Welcome to The Mystical Underground

Hans Holzer was a psychic researcher and author. I remember reading his books when I was in my teens, and one in particular stands out in memory. I think it was called Psychic Photography. He wrote more than a 100 books on the paranormal and died in 2009.

This evening, we received an email from David Wilson at Crossroad Press about a dream his wife had about Hans Holzer. It’s a great example of synchronicity and clairvoyance or precognition. Here’s how David’s wife, Trish, described it:

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 So, I’m sitting here at my computer, legs curled up to my side, trying to decide what to do next when I just…go to sleep. Sitting up. And I had this dream and in the dream, we were living in our 100-year-old house. I’m sitting in our old den and David comes home.

 He walks in the room, mail in hand, and tosses a manila envelope in my lap. It has no return address and when I open it, it’s empty. Weird. So, at that moment, a book from the bookshelf immediately behind my right shoulder just slides out and onto the floor. I pick it up. It’s Born Again by Hans Holzer. I have that book and have read it twice.

David and I look at each other and laugh and I tell him how weird that was. And I tell him it wasn’t weird. It would be weird if ALL the books came off the shelf. There’s a noise behind me but I never see what happens because I suddenly start to feel like I’m falling out of the chair and I wake up VERY suddenly, because I’m falling out of the chair.  

 So, I shake it off and start thinking about all the Holzer books I used to have and the ones I could never find. I go to Amazon to look for some of them, hopefully on Kindle…but there are only three.

I called David and told him he needed to get in touch with Mr. Holzer’s estate to see if we can e-pub the rest of the books, especially the older stuff. I really want to read them and all the used copies are beaten up.

One that I bought was missing ten pages from the middle. I cannot be the only person who read those books and learned from them, or who still wants to read them. All the work he did on them, all his brilliant research just can’t die. I’ve been reading Holzer’s books since I was a kid and I can’t believe I never thought to go back and look for the rest until now. If his daughter lets us publish them, I want to proof them all myself so I can read them.

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As a result of his wife’s dream, David got in touch with Holzer’s daughter and will be talking to her today. As I was writing this up, I realized there’s a deeper layer to this synchro. In Trish’s dream, the book that fell off the shelf was Born Again, which is exactly what will happen to Holzer’s books if his daughter allows Crossroad to publish them.

Cassie, the woman who has been living with us since January, is a groom/barn manager who spends 6 days a week working with and taking care of horses. During downtime in the barn – like when she’s waiting for the vet to arrive or for her employer to finish riding- she has her iPod and iPad handy.

Today, she dropped by the house for lunch and said, “Trish, you aren’t going to believe the synchro I had this morning.”

I was all ears.

Cassie was in the barn, scrolling through the Huffington Post while listening to her iPod. She came to a story about the death of Maria Von Trapp. She was the last surviving member of the famous musical family whose escape from Nazi-occupied Austria was the basis for the musical The Sound of Music.  The movie version won an Oscar in 1965.

Cassie has always loved the movie and the music. She traveled in Salzburg as a kid and has skied at the Von Trapp ski resort in Stowe, where the family ended up after they fled Germany.

As she was reading the article, the song that came on her iPod was from the musical, The Morning Hymn Alleluia. Goosebumps spend up her arms.  “I’ve got more than 4,000 songs on my iPod and that song has never come on. I was so shocked I had to check my iPod to make sure I was hearing it right.”

What are the odds?

A blogger on the Huff Post, David Kanegis, also commented on Von Trapp’s death and the death of Alice Herz-Sommer, the world’s oldest known Holocaust survivor. The two women died within a week of each other. His piece opens with this: The universe has a way of communicating with us through seemingly unrelated events. Or are they?

Kanegis is recognizing a synchro, without calling it that.

Here is the NY Times piece about Von Tropp.

I knew that Whitley Strieber and his wife, Anne, were working on a book together that involved her near-death experience in 2004 from a brain bleed. When I received an email the other day that the book was now available as an ebook from Crossroad Press,  I immediately downloaded it.

Miraculous Journey is a miraculous read. There are chapters in this book that brought me to tears, that made me laugh out loud, that prompted me to close down my iPad and take a long walk to simply appreciate my own life and surroundings.

I enjoyed the structure  – alternating chapters by Anne and Whitley. You get both sides of the story –of her illness, their marriage, their creative partnership, of who they are as partners, but also of who they are as individuals. It’s a memoir in the best sense of the word. It tackles the BIG questions – what is the nature of reality? What is death? Does consciousness survive? Are our lives predestined? Where does free will enter the picture?

