Welcome to The Mystical Underground

For decades, psychology was considered a woo-woo science, wrapped in a history of mysticism. But by the mid-twentieth century, the study of the human mind and its functions had become respectable in the eyes of mainstream science. The paranormal was labeled ‘magical thinking’ and researchers often linked such beliefs with a pathological condition, such as psychosis.

To this day, mainstream psychologists tend to be dismissive of psychic abilities, though not always relating it to mental illness. So it’s refreshing to encounter a leading researcher in the field (of psychology, not parapsychology) who challenges the norm. Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer was one such outlier, a psychoanalyst and internationally acclaimed clinician-scholar who taught at the University of California at Berkeley until her death in 2005.

Rather than ignoring uncanny experiences as mere anomalies not worthy of consideration or study, she gathered example of the paranormal and tried to understand them. Her book, Extraordinary Knowing: Science, Skepticism, and the Inexplicable Powers of the Human Mind was published after her death at age 57. Even before the book was published, however, her view of consciousness—described as ‘coincidence theory’—was the subject of a lengthy article in the New York Times Magazine, which called it one of the ‘most exciting’ new ideas of 2003.

In the book, Mayer describes one particularly intriguing story that she said triggered her interest in what she called ‘extraordinary knowing.’ Here it is:

A rare antique harp that she owned was stolen following a Christmas concert at a theater where her 11-year-old daughter was playing. Mayer filed a police report, contacted instrument dealers around the country, the American Harp Society newsletters, even got a news story on CBS-TV. No luck.

A while later, a friend suggested that she take an unusual approach, contacting a dowser. At that time, Mayer thought dowser were people who tried to find underground water with forked sticks. But by then she was willing to try anything, and was informed that really good dowsers could find lost objects.

Upon the recommendation of her friend, Mayer called Harold McCoy, the president of the American Society of Dowsers, in Fayetteville, Arkansas, about 1,600 away. She asked if he could help locate the missing harp. That call changed her perspective on what was possible.

To her surprise, he said: “Give me a second. I’ll tell you if it’s still in Oakland.” After a pause, he continued: “Well, it’s still there. Send me a street map of Oakland and I’ll locate that harp for you.” She was skeptical, but over-nighted a city map to McCoy.

He called back two days later. “Well, I got that harp located. It’s in the second house on the right on D—— Street, just off L———- Avenue.”

Mayer had never heard of either street, but she drove there, wrote down the address, then phone the police and gave them the tip. They didn’t want to get involved because the lead came from a dowser. They refused to issue a search warrant and said they were closing the case. They told her the harp had probably been sold and was long gone.

But Mayer refused to give up. She posted flyers about a lost harp in a two-block area around the house and waited. Three days later, a man called to say he’d seen a flyer, and that his next-door neighbor had recently obtained a harp like the one that was missing and had shown it to him. He offered to get the harp and return it. Two weeks later, after a series of phone calls, the harp was delivered to Mayer in the rear parking lot of an all-night Safeway.

Extraordinary knowing, indeed.

Tropical Storm Erika is, I think, a trickster.

It came in on the heels of Tropical Storm Danny, which dissipated in the Caribbean last week. For the past several days, I’ve watched the National Hurricane Center – the government’s agency – and Accuweather, a private weather outfit – track the storm. The predictions have vacillated from the storm tracking away from Florida to coming right into Palm Beach County, where we live.

A tropical storm is not a hurricane. Although TS often have an eye, an area of circulation like a hurricane, they are less organized and the winds are below 74 m.p.h. But they do pack a lot of rain. Erika, for instance, dumped 12 inches of rain in 12 hours on the island of Dominica, resulting in flash floods, mudslides, and four fatalities.

In 2012, TS Isaac stalled over our area for hours and dumped so much rain that our neighborhood flooded to the point where our mailbox became an island. I was coming home from the gym during the torrential downpour, my car stalled out, and I eventually had to have the engine replaced. We couldn’t get out of our neighborhood for two days.

