By KEN KORCZAK
A young woman using psychic gifts to raise the “vibrational love” level of the Earth may have run afoul of U.S. intelligence creeps
Even people deeply immersed in all things paranormal may not know the name of Heidi Jurka. And yet, this woman owns a rare distinction in the realm of psychic practitioner history — the CIA tried to kill her.
Here is what’s even more bizarre:
The CIA tried to assassinate Heidi Jurka because she was “meditating to generate higher levels of global love and peace.”
I know what some of you might already be thinking:
“Oh come on! Sure, the CIA is a nest of dangerous spooks and has perpetrated all kinds of dark, secretive skullduggery over the years. But would it really try to kill an American citizen — a pretty young woman in her twenties — because she belonged to a group of meditators who wanted to bring about a loving universal transformation of humanity through group meditation?”
I found this hard to believe as well until I read Jurka’s new book, The Making of a Psychic. In it, she relates the harrowing story of almost dying in a roiling house fire in Ossining, New York, a village about an hour’s drive north of New York City. It was no accident.
OFFICIAL INVESTIGATION PROVES ARSON
The local Fire Marshall officially established that the fire was set deliberately. It was arson. The perpetrators almost certainly knew that at least three people were in the house before they crept inside and set ablaze two interior locations.
The Fire Marshall’s investigation determined that the fire was “started in two separate places” using rags soaked in an “unusual, highly toxic, flammable liquid” at the bottom of an inside staircase.” The report added that “more accelerants had been splashed on the lower part of the wooden staircase itself.”
To make sure the job was done right, the arsonists turned on the gas jets of a kitchen stove. More fuel-soaked rags had been placed in the kitchen and accelerant had been poured on the wooden porch steps outside a kitchen door.
Jurka was in the third-floor attic room of the house when the fire broke out. When she opened her bedroom door, she was blasted by a wall of oily black smoke. There was no path to run out the door and down the steps to safety outside.
Her only option was to jump out her near-rooftop window. That she did, landing hard on a section of the porch roofing, damaging her neck and spine. She would then climb down a ladder propped up for her by a visiting friend who had been away when the fire started — but had come back just in time.
She survived, although she would suffer complications from her injuries for the rest of her life. But the psychological weight of what happened imposed an even deeper burden by shadowing her peace of mind for years to come.
When Jurka (pronounced “Yurka”), today in her 60s, subsequently learned that the fire may have been an assassination attempt, she spent the next decades of her life in a smoldering state of unease. She had that sense of always needing to “look over her shoulder.” She wondered if that stranger on the subway inexplicably staring at her or that odd man stopping her to ask for directions on the streets of Manhattan were hired “operatives” seeking to finish the job.
It also derailed a career path she fully expected to maintain for years to come. That career should have involved using her innate abilities to explore cutting-edge consciousness experiments or taking on clients seeking help from a gifted psychic.
A BORN SEER
Jurka describes herself as a person born with a range of extrasensory abilities. She could “tune in” to nature including plants and animals. She was also empathic. She could routinely gain impressions of what people were feeling and sometimes thinking.
As she grew into a young adult, however, her gifts more and more seemed a double-edged sword. Telling others about her abilities made people uncomfortable while others just accused her of being a “nut” or laughed at her for being a flakey New Ager.
But then her psychic talents — and certainly some significant synchronicities — directed her life’s journey to cross paths with one of the most important figures in paranormal research history — none other than the unstoppably controversial Dr. Andrija Puharich.
PUHARICH AND THE SPACE KIDS
One of the most fascinating chapters in the story of esoteric-psychic exploration is a project established by Andrija Puharich beginning in the early 1970s.
Puharich lived and operated out of a serene colonial manor house in Ossining, a three-story dwelling nestled among several acres of lovely, green & bucolic property enclosed by a black-iron gate in the milieu of the beautiful Tappen Zee.
I will skip over providing an extensive background of Dr. Puharich here because describing this Northwest University-trained medical doctor turned paranormal researcher extraordinaire would easily run to dozens of pages. Many readers will be familiar with the wide-ranging exploits of Dr. Puharich, but for those who are not, a simple internet search will reveal scads of information.
I will note that Puharich is noted for launching the career of the world-famous Israeli psychic and “spoon bender” Uri Geller. Puharich traveled to Israel to assess Uri’s gifts. He then convinced Geller to come to the United States so he could be extensively tested and studied. Geller lived with the Puharich family at the Ossining manse for about two years.
One of the synchronistic factors that connected Heidi Jurka to Puharich is that her father happened to be his dentist! Another more than coincidental factor was Jurka’s aunt, Dr. Edith Jurka. In addition to her practice as a prominent New York City-based psychiatrist, Edith Jurka had a deep professional interest in the paranormal. It helped draw Heidi into Puharich’s orbit.
