Here’s a contact we (INIT) received in 1996. I’m publishing it now because it relates to a series of article I’m writing on my other website, about an old Native American pal I used to know… as I explain at the end.

The letter below was written and sent to Earth in 1996 by the spirit of Sir Richard Francis Burton, a famous English explorer who had died in 1890, and now was working with the Timestream Spirit Group to open hi-tech communications with Earth, through the equipment and dedicated work of Maggy Harsch-Fischbach of Luxembourg, a close colleague of mine at the time. We published the letter originally in our Contact! journal, issue 97/02, on page 12. The reposting below is followed up by some comments by Maggy and by me:

It was during one of my expeditions a few years ago, along the River of Eternity. The land and the sky seemed boundless. The grass formed waves under the wind. Corn and beans were growing along the stockade. I saw the village on a knoll overlooking the river. The river banks were lined with poplar trees. The house of “Red Jacket” was right next to the medicine wigwam.

The entrance faced east and there was already twilight when I entered. The light from the entrance and from the smoke hole in the ceiling disappeared in the shadow. “Ohi, Burton” he greeted me, “It is good to see you.” He wore a red-stained leather garment with burned-in symbols and a white fur cap.

I sat down. “Ohi, I have come because I heard that one of the missionaries of the Church of the Second Hope visited your village again.”

He nodded, “Not all white men are like you, Burton. I still remember, before I came here, when I was bent down from age and half blind and lived on the large island. Rumors had already reached us about strange men who had come across the big waters and wielded terrible power with their thunder sticks. I was old and ready to die.

“Now I have been here so many moons that I cannot count them anymore. I got to know the white men. Many of them are friends of mine and my people.

“The great spirit has made this land for all of us. We live peacefully together and we settle our disputes in a pow-wow. But some of them still want to force their religion upon us. They say they want to teach us how to honor the great mystery the way he wants it. They say that they are right and that we are wrong. How do they know that they are right? They say their religion was written in a book. But if there is such a book, why did my forefathers not know about it? Why do we not understand this book? If there is only one religion to honor the great spirit, why are the white men so often arguing and fighting about it?

“We respect and honor the great mystery in our own way, just like we learned from our forefathers. We are grateful for everything we receive. We love each other and are in agreement. We never fight about religion.

“What do they want from us? We do not want to argue with the white men, but when they do not stop crowding us, we will have to move somewhere else.”

I invited my red brothers to come close to Timestream… “for there is good land. You can live undisturbed by religious zealots, as long as grass is growing and water is flowing in the rivers.”

Their reply: “We know you speak with a straight tongue, Brother. You cannot lie. We have heard much about you from the many colored light spirits (Rainbow people) and I shall speak with my people about what you said. If the great spirit is willing, perhaps we can make new medicine together which will help you with your talks with the living. We shall see.”

Since that time the red brothers (Wanapum, Duwamish, Irokese, Yakima, Sauk Fox, Winnebagos, Choktaw, Oglalla Sioux and Flatheads) have lived nearby. Many participate in ITC. Here, their souls have found rest and here the missionaries are not likely to show up.

—  Richard Francis Burton, 1996 November 28

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My comments:

The contact above is related to a series of articles I’m writing on my other website (noblesavageworld). Eugene Standingbear was in his 70s when I met him 4 decades ago, and he had amazing life experiences that I wrote about for various newspapers and magazines. Also, the first book I ever wrote (in 1978) was Gene’s biography, but it never got published. So now I’m rewriting it as a series of articles on my other website… a project long overdue (although I probably wasn’t really ready to write the book until recently, as I explain in the series).

When I gave a workshop at the Monroe Institute in 2005, we got many spirit faces on Polaroid film, including this one, which I believe might be the spirit of my late pal Eugene Standingbear  (the fellow to the right) showing up when someone took a picture of me.

I had several Native American colleagues whom I considered friends while I worked at the Bureau of Indian Affairs (1980-81) in Billings, Montana, but I’ve known only one Native American really well in my life. That was Eugene Standingbear of the Lakota (Sioux) tribe, and what a story he had to tell! He’d been brought up with noble values of the old way, then went to Indian schools to erase all that and replace it with Euroamerican values. He was in movies and TV shows. He’d lived among the richest of the rich, and he’d struggled to survive on skid row for 10 years before finally finding peace and sobriety in the last years of his life. That’s when I met him.

While researching and rewriting his story, I recalled the contact by Burton (above) that our INIT group received about spirit communities of Native Americans who’d died and gotten settled into beautiful, natural environments at the third level of the spirit worlds.

