| Synchronicity: The Modern-Day
Mystical Experience by Frank Joseph Synchronicity is the most mysterious thing in the world. It is the term parapsychologists use for "meaningful coincidence." It happens to everyone, more often than we realize. Synchronicities are not "mere" coincidences, random accidents without significance. For example, at the beginning of his international career, long before he became "Sir" Anthony Hopkins, he got on a subway in London after a fruitless search for his missing copy of George Feifer's novel, The Girl from Petrovka. The actor looked down, and there on the seat was the book. It was Hopkins' own, which had been stolen two years earlier. Anthony Hopkins' experience is a typical incident of synchronicity. Most people pay little attention to meaningful coincidences, ordinarily dismissing such events as amusing examples of statistical probability. But the apparent and assumed separateness of things in the so-called "real world" momentarily yields during a synchronous episode. Then the curtain of consensus reality parts, and we personally glimpse a vast, otherwise unseen network of inter-connecting unity beyond, behind, within and at the same time supporting our existence. Trying to explain irrational experiences with the rational mind (or subconscious experiences with the conscious mind) is hazardous, at best. Properly nurtured, synchronicity is a personal connection with the creative consciousness that pervades everything -- from the merest incidents of our individual lives to the swirl of whole galaxies. Synchronicities are epiphanies, our personal experience of spiritual vitality and reality. This was the function of the Ancient World's so-called "mystery cults," where initiates were brought along an educational path toward achieving genuine mystical experience. Growing disenchantment with institutionalized religions, together with popular cynicism fueled by a mechanistic science and dead-end materialism, have stolen any capacity for encountering such an experience from millions of people around the planet. We may read volumes on theology, but unless our senses are moved somehow, we are not really convinced in the existence of some godhead. Not the mind, but the soul must be touched. Synchronicity is that missing link between man and divinity. What we feel when we are contacted by a meaningful coincidence is the reflex action of our soul. In other words, synchronicity is the viable mystical experience of our times. There is no general consensus for the source of this phenomenon. Some speculate it emanates from the human subconscious. Others believe synchronicity is personal guidance from God in the form of subtle messages -- warps in the fabric of time. "God," according to the great American mythologist, Joseph Campbell, is a name for a power beyond our understanding. (Except at least partially through synchronicity?) He also likened "God" to a sphere, whose circumference is everywhere but boundaries are nowhere. In earthly existence, we live in the field of time. Events have happened, we experience life now and anticipate what is to come. We absolutely need this clear division of past, present and future to get though daily life in the work-a-day world of physical reality. But science has revealed that this concept of time is not the only one. An astronaut who travels almost at the speed of light will return to find that the Earth he left behind five of his years ago has changed five thousand years. Synchronicity is part of this so-called "Theory of Relativity." When we have a meaningful coincidence, time seems to have stopped or been suspended, because we temporarily walk out of our usual field of time into the field of eternity; that is why synchronicities feel so strange. It is the so-called "wisdom body," our natural spiritual instincts which are reacting to the presence of the divine. If time can speed up or slow down, it can also organize itself occasionally into meaningful coincidences. Although it has not yet sunk into the general awareness of mankind, for almost one hundred years physicists have know that all things -- even the densest matter -- are only different arrangements of energy. In other words, there is nothing essentially different between my fingers and the keys they are pushing to write these words. Both myself and the computer I am using are differentiated only through their separate composition of energy. If this is true (and it is), then such a realization tends to merge science with spirituality, and admits more than the possibility of unconventional events like telepathy, psychokinesis, time travel and synchronicity. Meaningful coincidence can put us in sync with that universally inclusive power, with which all things are possible. As the German mythologist, Heinrich Zimmer, once observed, "The very best things cannot be explained, and the second best things are misunderstood." Synchronicity is an extra-rational revelation to be experienced, not a factual event that can yield to rational explanations. At the very least, acknowledging synchronicity improves our perception of the world around and within us, making us alert to its subtleties we otherwise missed. There is, after all, far more to be perceived than we normally perceive. Frank Joseph will give his presentation and slide show recreating the reality of the Atlantean and Lemurian civilizations at Sound Mind & Body Healing Center on July 17, 2004, and he will conduct a class on synchronicity in July. Call (651) 688-2469 for information. Frank Joseph studied the phenomenon of synchronicity for the last 13 years. He is the author of Synchronicity and You, Understanding the Role of Meaningful Coincidence in Your Life. Since its publication in 1999, it has been released in British, Italian, Japanese and U.S. editions, thereby indicating the universality of this genuine mystical experience. Copyright © 2004 Frank Joseph |
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July 2004 |
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