Frequencies – Revisited

I’m no stranger to strange events, but sometimes it’s very easy for me to get caught up in the busy “here and now” world. At times I sort of forget that everyday life is just the proverbial tip of an immense and multi-layered reality-iceberg, but on the morning of November 30, 2006, I had a very unusual–and significant–“wake up call.”

I’d been really tired all week so when the alarm clock went off at 5:35 a.m., I slapped the snooze button and rolled over on my left side. In what seemed like seconds, the alarm started beeping again, and with a sigh–and in all one motion–I started rolling from my left side to my right, with my left arm extended, to hit the snooze button again to silence the alarm.

As I opened my eyes to check the time (still turning towards the clock) there was a “transparent” black and white photograph of an incredibly beautiful woman between my moving hand and the clock. Because my hand was in motion and this happened so quickly, my hand passed through the photograph (with no sensation) and the image dissipated much like smoke would, with wisps of blacks, grays and whites blowing out of the way as my hand moved through it. Just as my hand made contact with the clock to silence the alarm, in my head I distinctly heard the words, “Hedy Lamarr”.

Instantly awake, I sat up, turned the light on, turned the alarm off, and said to myself, “Hedy Lamarr?!”

My only conscious association with this name was knowing that Hedy Lamarr was an actress during the 1940s. I didn’t know any movies she’d starred in, and I didn’t really know what she looked like–although I assumed that the “photograph” that my hand had just passed through was a picture of her.

I got out of bed and got on the computer to start “Googling.” My first attempt wasn’t too successful as I typed in “Hettie Lamarr”. Google asked if I meant “Hetty Lamarr” so I clicked on that. That led me to several eBay auctions of photographs, so at least it confirmed my most basic knowledge that Hedy Lamarr was a beautiful actress–and most likely the person in the “photograph” that I’d seen.

Further down on that page, I saw the name spelled “Hedy Lamarr” and when searching with that spelling, I first went to sites that talked mainly about her work as an actress. After that, however, things took an interesting turn….

Yes, Hedy Lamarr was a very beautiful actress in the 1940s BUT she was also an inventor; an inventor of a “Secret Communication System”….

Wha???

You can read the full story by searching for her on the Internet, but the short story here is that she and a composer friend developed and patented a “frequency hopping” device to make radio-guided torpedoes harder for enemies to detect or jam. They developed this concept and a device in 1942 during World War II and gave it to the U.S. Navy–which promptly ignored it!

Sadly, the idea of “frequency hopping” was a concept way ahead of its time, and since the “Secret Communication System” was developed by an actress and a composer, that probably didn’t help with its credibility.

It wasn’t until the late 1950s that engineers at Sylvania Electronic Systems started working with Lamarr’s idea. This soon led to the concept–and not the actual, physical device (which originally used player piano rolls!)–being used in military communications systems on U.S. ships sent to blockade Cuba.

“Frequency hopping” is the basic foundation on which spread-spectrum communication (such as cellular phones and wireless internet) is built. Lamarr and her composer friend received no financial compensation for the development of their device or their concept (the patent expired before Sylvania engineers started working on it), but in 1997–just three years before her death in January 2000–Hedy Lamarr received an award from the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Upon receiving the award, Hedy supposedly said, “It’s about time.”

So what did this all mean? Why on earth did I see a transparent photograph of a beautiful woman and hear “Hedy Lamarr” in my head, while doing something as routine and mundane as rolling over in bed to turn off an alarm clock?

One possibility that came to mind was that this was a pretty startling “reminder” (or “wake up call,” if you will!) to remember that there’s far more to life than the “here and now.”

And it might have been a reminder that our ability to perceive the “here and beyond” has a lot to do with frequencies. I’d already been shown this in the late 1980s when I developed the intense fascination with aircraft communication and navigation, and in my ongoing curiosity regarding our ability to sometimes intercept radio and Morse Code transmissions.

As to why this happened when it did, I’d recently received an email from someone in Nevada who had questions about one of the articles I’d written on unusual experiences. As part of my emailed reply to him, I included an affirmation that is used at the Monroe Institute:

“I am more than my physical body. Because I am more than physical matter, I can perceive that which is greater than the physical world. Therefore, I deeply desire to Expand, to Experience; to Know, to Understand; to Control, to Use such greater energies and energy systems as may be beneficial and constructive to me and to those who follow me. Also, I deeply desire the help and cooperation, the assistance, the understanding of those individuals whose wisdom, development and experience are equal or greater than my own. I ask their guidance and protection from any influence or any source that might provide me with less than my stated desires.”

Perhaps by sharing (and again using) this affirmation, I somewhat inadvertently welcomed John Godfrey Saxe’s “elephant” back into my life.

© SKB 2006, 2023