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Citizen Diplomat Jim Hickman – “A Life Worth Living”

Featured image: Jim Hickman in Simply Living Magazine. Australia, July 1988.

“A Life Worth Living” is the title given by Jim for a biographical brochure (Hickman 2019). Jim Hickman (1947–2025) devoted his life to the massive grassroots movement of Soviet-American citizen diplomacy in the 1980s and 1990s to bring an end to the Cold War, in which he was one of the key figures. In a monograph about “Private Diplomacy” (Newsom 1987), he was introduced as a “research psychologist, specializing in political psychology, human development, and communications.” I met Jim in 2013 in Sausalito, early in my research on the citizen diplomacy movement. Later on, we had numerous interviews and exchanges. He generously shared his experiences with students, coming into my lectures online several times, and he helped my Russian student with her thesis on Dzhuna (Evgenia Davitashvili). In 2021, he invited me to participate in his course on “Applied Neuroscience and Spiritual Practice” at Ubiquity University, which he had helped to found and was, until his death, on the board of directors.

I first met Jim in 2013 in Sausalito. Photo: Birgit Menzel

Born into a U.S. Army military family, stationed in Germany, Jim went to high school in Heidelberg. He later became an anti-war activist and conscientious objector, studied psychology in California, and was involved in parapsychological research as an assistant to Dr. Stanley Krippner (Krippner 2024, 3). Hickman’s curiosity was aroused by the sensational book Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain (1970) by Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder. In San Francisco, Jim reproduced the Kirlian photography effect, facilitated by Henry Dakin (1936–2010), a philanthropic entrepreneur who later became an unconditional sponsor of the Soviet-American exchange programs and, at the same time, a mastermind of new electronic technologies in the service of humanity (Drewes 2020). In the early 1970s, Jim went on his first trips to the USSR with Krippner, where he became met Eduard Naumov (1936–1997), a well-known academic parapsychologist with international connections, and other scientists, such as biophysicist Viktor Iniushin, neurologist Grigorii Vasilchenko, and Viktor Adamenko (Krippner 2024, 3, 13ff, see also Krippner 1980).

In the late 1970s, Jim met Michael Murphy, the co-founder of the Californian Esalen Institute, with whom he engaged in the “transformation project,” a systematic study of extraordinary human functioning by “compiling and analyzing a broad range of scientific, speculative, and anecdotal literature” (Murphy 1980). Their idea was to explore the possibility of advancing human evolution to a stage where individuals could change their physical bodies at will and to understand how consciousness contributes to phenomena such as hypnosis, the placebo effect, biofeedback, visualization, meditation, and various experiences reported by saints, including stigmata, bodily luminosity, and levitation (Menzel & Ozhiganova 2025).

Sports psychology and parapsychology opened the channels of Esalen’s exchange with the Soviet Union. At the First International Congress of the Unconscious in Tbilisi in 1979, Jim met Joseph (Iosif) Goldin (1944–2000), a biophysicist by training and a charismatic, eccentric visionary who lived a very unconventional life by Soviet standards. A social outsider with no formal employment but crossing all social boundaries, Goldin was driven by the idea that revealing “hidden human resources” and applying new communication technologies would unite humanity. He had personal connections to numerous people in key positions of the Soviet elite while being equally familiar with dissident circles, artists of the unofficial underground, and various cultic milieus. Several leading academicians were intrigued by his fervent belief and protected him from persecution. Goldin’s formal position was titled “Scientific Secretary of the USSR Academy of Sciences’ Commission for the Complex Study of Man.” After first meeting the Esalen “kindred spirits on the edge” (Hickman) in Tbilisi in 1979 and 1980, Goldin organized future invitations against all odds and opened numerous contacts for most citizen diplomats. He became a member of the Esalen Board, and in 1980, the Esalen Soviet-American Exchange Program (ESAEP) was founded with Jim Hickman as its first executive director (1980–1986). From early on, lines of personal contact, both governmental and non-governmental, were opened up on both sides, and connections were established with people of influence in the embassies and related institutions.

In Moscow, officials were approached by scientific institutions for potential cooperation: in the Institute for the Study of the USA and Canada, where some individuals had secretly practiced yoga and transcendental meditation in their private life; the telecommunication center in Ostankino, but also institutions all over the Soviet Union with research programs concerning the Human Potential. Evgenii Velikhov, who was both the director of the Kurchatov Institute, i. e., in charge of the Soviet nuclear program, and the vice-president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, had a vital interest in opening up society for new technologies of communication, far from the military-industrial complex.

With his unique capacity to open doors and hearts, Jim became the catalyzing force of numerous exchange projects. In the 1980s and 1990s, he traveled more than а hundred times to Russia, establishing personal relationships with leading Soviet scientists based on mutual interests and trust. All his actions were transparent to the secret services in both countries, with the utmost effort to preserve his integrity.

