HERE are questions and comments I received recently from readers.
“I would like your opinion on the three dreams I had since last year.
“First, I dreamed of a tennis buddy, that we were on a plane bound for the United States to attend a high school reunion. We didn’t belong to the same high school but we were seated beside each other on the plane.
“The next morning I met him in a mall, after more than a year of no contact.
“Second, I dreamt about a college colleague who has lived in the United States for more than a decade. The day after the dream, on a trip to our province, I just thought of dropping by his place with no other purpose than to ask about his life in the United States. Voilà! He was there on vacation!
“The third dream was last night. A friend and I were watching a tennis tournament at Rizal Memorial Stadium. This morning, a common friend relayed to me the news that he had just passed away.
“Can you enlighten me on these coincidences?”
Arthur Balagot, Dagupan City
First, there is no such thing as coincidence. Everything has a cause, though we may not be aware of the connection.
A dream has been defined as the “language of the subconscious mind.” Being a language, dreams have their own grammar rules, punctuation and composition. Just like language, dreams can either be literal or symbolic.
Dreams may be about events of the past, present or future. A dream that comes true, like in your case, is called a “precognitive” or “psychic” dream.
You dream of your friends because you must have strong psychic connection to them. Psychic information may come to us either in the waking or sleeping state.
Many times, before something happens to us in the waking state, we dream of it, but it is soon forgotten the moment we wake up.
In case you want to learn more about the tremendous but unknown powers of your mind, you may read my book “Exploring the Powers of Your Inner Mind.”
Karma
Last week’s column on karma provoked a reaction from a former office colleague, a retired corporate lawyer and closet intellectual:
“Karma is a persuasive explanation for suffering traceable to sins committed by the sufferer in a previous incarnation. But it does not explain or justify suffering caused by ‘natural’ disasters like typhoons, tsunamis, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions where human agency is absent. Or even human-caused suffering on a non-individual massive scale like the genocide victims of the Holocaust, or Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Cambodia. The problem of human suffering is probably insoluble for us mortals. If examined carefully, one finds that the oft-cited biblical Book of Job did not really provide an answer.
“Should we blame an impotent God? Or a malevolent one? Or is there a God at all? Pope Francis gave an honest answer to this mystery of human suffering. These are questions philosophers and theologians as well as believers and unbelievers have asked through the ages.”
Rodolfo Publico
That’s an interesting thought, but suffering caused by natural disasters or genocide is still explained by karma. Those who suffered such terrible events must have incurred some karmic debts in past incarnations.
During the New York terrorist attack on the Twin Towers, there were people who were supposed to be there but were saved because they were, for some reason, delayed in going to the office, and there were those who were not supposed to be there but went anyway.
Remember the Titanic disaster? Famous banker JP Morgan was already booked to join that trip but changed his mind at the last minute. Coincidence?
My lawyer friend continued his interpellation: “What common sin did the 15 million killed by the Black Plague commit? Or the 7,000 killed by Supertyphoon Yolanda? Where’s the karma there?”
We can’t answer that, of course. But the principle is clear to me. Karma is a natural law of cause and effect. There is no escaping it, although we may not be able to explain each individual case. To me karma is not a moral law. It’s more like a natural physical law like gravity, or Newton’s third law of motion, which states, “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”
Or take the law of gravity. It is there whether we are aware of it or not, whether we like it or not. It has nothing to do with reward or punishment, which is a moral concept.
For example, if I hold a piece of stone and let it go, it falls to the ground, not because it is being punished, but because gravity pulls it down.
Another interesting analogy between karma and physical law is this. According to the Theory of Relativity of Einstein, there’s no such thing as parallel lines. Everything is a curve.
If that is so, according to one interesting theory, if you throw a stone up in the sky and if there is absolutely nothing to obstruct its path, it will eventually go down, back into your hand.
In my very limited understanding, that’s how karma works.
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