Synchronicity Stories
Honoring the Relentless Pursuit of Truth:
Gandhi’s Original 9/11 Truth Movement
and Dr. King’s Message of World Peace Thru Nonviolence and Love
“Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this
ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.”
~ Albert Einstein (after Gandhi’s 1948 assassination)
“Many ancient Indian masters have preached nonviolence as a philosophy. That was a more spiritual understanding of it. Mahatma Gandhi, in this twentieth century, produced a very sophisticated approach because he implemented that very noble philosophy of nonviolence in modern politics, and he succeeded. That is a very great thing. It has represented an evolutionary leap in political consciousness, his experimentation with truth.”
~ H.H. Dalai Lama, from “The Dalai Lama, A Policy of Kindness”
“Non-violence, which is the quality of the heart,
cannot come by an appeal to the brain.”
“You must be the change you want to see in the world.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi
“I found in the nonviolent resistance philosophy of Gandhi … the only morally and practically sound method open to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.”
~ Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Introduction
Dear Friends,
Today’s posting (on the twentieth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC), is dedicated to advancing worldwide social justice by inspiring nonviolent civil disobedience to extraordinarily irrational, immoral, and tyrannical edicts of current world “leaders”. The posting highlights histories of Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as the most prominent and inspiring 20th century spiritual practitioners of nonviolent resistance to those in power.
And it explains how the Gandhian nonviolent Satyagraha truth movement has brought humankind “an evolutionary leap in political consciousness” beyond centuries of spiritual philosophy preached by Indian mystic masters. (See above Dalai Lama quotation)
Background
Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC, many people regard September 11 as a day that will live in infamy – a day of treachery, often cited (disingenuously or duplicitously) as pretext for an Orwellian era of endless war, violence and dystopian deprivations of civil liberties.
(See PBS Documentary 9/11-Explosive Evidence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1l-8PFk8j5I)
But, paradoxically, few realize that on a century earlier September 11th Mahatma Gandhi launched his extraordinary “satyagraha” peace and justice movement through which Gandhi, and countless others inspired by him, have accomplished much good in the world by non-violently resisting and transforming widespread social injustice and oppression. As recognized by the Dalai Lama’s above quotation, Gandhi’s nonviolent truth movement represented “an evolutionary leap in political consciousness”.
Of countless humans inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s life and words, most prominent and influential has been Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., who honored Gandhi as a spiritual “guiding light …. of nonviolent social change”, and who in 1959 journeyed to India to study Gandhian methods, saying:
“To other countries, I may go as a tourist, but to India, I come as a pilgrim.”
During and since Mahatma Gandhi’s extraordinary lifetime, he has been venerated worldwide as one of the greatest spiritual and political leaders not just of our time, but of all times. Because he walked his talk authentically, peacefully, and spiritually, his words and life have been exceptionally inspiring and powerful.
Mahatma Gandhi changed the world by being the non-violent change he wanted see, particularly the end of the British Raj in India, followed by Indian independence and democracy. But few people realize that Gandhi’s legacy includes not just his campaign for Indian independence, but that it began with his brilliantly waged struggle against institutionalized apartheid racism in South Africa, with ground-breaking inter-religious dialogue and cooperation.
Gandhi’s Original 9/11 Truth Movement
On September 11, 1906, a young lawyer named Mohandas K. Gandhi organized and addressed a meeting of 3,000 people crowded into the Empire Theater in Johannesburg, South Africa. Members of the Indian community – both Moslem and Hindu – had gathered there in opposition to a proposed law that would require Indians to register, be finger-printed and carry special identity cards at all times, and which would further deprive them of civil liberties for failure to comply with the egregiously immoral law.
Gandhi argued that the law be resisted, but warned that resisters realize that they could be jailed, fined, beaten and even killed. The assembly not only declared its opposition to the legislation; its members raised their right hands and swore, with God as their witness, that they would not submit to such an unjust law.
Gandhi’s legendary talk at the Empire Theater meeting is dramatically portrayed by academy award winning actor Ben Kingsley in this excerpt from the epic film “Gandhi”:
The next day after the anti-apartheid meeting, the Empire Theater was mysteriously destroyed by fire.
Following their September 11th meeting and pledge, Indians refused to register and began burning their ID cards at mass rallies and protests. Thus began the original 9/11 non-violence movement that would literally change the world as the most powerful positive tool for salutary social change.
Satyagraha
The September 11th Johannesburg event began a powerful anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. Thereafter, in 1908 Gandhi carefully coined a new word – “satyagraha” – to describe the movement.
Satyagraha is Sanskrit neologism combining “satya” (Truth) with “agraha” (holding firmly). But because Satyagraha is rooted in Vedic spiritual wisdom it is extremely difficult to translate into English.
Gandhi was a spiritual man in search of God, who equated “Truth” with “God”. He grew up inculcated as a Hindu, and in South Africa called the Bhagavad Gita his “spiritual reference book”. However, he acknowledged that he had been influenced by the teachings of Jesus, the writings of Tolstoy, and Thoreau’s famous essay, “Civil Disobedience.”
Thus, Gandhi’s satyagraha movement was fundamentally spiritual, not just political. It encompassed relentless pursuit of spiritual Truth through the political practice of active, faith-based civil disobedience. It was steadfastly dedicated to asserting and living Divine Truth by nonviolently and respectfully resisting institutional injustice to achieve societal and political justice. Beyond mere “pacifism” or “passive resistance”, it encompassed an actively militant, yet resolutely non-violent faith-based assertion of one’s moral beliefs, with open defiance of unjust laws or decrees.
The movement began with the above recounted defiance of South African apartheid decrees, and burning of racially discriminatory ID cards. Later in India it actively defied unjust British Raj laws, like laws forbidding Indians to make their own salt, and requiring export of all Indian grown cotton to be fabricated in England. Gandhi’s “satyagraha” movement disobeyed those laws with the famous “salt march” and by not purchasing British produced fabrics, while fabricating their cotton with spinning wheels. And Gandhi actively opposed the Indian “untouchable” caste system, condoned by the Bhagavad Gita, as well as by immorally exploitive societal customs.
Gandhi often and broadly spoke about “satyagraha”. Here are a few of his apt quotations:
Truth (satya) implies love, and firmness (agraha) engenders and therefore serves
as a synonym for force. I thus began to call the Indian movement Satyagraha, that is to say,
the Force which is born of Truth and Love or non-violence, and gave up the use of the phrase
“passive resistance”, in connection with it, so much so that even in English writing
we often avoided it and used instead the word “satyagraha” itself.
~ Mahatma Gandhi
“The word satya (Truth) is derived from Sat which means ‘being.’ Nothing is or exists in reality except Truth. That is why Sat or Truth is perhaps the most important name of God, In fact it is more correct to say that Truth is God than to say God is truth. On deeper thinking, however it will be realized that Sat or Satya is the only correct and fully sign fact name for God.”
“Devotion to this Truth is the sole justification for our existence. All our activities should be centered in Truth. Truth should be the very breath of our life. When once this stage in the pilgrim’s progress is reached, all other rules of correct living will come without effort, and obedience to them will be instinctive. But without Truth it is impossible to observe any principles or rules in life.”
“[W]hat may appear as truth to one person will often appear as untruth to another person.
But that need not worry the seeker. Where there is honest effort,
it will be realized that what appear to be different truths are like the countless and apparently different leaves of the same tree.
Does not God himself appear to different individuals in different aspects?
Yet we know that He is one. But Truth is the right designation of God.
Hence there is nothing wrong in every man following Truth according to his lights.
Indeed it is his duty to do so.
Then if there is a mistake on the part of any one so following Truth it will be automatically set right.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi – Mohandas Gandhi on the Meaning of Truth 1/1/1927
“Satyagraha means resisting untruth by truthful means”
“It is a religious duty to fight untruth.
If one remains steadfast in it in a spirit
of dedication, it always brings success.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi – 3/30/1911 Cape Town speech
“Non-violence, which is the quality of the heart, cannot come by an appeal to the brain.” “You must be the change you want to see in the world.”
~ Mahatma Gandhi
”Non-violence is the greatest force man has been endowed with.
Truth is the only goal he has. For God is none other than Truth.
But Truth cannot be, never will be, reached except through non-violence…
That which distinguishes man from all other animals is his capacity to be non-violent.
And he fulfills his mission only to the extent that he is non-violent and no more.“
~ Mahatma Gandhi
Satyagraha Conclusion
Thus the “satyagraha” movement has been a militant, but resolutely non-violent active assertion of fundamental human morality, which has brought this world an unprecedented “evolutionary leap in political consciousness”.
Thereby Mohandas K. Gandhi has become one of the most inspiring and positively influential human beings in our current history.
Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr’s, Message of World Peace Through Love and Gandhian Nonviolence
Like Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. King, a Christian minister, dedicated his life to nonviolent religious spirituality, not just to political social justice.
In 1964 (at age 35) Dr. King became the youngest person ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, for his nonviolent social activism in opposing racial segregation, poverty, and war. As a dedicated Christian disciple of Jesus, Dr. King
“found in the nonviolent resistance philosophy of Gandhi … the only morally and practically sound method open to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.”
Dr. King’s life paralleled Gandhi’s life. Each began as an outspoken advocate of inter-racial equality and social justice in racially segregated societies. Gradually their nonviolent missions expanded to encompass universal freedom, peace and social justice for everyone everywhere.
On humbly accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, as ‘trustee’ for countless unknown others, Dr. King cited Gandhi’s success in India as a key precedent encouraging nonviolent civil rights activism in the USA, saying:
“This [nonviolent] approach to the problem of racial injustice …. was used in a magnificent way by Mohandas K. Gandhi to challenge the might of the British Empire and free his people from the political domination and economic exploitation inflicted upon them for centuries.”
And King described how (because of technological advances which imminently threaten nuclear/ecological catastrophe) the survival of humanity depends upon our nonviolently solving “the problems of racial injustice, poverty, and war” by “living in harmony” with “all-embracing and unconditional love for all men”.
Eloquently he explained that
“[Love is] that force which all of the great religions [Hindu-Moslem-Christian-Jewish-Buddhist] have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. . . . the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate Reality.”
Whereupon he recited this wisdom passage from the First Epistle of St John:
“Let us love one another: for love is of God;
and everyone that loves is born of God, and knows God.
He that loves not, knows not God; for God is love.
If we love one another, God dwells in us, and His
love is perfected in us.” [1 John 4:7-8; 12 ]”
Like Gandhi and Jesus – who also ‘heretically’ preached nonviolent love and forgiveness – King was martyred at (age 39), when his ‘heretic’ truth telling and expanding prophetic powers became intolerable barriers to the US Empire’s military/industrial war plans for Viet Nam and beyond.
Conclusion and Dedication
Today’s posting is deeply dedicated to inspiring a new era of global social justice through peaceful noncooperation and resistance to pervasive “new normal” era political and institutional social injustice, and its insane desecration of Nature on our precious planet.
