The Synchronicity of Number 66

My memory tells me two things about this synchronicity: that it began about 8-9 months ago, and that it was my second last visit to the cosmetic shop. 

I should not have asked for the discount which her husband used to offer me sometimes. When she refused to give any, I asked her to check with her husband before disappointing a regular customer. She looked right into my eyes and asked when was the last time I bought stuff from her husband. Never ask for a discount, all you might get is a shock! She updated me about an event that had happened three months before my visit. The shopkeeper had died due to brain hemorrhage 3 months ago! She acknowledged my shock, I appreciated her acceptance of her husband's demise.

That conversation should have ended after this exchange, but it went on for a few more minutes. This happens to people who poke their paranormal noses into universe's business. I was ready to leave when she asked if I knew what the number 66 signified. Why did she ask me? This was the first time I had met her, and neither her nor her husband knew anything about my mystical interests. 

She told me the number 66 had become an uninvited visitor around the time and immediately after her husband's death. She was seeing number 66 everywhere: in the hospital and even on the road to Haridwar ... I advised her to consult an numerologist if she was so eager to understand the mystery behind this number and its occurrence in her life at such a difficult time.

I didn't bother about this number until I started noticing it, too. Not only on registration plates, but I found this printed on some T-shirts and Jeans my younger nephew wanted to buy. I even stopped him from buying that stuff twice. But then last week he brought a T-shirt with the number 66 on its pocket and even told his mom about my resistance (fear is the word!) to this number. What you resists persists!

Without worrying about it too much, I just told myself that it was my fear, my Rahu, playing games and I just needed to believe in God (Krishna). Then something, which I would call mystical for now—until my understanding improves—happened. On the Saturday night, when I finished reading the chapter 12 of the Geeta, I opened the Geoffrey Parrinder’s translation of the Geeta and a page opened randomly. (I have two copies of the Bhagvat Geeta) On that page I found my answer to the number 66. This is what Krishna showed me:

XVIII.66:    “Come to me alone for refuge,
                   abandoning all things of law,
                   and have no fear, from every ill
                    I shall release you even more.”

I felt so light after this synchronicity. My fear evaporated.

Krishna gave me another assurance the very next day. I was windowshopping in Connaught Place when at a bookstand I noticed Robert E. Svoboda’s “Aghora – III: The Law of Karma”. How could I resist such a title especially when I have already read this author's "At the Left Hand of the God". I brought it home with me, and started reading this book later that night. On page 35, the author says: “He advises Arjuna to waive his attachment to all potential results of every karma and to focus on Him only: “Abondon all other duties, and come to me alone for refuge. Be not sorrowful, for I shall give you liberation from all sins. (Bhagvad Gita XVIII.66)””

A week before these two events took place, an ex-colleague visited me in the office. We were meeting after a gap of 12 years. Although we exchanged our phone numbers about 2 years ago when we had bumped into each other in the Raddisson lobby in Noida, for some reason, we could never meet before October, 2011. When my ex-colleague learned about my spiritual inclinations, he told me about his own. He spoke about the Geeta and how it changed his life. On hearing this, I told him how I started reading the 12th chapter of the the Geeta every night, only a few days before, when K.N. Rao, the great astrologer, advised me to do so, and how my divine connection with Lord Krishna was reviving after a suffering of three years. All he said to me was that he loved the last verse of the Geeta in which Krishna asks Arjuna to let go of everything and just come to Him; just love Him. What he didn't tell was that he was talking about the 66th verse in the chapter 18 of the Geeta. This occurred to me only only a couple of days ago when I was narrating this series of incidents to a friend. The verse 66 is the climax of the Geeta, as this colleague said. Since this was not enough for me to decipher the synchronicity of the number 66 and its purpose, the universe plotted the other two incidents.

