Poe and the Cannibals

Posted on July 22, 2009 by Trish and Rob

We thought we had posted this synchronicity, but apparently only put it in the book. It’s one of the most famous and involves everyone’s favorite weird guy, Edgar Allan Poe. It’s a great example of a synchronicity manifested through creativity.
***
In Poe’s unfinished sea adventure novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, he seems to have tapped into the future. The tale includes a scenario about three men and a sixteen-year-old boy who are drifting at sea in a lifeboat after being shipwrecked. Desperate, on the brink of starvation, they decide to draw lots to determine which of them will be killed and eaten. The cabin boy, Richard Parker, picks the dreaded short straw and is promptly stabbed and consumed.

On July 25, 1884, forty-seven years after Poe stopped working on the novel, a 17-year-old cabin boy named Richard Parker was killed and eaten in a similar incident. Young Richard Parker was on his first voyage on the high seas, boarding the Mignonette in Southampton, England bound for Australia. But when the ship reached the South Atlantic, it was pummeled by a hurricane and sank. The survivors, who had boarded a lifeboat, had few provisions and after 19 days became desperate. The men discussed drawing lots to choose a victim who would be eaten by the others, but settled on Parker, who had become delirious from drinking seawater. The remaining crew survived on Richard’s carcass for another thirty-five days until they were rescued by the S.S. Montezuma, aptly named after the cannibal king of the Aztecs.

The eerie connection between fiction and real life was revealed on May 4, 1974 when twelve-year-old Nigel Parker, who was related to Richard Parker, submitted the story to the Sunday Times of London, which was conducting a contest to find the best coincidence. The Richard Parker story not only won, but was called one the best ‘coincidences’ ever recorded by author Arthur Koestler, who had sponsored the contest. Astonishingly, the Richard Parker synchronicities have continued and a cousin of Nigel Parker, Craig Hamilton-Parker, has a web site documenting them.

UPDATE
Craig Hamilton-Parker, cousin of Nigel Parker, maintains a web site on Richard Parker, as mentioned above, and includes many additional synchronicities. Here’s a sampling.

For instance, Nigel’s father, Keith, thought that the Richard Parker story would make an interesting theme for a radio play and began to write a synopsis. At that time, to supplement his income as a writer, he reviewed books for Macmillan Publishing. The first book to arrive after he began work on the play was The Sinking of the Mignonette. A few weeks later, he was asked to review a collection of short plays, called The Raft. It was a comedy for children with nothing sinister about it, except for the cover illustrations, which showed three men on a raft, who seemed to threaten a young boy. The illustration seemed out of keeping with the tone of the stories. But even more bizarre, The Raft was written by someone named Richard Parker.

In the summer of 1993, Hamilton-Parker explains on the website, his parents took in three Spanish language students. One evening over supper, the elder Hamilton-Parker told the students about Richard Parker. The television was on in the background and conversation at the table stopped when the moderator of a local program began talking about the same story. “Dad broke the silence by saying how weird coincidences always occur whenever Richard’s tale is mentioned.”

He then told the students about the Poe story. Hamilton-Parker recalls that one of the girls cried out, “Look what I bought today!” She reached into her bag and pulled out a copy of a Poe book containing The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. “I bought that book, too!” said another of the girls. Both had gone shopping that day and independently bought the same book.

The website includes other stories as well, including a section of letters. As Rob was perusing the stories, he was surprised to find one that he’d written in an e-mail in 2005. In it, he told Hamilton-Parker that he’d ‘solved’ the Richard Parker enigma in a novel, Romancing the Raven, in which Poe temporarily time-traveled to the future where he heard the story about the real Richard Parker.

Posted in creativity, poets, precognition, writers | 25 Comments

The Shield

Posted on July 21, 2009 by Trish and Rob


A fairly common type of synchronicity is thinking or saying a word or phrase, then hearing someone on television say that same thing. For example, recently Trish and I both said ‘ice’ close together, then just a second or two behind us a woman of television said ICE, which in the program was the name of a federal investigative agency.

Nothing too outstanding about that one. But how about when the word in question is ‘synchronicity’? First of all, how often do we hear that word on television? And who would expect a sleazeball like Vic Mackey to say it three or four times, and he actually seems to know what he was talking about.

