There are four Yogas or paths recognized in Hinduism: Jnana Yoga, the path of philosophical reflection on meta-physical reality; Bakhti Yoga, the path of worshipful adoration of the revealed deity; Karma Yoga, the path of faithful service, good works, and ethical conduct in the secular realm; and Raga Yoga, the path of supra-conscious meditation and direct encounter with God. They represent Knowledge or Salvation (whichever is regarded as more valuable) through either Thought or through Love or through Goodness (Merit) or through Transcendence.

The four Yogas are like four paths or approaches to a mountain top, and they converge at the peak. Some paths are steep and short (like the Eiger Nordwand in the Swiss Alps), some are more gradual but longer (like the approach to the Eiger from the Jungfraujoch), but the altitude or elevation difference that must be traversed is identical. The vertical distance from the Human to the Divine is a constant of nature.

The four Yogas are like the four elements of the Greeks (Jnana = Air, Bakhti = Water, Karma = Earth, Raga = Fire), or like the four cardinal astrological signs (Libra, Cancer, Capricorn, Aries), or like the four seasons (Autumn, Summer, Winter, Spring – not in order but arranged to correspond), or like the four primary colours (blue, green, yellow, red), or like the Light, Love, Will (or Power), and the Divine Plan on Earth of the Great Incantation of World Goodwill. It is a case of complementary quaternity, just as the Yin and Yang symbol is one of complementary (not antagonistic) duality.

I am beginning to experience a fIfth path or Yoga. It is not deductive/rational like Jnana Yoga, not emotional/enthusiastic like Bakhti Yoga, not practical/ethical like Karma Yoga, not supraconscious/transcendent like Raga Yoga. It is experiential/inductive like science, but also intuitive/inspirational like poetry. It depends on Serendipity, on receiving “messages” or “signs” in everyday life that could be coincidences (they are not supernatural), but are so appropriate to my situations and needs of the moment that it takes my breath away. If I had asked God for a sign, this is the form it would have to take, short of a miracle which I have no right to expect. It is the form that Divine Guidance would be expected’ to take. It requires active attention on my part, being open and atuned to receive the message and to decipher and understand it. (The Christian doctrine is that one must be open to receive Divine Grace when it is freely given.)

The “induction” involved lies in interpreting these occurrences as messages rather than coincidences; not because of any statistical tests or correlations, but because of the appropriateness, the Meaning. This is not a “proof’ of the existence of God, but “evidence” (not certain, but provisionally acceptable like a scientifIc theory until falsifIed). It is like the evidence derived from other repeated observations, such as the succession of the seasons or of day and night (we DO expect the sunrise tomorrow although we cannot PROVE that it will come); or like the evidence that the external world continues to exist when we are not looking at it, which every child accepts, even if all philosophers do not. The evidence is not water-tight, but, as night follows day, it is very commonly accepted. I did not at fIrst believe that these were messages, but there are now enough of them that in all fairness I have to acknowledge their presence and their reality – because of their relevance. In what follows, I want to give several examples of my own experiences. I surmise that if others search their memories, they will find instances of their own, relevant to them, that speak to their condition.

1. CANTERBURY HILLS. That day I was very disturbed by a family quarrel. I drove out of the house with no intention ever to return, but I did not know where to go. I took Old Ancaster Road, but then on impulse I turned off before reaching Ancaster, though at that time I did not know where that side road led. It took me to the main lodge of Canterbury Hills, an Anglican retreat centre. “All right”, I said to myself in my agnostic testing mode, “I will ask God for help, if He is really here.” With that, I tried the front door, but it was locked. The side door and the back door were also locked, and there was no one around. “Here is my answer”, I thought. “Either God does not exist or he shuts me out.” And I walked further, stopping to sit and cry on a tree stump and then walking on.

And then it happened. Suddenly in front of me was an outdoor chappel, with pews and an altar up front. God was telling me “I don’t just live in that locked house, I am out here and open to everyone at all times. What can I do for you?” I sat down in the pew and poured my heart out, silently and in words. There was no word answer, no advice, just a gentle breeze and then a great calm. The grief was gone, and I knew that I should go back home. Walking uphill to the parking lot, I met a man (probably tbe caretaker) who had apparently been watching me. “Can I help you in any way?” he offered gently. “No, thank you, I will be all right now”, I said, got in the car, and drove home. Everything was peaceful there. The quarrel was not resumed nor ever referred to again.

2. HEY JUDE. This was a top popular song by the Beatles in the 1960s. For a time I heard it everywhere, even in Prague airport near the time of the Soviet occupation of 1968. But what I am referring to here is a series of three car accidents, all of which ended with relatively little harm to me though it could have been much worse, and in all three cases “Hey Jude” was on the car radio immediately before the accident. I took it to mean “You’ll be all right even though something is about to happen.”

In the first accident, my motor failed when I was driving up steep Old Ancaster Hill. I tried to back up downhill without power, but there was a curve in that road and I ended up with my rear going through the guard rail and then just hanging there over the cliff by the wire, I got out and someone pulled the car back up for me. I just had to pay for the guard rail damage.

In the second accident, I was driving home on the Queen Elizabeth Way from Toronto Airport in the snow, and I skidded on a bridge and almost turned right around, but came to a beautiful stop on the shoulder facing the right way. After collecting my wits a bit, I just drove the rest of the way home.