May the prophetic seeds of political and spiritual Truth first sewn by Gandhi on September 11, 1906, and nurtured worldwide by Dr. King, at long last soon end needless suffering, and allow an unprecedented new era of global peace and harmony, beyond fear and hostility.
And may humankind now heed Dr. King’s crucial warnings that we must “learn to live together as brothers [and sisters] or perish together as fools”; that our survival depends upon “living in harmony” with “all-embracing and unconditional love for all men [and women]”.
And so shall it be!
Ron Rattner
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Nobel Peace Prize Lecture (full audio+text)
“A Simple Monk” and a Saintly Soul
~ a Synchronicity Story
“I am open to the guidance of synchronicity,
and do not let expectations hinder my path.”
~ Dalai Lama
“Synchronicity is choreographed by a great, pervasive intelligence that lies at the heart of nature, and is manifest in each of us through what we call the soul.”
~ Deepak Chopra, Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire
Carol Schuldt
“A Simple Monk” and a Saintly Soul
This is a sweet synchronicity story about the Dalai Lama and my saintly friend Carol Schuldt.
Of all living spiritual masters, the Dalai Lama of Tibet most inspires me with his exemplary compassion, wisdom, humor, and humility. [I’ve dedicated a website category to his wise quotes and wonderful images.]
My 79 year old friend Carol Schuldt, is one of the most unforgettable people I’ve known. (See: One of The Most Unforgettable Persons I’ve Known.)
Carol is a spiritual person, with her own unique path of communing with Nature while surfing, swimming, sunning, hiking, biking, and gardening, and helping troubled souls – especially young people. Though raised Catholic, she has never knowingly followed any prescribed Western or Eastern spiritual path, like Tibetan Buddhism.
Though Carol has never yet met the Dalai Lama, she recently experienced a wonderful and amazing synchronicity with him. And immediately thereafter she excitedly phoned me to tell about it.
Here is the story:
On a June Saturday morning, Sacramento videographer Paul Maska came to Carol’s house to do a pre-arranged weekend video shoot of Carol for a documentary film about sun gazing produced by Wayne Purdin, Director of the Sun Center of Phoenix, AZ.
While filming and interviewing Carol, Paul became aware of Carol’s saintly spiritual presence and her exceptional natural lifestyle. So, during a break from filming, he asked her with curiosity if she was inspired by or felt affinity with any spiritual culture. After reflection, Carol declared that she felt special kinship with the Tibetans.
Whereupon, to Carol’s surprise and amazement, Paul spontaneously clasped their hands, touched their foreheads, and with deep concentration began making very low Tibetan overtone throat sounds. Unknown to Carol, Paul was then silently invoking and experiencing a communion with the the Dalai Lama, who he first met twenty years ago.
At that time, Paul had journeyed to India where he received H.H.’s personal tashi delek greeting and blessing. Paul then had an unforgettable spiritual experience with His Holiness while their hands were clasped and foreheads touching. Now, Carol’s expression of affinity with Tibetans, and her saintly aura, sparked Paul’s recollection and spontaneous invocation with Carol of that experience.
About ten minutes after Paul’s spontaneous tashi delek greeting and blessing for Carol, he and his assistant Marc, went outside for needed equipment left in their car.
Whereupon Marc discovered and examined a box of books which someone had just anonymously left in front of Carol’s house, beneath a large mural of Saint Francis of Assisi painted on the facade. Soon he found in the box an apparently new hardcover book entitled: “A Simple Monk”, with writings about the Dalai Lama by Professor Robert Thurman and others.
The book cover jacket displayed this prominent smiling portrait of His Holiness:
Knowing of Paul’s love of the Dalai Lama, Marc quickly took the book out of the box and gave it to Paul. Whereupon Paul excitedly ran upstairs to bring the book to Carol. As he handed it to her, he exclaimed, “Hey Carol you won’t believe what just happened!”.
Immediately appreciating the synchronistic blessing of the mysteriously manifested book, Carol burst into profuse tears of gratitude as she gazed at the smiling face of His Holiness.
Because of Carol’s great interest in synchronicities stemming from her lifelong experience of meaningful ‘coincidences’, Carol had just purchased a newly published edition of “The Red Book”, the previously unpublished esoteric writings of C.G. Jung, in which Jung had written about “synchronicity” – a word which he coined.
Though Carol was anxious to read and learn more from the book about this fascinating subject, she was so moved with gratitude by her experience with Paul and the Dalai Lama, that Carol handed “The Red Book” to Paul, asking him to first read it and then return it to her.
I predict that Carol will be experiencing many more amazing synchronicities before she reads “The Red Book”. Perhaps, you’ll read about them on this Silly Sutras website.
Indian Astrology, Free Will or Fate? ~ An Amazing Synchronicity Story
“Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end,
by forces over which we have no control.
It is determined for the insect, as well as for the star.
Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust,
we all dance to a mysterious tune,
intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.”
~ Albert Einstein
“Every Cause has its Effect;
every Effect has its Cause;
everything happens according to Law;
Chance is but a name for Law not recognized;
there are many planes of causation,
but nothing escapes the Law.”
~ The Kybalion
“You are truly free when you are not a person”.
~ Deepak Chopra – The Book of Secrets
Deepak Chopra
Introduction to Indian Astrology, Free Will or Fate?
I have elsewhere shared how in February, 1977, I spent a week in New York City, so filled with amazing synchronistic and precognitive experiences, that I became convinced it was possible to mystically transcend serial time perception. ( Synchronicity Story: An Amazing Experiment With Time )
Later, on learning that Sri Yukteshwar, Paramahamsa Yogananda’s guru, was an expert Vedic astrologer, and that the father of my Guru, Shri Dhyanyogi Madhusudandas, was also a Vedic astrologer, I became interested in astrological predictions and (for the first time in my life) was opened to possible validity of astrology – both Eastern and Western – as an esoteric science.
Indian or Vedic astrology is called Jyotish, which is Sanskrit for “light”; it is an ancient tradition going back thousands of years. Commonly, Indian astrologers (like those from other traditions) cast and interpret a personal chart – a ‘karmic map’ – based on each person’s unique time and place of birth.
But, there is another very rare branch of Jyotish astrology called Nadi reading in which the astrologer, a Brahmin priest, doesn’t cast a personal chart, but through analysis of one’s thumb prints locates and interprets notations supposedly first written on palm bark or leaves thousands of years ago by Indian sage Bhrigu, or a similar saint.
Few people in the world have ever heard about, much less seen, an Indian Nadi reader. On first hearing of Nadi readers, I skeptically dismissed claims of their authenticity and accuracy as too “far out” and beyond my Western programmed paradigm. But gradually I heard credible reports which began changing my mind.
First, two Harvard trained married friends recounted to me their amazing experience with a Nadi reader. Later, I learned that Swami Kriyananda
(J. Donald Walters), a well known Western teacher, author, and direct disciple of Paramahamsa Yogananda, was so impressed with the extraordinary accuracy of his Nadi readings, that in 1967 he had published a book entitled India’s Ancient Book of Prophecy.
In 2011, I was discussing questions of free will and destiny with my long-time Jyotish astrologer friend Jackie Haller, when she reminded me of Kriyananda’s Nadi reading experiences. Intrigued by Jackie’s comments, I soon did an extended internet search about Kriyananda’s prophesy book. It was out of print, but I found online summaries of his amazing story.
The next day, while visiting at the Fort Mason Italian-American Museum, I was informing my friend Joy Massa about Kriyananda’s Nadi readings, when a woman near us “coincidentally” overhead the conversation and joined us. Spontaneously she recounted lucidly and in some detail her personal amazing experience with a Nadi reading in Tamil Nadu, South India. She told us that she’d become interested in such prophesies from friends and after reading about Deepak Chopra’s extraordinary experience with Nadi readers.
Chopra was then well known to me as a knowledgeable and credible spiritual author. So I soon found and read, for the first time, his following life changing prophesy experience, in his “Book of Secrets”, pp 213-216.
“The Book of Secrets” by Deepak Chopra:
YOU ARE TRULY FREE WHEN YOU ARE NOT A PERSON
Several years ago in a small village outside New Delhi, I was sitting in a small, stuffy room with a very old man and a young priest. The priest sat on the floor swaying back and forth as he recited words inked on bark sheets that looked ancient. I listened, having no idea what the priest was intoning. He was from the far south and his language, Tamil, was foreign to me. But I knew he was telling me the story of my life, past and future. I wondered how I got roped into this and began to squirm.
It had taken strong persuasion from an old friend to get me to the small room. “It’s not just Jyotish, it’s much more amazing,” he coaxed. Indian astrology is called Jyotish, and it goes back thousands of years. Visiting your family astrologer is common practice everywhere in India, where people plan weddings, births, and even routine business transactions around their astrological charts (Indira Gandhi was a famous example of someone who followed Jyotish), but modern times have led to a fading away of tradition. I had chronically avoided any brushes with Jyotish, being a child of modern India and later a working doctor in the West.
But my friend prevailed, and I had to admit that I was curious about what was going to happen. The young priest, dressed in a wrapped skirt with bare chest and hair shiny with coconut oil—both marks of a southerner—didn’t draw up my birth chart. Every chart he needed had already been drawn up hundreds of years ago. In other words, someone sitting under a palm tree many generations ago had taken a strip of bark, known as a Nadi, and inscribed my life on it.
These Nadis are scattered all over India, and it’s pure chance to run across one that applies to you. My friend had spent several years tracking down just one for himself; the priest produced a whole sheaf for me, much to my friend’s amazed delight. You have to come for the reading, he insisted.
Now the old man sitting across the table was interpreting in Hindi what the priest was chanting. Because of overlapping birth times and the vagaries of the calendar when we are speaking of centuries, Nadis can overlap, and the first few sheets didn’t apply to me. But by the third sheet or so, the young priest with the sing-song voice was reading facts that were startlingly precise: my birth date, my parents’ names, my own name and my wife’s, the number of children we have and where they live now, the day and hour of my father’s recent death, his exact name, and my mother’s.
At first there seemed to be a glitch: The Nadi gave the wrong first name for my mother, calling her Suchinta, when in fact her name is Pushpa. This mistake bothered me, so I took a break and went to a phone to ask her about it. My mother told me, with great surprise, that in fact her birth name was Suchinta, but since it rhymed with the word for “sad” in Hindi, an uncle suggested that it be changed when she was three years old. I hung up the phone, wondering what this whole experience meant, for the young priest had also read out that a relative would intervene to change my mother’s name. No one in our family had ever mentioned this incident, so the young priest wasn’t indulging in some kind of mind-reading.
For the benefit of skeptics, the young priest had passed nearly his whole life in a temple in South India and did not speak English or Hindi. Neither he nor the old man knew who I was. Anyway, in this school of Jyotish, the astrologer doesn’t take down your birth time and cast a personal chart which he then interprets. Instead, a person walks into a Nadi reader’s house, the reader takes a thumbprint, and based on that, the matching charts are located (always keeping in mind that the Nadis may be lost or scattered to the winds). The astrologer reads out only what someone else has written down perhaps a thousand years ago. Here’s another twist to the mystery: Nadis don’t have to cover everyone who will ever live, only those individuals who will one day show up at an astrologer’s door to ask for a reading!
