Bill W. & Conscious Contact

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0:00

Moderator Welcome to the Tuesday Night Recovery Speakers History Workshop. Thank you everyone for joining us tonight. My name is Tim and tonight's presentation is by J.S. from Sedona, Arizona. And I love this quote of, words make you think, pictures make you feel.

0:05

Moderator And J. will be going through the new released Conscious Contact book. We meet here every Tuesday night at the same time using the same Zoom ID number. This meeting is recorded and all past audio presentations are available at RecoverySpeakers.com. We are not affiliated with any 12-step organization, though our focus is the history of AA and other 12-step fellowships.

0:13

Jay RecoverySpeakers.com is a 501c3 nonprofit dedicated to preserving and sharing the audio history of AA and the 12-step movement today and for future generations. We share a featured email every morning with a talk from our archive and in these emails you'll receive the recordings of our Tuesday night meetings and flyers for upcoming presentations. If you'd like to subscribe, you can use the link I'll be sharing in the chat in a moment or you can send me an email at info at RecoverySpeakers.com and I'll get you added. And if you are able to support our work, contributions are appreciated. I will be sharing the donation link in the chat.

0:27

Moderator And tonight we should have some time for questions after the presentation, so if there's anything that Jay talks or discusses that, you know, it triggers something, a thought or a question, make sure you note it and be ready to ask your questions at the end. And I will close the chat now. I will open it back up after the presentation. And we're going to be sharing a couple announcements at the beginning, but I'm going to ask Jay to unmute and introduce Sally for an announcement on the upcoming picnic. And there we go.

0:39

Jay Hey everybody, it's Jay and I'm delighted to be with you today. And I just want to go over a couple of things about the project and then I'll introduce Sally and we'll talk about all the exciting things that we've got happening at the picnic, the beginning of June. So I just wanted to start out by saying that the reason that this book exists, the reason that this film exists, the reason this project exists is because my family was devastated by alcoholism and it got me on a journey about why. And a lot of you people here know me and know me far too well, but I'd like you this evening to just bring a beginner's mind to the information that's going to be shared because we're able to share it now in a way that allows not only through the movie, but through the book for me to be able to share with you the 10 major points about Bill Wilson that I think aren't really known and appreciated that much. And the reason that I am able to know these things and to appreciate them is because of the work of the Stepping Stones Foundation and particularly my association over the past few years with helping with the archive there and the work that Sharon Wolf, the Deputy Director does and their whole board, but especially Sally Corbett Turco.

1:09

Jay And we got some really fun stuff cranked up coming the weekend of, anyway, June 4th through the 6th. And Sally, if you'd be so kind as to come on in. All right. Well, hi, everybody. And I'll keep this short because we want to get to the excitement around Jay and Janine's project launching tonight.

1:16

Jay We have a weekend full of events, June 4th through 7th. We are having our 75th annual picnic started by Bill and Lois celebrating family recovery. And we also will have our play, Bill and Lois in Their Own Words, which is completely the Wilson's words made into a play. And a movie and meditation event toward the end of the weekend with Jay and Janine showing the Bill W. Conscious Contact film and having a chance to have Jay talk about it and sign the new book.

1:27

Jay We hope that you will go to steppingstones.org to find out more about that. I would like to say thank you to all who are here who are our ambassadors and to our President Bill Barton who's here tonight. We do hope we'll see you soon. I want to congratulate Jay and Janine on their recent individual anniversaries and say how what a pleasure it's been for Stepping Stones to be involved in the film. And we congratulate them on completing the book.

1:38

Jay One other last exciting historic tidbit. You're going to be the first to hear this. In the last few weeks, the Stepping Stones Foundation was very pleased to acquire Sam Shoemaker's desk and Marty Mann's desk. So that's huge news for us. And we thank you all for letting us participate tonight.

1:44

Jay And back to you, Jay. Congratulations. Thank you. Is that the same desk that was in the office at Calvary or is it the one from the home? From his home.

1:48

Jay That's fabulous. That's fabulous. Samuel Moore Shoemaker. Another little announcement that hasn't been let out at all. On Saturday, June 13th, we will have a screening of the film and a meditation and a book signing at Calvary Church in Grand Mercy Park in New York.

1:54

Jay The festivities will begin about 630. And if you're in the neighborhood, come by. So thank you, Sally, for everything. And Bill, wonderful to see you. It's a real pleasure to be able to be involved in something that has deep personal meaning.

2:00

Jay But then also that the more that one follows one's bliss, the stronger the current becomes. And Janine came up with this great line that words make you think, but pictures make you feel. To describe the film. And one of the responses that we got from people was how much they wanted to be able to reflect upon the images that they'd seen on the screen. And so what we've, with the Foundation's participation, we've been able to take some of these assets that are particular to the collection, many of which have not been seen widely, and to make them available so that you can bring them into your own heart and mind.

2:14

Moderator And so when I say a beginner's mind, it's really, it's really quite wonderful. Tim, would you put up the first slide there on the, on the thing, of Bill? There we go. So it's so exciting for me to be able to share with you the fact that we've been recognized by over eight major film festivals around the world about this film and what's in it. And it was a collaboration between myself, Kevin Hanlon, and then the person that really did an amazing job in bringing the archival images to life is Janine Johnston, and she also did the design of the book.

