Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Weird or Coincidence?

Yo! Writing a post here after a long time :)

I wanted to do this post for a long time now. Better late than never. I present few of my experiences here which are unrelated but with a common theme.



Image Courtesy: Link

Incident 1:
Cannot recollect the exact period, but probably 10-14 years back. Our school was on Kangayam road (Tirupur), and everyday on the way to school, we used to look with awe at Velan hotel (a popular hotel, where film shooting has also taken place). How we longed to go inside! One day (night I should say) I got a dream of visiting Velan hotel. The only thing I remembered after waking up was a wooden model of a ship with glossy finish. Sometime later, I got a chance to actually go inside the hotel! It so happened that one of my father's friend was blessed with a boy and Velan hotel was chosen for treat. Man, I was so excited. And guess what, there was a wooden ship model with glossy finish!

Incident 2:
This happened in college. Coming out of exam hall, I was quickly moving towards my department to check score of India's cricket match. I remember moving pretty fast as I wanted to check the scores and rush home to prepare for next day's exam. Suddenly I felt as if someone was calling me and turned back. I remember that I pointedly looked in a particular direction. It happened to be my classmates who were discussing about me (or perhaps trying to get my attention) and I distinctly remember I used my thumb to question what it was! The distance between us was large enough that I couldn't have heard their call with all the chatter from students coming out of the exam hall. Later when we met, the classmates were perplexed as well as to how I turned towards them.

Incident 3:
On an industrial visit in train. We were playing dumbsharads. After many rounds, I had been thinking on a difficult movie name. I stuck on one and had in mind to be asked. The opponent team had given one and one of our team mate was about to act it out. Wonder what prompted me, before any acting was done I guessed the right movie name. And it was the same I had in my mind. For the record, the movie name was 'Billa'.

Incident 4:
In my workplace this time. I had gone to my supervisor's cabin to discuss something. He wasn't there and I started walking back. My supervisor at that time was coming from pantry. He saw me and wanted to draw my attention. My back was turned to him and he hadn't voiced out my name. I felt as if he was waving his hands (though I didn't ask him later if he did wave his hands) and turned to acknowledge him. At the time I turned to him, he was definitely looking in my direction and hence the assumption that he was trying to draw my attention.

Incident 5:
I was going through the meaning of Gayatri Mantra one day. I was very intrigued by its wordings and different interpretations prevalent. This scientific explanation caught my attention the most. It says that 'Om' is the sound produced because of the rotation of planets, solar systems, galaxies etc. That night I had a dream where I 'felt' the rotating sensation.

Edit - Incident 6:
Happened during first year of college. There was an assignment for a programming language (C or C++, don't remember which) - it consisted of writing many short programs to solve given problems (and may be some spot errors and the like). I tried to solve many (perhaps full assignment, can't be sure after nearly 10 years gone). That night though, I had a dream which pointed out an error in one of the programs - which turned out to be true the next day I checked!

What to conclude from these incidents? That we have some powers buried deep inside which arise in little incidents and pass almost unnoticed? A couple of books I have read ('God is not Dead' by Amit Goswami and 'The Intention Experiment' by Lynne McTaggart) provide answers for all of the above.

These books bring to light about scientific experiments conducted and verified by different researchers around the globe. I am presenting below a gist of some the interesting ones. (Details may not be exactly correct, as am writing off my memory)

  • We can anticipate future incidents, or atleast our mind prepares to forth-coming event. There is something called random event generator which uses electro-magnetic noise. Its output has high degree of randomness. When the 2001 twin tower tragedy happened, this device reading ceased to be random two hours prior the tragedy and continued to be so for around 2 more days. There is a more fool-proof evidence that time as we know isn't one-way.
  • A random event generator is set so as to produce either a '0' or a '1'. A computer logs them all and produces a final result of % of '0' and '1'. They are printed, sealed and kept locked, without 'anyone' having the knowledge of the result. A group of people are then asked to meditate, focusing on trying to bias the already generated result of the computer to one of the values, say '1'. Now the sealed print-outs are opened and checked to see if they biased to the number tried. And it was! This experiment has been repeated many times to rule out coincidences.
  • We know that brain activity can be measured as it involves electrical signals. Two people (with close relation) are seated in different rooms with electro-magnetic noise shield so as to record only the brain activity. One of them is asked to 'send' a thought to the other person in his mind. The other person was given some random activity and had no idea when the first person would send the 'thought'. When the thought was sent, similar looking brain patterns were registered instantaneously for both. And this was the case even when the two of them were separated by half the world distance.


To believe that the above experiments are true is left to us. 'The Lost Symbol' by Dan Brown also has reference to some of these experiments, though I believe he has exaggerated some of them. To me, they are fascinating. More so, as I could correlate them with my experiences. As Amit Goswami argues, can we bind 'consciousness' to materialistic body? The true extend of ability of our brain may never be found. And perhaps, that is not relevant. Because, there is so much that we do not know, or perhaps we know nothing at all, as to why we exist.