A Quantum Leap

Posted on December 6, 2009 by Trish and Rob

Can the present affect the past? If so, would that be cause and effect in reverse, or synchronicity? 


That’s the question that we are wondering as we post this quite extraordinary tidbit of information that involves President Obama and the birthers.  In case you’ve been missing in action, the birthers are a crazed contingent of far right and far from right fanatics who believe Barack Obama was born in a foreign country, not Hawaii. In spite of his birth certificate showing that he was born in a hospital in Hawaii, the birthers persist, saying it’s all a conspiracy.

 
The new twist on this story comes from ace conspiracy investigator Peter Levenda (author of Sinister Forces). But first, to put things in perspective, Peter makes it clear that he considers the birthers’ contention bogus. Notes Peter:

“I believe that the arguments set forth by the “birther” movement are without foundation because one would have to believe that a conspiracy existed as long ago as the day of Obama’s birth (or even earlier) to defraud the presidential election process.  I study conspiracy theories, as you know, and this one is beyond the pale.  Efforts to prove that Obama was born in Kenya (for instance) have been demonstrated to be false and the result of forged documents, etc.  I feel that there is a tangible element of racism and paranoid hysteria in these allegations that devalue honest journalistic investigation.”

Okay, that being said …

“There is a synchronistic element hidden within the “birther” allegations that no one has noticed so far.  It is truly bizarre, and its existence suggests to me that the fury of the birthers has its origin in the “sinister forces” of which I write.  I even hesitate to bring this up, knowing full well what the reaction will be among the birthers and how they will use this synchronistic piece of “evidence” to add more fuel to their fires, full as they are of heat and no light.  But, here it goes:
“In the two birth announcements from the Hawaii newspapers mentioning that a son was born to Mr and Mrs Barack Obama on August 4, 1961 we notice that the next announcement in the series, directly below that of Barack Obama, is for a son born to a Mr and Mrs Norman Asing on the same day.”
Seems innocuous, unless you have a sharp eye and familiarity with the language of Indonesia.We’ll let Peter explain.
“Asing is a word in the Indonesian national language, Bahasa Indonesia, and means … “foreign“!  
 You will recall that Barack Obama spent four years in Indonesia growing up and still has a good command of that language.
“Now the birthers will say that this is evidence that there was a conspiracy back in 1961 when Barack Obama was a week old, and that the birth announcement for Mr Asing was a coded message to their followers that “the eagle has landed” or something (much, I assume, to the real Mr Asing’s dismay). 
“My interpretation, of course, is somewhat different.  I believe that the birther movement was so intense that it created a ripple in space-time. (I write about this in Sinister Forces in connection with the Kennedy assassinations, the Texas Tower Sniper, etc. all of which were predicted in novels and plays long before the events took place).
“I believe that this announcement is a clue, but not of a conspiracy.  It is a prediction of what would occur, a prediction created by the intensity of the debate and the passions of the individuals involved whose quantum effects were felt not only in the present and presumably in the future but… also in the past.

“I would never have noticed this had I not spent many years living in Malaysia which uses a national language quite similar to Indonesia’s, and in which the word “asing” has the same meaning, so it was only serendipity that brought my attention to the birth announcement where the word “Asing” jumped out at me because, you see, in Malaysia and Indonesia I was also “asing”:  a foreigner.”

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So, to sum up,  Peter is suggesting that the emotional intensity of the birther movement and their contention–no matter how wrong–affected the past, synchronicistically resulting in the appearance of the name Asing directly below Obama.

This explanation is interesting–present circumstances exerting influence on the past–and could relate to previous synchronicities we’ve posted about authors writing about future events…namely, Edgar Allan Poe penning a tale about a dramatic case of cannibalism on the high seas 47 years before it occurred, and Morgan Robertson ‘novelizing’ the sinking of the Titanic (he called it the Titan) in Futility 14 years before the tragedy.

Posted in obama, politics, quantumn physics, time | 11 Comments

Apollo 13

Posted on December 5, 2009 by Trish and Rob

 

Butternut Squash was doing homework with her son and ran across this amazing synchronicity  concerning Apollo 13. She says she must be the last person on the planet to hear about it, but we’d never heard it, either! It’s another one of those repeating number synchros. In this case, the #13.
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On April 11, 1970, at 1:13 PM Houston time, Apollo 13 was launched. On the military time clock, it was 13:13. Two days later, on April 13, a fuel tank explosion took out all the power and oxygen. It appeared that fuel cells 1 and 3 were dead. The lunar module served as their life vessel and got them back to Earth.