2:28

Moderator Tim would you be kind enough to drop the trailer to the movie? Maybe, maybe not. At the time, I said, I don't know who you are talking about. And then I found out who Bill W. was.

2:33

Jay He was a pioneer. Pioneers are people that go places that other people are afraid to go. The man was an active seeker, always trying to find new ways so that he could grow spiritually. There are no formal introductions today. I agreed to abide by the rules of alcoholics and alchemists.

2:39

Moderator Bill, do you want to just start right out by telling us how and when you founded AA? Yes. One of the really fascinating things about this man is the white light experience he had that convinced him of the validity of the spiritual side, as opposed to the materialist he had been right up until that point. For the first time, I knew absolute and utter hopeless. I knew that I had no personal power to go on.

2:49

Jay There's no place to go. So what does he do? He yells out, if there be a God, will he show himself to me? And then bang, it happens. The essence of what happened to Bill Wilson gets lost because it's a cliche.

2:54

Moderator People love to feel like they've connected, I've found, to some part of his journey. We end up with this whole new enthusiasm that he tried at near the end of his life, a mantra meditation. I gave him his mantra. 20 minutes passed, the door bursts open, and Bill comes rushing in and he says, this thing works. I said, Bill, it's your first time.

3:02

Jay Take it easy. All human beings have a hole in ourselves. Wilson basically said, I need to pour some of that spiritual stuff in there. Again, we're back to the 11th step, prayer and meditation. I think it's a brilliant, brilliant message.

3:08

Jay He said to me later, I never understood the 11th step. I said, what do you mean? You wrote it. He said, no, I didn't write it. It came to me as an inspiration.

3:12

Jay And that's because I think his own ideas of the spiritual pathway to long-term sobriety changed and expand on that over the years. Bill was a good meditator. He understood the role of spirit in a person's life. He was open-minded. This was a new experience for him.

3:18

Jay And he took to it. It was unusual to be a seeker at that age. But I think that was him. Right? So thank you, my friend.

3:21

Jay So what this project is about is about Bill Wilson's spiritual journey and exploring that not about him as the co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. But something remarkable happened at Towns Hospital. And before that, alcoholism, drug addictions, the death sentence. And yet something came to pass that has changed the trajectory of generations of alcoholics and addicts. Most of the people here, our grandparents, didn't have access to this methodology that we call Alcoholics Anonymous.

3:31

Moderator And so we've got this hour-long documentary. And now that gives you a sweeping sense of this journey. But now you have the opportunity to have these incredible images that will help you find stillness. And, of course, that's the essence. So, Tim, if you'd be kind enough to let's go to the two, three.

3:38

Jay Nope. Yeah. Perfect. Perfect. Right there, my friend.

3:39

Jay No, no. Down one more. Yeah. So this is one of the things that I think is really, really important. In the film, we're able to use some of Bill's talks, cobble them together.

3:43

Moderator So he's able to tell his story in a way in seven minutes that you maybe have never heard before. And we got these recordings from Mike and Tim and got them cleaned up beautifully by our friends. And there's a really interesting thing that Wilson says when he's talking about his childhood, that he had this feeling of shame when he heard the neighbors talking about the divorce of his parents. Now, I'd never heard that or seen that in any of Bill's descriptions of his life. It's certainly not in his story.

3:56

Moderator And so it was wonderful to hear him describe the difficulty of his childhood. And many people are not familiar because it's not in, you know, war fever ran high. Um, it's where his mother basically abandoned him to her father and mother and took his sister and they went south to Boston, leaving him to deal with the outpouring or the outcome of the divorce of his family in a time when murder was much more socially acceptable than divorce was. And so that's a wonderful thing. These pictures that the Foundation has shared with you about of Bill and Lois during the Army years.

4:09

Moderator And I love this picture of her in the gown. So would you please, Tim, just next page. And then he has this wonderful way of describing the first drink and how awkward he felt and all that stuff that he says, I had a Bronx cocktail and boy, it was a good one. And for those of you who want to know, Bronx cocktail is very close to a Manhattan, but you use orange juice and scotch, but it's right there in the same kind of thing. And this again, when he talks about the drink, he talks about this sense of separation dissolving.

4:22

Jay And again, this isn't in the normal AA literature that we get to experience. Then this description of when he comes back from the war, getting involved in Wall Street, and he says, so I had to I'd set out to get rich and that led me into Wall Street. And soon I had too much money for a kid my age. But the money aspect didn't mean much. It was chips in a game, a game for power.

4:32

Moderator Please, Tim. So then, of course, the crash happens and and and he loses everything. And of course, he was fortunate enough to to go off to Montreal and and have a wonderful opportunity to make some money up there when everybody else was in the jam. And then he got in a fight with a cab driver and lost that. But another thing that that's really, really, really important is that he's that's really.

4:41

Moderator I think vital that a lot of people don't know in the fellowship as a whole is how radical a depressive bill was. And this idea on the outside, people looking in and I have conversations with folks all the time that have some very interesting misconceptions about Alcoholics Anonymous and the spiritual nature of the program. I just had a conversation a couple of months ago with my physician, young man, brilliant man. And he said, oh, yes, Alcoholics Anonymous is faith based. And.

