A Voice From Within, a Message for Humanity: Emilio “Chick” D’Arpino, 1934–2025, Bricklayer, Philosopher, Friend

On Saturday, August 9, 2025, my long-time friend and colleague Chick D’Arpino passed away quietly in his sleep, age 91. He is survived by two daughters, Cathy and Marci; two grandkids, Andrew and Shelby; and one great-grandchild, Vivian. Chick was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1934 (his parents had just immigrated from Italy a few years prior); the family moved to San Jose, California in 1945, where Chick remained in the same home until his passing. He proudly served in the U.S. Navy from 1951 to 1955, during the Korean Conflict. Chick was a bricklayer by trade and a philosopher at heart. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Chick became very involved with the philosophy departments at San Jose State and Stanford University, which he always felt was his true calling, especially after what happened to him early one morning in 1966, the subject of this essay, excerpted from my 2011 book, The Believing Brain, titled “Mr. D’Arpino’s Dilemma”—the dilemma being his lifelong search to understand a message he heard one early morning in 1966 that he strongly suspected was from an alien intelligence. Chick’s experience is emblematic of the power of belief, when the origin is a powerful personal experience that is nonreplicable in a lab. What should we make of such poignant anecdotes? This essay provides one answer. The dialogues are from an interview I recorded with Chick on Saturday, October 17, 2009, in person at my home in Altadena, after which we adjourned for beer at a local pub in Pasadena (see photograph below).

The voice was as distinct as the message it delivered was unmistakable. Emilio “Chick” D’Arpino bolted upright from his bed, startled that the words he heard so clearly were not spoken by anyone in the room. It was 4:00 A.M. on February 11, 1966, and Mr. D’Arpino was alone in his bedroom, seemingly unperturbed by what he was hearing. It wasn’t a masculine voice, yet neither was it feminine. And even though he had no reference guide built by experience from which to compare, Mr. D’Arpino somehow knew that the source was not of this world … 

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I met Chick D’Arpino on my 47th birthday, September 8, 2001, just three days before the calamitous event that would henceforth cleave history into pre- and post-9/11. Chick wanted to know if I would be willing to write an essay to answer this question: 

Is it possible to know if there is a source out there that knows we are here?

“Uh? You mean God?,” I queried. 

“Not necessarily,” Chick replied. 

“E.T.?” 

“Maybe,” Chick continued, “but I don’t want to specify the nature of the source, just that it is out there and not here.” 

Who would ask such a question, I wondered, and more importantly, why? Chick explained that he was a retired bricklayer interested in pursuing answers to deep questions through essay contests and one-day conferences he was sponsoring at San Jose State University and at Stanford University, near his home in Silicon Valley. I had never heard of a retired bricklayer sponsoring conferences before, so this got my attention as I have long admired autodidacts. 

Over the years, as Chick and I became close friends, I grew ever more curious to know why a bricklayer would spend what little money he has to funding essay contests and conferences to answer life’s big questions. I had a sense that Chick already knew the answers to the questions he was posing, but for a decade he took the Fifth with me until one day when I probed one more time he gave me a hint: 

I had an experience.

An experience. Okay! Now we’re talking my language—the language of belief systems grounded in experiences. What type of experience? Chick clammed up again, but I pushed and prodded for details. 

When was this experience? 

Back in 1966.

What time of day did it happen? 

Four in the morning.

Did you see or hear something? 

I don’t want to talk about that aspect of it.

But if it was a profound enough experience to be driving you to this day to explore such big questions, it is surely worth sharing with someone. 

Nope, it’s private.

Come on, Chick, I’ve known you practically a decade. We’re best of friends. I’m genuinely curious. 

Okay, it was a voice.

A voice. Um. 

I know what you’re thinking, Michael—I’ve read all your stuff about auditory hallucinations, lucid dreams, and sleep paralysis. But that’s not what happened to me. This was clearly, distinctly, unmistakably not from my mind. It was from an outside source.

