The Moon, Jean Houston, and You!

In 1968, Apollo 8 went to the moon, and what the astronauts found most awesome (their word!) was not the first-time, up-close look at the moon, but their mid-space glance back at the Earth. The sight of our beloved planet hanging in space—“a beautiful oasis out in the middle of nothing, against the backdrop of infinity”—left many of the astronauts speechless, even inspiring Edgar Mitchell into a state of Oneness that he later discovered the ancients had already dubbed salva kalpa samadhi. In this heart-opening clip from the upcoming documentary Continuum, Mitchell talks about his life-changing unifying experience: “[in that moment of seeing the Earth from space] I fully understood that the molecules in my body, and the molecules in my partner’s body and in the spacecraft, had been prototyped in some ancient generation of stars. In other words, it was pretty obvious from those descriptions that we are stardust.”

When I heard Mitchell’s comment, I thought back instantly to my interview with Jean Houston in July’s Science of Mind magazine. Jean is truly an astronaut of the soul. In fact, in recent years, her visits to NASA have proven to be her biggest inspirations, as she’s peered through the Hubbell telescope into the swirling cosmos. But as we know, Jean is also a lot closer to home; she wrote the introduction to the fiftieth anniversary edition of The Science of Mind. I asked Jean in a follow-up interview if she remembers the first time she encountered the work of Ernest Holmes.

“I actually met Ernest Holmes when I was nine years old,” she recalls happily. “My mother went to one of his services in southern California, and she took me with her. I remember I shook hands with him. He was very jolly. Absolutely delightful! And I probably first read The Science of Mind when I was ten years old.  At the time I was running off to at least twenty different schools, just the ones I remember, because Dad was in show business [he was a comedy writer for Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Edgar Bergen and others and frequently moved the family]. I was mathematically stupid but theologically precocious. So I was always looking in the local library for the knowledge of other societies, other places, other religions. Naturally, I was very much taken by New Thought.”

“My mother,” she continues, “was born in Siracusa, Sicily, and she married Jack Houston of Texas, so she left behind some of her Catholicism and was also searching. We’d go to all sorts of talks together. When I was eleven or twelve, I had good friends who would take me to various New Thought churches in New York, especially Irving Seale’s [Religious Science], which was then in Carnegie Hall. My mother was very, very, very New Thought. That’s why I couldn’t get sick. Once I got really very sick with hepatitis, and my mother was very jolly about it. She would bring me orange juice and a pamphlet by Mrs. Eddy and say to me, ‘Just think good thoughts!’ So I never saw doctors, but I did get well.”

If that sounds harsh, you should see Jean now—at seventy-five, she looks twenty years younger, almost no wrinkles and is strong as an ox. She attributes her heartiness to right thinking, a strong constitution for exercise, and daily heaping doses of delicious food, especially Sicilian olive oil!

Amazed at the twenty-six-plus books she has written over her career, I asked her, how does she do it? How can she be so prolific in between giving workshops, advising world leaders, and inspiring citizens of all nations to “refind” their power stories?

“People always ask me, how have I have been able to do so much in my life?  I say it’s very simple. I have subscribed to the belief that we are not schizophrenic—that’s our pathology—instead, we are polyphrenic. We contain so many, many persons in us. For instance, I am a teacher, a dog person, a traveler, a meditator, a cook (that is a serious part of myself), wild woman. I could probably name you twenty different people I am within myself. I realize little local Jean, or the egoic self, is only one small part of me; ego is but one image among the multiple images of the psyche. When I need to do something that I don’t particularly feel skillful about, I tap into another part.

“For example, I dislike writing. Intensely!  There are 130,000 unpublished pages downstairs that came out of my Mystery School. I used to write a book each month, and by the time it was actually typed up, it would become 400 pages.

“But in order to write, I have to tap into the part of myself who is a cook. I am a very good cook. I have no blocks whatsoever, full of galloping chutzpah. I get into my cook self to be able to write, to stir the mélange of ideas, to add a little pepper sauce, if I need something really vital, add the herbs of energy there, and so as a cook I can write. But as Jean I cannot write.”

Is she being humble? I don’t know. But perhaps that’s the cue to tell you how much I love Jean Houston’s books. They are not just books, they are experiences, and you can return to them again and again over a lifetime. I read about seven of them for my article for Science of Mind magazine, and I look forward to plowing through more. Here are a few goodies:

A Mythic Life: Learning to Live Our Greater Story—Perhaps one of the best autobiographies ever written, so funny it hurts, so poignant it breaks your heart. Houston’s ability to weave the colorful details of an uncommon life—she has met everybody important there is to meet in the world—against the backdrop of cosmic thinking should have won an Academy Award. It’s the best foundation for a screenplay I’ve ever seen.

Mystical Dogs: Animals as Guides to Our Inner Life—My all-time favorite book! Jean shares with us the series of amazingly wise, incredibly psychic, and sometimes just plain disastrous canines she and her husband Robert Masters enjoyed throughout their marriage. In reading about Jean’s dogs, we are led to think deeply about what it means to be human.

A Passion for the Possible: A Guide to Realizing Your True Potential—This uplifting pocket-size manual consolidates the spiritual core competencies Jean has explored through her adventurous and dedicated life. Houston leaves you wanting to realize your own potential—now!

Mind Games: The Guide to Inner Space— One of John Lennon’s favorite books. Jean wrote this with her husband psychologist L. Robert Masters. You can easily imagine Yoko and Jean sitting in bed trying out all the exercises. Warning: this book may put you into a transcendental state!  There are also great meditations to try out in groups.

Public Like a Frog: Entering the Lives of Three Great Americans—Fans of Emily Dickinson, Thomas Jefferson, and Helen Keller are taken on a spaceship ride into their imagined inner worlds to discover what it means to be a human extraordinaire. The material is derived from the intense work of Jean’s Mystery School, which participants have dubbed “The Graduate School in Human Potential.”

I believe that Houston’s greatest gift, besides her indefatigable enthusiasm for the possible human, is her incantatory voice. A former actress, she once played the Madwoman of Chaillot at Columbia University, a performance people still rave about. But it is no mere actor’s voice she speaks with. Her dark dulcet tones seem equally pulled from both the richest dark earth and the even richer dark void of space. Even on a phone call, she nearly put me in a trance, yet because she also listens—deeply—she leaves you feeling more in ten minutes than you ever thought possible.

That’s why we are delighted to offer our newsletter readers a special fourteen-minute meditation that Jean created just for Science of Mind readers, inspired from her recent book The Wizard of Us. Jean makes you feel that you are sitting around the fire with her, in some ancient time, perhaps with the moon rising in the sky and the gleaming faces of your beloved fellow seekers near. Plan a special time for yourself, settle in a comfy chair, and feel yourself revived, nourished, and revitalized by Jean Houston into that which you truly are—infinite, invincible, and eternally creative. As she believes, as she thinks, as she lives, the greatness of who we are is right here!

To find out more about Jean Houston’s workshops and teaching schedule, visit her website  www.JeanHouston.org

Pamela Bloom is an award-winning writer, interfaith minister, and vibrational healer. She is also the author of The Power of Compassion: Stories that Open the Heart, Heal the Soul and Change the World and Heaven Speaks: Intimate Interviews with Illuminated Souls, with Carla Flack.

Pamela’s website is www.SoulinBloom.net