My Life and How I Came to Run for President
by Sanderson Beck
I was born in Los Angeles on March 5, 1947 at 3:48 p.m., and I attended an elementary school in the Santa Monica canyon. With a few other students I was double-promoted through a semester, and I was lucky to have a great teacher in the 5th and 6th grade—Lucille Morton. This helped me to excel at Paul Revere Junior High School. Like my father and two older brothers, I too became an Eagle Scout in 1960. I began high school in the new Palisades High School. In the West Los Angeles Colt League in 1963 I won the trophy as the best pitcher based on the lowest earned-run average. My team-mates suggested I would also get our team’s sportsmanship award; but I urged them to vote for Joe Glenn, one of the first African-Americans who joined the league that year, and they did. I was also a quarterback and at school was elected Commissioner of Boys Athletics. I participated in speech contests with other schools on Saturdays. Graduating I was elected to the Ephebian Society in Los Angeles, and I received the $100 scholarship for Outstanding Contributions to Extra-Curricular Activities.
In September 1964 I went to the University of California at Berkeley and supported the Free Speech Movement inspired by the speeches of Mario Savio. I wanted to major in Psychology but did not like the way they studied the subject by testing rats. I majored in Dramatic Art, earned a degree in December 1967 and then did three quarters of graduate work, directing the one-act play The License by Pirandello. During the summer of 1967 I did an independent studies reading the writings of Jean-Paul Sartre. As a graduate student I had to consider the possibility of being drafted into the Vietnam War, and I decided to apply for Conscientious Objector (CO) status. My family was not very religious, and I was amazed as I read the Gospels for the first time. I also read the Portable World Bible and other philosophers. I applied to the Religious Studies Department at UCSB and studied with the eminent historian of religion, Mircea Eliade, took Indian Philosophy from Nandini Iyer, and Chinese Philosophy, Buddhism, and Religion and Psychology from Mokusen Miyuki who commuted from Los Angeles and occasionally gave me a ride and encouraged me to be a “spiritual leader.” My first room-mate there, Venustiano Olguin, had worked closely with Cesar Chavez who advised him to go to UCSB to study Gandhi and nonviolence. In the summer of 1969 I spent a few weeks at the Santa Barbara Mission in a program organized by Bishop James A. Pike. A friend of his asked me to do his horoscope, and Pike said that it was “98% accurate.” I began having mystical experiences, and the clairvoyant Gladys Jones who wrote The Flowering Tree told me in a reading that I had refined my character in many lifetimes and that I was capable of direct communication with God. In December 1969 I decided to dedicate my life to serving God and humanity.
In January 1970 I met John-Roger, founder of the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness and began attending his seminars. John-Roger was extraordinarily clairvoyant and said he was the “Mystical Traveler.” I completed my M. A. in Religious Studies in June 1971. On January 23, 1972 John-Roger ordained me a Minister of Light with the keys of teaching and counseling. I was elected to the MSIA Ministerial Board and edited the Ministerial Newsletter for two years. My friend Mark Holmes and I interviewed 62 people in MSIA and edited their accounts into the book Across the Golden Bridge which I published while Mark studied herbs in China.
My friend Henry Conyers, an African-American poet, and I wrote a musical comedy, God Strikes Again! He played the lead, and I was the director; it was performed at the MSIA conference in June 1973 and at the Aquarian Fair. With Henry and others I founded the non-profit Golden Age Education, and we organized several symposiums. Henry wrote an article for The Movement newspaper about George Washington Carver and Booker T. Washington. I suggested we collaborate on a screenplay, but he declined. However, I wrote what became Rising Out of Slavery. My first book, Living In God’s Holy Thoughts, was published in New York in 1976. In 1975 I began writing a series of teleplays on Socrates based on the works of Plato, and in 1976 I began a series on George Washington.
In 1974 I enrolled at UCLA and in 1978 became a Ph.D. candidate in the Philosophy of Education with minors in Psychology of Education and History of Education. I taught 13 students, and ten of them earned an M. A. in Education through a University of Redlands external degree program. I also lectured other groups on the philosophy and psychology of education. My holistic study of the teaching of wisdom by Confucius and Socrates did not please my dissertation committee, and I completed my Ph.D. in Philosophy at the World University of Ojai where I had begun teaching in 1976. I moved to Ojai in 1979 to teach there full-time. I taught more than forty courses in Ethics, Psychology, Religion, and other subjects over the years.
In September 1981 I took a six-hour nonviolence training at the Abalone Alliance camp, and we formed the affinity group called “Social Security.” (At the time I was studying Franklin Roosevelt for my book The Way to Peace.) The next day some of us were arrested for protesting the building of the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant, and we were put in an old gymnasium for several days. The affinity group elected me spokesperson, and I participated in Spokes Council meetings. From such people came the Livermore Action Group and the Vandenberg Action Coalition. I pleaded not guilty and was prepared to defend myself; but the prosecution brought no witness, and the judge dismissed the case.
