Introduction to Mark Saralegui and the project to develop a world class Global Peace Center on his 40 acres of flat land in the foothills near Santa Barbara California, as a “Holy Spirit Refuge”.
Slightly edited transcript of a half hour audio recording posted at:
https://global-emergency-alert-response.net/Mark_and_David_2019Dec5.m4a
This is David Williams speaking on December 5th, 2019, and today we're going to be discussing the project Mark Saralegui and I are working on for his 40 acres of flat land up on Refugio road, to create a world class Global Peace Center.
This is something to carry on the wishes of his late father who wanted to build something up there to help the homeless.
Mark is someone I met a few weeks ago in Isla Vista who's been experiencing homelessness off and on for a long time.
His father bequeathed the property to his heirs and his portion of it is something that needs some work, you know, the road cleared and all that.
But we want to together here share a little bit about each of our visions for what can happen up there.
As I told Mark when I met him, my background, or part of my background, includes my youth from the age 14 to 18 at Walt Disney studios as more or less an intern, learning how to make motion pictures.
This was under the auspices of the Boy Scouts of America Explorer program for boys 14 to 18. And since my dad worked at Disney studios, he convinced some of his friends and they got Walt to sponsor our Explorer Post 25.
One dad was a script writer and one was a camera man and all that.
So they taught us all these different things and we made a couple of movies and learned how to edit and all this kind of thing.
So I've had the vision of making a movie, a popular TV show ever since I met the Japanese monks and got into the peace walks in 1976.
Since then, I've had the vision of making a popular television show. Now it would be via the internet.
But the concept is “the Great Planetary Peace Pilgrimage, the most popular television show ever, based on the format of a moving staging encampment accompanying long distance peace walk from place to place around the world, with popular public personalities coming to lend their draw to the show with cameo appearances en route, with a stage every night, featuring kitchens with international cuisine, with international walkers”, and so forth.
So now finally, the opportunity to ground this vision seems to have come about in this property.
And I've talked to Mark about the idea. He has a brand with his initials, MA. So the MA Saralegui Movie Ranch.
The idea is to have a Peace Center site to offer different prayers for peace, with ceremonial grounds and different camps around this 40 acres.
That can be the setting, walking from these camps to camp to practice this Global Peace March. And then the Great Planetary Peace Pilgrimage as well, as long distance walks from place to place.
So to help promote this, I've committed to do the Great Spirit Relay again like last year, 2018, driving ahead in my RV to different places and trying to meet up with local folks on a fixed schedule so they can join the prayer.
This will be generally a prayer for peace with a lot of different issues represented, but especially the prayer for the success of this adventure up there on the top, near the top of Refugio Road.
This is a place that used to be, this property was an original stage coach stop. The first stage stopped there four miles up from Refugio beach on the road through the Canyon.
And so I wanted to introduce Mark and then discuss a little bit more about the ideas.
There is one I didn't talk to him about yet that I wanted to explain.
You know, Walt Disney had a vision that nobody hardly knows about. After the success of Disneyland in Anaheim, he bought this property in Florida, what's turned into Disney World down there, after his demise.
But his original vision there was to create a place that was a replica of different cultures around the world. So instead of Fantasy Land and Tomorrow Land and this kind of thing, you'd go from place to place in the park and you'd be in a German village or a Swiss village or a Spanish village or a Basque village or whatever, and be able to experience the culture, cuisine and the languages of all these places.
So this came to me in the last couple of days that this could be taken up there to have represented indigenous cultures around the world or around the United States too.
So maybe one area that would be a camp for the Lakota people, one for the Chumash people, one for the Iroquois people and have replicas of their kind of style of ceremonial grounds and buildings and this kind of thing.
So this is my general idea of what could go on up there.
I want to introduce Mark to start off with so you can hear his voice, and then we'll go into a little more detail.
He can explain what the property is like. It has water on it and springs and this kind of thing. And maybe a little bit of the history of it.
Say hello, Mark.
Mark:
Hey. Hi guys. I'm, uh, not very good with speaking, but I'm working on it.
