Berkeley Psychic Institute

The Church of Divine Man is a small, but rapidly growing, organization originating in Berkeley, California, which offers psychic classes leading to certification as a "psychic reader."



The Reverend Lewis Bostwick, who founded the church, has had experience in both the Rosicrucian and Scientology systems.

The Church of Divine Man is comparable to the Spiritual Alliance of Great Britain and the College of Psychic Science in London which are involved in the training of psychic readers. All of them are heavily committed to religious and metaphysical concepts such as reincarnation, spirit guides and auras. The main difference is that, while the British organizations grew out of the 19th-century spiritualist movement, the Church of Divine man emerged from the California consciousness movement of the 1970s.

The basic training program in the psychic institutes run by the Church of Divine Man lasts for six months, after which the student receives a certificate as a minister of the church. This provides the student with a legal basis through which to practice psychic counseling and healing. (Note: according to a recent communication from Rev. Michael Goldsun, the complete clairvoyant training program of the Berkeley Psychic Institute runs for two years.)


The Reverend Susan Bostwick, who is the head of the Santa Rosa Psychic Institute run by the church, and is the wife of the founder, Lewis Bostwick, has described the training to me in the following interview:

"The training requires putting together your own information. When you find out what your own information is you start to grow. Finding your own certainty as a psychic is first of all a matter of unlearning and then relearning. So when you unlearn that it's not bad to be psychic or that it's okay to not have to ask why, except that your abilities are simply there, that they can be opened up and that you are the master of doing that, then you progress at your own rate. Many people have different paces at which they get to that point where they can say, "I am here doing it and I have the ability. It is functioning."

"We teach them how to open and close the chakras; how to control energy in the body. It's all an energy game. That's what psychic training really is here. People have to learn how to control their second chakra, which is the emotional center and the sexual center. It's just like turning the knob on this tape recorder. The volume goes up and the volume goes down. So we teach people how to get in touch with the chakra and know when that chakra is out of control, when it is functioning at whatever stage for an individual person.

"When somebody else's energy is in a chakra, we call it a ‘cord' of energy. We teach students how to remove those cords from other people.

The teachings of the Church of Divine Man ascribe a different psychic ability to each chakra as follows: spleen or sexual chakra, clairsentience; throat chakra, clairaudience, broad band telepathy and narrow band telepathy; third eye chakra, clairvoyance; crown chakra, precognition. The powers of psychometry, healing and telekinesis are ascribed to the minor chakras in the hands. (A similar notion of ascribing various inner modes of sensitivity to the different chakras is also found in Sir John Woodroffe's classic, The Serpent Power [1919/19741. In thi case, the particular powers attributed to each chakra are different.) The particular system used by the Church of Divine Man appears to be unique. Susan Bostwick describes the primary exercise used in the Church of Divine Man, which is known as grounding:

"We teach students to connect a cord of energy, which is their own energy, from the first chakra down to the center of the earth. On a postulate level, we do this. We do it with the feet apart and with the hands apart on the knees. This allows the energy to run in a straight circuit. We have people close their eyes so that they go within themselves and begin to focus inward. As they do, they begin to send energy down into the middle of the earth. When they connect that energy cord down, they've connected a solid base. That is literally a sense and a feeling of being grounded. The first chakra is located a little differently for men and women. We also have the women ground a little differently than men. They put a separate line of energy from the two ovaries and also from the sciatic nerve right into that first chakra. This is our first meditational exercise and we work on it constantly. It continues throughout the training, every day over and over again.

"We mainly want to see people who are grounded in the body and are doing it as a being aware. ‘I am here in my body now, functioning and opening up my ability and I am aware of where I am at.' When that happens, people see colors; people hear voices; people get in touch with healing; people -begin to release energy blocks in the body, so they begin to experience their spirituality on a total level. If they are not grounded to the planet they get blown out. They become sick psychics.

