Stewart Bitkoff Finds Enlightenment on the Major Deegan Expressway
By JANET BREGMAN-TANEY
Dignity Magazine Editor
JanetBT@aol.com
Photos by David W. Coulter     

Stewart Bitkoff was stuck in traffic. Tired of the daily drudge, a 45-mile commute from Yorktown Heights, NY to Ward's Island, right next to Manhattan, he began using a meditation technique, focusing on the license plate in front of him, a technique that enabled him to be in the present, instead of concentrating on his anxieties. It worked so well for him, he decided to share it by writing and self-publishing a book, "How to Attain Enlightenment on the Major Deegan Expressway."

Recently, Bitkoff and a few people interested in his work conceived The Deegan Project —www.thedeeganproject.com. You can download the book from the Web site. The Deegan Project arranged three book drops — at Penn and Grand Central Stations in New York City and at the Martz Bus Station in Delaware Water Gap.

"We talked about the idea of giving them away, and to me that's fine, because our whole social system is based upon giving, whether people realize that or not. Mothers give to their children. Everything is tied to a monetary exchange. You're going to do this for me? I'll do this for you.

"The idea of giving away something to help people with their commute or helping them look at this other aspect of their consciousness was a natural for me.

"And also, it would acquaint people with my work, and then maybe they would somehow be interested at some later date in some of the other material that I wrote.

" 'Selfish altruism' it's called. The best form of being selfish is giving, because what you get is this payback, and they're doing lots of studies about blood pressure, lots of studies about all kinds of things, about when we give from the heart, how much better you feel and for how long."

As you might imagine, there was a distinct difference between people's reaction in New York City and Delaware Water Gap to the offer of a free book.

"People are in a hurry in the morning. They want to go to work. I went to the one down here, and people are in a hurry. They got their thing they gotta do before the bus gets there.

"And so some of them immediately will say, 'No.' There's not that many, really. Most of them will stop for a moment or two to listen. My daughter, who helped give out some of these, found out that some of the people were stunned in New York, that somebody was giving away something for nothing.

"Out here I didn't find that. What I found here was that people listened; most people took the book. Some of them began reading it right away, Some of the feedback we've gotten, is some people really enjoyed it." Dr. Bitkoff estimates that they have given away 4-500 copies of the book so far.

Bitkoff has also written and self-published (Authorhouse) "Journey of Light: Trilogy," with "In the Bookseller's Hand," a fictionalized account of his encounter with a spiritual teacher; "Teddy's Last Swim in Paradise Land," an evocative look at a man who is dealing with some spiritual questions and "The Judgment of Julie," the story of a recently-deceased man who must come to terms with his life and judge himself.

Bitkoff has also written workbooks for children, "I developed this magical place called 'The World of Pond.' It's a pond — turtles, grasshoppers, all kinds of things like that. The young turtles go to silver minnow-catching school.

They learn about how to use their minds to be better catchers of minnows, because they have to help support their families. The brown and the gray minnows are really easy to catch, but the silver minnow is the most elusive and tastes the best. The only way you can do that is by using your own consciousness to meld with the consciousness of the minnow. Your own mind connects with that, then you know where the minnow is going to go, and you jump on it."

Dr. Bitkoff wears a silver-gray suit, a thick silver-colored watchband and silver-colored glasses frames. He also drives a silver car.

Bitkoff has a doctorate in therapeutic recreation. He has taught at NYU, Herbert Lehman College and spent six weeks substituting for a professor on sabbatical at East Stroudsburg University.

He has also run hospital programs in New York City, (at Manhattan Psychiatric), New Jersey and Lakewood, in the Poconos "I worked with the most severely mentally ill in the state of New York, people who were coming off the streets of Manhattan, the Bronx. The most sick people statistically in the world.

"I was trained as a therapeutic recreator. That's the use of leisure time to bring about purposeful and directed change in somebody's life. The basic premise of the whole thing is using somebody's strengths, something they like. If we're going to be healing somebody, there are plenty of people who fight the problem head on. I was not concerned about that. I was, but I was secondarily concerned with what we would call a hook or their strength. How would I get them to use their own inner resources to overcome this problem that they had? I've always been involved with people makeovers.