My dad was going to make a camp ground up there and I'm gonna continue to work on that.
What's the word?
Continue his efforts to making it that way. And I'm going to go a little bit further. I'm looking maybe even putting in streetlights, outhouses and campsites, a couple of reservoirs and fire hydrants so that if there is a problem with a fire, we would be able to go up against it and fight it.
But when I get it done with it, there won't be the problem with it burning like it has in the past.
David:
Very nice. And so this is in the flow, so to speak, of efforts where I, you know, since August 16th, I've left home with my wife and daughter and her husband and little baby granddaughter to go off on the peace trail again and see if I could do something towards helping to create world peace as a scientist and a spiritual practitioner.
So this is basically in the flow of something to help, an opportunity for the homeless.
And this is something, an issue I've worked on, off and on since before the ‘80s.
And, my vision is not a blanket solution, but it's one where people of the right mind, one at a time selectively when their heads are ready, join the peace movement and then in that capacity, use their talents to help create world peace and get a way out and become leaders and spokespeople and movie stars and this kind of thing.
So, tell us a little bit about the property. There's water and springs and... Mark's a very a spiritual person, religious person. He's had, he was in a coma for a couple of months over a ruptured brain aneurysm in the lower left of his brain and then had an experience, the spiritual experience of meeting God, the Lord, and then being directed to study the scriptures. And now he's, um, and even before that, some strange things have happened in his life that called I call paranormal experiences.
Maybe you want to relate a little bit about the water and what the place is like up there and maybe some of your experiences with the wind and the water and your prayer and stuff.
Mark:
I'm always on the go. I've been homeless most of my life. My dad gave me the property and then I wasn't homeless. I had some other stuff happened that was really devastating and I came out of a coma and love was the basis for where I am now. And I'm going to continue on that basis because I love people and I love animals and I love the things that are around and, and up and down to the sides.
David:
So there's, how many creeks and Springs on the property?
Mark:
There's eight springs. I want to put in a couple of reservoirs so I can put in fire hydrants.
David:
And the springs are what turns into the creeks.
Mark:
Yes.
David:
So even in the dry season now, we've just started to get a little rain, but we were up there and there's water in the Creek. So this will include, you know, sustainable gardens and maybe if the County goes along with it, a Peace Pagoda like the Nichidatsu Fujii disciples have been building around the world.
There is room for that, an ideal place because it's set below the top of the mountain and you can see it from Refugio Beach and the freeway as drivers go by, silhouetted against the greenery up above it.
And also the Canyon is such that it echoes so that the chanting and drumming from up there would be heard all the way down the Canyon.
That prayer as well as what I started working on a few months ago, the idea of a peace monument simply built out of rocks as a Cairn.
Throughout antiquity, human beings have put together rocks in a pile and by their intent made it stand for something.
So what I'm been promoting is the idea of Love Rock Cairns.
The concept is, you find a rock that you love and you love it some more. For whatever reason: it's symbolic, or you found it in a special place or reminds you of something. And then everybody gets together and puts those love rocks together in a pile. And that's a Love Rock Cairn. So it stands for the message of peace through the practice of unconditional love. And it gives everybody a chance to come together in a simple ceremony no matter what their religion or political belief or whatever.
Everyone, if they believe in love, to put their love rocks into a cairn. So this wouldn't require a permit, you know, it's no cement, nothing, just a big pile of rocks. So it can be as big as you want.
And also the peace pole, the Global Peace Pole that we created in 2018 with the ceremony at the Tree of Peace on campus at UCSB, the symbol of the Great Law of Peace of the Haudenosaunee, the Iroquois.
This new style piece pole with six symbols on it was carried cross country to the rainbow gathering to the Martin Luther King Center, the Carter Center, and also in the form of a smaller version, the Global Peace Baton with the same six symbols on it. And then to the White House where we had a prayer ceremony with chanting and drumming there of the Na Mu Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo, to try to bring the Message of Peace to the President, and then on to the United Nations.
