Editor’s Introduction
This anonymous scientist is trained in biophysics, in which she earned a Ph.D. from a leading university. She has worked as an adjunct professor at 6 universities, a corporate consultant in medical R&D, and president of a nonprofit corporation for research and education.
This experience occurred in California in 1988. when Sienna Kaiser was 37 years of age.
Death and Rebirth of the Sun
Anonymous
In May 1988 I had the following dream, which in conjunction with certain experiences, prompted me to relocate and change jobs, and also predicted the unexpected death of my father by just a few months. Had I NOT had this dream and the associated meaningful synchronicities, I would have never gone to France for the next decade to found and direct a particular academic center there. Thus, this dream guided me into a major life transition and helped shape my career.
I was living in the Los Angeles area in May 1988, and dreamt the following. I was watching a beautiful sunset over the Pacific Ocean, when suddenly, the sun rose again out of the West. It was darker than ever & loaded with sunspots, and I could see the core of the sun, which had also grown dark. I was in awe and horrified to think the motion of the sun was so bizarre, and that it looked so bad, that everything as I knew it would soon end. Then the dying sun fell out of the sky and into the Pacific. It made a great sizzle and much steam. It was suddenly gone. I was scared, but felt all was not yet lost.
I looked around, wondering why the sky was not completely black now that the sun had died, and saw that a new star had risen out of the East. It was blue and small, but growing larger, and crossing the sky very fast. Clearly I/we had been blessed with a new sun, just at the very moment when the old sun died! It came and rested over my head. There was also a full moon, also blue, that was right next to the new sun. These two celestial bodies were auspiciously together and directly overhead at the end of my dream. I felt extremely hopeful about this, and knew that major change of a cosmic level of order was upon me/us.
I awoke that day to find a note from my landlord that I must vacate my home of the past 7 years. He had traded his house for another house closer to work, and the new occupant insisted that I leave. I had three months to move. This was a big deal, because it is very difficult and time-consuming to find affordable, nice housing in the LA area.
Later that week, I learned that my favorite courses at the local university where I was a lecturer were being cancelled due to cutbacks. These were not only my favorite courses to teach, they were my livelihood. I could not live on the salary from the one remaining course that I taught.
Thus, I had lost both my home and my livelihood in just one week. On top of that, my relationship was crumbling. My life in the West Coast was thus severely challenged. It was devastating to me, but that recent dream made me hope for and expect some clarity on all this loss. I was waiting for my new blue sun to emerge. One of my students pointed out that the night that I had this dream was also the night of the blue moon–one of 2 full moons of May 1988, another auspicious event.
The next week, through casual conversation at a dinner party in Westwood, I heard about something starting up at a certain university on France. Apparently this university was going to start a center that openly examined unconventional science, and they were looking for a person to found and direct it. Immediately, I felt very drawn to this task, especially as my French was quite good. Given my history as a pioneering scientist who lost her first academic job in 1980 because she got a grant proposal to study spiritual healing, I felt extremely drawn to this work, to help pave the way for other pioneering scientists posing new research questions that challenged the paradigm. I called the university in France and asked for more information. I sent them my curriculum vitae.
In June 1988, I flew there to be interviewed for the position. At that point, I was suffering from a big plantar’s wart on the bottom of my foot, but nonetheless stuffed my feet into high heeled shoes and, dressed in a suit, went for my interview. I faced five humorless, bull-dogged-faced administrators. I told them my story, quite frankly, of how I was terminated abruptly at the West Coast university when I procured a grant to study the effects of spiritual healing on organisms, and of other problems faced by my colleagues. I told them that the administrators at my former university said there was no such phenomena as spiritual healing, and that they would not have such research going on there, despite the fact that my grant proposal had been initially approved by them before it went out to the foundation. I honestly bared my soul and shared all my interests at the edge of science, including parapsychology, homeopathy, spiritual healing, alternative medicine, and more.
At my interview, I also spoke freely about the extraordinary hardships that all scientists face when they conduct research on unconventional topics. The day of my interview, it was 105 degrees in France, the hottest day of the year, and I sweated through my suit and destroyed it. Later, on the airplane returning to LA, I realized that my plantar’s wart was not bothering me anymore. I examined it and found that it was completely gone! Then I reflected on my dream image of the death of the sun–which also looked like the cross-section of my plantar’s wart, with a central core like the sun and rootlets like sunspots. Just as the sun fell out of the sky, my wart had miraculously fallen off. It had been located at a minor chakra (Editor’s note: chakra is an ancient Sanskrit term for experienced “energy centers” in the body) in the bottom of my foot that had to do with my relationship to the earth, according to a holistic practitioner. In relation to my dream, I interpreted this as a sign that I would get the new position and would be going soon to France! The particular location was not a pretty place to live, but I felt it was my destiny, given my big dream, the synchronicities that occurred shortly after the dream, and the remarkable spontaneous remission of my wart, which had been plaguing me for months and recalcitrant to all medical interventions. I had been limping along, unable to walk normally for some time, until this.
So, I didn’t spend any time looking for another job, or trying to find a another place to live in the LA area. Instead, I prepared to relocate, even though I had heard nothing yet about the French university position. I knew somehow that it was meant for me. In early August, I was called back by them for another interview. Finally, in late August, a letter stating the terms of my job offer was sent to me. I had one week to respond and relocate across the Atlantic, because they wanted me to begin in early September! I proceeded to mobilize all my belongings and leave my West Coast world behind, including everyone that I knew, and arrived in France in just 6 days. Immediately, I found a nice place to live there, just near a restaurant named, in translation, “Under the Blue Moon”. Once again, I felt securely guided by my dream images, which were instrumental in guiding me through this major transition.
Just a short time after I had moved to France, my father suddenly died. His sun went out unexpectedly. He was sitting on the couch reading a book at home at the moment of his death, which was anomalous and remains unexplained. Because he lived alone, no one knew about his death for two days. However, on the purported day of his death, my computer turned up all white when I turned it on, and several other electrical anomalies occurred, too, including a generator that anomalously broke in my apartment complex, and numerous light bulbs went out together anomalously. Such electrical anomalies, I found out, also occurred in my brother’s home and the former business office of my father, which was then occupied by my brother. I was completely unaware of what was happening with my father when he died. Only upon learning of my father’s passing, did I link my big dream and these electrical anomalies with his death.
At this point in my life, both my father and mother were dead. I reflected on the final image of my big dream, with the blue star and full blue moon in the sky resting over my head. I realized that it also meant that my spiritual father and mother were now watching over me. In retrospect, I find it remarkable how much meaning could be packed into a single dream, which anticipated and guided me through major changes in my life. No poet or artist could have created a story with such an economy of design, multiple symbolism, and clear imagery that foretold or revealed so much clarity to me.
Contributor’s Comments on the Experience
How does this affect my practice of science? Not at all in terms of day-to-day research. I think it makes me more open minded than most, in terms of the questions I am interested in and the nature of the research I prefer to pursue. I am also motivated to facilitate the development of an expanded science that would allow us to address new questions in biology/psychology/medicine that go beyond mechanism, which deal with context, meaning, and inner experience.
