those, I use the five names.” And he said, “Well, I don’t think the people will understand the five names.” I said, “Not unless you give them to them,” because he wasn’t going to give it to them. I got a letter a month later that said, “Since you’re an initiate of the Sound Current through Eckankar, here’s the other information that you’re to get.” So I looked through the information, and I said, “I don’t know why I got this, because I wasn’t initiated.”

John-Roger thus acknowledges that he studied with Eckankar, but was not, at least according to his own account, ever formally initiated into that organization. As for the parallels between Eckankar and MSIA, John-Roger would probably respond that these similarities result from the fact that truth is one, so why shouldn’t they both be saying similar things? This, at least, is how MSIA would view the issue.

Additionally, MSIA’s theology is strikingly different in many ways from both Sant Mat’s and Eckankar’s. One major difference is the position accorded Jesus Christ, who is viewed as the ultimate head of MSIA on this planet. Jesus embodies the Mystical Traveler Consciousness and holds the office of Christ for the earth (roughly like the “presidency” of this planet). John-Roger has also stated that he consciously changed the traditional form of Sant Mat initiatory tones - the “names of the Gods” referred to above - to access and synthesize the cosmic energetic route streams to Soul Transcendence of Eastern and Western mysticism.

After John-Roger’s postcoma realization, he did not immediately abandon his career as a high school English teacher. It was not, in fact, until some five years later that he began holding gatherings as an independent spiritual teacher, and not until 1971, that he quit his day job to become a full-time religious leader. How the core group of spiritual seekers came together to hold these first seminars is the foundation story of the Church of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness.

MSIA developed out of a series of six seminars held at the home of Muriel Engle in Santa Barbara, California. The first seminar took place on May 4, 1968. Across the course of six evenings, the audience was modest. Attendance ranged from 13 to 30 persons, depending upon the evening. After Santa Barbara, John-Roger was requested to present seminars in a private home in Thousand Oaks (a community midway between Santa Barbara and Los Angeles). Then they spread across southern California until there was such demand that John-Roger was doing five seminars a week at different homes in different cities. The Church of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness was formally incorporated three years later, in 1971.

Three people organized the first Santa Barbara seminars - Muriel Engle, Jack Reed, and Robert Waterman. All three are involved in MSIA to this day, and Engle and Reed both authored accounts of the beginning of the Movement that were published in The Movement newspaper, the organization’s periodical (later superseded by The New Day Herald). Other source material on the early days can be found in an early MSIA publication, Across the Golden Bridge.

Jack Reed’s story begins as a young man growing up in the sixties. He left the Air Force Academy in 1965, after attending that institution for a little over a year. After leaving the military, Reed teamed up with a friend in Tucson, and, beginning in late January of 1966, traveled around the country. They often encountered people who shared their spiritual interests.

While attending a week-long metaphysical conference put on by Neva Dell Hunter in Flagstaff, in August of 1966, Reed was introduced to John-Roger by an astrologer friend, Betty Baron. J-R, who immediately impressed Reed as a “weird dude,” stood up, shook his hand, and said, “I remember you. You killed me once in Atlantis!” He then added, “You should be very good at transfiguration.” Reed says that,

John-Roger and I were immediate friends. In my experience, he was the funniest guy I had ever met, and yet he also had these weird abilities. Despite the clowning, I perceived that he was also very spiritual.

After the conference, John-Roger returned to Rosemead. Reed went to Santa Barbara, where he enrolled as a student at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB). What brought them back together was a bet: Reed and J-R wagered a steak dinner over the sex of the child Reed’s brother’s wife was expecting. When the boy was born (John-Roger had predicted a girl), Reed drove down to Rosemead to collect. Reed then began visiting J-R on weekends on a regular basis, a custom that continued for the next year and a half.

I went down to see him, and I was also - I was 20 years old then - seeing this girl in La Habra, and it gave me a place to stay. I met several of J-R’s students, present and former, because they used to come over and hang out at his place.

