WPCF 2BVTZ #|x)?xxx,Xx6X@DQX@Wang LDP8 60024WANGLDP8.WRSx  @,h4 iyX@2@VR ZCourier New (TT)?xxx,Xx6X@DQX@Wang LDP8 60024WANGLDP8.WRSx  @,h4 iyX@#|x2DBOSTON GLOBE - 8/27/81 ONE PEACE SEEKER WHO HASN'T GIVEN UP What do you stand for? Sanity. What are you against? Insanity, Oppression, Slavery of Human Beings. For yourself? For everyone ... And what do you stand for? I don't know. Do you think you should know?  ?` <I don't know. 0  --Two strangers on Pennsylvania Avenue By Marguerite Del Giudice WASHINGTON - The man who asked "What do you stand for?" wasyoung with curly hair - a scriptwriter for business firms who hadbeen attracted by a sign in front of the White House that saidWANTED: WISDOM AND HONESTY. It had an eye drawn inside the "o"in "wisdom." The man who answered calls himself Thomas - by hisown definition a penniless wanderer and pilgrim who has discardedthe trappings of society for the life of a transient holy man andseeker of peace. William Thomas is his given name, he says,noting that first names are irrelevant. Then he produces a front-page article from the AlbuquerqueJournal that identifies him as William Thomas Hollenbeck, a NewMexico man who was arrested in June of 1979 for entering Israelillegally after swimming across the Suez Canal and crossing morethan 90 miles of the Sinai desert. He was on a pilgrimage toJerusalem. He had no visa. "They thought at first that I was a spy," he says. It is difficult to miss Thomas, sitting cross-legged in frontof the White House, surrounded by pigeons. One-persondemonstrations usually come and go in a matter of days, butThomas has hung on since June 2 and pledges to remain "until Ican think of something more constructive to do." Last week, an elderly woman with one crutch and a sandwichboard alleged that the Attorney General had burned down herhouse. Another time, a man lined up 12 signs in front of theWhite House to inform the public about electronic magnetic waveshe believes are being used by a Nazi unit within the governmentto brainwash American citizens. Thomas, on the other hand, is entirely coherent. He justlives in a world of the abstract, as a street-corner philosopher,engaging curious passersby in Socratic dialogue on freedom, truthand the meaning of life "The main point I'm trying to make," he says, "is that theearth is a unit, It's a whole thing, it is not compartmentalized. And what people do is divide this unit up with imaginary lines,and then they start wars over those imaginary lines. This is notproductive ... They fight wars over land they do not 'own.' Theonly thing you actually own is your own life..."h)0*0*0*1"Ԍ "I can clearly see that there are many different concepts ofreality, but a concept of reality doesn't change the actualreality ... There is a real plane and an imaginary plane, andwhen we live in the imaginary plane, it causes chaos" - and that,he says, is why the world is in the mess it is in: "festeringwith war, crime, cruelty, starvation, poverty, oppression andassorted petty personal problems." Thomas says there's only one reason he bothers to talk toother people: to provoke them into thinking about the existenceof God, "because if they believe there is no justice beyond whatwe can see in one lifetime, then the rule of the earth willcontinue to be Might is Right - and it isn't." To him, God isreason. He said the purpose of his life "is to acquire wisdom andattain moral perfection." To that end, he embarked on an odyssey six years ago, leavingbehind a wife and a New Mexico jewelry business, to experiencelife and find out what is true and what is not. At the time, he was studying the Bible, and he found himselfpreoccupied with the notion that money is the root of all evil. "I had a house, three cars, bank accounts, Insurance policies andI thought: I have all these things, these 'rewards,' and yet theBible tells me I am not living the right way ... And I thought,if that was true - if money led to evil, and if you need money tolive - then the syllogism followed that evil is necessary, whichwas not palatable to me." So he set out to see if he could live without money or jobs,in order to prove that evil was unnecessary. "To tell the truth,"he says, I had some anxieties. I was leaving my wife behind, Isaid, 'Is this rational? Are you sane?' But I had to test thisout. And I knew that if I found it to be true, then the worldwas living a radically irrational existence." Thomas' journey took him to New York where he worked for aweek as a carpenter to make enough money for a one-way ticket toCasablanca. From there he traveled on foot to Cairo. He had nomoney. "There were days I went without food," he says, " and in sixmonths I did sleep outside for about six weeks. But otherwisefood and shelter somehow were just provided. I never askedanybody for anything. I had a blanket over my shoulder and theclothes I was wearing: That was all. People would just come upto me and say. 