I suggest reading the earliest posts first

What is the relationship of the experience of synchronicities?

What is the relationship of the experience of synchronicities to the 'rational'? That question has been answered:

"Accompanying the more profound occurrences of synchronicity (is) a dawning intuition, sometimes described as having the character of a spiritual awakening, that the individual herself or himself not only is embedded in a larger ground of meaning and purpose, but also in some sense (is) a focus of it."
Richard Tarnas Cosmos and Psyche

The above quotation is embedded in 492 pages + 50 pages of endnotes, etc, little bitty print, not many pictures in the book.

"There is another world, but it is 'in' this one." Paul Eluard, Morris Berman, The Reenchantment of the World"

"Here again the dialectic that runs through the whole development of the mythical-religious consciousness stands out with particular sharpness....It is a fundmantal trait in mythical thinking that where ever it posits a definite relation between two members it transforms this relation into an identity. An attempted synthesis leads here necessarily to a coincidence, an immediate concrescence of the elements that were to be linked. " Ernst Cassirer, page 250, The Philosophy of symbolic Forms, Vol 2.

Concrescence is a term coined by Alfred North Whitehead
to show the process of jointly forming an actual entity that was without form, but about to manifest itself ...


"I saw not with the eye of the body, but the eye of the soul." Goethe; Theodore Reik's Fragment of a Great Confession

In discovering the other world, the hidden world, a very strange kind of conversation can be experienced but it's not the typical 'voice' that speaks in that other world. It's created artificially! It uses whatever is available to the individual, the specific individual.

This quotation is from War In Heaven by Charles Williams.

"When Mr. Batesby had spoken that morning it had seemed as if two streams of things: actual events and his own meditations had flowed gently together; as if not he but Life were solving the problem in the natural process of the world. He reminded himself now that such a simplicity was unlikely; explanations did not lucidly arise from mere accidents and present themselves as all but an ordered whole."
Read only the words in Bold-red. and that's the best example I can give of the process of 'abstraction' from embeddedness. This is an excellent description of synchronization as a life process. One's own meditations and actual events flow together and a new 'voice' speaks through this natural process.

Its an individualizing experience in every day life that has been named various names throughout history. C. G. Jung named it individuation, Emanuel Swedenborg had accurately identifed it as regeneration, a process that includes a life review.
An individuation process is not commonly recognized because its such a unique personalized life experience of one's own body and mind. You may be as surprised as I was to have to learn that the 'irrational' is what can't be scientifically validated because it's unique, ultra personal experiences that happen over a life span and science requires repeatability.
So the irrational is what ever isn't rational because science excludes personal analysis, the process requires repeatability. In fact the irrational is a wholeness of experience in that it includes the rational when the individuation process operates in a life or in lives. An individuation process is not commonly understood yet but I became aware of the process and the pattern without knowing about it myself!
How it creates a 'voice' and a conversation is the most personalizing life experience that can be experienced if it's recognized, because the form of its 'speech' is difficult to be discerned. Order emerges from chaos, literally over a span of time that may be decades in a life. It's speech is created artificially, the 'voice' aspect is created by a process of abstractions from every day life content. The bibliography at the end of a technical non-fictional book is in my opinion the result of that process of abstractions, its basically invisible to the author.
When quantum physics was 'discovered' that was a message that 'said': "The physical world is derived from another world" and: " there are no causes in the physical world, only effects." (Emanuel Swedenborg had already written that fact and other important details about the process of life, regeneration was his name for it, that he believed prepared a person for life after death.) One attribute of its speech is symbolic but literalness is also part of how the' voice' is created by a process literally of 'abstractions' , highlighted by the mind from every day life content, by a special function of mind that creates a 'second under lying context' automatically, with an extra 'sense'. The term 'second underlying context' was my own definition but a local Jungian psycyhiatrist told me it was an excellent term. Swedenborg's term, 'double thought' is appropriate too.

Only last year I saw an old movie (Blade Runner) and the process of 'abstraction' caused me to hear a remark made in it about 'tears lost in rain' with that 'extra meaningful sense' that I've noticed myself in my mind. It has helped me describe the undescribable invisibility of such events that occur, embedded in every day life until the 'extra sense' abstracts and highlights them. The 'jokes' that cause you to laugh most heartily are the simplest example I can give now. Television situation comedies in our time are popular from this mechanism's operations but that's just one of 'its' attributes.