I remember his apartment. It was very messy. It was a one-bedroom apartment. There was a surfboard standing in the corner. Dishes weren’t usually done [and were stacked] in the sink. And he was into gadgets, so there were electronic gadgets he was trying and stacks of paperwork and stuff. There were no pictures on the wall. I remember very clearly, because I often used to sleep on his couch.

On one of my trips down, J-R took me with him to a talk he was giving at Stephen Douglas’ metaphysical church in Long Beach. At about the same time, J-R suggested to me that he’d like to give more lectures to broader audiences.

In the mid-sixties, John-Roger was beginning to come out of the metaphysical closet and do public work in limited ways, such as guest lecturing at spiritual centers and giving Light studies (life pattern/past-life readings that addressed one’s spiritual issues). Some of the people who met him during this period later became involved in MSIA.

Reed wanted to set up a lecture for John-Roger at UCSB, and discussed the matter with his friend, Muriel Engle. At the time, Engle worked for UCSB developing that institution’s Educational Opportunity Program. She had been involved with alternative, “metaphysical” spirituality for some years and had met Reed through their mutual friend, Neva Dell Hunter. Two years prior to Engle’s first meeting with John-Roger, a well-known psychic had predicted that she would meet a young man who would have a major impact on her life, and with whom she would work closely. The clue she had been given by which she would know this person when she met him was “praying hands on a golden disc on a golden chain.”

Reed and Engle eventually found a metaphysical center, the Rainbow Temple (actually a private home that had been converted into a center), in downtown Santa Barbara to use for J-R’s lecture, which took place in August of 1967. From Reed’s description Engle’s initial impression was that John-Roger was bright but arrogant. However, she quickly retracted her judgment when she heard him say:

I’m going to present some techniques of expanding your consciousness which will enable you to recognize and understand certain personality traits and characteristics in others; but more important, this will help you see yourself more clearly. I ask only that you keep an open mind; if it works for you, use it. If you have better methods, please share them with me. But if you ever hear me say, “This is the only way,” please ask me to sit down.

This humble prologue impressed Engle, who then listened attentively to what J-R had to say. As part of his presentation, John-Roger offered to give the people in attendance short “readings.” Engle volunteered first.

His method of handling the vocabulary to fit each one’s understanding has always impressed me. He told me I would experience a change of consciousness about the first of the year. I listened but had to admit “nicht verstandt.” (“I don’t understand.”)

John-Roger then attempted to clarify his statement by describing this “change of consciousness” as an initiation. He further observed that it would involve “extensive travel.” This later turned out to be a prediction of a flight (at the time unplanned by Engel) to India with the famous yoga teacher Indra Devi to see the holy man Satya Sai Baba.

The evening following the lecture, John-Roger, Reed, and company dined at Engle’s house. Following the meal, she commented that she hoped the spaghetti was not too imbalanced starch-wise for someone as sensitive as J-R. He responded with typical humor, asserting that, “We will now have a demonstration of what the pendulum can do to change the chemical action of Whatever. . . .” He then opened his shirt collar, removed a golden chain over his head, and proceeded to use his medallion like a pendulum - a medallion that was in the form of a “golden disc with praying hands.”

When this happened, Engle says, “I froze: I didn’t need the sound of trumpets! Every nerve in my body rang in chord. . . .” Reed recalls that,

When J-R pulled out the chain with the praying hands, it was a moment where time stood still and there was a presence of Spirit that was overwhelming - like a wind of Spirit had blown in and shimmered; as if we had gone into another realm.

This remarkable experience did not, however, immediately lead to the cooperative spiritual enterprise that had been predicted in Engle’s reading two years prior, and she was “still puzzled” about how she might be working with John-Roger after that unusual evening.

