“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

Many of my silly sutras were first written on bits of paper during an extended period of solitude, when I had no computer, TV, or daily paper. My attitude then about the ‘digital revolution’ was expressed in this sutra:

INNER NET, NOT INTERNET
Ron’s going off-Line,
out-of-line, out of linearity.
While the world wants ever more information,
Ron seeks infinite inspiration:
in the Unknown, in the Mystery –
the Mystery of Divinity.

But finally, despite my reluctance to go on-line, I was obliged to get a computer after my son had significant problems requiring my legal help. Only then did I discover Albert Einstein’s wise quotations on many 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, since Einstein’s credibility as a “genius” is infinitely more than mine, as an unknown no-one.

A few years ago, I wanted to discuss one of these ideas with my friend “KJ” a retired medical doctor and computer ‘genius’, who I met after going on-line, and who generously has helped me learn how to use my iMac and to resolve my 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 said: “If it wasn’t for Albert Einstein, I wouldn’t be here.”
At first, I thought he was joking and asked him to explain, expecting some humorous story. Instead KJ 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.

Both of KJ’s parents were European medical doctors from Czechoslovakia. In the late 1920’s, before he 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 member’s 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, when the Nazis invaded and occupied Czechoslovakia, KJ’s father was listed by them as an “undesirable” person. And his life was thus jeopardized.

By this time (1939), Einstein had renounced his German citizenship and emigrated to the USA, residing in Princeton, NJ. 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, I wouldn’t have learned enough about computers to have digitally recorded and published on-line my silly sutras and apt Einstein quotes. And I wouldn’t have been able to share with you this synchronicity story.

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?

* [Einstein’s enthusiastic reaction to the graphology reading 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.]

“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:”
William Shakespeare – As You Like It 2/7

May we bless the whole
as we play our role
in the cosmic theater of life.

Ever a part in it,
never apart from it,
in happiness or strife.

May we grow wise and harmonize,
though chaos seems e’er rife.

‘Til we’re the Whole- and not the role,
and holiness is Life.

Ron’s comments and recitation of Players’ Prayer

“Synchronicity is an ever present reality for those who have eyes to see.”
~ Carl Jung

“There is no such thing as chance;
and what seems to us merest accident
springs from the deepest source of destiny.”
~Friedrich Schiller

“People … who believe in physics, know that
the distinction between past, present, and future
is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
~ Albert Einstein

Q. What are synchronicities?

A. Synchronicities are noteworthy “premonitions” or “coincidences” in time mysteriously arising from unexplained causes and conditions which connect events, actions and thoughts; and, which show us that in Nature, there is no time and there are no “coincidences – that everything that is, was, or will be is NOW; and, that everything is inter-connected and happens in harmony and synchrony – concurrently, not coincidentally.

Q. Why are synchronicities in time often noteworthy or meaningful?

A. Synchronicities in time are often noteworthy or meaningful because as we live in linear time they remind us of our unchanging timeless consciousness – which is our true Reality. And they can show our complicity in co-creating our ever changing world “reality”.

Time is how human mind tries to measure the immeasurable NOW.

As Einstein observed:

“Space and time are not conditions in which we live,
they are modes in which we think.”

Space and time are but convenient conceptions of thought.

Though convenient, time is not congruent with Nature’s way –
the timeless Tao.

As thought, time is always then, not NOW; so living in time is living in the past.

As we transcend living conceptually in past time, and begin living authentically in timeless Presence, we notice more and more “synchronicities”.

And the more frequently we see synchronicities, the more they show we’re in the Flow – the Tao; the Eternal NOW.

So, when events seeming random happen in tandem,
it’s then we’ll know we’re in the flow –
the Tao; the Eternal NOW.

Thus, because humankind almost always live in time, synchronistic signs of timeless Reality often seem so noteworthy or meaningful.