When astronaut Lovell began the first post press conference, his first words were, “I am not a superstitous person…”
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A bit of trivia about #13:
Among the Greeks, the bad luck day is Tuesday the thirteenth. I’ve yet to enter a building where the #13 is listed in the elevator. On most planes, you don’t find a thirteenth seat or a thirteenth row, at least not in planes where the  first twelve rows are first class. In some cultures, there’s a superstition that if thirteen people sit at a table for a meal, one of them will die in the next year. The fear of the number thirteen is
 called triskaidekaphobia.”


Posted in #13, apollo 13, global, spacecraft | 16 Comments

Millie and the 2 of Clubs

Posted on December 4, 2009 by Trish and Rob

 This image is from a deck called soul cards, found here.
 +++

If psychic phenomena falls under the umbrella of synchronicity, as Jung  believed, then every time you get a psychic reading, you’re experiencing synchronicity.

We first met heard about Millie Gemondo of West Virginia the night before Hurricane Andrew struck South Florida. Two days later, we had a reading with her. We were impressed. Eventually, we met Millie. And were really impressed. So many psychics have agendas – personal agendas. Not Millie. If she doesn’t see or feel it, she tells you. No BS.

She’s not only a terrific psychic, but an empath -someone capable of tuning into the emotions and physical body of whoever  he or she is reading.

Some empaths use photos of or objects that belong to the person for whom they are reading, but they generally don’t use the typical divination tools – no cards, I Ching coins, astrological charts.  Millie uses a regular playing deck of cards when she reads for people, but the cards are simply her way of focusing her enormous ability. One night she was reading for Trish and said something that really resonated and Trish exclaimed, “What? Where are you getting that?”

Millie laughed and touched her temple. “The two of clubs.”

Now the two of clubs is the standing joke. But it’s the card that resonates emotionally for her, that opens her to the “vast, tumultuous ocean of desires, conflicts and pains, triumphs and joys that are specific to the person I’m reading.” She doesn’t consider herself an empath, but sometimes the emotional connections to the person she’s reading shoves its way into her awareness.

While reading for a friend on Florida’s west coast some years ago, she suddenly felt a pain in her breast and blurted, “You’ve  got a small tumor in your left breast. Get yourself to a doctor immediately.”

The friend went to the doctor the next day and, sure enough, a small tumor was found and subsequently removed. Millie’s warning saved her friend’s life.

Posted in breast cancer, cards, health care, Millie, psychics | 10 Comments

Synchronicity books

Posted on December 3, 2009 by Trish and Rob


We recently read an interesting article on synchronicity on the Internet in which the author takes a scientific approach and makes some worthwhile observations. Here’s one:

“If causality does not govern everything, then there could theoretically exist an ACAUSAL connecting principle. Two events which are somehow connected, but neither of them caused the other one to happen. This is synchronicity. If synchronicity does not exist, then the world is just full of strange coincidences.

“Telepathy, divination, astrology and such are potentially possible under the theory of synchronicity. But they don’t occur for the traditionally believed reasons. Telepathy, meaning that one could ‘read’ another person’s mind, suggests some sort of thought waves, and this is not in accordance with physics. But it’s possible that two people can think of something at the same time.

“Under the theory of synchronicity, all such events would be synchronistic. If a person is more inclined toward certain synchronistic phenomena than others, she/he could be perceived as a telepath. Similarly, an event in the future or in the past could be connected with an event in the present; and the constellations and the stars and planets could be connected with elements in human lives.”

However, for a smart guy who wrote a lengthy and thoughtful article, Nicolas Knutsen makes one very baffling comment:

“The only book which is all about synchronicity that I know of, is of course the original by C.G. Jung, “Synchronicity – An Acausal Connecting Principle.”