Now we were getting somewhere. Here is a man I’ve come to know and love as a dear friend, a man who otherwise is as sane as the next guy and as smart as a whip. I needed to know more. 

Where did this happen? 

At my sister’s house.

What were you doing sleeping at your sister’s house? 

I was separated from my wife and going through a divorce.

Ahah, right, the stress of divorce. 

I know, I know, my psychiatrist thought the same thing you’re thinking now—stress caused the experience.

A psychiatrist? How does a bricklayer end up in the office of a psychiatrist? 

Well, see, the Secret Service sent me to see this psychiatrist up at Agnews State Mental Hospital.

What?! Secret Service? Why were you talking to the Secret Service? 

I wanted to see the President.

Okay, let’s see … 1966 … President Lyndon Johnson … Vietnam war protests … construction worker wants to see the President … mental hospital. There’s a compelling story here for someone who studies the power of belief for a living, so I pressed for more. 

Why did you want to see the President? 

To deliver to him the message from the source of the voice.

What was the message? 

That I will never tell you Michael—I have never told anyone and I’m taking it to my grave. I haven’t even told my children.

Wow, this must be some message, I thought, like Moses on the mountaintop taking dictation from Yahweh. Must have gone on for quite some time. 

How long? 

Less than a minute.

Less than a minute? 

It was 13 words.

Do you remember the 13 words? 

Of course!

Come on Chick, tell me what they were. 

Nope.

Did you write them down somewhere? 

Nope.

Can I guess what the theme of the message was? 

Sure, go ahead, take a guess.

Love. 

Michael! Yes! That’s exactly right. Love. The source not only knows we’re here, but it loves us and we can have a relationship with it.

♦ ♦ ♦

I would like to understand what happened to my friend Chick D’Arpino on that early morning in February, 1966, and how that experience changed his life in profound ways ever since. I want to understand what happened to Chick because I want to understand what happens to all of us when we form beliefs. 

In Chick’s case the experience happened while separated from his wife and children, the details of which are not important (and he wishes to protect the privacy of his family), but its effects are. “I was a broken man,” Chick told me. “I was broke in every way you can think of: financially, physically, emotionally, and psychologically.” 

To this day Chick maintains that what he experienced next was unquestionably outside of his mind. I strongly suspect otherwise, so what follows is my interpretation. Lying alone in bed, Chick was awake and perhaps anxious about the new dawn that would soon break over his day and life. Away from his beloved wife and children, Chick had to be troubled by the uncertainty of where his life would go from here, restless about which path before him to take, and especially apprehensive about whether or not he was loved. Those of us who have felt the sting of unrequited love, the anguish of relationship uncertainty, the torturous suffering of a troubled marriage, or the soul-shattering desolation of divorce, well know the painful inner turmoil that stirs the emotional lees—stomach churning, heart pounding, stress hormone pumping fight-or-flight emotional overdrive—especially in the wee hours of the morning before the sun signals the possibility of redemption. 

I have experienced such emotions myself so perhaps I am projecting. My parents divorced when I was four, and although detailed memories of the separation and disruption are foggy, one memory is as clear to me now as it was those late nights and early mornings while lying awake: I had an almost vertigo sense of spiraling down and shrinking into my bed, as the room I was in expanded outward in all directions, leaving me feeling ever smaller and insignificant, frightened and anxious about … well … everything, including and especially being loved. And although the ever-shrinking room experience has mercifully resided, today there are still too many late nights and early mornings when lost love anxieties return to haunt me, emotions that I usually wash away with productive work or physical exercise, sometimes (but not always) successfully. 

What happened to Chick next can best be described as surreal, ethereal, and otherworldly. On that early morning in February, 1966, a soothing tranquil voice calmly delivered a message of what I imagine a mind racked in turmoil longed to hear: 

You are loved by a higher source that wants your love in return.

