Welcome to The Mystical Underground

Months ago, I did one of my Barnes & Noble explorations, where I stroll through the aisles, searching for new books that looked interesting. Usually, I make note of the title and then check the price of the print book against that of an e-book. The latter usually wins. But not this time. I noticed a book called The Martian. Good cover. I picked it up, read the back copy, and even though I’d never heard of the author – Andy Weir – bought the book.

I loved it. I tuned it over to Rob when I finished it and he loved it. I passed it on to our daughter and she felt the same. By then, I knew it was going to be a movie, with Matt Damon as the Martian, and passed it on to others who enjoy good stories.   Today, Rob and I wet to see the movie version.

From IMDB: During a manned mission to Mars, Astronaut Mark Watney is presumed dead after a fierce storm and left behind by his crew. But Watney has survived and finds himself stranded and alone on the hostile planet. With only meager supplies, he must draw upon his ingenuity, wit and spirit to subsist and find a way to signal to Earth that he is alive.

 What this synopsis doesn’t tell you is that Watney is a biologist with a sense of humor who manages to grow potatoes on Mars that are supposed to keep him fed until he can be rescued by the very crew that deserted him because they thought he was dead. This synopsis doesn’t tell you about the human face of NASA, the engineers and math whizzes, the satellite communicators and computer nerds whose lives go on hold so they can bring this guy home.

Damon is spectacular in this movie. He emotes the loneliness, deprivation, and isolation of his situation without self-pity. He solves problems – the food, the oxygen, the water for the potatoes- and eventually, he even solves the communication problem and is able to chat with NASA, the astronauts who abandoned him. When an explosion decimates his potato crop, when he slams up against challenges that would send most of us to suicide, he shrieks, sobs, and we feel what he feels.

Oscar is written all over this movie. Gravity and Interstellar come to mind, but they can’t compete with The Martian. We’re rooting for this guy from the get go. Even though he’s an astronaut- the best, the brightest – he is also you and me. Matt Damon, last seen as a gasping secondary character in Interstellar, rocks as The Martian.

 May Oscar recognize you, Matt, as the actor who brought Andy Weir’s character to life.

Take a close look at this photo for a strange number synchronicity. If you think seeing repeated 11:11’s is a good sign, then what about 13:13? Maybe not so much. What we have here is pre-Halloween spooky.

At the top of the photo, you can see that the score of the Cleveland Browns – San Diego Chargers game on Sunday, Oct. 4 was 13-13. It was 3rd & 13 (3rd down, 13 yard to go.) It was the third quarter with 13:13 left to play. And at the instant the image was captured, there was 3 seconds left on the clock.

Maybe you say you saw all of that, but there are two more elements that are also present that are not so easy to pick out. Look to the upper right corner of the picture where the Cleveland Browns quarterback is standing on the sidelines. His jersey number is yes, 13. Here’s the final one that was missed by whoever put this up on the Huffington Post’s Sports Page. The date of the game was 10/04/2015. Add those numbers together and you get… ta da…13!

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If you’re interested in more spooky stuff, my book BUMP IN THE NIGHT: Ghosts, Spirits & Alien Encounters is now out in a trade paperback edition. You can find it here.

Our friend Dale Dassel from Georgia was browsing for information about a polar explorer and was led to a website of notable events in history,  organized by dates. So, out of curiosity, he decided to see what happened in history on his birthday, Jan. 19.

He figured there would be something about Edgar Allan Poe, who shared his birthday. But instead he was led to an article about German airships, which is one of his long-standing subjects of interest. Then he noticed the counter at the bottom corner and saw that he was visitor 1979…which just happened to be the year of his birth.

I’ve put up this story, mainly because Dale called it a ‘random coincidence,’ not a synchronicity, because he didn’t find it particularly meaningful. That led me to thinking about the question: When is a coincidence just that and when is it a synchronicity? I thought Dale’s story was a synchronicity…or rather I thought that he had accepted it as one. But when I questioned him, I found out he didn’t.

A day after Dale sent me the story I stumbled upon blog post in which someone was writing about that very subject. Hmm, so was that a coincidence or a synchronicity? I want to quote the post that appeared in a ‘community blog’  somewhat ominously called the Skeptiko-forum. I figured it was a place where hard-core skeptics would be ranting about the imbeciles who believe in the paranormal. But that wasn’t the case, at least in the small list of posts that I looked at. The post that caught my attention was called ‘Coincidence Bias,’ by Hurmanetar.

