(excerpt from the 2015 Institute of Investigative Living reader)

There are few hard facts about the origins and early life of George Van Tassel (1910-1978), the creator of the Integratron. According to his own account, he was an aeronautical engineer, a test pilot and personal pilot to Howard Hughes. What is known is that he was born in Ohio, flunked high school and moved to Southern California, where he worked in various capacities, including aircraft mechanic and flight inspector for the Douglas, Hughes and Lockheed aircraft companies during the war years, before being laid-off in 1947. It is also a fact that within a few years Van Tassel, with a set of unconventional spiritual leanings, had become a prominent figure in the postwar UFO movement, organizing annual “spacecraft conventions” at Giant Rock for 25 years. In 1947, at the age of 37, Van Tassel acquired a renewable government lease for the former Critzer land, re-opened the Giant Rock Airport and built a small cafe named The Come On Inn. Critzer’s dynamite-gutted abode became the underground storage space for the Van Tassel family, who at first slept outside the Rock and during the day tended the airstrip and their small cafe. It was in the shadow of Giant Rock that Van Tassel began his new identity as founder a religious non-profit, the Ministry of Universal Wisdom, and an associated college, and began mass mailing its official newsletter, the Proceedings of the College of Universal Wisdom.

Van Tassel was fully immersed in an elaborate belief in the existence of UFOs, and he asserted that the nearby airstrip was also frequented by visiting aliens. Initially drawn to Giant Rock to commune with the spirits of those Native American tribes who regarded the massive boulder as sacred, in 1953 he began conducting weekly meditation sessions in the rooms underneath the rock. The sessions, he claimed, led to UFO sightings, contacts and finally to his own transformative personal encounter with extraterrestrials. According to Van Tassel, on August 24, 1953, a spacecraft from the planet Venus landed in the middle of the night and invited him on board. There the aliens, who spoke perfect English, had a “healthy tan” and were all exactly 5’ 6” tall, shared with him the mathematical formulas and technical knowledge for rejuvenating living cell tissues with a machine. The “machine” would become the structure he called the Integratron.

Starting in 1953, Van Tassel’s annual spacecraft conventions would, at their peak in the late 50s—early 60s, attract thousands of enthusiasts and feature speakers, prominent “contactees” and even stunt flyers. Some attendees were reported to be involved in the study of antigravity, primary energy, and electromagnetism. In 1954, Van Tassel began construction on the Integratron, which he described as “a high-voltage electrostatic generator that would supply a broad range of frequencies to recharge the cell structure” of humans. The family used the conventions to subsidize the Integratron work, construction which continued until Van Tassel’s sudden death in 1978, after which the buildings at Giant Rock were vacated and gradually vandalized until the Bureau of Land Management bulldozed the remains. In the 1990s — 2000s, Giant Rock began to attract ravers, sometimes upwards of 3,000 at a time. On February 21, 2000, a huge piece of the rock split off and nearly crushed a parked RV. The sudden break may have been caused by heat from a large bonfire that burned next to the rock the night before.

At various points during the 25-year period that Van Tassel built and developed the Integratron, he called it “a time machine, a rejuvenation machine and an anti-gravity device.” He wrote that continuing UFO channeling and telepathy and the ideas of scientists such as Nikola Tesla led to the specific materials, construction and unique domed architecture of the structure, which was built entirely of old growth Douglas Fir (purportedly a gift from Howard Hughes). Recent research suggests that the core concepts for the Integratron were derived from the “bioelectric” research of George Lakhovsky, an eccentric Russian scientist whose writings, notably his book, The Secret of Life: Cosmic Rays and Radiations of Living Beings (1925), were circulating in esoteric and anti-establishment circles in southern California at the time. In his many radio and TV appearances, Van Tassel compared the Integratron to the Tabernacle of Moses. He claimed he was instructed by the higher intelligence extraterrestrials to build a 21^st^-century version of the Tabernacle using the same “positive power principle” of the Great Pyramids of Giza. He was told it would revitalize and rejuvenate the physical bodies of humans, a theory based on the idea of recharging of cell structures using a powerful negative ion field.  “We are electrical creatures using a biochemical body to exist in an electro-chemical environment,” Van Tassel wrote. Additionally, Van Tassel and his followers believed that there are powerful geomagnetic fields running through the earth beneath the Integratron site. There is also a large underground aquifer. These elements combined with concentrations of quartz, gold, copper and granite result in a powerful vortex of energy. The Integratron’s parabolic shape embodied a sacred geometry that focused and amplified this energy, creating a space in which people experience energy beyond the normal visible/audible spectrum. 

According to the current owners, scientists travel from around the world to study and experience the Integratron. One geophysicist described it as a ” mass battery.” A nuclear physicist called the sound chamber “a magnetic room.” In 2005, a scientist verified that at the center of the Integratron, there is a significant spike in the Earth’s magnetic field, which she had measured from Giant Rock to Joshua Tree National Park. Today, the Integratron, with its unusual architecture, sound chamber and elusive scientific underpinnings, is owned by Nancy and Joanne Karl. The two sisters work to preserve the site, offers public tours, special events and Sound Baths.

Sound Therapy, sometimes called Neuroacoustics or Psychoacoustics, has been used as a source of healing for centuries.  Sound Baths at the Integratron are 30-minute “sonic healing sessions” that use tones from crystal bowls, which are particularly powerful because of the Integratron is a highly resonant, multi-wave sound chamber. The bowls are made from quartz, crushed and heated in a centrifugal mold. The bowls generate very pure frequencies and are keyed to the major energy centers of the body. There is a wide agreement that the 7 major notes of the scale correspond to the 7 major energy centers, or chakras, of the body, as well as to the colors of the spectrum. ”This energy-focusing ability was considered when the Integratron was designed, and accounts for some of its remarkable effects when used for music, sound therapy, meditation, physical healing, and spiritual upliftment.”