In rapt fascination I sat through an hour of more arcane information about a past life I had spent in a South Indian temple, and how my transgressions in that lifetime led to painful problems in this one, and (after a moment’s hesitation while the reader asked if I really wanted to know) the day of my own death. The date falls reassuringly far in the future, although even more reassuring was the Nadi’s promise that my wife and children would lead long lives full of love and accomplishment.
I walked away from the old man and the young priest into the blinding hot Delhi sunshine, almost dizzy from wondering how my life would change with this new knowledge. It wasn’t the details of the reading that mattered. I have forgotten nearly all of them, and I rarely think of the incident except when my eye falls on one of the polished bark sheets, now framed and kept in a place of honor in our home. The young priest handed it to me with a shy smile before we parted. The one fact that turned out to have a deep impact was the day of my death. As soon as I heard it, I felt both a profound sense of peace and a new sobriety that has been subtly changing my priorities ever since.
Conclusion
Chopra’s astonishing story confirmed that it is possible to mystically transcend ordinary serial time perception. And it renewed for me these perennial questions about free will and fate, which began with my February 1977 synchronicity experiences in New York:
“Are there really any coincidences or accidents, or is everything that happens to us predestined by laws of causation or karma?”
“Do we really have free will as most people believe?
And if so, what free will?”
Perhaps you, too, will wonder about these questions after reading Deepak Chopra’s fascinating story.
Addendum, 2018
The foregoing synchronicity story, mentions (without including details) Swami Kriyananda’s amazing Nadi readings.
Such details, personally written by Kriyananda, (J. Donald Walters) appear below in a summary, titled: “Astounding Predictions”. Also, (citing Sri Yukteshwar, who was an expert Vedic astrologer, and Paramahamsa Yogananda’s guru) Kriyananda’s summary addresses the perennial questions about free will and fate which conclude the foregoing story.
Accordingly, the summary is herein excerpted from a chapter titled “Experiences of Infinite Consciousness by Swami Kriyananda, (J. Donald Walters)” published in “The Akashic Experience”, by distinguished Hungarian philosopher and author Ervin László.
Swami Kriyananda (J. Donald Walters ) –
May 19, 1926– April 21, 2013
ASTOUNDING PREDICTIONS, by Swami Kriyananda,
(J. Donald Walters)
Many years ago (1959) in Paliala (Punjab), India, a son of the Maharaja of Patiala, a student who was taking a course I was giving in Raja Yoga came to me one day at the home of Balkishen Khosla, where I was staying, and asked, “Swamiji, have you ever heard of Bhrigu?”
When I couldn’t place the name, he helped me by adding, “Bhrigu is mentioned in the Bhagavad Gita, where Krishna [speaking in the voice of God] says, “Among saints, I am Bhrigu.”” Of course then I recognized the name. Bhrigu lived in India in very ancient times.
Raja Mrigendra Singh, my visitor, went on to say, “Bhrigu wrote a sanhita [scriptural document) predicting the lives of innumerable individuals yet to be born, some of whom are actually living today.”
This seemed to me, of course, almost too fantastic. Yet I had already encountered examples of the bizarre and the unusual in that mystical land. To preface what came next, let me recount an ancient Indian tradition, which my “spiritual grandfather” (my guru’s guru), Swami Sri Yukteswar, clarified and, so to speak, “pruned” of inaccuracies that had crept in under the disintegrating influences of time. The tradition concerns four ages, explained by Swami Sri Yukteswar as being brought about by sidereal movements within the galaxy. That system is too complex for explanation here, but it is also related to the Akashic influences.
Sri Yukteswar stated that the earth recently entered Dwapara Yuga, the second of those ages, in which human beings will come increasingly to understand that energy is the basic reality of matter. In this Dwapara age also, humans will gain insights into the essentially illusory nature of space. Thus, in the centuries to come we will learn how to travel to other planets and to demolish the sense of spatial distance. This we have accomplished already to some extent, with the invention of the telephone, radio, television, internet, and air travel.
It is said that in the third of the ascending ages, Treta Yuga, humans will develop insight into the essentially illusory nature of time. We will understand that time and space are much more elastic than they have seemed; time itself will be increasingly perceived as a continuum, comparable to a river that, when observed from a bridge, is seen to consist not only of what flows directly under the bridge but also of the water flowing down to the bridge from upstream. In other words, the future already exists, being the result of flowing influences from the past, and will not change significantly with anything added to the water- perhaps cast into it from the bridge.
Hints of this reality are suggested already even today. They will become so obvious in the third yuga as to be universally accepted. Particularly gifted individuals will be able, beyond the denials of any cynic, to predict specific events far into the future.
Even today, predictions have been made, mostly regarding the lives of individuals but also regarding world events, that have turned out to be startlingly accurate. The knowledge of enlightened sages, moreover, has always shown itself in this respect to be quite extraordinary.
I was told a story, based on the personal experience of someone I knew who had visited a saint in Howrah, West Bengal. He had asked the saint how accurate and how specific a prediction could be. The saint responded by foretelling several completely unexpected events that would occur to him that very afternoon. What he said (and here, I am able only to paraphrase) went something like this: “When you leave here. you will be obliged to take a detour because a crowd will have gathered in the street in
front of a burning building. On that detour, you will see an accident on the right side of the street. but it will not impede you. and you will have a safe journey home.” The details were not exactly as I’ve related them here, but what actually occurred was comparable. I was assured that the prediction had come to be fulfilled in every respect.
Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi contains many predictions of a similar nature. I’d like to emphasize that I myself lived with the author of that book as his close disciple and am fully convinced of its, and of his, veracity.
Back, then, to my own experience with Raja Mrigendra and Bhrigu’s text, which was extraordinary. Raja Mrigendra told me that not many miles from where we were, “in the town of Barnala, there is a partial copy of that ancient document, in manuscript form. It contains predictions of the lives of individuals, including many who are living today. I found there a reading for myself. Would you,” he continued, “be interested in going there to see whether the sanhita contains something about you?”
“Are its predictions only general?” I asked. “Might it say about me, for instance , that I’ve come from a distance and appear to be interested in spiritual matters?”
“Nothing like that!” he replied confidently. “If it says anything at all, it will be much more specific.”
Well. naturally I was intrigued! We went by car the next day to Barnala, a town that in no way suggested mystical wonders, being an assemblage of completely ordinary, somewhat dirty streets and buildings, none of them even interesting. The structure that housed the miraculous document was quite as nondescript as anything in its surroundings. We were the first to arrive. and I was introduced to the custodian, a brahmin whose name (if memory serves) was Pundit Bhagat Ram. He welcomed us, showing my friend the deference due to his social position.
Passing lightly over the formalities, a horoscope was cast for the moment when I asked for a reading. The pundit went into an inner room where the stored document was piled on many shelves in bundles. He retrieved a small bundle numbered (I vaguely recall) 54. Opening the bundle, and dividing it into three piles, he kept one himself, gave one to Raja Mrigendra, and handed the third stack of pages to me, telling the two of us to look for a page showing a horoscope similar to the one he had drawn up. We each went carefully through them. I! was I who came upon a page that seemed to me similar to his design. It was the right one.
“The readings”, Raja Mrigendra had told me, “usually tell a person his last life, his present one, and his next one”· My reading began, as he’d predicted, with my previous life. It told me that in that life I had been born in India. My name was Pujar Das, I lived in Karachi (identified by the first letter in the name of that city, and also by its geographical location), was married, and was financially well off. We had no children. There followed a brief description of my life up to the time where my wife and I went on a
pilgrimage and came to a desert (probably in Rajasthan), there reaching the place where the ancient sage Kapila (founder of the Sankhya system of philosophy) had once had his ashram. There I met my guru, I resolved to stay there and seek God, sending my wife home. A fair amount of information followed, all of it both interesting and instructive, but too personal for inclusion here. None of it was verifiable. of course, though it’s true that in my present life I have felt strangely attracted to living in the desert.
“In the present life”, it continued, “he was born in a mlecha [unclean,’ an ancient word for Western] country, is well known as a seer of Ashtanga Yoga [the teaching of Palanjali), and is traveling and teaching in this country. His name is Kriyananda.” This piece of information brought me up sharply. I was astounded.
Kriyananda is a most unusual name, though two or three monks (sannyasis) have taken it since I did. Several more people had entered the room by now. and I passed the page around to them to see if they could verify whether this name was indeed written there. They all concurred that it was. The “reading” omitted mention of my next life but made a few predictions for this one that were interesting and hope inspiring, if a little vague.
The fact that it mentioned me by name, however, was itself simply amazing. What it said about this life, also, was more or less accurate, though general. Would I have liked more specificity? I’m not so sure.
Sometimes it’s more helpful to have a general sense of one’s direction than to be burdened with too many details, whether alarming or giving comfort.
What was I to think? The reading dosed by saying. “There will be no more readings today.” Everyone in the room, accordingly, left with us.
I was fascinated enough by all this to speak about it to friends. It seemed to offer evidence, above all. that there was much more to India’s ancient civilization –as I of course already knew to be the case –than cowherds, farmers, and primitive villages. Surely what it suggests, rather, is a legacy of extraordinary wisdom. This was ammunition that would help to substantiate any book or lecture on those ancient teachings.
A few weeks later I was giving lectures and classes in New Delhi, where this new interest led to another segment of the Bhrigu sanhita. Here I received another reading. It slated , “I have already given him a reading in my Yoga Valli. That one was according to astrology. This one will be according to the power of yoga .” Instead of once again telling me my last life. it went back to an earlier life.
“In the time of Kurukshetra [the historic war described in the ancient epic the Mahabharata], he was the ruler of a small state in Bharatavarsha [India]. Fearful of having to support the wrong side in that conflict, he handed over his kingdom to his son and went into the forest for a life of seclusion and meditation. There he took initiation from a guru· The reading went on to describe that man’s life, saying that after it, owing to his good deeds. he spent some 700 years in the astral world.
Fascinating! In many ways that subtle region has always seemed more real to me than this physical world, though what remain are strong impressions rather than clear and specific memories. Again. I purposely omit here details of that past life that are personal and not germane to these pages.
What ensued then was even more astounding than the reading in Barnala. “This life,” it continued, “is the eighth since thai one during the time of Kurukshetra. In the present life he was born in Romania. lived in America, [both statements were correct], and his father named him James. [James is in fact my first name, though I was always known by my second name, Donald.] He has two brothers. but no living sister is possible, though one will die in his mothers womb. [My mother admitted to me, after my return to America. that she had had one miscarriage.] After meeting his guru, Yogananda. his name will become Kriyananda. Within two months from the time he receives this reading he will return to his own country. where he will be lovingly received by his (spiritual) brothers and sisters, and will be given [appointed to] a high position.”
