Thanksgiving is one of those American holidays that I love. It’s like Christmas. You spend the day with people you love, give thanks for the quality of your life, and eat well. It’s also a holiday connected to important memories, odd memories.
During some point in my four years at college in upstate New York, it became too expensive to fly home to Florida for just a few days, so I went to Montclair, New Jersey, with Carolyn Sayre – Cookie, to most of us. She was probably six feet tall in her bare feet, with a towering intellect and an electric presence. I’d known her for a couple of years and even when she was a freshman, she indulged the mystical side of her personality. She thought she would probably major in religious studies – at the time, I recall, she was into Buddhism.
I’d never been to Montclair before. I’m not even sure if, at that point, I’d ever been to New Jersey. But Montclair was impressive. Huge homes on huge properties, wide, tree-lined streets where everyone seemed to drive exotic cars. I don’t remember ever seeing someone who wasn’t white. That bothered me. But I must admit I loved driving into Manhattan with Cookie behind the wheel of her convertible Packard.
The Sayre home was a sprawling mansion that immediately told me I was way out of my league, that I should probably prepare myself for meals tended by servants, lots of rules and regulations about what we could and could not do, and a no-no to midnight raids on the fridge. Was I ever wrong.
There were hardly any rules at all. Cookie’s parents were all about live and let live, which certainly suited a couple of budding hippies who had started joining protests against the Vietnam War. Even though we had a formal Thanksgiving dinner, tended by servants, nothing else about this family was formal.
Cookie’s father was a corporate attorney who had made a ton of money doing whatever corporate lawyer types do. Her mother was a knockout with the most beautiful eyes I’d ever seen. I have no idea whether she worked or what. She was a total mystery to me. It turned out that the house had a fantastic library and I spent most of the Thanksgiving holiday in there. One of the books I found was A Psychiatrist Looks at ESP by Berthold Schwarz.
In the Sixties, there wasn’t much published about psychic phenomena. But I was captivated by Schwarz’s book and astounded that he mentioned Cookie’s father William Sayre, who had been involved in one of his ESP experiments. Schwarz’s book was a cornerstone for me. After all, if a genuine MD shrink was investigating the stuff that fascinated me, I couldn’t be all that nuts, right?
I remember talking to Cookie’s dad about the book, about his experiences, and I could tell he knew it wasn’t supposed to fit into his life as a corporate attorney. But he was such a genuine man, that he talked freely about his experiences.
So here’s the synchro. Fast- forward twenty plus years. Rob and I were doing a story for OMNI and called on Schwarz as a professional source. He invited us to his condo in Vero Beach, just a few hours north of us. I knew his name was familiar for some reason, but couldn’t place it until he opened the door – and I recognized him from his photo in that book decades before.
“Do you know William Sayre?” I blurted at some point shortly after we’d stepped inside his home.
His eyes widened. “Knew him, yes. He died a few years back. What a wonderful man, very psychic. What’s your connection?”
For the next few years, we visited Schwarz now and then and kept abreast of his research. He was definitely a guy who was way ahead of his contemporaries, and every Thanksgiving, I think of those few days at Cookie’s house when I discovered Schwarz’s book, never knowing that decades later, I would meet him or that he would regress an abductee we met and brought to him. Always, Schwarz was curious, inquisitive, and if you’d experienced high strangeness in your life, he was there to help you interpret it.
That’s part of the beauty of synchronicity, the way it brings the past into the future, or the future into the past, and it all comes together in the present. So today, on Thanksgiving when we commemorate whatever the pilgrims did, I pay homage to synchronicity, that unifying force that so often brings our lives full circle.
I recently read a book about a forensic pathologist who called them Godincidences.
That sounds similar to a synchro book called God Winks.
love your stories of yesteryear and how they, like so many, weave their way into our todays – so compelling your experiences with sayre and schwarz – and of megan, beautiful how children and their innocence and purity always seem to know so much more than we who are tarnished by experience etc –
Tarnished by experience…that really says it, doesn’t it?
Darren, I remember one Thanksgiving celebration at Megan’s elementary school in which parents were invited. The teacher asked if any students wanted to tell everyone how grateful they were. Megan stood up and said she was thankful for the dog that she was going to get.