"Helping people to reach higher. That's what I would do with the mentally ill. They would say, 'I can't control my anger,' or 'I can't control the psychosis.' We would deal with, 'That's not exactly true, it's been a problem for you, but there are times when you can control it. What is it about? Why can't you control it?' and those kinds of things.

"The story I tell all the time, because it amazed me, I was working in a community in New Rochelle, around this Fountain House model program, which is based upon people's strengths, and people can recover from mental illness. I worked with this one fellow who had stuttering problems, college graduate. And over time, got him to answer phones, take messages.

"I found out he was an avid Mets fan. This is a college graduate, and he didn't go to the Mets games. We're in New Rochelle; all you do is take the train into Grand Central, take another train out to Queens.

So I said to him, 'John, how come you don't want to do this?' " 'I'm frightened.' "We worked on getting him to a Mets game for most of 8 years.

"What it turned out was, when he would get in crowds, he would hallucinate, and these demons would attack him. And then he would get all upset, and he would have to go back to his room and hide. And they would stay with him for hours. So the last time he went to a game this happened. So we worked on that.

"Eight years it took. To get him enough courage, to help him make the phone calls, find a guy to go with on this kind of a thing. We dealt with what would happen if this happened to you there? You can't run home; you can't leave the person, it took all this money and time to get here. We worked on that; we built up his strength to do that.

"The point was, he loved the Mets and wanted to go. But he had an illness that was standing in his way. It took eight years. I've learned so much from him."

When his two daughters were grown and out of the house, Dr. Bitkoff and his wife, Leola, moved to Bartonsville, where he challenged her to design a house for them.

In the last year, Bitkoff has had a breathing problem related to exposure to mold, followed by a kidney stone. Recovered now from his illnesses, he is looking for another therapeutic job or a teaching position.

One of the jobs he has recently taken on is to teach a course, "Mysticism, Happiness and Modern Life" at Northampton Community College's night school. (Wednesdays in April; call 1-877-543-0998 for information.) "Frithjof Schuon, wrote a book, 'The Transcendent Unity of Religions,' and what he talks about is that the closer you get to the apex of religious experience, which is the inner core experience, that's where the similarities in religions are. It's when you get to the bottom when you talk about the externals — we pray on Saturday, and we pray on Sunday, and we do this and do that.

That's where the differences are, in the external clothing, if you will. The internal reality of religious experiences, certainly at the highest levels, are most aligned.

"I'm really most concerned about the commonalities in religion. I understand the importance of the differences, because people are different, but when you ask what I'm concerned about, I'm concerned about the inner current or the inner reality of religious experience. And that's what I'll call mysticism.

"What I'd like to do is raise people's consciousness or help in the process of that in some way," says Dr. Bitkoff. As he speaks, he looks upwards into the distance and his glasses catch and reflect two balls of light.

"And then how that is, whether it's through my traditional work or this new work. That's what I saw myself doing, helping people reach higher, whether it was in a treatment program or in this kind of work."

Having studied intensively with two Western mystical schools, Dr. Bitkoff is now passing on some of what he learned through his books and in the Northampton Community College course. Raised an Orthodox Jew, Bitkoff never imagined he would pursue an interest in anything related to religion.

"(It was) the furthest thing from my mind. I was always smart in school; I was good at sports; I had no idea what I wanted to do. I stumbled across therapeutic recreation in college, and I liked it, because it connected something with me. But the idea of studying religion or something like that, my (childhood) experiences were terrible. That was the furthest thing I wanted to have anything to do with. Then so I was studying for my doctorate; I was just married.

"This thing called me to it. It was the last thing I wanted.

"What I'd like to do is raise a little bit, help with the raising of the consciousness. That's the point of the Deegan Project, really. I learned a couple things that may or may not be useful to you. Take a shot at it. Makes me feel good, and it might make you feel good."