Esmi Fernau grew up in Italy, Germany, Switzerland, and England. In later years she lived in Indonesia, the U.S., and most recently the Hawaiian Islands. Starting at a young age, she seemed fated to become involved, wherever she lived, with the movers and shakers of the moment. During W.W.11, she went to school with the daughters of thirteen royal houses and met Reza Pahlavi before he ascended the Peacock Throne. In the Paris of the Forties, she encountered many of the day’s leaders in philosophy, literature, art, and fashion, and had occasion to know and experience the influential minds of that period. She never attempted to meet any so-called famous people, but it seemed to happen nevertheless. In the fifties, she was part of the diplomatic milieu of Jakarta, at a time when it was a place that every political figure had to visit, from the Nixons to Eleanor Roosevelt. Later she spent time with Eldridge Cleaver in San Francisco and worked with Eugene Mc.Carthy in San Diego. La Jolla in the sixties was the Mecca where avant-garde psychologists held encounters, while world class physicists and economists were drawn to the newly built University of California. Jacob Bronowski rubbed shoulders with Jonas Salk while Nobelists in every field of science visited or worked at the new campus. She met most ofthem. It was a heady intellectual climate and a wildly stimulating environment. Does this sound like the most shameless namedropping? In fact, much of the time, as she was introduced to guests in the homes of friends, she had no idea how prominent these people were in their respective fields. She occasionally questioned the serendipity that so constantly exposed her to the famous (and infamous). When the opportunity came to co-author The Teachings of Clear Light , the answer became obvious: her studies of languages, literature and philosophy, her later interest in the sciences, her meeting representative samples ofthe people central to their time and cultures, was all in preparation to evaluating and interpreting the information brought forth in these books. Indeed she could not have written intelligently about the plethora ofsubjects that the Teachers drop in her lap had she not had these experiences.
Thespian Michaels cannot remember a time when he did not communicate daily with Light Beings who took him in the spirit to other worlds, times and dimensions. While there, he was shown sacred records, temples and special places and clearly remembers speaking unknown and forgotten tongues. It would be easy to attribute such memories to a child’s imagination were it not for the fact that Thespian’s mother became seriously concerned when regularly finding her three year old in lotus position on his bed carrying on fluent conversation in bizarre languages with people she could not see! The matter had a happy ending when the psychiatrist decreed him perfectly normal with an active imagination. His “imagination “remained with him throughout his life with some lessening during the school years. At age sixteen, following the death of his mother, he gave intuitive readings to his schoolmates and, while working at the Beverly Hills library, read hundreds of ·metaphysical books. He and Esmi seem to have one characteristic in common. Both by circumstances and by choice, we seem to have very little connection with family. The contacts we choose to keep, have more to do with personal affinity than with accidents of birth. Thespian lives on the windward side of Oahu where his business scarcely supports his writing. His extraordinary compassion and empathy combined with the intuitive recognition of people’s personal issues has surrounded him with an impressive following .The authors met in Los Angeles when he was seventeen and recognized each other’s soul on the spot. Ever since, we have been fast friends through marriages, divorces, children, and the vicissitudes of everyday life, both his and mine. It was inevitable that The Clear Light Books would be a joint project.