In 1982 I drafted Principles, Purposes, and Methods for a World Peace Movement, and in 1983 I was arrested six times for civil disobedience for protesting MX-missile testing at Vandenberg Air Force Base twice, with the L. A. Catholic Worker in Los Angeles which after a trial resulted in a month in jail, and in an action I organized protesting cruise-missile testing at the Pt. Mugu Naval Base in June. That summer while nine people were fasting on water for nuclear disarmament, I fasted on juices for forty days during which I was arrested at Congressman Lagomarsino’s office. I wrote IRENE: Realizing World Peace, and in March 1985 I sent copies to 1,300 peace groups including 200 outside the United States. In that book I prophesied the reunification of Germany and Korea. In 1986 I published The Way to Peace, and in 1987 I published LIFE AS A WHOLE: Principles of Education Based on a Spiritual Philosophy of Love. From April to November 1987 I traveled to 47 states and met with about 600 peace groups in an effort to persuade presidential candidates to adopt peace policies on nuclear disarmament and Central America. In Iowa I talked briefly with Dukakis and Biden. On Sundays I did not travel and wrote my Peace Tour Journal. Then I went to Concord to join those involved in Nuremberg Actions protesting the shipment of weapons to Central America. I defended myself in the first trial of that campaign and was acquitted by the jury. While I was there for ten months, I was arrested about forty times for nonviolent protests.
In October 1988 I moved to a pine forest in Georgia, and I married Karolyn whom I had met at the Unitarian Conference at Little Rock and at her home in Amarillo during my peace tour. She said she would be my wife for a time. While I was in prison for six months for protesting the Trident Submarines at Kings Bay with a trial, she was joined by her previous boyfriend. After I was released in 1990, they left. I managed to get a divorce. I attended Jimmy Carter’s Sunday school class at Americus a few times. In January 1991 I urged him to renounce the Carter Doctrine to prevent the attack on Iraq so that many lives could be saved, but he said it had to do only with the Soviet Union.
In August 1992 I returned to Ojai to resume teaching at the World University, and I assisted Rev. Lloyd Fellows with programs for the Unitarian Fellowship. In 1994 I published The Future and How. In May 1995 I began writing the Ethics of Civilization series of books, and in 1996 I began a website where all my writings can be read without advertisements. So far I have completed 18 volumes in that series. On September 1, 2001 I founded the non-profit World Peace Communications, and in 2002 we published the Wisdom Bible that I edited.
In early November 2002 I had a dream in which I told Jimmy Carter that I thought I had leadership ability. The next morning I got the idea of running for President. I published a brochure detailing policies I opposed and favored. In January 2003 we published my Nonviolent Action Handbook. In March we published my large Guides to Peace and Justice which later was extended and became the 2-volume History of Peace. I participated in protest rallies leading up to the illegal invasion of Iraq, and during the first few days of the “shock and awe” war I was arrested twice at Vandenberg AFB and once in front of the courthouse in Los Angeles prior to my arraignment. I defended myself in the trial, refused to accept probation, and spent four months in prison. Federal courts violate the US Constitution by not giving jury trials for misdemeanors. In 2003 a website conducted a poll on which candidates people preferred among the 65 people running for President of the US. They allowed anyone to vote for the future “leader of the free world.” They had a multiple-choice questionnaire on several issues that was taken by or for the candidates and by the voters, and the computer then gave each voter a list of the 65 candidates with those in closest agreement with their own views on top and those least on the bottom. Then the voters could move names around on their list before voting. In this poll Ralph Nader came out on top. The Green candidate David Cobb was number 8, and I was number 9. None of the traditional Democrats and Republicans were in the top 30, and George W. Bush came out last at number 65.
In 2005 I published The Art of Gentle Living and Best for All: How We Can Save the World. In 2008 I wrote the Abraham Lincoln screenplays.
In 2011 two rich men started americanselect.org to organize a third party that would have a convention on-line, and they paid workers to gather signatures to get the party on the ballot in all the states. Their idea was to have running mates from different parties which they made a requirement. The rest was to be determined by voters on-line. I participated as a candidate along with about 30 or 40 others, and by writing my views without electioneering I was running about 10th. Most of the top candidates were progressive, and apparently the financiers did not like that result. They renigged on their promises and cancelled the process and the on-line convention. What these two polls told me is that most people want progressive candidates, but the powers that be are trying everything they can to stop them.
I published UNITING HUMANITY by Spiritual Evolution & Democratic Revolution: Solutions to the Megacrisis of Climate, Poverty & War in 2014 with a second edition in 2017.
On November 6, 2018 I decided to run for President again, and this time I intend to run a major campaign; but this campaign will go nowhere without contributions. Early donations are especially helpful to get things started. I hope you will support us.