July/August  2003

            metaphysical  
Colorado's ^ Springs

An interview with Shanti Toll, producer of holistic psychic fairs.

 

     Where can you find thousands of US soldiers, thousands of evangelical Christians, and the oldest metaphysical fair in the country, all in the same town? Colorado Springs, of course.

     You can thank dead generals who lived in Washington, DC for choosing Colorado Springs as the home of the United States Air Force Academy, Peterson Air Force Base, NORAD (North American Radar and Air Defense), Shriever Air Force Base, and the US Space Command. The military is the largest employer in Colorado Springs.

     You can thank evangelist James Dobson for choosing the Springs as the home of his media empire, Focus on the Family, which in turn attracted dozens of other evangelical organizations, making Colorado Springs a major epicenter for Christian activism, of both the political and spiritual sort.

     And you can thank Shanti Toll for moving to the Springs in 1977 and organizing the first metaphysical fair in a pocket park across from his house in 1978.

     Shanti Toll, by the way, got his unusual first name earlier when he was earning a degree in religious thought at the University of Pennsylvania. He was learning that many religions required that young men undergo a name change ceremony as part of growing up. That inspired him to change his own name. He went on to earn a masters degree in education and agency counseling.

     Shanti Toll ran the metaphysical fairs with his wife Coreen through boom and bust years, and, in spite of occasional Christian picketers who thought the fair exhibitors (and the Tolls) were agents of the devil, Toll's fairs have thrived. He now holds two in Colorado Springs and two in Denver each year under his company name, Celebration Productions, Inc. Toll believes his fairs are the longest running (25 years) independent metaphysical fairs of any in the country.

      Yet Shanti Toll is more than a fair organizer. He is also a community activist-his current project as president of the Red Rock Canyon Foundation is to help create an open space extension to the Garden of the Gods City Park west of town. He is an expert on issues facing holistic psychotherapists-he sat for one year on the grievance board for the State regulatory authority that oversees the practice of non-licensed psychotherapy. In years past he has been a special education teacher and a psychotherapist. Toll also founded and ran a metaphysical bookstore with his wife for 23 years called Celebration New Age Store, which he sold in 2001, and which is still thriving (his offices are right next door).

     In this interview by Nexus publisher Ravi Dykema, conducted at the Celebration Production, Inc. offices in Colorado Springs, we ask him about life as a metaphysical entrepreneur in the capitol of Christian activism. We ask him about the value of and the philosophy behind psychic readings. And we ask him about the community he loves: Colorado Springs.

 

Editor's note: Shanti Toll's businesses, Celebration Productions, Inc, and previously Celebration New Age Store, have been long-time Nexus advertisers, for which we are very grateful. However, as long-time readers of our interviews know, being an advertiser in Nexus is not a condition for being interviewed in these pages.

 

RD: How did you come to be running the oldest psychic holistic fair in the United States?

 

ST: It started back in 1978, when my wife Coreen and I moved to Colorado Springs. I had been involved in teaching, and Coreen was starting Celebration New Age Store, and we found that there were a number of people doing holistic practices and they didn't know each other. So a group of us started having socials and pot luck dinners. At the end of the evening, different people would give a presentation on something that was metaphysical or holistic. It was really quite fun.

     After a year of doing that we decided, as a group, to put on a new age fair. We created The New Age Network, which was a group of people who were into holistic and new age practices. Our first fair was in a park in Colorado Springs. We had about 10 readers and 10 or so booths, and some pretty good jams-there was lots of music in the early days.

     At the time, one booth was the Women's Health Clinic, which had a bit of a radical, feminist point of view. Two booths from that, we had a Right to Life booth, a group of people who were not Christian, but who feel strongly that life begins at conception. They were both part of the group, and they got along. We didn't put them right next to each, but they both felt comfortable being at a new age fair.

     We did that for a few years, and then we got rained out, so we moved inside. After four years, the volunteer part of that group stopped happening. At the last meeting, someone said, "Does anybody want to continue this fair?" and I raised my hand. Everything else is history.

 

RD: At that time, weren't you making your living as a special education teacher in the public schools for Colorado Springs?

 

ST: Yes, in both Colorado Springs and New Hampshire. I was mostly teaching learning disabled and emotionally disturbed kids. That was what sustained our family while both the fairs and the store were growing. When they first started, our child was a year and a half old. We had a little bell on the door, and when my wife would hear the bell ring, she would run downstairs to the store and service the one customer, and then run back upstairs to our kids, who were five, three and one at the time. It was very much a family-oriented business. My kids even started working the fairs when they were around six years old, taking the $1 or $2 admission at the gate. It made the fairs feel very safe and family oriented, and I think it helped the store and the fair fit into Colorado Springs.

