1985. I went to have a reading, the woman made us hot tea, gave me a notebook and pen (she said because I was a non-believer, she wanted me to write everything she was going to tell me in the notebook).
She talked for close to two hours. Everything she said that day has come to pass. When we were finished , she would not let me pay, because "I was on a golden path" and she had waited a lifetime to meet someone on the golden path. What is a golden path? This woman died the following day... strange.
—Terri Ellen Holt Vroman, United States
Dear Terri,
On the spiritual path one sometimes comes across certain “exotic” elements. You encountered one of them: psychics who quite accurately predict one’s future.
Swami Kriyananda himself has gone to such persons, and has had some remarkable readings.
He also tells about his experience in India with an ancient astrological book (loads of bundles of papers), written thousands of years ago, predicting events of people in our time: the Book of Bhrigu.
Nowadays it is not easy to find the authentic Book of Bhrigu, because a number of false ones have been created. The right one, for example, doesn’t charge any money.
Similarly, it is not easy to find authentic psychics. Your psychic seems to have been a rare and good one, not asking anything, but wanting to serve, help, encourage. Her predictions came true.
She used the words “a golden path,” not “the golden path.” With “a golden path” (and I can only guess) she might have meant a very valuable path to Truth, a rare fortune indeed.
She must have seen something special in you, in your karma, similar to what Yogananda once said to a disciple: “You have clear sailing!”
You may have defined yourself as a non-believer back then, but she saw something different in you.
But “clear sailing,” or being “on a golden path,” does not guarantee anything: the important thing is not what has been predicted to you, but what you actually do with your life.
In other words, it is not enough to be on “a golden path,” – we need to walk on it with determination toward a clear goal, never stopping until we arrive. There are so many forces, within and without, which distract us from our golden path.
Being on a true “golden path” is always a battle, for everyone.
She died the next day. I would take that as a good-bye blessing from a high soul, who was telling you: “Go my child, walk on that golden path.”
Regarding prophecies in general: Swami Kriyananda, before describing Yogananda’s various prophecies, explains in a book: “A prophet, when he sees what is in store for men or for nations, is seeing the fruits of their own individual or collective actions. These “destinies” are not absolutely foreordained.”
In other words, even the words of true prophets are never declaring: “This future is 100% written in stone.”
What finally happens always depends on what the individual, or the country, or the world, is doing.
It is all changeable. Swami explains in that book: “There are of course ways of mitigating the results of bad karma, whether individually or as a nation.”
The opposite, as we said, is true as well: a golden path requires golden actions, otherwise it will become less golden for you.
May you walk on the golden path toward the Light,
jayadev
