The MSIA Presidency, left to right: Vincent Dupont, Paul Kaye, Mark Lurie.

Part Two of a Three-Part Interview in the New Day Herald (NDH) with MSIA’s Presidency:  Paul Kaye (PK), Vincent Dupont (VD) and Mark Lurie (ML).

NDH: So, to me one of the big factors that’s changed over the years has been J-R’s gradual withdrawal from some of the more public aspects of MSIA. How has that affected how MSIA operates?  

PK: Over the past 20-30 years, J-R has trained us in principles that we can easily follow and use as a blueprint in our day-to-day management. J-R is still very much available to us—we can always call and speak with him when it is needed. He is still very present physically and we also very much feel his spiritual presence, and sense that he’s running things spiritually.

ML: And John Morton has put his body on the line — he’s taking sharings, doing webcasts, so we have our spiritual director really out there and participating where he’s accessible and people can meet him. There have been ebbs and flows of J-R’s outward participation, but like Paul said, right now we find him very much engaged in the areas where we need him.

VD: And even at times when it would appear to us that J-R might not be as physically involved, or present with the day to day aspects of the church, he will come with a question or a statement or a direction that makes us aware that he’s totally on top of it, and that he’s got his finger on the pulse in a way that’s even beyond what we can think of. He’s certainly been watching out for us spiritually. Even within the ebbs and flows of his direct involvement it doesn’t seem that he’s ever lost touch with what’s going on.

ML: And we still get surprised.  We thought, well, maybe J-R’s traveling days are over, and then next thing we know he goes to Europe, he goes to South America. So J-R is the international man of mystery.

PK: We do see it as John-Roger’s church, since the basis of MSIA is John-Roger’s teachings. He’s laid out so much for us through all the seminars and discourses. Our job is to see to it that everything that flows out of MSIA will be based on the foundation that J-R has built.

NDH: And after his body dies, then what happens?   

PK: Well, we honestly don’t know. Who can say? We trust in the guidance of Spirit and that the next Traveler will continue J-R’s teachings just as John is doing right now. And let’s keep I mind that J-R is here with us now.

NDH: Are there preparations being made in the sense of legalities, or in terms of rules and regulations about how to handle the teachings after he’s gone? 

ML: That’s a good question because I think it hits the most important thing that we’ve recognized in terms of J-R’s transition, and that is we want to make sure we’re clear about how J-R wants his teachings presented after he’s gone. And I think we’ve got a pretty good clarity on that. J-R said that we should preserve the edited materials that he’s put out, that we don’t change them, and so our focus is making sure that we do have good archives and that we’ll be able to perpetuate those. And any additional clarity that we can get, between now and whenever J-R leaves the planet physically is something that we continue to strive for.

NDH: And how about unedited materials—will they be available in a public database? 

PK: Ultimately, perhaps. The most important thing is the recordings. They are the direct transmission where people can hear directly what J-R said, without any distortion.  Even books can distort or interpret because there’s editing involved, and even more so if they’re translated. That’s the luxury we have that was missing at the time of Jesus the Christ’s teachings. Then they were dealing with translations, and what people thought they heard, and his words were recorded way after the event. So the actual oral tradition of the Traveler as a direct line from the Spirit is the vital link in what MSIA is about.  What distinguishes MSIA is the direct transmission from John-Roger’s connection with Spirit and with Jesus Christ, who heads MSIA. So going forward, that’s what MSIA will be—a church founded by John-Roger, the basis and foundation being John-Roger’s teachings.

NDH: So. Let’s say, J-R dies tomorrow and you’ve got all this unedited stuff, what happens to it?  Who’s in charge of it? 

ML: Well, if you ask legally or in terms of making preparations, the presidency are the board of directors and the members and the officers.  We basically steward the organization. MSIA has all the tapes of J-R’s seminars and we have a mandate from J-R to keep them intact. In terms of the unedited materials, I think that’s still a point to really clarify with J-R.

PK: We have checked in with J-R several times and the indications that he’s given us make it seem like he’ll be around at least another few years. So, it’s not like this is an emergency, “Oh my god what will we do?” But if he did die tomorrow, we would attempt to continue everything in the Spirit and direction of what he’s given us.

VD: I think in terms of the materials themselves, J-R has been very keen over the years to put out new materials, not to have them gather dust in the library — he’s actually used those very words. And so you see we keep putting out books and having new CDs and DVDs come out. I think the sort of direction I’ve gathered, even though it wasn’t quite said in those terms, is that once he dies, he doesn’t want us to do anything more in terms of editing and publishing books and other materials. That would be like somebody else interpreting these raw materials and saying, “Okay, here’s a new book by J-R twenty years after he died.”  And, in a way, it’s probably why he’s so keen on putting them out now, while he can still shape it, bless it and make sure it’s true to his intention. But the flip side of that is as Paul was saying earlier; we have the luxury of having the raw material that is available now. So whether J-R makes it available or not in the future, that remains to be seen. But the fact that it is available, that there’s a body of work that’s been edited, published, and taped on all the various topics that he’s covered, and there’s the raw stuff that’s still there, that is an incredible gold mine. And to be able to hear J-R in the raw, and to hear him speak, there’s a context and intonation. When I read a transcript and it says one thing, and then I hear it played, I say, “Wow! It’s a whole other thing that I could have misinterpreted. There’s a whole other twist to it.”