Unfortunately, that comment tends to put Mr. Knutsen in the Dick Cavett league of writers on synchronicity. So let’s set the record straight. There have been many books exclusively on synchronicity and they are not difficult to find. Here are some:

Chopra, Deepak. The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire: Harnessing the Infinite Power of Coincidence. Harmony Books, 2003.

Combs, Allan, and Holland, Mark. Synchronicity, Science, Myth and the Trickster. New York: Marlow & Co., 1989.

Grasse, Ray. The Waking Dream: Unlocking the Symbolic Language of Our Lives. Quest Books, 1996.

Hopcke, Robert. H. There are No Accidents. Riverhead Books, 1997.

Joseph, Frank. Synchronicity & You: Understanding the Role of Meaningful Coincidence in Your Life. Element Books, 1999.

Jung, C.G. Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle. Princeton University Press, 1969.

Koestler, Arthur. The Roots of Coincidence: An excursion Into Parapsychology. Vintage, 1972.

Mansfield, Victor. Synchronicity, Science, and Soul-Making, Open Court. 1995.

Peat, F. David. SYNCHRONICITY: The Bridge Between Matter and Mind. Bantam Books, 1987.

Storm, Lance (editor). Synchronicity: Multiple Perspective on Meaningful Coincidence. Pari Publishing, 2008.

Tarnas, Richard. Cosmos and Psyche. Plume, 2007.

 Vaughn, Allan. Patterns of Prophecy. Dell, 1973.

Vaughn, Allan. Incredible Coincidence. Signet, 1980.

Wilson, Colin. C.G. Jung: Lord of the Underworld. Aeon, 2005.

And, of course, we can’t overlook:

MacGregor, Trish & Rob. Seven Secrets of Synchronicity: Your Guide to Finding Meaning in Coincidences Big and Small. Adams, August, 2010.

Posted in books, Knutsen | 18 Comments

The Fitzcarraldo

Posted on December 2, 2009 by Trish and Rob

In the late 1980s, we led tours for travel writers to the Peruvian Amazon and took  several trips up the river from Leticia, Columbia to Iquitos, Peru. The Rio Amazona was no QEII. However, as a former rubber-hauling vessel that had been refurbished for passengers, it had a wonderful open deck that provided fantastic views of the jungle.  Its sister ship was the craft that was used in Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo, that starred Klaus Kinski.

The boat stopped frequently for side trips on wooden skiffs with our bilingual guides, most of whom were the sons of Riverenos – Amazonian fishermen. These young men understood the river, the jungle, its moods, risks, and beauty.

So one afternoon when the boat hit a sandbar, we saw concern on the faces of the crew members. It was too early in the dry season for the river to drop so low. The owner of the boat, an American who had lived in Peru for years, tried to play down the problem, assuring us that the crew would find a way to free the vessel.  But we could see he was apprehensive.

Meanwhile, below the deck, passengers were watching a video of Fitzcarraldo, which had begun before the boat hit the sandbar. We joined the others and were astonished that the scene showed our sister vessel
 stuck fast on a sandbar and the crew finally deciding to drag the ship through jungle to another branch of the river.We looked at each other, shocked not only by the synchronicity, but by how none of the other passengers seemed to connect the parallel worlds of the movie and our situation.

Fitzcarraldo had been chosen from two boxes of videos, but even if it had been the only movie on board, what were the odds that the scene of the boat stuck on a sandbar would be playing just as the same thing was happening to us?

When you connect with synchronicity, it’s as if your world holds an added richness and dimension that others apparently miss.

A short time after the movie ended, the crew managed to maneuver the boat into deeper water and we continued our trip. We commented that it was fortunate that we didn’t have to drag the boat, like in the celluloid version of events. “That was just a movie,” one of our fellow passengers remarked. True. But for us, it was more than that.
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We scanned this very old photo of several of us on the open deck of the Rio Amazonas. From left to right: Diane Cleaver, our former agent, Rob, Trish, a woman whose name we don’t recall, and Chris Cox, our editor. What’s especially eerie about this photo is that the people on either end are no longer with us. Chris died in 1990, and Diane died about four years later.



Posted in amazon, fitzcarraldo, movies, travel | 14 Comments

The Monster of Florence

Posted on December 1, 2009 by Trish and Rob

 

Peter Levenda explores the dark side of mankind in his books, such as Sinister Forces, and so it’s not surprising that his reading list would include The Monster of Florence. But for Peter, that book opened synchronicities connecting him with the co-author Douglas Preston.