For the uninitiated, Vic Mackey is a fictional character played by Michael Chiklis for seven seasons in The Shield on FX. We never saw it in ‘real time.’ Cop shows don’t usually interest us. But a friend of ours, a Hollywood writer, told us to rent the first disk from the first season. She said the writing and the story-telling were among the best on television. The first episode was really gritty, and we almost didn’t go any farther. But by the time we’d watched the other episodes on the disk, we were hooked. We went through all seven seasons.

So after we finished watching the final episode of the final season, I turned on the special features, which included cast members talking about the series. We went back to work, and it was playing in the background. Trish was editing one of the chapters of our synchronicity book and I was working on a post for this blog. That’s when I heard Mackey (Chiklis) start talking synchronicity. I nearly fell off my chair.

Looking back over the seven seasons, he said: “There was so much synchronicity happening all the time, so many of these happy accidents.” As one example, he mentioned a director from the first season coming back to direct the last episode. “It was so perfect. So appropriate.”

If you’ve never seen The Shield, the comments probably don’t seem so startling. But if you know Vic Mackey, the idea of hearing him talking about synchronicity as we were working on the subject was totally unexpected, and startling.
Rob

Posted in television, The Shield, Vic Mackey | 10 Comments

Health Care

Posted on July 21, 2009 by Trish and Rob

This post isn’t about synchronicity. It’s about doing what’s right. We’re the only country in the industrialized world that doesn’t have universal health care. In 1989, when our daughter was born, we had catastrophic health insurance. It didn’t pay for much of anything. It definitely didn’t cover maternity. The only way they would pay for anything related to Megan’s birth was if there was a catastrophe, an emergency. So her birth cost us $8,000. & that’s in 1989 dollars. No telling what it would cost now. Twice that? Three times that?

Shortly after she was born, we cancelled our health insurance. We knew we were being ripped off. So in the nearly 20 years since, we have been self-employed individuals who have no health insurance, part of that group of 47 million the talking heads refer to rather frequently these days. Actually, we have tried to get health insurance at various times over the years. But because we are self-employed and in our sixties, it would cost somewhere around 12 grand a year. Thanks, but I would rather monitor my own thoughts and beliefs and live a life not based in fear than to pay out 12 grand to companies that might not pay out when I need it. As Esther Hicks (Abraham) says: “Treating the body is really about treating the mind.”

So here’s what a broken foot without health insurance cost us: orthopedic guy with X-rays, office visit, the boot: $350. Not too bad, considering the doc was a specialist who actually spent quite a bit of time with Rob. Walkin clinic for X-rays, a script for pain meds, and a wrap on his foot: $368. I figure follow up visit on the 27th will be between $150-200. So the total for this foot deal? About a grand, give or take.

Enough to make me want to move to Costa Rica, where for $60 or so a month, you buy into the national health care system. or to Ecuador, where an office visit to a local clinic costs $10. Yes, there are times when we need meds, antibiotics, a doctor. But, hello, can we get rid of insurance companies? Members of Congress have health insurance that we, the taxpayers, are funding. Why can’t we, the people, have the same type of insurance? Why not extend medicare to everyone and have a truly universal, single payer health plan?

Republicans and the blue dog dems, slam on the brakes. The cost, the cost, they shriek. But were they shrieking when Congress approved funding for war? For all the trillions we have spent on war, killing people, we could have used those dollars to provide a health care system that would provide for we the people.

Take a look here for what Obama’s trying to do. The problem is about paradigms. The old paradigm is in its death throes & all forms of life struggle mightily to survive. The big question is whether the whole system collapses before anything is done.

Posted in health care, insurance companies | 25 Comments

Dreaming the future

Posted on July 20, 2009 by Trish and Rob

Prophetic dreams are a form of synchronicity. We just don’t recognize the synchronicity until the future event arrives. Here’s one such dream from Adele Aldridge. It’s a dream about a very beautiful place that became part of her reality.

