It was 1993 sometime, can’t remember when exactly, that Joe McMoneagle and his wife Nancy (Scooter) came down to visit our palatial establishment, which was then in Norfolk. Joe had a manuscript and was looking for a publisher, and he knew we were interested, so he came down to look us over from a prospective-author-and-publisher point of view.
Bob Friedman and I knew Joe McMoneagle because we had met him in his capacity as Bob Monroe’s stepson-in-law (if there is such a word). In 1989 Bob and I had gone up to the Monroe Institute, in Nelson County, to try to do some business, and had gone again in 1990, and then we had taken the Gateway Voyage in December, 1992, and had heard Joe speak to the group about remote viewing and his own experiences.
My own experiences at Gateway had been so profound, so life-changing, that I had made a silent resolution to publish anything Monroe-connected that came our way. My own experience with an attempt at remote viewing is described in my book Muddy Tracks (which largely centers on my experiences in various Monroe programs). It got my attention.
So, here was Joe, looking us over. I guess he was reassured by what he saw (maybe he wondered if we had a real office!) because in due course we signed a contract and later that year the first edition of Mind-Trek hit the presses. (If you happen to have a copy with a cover dominated by a painting of a human eye, you have the first edition. Don’t know how much it’s worth, but there’s always ebay.)
Mind-Trek did all right, but only all right. Joe was well known in remote-viewing circles but in those days how many people was that? He was known in the intelligence community, a little larger circle, but again, not the numbers it takes to create best sellers. And his Monroe connection wasn’t a huge draw either.
Then in the fall of 1995, shortly after we moved our company to Charlottesville, the government declassified the Stargate program. Those were still the days when mentions of psychic functioning produced what Joe called “the giggle factor,” so everybody involved in the program ran for cover.
Everybody except Joe. It was perhaps his proudest moment, and in retrospect a brilliant career move. He let himself be interviewed by the local paper, by the Washington Post and others, and by television. Always a realist, he knew what they would probably do to him, but he stood up for the program and for psychic functioning in general. And as a direct result he became known to an ever-larger segment of the general population.
Mind-Trek began selling better. In due course, we issued a revised and expanded second edition, for Joe was now able to talk a little about the Stargate program. (Previously, he had been unable even to mention the program’s name, for it was classified information.) After 15 years it’s still in print, and still selling, and still deserves to.
It would be fascinating to read the ins and outs of how Joe’s post-military career took off in the wake of his defense of the Stargate program - hopefully Joe will write the story some day. At present he has been on national television in Japan 17 times, I think it is, and is recognized on the streets there. Oddly, he has not been equally recognized here, either by the man on the street or by the news media. Our loss. Yet he is far from being an unknown, either.
Hampton Roads did quite well for him, I think, by getting him into print before Stargate was declassified. And it did well from him, too. After Mind-Trek we published The Ultimate Time Machine (1998), Remote Viewing Secrets (2000) and the autobiographical hardcover The Stargate Chronicles (2002), re-issued in 2006 as a paperback titled Memoirs of a Psychic Spy.
Three of the four (all by The Ultimate Time Machine) remain available today, and hopefully will remain in print a good long time.
Sometimes, doing the right thing pays off.
May 20th, 2008 at 7:47 pm
If it were not for Joe McMoneagle, I probably would have walked out of my Gateway Voyage in November 2001. I had not really known much about TMI and Bob Monroe; I had signed up to take the program because my cousin Carol was interested, and I wanted to reestablish a connection with her - a connection severed when she became a busy Wall Street executive.
Carol never made it to that Gateway Voyage, and I realize now that my higher self “tricked” me into signing up for a program that I needed so very much. I still remember meeting some of the participants that first evening in the Nancy Penn Center - Elizabeth who wore a crystal, Julian who travelled out of body regulary, and Mars who told me that my headache was due to an energy blockage.
I knew nothing about CHEC units, and I certainly hadn’t waited my whole life to attend the Institute as did my roommate, Michael. In fact, I found the whole program way too intensive - we were in the beautiful blue ridge mountains, and I wanted to be outdoors not isolated in a darkened berth listenening to tapes. I liked living on this earth, and wasn’t too keen about travelling to other dimensions.
Jeffrey, the psychiatrist from Bellevue, convinced me to stay - for at least one more night.
“You seem to be getting a lot out of it,” he said. So I told Karen that I’d stay for that evenings program before making any decisions.
I was mesmerized by McMoneagle’s talk. He was like me - a “big” personality comfortable maneuvering on the earth plane. And his story! Wow - I am still blown away by the ending.
“The next time I die, I’m not coming back. I will cease to exsist and so will all of you.” It’s taken me a bit of time to unravel the immensity of that revelation, and I’m getting there.
Thank you, Joe. Without your talk that November evening - I believe it was a Tuesday - in alll likelihood, I would not have stayed and transormed myself, and in that transformation, shifting the evolution and paradigms of the world that is. Ea!