Q. How do synchronicities appear in our lives?

A. Synchronicities originate in now hidden depths of mind – at transpersonal and seemingly ‘chaotic’ quantum levels of existence. The more we intuitively entrain with those higher levels of consciousness, the more we are in harmony with the natural order, and the more we see synchronicities manifesting in our lives.

We live in an ever changing participatory vibratory relative “reality” wherein creation is vibration and oscillation, and where we are creative oscillating, vibrating vortices – interconnected and interdependent with all of Nature.

Thus, everything we think, do or say changes this world in some way.

Synchronicities are resonant exteriorations or manifestations of our subtle higher vibrations – our thoughts, intentions and emanations. The higher, subtler and more focused our vibratory frequencies, the more luminous our emanations. And as we become more luminous, our synchronicities become more numerous and more numinous.

Q. How shall we interpret synchronicities?

A. Synchronicities, like dreams, can be meaningful metaphoric messages that help guide us from deep levels of consciousness; and they can present us with evolutionary opportunities, if we recognize and act on them. Even the Dalai Lama has said: “I am open to the guidance of synchronicity, and do not let expectations hinder my path.”

Synchronicities also can be seen as positive “biofeedback’ signs that we are in harmony with the natural order.

Synchronicities reveal the harmonious ONENESS of the Universe – both manifest and unmanifest, implicate and explicate. And the more we see that ONENESS, the more we see synchronicity as normality.

Thus, synchronicities can be seen as significant signs and reminders that temporal linearity is a cosmic irregularity, that “reality” isn’t mechanistic, and that the universe doesn’t work as we’ve thought or been taught.

And so, synchronicities can spur an inner search for a new “reality” paradigm, ultimately leading to the transformational discovery that our ever changing world “reality” isn’t really Real; that our unchanging timeless consciousness is our true Reality.

Q. How can synchronicities inspire us?

A. Synchronicities can infuse us with feelings of awe and gratitude for all miraculous and mysterious Life on this precious planet.

As we see each synchronicity as a mysterious, miraculous and numinous sign and reminder of our interdependence with all Life, we are inspired to BE – in sympathy and harmony with all Life.


Q. Can synchronicities help us harmonize with Nature?

A. Yes. To harmonize with Nature we must intuitively and reverently commune with our natural environment. Synchronicities can help us awaken from misconceived dreams of separation from Nature, so as to honor intuitive insights over mistaken or misguided mental processes.

Mistakenly thinking ourselves separate from our observations and perceptions, we try to explain them with thoughts and logical analyses. This mental process often leads to such preoccupation with details and minutia that we lose a reverent, holistic and macrocosmic view of our miraculous space/time natural environment. And we have thereby become alienated from Nature, and have ignorantly created ecological crises.

Synchronicities can remind us of the limitations of thought, and of the dangers of alienation from an intuitively participatory way of being in this world; that as thinkers, we do not and cannot understand Nature; that we are part of a participatory natural order in which everything/ everyone is interdependent; and, that everything we think, do or say changes this world in some way.

With this awareness we are spurred to harmonize with Nature.

And so may it be!

“People .. who believe in physics, know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.”
~ Albert Einstein

“Space and time are not conditions in which we live,
they are modes in which we think”
~ Albert Einstein

Introduction

In April 1976, during a traumatic divorce, I experienced a transformative mid-life spiritual awakening. Thereupon, I began having many extraordinary psychic or mystical experiences previously unknown to me, including experiences which challenged my prior ideas about linear time and free will versus destiny.

In January and February, 1977, I was having so many unusual premonitions, dreams, synchronicities and precognitive experiences that I started making diary notations about them, though I’d never before kept any such diary. These extraordinary experiences radically challenged my “normal” linear time paradigm, and motivated me to try understanding what they meant and why they were happening.

At the end of 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.

Before telling you what happened to me in New York that week, I must recount prior circumstances and events in San Francisco which were crucially related to those New York experiences.

