Department: Is Darren Daulton Crazy?

Drunk. Pill popper. Wife beater. Doomsday prognosticator … It’s amazing the things people will say about him.

 

What happens next, for what feels like an interminable amount of time, is the world according to Dutch — not the extreme stuff, like the time he says he was teleported from one side of a building to another, or the day he saw himself running on the beach, but rather the more tangled precepts of his beliefs.

“We fear so much,” he says. “People attack out of fear and ego because they haven’t reached the higher stages of enlightenment. But they will. We all do. It’s like being a baby. We’re fed milk until we’re able to eat meat. You’re led that way. That’s how enlightenment works. It comes in stages. You have to replace fear with love. You have to realize you’re not in control.  

“People fear ascension, but Jesus ascended. Look at me; I went from baseball to metaphysics, so you’d have to say I’m pretty enlightened. But because I made that trip, and I don’t know why it happened to me, there are all these opinions. That will change. People will come to me.”

I’d been told that when Dutch is in this mode, specifics become real elusive.
When I ask about his process for writing the book, he tells me it was revealed to him.

Was there research? No. Revelations.

When I wonder if his return to baseball means less time for the supernatural, he says it’s easy to be in two places at once; it’s kind of like enhanced daydreaming.
When he mentions the power of the Holy Spirit, I tell him it makes me think of Catholicism.

“Catholicism?” he repeats, beaming that big-ass smile. “A stepping stone to enlightenment. But it’s not the real deal. It’s man-made.”

The Mayan calendar, specifically the date December 21, 2012, plays big in Daulton’s thinking. He believes that day will signify a spiritual awakening, a rising of collective consciousness. It’s been reported that he’s said the world will end on that date, an attribution often cited as proof of his craziness.

When I ask him about the rapidly approaching end of the world, his face tightens for the first and only time.

“I never said that,” he says. “Look up what I said.”

So I do, and on page 140 of If They Only Knew, I find this: “Some writers, based on their insecurities and egos, have incorrectly said, ‘I believe it will be the end of the world.’ It’s an interesting thought to ponder, but not true. I do not believe the Mayan calendar is the prediction of the end of the world.”