Hi Ryan You wrote, "...curious about is your relationship with Bateson prior to and during the times that you described. Did you have any professional contact with him or exhange of ideas before you and Richard began colloborating? Had Richard Bandler taken a class with him or had contact with him in anyway? Was his writing or work an impetus for your initial efforts?" I had for some years prior to meeting Bandler had a tremendous fascination for Gregory's work - in particular, his essays collected in Steps to an Ecology of Mind. I and a friend had, for example, read most of the articles in this collection to one another outloud and carried on extended discussions of his ideas and form of expression. You may imagine how delighted I was when Gregory was hired by the same college at UCSC where I was a professor. I had had no professional interactive contact with him until the point (a year after I hooked up with Bandler) when he showed up at Kresge (the college at UCSC). I sat in on his course and thoroughly enjoyed it. Then by a stroke of exceptional luck, Gregory, Lois (his wife) and Nora (their daughter) moved into one of the six houses on the 16+ acres of land at 1000 Alba road in Ben Lomand (a small mountain community in the Santa Cruz mountains) where both Bandler and I had our own residences at the time. We had casual although startling exchanges as neighbors and the families (mine and Bateson's) were nicely connected - my daughter Kathleen and Gregory's daughter Nora built a passable corral for their ponies on the land and enjoyed learning to ride together (including riding their ponies through the Bateson residence (until they were discovered and forcefully dissuaded by Lois) from this particular practice). The first real professional connection between Gregory and Bandler and me was the description offered in Whispering. There were a number of them subsequently. As far as I know, Bandler did not take any classes from Gregory although like myself, he may have sat in on some of Gregory's lectures. I can only say that my impression (not explicated) is that I learned enormously important styles of thinking and teaching from this man - who I personally consider the Beethoven of thought for the 20th century. All the best, John