PIECES IN A JIGSAW PUZZLE

A “Funny” Thing Happened On My Way to ZI WEI DOU SHU

by CHENG YEW MENG, PhD.

INTRODUCTION

What follows is a rather personal and esoteric account because I believe that people are drawn to Zi Wei Dou Shu (Purple Star Astrology) for very different reasons. Hence I can only offer my own story here which may not be applicable to everyone.

Firstly, Zi Wei Dou Shu (ZWDS) would be boring for me if it is not placed within a meaningful context. By that I mean ZWDS is only a jigsaw piece in the puzzle of life! Some people may be amazed by the accuracy of ZWDS’s predictive power. But to that, I would reply, “So what? What’s the big deal if someone can predict correctly that I will make money in 2008, or my wife will have an affair in 2009?”  It does not necessarily follow that if one particular prediction comes true then the others will also be fulfilled. That’s not logical, especially if we are talking about different predictions with regard to entirely different issues.

ZWDS only becomes interesting if, and only if, it points to something else, namely, a larger pattern. Let me put this in another way. There’s an old movie called “Alfie” in which Michael Caine starred. (I’m not referring to its remake where Jude Law plays Alfie.) Michael Caine played a womanizing young man who didn’t care very much about life or anyone else. All he seemed to be interested was to have his more than fair share of hedonistic and carnal pleasures. But by the end of the movie, after he had satisfied himself to no end, he felt empty and meaningless. He then asked himself the simple but yet profound question, “What’s it all about?”  We could elaborate by adding, “Who are we? Where do we come from? Where do we fit in the cosmos? Where are we going? What is life? Why there is life in the first place?”

ZWDS only becomes really interesting when it fits in as a piece in the puzzle of life, that is to say, when it offers clues to the meaning of life or to the nature of the reality of life. I have come to this conclusion after a number of years in my search for the other jigsaw pieces. However, before I spell out the relevance of ZWDS in the puzzle of life, let me offer you readers a sample of other pieces which are equally fascinating.

It has once been said by a philosopher that an unexamined life is not worth living. And if we are to face facts, the truth of the matter is that most people don’t really examine their own lives. Why? Not because they are unintelligent or lack the mental capability, but because if they really scrutinize their lives, they may find their suspicion confirmed. That deep down inside their lives there is no centre; their ground of being is shaky and without form or substance. This realization will lead to existential angst and will be unbearable, and therefore it’s best not to venture too deep. Let’s then just coast along with a herd mentality and amuse ourselves with conspicuous consumption and the latest offerings of technology.

However, let’s not go down that road. Instead, let’s take an alternate path and see what an examined life can bring. Before taking the first step on this path we need to face 3 facts.

Fact 1: THERE ARE MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS IN LIFE.

Fact 2: THE ANSWERS ARE THERE IF WE SEARCH FOR THEM.

Fact 3: THE ANSWERS ARE ONLY MEANINGFUL IF WE MAKE THEM SO.

With the above in mind, let’s look at some of the jigsaw pieces of life mentioned earlier.

THE SIRIUS MYSTERY

The first piece comes from the Dogon tribe of West Africa and their connection to the Sirius constellation. This was first brought to popular attention by Robert Temple in his book, The Sirius Mystery. In it he relates the story of how two anthropologists, Marcel Griaule and Germaine Dieterlan, managed to extract the most secret knowledge of the Dogon after living among them for years. Griaule became the first outsider to gain their trust and confidence, and consequently, the first to access their inner most secrets regarding their origin and their rituals.

Some of their startling revelations include that they were visited by beings from the Sirius system in the long distant past, and that there was another star (the Digitaria star of the Dogon, called “Sirius B” by Temple) orbiting Sirius A every fifty years. Griaule and Dieterlan published their article, “Un Systeme Soudanais de Sirius” in 1950. However, they appeared to have missed the incredible significance of the Dogon’s claims. They merely remarked in a footnote: “The question has not been solved, nor even asked, of how men with no instruments at their disposal could know the movement and certain characteristics of stars which are scarcely visible.” The point is that the Digitaria or Sirius B is not scarcely visible but completely invisible and was only discovered through the use of a telescope in the last century. And how did they know the orbital period was 50 years? This orbital period was later confirmed by astronomers as correct.

When Robert Temple first had The Sirius Mystery published in 1976, he asserted that the Dogon also revealed the existence of a third star, Sirius C, in the system. But at that time astronomy was unable to confirm its existence, hence rendering the claim and the whole account as unreliable. Twenty years later, in 1995, astronomers Daniel Benest and J. L. Duvent published their finding of a small red dwarf star (Sirius C) in the Sirius constellation in the journal, Astronomy and Astrophysics.

Until now no one has been able to explain how the Dogon were able to obtain such detailed knowledge without the aid of any advanced telescopes. Perhaps the simplest explanation is to accept their claim at face value, that is, indeed earth had been visited by space beings or aliens thousands of years ago and had imparted the knowledge to them!