Honesty and raw emotion run throughout this book. Yet, there is never a point where any of it descends into self-pity or victimization or “Oh poor me.” If anything, it’s the complete opposite, a kind of victory call, a challenge, a gauntlet hurled at our collective feet that asks: Who are we? As a species? A collective? As individuals? Where do we fit in the grander scheme of things?

Anne writes movingly of living  in Whitley’s shadow, of his encounter experiences and their repercussions for her when Communion was published.  And he writes movingly of how he could never have written anything without her. I, as a writer married to a writer, understand this dynamic. Your partner is your first editor, your first reader, your first critic. If he or she dislikes what you have written, you hope they will be honest with you about that, but despair when you hear the words, This doesn’t work. And you are beside yourself with joy when your partner says, Wow, I love it.

As writers who have followed Strieber’s career since we first ran across Communion more than 25 years ago, Rob and I have admired his steadfast belief that he, an ordinary man, experienced something so extraordinary that it altered the trajectory of his life. He was reviled and ridiculed after Communion was published and skeptics had a field day. Ha-ha, this silly man… But he kept moving forward – and so did Anne.

In Miraculous Journey, we find out that Anne had a difficult childhood. Well, difficult may not be the right adjective. Nightmare is better. Her mother committed suicide when she was seven. Her father remarried and she, the stepdaughter, was the handmaid, the servant who was emotionally abused, beaten down, and ultimately driven from the home.

In a sense, when she and Whitley met, destiny seemed to become part of the equation – yet they each had the free will to bow out and look elsewhere. But that isn’t what happened. They got married, had a son, settled in to a creative partnership. 

Now Anne has a brain tumor.

This book works on so many levels- collectively, personally- that I am left almost speechless. In the final chapter, Whitley writes:

A marriage as close and deep and happy as ours is a truly wonderful blessing, but facing being the  one left behind is, I suspect, in many ways as hard as the one who must move on. I do hope that if she is to go to her dying, she finds beyond the veil love even better than what I have been able to give her, an embrace absolute with joy…

This book is one to savor – and remember, always.

All too often, insightful comments are lost in the scroll of information and may not be seen. So we’ve brought forward a conversation with Sheila Joshi, a clinical psychologist who is recovering from severe neurological damage from prescription antidepressants.

“Withdrawing from the medications propelled me into a Kundalini awakening and/or shamanic initiatory illness, which included lots of extreme symptoms and some psychic experiences.”

One of Sheila’s  was about Omega3 increasing the frequency of synchronicity.

“…more and more research comes out about Omega-3 every day, and it’s a very promising thing for a vast array of health problems. Plus, when I increased my dose in the past, I started to have more synchros.

If anyone decides to increase their Omega-3, please let me know what you experience. I’m thinking of doing some research on Omega-3 and psi.

I asked Sheila how Omega 3s increase the incidents of synchronicity. Here was her response:

Well, we know that Omega-3 increases alpha and theta brainwaves, which have been correlated with psi. And my hypothesis is that there are several other mechanisms by which Omega-3 may facilitate psi – improving brain and whole body functioning, increasing quantum entanglement, and — using Sheldrake’s theory — consuming Omega-3 from algae, may connect us physically and through morphic resonance to an ancient, foundational organism and molecule that are pervasive on our planet, and that we are highly dependent on, and which are part of many morphic fields.

I’ve thought about this in relation to synchros – not Omega3 in particular but about how diet and nutrition fit into synchros. There’s anecdotal evidence that certain drugs facilitate synchros; that certain states of mind, attitude, beliefs also facilitate them. But suppose you could consume a certain food or vitamin each day that would increase your chances of experiencing a synchronicity? Pretty cool, right?

So if Sheila is right about omega 3s it’s up to the rest of us to test and discover it. Right now, we eat a lot of salmon – but according to this website  the best are wild Alaskan salmon, Arctic char, Atlantic mackerel, sardines…well, you can click through the website and see what is recommended.

But suppose you’re a vegan, a real vegan who doesn’t even eat fish? Can you take/tolerate the supplement of fish oils? Of Omega3 vitamins? Right now, as of this second, that’s a genuine unknown. We’ll see. I’m upgrading my intake of Omega 3s tonight.

Here’s Sheila’s essay on this intriguing topic.

 I found this on Whitley Strieber’s Unknown Country website. It may be one of the most clever ads yet, and made me laugh. I asked Whitley if we could post it and he said sure.