In October, she was offered an opportunity to visit the Ashram of Satya Sai Baba for two weeks, and, on January 4, 1968, flew to India. Engle later reported feeling that she had truly undergone the “change of consciousness” John-Roger had predicted. In her last personal interview with Sai Baba before returning to the United States, she asked him for guidance regarding a group of young spiritual seekers who had been meeting regularly at her home:

“I need a teacher for the young students coming to my home. I can point them to general information, but we need someone who really knows where each one is, individually.” Baba watched me for a moment, then nodded, “Your teacher is at hand; you will know.” That was all!

She was disappointed by the response, interpreting Sai Baba’s words as indicating that she should rely upon the God within to fulfill the need for a teacher.

The week following her return, Engle attended a prophecy class at a town not far from Santa Barbara. Invited to share her India experience with the class, she made a few introductory remarks, and then stated, “I really think He [Sai Baba] is the Christ of our time.” This assertion had a dampening effect on the interest of the group, and she immediately realized that she had “made a giant blooper.” After the class formally concluded, Engle became engaged in an informal discussion with some of the people present whom she knew - including John-Roger, who wanted to hear more about “this great soul you met in India.” After some conversation, John-Roger related to her that she should have said that Sai Baba “has the Christ Consciousness,” rather than asserting that he “is the Christ.” In the midst of this conversation, Engle recalled Sai Baba’s statement, “Your teacher is at hand; you will know.” She immediately realized that J-R was the teacher for whom she had asked. Before the evening was over, John-Roger agreed to hold pilot seminars in Engle’s Santa Barbara home - seminars that became the starting point for MSIA.

A number of people who came to the early seminars drove from other cities in southern California. As the seminars became regular, ongoing meetings, these “long-distance” attendees were able to persuade John-Roger to begin holding seminars outside of Santa Barbara. This expansion of J-R’s activities continued until he was doing five seminars a week at different homes in different cities.

Despite the later proliferation of classes, workshops, and conferences, the home-meeting seminar remained MSIA’s core gathering, fulfilling a role not unlike the Sunday morning meetings of most Christian churches. The format of such seminars was also established in the early days, consisting of a talk by John-Roger, followed by individual “sharings.” After the seminar proper, attendees fellowshipped together, perhaps accompanied by tea or some sort of snack.

As the organization expanded until J-R could not personally attend every meeting, a distinction developed between live seminars with John-Roger and taped seminars at which the group listened to a tape of a J-R talk. How the seed of the MSIA organization developed out of the early seminars was related by Engle:

The group members didn’t need a name; we knew what we were doing and how we were progressing to soul travel and that level of consciousness. But in speaking to others of our activities and development, [we realized that] it was the “others” that seemed to need some identification.

All the suggestions were listed, first for the title, then later for the symbol, and each member in each of the seminars (seven at the time) had the opportunity to vote his choice. We voted for weeks until, by the process of elimination, the chosen insignia became well known by the popular acclaim of the first few hundred members of the Movement.

From these humble beginnings, John-Roger’s activities gradually expanded until he had become a full-time spiritual teacher. It was only after several years of steady teaching activity that John-Roger began to formally make people his students by initiating them into the Sound Current.

The Soul Awareness Discourses - the basic lessons that Movement people receive on a monthly basis - originated from the request of some of the early participants for reading material on the teachings, and were derived from seminar transcripts. After the seminars started being taped, each tape would receive a name, based on the topic J-R had discussed that evening. Additionally, a couple of John-Roger’s close associates would transcribe the tapes as well as make notes about what was on them.

In response to repeated requests for reading material, these notes were examined for common themes and material brought together from many different seminars to form the basis for printed discourses on particular topics, ranging from “Sending the Light” to “Overcoming Discouragement.” The earliest discourses were mimeographed. As MSIA developed, these were periodically revised and expanded, and more advanced levels of the discourses composed for longtime participants.

Nineteen seventy-one was an important threshold, being the year in which the organization was formally incorporated and the first issue of the first Movement periodical, On the Light Side, was published. On the Light Side, which was not much more than an elaborate newsletter, soon gave way to The Movement newspaper, a true alternative magazine that reported on events and personalities in the larger New Age movement, in addition to MSIA activities and concerns.