4:52

Moderator and this idea that one has to have a belief before one can come in to the fellowship and yet we've got Bill in his own words talking about falling into a terrific depression, feeling hopeless, having no personal power, Tim if you'd be so kind, and then he says with no particular hope or faith I cried out as a child in the dark. He didn't have any faith. This experience was not as a result of somebody believing something, it was about despondency and he says if there is a God will he show himself and that it seemed that the room lit up in a great glare I was transported into an ecstasy completely indescribable. It seemed that I stood on a mountain and a great clean wind was blowing not of air but of spirit and I was a free man. I'm in a different world.

5:11

Moderator If you please, Tim. So one of the wonderful things about the relationship that Mike and Tim and Andrew have with all the people that are involved in history things is like our friend Gary Neidhart and his work on Charles Townes and about the Belladonna experience and people thinking that Wilson's white light experience was triggered by an exogenous substance which it was not. One of the things that people don't understand sometimes is the fact that you know we have the little doctor who loved drunks who'd seen thousands of cases and when Wilson reports to him what it was that he experienced what does Silkworth say not oh you had a convulsion not only we gave you too much medication he says I've never I've read about this in books but I've never actually seen it and whatever it is you better hold on to it. A couple of the other great assets that we have the foundation has is this wonderful picture of building lost by the Packard isn't it fantastic and but anyway it's really something and she's so happy she's chewing on an apple. Okay, Tim you'd be so kind.

5:36

Jay So one of the other things that I think that's very very important is this correspondence that Wilson had with Carl Jung. Now a lot of people misunderstand and you'll hear in popular culture and you'll hear in popular culture that Carl Jung founded AA and Bill does indeed say that in a letter that he sent to Dr. Jung that we could trace our origins back to your office but it wasn't the insight it wasn't the insight that the doctor had it was his fundamental humility and another way that Bill describes this experience when he's talking to Dr. Jung is that again he's terribly depressed this seems to be caused by my inability to gain the slightest faith. And this is the anvil upon which not only our fellowship but I think many of our personal experiences come from our inability to gain the slightest faith and so if we can you know having this great privilege to share with everybody this is his words this is how he described it I can't I got nothing and then screaming out if there be a God will he show himself.

6:00

Moderator And it wasn't to a particular he didn't say you know if Bill would have said Jesus will you please help me we might end up being a Christian movement and many of us never would have been able to be exposed to this. One of the wonderful letters that's available in the Stepping Stones archive Bill talks about the fact that that you know a lot of people say well he hijacked the Christianity out of AA and he ruined it but he said we were very conscious he said I was very conscious of the record of the Christian missions and I could not be impressed. Calvary mission where Ebi went after his time with Roland and where he was living when he came to call on Bill they maybe were getting 80 people a year that were putting together a couple of months at a time and they were literally they had 70 beds and they were feeding 70 people every night. Every night and so this idea that there was already a place for those people to go and here in Alcoholics Anonymous it's an open door please if you'd be so kind. So one of the things that we're very fortunate in the movie and in this book to have aside from the participation of our colleague Sally Corbaturco is William Shaberg who wrote the that fabulous work writing the big book The Creation of Alcoholics Anonymous and in this he's able to expose some of the things that he did in the book you know and I think ejecting his personality is always a great fun but when he talks about you know what's the diagnosis that Wilson made of the real alcoholic's problem is that he has no mental defense against the first drink.

