"Quit buying into death. We're offering you the greatest
freedom there has ever been on this planet." -James
Russell Strole
"I want to break the appointment with death in your body. We're the new heaven!"
-Charles Paul Brown
Physical immortality, I was told, cannot be experienced intellectually.
To have the "cellular awakening" that would start me
on the path to eternal life, I would have to set my reporter's
notebook aside.
So began my invitation to becoming immortal from a Scottsdale
group called CBJ.
"It's a feeling of pure aliveness," Daniel Hirtz, a
35-year-old CBJ member from Austria told me two weeks ago.
Genna Massey, 41, said her cellular awakening happened at a CBJ
seminar in London. After the program, she staggered to the stage,
fell into the arms of one of the group's leaders and felt like
she was "plugged into a generator."
"Something snapped in my heart," she recalled. "I
was exploding. I couldn't sleep. I was seeing all these colors.
I just knew I had found my people and I didn't even know I was
looking for them."
Cellular awakening sounded intriguing. Mystics and yogis have
used similar language to describe enlightenment. Could CBJ have
found a shortcut? I decided to find out.
Last Friday, I arrived fashionably late (it's uncool for immortals
to be compulsive about time) for the opening of CBJ's annual "convergence"
at the Scottsdale Plaza Resort Hotel.
About 1,000 immortality seekers from around the world are expected
at the convention, which ends Aug, 8.
CBJ's name is derived from the first initials of the organization's
leaders: Charles Paul Brown, BernaDeane and James Russell Strole.
Brown, 58, is the founder.
On Friday, after a standing ovation from about 600 followers and
a performance by a local rock band - chanting "keep generating!"
- brown strutted like a faith healer.
"Get off death row!" he shouted. "I'm opening
the prison doors for the cells and atoms of your body!"
Brown first felt the generator feeling described by Massey in
1959 when he was studying to become a gospel preacher and seeking
spiritual answers to the death of his wife, who was killed in
a car accident.
'Electricity from the cells'
It was a feeling of "electricity from the cells," Brown
said. Afterward, he concluded he was physically immortal.
In 1960, Brown met BernaDeane, now 56. She was a preacher's daughter
who thought "death is unnatural." The two began traveling
around the preaching immortality to anyone who would listen.
In 1968, Strole, now 44, joined the circuit.
Today, the trio share a $150,000 annual salary, a car and a home
near Pinnacle Peak and make frequent lecture tours through places
such as Europe, Israel and Australia. The funds came from member
donations, seminar fees and sales of tapes and T-shirts, which
are paid to CBJ's non-profit Flame Foundation.
Fire and Brimstone
CBJ literature emphasize that it is not a religion. But the tone
of the event was fire and brimstone.
"I don't care that there's no proof," BernaDeane cried
as she urged followers to make the leap of faith. "The biggest
cult on this planet is the cult of death, and I don't belong to
it."
The crowd went wild, and I tried to blend in with the mostly young,
fit and fashionable immortality seekers.
I poured myself a glass of water from a large tank in the back
of the room. No one sips coffee, alcohol or soda pop at CBJ functions.
The guy next to me mixed some sort of powder that looked like
algae into his water and gulped it. I tried to look like I was
having fun.
But earlier, Brown had launched attacks on the news media, cult
deprogrammers and others who have dared to question CBJ's doctrine.
It dawned on me that the anti-media message probably would interfere
with my cellular awakening.
"They just don't understand, because their death programming
goes so (expletive) deep," Brown said about the media. He
was upset by an article in the August issue of GQ, written
by a reporter who attended a three-day CBJ seminar in Israel.
After a few days of hugs from members and long hours of lectures,
the reporter started making phone calls to people back in the
States and accused them of being part of a death cult.
Change of Heart
Later, the reporter apparently went through a change of heart.
In the article, she reveals that Brown wears a wig (hair follicles
evidently do not become immortal); BernaDeane thinks death is
"embarrassing"; and the three get edgy when outsiders
get nosy about how much money the Flame Foundation takes in.
People were glancing at me and my notebook. No one was smiling.
I felt like a kid at a new school who unknowingly wore the opposing
team's colors to a pep rally.
Meanwhile, Brown's remarks about reporters were getting nastier.
"They say BernaDeane, James and I sleep in the same bed,"
he snarled. "Well, it's none of their damn business. Most
people can't even stay together for one year. We've been together
21 years."
Afterward, Bob Fisher, CBJ's California public-relations consultant,
urged me not to take the comments "too seriously."
"They're just very hurt and wounded right now," Fisher
said.
Another source of CBJ's pain a Rick Ross, a Valley cult-deprogrammer
who was a consultant earlier this year for the FBI on the Branch
Davidian standoff near Waco, Texas. Ross says he has a "thick
file" of complaints about CBJ from relatives of members.
"They haven't found the Fountain of Youth, they've found
the Fountain of Cash," Ross said.
Ross called CBJ's cellular awakenings "a manipulation of
trance and mind control."
"What it boils down to is you have to be with the group and
touch members of the group to live forever. If you become disconnected,
you will die," he said.
Massey, who, like many other CBJ members, moved from England to
Scottsdale to be closer to other immortality seekers, defended
her behavior, however.
'Programmed to die'
"It's impossible to live in a world that is programmed to
die," and seek immortality, she said.
One reason CBJ's need to be together is that immortality requires
regular "cellular intercourse" with other immortals.
This kind of intercourse does not involve nudity or sex - hugs,
hand-holding or emotional intimacy suffice.
"In England, you just don't touch people," Massey explained.
"but most people really need to be touched and loved and
wanted. To me, having people who want me alive forever is more
important than anything."
Around 11 p.m., as the program ended, everyone but me headed to
a reception. I bolted for the door.
As I drove south on Scottsdale Road, I stopped at a light near
the Sugar Bowl restaurant. Inside, families were talking, laughing
and eating ice cream together. Outside, a teenage couple lingered.
They looked like they already knew a lot about love and intimacy.
And they didn't have to pay $1,000 each to stay at the Plaza
and seek immortality.
I stepped on the gas, eager to forget my fantasy of immortality
and get home to my husband, my dog and my cat.