There is a kind of rational logic inherent to the process, not Aristolean, or linear, because 'it' uses personal memories and experiences as the content of the process. But that's a fact that had to be recognized over a span of time when 'it' created in my life a consistent synchronization between inner content that was new to me, certain memories from my past and everything, every thing, outside my body.
The process itself was almost overwhelming for a few years until it was a new kind of 'normal', but not yet invisible. What's new eventually becomes normal but whatever is normal gets to be invisible eventually, its ever presence has made it invisible.

The process as I had to figure out myself, operates 'in' every day events. I believe it is a special sense that unites (synchronizes is the best word to use) the body and brain with what's outside the body, history and Time itself with the flow of what I believe is the 'ongoing endeavor of Time'. It may be a function of the unconsciousness itself to create the process of individuation, from the depths of mind but I'm not sure about that. But let me emphasize that I had to discover all, every 'bit of information' myself and notice how it was created from mechanisms of mind that alter 'thought' and the direction of attention. The most difficult to discover was that there is a kind of 'prompter within'. It created a new relationship with every day life events gradually.'

" The medium is the message." The extension in Time of an idea can be 'like' a signal, in my opinion.

The process of individuation is virtually unknown but I have experienced that the 'transcendental function' is in charge, it's building a future event: The Future. Sometimes long strings of events have to happen, widely spaced in time so that the personal 'meaning and context' can in some situations only be given decades later. I've had several events, separated by even decades happen, then a 'closing event ' completes the string and then an inner display retrieves them and assembles them in a flash of a second as 'insight'. Only then suddenly, it's obvious that part of me in the past somehow 'knew' the future.

I wouldn't abandon 'string theory' which F. David Peat wrote is an 'interactive force'. He did not write about or mention a process of individuation. I will have to describe in detail why I believe Sigmund Freud's 'discovery' of psychoanalysis was his experience of this individuation process and Carl G. Jung's much deeper experience was the result of recognizing the effects of the same pattern.

What ever "it" is that energizes my body in that 'kind' of event, which often happens as an ordinary situation, it's not always 'numinous' (feelable at the moment) or even unusual. It's 'feelable' when a creative 'function' of the unconscious mind that is not unconscious its self., 'highlights' the event or the memory of an event. I know it never sleeps, I've had more than acceptable evidence of that fact. That's where its possible to see evidence of foresight, when I see what happened when I was 'moved' by that function in certain specific events and finally realized I'd been alone when many of them happened.

The depths of mind is where an unsleeping part of me (and probably everyone else) is at work. Nothing materially changes but 'associations and understanding'. Its nearly impossible to detect that there's a vast space between upper regions of mind and the most remote regions of mind that produces content that is thankfully strangely visible. It uses symbols that the individual 'knows' or can recognize.

My main symbol is the moebius band in all it's forms. An impulse caused me to make my first one in 1941 when I was 9 years old. The same impulse caused me to discover its 'secret', it's hidden forms that day after I'd made the band with a 180 degree turn. "Cut around it lengthwise." was a thought and I cut it once lengthwise, surprised at the result. The thought words repeated : "Cut around it lengthwise." so I obeyed again. The result was two bands separated but joined in a knot that didn't look like it could be undone. The two bands were joined but separated. The impulse has caused me to look over my shoulder at just the right moment, in the right location and what it brings to my attention is ALWAYS a surprise, sometimes its a real shock, perfectly timed.

It's connected to a part of 'me' that knows where I am, what's in front of me, where I've been and 'it' knows my most private thought. That part evidently knows the future, it has foresight and 'it' or whatever it's connected to uses a different language than our words. But it's within me, looking through my eyes, and I'm not unusual.

The four world balloon was created from an impulse to do something irrational.

About the image of 4 balloons?

I had an impulse to create my own image to represent (re-present) of the four worlds that William Blake's Tree of Life allegory had brought to my mind. I described what I wanted to a young man in a craft store and he thought it was impossible to do what I had in mind. Yet he did it without too much trouble then he made one for himself.


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Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Synchronistic events are not 'visionary' experiences.

The truth is sometimes literally 'funny'.



From my own experience I know they are every day events, that are 'like' particles in the processes of individuation, 'bits of information' in the context of F. David Peat's idea of an 'interactive force'.