Interestingly. I was in fact summoned back to America within two months. On my return voyage, while visiting Japan, I received word that Dr. M. W. Lewis, the elderly vice president of my guru’s organization, had just left his body. Shortly after my arrival in California I was appointed to replace him.
Continuing Questions
Perennial questions about free will and fate mentioned in the foregoing synchronicity story, have continued for me since I began wondering about them over forty years ago. Accordingly numerous other SillySutras.com writings deal with these questions. The most recent and comprehensive essay with numerous quotations is titled “Free Will or Fate” and is posted at https://sillysutras.com/free-will-or-fate/.
Perhaps an epigrammatic answer to esoteric perennial questions about free will and fate is suggested by the title of Deepak Chopra’s Nadi reading story:
“You Are Truly Free When You Are Not A Person”.
.
Analyzing Einstein’s Autograph ~ Synchronicity Story
“Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect, as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.”
~ Albert Einstein
“There are no mistakes, no coincidences,
all events are blessings given to us to learn from.”
~ Elisabeth Kubler-Ross
“Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful
for the evolution of your consciousness.”
~ Eckhart Tolle
“As I look back upon my own life, I see how many events – which at the time appeared horribly painful or unnecessary – contained remarkable lessons which I sometimes did not understand until many years later. Now life appears to me – more and more – as a gorgeous Persian rug. Seen from underneath (that is, from the ordinary human viewpoint), it may be a mess of loose strands, knots, pieces of wool hanging in a disorderly manner; but seen from above – from another level of perspective – what perfect order, harmony and beauty!”
~ Pierre Pradervand
Analyzing Einstein’s Autograph ~ Synchronicity Story
Ron’s Introduction
Dear Friends,
Many silly sutras, poems and essays were first written on bits of paper during an extended period of solitude, when I had no computer, TV, or daily paper, and was extremely reluctant to participate in the ‘digital revolution’. To express my skeptical attitude about possible technological transformation, I wrote that I chose the “inner net” rather than the internet; that while “the world wants ever more information, Ron seeks infinite inspiration: in the Unknown, in the Mystery – the Mystery of Divinity.
But finally, despite prolonged reluctance to go on-line, I felt obliged to get a computer in 2002 after my son had significant legal problems requiring my help.
Only thereafter did I discover Albert Einstein’s wise quotations on many philosophical subjects other than theoretical physics. I was amazed to learn that Einstein had expressed many of the same ideas which were conveyed in my sutras. Thereafter, in trying to discuss those ideas with others I often used Einstein quotes, rather than sutras. [As a lawyer I learned that it is much more persuasive to cite Supreme Court rulings than decisions of an unknown justice of the peace.]
A few years ago, I wanted to discuss one of these ideas with my friend “KJ” a retired San Francisco medical doctor and self-taught computer ‘guru’, who I met through a mutual friend after going on-line, and who generously helped me learn how to use my iMac and to resolve many inevitable digital dilemmas. So, I asked KJ “what do you think of Albert Einstein?” I expected him to acknowledge Einstein’s genius, and then anticipated quoting Einstein to him to initiate a conversation about the quotation. But his answer surprised me.
He replied: “If it wasn’t for Albert Einstein, I wouldn’t be here.”
At first, I thought KJ was joking and asked him to explain, expecting some humorous story. Instead he told me how a graphologist’s analysis of Albert Einstein’s signature sychronistically began a friendship which saved the lives of KJ and his parents.
KJ’s Story
Both of KJ’s parents were European medical doctors from Czechoslovakia. In the late 1920’s, before KJ was born they temporarily moved to Freiburg, Germany where his father was a surgical resident. KJ’s mother was then informally studying (and practicing) handwriting analysis, then recognized and taught as a scientific discipline in Germany and other advanced European countries.
One evening, KJ’s mother attended a lecture in Freiburg by a noted handwriting analysis expert. As part of the lecture, the graphologist asked audience members to place their signatures on small bits of paper, which were collected in a container and randomly picked by him for instant anonymous analysis. In so analyzing audience members’ signatures, the expert described one of them as “a quite average person, but with a flare for one particular field”. Thereupon a little man with bushy hair got up from the rear of the room and rushed up to the lecturer, proclaiming “That is the best analysis of my personality that I have ever heard.” He was so pleased, that he spontaneously rewarded the lecturer with a one hundred mark note – which was then a significant amount of German currency.
It was Albert Einstein, who by then was well known and acclaimed world-wide as a “genius” of theoretical physics for which he had received a Nobel prize. But it was not then generally known that in addition to physics, Einstein was quite interested in graphology. After the lecturer’s spontaneous signature readings, there ensued conversations about handwriting analysis amongst the audience members. And KJ’s mother, who had never before met Einstein, discussed with him graphology issues of mutual interest. This ‘chance’ meeting began a long friendship between Einstein and KJ’s mother, focused on their common interests and expertise in graphology. So, in the 1930’s after KJ’s parents left Freiburg and returned to Prague, his mother kept in touch with Einstein.
In Prague, KJ’s father became quite prominent and was appointed Surgeon to the President of the country. He was also a very outspoken political liberal. So, after the Nazis invaded and occupied Czechoslovakia in 1939, they listed KJ’s father as an “undesirable” person. And his life was thus jeopardized.
By this time, Einstein had renounced his German citizenship and emigrated to the USA, where as a Professor at the Princeton, NJ, Institute for Advanced Studies he had a free schedule and was using his great prestige to advocate for pacifism and social justice causes, and to tirelessly help countless potential European refugees obtain emigration visas to escape Nazi persecution, which he abhorred.
Via correspondence with KJ’s mother he learned of her family’s jeopardy, and managed to obtain for them an emigration visa, permitting them to come to the USA when KJ was nine years old.
So, but for Einstein KJ wouldn’t be here. And perhaps without KJ, Ron wouldn’t have learned enough about computers to have digitally recorded and published on-line his silly sutras, essays and apt Einstein quotes, or to have shared with you his “synchronicity” stories.
Einstein’s Noteworthy Humility
Professor Einstein’s spontaneously enthusiastic reaction to the graphologist’s reading that he was an ordinary person with a special talent happened when Einstein was already acclaimed world-wide as a “genius”. Yet it was consistent with his historical persona.
Historians say that Einstein was a very humble man who remained simple and self-effacing despite the world’s immense flattery and “genius” label, using his great prestige to advocate for social justice and controversial causes, like pacifism. So he regarded himself as just an ordinary person, with certain abilities in theoretical physics. For example he has said:
“I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.” “It’s not that I’m so smart; it’s just that I stay with problems longer.”
Apart from disclaiming superior intelligence, Professor Einstein once eschewed credit for his scientific accomplishments on grounds of predetermination. Until his death in 1955, Einstein rejected the “uncertainty” principle of quantum mechanics advanced by most respected physicists of his time; he stubbornly maintained his determinist view, consistent with ancient mystical insights, that
‘God does not play dice with the universe’
Thus, in a 1929 interview, when the debate about quantum mechanics “uncertainty” was at its height, Einstein modestly said that:
“I claim credit for nothing” . . “Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect, as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible piper.” [Einstein: The Life and Times, Ronald W. Clark, Page 422.]
Einstein’s steadfastly determinist view was consistent with ancient mystical insights, that the principle of cause and effect (or karma) pervades the phenomenal Universe without exception; that the ideas of chance or “uncertainty” arise from mysterious causes and conditions not yet scientifically recognized or perceived.
Some quantum physicists now suggest that recent non-locality experiments show that Einstein erred in rejecting quantum uncertainty theory; that these experiments support what Einstein rejected as “spooky action at a distance”. However, it is still possible that quantum physicists’ ideas of chance or “uncertainty” arise from predetermined causes and conditions not yet recognized or perceived by mainstream science.
Since Einstein’s death, some physicists, like his protege David Bohm, have advanced theories which reconcile apparent contradictions between universal “causality” and quantum “uncertainty” and “non-locality” and they are thereby ever narrowing remaining apparent disparity between scientific and mystical views of “reality”.
Einstein – Jung Synchronicity
Recently, we learned of a synchronistic connection between Albert Einstein and Carl Gustav Jung’s seminal work in coining and developing the concept of “synchronicity” – which on SillySutras.com has been expanded and treated as an important spiritual phenomenon.
According to Harper’s Encyclopedia of Mystical and Paranormal Experience, “The concept of synchronicity was developed largely by Carl G. Jung, who credited Albert Einstein as his inspiration.”
Einstein and Jung had met for a series of dinners in Zurich while Einstein was clarifying his theory of relativity. Long later in a 1953 letter to Carl Seelig, Jung wrote:
“Professor Einstein was my guest on several occasions at dinner… These were very early days when Einstein was developing his first theory of relativity, [and] it was he who first started me off thinking about a possible relativity of time as well as space, and their psychic conditionality. More than thirty years later, this stimulus led to my relation with the physicist Professor W. Pauli and to my thesis of psychic synchronicity.” … “It was above all the simplicity and directness of [Professor Einstein’s] genius as a thinker that impressed me mightily and exerted a lasting influence on my own intellectual work.”
Conclusion
The foregoing “synchronicity” story could not have been recounted by KJ and written by Ron, but for an amazing chain of mysteriously related unlikely events.
It couldn’t have happened unless:
1. Dr. Carl Gustav Jung met Professor Albert Einstein, whose “simplicity and directness” inspired Dr. Jung to coin and develop the concept of “synchronicity”.
2. KJ’s mother from Prague, Czechoslovakia and Professor Einstein hadn’t both shared interest as scientists in handwriting analysis; and therefor had concurrently attended a graphology lecture in Freiburg, Germany;
3. Where Einstein’s anonymous handwriting sample was randomly drawn and analyzed by the lecturer as that of ‘an ordinary person with a special talent’ – to Einstein’s delight;
4. Whereupon KJ’s mother met and discussed handwriting with Professor Einstein, and became so friendly with him as to maintain a continuing course of correspondence about graphology which lasted for years;
5. Until the 1939 Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia, which resulted in life-threatening jeopardy of KJ’s father and mother as alleged “undesirables”.
6. At a time after Einstein had emigrated to the USA, where as a Professor at the Princeton, NJ, Institute for Advanced Studies he had a free schedule and was using his great prestige to advocate for pacifism and social justice causes, and to tirelessly help countless potential European refugees obtain emigration visas to escape Nazi persecution, which he abhorred.
7. Whereupon KJ’s mother succeeded in communicating with Einstein, who managed to obtain for KJ’s family an emigration visa, permitting them to come to the USA when KJ was nine years old.
8. Where after retiring from a career as a San Francisco MD, KJ became a self-taught ‘computer guru’ who continuously helped Ron with his digital dilemmas after they ‘randomly’ met in 2002 through a mutual friend.
9. After reluctantly going online to help his son with legal problems, and consulting “Dr. Google”, Ron unexpectedly discovered many wise Einstein philosophical observations similar to Ron’s Sutra Sayings, and later innocently asked KJ “what do you think of Albert Einstein?”
