Word Gems
exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity
Eddie Rickenbacker
Can two people, still in this world, communicate via their higher selves?
Return to Afterlife "Personal Messages"
Eddie Rickenbacker, World War I Fighter-Pilot Ace
The following research was done by afterlife investigator, Michael Tymn; originally printed on Michael's blog dated May 21 and May 28, 2018.
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Editor's note: There’s an airfield in the city where I live named for Eddie Rickenbacker. But many people today would say, “Eddie Who?”
Eddie Rickenbacker was big, big news in his day. A real swashbuckling courageous war hero. And so, an account of psychic phenomenon attributed to him is noteworthy. His girlfriend Adela wrote about it.
As Michael Tymn reports:
… [Adela] St. Johns [a journalist] ... recalled a strange communication coming to her through [medium] Eileen Garrett from Eddie Rickenbacker, a highly decorated World War I fighter pilot. When in New York City, she and Rickenbacker frequently dined together and attended various functions. On one occasion, as they were on their way to a hotel in a taxi, Rickenbacker told the taxi driver to stop and let them out, that they would walk the last two miles to the hotel. The long walk angered St. Johns and she made no secret of it. Some time later, after the start of World War II, Rickenbacker was doing defense work for the Secretary of War when the plane he was a passenger on went down in the Pacific. Indications were that nobody survived the crash.
Two weeks after the plane’s disappearance, St. Johns received a telephone call from Garrett, telling her that she received a message that read, “Tell Adela I’m sorry I made her get out of the taxi and walk – but I’d do the same thing all over again.” Garrett said she did not know who the message was from, but she was sure the person is alive. After 23 days in a life raft, Rickenbacker and six others were found alive. When St. Johns next saw him she asked him about the message. He said he didn’t even know who Eileen Garrett was, although he recalled thinking about the taxi incident and how annoyed St. Johns had been while adrift in the ocean.
“It is understandable, I suppose, that there should be so many skeptics,” St. Johns concludes the book. “We live in an age when people question everything. Often, however, people are unwilling to accept the answers. This is particularly true in the area of psychic experience, especially with the experience of contact with someone we regard as dead. Most people believe that there is an existence of some kind after death, but the confusion sets in when they try to define that existence and its relationship, if any, with those of us who are living. Either people become too simplistic or too mystical, and one result of this can be doubt.”
... In the history of mediumship there have been cases in which the “spirit” communicating through the medium turned out to be still alive in the flesh. Such discoveries provided good laughs for the self-righteous debunkers, who accepted it as clear-cut evidence that the medium was a fraud. The possibility that telepathy can take place between living humans or that mediums can pick up messages from other living humans does not seem to have been given any consideration by the militant “skeptics.”
John Edmonds, chief justice of the New York State Supreme Court and one of the first psychical researchers, told of an old friend – one he had not heard from in 15 years – communicating with him through the trance mediumship of his (Edmonds’) daughter, Laura. Edmonds assumed that his old friend was dead, but was surprised to learn later that he was still among the living. “I have known since then many similar manifestations,” Edmonds wrote, “so that I can no longer doubt the fact that at times our communications are from the spirits of the living as well as the dead.”
As mentioned in the last blog post here, Eddie Rickenbacker, a highly decorated World War I fighter pilot, was working for the Secretary of War during WWII when a plane on which he was a passenger went down in the Pacific Ocean. Indications were that nobody survived. However, two weeks after the plane’s disappearance, medium Eileen Garrett received a telepathic message that read, “Tell Adela I’m sorry I made her get out of the taxi and walk – but I’d do the same thing all over again.” Although Garrett didn’t know who the message was from, she knew an Adela – Adela St. Johns, a renowned journalist – and passed the message on to her, mentioning that she could tell that the person who sent the message was alive. The message made perfect sense to St. Johns, Rickenbacker’s friend, who recalled having to walk two miles as a result of the taxi ride with Rickenbacker. A week or so later, Rickenbacker and six others were found alive in a life raft. After returning to New York, Rickenbacker told St. Johns that he didn’t know who Eileen Garrett was, but he did admit to thinking about the taxi incident while adrift.
Editor's note: Eddie communicating with Adela should rank, I feel, in the top ten-percent of most important afterlife-evidence cases. There is much to instruct us here; a good deal of it, counter-intuitive.
Allow me to preface my comments by alluding to the research of Cambridge biologist, Dr. Rupert Sheldrake. In recent years, he’s made a special study of telepathic communication for humans and animals. One of his salient findings informs us that those who share a bond, biological or emotional, forge psychic links most readily. Near the top of this list are biological twins, mother-child affinities, and, of course, romantic lovers. And we learn from the Spirit Guides that romantic Twin Souls are most tightly bonded of all creatures in the universe and, they say, “are never separated,” and cannot be.
