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11 PHIL'S ABILITY to enter into deep trance and answer a variety of questions had become more and more evident. The presence of other people such as Harriet seemed to provide the boost that was needed to really open up his facilities. He seemed to become more atease and more lucid the longer we experimented. But he was lead- ing into areas that were foreign and confusing to me and I was run- ning out of questions to ask. I was used to exploring history through past lives, not dealing with abstract, philosophical ideas and totally unfamiliar concepts. During this time we all had been attending meetings with a group of people who were interested in psychic and metaphysical topics. These meetings were held quite informally at a private residence. There often was no scheduled format and those attending would discuss whatever subject happened to be brought up. Since Phil knew the people, I thought he might feel at ease if] put him under during the regular meeting. He was not seeking notoriety; this was a very personal thing to him. Thus very few outside this group even knew what we had uncovered. My suggestion to put him into trance in public was not intended for the purpose of putting on ashow. It was mainly to help me get a different perspective of this new phenom- enon. I| thought it would be interesting to see if he could answer questions from a group. This would give me achance to sit back and evaluate and think of the direction our work should take. This ses- sion was an experiment and we didn't know what kind of questions to expect, or what kind of answers either. As might have been expected, many of the questions asked by the group were ofa personal nature. People took advantage of the situ- ation to see ifthey could get answers for problems in their lives. And 104 CHAPTER RUSHING TO EARTH'S AID