Krishna is my personal diety, so to say, although I felt disconnected from Him in the last few years. The first time I read the Geeta, it was the year 2002. During this long period of nine years, I took a stab at learning astrology, tarot, past life regression, pranic healing, quantum healing, crystal healing, and so forth. Before whispering in my soul's proverbial ears the meaning and relevance of the verse 66, Krishna wanted me to experience everything and every system that appealed to my mind. Because until the monkey mind has quenched its thirst, it doesn't let us move forward. 

Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare

Hare Ram Hare Ram Ram Ram Hare Hare

Twin Flame Via Ketu (South Node)

On June 19, my Mercury sub-period (antardasha)--which was running in the main period (mahadasha) of Rahu (North Node)--got over. On June 20^th started the antardasha of Ketu (South Node), which occupied its natal position in my horoscope a few days ago. This is Ketu’s third return (in the transit) in my life. It might mean many things, and I’ll refrain from delving deeper into it. While Ketu’s sub-period will influence my life till July first week next year, in the astro transit, it’s going to stay in Taurus, my ascendant, for 1.5 years. It seems like a crucial time because Ketu’s return in transit and its antardasha have coincided. Ketu’s return is also Rahu’s return because they are always 180-degree from each other. Interestingly, Jupiter is also passing its natal position in my horoscope.

Ketu’s hands are full. But it won’t show me what it has got in its shadowy hands. It’s a very secretive planet. So many events might be sprouting under its shadow at this time.

Ketu has not come empty-handed. It seems to be giving back what Mercury (shockingly!) took away: my interest in occult, synchronicities, crystals.

Crystals. They are calling me these days. Desh is motivating me to open a crystal shop. Talking about crystals, on the arrival day of Ketu, I found myself reading Judy Hall’s article “The Magic of Crystals” in which she mentions that a crystal which has equal sized crystals side by side on a common base can assist you in finding your twinflame:

“… If you can find a crystal that has two equal sized

crystals side by side on a common base place this here too. Many Candle

Quartzes can be found in twin formations that spring from a joint base and

they are excellent for this purpose as they symbolise mutual support and

loving interdependence. It will attract a twinflame into your life: a twinflame

being a soulmate without the karma and without the hassle. Something we

all need in our life!”

The same evening I was supposed to return Desh’s Rose Quartz and Amethyst samples, so I made up my mind to look for a twinflame crystal after returning his samples. I decided to search for it in his new showroom where he keeps crystal clusters and huge rocks. It didn’t take me more than three minutes to find what I was looking for. There was just one piece and it was in Clear Quartz. It was waiting for me! I picked it up along with an Amethyst cluster, which was pulling me toward it.

Feeling smug I went back to Desh’s den and asked the price of both items. He looked a bit surprised when he saw the twinflame thing in my hand. He said, looking amused rather than surprised, “ah, twinflame! Keep it. It’s for you.” Maybe he didn’t know he had a twinflame Clear Quartz, or perhaps, he didn’t expect that I would want one, or be able to find it in the sea of clusters. Anyway, I got what my soul looked for!

 Here is a pencil sketch of twinflame:

https://picasaweb.google.com/prommila/Crystals#5621010383891129954

An image of a twinflame Amethyst is here:

https://picasaweb.google.com/prommila/Crystals#5621010380717494466

Here is a picture of MY twinflame in Clear Quartz:  

https://picasaweb.google.com/prommila/Crystals#5621010513928689074
                                                  

Synchronicity about "Synchronicity"

I wonder why I never wrote about it on my blog ... this synchronicity is quite special to me. It happened mid last year, a couple of months after I wrote “A 360-Degree Look At The New Age Secret”. Its seed was sown around the same time when I was writing A 360-Degree ... article, and the synchronicity flowered two months after my manager’s visit to India.

When she confirmed that she would be visiting India, I asked my manager to bring C.G. Jung’s book “Synchronicity” for me, as I didn’t want to pay heavy shipping,--which I would have to if I ordered the book online. (The horizontal masthead on this blog is from the cover of “Synchronicity”. I found it online many years ago and altered it a bit.)