So but for Einstein, KJ wouldn’t be here. And perhaps Ron wouldn’t have learned enough about computers to have digitally recorded and published on-line his silly sutras and apt Einstein quotes and essays, much less to have been privileged to share with you KJ’s extraordinary Einstein “synchronicity” story.
Ron’s August 24, 2022: Epilogue
Today, August 24, 2022, is KJ’s 93rd birthday. On June 24th KJ passed away peacefully in his sleep. But that happened only after he amazingly helped resolve a crucial computer crisis which almost prevented continuation of the Silly Sutras website.
So this Einstein synchronicity story is republished today as a posthumous 93rd birthday tribute to KJ who told this story, and to recount how KJ resolved a critical computer problem to save the Silly Sutras website.
Here is what happened:
On June 1st I was almost prevented from continuing the website when my 2008 iMac (with outdated OS 10.9 operating system and broken backup disk) irreparably stopped working. On the ‘death’ of my iMac, I immediately contacted KJ about my urgent dilemma.
Despite his advanced age, KJ expertly guided replacement of the 2008 iMac with a late 2012 model that could still be converted to run OS 10.9. Also he instructed my daughter Jessica about finding such an iMac on Craig’s List. Jessica successfully found a replacement iMac, and brought it to my apartment to be carefully converted to run voluminous SillySutras archived data on Mac OS 10.9. And with KJ’s expert guidance that finally happened on June 23, 2022.
Then the next night KJ passed away peacefully in his sleep. If KJ had departed on June 1st instead of June 24th, I couldn’t be sharing his Einstein synchronicity story with you today.
Closing questions
According to Einstein, as quoted above, all this was pre-determined “by forces over which we have no control”.
Do you agree? What do you think?
Synchronicity Story: Ask and It Shall Be Given, Seek and Ye Shall Find
“Synchronicity is an ever present reality for those who have eyes to see.”
~ Carl Jung
“Our deepest fears hide our highest potentials.”
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
Ask and it shall be given; Seek and ye shall find.
~ Matthew 7:7
During my frequent walks to Aquatic Beach, I occasionally met there a lovely young woman swimmer, Simone, who found time to swim. while attending school and working to support herself. Several times we talked before or after her swims. During one of our chats, Simone remarked to me that some day she’d like to swim out at the opening of the harbor where it was deep with different tides than those closer to the beach where she was then swimming. But she said that she was afraid to swim there alone, and wouldn’t try to do so without others accompanying her.
Later, in November on a beautiful sunny Sunday afternoon, I took one of my frequent walks out onto the San Francisco Municipal Pier. The pier juts far into the Bay and is a breakwater for the Aquatic Beach harbor. The deep waters at the end of the pier had enticed Simone as a new place to swim, but her fears had precluded that experience.
As I walked toward the very end of the pier, I saw a large crowd gathered there. Never before in many such walks onto the pier had I ever seen such a crowd. So I was quite curious as I neared them. And when I arrived at the end of the pier, I discovered that the people were gathered around and observing a young woman in a swimsuit who had climbed over the wall of the pier, and was standing on the ledge above the water, poised but afraid to dive into the water. It was Simone, fearfully hesitating for a long time before jumping off the pier to swim back to Aquatic Beach.
As we recognized each other, Simone asked for my encouragement. I obliged and, motivated by my reassurance, Simone finally jumped into the water, as the large crowd of well-wishing onlookers cheered her on. Just as Simone finally ‘took the plunge’ I gave her a “namaste” salute. Thereafter, she swam back to Aquatic Beach with Ned, another regular swimmer with whom I also was having synchronistic encounters and chats. Responding to Simone’s wish for a deep water swimming companion, Ned had walked with Simone onto the pier and had been treading water awaiting her dive to join him in swimming back to the beach.
As Simone and Ned swam together back to the beach, I wondered how Simone would feel after overcoming her fear of swimming in such deep waters. So, I intended to quickly walk back to the beach and greet them when they arrived there. But that didn’t happen.
Instead, I had a very long and lovely synchronistic and spiritual chat with one of the other onlookers, Janice, a long-time Buddhist practitioner who had observed with curiosity my “namaste” salute to Simone. So I didn’t again see Simone or Ned that day as wished, and wondered thereafter about Simone’s experience of breaking her fear barrier about deep water swimming.
More than four months passed before I again saw either Simone or Ned. Then, on a Sunday afternoon in March, just as I began walking onto the sand at the West end of Aquatic Beach, I encountered Ned who was walking in his swim suit toward the Municipal Pier, where he planned to jump into the Bay and swim back to the beach. We chatted for a while about that November day and about Simone. He told me that he had seen pictures of Simone taken on the pier that day by an onlooker, but didn’t have them. As we parted, at my request, he offered to try getting me the pictures via email exchange with Simone, with whom he’d continued to communicate. And I asked him to give Simone my regards, expressing a desire to see her soon. We thereupon parted and I continued walking toward the East end of Aquatic Beach, as Ned walked to the pier.
A few minutes later, just as I arrived at the East end of the beach, a female swimmer emerged from the water and began drying off. It was Simone. My wish to see her again was almost instantly fulfilled. Then I told her about my encounter with Ned, and wish to see pictures of that memorable November happening. She took my email address, and later sent them.
Though neither Ned nor Simone was aware of each other’s “coincidental” presence that day on the beach, the Lone Arranger knew, and staged those quick consecutive encounters fulfilling my wish to see Simone and the November pictures of her.
Synchronicity Story: A Spiritual Experience on Bernal Heights
“If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.”
~ Fred Rogers
“When you meet anyone, remember it is a holy encounter. As you see him, you will see yourself. As you treat him, you will treat yourself. As you think of him, you will think of yourself. Never forget this, for in him you will find yourself or lose sight of yourself.”
~ A Course in Miracles (ACIM)
Bernal Heights view
Lately, I have been blessed with ever more magical moments and with ever increasing gratitude for this precious and lucky life. Usually these magical moments have happened synchronistically and unexpectedly. And often they’ve involved spiritual experiences with people, creatures or Nature, which I call “holy encounters”.
Just before the recent solstice holidays, I was blessed with a magical visit to a beautiful San Francisco view place which I had never before seen. And there I met a lovely man, Daniel Raskin, who shared with me a haunting story (which follows) of his unforgettable spiritual experience in a remote Utah desert canyon.
Here’s what happened, and the story Daniel told me:
I moved from Chicago to San Francisco in 1960, attracted by San Francisco’s climate, physical beauty and ambiance. Within its boundaries are more than fifty hills, several islands, and significant stretches of Pacific Ocean and San Francisco Bay.
So, while living in San Francisco I have visited and enjoyed almost all of its best known view places. But until recently I never had known about or seen the spectacular view from atop Bernal Heights a hilly neighborhood above San Francisco’s outer Mission and Bay View districts.
Then, just before Christmas, I was invited to attend a beautiful holiday dinner party hosted by Shelley Cook, a very talented and intuitive massage therapist who has been skillfully helping heal and realign my body since it suffered a painful lower back yoga injury.
At the party there were many lovely artistic people, all much younger than me. One of the other guests, Audrey Daniel, a professional photographer/videographer, told me she had lived for many years in San Francisco’s Bernal Heights district, which she regarded as San Francisco’s most charming and typical neighborhood – like a village within the city. Whereupon, realizing that I had never yet visited Bernal Heights during my 50+ years as a San Franciscan, I became curious about seeing what Audrey was describing.
My curiosity was soon satisfied synchronistically by The Lone Arranger, my ‘appointments secretary’.
A few days after the party, at Shelley’s request, I unexpectedly rescheduled my regular afternoon appointment with her to morning, so she could accommodate some people from Santa Cruz who’d just been injured in an auto accident.
Upon finishing our morning massage therapy session, Shelley had extra time before her afternoon appointments. Generously, she offered to show me a nearby Vedanta healing center and shrine which she had long been urging me to visit. So we went to the shrine.
There, as I gazed at an image of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa – a nineteenth century Hindu saint with whom I have long felt special affinity – I experienced a deep Divine mood, and cried copious tears of devotion.
Ramakrishna Paramahamsa
Thereafter, when Shelley and I left the shrine, it was lunch time. And instead of returning home to eat, I unexpectedly went with Shelley to a restaurant which she recommended. At first she suggested a nearby Asian restaurant, but then she suddenly intuited that we would probably more enjoy going to a place on Bernal Heights.
So, four days after hearing from Audrey Daniel about the Bernal Heights district, I visited that area for the first time in my life, and there enjoyed a delicious Mexican lunch with Shelley. After we ate and before returning to her studio, Shelley urged me to hike atop Bernal hill to enjoy the magnificent panoramic view of San Francisco, instead of taking my usual daily walk by the Bay.
So, still in spiritual mood from my experience at the Ramakrishna Vedanta shrine, I walked up steep streets to the base of Bernal hill. There I approached the first person I encountered, seeking directions to the hilltop trail.
But instead of a quick encounter about directions, we had an extended dialogue. It was Daniel Raskin, with whom I enjoyed a long spiritual chat and experienced a ‘holy encounter’, before we parted and I beheld the spectacular panoramic view from atop Bernal Hill.
Synchronistically, Daniel identified himself as a photographer living in the Bernal Heights vicinity, like Audrey the photographer responsible for my curiosity about that neighborhood. And when I mentioned Audrey, Daniel said he had participated and appeared in her documentary film The Owls of Bernal Hill.
As we chatted, I told Daniel of my interest in mysterious spiritual synchronicities. Whereupon, he shared with me a wonderful story of an unforgettable spiritual experience. Here is Daniel’s story as he wrote it for a diary in 1998, just after it happened:
A Spiritual Experience
By Daniel Raskin *
July 15, 1998, Cottonwood Point, Arizona
Sierra Club Trip: Locating Petroglyphs
Utah Box Canyon
Today we visited the end of a box canyon where there were complex and intriguing ancient petroglyphs and small ruins. After breakfast we drove a short way to our trailhead and hiked a few miles along a sandy path. The plants were mostly a bluish
aromatic sage; also juniper, cacti, local grasses and, here and there, a late blooming flower. The sky was perfectly clear, deep blue, and the sun fierce. Most of the hike was in full sun; the temperature in the nineties by ten or eleven.
The end of the canyon was a spectacular place, a high semi-circular vertical cliff. It was concave and beautifully banded, brown, light brown, reddish brown and yellow. A broad waterless wash wove through the flat valley floor. There, in the
shade of the canyon, oaks and plants with red berries grew.
As soon as I got into the shade of the canyon walls, I began to breathe rapidly. I did not feel I had over-exerted myself, and did not understand why I was breathless. I began to feel slightly nauseous, faint and dizzy. I also felt very moved by the beauty surrounding me. I began to feel very emotional. My heartbeat was rapid and my breath uncontrollably fast and deep. I began to feel like I had taken LSD.
