Memories of John Fulton
Rev. Marc Shargel
June 10, 2015
It was with deep regret that I realized the date of R. Rev. John Fulton's memorial service would correspond with long-standing travel plans that I had already committed to. I will miss the opportunity to remember John in person along with many old friends, and adding that missed opportunity to John's death compounds my loss. My greetings and best wishes go to all, including especially John, whose path now leads through valleys I believe he is navigating with great confidence.
As it happens, while everyone else is remembering and celebrating John's life, I will be on a boat, a place where John would never have wanted to follow me. I recall John being so profoundly seasick that he was unable to fulfill his role as the best man at Phil Cullinen’s wedding. But that is a story for Phil to tell.
John was probably there the day in 1977 that Lewis brought his entire clairvoyant class to a seminar in which I was a student, at Stanford University, but we didn’t really meet then. Early in 1978 I went to a psychic demo that John was teaching in a rented room above a bookstore in San Jose. In July I became a student in his meditation class at the newly opened “San Jose Psychic Institute” at 180 East Younger St. in San Jose. I can still hear John’s Oklahoma twang as he answered the phone "Sannazay S-eye-kik Institute.”
It was a long time before I was sure I wanted to take the clairvoyant program. I decided I should wait until after I graduated college and had a job with a decent salary. So I talked my way into a position at a small company called Apple Computer. In October of 1980 I sat at John's desk and, with shaking hand, did what felt like signing away a huge chunk of my future life, an entire year.
Barely two weeks into the program, I came to class one night and walked into "the wrath of John." I had no idea what John was so angry about. He told everyone to ground and run their energy and then left the room. Some minutes later he returned, his anger now in full bloom. He slammed the door behind him as he entered the room, and the pane of glass within the upper half of the door shattered, shards falling to the concrete floor. He railed at the class, apparently for the disrespect they'd shown to their teachers. I had no idea what had triggered the outburst, being new to the group. What had I got myself into? But I knew I could not have been at fault: I had just arrived. I must've had a smile on my face, at least fleetingly, because John said, "You’re amused, Marc?" It wasn't really a question so much as an observation. And, strangely, it wasn't an accusation or a criticism either. John's tone sounded almost as if he approved. John turned to leave and found the door would not open. The shards of broken glass wedged under the door on the other side, before it had swung more than an inch, and John was stuck in there with us. Then, as if he had not been in a fury just seconds before, John laughed and said, "I wasn't that angry. Thelma!" he called, "We're going to need a broom to sweep this up." Thelma Meites was one of the teachers at the Institute back then. "We're going to need a broom” actually meant that he wanted Thelma to sweep up the glass. She seemed as intimidated by his anger as any of my classmates and dutifully cleaned up, enabling John's escape. At the next opportunity, John submitted the names of every one of my more experienced classmates for graduation, and they were gone. For the majority of my year in the program, I read center chair every night.
I invited my mother to my graduation, and that’s how she came to meet John. A year or two later, John’s mother came to California for a visit (I think she still lived in Oklahoma) and I got to meet her. Her husband, who I’d heard had been a school principal, was not with her. When John introduced us, I told her John had been my teacher for a long time. “Well, I hope he’s done you some good,” she replied. I was stunned. She probably thought she was being “nice.” Her tone suggested to me that she was saying that I needed help, and it was unlikely that John was capable of providing it. As I heard it, she had managed to invalidate both a complete stranger and her own son in one terse sentence. I began to appreciate why John never shared anything personal about himself. Who would risk it with a critic like that for a mother?
The only story I can remember hearing from him of his time growing up in Oklahoma (or was it Texas? I’d heard both) was an anecdote about his study of martial arts. He said that as a teenager he’d spent time learning karate, and that that was what he and the guys he hung out with in those days were into. They’d sit cross-legged in somebody’s basement and compete with each other to defend against their best moves. “My foot to your face. Stop it,” guy next to him challenged. Before John could move a fierce kick nearly broke his nose. What prompted the tale was glancing at a magazine, John explained. “Legends of Martial Arts,” was the headline, or something like that. John looked at the middle-aged masters pictured and recognized several of his old pals. “I’ve had the crap beaten out of me by a lot of those guys!” he exclaimed.
