Inspiring Stories

Help is at Hand

Bel Geddes only had $5.83 left when he sat in a park and noticed a magazine lying next to him. Flicking through the magazine he noticed an article saying that the millionaire Otto Kahn thought the rich should help artists. Bel immediately spent most of his $5.83 sending a telegram  to Khan explaining his desire to produce plays and design sets. Khan wired Bel $400. With this help Bel went to New York and got a job designing opera sets. He gradually worked up to become one of Broadway’s best designers, and a famous designer of car bodies, and household goods.

Thou art That

Black Elk was an Oglala Sioux. He experienced a ‘great vision’ while standing on Harney Peak in the Black Hills of Dakota. Describing this vision he said, ‘I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all things as they must live together as one being.’ He understood from his vision that ‘anywhere is the centre of the world.’ He meant by this that we are each at the centre of the web of life. Whatever the mysterious link is between distant electrons that enables instant communication between them, it means that there is no distance between us. A way of envisioning this is through the image of the maypole, or of the sacred pole used in ritual dances. With the maypole each dancer is connected to the pole by a ribbon. Whichever way the dancers move the pole remains at their centre, and each individual is connected with all the others through the pole and ribbons. If we take the pole to represent what is at the centre or base of all of us, a point beyond time and space, then not only do we link with all things through the centre, but we are also at the centre of things through the link. This is similar to the recent findings of astronomers that there is no centre to the universe. No matter where one stands in it, you are at the centre.

Of course, Black Elk was not the only seer to say that we each are at-one with the primal life and consciousness of the universe. In the Upanishads it says Tat tvam asi, which means ‘Thou art That’. This means that not only are you at the centre, but in essence you are the centre.

Ask and it will be given

An amazing aspect of coincidences is that this mystical, or at least, subjective awareness of our connection with creation, is often expressed in terms of events rather than internal experience. Linda Clark became aware of this after attending a birthday party for the famous dolphin researcher John Lilly. Lilly’s work was in the study of alien language, so he was trying to discover if humans and dolphins could communicate. This fascinated Linda, and she longed to make friends with a dolphin, even to the point of begging one of Lilly’s associates to let her spend time in one of the dolphin tanks. The following day, as Linda looked out at the evening scene from her beachfront window, she was amazed to see two dolphins stranded on the shore. Linda immediately phoned the emergency services for help. Each service she contacted explained to her that the dolphins would certainly die. They were probably sick, and out of water they would only live for a few hours.

Not content with waiting for the authorities to act, Linda went to the dolphins with pots of water to keep them cool and wet. At her first contact the dolphins, a female and calf, shuddered anxiously, but when Linda spoke to them and lay next to them, their anxiety disappeared. Through the long hours of the night Linda poured water over the dolphins and spoke to them, encouraging them not to give up. Her clothes became soaked with water so often she had to change five times. Eventually, with the dawn, a rescue crew arrived and managed to lift the dolphins back into the sea. A marine biologist later said that he was amazed the dolphins survived, and it was only the second time in a century the species of dolphin, a deep water variety, had been stranded on a beach in Southern California.

On a TV show, Linda stressed what an amazing coincidence it was that her desire to know a dolphin was followed within hours by her experience as helper and friend of two of the wonderful animals.

We Be of One Blood, You and I

Carl Jung noticed such events in his dealings with clients. He describes one such coincidence as follows:

For instance, I walk with a woman patient in a wood. She tells me about the first dream in her life that had made an everlasting impression upon her. She had seen a spectral fox coming down the stairs in her parental home. At this moment a real fox comes out of the trees not 40 yards away and walks quietly on the path ahead of us for several minutes. The animal behaves as if it were a partner in the human situation.

These experiences deeply impressed Jung, and led him to define a theory to explain them. He came to believe that our internal world of personal experience is not separated from the external world of events. But he did say that synchronistic events were nevertheless not causally evoked. In other words, the thoughts and actions of the individual do not cause the event in the way striking a match and applying the flame to paper, would cause the paper to burn.

My Dog Saw my Spirit

When I was 18, and stationed in Germany in the RAF, I had a similar experience to that of Steve. It also involved my dog, Vince, who was a beautiful and loving Alsatian. What happened to me didn’t seem like a dream. It was even more vivid and real than waking life, although of a much different quality. I had suddenly been awoken from sleep by an intense feeling of rushing upward, and expansion. Everything was black until I could suddenly see my body asleep on the bed below me. Then, with my knees clasped to my chest – not at all the Superman image – I flew way above the ground across the summer evening landscape. At one point I could see ripples of energy rising from the ground. I wondered if this was people praying. Then the flying ended and I was immediately at home in London.

This was such an enormously impressive experience I stood for a while stunned, trying to understand what was happening to me. My mother was sitting knitting watching television, and Vince was asleep in front of the gas fire. My father was not there. Excitedly I called to my mother, ‘Mum, look what’s happening to me!’ She obviously didn’t hear me, and this was incredibly puzzling because I was so real and solid to myself. So I felt there must be some sort of barrier between us. I therefore shouted to her, trying to ‘get through’, or attract her attention. Physically she still carried on knitting. But a part of her, that felt to me as if it were ‘downstairs’, underneath her usual actions and awareness, responded. From that part of her there was no separation between us. At the same time Vince jerked awake, having apparently heard me shout. He looked around to where I was standing behind our settee, and came bounding to me, howling and barking as if in agony. This was something he always did if I had been away for a while and returned home. He was crazily in love with me and didn’t mind showing it.

