After a near-death struggle with colon cancer in 1988, I was still an agnostic just beginning a spiritual search when I stumbled into technical spirit communication in the early 1990s. That’s when I struck up friendships with George Meek, the Harsch-Fischbach couple in Luxembourg, and other pioneers of ITC (instrumental transcommunication, or spirit communication through technology).

It was a miraculous time in ITC, as George had developed the Spiricom device a few years earlier to allow the first-ever two-way communication with spirit through technology on a fairly reliable basis, and now various researchers in Europe were starting to open up clear dialog with the finer realms of spirit through various modern gadgets, and ethereal beings were sending long, mind-boggling messages through computers, telephones, radios, even FAX machines. This was, in the most literal sense, information that would one day change the world in most amazing ways… probably not in my lifetime, but hopefully in this century.

Experience the Spiricom dialogs

Maggy Fischbach had spent five years immersed in her breakthrough work that was both magical and wrenching. The most magical part was talking on the phone and through radios with an ethereal being calling himself Technician, who said he’d been following humanity for thousands of years and knew many secrets of our ancient past. It also involved talking to departed family members and late colleagues by phone and computer.

Read more about those communications

The wrenching moments came as she opened her heart, her archives, and her home to many fascinated people to share her experiences. She was branded a witch, a hoaxster, and a liar by people who couldn’t wrap their minds around the realities that were shaping her amazing life. It was the emotional upheaval from those situations, I suspect, that opened her up to the influences of negative spirits… who broke through her equipment with unsettling or threatening messages and caused strange accidents and mishaps to occur in her day-to-day life. One group in particular, “Group 2109,” “Group 2107,” delivered a series of strange messages.

Many people who receive such hostilities let them roll of their backs, having become attuned to the savage swells of this troubled planet, but Maggy was a sensitive soul—a kindergarten teacher who did these experiments in her spare time. She excelled at her job as a kindergarten teacher because she too had the innocence and awe of a child, coupled with the wisdom of an ancient priest (whom, incidentally, she had been in at least one earlier incarnation). Wisdom and sensitivity—a rare blend ideally suited to ITC research.

The main thing that Maggy and I learned, along with other researchers who followed the same path, is that spirits can only communicate with people on Earth of like mind. And researchers can only attract into their work spirits who resonate with their own dispositions.

It was Maggy’s wisdom and sensitivity, more than anything else—more than the equipment, more than the techniques—that allowed her to open an historic communication bridge with the finest realms of spirit working with our world.

George Meek, father of ITC

I also had a degree of sensitivity, though not to the degree Maggy had. Like many sensitive kids, I had contended with psychopathic kids (bullies) while growing up, who gradually taught me how to let insults bounce off and to face aggressive behavior in suitable ways that are uncharacteristic of sensitive people. The inevitable result: emotional scars.

Emotional scars from such experiences invariably present an obstacle to ITC research. We often become secretive with our thoughts and guarded in our reactions—qualities that obstruct finer spiritual light and information from streaming into our lives and into our work. Maggy apparently had been protected by loving parents and teachers from much of scarring that can occur throughout a sensitive childhood, while people like me, in small-town America, were not.

Still, I was recruited by the finer spiritual beings to be part of a research group that Maggy had envisioned for several years, probably for a couple of reasons. Living in America, my life could be choreographed by the ethereals to cross paths with empathetic people who could provide financial backing to make such a project possible. I had also written several books before my cancer on peace and world affairs. My passion in life up to that point had been to discover workable ways to achieve and sustain peace among the broad, diverse array of noble-savagery we call humanity.

While some 80-90 percent of peace research underway during the 70s and 80s was aimed at conflict resolution, I argued that true peace could only be found not by resolving conflicts after they erupted but by minimizing conflicts over the long term through various means, especially standards and values instilled into the minds and hearts of a population to help people remain compatible, starting from a young age and continuing through life. I reasoned that as long as we continued to resist standards and unity, especially the evolution of the United Nations into a world government, there would never be any real hope for lasting peace within the human species.

So throughout the 1980s, while my efforts were directed to finding ways to keep people in harmony, and while Maggy was busy opening communication channels with the finer realms of spirit, the ethereals realized that there was a vital need for both of these qualities if there was ever to be any true ITC established on this planet. Obviously the ethereals were completely aware of who I was inside and out, they knew my writings, my strengths, and my weaknesses, and they apparently took me for my word, hoping for the best. They recruited me into the project.

Maggy’s innocence and sensitivity opened her up to many spiritual influences, including people who had left the earth and now enjoyed being in her presence. They loved her.

I was more of a bristling energy, I’m sure, with my guardedness, my secretivenss, and my mixed feelings about so many issues, and my intellectual approach to situations. It was obvious, over the course of our collaboration, that the other side—the finer spirits—did not feel as comfortable and loving with me as they were with Maggy. But that was okay, as far as the ethereals were concerned. They’d been with humanity for eons, and they know that sometimes it takes some rough edges to make things happen in the dynamics of human relationships. The affairs of Earth are not smooth.

They figured, I believe, that with Maggy’s sensitivity, with my growing knowledge of how to instill peace within a group of diverse people, and with other noble qualities of other members, we might have a chance of making an ITC bridge a durable, well-established part of the chronically irritated human landscape.

By 1994, through my friendship with George Meek, I’d become a close friend of two wonderful and mystical women from the east (well, that’s east of Colorado… I’m talking Greenwich, Connecticut). Juliet Hollister and Alison van Dyk were closely associated with the United Nations and several foundations that gave money to promising, important projects. So that summer the three of us flew to Luxembourg and met with Maggy and her husband Jules Harsch, and we forged a plan for an international panel of ITC researchers and scientists. We established INIT, the International Network for Instrumental Transcommunication, in the fall of 1995.

Maggy worked closely with ethereal beings to put together a list of founding members—people who were empathetic, knowledgeable, wise, open-minded, and convinced of the validity of Maggy’s miraculous communications. In the ensuing months, our group enjoyed a staggering series of high-level communications from the finest realms of spirit.

Read more about Maggy’s ethereal communications

So, Maggy and the ethereals hand-picked the founding members of INIT, and after that the group would more or less evolve through the decisions of the members… and that’s when troubles began for our group.

(more to come)

What I Learned from ITC, the series:

1 Being sensitive in a harsh world
2 Controlling emotions
3 Leaving the family of man
4 How spirits navigate time and space
5 Hardships heighten the human experience
6 To establish a bridge
7 The illusion of time
8 Life on the mid-astral plane, or third level