 ***
I have just finished reading The Monster of Florence, by Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi.  It is an account of Preston’s investigation of Italy’s most famous serial murder case. I read a lot of serial killer non-fiction, and this seemed like an interesting addition.  The Monster has been killing and mutilating victims in Tuscany and primarily around Florence — a city I know well — since the 1960s and has never been caught.  But Preston’s book — written with the help of the most-informed Italian journalist on the case, Mario Spezi ,who is referred to as the “Monstrologer” — is equally about the corruption of the Italian judicial system which has allowed the Monster to escape justice to this day.  Okay.
                                            

   Today I was writing an email to a friend of mine about the book.  It was only after I had finished the book that I realized that Preston is the co-author, with Lincoln Childs, of a series of books about an occult detective named Pendergast.  I had been reading those novels in Indonesia last year, during Ramadan, as they were one of the few books I could find in English.   Okay, that was interesting, but …

I had just finished writing the email when I felt compelled to do a search on the Internet for some background information.  I found a blurb by Preston for a book by Whitley Streiber, Critical Mass, on the International Thriller Writers website. Now, I know Whitley and have been interviewed by him on a number of occasions, so that was eerie.  I didn’t know that Preston and Whitley knew each other, or were aware of each other’s work.

 
But what I especially did not realize was that the blurb from Preston appears on the site directly below a blurb for the same book … from me!
***
Interestingly, when Peter reviewed Streiber’s new novel, it was called Midnight…and that’s somehow appropriate.

Posted in authors, books, Peter Levenda | 12 Comments

Global Synchronicities- Flight 1549

Posted on November 30, 2009 by Trish and Rob
 

  Global synchronicities are when the universe seems to be addressing us as a collective – as a people, a community, a nation, as citizens of the same planet.

 Given the eight years of George Bush’s controversial presidency, it was stunning to witness the way the universe spoke through synchronicity as Bush’s second term came to an end.

On January 15, 2009 at 8 PM, Bush gave his final speech to the nation. In  a presidency defined by the repercussions of planes slamming into the World Trade  Center, it was intriguing that just five hours earlier, U.S. Airways flight 1549 crashed into the Hudson River, a short distance from the tragic site of 9-11. Yet, the landing was near perfect, all 155 passengers survived.

The first rescue boat to reach the scene was named after Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, a staunch supporter of the separation between church and state, a man consistently ranked as one of the best presidents.

After eight years of flagrant abuse of power, a disastrous war of choice, torture, rendition flights, and the erosion of civil rights, it was as if the “miracle on the Hudson,” was the universe assuring us that we would come through it all intact. It’s no small irony that five days later, the day after Martin Luther King Day, the first black president was sworn into office.

Through mass events and the synchronicities so often associated with them, we’re witness to a deeper layer of existence similar to what quantum physicists speak of when they refer to everything in the universe being intimately connected. As Michael Talbot put it in The Holographic Universe, “Our brains mathematically construct objective reality by interpreting frequencies that are ultimately projections from a deeper order of existence that is beyond space and time – the brain is a hologram enfolded in a holographic universe.”
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As I was preparing this post, I  dropped by Elizabeth Avadon’s blog    and discovered a fascinating post about the salvage of Flight 1549 – in photos. Perfect synchronistic timing.Photographer Stephen Mallon’s exhibition of large scale photograghs, Brace for Impact, The Salvage of Flight 1549, was shown at Williamsburg, Brooklyn’s Front Room Gallery and will be at the Verge Art Fair in Miami from December 3-6.. Take a look at his site for the amazing photos. He kindly allowed us to use this photo.

