Many people have experienced or will experience mystic coincidences or synchronicities without being aware of them because such phenomena are not on their maps.
Some people believe that you will experience more mystic encounters and synchronicities when your meditation practice deepens, and you begin to find more harmony in life. I don’t think so. I believe such events are more likely to appear when you have lost footing, after a divorce, for example, or if someone near you dies. They can come about when you feel balanced, but they will not be that powerful. Well-balanced and satisfied people rarely experience strange paranormal phenomena. They usually don’t even understand what you are talking about if you bring up this subject.
Mystical experiences and synchronicities are like dreams. It’s as if the unconscious mind tries to tell us something, but we can’t figure out what.
It’s often difficult to tell others about a mystical encounter. If you do, you or someone else may get in trouble; you or someone else will come off as a fool. Mystical encounters are often set up in this way. We can talk about small everyday chance encounters, but we can’t talk about the interesting and important ones, at least not in full detail. Many of my “best” stories about mystical encounters can never be told without causing trouble, so I suppose I have to take them with me to the grave. These experiences belong to a secret dimension of life, an esoteric dimension.
If someone tells you a story about a strange synchronicity they have experienced, it may be a true story, but it may also be just fiction. Or, there may be some truth in it, but it has been changed here and there to make it more presentable. Many important details are often left out. (My Santorini story is censored in this way.)
The internet and the New Age bookstores are teeming with information about mystical experiences and paranormal phenomena. Much of this information is just nonsense, spiritual gobbledygook – but some of it is not.
It’s not healthy, I think, to become too interested in mysticism, synchronicities, and paranormal things. The ordinary everyday world is much more important; it is here where you have to find your way. You will go nuts if you look for synchronicities and meaningful encounters everywhere. (Why is she calling now? Is there a secret meaning behind this ordinary invitation? Or whatever turns up.) You can get lost in brooding and speculations about how the world works and forget how to make a living.
If I had not caught that terrible flu, I would have left Crete much earlier; in that case, I would not have met Doreen. If I had not been so desperate and unhappy, I would probably not even have gone to Crete. Well, in that case, I would not be sitting here writing this.
Mystical meetings and synchronicities raise thorny philosophical, psychological, and scientific questions. Can confusion and desperation, sometimes and in some way, be meaningful? Is it something deep inside us that tries to prompt us to wake up from delusions? What is free will? I didn’t decide to go to Santorini to meet up with Doreen. Who made the decision? It’s impossible to find answers to such questions. It’s like speculating if there are many more universes out there somewhere. We will never get to know about this.
Mystical experiences and synchronicities exist in this world. They are not just fantasies. They can slightly change your worldview a bit, but there are many other subjects to study in the school of life that are more important, such as how to treat children, fellow human beings, and other animals. It is also essential to find out how to make a living decently and how to celebrate and have fun at times.
Synchronicities and mystical encounters can be hints or eye-openers. They can make you question yourself and your core beliefs. They can also work as reminders when you forget how little we understand about this world.
How do you explain the emergence of meaning in biological evolution? What does it consist of? How come all the other animals are doing so well without meaning to life?
At this moment, tons of radio waves flow through you, signals you cannot perceive: radio and TV broadcasts, telephone calls, and internet searches. The ether is also filled with telepathic messages you cannot perceive because they are not directed at you. You may not even notice them even if they are directed at you because you are insensitive and believe such signals don’t exist. These messages don’t consist of radio waves.
Many people have experienced synchronicities and telepathic phenomena; many are fascinated by these peculiar signals, but what do they consist of? Why are they so ambiguous? Why are they so difficult to interpret? Are they messages from some entity that directs our steps and makes decisions for us? Are they products of an overheated mind? Are they simply reminders that there is more to the world than meets the eye?
Life is much stranger than you can wrap your head around. What is happening up here, at the surface level, in your everyday consciousness, in your rickety little boat, is not the whole story. Life is not just about money, social status, and sex. It is not about which religion or political system is the best, middle-class or working-class mindsets, or food and music preferences. The everyday consciousness is only a part of a human being.