Extraordinary experiences in San Francisco

One month before my New York trip, on January 22, 1977, I had an unforgettable mystical experience of traveling astrally super-fast to an unknown place. The inner experience happened when I was partially awakened from a sound sleep in the middle of the night. I was out of my body and traveling with a whirring/whistling sound, so swiftly that intuitively it seemed I was moving faster than the speed of light – a supposed physical impossibility.

My first destination was a room which appeared from its furnishings to be a typical hotel room. After observing the room, I suddenly traveled right through many walls in the same building and stopped in another similarly furnished apparent hotel room – again a supposed physical impossibility.

In the second room, I looked out the window and saw far below what I thought was a kidney shaped swimming pool on a platform, surrounded by geometric designs. At that point I briefly awakened in wonderment about this unprecedented experience, and later recorded it in my diary.

At this time, I was seeking explanations for my extraordinary experiences by attending various psychic/spiritual programs, including events sponsored by Arica Institute. Arica was a spiritual mystery school founded by Chilean mystic Oscar Ichaso, who used enneagrams – nine star polygons – to esoterically model and analyze human personalities. On Monday, February 7, 1977, I attended an Arica program in San Francisco where I was encouraged to visit Arica’s new beautiful headquarters facilities in New York City.

Also, during this same time period, I experienced several unusually vivid dreams, wherein I saw an unknown dark haired woman with short bangs, and became very curious about her identity and why she was in my dreams.

After jogging to the Golden Gate bridge each morning, I regularly walked to my office in the financial district. On the way to my office I often passed a store front Christian Science reading room on Polk Street where I read the selected bible passages displayed in the window. On Tuesday, February 8, 1977, the day after the Arica meeting, I had walked a short distance past the Christian Science reading room without stopping, when suddenly I felt impelled to go back and read the bracketed bible passage then on display in the window.

It was from Genesis, Chapter 29, about Jacob and his uncle Laban and Laban’s two daughters, Lea and Rachel who were both betrothed to Jacob. Jacob loved Rachel, Laban’s youngest daughter, but couldn’t marry her until after he had first worked for Laban seven years, married Lea, the eldest, and then spent seven more years laboring for Laban as a condition to his marriage to Lea.

The commentary noted that because of Jacob’s love and devotion for Rachel, the two seven year periods passed quickly – as if ‘time stood still’. That night I noted this in my diary.

In New York I was to participate in a week of class-action depositions. Since I was unfamiliar with New York city I asked my uncle Richard, a New York resident, to reserve a room for me at a hotel near the Rockefeller Center deposition site. He picked the Wellington. But thereafter I learned from other lawyers attending the depositions that the New York Hilton was closest to the deposition site. So I called the Hilton from San Francisco, but was told they were then booked. So, I planned to stay at the Wellington.


A miraculous trip to New York City

“The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.”
~ Albert Einstein

Here is what happened during my 1977 trip to New York which forever changed my views about the ‘reality’ of serial time:

On Monday, February 21, 1977, I boarded an airplane flight from San Francisco to New York City. En route I began reading a book by J. W. Dunne, entitled “An Experiment With Time” about precognition and human experience of time. I had just purchased the Dunne book, after reading “The Roots of Coincidence” by Arthur Koestler which discussed time seriality and synchronicity in light of observations by physicists. I was trying to understand the numerous precognitive and synchronistic experiences that then had been regularly occurring in my life for almost a year since my rebirth experience.

Dunne’s book proposed that past, present and future all happen concurrently, though ‘normal’ human consciousness experiences them linearly, except in dreams. Dunne’s theory was based on his own precognitive dreams and induced precognitive states. Though Dunne’s essay was originally published in 1927, this was my first exposure to these fascinating ideas about linear time. Soon, however, my amazing experiences during the week in New York convinced me of the probable validity of Dunne’s theory.

I arrived at JFK airport Monday evening, checked into the Wellington Hotel, and was assigned an uncomfortably warm room, in which I didn’t want to stay another night. On awakening Tuesday morning, I called the Hilton where I was able to reserve a room. So, I checked out of the Wellington and into the Hilton, where I was given room 2541.

