Le voyage à l'Est

Memories, fantastically beautiful memories of that other infinitely greater lost world, haunted me for days. I was like a different person. In the light of my new understanding my conception of all things was changed. I viewed everything from a new perspective. Thus I felt more than ever like a stranger here upon Earth.
One afternoon when I was in downtown Los Angeles I stood on a street corner and watched the hurrying throngs of people. All was so earnestly intent upon personal ambitions, pleasure, frivolities, worries and personal problems and so completely wrapped up in their own private worlds. Few even so much as noticed their fellow-beings on the streets. It was as though each person lived a world apart; encased in a tomb of separateness and living death. Like shadows they hurried busily on their separate ways lost in dreams of unreality.
I realized in truth each went his way alone; even those nearest and dearest to him never really touched the deeper core of his aloneness. This is the tragedy of his mortality. Things seem pleasant enough on the surface. Earth with its flowers, trees, sunshine; the cities with their paved streets and fine buildings; the trim houses with their neat lawns--all appear fair enough. But it is like a mirage, for the material world is a prison world where each man is a bondsman locked in a prison cell. The prison cells cannot be opened from without.
Greatly saddened, I took my car from the parking lot and drove home. A storm was brewing and already a fine mist of rain was in the air. I left my car at home and walked down by the Los Angeles River where the waters were beginning to flow in the dry and dusty riverbed.
All of nature seemed waiting, quiet and tremulous, for the life-giving drops of precious water that would drench the sun-baked land and give new life to the dying trees and parched hills.
The dense clouds were dark and ominous over-head. How symbolic, I thought, of our isolation from the rest of the universe. Spiritual intelligences throughout time and space dwell in unity, communicating throughout the universe, all a part of the great harmony of the Father; but man here on his tiny planet is cut off from contact with those other worlds and fully content to vision himself grandiosely as the higher intelligence in the universe.
If only we could realize how wrong we are! We exist here on our world in a kind of solitary confinement. Our much vaunted atmosphere is one of the bars that prevents us from escaping from our prison world. Also, to a great extent, it prevents contact with outside intelligences; for most of our radio and television waves are bounced back down to us by the many layers of ionized gases in our atmosphere and beyond. Hence it is much more difficult for us here on this planet to establish outer space contacts than for most other planets.
Why is this so? Why are we so completely isolated and cut off from contact with the rest of the universe?
I turned for home as the full fury of the storm broke. An onslaught of wind lashed the trees, stripping the dead leaves and branches from them. The rain came down in torrents and it was one of the rare occasions when lightning flashed in the California sky and the thunder rumbled ominously. At each flash of lightning my entire body quivered in pain. I reached home soaking wet and went to bed.
In the following weeks I continued with my weekly lectures at the Hollywood Hotel, but I was dissatisfied with my effort. I felt I was reaching comparatively few people when I should be contacting so many more.
Then in September, 1953, Paul Vest's first article about my trip in the flying saucer was published in MYSTIC magazine. Immediately letters began coming from all over the United States and even from Mexico and Canada. I was amazed at the public interest and the general acceptance of my story. It appeared that intuitively many persons had been prepared for the account.
Because of the article I was contacted by long distance telephone by a man in the East who is a well-known evangelist. His broadcasts over a large radio network a week. He told me in all good faith that in answer to his prayer for guidance after reading the article in MYSTIC, he had been shown a sign in the skies. The "sign" was the sudden appearance of a flying disk phenomenon above him while he prayed. He stated that he was so deeply impressed with what he saw that he drove immediately to the State Police barracks and notified the captain of the troop. The captain also witnessed the strange phenomenon and ordered an airplane to be sent aloft to investigate. But before the plane was off the ground the phenomenon vanished. Thus, he said he was absolutely convinced of the authenticity of my story. He invited me to visit him in the East and make a number of appearances there.
Since I had already given up my job, we were low on funds at the time. He forwarded me one hundred dollars to cover part of our expenses on the trip East. He also enclosed a contract in which he agreed to pay me for each lecture. My purpose in going East was to reach a much greater audience, but even the humblest of God's creatures must have sustenance for their bodies. And surely a workman, even in God's work, is worthy of his hire.
Most of the audiences in the east were enthusiastic and highly receptive to the message of the saucers. I was happy in the belief that I had sown many seeds of understanding about the space visitors. But the minister of the gospel on whose word I had made the trip, failed me completely. He has not up until the present time (one year later) paid me for my expense and time. In fact, he was content to desert me in the East far from home and relatives and leave me stranded there penniless. His name? Does it matter?
The final lecture in Buffalo was the most successful of any of the engagements. People came from as far away as Canada, completely filling the large auditorium. Thus, from a material standpoint Christianity had thrown me from the heights, but spiritually it had sustained me stronger than ever. Also, I was beginning to learn an important lesson. The hypocrites will invariably crucify, but the truly faithful will always redeem. Actually, the hypocrites far outnumber the true. But God and only one is indeed a vast majority. Similarly, space visitors and a few are also a majority. The absolute truth of these last two statements are forever settled in my own mind.
Without funds and stranded in the East, we finally got financial help from relatives, and also an invitation to visit our folks back in New Jersey. Our spirits, which had dropped to a low ebb, began to pick up. Thus we were in an almost joyful, holiday mood as the boys, Mabel and I piled the suitcases into the car and headed for Trenton. We stayed with my father-in law, Alfred Borgianni, on Kuser Road, close to the spot where I had once sent aloft balloons with the mold cultures in personal experiments, not knowing my work was being observed.
Our reunion with family and friends was a joyful one. We were invited everywhere and were kept out almost every night until a late hour. We quickly forgot our hardships and disappointments of the past weeks and joined in the happy, pulsating life around us. But I certainly never dreamed that there, close to my old home, I should have another experience with the extraterrestrials.