THE BIBLE CODE

The second jigsaw piece comes from the Bible Code. This is a really amazing piece; its academic credibility is impeccable and its implications should shatter the Fundamentalist Christians’ understanding of God. It’s another case, as with that of the Dogon, of transpiring of knowledge from the annals of academia to the popular press. It has been known for centuries that there exists a secret code in the bible, especially in the first five books of the Old Testament. When the biographer of Isaac Newton, John Maynard Keynes, the great economist, went through the long forgotten handwritten papers of Isaac Newton, he discovered not notes of scientific inquiry but piles upon piles of paper devoted to unlocking the purported code in the bible! Lots of Jewish biblical scholars have gone down the same road but ended up with little fruit to show as well. It is only until the advent of computers that more headway is evident.

The greatest breakthrough was made by Dr Eliyahu Rips and his colleagues who experimented with equidistant letter sequencing using the first five books of the bible. Their results were published in 1994 in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal, Statistical Science. Within the Code, they were able to locate the all the 32 names of Hebrew sages who lived after the bible was written. Not only that, they also located the dates of their birth and death all in the vicinity of their names. To have their names and dates encoded together is highly significant; that this can only happen by chance is in the odds of 1 in 10 million! Rips and his colleagues tried to perform the same experiment with 3 non-Biblical texts but were unable to produce similar results.

The person instrumental in popularizing the work of Rips is Michael Drosnin who penned The Bible Code and The Bible Code 2: The Countdown. Many world events were recorded in the Code, e.g. President Kennedy’s assassination; Hitler and the Second World War; the six day war in the Middle East; the bombing of the twin towers in New York; the Great Depression of 1929; and the death of Princess Dianna. Drosnin himself saw the words, “Yitzhak Rabim” running across the words, “Assassin will assassinate” in the Code. Even the predicted year was there. He found this information more than a year before Prime Minister Rabim was assassinated in November 1995. He had tried to warned Rabim through a letter but it was ignored. Rabim probably thought he was an absolute nutcase!

What is even more fascinating, for my purpose, is information concerning the origin of humanity and the identity of Yahweh, the biblical God. In The Bible Code 2, Drosnin devotes a chapter on the code of life, DNA, and a chapter on the alien identity of man’s maker. It seems that the Bible Code is in agreement with Francis Crick’s theory of Directed Panspermia. That is to say, that life on earth originated from the stars. It was brought to earth from elsewhere. In the Code we can find the words, “DNA was brought in a vehicle” running across the words, “in a vehicle your seed.” In another instance, we also find the words, “DNA spiral” crossing over the words, “in Adam the model, template.” Yet on another occasion, the words, “Creation of Man” running across the words, “I gave it to you as an inheritance, I am God” were found.

ALIEN ORIGINS

The third jigsaw piece comes from the works of Zecharia Sitchin. Sitchin has written a series of six books entitled, The Earth Chronicles. In a nutshell, his thesis is that advanced civilizations existed on earth many thousands of years ago and they were of extraterrestrial origins. The story can be found in the ancient Sumerian tablets. A race of space beings called the Annunaki arrived on earth about 450,000 years ago. Anu, Enlil and Enki were three main characters or gods in our story. Anu was the father who eventually went back to the planet of Nibiru. The two sons, Enlil and Enki were left behind in charge of the Annunaki who were mining for gold, for whatever purpose is not clear. Because of all the toil and hard work, they mutinied. Enlil wanted to punish the mutineers but Enki was more lenient. Enki suggested that a suitable candidate to replace the Annunaki at the mines existed. This candidate was the early hominid, a creature at a particular stage of evolution on earth. It was Enki, with the help of Ninmah, who genetically altered the hominid to have the intelligence of modern man. Thus mankind was created in the image of God. But so was the primitive worker for the gods! According to the Sumerian tablets, the gods were physical beings from the skies who possessed incredibly advanced knowledge and were the ones who taught homo sapiens techniques of agriculture and gave them culture and civilization. Now this is not an isolated story from a past civilization alone. Many ancient myths from Europe, South America, Middle East, and China all tell the same story that our intelligence was imparted to us by the gods who came down from heaven. It would be rather fool hardy to simply dismiss them as aspirations or fantasies of early man, especially when there are just too many parallel accounts from dissimilar cultures.

The Flood or the Great Deluge account in the Bible is found in an even earlier version in the Sumerian tablets. The Bible Code, mentioned above, also confirmed the event of the Deluge. The point here is that this is an actual event, possibly resulting from the ending of the last Ice Age about 11,000 to 16,000 years ago. I don’t think we should give too much credit to early man for making up such a fantastic phenomenon. Sometimes a spade is really a spade.

