Welcome to The Mystical Underground

 Our daughter was home this weekend and, in one of those random moments in family life, asked if either of us has used reddit. Well, we’d heard of it, but no, we hadn’t used it. Reddit is a social news and entertainment website where registered users submit content in the form of either a link or a text post.

Megan felt it would be a great publicity venue, and suggested that Rob should go on reddit, introduce himself as the author of six original Indiana Jones novel and the novelization of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and that he was open to answering questions about the books.Here’s the link to the discussions/questions.

 Within less than 60 seconds, questions started going up. This leads me to believe that some readers live on reddit in the same way that some people live on Facebook. So while Megan and I listened to an interview with Esther Hicks on the Hay House site – 70 minutes that included an interview with Esther and with Abraham – Rob sat at his computer answering dozens of questions from Indy fans.

 These questions ranged from minutia about the characters in the Indy saga to questions about writing, plotting, characterization. Someone from Chile asked a question in Spanish, so he responded in Spanish and someone in a later comment translated the comment.  Someone else asked about Aliens in the Backyard, others asked about synchronicity. After an hour and a half, Rob said he was signing off for the night but would be open to answering more questions the next day.

 Megan, who had set up the account for Rob, kept reading more questions as the three of us were watching a movie, and I suspect he’ll spend another couple hours tomorrow answering the questions. What I learned from this is the power of an archetype – which Indiana Jones certainly is. It was surprising to hear questions from people who had read the Indy books in elementary school – and are now adults – and traced their love of reading back to those books. This kind of feedback for a writer is priceless.

 When a writer writes that first word or that first sentence, there is usually a hope somewhere in the back of his or her mind that the story which unfolds will attract readers. Inspire them to read more and more. One commenter said his mother used to read him the Indy books at night, before bedtime. Another commenter said that when he was in fifth grade, he did a book report on Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and read a portion of the book in front of the class that included the word shit. He remarked that it was pretty cool to be standing there and saying that word and the teacher couldn’t do anything because it was in the book.

 When Megan read this comment aloud, Rob laughed. “Yeah, and after that, Lucas Film told me not to use any cuss words in the books.”

 What seems clear is that archetypes are as  Carl Jung described them, unconscious patterns that are intrinsic to all of us, that speak to us at a profound level regardless of culture or religion or ethnicity. There is probably an Indiana Jones or Marion Ravenwood in many of us-  the raconteur, rebel,  rogue, adventurer – following some mysterious quest into parts unknown.

Here’s a link to the radio show we did last night with paranormal review radio. Hosts Anthony and Lucy asked great questions!

Well, it’s not exactly synchronicity, but it’s a case getting synchronized–coming into alignment.

 A few months ago, a woman name Kate Walker contacted us about a possible interview for a movie she and her partner are shooting on synchronicity.  She thought she would be in Miami sometime this summer, so we agreed we would drive down there for the interview.

Last week, Katy emailed me that she’d just heard one of our radio interviews about Aliens in the Backyard,  and that she was discovering that synchronicity was threaded through UFO encounters and abductions. We emailed back and forth for several days and she sent me a PDF file for a book called Allies of Humanity by Marshall Vian Summers. This is book 1 in what is now a trilogy and is being offered free at this link.  It’s also attached as a PDF at the end of this post.

The book consists of five briefings by a consortium of entities who have been observing the alien intervention of our planet. They observe – but don’t interfere, except to impart information. And the info is fascinating, about how these intervening aliens themselves aren’t evil, but simply have their own agenda. And their agenda involves utilizing humanity and this planet’s resources for themselves.

To that end, they are skilled at what the consortium calls the “mental environment,”  where the perceptions, the realities, that abductees experience are manipulated and sculpted.  Because they are so skilled in this mental environment, they are able to convince some abductees that they are here to help humanity, that they are spiritually evolved beings.

This premise certainly addresses the schism in the UFO community: the John Mack camp that believes  encounters are ultimately beneficial and the Budd Hopkins/David Jacobs camp that says these encounters are anything but.  For Rob and me, the bottom line is simple: when someone is taken against his or her will, it’s a violation. It’s wrong. No matter how you try to spin it after the fact, a travesty has occurred.

With channeled material like this, it either resonates or doesn’t. When I read my first Seth book in 1974, it resonated. When I read my first Ramtha book (JZ Knight), it did not resonate.  I tossed Ramtha in the trash and kept reading Seth. Allies of Humanity resonates for me…but with a few small caveats. I was never able to get through A Course in Miracles  because of the pervasive references to god. When I tried to read Miracles, I felt like a  12-year-old kid forced to attend catechism. It turned me off. Yet, people I respect rave about the book.

There is some of this god stuff in Allies, but more of it on the website. I suspect this is where the personality of the messenger (Marshall Summers) comes through.  At no other point in this material is there much of a sense of Summers at all. In the preface of book 2, it’s noted that the six briefings that comprise book 2 were channeled within 24 hours. That speaks of incredible creativity. When a novelist is hooked into characters and story, into plot and conflict and resolution, it’s as if you become a channel for the story itself. So I understand that kind of feverish pace.

But there seems to be a dire urgency in book 2. The Allies contend that the planets, its resources, and humanity are the ultimate prize in some sort of galactic war where military force, by agreement, is forbidden, and just about everything else is fair game. The allies talk about the importance of individuality, personal freedom, and spiritual knowledge to counteract the manipulation by aliens. They emphasize the importance of unity in mankind – instead of the divisiveness we see now.