Igor Charkovsky dipping a baby in an ice hole in front of Healthy Family Club participants and American guests. Ca. 1984, Neskuchnyi Garden, Moscow. Photo: Private Archive Virginia Coyle

Jim paved the way for exchange programs like the one with the Association for Humanistic Psychology (AHP), which sent hundreds of professional American psychologists, psychotherapists, psychiatrists, and art therapists who met about 2000 Soviet professional colleagues all over the Soviet Union. He encouraged Cynthia Lazaroff to co-find the US-USSR Youth Exchange Program, where she successfully launched an international campaign pioneering exchanges in art, literature, theatre, education, film, sports, wilderness adventure, urban leadership, and environmental service. Lazaroff has led hundreds of Americans on people-to-people tours, taught American culture in Soviet schools, and has been the author of the innovative curriculum (Lazaroff 2018). Early on, Hickman established ties with Igor Charkovsky (1936–2021), an Orenburg-born physiotherapist who became the pioneering founder of waterbirth in Russia. Jim and his partner at the time, Gigi Coyle whose focus was on Interspecies Communication, spent some special days with Igor, waterbabies and expectant mothers.

Jim helped the famed Canadian horse whisperer and T-Touch healer Linda Tellington Jones find a path to the Moscow Olympic training center. Telington Jones traveled to Russia ten times between 1984 and 1987, bonded with the founders of the Moscow Healthy Family Club, and, and began a beautiful program with children entitled “Animal Ambassadors.”

Jim Hickman and Rusty Schweickart, departing for Moscow in 1982, San Francisco. Photo: Private Archive Jim Hickman

But maybe the two most visible and collectively remembered projects Jim helped to organize in the ESAEP were the space bridges (telemosty) (1982–1989) and the Association of Space Explorers (ASE), the first and only professional global organization of astronauts and cosmonauts, bringing to­gether people who have traveled in space, which still exists to this day. Both historical breakthroughs owed much to the authority of the Apollo-11 astronaut Rusty Schweickart, who was close to Esalen then, the personal dynamics, and the daring minds of both Jim and Rusty to make the impossible possible. Schweickart’s mission was to connect astronauts with cosmonauts, thereby creating a transnational professional dialogue. Since in the Soviet Union, all heroes of the cosmic age were equally revered, his presence in Moscow opened up the gates to the Kremlin.

The first direct, uncensored encounters of Soviet and American citizens were made possible by the new TV satellite technology. On Labor Day in September 1982, the new off-limits type of cooperation between the Esalen people and their Russian counterpart began between the US Rock Festival in Southern California and the Moscow central TV station in Ostankino – Steve Wozniak, the Californian co-founder of Apple Computers could be convinced to finance a formerly unconceivable American-Soviet satellite connection and provide the new huge Diamond-Screen technology; high-ranking Soviet TV officials made unprecedented decisions and numerous people got inspired to communicate across the Iron Curtain, to improvise and take personal risks, tirelessly building networks to organize audiences and content, and overcoming seemingly unsurmountable problems of communication. Between September 1982 and July 1990, twenty-nine space bridges interactively connected American and Soviet citizens of all geographical areas, social strata, professional fields, age groups, and even members of the governments. The space bridges have not been sufficiently studied31, and the cultural significance of this event for ending the Cold War, preceding, and promoting glasnost, still awaits its cultural analysis. Altogether, the impact of the space bridges was clearly deeper in the Soviet Union than in America. Generally, the audience in the Soviet Union was larger, more curious, and knowledgeable about the other side than the American audience, to which the program was offered at less prominent air times and with a greater variety of broadcast stations.

The Association of Space Explorers (ASE), which Jim helped to birth, was founded in 1985 in France after eight years of preparation. Among the 72 founding members from seventeen countries, ten were Soviet cosmonauts. In 2025, the ASE will have over 400 members from 40 countries.

Jim is remembered by many as the most fun person to meet, a trickster, and a storyteller. In the late 1980s, the years of perestroika, and the following 1990s, he organized several big rock concert tours in (Soviet) Russia. Twice, he took John Denver on a triumphant tour, as he did Billy Joel, Paul Winter, and others. Being not only unconventional, a “bridge person,” by his presence between peoples, cultures, nations, species, and realities, he was great company, be that in Moscow’s apartment of the psychic Dzhuna Davitashvili, in Alma-Ata, in Novosibirsk, or on an pilgrimage to Lake Baikal. Once, he remembered dancing on Velikhov’s dining room table, then of the Vice President of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, and now National Security Advisor to the President of the Russian Republic. Another time, he was driving with Vladimir Pozner at night to Moscow’s Dzerzhinsky square, shouting obscenities at the founder of the Early Soviet Cheka (Vladimir Pozner in Humanity Rising 2025). Even once, he dressed up in Leonov’s uniform as General of the Soviet Union and Hero of the USSR, as several cosmonauts and astronauts (Schweickart) watched, while Sevastiаnov and Jim danced to some US rock & roll. Later, he was advised to destroy the Polaroid shot that captured this moment since, according to US intelligence perception, it might have compromised their project to unite the cosmonauts and astronauts (Hickman 2017).

His partner in the 1980s, long-time friend and collaborator until his death Virginia Coyle, remembers: “Jim knew the power of acupuncture, a hole in any dam that could lead to big change” (Coyle 2025).