"Finding the center of the head is our second exercise after grounding. Most people don't even know they have a center of the head. They aren't aware of that center. Being in the center of the head is a new place for many people. ‘I'm at home. I've found home. Home is right here.' Then when they get in there sometimes they discover that somebody else's energy has been in there all these years. So they begin to learn how to drain off energy from that area, or from any other area of the body. We drain energy off by sending it down the grounding cord.

"The ability to read somebody else is something that everybody has. We haven't found anybody who can't be trained. Opening up psychically is a matter of being able to clear away a lot of information that has invalidated that ability. We don't have much validation to be psychic.

"People here have to start out reading immediately. Two people sit down together and form a communication line. They get into the center of their head. They find a neutral place and they say, ‘hello spirit.' Most people when they do this say, ‘No one has ever said hello to me as a spirit.' They've always said psychically, ‘You've got big boobs, or you're dressed funny, or you look weird, or your fingernails are crooked, or your nose is too big.' We talk to bodies in this society.

"When we start to communicate with spirit, we begin to do what we call ‘matching energy.' I can't communicate to a five year old, unless I communicate on a five year old's level. That's creating an energy cord with that five year old on a certain level, and we see that as color or we see that as vibration. But if you want to talk to your mother or your grandmother, you will match energy in a different way. If you want to communicate with a college professor, you have to shift gears again. Sitting and reading is a process of internally learning how to communicate on different levels.

The Psychic Healing Book: How to Develop Your Psychic Potential Safely, Simply, Effectively, written by Amy Wallace and Bill Henkin (1978), describes in detail many of the basic techniques taught by the Church of Divine Man. The material is almost exclusively concerned with visualization of "energy" in the body, the chakras, and the aura. One exercise for the psychic cleansing of one's own body involves imagining energy in various different colors washing through the body and then down to the center of the earth. Almost all of the exercises in this book involve a trance state which begins with the grounding procedure already discussed. Following the trance exercises, during which time the readings are done, another type of exercise is recommended called "making the body real." These exercises involve doing any physical action with awareness, such as walking, eating, or having sex.

Two interesting concepts that are presented in this book are "cords" and "pictures." Cords represent lines of energy which are "thrown" into our various chakras by other people who wish to use our energy or otherwise get our attention. Pictures are mental images, many of which have been planted in our minds by other people, psychically or otherwise. Sometimes it is desirable to remove cords and dissolve pictures in order that an individual can function more autonomously. Exercises are given for doing this in trance, and also for determining the source of the cord or picture.

There is nothing in any of these exercises that refers to obtaining feedback from the environment regarding one's psychic impressions. Wallace and Henkin suggest that the student simply assume that one's mental imagery is accurate, although they acknowledge that this may not always be so. In the opening section of the book, several alleged psychic healings are described vaguely.

The Psychic Healing Book contains a philosophy of paradox. Wallace and Henkin acknowledge that they are teaching a system. However, they claim that if they are successful, the reader will discard the system: "You don't have to clean chakras or run energy or diddle around with auras. You don't have to pull cords or keep out of anyone's psychic space or mock up roses. You don't have to talk to your body or look at colors or even pay attention. All you have to do to effect a healing is to let your friend have his symptoms, his ailments, his complaints, and intend that he be well."

While the teachings of the church may have some merit, the results of the "psychic training" are questionable. The author has had several "readings" from members of the Church of Divine Man concerning physical and emotional health, future prospects, past lives, aura, chakras, and spirit guides. Most of this information was, needless to say, metaphysical in the classic sense of being unfalsifiable and unverifiable. On those few occasions when the author was given information Which could actually be verified, nothing proved to be accurate. Regular "psychic" demonstrations are given at the Berkeley Psychic Institute and other Institutes of the Church of Divine Man throughout Northern California. Further opportunities for field studies, and other possible testing, may be available.

Wallace, A., and Henkin, B. The psychic heating book: How to develop your psychic potential safely, simply, effectively. New York: Delacorte, 1978.

Woodroffe, 1. The serpent power: The secrets of tantric and shaktic yoga New York: Dover, 1974. (Originally published, 1919.)

Jeffrey Mishlove's Blog Index