The first  'coincidental' event that happened to me didn't produce a sense of awe, wonder, or curiosity. Let me describe it: I went to a friends house for coffee one spring morning. She was unusually happy because it was her birthday and her husband had given her not one birthday card but two.  I read both cards and  made appropriate remarks about what a thoughtful man her husband was. I had noticed that he seemed attentive and helpful and perhaps I felt envy, just a tad of envy, nothing else.
When I left I went to a pick up some pictures I'd left to be developed from a roll of film I'd found in our van when I cleaned it. The roll of film was under a seat and I had no idea what pictures were on it or how long the film had been laying there. When I riffled through them I realized they were from the last trip  my husband and I had taken in the fall, several months ago.
 One image made me feel 'funny'. It was a picture of myself wearing a bathing suit, a pink sweater over it, running through the  silvery sunset tinged surf, waving my hand at my  husband who was taking the picture. Then I recognized that this picture was virtually identical to one of the cards my friend's husband had given her! It had a woman, wearing a swimsuit topped by a pink sweater, waving as she ran through silvery sunset tinged surf.
I didn't think about the timing for very long except that  it did seem unusual that just on that day I picked up the old roll of film,  she had a card that was identical  not just basically but in such specific detail. I thought about showing the card to her, but decided not to mention it. It was just an 'event', nothing personal and the word 'coincidence' did not occur to me.
I forgot that event  until another similar event happened, then another, then others happened more frequently, not always similar in content except that the timing seemed to be unlikely, even impossible to happen once in a lifetime.
 How could it happen that I am driving, we are in heavy traffic and suddenly I  hear myself blurt out that I don't feel like myself any more, that I'm going to change my name to Ju-anna. And I've not thought about that before; the words spontaneously came out of my mouth, unwilled by me!  Suddenly a white van passes from the passenger side to in front of me, dangerously close then veers into the left lane and speeds away but I saw the first vanity plate  I've noticed it was letters:  DJWANNA. The letters decoded themselves spontanteously into Do you want to? Then a 'second sight' (literally)  revealed that they repeated what I'd just said my  name was: 'Ju-anna'! Different letters, same sound! "Did you see THAT?" I yelled and tried to speed up to make sure I'd seen what it seemed I'd seen but traffic made that a dangerous thing to do so I didn't think more about it. That was in 1983 probably.


Then over a span of a few years (1982-1989) similar  and a variety of other 'kinds' of unusual  events happened. Some were all in my mind, a kind of content that I'd never had in the past, or so I believed at the time.  Occasionally I noticed thoughts that occurred that seemed faint, they were not quite words somehow, but were a suggestion of words, like a fragrance identifies an object before its visible. I watched two such events  advance to becoming real words in my mind! Then later that content met its exact match on the jacket of a book, An Imagined World, by June Goodfield!!!! I felt 'funny' when I read about Anna Brito, who 'caught a  sudden glimmer of possibility; she observed a pattern that had hitherto been unnoticed or ignored and she began to think of explanations for what she'd seen. Her superiors weren't very impressed, but she persisted, thanks not only to tenacity but to inexperience--a mind uncluttered by pre-conceptions...." There was a faint sense of more words in my thought, added to words on the jacket but they were in the book!  That variety of inner content began to accumulate, it became a stream that gradually paralleled the understanding of my 'normal' experience, built up from every day situations at times, but not always. I could see the accretion of the new understanding and how it was built as I lived, from events in my life in a perception that was new to me, unfamiliar and it made me feel 'funny' very nearly constantly by 1984 and afterwards until about 1995. I'd become comfortable and familiar with this 'funny stuff' and I could relate to my own  inner content when it emerged, and at times say it aloud in it's 'now'.  As a comparison I remember having a different understanding, before I was 5 decades in age.
I noticed that certain new (to me) content was 'inserted' into my mind. Example: The word 'overt' came to mind one day, then it re-occurred until I wondered why. Then the word 'covert' began to 'haunt' me the same way. I wrote the words down one day and laughed (to myself) when I saw that the difference between the two words was also a similarity, the word 'see' and the letter 'c'. An overt thing can be seen, a covert thing cannot be seen.  It meant nothing to me then, but much experience followed so now I realize the words were telling me something, they suggested that an 'overt' thing and a 'covert' thing was happening.