Today I started going through our hurricane supplies – which haven’t seen the light of day in 10 years, since Hurricane Wilma in 2005. I found useless flashlights, useless battery-operated lanterns, corroded batteries, portable fans that no longer worked. So I made my hurricane run. I stopped by our local Walgreens drug store first – no flashlights, a paltry selection of batteries. But their coolers were on sale, so I bought one.

I moved on to the grocery store, where vast palettes of bottled water took up the front of the store, where canned goods had been pretty much cleaned out, and flashlights were gone. I stocked up on food supplies I thought we might need – including pet food for two dogs and two cats. But tomorrow I’ll make another run for stuff I overlooked. At another drug store, I bought a ten-pound bag of ice. Meanwhile, Rob was at another place, filling several containers with gas for the generator that has sat in our garage since 2005 and for a propane tank so we can use the grill.

In many ways, the bare shelves and the lack of goods reminds me of what used to happen in Venezuela when I was a kid and a revolution was in the works. Schools closed, grocery store shelves laid bare, gas stations lined with cars waiting for a pump so tanks could be topped off.

After the hurricane season of 2005 – when we were hit three times and lost power for a total of about two weeks – all gas stations in South Florida were supposed to have backup generators. I discovered tonight, thanks to a map on a local website, that only a handful in our area have those generators. So, tomorrow, we top off our car gas tanks as well.

The most recent forecast for the storm is that if it survives passage through an unfavorable area in the Caribbean without being torn apart, it will hit our county as a cat 1 hurricane. I remember that in October 2005, when I heard the Wilma was just a cat 1, I didn’t worry too much about it.Big mistake.

At one point in its existence, Wilma had become a cat 5 hurricane, with winds of 185 m.p.h, and a barometric pressure of just 882 millibars. And that pressure is the telling factor. When it stalled out over our area, the skylights in our roof were vibrating so violently I was sure they were going to pop out. Rob and I took turns gripping the handle of our front door, which shook so violently we thought it would explode outward from the pressure, which wasn’t anywhere near 882 mb at that point. Fortunately, Wilma was moving fast.

The aftermath of a hurricane is usually worse than the hurricane itself, unless you’re dealing with a Katrina, which occurred a decade ago today, as I’m writing this. Katrina brought the city of New Orleans to its knees, 1,800 people died, and the government negligence exposed the Bush administration for the incompetent idiots they were. In the absence of electricity, the heat and humidity and the bugs are the worst of it. But this time, we have a generator that we can power up as soon as the storm has passed. It means we can plug in the fridge. It means we won’t lose frozen foods.  It means we can take turns standing in front of the fridge with the door open so we can cool off.

So if you leave comments that don’t appear on the blog, it means we don’t have electricity or Internet. It means we are going quietly crazy here in South Florida and are contemplating a move to the mountains!

Oh, Erika. You trickster. Surprise us! Get shredded to bits before you reach the south Atlantic waters where you could strengthen. Just move on out to sea. You aren’t welcome here.

In October 2014, our blogging friend Isabella Dove  lost her eleven-year-old daughter, Naaila, while they were living in West Africa. Since Naaila’s death, Isabella has had a string of synchronicities related to Naaila that appear to be spirit communication. She considers them to be deeply healing. We posted one of them on August 16.

This story and the link at the end of it to a much longer synchro, blew me away.

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June 2014. Upon purchasing an intercontinental flight for my young daughter to travel and visit her uncle and cousins in Europe, I realized it would be her first long-haul flight by herself. Though Naaila was a seasoned traveller all over the world, she always flew with me by her side. She would know all the routines for fellow passengers and for aircraft preparations because she studied all on-board documents fully on each flight. I guess she probably is the only passenger doing so as I hardly saw anyone even taking a glimpse to those technical flyers.

Having realized so, I was bound to choose a nice seat number for her and also requested the airline representative to put a note on file that it would be nice if it were a woman sitting next to her. I knew airlines can do that – if they really want to – even though they tell you right away that they can’t. It is indeed a regular practice on airlines in Pakistan and other strict Muslim countries where women traveling on their own cannot sit next to men. I chose window seat 27K.