 

RD: In those days, Colorado Springs' main industry was the military, right?

 

ST: Very much so. There are four bases in and around Colorado Springs. The electronic industry started to come in. Then five or six years later, Focus on Family came in, followed by a lot of evangelical Christian groups. It was fairly conservative. But there's always been a big group in Colorado Springs of normal people working normal jobs. I think that was the group we were relating to.

 

RD: Weren't you also involved in some community advocacy programs?

 

ST: Colorado Springs was in trouble economically when we got here. In a neighborhood, people can control the environment to a certain extent, and that feeling of empowerment is important, because it allows people to take ownership. Because this was my first home, I was very committed to it. Almost every time there was a problem in the neighborhood, by talking with people, we could figure out who was creating the problem. It became empowering to recognize that, if there was a problem, we could solve it. We could talk to the landlord, or we could talk to the people themselves who were creating the problem. It actually made this neighborhood fairly stable. And even though it's not one of the fancier parts of town, it's one of the more stable parts of town.

 

RD: When Focus on Family located in Colorado Springs, they were helped by the El Pomar Foundation (a large philanthropic organization) that saw them as a clean industry, right?

 

ST: Right. They were given a grant of $3 million and they were located in the north part of town, near the Air Force Academy. There was a lot of enthusiasm among the evangelical movement-that this was going to be a new center of evangelical Christians for the United States-really for the world, because I think there are now more than 50 Christian evangelical organizations here.

 

RD: How has it been for you, as a producer of holistic metaphysical fairs and proprietor of Celebration New Age Store, with this growing Christian presence in your town?

 

ST: It helps that we were already well-established by the time they came to town. Also, we felt we had a role to maintain open communication about all the possibilities of what life could be, and all the possibilities of what life and life hereafter is, and that in the good American tradition, we were just offering a neutral place where people could explore. When the Christians first came in, they would protest, and they were scared of us, because they thought that we were something that was outside, and they didn't understand that.

 

RD: What do you mean by "outside?"

 

ST: I think they were afraid that we were Satanic. But one of the things Coreen and I don't believe in is Satanism. We see that as part of Christianity, and I'm Buddhist and my wife is an ex-astrologer and sort of a nature-based person. So part of our job was to educate people about who we were and what the ew age was, because there were so many misconceptions and so many projections on that. They thought we were leading people astray.

 

RD: Weren't you on a list of Satanic organizations?

 

ST: Yes, in fact we were number one on the list. We had found that out from a person who shopped in the store who had been invited to a meeting, where it was discussed. There were protests with bull horns and evangelicals singing hymns and things like that, and we had to work with the police to make sure that their rights were protected to protest, but also that our rights were protected so people could come into the fair and the store.

     What was interesting was that some of our people, the alternative people who wanted to explore metaphysics and holistic health, were upset about having protestors outside. We said to them "Look, it is their right to be outside protesting, and they are trying to intimidate you to not come to this fair. If you really feel as though you don't want to do that, and you are intimidated, then don't come, but recognize they're trying to control your behavior. And you should make your own decision about what is important to you."

     The impact of all of this is that Colorado Springs' alternative community is very outspoken and sure of what they believe in. More so than in Boulder and Denver, where everybody is just sort of open, and nobody challenges anything. In Colorado Springs, people had to make a decision that, yes, they wanted to go to a new age fair. Now these people are not necessarily new age. They were just people who were interested in various ideas that we were presenting, and they decided they weren't going to be told what to do.

 

RD: Didn't the law that was going to prevent cities from singling out gays and lesbians for protection originate in Colorado Spring?

 

ST: It did. The whole community was much more articulate down here, both the evangelical Christians who were trying to get this amendment passed, but also the pagans, the independent thinkers, the atheists-we had all become much more galvanized in our positions and were able to articulate it. So I thought in one way it was very natural for both sides that that issue came out of Colorado Springs.

 

RD: What was the vote in Colorado Springs on Amendment 2?

 

ST: Oh, it was very much in favor. But at the same time, it was also where the focal opposition to it was. And the court battles and the things that eventually got it overturned, all came out of here also. Celebration's role during this period was to draw a very big circle, because metaphysics is the exploration of all views of what life and death is really all about. It's not okay to say this philosophy or this religion is metaphysical and this one isn't, and it's not okay to say that this view of holistic health or this view of lifestyle is metaphysical and right, and this one is wrong. What we try to do is provide a safe environment where people can get facts.

