Harra, Carmen

views updated

HARRA, Carmen

PERSONAL:

Born in Bistrita, Transylvania, Romania; married; children: three daughters. Education: Bucharest University, School of the Arts, undergraduate degree, 1978.

ADDRESSES:

Office—62-61 Alderton St., Rego Park, NY 11374. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Singer, songwriter, composer from age sixteen through thirties, performing in Romania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Germany, Russia, France, Sweden, Italy, and the United Kingdom, on stage and television; metaphysical intuitive, 1980s—; lecturer, television show guest, including appearances on Good Day New York, Fox News, and Today; teacher of classes on developing intuition at The Learning Annex, New York, NY; certified hypnotherapist, astrologer, astrophysiognomist, cosmologist, numerologist, and Kabbalah expert.

WRITINGS:

Everyday Karma: A Renowned Psychic Shows You How to Change Your Life by Changing Your Karma, Ballantine Books (New York, NY), 2002.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

Meant to Be: Decoding Time, Predicting the Future.

SIDELIGHTS:

Carmen Harra is a renowned psychic reader who has advised presidents, Hollywood stars, European royalty, and Wall Street executives. Preferring to call herself a "metaphysical intuitive," she appears on television and conducts workshops and private consultations. Her predictions about major world events are well known. For example, Harra predicted that a blond man whose name began with a "P" would become the new Russian president in 1999, and Vladimir Putin became president on the last day of the year. She also predicted that Al Gore would be elected president but would not take office and that Mother Teresa would die within a week after Princess Diana's death.

Harra has even been consulted by the fashion world. In an interview with William Norwich for the New York Times, she said, "In about 2040 to about 2080, fashion will become creative again.… Fashion will be harmonious again." She advises people to wear bright colors now to create positive energy.

Harra says that her contact with the spiritual world developed as a result of a near-death experience she had at age five, when she nearly drowned in a Romanian river. She reads auras and can tell a person's state of health and well-being by the colors she sees surrounding them.

Harra's first book is Everyday Karma, which guides the individual toward healing psychological wounds from the past and developing the capacity for unconditional love. It explains the past, present, and accumulated levels of karma and discusses the karma of the individual, the family, and groups. It also includes ways to listen to a personal spirit guide and enter the spiritual world, create positive karmic relationships, find a karmic life purpose, and learn relaxation techniques that bring balance and new energy to everyday life. At the end of the book Harra presents her ten-step Karmic Resolution Method.

Douglas C. Lord, in a review for Library Journal, wrote that he found Harra's methods similar to cognitive-behavioral techniques used by other writers and said the Hindu concept of karma, in which a person's past deeds influence their future lives, "gets short shrift." He also thought too little emphasis was given to relaxation techniques, but said that overall the book was "an encouraging guide." A Publishers Weekly contributor commended Harra on her writing style and "positive tone" but thought less of the abundance of "anecdotal evidence" and the lengthy section on her own predictions. The reviewer said these might make some readers skeptical that Harra is interested in capitalizing on the American "appetite for occultism."

Victoria Zhang, in the Boulder Weekly, observed that the ordinary person was incapable of viewing themselves "with the level of insight required to produce true and lasting change, if they only follow the exercises in this book." She also commented on Harra's reference to the Christian God in much of the book and pointed out the incompatibility of Christianity with karma and reincarnation.

Harra told Norwich, "We live in a world that needs healing. There is an accumulation of lots of bad karma.… We're living in a transition from now until 2033, when humanity actually goes up into a higher level of spirituality. If we don't know how to cross the bridge, it could be catastrophic."