Welcome to The Mystical Underground

I received this interesting email today from Nancy Atkinson, a fellow blogger whom we  met six years ago when our families happened to be traveling in Oregon at the same time. It certainly addresses how synchronicity can speak to us through the body electric!

++

I have a new synchronicity for you:

A few months ago my daughter called and said she had a conference in Disney World and would we like to join her there to take our grandson around Disney and Universal Studios while she worked? We readily agreed as it had been on my bucket list to take him sometime after he turned eight. He is only seven and a half, but we felt that was close enough as his mother already had a room, airfare for herself, etc. In other words, it was a good time as part of the trip was already paid.

So I made a pact with myself to walk and swim at least five times a week for the next two months to be in good shape for all the walking we would be doing for three days. (I was coming from a good place – lots of beach walking and swimming three to four days a week.) Well, to make a long story short, I didn’t do a thing! We arrived back home at Lake Tahoe and after living at sea level for six months, I struggled to adjust to the altitude of 6500 feet. (A doctor later told me it takes two months.) So that accounted for at least several weeks of not wanting to work out, but then the weather changed and was warmer and the excuses began to fade. We then started a low-carb diet and that took a week or so to adjust, or so I told myself.

So bottom line – I didn’t do a darn thing to prepare for Disney for two months and the day was arriving fast.

My clothes were lying on the bed ready to go into the suitcase, all the necessary fast-passes arranged at Disney, and a host of very expensive tickets purchased. Two days before we were to leave my back began to spasm! And when I say spasm – it was unlike anything I have ever experienced! Off to the ER the day before we left – with me taking little old person steps into the building. Nothing to do – cold compresses, pain meds, don’t do anything that hurts, was his only recommendation. You mean like riding Splash Mountain? Sitting on a plane for 7 or so hours? Rushing to catch a close connection in Phoenix, a notoriously large airport?

Needless to say, the suitcase left without my clothes or me. My husband met our grandson in Orlando for three days of fun and sun. They walked 12 miles the first day, 10 miles the second day, and on the third they lost count. I would have slowed them down without the “training”, in all probability, but without it I would have been exhausted.

On the day my husband returned, my back was back to almost normal. A day after that it was perfect. This from being flat on my back in bed the whole time he was gone.

The Universe was letting me know if I wanted to be able to keep up and have fun at the ripe old age of 61 – I’d better quit with the excuses and exercise every day. As soon as I said I’d learned my lesson – no more excuses – my back was fine. I missed the trip, but I learned a valuable lesson. There are no coincidences, only subtle and not so subtle nudges.

I’m not sure when I met Ray Getzinger. But at some point in the years we’ve had our blog, he wrote and said he’d read everything I’d written since I published my first novel, In Shadow, in 1985.   That’s a lot of books and I’m grateful he has made his way through the reading list!

Over the years, we have become virtual friends and recently, Ray emailed me that his wife of many years, Millie, had recently suffered a stroke and was going into a rehab facility once she left the hospital. This was around the same time that I’d started Pam Grout’s book, E-Cubed, and had been doing some of the pay it forward experiments with $1 bills. I told Ray I would leave some bills scattered around town in the next few days that would be specifically for Millie’s rapid recuperation and full recovery.

My first bill for Millie was left on a restroom door in a pubic park. Rob was playing Frisbee Golf and Noah, our dog, and I, were accompanying him around the course. The second bill was left in a restroom in a local Mexican restaurant where Rob and I met some friends for dinner the other night.

After I left the first bill, Ray wrote:

Now I know Millie is going to get better. 

She was transferred to the rehab center closest to home. It is less than two miles away. I was called saying she was there before she even got to her room. She was still being wheeled to her bed.

We both have My Chart that gives lab and X-ray results 48 hours after the test. I have been checking since she was admitted. Up to two days ago everything kept getting better. I didn’t know she was leaving the hospital until I got a call late this afternoon.

I wrote Ray that a friend had sent me some Yankee candles and that I had lit one for Millie. The one that is burning is called crackling peach mango! Beautiful scent.

He replied: Interesting. Her favorite food is peach yogurt and she loves Yankee candles. Maybe that’s part of the way it works.

After I left the second bill in the Mexican restaurant, he wrote: Millie was awake more today than any day since being in the hospital. One of her favorite games is Sudoku. I got her a new book and she is working on the puzzles. One thing though, she was reading the “First” magazine I brought. She pulled the subscription card out and said she sure would like to read the magazine. I told her she was and she acted surprised. She will be carrying on a perfectly normal conversation and come up with something like that. She is making progress. Her speech doesn’t seem to be affected, only her thought patterns since the first couple of days. 

