Introduction
"...if we do discover a complete theory, it should in time be understandable
in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we
shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be
able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that
we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would
be the ultimate triumph of human reason-for then we would know the
mind of God." Stephen Hawking
Sometimes, the greatest adventures in life are internal. This work represents
such an adventure. It's a journey through the unseen dimensions of
mind and spirit. I can attest to the reality of the events described
herein. They are not fictional. The journey isn't new. It's been the
quest of millions of persons for thousands of years. But, like the
uniqueness of one's fingerprints or DNA, each life story is unique.
I began the quest as a youth, by borrowing from the scientific method and
generating a few hypotheses. It was soon discovered, however, that
the investigation would need to extend beyond that approach. After
some time, the "unseen" realm occasionally manifested itself in the
physical world, as if a level of reason was operating. In the years
following, I began working in emergency services and witnessed many
chance events of tragedy, including the deaths of friends and family.
What part, if any, did reason have in these things? Could there be
meaning in the probabilities of what appeared to be mindless suffering?
After returning from a trip to Bali in1994, something happened that would forever
change my life. For one week, each thought of every moment became
related to those things occurring in physical reality, as if the very
thought was creating it! Psychologist Carl Jung defined such experiences
as synchronicity, or meaningful coincidences. Many of the events involved
music, whose lyrics perfectly reflected what was happening at the
moment. The result was both electrifying and unsettling. What level
of intelligence could operate in this way, and what was it leading
toward?
Gradually, it was revealed that the processes of our planet and the interactions
of its inhabitants are orchestrated by a higher level of intelligence
leading us, in an evolutionary process, toward our destiny! I've come
to believe that most people are completely unaware of this process.
There are, however, two burning questions that remain: who's "pulling the strings?"
and what are we evolving toward? That's what this book is about. The
following pages will present the ideas as they were presented to me
and describe my journey of arriving there. The final conclusions might
be shocking!
Having no intentions of writing a book, my life seemed to accumulate a lot
of strange and interesting experiences. One night, it came in a dream
that the experiences were integrated into a story, and the story needed
to be told. Once I made the decision to proceed, the narrative began
writing itself, the bulk of the contents being produced from the dream
state. It might therefore be appropriate to welcome you to the "waking
dream." I hope reading it will be as interesting as it has been living
it!
Chapter 9 Excerpt
Synchronicity and the Nature of Reality
"You don't see something until you have
the right metaphor to perceive it."
The concept of miraculous coincidences is not at all new. The phenomenon
has been recognized by many cultures, and in the distant past, was attributed
to the acts of the Gods. In Greek mythology, the God Hermes, was represented
as a playful "trickster" who was manifested in unexpected and humorous
events. The same type of character was known by various names in different
cultures. To the Native Americans, he was known as "Ictinike," to the
Polynesians as "Maui," "Krishna" to East Indians, and "Loki" to some tribes
of Europe. The modern equivalent might be illustrated with a character
named "Q" in the popular science fiction book and television series Star
Trek. Q was a vastly advanced human with nearly inexhaustible powers,
who would appear on the Star Trek space ship, producing mischief and misdeed.
Eventually Q's father, a being of superior power and wisdom, would intervene
and scold him for his improprieties.
The unexpected nature of synchronicity gives it a humorous twist, as seen
in many historic events. Charles Darwin was working on his treatise about
"survival of the fittest" in 1844, when he received a manuscript from
A.R. Wallace, a biologist unknown to him. Darwin later wrote:
I never saw a more striking coincidence. If Wallace had my M.S. sketch written
out in 1842 he could not have made a better short abstract! Even his terms
now stand as heads of my chapters.
Surprisingly, synchronicity has captured the attention of some well-respected scientists.
As one might suspect, the scientists have experienced it themselves! Carl
Jung said the synchronistic events he witnessed in his life might appear
unbelievable, yet he couldn't deny their reality!
Jung once counseled a woman he described as having a disposition of total rationality.
