Mysteries abound. Inexplicable moments in time
and space that elicit the query, Just
what exactly is going on here? As previously
mentioned, I have a sizeable list of odd occurrences and unlikely meetings from
my own experience and also have a fun book called Beyond Coincidence that’s chock-full of these peculiar stories. Reading
them one after another only reinforces a feeling of conviction that the
phenomenon of the “meaningful coincidence” is legitimate. Every one of us has a
few tales that could be included in such a compilation. They’re so compelling when they happen, so
strange….
It so
happens that I’m involved with quite a few “scientist-types”—intelligent, highly-rational,
natural-born-skeptics—who instinctively distrust anything that smacks of superstition or the paranormal. Who desire some
Scientific Proof, not conjecture and Unnamable Principles. I’ve tried to explore
the concept of the meaningful coincidence with one of their tribe, on occasion,
when such an event pertained to us both. (A smart, well-read person might have some
original insights worth sharing; I’d be all ears.) But thus far I’ve
unfailingly been rebuffed; none of these people will even discuss the matter.
Barb, an entomologist affiliated with the
Smithsonian—has the PhD and more— was typical in her resolute refusal to
entertain any notion that
synchronicities could be more than a product of pure chance. Her arguments fell
along these predictable lines: With so many
things happening simultaneously in our complex world it’s no surprise that,
every so often, all the cherries line up and you have one of those
jackpot-moments. The odds may seem impossibly low but they really aren’t nearly
as low as one would think. These things are nothing more than random flukes
with no special meaning; to invest them with significance is misguided and
naive. Solid reasoning that flat-out disregards something undeniably real.
Barb had taken The Firm Stance and, in this
instance, her somewhat-patronizing manner irritated me so I pushed back with a brief
summary of the ridiculous string of fortuitous events that guided me to those
amazing places where I’ve lived and worked, the dream jobs—that many would say
qualify me to claim a charmed life. (Admittedly, this wasn’t an ideal
illustration; a couple of the more astonishing stories from my book would have
served better.) But she just smiled and shook her head dismissively when I’d
finished. “Nope. Un-uh. Pure chance.” The scientist-types—and, despite my tone,
I by no means intend to use that label in a derogatory fashion—have dug in
their heels. But I’m just as certain they’re wrong. C. G. Jüng would think
so, too.
I believe Jüng was among our great 20th-century-minds,
particularly in the sense of one who challenged the prevailing paradigms of his
field by introducing radically new and creative ideas. His vast knowledge of history
and mythology, combined with a profound understanding of the human psyche’s baffling
depths, afforded new ways to view our inner world. I’m both inspired and cowed
when considering his compassion and sheer energy; the remarkable scholarship, the
synthesis of so much disparate information into a monumental body of work Jüng
produced while endlessly treating patients, travelling, lecturing…working on
manuscripts and writing many letters every
day. And then retiring for part of each year to a stone tower (of his design) by
the lakeshore at Bollingen where he continued working to the very end. He
exulted in tending his stove, chopping firewood, and hauling buckets of hand-pumped
water—living, in seclusion, the contemplative and intentionally-simple life of
a modern Mage.
I have a copy of his delightful autobiography—Memories, Dreams, Reflections—which he
finished shortly before his death. He recounts two highly-significant
occurrences in 1898 that led to his, rather unexpectedly, choosing psychology from among other fields of
medicine in which to specialize. Rather than summarize his experiences, I’ll
quote directly from the book (editing slightly for narrative flow):
“During
the summer holidays something happened that was destined to influence me
profoundly. I was sitting in my room, studying my textbooks. In the adjoining
room, with door ajar, my mother was knitting. That was our dining room where
the round walnut table stood. It had come from the dowry of my grandmother and
was about seventy years old. My mother sat, knitting, about a yard from the
table. Suddenly there sounded a report like a pistol shot. I jumped up and
rushed into the room. My mother, flabbergasted, was sitting in her armchair,
the knitting fallen from her hands. She stammered, “W-w-what’s happened?” and
stared at the table. Following her eyes, I saw what had happened: the table top
had split from the rim to beyond the center and not along any joint; the split
ran right through the solid wood. I was thunderstruck. How could such a thing
happen? A table of solid walnut, seventy years old…how could it split on a summer
day in the relatively high humidity characteristic of our climate? If it had
stood next to a heated stove on a cold, dry winter day it might have been
conceivable.”