She has been out of breath when just going to the bathroom for years. She tried to get her doctor to order supplemental O2. Now at least she is getting the oxygen she needs. I hope there is now proof enough for insurance to pay for it when she comes home. 

On my end, a couple of great things have occurred:

I finally finished my revisions to my new novel and it went off to my agent

I got a lead for a new health app from the people we had dinner with at the Mexican restaurant and passed it on to my sister, a nurse in the elder care field who is looking to expand her venue. She is excited about the app and plans to present it to a friend who is also in the same field, and hopes it translates into a new job for her.

I received an email from a friend who gifted me a psychic reading with a woman in New Orleans who was remarkable in detecting patterns in my life. It was exactly what I needed at this point in time. I can’t prove that any of this is directly related to the dollar gifts for Millie, but it feels to me that it’s all interconnected.

An unexpected royalty check arrived.

This technique of Grout’s really is about paying it forward.

We recently abandoned our home offices during working hours to see Ex-Machina, a fascinating tale about artificial intelligence. The story is well written and the acting excellent. The fact that the three main actors are virtually unknown in the U.S. added to the reality, since we didn’t have to get past the idea that we were watching a famous actor or actress playing another role. That made it easier to drop the sense of disbelief and get into this compelling story of advanced artificial intelligence in the form of a very human-like robot that becomes more clever than its creator.

In Ex-Machina, we have a robot that apparently possesses a sense of self-awareness. However, according to Korean quantum physicist Daegene Song, that will never happen. According to an article published in techswarm.com, Song has shown that computers will never be able to duplicate human consciousness or be programmed to do so. The reason, he says, is that consciousness doesn’t exist in the brain.

By representing consciousness mathematically, Song’s quantum computer research shows that consciousness is not compatible with a machine. Among conscious activities, the unique characteristic of self-observation cannot exist in any type of machine,” Song explained. “Human thought has a mechanism that computers cannot compute or be programmed to do.”

An article in Unknown Country notes that the neuroscience community has been working for many years to replicate consciousness in a machine by increasing the number of pathways between memory chips, but now it appears that, no matter how large the machine brain, it will never be self aware. A general assumption among scientists is that consciousness is a side-effect of brain activity, but Dr. Song’s math suggests that this cannot be true. If he is correct, then a fundamental change not just in science is implied, but also in the way we view ourselves. It would appear that consciousness may be something that the brain accesses, but does not generate.

In a related study of consciousness, described  in phys.org, physicist Sir Roger Penrose and anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff tussle with the same issue in their study of consciousness.

“The origin of consciousness reflects our place in the universe, the nature of our existence. Did consciousness evolve from complex computations among brain neurons, as most scientists assert? Or has consciousness, in some sense, been here all along, as spiritual approaches maintain?” ask Hameroff and Penrose in the current review.

“This opens a potential Pandora’s Box, but our theory accommodates both these views, suggesting consciousness derives from quantum vibrations in microtubules, protein polymers inside brain neurons, which both govern neuronal and synaptic function, and connect brain processes to self-organizing processes in the fine scale, ‘proto-conscious’ quantum structure of reality.”

If these scientists are correct, we might not have to worry about self-aware robots taking over the world. But we’ll still potentially have to deal with programmed robots following the coded orders of their makers. Who knows what they might eventually be capable of doing.

Tree of souls

The crash of Germanwings Flight 9525 leaves many puzzling questions, but foremost among them is that if the copilot deliberately crashed the plane, why did he do it?

The other question I find myself asking is if, in a disaster like this, where people die so violently and could be heard screaming on the voice recorder, what happens on the other side in the immediate aftermath?

Is the trauma of that death – an air disaster – carried into the afterlife? Is it carried into another life as a theme, perhaps as a fear of flying or some other phobia? Is there an emergency team on the other side that deals with the souls of these 150 people? Are there certain souls on the other side who are “trained” to do this kind of work? What about disasters where thousands die, like the tsunami in Indonesia in 2004? A war? A disaster like 9-11?

I Googled the question: What happens to souls in the aftermath of a disaster? A lot of Biblical stuff and emergency preparedness stuff came up. But nothing that really shed any light on this question. So I asked our psychic friend, Millie Gemondo, if she thought there was an emergency team of first responders in the afterlife. “Great question,” she laughed. “I know there are souls who help after you have passed over, but a team? I have no idea. I do feel, though, that more and more people will be choosing to pass on in mass deaths, like in natural disasters, war, plane crashes.”

“Why?” I asked.

