One man who influenced Bill Wilson greatly was Gerald Heard. Tom Powers often said that Heard was one of Bill's sponsors.

Gerald was the man who introduced

Bill to Aldous Huxley. I suspect that Gene

Exman (the religious editor over at Harper

that Bill visited with the first 2 chapters

of the Big Book)introduced Bill to Gerald.




Anyway, Bill (and Lois) first visited Heard on

a trip to California in 1941. Heard had been

practicing yoga and earnestly studying the

Scriptures of many of the world's great

religions. Heard wrote many books on the

subject of God, religion and also UFO's (a

subject that Bill was very interested in and

would talk to Heard about at lengths). One of

Heard's books even made it into Dr. Bob's

library ” "A Preface to Prayer."




Tom Powers often said that Heard was one of

Bill's sponsors. Heard was particularly

influenced by Sri Ramakrishna and Heard

donated his Monastery, Trabucco Canyon, to

the Vedanta Society of Southern California,

to be run by Swami Prabhavananda.