Humankind has acquired a lot of knowledge; science has made fabulous progress in the last 400 years. However, most of what there is to know is still unknown. For example, are there tons of universes out there, or is this one the only one? How did life come to be? What is matter really? What do the electrons and quarks consist of? What is dark matter and dark energy? What does a thought consist of? What does consciousness consist of? There are endless amounts of questions that we have no answers to.
So, we have the part of the world that we know of and the gigantic part that we don’t know anything about.
The unknown part of the world is a mystery to us, and we can’t do anything but speculate about it. Here, we are all on equal footing: scientists and spiritual teachers, philosophers, and laypeople.
We don’t know if life and suffering have a purpose, we don’t know if the universe has a purpose, and we don’t know if a God is hiding somewhere. We don’t know how things really are.
We are like sailors in a heavy fog and uncharted waters.
How did life begin here on Earth? What happened before the Big Bang? Are we alone in the Universe? I think such questions are not that important, but they can be fun to discuss with someone after watching a science show on TV. It’s the same thing with synchronicities and other paranormal phenomena. I think other questions are more important, for example: Do I lie too much? Do I deceive myself? Am I a selfish jerk?
Once a worldview has been formed in your brain, it is as hard to get rid of as it is to quit smoking for someone addicted to cigarettes. And those who have the strongest convictions have the most severe withdrawal symptoms.
C.G. Jung invented the word synchronicity in 1928. He tried hard over decades to explain this phenomenon but did not succeed. The result was just words, tons of words. Many have gone down that rabbit hole – and never returned.
You will probably be surprised if you experience a synchronicity or some telepathic phenomenon. It will make you wonder about the nature of reality. You may ponder over this for years. However, nothing much in your everyday life will change. Your bad habits and endless daily chores will continue. A real life-changing experience requires something much more potent.
The world has always been horrible: horrific wars, slavery, poverty, diseases, excruciating pain, religious oppression, psychopathic emperors, kings, and presidents.
There have also been places where peace, love, and optimism prevailed, for shorter periods, for a lucky few, but the overall situation has always been horrible.
Three thousand years ago, people believed that the earth was flat. Five hundred years ago, people were terrified of witches; they hunted them down and burned them at the stake. Nowadays, most people understand that witches don’t exist and that they have never existed – except in our imagination.
Most people no longer believe in ghosts, trolls, and witches, at least not here in Europe. Most people no longer believe that the sun revolves around the earth or that the world was created 6000 years ago. However, many still believe in God, evil spirits, and that cancer is a punishment. They think rich, healthy, and handsome people are God’s favorites. They would rather die than question their beliefs.
Atheism is, of course, also a persuasion. Atheists also live in a kind of fantasy world. They have no proof that there is no God behind it all.
There are so many different fantasy worlds, so many different gods, and so many different ideologies. Some people believe they are saved; others believe they are useless fools. Some think they’re clever; others think they are spiritually awakened.
I believe it’s possible to leave a belief system. You don’t have to be a liberal, a Protestant, or a Sunni Muslim. You don’t have to be anything except what you are: a human being.
What do you think? Are you also deeply convinced about things that you will consider misunderstandings thirty years from now?
Synchronicities appear in many different ways. One example is when you, for some reason, come to think of an old classmate you haven’t met since high school thirty years ago, and then you suddenly bump into him in the afternoon.
Another example is when someone has a weird dream about a relative and later gets to know that he died in a car accident that particular night.
I think the Santorini synchronicity was an exceptional kind of synchronicity, a Yoga connection. Doreen and I did not know each other before, but we were connected through Isla Mujeres and Monica. Maybe also in some other mysterious way. But we were not supposed to get married and have a life together. Perhaps the purpose of that meeting was to open our eyes to the mystical dimension of life.
That meeting proved to me that there is a mystical dimension. I am scientific-minded, but science dismisses synchronicities as woo-woo.
When Galileo offered the Inquisition authorities to have a look at the moon through his telescope, they refused to look. They were not interested; they knew he was wrong beforehand. Science today is like the 17th-century Catholic church.
Dogs can hear sounds you can’t hear and perceive scents that don’t exist in your world. If they had been able to talk, you would think they were lying or imagining things.
Looking for the meaning of life among electrons and protons is hopeless. You won’t find it there. It’s like looking for gold in the potato field. Nor will you find it in chromosomes or among nerve cells.