At the time of writing “A 360-Degree Look At The New Age Secret”, I struggled between choosing the right term to describe the phenomenon that gives us power--and works its magic--to fulfill our desires. Between “passion” and “intensity”, I settled for “intensity” because it resonated more with me. I wrote “A 360-Degree Look At The New Age Secret” sometime in January last year and kept in a proverbial closet because I wanted to be sure if I deeply believed in what I said in the article.

My manager visited India sometime in the second week of March. With her arrived “Synchronicity”. I put it on the piles of unread books. On my trip to B’lore June last year, I carried “Synchronicity” with me and resolved to finish it before I returned home. (I’m in a habit of buying books and never reading them. Many times they end up as collector’s items in my bookracks.)

My synchronistic moment waited on the 32nd page of “Synchronicity”:

“As regards the role which affects play in the occurrence of synchronistic events, I should perhaps mention that this by no means a new idea but was already known to Avicenna and Albertus Magnus. On the subject of magic, Albertus Magnus writes:

I discovered an instructive account [of magic] in Avicenna’s Liber sextus naturalium, which says that that a certain power to alter things indwells in the human soul and subordinates the other things to her, particularly when she is swept into a great excess of love or hate or the like. When therefore the soul of a man falls into a great excess of any passion, it can be proved by experiment that it [the excess] binds things [magically] and alters them in the way it wants, and for a long time I didn’t believe it, but after I read the nigromatic books and others of the kind on signs and magic, I found that the emotionality of the human soul is the chief cause of all these things, whether because, on account of her great emotion, she alters her bodily substance and the other things towards which she strives, or because on account of her dignity, the other, lower things are subject to her, or because the appropriate hour or astrological situation or another power coincides with so inordinate an emotion, and we [in consequence] believe that what this power does is then done by the soul. … Whoever would learn the secret of doing and undoing these things must know that everyone can influence everything magically if he falls into a great excess … and he must do it at that hour when the excess befalls him, and operate with the thing things which the soul prescribes. For the soul is then so desirous of the matter she would accomplish that of her own accord she seizes on the more significant and better astrological hour which also rules over the things suited to that matter … Thus it is soul who desires a thing more intensely, who makes things more effective and more like what comes forth….Such is the manner of production with everything the soul intensely desires. Everything she does with that aim in view possesses motive power and efficacy for what the soul desires.”

In the post “Affirmations beget Synchronicity!”, which I wrote five years ago from now, I linked the whole gamut of positive thinking/secret/affirmations to karmas as well. This is because of my belief in karma theory and my knowledge about astrology and how it influences our attitude and destiny.

The text I have quoted above from “Synchronicity” reminded me that my understanding has been in accord with that of many others who spent their lives finding answers to the mystery called life.

Matrix of Stories

Spiritual journeys begin in the womb of the universe, the cosmic egg; hiryanagrabha. Biological journeys are rooted in mother’s womb; connecting us through the umbilical chord with the physical world. These journeys fuse together at an undefined point, and at this point begin our life’s stories. Our stories are a small part of the matrix in which we grow. Our stories are connected with the stories of others. These connections span across centuries, cultures, countries, and worlds.

The seed of all stories is our search for Self and the search for meaning, and with the seed is born the impetus to breathe life in our stories. What causes the stories to flower as myths and scriptures of our lives are these twins – seed and impetus.

The matrix of our life stories is formless. It’s hard to tell whether you’re the writer of your stories, or you, yourself, are being written ... There is always a point when the story starts writing itself; it makes you its protagonist. In its urge to reach a finishing point, the story commands you to think, feel, and act in bizarre ways.

While the story is writing you, you start dabbling with another story, and yet another story, and in the course of multiple inceptions, you’re written and edited many times. The beauty of this matrix is every time you end up where you started—but as a different person; with new and yet familiar pain points; colored with different shades of transient pleasures; hungry for lasting joys. Another intriguing truth is the resemblance between all stories; their underlying cause is one and single! And it’s this mesmerizing truth that binds all parallel stories in our life with a common thread. This thread also crosses boundaries, and ties knots with other threads of other lives. This thread binds us with events, places, and people.