For reasons that will be discussed more fully in the next chapter, the period of the 1970s was a fruitful decade for the expansion of metaphysical spirituality. An important though little-discussed threshold event that helped set the stage for the spiritual ferment of the seventies was the lowering of immigration barriers to people from Asian countries in 1965. Thus not only were the older occult-metaphysical groups able to experience rapid growth in the wake of an influx of post-countercultural youth, but new Asian teachers were drawing students from this same crop of ex-hippies. Teachers from all of these traditions were interviewed in the pages of The Movement.

In more recent years, The Movement was succeeded by The New Day Herald, an in-house newspaper focused on MSIA news and events. Most of the space in the early On the Light Side periodicals was taken up by transcriptions of seminar talks. The content of these transcripts provides a good sense of John-Roger’s teachings in the early days. The following citation from the first On the Light Side accurately captures J-R’s homey, down-to-earth style:

First you learn who you are. And when you learn who the real self is, the false images fall away rapidly. The person you thought you were, the religion you thought you were, the philosophy you thought you were may fall away. You may find out that all of these philosophies that you’ve been adhering to just don’t work. But you may be afraid to throw them away because you don’t know what will take their place. When you get rid of the things that don’t work, you will find the true self. And the true self doesn’t have anger or jealousy or greed or lust or avarice. It doesn’t have any of these things; it doesn’t need them. But the false self has them and needs them and fights for dear life to hang onto them. If you could just once see within the true self, if you could get that image just once in your consciousness for a fraction of a second, you could go on for the rest of your life using that as an inner guiding light.

This focus on spirituality was, however, supplemented by discussions of some of the more fantastic phenomena one could encounter when treading an esoteric spiritual path. Also, some of the older members I interviewed recalled that many of John-Roger’s seminars presented information about the inner realms. This is related, in part, to a topic that was enjoying considerable attention in the metaphysical subculture of the 1970s - astral projection.

Astral projection, also known as the out-of-body experience (OOBE), refers to the supposed ability of human consciousness to travel outside the physical body. The astral body is said to be an exact replica of the physical body, but more subtle. It is the body that one inhabits immediately after death. It is further said that it is able to detach from the physical body at will, or under certain special circumstances. The astral body remains attached to the physical body via a stream of energy commonly termed the silver cord. It can also spontaneously leave the physical body during sleep, trance, or coma, under the influence of anesthetics or drugs, or as the result of accidents.

The notion of astral projection was popularized by the studies of the British scientist Robert Crookall - who compared hundreds of cases in which people left the physical body and reentered it after traveling unseen in the astral body - and by Sylvan Muldoon and Hereward Carrington, in their books The Phenomena of Astral Projection and The Projection of the Astral Body. Besides describing the phenomenon, they also reported on some techniques that were said to be effective for experiencing astral projection at will. These were almost all based on a simple, strong desire to project one’s own astral body.

Astral projection in the early 1970s was what channeling was to become for the late eighties and, more recently, what angels are for the mid-nineties - a popular fad that almost everyone in the metaphysical subculture had some interest in. While J-R often discussed astral plane experiences, he was also careful to emphasize that MSIA’s goal was Soul Transcendence, NOT astral travel. Nevertheless, it is easy to see how the widespread interest in astral projection was the basis for initially bringing certain seekers into contact with John-Roger’s teachings. To cite a relevant passage from an early MSIA book, Inner Worlds of Meditation:

One of the first indicators that you have tapped into the astral consciousness within is that the imagination becomes very fertile. . . . Continuing within, you may start seeing lights - circular lights, triangular lights, square lights, colored lights - and this is all saying that you are moving further within. . . . You may start to see some beautiful, fantastic shapes and designs. If you watch carefully, you will start to see whole scenes appear within the inner vision. It might appear that you’re back in King Arthur’s court, at his round table. Just observe; it could be one of your past incarnations reflecting through the astral realm.