 The words 'the numinous is hard to bear ' occurred into my mind, spontaneously one day in 1985 and I wondered what the 'numinous' was. I looked it up but didn't understand the definition. (I remembered that in the past I'd been able to understand dictionary definitions but now I could not.)  Then within a few days I read the word in a book, Contact by Carl Sagan which I was reading then. That book made me feel 'funny' all the way through it and I 'met' ideas in it that I'd never known about.
The word 'palimpsest' began to hang around in my thought after reading the book, then a most amazing thing happened soon after that when the book's main theme which was about a message that was a palimpsest took root in my mind, and seemed relevant to me.  I noticed that a new context  at times emerged in my thought, automatically produced, and immediately, so quickly that it took a few years (2 at least) to identify was a kind of 'echo' of content that had occurred into my thought. Or from what I was looking at at the moment. It began like a 'drip'  then became a deluge,  that changed over a span of years. (My next post will be more explicit about this and how it began.)
I realized the thing was 'talking' to me, this 'interactive force', which is how I thought of it after reading F. David Peat's book in1989. There was a replay of content literally. , At times this was thoughts that occurred about something I was doing or thinking about; the content re-occurred in a bundle, no space between words, but a different  kind of hearing the bundle turned the words towards me, and simultaneously formed a personal 'bit of information'. This had to happen in one specific situation where I  could see this happen,  but the word 'echo' is good too.
The timing was what should have puzzled me, should have aroused curiosity but I'm a slow learner. 
 The duration, the span of time through which  this kind of event happened convinced me that there was a purpose other than my own behind them. I could see that I didn't will them and could not have understood them myself because  the new meaning was produced, given to me in a variety of forms. Some could be recognized immediately, others required certain events in the real world to happen later. There were incidents where suddenly  memories from a very early age were retrieved and  linked to 'right now' , and they had information in them, only then.

I'd not read anything about  psychiatric ideas and when I began trying to describe my experiences to a psychiatrist I didn't realize this was a 'kind' of experience that has psychiatric names and definitions until one day I asked to read what a therapist wrote while she listened to me! I was puzzled then outraged.
 It was obvious she recognized a pattern but nothing I'd actually said was on the record. Nobody who read that report would know what I'd talked about. That may be different now, when psychiatric names and definitions are everywhere in news, movies, television shows like NCIS, CSI.  Hearing names is not likely to convey the kind of meaning that experience does. I've read a lot but it was 'events' that produced a new understanding.

This post has  some examples that I'm using to try to make a point about how these kinds of unusual 'events' that  produces the process of individuation, but more than that: information, fragments at  a time usually. But there's a lot I didn't know then about  history, especially the origin of psychoanalysis, nothing about my own  mind, thought, mechanisms that alter thought, (even changing the direction of my own thought, so that its 'heard' the way another person would be heard.) (That's a really big change!) And noticing how much spontaneous content that is not self willed or self generated occurs,  just comes into my mind, its thought embedded, but that it was not my own thought took a long time to become curious about, and attentive towards.

 Especially I could not have suspected depths of mind exist or that there's a variety of inner content that may  not be available for articulation for a long span of time. There are levels in the mind where content occurs that  requires years of attention turned towards 'me' as an object, an observer to 'me' as an actor and its own audience because there is at this point, (and not before) a point where  both inner and outer world interfaces, becoming one.. When that kind of event occurred at first there was no sense of 'numinosity', only a kind of 'dizzy-ness', momentary confusion, wierdness. I don't rule numinosity out, but words need to get connected to their real world meaning, in lives. That's where meaningful coincidence is an 'interactive, information generating force'. The word 'numinous' doesn't attach itself automatically to any event.

There is a consensus that there's a thin line between normal experience and the kind of experience that is essential to a process of individuation. 
"There are certain dangers that are not necessarily associated with psychosis, which is a common diagnosis;  ignorance that such a process exists; the span of time over which the process evolves; and the fragmented, non-linearity of related events, as well as the apparent doubleness; literally an alternate to 'normal' reality emerges. Its there already.

What some authors have named 'numinous events'' does not always seem to be anything but 'strange', unreal. I can only understand what I've experienced myself, and there was a distinct loss of volition but also a distinct change in perception and thoughts.

I hope this is useful information to other individuals like myself, who didn't  know what 'psychosis' is, and do not suspect what the content of 'psychotic thinking'  is, what kind of 'events' are psychotic, when it can vary so greatly in content. When the content is so explicitly related to what the 'I' that's observing  understands with 'my' normal way of getting meaning, it can turn reality upside down, inside out.  I hope these posts and the examples I give are  re-assuring and helpful. It's difficult to live through the apparently  'non-numinous' when years of events have to occur, and there's no linearity of events.