Here’s the ad:

SINGLE BLACK FEMALE seeks male companionship, ethnicity unimportant. I’m a very good girl who LOVES to play. I love long walks in the woods, riding in your pickup truck, hunting, camping and fishing trips, cozy winter nights lying by the fire. Candlelight dinners will have me eating out of your hand. I’ll be at the front door when you get home from work, wearing only what nature gave me…. Call(404) 875-6420 and ask for Annie, I’ll be waiting…..

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 If you’re a guy, this sounds pretty good, right?

 Well, imagine the astonishment of the more than 150 men who found themselves talking to the Atlanta Humane Society, about this little beauty:

Have you heard of this herb? It’s widely used by men for prostate health. I took it daily for years in the hopes of forestalling the growth of my prostate, a condition faced by more than half of men over 50. Unfortunately, in that battle, the prostate won, and I had to seek other remedies—first, medications to relax the muscles around the prostate and supposedly to shrink it. Again, unfortunately, the prostate won.

Last September, I resorted to surgery, and it was a success. The prostate, which had grown nearly three-times its normal size, was trimmed down and all the annoying symptoms – along with the temporary catheters – vanished. I no longer needed any medications or saw palmetto – though I guess it wouldn’t hurt to continue taking it. But I wasn’t too happy with saw palmetto, and admit that I had bad-mouthed the natural remedy as bogus. Even a scam. I figured I was done with it.

But not so fast. Last week, my friend Don and I went on an early morning off-road bike ride on a trail an hour north of here. I’d only ridden it once and that was years ago. The trail was relatively easy, especially compared to our local technical trail with numerous log piles, criss-crossing root pattern, steep drops and sharp turns along tight trails through heavy woods.

We’d been riding nearly an hour when we crossed a narrow wooden bridge over a creek. Don was ahead of me and had disappeared around a bend as I came off the bridge. I swerved to avoid a mud puddle and paid for the move. I was slammed down into something sharp and prickly. As I slowly got to my feet, I looked back and saw that I’d crashed into a patch of saw palmetto.

I didn’t see the irony, though, until a few days later when a friend, upon hearing the story, replied, “I thought saw palmetto was good for men.” Maybe for some, but not for me. A broken stem about the size of six toothpicks had pierced through the top of my ear. Don, a retired paramedic/fire fighter, pulled it out and I stopped the bleeding with a kerchief. We continued on, but I knew I’d bruised a rib or two and that I would feel it more after we finished.

Back at home, I cleaned the ear and found another splinter, shaped like an arrowhead, wedged into the top of the ear. I couldn’t get it out, neither could Trish, so I ended up at a walk-in clinic. I’d been there before, back when I was realizing the saw palmetto formula wasn’t working for me.

So much for my encounters with this prickly plant. I don’t know if I’ll take any more of the herb, but I will definitely respect it when I encounter it again along the trail.

This You Tube video is intriguing. It’s from NASA footage of the space station.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TT9j1nm6Y6s

 Our dog park is across the street from the Aero Club, a suburban community where many houses have hangars and the private airstrip is now paved. The flight path to that runway brings many types of planes directly over the dog park.

On February 17, when Rob and I were at the park, an experimental plane – like the one depicted above –  came in very low over the park and dog owners peered upward or ducked. Yeah, ducked. It was that close. Rob said to some people nearby, “Did you hear about the plane that crashed here?”

“What?” I asked. “When?”

“Oh, you know, that plane that crashed four or five years ago. But it’s going to happen again.”

Two people had died in that crash, a man and a woman who had left behind two small children. But I was struck that Rob initially referred to it in a way that led me to believe there had been a recent crash.                

The next  morning, the 18th, I dreamed that the Palm Beech International Airport had changed its flight paths so that planes now came directly over our house. In the dream, I saw a twin engine plane plane  lying perilously low and headed straight for our house. I could hear its noisy engines and thought, My God it may hit us.

It didn’t, though, and I woke up and walked out into the kitchen, eager for coffee and food. Rob eventually joined me and I told him about my dream. Then forgot it.

At nearly one this afternoon, Rob and I were waiting for a call from Whitley Streiber. We were going to be doing an interview with him about The Synchronicity Highway.  Our windows were open, the air here has been cool, and I heard this shrieking chorus of police alarms and commented on it to Rob.

Then we did our interview and I forgot about it until I received a text message from a Karin, a woman I know from the dog park. She asked if I’d heard about the plane that had crashed across the street from the dog park. The pilot, she said, was killed. It was the experimental plane that had flown in so low the other day. The pilot flew for American Airlines and was a friend of our neighbor, who is also a pilot for American.

Precognitive?

They call it murmuration. It begins about 30 seconds into the video and it’s astonishing. It’s truly an example of a collective self in action.

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