Physicists and biologists have looked deeply into this, and they see no evidence for meaning or purpose in nature. So they claim that there is no meaning or purpose in life, really, because, ultimately, the world is nothing but atoms and molecules.
However, meaning, purpose, right and wrong, justice and evil exist among human beings on the human level.
You are not just your atoms and molecules.
Jung was not a Nazi, but he never denounced the Nazi ideology loud and clear during the 1930ies. Jung was a Swiss citizen and did not have to fear the Nazi SA and SS thugs.
If you write something in the sand, on a beach, it says something there only if someone reads what you have written. It’s just sand if no one reads it. Geologists can examine the sand and explain in detail what it consists of and how it originated. They don’t care about what you have written. Only the sand is worth studying for them. They have a materialistic worldview.
I don’t care much about sand. It’s just sand. I am more interested in what someone has written there and why.
The brain consists of more than 80 billion neurons, more than 100 trillion synapses, and mysterious chemicals. So what? I’m more interested in the thoughts that are formed in it and why.
A Near-Death-Experience is a Near-Death-Experience. It is not an experience of death. Resuscitation is not the same as resurrection.
Strange phenomena can occur under extreme stress; you can get mystical insights. Mystical insights don’t appear in comfortable everyday life. And you don’t get mystical insights by reading books or listening to spiritual teachers on YouTube.
People are not always honest. (I’m not always honest either.) Some people lie about their meetings with spirits, angels, or extraterrestrials; others lie about their telepathic experiences. Many fantastic stories about such things are circulating among us. Some of them are true, and some of them are not. (Well, some people genuinely believe that they saw an extraterrestrial spaceship when what they saw was a fighter jet, a weather balloon, or a hallucination.)
Some people lie about their religious faith; others tell fish stories. Trump was posing with the bible in his hand in front of a church. The photo was published in newspapers all over the world. Everyone could see how pious he was.
All people lie from time to time, even scientists, police officers, and priests. We are also lying to ourselves. We are born into a world of deceit and deception and must find ways to survive here. ”We have all been thrown into the water to sink or swim.”
However, some fantastic stories are, in fact, true; all people are not lying all the time, and sometimes we are not deluded by our senses. Sometimes we are telling the truth.
It is hard to tell who is right and who has it wrong. This is why science and the scientific method evolved. However, scientists deal only with stuff that can be proved or disproved. I can’t prove that I saw an owl today, and I can’t disprove that you witnessed a UFO landing in your yard last year. Scientists take disprovable things off the table, which makes their job so much easier.
Synchronicities and mystic encounters are rare events. They don’t show up when you want them to. Therefore they are not suitable for scientific experiments. Maybe this is why there are so many charlatans in this field. You can seldom prove that they are talking bullshit. This is the reason why people who have experienced strange paranormal phenomena avoid talking about them with people they don’t trust. They don’t want to be mixed up with bullshit artists.
What if God is an extraterrestrial scientist? Maybe he managed to create a living cell in his laboratory some 3,5 billion years ago. He may have lost control of his creation, like the boffins of today who lose control of their organisms, which escape their laboratories and create havoc. However, as they say, who created God?
Sometimes, you bump into someone, and you think to yourself: How the hell did this happen? I was thinking of her just a minute ago. I haven’t seen her for over thirty years, and now she’s suddenly here. Jung called this phenomenon synchronicity.
Sometimes, you bump into someone you have never met before and realize that this meeting is not just about meeting someone. It is something much more important. You can feel it. You know it. You may think that this must be your soul mate. Maybe it is. Or, maybe it is not.
Maybe you are supposed to marry this person, maybe you aren’t. Perhaps you are soul mates, but you are not supposed to get married. Still, you are connected in some mysterious way. What is all this about?
Sometimes, you bump into someone you don’t want to meet and have tried hard to avoid. And now you meet him here, of all places. What’s going on? This is ridiculous.
You can also have a synchronistic meeting with a dangerous person, a psychopath, or a narcissist, and you get duped. Later, you may wonder what that meeting was about. Was it arranged in some mysterious way to make you learn something about yourself?
A random meeting is just an unexpected meeting, a coincidence. A synchronistic chance meeting is a mysterious chance meeting. This is not a matter of interpretation.
