Welcome to The Mystical Underground

Here’s our theme song. Fantastic imaginative video accompaniment. Enjoy!

People who write novels or short stories, people who create art in any medium, rely on their imaginations, the source of creativity. Imagination unfolds within us from a realm outside of the everyday world of cause and effect. It’s in sync with right-brain thinking, the home of intuition, hunches, psychic abilities, synchronicity. As a result, imagination is not easily quantified.

Would it be a good idea to try to measure imagination? Would we better understand how imagination works if we could somehow scrutinize it with scientific tools?

That is exactly what the Imagination Institute, based in Pennsylvania is attempting to do. Thanks to a generous donation from the John Templeton Foundation, the institute this Friday, May 15, will hand out up to 15 two-year grants for $150,000 to $200,000 each to researchers who have generated proposals to create an ‘imagination quotient,’ an attempt to ‘objectively measure imagination.’ In fact, the institute calls its initiative, Advancing the Science of Imagination: Toward an ‘Imagination Quotient.’

Hmm, that phrase sounds like an oxymoron to me. But before I say anything further, here’s more about the objective of the project.

In their own words, the institute has “targeted psychologists, neuroscientists, and educators who conduct research on theory of mind, mental imagery, mental simulation, perspective taking, prospective thought, daydreaming, mind wandering, counter-factual thinking, creativity, memory, curiosity, child development, aging, social cognition, and related fields, to support projects that seek to test and validate a proposed measure and develop an intervention for imagination/perspective. This initiative encourages such researchers to collaborate with individuals in corporate, military, school, health, university, governmental, and artistic settings to demonstrate that the proposed measure and interventions work in such a setting.”

My immediate impression is that I don’t think this scientific endeavor is going to work. When mainstream science applies its rules and measurements to something as elusive as imagination, I suspect the results will be embarrassingly tedious papers lacking imagination as the researchers attempt to apply left brain thinking to right-brain processes in a futile attempt to harness the unruly and hard to believe aspects of imagination.

Well, maybe that’s my imagination going wild! What the researchers might call ‘counter-factual thinking.’ That term suggests that imagination might lead us into believing stuff that’s not true—at least not acceptable to the mainstream scientific community—stuff like the paranormal and alien abductions.

I will be surprised if these researchers say anything positive—if even anything at all— about the role of the sixth sense. Mainstream researchers rely on the analytical mind, on logic and rational thinking, attributes that don’t coincide with intuitive processes.  After all, mainstream neurologists and psychologist avidly reject the idea of meaningful coincidence and label such events as random and meaningless. They dismiss psychic abilities as unproven.

Maybe I’m being too harsh in pre-judging this project, especially since I haven’t seen the proposals that will win the grants. However, for me, a dead giveaway about the intended direction can be found here in the institute’s graphic design at the top of their page. Imagination is seen as turning cogwheels, implying that imagination is like a machine, that the universe is a great machine. The old paradigm. Hello, machines do not have imaginations.

Anyhow, best of luck to the winners of the grants. They will have two years to  diddle with imagination to their heart’s content.  My guess is that they prove, to the project’s chagrin, that you can’t harness imagination and turn it into a machine.  – Rob

I recently received an email from Elizabeth, who had bought one of my very early astrology books, Cosmic Kids, years ago. She had a question about something in the book that was missing. She also sent along a synchro that struck me as a warning. Here’s her email:

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Reading your book AGAIN with the birth of my newest grand baby led me to search for you.  I read some of the pieces on your sites and listened to the audio recording of a recent radio talk.

I have been a believer in coincidences being not coincidences and happening “for a reason” for many years, but I was not familiar with the term synchronicity.  Just since connecting with you through your site, I have been experiencing – or more accurately – aware of a number of synchronicity events.

The clearest one happened on Monday. I was babysitting my newest grandbaby and before my daughter left us, she asked me –what was on the baby’s head.  I saw absolutely nothing, but she insisted there was something there.

About a half hour after she left us, the baby hit her head on the door which resulted in a red bump exactly where my daughter had seen something.  Yesterday, a man jumped out in front of my car and crossed in front of me and I came very close to hitting him. Since then, I have had probably 5 or 6 more close calls as I have been driving.

Not exactly sure why I am becoming sensitive to these messages at this time. But I am paying attention!