She couldn't free herself from this attitude to explore things from a
different perspective. One day, she was in his office describing a dream
about an Egyptian scarab beetle. To the Egyptians, the scarab was a symbol
of rebirth or new awakening. Jung heard a tapping on the window behind
him and turned around to see that just such a beetle was bumping against
his window! Catching the beetle, he presented it to his patient. The occurrence
of such an irrational event so stunned her way of thinking that
it provided the breakthrough for his treatment of her problems!
Another synchronistic experience described by Jung, involved his analysis
of the fish symbol. He believed symbols in legend and literature were
universal indicators of an underlying psychic structure common to all.
He'd been studying the significance of the fish for some time, when the
following chain of events occurred on April 1, 1949.
Finishing an inscription containing a figure that was half-man, half-fish, Jung
went out to lunch, and was served fish. Someone at the meal, with a slip
of the tongue, mentioned the custom of making an "April fish" of someone.
Later that afternoon, a former patient he hadn't seen in months showed
him some pictures of fish. That evening, someone showed him a piece of
embroidery filled with fish. The next morning, a patient he hadn't seen
in ten years, described a dream she had the night before about a large
fish. A few months later, after writing about this series of events to
use in another paper, he walked to the bank of a lake. He'd been to the
same spot several times already that morning, and no one else was present.
Now, however, there was a sizable fish laying on the sea wall with no
explanation for how it got there.4
Wolfgang Pauli was a Nobel prize winning physicist contemporary with Jung, who
predicted the existence of the neutrino in 1930, 26 years before it was
confirmed by experimentation. He also developed the exclusion principle,
which states that no two electrons can occupy a planetary orbit within
the atom, and he helped in championing the quantum theory of physics.
Interestingly, Pauli experienced many synchronistic events in his lifetime.
While studying the behavior of subatomic particles, Pauli became enamored with
mirrors and their reflections as a model for particle behavior. A friend
wrote, making fun of his obsession with mirrors. Pauli wrote back, quoting
the legend of Perseus and the Medusa.
In the mythical tale, the Medusa was a monster said to be so ugly that men
would turn to stone if they gazed at her. Perseus used his shield to see
her reflection and thus was able to slay her.
Shortly after sending this reply, Pauli received a paper from a former student
he hadn't heard from in years. The paper was about a fungus called Mykes,
which is light sensitive. Mykes in Greek means "mushroom."
Shortly thereafter, he read an essay on Jungian philosophy about symbolism
in the story of Perseus. It described how Perseus founded the town of
Mykenea after killing the Medusa. According to the story, Perseus found
and dug up a mushroom, and in the process, caused a spring of water to
come forth from the ground. Thus, the town Mykenea was named after that
mushroom. Upon reading this, Pauli burst into hysterical laughter.5 This,
and other synchronistic events he witnessed, caused him to explore outside
the accepted rationality of science.
Arthur Koestler, in his book The Challenge of Chance, says it was appropriate
for Pauli to develop the exclusion principle and also be one of the first
to recognize limitations in the experimental method. In the exclusion
principle, he showed the behavior of electron orbits made it appear as
if there was a force operating, yet no known force was identifiable. In
a similar manner, he felt that unseen forces might be operating on scientific
apparatus, placing great limitations on the experimental observer.
Pauli was having great personal difficulties when he became acquainted with
Carl Jung. Jung described him as a very one-sided, intellectual man. At
his request, Jung began counseling with Pauli, starting with an analysis
of his dreams. He was intrigued to find the physicist's dreams paralleled
some of the symbolism in alchemy, the mystical teachings of medieval times.
He later incorporated this discovery into a paper titled Individual
Dream Symbolism in Relation to Alchemy. Pauli's dreams culminated
in what Jung called a "conversion" experience.
Pauli had a dream, or vision, that he called the "world clock." This was a figure
that included two perpendicular discs contained within a golden ring.