Some of this we’ve intuitively known; most of us sense that love binds people in every way. But the case of Eddie and Adela adds new information. Let’s make a bullet list:
- When medium Eileen Garrett received Eddie’s message, it came to her as specific and pointed directive: “Tell Adela…” However, from Eddie’s point of view, he had sent no message at all! further, he’d never heard of Garrett.
It would appear that the message received by Garrett was not sent by Eddie on the level of the “small ego" but from his “higher self” linked to Universal Consciousness.
Editor's note: Quantum physicist Dr. Amit Goswami speaks of scientific experiments offering evidence of this higher consciousness. Subjects were placed in Faraday cages, barring all electromagnetic signals, and yet communication was possible via “nonlocal” means, as physicists use the term. (I will be saying more about this in a forthcoming writing.)
- We might ask, did Eileen somehow tap into the random thoughts of Eddie? – as he did admit to thinking about Adela while lost at sea. But, no, this view of non-directed thought doesn’t fit the facts. Eileen received a message that was very pointed and purposeful: “Tell Adela…” – in other words, the communicator most assuredly intended to send a message. But Eddie, on the level of personality, had no knowledge of sending a message, and probably didn’t even believe this was possible.
Editor’s note: This reminds me of my own second-hand message from cousin John in the afterlife: “Tell Wayne…" (see previous page)
- Would a “higher self” be boring to meet? Too religious to be believed? Too straight-laced? Or would s/he tell you a joke or two? Well, let’s notice how Eddie’s higher-self is a bad boy. He's not shy about speaking to the girl he loves with joking humor and a bit of trash-talk. She’s mad at him for making her walk two miles – we don’t dare ask her what kind of shoes she wore for their big night out but probably not hiking boots -- and Eddie’s higher-self is well aware that she’s mad at him, but, even so, he rubs it in and jabs her, displaying little sign of remorse. This is the way lovers tease each other, it’s the way Kairissi and Elenchus razz each other, and we are pleased, and relieved, to learn that, whatever else a higher-self might be, it’s also a teasing lover.
This issue of layers of communication between lovers, subliminal and conscious, reminds me of the story of Franchezzo and his girl. It’s featured on this page. Franchezzo had crossed over, realized he’d done many things to hurt the girl he loved who was still on Earth, and sought to make amends and to improve himself. For her part, she vowed that she would wait for him, and live alone, all of her life. However, for our purposes here, a most telling point of his testimony was this:
- Franchezzo, A Wanderer In The Spirit Lands: "I have seen one of a pair of lovers, whom some misunderstanding had parted, and between whom death had placed a last insurmountable barrier, [go to] the Beloved One left behind, and seek, by all means in his power, to convey to her the true state of things, that their hearts had been true, whatever might have appeared to the contrary!"
Is this not a remarkable statement? Notice, first, the common “out of phase” interaction of these lovers. A “misunderstanding” had caused them to part, a huge rift that would last an entire lifetime. But then, one of them crossed over and now, in desperation, with the better vision of the next world, attempts by all means to communicate with his lost love – his lost true love!
We are astonished at the assertion, “whatever might have appeared to the contrary … their hearts had been true”!
- Where's the evidence that they are, or ever were, true lovers? Is this the "ludicrous proposition" of which we spoke in "Prometheus"? -- they themselves would ask these questions. After all, they'd treated each other badly and, in great retaliatory anger, had stomped away from each other early on, with severe intention of never seeing each other again.
We gasp at this revelation of the hidden motivations of the heart. It is possible, we find, and more than possible, for two to be eternally destined, and yet treat each other so shabbily, such that, they will not be together in this life.
But the greater cause for astonishment is this: despite all that happened, and all that didn’t – all of the bruisings of ego and harsh words – “their hearts had been true” to each other! and there had never been one day, in terms of their higher selves, when they had not loved each other most fervently, been true and loyal to each other, and, with all vehemence, had yearned with utmost longing to be together.
Welcome to the world of hidden soul-pledges that move and direct the lives of eternally-destined Twins; albeit, in the beginning stages, often in an "out of phase" manner.
And this secret love is part of the higher-self, which, like a wiser, older friend, had sent a message, on behalf of Eddie, to the beloved girl, when he had expected to die. He didn't want to leave this world without talking to her one last time. Of course not. And, anyway, what good is a higher-self if he can't arrange a little thing like getting a message through when you're lost in the middle of the Pacific?
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