Here’s what he says, in brief.

“How do we know if something is a random coincidence or a meaningful synchronicity? There is really no scientific way to tell the difference. Sure, we can attempt to calculate the odds in attempt to discern between the two, but unless the phenomenon is repeatable and testable, there’s no way to examine it with science leaving it up to the individual to assign meaning to the coincidence or synchronicity based on a WAG (wild ass guess) of the probability and the individual’s own Confirmation Bias or Coincidence Bias. The justification for Coincidence Bias is that with a staggering amount of improbable possibilities it is highly probable that something improbable will happen in an apparently meaningful way.

“I’m creating the new term (at least I think it is new) “Coincidence Bias” because I think it is a real bias that hasn’t been identified. In the pervasive modern rationalistic materialist paradigm, it is assumed that the events of the universe are either causal or random so that when a seemingly meaningful coincidence occurs that has no apparent cause, there is a bias to assume it is completely random and meaningless. The converse of Coincidence Bias is Confirmation Bias in which we assign post-hoc meaning or justification to a random or non-causal event. Confirmation Bias is a bit more natural to us with our origins and pattern recognizing brains, so in scientism it is relegated to the same dustbin inhabited by old wives’ tales and religions.

“If we give up the rationalistic materialistic notion that the universe is fundamentally meaningless, and instead adopt the notion that the universe is fundamentally an interesting story developed for the sake of experiencing interestingness, then it becomes apparent that coincidence bias is a real bias.”

I like what Hurmanetar had to say. He’s pointing out that to assume any coincidence is inevitably meaninglessness is a bias every bit as much as is the belief in synchronicity. Yet, all that said, to me the answer to the original question – when is a coincidence a synchronicity – is actually quite simple. Whoever has the experience is the arbitrator of what’s meaningful and what’s not. I can’t decide that Dale’s coincidence (or anyone’s) is a synchro or not one. It’s subjective…and if ‘subjective’ means bias, well, so be it.

Rob and I recently sold a book called Sensing the Future: A Field Guide to Precognition. One of the chapters is about creativity and precognition and in researching the lives and precogs of musicians, I found that many of them had foreknowledge of their own deaths. Jimi Hendrix was among them.

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Incredibly, Hendrix’s professional career spanned only four years. But in those four years, following his appearance at the Monterrey Pop Festival in 1967, his prowess as a musician exploded across the music scene of the late 1960s.

His third album, Electric Ladyland, reached the top of the charts in the U.S. in 1968 and in 1969, he was the headline act at Woodstock. At the peak of his career, he was the highest paid entertainer in the world. The Music Hall of Fame described him as “arguably the best instrumentalist in the history of rock music” and Rolling Stone ranked him as the greatest guitarist of all time.

Whew. All this in just four years? But if you were fortunate enough to see him perform live, if you have watched him on You Tube, listened to his music and lyrics, you can’t deny the astounding power and energy of his talent.

                      There must be some way out of here,

                        said the joker to the thief,

                        there’s too much confusion

                        I can’t get no relief…

 These lyrics from All Along the Watchtower, a song written by Bob Dylan, were owned by Hendrix when he sang it. The words seemed to rise from Hendrix’s soul and may tell us a great deal about why he became a member of The 27 Club. Hendrix, like Janis Joplin, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison and Kurt Cobain and numerous others, died at the age of 27. And he apparently had a precognitive sense about his own death five years before it occurred.

On September 18, 1965, two years before he released his mind-blowing debut album Are You Experienced, Hendrix recorded a song with Curtis Knight called The Ballad of Jimi that predicted his death. It never appeared on an album, but the song was dedicated to “the memory of Jimi,” and some of the lines clearly show that Hendrix had sensed his personal future.

           Many things he would try

           For he knew soon he’d die

             Now Jimi’s gone, he’s not alone

            His memory still lives on

            Five years, this he said

           He’s not gone, he’s just dead.

 There are plenty of speculations and conspiracy theories about Hendrix’s death in London.  But according to the autopsy, he died shortly after midnight on September 18, 1970, from an overdose of barbiturates and by asphyxiating on his own vomit. In other words, he died five years to the day since he predicted in his own death in the recording of The  Ballad of Jimi.

