Question: 

Are we really in control of our destinies or do we mostly believe that ‘some unseen hand’ is controlling us or even that our destinies have all been decided at birth?

Answer:

Probably no-one can provide an answer to this question that will convince everyone. Nevertheless, most people accept the well-known maxim that ‘God helps those who help themselves’ and likewise that all human beings are – or should be – free to make choices about how they conduct their lives. Conversely, relatively few would accept the suggestion that we humans are robots under the control of some supernatural power.

No-one can deny that ‘coincidences’ play a huge role in our lives. Coincidences after all, happen to us all every day. Most are of little consequence. However, we all know that once in a while coincidences occur that change the whole course of our lives. Experience has taught me that very occasionally – and I write this with the utmost reluctance – ‘some unseen hand’ does in fact intervene in our lives and ‘instigates’ a ‘coincidence’ or even an ‘occurrence’. I have come to accept that the ‘spirit world’ as it is often called, does in fact exist, not in a physical sense of course, but in a virtual one in which former inhabitants of this world are – occasionally at least - controlling events on Earth. I have reached this conclusion in the light of events that have profoundly changed my life in a manner such that no other explanation makes any sense.

Question:

Can I identify one particular occurrence, one moment of destiny, so to speak, when to all intents and purposes I had – or should have had - a free choice, when an ‘unseen hand’ changed the entire course of my life for which I am unable to offer any convincingly credible factual explanation?

Answer:

Yes, I can: On just our 3rd date, 28th May 1969, I impulsively and unpremeditatedly asked for my girlfriend’s hand in marriage. 

Question:

Surely nobody asks such a question without at least a moment’s reflection about the consequences?

Answer:

Love at first sight? Total involuntary infatuation? Well, maybe, yes. It is after all, a very romantic proposition! Yet, the idea of proposing marriage had not even crossed my mind 5 minutes before, 1 minute before, even 10 seconds before I actually made that proposal. When I came to my senses a few hours later, I was in complete denial of having ever made it. My recollection of those moments was that I had gone mad; completely and utterly mad.  Yet, I knew it was in fact true. The only possible explanation was that ‘some unseen hand’ had taken control of my senses. Of course, at that point in time I had no idea that Mahin had been forewarned by a fortune teller that she would meet a man with blond hair and blue eyes and travel the world. It was hardly surprising that she had her answer ready!

It was many years later that a trusted friend invited me to consult his astrologist sister who was able to provide a credible explanation.

Question:

What about all those other almost inexplicable coincidences? Could these have been influenced by ‘some unseen hand’?

How, in my childhood, my mother had recounted tales of the assassins and how young men were deceived into believing that if they successfully carried out a political assassination they would be rewarded in paradise with a beautiful houri of their own choosing
How, in my youth, I was attracted to the likes of Sophia Loren and while on exchange in France I fell in love with my Sophia Loren look-alike hostess 
How, in 1979, I accepted a position in Switzerland, only to be posted at short notice for a few weeks to Iran
How on arrival I was introduced to someone whose landlord would take us all to the races where I met Mahin.

Answer:

It’s impossible to know, but it would seem reasonable to assume that the ‘unseen hand’ was already at work long before my ‘moment of destiny’.

Question:

Once you realised that ‘some unseen hand’ had made one of the biggest decisions in your whole life apparently against your better judgement, do you not consider yourself weak that you failed to walk away from your ‘coerced’ commitment?

Answer:

Yes, absolutely. I willingly admit to my own manifest weakness of character! But in the same breath I would ask how many men in my state of mind, and in the same circumstances at that time would have had the strength of character to walk away? I cannot deny that I was in love – up to my neck! In my estimation, I had succumbed to the magic spell of one of the most instinctively talented seductresses that had ever walked on the face of this earth! I had fallen straight into a trap so deep and so filled with honey, I wager no man with natural instincts would have been able to crawl out of it: apart from a misogynist maybe.