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Anyone who’s read the Riverworld series of books by Phillip Jose Farmer balks when first reading the information we have received from Sir Richard Francis Burton. The Farmer books constitute a “fiction” story about the after-lives of various characters, the main character being Burton, who have died and awakened in a strange riverine world with several suns. A place much like the Planet Marduk, inhabited by people from all eras of history, as described by our spirit colleagues. Many people automatically assume that ITC experimenters have simply read Farmer’s books and fabricated a story around it.

Such is not the case. Most of us in ITC are familiar with the Farmer books. For every similarity there are dozens of contrasts between the world described by Farmer and that described by our colleagues. The most important difference is that the world inhabited by our transpartners is a light, positive place, whereas that described by Farmer is rather dark and dangerous. On Marduk, people don’t die in their spirit bodies, while in Farmer’s world they’re killed left and right.

The Riverworld books are indeed fascinating, and we are told by our spirit colleagues Technician and Swejen Salter that Farmer received much of his information from the spirit worlds either during his dreams or in meditation. Life in the next world is far too complicated to be fully understood by the human brain. Apparently our friend Burton, whose life on Earth was a mixture of noble and savage behaviors, probably has been having a variety of posthumous experiences in several levels of spiritual existence, including the hellish purgatory described by Farmer and also the exciting Earth-like existence of the Third (mid-astral) spirit level which he describes so vividly to us.

Mrs Harsch-Fischbach has gotten to know Burton probably better than anyone else alive on Earth today.

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Maggy’s comments:

I read the first of Farmer’s books in 1987. I did not trust Richard Francis Burton when he first made contact with us because of that book. We certainly did not want to be contacted by Richard F.B., but once he made contact we decided to wait and not reject a person we did not know enough.

As time went on, we experienced several instrumental dialogs with him. We realized that we were in contact with a warmer and kinder personality than described by the Farmer books. We were in contact with a very sensitive man with great feelings for Jules’ and my well-being and interests.

He is still a traveler on the other side, an adventurer and explorer of the spiritual world now, an unquiet spirit, but in a positive way. He told us he was interested in the geography of Marduk, as he had always been interested in the geography of Earth before his death.”

Spirit colleague Swejen Salter says of her post-life partner:

Richard is progressing in the spiritual world and is able to travel to higher levels. He left his Earth life behind long ago. He gave up ways of thinking that turned out to be incorrect to the point of view of your contemporary world. He has had a lot of experiences which helped him to come to a higher level now, being able to distinguish between positive and negative. For those reasons he does not want to remember details of his Earth life anymore. He has the ability and the patience to communicate with all kinds of human and nonhuman entities. He is still learning foreign languages here and knows for example more than thirty different dialects of African tribes.

Maggy continues:

He talked to Jules and me in English and German with an English accent, and even once used some words in Luxembourgish in order to show us his interest for our language. Although he is working in the background he impressed us by his helpfulness and patience. He sometimse gives advice to Swejen in her contacts to us, and often contacts us by leaving short messages on the walls and in the mirrors if the instrumental contact is not possible.

The Richard whom Jules and I know by ITC never turned out to be a friend of Christian religion but a real defender of humanity. He believes than mankind is absolutely able to develop its own positive qualities, with or without the help of the Church. He leaves everybody his own choice of belief, careful not to impose his own will on anyone else. He is a defender of all kinds of religions and a great ethnolog, a special friend of Native Americans, Arabian and African people, a friend of animals and nature. He is certainly one who will see that everybody is allowed to express his opinion freely. He is an impressive and versatile personality and a sympathetic defender of our purpose on the other side. During our conversations we have developed a confidence in him.

At first it was evident to us that Richard Francis Burton did not trust Jules and me at once. He really tried to know more about our ways of thinking.

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My comments:

Sir Richard is gone from the Timestream station much of the time on exploratory trips of his riverine world. With Dr Salter’s help he has sent pictures of himself and his boat “Trucker” to Earth through Maggy Harsch-Fischbach’s ITC receiving station in Luxembourg, as well as several exciting and fascinating reports of his journeys on Marduk. Several of these reports have been carried in previous issues of Contact!

Burton’s restless spirit is a carryover from his Earth life (1821- 90). In 1853, disguised as a Moslem pilgrim from Afghanistan, he made a pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, being one of the first Europeans to visit those two holy cities of the Moslem religion. Five years later on a trip to East Africa, he discovered Lake Tanganyika. He wrote more than 30 travel books and is well known for his translation of the Middle Eastern tale Arabian Nights. A 1999 movie, Mountains of the Moon, dramatizes his adventures.

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— Mark Macy, 2018-12-02