“I don’t know.” Millie said. “It’s just what I feel is happening and going to happen during this time.”

I asked author and past-life regressionist Carol Bowman the same question. In her regression work, she has found that certain themes carry over from life. Let’s say that in one past life, you strangled to death; in this life, you might be born with the chord wrapped around your neck. That’s a simple example. Carol’s response:

I’ll get back to you when I die.  In the meantime:

From what I understand, there are always guides/souls waiting on the other side to help. With a sudden and traumatic death like that, they were already out of their bodies before the plane hit, as far as I know.  You know those NDE stories of people in horrific car crashes who are standing beside the mangled car and their injured bodies wondering what happened?  They shot out of their bodies before the moment, or at the moment of impact.  They’re just confused by the suddenness of the death.  

There seem to be souls who specialize in these types of deaths, and, I imagine, in mass events like this one. 

That’s what I’ve put together from the NDEs and from the regression work.  

I also asked our friend Nancy McMoneagle, the director of The Monroe Institute, this same question. The institute explores the nature of consciousness, so I found her response particularly insightful:

I do believe once anyone crosses over for any reason, there are others to meet him/her.  A special non-physical team dealing with disasters?  Why not?!  We actually have a program at the Institute called “Lifeline,” which is very much about helping people out who have passed on who may not be aware of it, or who might be stuck.  

In fact, “The Unexplained” TV show did a story on the Lifeline program a few years ago.  My sister  was one of the trainers for it.  Her funniest comment was how she called this group “Club Dead.” (Club Med’s counterpart?!)  One of the participants talked about a guy who had died in Ohio, gave his last name, info on his family, etc., etc., and the film crew actually found these folks – and she had no  knowledge of him or his family whatsoever.

I’ve got a few other people to ask about this, but what ideas do you all have?

At the end of April, we posted a story called Revisiting the Straight Pins. It’s about spirit communication.

One of the comments came from Vicki De Laurentis, whose synchros we have used in several of our books. Her story, like that of the straight pins and Mike Perry’s numerous white feather stories, illustrates that spirits can use virtually anything to communicate with the living.

+++

When my mother -in-law passed away, my daughters remembered her Italian tradition of putting, I think, 13 or 16 pennies in the casket in order to “pay St. Peter”.
We were at a hotel and only found about 5 pennies.

Well, for the next two days of preparations my daughters kept finding pennies everywhere! I even added “pennies from heaven” to my Eulogy. It helped all of us as we felt she was with us the entire time making sure we had her pennies! Even now and then we will find a random penny in very unlikely places.

Later that same day, Vicki returned to the blog and left a second comment:

Funny thing, since I wrote that I’ve been finding pennies! I guess she liked my sharing that story!

Simone from Rio de Janeiro read the Portuguese edition of The 7 Secrets of Synchronicity and began compiling her own synchronicities. Here are three that she sent to us. The first one is about that mysterious repetitions of the number 23, which we’ve written about here.

+++

Here’s our theme song. Fantastic imaginative video accompaniment. Enjoy!

People who write novels or short stories, people who create art in any medium, rely on their imaginations, the source of creativity. Imagination unfolds within us from a realm outside of the everyday world of cause and effect. It’s in sync with right-brain thinking, the home of intuition, hunches, psychic abilities, synchronicity. As a result, imagination is not easily quantified.

Would it be a good idea to try to measure imagination? Would we better understand how imagination works if we could somehow scrutinize it with scientific tools?

That is exactly what the Imagination Institute, based in Pennsylvania is attempting to do. Thanks to a generous donation from the John Templeton Foundation, the institute this Friday, May 15, will hand out up to 15 two-year grants for $150,000 to $200,000 each to researchers who have generated proposals to create an ‘imagination quotient,’ an attempt to ‘objectively measure imagination.’ In fact, the institute calls its initiative, Advancing the Science of Imagination: Toward an ‘Imagination Quotient.’

Hmm, that phrase sounds like an oxymoron to me. But before I say anything further, here’s more about the objective of the project.

In their own words, the institute has “targeted psychologists, neuroscientists, and educators who conduct research on theory of mind, mental imagery, mental simulation, perspective taking, prospective thought, daydreaming, mind wandering, counter-factual thinking, creativity, memory, curiosity, child development, aging, social cognition, and related fields, to support projects that seek to test and validate a proposed measure and develop an intervention for imagination/perspective. This initiative encourages such researchers to collaborate with individuals in corporate, military, school, health, university, governmental, and artistic settings to demonstrate that the proposed measure and interventions work in such a setting.”

