THE MIRACLE CODE
How the Greatest Breakthrough in Literary History Answered a Little Girl's Prayer
“This story shall the good man teach his son.” I’m actually still reeling from it, having only learned of it today. It’s Dickensian - impossibly Dickensian and yet, I promise you, every word is true.
At first it was the almost unbearable sweetness of the events that unfolded last week on Sunset Boulevard which left me awestruck. Then, because I happen to be intimately acquainted with the story behind the story (in fact I was there at very beginning of it, when neither I nor the dear friend whose tenacity and genius I unwittingly ignited nineteen years ago could have dreamed of the revelations to come), I began to reflect on all the historical, literary, and metaphysical threads which became interwoven to answer a 6-year-old girl’s innocent prayer. These are threads which stretch not merely from Stratford-upon-Avon to a convenience store in Hollywood, but from ancient Egypt to India and thence to California, and impact and indeed revolutionize the history of science, mathematics, literature…and the life of a homeless toddler on the harsh streets of Los Angeles.
It falls to me to somehow share this tale without betraying the identity of the principal character. Those who know me well will guess his name swiftly, and I suspect that his role will become known with or without this writing, as the tale is likely to soon become legend in a certain worldwide spiritual community. But for now let us simply state that he is a brilliant English musician, composer, and amateur scholar in his mid-70s, eccentric, hilarious, childlike, quixotic to the last degree, and (as Jung said of Freud) a man completely possessed by his daemon (the ruling dharmic passion which can consume a lifetime).
Let’s visit the girl for a moment. She is six, rising seven, and lives with her mother in their car on the streets of Hollywood. How they came to be there is an unknown tale at present, and doesn’t really matter. What matters here is hope. Somehow mother and daughter have scrounged together a dollar to spare on the most outlandish, bleak, and unlikely hope L.A. has to offer - buying a lottery ticket at a 7-11 on Sunset near Normandie. But the mother isn’t aiming for the PowerBall. She’s betting on a “Scratch-Off” winner of a buck or two to put a smile on her daughter’s face in the midst of their hardship.
“Mommy! I won a dollar!”
The clerk behind the counter smiles and hands her a dollar. She beams like she just got into the Final Four. “Let’s use it to buy another!”
At this point they are joined by a trimly bearded, shaggy-haired man in his 70s who resembles an impish Sir Richard Attenborough, and speaks with the same plummy British accent, while beaming like a saintly leprechaun. He walks delicately, surreptitiously putting a hand on the counter to keep his balance. We will call him Arlan - a nom-de-guerre he once used, though too long ago for you to ever unveil his true name by online sleuthing.
“Good for you, little one!” Arlan cries. “Yes, go for another!”
The clerk hands her another ticket. She scratches eagerly at the surface. “Look, Mommy! I won another dollar!”
The clerk and Arlan are thrilled. Applause and merriment light up the convenience store for a few moments, and Arlan’s smile increases its wattage severalfold.
“Oh, let’s try one more time!” cries the little girl, whose name we learn is Olive. The newly-won dollar is duly produced and a new ticket procured, for the unlikely chance of three straight scratch-off wins (a rare event the clerk has never yet beheld).
Let’s look at Arlan for a moment. He has quietly revolutionized several fields of knowledge, but few people know it yet. He’s in a great deal of pain and needs two knee replacements, but keeps putting off surgery so he can complete the great quest of his life - to reveal to the world the astonishing hidden truth about Shakespeare. He’s in the 7-11 to honor two superstitions and a secret code.
The Truth About Shakespeare
Let us assume that you who read this are sufficiently skeptical of authority to allow for the possibility that history as we have received it is not quite history as it happened, that the victors don’t merely write history but often completely rewrite it, that those in power will go to extraordinary lengths to keep it, that genius has a way of transcending even the most cunning tricks of politicians - and that “foul deeds will rise, though all the earth o’erwhelm them, to men’s eyes.” (Hamlet, Act 1, sc. 3).
For the purposes of our story, let’s agree to accept the following, for the moment, as a given: Shakespeare didn’t write Shakespeare. The Regius Chair of History at Oxford University privately admitted that the paper-trail which should validate the authorship of the world’s greatest plays and poems is inexplicably and stunningly absent in the well-documented era of Early Modern England (which was this professor’s specialty). The man from Stratford-upon-Avon (though I never would have believed it before the evidence became unignorable) was a front for a brilliant and scandalous nobleman whose genius was used by the Tudor regime in a spectacularly successful propaganda campaign - and whose identity, if revealed, would ruin the entire enterprise…to say nothing of endangering the succession to the throne.
Nineteen years ago, I gave a performance of a one-man show I’d penned on the controversy at the Beverly Hills Public Library, impersonating Sherlock Holmes to unravel the mystery of who really wrote Shakespeare. Arlan reluctantly dragged himself out of bed to do the duty of a friend and attend, though he hated Shakespeare and thought the whole thing likely to be a colossal bore. He was then in his late 50s and had been praying for the revelation of the great theme which would inspire him to compose a world-shaking new opera. By the time my performance was done, he was agog. “This is it, Michael! This is it!”