ML: What’s really nice is that there are so many J-R seminars released that are already out there, it’s been spread out all over the world.

VD: One thing came out a lot when Betsy Alexander was putting together the Fulfilling Your Spiritual Promise book.  J-R was very keen on the fact that the teachings are living teachings. They’re alive and they’re constantly evolving and following the Spirit. So even though as soon as you put it into a book format, it’s fixed, that’s only the word level. It says in the introduction to Fulfilling the Spiritual Promise to let the book be just a doorway into your own inner knowing and something that allows you to find the way into your own inner wisdom so that you don’t end up using it as a Bible-thumping tool. Like, “But it says so in the book!”  I was having breakfast once with J-R in a hotel and he talked about the fact that every hundred and fifty years or so a Traveler comes along who updates and refreshes the teachings, making them more contemporary. It’s not changing the essence of the teachings, it’s more like updating them according to the times.  And that’s something J-R did as part of his job as a Traveler. The words are just the general entry into the teachings so that you can then go into the essence of what is presented to the Spirit speaking inside of you, and then learn in that way. So the whole idea of what happens to the teachings to me can be summed up as hopefully they will continue to be the doorway for people to open into their own Spirit.

NDH: Will there always be a Traveler in MSIA?   

PK: It’s under a spiritual directive, and it’s not a responsibility that has been given to us to say or influence. We deal with what’s present. To think about what would happen in the future, that’s something we have no control over.  Our direction is the preservation of J-R’s teachings. And, just to be clear about it, to me it really doesn’t matter. Because there’s been enough put out of the teachings to keep everybody going for years and years. Look how long we’ve been going on Jesus’ teachings and he said, relatively speaking, very little.  For the last 40 years or so, J-R has laid out for us the whole map of human consciousness—a way out of the body and into the Spirit. People who are attuned to that will find it, even if they don’t necessarily have a physical contact with a Traveler. If they’re meant to be taken up they’ll find a method—they’ll get what they need.

ML: It seems pretty clear to us that there are a lot of people who J-R’s working with on this planet who don’t even know that MSIA exists.  When I get glimpses into that from comments I have heard J-R make over the years, it helps me get perspective on the big picture.

VD: There was a great example of that on the Europe trip last summer. One of the airport employees happened to be doing something for us. And J-R told me, “Take good care of him, he’s one of us.”   It was like, what do you mean, J-R? He said, “He’s one of the Traveler’s.” It was like, “Wow! Okay.”  And it was very interesting how the whole interaction happened, and how the guy actually went against his superior to assist J-R with a wheelchair when he was told he wasn’t supposed to do that, because he was to go through this whole red tape thing. The guy basically sneaked behind the scenes and provided the wheelchair when he shouldn’t have. He just really took off with the spirit of what was going on. So he had his physical connection with the Traveler, and even though outwardly he may have been the guy pushing around the wheelchairs at the airport that day, it became the way the Traveler chose to connect with him. So there’s a lot more to it than what we see.

PK: And the Traveler is a consciousness, it’s not a physical body, so what I have understood from J-R is that it actually can also operate through a committed group of people.

VD: There’s that perennial question about what happens when J-R dies, who’s going to be the next Traveler after John, etc.  J-R once said that it could be a group of people and he used an example of the Presidency at the time, saying that when the three of us come together the Traveler consciousness can also come present.  So rather than it be one person, it could be more like a group of initiates or the ministerial body, for example. There are many different possibilities. If John or the next Traveler were to say, “I’m going somewhere else,” then it would clearly change the nature of the organization, since a big part of the Traveler’s work is direct transmission of the teachings and being able to give the “Word” through initiation. Under these circumstances MSIA as an organization would change in nature to something more like a foundation or a library. People could still come for the teachings, and perhaps tap into the Traveler and the inner teachings just like you can read the work of a Traveler in a past century and still resonate with it.

ML: We’re pretty deep into the speculation zone right now.

NDH: So if you had a magic wand and could transform MSIA into anything you wanted, what would it be? 