On the horizontal disc, four little men were holding pendulums, and the
vertical disc had the hands of a clock. The figure was covered with numbers
Jung recognized as being similar to those used in the Kabbalah, the mystical
teachings of the ancient Hebrews. Jung interpreted the figure as being
symbolic of the conscious and unconscious aspects of Pauli's inner balance.
For Pauli, it also seemed to represent the orderly nature of the universe.
He found the dream provided a cure to his inner turmoil and began collaborating
with Jung on some of his theories.
Pauli saw parallels between modern physics and Jung's theories of consciousness.
He even postulated a revision in the theory of evolution.
It was assumed in the past that mutations within species occurred at random,
and natural selection, then, favored the more desirable traits. More recently,
however, scientists have pointed out that the selection of mutations by
chance alone would have taken much longer than the age of the earth would
allow for. Pauli suggested Jung's concept of synchronicity might account
for how stressed organisms could produce changes in physical reality more
quickly than by chance.
As time passed, it became well known among the physicists of Europe, that
the presence of Pauli often produced catastrophic failure in experimental
apparatus. This became so pronounced that it was humorously dubbed: "The
Pauli Effect"! It seemed uncannily symbolic of Pauli's break with
traditional thinking, considering his belief in the limitations of the
experimental method.
With Pauli's helpful insights, Jung eventually completed his book, Synchronicity:
An Acausal Connecting Principle. Jung recognized meaningful connections
between psychic and physical events, but the events appeared to exist
outside of time, space, and causality. The existence of synchronicity
has been recognized by other scientists as well, but it has eluded a clear
explanation. Postulated theories include Kammerer's theory of "seriality,"
and Bohm's theory of an "implicate order." Jung described synchronicity
as: "acts of creation in time." He believed the subconscious was somehow
producing a physical manifestation in external reality. The significance
of a synchronistic event, however, is not only its occurrence beyond all
reasonable probabilities, but its meaning to those involved. One
rather humorous case is described in the book Incredible Coincidence.
Dr. Tom Leonard, a professor of Statistics at the University of Warwick, Coventry,
England tells of a new professor of Statistics giving his first lecture.
He flipped a coin to demonstrate the 50-percent probability of it landing
either way. The coin landed on a polished floor, spun around a few times,
and came to rest vertically on its edge, whereupon, the class came to
their feet in thunderous applause! The odds of this occurrence have been
calculated at a billion to one!16
This incident might seem to have no significant meaning, therefore not qualifying
it in the strict definition as synchronicity. However, we have no way
of knowing how the event affected the lives of the instructor or the students.
It's possible that the improbability of it may have encouraged a student
to pursue a particular field of study or to approach all theories with
an attitude of discretion. Thus, it would only have been meaningful to
that individual. Synchronistic events may occur that way, by involving
several people, but only representing a meaningful relationship
to one.
The principles of probability are well established, such that synchronicity
might seem like a strange, occasional exception. But in the quantum mechanics
realm of subatomic particles, strange, improbable occurrences seem to
be the norm.
An experiment performed in May 1997 by a team from the University of Geneva
showed that a measurement carried out on one photon particle had an instantaneous
and identical effect on another photon, although separated by nearly seven
miles! Physicist Nicolas Gisin, the team leader, said it was the equivalent
of having two persons seven miles apart flipping coins. Each time one
person would grab the coin out of the air his colleague's coin would simultaneously
stop spinning and always land identically! This was repeated thousands
of times in a row! Any connecting force would need to travel faster than
light, something thought to be an impossibility. It implies an inter-connectedness
or "whole" aspect inherent within matter itself.
The experiment was actually proposed in 1935 as the "EPR" paradox, by
Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen. It was presented as a thought experiment
whose paradoxical result was originally intended to show that the "uncertainty
principle" was a measurement problem not a problem of what would actually
occur. In 1964, physicist John Bell turned the idea into a testable hypothesis
by developing an equation called "Bell's inequality." The EPR paradox
was first verified experimentally in 1981, although the photon separation
in that experiment was only a few meters. Appropriately, it's called "Quantum
Synchronicity."