6:38

Moderator He'd make all the promises in the world but what's the hallmark of a real alcoholic? He can't avoid the first drink. But we do have a spiritual experience head defense and that's what the methodology of the 12 steps are and it's really fun that Shaberg and I have been colleagues and close friends for almost 25 years now and when I met him he had no meditative practice at all. One of these days maybe he and I'll come on and with Tim and Mike and talk about how I I tricked him into going to a meditation meeting which he had avoided for years and years but this idea that what is it that that we've got we've got this prayer and meditation and part of the thing about this work this project that Janine and I have been involved with and really you know I've got a the emotional intelligence of Kevin Hanlon the man who directed this film and the man who took my vision and shaped it into this way is just stunning but I've been fortunate enough to go around the world in Alcoholics Anonymous and talk with thousands of people and there is this idea somehow that meditation is extra credit and I was fortunate enough to get raised in a fellowship where it was not treated that way and um and so it's really really wonderful to be able to not only share that meditation is vital but that it changes it isn't seek and find it's seek and seek and seek and the fact is is that the foundation the board Sharon and and and Sally they keep alive and accessible the fact that these people were evolving they were changing they were trying different things not because they were crawling or clawing at it but because they were indeed um growing along spiritual lines and so uh it's just it's just so much fun to to to share this uh this stuff with you now um many years ago uh when Sally Corbett Turco and I were having a deep discussion about the nature of Bill Wilson and all this stuff we both agreed that of the five most important letters not only were the Jung's but the best exposition of the way that Bill Wilson communicated with people was this letter from July 2nd of 1956 to Mel Barger our our great friend and uh and wonderful uh historian and and and one of the things that Wilson did with Mel, Mel had uh written some articles for the grapevine and um stopped by the office a number of times and and and so he and Bill had a had a real relationship and so he sent a letter to Bill and uh and asked him some questions and and this this particular letter had Bill's response to it and one of the so here it is 1956 now so this is 32 years after Wilson has the experience in at Towns and and in it what's he talking about he's talking about that he speaks more freely nowadays about the experience and then this is the other thing that I think is really really really really vital that people don't appreciate and Janine and I have some ideas about how we're going to draw this out more and more uh so that people in the fellowship see he says that um that these experiences as old as man himself and then Wilson says I can't hold with most theologians that these experiences are something special and unique. Every time he got the shot he always said it's the the gradual experience that really is the deal the sudden one you know it's it's emotionally upsetting and all this stuff and it separates people and here in the fellowships what we get to do is is that we as we apply the steps and the traditions and the concepts in our lives we get to feel this more and more of being a part of we feel a solidity in our being and in our mind that we never had before this is the essence of the spiritual experience and then Wilson says uh you know that that if you were to take and I'd I just love to do this sometime um I've gotta I've gotta do this as a as a group meditation somewhere maybe we'll we'll do it uh at Calvary but if you were to take your all the different transformations that you've went through since you've been in AA and you compress it into six minutes he says you'd see stars too and uh you know if if you take a while to reflect on the the books or the words or the the messages or the messengers that impacted you when you first came in and follow that line and all the different places that your heart and mind has been led to be it's a wonderful thing and again and again and again Wilson talks about little by little I think we'll strip the mystery away from mysticism and this will be all to the good now you hear the word mysticism and you go what the heck is that well the the classic definition of mysticism is the belief that a person can experience a relationship with the power outside of themselves said and and you know I believe this happens every time that we we go to uh to a meeting if you please Tim so uh back to this Mel Barger letter in talking about my flash of reality I often fail to make the point that every AA who has the program it's the not drinking thing I gets the same thing as the one that has the white flash the only difference that I can see is that most experiences are strung out over a long period of time and this is so elegant in most cases grace leaks in a little by little and then we had this opportunity um Shea Berg and I in our conversations to talk about our great friend and mentor and Mel was one of those also um those of you who uh came to the uh symposiums on AA history that uh Bill Shea Berg and I uh organized in Sedona after I moved here um uh got to meet Mel and and uh but Ernie was too sick and Ernie made this incredible movie Dan and Kevin made this incredible uh uh clip called A Reverence for History and it's just wonderful well where Ernie talks about his insights about from being a historian for many many years but he was the one that told Shea Berg and most of us have heard it from someone else but this this idea of people having a hole inside of them and that uh you know I don't know about you but the first time I ever heard that phrase a hole like the wind was blowing through me was in a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous and it described something that I didn't even know I had but the moment I heard it I knew that I had it and then they said we have a solution for that and uh if you please uh Tim so what is what is this what is this spiritual uh uh solution what what is it that uh that uh that that we've got well you know and the great diagnosis of course is the thing with Jim and uh and his uh uh putting the whiskey in the milk you know thinking that that somehow it wasn't going to matter and what was it that Jim wasn't doing he failed to enlarge his spiritual life and we know that enlarging the spiritual life the bedrock of it is working with others but it's also making sure that we've looked at people in the eyes who's who we've harmed setting those things right and then you know spending time in reflection and asking for uh asking for direction and uh I just can't believe that that we're able to have this great great image of Bill and AA number three sitting on the porch at Stepping Stones having a cigarette and talking man I mean you know and and I tell you folks this is so cool for me because I love Tim I've known Tim for a long long time right and today we're talking he says I've never seen that photo and the fact that Janine and I had anything to do with being able to put my friend in the position to have that experience of seeing those boys I mean at you know and and it's because of of the archive and and the incredible care that's been that's been uh taken over the years and now that we've got everything digitized you know it's it's it's safe it's it'll be available for a long long time uh if you please Tim.

9:49

Moderator So this is this is a really fun thing and and um I was Fortunately enough, there was a guy in Santa Monica, California that I knew, Sean M, and he was really, really interested in making sure he was working AA Wright and making sure that everybody could work AA Wright and all this stuff. And he was doing this newsletter, and he had the terminity to write Lois Wilson and say, what did you two actually do? And she wrote him back. And she says this, now Bill and my quiet time consisted of a cup of coffee in bed, meditation during which we were silent, receptive to any inspiration, trying to find the will of God. It only lasted three or four minutes.

10:05

Moderator Lois goes on to say, I would define meditation, as Bill used it, as listening for God's direction. Meditation prayer itself, the wise ones distinguish between wants and needs, and that I should spend more time with the receiver turned on to listening, that I may hear what's coming in. The slogan easily might be a little bit often. Now I want to break this down a little bit, because when we're talking about meditation practice, a lot of people act as though it's difficult and this and that. And being raised in the AA that I was, where the 11th step wasn't optional, there was a real focus.

10:18

Moderator I don't know if any of you nice people, there's a line in that book we love so much that says, if circumstances warrant, we invite our wives or friends. I've had warrants, and they're fairly serious things, right? And then sometimes you're really lucky that you have a wife or a friend, or maybe they're the same person at the same time. It's an amazing thing that can happen if you're not drinking. But this idea that, how about this for the way that you, and just try this with some sponsors, see if they can do it, but consistent of a cup of coffee in bed.