PK: In many ways I consider the present situation to be pretty ideal. The wand has already been waved!  That we’ve had J-R as long as we’ve had him is somewhat of a miracle from my point of view. I don’t have anything I’d really want to change, and I think partially because it’s spiritually directed and I sense that present now. It’s very alive, no matter how I’m feeling. For example, I may be getting bogged down in administrative details or staff problems—you know just the things that make up daily life. Then I’ll have a morning of MSIA services, the Spirit comes present and everything clears away. The aura balance, polarity balance, or innerphasing is being done by Spirit, because I can’t do those myself. I don’t know how to do them.  Or facilitating a PTS workshop. I get in front of the room, and boom, no matter how I’m feeling, no matter what’s happening, Spirit is alive and it’s palpable. If it happened once or twice I could say I was imagining it, but it’s been twenty-five or thirty years it’s still as alive as it was the moment I walked in. And that’s good enough validation for me.

ML: What I liked about the question that you just asked, is it made me realize that we don’t really have a lack for anything. We have fantastic facilities, great people we work with, we have good equipment, wonderful programs. I don’t see anything where there’s a big opportunity for change or a need for change. Obviously you could always replace a carpet here or there or do something like that, but I really like the way we currently support the Traveler’s students and make the teachings available.

VD: There’s always the need to keep up with the times, like with technology and the media. I would add for myself that at the time something’s going on I might think that’s not the way I would do it.  But, in retrospect, I see what’s happened over the years and I realize how perfect it was, including for my own learning and growth. So these days it’s a lot easier to do my best to see it that way as it’s actually happening, and say, “You know, I don’t quite get it right now, but I know there’s a point in there somewhere.”  Spirit comes present time and time again without fail, when we do services, when we do events and or even when we call in the Light to handle a particular situation. It is just so mind-boggling and it’s just so consistent that I wonder why I still ask myself, “Oh my God I wonder what’s going to happen?” What am I doing? I don’t need to know what’s going to happen. I know that it’s mine to cooperate with the best I can. And one of the recent of examples of the past year is when it comes to staffing. Sometimes we’re in a situation of, “Oh my God what’s going to happen when so-and-so leaves? How are we going to replace them?” Or they leave and we don’t have anybody. And without fail, the right person shows up in the right timing and in perfect ways. And it’s like, what was I worried about?  So even in a very practical way, that spiritual presence is there directing and orchestrating things. It’s a very palpable thing and a very practical thing.

ML: I thought more about it and there are two things that come to mind. One is that if I could wave a magic wand that people would know more of the inner teachings of MSIA, which is what the outer form is there to support.  And I’d love to be playing volleyball with J-R at an Arrowhead retreat again.

VD: Or riding horses at Windermere.

NDH: I’ll ask the same question about Windermere—if you had a magic wand and could transform Windermere, what would it be? 

ML: Well, if you’re truly saying just ask for the grocery store, it would be fantastic if we could build a beautiful retreat center up there. That’s not in the cards with the present neighborhood zoning and all that.  With that said, we actually have some pretty cool things starting to move up there. We’re going to be adding goats to the property and we love the possibilities of what that could bring forward. The practical reason is to bring the goats is to clear the brush, but what comes from having goats on the property is to have a new type of livestock and interaction possibilities for people, and maybe for them to milk the goats, and things like that. Also, Andrew Baillie has been heading up the creation of an organic garden and we’re really interested in seeing how that develops.  We want to support that.

VD: And we’re planning orchards too.

ML: So after things have been kind of dormant at Windermere for a long time we’re actually starting to see some movement.  We are allowed to do agricultural activities on the property and have visitors.

VD: In many ways probably what Mark was just talking about is finding ways to bring people to the land and have more reasons for people to come to Windermere. And I think that’s part of the mission for Windermere as a place of peace and as a place of healing— for people to come to the land and both to bring their Light and to receive of it.

ML: We haven’t figured Windermere out yet, but one thing we’re clear about is, J-R has a focus on it. That hasn’t wavered.

PK: He has definitely indicated that it is his ministry. And reading between the lines of J-R’s sharings on Windermere over the years, I really think that it is for another time and another generation of MSIAers. We are just stewards doing our best in the meantime. Its greater use is still to be revealed.

VD: I remember over the years J-R saying, “The land will tell us what it wants, and what to do with it.” And in a way it feels like we may have come into a greater cooperation with that recently. For many years  IIWP had these great plans with the CUP [the Conditional Use Permit that is legally required to have a retreat center] which we think was great and it would have been fantastic. And even though we went to great lengths to make it something that’s compatible with the land and environmentally sound, it still didn’t go. So we asked ourselves what can we do within what is currently allowed without the CUP. Only recently did it seem that we worked out things like the goats and the orchard, which use the resources as they are. Many things then came together and we realized that we can do all these things already. We don’t have to get special permits. And little by little it’s taking on a life of its own, which is really great. A great example of that is the recent fires in Santa Barbara, where everything around started to burn to the ground, and the fires stopped at Windermere because we had taken care of the land in a way that J-R had encouraged.  And it was so exemplary that it became like a textbook case. And it seemed to unlock something. It’s not like we’re vindicated in any kind of againstness, but more like we know we’re on a good track, so let’s keep going in that direction and see where it goes. And then these things get resolved one after another. How do we keep the land clear? Well go with the goats, it’s natural and it’s much cheaper.  It seems to have a natural organic progression, which is also very much matches how we’ve seen J-R work over the years.  It’s seems like everything he’s done has followed a very organic process The process seems to take a life of its own.

