Another Pioneer

Pete Sanders visited Sedona on many occasions before coming to live in 1980. He remembers attending several events at the Aurobindo Center near Red Rock Crossing with his mother around 1965 or 1966. Lois Kellogg founded the Center in an octagonal building located on what is now known as Chavez Ranch land by Oak Creek. This was probably the first spiritual center in the area, active in the 1930's and on into the 1960's. There was a library and a reading room.  Meditation and discussion groups were held there. It was a place where people gathered in much the same way they do now at the Hub.

When Pete came to live in Sedona, his purpose was to set up the Free Soul Foundation. The information regarding Free Soul had come to him earlier through spiritual guidance, beginning in 1970 during his years at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He refined and tested his ideas between 1974 and 1980 while a Naval Officer posted to many countries around the Mediterranean, including Italy and Greece. He also spent time in Japan. It was important to discover whether his techniques would work in  different cultures. They did. It was these multi-cultural experiences which led him to feel ready to begin Free Soul.

The organization is a non-profit foundation for the purpose of helping people be their own teachers in New Age explorations. There are over 200 certified instructors in the United States and 6 other countries today.
 
 

Pete was involved with the original Center for the New Age, a member-based service organization which Christopher Jelm founded in 1988. The first incarnation of the Center for the New Age was in Mary Lou Keller's old house. This organization carried onward the work begun by Marlene Mahre in her monthly Calendar of Creative Happenings, which held the community spirit together for several years. (O'Ryin Swanson bought out Marlene's calendar of New Age events and began Sedona Journal of Emergence in 1991.)

Marlene became president of the Center for the New Age after Christopher Jelm.  It had to move out of the Keller house when the Hillside shops were built. The decision to go to the Village of Oak Creek did not work out well. The Center came back to Sedona in 1989 laboring under the financial consequences of two moves and a poor location in VOC.

Peter served as president after Marlene for two and a half years. He is very proud of the fact that he led the organization out of $10,000 in debt to a $11,000 surplus during his tenure. No other President of the Center for the New Age lasted as long.

Towards the end of his career as president, Pete says the Center was visited by 18 Hopi tribal elders. They came to ask for help in preventing the desecration of traditional sacred sites thinking that Pete, as president, had some authority over the behavior of New Age people.

New Age visitors had been leaving crystals and spirit feathers at sites as tokens of reverence. The Hopis had so much respect for the faith of others that they would not remove them. However, these behaviors represented desecration of a sacred site from their point of view and were upsetting to their traditions.

Pete explained that the New Age movement was not organized under anyone's authority. It was simply a world-wide spontaneous spiritual movement. He asked if the Hopi elders could tell him which sites were sacred so the Center could try to let people know not to do this. The elders replied that they could not tell him. This information was known only to the medicine men. It was the duty of the medicine men to carry out certain ceremonies at the sacred sites as part of their responsibility to the planet. Pete said all he could do was try to educate people as to reverent behavior and good manners in sacred space. Basically that meant, take no souvenirs, no rocks or sand, and leave nothing behind, no crystals, feathers, or offerings.
 
 

About 1990 the City Council began to consider a business license code, copying the proposed law used in other cities. There was great controversy when it was discovered that while most businesses would be charged $100 a year for their license, psychics, massage therapists and some other people would be charged outrageous fees, as much as $50 a day. It was the artists who rebelled first. They were furious at the idea of having to pay $100 a year for being an artist.

The New Agers, led by Pete Sanders, came to the City Council meetings and brought carefully reasoned proposals. They succeeded in getting the attention of the Council and as a result the reputation of the Center and of New Age people in general benefitted. The business license law was not passed at that time but it has been proposed again in 1997 in modified form.

A very unfortunate thing happened in 1991, which caused great distress to the whole community and acute pain to knowledgeable New Age people. The TV show "48 Hours," made a program about Sedona which was presented on TV March 27, 1991 as Secrets of Sedona. Pete learned afterwards that the producers put the show together by asking local photocopy shops about the weirdest stuff they had ever seen. The people creating the show refused to interview level-headed people or any of the non-profit organization heads. The result was an hour of distortion which made some people think the town was full of flakes. It really hurt.
 
 

For the past five years Pete has worked hard to get the Forest Service to understand that many people are coming to Sedona specifically for a spiritual experience. He found the Forest Service totally unprepared to understand the significance of this despite the fact all of the famous vortex sites are on Forest Service land.

Pete knew that a Northern Arizona University study of visitors done in 1995 at two different seasons of the year showed that 64% of Sedona's visitors were seeking a spiritual experience. Forty-two percent said they wanted to visit a vortex area. He worked extremely hard to get non-offensive language put into the Forest Service plans. [See pp. 28-30 "The Inspirational Landscape" section in Proposed Actions for National Forest Lands in the Sedona Area, available at the Sedona Public Library.]

Another aspect of working with the Forest Service was Pete's educational effort with regard to medicine wheel etiquette. As anyone who lives in the area knows, many visitors and some local folks have laid out medicine wheels for ceremonies on the land and left them there afterwards. The Native Americans, says Pete, never left a medicine wheel intact after a ceremony was complete. This was considered sacrilegious.
 

Medicine Wheel at privately owned Rachel's Knoll
 

It is illegal to build medicine wheels on Forest Service land.  The Forest Service views people who build and leave medicine wheels after a prayer ceremony as ruining the forest. They blamed New Agers for this. Some media reports exaggerated the problem. The Forest Service has admitted there is far more problem with cigarette butts than privately constructed medicine wheels. Nevertheless, some New Agers, not aware of these facts or sacred tradition, have resented the destruction of medicine wheels by the Forest Service.

Pete suggests that if people want to do a medicine wheel ceremony, they create one mentally. It will do just as well. He also mentioned that sage smudging, which is very popular among New Age folk, can leave permanent smoke marks on the rocks, obscuring the ancient pictographs. Fire is a tremendous danger in the tinder dry desert in any case.

Another aspect of Pete's work with the Forest Service has been to allow volunteers to help with trail maintenance at vortex sites such as Airport Mesa and the Cathedral Rock trail dedicated in April 1997.

Pete's first book, You Are Psychic has sold 250,000 copies and is still in print. His booklet Scientific Vortex Information is available in local shops and he is especially proud of his 3rd book, Access Your Brain's Joy Center, which is based on the rediscovery in Sedona of brain research lost 35 years ago. It is about a way to feel better quickly without alcohol, nicotine, drugs or overeating. Pete is excited about its potential contribution to society.