10:33

Jay So instead of dropping a cup and running, what I do is I bring my coffee to bed. And the two of us sit there, and we talk about which way our day is, you know, going to go. And then quietly just ask for inspiration about what I should do today. Is there anybody I need to talk to? Is there anything that I need to say?

10:41

Jay Is there someplace I need to go? Is there something that I can contribute to? This is the essence of the Oxford group, how to listen, and it's only just a few minutes. And so orienting our mind to asking for direction, specifically, what do you want me to do? And then figuring it out, telling each other what it is and going out and doing it.

10:49

Jay It's a wonderful thing, then saying your prayers. Now, listen, if we could get 16% of our sponsors to do this, what kind of a world would we live in? I think it'd be quite different than the one we're in. So then here on the right is a picture of me and Lincoln Norton. And Sally Corbaturco and I had spent many hours, well, not many hours, but maybe a couple hours all together having little conversations about a rumor that we had heard that Bill Wilson had tried Transcendental Meditation.

11:01

Jay That's what we'd heard. But we could find nothing in the AA Coda, not at Stepping Stones. I went to GSO, we turned over every rock we could. We couldn't find anything about Bill actually doing TM. And so we couldn't use it as a fact.

11:07

Jay But I liked the story. I mean, it sounded really good to me. So on my history presentations I'd give around the country, I had a slide that I put up and it was Bill and the Maharishi. I didn't Photoshop them together. And I put, Bill Wilson learned Transcendental Meditation 1968, and a question mark.

11:14

Jay Anyway, I get invited to go down to Brownwood, Texas. So I go down there and I'm giving this talk and this guy comes up to me and he says, my dad taught Bill Transcendental Meditation. After I picked myself up off the floor, this gentleman was kind enough to say, would you like to meet my father? Well, of course, but I'm thinking, you know, what geriatric ward am I going to have to fly to meet this guy if he taught Wilson TM in 1969? Turns out Lincoln's only eight years older than I am, but that's nothing entirely.

11:26

Moderator But so I call Lincoln up and he tells me this incredible story and I, bang, I call Sally and I say, found, found the thread. Can we come up? I'll bring my iPad, we'll do a little thing, maybe we could put on a website, blah, blah, blah. And, and what happened is, is that, that Lincoln was able to tell us this wonderful story, if you please, Tim. Turns out that Lincoln's father, Tom, was a long time AA member.

11:37

Moderator I was doing research at Stepping Stones when this guy was still alive. It just kills me. We could have, we could have gotten together with this guy and, and that his dad was real interactive and involved in AA and, and, and he wanted to, and, and so Tom's really, you know, he's interested in his son and his son, please, Tim, if you'd, if you'd be kind enough, had, had gone to a lecture at Harvard that the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi gave in 1966 and he learned to meditate and then went and visited his dad and his dad said, what's up with you? There's something different about him. And he's going, no, nothing different about me.

11:52

Moderator His dad said, no, there's something is it and, and Lincoln said, well, I did, I did learn this meditation and technique and his dad went out the next day to New York and, and got a mantra and became involved in the like, and, and he went to a meeting regularly that Bill was involved in. And so what happened is, is that Lawrence, next, next slide, please, Tim. So Lawrence ends up, you can see him on the, or not Lawrence, excuse me, Lincoln, they're on the right. You can see him ended up going to India and the Maharishi asked him if he wanted to become an instructor and he said, sure, he wanted to do that. And so he went through the courses.

12:08

Moderator It was, it's like a three month course where you're working every day and then finally you, you, you get the ability to share this information and knowledge and, and he comes back to the next slide, please, Tim, he comes back to the US and his dad says, Hey, would, would you like to come, would you please come and teach it to my friends at my, at my group? And so Tom invited Lincoln and he came and he did a meditation instruction for three or four members of, of, of Bill's group at the time. And I just love this picture of, of Bill on the wall, it's one of my, one of my real favorites. The next slide, if you please. So now we've got a report from the guy who taught Bill how to, how to meditate.

12:26

Moderator In this way, in this mantra meditation, I'm sorry, Tim, go back just so I can talk about the Puja, which is the, the page before, yeah, right there. So anyway, here's the fun thing down in the lower left corner, you see, this is Bill's admission to town's hospital card. We, we actually showed a couple of times and it says right on it that December, yeah, can you squeeze in a little bit there, December 11th, 34. And Lincoln's memory was that he gave Bill his instruction either December 10th or 11th of 1969. Isn't that a lovely little, little thing.

12:39

Moderator Now, if you squeeze back down and we'll show the other, the picture on the other side. So this is a Puja. And anytime that, anytime that somebody learns this particular style of meditation, what happens is, is they give a ceremony of gratitude to the lineage, because this is a knowledge that's been going, you know, 14,000 years or so, you know, I mean, it's just, it's just absurd how long people have been, been, been doing this. And you, you have a little fruit and flowers and they do some incense and they, they go through and they, they literally go through the lineage of, of everybody that's done this. What, all the way back, what would happen is if somebody was going to learn this, they knew that if somebody was going to practice something spiritual, that they needed to have some skin in the game.

