About

About me

Read what a friend and former student said about me.

John

About six months ago I discovered that I was highly allergic to blue food coloring (specifically FD&C Blue #1). It caused everything from ADD symptoms to confusion, migraine headaches, memory lapses and a disruption of my mental functions which in turn changed every single day of my life into one of continuous pain and anxiety. It was a very unhappy state of affairs.

Nearly everything seems to use blue food coloring as a ingredient from jello to mouth wash. Anything colored blue or green (when it is mixed with yellow) has FD&C blue #1 in it (also known as Brilliant Blue, FD&C Blue No.1, Food Blue 2, Acid Blue 9, D&C Blue No. 4, Alzen Food Blue No. 1, Alphazurine, Atracid Blue FG, Erioglaucine, Eriosky blue, Patent Blue AR, Xylene Blue VSG, and C.I. 42090).

That allergic reaction lasts for over 4 days. Unfortunately, I as do most people, ate something with blue food coloring several times a day. My attention was never drawn to it as a possible source of an allergy since I was never free of the symptoms it caused. I had never known a day free from that poison since I was breast feed by my mother.

They used to outlaw Blue #1 in many European countries but I don't know if they still do.

Coal Tar Dyes – (includes D&C Blue 1, Green 3, Yellow 5, Yellow 6, Red 33, etc.)
Even though their carcinogenicity has recently been proven, the 1938 Act includes a specific exemption for them. Severe allergic reactions, asthma attacks, headaches, nausea, fatigue, lack of concentration, nervousness, increased risk of Hodgkin’s disease, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and multiple myeloma. Found in bubble bath, hair dye, dandruff shampoo, toothpaste and foods. Here

And

Brilliant Blue or Blue #1, is a coal tar dye (used in alcoholic cordials and liqueurs, bread, caviar, skim milk, prepared fish, and meats) that promote breast and kidney tumors in lab animals. For that reason it’s widely banned in Europe. Here

Since the amount added is not regulated they often add much more in the U.S. than in European countries. Often on the order of several hundred times the amount.

Have you ever heard of anything so strange in your entire life?

Meditation helped resolve the confusion and surprisingly so did remembering past lives. The past life memories supplied a 'template' for my thoughts. It wasn't an overly powerful template but it did influence my thinking for the better. Memories of my past lives were far less painful than just thinking in this life.

Knowing something was wrong physically, but not what, I took biochemistry in college but I did not discover what it was then. I developed medical devices that normalized brain function back in the 1980's (nearly identical to the Third Eye Machine I write about here.). They did help but I still did not discover the cause of my problem at the time. They worked very well with others for normalizing mental aberrations caused by brain malfunction such as sleep disorders, stroke, post concussion syndrome, etc and sold quite well on the market. It was a great business until I moved near a 7-Eleven with their tons of blue dye #1.

The inflammation/irritation created pain which was always there 24/7. At times it manifested in a migraine headaches which often led to hospitalization. There was self medication for both the migraines and the 24/7 inflammation. Then there were the near fatal motorcycle accidents, etc, etc. These abrupt changes in my life for the worst had only one common factor and that is they were all spontaneous, impulsive and never planned out ahead of time.

It also affects my writing. The effects of blue dye #1 can be clearly seen on many pages on this web site that have not been updated. I am famous for leaving out words, a kind of 'writing dyslexia'.

I suffered from abject poverty and at times I ran out of food so my teeth literally fell out. In what is perhaps the most incredible irony of my life I had to go on a clean out of my kitchen and for two weeks had no food other than noodles and cheese. So for two weeks I had not a bit of blue dye. This absence of blue dye in my poor diet exposed it as my allergy when I drank a glass of 'blue' kool aid and promptly came down with a horrible migraine headache (after losing about 8 teeth). Should I be grateful or not?

Now it is over. I'm fine. So a 50+ year nightmare has finally ended. In fact I am content about 99.5% of the time.

(Written in May 2008) All the confusion is dissolving and my emotional growth is starting now, from the age of about 14 years old. Perhaps that is too all encompassing. Parts of my emotional growth were blocked while other parts were unaffected. Emotional understandings that were built up from other understandings often never were understood by me. The pieces rarely fit together. Whatever mechanism in the brain automatically does that naturally, it was about the first thing to stop working when taking blue dye. I can intellectually understand those emotions through my memories of a past life when I had that understanding in that previous lifetime. So I have the emotional understanding of a 56 year old, a 14 year old and those from about 70 other lifetimes of varying ages and both sexes. I was always a nice person though. That niceness is one common thread all my previous lives have. It's not to be underrated. Being nice is one of the main things that allows a person to recall past lives. (Nice people are people you want to know even if that person was you in a previous life, and especially if that person was you. Allergies aside, my heart is always in the right place. In this life I would especially like to meet a lady like I was in the 16th century.)

