Sarfatti insists that in 1952, at age 13, he had an anomalous experience that changed his life. He claims to have received a single telephone call from a cold, metallic voice, declaring to be a conscious computer on a spacecraft from the future. But, after Sarfatti lent his mother a copy of Andrija Puharich's book URI (London: Futura Publications Ltd, 1974), in which he described similar contact with Uri Geller, Sarfatti's mother remembered that the young Sarfatti received the calls over a three-week period. Sarfatti had been selected as one of '400 receptive young minds' to be part of a project that would begin to occur 20 years in the future. He links this alleged 'contact' ("the intrusion of an objective entity") to the Vast Active Living Intelligence System (VALIS) experience of science fiction author Phillip K. Dick. Sarfatti's 'experience' has met with widespread criticism from the physics community. Sarfatti believes that there is an Illuminati or Elect of minds, citing Pythagoras, Leonardo Da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and Werner Heisenberg as examples who, throughout history, have deciphered messages from the future. The notion of an Elect is featured in the works of many occultists, Rabelais' Gargantua & Pantagruel (New York: Norton, 1990), Toynbee's "creative minority" and the 'evolutionary Calvinism' SF works of Colin Wilson, such as The Philosopher's Stone (London: Barker, 1969).

In 1973, the late Brendan O'Regan told Sarfatti that he had been collecting data on other scientists who have had similar 'anomalous experiences', predating later investigations by Jacques Vallee and Harvard's John Mack. Sarfatti believes that his critics "wish to crucify me because they think I am lying or insane about my 1952 VALIS-like experience."

Sarfatti claims that his critics are demanding "the blood of the poet" when they claim that his theories and "exuberant talk" are "corrupting the youth." The "hemlock of financial support" prompts many scientists to become slaves of the State, he says. "I think they are afraid of my limited attack on the principle of retarded causality, which holds that causes must always be in the past of their effects. What I am saying is that there is a small, but significant chance for causes to be in the future of their effects. They are afraid of my open mind on the question of precognitive remote viewing (ESP), faster-than-light communication and other heretical notions," he says.

"Neither classical physics or standard quantum physics today permits 'intent' or 'free will' or 'creative intelligence'. This essential hallmark of life demands a violation of the statistical predictions of quantum physics as formulated today. This is the key idea of what I call 'postmodern physics.'"

Sarfatti's early academic studies showed no sign of what was to come. He graduated Midwood High in Flatbush, 1956; the same school that Woody Allen attended. His academic credentials were impeccable: B.A. in physics from Cornell; M.S. from the University of California, San Diego; Ph.D. from the University of California, Riverside; and stints with the Cornell Space Science Centre, the UK Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell, and Heisenberg's Max Planck Institute in Munich. "By 1969 I was an assistant professor of physics at San Diego State with Fred Alan Wolf next door," Sarfatti reveals ironically - Wolf would later link the 'pop physics' of Jungian psychology, quantum physics and New Age phenomena, pre-dating bestsellers like James Redfield's The Celestine Prophecy (New York: Warner Books, 1993).

Sarfatti went on to become an honorary research fellow with David Bohm at Birkbeck College of the University of London in 1971, and was visiting physicist at Nobel laureate Abdus Salam's UNESCO International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy. Ilya Prigogine invited Sarfatti to Brussels in 1973. Sarfatti's career was growing in prestige and recognition.

Then the weirdness descended.

Into the Pandemonium

In 1975, Sarfatti co-founded the legendary Physics-Consciousness Research Group with Esalen Institute's Michael Murphy, funded by EST guru Werner Erhard. Murphy was investigating revelations of the USSR's intensive parapsychological research projects, later setting up the Soviet-American Exchange Program at Esalen in the 1980s, which attracted the likes of Boris Yeltsin during his 1989 U.S. visit.

Sarfatti gave seminars at Esalen, serving as a guiding influence behind Fritjoff Capra, Gary Zukav and other proponents of the 1970s "New Physics" movement, which explored links between quantum physics and Eastern mysticism. Sarfatti brought Zukav to the Esalen Institute, where he conducted the research for his bestselling The Dancing Wu Li Masters (New York: Morrow, 1979), a book which captured worldwide attention. Sarfatti ghost-wrote major parts of the book, but a bitter feud eventuated when Zukav reneged on promised royalty payments. A notable 'paraphysicist' (physicists who investigate ESP phenomena), Sarfatti co-authored the lurid paperback Space-Time & Beyond with Bob Toben and Fred Wolf, later withdrawing his name from the updated edition. Sarfatti also contributed material to futurist Robert Anton Wilson's Cosmic Trigger I: Final Secret of the Illuminati (Berkeley: And/Or Press, 1977), and Jeffrey Mishlove's The Roots of Consciousness: The Classic Encyclopedia of Consciousness Studies (Council Oak Distribution, 1993). Current editions of both Zukav and Mishlove's books have deleted much of the original material, which he wrote for the first editions. "Not a very smart move on the part of the authors!" replies Sarfatti.

The deployment of Psychological Operations (PSYOP) warfare during the Vietnam War led the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defence Intelligence Agency and Office of Naval Intelligence to explore similar 'mindwar' techniques during the 1970s, through facilities like the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg. The CIA funded Project Scanate was set up to explore the use of precognitive remote viewing techniques to probe Soviet military installations from a distance. Psychics including the Scientologist Ingo Swann were employed to gather intelligence data.

Stanford Research Institute's Electronics & Bioengineering Laboratories were assigned to the project under the direction of Russell Targ, parodied in the film Ghostbusters (1984), as Dr. Egon Spengler (Harold Ramis) and Hal Puthoff. Interest in Scanate led to further projects, such as the notoriously named Stargate, and longterm research into neuropsychology and cognitive science. Military intelligence sources invested over $20 million in the Remote Viewing (clairvoyancy) field until 1995. The CIA ended the programs in the late 1970s after determining that while there was some evidence for ESP ability, it yielded no useful results for intelligence work. The DIA took over the program and funded it until 1995, when information on Scanate and Stargate was declassified, leading to a media feeding frenzy lead by ABC's Nightline program.