***

I was living with my children in my favorite big Victorian house on a river in Connecticut. I had no intention of moving. The dream was very matter-of-fact with no emotional tone to it and almost hazy in appearance as well as feeling. I didn’t bother to write it down because it did not feel very significant. But the dream kept flashing back into my mind so I acquiesced to it and wrote it down and promptly forgot that I ever had the dream. The dream simply did not relate to anything that was going on in my life at the time.

The dream: I’m standing in a large room overlooking a body of water. The town I’m in looks like Sausalito in California. There is a small beach in front. The man next door owns the beach but he lets me use it. I am alone. I feel very happy there.

Now what in God’s name is that all about? I thought and then forgot it until I read it again five years later. At the time of this dream I was in a happy relationship, loved my life and had no intention of moving, especially so far away as California. Stuff happened. Long story. And I did move to Sausalito. I found an apartment where I could walk down a hill, onto a dock and then into town. I took this walk every day. When a visitor remarked as we walked that I was living in such a nice place I said, “Yes, but where I really would like to live is on this dock.”

The following week there was a for-rent sign in the window of an apartment by the water. I stopped and knew that I had to take a look. I had only been in California for three months and had barely unpacked. When I walked into the apartment my heart started pounding. I told the owner that I had just moved to town and was looking for a friend. I thanked him for showing me the place and left. I got about half way up the street when I ran back and gave him a deposit check. None of these actions were logical considering the circumstances. And so of course when I told my parents and friends that I was moving again, they thought I had lost my mind. I kept saying, “You have to see it!” and other such exclamations which did not translate for them.

At this point in time I did not remember my dream from two and a half years earlier. It wasn’t until I was looking through my journals that I found the dream. I jumped out of my skin, realizing that I was indeed living on the water in Sausalito in the exact place I had dreamed about.

It happened that the man who owned the building also owned a big historic building next door. The building, the view, the place was so specific there was no way I could have known that at the time of the dream. Is that experience synchronicity? I don’t know. Based on other dreams that happened before they were lived, I have to question, not whether they are acausal synchronistic events, but how the psyche lives outside of linear time.

Adele Aldridge

Yoga Babe Cafe

I Ching Meditations




Posted in dreams, prophecy | 15 Comments

Indra’s Eye

Posted on July 19, 2009 by Trish and Rob

Tony Evans

The following is a column from the Idaho Mountain Express, written by Tony Evans. It’s a very personable tale complete with a synchronicity, and even two references to Indra – without any explanation, as if all readers of the Mountain Express know about Indra’s Net.

Reading such a column, as well as my correspondence with Jim Banholzer, leads me to suspect that my image of Idaho as the American West’s answer to Alabama might not be so accurate.

I also noticed in amazement that the on-line version of the paper said the temp in Sun Valley was 50 degrees on the morning of July 17, a mere 39 degrees cooler than South Florida at that moment.

Take it away, Tony. – Rob

***

I began this day by learning about the endangered Devil’s Hole pupfish, which lives in a 15-foot deep pool in the Nevada desert. The kids were still sleeping so I just grabbed a magazine, turned on the Internet and one thing led to the next until I was reading about the distinctive dorsal fins of the various species of pupfish when my coffee ran out. The kids needed rides to camp and I had to let go the frivolity of info-tainment and act like a grown-up. Grown-ups don’t take much interest in weird stuff or believe in magic. Grown-ups create structure and routine. If we don’t, the kids will shake their heads and roll their eyes at us like, “Get it together will you. You’re the grown-up!”

So I jump start the car with the neighbor’s car because I left the key on all night and drive the kids to camp. I follow them inside just to see what Creativity Camp looks like, but turn away when I get weird looks from kids like, “What are you, lost?” So I find a table at the Community Campus Internet Café to put some finishing touches on a story about Tibetan Prayer Wheels. It’s almost finished except for something I want to add about Bodhisatvas and how they stick around to work for the eventual enlightenment of “All Sentient Beings.” I want to point out that this, of course, includes caterpillars and amoebas, and might require a bit of patience, since being human is a prerequisite for attaining enlightenment. Then my computer battery goes dead.