I continued on as a minister in training, spent a year doing missionary healings, and it was five years after the broken glass incident that I became a teacher in training, under John's supervision. Sometime in our acquaintance, I don’t remember when, he talked about learning to ground. He told me that not long after Lewis had taught grounding to him, John had made a rose to tell him how long it would take him to truly master the skill. Fifteen years was his clairvoyant answer. It had been more than 15 years of practice for John by that point, but significantly less for me. I remembered that awesome commitment I’d made over John’s desk, of an entire year. What seemed awesome to me now, was that John, upon realizing the value grounding had for him, had made a 15-year commitment to himself. And that his ownership of his tools as a psychic was deeper than anything that could have come from outside of himself, even from the regard he had for Lewis Bostwick, a teacher I knew he revered.
In 1989 I volunteered, eagerly, to become a teacher of the One-to-One program. Lewis, whose student I had been in this program, was retiring from teaching it. I was one of a group of six who spent hours listening to recordings of Lewis’ One-to-One sessions with various students. Around 1991, Lewis decided that One-to-One, like other activities that didn't fit cleanly into CDM, such as the birth center and Trance Medium training, should be administered out of Aesclepion, by John Fulton. That meant that Tom Prussing, then dean of the One-to-One program, would report directly to John. John came to one of our regular teachers’ meetings and introduced himself by saying, "This is my game now." We had worked hard to create something as similar to what Lewis had taught us as we could, and were apprehensive about what John might try to turn it into.
A few months after that, when I had a minute for private conversation with Lewis, I suggested that since John hadn’t been through One-to-One himself, he’d be unable to maintain the special space we’d created. It was a risky thing to say but something I felt strongly about. “It’s truth,” I remember Lew saying. I could never have anticipated the consequences. Not long after that conversation, Tom announced that John Fulton, our new boss, would also become a student in our program. There were six of us teachers, but I assumed Tom would be teaching him. Tom said he’d allowed John to select his own teacher (a one-of-a-kind event) and that John had said, “Marc would be fine.” I was stunned. I didn’t know whether to be flattered or intimidated. I settled for a little of both. I never really knew whether John chose me because I was familiar, good at being neutral, or easy to control. I decided to believe it was my neutrality and hoped I was at least partially correct.
So I became teacher, or at least guide, to the man who’d been my first meditation and clairvoyant teacher. Even as he worked through intense energies, he volunteered little about what he was seeing. It was clear, though, that the process had had lasting value for him: he once mentioned, almost incidentally, the profundity of the place he visited during those sessions.
John became very giving, if no more forthcoming. As Tom Fergus was dying of cancer that had invaded his brain, John was a comfort to John’s wife Julie. He came to Tom’s memorial and I know a lot of people were glad he was there. A few years before, Tom and I had made a journey by motorcycle to scatter the ashes of another friend, David Broginsky. John and I talked about our mutual enjoyment of motorcycles. I suggested we go for a ride together sometime, but
It was not until years later that I thought I got some insight into the fundamental nature of the man who’d been my teacher for so long. And it came via a peculiar and indirect route. After Lewis died in 1995 and CDM and Aesclepion had their divorce, John and a group of his teaching staff at Aesclepion devised a new One-to-One curriculum, inspired by the one my colleagues and I had developed, but not a copy. It was something similar but different. Once I learned of the difference I was intensely curious. A friend who had experience in both “styles” agreed to show me what I came to think of as “Aesclepion style.” It surprised me, in that they’d adopted one technique I thought I’d understood Lewis to have advised against, and the other differences were significant, too. It made no sense to me until I tried it from a short distance outside my body, and then it became perfectly clear. I realized that John and the authors of that One-to-One curriculum had come up with something that honored the innate capacity we all have as trance mediums, to be a spirit not only separate from our bodies, but also outside of our bodies. At least that was my experience, though it wouldn’t surprise me if those authors disagreed. But along with that glimmer of spiritual insight came an insight about John Fulton. Though I’d heard long ago he’d been an artist, a painter, before taking up his psychic training, he’d never impressed me as the “flighty, artistic” type. Just the opposite, in fact. He was pragmatic, committed to what he taught, unwavering and utterly in control, always. Yet I caught a glimpse a very talented trance medium who’d learned to control himself completely. If I was right, it was a rare, perhaps unique achievement. I’d never seen him as anything but the man in full control, but I realized the depth of his commitment to techniques like grounding and his tremendous respect for Lewis must come from an equally deep personal knowledge of how different his life might have been without having come to know Lewis and the tools he taught.