While John-Roger never stopped discussing inner plane experiences, progressively less stress was placed on providing information about the lower planes as the Movement matured and as the astral projection fad faded away. Despite this slow shift in emphasis, J-R’s basic approach and style has changed very little over the years. John-Roger has written dozens of books, conducted thousands of seminars, and provided material for hundreds of hours of taped lectures over the past several decades, but comparatively little has been added to the basic themes laid out in the first few years of his spiritual teaching activity. At the same time, J-R has said that as the Spirit moves him with greater clarity, he also moves with greater clarity; therefore, the teachings are constantly undergoing slight revisions, and, from the point of view of participants, the teachings go deeper and deeper with time.

In contrast to his simple, unadorned teaching style, another characteristic of John-Roger’s activities has been a steady stream of usual psychic-spiritual experiences among his students. These experiences have characterized his ministry from the very beginning. Some sense of this dimension of J-R’s activities has already been conveyed in the preceding story of the early days of MSIA. These experiences have come to be accepted as what we might call “everyday miracles” by many people in the Movement. Such experiences provide, as I indicated in the introduction, evidence for the reality of the subtle, inner levels that are not immediately accessible to our ordinary, everyday state of consciousness.

It is difficult to convey an accurate sense of the role these often remarkable events have played in the life of MSIA. From the perspective of MSIA’s ultimate goal, Soul Transcendence, such experiences are insignificant. Not a few members, and even some who have been around for many years, have never had a single experience. For others, such psychic-spiritual experiences have been crucial for their personal spiritual journey. A remarkable example of this latter category of person is an actress whom I will call Susan Kelly (not her real name). In an interview I had with Kelly, she related a number of such experiences, including the story of how she feels John-Roger helped her land a big film role in the early days of her association with MSIA. In Kelly’s words:

One night during a live seminar, we were supposed to send up a little memo to J-R, and you could ask him a question. So, I wrote, “Dear J-R, I would like to put in the Light with you, this role I really want in Bite the Bullet.” When he got to the note, J-R looked right at me.

“You’ve already gotten that role in the spirit. Don’t show them the film Coming Apart. You were going to show them this film you did? You were in a different frequency when you did that film.”

Well, you better believe it. I was on drugs. I was totally, stark raving nude. I was everything in that film. It was done in ‘68 and ‘69, before I got on the spiritual path.

“No need to show them that film. You already have the role.” A couple of days later I got a call from Mr. Brooks’ secretary that I’m supposed to show up on a Sunday. Would I mind showing up on a Sunday because he was doing these readings very quickly and had planned to costume everyone on Monday? So I said, “Sure.”

The next day, I broke out with an infection that caused a rash all over my face. I’d been to Hawaii shooting “Hawaii 5-0,” and I’d picked up something in Hawaii. It certainly wasn’t sexual because I had been celibate, but it was just like staph all over me.

So I called up this guy who was the editor of The Movement newspaper at the time. His name was Joel.

“Joel, I gotta talk to John-Roger.”

“Well, that’s not easy, you know. You can’t just say, ‘I gotta talk to John-Roger.’ He’s a busy man; he’s always traveling and teaching.”

“You don’t understand. He told me I was going to get this role, but now I’ve broken out in a staph infection. I’ve got to talk to him right away.”

“Well, I want to give you this number at his personal residence, but you’re not supposed to have it, Susan. So don’t say where you got it from.”

So I call this number, and he picks up the phone.

“Hi, Susan.”

“I’d like to speak to John-Roger.”

“This is John-Roger, Susan.”

“Oh, well, I don’t mean to disturb you, John-Roger, but I have this rash all over my face, and you told me I was going to get this role, blah-blah-blah-blah-blah.”

