Few people, especially in the third world countries, are familiar with 06, a man who accurately predicted the future like no one else. He was born in 1896 and passed away in 1971. Just as this limited, three-dimensional world, functions within our five senses, there exists an ‘unseen’, multi-dimensional world which we glimpse in our dreams or during deep meditation. This unseen is the real world because it is the world of causes. Our so-called real world is the outward circumstantial world is the world of effects. For eg. you think kindly of others in the invisible-vibrational-world of thoughts and you keep meeting kind people in your life. If you think of harming someone, you are harmed. If you are jealous, you become the focus of someone’s jealousy.

Hence, if you live within what Zen Buddhists call your ‘true nature’ (Hinduism calls it Atmaswaroop), each person is his own savior and will know the real purpose of life without going to ‘dhongi’ media-savvy Gurus who are sprouting up like mushrooms today and making a killing feeding on people’s gullibility. Anyone who charges money for spiritual knowledge is FAKE.

A true Guru shares his knowledge freely, but to deserving pupils and that is why it is said that a Guru appears when the pupil is ready. In my mystical search, I have met a few ‘real’ Gurus and several clairvoyants. I have read Egyptian occult literature as also the works of Hamsur, Kierkegaard, Walt Whitman, Gurdjieff, Correli and Ruth Montgomery and surprisingly, I never went for these books. They came to me mysteriously from time to time from friends and even total strangers.

All spiritual literature talks of the sixth sense, clairvoyance and the ability to see the future. Nostrodamus had this ability, so did Dante who wrote the Divine Comedy. To acquire this sixth sense is a life-long process. One has to practice dream-travel, lucid-dreaming, telepathy, speed-running of thoughts, death-meditation and a wise-silence to achieve this state. Sixth sense and clairvoyance are merely cosmic radiations from the ‘uncreated’ future that we are able pick-up as ‘vibrations’ in the present. It comes as a ‘flash’ during normal brain activity but more so as a dream-about-a-future event.

Arthur Ford was a great psychic and clairvoyant. His amazing story has been told in a few books, including his engrossing autobiography, ‘Nothing So Strange’. However very few people are familiar with Arthur Ford’s name or his amazing predictions and hence I take the liberty of writing a few lines about him. Ford, a native of Florida, had been a divinity student at Transylvania College in Kentucky at the time when World War I had just started in Europe. He was quickly enlisted in the armed forces and became a second lieutenant. He was based at Camp Grant when, on awakening one cold morning, he visualised a roster of those who had died there of influenza during the night of sleeping out in the chilly open. Trying to shake off the curious dream, he walked over to the adjutant’s office to see the actual list, which was being posted. To his surprise, he discovered that not only were the names those which he had foreseen but they were also in the same order as his dream roster.

From the army, Ford took an about-turn and was ordained a Christian Minister. During this, he filled several church pulpits, but his growing interest in psychic phenomena led him into the lecturing field. One evening, he conducted a seance at a Washington rectory where only eight persons were present. Among the persons who had died recently was a mother of three and in the seance conducted on her, she revealed that she was the wife of a pastor serving a church in a particular Washington district which she identified by name. She also revealed that she had died of a brain tumour and other details of her life. When the persons present at the seance, telephoned her husband, he readily confirmed that his wife had died a few days ago of a brain tumour as well as other details of her life. He said he had never heard of Arthur Ford and added rather curtly that he had no interest in the psychic field.

It is well known that Arthur Ford had predicted the killing of President Kennedy in a moving conveyance while away from the White House. He had also predicted that President Johnson would defeat Barry Goldwater in the Democratic party primaries in Alabama where Johnson was not even listed as a candidate. But Johnson won by a landslide there.

Arthur Ford, whose own psychic powers were never in doubt, had sometimes triggered extrasensory reactions in others. In May 1966, after completing a series of lectures at a spiritual convention in Chicago, he was chatting with his old friend, Arthur Shefte, when he suddenly lost consciousness. Shefte knew him well enough to recognise that this was not a yoga trans-state and hence moved him to the nearest hospital. But when Ford was being carried on a stretcher to the ambulance, his phone rang. Shefte, answering it, heard a voice say: “This is Margueritte. I was awakened from a nap with a voice, which said that Arthur Ford is in very serious trouble. He should be moved to a hospital immediately, if possible.”

Ford required hospitalisation for several weeks because of embolism, after which he returned to his house in Philadelphia to convalesce. He then went to spend a week at the house of his friend, John Lawrence and his wife. After everyone had retired for the night, Lawrence heard his dog barking and clawing at the door to Ford’s room and went to investigate. He found Ford lying unconscious on the floor. He died 36 hours later. Some guardian angel was apparently watching over Ford, who ordinarily lived alone, for he was fortunate enough to be in the company of friends each time he had an attack of becoming suddenly unconscious.

As a man who could see the future, he was catapulated to fame by his unrivalled talent as a medium but in his lifetime he never actively sought publicity or greatness.