12:57

Jay And so the peasant or the farmer or whomever would bring one week's fruits or crops or whatever it was that they did to the person that was giving them the instruction. Nowadays, that translates in to about $1,000 to, to take a, to take a course, you know, and there's, there's all kinds of different set, but, but from the, from the TM folks, folks say it's a Ponzi scheme. No, it's not. It's, it's just making sure that you, you do that. And if you go to a congregational church, you know, you're throwing $20 a week in anyways, it's, it's not like it's any, any odd thing, but anyway, so, and, and I asked Lincoln, I said, did Bill pay?

13:14

Moderator Absolutely. He paid. So just so you know, it wasn't a freebie that, that Wilson got. So anyway, what happens is, is that they go up into the, this bed, this, this room and Lincoln gives Bill his mantra and what a mantra is, is it's a, it's a meaningless phrase in Sanskrit that when you use it, it allows you to transcend when you're, when you're taught to transcend your thoughts in a, in a different way. So anyway, so next slide please, Tim.

13:25

Jay So, so anyway, he gives Bill his mantra and then he leaves for 20 minutes and then after 20 minutes, he goes back to the room. When he gets back to the room, Wilson's not in it. What the heck's going on? You know? Well, he doesn't say that, but he says he went back and joined the others and said, did anybody see Bill come downstairs and nobody did.

13:33

Moderator But there was an outside staircase where we're at the house that Wilson learned this and he'd gone out into the night air. Now this is 1969. I've had the, I've had the privilege of reading Lois's diary and the lengths that they were going to in 1967, 68, 69, 70 to keep Bill alive and functioning was absolutely incomprehensible and he had awful emphysema and he's chain smoking still and all this stuff. And anyway, he'd gone out into the night and, and so Lincoln's down asking if everybody's seen Bill and all of a sudden the door bursts open and Wilson walks in, he says, this stuff really works. And Lincoln looks at him, he says, dude, you know, like mellow out, this is your first time.

13:49

Jay And Bill says, look, I was able to get deep breaths that I hadn't been able to get in age. I shouldn't have been able to do this, but something has happened. And anyway, so indeed he had the experience. We know that there were other people there that were friends of his that had, that got their, their mantras that night. And then the next, I'm sorry, let's, let's, let's stay here, excuse me.

13:59

Jay So then what happens is, is that there are check-in meetings, there are three meetings after the initial, when, when a person gets their mantra, where the, the instructor checks their practice and all that stuff and answers their questions. And so Bill came, Lincoln came to Stepping Stones and had engagement with Bill and other people at, at Stepping Stones that were part of this mantra meditation group. In it, Bill said to Lincoln, I never understood the 11th step until I started transcending. And Lincoln said, he said, oh, come on, he said, you wrote the 11th step. What do you mean you didn't understand it?

14:13

Moderator And Bill told him that it came, I didn't write it, it came to me as an inspiration. Now I don't know about you nice people, but over the years, many times I've described the book is divinely inspired or this or that or another thing that, but, but for Wilson to say it was an inspiration to me confirms that it was not of his mind, that it was something greater working through him, which is what my experience of that, that book is, it isn't the words, but in doing it, something greater works, works through us. And so, so anyway, that's, that's another one of these things that I just think is so fascinating. Now, when I'm talking about coming up to stepping stones and getting Lincoln Norton and get my iPad and talking about all this stuff, our friends, Sally Corbaturco, Sharon Wolf, the board is going, yeah, okay, but we don't have any evidence. We don't have any real evidence that corroborates this now as a person that is an amateur historian.

14:35

Moderator My central thing is you got to have two independent sources and we did, we were able to get things that Lincoln had said and written and all this wonderful stuff, but we didn't have, I mean, you know, I mean, the coin of the realm in Alcoholics Anonymous is gossip and we didn't have anybody, you know, saying, well, yeah, I remember when Bill, you know, started doing TM and blah, blah, blah, but the reality was by this time in his life, his circle was very small. And so we're doing all this stuff in our, you know, the angel of the Lord, as far as I'm concerned, is our friend, the deputy director, Sharon Wolf, and she's busy going through and we know the dates, right? We're looking for December 1969. And she was trying to find information in one of Lois's journals, couldn't find it, and she made the mistake of turning the page. And here in this guest register, Mantra Meditation Group, Bill F., Lois S., Bill, and then Link Platt, Lincoln Norton had taken on his stepfather's name.

14:59

Jay And so he was known as Link Platt in those days. And that's why it's Link Platt in the book. And then Tom Norton, his father, there at the bottom, that they were there at Stepping Stones. And it says Mantra Meditation Group. And so we're able to say that, yeah, he did this now.

15:06

Moderator You know. One of the things that the TM people do is they act as though meditation, when they talk about it, if it's not their way, it's not meditation, and that's, you know, anybody's privilege to think that their way is the correct way. But we know that Bill had tried a number of meditations, that he had enjoyed the fruits of them at different times in different places, and that here at the end of his life, here he is trying something else. And the stories that Lincoln tells about him in the film are quite wonderful. And this book has the complete transcript of all the information that's in the film.