“OK, look.” He said, “[You’re] probably very infectious now. If so, you shouldn’t get near anyone. If I were you, I’d stay inside for three days, perhaps get a hold of some kelp, lecithin, and B-6, and chant and meditate around the clock. I’d also take kelp, lecithin, and B-6 like you can’t get enough of it. If anyone brings you food, have them leave it at the door. I’m going to work with you on the other side and speak with your spirit guides on the other side.”

Well, I didn’t know what “speak with my spirit guides” meant, so I didn’t know what was going on. But I said, “Fine, whatever.”

Finally, he came back on and said, “Tuesday.”

“What do you mean, ‘Tuesday’? You’re the Mystical Traveler. What’s the matter with Sunday? My audition’s Sunday.” The minute I said it, I thought, “Man, I’ve got an ego!” I mean, I was hearing myself talk to this man that all these people were so devoted to, and I was making demands.

So while I was saying, “You’re the Mystical Traveler; how come you’re not going to get me well by Sunday?” he said, “Tuesday.”

So he goes away and he puts Muzak on. Suddenly “The Impossible Dream” is playing on the phone, and I’m thinking, “Man, this is corny! This has gotta be the corniest thing I’ve ever heard. I’m listening to “The Impossible Dream” and he’s talking to my spirit guides on the other side. What’s going on?”

But he came back and he said, “O.K. After you hang up, just see if you can just go to bed and don’t talk to anyone for a while. Do your spiritual exercises, and you’ll be fine.”

So the next day I’d done everything he said, and it was beginning to go away. Then it was getting close to Sunday, and it’s not all gone, so I was getting a bit freaked out. I still had the scabs and whatnot, and it’s like Friday and it’s getting to be Saturday, and I’m like freaking. Suddenly I get a phone call. It was Mr. Brooks’ secretary.

“Susan, would you mind if we switch you to Tuesday? Because Mr. Brooks has a sudden unexpected engagement.”

“No! No! That will be just fine!”

Well, Tuesday came. My face was entirely clear. I had one little tiny bump down there. You couldn’t see it unless you were looking for it. But, I was so used to a face filled with scabs that I was horrified someone was going to know.

So I got all dressed up and I went in there and he said, “Well, kid, we gotta make your hair brown, gotta have you have long hair. I want you to look like my wife, Jean Simmons. Going to get you fitted for a hair fall. Hair down to your waist, dark brown, whatnot.”

“You mean, I get the part?”

“Yeah, you got the part, kid.”

“Well, Mr. Brooks, don’t pay any attention to this thing,” I said, pointing to my bump.

“What are you talking about, kid?”

“This thing.”

“Shut up, kid. You’re going to lose the part if you don’t shut up. Just go to costumes.”

Then I went off on location with Gene Hackman and the rest of them.

While Kelly’s story may strike the reader as outside the realm of ordinary human experience, such “everyday miracles” are not viewed as extraordinary events by MSIA veterans who have heard many such stories over the years and have experienced things like this themselves.

Reflecting the counterculture’s interest in communal living arrangements as well as the model of the ashrams and monasteries being established by the new Asian spiritual groups, many early Movement participants felt that MSIA should establish a spiritual household. After a couple of initial experiments with different residences (e.g., a large house referred to as the “Light Castle” served this purpose for a few years), the Movement acquired an old mansion that, prior to their acquisition of the property, had been expanded and converted into a retirement home for doctors.

Purchased in 1974, this house in L.A.’s Crenshaw district was designated “Prana” (a Sanskrit word referring to the subtle energies tapped by certain yogic techniques). From then until now it has served as MSIA headquarters, though John-Roger never made it his residence. In the early days, over a hundred people lived in the Prana complex, and many other Movement participants resided in an adjoining apartment complex. Listening to the stories members tell of this period, one comes away with the impression that Prana served as a kind of spiritual “basic training” center for many young aspirants.

