By Jach 

Afraid, I just walked. I didn’t know what else to do. Somehow moving seemed to help. I told myself: “Keep moving, just keep moving, Jach, and somehow everything will be all right.” There was no logic in that spontaneous mantra, but then there was no logic in most of what had been happening to me over the past several weeks.

“Keep moving, just keep moving … ” At first, I thought it would just go away. I hoped it would just go away. I also hoped my hope would be enough so that nothing would come of it. But I heard the voice. I did hear the voice. I could not deny it any longer. The lack of denial did nothing to help me understand, so I just kept moving and repeating my private mantra. I was scared. I was terrified.

“When had it all begun?” I heard myself ask. This was a stalling tactic for sure, but I followed the question. I had nowhere else to go.

I’m not sure when it began. It seemed so simple then. I was on a business trip. I was at the Home Office, and it was half-way through a five-day conference/training session. Young execs from all over the country were there. I hated being away from home. These trips were considered a “perk” of mid-management, but I never felt very perky.

I don’t know why I decided to meditate that evening. I had learned “how” to meditate at a course Peny had dragged me to back in 1972. The course had promised great results, which she found plausible and exciting. I found the claims unbelievable. She was right.

For me, meditation was a euphemism for napping. I would — how do they say it? — I would go “too deep” in almost all of my meditations. Though I had learned it, and had seen other people have great results, I had all but dropped the practice. Glorified napping did not seem to be the “way home” for me, or the way anywhere for that matter! I don’t know why I decided to meditate that evening.

My eyes closed, and I began my routine of breathing the tension out of my body. I could feel myself starting to slip off to sleep. Then something very strange happened. I started to visualize! I saw things! I saw things spontaneously. This was a first!

I still remember it … The path twisted this way and that. Green … everything so very green. The ferns, tall. Trees, lush. Sweet smells. So engrossed in the detail, I forgot to be startled. I forgot to disbelieve.

The images burst. My mind raced ahead. I kept following. Then I saw an intriguing cabin. “Oh, brother,” I thought. “This is just too corny! This is almost embarrassing!” But there was something different about this particular cabin. The spontaneity and the uniqueness silenced my skepticism and my sarcasm.

Surrounded in tall pines and sequoias, it had a thatched roof and sparkling glass windows with diamond-shaped beveled panes. The exterior walls were rough cut, but the slightly ajar door was smooth and finely crafted. It was certainly “Americana,” but it was something else as well. It intrigued me. It welcomed me.

Maybe it was the twill of smoke. Perhaps it was the warmth of the light pouring from windows and door. The details astonished me. The racing stopped.

I stood for a very long time. Inching my way, the path gave way to three steps. I finally crossed the porch and reached for the latch. The door opened on its own. My skepticism bubbled briefly. I could almost hear it breathe. I stepped into the room.

A man was standing in front of me. He was gentle. I was not afraid. He spoke to me. Our relationship began. …

I bolted. The meditation abruptly ended. I remembered every word! Writing furiously I had to capture the moment. Exhausted, I called Peny. She lifter her enthusiasm to match mine. I loved her for that.

Nothing happened after that. I had asked his name. “Lazaris” was the word I heard. I asked again thinking of “Lazarus” of the Bible, or the department store in Columbus. The name was distinct: L-A-Z-A-R-I-S. The emphasis was emphatically on the second syllable (La-ZAR’-is). I had a name, but no further contact. I all but forgot about the whole experience. …

October 3rd, 1974

Early evening. Sitting on the bed, plumped up in pillows, I am preparing to meditate (ha!). I am going to seek insight (ha!) to help guide our lives. Things were not really so bad as to warrant such extreme measures! Yet over the fourteen years of our being together, I had learned to pay attention to Peny’s psychic flashes and intuitive gestalts. She had “flashed” that I should do a meditation.

She asked me questions. I answered. The questions were great. The answers were boring. Maybe that’s why I fell asleep. I thought I had fallen asleep. I could feel myself drifting away. I tried to stay awake. I tried to hold onto the sound of her voice, but the soft lure of sleep won out. I drifted off. I was asleep.

Two hours later, Peny didn’t hear my sheepish apology for having dozed off. She was excitedly tumbling over words trying to tell me that an entity had spoken through me. She thought I had fallen asleep again, too. This time, however, my head didn’t bob, so she waited. Some minutes passed, and then a deep, resonant voice began where mine had left off. The answers, however, were powerful, not of the caliber of mine. She listened. She wrote as fast as she could. She was like a child with Santa Claus — she didn’t question it then, she just took all the information she could get. She would evaluate it later.

