Part 2
Among the many questions that people have asked about angels and spirit guides, one stands out in my mind. If there really are guardian angels to protect and guide people, why do they allow them to be crushed to death by a truck, drown in a river, get shot in the head, or burn in a fire?
The standard answer to this question, which I mentioned in last week’s column, is that guardian angels or spirit guides cannot interfere with one’s karma or destiny. If this were the case, one can very well ask, “So, what are they there for?”
While there are, indeed, numerous instances when angels were nowhere to be found when they were most needed (think of the massacre of the Vizconde family, for example), there were also numerous instances when they suddenly appear to help save a person or a group of persons from serious harm, or even death.
No rational explanation
French journalist Pierre Jovanovic, head of the French Press Agency in Los Angeles, embarked on a two-year investigation of the existence of guardian angels because of of a miraculous incident in 1988 that saved his life, for which he could find no rational explanation.
He was in the front passenger seat of a car driven by his friend along the freeway en route to San Francisco when he was suddenly shoved strongly toward the driver’s seat. Almost at the same time, a sniper bullet pierced the windshield at the exact place in front of where he was seated. Were it not for that sudden shove, he would surely have been shot in the head.
When Jovanovic told his colleagues what happened to him, he was surprised to learn he was not the only one who had experienced such a mysterious intervention by an unknown force or entity. He was told it could have been his guardian angel who saved him. But Jovanovic did not really believe in the existence of angels.
In his attempt to find proof for the existence of angels, he read a lot of books, interviewed authorities in the field of near-death experience, psychic or paranormal phenomena, as well as hundreds of people who have had similar encounters with invisible beings. The result was a fascinating book entitled “An Inquiry Into the Existence of Guardian Angels,” published by M. Evans and Company Inc in New York in 1993.
In that book, Jovanovic meticulously reported countless cases of angelic intervention that saved people from death or serious physical harm. “How can you explain,” asked Jovanovic, “those absolutely unpremeditated actions that save one’s life, those inner voices that warn us suddenly, those precognitive or psychic dreams, that insane series of coincidences causing a friend or a total stranger who had no business being on the spot at the crucial moment to intervene and avert a catastrophe? A chance premonition, a stroke of luck, a coincidence—or is it someone?”
On February 1998, I went to Cagayan de Oro City to give a seminar before a group of local government officials and educators. My host told me that he had intended to buy me a Cebu Pacific plane ticket. On the way to the airline office in a taxicab, he distinctly heard a voice whisper in his ear to get me a Philippine Airlines (PAL) ticket. At first he ignored it, but the voice became so insistent that he decided to proceed to the PAL office, instead.
Crashed on a mountain
When I arrived in Cagayan de Oro, on Feb. 2, 1998, I learned that Cebu Pacific Flight 387, which I was supposed to take, had crashed on a mountain, killing all 104 passengers and crew. Who was that voice that whispered to my host to get me a PAL ticket?
Here’s another true story of angelic intervention which was e-mailed to me by reader Honey Reyes some years ago:
“I was waiting for a jeepney ride in Makati one Sunday evening. I was getting impatient because I had already been waiting for almost 15 minutes. There were three of us waiting for a ride. When a jeepney finally came, they all rushed toward it, but I stood still, as if frozen. I couldn’t move, as if I was in a trance; my mind was somewhere else.
“There was only one seat left behind the driver. The other passengers and the driver were calling for me to get in, but I didn’t move, as if I didn’t hear them. Then a young man carrying a white rose and a little teddy bear came running toward the jeepney and sat behind the driver.
“I got mad at myself for being so stupid! After a few minutes, another jeepney came and I took it. When we passed by the previous jeepney, we saw it had figured in a terrible accident. It had turned turtle instantly, killing both the driver and the young guy who sat behind him.
“I burst into tears when I saw what happened. The other passengers were surprised I was crying. I told them I was supposed to be in that jeepney, sitting behind the driver.”
Jovanovic concluded his thought-provoking book with the following words: “It was this book’s aim to convince, but alas, I have no idea whether I have achieved my goal, and I will only advise you, like the writer San Antonio, that ‘If you do not believe in the efficacy of the guardian angel after this, you have only to carry this book back to the bookstore and exchange it for a cookbook.’”
The next Basic ESP and Intuition Development seminar will be on Jan. 16-17, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Interested parties may call tel. 8107245 or mobile no. 0998-9886292. E-mail the author at jaimetlicauco@yahoo.com.