Waves of Devotion

Dhanurdhara Swami April 24th, 2017

I read a very interesting story about someone who was haunted by a ghost after moving into a new house. As soon as she stayed the night there she began to feel pressure on her chest and heard whooshing sounds. She had a sense that someone was watching her. When she went to work she felt fine, but every time she returned she felt the same way. Her feelings increased more and more throughout the night. This went on for weeks. She thought she was going to die. She did everything she could to get rid of the ghost, even burning fresh sage upon the recommendation of a new age friend. Nothing seemed to work. She was desperate so she Googled “ghost busting”. She found a ghost busting hotline. She called. To her surprise a person representing the Rationalist Society answered, an organization whose purpose was to debunk the supernatural. She thought what did she have to lose? She told them her symptoms. The receptionist immediately said she had the exact symptoms of carbon monoxide poisoning and that there was most likely a gas leak in her house. She immediately called the emergency number for the gas company who thankfully sent someone over within an hour. Sure enough there was a serious leak. After the gasman repaired the leak he soberly told her, “Ma’am, one more day and you would have been dead!” The next day all of her symptoms were gone. She felt duped by all the hocus-pocus thoughts about ghosts. She became inspired to help others understand that all paranormal experiences could be explained by science. She even told people of a $10,000 reward offered by the “Rationalist Society” to anyone who could demonstrate anything paranormal that couldn’t be explained by modern science.
 
Don’t worry. This isn’t an article about invalidating the paranormal by science. It’s actually the opposite. I want to prove that there are paranormal experiences beyond modern science. While I found this story interesting, I didn’t like its conclusion. No doubt this lady found that her horrid experience was anything but mystical, but it doesn’t mean that all paranormal experiences are a hoax. It brought out in me something that bothered me for some time: Why has no one ever tried to prove the paranormal by a fairly easy experiment using the law of karma through the science of astrology? It is paranormal because astrology says that our destiny is outlined at birth and that our experiences in life can be predicted. What can be more paranormal than that? Before I outline the scientific experiment based on astrology that can demonstrate there is a law of karma, let me share how in my own way I tried to prove the law of karma.
 
For over the first twenty years of my devotional life, I concentrated on studying Kṛṣṇa consciousness and then teaching it within the devotee community. In the mid-nineties I was inspired to share those teachings in New York. My problem was how to get people to attend my lectures. I was not known outside ISKCON, and there were thousands of teachers of Eastern thought lecturing in New York, most of them more known than myself. To get people to come to my lectures and become more visible I prepared a seminar entitled “The Psychology of Karma” and offered a free astrological reading for the first ten people who registered. It worked. I got a reasonable amount of responses. I would then send that information to my astrologer, Dīna Śaraṇa, who looked at those people’s charts and sent me a short description of each person’s character and a major event in their life. At a certain point in my lecture I would explain how there is a map of one’s destiny based on the position of the planets at one’s birth, and that this could be understood by the science of astrology. I would then call out a person’s name and with confidence say something about their character and perhaps an event in their life, although I had never seen them before. There were enough startling results to prove the law of karma. I would then say:
 
“All I knew about you was your birth time, so all of these predictions were known then. What is the force that moves the universe around you to give you these experiences, what is the purpose of those experiences, and what is the best way to respond to your destiny to get the most benefit out of them?”
 
I would then explain the law of karma in depth to an audience who was now open to the idea.
 
So here is my idea for a controlled scientific experiment to prove that there is a destiny set at birth. What could be more paranormal than that? You would just need an honest skeptic to get the birth information of ten people. Nine should be of ordinary income and one should be of fabulous wealth, and you could do that with any quality as long as one person had that particular quality in an exceptionally more significant way than the others. It would then be the responsibility of a skeptic or authorized third party to make sure the experiment was scientifically controlled so that the astrologer or astrologers had no way of knowing anything more than a person’s birth information. If the astrologer or astrologers could pick out the chart of the wealthy person, and I see no reason why they couldn’t, with a substantially higher probability than just chance, then that would be something paranormal that couldn’t be explained by modern science.
 
Maybe I could find where that $10,000 challenge is offered. Then I could make that information available to any qualified astrologer who is interested. Now that would be easy money!
 
 

• Monday Morning Greetings
• Comments(0)