If it had not been for my food allergy I would be an average 'Joe'. Don't envy me or the pain that I have gone through to divert me into the dangerous path I ended up taking, which I almost only did in order to resolve the problems created by my allergy.

On the light side I would probably never have learned to meditate and it goes without saying that I would never have learned to recall previous lives had it not been for the allergy. This is a 'path' that I never would have taken had it been my choice.

I guess in a way what I did could be likened to advanced study. This is probably the equivalent of earning 10 doctorates. If anyone did such a thing then they would end up becoming a person with lots of skills and knowledge that they could really accomplish a lot with. That is essentially what I did by meditating for 27 years but as I said it took a lot to get me to do it.

Would you voluntarily spend 27 years in college getting advanced degrees if pain wasn't involved? Me neither. Probably not unless your feet were held over a fire like mine essentially were.

Please don't envy my recall of past lives but if you still do then I pray that the almighty gives you an allergy that you don't know about in your next lifetime, just like I have. I'll be sure to ask that it be one that thwarts everything that you try to do, makes life next to impossible, causes terminal conflicts with all your relationships which leads you to live your life abandoned, alone and in tremendous agony.

Oh, don't thank me yet. Two days of this allergy and you would probably wish that you had never been born. The fortunate thing is that I needed to recall these past lives and it would never have occurred if it had not been for this allergy. There fore the allergy was pre destined.

Oh, don't get me wrong. There is great beauty inside us all. Still that does not seem to usually encourage people to look inside at past lives. One problem is that your attitude in past lives is always different than what they are now and that creates conflicts. Those conflicts are painful to look at in order to resolve and until you do so you will not see much of that great beauty. What is your incentive to deal with those conflicts? An allergy works pretty good as it creates more conflicts in this life than in past lives. Hence it becomes easier to look at past lives and deal with the differences than to just deal with this lifetime.

Then there is the deterrent created by the memories of physical pain. In order to recall 70 past lives fully you must recall 70 deaths and all the other hard times. It was not a bit of fun but again it was nicer than the alternative of not recalling those past lives.

There are other ways of recalling previous lives and developing inner understandings but there isn't usually a strong incentive to do so. Knowing others who were friends of yours in past lives often works because you have to recall that past life or at least understand it in order to relate to that person fully. It's a lot more fun than allergic reactions.

Don't get me wrong, the allergy created other positive changes in my personality. It increased my IQ quite a few points over what genetics alone would have. I also have a nicer personality because of it. The most intriguing outward change that has occurred was one that flies in the face of logic. My eyes used to be a dull hazel color which bordered on gray. Now they are aquamarine. I thought such changes were impossible because eye color was 'hardwired' due to genetics. It amazes me everytime I look into a mirror.

If I had not had strong allergies for most of my life then I probably would have become nothing more than a 'normal millionaire'. With above average intelligence, a skill with technology, good looks, a nice personality I would have had no incentive to take the path that I did.

An interesting effect that recalling past lives has had on me is that I have all the skills I had in each of those past lives that I recall. This occurs with all skills. That includes writing (here). I guess that should go without speaking. It's obvious that if you can recall writing (or any other skill) be it from this life or from another then it's obvious that you should also have the same skill now.

I am pretty psychic in this life and I have been in many of my past lives. Those skills seem to add up. The psychic abilities I have had in past lives add to those in this life. However, it has mainly broadened my skills. My abilities have become far less specific and far more general. I am now a much better prophet than a psychic which means that I am far better at seeing the future events of mankind than future events in the lives of individuals.

And now that my allergy no longer affects me how often do I think about past lives these days? I'd have to say about 15 minutes a week or less. Down from up to ten hours a week when my allergies were affecting me.

A British person humorously implied that I was delusional. His email was nice and he used that dry English humor which leaves you uncertain of what to take seriously and what not to. How did I reply? In kind.

The most interesting account of past life recall is that of General George S. Patton. I write about it here.