From the matrix of endlessly hooked up stories, I’ve picked up a story, which is still in the making, and which is making me. It began in a summer decades ago, on a cloudy day, when my heart had just begun to understand its search. The search started over a melancholic walk in the emerald green surroundings; surroundings canopied with gray clouds; clouds pregnant with rain; rain that put off its plan to drench the ground; the smell of wet ground that was nipped in my mind; a mind that was ready to conceive.

I'll stop here. My story is calling me.

From Paranormal to Divine

That was the summer of 2002. The month was May. Dates are lost somewhere in the maze of faded memories... The place was Mussoorie; a city enveloped in hills. Mussoorie is a holiday home to some Bollywood stars. It’s permanent residence of Ruskin Bond, too. Almost 8 years ago, Lipica and I planned a short trip to Mussoorie with Lipica’s friend Sugantha who lived there.

I’ve thought of writing about it many times before, but never got around to doing it for some reason. I don’t know why I’m writing about it tonight when I’m neither awake, nor asleep.

On the non-airconditioned bus to Mussoorie, which had the effect of sauna bath on its travelers, Lipica and Sugantha were sharing a seat. I was on the other side; drinking through my ears the cocktail of Sugantha’s half-true life stories and the noise that was emitting through the loosely-fitted window glass. We did not talk much on the way. The separateness of our seats punctuated the lack of common vibes between Sugandtha and me. This, however, didn’t stop me from overhearing their conversation about Sugandtha’s bua ji, who was a devotee of Krishna since her teen years--she was 76 in 2002. What I heard was that Buaji had taken an oath to remain silent all her life, and that she had a younger sister who was a divine being that left this world when she was 20 or so. The younger sister’s body dematerialized in a broad daylight and a streak of light left her body through her crown charka. Many people saw it. Before leaving her worldly form, the younger divine being guided her sister (buaji) to traverse the path that led to Krishna. I doubted Sugandtha’s words. In a quiet but acerbic tone I told myself this couldn’t be completely true. I told myself that Sugantha was on a spiritual trip to heighten her ego.


We reached the main gate of her Buaji’s old British home around 8 p.m. I stepped out of the white Maruti van first; the two friends were a step behind. We picked up our bags and began to climb down the stairs that led to the open space and veranda. While climbing down the stairs, I saw a person of short stature who was dressed in a cream robe. This being was walking in the same direction as the three of us. This person’s creamy-white wavy hair was falling on her shoulders. I could not see her (or his?) face, but she seemed to be heading toward the passage or the room on the left hand side. I can relive that moment right now without any emotions, but my mind released an unknown yet familiar feeling of fear through my body in the moment when I saw her the first time. I had clenched my fists. I couldn’t look toward her again. Not even with my eyes half closed. After a few moments, but before I reached the veranda, it occurred to me that this person could be Buaji. But why had her presence and calm appearance scared me out of my wits?


I didn’t ask Sugantha about her Buaji at all. I was avoiding any conversation about her. I think it was the fear of facing her Buaji. After an hour of our arrival, a short lady with an exceptionally radiant face entered the front room. I heard the footsteps before I saw her. The fear made another attempt to cause similar reaction as it had an hour ago. But I leashed it with awareness this time. I bravely looked in the direction of her footsteps. She was wearing a white salwaar kamiz. Her head was covered with a white dupatta. The radiance on her face blended well with the whiteness of her attire. I asked Sugantha who the lady was. To my surprise, she said, “Buaji”. I asked her who was the person we saw walking outside, if that wasn’t Buaji. Sugantha and Lipica said they didn’t see anyone while entering the house or climbing down the stairs. I was shocked! How could they miss someone so distinct? Sugantha said that no one else lived in that house except Buaji, Chaukidaar and his wife (they were young and normal looking). Moreover, there was no other house in that vicinity. So no one would have visited this house anyway. She asked Buaji about the mysterious lady that I had seen. Buaji gesticulated to tell us no one else lived there. When I explained to her that the lady's hair was similar to that of Krishna's-- (waves, texture, not the color), she laughed and made some gestures again to rule out the possibility of anyone visiting her home. That was a scary night in that lonesome house. Even existence of a good soul--devotee of Krishna—couldn’t salvage my fear-stricken heart.