(Michael Henry Dunn in “Sherlock Holmes and The Shakespeare Mystery”)
His obsessive nature had found The Great Obsession. It all turns on a code and on the identity of the real 007.
That would be the famous mathematician, polymath, spymaster and (some say) wizard, Dr. John Dee, court astrologer to Queen Elizabeth the First, whose spy-craft code number Ian Fleming chose four centuries later to identify James Bond.
Necessity now forces me to condense time and events to an almost unforgivable degree. After his chance viewing of Sherlock Holmes and The Shakespeare Mystery, Arlan dedicated the next two decades to cracking the code - and blasted a hole in the fabric of history which scholars may spend centuries mending. Let me just give you a series of bullet points with YouTube links backing up each conclusion, leaving it to your own level of interest to puruse them later if you so choose. There’s a homeless six-year-old girl at the other end of our tale, and it pains me to keep her waiting :
The dedication to the 1609 edition of Shakespeare’s Sonnets contains an alternate-word cipher and a hidden grid, which is revealed (as all codes must be) by the use of a key - in this case, the number 624 - and which points unequivocally to Edward de Vere, the 17th Earl of Oxford, as the hidden author.
The code and the disguise were put in place by a secret brotherhood, with Dr. John Dee at its head, which was a precursor to the Freemasons, with the twin purposes of passing on esoteric knowledge and honoring the memory of the true poet.
The cover of the 1609 Sonnets hides mathematically irrefutable Sacred Geometry which reveals many of the Great Constants of math and science hundreds of years before they were commonly known - and reveals the latitude and longitude of the Great Pyramid of Giza to within 900 feet, a century before longitude had even been established.
And, oh yes, reveals the Speed of Light three hundred years before Einstein.
This Sonnet Code merges with two other codes found in Holy Trinity Church in Stratford, the reputed burial place of Shakespeare, to ultimately reveal the hiding place of a trove of relics and documents which promise to upend the history of modern England and astonish the world. This trove has been shown by ground-penetrating radar to lie within the 800-year-old altar stone in Holy Trinity itself.
Back to our friend Arlan and the homeless girl.
The Code, the Prayer, and the First Miracle
Arlan has brought the story to the attention of the appropriate authorities with the goal of having the altar stone opened to reveal the truth. This always struck me as a nearly hopeless quest, requiring nothing less than a miracle, but which must nevertheless be steadfastly pursued in the name of Truth. Being a longtime meditator and (like me) a disciple of the teachings of the great yoga master, Paramahansa Yogananda, Arlan has hit upon the noble concept of moving from his longtime home in Hollywood to Stratford-upon-Avon, where he will meditate and pray in Holy Trinity Church for eight hours a day, six days a week, until the heavens move the authorities to open the altar. So last week he was starting to pack.
The fact that Arlan’s knees are swiftly disintegrating, that rising from his bed in the morning takes agonizing minutes, and that the pain is too great for him to sit still for 45 minutes let alone all day long, is one that he has conveniently forgotten in his noble vow of a daily 8-hour vigil in Stratford.
You may wish to look up again the meaning of the word quixotic. “Equally impractical and idealistic, also having the sense of romantic nobility…derived from the title character of the great Spanish novel, ‘Don Quixote.’”
Arlan had kindly let me know that he would be in England for the summer, in case I had need for a place to stay on one of my frequent visits to LA from my home in Colorado. His cozy one-bedroom apartment on the quaint grounds of the meditation center on Sunset Blvd. where I too had once lived long ago, had been a welcome haven on past visits, and I was delighted with the prospect.
As he packs last Sunday, Arlan realizes that this will be his last chance to enjoy the Sunday service at the small chapel at the meditation center, and so he decides to make a larger donation than usual by way of thanks to God for many blessings, past, present, and surely to come. The amount of the donation, he decides, must of course be one hundred and one dollars, as the number 101 is one of several which have mystical significance in the world of Shakespeare codes. Checking his cash stash, he realizes he has emptied it just days before, when he consolidated most of his savings to purchase two small apartments for himself, his daughter, and granddaughter in an ashram in south India, where he plans to retire after pulling off (with God’s grace) the great Shakespearean revelation in Stratford.
He needs a hundred-dollar bill, and a one-dollar bill. It’s Sunday morning and service is about to start. But light bursts upon him - of course! Thanks to another superstition, he always keeps at the bottom of his trouser pockets two small envelopes. One contains $624 in cash - 624 being the mystical key to the Great Code. In the other pocket is another small envelope with $426 (the Elizabethan code-makers being fond of reversing numbers). Quickly taking the needed $101 from one of the envelopes to give to the donation basket, he stops to pull out another $101 to cover practical needs…and one other superstition - his monthly habit of buying a $1 lottery ticket at the local 7-11, “just in case I have an unused positive karma deposit with Divine Mother,” he tells me.
Now we rejoin little Olive and her mother, with Arlan and the 7-11 clerk looking on, as the girl eagerly scratches at her ticket, in hopes of the quite unlikely third winner in a row.