I walk to the car with plans to drive to the nearest ink pen, where I will be able to jot down my thoughts before they evaporate. I turn the key and the battery is dead again. So I push the old Nissan in neutral to an empty quarter of the parking lot, raise the hood in order to appear distressed, take out the well-worn jumper cables and decide to wait. “Patience,” I think. Whole universes are created and destroyed within one blink of Indra’s eye. What do we mortals ever expect to achieve by getting in our little hurries? Roadside assistance is only a phone call away, but I know someone will come along. I’m not going to wake up my brother. Someone is coming soon. I look down at my flip-flops and notice a small white flag on the asphalt. A wired sprinkler flag used by the landscapers to mark sprinkler heads. I pick it up and start swinging it around playfully as if in surrender. As if I have nothing better to do on a Wednesday morning than to stand around in the high-school parking lot swinging a funny little flag. A blue truck makes the turn at the end of the parking lot and is headed in my direction. I wave and call to him when he passes. “How about a jump start?”

“Sure” he says. It all goes smoothly. Positive to positive. Negative to negative. No sparks. As I thank him and turn to go I look at the side of his truck and notice the same logo as on my little white flag. Clearwater Landscaping. “I think this is yours,” I say, handing it to him. Some things must only happen once in the blink of Indra’s eye.

Posted in cars, indra's net | 7 Comments

Zen 666

Posted on July 18, 2009 by Trish and Rob

In an earlier post, The Luck Factor, I mentioned the influence of endorphins contributing to synchronicities. Endorphins are released during extreme exercise, a crisis situation, sex, child-birth, meditation, and challenging creative endeavors. But also intense conversation is another trigger, as in the following story.

One afternoon many years ago, I was involved in a deep conversation about spiritual belief systems and cosmic questions while driving a couple of friends to the Miami airport. One of them, George, was a minister of a New Age/Latter Day Hippie church in Negril, Jamaica. The other, Hanna, was his Norwegian girlfriend, who I’d met in my travels before she’d became involved in the ministry. I was enmeshed in a major life transition at the time – a separation from my first wife – and that contributed to the intensity of the conversation.

I felt somewhat lightheaded, as if I were in an altered state, when I jabbed a finger at the license plate on a passing car. It read: ZEN 665. George blurted, “It would be really remarkable if we saw ZEN 666.”

A few minutes later, while still on the interstate, a yellow sports car passed us with that very license plate. ZEN 666! It was as if the trickster was in the car with us, laughing at our astonishment. We hadn’t been talking about 666—other than George’s off-handed suggestion, but the appearance of that license plate was sensationally significant to the three of us. We asked for it and it had appeared. It was a revelation, as in the source of the infamous number – Revelations.

For months, I told the story of Zen 666 repeatedly. I couldn’t seem to get over it, and wanted others to consider the odds of such an incident happening. Finally, a couple of years later, while driving on a street near home, a red sedan passed me bearing the same combination of letters and numbers. It was a different car, more than fifty miles from where I’d seen it, but the same Zen 666. Another revelation.

Rob

UPDATE:

One of the readers e-mailed his comment. It’s related to license plates and is another good example of the trickster toying with our awareness. Synchronicity.

***

I have experienced at least two good license plate coincidences.
First, about 15 years ago, on November 30, I pulled up behind a car
with the license plate “Nov 30.” Second, last Thanksgiving Day
(November 27, 2008), I passed a car with the license plate “Gravie.”
I never saw either license plate before those dates, and I’ve never
seen either one since.

Posted in 666, odds, Zen | 17 Comments

Past Life Connections

Posted on July 17, 2009 by Trish and Rob



Occasionally, someone adds a comment to a post from months ago and, while it gets recorded, it’s not likely to be widely read. So when Sansego added a comment about the Lincoln/Obama connection, we thought we’d bring it forward as a post with our own comment attached.
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“Walter Semkiw wrote a great book about reincarnation and his theories about certain famous people being reincarnated souls of other famous people. For example, he theorizes that actress Halle Berry is the reincarnation of actress Dorothy Dandridge. Google search him to get his website. According to Semkiw, Obama is not the reincarnation of Lincoln because their “facial architecture” does not match, but is the reincarnation of another Illinois Senator that was a friend of Lincoln. Very intriguing!

