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Beyond Biofeedback – Drs Elmer and Alyce Green

I first heard of Jack Schwarz in the spring of 1971, while lecturing in California at the Esalen Institute. Paul Herbert, who recorded lectures for Esalen, asked me if I had ever heard of one Jack Schwarz, who was very much like Swami Rama. Paul's description of Jack intrigued me. He gave me Jack's phone number and said that it might be useful if I were to tell him about our laboratory. Not long after, I called him.

The first thing I noticed, aside from the fact that Jack spoke English with a slight foreign accent, was that he had a big sense of humour, a good sign. (Who can be more depressing than a deadly serious "spiritual" man? If a sense of humour is lacking he may not know who he is, or may be caught in an "ego trip.")

I told Jack about our lab and said that if he ever came through the middle part of the country on his travels, we would be glad to show him what we were doing. I thought no more about Jack until several months later. My secretary called me and said a man by the name of Jack Schwarz was on the line. "He said that you invited him to come to the laboratory." Almost the first thing Jack said when I answered was that he had some time free between two sets of lectures he was giving on the West Coast and if I wanted him to be a subject at the laboratory he could arrive on the day after Thanksgiving and stay until December 8. We had an unusually heavy lab schedule at that time and I doubted if we would be able to get together, but when I looked at my calendar, those particular days were the only ones that were free until Christmas. I didn't have the slightest idea what Jack would do in our lab, but we quickly made arrangements, and on the night of Thanksgiving I drove to the Kansas City airport to meet him.

Alyce and I had invited him to our house, with the idea that it would provide a somewhat quieter environment than a hotel and would also give us a chance to get acquainted. Jack was an interesting conversationalist, and before we knew it, it was two A.M. I apologized for keeping him up so late, and he said he seldom slept for more than two or three hours a night anyway, but that we probably wanted to get some sleep.

Both Swami Rama and Jack Schwarz seemed to need no more than two or three hours sleep each night. Swami had said that it is necessary when going to sleep for the mind and brain to be quiet at the same time, otherwise a perfect rest is not assured. Alyce and I had on a few occasions slept as little as twenty-five hours per week for a short period of time, and sometimes less. For example, during the month in which I was doing my research and writing my dissertation at the University of Chicago, I slept about four hours per night. But we did not make a habit of it, as Swami and Jack did.

Jack's ability to go without sleep has impressed me. Jack has attended three Council Grove Conferences, at which, because of his unusual ability to be aware of trends in people's lives, many of the other participants wanted to talk privately with him. To accommodate these requests, Jack scheduled his time until about five o'clock in the morning. During two of the five-day conferences, I realized from talking with other people that some nights he didn't sleep at all. Curious as to how many hours Jack was getting, I checked every day and found that during one conference he slept a total of seven hours and at another only a little more.

Jack does not recommend, however, that people try this before they have learned to "discharge the stress of the day, and then recharge.” One must learn a certain kind of meditation, but even then it isn't simple. Both psychological and physiological factors are involved, and it might take ten years before a person can cut sleeping time from eight hours to six hours, and another ten years to go from six to four hours The main problem is to learn how to use "the electricity of the body,” and not dissipate it through what don Juan, Castaneda's teacher, would call "indulging." The point here is that it is not just a simple procedure that is followed but a way of life, and that way of life represents a big change for the average person.

In that first long talk with Jack we learned that he was forty-six years old and had been born in Holland, in the same region as the famous Dutch psychics Peter Hurkos and Gerald Croisette.

Was there something about the Dutch soil or air or water that tended to develop awareness of normally unconscious processes? Swami Rama developed his talents over a period of many years, he said, especially the years from eighteen to thirty-one, but Croisette, Hurkos, and Schwarz developed unusual talents without following any particular training program. When Jack was in his early teens he saw a stage hypnotist enter a self-induced trance and then push pins into his arm while he talked about the power of mind to control pain and bleeding.

Jack had the normal response to pain until he saw that demonstration, and then, for no particular reason, he knew that he would be able to do the same thing. He got some pins and tried it, and sure enough he could turn pain off. What a conversation piece, he thought. Jack said that at first he never tired of amazing his friends. He developed a cocky attitude, in spite of the fact that he had not had to develop his skills, but "woke up one morning and found all the diplomas were on the wall." He could stop pain, stop bleeding, influence people through hypnosis, remove pains in other people by putting his hands on them and thinking about the pain going away, and could often "guess" other people's thoughts precisely.