The Three Christs of Ypsilanti (23 page)

The most detailed of his elaborations concerned his new wife. On March 29, Leon stated that when he was fourteen years old he had lost his heart and had not recovered it until November 1959,
when he married the Yeti woman. When he leaves for work, he said, his wife takes his heart away and puts a scroll of the Ten Commandments in its place.

Two days later, when asked why he had written his meeting report on toilet paper, he replied that he needed the other paper for a letter to his wife. His wife's name was Ruth of Boaz (he pronounced it “Booze”). She had “light brown hair, not combed— it's natural as it grows. She's about seven feet tall and more than 200 pounds in weight.” (This was a considerable change from an earlier description of his wife—“four feet ten or eleven, with long hair, pretty and old fashioned.”) When we drew his attention to the fact that Ruth seemed to be quite a bit bigger than he, he replied: “It doesn't bother me, sir. There's a difference in age; she's about fifteen years older, so she's fifty-three or fifty-four. She's a stern, strict and lovable woman.”

It had taken quite a while, Leon went on, to get adjusted to being without a heart. “But it has avoided me from getting attached to individuals and it's best for my case. Yes, sir, that's true. It would be a temptation to attachment.”

Once when we had a visitor from India, Leon responded to a question about his family by saying that the Yeti people had originated through the mating of an Indian woman with a jerboa rat. They had a boy and a girl, who, because they ate too much and were too big, were banished. This boy and girl went up into the mountains, and there began the Yeti tribe.

Leon reported in June that he had two main foster fathers, a white dove and a jerboa rat. This was a slight change from what he had told us the previous November: then his main foster father was a white dove, and the jerboa rat was an assistant foster father.

He also said that he was the
father
of Joseph Gabor, who a few months before had emerged as his
light brother
, married to the Virgin Mary. This Joseph Gabor used the name
Rex rexarum et Domino dominorum
, but his reincarnation name was Maximilian. He added that Joseph Gabor “came into the world through my seed.” This latter remark seems to have a double meaning. On the one hand it meant that Leon created Joseph Gabor as his fictitious
light brother, as a device which enabled him to get rid of his name
Rex rexarum et Domino dominorum
and of his delusion that he was married to the Virgin Mary. On the other hand, it meant that Leon's father, whose name was also Leon, sired Joseph —who is himself.

I commented to Leon that I had great difficulty understanding all these relationships, and Leon agreed that it was quite complicated. “Fairly deep matter,” he added.

On June 23, Leon announced a change of attitude toward his mother. “I said before that the Old Witch died through negativism, but this was through duping. It's possible that she repented, therefore she went to purgatory and later to heaven—possibly. She died from a broken heart, and there's a possibility she did repent.” He was glad she had repented, and that her past misdemeanors would be burned away in purgatory. She might, through her own free will, have made the choice to repent, and it was a relief to accept things as they are.

Two days later he added that if the Old Witch had repented she was no longer the Old Witch but Woman Eve. She was also Mary Gabor, and Leon was her foster son, but no blood relation. From this day on, Leon very seldom referred to his mother as the Old Witch, but rather as Woman Eve or Mary Gabor.

On June 27 I noticed that Leon had not shaved. When I asked him about this, he informed me that he was growing a beard. He was going to prove he had Yeti blood by demonstrating that his beard would grow only one and a half inches and then stop. If his beard grew longer than this, it would mean he did not have Yeti blood. Three days later he backed down somewhat, saying that all his wife's relations had beards, and that he was waiting for information from home as to how long these beards grew before stopping. But if his beard grew more than one and a half inches, then WHACK! off it would come.

By the end of three weeks, Leon, now with a full beard, bore a remarkable resemblance to pictures of Christ.

[
1
]Since the events in the several sections of this chapter, and in Chapters IX and X, are concurrent, and broken into separate sequences for topical presentation, a brief chronology of key events in the period covered—January 14 to August 1, 1960—follows:

[
2
] Luke 13:6–9. “He spake also this parable; A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard; and he came and sought fruit thereon, and found none. Then said he unto the dresser of his vineyard, Behold, these three years I come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and find none: cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground? And he answering said unto him, Lord, let it alone this year also, till I shall dig about it, and dung it: And if it bear fruit, well: an if not, then after that thou shalt cut it down.”

[
3
]At my request Leon later gave us in writing the following definition of a
Cosmic squelch eye:
“a center eye of light near the top of the forehead of a, potentially, hollowed out—stigmatized—,person, creature, ect. A cosmic squelch eye can be uncrossed, crossed; uncrossed squelch eye can help form other cosmic eyes on the forehead, ect., if the person, ect., has cut such squelch eye into its brain, ect.; A crossed squelch eye can help form smaller ones; some instances larger one,'s: a cut crossed squelch eye can help smooth out a larger one, depending on the capabilities of that person. If that person, ect., mis-uses such squelch, cosmic eye,'s,; Devine Providence can have such taken away from that person, ect.,; through—Righteous Idealed cosmic Robot Governor-Governess, image, at the right side of such person, ect. . . .”