On entering my new Hilton room I gazed out the window and was astonished to see below me an extraordinary mosaic art display of colored tiles arrayed in geometric forms. I immediately recognized it as the apparent “raised platform” with the same geometric design which I had mistakenly perceived as a swimming pool in my January 22 astral time travel experience. But instead of a swimming pool on a raised platform, I was viewing the roof of the Ziegfeld Theater, as covered with this artistic mosaic tile display.

Thereupon, I realized with amazement that my astral travel vision had been precognitive and, moreover, that my perception then that I was traveling faster than the speed of light – and thus traveling into the ‘future’ – was probably correct.

Soon after checking into the Hilton, I attended the first deposition at 1345 Avenue of Americas, in the offices of Arthur Anderson Co. Synchronistically, the extraordinary Ziegfeld Theater rooftop display was also visible from from the deposition conference room.

On Tuesday evening after the first deposition and before dinner, I decided to visit the New York Arica Institute headquarters, as suggested by San Francisco Arica people. Located at 24 West 57th Street, it proved unusual and beautiful as they told me – with even an interesting art gallery. There was only one other visitor when I arrived at Arica that evening – Pat, a dark haired woman with short bangs, wearing jeans and a denim jacket, who was viewing displayed art works.

We soon began chatting and learned that we were both quite interested in similar psychic phenomena. Pat, like me, had attended and valued Werner Ehrhard’s est training and had been having numerous psychic experiences following a recent divorce. She told me that she was self-employed as a free-lance model. (I later learned that she was then one of New York’s top fashion models.)

After talking for some time at Arica, we went to a nearby small restaurant where at dinner we were engrossed in conversation about logic versus experience of psychic phenomena and precognitive dreams – a conversation that seemed only to have begun when we needed to part. So we agreed to and did meet again for dinner the next night, Wednesday, February 23. And again we continued conversing about seemingly illogical but very real psychic phenomena which we had experienced.

On parting, I invited Pat to join me for dinner on Friday night, since I had a dinner engagement with my uncle and aunt on Thursday night. Until then, I had planned to return to San Francisco on Friday evening after the depositions, but decided that I’d like to stay in New York to see Pat again. She told me that she’d like to meet me again, but wouldn’t know if that was possible until Friday. So, we agreed that she would let me know by calling me at the deposition. I gave her a phone number which I’d been told would directly connect to the Arthur Anderson conference room where the depositions were happening.

That Wednesday night, I awakened suddenly from a sound sleep with the “ahaa!” realization that Pat was the dark haired woman with bangs who I’d earlier seen in San Francisco dreams. In a phone conversation the next day, I asked her if she’d always styled her hair with bangs. She replied that she hadn’t worn it that way for a long time, but that she had just had her hair cut with bangs, the week before we met. (So, when I saw her with bangs in my dreams, she wasn’t yet wearing them.)

On Thursday night I had dinner with my uncle Richard and aunt Roseanne. This was our first meeting since my spiritual awakening. So, tactfully, I tried to explain my recent experiences and new intense interest in psychic phenomena and precognition. But it seemed that these subjects were a bit too ‘far out’ for them.

On returning to my Hilton Hotel room before bed-time, I decided to read passages from the Gideon bible which I found in a drawer under the telephone. Randomly, I first opened that bible to the Book of Numbers where synchronistically I read this passage about significance of dreams and visions:

And the Lord said to them, “Now listen to what I say: “If there were prophets among you, I, the Lord, would reveal myself in visions. I would speak to them in dreams. But not with my servant Moses. Of all my house, he is the one I trust. I speak to him face to face, clearly, and not in riddles! (Numbers 12:6-8)

Next, I decided to review again Genesis 29:16 et. seq., the passage about Jacob and Laban’s two daughters, Leah and Rachel, which had so intrigued me two weeks earlier in the Christian Science Reading Room window.