"Apophenia is the tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things. The term was coined by psychiatrist Klaus Conrad in his 1958 publication on the beginning stages of schizophrenia. He defined it as ”unmotivated seeing of connections accompanied by a specific feeling of abnormal meaningfulness.” Wikipedia
According to the invisible ships myth, when European explorers’ ships approached either North America, South America, or Australia, the appearance of their large ships was so foreign to the native people that they could not even see the vessels in front of them. Wikipedia
Some people can see things that don’t exist; others can’t see things that do.
Consciousness is called a hard problem by some philosophers. Others don’t consider consciousness a hard problem. To them, consciousness is just regular brain activity: firing neurons, electricity, and neurotransmitters.
To me, everything is a hard problem: consciousness, electrons, the Big Bang, telepathy and synchronicities.
You have to find someone who can teach you about life and how you should live it: a spiritual teacher, a pastor, a mullah, a life coach, a philosopher, an influencer, a political leader. Someone must tell you where to go and why.
It feels good to know where to go and how to get there. It feels good to sit in an audience listening to someone who knows the way. It feels good to have a leader.
However, if you listen to other spiritual teachers, they will point in other directions. There are Gurus and leaders for all directions, full circle.
Is life a kind of school, or is this idea simply a way of looking at things? Is there a life curriculum? What happens if we fail an exam?
You don’t have a philosophy of life; you have at least two: one that you can talk about in front of others – and one that you currently live by. The philosophy you live by is perhaps not that nice.
Some meditation teachers teach that you should just let your thoughts pass by like clouds in the sky. You should not bother about them, they say. I believe this is wrong. Well, most thoughts are pretty stupid, but some are very important; they create our worldviews. They can ruin your life as well as other people’s lives. It is essential to pay close attention to such thoughts, I think.
You should question yourself, your ideas, and your beliefs with the same intensity as you are questioning other people’s ideas and beliefs.
Some people are Christians, but they refuse to turn the other cheek, and they prefer to ”store up for themselves treasures on earth” – in tax havens. Others say that all humans are equal, but they use an indifferent or condescending tone when talking to the plain-looking and uneducated. And they are extremely friendly and accommodating to those who are attractive and successful.
What if you’re a fool and utterly unaware of it? Throughout history, people have been duped into beliefs that later turned out to be utter madness.
From a biological perspective, success is to have many children who reach adulthood; nothing else matters. You must have more children than your competitors to be considered a winner. Darwin’s disciples were deeply concerned that poor people had more children than the rich and prominent.
Dean Radin has scientifically proved that telepathy is a real phenomenon, not just a fantasy.
However, there is not much practical use for telepathy. The importance of telepathy is almost negligible here in our modern world. Satellite cameras, the internet, and cell phones are much more useful.
Jews and Palestinians cannot get along, nor can Sunnis and Shiites, rightists and leftists, evangelicals and atheists. Our political and religious identities cause so much misery. They seem so solid and permanent as if they were cast in bronze, but even this is a misconception. Leftists can become right-wingers when they get old, Christians can become atheists, and atheists can become Christians. Fish turned into birds in the evolution. Nothing is permanent in the long run. ”Everything flows.”
See for your inner eyes, your brain. Don’t rush; set aside at least a minute for this exercise. Imagine its color and texture. Imagine the blood flowing through it. Do you hear the murmuring? Here are your imaginings and fantasies created, your explanations and excuses, what you call reality, even what you call your I, emerges from this mysterious organ, like a genie from a magic oil lamp.
Life is also an emergent property. It has emerged from the non-living material world. And the material world has emerged from the quantum world. And the quantum world has evolved from?
Neither Plato nor Aristotle had any objection to slavery. Paul urged the slaves to be obedient to their masters, and Augustine believed that slavery was a just punishment for sins. Adam Smith, on the other hand, claimed that wage labor is a more sensible form of employment. Employees do not try to escape. They also perform better because they need to get food on the table. They don’t want to be fired.
Spirituality can be a potent psychological coping mechanism. This is called spiritual bypassing. If you can’t accept how the world works, you can invent a spiritual fantasy world, a castle in the air filled with angels, gurus, and life coaches.
There are many other helpful defense mechanisms, for example, rationalization, idealization and denial. We have to protect ourselves. Defense mechanisms help us to cope in this terrible world of war, terror, disease, and falsehood.
