#137

Nearly every afternoon afternoon recently when I glance at the time on my computer, it’s 1:37. Love the numbers.

In 7 Secrets of Synchronicity, we mentioned number 137.  A little background.

A prime number can be divided only by 1 and by itself. Or, put another way, a prime number is a positive integer that can’t equal the product of two smaller numbers. That makes 137 a prime number and a particularly baffling one. In Deciphering the Cosmic Number: The Strange Friendship of Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung, Arthur I. Miller refers to this number as the “DNA of light.”The number is also associated with the Kabbalah. Miller explains that in ancient Hebrew, numbers were written with letters and each letter had a number associated with it. “Adepts of the philosophical system known as the Gematria add the numbers in Hebrew words and thus find hidden meanings in them,” Miller wrote.

In Hebrew, the word Kabbalah has four letters that add up to 137. Not surprisingly, physicists began referring to 137 as a mystical number. Wolfgang Pauli, a Nobel laureate and one of the early supporters of Jung’s theories about synchronicity, wrestled with the  implications of 137 for most of his life. When he was admitted to the hospital at age 58 and learned he would be in room 137, he supposedly said, “I will never get out of here.” He was right. He died shortly afterward.

Physicist F. David Peat had his own experience with 137 when he visited the Jung Institute in Bollingen, Switzerland. In an email to us some years ago, he explained he was invited to give a lecture to celebrate the institute’s fiftieth year. Upon arrival at the hotel next to the institute, he was given a key and told his room was on the second floor of the annex.  He walked down to the lake first to “get something of the spirit of Jung.” But after half an hour, nothing happened, so Peat decided to return to the hotel. “I took the elevator to the second floor, removed the key from my pocket and it was 137! I realized I was there to talk about Pauli, not Jung.”

So on the afternoons when I see 1:37 on my computer, it delights me. The DNA of light. Does it get any better than that? I finished a ghostwriting project that I thoroughly enjoyed working on, I’m nearly ready for Christmas, and now when I hear news about trump, I remind myself that light always is more powerful than darkness.