Spiritualism was going through one of its periods
of extreme popularity at the time. His mother was an active adherent; she held
seances in their home and believed in any number of paranormal phenomena. She
made a comment—vague, but loaded with innuendo—that the incident held some meaning
and cast him a significant glance. Jüng was disturbed: “Against my will I was annoyed with myself for not finding anything to
say.”
Barb would likely scoff at their reactions. She’d
have a ready argument about built-up tensions in the old wood; that there undoubtedly was a perfectly reasonable explanation.
It was odd, yes, but certainly not some sort of supernatural occurrence. And
Barb could well be right. To be fair and objective: this story is (so far as I
know) unverified, and I’ve never seen a photograph of the broken table nor
heard further commentary. The across-the-grain element is what makes it truly
hard to fathom.
Jüng goes right on:
“Two weeks
later I came home in the evening and found the household—my mother, sister, and
the maid—in great agitation. An hour earlier there had been another deafening
report. The noise had come from the direction of the sideboard, a heavy piece
of furniture dating from the early nineteenth century. They had already looked
it all over, but had found no trace of a split. I immediately began to examine
it and the surrounding area, fruitlessly. Then I began on the interior. In the
cupboard containing the bread basket I found a loaf and, beside it, the bread
knife. Its blade had snapped off in several pieces. The handle lay in one
corner of the rectangular basket, and in each of the other corners lay a piece
of the blade. The knife had been used shortly before, at the four o’clock tea.” In
concluding the account he writes that, once more, his mother shot him a loaded
glance. Again, the young man was irritated by his inability to respond.
“The next
day I took the shattered knife to one of the best cutlers in town. He examined
it and shook his head, saying, ‘This knife is perfectly sound; there is no
fault in the steel. Someone must have deliberately broken it piece by piece. It
could be done by sticking the blade into the crack of a drawer and breaking off
a piece at a time. But good steel can’t explode.’” Jüng knew
otherwise: “The hypothesis that it was
just a coincidence went much too far….So what was it?”
These events and later ones of a similar
nature led to his formulating the concept of synchronicity; up to that time, no
one had recognized that thematic or clustered coincidences might be related to the
subconscious and fraught with personal meaning.
So. Another personal connection I feel with Carl
Gustav Jüng is that I’ve had similar experiences which, because of their
strange improbability and curious timing, also left me posing that same
question: What is going on here? The
two tales that follow, coincidentally, both revolve around things breaking spontaneously:
In 1979 I purchased—as a present for my family—a
cardboard box containing one dozen glass mugs. Though imported from France they
weren’t too pricey and became quite popular. (Cafés used them and you still see
one from time to time….) These mugs were made of clear Pyrex glass; a simple
but elegant design that I really liked—straight-sided, easy-to-clean and very
durable. You could drop one (maybe not on the sidewalk, but onto kitchen
linoleum) and it wouldn’t break. My family used them continuously and I ended
up with a couple that served me well for many years.
The event in question happened shortly before
I moved to the Owens Valley in 1983. My brother must have been home on a break from
college at the time because all four of us were in the family room that
evening, watching television.
Suddenly there “sounded a report” from the
kitchen; nothing like a pistol shot but definitely some sort of minor
explosion. I was first on-scene. We all looked around but I was first to open a
cupboard door above the counter with shelves that held bowls and other
kitchenware, including some spare glasses and mugs. And it took a moment before
I realized that one of those French Pyrex mugs had exploded. Since it was made
of tempered glass, it had shattered into scores—maybe hundreds—of tiny, roughly
cubic, pieces that were strewn all across the shelf. We were all stunned and
amazed.
This would be Barb’s take: Pyrex glass is made under very high pressure
so it can withstand great temperature variants. The mug may have had a slight
nick in it that compromised its integrity and all that internal pressure caused
it to “blow up.” It could happen at any time…a ticking time-bomb.
You’re probably right again, Barb. In fact,
tempered glass is known to explode
spontaneously—usually (but not always) in, or just out of hot ovens. But why
did it sit around all that time waiting for my whole family to be gathered
together a few yards away before it committed mug-suicide? It could’ve gone off
at three a.m. and we wouldn’t have even heard it. “Pure chance,” she’d reply.
Well…maybe so.