As the Movement and its members matured, the interest in communal living waned. The population of Prana eventually decreased from a high of about 130, to, at present, thirty-some-odd people, mostly core staff. The facility now serves as organizational headquarters and as a seminary - Peace Theological Seminary and College of Philosophy (often referred to by the abbreviation “PTS”) - and the bedrooms that formerly held avid ashramites have found new usefulness as dorm rooms for visiting students. PTS offers a variety of classes, correspondence courses, and a 2-year Master of Theology degree to Movement participants (the program has also been held outside of Los Angeles in other areas of the country), and there are plans to institute a course of study for a Doctor of Theology degree. As someone who has casually observed the Master of Theology program develop, my impression is that it has become one of the MSIA organization’s core activities.

How the Movement spread beyond southern California to other parts of the country is another part of the MSIA story.

This juncture in the Movement’s development is, however, quite complex because the story line splits off into separate narratives for each area. Rather than attempting to tell all of these tales, I will note a few points that will provide some perspective on the organization’s expansion.

In the early days, the teachings were spread outside of California via people sending tape recordings of John-Roger seminars to relatives and friends in other parts of the country. These friends or relatives would then hold home seminars at which J-R tapes would be played. (This seems, in fact, to have been the actual origin of the “taped” as opposed to the “live” seminar.) At first these tapes were quite crude - people initially recorded John-Roger’s talks with omni-directional microphones on cassette records - and the switch to more professionally-recorded sessions was prompted by complaints about tape quality from other areas of the country. One of the first MSIA “beachheads” outside of California was the Miami, Florida, area. During an interview, one longtime member related an amusing story about her first experience at a taped seminar in south Florida in 1969:

I went to the address, and it was one of these tenement apartment buildings with the exposed light bulbs outside of each apartment. So I knocked on the door. Someone opened it a little, and it was dark inside. I said, “Is this where they play the tapes?” I didn’t even know anything more specific to ask. So he said, “Yeah,” and opened the door, and I walked in and it was like going into a movie theater when the lights are down and you can’t see. . . .

As my eyes began to adjust, I noticed squiggly strings of different lengths hanging from the ceiling. . . . Kind of a nouveau art thing. The center of the floor was bare, there was no furniture, and people were sitting along the edge, leaning up against the walls. The only thing in the middle of the room was a tape machine. Nobody said, “Well, sit over here” - not anything! It was weird. So I looked around for a place to sit and I noticed that there was this La-Z-BoyÆ chair, and behind the back of it was a wall space. So I climbed under the chair to sit down.

The tape began to play, and it was the most horrendous sounding thing. It had all this background noise, and you really had to listen hard to hear anything. So I was sitting there in this remarkable place, and it was all the most amazing scene. As I listened to this tape I could not understand, in a room full of people I had not met and could barely see, sitting on the floor, something began to happen inside of me. The most bewildering statement was made inside of me - by me to me - and that was, “I’m home.”

Soon afterwards, the south Florida seminars shifted to a home with less of a countercultural ambiance. In Miami, as in other parts of the country, J-R would be invited out from L.A. to hold live seminars and other events after a large enough group of interested, regular people had formed. However, while the strength and size of groups of MSIA participants in other areas waxed and waned, MSIA never, as an organization, established formal centers outside of southern California.

The story and the pattern of MSIA’s expansion outside of the United States is not unlike the Movement’s expansion across the country, though there are a couple of prominent cases - Africa and Australia come to mind - where the initial contact came from individuals who had read a piece of MSIA literature and wrote for more information. In other cases, people who had studied with the Movement in the U.S. moved overseas and started holding home seminars in their country of residence.

As will be discussed in detail in Chapter Seven, over half of all currently active Movement participants reside in the United States. Of these, around 40% live in California. The impression of MSIA as still being centered in the Los Angeles basin is reinforced by the fact that, as a corporate entity, most properties owned by the Church are in southern California. In other parts of the country as well as overseas, Movement activity has been largely confined to home seminars, with occasional visits by J-R, John Morton, or some other person empowered to hold live seminars. One reason why MSIA has not established a larger presence outside of California is the tendency among participants from other parts of the country to move to the L.A. area in order to be closer to the Traveler and to the Movement’s organizational center.