There the experience ended. I woke back in German, with my body feeling as heavy as lead after having experienced the fluid lightness of life apart from it.

Later, when I checked with my mother what had happened that evening, she told me that my father, a part-time musician, had been out playing in a band, and she had been sitting alone knitting. Most importantly, Vince had suddenly reared up from sleep and rushed to the back of the settee, howled and leaped about for no reason she could see.

Is Life Really Looking After Us

Chris Graham and Steve Ashton came face to face with this mystery when they arranged to meet friends at an upstate New York park. The park had great recreational facilities, with boating and fishing, and Chris and Steve had arranged to meet their friends at exactly 1pm. But it was quite a drive to the park, and as they travelled the New York State Thruway, the car burst a tyre. Being young and experienced it only took 15 minutes to put the spare wheel on and be on their way again. However, after a short stop at a Thruway service area, the car refused to start. The battery was flat and Steve didn’t have any cables to get power from someone else’s battery. It took them half an hour before they got started again. They went over the speed limit trying to make up lost time, wondering if their friends would wait. It didn’t help though. They were pulled over by the police and given a ticket.

They were now an hour late, but Steve still felt they could find their friends in whatever activity they had got involved. ‘It’s not far now’, he said. He had not counted on the car dying though. As they pulled off the Thruway the engine coughed and died. It took an hour for the garage truck to arrive, and when they got to the garage they were told it would take another two hours to fix.

Steve is an all through optimist. ‘The park is only twenty minutes away’, he said. Let’s go see if we can find them.’ They were four hours late when they entered the park. They went to the arranged place of meeting near the lake, but nobody was there. ‘This is not a good day’, Chris grumbled.

Suddenly their troubles were forgotten as two screams for help reached them from the lake. Two small boys were struggling in the water. ‘Help us’ they were shouting. Chris and Steve were certified lifeguards. They dived into the lake and pulled out the boys, who were drowning.

When the boys were safe, Chris and Steve, trembling from the water and the emergency, looked at each other. Their agreement was mutual. If they hadn’t got to the lake at exactly the time they did, the boys would have died.

Looking beyond what the eyes see

A couple were worried about their young daughter, Carol, witnessing the deterioration of her grandmother, who was in her eighties and dying from the effects of heart disease, arthritis and old age. As the grandmother was being cared for in the home, it was easy for Carol to enter the bedroom to be with her grandmother. But the parents discouraged their daughter from spending too much time with her grandmother, as they thought it was an awful sight for a nine year old to see. Nevertheless, finding herself drawn to be with her grandmother, Carol went to her one day, but returned to her parents within a few minutes with a puzzled expression. ‘Mommy,’ she said. ‘There are two grandmothers. I saw two gran­nies in the room. First I talked to granny and then a lighted lady named Beth came and talked to me and granny. Then they left together.’

When the mother went with Carol into the grandmother’s room, they discovered that she had died. Carol’s simple and clear description of what she had seen changed her mother’s view of death. Especially so as Carol did not know that her great grandmother’s name was Beth.

The coincidental aspects of Carol’s vision were that Beth was the name of her great grandmother, and that Carol saw what she did at the moment of her grandmother’s death.

Dreams Are  More Than Dreams

One of the most inspiring of these is described in Closer to the Light by Dr. Morse. It was told to him by a physician who had witnessed the case.

A pregnant woman, Andrea, experienced difficulties during the delivery of her baby. The placenta was separating prematurely, and the baby’s head was at an angle to make its delivery extremely difficult. When the child was eventually born it was discovered that he had a severe brain haemorrhage. His condition was so bad he had to remain in the intensive care unit of the small hospital. Andrea did not want him moved to a larger hospital as she wished to be near him at all times. The doctors caring for him did not press her to make the move as he was so ill, and no treatment was possible. Besides the brain damage the baby boy had severe cerebral palsy and seizures. An EEG showed the abnormality. Dr. Morse says that, ‘These are afflictions from which children simply don’t recover. If they survive infancy, they spend their lives severely retarded.’ Andrea was told the diagnosis but she stayed with her baby nearly 24 hours a day for months.

While Andrea was with her child late one night, she looked up and saw a ‘being of light’ enter the room. She describes the being as having the same form as a human, but not decidedly male or female. It glowed with a pale light as it spoke to her. ‘Your son will be all right’, it said, assuring her that her son would be normal. As the glowing being spoke to her Andrea felt as though love poured into her body in a marvellous way. It so deeply impressed Andrea that the next morning she told the attending medical team what had happened, and persuaded them to do another EEG to see if any change had actually occurred. When the brain-wave test was completed, it showed that Andrea’s deeply sick child was completely normal, having made a full recovery.

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[i] Andrea is a false name given by the author.

[ii] Paraphrased from Closer to The Light, by Melvin Morse M.D., with Paul Perry. Published by Ivy Books, USA. ISBN: 0-8041- 0832-3.

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[i] The false name of Carol is added by the author.

[ii] Paraphrased from Closer to The Light, by Melvin Morse M.D., with Paul Perry. Published by Ivy Books, USA. ISBN: 0-8041- 0832-3.