In 2013, Penguin/NAL, the long-time publisher of the Sydney Omarr series of astrology books, decided that 2014 would be the last year they would publish the books. Rob and I had been writing them since 2003. The series consisted of a book for each sign with daily predictions, and an annual roundup that included general trends for all twelve signs. In other words, thirteen books a year.

Typically, NAL/Penguin published the forthcoming year six months early, in June, and included 18 months of predictions – from June to December of the present year and 12 months for the next year. In November of 2014, we started receiving e-mail from long-time readers, asking where the 2015 books were. Our blog kept getting hits from various bookstores and individuals around the country with the search words: Sydney Omarr 2015.

By early 2015, we had received hundreds of e-mails and decided to publish the 2016 books as Genie in the Stars through Crossroad Press. The e-books and print books  for the 12 signs are now available. We followed the same format we used in the Omarr books, with daily predictions based on lunar transits and Omarr’s unique numerical system. Eclipses, retrogrades, and angles the transiting planets make to your sun sign are also included in the predictions.  This link leads you to the page in our blog’s masthead where all the books are linked to Amazon and this link takes you to directly to Crossroad’s store.

The Crossroad Press team – illustrator David Dodd, publisher David Wilson, and Aaron Rosenberg – have done a fantastic job! Thanks to all of you!

We’re in the process of contacting everyone who e-mailed us and our apology if you haven’t yet heard from us directly. We hope 2016 will be a wonderful year for all of you!

I’ve seen the Charlie Chaplin ‘cell phone’ video, but don’t recall seeing her amazingly large shoes. I’ve never seen the others. Some interesting stuff and I like how the moderator takes an objective view rather than making paranormal claims or taking a dismissive stance. Well done.

This synchro story from Merlyn (aka Sam) and follows an earlier post on his ideas about synchronicity.

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“I have been married for over a decade with the most wonderful woman I have ever met who is from Colombia.  Her name is Cristina.  I met her in Curacao in 2002 and eight days later we were engaged.  We had lived in the Caribbean and Central America over the next 10 years.  Due to issues related to one of my sons from a previous marriage, I moved back to Texas to help him out.

“Unfortunately, it is far harder to bring your wife to the US if you married out of the country (as we did), so we have been working on the immigration process for two years now.  The following story is based on our having to be apart (thank goodness for Skype) other than a few brief visits I made to Medellin (her home)… and how much we miss being together as a normal couple in love would be.

“On Friday, October 10, 2014… inspired by my love for Cristina, I created the above collage and placed it on the small wall portion between the two windows behind where I sit at my computer and which can be seen by anyone who is looking through my webcam.

“The flower is a flower that my wife, Cristina, made and had placed on a gift she gave me (also of something she made).

“The three images are photocopies of three Crop Circle Cards. The Crop Circle Cards are an oracle deck similar to Tarot but inspired by crop circles.  The deck has 64 cards.  The bottom left was Cristina’s first card, card number 3 – Love. The bottom right was my first card which was card number 60 – Starseed Spiral. The card above (center) is card number 6 – Union / Marriage. Below is our wedding picture from back in 2002.

“In the evening of this same day I experienced the following.

“I was watching the movie, Transcendence. Early on in the film Will Castor (Johnny Depp) says to his wife, Evelyn – “Think about the garden. Think about our sanctuary.”

“I recalled thinking how special this was to them… it was their sacred place, just for the two of them.  Clearly a love story was emerging.

“About 1 1/2 hours later it’s the end of the movie and Will and Evelyn had just perished. Their good friend is in the very garden and was looking at two sun flowers. I am blind in my left eye and so when I am with Cristina, I always stand on her left. She is four inches taller than I.  So as I looked at this scene during which their friend was stating some final words in their remembrance, I imagined the two sun flowers were not just Evelyn and Will… I imagined that they might as well be Cristina and I.

“At this precise moment… and I mean literally within a few seconds of this scene and my thoughts… my Skype lit up. It was Cristina. She was looking beautiful and beaming and immediately said… “Would you like to see the new painting I did at art class today?” I said, “Of Course!”

“You can’t make this stuff up…I was blown away. After I recovered a bit I asked her to hold it up again so that I could grab the screenshot.”