Semkiw’s theory about finding reincarnation matches between two people includes the number of coincidences between the two lives, carry-over talents, and similar “facial architecture.” Very worth reading more in depth!”
***

Semkiw’s book is very interesting and certainly has expanded the reincarnation literature. But some of Semkiw’s conclusions strike us as too facile. The bottom line, though, is that none of us know for sure.

Possibly more intriguing than similarities in ‘facial architecture’ are birthmarks that directly relate to wounds of a past-life personality. Ian Stephenson, MD, wrote about such cases in Where Reincarnation and Biology Intersect. Stephenson’s writing is somewhat dry and academic. A more accessible tome that includes material on such birthmarks is Carol Bowman’s Return from Heaven. In spite of the title, it’s not religious or theoretical, and delves into cases of reincarnation within the same family.
***
In searching for photos, we came across two people named Lincoln Kennedy, one an actor, the other #72 on the Oakland Raiders.

Posted in lincoln, obama, reincarnation | 19 Comments

A Trucker’s tale

Posted on July 16, 2009 by Trish and Rob


We don’t get too many synchronicities from truckers about trucks. So this one by Jim B.breaks the mold.

***
Back in cold February, I was chugging up Highway 75; when suddenly right before Ohio Gulch, the rig started behaving badly. Turns out it was the transmission, and even though a mechanic-friend had recently gone over it with a fine-toothed comb, it was shot.

That cost some big bucks; and then, only a few weeks later, the truck started misbehaving again, at that exact same spot. As locals know, Ohio Gulch is the turnoff for the dump transfer, and just north is where the State sometimes sets up weigh stations. It’s also essentially the last good place to pull over safely; if you’re heading north with a big rig in the area, and it breaks down.

The second breakdown was caused by a fuel pump problem. I thought it was strange and yet a little fortunate that the truck decided to break down at the same safe pullover spot twice. Then I remembered; fifteen years ago, I was driving a rig full of rocks for a stonemason, and that truck broke down at the same spot. I had loaded Gene’s truck to the brim, with four and ¼ tons of river rock. As we approached Ohio Gulch, his truck started thumping loudly from the right rear. I pulled over and soon saw that the wheel had actually rolled out from its base, while the lug nuts whizzed off like bullets in the wild-west sage. Although the tire and rim had shot off, it had miraculously wedged into a corner of the truck, keeping the masonry rocks from spilling out.

As I hitchhiked to the East Fork jobsite, passing over Greenhorn Bridge, I became thankful that the truck had not decided to shuck off its rock, back to the river there. I wasn’t looking for that type of legend on my resume.

It’s funny; every time I drive past that Hyndman Creek house with a friend and see those river rocks shining so intact, I feel compelled to pull over, point at the stones and tell this story.

And it makes me curious to hear about other people’s experiences of breaking down at same spots.

And while we did laugh later, Gene told me, when he saw me walking the last leg of Hyndman, two hours late and with no truck, he thought, “This can’t be good.”

Posted in locations, road problems, travel, truckers | 13 Comments

Bright Lights

Posted on July 15, 2009 by Trish and Rob


Some of you might remember a fascinating post, Jack the Ripper, by Australian therapist-futurist Marcus Anthony. The following post is one that many traditional psychologists certainly would hesitate telling anyone, much less posting on the Internet. But then the story is part of the reason the Marcus Anthony has moved beyond the status of traditional therapist. Enjoy!
***

Some people ask me how I got interested in knowledge that might be considered “alternative” in some circles. Here is a little story about an extraordinary experience that certainly helped me along my way! So here goes my story, and 100% true.

In 1996 I was living in Coffs Harbour, New South Wales, Australia, a small coastal town. One day I was walking along the street downtown, and I saw a sign which read: “Psychic readings, $10″. I had never had a psychic reading up till that time, and curiosity got the better of me. So I went inside and met a woman named Leslie who gave me a “reading.” The reading itself was nothing particularly special. But what followed certainly was.

To cut a long story short, I ended up going to one of Leslie’s talk/meditation evenings a few weeks later. At the end of the talk she told everyone present that she had had lots of dreams about UFOs the previous night.

“Whenever I have these dreams there are lots of UFO sightings around,” she said. “So if you go out tonight you may see something. I feel that about two in the morning would be the right time.”