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She hasn’t elaborated on the other close calls, but it sounds as if she’s in the midst of a cluster of synchros that are are warning her to be cautious when she drives.

Synchronicity, telepathy, or precognition?

Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between the three. Recently, I had two experiences that brought home that question.

The first one was simply a thought that came to mind. I suddenly remembered that a reporter for the Tallahassee Democrat was supposed to call me or e-mail me about an interview. I’d forgotten about it, but there was a deadline involved. The article was supposed to appear before a writer’s conference opened in Tallahassee in a few days. Since I was giving the keynote address, the reporter had decided to interview me for his article about the conference.

As I walked back to my office and mentioned it to Trish, she replied that he’d just now sent me an e-mail. So my immediate thought was that it was telepathy. I’d picked up on his e-mail. But he hadn’t sent it yet, so maybe it was precognition. Then again, maybe it was neither. After all, I hadn’t predicted that he would write me at that moment or knew he was writing me. It was simply something that I’d remembered was supposed to happen. So maybe it was just synchronicity. Or, all of the above.

Here’s another example that occurred the next day. It was the same type of situation. I was remembering something from the past when, bingo, I got an update. I’m an avid disc golf player, I play in a league once a week. When I take Noah, my Golden Retriever, to the dog park, I often bring a couple discs and practice a few throws, making sure I don’t clobber any people or dogs with my tosses. As I retrieved my discs, I thought about a particular type of disc that I wanted to replace one that I’d lost in a lake a few months earlier. I’d really liked that disc and had put my name and cell phone number on it.

Not two minutes later, I received a text message from a guy who’d just found it several feet from shore. I was amazed, but didn’t tell him that I was just thinking about that long lost piece of plastic. He didn’t give me his name, but said he might show up at the league game the next day. In fact, he did and handed me the disc. It turned out we have same first name, Rob. A common name, but still it fit with the synchro. Like attracts like. But, again, was it telepathy when I thought about that long lost disc, precognition? Maybe it doesn’t matter.

I recently met Philip Merry on a Facebook group synchronicity page where he very niftily countered a skeptic who had repeatedly contended that synchronicity belonged wholly in the everyday world of cause and effect. In our on-line conversations, I found out that Philip is a Brit who has lived in Singapore for 26 years and is in the midst of completing a Phd on synchronicity. He also told me that our book, The Seven Secrets of Synchronicity, was instrumental for him in starting his thesis on the topic. Philip also said that he has conducted leadership workshops for 35 years in 57 countries.

Philip is including some of his own synchronicities in his thesis and he sent me one of them. It’s a meaningful coincidence that occurred at a pivotal point in his life, when synchronicities often manifest. This is directly from his thesis, which accounts for the academic style of writing in which he refers to himself in the third person.

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“The first example concerns meeting the American singer John Denver at a time when the author was making a decision about marriage. The author had attended a workshop where John Denver’s songs helped clarify his decision to marry. On Friday he actively thought about how he could contact John Denver, but dismissed it as a crazy idea.  

“He was surprised to find from the next day’s newspaper that John Denver would be in Singapore the following week. He shared the story with his friend Carol, who called who her friend Shirley, who worked at the hotel where John Denver would be staying. Shirley called the author asked him to send a fax for her to pass to John Denver.

“Shirley reported later that she was standing with fax in hand and John Denver appeared from the lift. She passed the letter to him and he called the author on Sunday evening saying how pleased he was that the author enjoyed his songs.

“This is synchronicity in action. At a significant moment in the author’s life (deciding to get married) he wanted to thank John Denver and two days later talked to him.  There had been no planning, no knowing and no logic, just a synchronistic event that seemed to confirm that getting married was the right thing to do.” 

Philip also sent the image at the top of the post. Here is what he said about it.

“On the picture – my take on synchronicity is that there is an energy field (or morphic field or zero point etc) that exists just outside awareness of our everyday world. This is a field we can tap into if we know how (or if we believe that it exists). Hence the pic captures this sense of looking beyond the world of everyday into the magic world of synchronicity. Trust that makes sense.”

Over the weekend of April 24-25, Rob and I attended the Tallahassee Writers’ Conference. Rob was one of the keynote speakers and talked about the importance of synchronicity, dreams, and meditation in the creative process. We also presented workshops – Rob did one on creating archetypal characters and I did one on storyboarding and we did a joint workshop on writing partnerships. It was one of the most enjoyable and best organized conferences we’ve ever attended.