And finally I ruminated deeply about the meaning of this passage, suggesting infinite possibility of ‘miracles’:

“Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him that believes” ~ Mark 9:23.

An amazing day



I arose Friday morning intending to stay in New York that night only if I could spend another evening with Pat, the lovely dark haired ‘woman of my dreams’. Otherwise, I would return to San Francisco on an evening non-stop flight. I received no phone message from Pat during the morning deposition session. Assuming she couldn’t meet me, I checked out of the Hilton at 1 p.m., and left my bags in the hotel lobby baggage room.

Only after checking out, was I informed by the Hilton desk clerk of Pat’s unsuccessful attempt to reach me there, and of her answering service call-back number. But I wasn’t able to contact her until after 5 p.m.

When I finally reached her, she told me she’d been trying to call me at Arthur Anderson all afternoon to arrange our meeting, but that no-one answered the Anderson private line number, so she had given up on seeing me, and had returned home outside Manhattan. By this time, it was too late for me to catch the hotel limousine bus service to JFK for the evening non-stop to San Francisco.

So I stepped up to the Hilton front desk and registered for a room for one night. Synchronistically, I was given room 2506 on the very same floor and very same side of the hotel as room 2541 (where I had been staying until then), except at the opposite end of the corridor. I entered the new room looked out the window, again beheld the extraordinary colored tile mosaic art display on the roof of the Ziegfeld Theater, and began crying. At long last I realized why in my January 22nd astral travels into the future I had moved through many walls from one hotel room to another. I had moved from Hilton room 2541 to room 2506. How AMAZING!!

Unexpectedly alone in New York on a Friday night when I had planned to return to San Francisco, and wondering how I would spend the evening, I went down to the hotel lobby bar for a drink. There I met an English woman named Pam, who told me she was visiting from London to spend time with her friend, actor Rex Harrison, who was then starring on Broadway in “Caesar and Cleopatra”, which had just opened at the Palace Theater.

Pam urged me to join her at the play that night and promised to introduce me to Rex Harrison after the performance. That sounded interesting, so I agreed to see “Caesar and Cleopatra” with her.

Then, I asked Pam what she did in London when not vacationing. She told me she was an actress on leave from the London production of “Fiddler on the Roof”. We talked a bit about Fiddler. I had seen the movie adaptation of the play, but not the play, and as we talked I was reminded of how much I had enjoyed the film.

Set in Tsarist Russia in 1905, the Fiddler story centers on Tevye, a village milk man and father of five daughters, and his thwarted attempts to follow religious traditions and maintain family unity in turbulent times; how he coped with both the strong-willed actions of his three older daughters and with the edicts of the Tsar banishing the Jews from their villages and dwellings.

The story was set at the very time when my beloved Jewish father, Harry, was born in a similar Ukrainian village. Especially because my father and his extended family were obliged to flee for their lives from Tsarist Russia, in the same way as the fictional characters in Fiddler were obliged to flee, I was exceptionally interested in the story and loved the music.

While Pam and I chatted about Fiddler, she mentioned that a Fiddler revival was then running on Broadway with Zero Mostel in the lead role, as Tevye the milkman. I had always wanted to see a Fiddler production but didn’t know until that moment that it was being performed on Broadway. On learning this, I diplomatically explained to Pam that though it would be fun to meet Rex Harrision with her, I would prefer seeing Fiddler on the Roof.

I’d heard that with Zero Mostel, the original star, the play was wonderfully entertaining, and perhaps better than the movie in which Mostel wasn’t cast. So, after explaining this to Pam, I quickly went to the Winter Garden Theater box office where I was able to get a good center balcony single seat.

Thus on Friday, February 25, 1977, I was unexpectedly about to see a Broadway revival of “Fiddler on the Roof”, with Zero Mostel, because I had unexpectedly failed to return that night to San Francisco as planned, and had unexpectedly remained in New York City, where I was unexpectedly staying at the Hilton Hotel, in a 25th floor room at the opposite end of the corridor from the 25th floor room where I had unexpectedly stayed earlier in the week, after unexpectedly checking out of the Wellington Hotel.