Edith Jurka was intrigued by leading-edge techniques that might help treat her patients. Puharich put her on to several such resources. One example is the “Mind Mirror” machine developed by biophysicist C. Maxwell Cade in 1976. The Mind Machine is a type of EEG-enabled biofeedback device that serves as a multifaceted brainwave training tool.
When Heidi was 22, her mom, dad and her psychiatrist aunt paid $125 each to take a series of metaphysical courses offered by Puharich. These were rigorous three-hour classes over a series of weeks that took a deep dive into subjects like intensive meditation techniques, psychic development and other forms of exoconscious human potential development.
As a natural psychic, Heidi Jurka took this realm like a duck to water. She soon began working for Puharich. She came to be designated as one of his “Star Kids,” young people who demonstrated psychic ability and scored high on tests Puharich had developed to measure extrasensory talents.
OFF-THE-CHARTS COSMIC STUFF
Heidi Jurka’s description of what went on during the group meditation and “psychic outreach exploration” efforts led by Puharich is truly among the most fascinating accounts of metaphysical experiments I have read.
I don’t want to give too much away for those of you who have not read the book, but let’s just say that Puharich’s elite cadre of Star Kids believe they achieved contact with extraterrestrial beings who occupied a “Mother Ship” parked in orbit above the Earth.
These super-advanced extraterrestrial, celestial-like entities were deeply interested in working with mere mortal earthlings in a cooperative effort to bring about paradigm-shifting changes in the collective psychic energy and/or orientation of humanity.
Puharich told his students:
“It’s clear that that man non-earth-based entities are coming together in an effort to aid our energetically, evolutionary and vibrationally stuck planet. And help us save ourselves from the disastrous, self-destructive path we are currently on. This fraught direction could have a rippling effect on the universe that will be destabilizing.”
Thus, Puharich and the Star Kids organized a major event that involved weeks of preparation. It was to be a kind of high-level human-to-extraterrestrial contact event that would establish a solid two-way communication channel between the alien entities and human, Earth-based ambassadors to the stars, so to speak.
The Star Kids engaged in days of fasting and body cleansing. They meditated deeply for weeks on end. Complex yoga exercises were performed. Leading up to the big contact event, they maintained a code of silence and performed routine tasks in an intensive state of mindfulness — and so forth. I should also note that this team of earth-to-extraterrestrial ambassadors were not just “Kids.”
Puharich had identified people with demonstrated psychic abilities from seniors to youths. They came from several walks of life, professions, backgrounds and world destinations. The participants include mediums, psychics, UFO contactees & experiencers — but also artists, writers, poets, scientists, philosophers, musicians and more.
Puharich dubbed his project “The Mind Link.”
Think of it as similar to Dr. Steven Greer’s CE5 on steroids. CE5 is a specific set of protocols that includes special sounds, laser lights and intense meditation to summon UFOs. Greer invites anyone who pays a hefty fee to sit outdoors on lawn chairs in some remote location with other “ordinary” or non-psychic people so they can all meditate together with the goal of “drawing in” a UFO. Many of Greer’s CE5 participants are otherwise non-meditators.
Puharich’s Mind Link, on the other hand, was composed of experienced meditators with years of practice. The psychics joining his effort were tested in rigorous laboratory settings to show they were “the real deal.” The Mind Link effort was to begin on August 22, 1977, and operate through August 31, 1977.
Again, I don’t want to give too much away for those who have not read the book, but Heidi Jurka provides detailed notes she took after the Link sessions. She describes sensational and fantastic out-of-body visitations to a UFO and meeting with alien beings, including an ET entity named Tauri. Jurka and her fellow Link adventurers explored the inner environs of the UFO where they met several different types of beings.
What’s intriguing is that Jurka and the other Link participants compared notes and reported meeting the same extraterrestrials. They independently described the various rooms and locations inside the Mother Ship in the same way. Thus, they were convinced that they had not experienced a personal hallucination-type event within their own individual minds.
This diverse group of seekers apparently traveled to the interstellar craft together just as evidentially as if they had all gone together in their physical bodies to some normal earth-bound location, such as a local park, museum or shopping mall.
When the Mind Link concluded at the end of August, Puharich and his team were thrilled. They were convinced the experiment was a ground-breaking success. The first significant human-to-ET detente had been achieved, and now the sky seemed the limit. Dedicated people had taken the first step toward nothing less than the planetary transformation of humanity — ushering in a historic, transformative “New Era of Enlightenment.”
The goal was to continue the cooperative work with the ETs with a long-term project. Ambitious plans were made to set up a community in North Carolina on a 10,000-acre estate called Devotion. This is a lovely area of natural, unspoiled woodlands owned by multimillionaire Josh Reynolds (R.J. Reynolds) of the famous Reynolds aluminum business.
BUT THEN IT ALL BURNED DOWN
Heidi Jurka went out with an advanced team to assess the Devotion property and determine its adequacy as a base for ongoing Mind Link contacts with the advanced galactic beings (or wherever they were from).