At various points during the weekend, people shared their synchronicities with us. One of the best we heard came from Donna Jennings, whose synchronicity came at a critical juncture in her life and definitely acted as guidance.

In March 1985, Donna was interviewing at four different colleges for a doctorate program in marriage and family therapy. She had just left her third choice – Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, where it was cold, freezing, still winter. Then she arrived in Tallahassee, where her fourth choice was Florida State University.

“Tally was at the peak of spring,” she said. “The azaleas were in full bloom.”

“I was driving around, considering my options, wondering which collect I should choose. And Ta Da, I turned around at Jennings Street. Message delivered and received.”

Donna began the program in August 1985 at FSU and graduated in 1990. “I’m now retired from teaching human sexuality at college. Writing is my new direction and I am on the front end.”

I suspect that Donna will continue to follow the synchros and will do just fine as a writer!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiPctjrei80

In Aliens in the Backyard, we have a chapter called “Earth Shakings,” which is about planetary empaths. This chapter grew out of pieces we posted on our blog about this phenomenon.

On March 11, 2010 and on March 11, 2011, we posted our first two pieces on planetary empaths. These individuals are so attuned to the planet that they experience physical, emotional and psychic symptoms days and sometimes weeks before a natural disaster.

Periodically, we receive emails from some of these planetary empaths about the symptoms they are experiencing. In late March/early April 2013, several empaths reported recurring and persistent symptoms. These symptoms apparently were related to the events at the Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013, and possibly to the 7.8 quake in Iran the same day.

So we created a page where these individuals can report their symptoms. On April 25, 2015, Nepal suffered a massive 7.8 – 7.9 earthquake, depending on which source you read. On the day of the quake, a woman named Liz posted on the empath page:

Yesterday evening I became extremely nervous and sick at my stomach. This morning my friend sent me the link to this page about Planetary Empaths. After reading my email, I checked my Facebook and had a message that a FB friend was okay after the earthquake. That was the first I had heard about the quake. I am Buddhist and am sure that my unease was due to this quake. I still feel sick and keep wanting to cry.

Sharlie West, who periodically emails me her visions and dreams, some of which are precognitive, sent me this:

Three weeks ago I told husband Jim that there would be a huge explosion, possibly an earthquake, and thousands of people would suffer. This was before  I went to sleep, in that in-between state. I could see them running. 

Three weeks before 9/11 I dreamed about bodies floating upward near the buildings, all in black and white. Guess I was seeing the negative.

And it’s not over yet. There will be a series of them. There’s a heaviness knowing it can’t be stopped.

Did anyone else experience any symptoms before the quake on April 25? Connie? Debra?

Nicholas Carroll pointed this out on Facebook. It’s pretty cool – the bird lands on the book and looks at itself on the page.

Here’s another very old post we put up on 2009. It’s about a cluster of synchros. As you can see, clusters can involve virtually anything – even a sweatshirt!

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Ten years ago (in 2009) our neighbor, Annette, was on her way home from the hospital, where her father had just undergone an amputation of his leg. It was chilly and she stopped to buy a sweatshirt. As she got back onto the interstate, she suddenly witnessed a horrendous car accident – a truck slammed into the rear of a smaller car, which flipped over several times and finally came to rest on its side. Annette pulled to the shoulder, leaped out of her car, and ran over to the car to see if she could help.

The middle-aged man inside was terribly injured but still conscious. Annette shouted at the crowd of gawkers, asking someone to call 911. Then she stayed with the man, talking to him, urging him to remain conscious, assuring him help was on the way. Two days later, she stopped by the hospital to visit him and he told her he would never forget her, that her voice and encouragement forced him to cling to consciousness.

Now, fast forward to 2009. Annette was on the interstate again with a friend and her kids. It was another chilly night and she stopped to buy a sweatshirt. As she did so, she flashed back on the last time she had bought a new sweatshirt while headed somewhere on the interstate. She felt a sort of superstition about it, but shrugged it off. Ten minutes later, an SUV raced past her, weaving all over the road. Annette suspected the driver was drunk and slowed down to put some distance between them.

Then, suddenly, just ahead, she saw the SUV slam into a smaller car. “The moment of impact was like an explosion. That’s how hard the SUV hit the other car.”