Astonishment. Not merely a third-in-a-row winner emerges from Olive’s hopeful scratches, but a hundred-dollar winner! Now the delight and amazement go through the roof, as other customers applaud, and Olive, her mother, and of course Arlan as well, jump up and down in ecstasy (well, Arlan hobbles in ecstasy, as with his crumbling kneecaps he can barely stand).
The celebration gradually subsides, congratulations abound, and Olive and her mother walk out to the parking lot. As Arlan pulls out his wallet to buy his own ticket, the clerk shakes his head and smiles.
“So glad to see that. I see those two a lot and they are having a pretty rough time.”
“Oh? How so?” asks Arlan.
“Homeless. Living in their car for the past few months. Like a lot of people these days.”
Arlan looks down at the two bills in his hand - the hundred and the single. He looks out at the parking lot, where Olive and her mother are starting to walk away. He can’t just give them the money - he has to somehow save their dignity too. Inspiration strikes. He hobbles as swiftly as he can out the door to catch them.
“Wasn’t that amazing?” he exclaims. “You are such a lucky girl - so blessed. You must be an angel!”
Olive answers, “Yes. I am!”
“And what are you going to use your winnings for?” asks Arlan.
“A home.”
Arlan swallows hard. Even for an unredeemed romantic dreamer this is getting hard to take.
“Well, when I have a wish like that, I like to pray to God. Do you pray?”
“Oh, yes. I pray to God too!”
“Wonderful! Would you pray with me now? I have a wish too, and we can pray together. And let’s take a selfie too!”
Arlan takes out his cellphone.
“Oh, look! You have the same God that I do!" cries Olive.
On the screen of Arlan’s cellphone is an image of Paramahansa Yogananda.
(Paramahansa Yogananda, author of Autobiography of a Yogi, founder of Self-Realization Fellowship).
Olive’s mother explains that that they have only recently visited the nearby meditation center (founded in 1942 by Yogananda) and that a kindly elderly woman named Stephanie is “trying to help us with our problem.” Arlan knows which Stephanie this is. The synchronicities are starting to pile up.
They pray together for a moment. “You’re such a lucky girl, Olive. Tell you what. Why don’t we go back in and you buy one more ticket for your home after our prayer. But this time, let me scratch it off, so some of your luck might rub off on me, all right?”
In they go, the hobbling old dreamer, the mother, and the little girl, back to the counter where the clerk is waiting.
“Olive is going to try one more time!” Arlan tells the clerk. On receiving the ticket, Arlan slips his hundred-dollar bill under it in his hand, and as he scratches the ticket he shows the hidden bill to the clerk with a wink. The clerk’s eyes widen for a moment - for real, old man? - then he smiles and nods.
“I can’t believe it - another winner!” cries Arlan. “Another hundred dollar winner!”
Amazement times ten. Shrieks, gasps, and delight. The clerk pretends to enter the ticket in the computer and hands Arlan’s hundred dollars to Olive.
After the joy subsides and Olive and her mother go their way, back to the car they live in, Arlan allows the sweetness of it all to sink in. A good deed for the day. An encounter with angelic innocence and faith on the harsh LA streets.
Back in his apartment, the phone rings. It is Stephanie.
“Ah,” thinks Arlan. “Olive and her mother must have run into her and she’s guessed it was me.’
But no. Stephanie has no notion of the encounter.
“Arlan, I got this feeling I should call you. There’s a homeless mother and her daughter I am trying to help find a place, and I just wondered if you might know of anyone who could help them? Who might have a place, or a room for a while?”
It all comes together and he answers without a pause.
“As it happens, I do. I’ve just met Olive and her mother, and next week I’m going to England for the summer. They can have my place for a good long time while I’m gone.”
Olive’s prayer is answered within minutes of its offering.
But the miraculous Sunday is not over yet.
Arlan has to share this wondrous story with someone. He calls one of the monks in the ashram, a senior brother he has known for many years, and shares the tale of Olive and the magical number of 101.
“And there’s one more piece to this, Arlan,” says the brother. “I am sitting here at my desk composing my sermon for next week. And the theme is The Power of Small Acts of Kindness. But I hadn’t come up with an example, a story yet. And just now I looked at Yogananda’s picture and received the message, ‘Stop. Wait. The story is coming.’ And here it is.”
That should be enough, yes? Grace lives still in our hard world. Childlike faith is rewarded. Angels move behind the scenes, and that hidden Reality we call by so many names reveals Herself as the Mother behind all mothers.
But there is one last miracle, perhaps not the greatest in our tale - the generosity and the faith are miracles enough - but one that touches my heart to tell.
The next morning Arlan wakes with a smile on his face. Many things to do. Packing, planning, arranging. Up he gets, off to the bathroom, back to the kitchen for his morning tea, then to his desk.
Then it hits him. The pain is gone. His knees are healed. The excruciating pain which made rising in the morning an agony, which required immediate surgery, which made his noble vow of eight hours of daily meditation in Shakespeare’s burial place an impossible dream - gone without a trace.
“This story shall the good man teach his son.”
blessings,
Michael
This was such a beautiful and inspiring story! Thank you so much, Michael. Jai Guru
Catherine & Rex
What a fabulous, heart warming and magical tale. So many connections so clearly showing we are so interconnected. Thank you, well told. 💗🕊️🌞