Usually when we post synchro stories from others, we get right to the heart of the story. But in this case, we’d like to let Sam introduce himself and his thoughts on synchronicity. Then we’ll follow up with his astonishing synchronicity about love. But first, here is Sam.

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“I have had profound experiences with the phenomena, synchronicity, that date back 30 years. At one point I began to document these experiences. I am hoping to share many of these experiences and discuss the possibilities behind the phenomena.

“Once I began to study any material I could find regarding the phenomena, I noticed that many folks who have some experience with synchronicity seem to experience what a collective might experience or at least they seem to interpret much of their experiences in relation to the collective. My experiences with the phenomena are primarily quite personal. In fact, some are so personal and involve matters that are extremely difficult to speak about beyond a few folks who I have grown close to (and have trust with).

“I have never met anyone yet who has expressed anywhere near the level of experiences with synchronicity that are of a vastly personal nature as I have documented (and have accumulated the artifacts that support the synchronicity) where I am also prepared to share these publicly. This does not mean there are not folks who have had and continue to have incredible experiences with synchronicities of a personal nature… I am only stating I have yet to discover another who has their synchronicities documented, provide any possible artifacts and in cases where others are involved, have others willing to make statements about what they observed.

“Essentially, what I am saying is that when I realized that my synchronicities were so incredibly impossible to simply be random, that I had developed “abilities” where I was (and am) able to increase the “synchronicity fertility rate and profundity level” environment such that it became impossible to continue to try and convince myself these events were entirely random and that I had simply begun to notice them more. I know this is a big statement. I also know there are and will be folks who, no matter what someone like me shares with them, they will stay rigid in their views that there is nothing to the phenomena and for me, this is fine, as I am not here to convince anyone that the phenomena is real.

“So then why am I here and why am I posting about it? Simple. This phenomena played a key role in how my own life changed for the better. I make this statement from the point of view of others in my life. I changed in a way that others in my life experienced a far more pleasant and positive human being. This, of course, also made their own lives (and attitudes) better and thus one can see that the ripple effect can only impact the rest of the world in a better way. Knowing that even if only one human being who has had some experiences with synchronicity yet is still struggling with “is it real or not” reads anything I may write and by so doing, opens their mind further and increases their enthusiasm, then perhaps they will increase their experiences with the phenomena and start to open to the deeper conclusion I have opened to (and which I have experienced enough now to say I am convinced of)… and that is – all is connected.

“I don’t need a theory such as (as a hypothetical example) – mathematically proven quantum entanglement… through my experiences, I know. I don’t need to convince those who prefer to remain skeptics as, in my opinion, they have that right to remain closed minded. I don’t need to prove it either. As in my opinion (today) it is un-provable along the lines of the way what they call ‘science” and the “scientific formula” requires. It seems (if I recall correctly) that science can only disprove a theory anyways… but I digress.

“Why did my conclusion through personal experience that all is connected change me for the better? Simple. Because I am able to see that from one point of view we are all effected by all. This is why some of the mystery traditions conclude we are all one. I see things more like Tim Freke. I see both – we are one and we are many. He calls this paralogical thinking.

“If we consider the possibility of continuance of individuation beyond the death of the physical body, we might even see the possibility of what I would call trilogical existence (and this suggests the soul).”

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It’s obvious that Sam has thought a lot about the meaning of synchronicity. His nicely documented synchro comes up next.

Like gifts, synchronicities come in all shapes and sizes. They aren’t all earth-shattering and life changing, but even the small ones, I think,  signal that we’re in the flow. This synchro comes from our friend, Melissa, who used to babysit Megan when she was a kid. We’ve used her stories before. She and her husband, Jon, now live in Manhattan and Melissa periodically sends us some cool synchro stories.

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This morning, I sat down with a nice cup of tea and the cat on my lap and decided to play on my iPad. Then, I remembered Jon and I have a wedding anniversary coming up in September – I almost forgot!

So, I Googled what the traditional gift is for the 7th wedding anniversary. Turns out, it’s copper. Thinking only of pennies, which I know aren’t made of just copper anymore, I was at a loss. Then I searched for gift ideas for this particular anniversary to see if I could get inspired. I like to be creative or get something unusual. One of the search results was for etsy – “popular 7th anniversary gifts on etsy” or something like that. I clicked it, thinking I might find something fun.