W
ITH THE
establishment of the rotating chairmanship in August of 1959, we had called a moratorium on any direct confrontations among the three Christs on the question of their identity. After a few months, the time came to determine whether or not, if the identity confrontations were experimentally renewed, the men would try to preserve the relative peace that had then ensued. What would be the consequences to each of the three, and especially to Leon, who had maneuvered himself, or had been maneuvered, into a position where he could no longer lay open claim to being the Christ reincarnate?

These new experimental conditions were not, however, to be the same as those that had prevailed before. When first we brought the men together, each had to face the conflicts that arose when both of the others claimed the same identity as he did. Each one, therefore, had to measure his situation against the touchstone of the reality of his own beliefs. The new touchstone involved a very
different order of “reality,” the authority of a third party or arbitrator—the perspective, as it were, of the “outside world.” How would the men react if the outside world were to accept, or indeed to insist on, their delusional “reality”? Conversely, what would they do when presented with dramatic evidence that the outside world rejected all their claims?

At the regular group meeting on February 18, 1960, I asked the chairman for the floor and, after being recognized, said that I wondered, since Leon insisted on calling himself Dung, whether we should not also, in the same spirit, call Joseph “Mr. God,” and Clyde “Mr. Christ.”

All three men responded to this proposal negatively; apparently a psychotic is a psychotic only to the extent that he has to be. Both Clyde and Joseph objected strenuously—thus demonstrating that they had quite a realistic grasp of the implications of being called by their delusional names and of all the problems this might present. And Leon shrewdly and realistically joined forces with them, although his reasons were different from theirs.

Moreover—and quite surprisingly—my question did not start an argument among the three men about identity. All of them stuck realistically to the issue under discussion: should we or should we not call them by their delusional names? Primarily they were oriented toward me and the issue before them, and not toward one another. In fact, they joined forces against me and supported one another by presenting a united front. Even the ensuing discussion did not provoke them against one another. Nor did Leon accuse me, as he had done months before, of using negative psychology and negative duping. His comment was entirely realistic. He pointed out that the effect of what I was proposing would be to set the three men against one another.

Clyde's initial response was anger. “Oh, no. Now, don't be funny,” he said. “Just because that fellow there that should be Rex changed, I don't want to be scoffed at and have one of the patients calling me those names.”

—
I didn't suggest you have this name outside, but only at the meetings
.—

But this did not mollify Clyde. He wanted Rex to be Rex, he said, and himself to be Clyde.

“You can call me Rex, sir,” Leon said. “I'll accept that.”

I then said that I sometimes forgot who they really were when I had to call them by names like Clyde and Joseph. At this, Joseph interposed that he knew he was God. Clyde objected strenuously.

“Every time I say I'm God,” Joseph complained, “he says I'm not God. It's a waste of time to talk to him. Just overlook it! The best thing is to adhere to Joseph Cassel.”

I repeated their names, going around the room—Mr. God, Mr. Christ, Mr. Dung.

“I don't like that name,” Clyde said. “It's manure to put around a tree.”

“I'll answer to Rex,” Leon said.

—
Could we call you Jesus? That's on your birth certificate
.—

“I prefer Dung because it's a humble name and doesn't arouse direct and indirect prejudice or jealousy.”

(To Joseph)—
What would you do if I called you Mr. God?
—

“Oh, I wouldn't worry about it.”

—
If you don't want to be called God, I wonder if you are God?
—

“It doesn't make any difference to me. I know what I am.”

—
Can we try it for a week, Mr. God, Mr. Christ, Mr. Dung?
—

Clyde replied angrily: “I think you're intoxicated right now.”

—
What's your name, Joseph?
—

“Joseph Cassel.”

—
And God?
—

“Why not?”

—
Did you write the Ten Commandments?
—

“Yes, but I don't want to get recognized over here.”

—
We're trying to give you recognition
.—

“I disagree,” said Leon. Then he and Joseph started yelling at each other about the Ten Commandments, ignoring the question of identity entirely.

—
You gentlemen are making it difficult for us
.—

“It's indirect agitation,” Leon said. “There's a confliction.”

“You must understand,” Joseph added. “It's too heavy for an
individual to participate in these meetings over here, to go into that God business. All we have to do is to carry on as we were before: R. I. Dung, Joseph Cassel, Clyde Benson. It's too impossible what you fellows want. It's all right for me. I can carry it, but they can't, so I ask Dr. Rokeach's permission to carry on as we have been carrying on.”

—
Suppose that each of us follows his own free will. My free will tells me to call you Mr. Dung, Mr. God, and Mr. Christ
.—

“You're agitating,” Leon said. “You're trying to bring out the inner emotional desires of expression, sir. I understand that, but the fact remains that the other person, when he hears that in the presence of Mr. Benson, he'll say, ‘Am I left out? I consider myself doing something too.' It's frictional psychology.”

—
Why are you concerned about these other two gentlemen?
—

“It's obvious when you deviate from the truth there's friction,” Leon answered. “I expressed every side of it: Mr. Benson's, Mr. Cassel's, and my side.”

—
Are you concerned with their peace of mind?
—

“Indirectly, yes, pertaining to what I saw today.”

—
I brought the matter up only to explore the wishes of the group. I didn't intend to impose something on you against your will
.—

“I thank you for bringing out the inner emotional fact of expression that you have seen and witnessed this afternoon,” Leon said, “and therefore you have three sides of the story. It's obvious to you.”