I propose that Zecharia Sitchin’s work should be taken seriously however incredible his theory may seem because his is based on ancient records and is supported by many other sources. The first volume of his Earth Chronicles, The 12^th Planet, is a perfect example of how science confirms ancient claims regarding our solar system. According Sitchin, the Sumerian cosmology has 12 planets in our solar system, including the sun and the moon. But as we know, there are only 9 planets orbiting the sun. Even if we include both the sun and the moon, it would still only make a total of 11. So where is the 12^th planet? In recent years, this planet has apparently been located by astronomers and was speculated to have a very different orbit from the rest of the other planets in our solar system. Again this was already known by the Sumerians. They named this planet, Nibiru, and they maintained that it has an orbit of 3,600 earth years according to Sitchin.

CONCLUSION

Let me explicate the main points of all the above jigsaw pieces. There’s little doubt in my mind that earth had been visited by advanced beings of some sort (though they were more likely from another dimension rather than extraterrestrial)  in the distant past, and is still a place of visit to them! If one takes the time to do the research, one will come to the conclusion that these higher intelligences have been with us since the beginning of humankind. (Graham Hancock’s book, Supernatural, is a scholarly researched and very convincing account of this view.) Some people might see them as gods, demigods, extraterrestrials, aliens, fairies, angels, demons, etc. Whatever they are is hard to establish, but what is indisputable is their effect on humanity throughout history. They reside in our very psyche and they feature in our myths of creation, fall, and redemption. That they are still here with us is almost a foregone conclusion given the evidence.

Of course, one should not just take my word for it. One must do the necessary slog work by reading the appropriate books, checking out the pertinent articles, surfing the net to get to the relevant websites, and then weighing the information in the light of one’s own experience to arrive at one’s conclusion. What matters is that one has done or is willing to do the search, not the result of the search. If at the end of the search, one comes to the conclusion that all the jigsaw pieces above are a load of crap, then at least the conclusion, if not the contents of the search, warrants respect. But, on the other hand, if one simply dismisses them as rubbish without thorough examination, then one would be akin to an ostrich with its head in the sand, refusing to confront reality.

There are many more jigsaw pieces than the ones mentioned above. It’s up to the reader to go and search for them. As I have stated before: there are more questions than answers in life. It’s another way of saying that life in its essence is mysterious and it’s unlikely that we will be able to unlock the mystery in our lifetime. Yet it’s something to celebrate about. We can marvel at the mystery even though a large piece of me desperately wants to know what it is all about. The enticing thing in this whole affair is that whoever or whatever is behind it all has left numerous clues for us to find.

And this leads to my claim that ZWDS is absolutely fascinating because it is like the Bible Code in that based on one’s year, month, day and hour of birth, it is possible to predict accurately the events or things which will happen to the individual. Honestly speaking, I was rather a skeptic when I was first introduced to ZWDS. Only after I had drawn up my own chart and those of my relatives, and saw how the charts correlated with our lives, I began to seriously investigate and study the subject. Since then I have never ceased to be amazed by the accuracy of the charts. How is this possible? How can just the birth details reveal so much about a person? Apart from determining significant issues such as the wealth and profession of a person, I have in the past been able to tell that my client’s menstruation period was irregular, that one particular client visited a prostitute on the day he consulted me, and another client had an argument with her husband on a particular day. All this comes from a reading of a ZWDS chart.

ZWDS is a very complicated system based on specific rules and calculations. Legend has it that ZWDS was invented by Chen Xi Yi, but where did the formulas come from? Were they from a much more superior intelligence, possibly from another dimension? After all, science is now telling us that there are possibly eleven dimensions to our universe. Buddhism has long been saying to us that there are at least thirty-three levels of existence. Interestingly, science is only beginning to catch up with the truths of religion. F. Capra’s The Tao of Physics, L. McTaggart’s The Field and E. Laszlo’s Science and the Akashic Field are especially informative on such issues. But that’s digressing, so let’s return to our place of departure. ZWDS points to a much larger pattern, with ZWDS as possibly only the first of many layers of the Code to revealing the Mystery of Life. Only from such a perspective is ZWDS highly meaningful and immensely interesting.

POSTSCRIPT

A few years after I have penned the above article, I came across a Biblical Language scholar named Michael Heiser who has challenged numerous claims and interpretations of Zecharia Sitchin (see Heiser’s website:  www.sitchiniswrong.com). One of the more significant challenges was for Sitchin to produce a single source or a line of a Sumerian cuneiform text which mentions that Nibiru is a planet or the home of the Annunaki gods. Till his demise in 2010 Sitchin has neither responded to Heiser’s challenges nor produced any evidence regarding Nibiru. In light of Heiser’s revelations the claims of Sitchin must be scrutinized and verified before accepting them. While there are problems with Sitchin’s interpretations regarding the Annunaki, my central thesis of ZWDS being only a piece in the puzzle of the meaning of life still nevertheless holds true.