I sat down. My condition intensified. I began to cry, copious tears. I was simultaneously relieved, frightened and confused. My thoughts and feelings wandered freely. As I continued to cry, I felt over-joyed to be alive. I felt blessed to enjoy the relative security of my middle class existence. I thought about my partner Ann. I thought about her ovarian cancer. It almost killed her, but now she is healthy again and stronger in new ways. I thought about Jesse, my twenty-one year old, and how he is now thriving after a difficult adolescence. I thought about Sam, my sixteen year old. He has survived a risky and chaotic early adolescence, and is stronger and more mature. I felt my love, my powerful love for my family. All this time I was crying and breathing deeply.
I thought about the miracle of being alive, of experiencing existence in the midst of infinite eternity. What explains my chance to experience life? Who or what, ultimately, gave me and all of us this miraculous gift?
As I thought and cried, I slowly began to calm down. My breath slowed. After a while I felt stable enough to get up. I took photographs of the canyon and the beautiful oaks and wild currents growing there. Then I joined the group. They had
dispersed about the headwall to view the great array of petroglyphs. There were animals, human figures, designs and scenes pecked into the rock. The most impressive was a figure of a one-legged person. People with deformities were sometimes holy people in Native American cultures.
After looking at the rock art I investigated the remains of a kiva. A coyote had made a lair in its recesses. I found a small rodent’s jaw. I climbed down to the canyon floor. Datura, a hallucinogenic plant was growing there. I wondered: “am I in a sacred place?” After a while we left the canyon, had lunch, visited more rock art sites and returned to camp. I felt light-headed for several hours.
What happened to me? Did I become delirious from the heat? Was I freaked out by the rigors of this trip, lonely for my family? Maybe. But why did this happen today, rather than on another hot, hard working day?
And, why did this happen in a place with a petroglyph of a one-legged person, a kiva and hallucinogenic plants growing?
I’d like to say I had a vision, if saying that didn’t feel arrogant and presumptuous. Who knows? Fortunately, life is full of mysteries.
After returning home: I shared my experience with Ann. She said that I had had a spiritual experience about the gift of life and the power of love, as she had had when she was sick with cancer.
* Daniel Raskin is a retired San Francisco preschool teacher and photographer.
Utah Box Canyon
Today we visited the end of a box canyon where there were complex and intriguing ancient petroglyphs and small ruins. After breakfast we drove a short way to our trailhead and hiked a few miles along a sandy path. The plants were mostly a bluish
aromatic sage; also juniper, cacti, local grasses and, here and there, a late blooming flower. The sky was perfectly clear, deep blue, and the sun fierce. Most of the hike was in full sun; the temperature in the nineties by ten or eleven.
The end of the canyon was a spectacular place, a high semi-circular vertical cliff. It was concave and beautifully banded, brown, light brown, reddish brown and yellow. A broad waterless wash wove through the flat valley floor. There, in the
shade of the canyon, oaks and plants with red berries grew.
As soon as I got into the shade of the canyon walls, I began to breathe rapidly. I did not feel I had over-exerted myself, and did not understand why I was breathless. I began to feel slightly nauseous, faint and dizzy. I also felt very moved by the beauty surrounding me. I began to feel very emotional. My heartbeat was rapid and my breath uncontrollably fast and deep. I began to feel like I had taken LSD.
I sat down. My condition intensified. I began to cry, copious tears. I was simultaneously relieved, frightened and confused. My thoughts and feelings wandered freely. As I continued to cry, I felt over-joyed to be alive. I felt blessed to enjoy the relative security of my middle class existence. I thought about my partner Ann. I thought about her ovarian cancer. It almost killed her, but now she is healthy again and stronger in new ways. I thought about Jesse, my twenty-one year old, and how he is now thriving after a difficult adolescence. I thought about Sam, my sixteen year old. He has survived a risky and chaotic early adolescence, and is stronger and more mature. I felt my love, my powerful love for my family. All this time I was crying and breathing deeply.
I thought about the miracle of being alive, of experiencing existence in the midst of infinite eternity. What explains my chance to experience life? Who or what, ultimately, gave me and all of us this miraculous gift?
As I thought and cried, I slowly began to calm down. My breath slowed. After a while I felt stable enough to get up. I took photographs of the canyon and the beautiful oaks and wild currents growing there. Then I joined the group. They had
dispersed about the headwall to view the great array of petroglyphs. There were animals, human figures, designs and scenes pecked into the rock. The most impressive was a figure of a one-legged person. People with deformities were sometimes holy people in Native American cultures.
After looking at the rock art I investigated the remains of a kiva. A coyote had made a lair in its recesses. I found a small rodent’s jaw. I climbed down to the canyon floor. Datura, a hallucinogenic plant was growing there. I wondered: “am I in a sacred place?” After a while we left the canyon, had lunch, visited more rock art sites and returned to camp. I felt light-headed for several hours.
What happened to me? Did I become delirious from the heat? Was I freaked out by the rigors of this trip, lonely for my family? Maybe. But why did this happen today, rather than on another hot, hard working day?
And, why did this happen in a place with a petroglyph of a one-legged person, a kiva and hallucinogenic plants growing?
I’d like to say I had a vision, if saying that didn’t feel arrogant and presumptuous. Who knows? Fortunately, life is full of mysteries.
After returning home: I shared my experience with Ann. She said that I had had a spiritual experience about the gift of life and the power of love, as she had had when she was sick with cancer.
* Daniel Raskin is a retired San Francisco preschool teacher and photographer.
******
Do you agree (as I do) with Daniel’s partner Ann that he “had a spiritual experience about the gift of life and the power of love”?
And didn’t Daniel’s spontaneously copious tears express more eloquently than any words the heartfelt depths of his joy and gratitude for this blessed life?
Ron’s moral of the story:
Daniel’s deep spiritual experience, shows us that we don’t need religious rituals, beliefs or dogma to experience Divinity; that, beyond religion, our grateful communion with Nature can be an equally powerful spiritual path.
Remembering An Attitude Of Gratitude – A Holy Encounter ~ Ron’s Memoirs
“The deeds you do may be the only sermon some persons will hear today”
~ St. Francis Of Assisi
“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said,
people will forget what you did,
but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
~ Maya Angelou
“If you could only sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to the people you may never even dream of.
There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person.”
~ Fred Rogers
“When you meet anyone, remember it is a holy encounter.
As you see him, you will see yourself. As you treat him, you will treat yourself.
As you think of him, you will think of yourself.
Never forget this, for in him you will find yourself or lose sight of yourself.”
~ A Course in Miracles (ACIM)
“We are born and reborn countless number of times,
and it is possible that each being has been our parent at one time or another.
Therefore, it is likely that all beings in this universe have familial connections.”
~ H. H. Dalai Lama, from ‘The Path to Tranquility: Daily Wisdom”.
In this world of relativity, we are all relatives.
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
Introduction.
In the prior memoirs chapter “Another ‘Near Death’ Experience?”, I told of my miraculous survival and healing from critical taxicab rundown injuries, which I have attributed to the prayers, care, and good wishes of saints and many others who wanted me to get well. And I explained how the shock and trauma of my sudden injuries left me with continuing retrograde amnesia, without memory of what happened immediately before and after the taxicab incident, and while I was comatose.
In this chapter I will recount how a spontaneous act of loving-kindness by an ICU nurse – who synchronistically shared my reverence for Saint Francis of Assisi – proved an unforgettable healing blessing. I cannot remember the nurse’s name (so I’ll call her “Mary”), but my memory of our meeting was rekindled by an unforgettable document she left while I slept the next day; and I will never forget how I’ve felt because of her kindness.
A Holy Encounter.
For many years I have had frequent synchronistic meetings with strangers with whom I have experienced deeply harmonious connections. I have called them “holy encounters”. This is the story of an especially memorable holy encounter with a compassionate nurse which happened at the San Francisco General Hospital Intensive Care Unit [ICU], shortly after I had been run down and critically injured by a taxicab.
I have no memory of my admission to the ICU or of any prior conversations, diagnostic procedures or medical examinations there, and I was unaware of details of my injuries until after this encounter.
I later learned from medical records and from those who had examined or visited me that I had sustained a traumatic bleeding brain contusion and concussion, with extended loss of consciousness; large 2” chronic subdural hematoma pushing brain out of normal alignment; multiple fractures, including multiple facial fractures, bruises and lacerations; a fractured right leg tibial plateau; and various traumatic internal injuries, including a lacerated and bleeding liver. I was told that my head and face were completely bruised, discolored and swollen.
On the morning of this holy encounter I can now remember awakening supine on my hospital bed unable to rotate my body because of an IV tube and a full leg brace on my right leg. Presumably I was under influence of narcotic pain suppressant drugs which had been administered while I was unconscious, and until I was later able to decline them with informed consent.
Soon after I awakened that morning, I was greeted by a lovely slender, blond haired ICU nurse, who said:
“Good morning Mr. Rattner, I’m Mary your nurse for today.
How are you feeling?”
Amazingly, I simply responded:
“I’m grateful to be alive!”
Surprised, Mary commented appreciatively about my positive attitude. Whereupon I promptly recited for her my Silly Sutras saying that:
“An attitude of gratitude brings beatitude.”
And I explained to Mary that my attitude of gratitude came from abiding faith in Divine Providence, and conviction that I was blessed by Saint Francis of Assisi and other saints [*See Footnote]. Mary then told me that she had been raised to revere Saint Francis by her mother who regularly prayed to him at a home shrine.
Inspired by this wonderful synchronicity, I gladly recited for Mary the
“make me an instrument of Thy peace” prayer associated with Saint Francis, which amazingly I readily remembered, and which apparently she deeply appreciated. We talked briefly and she then proceeded on her rounds.
An unforgettable “get well” message.
The day after our ‘holy encounter’, I awakened to discover that while I slept Mary had placed this “get well” message, with the peace prayer of Saint Francis of Assisi, next to my bed.
Conclusion.
I have heretofore told how my mid-life spiritual epiphany opened an emotional flood-gate which had been closed since childhood, and unleashed for the first time in my adult life an intense and unprecedented torrent of tears; how for many years I cried so often and so profusely that I came to realize that I was experiencing a great transformative blessing recognized in various devotional spiritual traditions, and which in the Catholic tradition of St. Ignatius of Loyola and St. Francis of Assisi was known as “the gift of tears”.
Though never a frequent flyer, I became – and for over forty years have remained – a very frequent crier. Tears have helped purify my psyche, body and nervous system permitting ‘peek experiences’ of higher states of consciousness, as well as many experiences of extreme ecstasy. They have become for me a divine sign of an opened heart.
Mary’s ‘get well’ message has consistently and often sparked a flood of heartfelt emotions and tears as it reminds me of our holy encounter and of my attitude of gratitude for this precious human lifetime. Thus, many times while writing this story I have cried with heartfelt gratitude.
Moral of the story.
Every spontaneous and heartfelt act of loving-kindness bestowed in ordinary life – even in seemingly insignificant incidents – can prove a lasting blessing for its recipient and everyone everywhere.
And so may it be!
Ron Rattner
Footnote
* Saint Francis of Assisi.