Her group also went to the North Carolina site to debrief after the amazing events of August 22 through 31. They wanted to relax & recharge from the months of exhaustive, concentrated efforts that went into the first ET contact event.
It was a blissful interlude for Jurka. Her experience in the mind-blowing Mind Link contacts had left her feeling expanded, excited, inspired, hopeful and happy. She felt a new mission in life. The Mind Link had given her a sense of purpose. For the first time, her psychic gifts seemed not a curse that made her feel like “a freak.” Now it seemed possible she would play an integral role in one of the most important roles in human history.
However, after her return from Devotion, North Carolina, the ever-mercurial and peripatetic Dr. Puharich suddenly opted to turn his attention elsewhere. He decided to travel to a remote region of Mexico where he could study the famous “Rusty Knife” psychic healer known as Pachita. Her given name was Barbara Guerrero. She operated in the remote village of Tepoztlan outside the tourist town of Cuernavaca.
Pachita was in her late 70s at the time and possibly nearing the end of her life. She had gained world fame for her purportedly miraculous ability to heal people from all kinds of illnesses. Pachita would perform “surgeries” on people with an old, unsterilized rusty knife with uncanny results.
Of course, some skeptics who also studied and spent time with Pachita concluded she was little more than an outrageous fraud. Other credentialed academics, including Dr. Puharich, found her abilities to be authentic, however.
In the interest of moving along, I’ll skip further discussion of Pachita.
Whatever the case, Puharich asked Heidi Jurka to accompany him to Tepoztlan to assist him in his study of the psychic surgeon. Thus, rather than capitalizing on the initiative of the Mind Link success and the new alliance forged with advanced extraterrestrial beings, Puharich and Jurka took a detour to study a shamanic Mexican healer for the next several months.
Jurka eventually returned to New York and resumed her work and residence in the stately colonial 3-story manor at Ossining. Then, in August of 1978, nearly one year after the Mind Link experience, Jurka almost lost her life when arsonists broke into her home and set it ablaze.
In her book — and also in a recent interview with psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove’s New Thinking Allowed program — Heidi Jurka flatly states that it was the CIA who hired two arsonists to kill her. The arsonists were said to be IRA (Irish Republican Army) mercenaries hired by the CIA. That’s according to a 1998 biography written about Puharich by his ex and second wife, H.G.M. Hermans. Read it free here: Memories of a Maverick.
In her interview with Mishlove, Jurka stated bluntly:
“Someone had tried to kill me for meditating … So, I say, oh, the CIA murdered for meditating … the idea that my government thought of me as completely disposable when were actively working in peace and to murder me for meditating is heartbreaking and remains so.”
THE END OF A PSYCHIC CAREER
Jurka’s narrow escape from a horrifying fiery death rattled her to the core. She knew immediately that a future leveraging her psychic abilities as a viable career path was done — over and out — gone.
It didn’t help that, after the fire, Dr. Puharich cut off contact with Jurka and most of the other Star Kids. Jurka believes he did so to protect everyone associated with his work. Puharich had also likely grown justifiably paranoid about his long interactions with dark & dicey government intelligence types. He moved around a lot, kept a low profile and made strenuous efforts to keep his locations secretive.
He believed he had a target on his back by both his own government and Russian spies. The latter may have wanted him dead for his work with ELF, Extremely Low Frequency radio waves. (That’s a whole complicated other story as well).
It’s worth noting that Puharich was deeply connected to the CIA almost from the beginning of his medical career. He completed his M.D. in 1947. This from Wikipedia:
From 1953 to 1955, Puharich served as a captain in the Army Medical Corps; in this capacity, he was assigned as Chief, Outpatient Service, U.S. Army Dispensary, Army Chemical Center, Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland. By this time, he was already presenting papers on the possible military usefulness of paranormal phenomena.
During that time, he was in and out of Edgewood Arsenal Research Laboratories and Fort Detrick, meeting with various high-ranking officers and officials, primarily from The Pentagon, CIA, and Naval Intelligence.
Heidi Jurka was left on her own. Indeed, the Star Kids all wanted nothing to do with one another after the traumatizing, frightening blaze of the Ossining home.
The rest of the narrative of The Making of a Psychic involves her subsequent efforts to find her place in the world as a “normal person” and to leave behind her self-definition as “a freak,” her term for what it feels like to possess psychic abilities.
Jurka tells of her many travels, jobs and educational pursuits. She eventually forges a successful career as a chef after taking training at the world-renowned Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York.
Indeed, these rather more grounded pursuits comprise the majority of her narrative. It’s almost as if Jurka is attempting to assert her image as someone who is just like anyone else. It’s like a plea to her readers:
Psychics are people too! They have hopes, dreams, career ambitions, hobbies, relationships — they hold down jobs, go shopping, hang out with friends — just like everyone else!
NOTE: For more in-depth review of paranormal books, please see: KEN-ON-MEDIUM