July 2014, after conducting all pre-flight administration for a Non -Accompanied Child traveling on her own, we waited for a Brussels Airline representative to take her in. We kissed good bye in a special way, both of us knowing we were to experience a premiere. She walked away without looking at me, confident. But she sent me text messages from the waiting area and said she felt weird waiting there by herself. I wished I could have hugged her but told her to be patient.

August 2014. Upon her return a month later, I asked her how that flight went and how she experienced her first flight on her own, hoping all had gone well. She told me that her pre-assigned seat 27K was messy and occupied by a woman who had far too much hand-luggage. She also said, the woman “was a little fat too, and I didn’t want to sit there. I would have been shrunk by the window.”

The flight attendant told her to sit two rows behind, in seat 29K by herself. “I cried a bit and a woman looked at me told me it would be all right, don’t cry.” Then she ate, watched a movie, and slept.

Fast forward Monday 27 October 2014. I am going to be on that same flight, that very same aircraft and Brussels Airline and as I watch my daughter’s coffin being loaded on the plane’s cargo, my heart jolts and I sob. My traveling companion holds my hands and together in silence we watch the plane. I said, “Naaila had often asked me how the plane is configured in the cargo area. I guess now she’ll see for herself.”

An airline representative comes over to me and says she recognizes me and mentions the day that I bought that ticket – “You know, seat 27K. That pretty girl… I am so sorry for you!”

I thanked her and sat down in the waiting area, sorry they could not have upgraded my ticket to business class.  Upon boarding the plane, I checked my seat number and my heart jolted: it was 29K, the exact seat my daughter had sat on 14th July 2014 when taking her first international flight alone. I was awed at life’s surprise and the synchronicity in numbers and events. Had I been upgraded to business class this would have never occurred. But it was so terribly sad and I couldn’t hold my tears.

The wheel of life keeps turning.

Namaste everyone.

Here is the link to the longer story about the synchronicities involved in Naail’a memorial service at a Buddhist temple.

Here’s a strange synchronicity that began as a dream. It comes from a non-fiction book, Man & Time, by British novelist and playwright J.G. Priestley. The author was promoting his new book in 1963 on the BBC, when he asked viewers for accounts of their precognitive dreams. He was deluged with nearly a thousand letters.

Here’s a summary of one of them, which I found in ONE MIND, by Larry Dossey.

One woman wrote she had told three people with whom she was eating breakfast that she had just dreamed that as they were finishing breakfast a farmer arrived with 33 eggs in a bucket. Later, as she was standing halfway up the stairs, three more eggs were handed to her That was her dream.

Shortly after the actual breakfast, a farmer arrived and handed her a bucket, which he said contained three dozen egs. She transferred them to a basket and paid for them. Minutes later, her husband told her that he had counted the eggs and there were only 33 of them, not three dozen.

While the woman was counting them for herself, she was called from below by an someone who met her halfway up the stairs. The person explained that three eggs had been mistakenly removed from the bucket, and then handed her three eggs.

Priestly wrote: “Thirty-three and then three eggs in the dream; 33 and then three eggs in the real event. You can call it coincidence just as you can call it boojum or anything else….But if you stop clinging to coincidence and try explaining this trumpery affair, you might shatter one kind of world.”

As Dorsey noted: “The replacement for that shattered world is one in which linear time is no longer a tyrant, and causes do not always precede events.”

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As an addendum, I read a rambling psychological study of the people who answered Priestley’s request for examples of precognitive dreams. The writer, psychologist Katy Price, in her conclusion notes that she has never had a precognitive dream. Interestingly, Priestley in his book says this about psychologists:

“And it does not surprise me that experimental psychologists—some of them attempting to deal with the psyche as if it were a lump of sodium—do not have precognitive dreams: Their minds are made up against them.”

I’m not sure that is the case for this psychologist. It’s hard to tell what Price thinks about precognitive dreams, since she seems most interested in categorizing and quantifying the results of Priestley’s call for precognitive dreams. She did make one interesting observation when she said that Priestley is not a scientist so he has more freedom to pursue matters that extend beyond the acceptable margins of science.

Here’s an interesting UFO – or orb – video. If it’s fake, someone went to quite an extent to match the background voices with what the camera is showing. Pretty impressive, IMO.