As I sat that night in the Winter Garden balcony awaiting the opening curtain, I read the brief playbill story summary. But nothing therein prepared me for my emotional experience during scene six of the first act. Prior to that scene, a young man named Perchik – an itinerant bible scholar passing through Tevye’s village – had met kind hearted Tevye, who gave Perchik room and board in exchange for Perchik’s commitment to teach bible lessons to Tevye’s daughters.

Amazingly, act one, scene six, opened with Perchik giving Tevye’s daughters a lesson about Jacob and Laban’s two daughters, Leah and Rachel, from Genesis 29:16 – the same passage that had engrossed me in San Francisco when I read it in the Christian Science Reading Room window and again when I read it in my hotel room Gideon Bible.

For me this was such a miraculous, mysterious, and meaningful synchronicity, culminating so many similar amazing events during my extraordinary week in New York, that I spontaneously burst into tears. And I kept crying for the remainder of the play.

Conclusion

On returning to San Francisco from that miraculous week in New York, I began wondering:

“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?”

What do you think?

Since that extraordinary week in New York thirty five years ago, experience has lead me to believe that it is possible for rare seers, Buddhas, and mystics to intuitively realize as accurate the following ultimate answers to these questions:

“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

Q. (to Ramana Maharshi)
“Are only the important events in a man’s life, such as his main occupation or profession, predetermined, or are trifling acts also, such as taking a cup of water or moving from one part of the room to another?”
A. “Everything is predetermined.”
~ Ramana Maharshi

“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

“Ego is the biggest enemy of humans. ”
~ Rig Veda

“The foundation of the Buddha’s teachings lies in compassion,
and the reason for practicing the teachings is to wipe out the persistence of ego, the number-one enemy of compassion.”
~ H.H. Dalai Lama

“The entire Buddhist path is based on the discovery of egolessness and the maturing of insight or knowledge that comes from egolessness.”
~ Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

“Free of ego, living naturally, working virtuously, you become filled with inexhaustible vitality and are liberated forever from the cycle of death and rebirth. Understand this if nothing else: spiritual freedom and oneness with the Tao are not randomly bestowed gifts, but the rewards of conscious self-transformation and self-evolution.”
~ Lao Tzu

Ego’s attrition
is our mission;

Egocide’s our goal.

When ego’s dead
we’ll lose all dread,

Knowing we are Soul.

Then we’ll say
that life’s a play,

Each body/mind a role;

That we’re the Glory
and not the story,

Not just parts – but Whole.

Ron’s recitation of Egocide

“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

“Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.”
~ Albert Einstein

Ron Meditating On Ganges With Sant Keshadavadas, 1982

As explained in other posts, during a traumatic 1976 divorce, I experienced a transformative mid-life spiritual awakening.  Two years later, I met a 100 year old Hindu guru, Shri Dhyanyogi, and evolved from being a secular Hebrew, to becoming a “born-again Hindu”. And gradually I developed an ever increasing interest and curiosity about Indian spirituality and culture. After a few years, the “universe” presented me with an ideal opportunity to satisfy that curiosity.

In 1981, soon after Dhyanyogi had returned to India, I met Sant Keshadavadas, a devotional Indian spiritual teacher known as a singing saint. Especially in the absence of my beloved Guruji, Dhyanyogi, I appreciated Sant Keshadavadas’ loving demeanor, singing, stories and teachings. So I frequently attended programs at his Oakland, California “Temple of Cosmic Religion”. Thereafter, on learning that Sant Keshadavadas would be conducting a spiritual tour of Indian holy places, I wanted to join that tour, if it was OK with Dhyanyogi.

