Your personal case history is incredible, Two Bears. I vouch for it's authenticity, and I know you have at least a couple dozen more too. Nice try with Martin! Somehow I doubt that he checks in here to "broaden his horizons" and "expand his knowledge" though ...

Anyway, just in case this thread is on it's last legs, I wanted the last "Word" to be a Musical One -- in Western philosophical/mystical tradition, so people will know the ideas presented in my first post are not restricted to Eastern swamis. So here's a little quote from Aristotle;

"[the Pythagoreans] saw that the ... ratios of musical scales were expressible in numbers [and that] .. all things seemed to be modeled on numbers, and numbers seemed to be the first things in the whole of nature, they supposed the elements of number to be the elements of all things, and the whole heaven to be a musical scale and a number."

And a couple from Kepler, who ...

20 centuries later, wrote in his Harmonice Munde (1619) says that he wishes "to erect the magnificent edifice of the harmonic system of the musical scale . . . as God, the Creator Himself, has expressed it in harmonizing the heavenly motions."

And later, "I grant you that no sounds are given forth, but I affirm . . . that the movements of the planets are modulated according to harmonic proportions."

I found them here (this article will awaken the mathematician in us all! ;-) -- Pythagoras and the Music of the Spheres

Yours Lovingly, metaphysically, philosophically and Musically,

daylia