Posted in global, hudson river, plane crash | 26 Comments

Astrological Synchronicity

Posted on November 29, 2009 by Trish and Rob

 We don’t receive too many synchronicities related to astrology, but Dale Dassell sent us a good one. It’s especially interesting, since it deals with a daily sun sign horoscope from a newspaper. These little ditties are very general, hardly specific to an individual, as a personalized horoscope would be. But this one hit it on the nose for Dale.
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This is so amazing that I had to share it. Yesterday, about halfway through the day, my brother and I were sitting at home playing the Nintendo Wii, when out of the blue I suggested that we go bowling that night. I love to bowl, and I haven’t bowled in months. Doug said he couldn’t go because he had to work late (from 6 p.m. to midnight), so I mentioned the idea to dad, and he said it depended on how mom felt when she got home from work. Well, mom also worked a late shift, arriving home at 6 p.m., and by that time it was dark and chilly outside. She said we could go bowling tomorrow (today), and I said it was cool. About 20 minutes ago, I flipped open the newspaper to do the Jumble puzzle, when I glanced over at my horoscope and read this:

Capricorn: Find ways to acceptably express physical exuberance. Organize a gang of friends for a night at the bowling alley or skating rink.
I nearly fell out of my chair. I had the idea to go bowling yesterday, with no possible way of knowing what this morning’s horoscope would say. Does that qualify as a synchronicity?
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Dale later added:

“As far as I can remember, this is the first daily horoscope that turned out to be accurate. I wasn’t sure whether or not it counted as a true synchronicity since I actually anticipated the notion the day before I read it in the newspaper. I hope it’s not a trend, because I would be terrified if I could predict the future on a regular basis!”

One note: Synchronicity isn’t only simultaneous occurrences of inner and outer events. Jung maintained that precognition, telepathy, clairvoyance and other forms of psychic phenomena were all aspects of synchronicity.

Posted in astrology, bowling, Capricorn | 6 Comments

Storm Surge

Posted on November 28, 2009 by Trish and Rob

 

We’ve talked before about the relationship between creativity and synchronicity. The Edgar Allan Poe story and the Titanic are two of the most astonishing.We’ve experienced our share of these weird synchronicities, where something we’re writing surfaces in real life.

On August 14, 1992, Trish mailed off a novel, Storm Surge, to her new editor at Hyperion. It revolved around a category five hurricane named Alphonso that slams into South Florida and flattens entire  neighborhoods.  On that same day, a tropical wave moved off the coast of Africa, one of many that roll away from that  continent during hurricane season. It had completely escaped Trish’s notice.

But ten days later, that wave had grown into one of the most powerful hurricanes on record., At one point, its winds were estimated to be in excess of 200 mph.Hurricane Andrew walloped Homestead, Florida, wiped it off the map, and obliterated entire neighborhoods.

The synchronicity is striking in several regards. In fiction and real life, both hurricanes were the first named storms of the season and began with an ‘A.’ They were category fives, and were tightly compacted storms that targeted only a small area. Again, an example where creativity provided a venue for a premonition, an

 aspect of synchronicity.

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One of the strangest synchronicities of this sort happened to writer Doug Moench, while he was writing the screenplay for one of the Planet of the Apes movies. This one is truly disturbing and is going to be part of a documentary film, Authors of the Impossible, that will “examine the paranormal and popular culture.” That story is here.

Posted in creativity, extreme weather, hurricanes | 11 Comments

Psychic detective speaks

Posted on November 27, 2009 by Trish and Rob

Yesterday, we posted about psychometry or psychic touch – which Carl Jung considered an aspect of synchronicity, like telepathy and precognition. We mentioned a psychometrist, Noreen Renier, who years ago was one the subjects of a book on psychic archaeology. She saw our post, probably through the help of that clever psychic computer called Google Alerts, and wrote us.

Subsequently, Ray Getzinger asked in a comment what a psychometrist sees when holding an object. So we asked Noreen and here’s her answer. The part about role-playing – the murderer or the victim – is interesting.

“As a psychometrist who works with both law enforcement officers and private individuals, it would depend on my clients needs how I use my mind.  On homicide cases, the detectives usually send me an object off the victim or something the murderer left behind.  They need specific information; what the person looked like that committed the crimes, where he lives, why, etc.  I definitely can tune into the individual and become the murder as well as the victim and sometimes its just me watching and sharing with the detectives what I see.

 Private clients want me to see into the future so its a different part of my mind I would be using.  For more information about how I work, please read my book, A Mind for Murder, or go to my website. Every psychic works different and developing your own style is important.
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Noreen’s book cover looks a lot like one of my covers. There’s a synchronicity!
Rob

Posted in Uncategorized | 8 Comments