15:20

Jay But really, it was amazing that we were able to do that. And then just to talk about change and the fellowship and the like. Now those of you who are familiar with the book Alcoholics Anonymous know that after the third step prayer, it says the wording was quite optional. But people don't focus on that very much. In fact, if you sit around with a bunch of people and say, okay, what are the things you can't change in AA, third step prayer, can't change that, you know, because we've all had such wonderful experience with it.

15:33

Jay So anyway, one of the things that happened when doing our research and the like is, over the years, my colleague had run across that as Bill sees it, Bill changes the third step prayer. We wanted to make sure that people realized that he was evolving, he was changing. And so in 1938, he writes, you know, take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness. And then later on in 1965, in this this little compendium that he put together, he changes it, take away my difficulties, that my transcendence over them may bear witness. Now that's, that's a big change.

15:46

Jay That's a big change. And it's really fun. I think I think there's something like in as Bill sees it, there's 70 references to the big book, and he ends up changing things not substantively, but I think substantively like eight, eight to 12. And most of them have some little editorial changes to them. So so this idea that that Wilson in many of his letters, talks about that the problem with any spiritual movement is that it becomes calcified, that it becomes frozen.

15:56

Jay And anyway, that's what that's what we got on that. So I just like to, I just like to, to toss that in and. And then finally, you know, just this wonderful thing that, you know, this this encouraging the evolution and in it, Sheaberg talks about his great love for William James, and we actually have this, this photo of James and Carl Jung together back in 1905. And but that James said, you know, what's the cash value of your prayer life? What's the cash value of your meditation?

16:08

Jay And just doing what we can to, to encourage folks. So, you know, the great thing is that Alcoholics Anonymous is an open door, that that the fellowship's an open door, and that Lois Wilson had the vision to make all this information in this wonderful environment that our friends do an incredible amount of work to keep alive and vital for us. So I, you know, if you haven't been yet, put it on the bucket list, it's it's quite an experience. And with that, I'd like once again to acknowledge Janine's incredible contribution to all of this and into please invite you to come to the picnic and all the other wonderful events, the play and our meditation, the movie and the like. And I think the one thing that I like to do, why don't you play, I'm going to play a little thing that happened just so you know, what it is that people in the film community think about what it is that we've done.

16:30

Jay Would you be kind enough to play that little clip? We've won the best director. My name is Jay Estenit, I'm the producer of Bill W. and Conscious Content. This is Janine Johnson, my co-producer, and Sally Estenit, my co-producer.

16:35

Jay We have the opportunity today to celebrate Kelvin Hamlin and his emotional intelligence and how he's been able to convey the fact that there is something within each of us that contact can be made with that can lift any individual from the desperation of alcoholism and drug addiction. Everyone in here knows somebody and it is not with, it doesn't come from religion, it doesn't come from hierarchy, it doesn't come from social services or anything else. It's for fun and for free and it's available to any person. Thank you. Thank you.

16:47

Jay Thanks. So if anybody's got any questions or anything, I'd be delighted to answer them. And thank you very, very much for your kind attention this evening. Thank you so much. And first question is from Loretta.

16:52

Jay You can unmute and ask your question. Thanks, Jay. I really liked the presentation. What can you tell us about the picture that's opposite? I think it's page 29, Bill's spiritual experience.

16:56

Jay There's that one with the. Oh, with the white. That was. Janine, are you here? That was something that.

16:58

Jay Oh, there's Janine. Do you want to. Can you talk about the photo? Yes. Yes.

17:00

Jay When Kevin Hanlon made the film, he created an effect to illustrate Wilson's white light experience. So that's the idea taken from the film. It's not moving in the film. It's like it expands out like this just to illustrate that experience. I didn't know if it just happened naturally or had occurred in a spontaneous way.

17:08

Jay Thank you. Yes, thanks. Yeah, there's a caption that kind of explains it when you see the book. So thanks. Thank you for the question.

17:11

Jay And next is Audra. You can unmute. Good evening. My name's Audra. I'm an alcoholic addict.

17:13

Jay Just a question for you, Jay. I know that Bill had a ongoing. I guess written friendship with Father Ed Doling. Yeah. And I'm just curious.

17:16

Jay And, of course, I know you didn't go over the whole book, which fantastic job. You totally blew me away. Why you didn't touch on that in the book? Or did you touch on it in the book and just didn't get to it? No, no, no.

17:23

Jay It's just about it. Okay. It's my movie. Okay. My movie's about.

17:24

Jay No, no, no, no. Just bear with me for a moment. My movie's about the fact that this experience happened. And what came out of it and came through it. Now, in the in the film, I mentioned, like, his relationship with the the St.

17:30

Jay Francis prayer. Sally Corbett Turco mentions Catholicism, Episcopalianism, all that. This is just about the nature of the experience and the expansiveness that came behind it. It isn't about all the different things that he did. And there's that wonderful book that just came out about Father Dowling.

17:36

Jay Bill's spiritual sponsor, you know, covers all that. I have it. Thanks so much, Jay, for everything you did for for the history. I appreciate it. Yeah.

17:40

Jay Thank you, Audra, for the question. And I do not see any other hands up. And Jay, I just want to ask, do you want to. I shared a link to the website and now that it's completely. Newly changed.