On July 13, 1942, Reserve Battalion 101 in Lublin executed 1,500 Jewish women, children, and older men. The battalion leader, Wilhelm Trapp, was a wise man. He offered the men who did not want to participate in the mission to step aside and promised not to punish them. He understood that some of them would not be able to shoot children without making a fool of themselves. Twelve men out of five hundred accepted the offer. What do you think was decisive when these twelve men made their decisions? And what motives did the other 488 men have?
Do you believe that God created the world? Do you believe that God rules the lives of men? Do you think five-year-olds get bone cancer because he wants to teach them a lesson?
Suppose you read something that irritates you. You might think that it sounds stupid, dull, or offensive. Maybe it’s the political perspective that angers you. Can you then say something immaterial has affected your brain and hormonal glands?
Japanese soldiers were stationed on isolated islands in the Pacific Ocean during World War II. They were under strict orders never to abandon their positions and to never trust news and propaganda from the enemy. Some held the positions for more than two decades after the war had ended.
What does it matter if the sun revolves around the earth or if the earth revolves around the sun when you have a toothache?
How do you explain that some people have to experience so much suffering, pain, poverty, and misery while others live their lives like spoiled upper-class brats at an endless garden party?
Why is life so unfair? Is it a God that arranges things this way? Is it evil spirits that are responsible? Does fate, karma, or biological evolution dictate the rules? Are we responsible for this horror show? Are we the directors?
Well-off and fortunate experts on life and living teach the sore losers the importance of positive thinking. If all the unfortunate suckers only could understand the power of positive thinking, they could also be wealthy, healthy, and successful.
Have you ever read a psychologist or advice columnist who has noticed that war, greed, and exploitation are ruining life here on Earth? Why do we try so hard to destroy this planet? We’re in urgent need of help.
Psychology, philosophy, meditation, religious faith, and spirituality have not been sufficient to change our violent ways. Not even science and technology have been able to help us; on the contrary, they have brought us here to the abyss. None of our political ideologies have worked.
You don’t have to read much history to understand where we are coming from.
Maybe our world is like a chicken factory farm. The chickens don’t know what’s happening outside the factory walls.
Scientists can only deal with what’s happening here on the inside. When they speculate about what’s going on outside the walls, they are no longer strictly scientific; they are like the rest of us. Religious people know what’s going on out there, but they are not unanimous. There are thousands of competing religious explanations.
Not so few people have experienced synchronicities or telepathic phenomena. Does this mean that your mind is not confined to inside your skull?
Your eyes detect photons, and your ears detect waves in the air, but what part of you detect telepathic signals? And what is a telepathic signal? Are we connected somehow, also without telephones or the Internet?
What if some of your thoughts and driving forces are not created in your brain? Some speculate that the brain has a telepathic receiver and transmitter installed.
Some people are the sensitive kind. According to Elaine Aron is about one-fifth of the population highly sensitive. People, in general, are more or less insensitive. Psychopaths are extremely insensitive. About 1 % of us are psychopaths.
Life is often difficult for Highly Sensitive People. They suffer among regular folks.
Highly Sensitive People can sometimes experience paranormal phenomena, like synchronicities, precognitions, or telepathy. Insensitive people think that sensitive people are neurotic fools.
Delusions and misunderstandings can sometimes be helpful guides. When I traveled to the US in 1979, I was guided by them. I had very confused ideas about what to do with my life. And when I went to Crete in the fall of 1981, I was even more bewildered. Where would I be today without those delusions and coincidences? Well, somewhere else, I suppose.
From what I understand, Jesus was not just a creation by the New Testament authors. There was also a man of flesh and blood who was the origin of the legends. He was a Jewish preacher convinced that God would crush the powers of darkness and that the fight had already begun.
But the powers of darkness became annoyed at him and sentenced him to death. Moreover, 300 years later, they hijacked Christianity, changed it to suit their purposes, and made it their religion. Since then, war-obsessed emperors, kings, and presidents have called themselves Christians. The powers of darkness are very cunning.