     That's really why the store and the fair grew. It's because we were drawing a very large circle that included all points of view. So our public here is really not any different than the public in any place in the United States. It's just that there's a tradition in Colorado Springs of exploration, and we have become associated with that. I think it has helped us in our growth, in that the media would often use us as a focal point. They would do articles about the evangelical movement, and then they would be looking for the other side. We got a lot of positive PR; it had a healthy skepticism, but it also did not reject the ideas of open, free thinking, of approaching health in a new way, and allowing experimentation about lifestyle and health and metaphysics to happen.

 

RD: Weren't there Christian organizations sometimes exhibiting in your fairs?

 

ST: Yes, in fact at the next fair in Denver, we're going to have a group that wants to give alternative people a different way of looking at Christianity, because they think that Christianity sometimes gets a negative rap on the other side.

 

RD: Are they evangelical?

 

ST: I assume so. They use the phrase, "Godisnowhere," all run together. And if you change the way you look at it, it says, "God is now here." What they're trying to do is promote that transformative quality of being able to see things in a new way. They have actually developed a ministry that will approach alternative and spiritually oriented people. It's something they have to work on, and we have to work on as well. We have a rule in the fair about no proselytizing.

 

RD: What is that rule?

 

ST: I have defined proselytizing as forcing your ideas onto someone who doesn't want them. The rule against it is part of our list of policies for all the vendors. It says that this is an environment in which people are exploring. And while it's definitely an environment where participants are exchanging ideas, it's one in which they go up and ask, "What is this booth about? What are you doing?" What we don't want to promote is vendors or exhibitors forcing their ideas on participants, or getting in their space and saying, "You should believe x-thing." It doesn't matter whether it's Christian or new age. It's a matter of respect for the individual's exploration and their ability to make their own decisions.

      Another policy we have is that there are many paths to spiritual understanding and to holistic health, and participants and vendors need to respect other people's views. They can disagree, but they must do it with courtesy. We want everyone to have a respect for sincere approaches to metaphysical understanding and holistic health. Most Christians cannot do that. They'll say something like, "This is of Satan." At that point I say, "Okay, you certainly have a right to your opinion, but you need to protest on the outside." If you're in the fair, you can't talk negatively about other points of view. You just talk positively about what your orientation is, and you let the individual decide.

     Another absolute requirement for any vendor or reader in the fair is that they have to believe in the free will of the individual. I'm a real advocate for independent practitioners. Governor Romer put me on the first grievance board for non-licensed psychotherapists. There's a lot of research about how counseling works, but one of the things I know is that for counseling to work, the client must believe in it. The individual has to believe in free will, that he or she can control his or her life. About 50 years ago, psychic readings had a "gypsy" approach. You would get a reading about the future, and then the reader would often say something like, "This is what's going to happen, and you can't do anything about it, but if you pay me some extra money, I'll change the wheel of fate," or "I'll change your karma," or something like that. That kind of approach is not therapeutically valid; it does not empower the client. Readers at my fairs must agree that they are giving clients an indication of where their energy is leading them, but that the clients always have free will-that's what empowers them, that's what makes the reading helpful.

 

RD: So you were trained as an educator, and you worked in education for years, and you've also done past-life readings, correct?

 

ST: No, I've never done readings. After working in metaphysics for a while, I started getting into hypnosis. Then I got a traditional masters degree in agency counseling from the University of Northern Colorado. So when I did past-life regression, I would put someone in a light trance, then guide them to notice the impressions coming from their subconscious; I would then record their impressions.

     I did have a traditional counseling practice where I worked with couples and individuals counseling on adjustment reactions to grief or losing jobs or relationships. I do believe that traditional psychology has a lot to offer, but it doesn't have all the answers; if it did, we'd all be well. After working in mental health in the public schools, and then in private practice, I began to believe that traditional psychology couldn't efficiently service the needs of the whole community.

     I think most people are fine most of the time, but when something happens in their lives-they lose a loved one or a job or a relationship-they get out of balance. They may have some emotional problems. At that point, counseling is helpful. But another way is to go into environments where there's support, and where you can find your own balance. Environments like that-in schools, churches, men's groups, women's groups, fairs, workshops-can help people get through crises and then go on with their lives.

     That's one of the problems with psychology: it spends so much time labeling and categorizing and trying to make sure the insurance is right, that it may not go to the nub of the issue, which usually has to do with, "What is my life all about?" In both of the public schools where I taught, I was often restricted from talking about life in its most holistic way. I think that's what the fair does, and what both physical healers and good intuitive readers do.