The entity explained that he was Lazaris! Yes, the same one I had contacted so many months before. That experience had been in preparation for this one, though neither Peny nor I would begin to understand what “this” was for many years to come. Lazaris requested two weeks of our time to finalize the necessary adjustments so he could “channel” through me. He provided Peny with a simple, but detailed, method I should use to enter trance more easily. He assured her that this experience would never be detrimental, that although he had neither a body nor time, he appreciated that we did, and he would never abuse either.

More questions are answered. I know Peny is telling me the truth, because she does not lie. The information explodes in my mind. I hear the words. I know they are true. I cannot believe what I am hearing. The contradictions are lost in the sweet comfort of avoidance. I just refused to talk about it.

Every evening I would sit and close my eyes and take an “after-dinner nap.” Every evening Peny would enthusiastically tell me all that had transpired. I listened. I smiled. I avoided.

After the two weeks, the necessary adjustments were complete. Peny had come to know and trust this entity that I wasn’t even really admitting was there. Everything at work was just fine. Everything was just fine. I continued to avoid. Peny, aware of my usual way of handling things I didn’t understand, handed me a cassette with one word: “Listen.”

“Keep moving, just keep moving … ” I couldn’t deny that something was happening. Afraid, I just walked. I cried. I did not know what to do. Peny knew me so well that she left me alone. Her tenderness and compassion was so great that she knew when loving meant to leave me alone. I walked. I cried. I had never been so scared in my twenty-seven years. I had never been so frightened. What was happening to me?

Months would pass, months filled with evaluating Lazaris with casual friends about whom I knew very little. They would come and talk to Lazaris and then report their conclusions. These were people I trusted who also had extensive backgrounds in this new-to-me field of metaphysics. I would slip into “trance,” both terrified that he would come through and terrified that he wouldn’t be there. Gathering the feedback, I concluded that something very real was happening. Many more months would pass before I could accept Lazaris for who he really was.

Then I referred to him as “it,” which I suppose is technically more correct since Lazaris is neither male or female. As I have come to know Lazaris, I have come to know his love, his humor, his giving and caring. I have come to know his commitment to me and to all the human beings who find him. I have come to understand his dedication to honesty. He has become a friend. He has become my friend, my very best friend. He is no longer an “it.” To me, Lazaris is a “he.”

I kept moving. I just kept moving that day in mid-October, 1974, and everything did turn out just fine.

The initial friends of Lazaris began telling their friends, who told their friends, and … As their friendships with Lazaris grew, so did mine. Each day, each week, I grew to love him more.

I remember one evening in (I think) 1976. By then Lazaris was conducting workshops, and I was listening to a cassette of the most recent one. It was very late. Alone in the totally dark living room, I was lying on the floor just listening. It still amazed me that the voice was coming out of my body. I just listened.

I heard the words, but that late night, I heard something more. It was between the words. I heard the love. I could hear the concern and the compassion. Tears rolled down my cheeks. The tears turned to sobs. I could feel Lazaris filling the room. I could feel Lazaris filling me with his incredible love and his soothing peace. I could feel his smile. Though I had known that Lazaris was real for almost two years, that night I was finally at peace. That night was special.

Since 1974, tens of thousands of people have found their friendships with Lazaris. He works with thousands of people in seminars and Pay-per-Views. In 1985 Lazaris agreed to make recordings available. They now number more than 400, and the demand constantly increases.

As I look back, I wish we had kept better records. We don’t have the original notes that Peny took that evening in October, 1974. We don’t even know the time of day. I can’t begin to remember the day or even the month when I first meditated and “accidentally” discovered Lazaris. When all this happened, we had no idea that it meant anything at all. We had no idea that the phenomenon would even recur. There was no reason to document what might have been a fluke. Perhaps if we had known … but this whole experience unfolded itself in front of us. Peny and I felt more like observers than participants.

Now Peny and Michaell and I still wait and watch to see where Lazaris’ love leads him and us. The waiting and watching is exciting. We know that Lazaris knows where it all leads.

He is taking us Home. In a metaphysical environment where approaches to spirituality proliferate with varying shades of validity and integrity, I am glad to have a friend like Lazaris. I am glad I “kept moving, just kept moving” that day so many years ago.

by Jach Pursel,
Lazaris’ Channel, 1987