I do not know if these are the 13 words heard by Chick D’Arpino that morning, and he’s still not talking, other than to exposit … 

The meaning was love between the source and I. The source identified its relationship to me and my relationship to it. And it dealt with L-O-V-E. If I had to say what it was about, it was about the mutual love we have for one another, me and the source, the source and me.

♦ ♦ ♦

How does one make sense of a supernatural occurrence with natural explanations? This is Mr. D’Arpino’s dilemma. 

I am burdened by no such dilemma because I do not believe in otherworldly forces. Chick’s experience follows from the plausible causal scenario I am constructing here for what I believe to be an inner source of that outer voice. Since the brain does not perceive itself or its inner operations, and our normal experience is of stimuli entering the brain through the senses from the outside, when a neural network misfires or otherwise sends a signal to some other part of the brain that resembles an outside stimulus, the brain naturally interprets these internal events as external phenomena. This happens both naturally and artificially—lots of people experience auditory and visual hallucinations under varying conditions, including stress, and copious research that I will review in detail later demonstrates how easy it is to artificially trigger such illusory ephemera. 

Regardless of the actual source of the voice, what does one do after such an experience? Chick picked up the story and recounted for me one of the most transfixing tales I’ve ever heard. 

It happened on a Friday. The next Monday—I remember it was Valentine’s Day—I went down to the Santa Clara Post Office because that’s where the FBI office was located at the time. I wanted to see the President in order to deliver my message to him, but I didn’t know how one is suppose to go about seeing the President. I figured that the FBI was a good place to start. So I walk in there and tell them what I want to do, and they asked me, “So Mr. D’Arpino, why do you want to see the President? You protesting something?” I said, “No sir, I’ve got good news!”

Had you thought through what you would tell the President? 

Nope. I didn’t know what I was going to say. I just figured it would come to me. Basically, I wanted to tell the President: “There’s a source out there that knows we’re here, and that source really cares for us.”

How did the FBI agent respond? 

He says “Well, I’ll tell ya, if that’s the case you need to go to the Secret Service office since they deal directly with the President.” So I asked him, how do I go about that? He looked at his watch and said, “Well, Mr. D’Arpino, drive up to San Francisco and go to the federal building there, and on the sixth floor you’ll find the Secret Service office. If you leave now, barring any traffic, you should be able to make it before they close.” So that’s exactly what I did! I got in my car and drove up to San Francisco, went to the federal building, got in the elevator and went up to the sixth floor, and sure enough, it was the Secret Service office!

They let you in? 

Oh sure. I met an agent, about six-feet tall, and I told him my story about wanting to see the President. He immediately asked me, “Mr. D’Arpino, is the President in any danger?” I said, “Not that I know of.” So he hands me a piece of paper with a phone number on it and says, “Well then here, call the Washington, D.C. White House switchboard operator and talk to the appointment secretary and see if you can make an appointment to see the President. That’s how it’s done.”

Well, I couldn’t believe it! It was going to be that simple. So I called. And I called. And I called again. And again. I never got through. So now I was stuck. I didn’t know what else to do. Since I was a Navy veteran I went over to the Veterans Administration hospital and told them everything that I had done so far. As you can imagine, they tried to talk me out of it. “Now Mr. D’Arpino, why would you want to see the President?” Then they asked me to leave, but I was at the end of my options and I didn’t know what else to do, so I took inspiration from those protestors the FBI guy was asking me about. I just sat down there at the V.A. hospital and refused to leave! 

It was a sit in! 

Yeah. Then the clerk there says, “Come on, Mr. D’Arpino, if you don’t leave I’m going to have to call the police and I don’t want to do that. You seem like a nice guy.” So I go back and forth with this guy. I remember his name was Marcy because that’s my daughter’s name. Five hours later he comes back and says, “You’re still here Mr. D’Arpino?” I said “Yup, and I’m staying here.” He says, “Now doggonit Mr. D’Arpino, if you don’t leave I really am going to call the police.” I said, “Marcy, you gotta do what you think is right, but I’m staying here.”

