Jung, Pauli, and Peat

Posted on May 7, 2009 by Trish and Rob

Jung Institute, Zurich
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F. David Peat, a theoretical physicist who worked with the legendary physicist David Bohm in the 1970s, wrote Synchronicity: the Bridge Between Science and Matter, one of the seminal books about synchronicity. He now lives in Pari, Italy and runs the Pari Learning Center. Given his scientific background, his insights into synchronicity are unique.

He sent the following story to us in an e-mail. It’s about his visit to the Jung Institute in Bollingen, Switzerland, where Jung lived during the last years of his life. Peat gave a lecture there to celebrate the institute’s 50th year. He refers to Wolfgang Pauli in this story, a physicist and early supporter of Jung’s research into synchronicity. Peat’s previous story on this blog is Golden Scarab. The reference to 137 is the topic of a February 21 post, Wolfgang Pauli and 137.
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You may know that Pauli was very interested in the size of the Fine Structure Constant 1/137 because all the other constants of nature are very large or very small, but 137 is a human sized number. When Pauli was ill, he went into hospital and asked his assistant what room they had put him in. It was 137. Pauli said “Now
I know I’ll never leave.”

I arrived at the hotel next to the institute, was given a key and told my room was on the second floor of the annex. I didn’t go to my room at once but went down to the lake. The idea was to get something of the spirit of Jung – but after half an hour, nothing happened at all. So I thought I’d go back to the hotel, sleep and maybe have a dream about Jung. I took the elevator to the second floor, removed the key from my pocket and it was 137! And so I realized I was there to talk about Pauli and not Jung.

That evening I told the story about the key and an old man at the back laughed. Later when I wrote an equation on the board, the same old man said, “It won’t work.”

I replied, “Oh, the spirit of Pauli is in the room.”

At the reception I asked who the old man was. It turned out that he was an assistant who was with Pauli in the hospital.

The occasion of the various talks at the Institute was its 50th anniversary. Some time later I learned that Pauli had given the inaugural talk. While he was speaking he felt “let it all pour out” and at that moment a vase of flowers broke and water poured over the table.

https://www.paricenter.com/

Posted in Jung, Peat, science | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Astro-Yoga

Posted on May 6, 2009 by Trish and Rob


Adele Aldridge is an artist and Internet entrepreneur who designs T-shirts that combine yoga postures and astrological signs. As she explains here, she was surprised to discover that someone actually teaches Astro-Yoga. And how appropriate to make that discovery on a synchronicity blog.
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I experience many synchronicities that I put into several different categories: I Ching, dreams, Internet events, and In-the-world events.

It feels appropriate to present my first synchronicity here by writing about my encounter with this blog and Rob and Trish’s website, Astro-Yoga.

I’ve been working on my own visual and poetic personal interpretation of the I Ching for many years and recently began the process again with new images to post on my blog. The use of I Ching is synchronicity itself. Carl Jung coined the word and now we all take it for granted as if the word had always been part of our language.

So one day when I happened across this blog I was delighted to find a place devoted to personal stories of synchronicity. It was actually a wonderful synchronicity to find the site.

But what hit me between the eyes was when I discovered that Rob and Trish have another blog called Astro-Yoga. I have a series of designs called Astro Yoga Babes for my YogaBabe Cafe store. I also have an interest in astrology and thought a yoga pose for each sign of the zodiac would be fun to create for Yoga Babe T-shirts and other products. So when I recently found that there was someone who was actually teaching yoga with the astrological signs in mind I had that sense of being in tune with a much larger force. And the name, Astro-Yoga! Wow. I just wish I could be in his yoga classes.

Adele Aldridge
https://www.ichingmeditations.com
http:yogababecafe.com

Posted in astrology, divination, I Ching, yoga | 2 Comments

Law of Attraction?

Posted on May 5, 2009 by Trish and Rob

Sometimes, synchronicities seem to happen because of our intense focus on something. For instance, in 1982, I was rewriting my first novel, In Shadow, for the umpteenth time, working eight and ten hours a day, totally immersed in the rewrite.

The story involved a female professor whose life was turned inside out when she stumbled onto a designer drug ring. She was being stalked – followed at odd hours, obscene notes left in her mailbox, obscene phone calls. Just as I was rewriting a scene about an obscene phone call, my phone rang. In those days, there was no such thing as caller ID. So I answered the phone – and there was only heavy breathing on the other end, just like the stalker in the scene, and then a soft, slimy voice uttered a string of obscenities, just like in the scene. I slammed down the receiver, the phone immediately rang again. I let the phone ring and ring, quickly finished the scene – and never rewrote it again.

I’ve thought about this over the years and every so often hear about other writers who have experienced similar events. So this morning, I was surprised to run across this next story, which first appeared in Phenomena: A Book of Wonders, by John Mitchell and Robert J. M. Rickard. It seems that even intense focus on a movie may attract synchronicities.
Trish

***
In July 1975, the Melkis family of Bedford, England was gathered around their TV, enthralled by a movie about the Titanic. As they waited tensely for the ship to hit the iceberg, a large block of ice fell through the roof of their home.