Shortly after a profound spiritual opening in 1976, I began having synchronistic inner and outer experiences concerning Saint Francis of Assisi, of whom I was previously ignorant. Because of those experiences I developed deep affinity with this legendary saint, and regarded him an archetype to be emulated. Soon I began multiple daily recitations of the “make me an instrument of Thy peace” prayer associated with him, which have continued until now.
On retirement from legal practice in 1992, I made a pilgrimage to Italy to honor Saint Francis. In spring 1992, I journeyed to the Umbrian town of Assisi, Italy, where Saint Francis (‘Francesco’) was born and resided for most of his inspiring life, and where I experienced an extraordinary feeling of déjà vu, and some of the most memorable spiritual experiences of this lifetime. Also I made a magically memorable excursion to Mount La Verna in Tuscany – where Francis became the first Christian saint to receive the crucifixion stigmata of Christ. (See https://sillysutras.com/pilgrimage-to-assisi-communing-with-saint-francis-rons-memoirs/)
Synchronistically Discovering The Inner Spirit Of ’76, at Age Seventy Six, in 1976
~ Ron’s Memoirs
“The ego cannot be done away with. As long as ‘I-consciousness’ exists, living beings and the universe must also exist.
After realizing God, one sees that, it is He Himself
who has become the universe and the living beings.”
~ Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa
“The ego does not vanish altogether. The man coming down from samādhi perceives that it is Brahman that has become the ego, the universe, and all living beings.”
~ Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa
“All paths ultimately lead to the same Truth. But as long as God keeps the feeling of ego in us, it is easier to follow the path of love.”
~ Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa
“The ego cannot begot rid of; so let the rascal remain as the servant of God, the devotee of God.”
~ Sri Ramakrishna Paramahamsa
Introduction
Dear Friends,
As Americans commemorate our founding fathers’ July 4th, 1776, declaration of political independence from tyrannical British rule, this memoirs chapter tells how at age 76, in 1976, I synchronistically discovered a profound inner ‘Spirit of ’76’ evolution process (still unfolding at almost age ninety) revealing how we shall transcend previously unimagined fearful ego-mind obstacles to enjoyment of a god-given happy life.
Synchronistically Discovering The Inner Spirit Of ’76 at Age Seventy Six in 1976
On New Year’s Eve 1974-5 I was blessed with a transformative out-of-body experience (OOB), which impelled my relentless investigation of its profound meaning. Until then, like most Westerners, I self-identified only with my mortal physical body, its thoughts and story, and assumed that inevitable bodily death would forever end my life.
However in spring 1976, at age seventy six my quest for meaning of that OOB was suddenly rewarded by an extraordinary and spontaneous aha spiritual rebirth and re-awakening experience, which forever changed my Self-identity and reality paradigms. And it began a profound spiritual-evolution process, revealing previously unimagined and continuing discoveries which are still unfolding at almost age ninety.
Synchronistically my spiritual awakening at age 76 happened during the auspicious 1976 bicentennial commemorations of the 1776 American Declaration of Independence which widely celebrated “The Spirit Of ’76” .
Spirit Of ’76 Background
On July 4, 1776, thirteen American colonies declared their independence from British royal rule, in an historic document inspired by Thomas Paine’s Quaker philosophy and written by Thomas Jefferson. The Declaration of Independence morally proclaimed that under “the laws of nature and of nature’s God” government is established by people to secure their “Life, Liberty and . . pursuit of Happiness”, and is to be overthrown as illegitimate if it no longer does that.
Thomas Jefferson who authored the Declaration of Independence later explained that its principles
“promised to lead America—and other nations on the globe—into a new era of freedom. The revolution begun by Americans on July 4, 1776, would never end. It would inspire all peoples living under the burden of oppression and ignorance to open their eyes to the rights of mankind, to overturn the power of tyrants, and to declare the triumph of equality over inequality.”
Thus the Declaration unequivocally affirmed the inherent god-given human right to “Life, Liberty, and Happiness”. Though it emphasized outer liberty from immoral and inequitable political oppression, it’s spiritual philosophy also includes perpetual freedom from inner oppression, because (as Thomas Payne revealed) “our greatest enemies . . . are within.”
My Inner Spirit Of ’76 Discoveries
Synchronistically, at age 76 in 1976 I began discovering within that:
1) Spiritually we are not mere separate mortal physical bodies but ONE immortal and universal consciousness. Our mortal physical bodies are only impermanent energy vehicles with which we explore earth’s dense 3D environment. But because we are eternal consciousness we never die, just replace our temporary ‘space/time soul suits’ with new models.
2) Planet Earth’s space/time relative “reality” isn’t really real, but an energetic optical illusion of universal consciousness – like a dream or mental mirage, which Eastern religions call samsara or maya.
3) In space/time everything is energy [e=Mc2] appearing and disappearing within universal consciousness. But most humans mistakenly identify only with their thoughts, instead of their consciousness of those thoughts, and don’t realize that in Reality we are consciousness disguised as persons.
4) Because we mistakenly think that we’re only individual persons or entities separate from each other and Nature, we ‘create’ an illusory reality with our ever changing thoughts, words and behaviors.
5) Our self-identification with thought is ego. Ego-mind ideas about supposed separate self-identity and reality inescapably subject us to to the karmic law of cause and effect, whereby “every action, every thought, reaps its own corresponding rewards” – either joy or suffering. Thus ego-mind self-identification metaphorically confines us in psychological prisons in which suffering is inevitable, and which restrict realization of our infinite potentialities.
6) As long as humans choose to physically incarnate on Earth some separate ego-identity is inevitable and unavoidable.
7) Such Earthly ego-identity can be either harmful or helpful:
Egos are harmful when they are fearful, selfish, materialistic, or hedonistic; but when we fearlessly devote our precious human lives to serving others our egos are helpful. (Eg. see Bhagavad Gita, Chapter 6:05-6)
8) Maintaining a helpful ego of service or devotion to God in our chosen worldly activities is highly desirable. Helpful ego-minds quicken our transcendence from cause and effect earthly sufferings; but harmful ego-minds prolong such sufferings.
9) Thus, I’ve discovered (in the Spirit of ’76) that harmful and fearful inner ego-minds can be “our greatest enemies” by preventing our realization and enjoyment of innate human freedom from inner oppression. However, the energy frequency of LOVE always eradicates and dissipates fear as an assured antidote to fearful ego-minds.
10) So as fearless servants and instruments of Divine LOVE we are invariably destined to ultimately enjoy our innate God-given freedom from all inner-ego oppression.
And so shall it be!
Conclusion, dedication, and invocation
The energy of Divine LOVE always prevails over fearful energy. So as instruments and servants of God, we will invariably evolve human consciousness –beyond our mistakenly perceived separation from each other– by fearlessly realizing and actualizing our common Oneness with all Life as LOVE.
This memoirs posting is dedicated to hastening that transformation until we have merged and melted into ONE Universal Awareness – as Divine LOVE.
Thus may we always BE and pray:
Infuse us, enthuse us, and use us, to gratefully bless all life as Love!”
And so shall it be!
Ron Rattner
Choosing To Live A Miraculous and Holy Life ~ Ron’s Memoirs
“There are only two ways to live your life.
One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as though everything is a miracle.”
~ Albert Einstein
“And as to me, I know nothing else but miracles.”
~ Walt Whitman
“For everything that lives is Holy,
life delights in life.”
~ William Blake – The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
“Try and penetrate the secrets of nature and you will find that,
behind all the discernible laws and connections,
there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable.
Veneration for this force beyond anything we can comprehend is my religion.”
~ Albert Einstein
“The more we grow in love and virtue and holiness,
the more we see love and virtue and holiness outside.”
~ Swami Vivekananda
“Unless ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe.”
~ John 4:48
Saint Padre Pio of Pietrelcina,
May 25, 1887 – September 23, 1968
Capuchin Franciscan Friar with stigmata
Dear Friends,
On observing noteworthy mysteries which we can’t yet explain by known natural or scientific laws, we may call them “miracles” and attribute them to an Infinite or Divine Power, beyond human comprehension. Whether or not we call these phenomena “God” or Nature or Universal Intelligence, we can (like Albert Einstein) choose to live “as though everything is a miracle.” This memoirs posting outlines how I’ve begun regarding everything and everyone as divine and holy miracles.
My last “Miraculous Lotus Flower” memoirs posting told how I was obliged to change my description of a supposedly “real” blooming flower by physical proof revealed by my daughter Jessica Eve Rattner. However, I’ve been especially inspired by Sri Ramakrishna’s Teachings About God in All Beings to always remember that we have freedom of choice to perceive only Divine spirit or God – to see that everything is a Holy miracle – with love beyond fear or proof.
Today’s memoirs chapter discusses Divine “miracles” that can’t ever be scientifically or rationally explained, but are best accepted with faith as perpetual “unsolved” mysteries arising from “acts of God”. Perhaps the most inspiring such miraculous story yet posted on the SillySutras website is “Why The Choir Was Late” Similarly many other posted true synchronicity stories can be regarded as Divine mysteries beyond proof.
Some more unsolvable “miracles”
1) From May 1976 to February 1977, I had so many previously unprecedented premonitions, dreams, synchronicities, and precognitive and astral experiences that I began wondering whether we can astrally bi-locate, travel and transcend serial time. This still remains a question beyond scientific proof.
2) During April – May 1978, I synchronistically met my beloved Guruji, Shri Dhyanyogi Madhusudandas, who demonstrated yogic powers which I’d never previously imagined possible. These were Guruji’s rarely demonstrated “signs and wonders” [John 4:48] that motivated me to receive his shaktipat initiation. Soon thereafter at Guruji’s request, I drove him and his designated successor, Shri Anandi Ma, for an unforgettable sight seeing trip from Oakland to San Francisco to see Grace Cathedral and Saint Mary’s Cathedral.
En route as we passed the high-rise building, where my law office was on the 21st floor, I exclaimed spontaneously: “Guruji, my office is at the top of that building”. “Very good,” he responded. And we drove on. The next morning, my twenty first floor air conditioned office was completely suffused with the ambrosial fragrance of roses. But, its windows were sealed, and there were no roses in the entire law office suite. So afterwards I questioned Shri Anandi Ma about the rose fragrance. Smilingly she replied: “Oh, that’s Guruji’s calling card, when he makes astral visits”. So, how did that astral visit happen? It’s still a “miracle” beyond scientific proof.
3) During Guruj’s last months in the USA (in 1980-81), he affirmed to me his yogic ability to travel astrally at will. He told me: “Rasik, a yogi’s body is like a baby’s body. Your body is like a prison. I am like a jailer with the prison key. I come and go as I please.” But such astral traveling still remains a “miracle” beyond scientific proof.
4) In May 1992, after an unforgettable déjà vu pilgrimage to Italy to commune with Saint Francis of Assisi, I drove to the Southern Italy Adriatic town of San Giovanni Rotondo to pay my respects to Padre Pio, a famous stigmatist and Capuchin Franciscan Friar, known for his miraculous deeds, astral appearances, and for sometimes manifesting subtle fragrances of roses with violets. While I prayed and meditated at his holy tomb, I was unforgettably suffused with those fragrances. Later, I had repeated experiences of flower fragrance ‘visits’ from Guruji and other mystics. Those flower fragrance manifestations are still “miracles” beyond scientific proof.