My immediate impression is that I don’t think this scientific endeavor is going to work. When mainstream science applies its rules and measurements to something as elusive as imagination, I suspect the results will be embarrassingly tedious papers lacking imagination as the researchers attempt to apply left brain thinking to right-brain processes in a futile attempt to harness the unruly and hard to believe aspects of imagination.

Well, maybe that’s my imagination going wild! What the researchers might call ‘counter-factual thinking.’ That term suggests that imagination might lead us into believing stuff that’s not true—at least not acceptable to the mainstream scientific community—stuff like the paranormal and alien abductions.

I will be surprised if these researchers say anything positive—if even anything at all— about the role of the sixth sense. Mainstream researchers rely on the analytical mind, on logic and rational thinking, attributes that don’t coincide with intuitive processes.  After all, mainstream neurologists and psychologist avidly reject the idea of meaningful coincidence and label such events as random and meaningless. They dismiss psychic abilities as unproven.

Maybe I’m being too harsh in pre-judging this project, especially since I haven’t seen the proposals that will win the grants. However, for me, a dead giveaway about the intended direction can be found here in the institute’s graphic design at the top of their page. Imagination is seen as turning cogwheels, implying that imagination is like a machine, that the universe is a great machine. The old paradigm. Hello, machines do not have imaginations.

Anyhow, best of luck to the winners of the grants. They will have two years to  diddle with imagination to their heart’s content.  My guess is that they prove, to the project’s chagrin, that you can’t harness imagination and turn it into a machine.  – Rob

I recently received an email from Elizabeth, who had bought one of my very early astrology books, Cosmic Kids, years ago. She had a question about something in the book that was missing. She also sent along a synchro that struck me as a warning. Here’s her email:

+++

Reading your book AGAIN with the birth of my newest grand baby led me to search for you.  I read some of the pieces on your sites and listened to the audio recording of a recent radio talk.

I have been a believer in coincidences being not coincidences and happening “for a reason” for many years, but I was not familiar with the term synchronicity.  Just since connecting with you through your site, I have been experiencing – or more accurately – aware of a number of synchronicity events.

The clearest one happened on Monday. I was babysitting my newest grandbaby and before my daughter left us, she asked me –what was on the baby’s head.  I saw absolutely nothing, but she insisted there was something there.

About a half hour after she left us, the baby hit her head on the door which resulted in a red bump exactly where my daughter had seen something.  Yesterday, a man jumped out in front of my car and crossed in front of me and I came very close to hitting him. Since then, I have had probably 5 or 6 more close calls as I have been driving.

Not exactly sure why I am becoming sensitive to these messages at this time. But I am paying attention!

++

She hasn’t elaborated on the other close calls, but it sounds as if she’s in the midst of a cluster of synchros that are are warning her to be cautious when she drives.

Synchronicity, telepathy, or precognition?

Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between the three. Recently, I had two experiences that brought home that question.

The first one was simply a thought that came to mind. I suddenly remembered that a reporter for the Tallahassee Democrat was supposed to call me or e-mail me about an interview. I’d forgotten about it, but there was a deadline involved. The article was supposed to appear before a writer’s conference opened in Tallahassee in a few days. Since I was giving the keynote address, the reporter had decided to interview me for his article about the conference.

As I walked back to my office and mentioned it to Trish, she replied that he’d just now sent me an e-mail. So my immediate thought was that it was telepathy. I’d picked up on his e-mail. But he hadn’t sent it yet, so maybe it was precognition. Then again, maybe it was neither. After all, I hadn’t predicted that he would write me at that moment or knew he was writing me. It was simply something that I’d remembered was supposed to happen. So maybe it was just synchronicity. Or, all of the above.

Here’s another example that occurred the next day. It was the same type of situation. I was remembering something from the past when, bingo, I got an update. I’m an avid disc golf player, I play in a league once a week. When I take Noah, my Golden Retriever, to the dog park, I often bring a couple discs and practice a few throws, making sure I don’t clobber any people or dogs with my tosses. As I retrieved my discs, I thought about a particular type of disc that I wanted to replace one that I’d lost in a lake a few months earlier. I’d really liked that disc and had put my name and cell phone number on it.

Not two minutes later, I received a text message from a guy who’d just found it several feet from shore. I was amazed, but didn’t tell him that I was just thinking about that long lost piece of plastic. He didn’t give me his name, but said he might show up at the league game the next day. In fact, he did and handed me the disc. It turned out we have same first name, Rob. A common name, but still it fit with the synchro. Like attracts like. But, again, was it telepathy when I thought about that long lost disc, precognition? Maybe it doesn’t matter.