What intrigues me about book 1 is nuance. Even the bad guys  aren’t evil. They simply have an agenda, like the Europeans did when they arrived in the Americas. And the supposed good guys aren’t rushing in to defend anyone, but are imparting information about how humanity can inure itself to this intervention. I’d like to know, however, how the aliens who are intervening got here. Are they from another planet? Are they inter-dimensional? Nothing that concrete is offered.

They do talk about trade routes in the universe that these various alien cultures use, but again, no specifics. Betty Hill talked about trade routes she was shown during her and Barney’s abduction and in 1968, an elementary school teacher and amateur astronomer, Marjorie Fish, decided to decipher Betty’s star map. In other words, Betty gave more specifics than the allies do.

 Do let us know what you think about the material.

There’s something of a synchro for me connected to this video. Yesterday I was writing about a series of interviews that Carl Jung gave to a doctor in Houston in 1957. Today, Bernard Beitman, a visiting professor of psychiatry at University of Virginia who is writing a book on coincidence, sent me a different video about Jung. I started watching it, then noticed, to the right,  a video called Interview with Jung.  It’s fascinating to hear him talk about his relationship with Freud.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-kdF-qV6PpE

If you scour the Internet in search of unusual coincidences, sooner or later you’re likely to run across a story – or make that stories – about Hugh Williams. These are seafaring coincidences that span nearly 200 years.  Here is one version:

A vessel went down in the Menai Strait off the coast of Wales on December 5, 1664. All 81 passengers were lost with the exception of a man named Hugh Williams.

On December 5, 1785, 121 years later, another ship sank in the Menai Strait, and again all of the passengers drowned except one – Hugh Williams.

Move ahead to December 5, 1820 and another ship, a 25-passenger vessel, sank in the Menai Strait. And once again there was a sole  survivor. You guessed it, his name was Hugh Williams.  We could call him the unsinkable Hugh Williams. And notice the month and day are the same each time, as well as the survivor.

Where did this story originate and is there any truth to it? Or is it  just an old maritime tale that has been passed down over time?

The first reference to the unsinkable Hugh Williams is found  on pages 281-282 of North Wales, Including its Scenery, Antiquities and Customs,  1804, by Rev. William Bingley. It describes a Hugh Williams who escaped from a shipwreck on December 5, 1785.

A version of the three-part story appears as a footnote on page 155 of Cliffe’s Book of North Wales, published in 1851.   The story includes the sinkings on December 5, 1664 and 1785, with Hugh Williams, the only survivor.  The date of the 1820 sinking, however, is Aug. 5, not Dec. 15. But Hugh Williams is still listed as the sole survivor.

The footnote goes on to mention that, “Again on May 20th, 1842, a boat was crossing the Menai, near the spot where the above catastrophes happened, when she upset with 15 passengers,  and all perished save one; but in this instance the name of the survivor was Richard Thomas.”

Another book, Guide to North Wales, by Francis Coghlan, was published in 1860. It repeats the story of the three shipwrecks, and includes the August date for the third sinking.

Apparently, an English writer decided this would make a better story if it was brought closer to home. So here’s another version:

On December 5th 1660, a ship sank in the straights of Dover and the only survivor was named Hugh Williams.

On 5th December 1767, another ship sank in the same waters and 127 passengers and crew members died. The only survivor was a Hugh Williams.

On August 8, 1820, a picnic boat capsized on the Thames. There was one survivor – Hugh Williams.

On 10th July 1940, a British trawler was destroyed by a German mine. Only two men survived, one man and his nephew, and they were both named Hugh Williams.

Notice how the Dec. 5 date only occurs twice and the years vary from the earlier version, and the clever twist when there are two survivors. Of course, they are both Hugh Williams.

What are we to make of it all? It seems there is a basis for at least the Hugh Williams story. But it seems that the Dec. 5 on the 1820 sinking probably doesn’t ring true. So the version in the video probably has been altered to make the story seem more mysterious.

But how mysterious is this story?

Coghlan’s account of the three shipwrecks ends with the comment: “This extraordinary coincidence can only be explained by the circumstance that the name of Hugh Williams is very common in these parts.”

Blogger Rick Spillman, who gathered some of these references, not only notes that in Wales Hugh Williams is a common name, but that the Menai Strait  “is a particularly nasty body of water with strong currents and rough seas.”

While the video asks if the Hugh Williams saga is the strangest coincidence ever recorded, the answer is probably not. But it’s a good one, a classic, and historical.

Nika and Noah, in my messy office, peering out the window at – a squirrel? Well, maybe.  But they could also be drawn to the window by some  dim hope that a squirrel might appear and help itself to our ripening mangos.

Or maybe it’s lizards that attract them? Or birds? That’s the thing with these two: they are so fully ensconced in the moment that everything else is forgotten. I wonder about that, how we humans can be so fully immersed in the now that everything else falls away.

I believe this is what happens during meditation, when we sleep and dream, even when we’re driving some familiar road and enter a dreamlike state. At those moments, we aren’t fretting about bills, schedules, who said what to whom and oh yeah, my feelings are hurt and suppose, what if…?

Then Rob made some noise from the other room, the noise that meant he was headed off to teach a yoga class. The  dogs turned their heads simultaneously, as if checking to see what was going on in the other world, that place where the humans don’t get excited about squirrels.

And they quickly turned their attention back to the window and whatever it was outside that fascinated and riveted them.

So whenever I’m in the midst of some dramatic moment, worrying about this or that, I’m going to utter one word: SQUIRREL. And it will snap me back to this image, this NOW, and hopefully will plop me into the current of NOW.