The Many Minds of Eileen Garrett

With great affection I recall Alan Vaughan, PhD (1936-2001).  A researcher, noted author and editor at one time of “Psychic Magazine” he was also a psychic held in great repute.  As a grantee of PF he came under the wing of my grandmother who helped propel his career.  Shortly before he died he was working on a family authorized bio of Garrett and for a short while was  given a desk within PF’s offices to more easily attempt that herculean task allowing for immediate access to our library,  Garrett’s family  and those who knew her first hand.  Regretfully at his death his notes were lost but what remains is a paper he wrote “The Many Minds of Eileen Garrett” which was to flesh out the arc of his manuscript which I have come across. I would like to share some of it with you who continue to ask me what she was like.  A video of one of our earliest Perspectives lectures,  Alan did for us,  is available in our PF you tube channel.  In future blogs I will share further passages from his paper but for now:

“Eileen J. Garrett was one of the most extraordinary, powerful and yet enigmatic presences of our time. Although, she died in 1970, her legacy continues today.  Wherever men and women have sought to understand the nature of mind, their lives have in some way been touched by this remarkable woman.  Her “many minds” included the roles of business executive, author, editor, publisher, intuitive, medium, healer and patron of science. She established the Parapsychology Foundation in 1951 to fund a  whole generation of psychic researchers and launch the modern era of consciousness research…By sheer force of personality, she demonstrated that she could accomplish nearly anything—especially if it was controversial.  Believers called her a miracle woman.  Skeptics called her a charlatan.  She called herself ‘at least, none of these.’  Mrs. Garrett was generally conceded to be the best medium of the century and the most tested in a career that lasted fifty years.  She inadvertently triggered the psychedelic movement when she gave Timothy Leary, a grant to study the link between extrasensory perception (ESP) and LSD—a fact unacknowledged in the obituaries of Leary.  Humphrey Osmond, a psychiatrist , had helped Mrs. Garrett find the right person to do the LSD-ESP research.  They congratulated themselves on finding such a solid, respectable researcher at Harvard.  But Leary got so high on LSD that he forgot about ESP and never did do the research.”

I can attest to PF’s and her  disappointment and embarassement that as we were trying to get science to recognize the value of parapsychological research the last thing we needed was to get caught up in the drug mania of the 60’s hence that is not generally known.  Vaughan goes on with more interesting commentary of Garrett’s drug work that I will save for another day.  He goes through a brief recounting of the many facets of her research work again to be shared in future.   He accurately states “Throughout her life, Garrett displayed great gifts of business acumen combined with remarkable creativity  and a wholly intuitive style of decision making. Eileen did not read resumes to decide if she should hire someone—she read their auras.  If their auras got dark, they got fired.  She started businesses seemingly on impulsive whims, but actually based on profound intuition.  For example, in 1941, she was walking down a New York street one day when a building named The Life Extension Building caught her eye.  She noted the address, 7-11, and worked out by numerology that it would be a favorable location.  The next day she went in and rented a suite of offices to start a publishing house.  Afterward she wondered if she had enough money in the bank to pay for it.  Thus was born Creative Age Press…The logo of Creative Age Press (and later the Foundation) was the helix, a symbol derived from her repeated experience of seeing a smoky white substance arising from the dying in the shape of a helix or spiral.  Bemused at the sexy covers of her books, Time magazine snidely commented that the helix must represent a bedspring.  But to be taken notice of by Time magazine meant that she had made it…Other people have thought she was nuts, too, but she continually confounded them by being successful…Eileen Garrett was a fascinating, yet extraordinarily complex and enigmatic personality.  A conversation with her depended on telepathy, since she expected you to intuit the ending of every other sentence.  She possessed enormous charm though she could also display a fiery Irish temper.  But most amazing to me was the dazzling aura of energy that surrounded her.  Being near her was like bathing in a fountain of sparkling energy that surrounded her.  A meeting with Eileen Garrett could be an invigorating—even healing—experience.  For many, including myself, Mrs. Garrett was the most remarkable person we ever met.  Her major contribution, in my view, was bridging the worlds of mysticism and science to create the beginnings of a new consciousness whose influence we have only begun to feel.”

Wow!   Pretty big shoes to fill, eh?  I have tried my entire life to walk that walk.  How great to have had her as a beloved grandmother and  role model. I will raise a glass for her birthday this month on the 17^th which as being Irish born always meant great celebration besides a cake.     She taught me well with the example of her ever undulating spiral before me– I learned one must always aim upward and onward!