One of the first things that caught my eye was this – a necklace with a penny charm. (In above photo) The description is “Anniversary Date Hand Stamped Penny Necklace – Personalized”. The picture floored me, it was a penny sure enough, but the inscription? “Sept. 13” with a heart around the penny’s year – 2008.

Jon and I were married on 13 September 2008!

I think I found my gift – if they have any 2008 pennies on hand or I can find one. Though I don’t think he’ll wear a necklace!

In November 1963, Walt Disney flew over Orlando, Florida, looking for a possible site for a second Disneyland, and apparently liked what he saw. It’s hard to imagine what he saw because back then, the same year my parents moved to Florida from Venezuela; central Florida was pretty much a swamp and cow pastures.

Using a number of dummy corporations, Disney bought more than 27,000 acres, an area about the size of San Francisco. Under a cloak of secrecy that would rival anything in Harry Potter, he paid about 5 million for land. A paltry sum, considering what Disney is worth today.

The Disney deal opened up central Florida, which until then had been mostly pastures, swamp, and unbearable heat. As of 2010, Orlando is the 26^th largest metropolitan area in the U.S. and the third largest in Florida – after Miami and Jacksonville. And, oh yes, it’s known as the “theme park capital of the world.” In 2014, Disney drew more than 62 million visitors. Its airport is the 13^th busiest in the U.S. and the 29^th busiest in the world. I cite these statistics because I think they explain why the city itself is such a fascinating slice of American life.

Thanks to the Disney stuff, talent pours into this city. Wanna be actors and actresses, designers, animal trainers, engineers, artists and directors and everything in between. As a result, Orlando has its share of colorful characters who have become part of the city’s urban legends. We had the pleasure of meeting one of these characters the night of our daughter’s birthday.

After a great Mexican dinner, we walked downtown to a bar called Casey’s and grabbed a couple of sidewalk tables. Within 10 or 15 minutes, an eccentric-looking dude with a deck of cards stopped on the sidewalk in front of us. He was Richard the Adequate, a magician. “Pick a card, any card,” he said.

“I know you!” Megan exclaimed. “You’re awesome!

“Pick a card, any card,” he repeated, so Rob did.

“Look at your card,”

Rob looked and turned it cupped in his hand so the rest of us could see it. The three of diamonds.

Richard said, “Three of diamonds.”

He performed several more card tricks, one of them involving the tattoos on his arms, and then brought out a single tiny Styrofoam ball and handed it to Megan. At the end of the trick, when she opened her hand, there were two tiny, Styrofoam balls. Megan was floored. And at this point, so were all the rest of us.

Whenever I encounter a person as talented as this, I ask questions. I’m curious about the person’s history, what has led him to this moment in time. Richard said that in 2006, he was working at a magic store in Orlando that was closed and eventually razed to make room for a development. He lost his job, his home, everything, and ended up living under a bridge. But in one of the articles I read, he had worked at Disney, been let off in 2006, and his life tanked. Whatever the truth, the year of 2006 was pivotal for him.

“You’re psychic,” I said after watching one of his mind-blowing magic tricks.

He laughed. “I’m psychotic.”

“Yeah, sure. How’d you do that?”

“Can you keep a secret?” he asked.

“Sure.”

“So can I.”

At one point, a young man approached our group and just watched Richard’s tricks. Then Richard turned to him. “Pick a card, any card.”

The young man chose a card and showed it surreptitiously to the rest of us. The eight of clubs.

Richard said, “You picked the eight of clubs.”

The young man’s eyes widened. We all applauded.

According to an article in The Orlando Sentinel,  “He’s part magician, part comedian, part motivational speaker and all entertainer for downtown Orlando’s nightlife crowd, and he credits the experience of living under a bridge with getting him where he is today.”

His real name is Richard Waddington and he says he got into magic when he was just six years old and saw the movie Houdini with Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh. He came up with his performance name – Richard the Adequate – when he recalled something his grandmother had told him. “Always strive for greatness, but know your limitations and always be humble.”

“I’m not magnificent,” he says. “I’m not spectacular. I’m adequate.”

All of us who saw him that night disagree.

“I have no way of knowing at the beginning of that night what I’m going to make,” he says. “Life without challenges is boring, and I look forward to the challenge. At the beginning of the night, it’s a question mark. At the end of the night, it’s an exclamation point. Street magic got me off the streets. Now that’s poetic justice.”