Remember the movie Zorba the Greek with Anthony Quinn? Even if you don’t recall the particulars, you probably remember the dance on the beach. Well, here’s a flash mob doing that dance. It’s wonderful!

Last month we posted a peculiar story about a train and the attempt to avoid a psychically predicted crash by changing the train’s number. We found the story in Coincidence: A Matter of Chance or Synchronicity, by Brian Inglis, which was first published in 1990, then re-published in 2012.

In the aftermath, I posted the following quote from Inglis’ book on a synchronicity Facebook page: “Life is full of coincidences, some are minor, but often, like the one above (about the railroad engine), they are extraordinary. Whether they are random events or meaningful cosmic moments which have a purpose, we don’t know—it remains a mystery. But what is certain is, a lot of people have them, and they never cease to amaze us.” – Brian Inglis

A couple of minutes later, JY, a British woman, responded this way: “The biggest trauma of my life occurred when I left someone called Brian for someone named Inglis .. And I’m currently living with a Rob MacGregor as a result of that choice … I guess even that could be a synch.”

She went on to say her housemate’s name is Rob Roy…as is mine. Then she added: “My first date with Inglis was to see the film Rob Roy (MacGregor), who my housemate is supposedly descended from.

A serial synchro there. Now about the Wailing Wall.

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We recently came across another older synchronicity book, Small Miracles: Extraordinary Coincidences from Everyday Life, by Yitta Halberstam and Judith Leventhal, published in 1993.

The book, according to the introduction, is a collection of stories of extraordinary coincidences in the lives of ordinary people. Coincidences are small miracles that can awaken us “to the rich promise of a bounteous universe and the splendor lying dormant within your soul. Coincidences are everywhere and can happen any time. When your soul is ready, they will come. All that is required is that you open your heart.” (p.xiii)

The writers seem quite religious in orientation, at one point quoting Doris Lessing: “Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.” Nice one. That said, we would hope that the writers did not make up stories, because the one we’re about to relate is really, really extraordinary. Take a look…

“A young Jewish man, Joey Riklis, from Cleveland, Ohio, went to visit the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem after his father had died. His father had been a survivor of the Holocaust and was an ardent practitioner of his Jewish faith. Joey had rebelled against his father’s faith and the two of them had been alienated for some time.

“He was feeling guilt and remorse over his father’s death and blamed himself for it. Joey had traveled to India and done his share of guru in hopes of finding an alternative to his Hebrew religious heritage. But nothing truly satisfied or filled his spiritual longing. So he went to Israel to explore the heritage that he had formerly spurned.

“While there, he noticed people scribbling notes on small pieces of paper and inserting them into the crevices of the Wailing Wall. He asked a young man there what this was about and was told that they were petitionery prayers.

“People believed the stones were so holy that any requests placed inside of them would be especially blessed. So Joey decided to write his own petition, addressed to his father. He wrote, ‘Dear Father, I beg you to forgive me for the pain I caused you. I loved you very much and I will never forget you. And please know that nothing that you taught me was in vain. I will not betray your family’s deaths. I promise.’

“Joey searched for an empty crevice in the Wall to place his petition. There were notes crammed and overflowing all over the place. After an hour of trying to find an empty space he finally found a spot and inserted his small note into the crack. As he did so he accidentally dislodged another that had been resting there, and it fell to the ground.

“He bent down and picked it up and was going to put it back when he was overcome by a powerful impulse to open the note and read it, which he did. Here is what he read: My Dear Son Joey, If you should ever happen to come to Israel and somehow miraculously find this note, this is what I want you to know: I always loved you even when you hurt me, and I will never stop loving you. You are, and always will be, my beloved son. And Joey, please know that I forgive you for everything, and only hope that you in turn will forgive a foolish old man.” Signed, Adam Riklis, Cleveland, Ohio.”

Yeah, really astonishing. Joey, where are you? Please tell us that this really happened. I hope it did.

This story comes from our daughter, Megan.

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Megan has two part-time jobs – as an artist for Paint Nite and as a dog walker. Now she and a friend are starting up a business where they will find lost pets – with an emphasis on cats and dogs.

