Stunned By Synchronicity

'A star is as near as it is far'. How can a star be both near and far? The star in the night sky is but a pattern of light emitted from a gaseous ball which may or may not still exist. The night sky is but the void of space. The star in the sky is as illusory as the star image in our eye or the star message delivered to our brain. We perceive outer distance, but the consciousness of the star is first registered deep within our minds, within our being. The star, if it exists at all, exists equally as much within as without. It is both near and far in the same moment: now.

The future, tomorrow, may be just as illusory. Our learning and the greater part of our experience tells us that tomorrow follows today and that what we do today causes tomorrow's effects. When we encounter an event in our future which we have already seen, we are amazed and label it precognition. Yet science shows us that tomorrow is already out there somewhere on a timescape, already existing in a kind of now. Science tells us that things do not always happen through cause and effect, but that events can occur simultaneously as if invisibly joined together in a mutual state of being in a shared now.

Most people have experienced that simultaneous now. It is the experience of deeply meaningful coincidence known as synchronicity. Sometimes the strange coincidence seems to carry a message and the meaningfulness is understood. More often synchronicity leaves you with a feeling that you have touched some sense of meaningful but indefinable mystery.

Receiving Rebekah's letter with its gift of 'A star is as near as it is far' at the exact moment that I was composing the paragraph about stars and distances is an example of synchronicity. In its purest form, it is an outer world event (the letter and its contents) which coincides in a meaningful way with an inner world event (my thoughts).

The famous psychiatrist Carl Jung frequently experienced this phenomenon and it was he who labelled it synchronicity in the 1920s. His best-known example concerns a woman who booked in to see him after reaching the end of her tether with her two previous psychiatrists. Jung realised that she was a very rigid thinker who needed a rational explanation for everything. He asked her about her dreams and listened as she described her dream of an Egyptian Golden Scarab beetle. While she was talking there was a tapping sound at the window and Jung walked over to open it. As he did so, a beetle flew in: it was the nearest equivalent to the Egyptian scarab beetle that Austrian insect life could provide. The woman was so stunned by the coincidence of the arrival of the beetle at the exact moment that she was describing the beetle of her dreams, that she broke through her rigidity and became more open and willing to change through therapy. For his part, Jung saw the scarab beetle as a universal dream symbol of transformation, so its arrival at the exact moment that the woman was describing, through her dream, her unconscious readiness for transformation was deeply meaningful in its endorsement.

One night I had a long and bizarre dream which seemed heavily significant. The next day I sat at my desk working through the meaning of the dream, but I was stuck with one part about someone administering LSD up someone else's nose! Luckily, at the moment I woke up I had the feeling that LSD really meant pounds, shillings and pence, but I couldn't work out the connection between old currency and this person's nose. I closed my eyes and concentrated: I really wanted to understand this one. My thinking was interrupted by the sound of the phone ringing. It was someone wanting to send a fax of a newspaper article he had enjoyed. I switched the fax on and watched the headline roll through first: CREDIT RATING GETS RIGHT UP YOUR NOSE. I hadn't seen the article before, so it hadn't inspired my dream. It was exactly the clue I needed to complete my interpretation.

The dream episode with the nose was a beautiful example of a visual cliché: at the time of the dream there was an old money situation that was really getting right up mine! The fax was the outer world event that coincided with my inner world thoughts in a meaningful way. I had already had the dream, and no doubt the man had already cut out the article, but the important point was the exact coincidence of both events as experienced by me. The outer world mirrored my inner world at that exact moment and the resultant synchronicity enlightened me.

These synchronicities are simple examples of an outer world event coinciding, at the exact moment in time, with an inner world thought. Furthermore, in each case the person was aware of the subject matter of their inner contemplation. However, the more common situation experienced in our busy, outer world oriented culture is a convergence of people or events without consciousness of the state of the inner world at the moment of synchronicity. The situation registers as meaningful because it seems ridiculously beyond the odds or even heaven sent.

Synchronicities often occur at times of change or transformation, when new ideas, thoughts, insights or understandings are breaking through from the unconscious mind. The scarab beetle, the star and the fax all arrived at breakthrough moments: indeed they may have been the midwives present at the births rather than heralders announcing the events.

