Snowman Movie, Meditation and Mental Telepathy

Abominable Snowman

I’m returning to New York to talk about Abominable Snowmen, Tom Slick, and telepathy between humans and Yetis. That’s right. I am barely back from the Big Apple, and I’m going back to introduce a favorite movie of mine during another museum’s new opening.

Abominable Snowman

I hope meet some of the people that missed my talk at the American Museum of Natural History on December 1st. If you wish, ask me about Yeti mind-reading or the real stories behind the movie that will be screening. Want your copy of Tom Slick autographed or interested in picking up a new one from me soon? See you there.

The Rubin Museum of Art – the museum of Himalayan art in New York – is mounting a series of programs called Brainwave: Sacred Science starting in January 2008.

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This will take the form of discussions and performances to help understand how the mind, through the practice of art, music and meditation, has the power to change the brain, measurably reshaping it.

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Every Friday, the Rubin Museum of Art screens films under the rubric CabaretCinema: “Where movies and martinis mix”.

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The theme in January 2008, linked to Brainwave: Sacred Science, will be “Mind over Matter.” The Rubin always has someone come and introduce the films they screen, and so far Blair Brown is doing Altered States, Phillip Lopate will introduce Solaris, Richard LaGravenese is presenting Séance on a Wet Afternoon, and John Guare will open Otto Preminger’s Whirlpool.

Abominable Snowman

I have been asked to introduce the series beginning with the 1957 classic film The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas on Friday, January 4 at 9:30 p.m. I will be doing a book signing before opening the film, which has been a personal favorite of mine for almost five decades. I have written and spoken often about the “Tom Friend” character in the movie being modeled on the real-life Tom Slick.

Abominable Snowman

The Abominable Snowman of the Himalayas is the story of an English botanist, Dr. John Rollason (played with extreme intelligent by Peter Cushing) who agrees to go on an American expedition lead by Tom Friend (Forrest Tucker), who is at first covertly looking for the Yeti. In reality, we learn, the Friend character is out to kill and/or capture the Yeti. (The story line was taken directly from events then happening in Nepal with Tom Slick’s hunt for Yeti, his use of guns & helicopters being discussed in The New York Times at the time, and the uproar it caused for Slick.)

If you have seen the film, you will recall that the movie’s Yeti displays an uncanny extraspecial ability for telepathy. Along with the history of the film, I will discuss the theme of Yeti ESP in this movie, quite open-mindedly.

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The Rubin Museum of Art is located at 150 West 17th Street, New York, New York. Previously a Barneys department store, the Rubin Museum of Art is the only institution in the Western world dedicated exclusively to the art of the Himalayas and the surrounding regions. From a lobby clad in limestone and ipe wood and furnished with a decorative copper screen, visitors enter into a café, shop, theater, educational facilities and six levels of gallery space. Accessible by a grand steel-and-marble central staircase, the former sales floors have been reincarnated as contemplative galleries inspired by the geometry of the mandala.

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