Gigi wrote recently in remembrance of Jim that “Hickman was an inspiration and a door as well as a heart opener for many, supporting those he met to live their dreams. He often claimed he was there to carry our bags, whether it was for a musician, an astronaut, Gorbachev, or one of his translators. He was willing to do almost anything once the direction to do a space bridge or a world summit became clear. In some ways, he was a recluse, and in other ways, one of the most interactive, positive, social animals one has ever known. And he was very keen around who he spent time with. His passion for healing the world, as, again, for most of us humans, arose out of his recognition of a personal need for healing to continue. Jim was outrageously courageous and quite vulnerable at the same time.” 

Virginia Coyle (Gigi) and Jim Hickman looking over their Interspecies Communication work in the mid-1980s, in Ojai, California, where they lived. Photo: Susan Goldman

In the mid-1980s, Jim split his time between his numerous, often stressful trips to the USSR, living on a houseboat in Sausalito, California, then in Savannah, Georgia, at a marine Institute, and then in Ojai, California. He spent two summers way up north in British Columbia on a small island at the Interspecies Communication Camp “Orcananda,”, joining Gigi,  musician Jim, and Katie Nollman along with a small community, building another relationship – playing music underwater, interacting with the orca whales. He became co-director with Gigi of ORCA (Oceanic Research Communication Alliance), responsible for the first authorized release of two dolphins back to the wild who had been part of John Lilly’s communication research project for five years.

In the 2000s, he became an international entrepreneur. He was a telecommunications executive during the 1990s, co-founding the Russian long-distance company Rustel in 1992, serving as its president from 1992 to 1997. From 1989 to 1992, Hickman was CEO of AJ Ventures, Inc., a U.S. company that established commercial enterprises in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russia in 1993. As vice president of the State of the World Forum, he worked with President Mikhail Gorbachev (1931–2022) and Jim Garrison on the foundation’s international programs. He co-founded, with Jim Garrison, Mosaic Networks in 2003 as a business consulting firm focused on international telecommunications projects (Satinsky 2013).

In 2005, he co-founded Wisdom University, for which he served on the Board from 2005 to 2012, and thereafter Ubiquity University, where he was the CFO  and an instructor at the Graduate School. Since 2005, Jim has lived in semi-retreat in Bolivia with his family. He focused on his contemplative practice and his personal study of quantum physics, neuroscience, epigenetics, and the nature of reality.

Roger MacDonald, the news and information-manager for the citizen diplomats and later one of the founders of the Internet Archive, said recently that Jim  “<…> was filled with joy, genuinely interested in and respected and appreciated others, and was bold in saying that, that certain honesty of Self, to himself and with others, was particularly in a lot of erudite academic and diplomatic circles was unexpected and striking and recruited the best of spirits of people that he met and that we met to work together. Jim was a genuinely Zen-like guy, with his head in the clouds, and his eyes gazing at the wonders of the skies, and his feet firmly planted in the muddy soil of the earth.” (2025)

With his life-affirming attitude to making peace and opening hearts and minds against all odds, Jim Hickman has left a lasting impression on many, encouraging us to continue his legacy.  

I am grateful to Virginia Coyle, Caroline and Galen MacDougall for the pictures and further information on Jim Hickman’s life.

References

Coyle, Virginia. My Life with Jim Hickman. Unpublished Manuscript, March 2025.

Drewes,Laura Gail (ed.). Henry S. Dakin: From Physics to Metaphysics and Guns to Toys. Petaluma: Happy Medium, 2020.

Hickman, Jim. A Life Worth Living Initiative. Attitudes & Actions. Successful Living in Turbulent Times. Bogota, 2019.

Hickman, Jim. My Stories. Unpublished Memoirs, May 2017.

Krippner, Stanley. A Chaotic Life. The Memoirs of Stanley Krippner. Pioneering Humanistic Psychologist. Vols. 1–3. Colorado Springs: University Professors Press, 2024.

Krippner, Stanley. Human Possibilities. Mind exploration in the USSR and Eastern Europe. Garden City; New York: Anchor Press; Doubleday, 1980.

Lazaroff, Cynthia. “US-Russia Initiatives.” 2018.

MacDonald, Roger. “Reminiscence of Jim Hickman.” In Humanity Rising, Day 1106, March 25, 2025.

Menzel, Birgit & Anna Ozhiganova. “Becoming Superhumans: The Crossroads of Late-Soviet and Western Esotericism,” in: Comparing Esotericisms. Experiments in Collaborative Authorship. Edited by Bernd-Christian Otto & Michael Lackner. Boston: Brill, 2025. (in print)

Murphy, Michael. Internal Paper. Esalen Archive. Unpublished document, 1980.

Ostrander, Sheila & Lynn Schroeder. Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1970.

Satinsky, Daniel. Creating the Post-Soviet Russian Market Economy. London: Routledge, 2023.


OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Birgit Menzel (April 28, 2025). Citizen Diplomat Jim Hickman – “A Life Worth Living”. New Age in Eurasia. Retrieved May 16, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/13tww


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