 

RD: So tell me about your perspective on psychic readings. Do you think that they're misunderstood by many people?

 

ST: First of all, a good psychic reading is one form of counseling. And counseling entails listening and responding to people. In that process, there is a way of connecting to people; that connection is important, and a lot of intuitive readers make it a point to find empathy within their readings. Using that intuition is a trait I think all counselors should use, whether they're psychic or whether they're Ph.D. psychologists.

     Intuitive psychic readings also empower. They are incredibly efficient and cost-effective, because they give you some information, and then they say, "Now, go out and change your life." They do that at a reduced rate per hour, and they don't say, "And come back next week, and the week after, and the week after." First they listen, then they say, "Here's some input," and then they say, "Go. You have free will. Make it the way you want it to be." It goes right toward the core of the issue, which is that people need to change. They need to change because they want to change, because they're unhappy.

     There's another thing that's very important about psychic readings: they're usually holistic. Whether you're using Tarot cards or palmistry or channeling, you are looking at the client's life line, their love line, their career line, or you're looking at cards that relate to all the different areas of their health. You're looking at things that relate to their whole life.

     This is important because one of the things that happens when people are in trouble is that they fixate on whatever the problem is. They forgot that they are really a multi-faceted human being with a soul and a physical body. When a reader lays out a Tarot reading, he or she can say to the client, "Here's a card that relates to your health." But by the time the reading is complete, the client has a larger and more comprehensive perception of himself or herself.

     One of the problems with traditional psychotherapy is that it just focuses on one part of the person, where the problem is. There's another equally valid philosophy that says, "The way to deal with this one problem is to look at it from a holistic point of view."        

     And psychic readings are effective. When I was working with the grievance board, the State of Colorado had done studies that looked at the effectiveness of traditional psychotherapy by licensed people versus non-licensed people. Those studies did not show a significant difference between the two.

     This leads me to the idea that all counseling is an art, and all counseling is a matter of helping people connect to the world around them and to themselves. Psychic counseling can do that as well as traditional counseling, and at a fraction of the price. And it's much more efficient for society to allow people who need counseling to be able to have psychic counseling as one of their choices.

 

RD: Can you see a down side to psychic counseling? One I can think of is when people believe they know why something is happening, they may cling to that reason. It seems disempowering.

 

ST: Many forms of traditional psychology offer those same "reasons." For example, a traditionally trained therapist may say, "Your mother did this thing to you 30 years ago, and from a Freudian point of view, this is why you are the way you are." This is not a problem of just psychic readings. You can give any excuse you want for maintaining a dysfunctional relationship or having something not work in your life, so it's really not fair to put that onto psychic readings.

     Even people who are relatively together feel more at peace when they understand certain things, when they have a reason or an answer to the question, "Why?" If that "at peace" works for you, so be it. If you still continue to be unhappy and miserable, then it doesn't work, and then you can say that it was because of astrology, or because your mother didn't do something for you in potty training.

     It doesn't matter whether you're an astrologer or a psychiatrist or something else. The art of counseling is listening, and then giving some advice. I'm fairly concrete. I like to see what the problem is and try to assess that. At the same time, being in the field for 25 years, I no longer second-guess what's going to be effective, because I see things at the fair or in the traditional world that I just shake my head at. Then someone will come along and say, "That transformed my life. I am happier. My relationships are better."

     I have a healthy respect for the decision-making abilities of the public. At the fairs, I look at who's successful, who people go back to year after year after year. I think those people are offering something of value, because that's what the public is choosing. I can also filter out those people the public is no longer interested in.

 

RD: What do you mean, "filter out?"

 

ST: The fair is always changing, and I spend a lot of time on quality control-not by trying to be a policeman, but by really paying attention to what's happening, who people are talking about. Then I look at complaints, and I usually give feedback to the reader or the vendor. Part of my job is to be honest, to tell people, "This is the impression that people are getting." If I get a number of people giving me feedback in a similar vein, I trust that.

     I do work on quality control, but I don't go out to judge people. I wait for opinions and feedback to come to me. Just so you know, we have talked to every single vendor and reader at our fair. We ask ourselves, "Are they sincere? Are they honest and ethical? Are they helpful? Do they give specific information relative to the question?" We get references from potential vendors and we call the references. Especially for readers, because I do see reading as an art.

 

RD: Would you like to see psychic reading included in public mental health?