Sugantha invited us to the other room in which Sugantha’s younger Buaji's (the divine being) photograph was kept. She started telling us about her younger Buaji. The younger one was a 12-year kid when that photo was taken. Her attire was nothing but a white piece of cloth that she had wrapped around her whole self. The moment I noticed her black, thick, wavy hair in the photograph, I began to wonder if that person outside was no one else but the younger sister; the divine being. It was not hard to imagine that if the young girl in the picture grew old, she would look exactly like the person I had seen walking at a five feet’s distance… But her body had dematerialized and her soul had left the world when she was 20. How could that person be the younger Buaji? And if she so much liked to live in that form and in that house, why would she leave in the first place?

Next morning, Sugantha whispered in our ears that Buaji was inquiring about the lady I had seen a night before. Buaji asked chuakidar and his wife if they saw someone, to which they said “NO.” It was then I recalled that chaukidar’s wife was washing dishes when the person in the cream robe was passing by. How could she miss a person of such a distinct appearance and mysterious aura?

It took me a night of full of fears and doubts to conclude that who I saw—that no one else could see--was perhaps a spirit; a divine spirit. Another thought that this person was no one else but Krishna himself began to sprout in my mind…

This mysterious incident remained with me for a couple of years. I was desperate to find answers/the truth. But the truth didn’t even lurk behind the shadows of doubts… I have stopped looking for answers now. Truth reveals itself, when the time is right.

Or, perhaps, this curiosity is still alive in some corner of my heart, but I don’t water it with attention anymore…Not thinking about this paranormal experience doesn’t lessen its significance though. No matter what I say, the truth is, this episode marked the beginning of my unintended spiritual journey—in this life.

The Crow Synchronicity

Some things appear random in the scheme of life, but they’re as much a part of Invisible Plan as others that are seemingly planned. I don’t know why I brought up the topic of crows and my ornithophobia (just with the dead birds. Especially black birds.) the other day with M and S. I asked M if she noticed that ravens flight the B’lore sky just as crows flock the sky in Delhi/NCR. On hearing my statement, S said she had not seen a crow in Noida for quite some time. I said I would show her one someday outside the office. With this, the conversation died its natural death.

Last Sunday, after I came back from my weekly meditation class, my mom’s nurse shocked me when said she had to pick up a dead crow that papa saw in our porch and throw it in the trash. This is the first time a bird died in this house. We've been living here for 22 years now. The area of porch where she found the dead crow is fully covered. My father said the two notorious cats must have brought the crow and left it there. I thanked God for not letting me see the crow. I would have been paralyzed with my known indescribable fear, anxiety, if I had to see it. I would have clenched my fists and screamed. I would have ran... I can’t even see a dead crow from 100 ft. let alone seeing it at an arm’s length. This fear stems from a past life, I think. I just hope it’s not about the future.

This morning, a text message woke me up from my disturbed sleep. It was from S. The message was: “A crow in my balcony, first time in this house.”

The dead crow is an omen. Some say it’s a bad omen, and some cultures believe it to be a good omen. Is the alive crow that S saw in her balcony a sign about something, too?

A 360-Degree Look at the New Age Secret

The world has found the Secret of fulfillment and with this Secret we have found the immutable laws of spiritual and material success. This Secret is packaged in different forms: affirmations, positive thinking, prayers, law of attraction, law of opposition, and so on. These are all different words for one and single phenomenon which tunes in our consciousness with the universe. Everybody experiences this phenomenon knowingly or unknowingly. In the spate of words floating around the universe, my consciousness--based on a careful observation of events in my life--has chosen another word for this phenomenon: “Intensity.”