That all took place in 2018. And this particular style of peace Pole was left in Taos at the Gorge Bridge there.
This was inspired by Reverend Yamato who brought the ecumenical peace pole ceremony to United States in 1978. And so now I've got another, eight foot Redwood four by four to put the symbols on and create the next, the first, I guess you'd say, production model after the prototype of this Global Peace Pole that anybody can create around the world. Just download the graphics and the explanation of what they mean and stick them on any kind of pole with whatever other symbols of peace people want to put and create a peace prayer center with the peace poles and maybe the love rocks as a part of it.
So this is a part of the vision of creating a world class Global Peace Center, where all the proceedings can go up on the internet and all the messages that people come up there of all different religions and spiritual ways and indigenous practices, to record the messages towards a nonviolent spiritual, political, scientific revolution of consciousness to bring the mind of humanity into harmony with the natural law, with the law of nature, with this Great Law, the Great Law of Peace as the Iroquois, the Haudenosaunee call it; it's the same as the Dharma of Hinduism and Buddhism, the Myo Ho of the Na Mu Myo Ho Ren Ge Kyo. It's the Great Law that's depicted by the Torah of Judaism that even God cannot contradict and has to follow in his decisions in the world and actions in the world. And it's depicted in Islam as the Will of God which nothing can violate. Everything that happens, happens in accord with the Will of God. God's responsible for everything. And that's sometimes a hard one to swallow if there are things that happen you don't like and they seem bad. But, by grasping this concept that everything happens in accord with a natural law, with a cosmic law and paying attention to coincidences in our life because this law doesn't operate necessarily by cause and effect. But coincidences have a special meaning in how this operates. So I know Mark is really in tune with nature. He talks to the birds wherever we go.
And, so let's see, some of the experiences you've shared with me to give an idea of how your mind is connected to, I'll call it this law or your faith in your Lord God.
You know, like the one time, the one about the water and, and the different times you've had difficult experiences that have put you into, call it a lamentative frame of mind where you're, “Oh, wow, you know, something's not right” and then out of that you've made a prayer and different things have happened that coincidentally, as you can say, as a result of that or coincidentally, but can you relate a couple of those experiences?
Mark:
Yes. Um, I diligently labor because I had no money. I had a car, and I slept in it a lot and I worked in nine restaurants in Goleta and Gaviota and one of the restaurants I was working in, I accidentally stuck my hand in 300 degree grease. It should've put me in shock. I pulled my hand out, looked at it and went wow. And kept on working.
I had no idea that, that I was being connected with a spirit. And, uh, when I was little I said, “we” and my dad, he goes, what are you saying? Well, you're all by yourself. So I stopped saying we and I started saying I. Well, I had this operation on my head Dave was telling you about earlier. And I looked my dad in the face and I told him, “we” will see you again. And it is significant to say we not I, because I is of the self and we are supposed to deny self. And which I did. And I, I met the Lord, he answered my prayers, told me to read the book, I studied the Bible and they attacked me, broke into the house.
David:
So when you're saying “we”, you're meaning you and God.
Mark:
Yeah, yeah. Not me, myself and I. (laughs) yeah. Well, Oh, well that's all Okay too. Because sometimes it is me, myself, and I want you to talk, talking with God and you are one on one with Him. It is me, myself, and I, but it is including everything around you and a lot of the time it's “her” and there's a significance to “her” because you can't live with “he” only. He and I had some things happen and I got on my knees and I prayed and I met this wonderful girl. And then, a year and a half later I broke up with her thinking she should be with someone better than me. I broke up with her 17 times and I got her back and I'm talking to her today. Yup. Wow.
David:
That's, that itself is a minor miracle, a major one in your life. I'm so glad we were able to reconnect you all on Facebook, you two, and she's ready to come out here and be a part of all this. So tell, tell a little bit about the time that you had an experience where the water started flowing. What was the circumstances around that?
Mark:
Well, we had a lot of floods and after having a seven year drought and a lot of the creeks were, some of them were dry and I'm just standing around trying to get to from one place to another and I was by myself and no rain and conversing with my Lord and more water started coming down out of the hill and this happened like 15, 16 times and it still happens. So, uh, it, it's just like wow. Wow.