 

ST: No, I think it's best for it not to be. Public mental health has a particular role to play for people who are having such trouble that they cannot cope. But that's a very small group. Yet I also think it isn't good for mental health professionals to feel their client is way off-base because he or she got a reading. I've seen that happen, where there is such a predisposition to reject readings out of hand, to say, "Nothing good came out of that."

     Also, I don't think we understand the human soul or mind well enough to just stick with the tried and true. I think that, especially in this day and age, we need to experiment. Later, scientists will do double-blind studies on some of these alternative or non-traditional methods of therapy and counseling. But somebody's gotta be out there pushing the envelope, encouraging lots of experimentation. Some of it is going to turn out to be frivolous, but some of it is going to turn out to be critical in moving to a new phase, where society is coping better with what it is to be a human on this planet.

 

RD: Please define the term, "new age."

 

ST: It's not really "new"-it's something that is in the process of coming back. We started a new age many years ago; it was very popular in the middle '70s, then it fell out of favor. New age has to do with being open to new things coming along, and with looking at the future as something that can be better. Just like at the turn of the 19th century, more than one hundred years ago, people were using the word "new age." I think that term will come up in the cultural vocabulary every 50 years or so. And I'm just waiting for it to come around again.

 

RD: Why do you think nobody wants to be called "new age" now, even though they did back in the '70s?

 

ST: Partly because the term has been used by the media so much, it has so many pop connotations, and people who believe themselves to be more soulful than the pop culture aren't going to embrace a pop culture word. It's also because all movements become trite after a while. The issue of triteness is fascinating, because everything has already been said. Triteness is in the mind of the beholder, and in the mind of the sayer. If the person is not sincere about what he or she does, then it is trite.

     I think sincerity is critical-what makes a metaphysical fair different from a commercial fair, or a pop new age fair, is only the sincerity and the integrity of the people there. I cannot control that, nor do I want to. But I do think that people have to sincerely believe they are helping someone with the information they are giving, or that the product they sell is something that is of value, and they are committed to it. It's not just for money.

     One of the things I struggle with year-in and year-out is how to keep myself fresh. How do I not treat this just as a business? And it is by my modeling, or an attempt to be Utopian, or an attempt to be interested in public mental health, or an attempt to bring joy into people's lives. I don't want to be too heavy about this, because a good fair is joyful and has a lot of things. But I have to model sincerity, and demand it from the vendors; then I can offer it to the public and say, "Come and make this fair what you want it to be, what will give you joy or happiness or meaning or benefit." That's what makes it a metaphysical fair versus any other public gathering that is selling stuff.

 

RD: Your fair has fewer of the really big names in the industry than other expos. I assume that was a choice on your part.

 

ST: No. It just happened that way. In the early days, we had Linda Goodman, who had not done any other fair. We had Scott Cunningham. We had Stuart Wilde. We had big names. In the early days, back in the '70s and '80s, this alternative thing had not become pop yet, so speakers would go to any venue that would provide them a place where a lot of people would show up. In the late '80s and '90s, these expos became successful enough that they could start to demand guarantees of many thousands of dollars.

     At that time, two things happened. One is I made the decision that headliners coming in are for the benefit of the public. If a headliner was a big draw, I would give them 75 percent of the door up to 100 percent, but I would not raise the cost of the fair just to have some big name, because the fair is for the people. It started as a co-op. In the early days, we had people who didn't have much money-secretaries, truck drivers, waitresses, working people who made an hourly wage. They were just exploring. It was our view that we were providing a service to our community, not just for people who have money.

     People now go to the fair to see their friends, to have a good time, to get some readings with readers they know. They're going to have fun at the fair no matter who I have come in. In both Denver and Colorado Springs, I have a few thousand people who come to fair after fair, because this is where they go to get a perspective on their lives and to have a good time. That's the core of the fair-those are the people I represent. My job here is to decide what's best for the public. All my decisions come out of that. Whenever I have a problem about whether to do something, or different people want different things, I always go back to what's best for that public. So that's what happened with the big names.

     Twenty-five years ago, when we started doing the workshops, they were non-profit. A few years after I'd been doing them, I started to make some real money off the workshops. Then I came to a decision that they would continue to be non-profit, so all the money that's raised for any workshop at the fair either goes directly to the person who is doing it or to legitimate charities. It's another way of giving back.

     The next Metaphysical Celebration Fairs are September 12 to 14 in Colorado Springs, Southern Colorado Expo, 1801 N Union Blvd, and October 10 to 12 in Denver at the Merchandise Mart. For more information call 791-634-1810.