In the summer of 1968 I was a college student in New York City and decided to go on my first trip to Europe. I didn’t have much money but decided I would hitchhike around to places I wanted to visit. When I got to Italy I made it to Rome and Florence. Hitching rides was easy along with crowds of other young travelers. I decided to set out for San Giovanni Rotundo where I understood the famous stigmatist, Padre Pio, lived. My mom had books on the Padre, and I was intrigued by stories his psychic powers. I didn’t expect to hear much about miracles at Columbia University.
I brought two books with me on this first trip abroad. The Little Flowers of St. Francis and J. P. Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. Not a typical metaphysical duo. I was excited when I finally made it to San Giovanni and was introduced to Mary Pyle, a devotee from a well-off American family. Mary said she could arrange a face-to-face meeting with the Padre. I smiled but said nothing; a part of me backed off from such a meeting. It spooked me, I’ll admit. It didn’t diminish my interest in the Padre’s paranormal powers, as, for example, when he soared into the sky and waved away invading American bombers. After the war ended a whole posse of American aviators came to San Giovanni to meet the monk they met in the sky who stopped them from bombing San Giovanni.
Mary Pyle took me to a room where I could sleep. Early in the morning Padre Pio said Mass, normally a scene of great excitement. I finally got to bed and managed to drift off to sleep. It was not an easy or refreshing sleep. I kept dreaming of scenes where all the accouterments of the church, book, seats, plants and flowers and windows, all broken and in disarray, and not a living soul in sight. What could these images mean? Was I being invited, called, reminded that I had something to do—why else did I come here? Puzzled and curious, I dressed and stepped out of the room to look for something resembling breakfast. I realized I had missed the early mass I had planned to attend. Instead I had a very confusing dream.
Walking about a few moments, I bumped into Mary Pyle smiling warmly and before I was about to confess my missing Mass, she blurted out: “You can see him!” “What?” I said, startled. She pointed toward a balcony about forty feet away. At eleven o’clock he comes out and speaks very briefly. You can see and hear him.” I thanked Mary Pyle and she walked on. I stood there, feeling slightly stunned. Mary Pyle got me to at least see and hear the voice of the most famous living Catholic saint.
At eleven o’clock, a group of people came together to the left under the balcony. The moment the Padre appeared the people below broke out into various cries and calls, all mingled with prayers and the names of the holy man. The Padre called out his blessings in response. This interaction lasted not much longer than five or eight minutes when the Padre turned right and started lo walk off the balcony but then suddenly stopped and started to turn right toward me—then stopped and walked back off the balcony. I never forgot that movement and wonder what if anything crossed his mind.
As I said, my mother’s books about Padre Pio inspired my interest in the man. The strange phenomena intrigued me when I got to Columbia University and began work on my doctoral degree in philosophy. There was a lot of resistance to the paranormal among most philosophers. If there was anything to the paranormal, it would amount to a challenge to materialism. It would trigger an explosion of exciting possibilities—such as miraculous healings or ecstatic levitations or life after death. Clearly, materialism would take a drubbing. And the door would open to a host of paranormal phenomena. It was obvious to me that what was at sta.ke here was the question of a new worldview.
Contrary to slavish materialism, a psi-based idealism opens a number of doors to expanded human functions. Let me suggest what that shift toward the reality of mind is about. With the inventive spirit of the mind on the loose, we’re forced to confront the ever-shifting labyrinth of meanings and options. Perhaps the most exciting expansion of our mental life is the realization that we are free agents. We are free to think our way through our life, moment by moment, choice by choice, thought by thought, adapting, step by novel step, choosing, hesitating, leaping forward—with caution and bravado. To know that we are free spirits follows from the death of materialism.
I still think about the amazing Padre Pio turning almost toward me, then stopping. A A Sufi philosopher told me that the Padre was just seeing me off to my own future. At least I would say this. The facts (reams of them) pointing toward the reality of the miraculous are wildly apparent. To ignore them is to throw away a whole dimension of meaning, a whole world of possible experience. (See my book Smile of the Universe: Miracles in an Age of Disbelief.
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