A different kind of organizational expansion arose from John-Roger’s active experimentation with different vehicles for the teachings. While the basic ideas have remained the same over the years, there has been a remarkable proliferation of classes, spinoff organizations, and other activities since the Movement’s beginnings. This diversification is a reflection of John-Roger’s open-ended, let’s-try-this-and-see-if-it-works attitude.

A particularly important development for the Movement’s expansion in the seventies was the adoption and modification of the then-popular est/Lifespring seminars. Russell Bishop had been a trainer for Lifespring, and he proposed to J-R that a Lifespring training be held specifically for Movement people. It was given at the Miramar Hotel in Santa Monica.

Anywhere from 100 to 200 people attended. One person remembers that this was “so popular that it led to many other trainings.” John-Roger told me that, “Insight came later, after much reflection as to how Lifespring didn’t really work for us and how we wanted to put the Spirit into it and, therefore, change many of the Lifespring processes to fit what Insight wanted to do.”

One longtime member said it this way:

Insight kind of took the format of Lifespring and made it loving. There wasn’t an “asshole theater” like there was in Lifespring, and there wasn’t an in-your-face attitude. It was more loving.

It was during one of the early trainings that I had one of those experiences that gave me a greater awareness of what we were doing, what was going on, what the Discourses were talking about, what J-R was talking about, etc. If my whole life goes by and I have the memory of that one experience, there’s nothing that I can’t face because of that experience. That can’t be taken away. That can’t be negated by the naysayers, or the people who have left that are basing their dislike of what we’re doing on their physical realm experiences, because it was not a physical experience.

Initially Insight was closely associated with MSIA, and a great many people in the Movement took Insight training. At present, Insight operates completely independently of John-Roger and MSIA, and, further, is not (and never was) regarded as an MSIA training.

The transformation of the Lifespring style into the more caring Insight style is typical of John-Roger’s experimental attitude: Take something from somewhere else that works, and modify it until it becomes congruent with the MSIA approach.

Other organizations founded by John-Roger and/or MSIA members were Baraka Holistic Healing Center (1976) and the John-Roger Foundation (1982). The John-Roger Foundation was created in order to raise funds for nonprofit organizations and sponsor classes, seminars, and symposiums. Along with the Integrity Foundation (incorporated in 1983), the JRF celebrated Integrity Day, through which the Foundations could promote global transformation by the enrichment and upliftment of individuals. An annual Integrity Award banquet was held for five years beginning in 1983: During this event, awards were given to individuals for their achievement along with checks which were donated to their favorite charities. Among the recipients of the integrity awards were Dr. Jonas Salk, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Lech Walesa, and Mother Theresa.

In 1988, the John-Roger Foundation altered its focus, and changed its corporate name to the Foundation for the Study of Individual and World Peace. These organizations operate independently of MSIA. Even MSIA is set up to run independently of the advice and input of John-Roger, though as the founder and original teacher, his suggestions naturally exert tremendous influence.

As should be clear by this point, the Church of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness and the other organizations that have been inspired by John-Roger and MSIA members are the products of a gradual process of growth. All of these structures were significantly shaped by J-R’s input in their earliest stages. However, far from constituting a monolithic block, most of these have expanded out from underneath the umbrella of MSIA and matured beyond the need for the ongoing personal tutelage of John-Roger.

There was some point, and maybe there has been more than one point, where J-R said, “I basically have finished what I came here to do, what was my job, my responsibility, as the Traveler.” And when he said it, he didn’t keel over and die. Instead, he kept doing work and seminars. But I picked up that statement as, “Okay, the key information, whatever it was here for him to do, he did.” The way I related to it was, it’s been passed on, so that whatever I need to pick up about soul consciousness through the Traveler, has been delivered to me, it’s been placed into my hands, the information is available, and the energy fields are on the planet.

-John Morton.

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