She swerved to the shoulder, scrambled out, and ran toward the accident scene, as she had ten years ago. Just like before, gawkers were clustered around and Annette, who had left her cell phone in the car, shouted for someone to call 911. She leaned into the car to see if she could help the driver, but he was unconscious, his legs bent at an awkward angle, his torso slumped over the steering wheel. She didn’t feel a pulse when she touched his wrist, but detected a faint pulse at his carotid.

“Stay with us,” she said. “Help is on the way. Just stay with us.”

But when the paramedics started removing the man from the car, she saw that his face was split open from his skull to his chin and knew he wouldn’t make it. “I told my husband about this, about how in both instances I had just bought a new sweatshirt and what did he think about that? He told me I was looking for meaning where there isn’t any. But I can tell you this. I will never again buy a new sweatshirt if I’m driving on the interstate.”

Despite her husband’s skepticism, Annette recognized the pattern and found it meaningful. Buying the sweatshirt didn’t create the accident, but ultimately it enhanced her awareness.

In 2010, we posted a story called The Ghost & the Straight Pins. It was also in The Synchronicity Highway. As you’ll see, there was recently an oddball synchro associated with this story that happened to poet Sharlie West.

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During my (Trish) last year in college, I lived in a small apartment on the third floor of an old building in Utica, New York. My roommate, Linda, and I, shared our cramped living space with a tabby cat. Early in the school year, Linda’s grandmother passed away. One day not long afterward, Linda’s mother found a straight pin on the grandmother’s tombstone. A few days later, our tabby, Tigger, was about to jump into a chair where I was reading when she suddenly did a 180 in midair and tore into the bedroom. Linda and I just looked at each other, wondering what that was about.

The next morning, I found straight pins scattered around the living room – a pin stuck in a couch cushion, pins laying on the rug, a couple more straight pins on the kitchen table. This began to happen consistently. When Linda mentioned it to her mother, she sort of laughed and said it was Linda’s grandmother. “Nana G loved to sew. I’ve been finding straight pins all over the house, even underlining passages in the bible.”

I didn’t have any problem believing in ghosts  and was certain that Tigger had seen Nana G the night she did that 180, but straight pins? How did a ghost manipulate physical matter, even matter as small as a straight pin? But one weekend when we visited Linda’s parents, her mother showed up the straight pins underlining passages in the bible.

“How does Nana G do that?” I asked Linda’s mom.
“I have no idea,” she replied. “But isn’t it amazing?”

The straight pin phenomenon continued consistently for several months,  then gradually stopped. About ten years later, I was visiting St. Augustine with Linda and her mother. We were in that fort featured in the photo, Castillo de San Marcos. The Spanish began construction on this fort in 1672 to protect the city. It’s the only existing 17th century fort in North America.

There’s nothing in this place, just stones and empty hallways. Our footsteps echoed in the emptiness. The whisper of the past was everywhere. But everything was bare – the thick walls, the well-worn floors, not even a piece of trash in sight. So the three of us were moving through the interior, marveling at how cool it was despite the summer heat outside. I happened to look down and stopped, incredulous, staring at a single straight pin.

I picked it up and showed it to Linda’s mother. “What’re the odds of finding a straight pin in this place?” I asked.

Her mom smiled. “I’ve been feeling Nana G around.”

“Looks like she wanted to tour the place with us,” Linda said.

“So is this an apport?” I asked.

Neither of them had an answer. But to this day, an apport – the paranormal transference of an object from one place to another – seems to be the best explanation.

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Now jump ahead five years since we posted this. Poet Sharlie West emails me whenever she has had an intriguing vision or dream, as it was in her most recent note:

Last night I dreamed about straight pins that I was collecting, lining them in two rows

next to each other like railroad ties. In the dream I said to someone, this is a coincidence, I just saw a television movie that had straight pins in it. (I didn’t)

I woke up thinking, what was that about? Then as I was reading The Synchronicity Highway I came to the part about Straight Pins in Castillo San Marcos and had to share. So funny after last night’s dream. I have no idea if this is a meaningful sync. I don’t even sew.

We shall see. The parallel lines might mean something. Oh, and as I sat down at the computer to mention this, it was 11:11.

Whatever the dream means to Sharlie, it struck me as precognitive.