Eileen J. Garrett - Awareness

Awareness

by
Eileen J. Garrett

With a Foreword by Rhea A. White

Helix Press
New York

Copyright 2007 by Eileen Coly
All rights reserved

This book, or any part thereof, must not be
reproduced in any form whatsoever
without written permission from the Publisher,
except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews.

Published by Helix Press
An imprint of the
Parapsychology Foundation, Inc.
PO Box 1562
New York, New York, 10021, USA

TEL: 212-628-1550 / FAX: 212-628-1559

Printed by
BookMasters, Inc.
Ashland, Ohio, USA

Cover art designed by
Illuminations, Inc.
Greenport, New York, USA

ISBN 10:1-931747-22-9
ISBN 13: 978-1-931747-22-6

, Lisette Coly

, Rhea A. White

, Eileen J. Garrett

, Eileen J. Garrett

,Rhea A. White

,Lisette Coly

by and about Eileen J. Garrett, Carlos S. Alvarado

As the granddaughter of Eileen J. Garrett, author of Awareness I realize full well that she was a highly complex individual who during her lifetimeshe was born in l893 and died in 1970was an author, lecturer, entrepreneur, business executive, publisher, psychic medium and healer as well as the founder of Parapsychology Foundation, the nonprofit organization I currently administer as its Executive Director. Parapsychology Foundation acts as a worldwide forum supporting scientific exploration of psychic phenomena.

Born in Ireland and living in England until she became an American citizen in the l940s, Eileen Garrett, all her life, possessed mediumistic faculties. These so-called gifts included telepathy, clairvoyance, clairaudience, trance mediumship as well as an ability to diagnose illness in a clairvoyant manner, but always in consultation with physicians and psychologists. She was the author of non-fiction books addressing psychic matters including her cogent autobiography, Adventures in the Supernormal, recently brought back into print and available through the Foundations imprint, Helix Press. She wrote three works of fiction under the nom de plume of Jeanne Lyttle, edited various anthologies in the field of psychic research and published the reknown quarterly review of psychic research, Tomorrow Magazine as well as the scholarly International Journal of Parapsychology that the Foundation is once again proud to publish. Convinced that the study of psychic matters was best served by consideration by many disciplines and as truly an international pursuit, she sponsored many international conferences devoted to parapsychology welcoming academicians and scientists to join in a concentrated effort to find answers to the questions raised by psychic functioning.

My mother, Eileen Coly, Garretts daughter and current President of Parapsychology Foundation, and I, when asked to try to describe the force of her personality and her beliefs, refer to her own ability to set pen to paper and freely and lucidly organize her own thoughts and experiences in the psychic world which speak eloquently for the Lady herself.

Eileen Coly and I are most grateful that the late Dr. Rhea A. White, our esteemed colleague and long-time PF associate, grantee, author and conference participant not to mention valued personal friend, had graciously shared her comments on and consideration of Garretts Awareness manuscript for this volume. Grace to her far-reaching and meticulous career, Rhea with her many resources coupled with a personal first-hand knowledge of Eileen J. Garrett, was eminently suited to contribute her reflections of Awareness, for which we are most appreciative.

I am very proud to share with you what I feel to be an extraordinary document of value to humankind. Awareness was written and first published within the crucible of The Second World War in 1943 and then again reprinted with a subsequent Preface by Garrett to the Second Edition released in the l960s.

I would caution that some of the material presented refers obviously to a bygone era but her message remains current, as we lamentably seem to have learned little over the intervening years, mired as we are in unpredictable, hostile and dangerous world events.

We may surely benefit from the timeless message of Awareness a plea for a new evolution of the individual life as envisioned by Eileen J. Garrett.

Lisette Coly
Executive Director
Parapsychology Foundation
New York, March 2007

I read several books by Eileen Garrett when I was at the Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University in the 1950s. I was enthralled by her books, not for their oh wow value, although there was an element of that. She was a medium of great reknown in the U. S., the U. K., and indeed, throughout the world!

It was not only the subject matter (facets of her life as a psychic and medium, which she described), but she was a mover and shaker in regard to promoting parapsychology as a science. She initiated the Parapsychology Foundation which, since its beginning in the 1950s, has been the leader in bringing together parapsychologists from around the world and scholars from many disciplines. This has greatly broadened and deepened the field and extended its geographic and interdisciplinary boundaries.

The Foundation accomplishes this in several ways: through its international conferences and their published proceedings; through Garretts books, editorials, and articles; through the Foundations newsletter and journal; and by giving research and travel grants to researchers, providing financial support for college students interested in parapsychology, and holding lectures open to the public.

Mrs. Garrett, as she was usually referred to, has written some of the best books available about what it feels like to be a psychic and a medium and the far-reaching implications of both. Awareness is one of the best. In rereading this book after fifty years, I was not only greatly impressed all over again after all those years in the field, but I saw more clearly than when I was a newcomer the great value it has for persons who have had any kind of exceptional experience, not only psychic ones. I will elaborate on this in the Afterword at the end of this book.

I also sometimes wondered, as the years passed and I became a seasoned parapsychologist, whether my high regard for Mrs. Garrett may have been partly due to the fact that I had read her books and editorials when I was new to the field. After reading it recently, I now know that was the case. She conveys firsthand knowledge of what it is like to be a psychic and medium better than any one I have read.

I had the privilege of knowing Mrs. Garrett, who could be intimidating on occasion, but who was always interesting. Through her books, articles, and editorials, the knowledge she imparted is still as important for 21st-century readers, including myself, even as it was in the 1950s. In fact, with age and experience, I have come to understand what she wrote and recognize its importance more fully on this later reading than when I was new to the field.

Im confident that those who read this and others of her several books will agree. Her overmastering personality is matched by her wisdom concerning the inside of being psychic because she was so highly aware and conscious of the process involved from her own personal experience. It didnt hurt that she was such a good writer that she was able to convey the details of her life and experiences such that the reader feels inside her head.