5) In May 1993, intuiting that our daughter Jessica has just arrived from India on a world tour (with her spiritual teacher, Ammachi,) Jessica’s mother Naomi opened her San Francisco front door to discover strewn on her front porch the mysterious appearance of many rose petals. Later, Ammachi sent Naomi a packet of similar rose petals, without revealing or claiming to be the source of this rose petal ‘miracle’.
Soon thereafter while reading “The Autobiography of Saint Therese of Lisieux: The Story of a Soul.” I was repeatedly reminded and thought of Jessica. Then I synchronistically discovered (at “Christ in the Desert” a remote New Mexico monastery) that during Therese’s brief life as a Carmelite nun she often threw rose petals; and that during her last illness she had announced:
“After my death I will let fall a shower of roses”.
Saint Therese of Lisieux,
“The Little Flower of Jesus”,
January 2, 1873 – September 30, 1897
Since Therese’s passing many manifestations of rose petals and other posthumous “miracles” continue to be attributed to her. But Naomi’s rose petal manifestation “miracle”, remains an unsolved mystery beyond scientific proof.
Spiritual importance of seeing everyone and everything as divine and holy miracles beyond proof.
1) Every incarnate human is unique, with a unique “reality” “created” by his/her individual thoughts and behaviors. And we each have personal freedom to think and behave as we choose.
2) But our freely chosen thoughts and behaviors unavoidably subject us to the universal law of cause and effect; and thereby to karmically ‘reap as we sow’ either joy or suffering, depending whether we are lovingly kind, compassionate, and helpful or fearfully selfish, hedonistic and harmful.
3) If we always choose, to live with love beyond fear or proof; to perceive only Divine spirit or God; and to see that everything is a Holy miracle – we gradually create states of consciousness beyond karmic suffering and we ‘reap’ increasingly joyous lives. Ultimately we are destined to awaken from this dream-like relative “reality” to BE the eternal mystery of Divinity as LOVE.
Dedication of Choosing To Live A Miraculous and Holy Life
This memoirs chapter is deeply dedicated to elevating our ever evolving earthly “reality” by encouraging a “critical mass” of Humankind to choose living with loving, kind, compassionate, and helpful thoughts and behaviors.
May it inspire us to always remember that we have freedom of choice to perceive only Divine spirit or God – to see that everything is a Holy miracle – with love beyond fear or proof, until we ultimately awaken from this dream-like relative “reality” to BE the eternal mystery of Divinity – as LOVE.
And so may it be!
Ron Rattner
Farewell Carol:
Tribute to an Unforgettable Friend
~ Ron’s Memoirs
“May the Lord give you peace.”
~ St. Francis of Assisi
“You are not a drop in the ocean.
You are the entire ocean in a drop.”
~ Rumi
Carol Schuldt, ‘Queen of the Beach’, (6/26/33–12/01/18)
Ron’s Introduction to “Farewell Carol”.
Dear Friends,
While living we keep learning. Even Sri Ramakrishna often said
“As long as I live, so long do I learn.”
So at age ninety, I am continually blessed with helpful new spiritual insights and perspectives.
Therefore, I’ve updated and am reposting my “Farewell Carol” memoirs tribute to Carol Schuldt, a departed dear friend who was one of the most unforgettable persons I’ve known in this precious human lifetime. (This posting and my other stories about Carol are linked here.)
Carol was an extraordinarily intuitive free spirit, whose authentic and inner directed spiritual life was an inspiration for me and countless others.
Spiritually I’ve learned and written a lot about my friendship with Carol. Although she had many obvious flawed behaviors and habits, her spontaneous continuing communion with nature and constant concern for helping others, especially special needs children and adults, and troubled souls, was spiritually inspiring.
Recent prior postings explain that upon physical incarnation in low energy Third Dimension [3D] space/time and duality, we experience unavoidable sufferings from fearful ego illusions, but that we can choose to hasten our elevation to higher dimensions beyond such sufferings with loving and helpful behaviors, like Carol’s, where our instinctive caring for one-another, will bless Earth-life with an unprecedented era of Universal LOVE.
Background
“Farewell Carol” was first posted on June 26, 2022 on Carol’s 89th birthday anniversary.
Previously Carol painlessly left her body on December 1st, 2018, diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and heart failure at age 85. A week later her body was interred in a wild nature place overlooking the Pacific Ocean, after spontaneous rituals and stories were shared by Carol’s friends on a beautiful sunny afternoon.
In tribute to Carol, this posting has recounted my memoirs of our friendship, outlined Carol’s extraordinary spiritual history, told a miraculous synchronicity story about how I tearfully bid her farewell through our shared synchronistic harmony with St. Francis of Assisi, and concluded with my eulogy to Carol.
Carol Schuldt & Ron Rattner, @ Ron’s 80th birthday party, 11/11/’12
Carol was a legendary San Franciscan, sometimes known as ‘Queen of the Beach’ or ‘Mother Teresa of the Sunset’. She lived as a life-long nature lover and natural born shaman, authentically, intuitively, generously and spontaneously. (See Carol’s SF Chronicle obituary)
Carol and I had many synchronistic encounters, after we first met in the 1980’s. And we repeatedly shared our many ‘miraculous’ synchronicity stories (a few of which are posted here on SillySutras.com).
Before meeting Carol, I’d miraculously ‘discovered’ and become a lover of St. Francis of Assisi. And soon after meeting Carol, I learned that she too was a St. Francis lover, who constantly communed with Nature, even with the sun, the moon, and many nonhuman lifeforms.
So in tribute to Carol’s transition, I’ve writen about her spiritual history, and how I tearfully bid her farewell through our shared synchronistic harmony with St. Francis of Assisi.
Summary of Carol’s spiritual history.
Carol and I first met long ago while sitting at Aquatic Beach on San Francisco Bay (across from Ghirardelli Square), where I walked and where she often came to escape ocean fog and swim in the sun (without a wet suit). Afterwards we exchanged many “miracle” stories about our lives stemming from our countless experiences of synchronicities, or meaningful ‘coincidences’.
I deeply appreciated Carol as an amazingly free spirit with great instinctive wisdom and generosity. Before we met, she’d already become a ‘living legend’ throughout and beyond her San Francisco ocean front neighborhood. And many stories were written or told about her. For example, an excellent story: “A Benevolent Queen of the Beach” appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on September 25, 2000. And in 2005 Carol was interviewed on film by the SF Public Library, about her history and life in the ‘hippie’ 1960’s.
The Chronicle article told of Carol’s exceptional inner wisdom even from childhood, when at Catholic school she adamantly refused to worship a bloody Christ on a crucifix, and was the only child exempted therefrom by the nuns, who recognized her wisdom.
The article also told how Carol’s dedication to helping special needs children and adults, and troubled souls, was spiritually inspiring. But that paradoxically Carol experienced great family tragedy with all of her three children: her two daughters whose lives were lastingly impacted by drug addiction, and her son Pete who was permanently brain damaged in a childhood car accident. Because of her great generosity, especially toward needy young people, Carol was sometimes known as the “Mother Teresa of the Sunset District”. And as a daily swimmer/surfer she also became known as ‘Queen of the Beach’.
From childhood Carol was an extraordinarily intuitive free spirit. She never knowingly followed any prescribed Western or Eastern religious path, despite attempted childhood Catholic inculcation. Instead, she instinctively followed her own unique spiritual path of communing with Nature while surfing, swimming, sunning, hiking, biking, organic gardening, and helping troubled souls – especially young people.
Carol’s muraled house and organic garden.
Carol’s muraled house and aesthetic organic garden have symbolized her unique lifestyle as a St. Francis lover. Especially noteworthy is an artistically beautiful St. Francis of Assisi “Peace & Joy” mural at her home’s entryway – a delightfully surprising tourist attraction for visitors to San Francisco’s ocean beach area. On Carol’s roof top (above the mural) is an artistic portrayal of ‘Brother sun’, her main deity, and unfurled above the roof is a red Tibetan prayer flag, symbolizing Carol’s respect for the Tibetan culture and Dalai Lama.
Thus Carol’s house has eloquently exemplified her simple inner-directed life of instinctively communing with Nature, often without concern for outer–directed societal standards.
Carol’s St. Francis mural
Ron’s Synchronicity Story: “Goodbye St. Francis”= Farewell Carol
During forty years of living in the same San Francisco high-rise hermitage, my apartment has been adorned with many pictures and portrayals of St. Francis, my favorite saint, and of the peace prayer which he inspired. And until five years ago St. Francis in a stone statue also presided over my outside deck garden.
But in July 2018, I was obliged to remove everything from my outdoor deck so it could be renovated and repainted. Thereafter, I realized that I could no longer physically maintain my deck-top garden. So I decided to give away the plants and planters blessed by my St. Francis statue. While I was looking for new homes for my plants, the St. Francis statue was kept in an inconspicuous corner of my bedroom which was temporarily filled with many deck plants.
On December 1, 2018, my long-time neighbor and community gardener friend, Jan Monaghan, came to take pictures of my plants and planters, to help me find a new home for them. While showing Jan the St. Francis statue, I suddenly and inexplicably started crying, thinking and saying “goodbye Saint Francis”. Thereafter for several hours I kept crying,
The next day, Sunday December 2nd, I learned (via email) that Carol’s soul had departed her body Saturday evening, and I intuited that while Ron was tearfully saying goodbye to St. Francis Carol’s soul was astrally bidding Ron ‘adieu’.
On Monday morning, realizing that my St. Francis statue needed a proper and prominent new place to stand, I decided to move it to my my high-rise hermitage view living room, where I spend most indoor waking hours. So I telepathically told the saint in the statue that (on returning from a brief walk) I was moving him to a perfect place on my living room wool carpet, and that I would find an appropriate indoor pedestal for him there ASAP.
Soon thereafter, I took a brief walk on nearby Vallejo street. After walking for about fifteen minutes I beheld an amazing manifestation miracle. Amongst a curbside pile of discarded objects, I saw a perfect pedestal for St. Francis, which I carried home. On returning home, I moved St. Francis to a new perfect place on my living room carpet where he now resides on that miraculously manifested pedestal. And just as Carol’s St. Francis mural appears below a red Tibetan roof-top prayer flag, my St. Francis statue stands beneath a red Tibetan Kalachakra thangka mandala, symbolizing respect for the Tibetan culture, and His Holiness the Dalai Lama.
St. Francis statue on pedestal in Ron’s high-rise hermitage
Eulogy to Carol Schuldt
After briefly blessing this world
as a lover of St Francis of Assisi,
the divine soul we’ve known as Carol Schuldt,
has returned to the Sun,
from whence she’ll reappear eternally
for endless new lifetime adventures,
in countless new forms, of
LOVE.
And so may it be!
Ron Rattner
