The cork and pinwheel thing always stuck with me. I was six years old. My dad tried to make a paper pinwheel spin on a needle in a cork, that was under a jar. You had to do it with your mind. It was 1953 in Philadelphia. It was shortly after that that my four year old brother lost his hearing aid earpiece. My dad offered a $5 reward to us to find it. The new hearing aid had just cost my dad a months pay. It was getting dark and it was lost in a place where three outfields in the park met back to back, so the lawn area was large. It got darker. I felt pressure of time.
   Four of us had been at it an hour, with no luck. I just sat down for a breather, braced myself with my hands behind me, down on the grass, and felt something small and hard UNDER THE PALM OF MY RIGHT HAND! It could have been a stone, but I knew immediately and without doubt that it was the earpiece, about the size of a nickel. I laughed to myself as I closed my fist around it, KNOWING what I would discover as I brought it up for a look. There was a magic moment when I realized that the mind could do anything if there was certainty.
   I decided I wanted to study the powers of mind further. During that same period, the kids in the neighborhood would try various methods to fly like Superman. We tried running fast and jumping. It never worked. Then I realized from somewhere within, that it was by sitting still, in a pyramid shape, with the mind in a perfect state, that would unlock that power. I had been showed the library by my mother the week before. That Saturday morning, while my parents slept, I went to that library on my first solo bus trip.
   I got there before the library opened. I had to wait for an hour, until 9 AM. I was sure the ancient knowledge was there for the looking. But when I described what I wanted, the librarian thought I was talking about magic when I said, "Where's the old books on how to fly and turn invisible?" She sent me to the game section where magic books were. Neither of us knew the word metaphysics in Philadelphia in the 50's. Hey, I was only six!
   Disappointed, I took 10 books home on close-up sleight of hand, and mastered a couple of stunning card tricks in less than a week. I tried them on my father, and the adults and kids in the neighborhood the next Saturday, at a break in the ritual, all-ages, box-ball game, that we played on weekends in the alley between the row houses. When I saw what marvel and wonder it created, I took a vow to myself at that age of 6 years old, to always provide people with a little magic and sense of awe, so that people would not take reality for granted.
   Since four years old, I had been slipping downstairs at night, when my parents were asleep, to watch TV late night movies. I always knew that I would meet The Dalai Lama one day, since seeing the Frank Capra movie Lost Horizon on the late show, that same year. Years later, when I was 25 years old, I remembered what I was looking for while trying a meditation practice I found in a book. A year later, in February of 1973, I found the Tibetan Book of the Dead and knew again I would meet these teachers. For the next six years, I pictured a large well tended lawn, on a hill. I started looking for that hill in April of 1974. I felt it would be out West and I left Pennsylvania, looking for the right place. I went to Colorado where I helped start a new FM radio station, and a year later to Oregon. I went back to Colorado a year later, and then back to Pennsylvania. I was running a radio station in Scranton for 18 months when I felt the time was near and I left for the west coast again in 1978.
   After I began to perform magic for a living, and I saw the total solar eclipse in the Spring of 1979. at the replica of Stonehenge, along the Washington Columbia River. It was supposed to be a cloudy morning, but I deduced that it might be clear on the east side of the Cascade Mountain Range if most of the clouds would be held back by the cold of the morning peaks. The eclipse's totality was at 7:50 AM, so I left for the two hour drive and got there at 7:30 AM. The stone monuments were in a field on a western plateau overlooking the Columbia River. There was one big cloud covering the sun.
   I tried to start mentally burning a hole in the cloud and saw that a small break might drift over in time to see totality. I started to smile as a man saw the "I Believe In Magic" button I had, with stars and a comet and said, "If you believe in magic, get rid of that cloud!" I said, "I'm working on the problem!", and just 15 seconds later that hole broke, just as totality totaled! The valley below began to ripple and shimmer as rarefied light, sparse rays escaping between the mountain peaks of the moon, played with the land and our minds. I remembered stories of the past, as the pale yellow glimmer rekindled old tales and genetic memories. I felt Antiquity! And I knew it signaled a big change about to happen.
   In 1979 I heard on the radio that The Dalai Lama was in the country for the first time. I traced his visit to a stop in Seattle. I drove 300 miles, to a building at Seattle University, where I observed the lawn on the hill as I walked to the entrance. Tibetan lamas came out just then, and asked us to use their camera for a picture with The Dalai Lama who came out a moment later. We took their picture. This photo was taken an hour later. The next evening I met the Lama to the left of the Dalai Lama and he invited me to come two days later where I was introduced to The Dalai Lama and shook his hand. That has happened seven times over the last 16 years, at teachings in Vajrayana Buddhism I have taken in Seattle, Wisconsin, Vancouver, Los Angeles, and San Jose.
After my Bar Mitzvah, I began to study Christianity. I studied Methodist, Presbyterian, Lutheran, Episcopal, and Catholic teachings. In college I studied Upanishads and Hinduism. After college I gravitated to Zen Buddhism, Hebrew Kabala, and The Tao of Physics.
I realized that the most complete teachings available on ancient knowledge, uncorrupted, without a break, was the Tibetan system of Tantric or Vajrayana Buddhism. That's when I started looking for Lamas or Rinpoches to study with. In 747A.D. The Buddhist magician Padmasambhava, who wrote The Tibetan Book Of The Dead, wrote of fourteen future Dalai Lamas, predicting that: "When iron birds fly (planes) and horses go on wheels (trucks/horsepower), the people of Tibet will scatter around the world like ants, and the teachings of the secret dharma will come to the land of the red man."
 