But where did the ice come from??

Posted in law of attraction, movies | 3 Comments

Synchronicity and Travel

Posted on May 4, 2009 by Trish and Rob

We’re always looking for travel synchronicities when we’re on the road. I even have a topic on the subject in a Facebook synchronicity discussion board. https://www.facebook.com/topic.php?topic=8451&post=37089&uid=2208493210#post37089

So as we drove from our temporary mountaintop abode in North Carolina to Roswell, Georgia for a visit to Trish’s sister, we remained ever alert for synchronicity. We’d already experienced the one at my yoga class that launched our trip, and then the robin attacking the window reflection/Specter attacking the GOP while at the cabin. (Both were posted.)

We reached Roswell and were just a couple of miles from our destination. It didn’t look like synchronicity would be part of that day’s journey. Instead, we moved haltingly along in a mid-afternoon traffic jam on Holcombe Bridge Road. While taking two or three green lights to get through each controlled intersection, our ‘leisurely’ (Grr!) pace gave us an opportunity to scan the roadside sights…and that’s where we spotted Synchronicity.

That’s the name of a metaphysical bookstore at 861 Holcombe Bridge Road. The word was huge, fifty feet in the air, on a shopping center sign in the parking lot. Then there was also the smaller one in the photo here that was above the bookstore.

Synchronicity realized!
Rob

Posted in travel | 11 Comments

Small World Phenomenon

Posted on May 2, 2009 by Trish and Rob

Here’s another one from Joyce Evans, a Milwaukee journalist, who submitted it about a week ago.

While brainstorming for my novel, thoughts popped into my mind about my job-hopping days, and I was amazed about two of the experiences I had about how small the world really is. It was in Moline, Ill., when I met the brother of a classmate. We all graduated from the same high school in North Carolina. He was working for John Deere, and he told me his sister worked in Washington, D.C.

While working in the nation’s capitol, I took a taxi to the train station for a job interview in Philadelphia, and the cab driver was a classmate too. He told me the D.C. classmates were having a reunion in Rock Creek Park that weekend and I should attend. “Everybody will love to see you. We’ve got a lot of Eppes High School graduates living here in the District. I went and saw people I never expected to see

In an unrelated, synchronous small world event: Last night, I decided to write President Obama about my subsidized family loan experience. I planned to tell him that my experience wasn’t an isolated incident because tens of thousands of other families were going through this complicated tangled web, which has allowed private lenders to benefit. Low and behold, I woke up Friday morning, checked the internet, and found the story about President Obama’s plan to change the system of subsidized loans.

“In the end, this is not about growing the size of government relying on the free market, because it’s not a free market when we have a student loan system that’s rigged to reward private lenders without any risk,” Obama said. “It’s about whether we want to give tens of billions of tax dollars to special interests or whether we want to make college more affordable for eight and a half million more students.”

I immediately wrote the letter to thank him and to share my experience.

Posted in global, travel | 1 Comment

Dominoes

Posted on May 1, 2009 by Trish and Rob

Here’s another story from Max Action, the guy now famous for the Magic Teapots story. Max also contributed Chicago Breakfast Bums, and The Little Prince.

This synchronicity occurred a couple of weeks after the teapot incident. In the couple of weeks after Max discovered the second teapot, he says that all his friends were immersed in minor coincidences constantly.

“Sadly, I can recall little of the details now. This was well before I decided I wanted to try to remember and even write down coincidences when they occurred. But thanks to tangible traces left behind, though, I do remember one instance:

Six of us were sitting around playing Pictionary. During the course of the first two games, it became clear that Rebekah and I, on opposing teams, were both getting very good at cutting to quick abstractions when drawing. Some comments were made about how when she and I were teamed up we’d be unstoppable (we were rotating partners each round and in the final round she and I would be partnered up.)

Shortly into the third game, I was drawing, Rebeckah was guessing, and the word was “dominoes.” I hastily sketched a pair of dominoes, knowing she’d have to get it very quickly to beat the other teams to the punch. Almost immediately she had a curious reaction – her face flushed bright red and she had a hard time getting the word “dominoes” blurted out.

Flushed and flustered, she grabbed the notebook from me and paged backward a few pages – to show us the one thing that she had doodled aimlessly, minutes before – dominoes, in two places – (see the photo at the top).

Later – maybe that same day, maybe the next day, we went to the thrift store – for the first time since the time I’d bought the teapot. It was a large store – I think it was the Sun Ray mall one on 94 – and we all got separated. I wandered alone for what seemed to me a surprising amount of time without seeing any of my friends.