The full meaning of a synchronicity may not always be obvious to the person who experiences it, largely because it is often wrapped in symbolism, much like a dream. The inner world process is often unconscious or dreamlike, so its outer world partner frequently reflects the same language. A very common synchronicity, for example, is to encounter repeated incidents of broken glass at times of personal breakthrough. In dreams glass often appears as a symbol of an invisible barrier or limitation. Once you break through the glass, you break through the illusion of a personal limitation. Without an appreciation of this symbolism, breaking glass synchronicities remain puzzling, seemingly having no link with your inner world.

Travelling tends to facilitate personal change and transformation as we encounter different cultures and alternative views and ways of life. Moving away from our usual routines encourages us to see our lives from a different perspective, and journeying with a partner or friend often challenges relationship issues. It is for all these reasons that synchronicities tend to occur while travelling. What comes up for us during our journey and challenges us to extend ourselves beyond our previous mental limitations meets us in the outer world through the mirror of synchronicity.

The following are two typical travel synchronicity stories. (These experiences were related to me during radio talkback and I am reporting them from programme transcripts. From here on these will be indicated with an asterisk *.)

Leda was travelling with friends from San Jose to Lake Tahoe in the States, when they stopped at a town named Auburn to have a Big Mac. Who should then walk into the restaurant but three young men from their home town back in Australia, all friends of her daughter. Later they realised their car was parked right next to theirs too!

Meanwhile another traveller, Julie, was in Pompeii visiting the ruins. Just as she was about to leave, she started talking to a couple of English people and they ended up having a drink together. The English couple knew only one person in Australia and that turned out to be a good friend of Julie's.

I have no idea what was going on in their inner thinking when these synchronicities occurred to Leda and Julie, but I have no doubt that if I sat down and talked with them I would discover the personal limitations their travelling was challenging and which these meetings had mirrored.

Another common synchronicity theme is reunion, which often mirrors inner personal breakthrough such as integration, harmony or healing of the past. Someone or something from the past will present in the most unexpected circumstances just as the person is on the verge of readiness to handle or heal that area of their life. Mandy’s story reflects this.

Mandy's father in Australia had traced his family history to Cornwall in England. While she was living in the UK, Mandy and her husband decided to drive down to Cornwall one weekend to have a look at the records in an old church. A service was in progress by the time they arrived, so they searched the headstones in the cemetery looking for signs of the family name, but without luck. Eventually they spoke to the vicar who told them that no records had been kept during the years that interested them, but he invited them into the vicarage for a cup of tea anyway. 'There's another chap here from Australia,' he said. 'You might as well meet him'.

As they were introduced they realised they shared the same surname. The man had come all the way from Australia specifically to trace his history, arriving at the church on the exact same day. It turned out that they were related and Mandy discovered a whole branch of the family she didn't know existed. Back in his home city in Australia, the man became great friends with Mandy's parents.*

Although I didn't have the opportunity to discuss her experience more deeply, I'm sure that both the Mandy and her new found relative had each reached an inner readiness for some kind of integration and self-discovery and this was mirrored in their finding each other.

The last group of common synchronicity themes is accident, death and birth. Death and birth tend to greet unconscious surfacing of the need for death of the old and birth of the new, while synchronicities around accidents generally signal the unconscious recognition of wrong way and the need for a change in personal direction or attitude.

One night Peter was driving home from the movies with his wife when he saw a car accident. He stopped, gave his name as a witness, then continued on his journey. Two days later he had to go down to the police station to report his father's car as stolen. While he was sitting waiting, a young couple were talking at the counter. He heard them mention a car accident and the fact that there had been a witness. He looked out the window to see the car which had been at fault two nights earlier. Some time later he was told that his father's stolen car had turned up and he went to the car yard to identify it. As he was standing in the office, the same young couple turned up to enquire about having their car fixed.*

Again, I don't know what Peter's synchronicities were mirroring within his inner world, but I would guess that he was beginning to realise (witness) 'wrong turnings' he had taken in his personal direction which could be 'fixed' by identifying something about his father's attitudes.

Notice that the main synchronicity themes are the same as those associated with most precognitive dreams and visions, as discussed in earlier chapters. An understanding of synchronicity will help elucidate the phenomenon of precognition, since they are, in effect, closely related.

Not all synchronicities fall within these main themes, though, and some can seem quite trivial at first.