No sensible people can call themselves communists today, after all the horrors that have taken place in the name of communism, but how come Christians still can call themselves Christians without being ashamed? Christianity also has an appalling history: the Crusades, the Inquisition Courts, the Witch hunts, the oppression of women and children, and their staunch support of the worldly powers and their endless wars. On Sundays, the nineteenth-century slave drivers in the American South went to church and sang hymns: ”Si-i-lent night, Ho-o-ly night.”
During the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century, slavery and the slave trade began to be questioned. The new ideas also influenced many Christians. A new Christian ethic slowly emerged. What is right and wrong is not carved in stone. But it takes time to change established beliefs. In the early eighteen-hundreds, when the London Parliament voted if they should abolish slavery in the British colonies, the Bishops in The House of Lords voted against the proposal.
In 2006, the Church of England apologized for the fact that their priests had owned Caribbean slave plantations. (Yes, even some priests owned slave plantations.)
Who is the deceiver, and who is deceived when you are deceiving yourself? Later in court, who is the prosecutor, and who is the defense lawyer? Who is the judge?
If you have a degree in biology, you can explain how biological evolution works, but you have no idea how it started. How did life begin here on Earth? Religious people can not present evidence for their grandiose fantasies, but nor can you.
A painting consists of many molecules, but you can’t send it to a chemical laboratory and expect to get it fully analyzed. The chemists will miss essential aspects of it.
It’s the same thing with you; you are very different from your chemicals. You are also an animal, subject to biological laws. But you are not just a crazy ape, and you are not controlled solely by your genes and upbringing. Your beliefs are also fundamental to you. The discoveries by Darwin and later biologists can only partially explain what makes you tick.
Concepts such as ethics, conscience, meaning, and evil are irrelevant in particle physics in the same way that quarks and electrons have nothing to do with freedom, equality, and justice.
Biologists look at the world through a biological filter, and everything they see gets biological explanations. Physicists have physicalist filters, and psychologists have their psychological filters. They are like religious fundamentalists; their worldviews are hard-wired.
Are we all like religious fundamentalists? We see what we have learned to see and hear what we want to hear.
I believe that the brain creates consciousness and the sense of I am. The brain creates lots of things. It creates seemingly realistic images of the outside world. It takes care of your breathing, heartbeats, and wakefulness; it stores memories and has an autopilot that can drive your car when you are lost in a daydream.
It creates thoughts, ideas, pain, anxiety, depression, happiness, and love. Everything is created in the brain; it even creates itself.
I also believe that the brain broadcasts and receives synchronicities and telepathic messages.
Without living beings with brains, there would be no souls in this world, no spirits, no gods, no planets, and no stars. Without living beings, nothing would be real and tangible.
The brain is an unbelievably complicated and sophisticated organ. But how do you explain all the stupid stuff it cooks up: nasty thoughts, foolish thoughts, and misapprehensions.
A dream is a dream, a surreal night show. The interpretation of the dream is an interpretation.
A work of art is a work of art. The review or interpretation of the artwork is an interpretation or a review.
A synchronicity is a strange experience. The explanation of what synchronicity is - is an explanation.
The thinking part of the brain creates clever explanations and interpretations based on implicit core beliefs and assumptions about how the world works.
A belief or an implicit assumption is like a transitional object. Once upon a time, you were a three-year-old who refused to let go of your tattered old teddy bear. Now, it sits in a cardboard box in the attic.
Our worldviews, mindsets, and beliefs are in a slow but constant flux. After Mythos came Logos 500 B.C. After the scholastics in the Middle Ages came Galileo. At the end of the nineteenth century, physicists thought they had everything figured out; just a few minor details were left to explain. Then came Einstein and then the quantum physicists. What will come next?
Japanese Zen monks fully supported their Emperor during the Second World War. Harada Daiun Sogaku said: ”If ordered to march: tramp, tramp, or shoot: bang, bang. This is the manifestation of the highest Wisdom. The unity of Zen and war of which I speak extends to the farthest reaches of the holy war now underway.”
American soldiers practice mindfulness meditation to improve their performance as snipers, drone operators and fighter jet pilots.
Wall Street investors have also discovered the advantages of mindfulness meditation.
Mindfulness meditation will not soften up your ossified worldview, no matter how pernicious it is.
It is the same thing with synchronicities and telepathic experiences. At most, such events can create a crack in the prison wall.
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