Now, being the gullible fool that I am, I decided to take up the offer. I went to bed at about 11 p.m., but set my alarm for 1.45.

When the alarm rang, I managed to drag myself out of bed. I stumbled around my house for 15 minutes, and then headed outside at 2.00 a.m. sharp.

My eyes almost popped out of my head when I swung the door open and looked up at the sky. For flying right in front of me in the clear night sky was something I had never seen before. I can only describe it as a large ball of luminous white light, about a third the size of a full moon. The thing was probably a few hundred metres in the air, and was floating eastwards at about 90 degrees above the horizon. There was absolutely no sound, and it seemed to be gliding on air. I can only describe it as eerily unearthly. I ran out onto the road, and watched it disappear over the neighbours’ houses. In total it was in view about 30 seconds.

The ball of light was heading east, out over the ocean, and since I was in an excitable state, I ran down to the beach, which was only a few hundred metres from where I lived. I walked up and down the beach for an hour, but the ball of light was nowhere to be seen.

Finally I gave up, and decided to head back to bed. I walked back down the short street to my home, and trudged up the driveway. Then, as I was about to duck under the doorway (I’m rather tall) I looked up one last time. Once again my eyes nearly jumped out of my head. I saw something equally as amazing as the ball of light. For, moving directly over my head there was a group of about twenty red, circular lights, flying in a double-V formation, one “V” inside the other. Again there was no sound, just eerie silence. The objects flew in a southerly direction, parallel the coast. They appeared to be a few hundred metres in the air, and within half a minute disappeared behind some trees at the end of the road.

I have had quite a few “interesting” experiences since that day, but probably nothing quite so extraordinary as that night. Of all the things that set me on a path of questioning dominant knowledge structures of western society, and the road to exploring human intelligence and human futures, this experience was probably the most significant.

What were those things I saw that night? How on earth did Leslie know that they were going to be there at that precise time, merely from a dream? Why are these kinds of phenomena still a taboo topic in modern science and academia? I’m still asking these questions today.

–Marcus Anthony has a new book coming out, Sage of Synchronicity.

Posted in dreams, sightings, UFOs | 6 Comments

Sad Celebrity Synchronicity

Posted on July 13, 2009 by Trish and Rob


Here’s one of those historical synchronicities that we happened to come upon. This one parallels the Christopher Reeves synchronicity, even those though it doesn’t directly involve either well known actor.

***

In 1973 British actress Julie Christie starred in the compelling movie Don’t Look Now that was dramatized from a story by Daphne du Maurier. In the film, Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland played the parents of a child who is tragically drowned in a shallow pond in the garden of their country house.

Six years later, Jonathan and Leslie Heale were renting their friend Julie Christie’s farmhouse in the Welsh countryside. The movie star had just left after a visit when Leslie suddenly noticed that her 22-month-old son was missing. She found him dead, as in the movie, floating face down in the duck pond in front of the house.

–That’s from the 1992 Reader’s Digest book Bizarre Phenomena,in their Quest for the Unknown.
***
Although many people already are aware of the Reeves story, mentioned above, it’s worth including here.

In Christopher Reeves last role, he was wheelchair-bound as if preparing for the rest of his life. On the evening news, Wednesday, May 31, 1995, five days after Christopher Reeves was injured in an equestrian accident, Dr. John Jane of the University of Virginia Medical Center confirmed for the first time in a news conference that Reeves was indeed paralyzed from the neck down and unable to breathe without the aid of a ventilator.

A few hours later HBO aired, as previously scheduled, a film starring Reeve that had debuted only a week earlier: Above Suspicion. By unbelievably tragic coincidence, Reeves played in that film – his last role before he was injured – a police officer who was paralyzed after being shot in the line of duty. Obviously Above Suspicion is a film burdened with heavy emotional baggage, but how does it rate as entertainment? For those who can bear to watch Christopher Reeves say lines like: “I want to die. I can’t live my life as half a man…”, it is a taut, beautifully acted drama.

In 2004, John Kerry on the campaign trail mentioned Reeves as a candidate for stem cell treatment on a Friday, and Reeves died on the following Monday.


Posted in celebrity, creativity, death, movies, parallels | 11 Comments