At the time, we had no plans to get a dog. But circumstances led us to be given a golden retriever by Christmas. Megan knew somehow, and was grateful in advance!
Megan performing elementary magic,it sounds like to me.-)
In that same book he tells how he and his wife manifested a Mongolian Yurt in less than a year using similar methods to what Megan used for getting the dog.
There is a You Tube of it here,with his music as the soundtrack;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GilrPHOBVE
Looks like fun,but too much mucking around for my liking.
Give me a tent any-day.
He’s an Autistic guy about my age that’s lived through a nightmare growing up,but what a great musician and author he has turned out to be,not that I have read any of his Celtic fantasy fiction novels…not my kind of reading,but I’ve been told by those who like those kind of novels that he is good.
I do love his music though,it is so calming as background music while I’m working on the computer or reading…but it keeps my focus without putting me to sleep.
He doesn’t like the word synchronicity though,according to his book
(that’s where we differ I’m afraid,because I do) .He says;
“In the New Age movement I often hear people refer to coincidences as synchronicity.This word sets my teeth on edge because to me it suggests mystical forces beyond the control of the individual.”
( I don’t agree,but I’m not going to argue the point)
He likes to call them Convergences.
But like the guy who likes to call them “God Winks” or the Christians who like to call them serendipities .I say a rose is but a rose no matter what name you call it. I’ll stick with synchronicity,thanks.
Hopefully I’ll run in to him one day…but I don’t think I’ll be mentioning how synchronistic our meeting was .-)
This is a great (like Darren said). I love the way synchronicity weaves people together in a wonderful tapestry of life experiences. thanks for sharing this little gem with us!
Speaking of Thanksgiving.I was reading a book called “What is Magic?” this morning and came across this passage;
“Gratitude.In our culture gratitude is traditionally expressed after the fact as if it’s some sort of payment in exchange for services rendered .Ancient societies from the Maya to the Egyptians understood gratitude in a completely different way.It was something offered up before the fact.”
I think gratitude is a very important thing to acknowledge,that’s why I buy a gratitude diary every year from this lady;
https://diarygratitude.com/preview.php
Although I’m ashamed to admit that I don’t make the use of it that I should.
My goal is to order the one for next year and place it in a much more prominent place and use it on a daily basis.
But you know what they say the road to Hell is paved with,don’t you ?-)
Our best intentions!
Trish didn’t mention any of our experiences with Schwarz. One that I recall vividly was a hypnotic regression of a friend, Don, who had experienced something very odd years ago and wasn’t able to shake it.
Schwarz took him back to the experience. Although it was an emotional recollection, at the time none of those involved seemed to express any emotions.
Don consciously recalled that he and a friend were on their way to a Halloween party. Don was dressed as a pirate, his friend was a clown. Driving in the dark in a semi-rural area, they saw a bright light in front of them. The next thing they recalled was standing outside the car and two hours had passed.
Here’s what was revealed in the regression. They drove toward the light until the engine died. They were frozen with fear as three small beings approached. They were led away, unable to resist. They approached a craft, where they stood in line with several other people who had also been stopped. They were taken into a room with rounded walls and markings like hieroglyphs near where Don stood. Under hypnosis, he was able to recall several of the glyphs, which he drew.
Oddly enough, I don’t remember what happened after that, maybe an examination on a table. The image, though, that remains in my mind is a pirate and a clown standing in line with several men and women and children outside a strange craft with Greys nearby.
Don was an unusual guy, who was extremely psychic. I remember going to restaurants with him and instead of ordering a meal, he would start giving the waitress a reading. One time we had several waitresses asking for readings while we ate. One other thing, he was of Portuguese descent. His full name was Don Estrella, which literally translates to Mr. Star. Both Don and Dr. Schwarz have passed on.
I like the concept of a Thanksgiving – have a wonderful day. Great post, always good to read your interesting personal stories and synchros. Homage indeed to synchronicity and what it brings to our lives.
Great post,guys.
And it reminds me a line out of that old Mel Brooks movie spoof of “Star Wars” called “Spaceballs”.
May the Schwarz be with you.-)
Happy Thanksgiving guys.
I wish we had a holiday like that one in Oz.
Maybe we could have a ‘There’s No Place Like Home’ holiday .-)
I like your name for the holiday!
May the schwarz be with you, too!