David:
Right. And then another time you had an experience where a couple of years ago there was a big fire coming towards the Canyon. And I want you to tell a little bit about that.
Mark:
Someone in the wind was blowing and uh, someone, somehow they started a fire at the top of the hill and the fire was coming towards the property. We vacated, they had us all vacate and we were down on the highway looking up toward the fire and the fire was burning towards the property. So I prayed for the wind to blow towards Santa Barbara and the wind blew towards Santa Barbara.
David:
Wow. Well, you know, people that don't have a personal understanding, you know, may just chalk all these things up to coincidence. But like I say, in my experience, I’m 74 years old, and my experience has been that's the kind of coincidence that exemplifies what I mean when I talk about how the law of nature, the natural law, the cosmic law works.
So prayer and how our mind works is very connected to that. And Mark's stories here are I think, a classic example of what Thomas Banyacya the Hopi interpreter said repeatedly throughout his life. And he was able to speak to the United Nations with other indigenous people for the first time in history, fulfilling the Hopi prophecy about the House of Mica on December 10th, 1992. And what he explained is that the mind of man, of humankind, is so connected to the natural world and that generally around the world the mind of humanity is out of harmony with the natural law.
And instead we have these rules and regulations enforced by violence, by the governments, as “laws” that are required to be followed. And so the governments are not tuning in and not building into their systems respect for this great law of peace, which was the foundation of the Iroquois Confederacy after which the United States government was largely patterned, but they left out the whole concept of the natural law of the Great Law of Peace.
So Thomas was saying to the United nations, well, you know, if you don't straighten out and get with this, uh, respect the natural law, there's going to be more natural disasters because that's how connected the mind of man is, the mind of humanity is, to the natural world. “There's going to be more civil strife, more Wars”, all these kinds of things which have come to pass in these years since December 10th, 1992. So in my view as a scientist with a special field of interest in the chemical physics of consciousness, someone with a set of unified field theory equations that purports to describe the operation of this cosmic law in the language of mathematics, I see that these experiences of Mark’s are directly confirming and in line with what Banyacya was saying to the United Nations - that we can heal the Earth, we can change the minds of the people and bring harmony to the earth, which is all in the prophecies of so many cultures that this is coming in spite of all the process, the problems we have, that those are going to be solved.
The Hopi prophecy talks about new inventions, to help to clean the Earth and heal our Earth and replace the kind of power technologies we have that are polluting and so forth. And, so I'm just, you know, offering a kind of a commentary here on Mark's experiences that he's related as confirmation of this concept that by tuning into whatever you want to call it, the Lord God, the nature, whatever, it doesn't matter what you call it, if you tune into this zone where your mind is calm and you get into this oneness frame of mind where you understand the oneness of all and the universal love concept, then things happen. And, it's, it's, it's almost like magic, and it is, as close as I can see.
So, let's see. I'm trying to think of other things that have influenced you in your life, including a lot of difficult experiences that you’ve had, from what you’ve said, like about your time as a tow truck driver, you've had pretty much like a post traumatic stress syndrome going on like soldiers in the war because you witnessed so much death and carnage is as a tow truck driver, which I never thought of that before.
I just thought tow truck drivers just went out and towed cars. But gosh, if you're at an accident and people are smashed all over the road, then that's got to affect you. So I don't know if we need to go into any detail about that, but, how has that experience influenced your, your spiritual development? Let's see if things go that way.
Mark:
I'm not sure that it did. Um, when I was little I said, we, and my dad's all, “what are you saying “we” for? You’re all by yourself!”
Well, later I looked him in the face 30 years later and I said, “we” will see you later, because we're not alone. And “I” is singular and we're not single. We either have our loved ones or we have our main level in our Lord.
David:
Right on. So this experience you just related, was after you met the Lord as a result of your, I'll call it a near death experience, but basically if you're in a coma, you're dead and you come back. And the tow truck driver experience was before that, right?