So after obtaining Guruji’s approval, in January and February 1982, I journeyed with Sant Keshadavadas on a wonderful spiritual pilgrimage to Japan, India and Nepal. That guided tour was, and remains for me, the most important trip of my lifetime.

Never before had I been in a land with such a palpably spiritual ambiance as I experienced everywhere in India. Our tour group crossed the length and breadth of that vast country (mostly by airplane and local buses) visiting many spiritual shrines and meeting saintly beings, like Mother Teresa and Satya Sai Baba. And I had numerous wondrous experiences. (In other chapters I will recount some of those experiences.)

Ron with Mother Teresa, Calcutta, 1982

Sai Baba blessing Ron, Bangalore, 1982

Ten years after that trip, in 1992 I retired from law practice and returned to India to pay my respects to Guruji, who at age 114 requested that I write and publish my spiritual memoirs. Though initially bewildered by this request, I knew that such memoirs needed to describe experiences during my 1982 ‘trip of a lifetime’. But I hadn’t kept a diary during that pilgrimage trip, and had to rely mostly on memory to tell about it.

Thereafter, many years passed during which I lived in introspective semi-seclusion, without a TV, computer, newspaper, or radio news of the “real world”, meditating, praying, seeking answers to ultimate questions, and “enlightenment”. During these years I did not yet feel ready to honor Guruji’s request that I write and publish my spiritual memoirs. But I was always mindful of the importance of fulfilling his wishes.

A few years ago, while thinking about Guruji’s request, I discussed it with my friends Bizhan and Deborah. I told them that as I was delaying in writing and publishing my spiritual memoirs they were being edited by time, as my memories waned. And I expressed concern about whether I could remember sufficient details of the 1982 pilgrimage to India, suggesting that my friends might be able to help me remember stories I had shared with them.

Thereafter, within a couple of weeks, the universe produced an amazing synchronicity – a “manifestation miracle” which re-kindled memories of that momentous trip.

Here is what happened:

One afternoon while walking to the Marina Green adjoining San Francisco Bay I intended picking some dandelion and fennel leaves for my salad. But as I passed across the street from the Marina Safeway supermarket, I realized that I’d forgotten to bring a plastic bag in which to carry my ‘harvest’. After momentarily considering a detour into the Safeway, I decided instead to keep my eyes peeled for stray bags which commonly could be seen then blowing around in the public park area where I was walking.

Soon I saw at a distance on the sidewalk ahead of me a white plastic bag, and presumed that it was just what I needed. But as I approached it, I saw that it was far too large for my purposes. So, rather than leaving it cluttering the sidewalk where it might be blown into the water, I decided to put the plastic bag into a nearby waste dumpster.

I picked up the bag, walked a few a yards to the dumpster, and opened the dumpster lid prepared to discard the bag. But I was diverted from doing that by a surprising sight. Clearly visible, at the very top of the refuse pile in the dumpster, were about a dozen commercial VHS video tapes, which I began to examine with curiousity.

As I looked at the video titles, I saw that they all seemed to relate to spiritual subjects that interested me, like yoga. Though never before a ‘dumpster diver’, I decided that I’d like to take all those videos home and check them out.

Thereupon, I wondered momentarily how I might carry them, forgetting the large plastic bag that had led me to the dumpster. Then, remembering that bag, I laughed as I realized that the universe had not only led me to the videos, but had provided me a bag perfectly sized to carry them home. So I put them in that bag, which when loaded became quite heavy.

So, unable to continue walking as planned, I returned home with the heavy bag of videos but without dandelion or fennel for my salad. At home I discovered that the universe had just produced perhaps the most extraordinary “manifestation miracle” of my life.

On examining the videos, I found one titled “Call of the Flute – Spiritual Journey To India And Nepal”*. To my delight and amazement, I discovered that it was all about my 1982 pilgrimage to India with Sant Keshavadas.

And then I remembered that a team of professional videographers, led by a devotee of Sant Keshavadas, David Karp, had accompanied our tour group. Apparently afterwards they had produced and distributed this one hour documentary video for display on some non-network and cable television outlets. I had never acquired a copy of the video, and don’t recall ever before seeing it.