I recommend these. They are all five star caliber.
My Land-My People, The Dalai Lama (Most Highly Recommended-Magic Mike)
Secret Buddhism : Vajrayana Practices by Kalu Rinpoche (Vajrayana - Diamond Body teachings),
Dzogchen : The Self-Perfected State by Chogyal Namkhai Norbu (Big Sky/Mountain teachings), (Most Highly Recommended-MM)
Spacious Path to Freedom : Practical Instructions on the Union of Mahamudra and Atiyoga by Karma-Chags-Med, Rinpoche Gyatrul, B. Alan Wallace (Translator), Karma Chagmei (compassion teachings),
Echoes of Voidness by Geshe Rabten (Sunyata-emptiness, void teachings),
The Tibetan Book of the Great Liberation; Or, the Method of Realizing NirvANa Through Knowing the Mind by Walter Yeeling Evans Wentz, W. Y. Evans-Wentz (Editor) Evans-Wentz, (Most Highly Recommended-MM)
Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines - Evans-Wentz, (Most Highly Recommended-MM)
Foundations of Tibetan Mysticism - Lama Govinda, (Most Highly Recommended-MM)
The Way Of The White Cloud - Lama Govinda
The Way of the Bodhisattva - by Shantideva,
Princess In The Land Of Snows - by Jamyang Sakya (my dear friend since 1979), (Most Highly Recommended-MM)
The Tao - by Lao Tsu,
The Tao of Physics  - by Capra. (Most Highly Recommended-MM)

  The Three Levels of Spiritual Perception : An Oral Commentary on the Three Visions (Nang Sum of Ngorchen Konchog Lhundrub)
- by Deshung Rinpoche (Kunga Tempay Nyima), Sonam's previous incarnation
(Most Highly Recommended-Magic Mike)
Customer Comments - Customer Review of this book.
Chuck Pettis (crp3@msn.com) from Seattle, Washington , August 9, 1998 A comprehensive view of life, death and enlightenment I have read many spiritual books in my lifetime. This is the most comprehensive explanation of life, its purpose, karma and how to attain enlightenment I have ever seen. Not light reading, this book not only provides detailed information on meditation, worldly existence, suffering, the rarity of human birth, and the law of karma, but provides powerful meditations and spiritual practices to help us increase our capacity for love and compassion and to improve our ability to concentrate free from thoughts, so as to attain insights and ultimately enlightenment.

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