Tales of the Mystic Milkman
An organic farmer’s unexpected journey into the mysterious realms
of electric shaman, clairvoyant visions and psychic spies.
– My strange-but-true story, updated: December 1, 2019
“There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.” – Hamlet
At the age of 43, I walked away from a successful career and business helping ‘save the world’, and purchased a one-way ticket to Southeast Asia to embark on global backpacking walkabout in the hopes of saving my own soul.
From trekking in the Mongolian Steppe and studying Kung Fu in China with a Shaolin master, from a mysterious encounter with a Tibetan monk in the heart of Siberia and diving deep into vipassana meditation in Kathmandu, from dropping acid for the first time on the beaches of Goa, to learning how to swim, scuba, and how to ride a motorcycle, my travels outward paralleled my inward explorations.
And slowly, as the months of wandering unfolded, I could feel myself emerging and healing from the hate, anger and sadness which had, for all too many years, consumed my life, destroyed my health and sabotaged my relationships.
One day, as I was sitting in a café in Bali, pausing to ponder and reflect back on the previous months of adventure, I heard rumor of a local shamanic healer who purportedly had a mysterious gift … I was told that her touch was electric, literally. Skeptical but intrigued, I went to find out for myself, where I discovered that, actually, both the healer and her husband had this same ‘electric’ ability. I went for two treatments which were, quite literally, shocking, in every sense of the word.
During and after each session, I kept asking myself …. is there a hidden wire under a carpet? A battery under their sarong? This must be a trick. But at the same time, I wondered … if it wasn’t a trick, then just what in the hell was it? I just couldn’t get it out of my head because if this was a real ‘mystical’ ability – then … well, then there were even more interesting questions: How did they develop this ability? What were they capable of? What were the implications? And … could I learn to do it? Could I, myself, become ‘electric’?
A couple of weeks later, my travels had come to a natural conclusion … it was time to head back home to California, regroup and assess next steps. But apparently while I was done with my trip, my trip wasn’t done with me.
Just a couple of days prior to meeting the ‘electric’ healers, I had been at the same café in Bali, where I met Sofia, a dazzlingly beautiful Spaniard under circumstances which were, for both of us, inexplicable synchronicities. Our connection was instantaneous. She was leaving the country the next day, but planning to move to Bali.
All too soon, I too was back on the farm, living in a converted calf barn studio which had become my temporary crash pad while I attempted to integrate an amazing journey. Glowing with newfound optimism, fresh perspective, and having healed on so many levels, what would I do next?
Growing up on our relatively isolated ranch on the coast of west Marin, I had spent much of my childhood devouring every science fiction and fantasy novel I could find … Stephen Donaldson, Piers Anthony, Larry Niven, Tolkien were some of my favorites. I played Dungeons & Dragons, and wandered the cow pastures, hoping to stumble across invisible portals to other dimensions. Often, I looked to the dark night skies for signs of UFOs.
And now, I was home, on the very land that had given birth to my belief in magic and, fast forward many decades, I had just experienced what might actually be real life magic. Or maybe not. And while pursuing magic didn’t seem like a particularly smart way to restart my post-mid-life-crisis life, one thing was clear: I had to find out. Because if this magic was real, I wanted to turn it on in me.
A few months later, I dug out my backpack and prepared to move back to Bali, intent upon apprenticing with the electric healers, and hoping to uncover their truth.
In early 2012, and shortly before I departed, I met and interviewed a quantum physicist who told me that some of her research breakthroughs were inspired by a mysterious Amazonian plant entheogen called ayahuasca. I didn’t know it then but, some years later, this mysterious concoction was to play a critical role in my subsequent quest into uncovering the underlying patterns of psychic experiences.
I returned to Bali, and spent the next year deep into the singular quest of uncovering the magic of Bali, apprenticing with the electric healers, practicing esoteric meditations, and living with Sofia who, thanks to my obsession with this electric thing, soon nicknamed me “Mike Elektro”.
The electric healer couldn’t teach me, though we became friends and I learned much in our time together. Still, if I wanted to fulfill my quest to become ‘electric’ myself, I understood that I needed to search elsewhere.
Frustrated but determined, I figured that although this ‘electric’ ability was rare, surely there were others with this gift. Thus began my Balinese version of a Where’s Waldo search for electrical healers, but – after countless weeks of searching local villages and scouring the Internet, and even finding evidence of electric healers in other parts of the world – try as I might, I couldn’t find another electric healer in Bali.
Until one day – at precisely and literally the moment before I just was about to close my laptop and give up on this search altogether, I stumbled across a video clip by a German filmmaker, depicting a shaman living somewhere in Bali, with what appeared to be electric ability. I immediately contacted the German but he refused to provide me this Javanese guy’s name or address. So, armed with only a photograph and my horrifically-poor grasp of Bahasa Indonesia, I rode my motorcycle from village to village, stopping random people on the street, asking if they recognized this shaman. A futile effort to be sure, but I was so close.
On the evening just before giving up looking for him, I received a Facebook response to a posting on the local Ex-Pat forum. “Oh, yeah, his name is XXX, he lives in XXX village. His cell phone is …”
I texted the healer immediately, and arranged to meet him the next morning. His electric power was incredibly strong, and … he promised to teach me how to be electric. Jenga!
Over the next two weeks, I returned for a handful of electric treatments. And the German filmmaker agreed to document my efforts to become an ‘electric’ apprentice.’ And one day, while being filmed during a treatment, I was presented with the devastating fact: this guy was a fake. And by that I mean, he had a hidden electric cord, from which he’d draw 220v, 50amp from the electrical though his body, and then complete the circuit by touching his patient, all the while pawning it off as mystical energy.
Depressed at my own stupidity, naiveté and total lack of discernment (let alone the fact that all of this had been captured on film), I concluded that my quest for magic was a dreamer’s fantasy, and I had wasted months in pursuit of a ridiculous, foolish quest.
But then, just when I was about to give up, pack up and go home, something truly amazing happened: I suddenly began having a series of clairvoyant visions. They were strange but specific, hard to verify but even more difficult to dismiss.
And thus began the next phase of my adventure, one which has become even more mysterious and magical than all my previous experiences combined.
Over the next seven years, my life has included clairvoyant visions, training with psychic spies and gambling with psychics in Vegas. There was a precognitive dream about a sacred ceremony which then came true a year later thanks to a specific moment of internal Truth and Tinder (under circumstances which shed light on the underlying fabric of synchronicity). I’ve delved deep into ayahuasca with the goal of cracking upon my psychic abilities, and studied telekinesis with Russian scientists. I’ve conducted man-on-the-street interviews with hundreds of people describing their own mystical experiences and, this year, I discovered black magic … the hard way.
Along the way, I’ve been obsessed with trying to understand these mysterious experiences, their characteristics, their patterns. Meanwhile, I’ve been back living on the ranch where, a long time ago, I had dreamt of experiencing magic. And now, like in The Alchemist, here, on this very ranch, there are magical treasures which I am only now, for the first time ever, beginning to discover.