In the last decade, I have observed this phenomenon carefully in my life and my perspective about this new age Secret is going through a change. With some observation I say that a true prayer has no template or format. What it does have is intensity, which has its root deep in our hearts. When this root is watered with strength and love, the intensity grows and touches the Superconscious where the divine lives. But all this happens in a moment; in a blink. I realize that igniting intensity is not a subject to be taught or learned; it’s a koan without an answer.

No matter whether we affirm specifically or not, or pray ritualistically or not, here are few things which we ought to heed, rather internalize, as seekers:

•  When we want something, most of us mediate on the fear that we won’t get it. In other words, we “affirm negatively”. Some might jitter and say we don’t affirm at all. All of us do! If I keep thinking in my mind “I won’t get it, good things don’t happen to me” and blah, then I am affirming negatively, rather I am NEGATING what might come my way. So that’s one reason why we don’t get what we want.
• When conscious and subconscious minds are not aligned, then things tune out and don’t happen the way we expect. To put it in different words, it becomes immaterial whether I chant a mantra, a prayer, or an affirmation 108 times or 1000 times, if I can’t feel it deep inside my heart, I’m merely putting myself to sleep or falling in a temporary state of boredom.
• Out of conscious and subconscious whichever is stronger, will win.
• If affirmations and negations are equal, then the result is zero (simple math).
• If we affirm for someone else’s loss, we don’t win. Nature is not unfair!
• Once you start focusing on what you want, the universe shows you signs and symbols to help you move forward. Sometimes they come as whispers, and sometimes you hear loud cries... When the synchronicity begins, a few seemingly negative things happen and only those negativities lead you to what you have been craving for. This is not a rule however, but I have experienced it quite a few times in my life.

Along with many opportunities to validate what I’ve listed above has come to me the realization that there is no logical way to create something which is born only when certain variables in the universe are present at a certain time for us to make things happen. Some might argue that prayers and affirmations bring those variables to work desirably for us. Yes, absolutely! But this raises another question: why is that in some situations we can easily adapt the right approach to fulfillment, that is, the desired intensity to achieve our goal is ignited naturally. Whereas in some situations, no matter how much we try, we can’t rid ourselves of some patterns, beliefs, and negativities.

Therefore, undesirable state of mind either diminishes the intensity, which we require to attain our goal, or never lets us create the associated positive feeling. So what drives this driving force; this intensity? Can we ignite intensity in all our prayers and affirmations in a consistent manner? Why are some prayers backed with high intensity and others mere mechanical verbalizations of our pains and fears, devoid of intensity—like corpses? Or let’s ask ourselves can we artificially induce the needed intensity? Can we dissolve fearful or negative thoughts just by saying “I’m courageous and fearless.”? Will a fear, which has been dominating our subconscious mind for ages, dissolve if we chant a positive statement?

Affirming for something alone is not going to persuade God to serve it on a platter, but making the effort, thinking about it, searching in many directions, does make it happen some day. So it doesn’t happen because you or I affirm, but because of the intensity with which we want to make it happen. If we say, well it happened because we affirmed. No it’s not that simple. It happened because we believed intensely; we desired intensely.

In this big ocean of multiple realities and possibilities, there is another truth: our intensity to realize our dreams is as much a part of our destinies as the dreams themselves. The stuff we dream and desire is always in synch with the path that our souls choose to follow. Some dreams fulfill and some don’t. While fulfilled dreams bestow the sense of satisfaction first and later improve our understanding of “Neti, Neti”, the experiences that we go through on account of unfulfilled dreams stay with us longer. In both cases, we move closer to Completion--the ultimate goal of our souls. The path one takes is always in accord with not only the purpose of soul, but with the level of soul too. The Almighty doesn’t let us wander without a reason. There is a method to what appears to be madness.

prayer

Not all prayers come true because not all prayers are prayers. They're mere verbalization of our pains or desires. A true prayer has no template or format. What it does have is "intensity", which has its root deep in our hearts. When this root is watered with strength and love, the intensity grows and touches the superconscious where the divine lives. But all this happens in a moment; in a blink. No science or art can teach you how to pray.