Steven's story, for example, concerns his broken toilet lid. His wife really wanted it to be replaced, but he wasn't that bothered and kept putting it off. He also knew that you can't buy toilet lids on their own because they come in sets with the matching toilet seat. It seemed a waste of money. Several months passed before Steven noticed a plumbing store on the opposite side of the road as he was driving and decided it was time to take action. He parked the car and entered the shop three paces in front of another man. 'You better go first because my problem's going to take a while', Steven told the man, hoping to be able to talk the plumber into selling the lid without the expense of the seat. The man approached the counter and asked for an ivory toilet seat. 'Yes, that's the one but I don't want this', he said, tearing off the lid and giving it back to the plumber. Steven stepped in and offered him some money for the lid, but he was given it for free.*

After months of doing nothing, and after driving past any number of plumbing stores, it was only at the exact moment Steven decided to take action that the second man also appeared on the scene and the synchronicity occurred. Despite the apparent triviality, I know from experience that there would have been inner world changes within Steven which were surfacing at that particular time and which his outer world simply mirrored. How much more might Steven have gained from his synchronicity than a bargain deal on a toilet lid and a funny story to add to his repertoire, if we had been able to discuss the inner world side of the picture?

When you first start experiencing synchronicities the usual reaction is to be, quite simply, awed. The experience inspires a sense of interconnectedness or oneness with the world and a feeling that there is a deeper meaning and purpose behind the everyday facade of life, although what exactly that meaning is, may seem quite elusive. It is tempting to look for cause and effect explanations, but they are difficult to endorse. Telepathy is often given as a cause, as in, for example, 'I was thinking about him (cause) so he phoned (effect).' Most synchronicities, however, do not stand up to this kind of analysis.

When Rebekah sat down to write to me about the star, I was not thinking about her and I had not thought about opening the chapter with any discussion on stars. By the next day, as I sat at my computer and composed my astronomical paragraph, it could be argued that I had read Rebekah's mind or letter unknowingly through telepathy and that I was taking my cue from her theme. However, the letter did not arrive before or after I had written the paragraph, but tantalisingly right in the middle of it, in true synchronicity fashion. It simply fits the definition of synchronicity with its tell-tale tingling sensation of meaningfulness better than it fits the alternatives.

For the person experiencing it for the first time, synchronicity brings a sense of the mystical which, even without any analysis of inner meaning, is sufficiently rewarding in itself. A finger beckons to explore a wider world, an existence beyond cause and effect, a world of 'now' which promises, perhaps, enlightenment itself. Once you enter that now possibility, synchronicity events seem to multiply. It's as if you start with a little hole into the now world which keeps getting bigger as your perception of reality expands.

If you can acknowledge, at this point, that synchronicities symbolically mirror your inner personal development, you can read these outer world signs as indicators of inner changes on the way. Inner processes are expressed by the unconscious, the right brain, the stuff of dreams: universal symbols, associations, visual cliches, archetypes, word puns, emotions and so on. A thorough versing in dream language acquired from a professional source such as Sleep On It and change your life, is important for the serious synchronicity buster. For the sake of simplicity I have chosen examples which are easy to follow.

I was sorting through some papers and got sidetracked into a box of mementos, when I found a card from a Carol I knew many years ago, which set me thinking. Later that morning I received a fax from another Carol and a phone call from yet another Carol, a woman I hadn't talked with for many months. I thought I must be in the middle of a synchronicity, but I didn't understand it. I couldn't immediately match it to any inner thoughts that I was aware of. The last Carol told me her name meant song of joy. Like a Christmas carol, I thought to myself. There had been no other phone or fax calls so far: no other names had flown into my day. Later, after having the answering machine on for a while, I replayed the tape to find just one message had been left, by a friend whose surname is Manger. 'Like a Christmas carol,' I laughed to myself, still ignorant of the deeper meaning. Her message began, 'Oh, it's ...' and that was all, just two words, but I recognised her voice. There followed a minute and a half of classical music, a click, the rest of her message, another click and then a further two minutes of music. What had happened, of course, was that she had received an incoming call at the moment she started to leave her message and she had put our phone line on hold. Still unsure about all these joyful Carols, I let the day continue to unfold.

The afternoon brought three letters: one business letter and two personal ones. The two personal ones each informed me of address changes. Only the day before we had received a letter from some friends to tell us they had moved house and, I realised, one of the Carols had phoned me specifically to give me her new address. What's more, the person who sent me the business letter had inadvertently enclosed three letters from her desk which she must have picked up when she put the sheaf of papers for me into the envelope. Since two of the letters did relate to me and were not private, I read them. One recommended a woman by the name of Carol, as a possible collaborator on some work.