So he called the police. Two officers showed up and they ask, “What’s the problem?” Marcy replies, “This man wants to see the President.” So the one cop says, “Mr. D’Arpino, you can’t stay here. This is government property. This is for veterans.” I say, “I’m a veteran.” He says, “Oh, wow, okay, well … ” then he asks Marcy, “Is he causing any problems? Is he doing anything wrong?” And Marcy says, “No sir, he’s just sitting here.” So the cop tells him, “I have no jurisdiction here.” So they all kibitzed for a while and then decided that they would take me up to meet some people who could help me at Agnews State Hospital.

Now, as you can imagine, I had no idea what was going to happen once I entered a state mental institution. At first they talked to me for a while and they could see I wasn’t crazy or anything like that, so one of the cops escorted me to my car and said, “Here you go, Mr. D’Arpino, here’s your keys. If you promise that you will never try to see the President, you can just go home now.” But I was still insistent on seeing the President, so they said they were going to hold me for 72 hours for observation. That was my biggest mistake. I thought I could just leave after that if I wanted, but no.

You spent three days in a mental hospital? What did you do? 

They sent in several psychiatrists to talk to me, deciding that I needed additional observation and that I would need to appear before a Superior Court Judge along with two court-appointed psychiatrists to determine if I would be committed to the mental institution for longer than three days. On February 24, I appeared before the judge and two psychiatrists, who asked me some questions and recommended that I be committed. Diagnosis: psychosis. Time: to be decided.

At this point in the story I’m picturing Jack Nicholson’s Randle McMurphy and Louise Fletcher’s Nurse Ratched wrangling over patient’s privileges in Ken Kesey’s famous novel cum academy-award winning film, a fancy I suggest to Chick. 

Nah! One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was a piece of cake compared to this place. It was rough. For a year and a half I sat in my room and did all the little tasks they gave me to do and attended the group sessions and talked to the psychiatrists.

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What should we make of all this? Is Chick D’Arpino just some crazy man out of touch with reality—a lunatic in a tin-foil hat? No. One 30-second experience does not a psychotic make, let alone a lifetime spent pursuing science, theology, and philosophy in books, conferences, and university courses to better understand both himself and the human condition. Chick may be exceedingly ambitious, but he is not crazy. Perhaps he had a momentary break with reality triggered by an environmental stressor. Perhaps. And that is what I suspect happened … or something like this. Yet millions of people have gone through the emotional stressor of divorce without ever having such preternatual encounters. 

Most of us don’t hear voices or see visions, yet all of our brains are wired up in the same neural-chemical way as the visionaries who do, from Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad to Joan d’Arc, Joseph Smith, and David Koresh. The model of how brains form beliefs and then act on them is what is of interest here, because this is something we all do—inevitably, inexorably, indisputably. Beliefs are what brains make. Whatever happened to Chick D’Arpino, I am even more interested in the power belief systems lord over us once we form them and especially once we commit to following through on them, whatever type of belief it is: personal, religious, political, economic, ideological, social, or cultural. Or psychiatric. 

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Now free on his own recognizance, Chick D’Arpino returned to work and began his journey of understanding. To what end? 

Before I die I want to understand the human capacity to correctly answer such questions as “What am I?” “Who am I?” “Is there a source out there who knows we are here?” I think I have answers to these big questions that I want to share before I die.

Where did you get those answers? 

I got these answers from the source.

What is the source? 

The mind itself.

Herein lies what is arguably the greatest challenge science has ever faced, and it is the problem that I tackled in The Believing Brain: 

Know the mind itself and you know humanity.

Thus it is that Chick D’Arpino’s journey is a testament not only to the power of belief, but to the ability of the mind to know itself, and in the end to discover that love is the most important thing any of us can know.