Minding His Business

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"When subjects like the transmutation of physical matter come up, people often get nervous," says James Jensen with the tolerant smile of someone who has seen many doors slam shut at the mention of the topic. "So I don't show this around much."

"This" is what used to be a U.S. silver dollar. It isn't any longer. One side of the transmuted coin now contains the Portuguese word "Peixes" floating above a pair of engraved porpoises; on the other are the 12 signs of the zodiac rendered in exquisite detail. The chief executive officer of Seattle-based Thousand Trails Inc. pauses. Who would believe the story?

For those who will, it goes like this: Jensen, an avid student of parapsychology and metaphysics, went to Brazil in 1981 for a firsthand look at physical manifestations of mind over matter. There he met Thomas Green Morton Souza Coutinho, the noted Brazilian psychic renowned for his feats of psychokinesis, telekinesis, mental telepathy, and other paranormal phenomena. "Five were in the group," the 42-year-old Jensen recounts. "All of us, were being extremely scientific in our approach to quantifying what we saw. Even so, much of it was literally incredible. Thomas had me take a dollar and hold it tightly in one hand. As the energy began building up around him, he asked me what my birth sign was. 'Pisces,' I said. Moments later, I experienced a pung sensation in my hand. When I opened my fist, this was in it."

Jensen believes that Thomas's phenomenal production of the talisman is just one manifestation of the dynamics of human consciousness. "My calling in life is to help people utilize the full range of their resources," declares Jensen.

Now head of a company that develops private-membership recreational campground resorts and is expected to produce sales of around $75 million this year (see INC., November 1981, page 78), Jensen's awakening to the power of positive thinking occurred in 1969 when, as a young sales executive with Encyclopaedia Britannica Inc., he enrolled in an Omega Seminar devised by the late John Boyle. This program involves a rigorous, four-day exercise in self-image psychology aimed at corporate executives who want to redefine their personal and professional goals.

Jensen's were redefined back to Omega. In 1973, he signed up again, this time with an eye to learning how to teach Boyle's philosophy. He once spent 26 consecutive weekends conducting free self-awareness seminars for all the employees and spouses of his former business, a furniture-rental company which in six years he took from 183 employees and $6 million in sales to 1,400 and $72 million. "The more successful we got, the more other companies tried to copy what we did," Jensen reports. "They came in and took a look at our furniture and our showrooms, but they never understood the nature of our success. It was the people. The people made that company. Not the furniture. To this day, I still don't know a thing about furniture. I'm more interested in my employees becoming better people than I am in my people becoming better employees."

From 1979 to '81, Jensen took a sabbatical from the corporate life. He pursued readings in metaphysics and psychology while organizing and chairing a weeklong symposium on "Extended Human Capacities" for 1,500 members of Young Presidents' Organization Inc. and their spouses. The conference, held in Madrid, Spain, featured guest speaker Uri Geller, another good friend of Jensen's. "Uri was there to give an object lesson in reality expansion to a whole group of linear thinkers," explains Jensen of the appearance of the famous, purportedly keybending and watch-fixing, Israeli psychic. The idea was to have what Jensen calls an ah-hah!" experience, then explore ways to turn that eye-opener into something useful for each observer. Not so they could bend spoons, necessarily, but so they could understand the mind's influence in such areas as health and stress management.

Since then, he has taken the Omega Seminar four more times, determined to train himself as a formal instructor. To answer the calling, in early 1983 Jensen gathered together his notes and tapes, then locked himself away for a week to synthesize the material. "I knew I had to present Omega as John Boyle had developed it, not Jim Jensen's version of it." Boyle died in June, but before he did, Jensen promised him he would help his wife, Helen, continue the work. Last April, he conducted his first seminar, again pro bono; by year's end, he will have led two more, and four are on his calendar for 1984. For each retreat, Jensen spends three days in preparation; during the seminar itself, be continues to renew and prepare, rising at five a.m. and taking time off only to eat, run, and meditate. He finds each experience fresh and exhilarating. "The teacher always gets more out of it than the students do," he says.

Jensen has also channeled his energies into Robert Schwartz's Tarrytown 100 group, a loose fellowship of business leaders organized around principles of higher consciousness and global peace. Recently, he has taken a personal and financial interest as well in the Esalen Institute's joint Soviet-American exchange in parapsychological research. Sometime in the next year, Jensen hopes to travel to Russia with Esalen founder Michael Murphy and meet his Soviet counterparts. "We have to learn to talk to people who think differently from us if we want to survive," he avers. "I'm not out to save the planet, just to do my part."