On the Death of
Christopher Bird
E-mails from Tom Mellett to Henry Hicks
It's an odd feeling to learn of the death of someone you know personally while watching the national network news, but yesterday, I heard Peter Jennings of ABC news announce the passing of Christopher Bird at the age of 68. With co-author Peter Tompkins, Chris Bird wrote the ground-breaking book, "The Secret Life of Plants," published in the early 70's, which among other things, introduced my wife Jennifer to the work of Rudolf Steiner long before she met me. Of interest to Anthroposophists is his and Tompkins' work "Secrets of the Soil," (1989) which is mostly about bio-dynamics and caused a great deal of consternation among the usual dogmatic types who accused him of sensationalizing Steiner's ideas about agriculture.
I recall the circumstances of my first meeting with Chris Bird. It was 1991 in Berkeley, California. I was visiting Arthur M. Young, the inventor of the Bell helicopter and founder of the Institute for the Study of Consciousness in Berkeley. (Arthur is the author of "Geometry of Meaning" and "The Reflexive Universe.") --- (To Andreas Carter: I'm ready to post about Arthur Young as soon as I finish this piece about Chris Bird).---- Chris, Arthur and myself went out to the nearby Chinese
restaurant, where Chris unburdened his soul about the quasi-hysterical reaction of so many bio-dynamic folks to his recently published book, "Secrets of the Soil." I remember him asking me in a gruff but pleading manner: "What is wrong with these people?" It is difficult to explain even to Anthroposophists about what I term the "neo-Essene" or "neo-Amish" impulse in Anthroposophy wherein so many otherwise good-natured people feel the need to "put the genie back into the lamp" (read: return to Lucifer) and then to hide the lamp (from Ahriman) when it comes to the dissemination
of anthroposophical knowledge. (I suppose it's an atavistic holdover of the time of the Mysteries when you could lose your life for revealing spiritual truths). At any rate, Chris was genuinely befuddled at the reaction of so many bio-dynamic folks who talked about him like he was some kind of traitor for revealing this knowledge to the general public. All I could tell Chris was that he was not alone, for it happens to other"outside authors" who write publicly about other fields of anthroposophical work
where so many people would like to have the secrecy back again. What they forget, of course, is the fact that if Rudolf Steiner had not made this knowledge public to begin with, they would not have a foundation for their dogmatic attacks!
Be that as it may, I wonder if other members of the group have a connection with Chris Bird and his work, and would like to post their comments, especially since Chris is now in the middle of his 3.5 day
retrospect, viewing the "museum of his own past life" as his etheric body dissolves into the wide universe. I recall Steiner speaking about the importance not only of reading spiritual science to the dead, but specifically, cultivating an author's work after his death. There is much greater insight to be had when you read the work of a deceased author, since he or she is no longer bound to the prison of the physical body, and can "perch on your shoulder," as it were, and "whisper" insights as you
read and contemplate the work.
Other books by Chris Bird include: "The Divining Hand", (1979) an encyclopaedic book about dowsing; "The Persecution and Trial of Dr. Gaston Naessens: the true story of the efforts to suppress an alternative treatment for cancer, AIDS and other immunologically based diseases." (1991); "Modern Vegetable Gardening" (1993).
Tom.
I managed to find a short obituary of Christopher Bird in the New York Times of Monday, May 6, 1996. It turns out he died last Thursday in a hospital (outside Atlanta, Georgia) after a stroke that he suffered at home. He had a Web page but it is inactive. However, I do believe his e-mail address is active: birdnest@mindspring.com. His widow's name is Shabari-Lynda Boland.
As for Jerry Haslett's query about the whereabouts of Peter Tompkins, I do not know myself; however, I believe a query to Chris's e-mail address or to Nancy Kolenda at the Center for Frontier Sciences at Temple University (V2058A@VM.TEMPLE.EDU) might track down the elusive
Peter.
Interestingly enough, it also happens that Chris Bird was here in Austin, Texas two weeks ago to interview the physicist Hal Puthoff for research concerning Chris's latest book whose tentative title is/was "The Secret Life of Water." (To Andreas Carter: Hal Puthoff is yet another figure whom I must post the group about and in the context of my promised post about Arthur Young----since it was Arthur Young who first told me about Hal Puthoff back in 1981. As a physicist, Hal is working on startling ideas in quantum electrodynamics, finishing the work of the late Andrei Sakharov concerning the zero-point energy fluctuations of the vacuum. Hal and his wife Adrienne Kennedy founded the Palo Alto (Peninsula?) Waldorf School, and yes, Hal is the physicist responsible for the Remote Viewing experiments funded by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency in the 70's at Stanford Research International (SRI). There was a large "media flap" here in the U.S. in the last 6 months when the CIA declassified a number of documents related to the military funding of this well-documented training in visual clairvoyance.)
Tom Mellett.
Had a chat last evening with Jennifer Greene of Blue Hill, Maine concerning Christopher Bird and his book in progress. At this time it appears that the book was reasonably near completion and will likely be finished by his widow, with whom Jennifer spoke recently. JHaslett@uic.edu
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