17:45

Jay Would you like to show anyone anything from that? Well, yeah. Just that. So the book will be available May 22nd. And and so you can you can get the movie.

17:48

Jay You can purchase the movie now for 10 bucks. And it said it lives on the Vimeo platform. So it will be there for you to use. And you can use like up to three devices to be able to access it. The there'll be a subscription where you'll be able to access the movie and a digital copy of the book that you can't like take pictures of or anything, but that you'll be able to to look at the book digitally and other content that I'll be putting up about different aspects of Wilson's spiritual life.

18:01

Jay And then we'll have the if you go to purchase the book. There you'll see that we'll have it three different ways. You can either get it in paperback. You can get it in hardcover and or we're going to do a run of 150 and 11 by 11 collectors edition. And if you get the hardcover, I'll be happy to dedicate it and sign it on a on a book plate that I'll be happy to send you and in whatever way that you want me to have it inscribed.

18:12

Jay So look forward to you to doing that. And it'll be available on Amazon and the like. So thanks for that. And now I see a couple more hands up. Let's get these two in before we wrap up.

18:17

Jay Dave, you can unmute. Thanks to my name's Dave. And, you know, Jay, that when they first started, you had, you know, Bill Wilson admitted to town's hospital December 11th. You know, and that that admitted, you know, it's like step one. We admitted.

18:23

Jay That we were powerless over alcohol. And then on, you know, the step five is we admitted to another human being, their exact nature of our wrongs or something. It's just interesting that that admitted, you know, as Bill was admitted, his admittance to the hospital and then he has it in the steps. So anyway, I just wanted to comment on that. Yeah, that's a lot like, you know, that, you know, you pronounce man and wife and you're also pronounced dead.

18:34

Jay But I don't know any other place that were pronounced. Right. Thanks, Jay. Thank you, Dave. And next is Adam.

18:36

Jay You can unmute. Hey, I was just wondering, are the books going to be available in the group office? No, no. I am an outside issue. In fact, one of the things my friends at Stepping Stone is always we're very clear that there's a firewall.

18:42

Jay If we have a joint venture, but but no, there won't be an inner group. You get them. You get them directly from the from the website or from from Amazon. OK. Thanks a lot for that.

18:47

Jay Thank you, Adam. And our next question is from Tom. You can unmute. Yeah, I'd always wondered where transcendence came from. And as Bill sees it.

18:50

Jay And now I know. And somebody asked me about it and I told her I didn't know. So I'll have to tell her, too. But I appreciate it. I appreciate the talk.

18:54

Moderator I learned an awful lot. And it answered that question for sure. Thanks today. Yeah, you're welcome, Tom. But here's an interesting thing.

18:57

Moderator That book was published in nineteen sixty five. So probably Bill wrote that in sixty four. Now, if you take a look, he doesn't meet transcendental meditation until nineteen sixty nine personally. So this feeling of transcendence, this spiritual apprehension, Shaberg and I spent a couple of minutes in the movie talking about this being a very excellent illustration of Wilson's change over time. Because of the other work that he'd been, you know, because of the spiritual work that he'd been doing.

19:08

Moderator So the important thing is not to ascribe that to his actual work with transcendental meditation because later. OK, thanks, my friend. Thanks. Yeah, you're welcome. All right.

19:11

Jay Looks like that is it for questions this evening. Thank you so much, everyone. Yeah. Thank you, everybody. And yeah, hope to see everyone back in June or July.

19:15

Jay We will be doing a follow up with Jay and Mike here soon. And oh, one other thing. We got Bill Barton, who's the the chairman of the Stepping Stones Foundation. Do you want to say anything about encouraging people to to come or to do research or anything like that, Bill? Hey, well, I've been mesmerized by this whole presentation myself, Jay.

19:23

Jay It's great. And I'm so pleased about the collaboration we've had with you on this wonderful project. And I know you put your heart and your your own money into it. And it's really been a labor of love. And we love it, too.

19:29

Moderator So, you know, I just want to reiterate how great I feel about Stepping Stones and everything we have. We've got a hundred hundred and ten thousand or so pieces of archives and other memorabilia of their life, you know, up here in Bedford. And it's just a remarkable place. And the more treasure that comes out every time I visit it. And so come to the picnic.

19:37

Jay Come to the play. There's a big it's a big deal this weekend. And, you know, June 6th around that. And it's just it's a really spiritual place. It's really, you know, you drive into the grounds of Stepping Stones.

19:43

Moderator You immediately feel it. You immediately feel a connection to the Wilsons. And I've loved it since the first time I've been there. I've been there 25 or more times. And I always get a little chill when I go through it.

19:48

Jay So try to get there. So thanks again, Jay, for all you've done for promoting us, too. Thank you. Amen. Amen.

19:51

Jay Thank you. And just a reminder, if anyone has not received the information about the upcoming Stepping Stones picnic, I just shared the flyer in the chat. You can download that and please share it if you can't make it. Maybe your friends can. Yeah, absolutely.

19:56

Jay All right. Well, thank you, everyone. I will now stop the recording and allow everyone to unmute and thank Jay for the great talk today.

The following is an AI-generated transcript. Minor errors may occur. The audio is the authoritative source.

Bill W. & Conscious Contact

Bill W. & Conscious Contact

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