'Where are you going? That's a long way. Where areyou sleeping? Come with me.' They asked me, they frequently askedme, what I needed, I never asked." He returned to the United States for a time, working as adispatcher for a cab company an as a stone carver. Then heresumed his journey. Over several years, he said, he traveledback and forth across Europe.' He found himself last year inLondon, where he was jailed for several months after overstayinghis visa. Eventually, the authorities deported him to the UnitedStates. He arrived last October at Kennedy InternationalAirport, where he had to be forcibly removed from the plane. "Iwas dragged into the Customs office," he says, " where I was toldI was now in America and free to go where I pleased.""h)0*0*0*1"Ԍ The seed of that ordeal was a decision he had made in LondonMonths before: He no longer wished to be an American citizen. Inthe course of his wanderings, he had come to the conclusion thatthe United States was contributing to the destruction of theearth and exploiting its inhabitants. Therefore, for him toadvise others not to fight over land and exploit one another,while he was benefiting from an American passport, seemedhypocritical to him. Association with a country whose ideals heloved but whose practices he abhorred was inconsistent with hisgoal of attaining moral perfection. So he had taken the waterproof wallet containing his unioncards, his Social Security card, and his passport and had thrownit into a lake in Hyde Park, England. "I assumed," he says, "thatthere was nothing wrong with throwing away my passport because Iknew myself to be a free man ... Then I decided I would walk backto the Mideast, but when I got to Dover, I was arrested ... "I argued that I couldn't have a visa, because I didn't have apassport, and I didn't have a passport, for reasons I havealready explained. Additionally, visas are designed to controlpopulations, and since I was leaving the country, I was no threatto the population ... They had no right to tell me I had to be anAmerican. It is not for anyone else to decide who I am; It is forme to decide ..." Thomas has written down his thoughts and his experiences, anaccount that exceeds 300 pages. In March, he telephoned theSoviet embassy here, saying he had a manuscript dealing with theconflict between America's ideals and its practices and asking ifthe Soviet embassy was interested. He says he has no sympathyfor communism, but thought he'd try to communicate his ideas onpeace through another channel. When he arrived at the embassy,he met with Victor Doroshenko, the third secretary in theinformation department. According to Thomas, he and Doroshenko exchanged ideas, andDoroshenko asked if there was anything the embassy could do forThomas, who told Doroshenko he was interested in peace. "And thenI told him," Thomas recalled, "that I thought this mutual buildupof nuclear weapons had to do with a mutual fear between the twonations. And he said, yes, he thought that was true. And then Itold him that in order to prove that Americans had nothing tofear of the Russians, I wanted to surrender myself to the SovietUnion. he said, 'You don't have to do that,' and I said thatnevertheless, I would. He said, 'You cannot.' and I said, 'Iwill. I am not leaving.' So they had me removed by the police." Doroshenko confirmed that the meeting took place and confessedto having been puzzled by Thomas' calm refusal to abandon theidea of surrender. "I told him." said Doroshenko, "that he wouldhave to go to the chancery first if he wanted to go to the SovietUnion, but he wouldn't move, so what could I do?" The young scriptwriter with the curly hair who had stoppedhours before to ask Thomas what he stood for had been preceded byan old man with no hair who was carrying a lot of papers underhis arms. "What is this about?" he asked. The papers flappedunder his arms like wings. Thomas answered: Wisdom and peace."The old man's mouth fell open. Then he walked away, shaking his"h)0*0*0*1" head vigorously, and saying, "You never let up, do you?" Thomas thanked him.