Mark:
Yes. And I had some devastating things happen that, like I said earlier about being burned with grease in the restaurant. I had five burns before that, that were excruciating and painful. Um, one radiator blew up on my stomach, another time I laid in battery acid. I was a tow truck driver. So I'm going to accidents and what I'm seeing is people all over getting killed, and vehicles that I towed where they did get killed but I didn't see anything. I had to spend the time to get this one vehicle out of the crotch of a tree before I towed it. It was just, it was awful.
But, like that a lot of the stuff that I've experienced in my life was awful.
David:
Well, like I say, my belief anyway is that God's responsible for all these things that happened and all these difficult times and experiences you've had, including the troubles you've had with your family, have all prepared you for whatever's next in your life. And, this project we're working on, that's, it's going to be, something that'll bring your message and the spirit that you're carrying of this relationship with the Lord all around the world. And, so I'm, I'm real happy about that.
What else do we want to talk about on this first part? ...
Tell us about what you see as some of the obstacles that, besides the physical ones that the road up there needs to have a bulldozer to grade it out and, we've got a quote from somebody who's done it that is working with this, Chris Brown, that he can do it.
He figured it'll cost like $3,000. So I'm planning to raise that money to get that road cleared up to the top.
But other than that, what, what else do you see as obstacles?
Mark:
Fire, a major fire problem right now is all the brush growing over since the 1955 fire, whichever burned everything. Um, a lot of clearing a brush in this kind of thing needs to happen to make it all secure.
Reestablishing a water system will be good. Then I can obtain a burn permit and do burns to eliminate some of it, and the ash is good for for it too. So, wherever I burn this is good for the ground. And, there's been seven fires in the area in the last 15 years. And, one day one was coming towards the property that we were on when we vacated to the highway down below, and we could watching it and it was coming toward my property and houses. I prayed a wind blow it towards Santa Barbara and the wind blew it towards Santa Barbara. It was just like, Oh, cool. Thank you.
David:
Okay, well, this conversation is just a brief introduction. It's just 30 minutes now, so I think I'm gonna stop this recording now, and then we'll kind of regroup and, see what we want to talk about next.
Mark:
Thank you.
—- end transcript
References:
Thomas Banyacya, the Hopi Declaration of Peace and Hopi Prophecy:
https://global-emergency-alert-response.net/tbhopi.html
Santa Barbara Style “Global Peace Pole”, see explanation of its symbols at:
https://global-emergency-alert-response.net/GPPsymbols.html
Wilcock on Fujii Guruji:
https://global-emergency-alert-response.net/Fujii2.pdf
How to make the dream of world peace come true, Guruji:
https://global-emergency-alert-response.net/dream.html
Vision of paradise on Earth, DCW:
https://global-emergency-alert-response.net/vision.html
Wikipedia on Fujii Guruji:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nichidatsu_Fujii
How you can help:
As of December 11, 2019, here is a partial list of what is needed most and how you can help this project succeed:
Outreach to share this idea with those interested to keep its success in their prayers and meditations; networking, help make a better website presence, social media etc
To start a base camp to enable Mark and a few of his friends to move from living on the streets of Isla Vista into housing at the start of the dirt road up to the property from Refugio Road, there is parked a small house trailer and a boat on a trailer with two bunks in the cabin, both of which need to be cleared out of unusable items stored there which need to go to the dump in a truck someone can offer to help with this one day task to create home base for 3-4 people including Mark, or about $100 to rent a box truck for the day including gas and dump fees.
Shuttle driver(s) with vehicle(s) for half day now and then to bring people and/or supplies up to this starting base camp.
Cash donations for volunteers food, gasoline, etc. Bank info below.
Mark has a 4WD vehicle and a station wagon parked about a mile up the first access road which need minor repairs to put on the road again.
If you want to help, have suggestions etc, text or phone your info to David Williams at the number for the American Peace Movement sponsoring this project: 805-403-1634.
American Peace Movement
Wells Fargo Bank
Account#: 7557135469
Routing#: 122000247