Finally, I looked up and discovered that Rebekah had come down the aisle from the other side. She also had been alone the entire time since we’d arrived, and I was the first of our party she’d run into since. In the spot where we met, we both looked up and saw that there was a plastic bag of dominoes hanging in the aisle between us – and burst into laughter.

Our laughter took on a somewhat different tone when the exact same thing happened the next two times we went to thrift stores, over the rest of that winter – wherever she and I met up in the store, there would be dominoes right there with us.
+++

But there’s a postscript to this story. Apparently when Max was digging through old emails, working on an upcoming post for his blog, he came across an email from 2006 in which he had written about the dominoes synchronicity.
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“This one continued for awhile. Three times in thrift stores over the rest of the winter, we bumped into each other randomly after having split up to wander about. At the point where we met, each time when we looked up there was a bag of dominoes in the aisle immediately next to us. I still wasn’t sure, though, so I just sent Rebekah a text message asking her abut this and she confirmed it had actually happened three times.”

Check out Max’s synchronicity on the albino squirrel:

Posted in max, objects, telepathy | 1 Comment

Synchronicity in Paris

Posted on April 30, 2009 by Trish and Rob

Here’s another one from Mysteries of the Unknown. It involves a lost object, a writer, and Paris. A winning combination!

Novelist Anne Parrish was born in 1888 and died in 1957. She spent her childhood in Colorado Springs and apparently treasured the books she’d read as a kid. Among her favorites was Jack Frost and Other Stories. This synchronicity, from Mysteries of the Unexplained, reminds me of the Anthony Hopkins synchronicity, Girl from Petrovka.

Trish
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During Anne’s first visit to Paris in the 1920s, she and her husband browsed the secondhand bookstalls that lined the banks of the River Seine. In one stall, she ran across an old copy of Jack Frost.
 When she opened it, the inscription on the flap probably caused her heart to pause. It read: Anne Parrish, 209 N. Weber Street, Colorado Springs.

Posted in books, lost objects, writers | 2 Comments

The Specter Spectacle

Posted on April 29, 2009 by Trish and Rob

As we sit in our mountain abode overlooking one of the grassy Hawknest ski runs, the big news on TV this morning is that Arlen Specter has switched parties from a Republican to a Democrat. In doing so, he attacked his former colleagues for pushing the party to the far right.

So amidst this news, we heard a repeated tapping sound coming from one of the bedrooms. After five minutes, I got up and took a look. To my amazement, a robin was repeatedly flying into the bedroom window. Over and over again. Then I remembered hearing about this behavior. Robins, in particular, will attack windows, not because they are attempting to enter the room, but because they are attacking their image. They think it’s another bird.

And so, in a sense, Specter was attacking his former image as GOP stalwart as he switched to the Democratic Party.

Trish also pointed out that his name Specter is a homonym for specter, a ghost image, and the robin was attacking a specter of itself.

www.huffingtonpost.com

Posted in animals, birds, global, homonyms, politics | 1 Comment

Lie to Me

Posted on April 28, 2009 by Trish and Rob

Here’s a political synchronicity related to a news event that I think works for people of all political persuasions. First, the news item:

NEW YORK — The Fox network is sticking with its regular schedule over President Barack Obama this week.

The network is turning down the president’s request to show his prime-time news conference on Wednesday. The news conference marks Obama’s 100th day in office. Instead of the president, Fox viewers will see an episode of the Tim Roth drama “Lie to Me.”

It’s the first time a broadcast network has refused Obama’s request. This will be the third prime-time news conference in Obama’s presidency. ABC, CBS and NBC are airing it.
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Okay, if you’re on the political right, you might laugh and say: “Fox already has someone lying to us. We don’t need to substitute Obama for that role.” If you’re on the left, you might fall down laughing and say: “They prefer ‘Lie to Me’ than to hear the president. They’re sticking with their usual agenda, swallowing and disseminating the lies of the far right.” For independents: “They’re all liars. But some are lying more than the others.”

Posted in global, political | 9 Comments

A travel synchronicity

Posted on April 27, 2009 by Trish and Rob

Last month, we wrote about a woman in Rob’s yoga class who told him she was leaving South Florida for her home in a small town in Maine. The woman on the mat next to her looked up and said she was also from that town. They didn’t know each other, but quickly found out they had friends in common.

This morning (4/25) just before that same class began, a woman was talking in an animated way about her cabin in Boone, North Carolina. That caught Rob’s attention, because right after class we were heading to Boone, N.C. where we would be staying at a friend’s cabin. After class, he mentioned the synchronicity to the woman. She replied that her cabin was actually closer to Banner Elk, a town of 900 people about 18 miles from Boone, a college town of about 14,000. Rob smiled and told her that was actually the closest town to where we were headed as well. What were the chances?

When we left on the trip a couple of hours later, we stopped at a gas station a few miles from home. As we pulled up to a pump, a man stepped out of a nearby car. He wore a blue t-shirt emblazoned with one word: CAROLINA.

Posted in north carolina, travel | 3 Comments