Yet somehow, over twenty years later, a copy of that video had synchronistically manifested for me in a Marina garbage dumpster which I unexpectedly visited at a rare time when the video was visible at the top of the garbage pile.

And on viewing the video I found that it included numerous scenes which had been filmed when I was present, thus serendipitously rekindling memories of that momentous trip, and fulfilling my recently expressed desire for such reminders.

Who can explain such synchronicity “miracles”? Nonetheless, despite their mysterious origins, such synchronicities can fill us with feelings of awe and gratitude for our miraculous Life on this precious planet, and remind us that we are part of Nature, connected and interdependent with all Life everywhere.

Einstein once observed that: “Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.” As I have been ever more blessed by such noteworthy and amazing “coincidences”, they ever more inspire and infuse me with heartfelt gratitude for the grace of this lucky life, and for the omnipresent but ‘anonymous’ Divine Source of all appearances therein.

*Videographer David Karp has generously permitted me to share with you on You Tube this documentary video, which so miraculously manifested for me just when I was trying to recall details of our 1982 pilgrimage to India and Nepal.

“Call of the Flute – Spiritual Journey To India And Nepal”

True happiness cannot be found in things that change and pass away. Pleasure and pain alternate inexorably. Happiness comes from the Self and can be found in the Self only.
Find your real Self .. and all else will come with it.
~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

What is birth? Is it of the “I-thought” or of the body?
Is “I” separate from the body or identical? How did this “I-thought” arise?
Is the “I-thought” your nature? Or is something else your nature?
The “I” of the wise man includes the body but he does not identify himself with the body.
For there cannot be anything apart from “I” for him.
If the body falls, there is no loss for the “I”. “I” remains the same.
If the body feels dead, let it raise the question. Being inert, it cannot “I”.
“I” never dies and does not ask. Who then dies? Who asks?
~ Sri Ramana Maharshi

Sri Ramana Maharshi

Q. How can we become immortal?

A. To be immortal, BE more than a mortal.

Consider:

What lives? What dies?

What exists? What persists?

Observe:

That every thing and every phenomenon
that arises and appears on the screen of our consciousness

Is but a fleeting mirage projected in space/time,
by and within the Light of Eternal Awareness;

That nothing is permanent in the ever changing universe,
where all that appears, disappears.

Be aware:

That only Eternal Awareness
exists and persists beyond time.

So, to be immortal, don’t just be a mortal –

BE Eternal Awareness –

NOW!

“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.

“Our prayers should be for blessings in general,
for God knows best what is good for us.”
~ Socrates

“Prayers go up and blessings come down.”
~ Yiddish Proverb

HOW SHALL WE PRAY?

Pray for God to do through you –

Not for you.

Pray like Saint Francis of Assisi:

“Lord, make me an instrument of thy Peace.”

Ron’s audio recitation of How Shall We Pray

“Harmony is the secret principle of life.”
~ Paramahansa Yogananda

“When there is harmony between the mind, heart and resolution
then nothing is impossible.”
~ Rig Veda

“As it acts in the world, the Tao is like the bending of a bow. The top is bent downward; the bottom is bent up. It adjusts excess and deficiency so that there is perfect balance. It takes from what is too much and give to what isn’t enough. Those who try to control, who use force to protect their power, go against the direction of the Tao. They take from those who don’t have enough and give to those who have far too much. The Master can keep giving because there is no end to her wealth. She acts without expectation, succeeds without taking credit, and doesn’t think that she is better than anyone else.”
~ Lao Tzu *

Our life is in the balance,
Ever < NOW >,

‘Twixt our hopes
and our history,

On a fulcrum of Mystery,

Our life is in the balance,
Ever < NOW > !

Ron’s audio recitation of Life’s in the Balance

* Lao Tzu, translation by Stephen Mitchell