Now, you have to really love detective work when you make the commitment to understand the synchronicities in your life! These were my clues so far:

Over the space of less than a day, I had three Carols I knew, one Carol I didn't know, one tenuous Christmas carol and four notices of address changes. One of the Carols overlapped with the address-change theme and the unknown Carol could represent a new address in my professional diary. I also had a fleeting clue that Carol meant joy or music. At this point I turned to pen and paper. What did all these people have in common?

The known Carols, I realised, all felt that they had been inspired by my work, but at the same time they had each provided me with inspiration and opportunity for career advancement. Each Carol was associated with a different phase of my career. The Carols as a group therefore symbolised mutual exchange at a time of moving forward.

The common link between the four people who had moved house was freedom. One gained freedom from a controlling landlord; one exchanged a city terrace house for acres of freedom for her growing sons; one moved to gain freedom through access to medical care, and the fourth moved to be rid of stairs which were becoming too painful to climb.

Putting all that together, I had an outer world which was mirroring 'I am moving ahead to a freer phase of life through joyful mutual exchange.' Once I had done the basic detective work, it made perfect sense. After more than three years researching the material for this book I am beginning to taste freedom as I write my way towards the final full stop to send this book on its own journey. Self-funded research and writing are highly disciplined, solo, self motivational tasks which can, at times, feel restrictive and lonely. Precognition has been a difficult area to research but it was also a necessary labour of love. I needed to fully understand why bits of tomorrow kept invading my todays. The hypnotism project added headaches to the consternation and towards the end I realised that I needed to close The Dream Research Bank and cease other related work to allow me to nurse the book baby through its final months of gestation. As I write now, the big picture has clearly fallen into place and I am enjoying the last stages of the creative process which always brings joy.

This research period has been exciting, difficult, expanding, restrictive, emotionally exhausting, insightfully uplifting, an immense labour and an exhilarating sense of achievement. Some of my past has been written into these chapters and much more has been examined and let go. Leading up to the 'Carol Synchronicities' I was beginning to realise that I was ready for change: for more teamwork, more mutual exchange, more reward received for effort given and the extra freedom that all these things bestow. Before the synchronicities these seemed vague notions, ideas toyed with in my sleeping dreams. By analysing the synchronicities, the thoughts gained impetus and solidified into an attainable goal. The synchronicities underlined the emerging feelings and, deciding I liked their reflection in the mirror of life, I chose to fully empower them.

(Post Script: The Carol synchronicities did indeed herald the shape of things to come. Today is 17 December 1997 and I have been given the task of reviewing my manuscript before it goes to print. Two days ago we moved into a beautiful new house. We had wanted to move a month earlier, but this is the way it has turned out. A superficial review of the Carol synchronicities reveals a hindsight prediction: ‘You will have an address change by Christmas.’ At a deeper level, the other changes discussed in this chapter have broken through to become my new way of life, one of collaboration and teamwork concerning the documentary [which is also a career advancement], and a freer, more joyous phase of being.)

All too often people read synchronicities as green lights which need to be followed. Sometimes this may not be appropriate. Imagine, for example, a man working a house renovation business. He's just finished a big renovation project but didn't make the amount of money he had expected. He also worked too much overtime. He's exhausted, but he needs just one more property to renovate, a real gem: the one that will really bring in the kind of dollars he's set his mind on. He looks around to see what's available, and he's amazed because every real estate agent he visits tells him about a fire-damaged house that would make a big return for the right renovator. Is this a sign from God? Is it a synchronicity to follow?

Our imaginary investor is experiencing synchronicity. His outer world is reflecting his inner world, only he's probably too exhausted to be in touch with the reality of that inner world. He is, of course, 'burned out', as are the properties being drawn to his attention. Rather than invest in a burned-out house and go round the same cycle of renovation and exhaustion, which obviously hasn't worked to his personal satisfaction so far, he would be better to examine his patterns of work, or his expectations of financial returns, and approach work from a different angle.

Synchronicity, then, is a mirror of what is emerging from the unconscious mind, what is soon to break through into consciousness. It tends to occur at a stage before full consciousness (while, by definition, it is still 'inner', still 'breaking through') and its outer world image is as symbolic as its inner world counterpart. In its purest form it is an instantaneous reflection, a phenomenon occurring in a world of now, not relating to notions of cause and effect. It is frequently misinterpreted as a signpost towards a better future. It may well herald a sign of the shape of things to come, but whether the signs have to be endorsed by action is a question of free will.