In the third accident, I was driving to Kingston on the 401 and was already past Toronto near Morningside Drive, but the morning sun was in my eyes and I didn’t make it around a sharp curve where 401 and Lakeshore used to join (they have changed that now) because I was going too fast. I went through the guard rail which did not stop me this time, but I ended up in a soft snowdrift down beside the road without any damage, though the police would not let me drive on to Kingston without having the steering repaired. I went on to Kingston (a World Federalist meeting) by train.

There is nothing too remarkable about these accidents, or about my luck in emerging unhurt. But each time just before it happened, the car radio played “Hey Jude”, and I took it as reassurance that I was under divine protection.

Maybe this one is not too convincing because they played that song so often, but it felt significant to me at the time. Later they did not play it so much, but I stopped having accidents.

3. About 20 years later I liked walking the path through woods and meadow between the A&P shopping Plaza and Hope street in Dundas. That path goes right beside Spencer creek, the main Dundas waterway. I sometimes sit on the stone wall beside the creek and watch the water flow by.

One time when I sat there I prayed to God to give me a sign, even though I knew that this should not be done; who am I to challenge the Ground of All Being? I half forgot it by the time I got in the car to drive home. Then I noticed the song on the radio, a spiritual called “The Storm Is Passing Over, Hallelu”. I was ready to recognize it as a sign of sorts, but there was no storm, either literally or figuratively.

Yet within a week, Alan’s last illness began (the last stages of Parkinsonism), and I was spending day and night in the hospital, not able to continue my work which I love, and thoroughly frustrated because I could no longer understand his speech so that I could better serve him. Then he started having hallucinations, and insisted on going home although he was not medically ready for it. I just gave up, hired round-the-clock nurses regardless of the cost. I remember the head nurse in the hospital asking me how am I doing myself, and me saying in a flat voice “Oh, I am finished.” And she said resolutely, “No, you are not. I know, I have been a caregiver.” Alan died the very next night after coming home. It was as if he had wanted to die at home and not in the hospital.

At the same time that this was going on, the Gulf War broke out, which was profoundly depressing to me, because I had thought that the 1989 revolutions meant a turn for the better in the world. I was so depressed by the confluence of the two storms, the domestic one and the world one, that I kept rubbing my eyes though there were no tears, and my hair kept falling over my face because I had no time to go have a haircut.

And after Alan’s death, and after the Gulf war ended, I got sick and could not get over it for a whole month, which is very unusual for me, and Dr. Richardson could not figure out the reason. I thought that Alan was calling me to come join him in the grave, which already had my name on the marker, without the final date. But I did recover, I did adjust, the storm passed over.

I had had no idea the storm was even coming when I asked my question beside Spencer creek that day. And the term “passing over” had meaning for me, in the sense of the Passover celebration, commemorating the time when the Angel of Death who took all the firstborn in Egypt at the time of the Exodus “passed over” the houses of the Hebrews whose doors were marked with the blood of a lamb.

4. Very recently I was depressed when the accountant told me that our Institute was running out of money and could not continue in this way. I am not a businesswoman by instinct or training, and did not know just what to do. Then within less than an hour, while I was driving somewhere in Hamilton, I saw no less than four signs that seemed to say “cheer up”. One was a banner stretched across Main street announcing “Earthsong”, a local festival to which I had certain emotional associations. The second sign that flashed by was a billboard saying “The Beat Goes On”, the very words I had used in my poem about the storm passing over (“Passover”). (See previous paragraph). The third sign was a piece of grass

growing out of a tiny crack in the cement wall beside our driveway. And the fourth sign was the outline of the tall tower of the Century 21 building against a blue sky.

Very tiny signs – but put them together: the heart beat goes on in the Song of the Earth, as Life Overcomes the stone walls, and the Future will be glorious.

5. Just last week, I was worried about my son Ian and his wife Merrill separating and engaging in mutual recriminations and accusations. I looked up at the window sill where I had put a card saying “God loves you” some years ago, and it was missing. I felt that perhaps God does not love me any more, has abandoned me. (One has to be open to negative messages too, not only positive ones, to make the induction valid.) I went to bed feeling miserable.

When I got up in the morning, the first thing I did was to look for that card. Without much trouble I found it – it had just fallen off onto my desk which is right up against the window. Much relieved, I picked it up; but how did it get way over here on the left side when it had been on the right side on the window sill? It was as if it was trying to draw attention to itself.

Then I noticed that there was a note pinned to it. I don’t remember putting it there years ago, but I must have. The note quoted from Tennyson’s “The Passing of Arthur”:

The old order changeth
giving place to new
and God fulfills himself
in many ways
lest one good custom
should corrupt the world.

I was stunned by the appropriateness of it. And the card had fallen off not to give a negative message, but to make me pick it up and read the note.

Inside the card was Alan’s signature – he gave me the card on Valentine’s day while his writing was still legible, so it must have been in the early 80s. But the writing in the poem was not Alan’s. Who had written this to me?

I turned the note over, and it was an address card of Tom Pepper in Saskatoon. I couldn’t believe it. He had sent me this shortly after the episode in June 1979 in Saskatoon when I was staying in his and Betty’s house for a CPREA conference. I had tried to commit suicide, gave up on it, came back to the house, and told Tom about it, and he comforted me, having had some experience with attempted suicide in his own family. (His mentally disturbed son actually did kill himself many years later.)

This last experience was really too much. I cannot deny it any more. Someone – some One – is sending me signs. I’d better start believing it.