The other incident also involved glass. And,
similarly, I was there to witness it. From an entry that I wrote in the
guest-log of a house I was caretaking at the time:
“A most
curious incident: a month or so ago before I went to Ventura I was reading on
the couch one morning about seven a.m. When I first started staying here a
couple years ago I found, while exploring the floor cabinet beneath the swamp
cooler, the lens of a magnifying glass—4” wide, ½” thick; the kind Granny uses
to read fine print—but the plastic handle had broken and was gone. So there was
just the glass lens (a beautiful object in itself…) which I recognized as a
valuable aid in viewing rock specimens and wildflowers. So I moved it onto the
bar and it’s lived there under the clock for the last two years and was often
employed to check out some delicate little thing (at least by me). Nobody moved
it away while I was gone all summer. SO: That morning while I was cozy and
reading on the couch with Mount Whitney a glance away I heard a very soft
sound. A little ‘tink!’ or, maybe, ‘knnck!’ followed by an also-tiny, soft ‘thud’
on the carpet. I got up to investigate and found that the lens had just
spontaneously shattered. Basically, it broke in half but with one other little chunk
from near the edge and some minute shards which forced me to get out the
vacuum. It was such an odd sound in the morning silence. I’m sure there’s a
rational explanation but, since so many of these strange things happen to me, I
LOVE the fact that the lens sat there for so long and waited into daylight
hours so I was in the utterly silent room with it before it popped open like a
seedpod—a strangely pleasant sound I’ve never heard nor will likely ever hear
again—and half of it plopped onto the floor.”
Note the common theme that all these events
were witnessed. They could have
occurred when no one was around. Barb would say of my questioning the
significance of all these very curious events, “Nope. Just good, old-fashioned,
100% pure chance.”
You’re
wrong, Barb. You…are…wrong.
Contrary to the sound of my claims, there’s no
doubt some rational explanation for all these events. I’m not a “true believer.”
By nature, I too am a card-carrying skeptic.
In the case of these anecdotes, the timing
is what I find equally odd. Jüng’s stories, as famous as they are, were
apparently unverified. As for my two: spontaneously-shattering glass is a known
phenomenon, not nearly as strange as it appears on the surface. At issue here
is the implacable resistance certain people have to acknowledging that there
are things—even in our modern world—that aren’t just out of reach of the
scientific method, but are the product of influences that we don’t understand
or even have names for. Which is not to say we can’t sense their reality. What bothers me is that the scientist-types
don’t even recognize that they’re following their own beliefs with something
very like religious zeal. They don’t perceive that they’ve elevated Science to
something anathema to their way of explaining reality: a veritable religion.
Evidence of this can be seen constantly in the
way that science treats the True Mysteries; by completely taking for granted
compellingly-unexplainable (but every-day) phenomena. Life “just happened.” DNA
is thought of as—and I’ve actually heard it called—“just another molecule.” (Except
it’s the only one that self-replicates….) Back
to Jüng: when he came to America in 1924-25 he visited the Pueblo Indians of
Taos and spoke at length with their chief and found their encounter extremely
moving: “As I sat with Ochwiay Biano on
the roof, the blazing sun rising higher and higher, he said, pointing to the
sun, ’Is not he who moves there our father? How can anyone say different? How
can there be another god? Nothing can be without the sun.’ His excitement,
which was already perceptible, mounted still higher; he struggled for words,
and exclaimed at last, ‘What would a man do alone in the mountains? He cannot
even build his fire without him.’
“I asked
him whether he did not think the sun might be a fiery ball shaped by an
invisible god. My question did not even arouse astonishment, let alone anger.
Obviously it touched nothing within him; he did not even think my question
stupid. It merely left him cold. I had the feeling that I had come upon an
insurmountable wall. His only reply was, ‘The sun is God. Everyone can see that.’”
This is a charming and poignant account but it
also personifies a type of unquestioning certitude also common in our more
modern, science-influenced view of an accepted “reality.” In the western world
(or at least in America), whether or not it’s admitted, we seem to believe that
“the unknown” is a nut soon to be cracked. “The Unknowable”—barely recognized,
never spoken of—is virtually taboo. Life is just some random fluke; an
accident. DNA is “just another molecule.”
Everyone can see that.
I think it would behoove us to cultivate a
greater sense of something the Pueblos, (and so many other “unsophisticated” cultures
throughout time) never lost sight of: the sacred and, ultimately, utterly
mysterious nature of our world. It matters little if you think a star is a ball
of burning gases or a god. It’s a truly astounding thing. One of them, old Sol,
gave us the miracle of life. Maybe worth reflecting on, next time you witness a
sunrise. Whether or not it’s splendid….
26 Mar 2011, 20 May 2013
© 2013 Tim
Forsell
All
rights reserved.
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