I’m not sure of all the details she and her partner have worked out, but I think it goes something like this: You’ve lost your pet. You contact Pet Finders, send them several photos of your animal buddy and they print up flyers and distribute them around the Orlando area. They post the photos on their Facebook page, through Twitter and other social media, and distribute to animal shelters, veterinarians, apartment buildings, in every restaurant and watering hole downtown, wherever necessary, and give you daily updates on the areas they have covered, any leads they’ve gotten.

In other words, they would do all the footwork. You, who have lost your pet,  probably work full-time, may have a family and a lot of obligations and don’t have the time you need to devote to the search. They would charge by the week or month for their service.

The logo they’re going to use is that of a terrier – probably this painting that she did of her former roommate’s dog, a terrier mix named Ollie. That’s Ollie to the right of the painting, probably wondering if he actually looks that colorful, with Megan behind him.

Oo the morning after she and her prospective new business partner met up to hash out some details, Megan headed out to walk some dogs. And there, in her front yard, was a lost terrier, who looked similar to this dog.

She picked up the little guy, looked at his tag, and realized the address was just down the street from her. So she walked over there with the terrier and the woman who answered the door was elated. She said her dog has been outside in the yard and had somehow gotten out.

“You guys aren’t going to believe the synchro I had this morning,” she said when she called.

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I think it’s a confirmation synchro – right business, good timing, ideal partner. After all, it wasn’t just a lost pet that turned up in her yard – but the type of dog they planned to use in their logo, and it had a happy ending!

She would really like a better name than what Rob and I gave her business – Pet Finders. She’s looking for pizazz, flash, alliteration, something that leaps off your tongue.

My question is this: will you also find lost animals like the one on this flyer in our local dog park?

This story about spirit communication came from Isabella Dove, whose daughter Naa’ila Gioia, passed away last year. Isabella was one of our early blogging friends. When we first met her, she and her daughter were living in Thailand, then moved to Laos. Naa’ila was the love of Isabella’s life. Isabella read a spirit communication story we posted on Facebook and after she read it, she emailed me.

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Hello Trish, this is the story.

Or one of the stories. There have been others but this one I feel has a huge meaning.

My daughter passed away on the 23^rd of October 2014. She was 11 years, 9 months and 9 days old. The day she died was the Diwali Festival, as they call it in India, the Festival of Lights. It’s a day when many people apparently wish they could pass away because the Festival of Lights represents the ultimate liberation from life’s burdens. It occurs every year around the end of October.

I was told that  in India some people who are on their way to other side, actually try to wait to pass away on that day. So when I was in India, people were telling me in how lucky she and I were that she passed on the day she did. She was freed from burden and went straight to the light and this has invaluable significance for my own karma.

We lived in Laos for 4 years so I organized a Theravada Buddhist ceremony at the main temple in Vientiane and decided to put her ashes in the wall of the temple, as per practice. So a plaque was needed.  The best way was for me was to keep it simple, creative and not too expensive. So I took the picture of her that I love with the writing on it (image above) went to a printing shop, and had it made on an acrylic support which would be covered with glass and sealed. Three more copies were made  as I wanted to keep one for me and I also sent one to my brother.

The post in Laos is reliable, yet you can never guarantee what happens. Anyhow, it cost me four times the price of the four acrylic 4 plaques to send them to Europe.  This was done around January 20, 2015. Since I couldn’t find any bubble protected envelope, I put the plaques in a simple envelope and thought I would be lucky if the package arrived at its destination in one piece.

I never really bothered to check but after about a month, my brother told me the package hadn’t arrived yet. Then, on March 10, 2015, he was writing me a happy birthday email and announced the package had arrived that very day, on my birthday. Like a present. 
So my lovely daughter’s presence was in both places at the same in Europe with my brother and with me in Thailand, wishing me a happy birthday!

I have other stories like this in my notebook. I also wrote a few posts on my blog. I am slowly getting my normal life back, but it will never really be normal again.

Lot of love,
Isabella

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We will be posting several more of Isabella’s synchros in the days to come. They are all stunning.