NDH: I ask you the same question about Peace Labyrinth and Gardens.  If you wave a magic wand and make it anything you want? 

ML: Well for me, maybe just a little bit more popular in terms of people coming here to have a spiritual experience of MSIA.

VD: I think it’s pretty darn good. To me we’ve really come to point where it’s fulfilled a lot of the vision we’ve had for it. And, the main thing as Mark said, more people coming to enjoy it would be the next step. And there’s a fairly new development of having our guest house dedicated for guests staying at Prana. That usually happens around conference, and DSS and MSS weekends and so on. And we’re going to be using it for the PAT trainings coming up in the summer. So it’s really happening, and to me it would be great to have more people coming to enjoy Prana year round and touching in to the Spirit that’s here.

PK: What’s with this magic wand thing? I think you have been watching too much Harry Potter. We renovated Prana and the grounds to be utilized, we have created the space for people to come, and more people are definitely coming. We just got a write up in a Los Angeles Magazine, in a section about “oases in Los Angeles.” Interestingly, we actually have used the words “oasis in the city” to describe Peace Awareness Labyrinth and Gardens.  It’s hard to believe that we’re in central L.A. and right now we are all looking out at the gardens and even hearing the birds. Once again, the Traveler waved the wand and this is what was created. And it is kind of magical.

VD: We have a lot of people come through for the Spa days and the different events. And we had a memorial service on Sunday for 100 or 150 people. And so the place is used and has many activities and people are coming.

PK: One thing that all three of us share is how excited we get when someone new comes into MSIA—even if it’s just one person!  We’re still really into our jobs. We’re not jaded at all, we are thrilled to see a new face. It is always so interesting to find out how people find out about us.

ML: It’s like welcoming someone into something that we know and love and somebody else has recognized that too.  That’s one of the most satisfying things that happen to us.

PK: We have the structure, and we are active in putting the word out there. We are planting seeds. Even the Spiritual Warriors movie is a form of seeding where J-R charged it so the DVD can be used at a seminar. It’s another of way getting the teachings out there, another seed that’s being planted. We don’t know how which one is going to sprout, or when.

VD: We make it a point to stay with the times, and to keep up with technology. Mark was on top of the Internet when it came along and put us ahead of the curve on that. We started webcasts pretty much at the beginning of when that technology became available.  And we’ve been active with email classes. Now PTS is starting to evolve live classes on the web with Julie Lurie taking the lead on this. There are MSS classes being facilitated remotely through the Internet in Canada, with the facilitators being in Los Angeles and John Morton taking sharing remotely. We recently started MSIA groups on Facebook and Twitter.  Zoe Golightly has really run with Twitter.  And Zoe and Debbie Roth have really gotten great MSIA participation on Facebook.  We’re exploring new avenues on the Internet to do more of that. We’ve completed the new online store and we’re in the process of redesigning the main MSIA website with the new version coming out at the end of the year.  When we talk in terms of more participation we don’t go after market share like a traditional business would but we certainly make sure that within the mission of making the Traveler’s teachings available we stay up to date. Further examples are that we have begun making the teachings available in the MP3 downloadable formats, and e-books are now available through the MSIA website, with e-Discourses to soon follow.

NDH: So same question about Prana West—if you had a magic wand and could make Prana West anything you wanted it to be… 

PK: We have been blessed to be able to renovate it so beautifully. Now, it’s just a question of getting the usage out of it. We had PAT Trainings there in July. They were our most successful, in terms of enrolment, for many years. People loved them. We’re already having MSS classes at Prana West, so it is being well utilized already.  We also have a property at Lake Arrowhead that has an attraction for the younger people in MSIA. A PAT at Arrowhead for the 18-35 year-olds, plus the young at heart is in the planning stages for 2010.

ML: Prana West is fully occupied and the PTS offices are there.  It’s great.

PK: The purpose of the meditation gardens and the labyrinth wasn’t just to build nice landmarks, it was so people could come and enjoy it, and above all get the spiritual experience and attunement to the Traveler’s energy that is here in abundance. And that is happening and we’re very happy about it.

VD: And people come who do come, do get that. We get tremendous feedback from people who come, so it’s fulfilling its purpose. And the more people who come to partake of the blessings the better.  That’s the intention that we’re working.

End of Part 2.  Click Here for Part 3.