It All Adds Up

It was the summer of 1972 when just three weeks before my first marriage, my "best man" died from an overdose. Although I considered him to be my best friend, I didn't even know that he was using. I can not describe the gut wrenching pain one feels when they loose someone dear. I know that for the first time in my life I began to ask myself questions. I experienced an inner yearning I had never known before. And, while I never spoke of this thirst to anyone, I could not help but to feel driven by this new inner quest. I had begun to thirst for the meaning, purpose and true reality of my being. Why was I here? Was death so arbitrary? If it was going to hurt so badly, did I want to go on with this thing called life?

Until this consciousness altering experience I never gave much credence to GOD or anything of a spiritual nature. I was studying to be an engineer and I placed my trust in numbers, formulas, math and science, not GOD. If you couldn't hear it, feel it, see it, taste it or smell it, to me, it wasn't real. All of this changed, however, when one day not long after my friend passed on, I was listening to the radio and heard a song entitled "The Third Eye" performed by Roy Ayers. The lyrics were mesmerizing. They spoke of "secrets of numbers, secrets of sound, secrets of wisdom to be found." Driven by my desire to KNOW, I purchased the album and discovered the writer had been inspired by a book written by Vera S. Alder (1938) entitled "The Finding of the Third Eye." Although the book introduces the reader to many metaphysical disciplines, my early training in math and science predisposed me to chapter eleven, The Science of Numbers (Numerology).

I discovered that I was a number seven (7) person and that part of my mission in life was to seek spiritual truths and teach them to others. So, after study and research, I discovered that my friends' death had put me "on the path".