Historical Synchronicities

Carl Jung first coined the term 'Synchronicity' which he defined as; "an acausal connection of two or more psychic-physic phenomena."

Here is a link explaining an episode Jung had with a patient which helped inspire the idea for him and compel him to continue study of it. www.carl-jung.net...

Then I have submitted 3 stories that are nothing short of astounding in my opinion.

I'll start with the Edgar Allan Poe story.

In 1838, Poe's only novel was published - The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Partway through the book, the crew of a ship called Grampus finds themselves with a busted boat and no food or water. They manage to catch a tortoise and strip off its shell, but eventually, in order to survive, the crew draws straws to figure out which of them will be sacrificed to provide meat for everyone else. The death straw goes to a former mutineer named Richard Parker, who is promptly stabbed to death; his head, hands and feet thrown overboard.

A creative story - Poe actually called it "very silly" - but here comes the real twist. In 1884, a yacht named the Mignonette left England, headed toward Sydney, Australia.

The yacht wasn't really made for trips around the world, so it shouldn't have been a surprise to anyone when it sank in a storm. The four-man crew barely escaped in a lifeboat, but they definitely didn't have enough provisions for survival. They did catch a turtle and eat it, but just like their counterparts in the 45-year-old Poe tale, they needed more if they were going to be found alive when a rescue boat found them.

One man - a 17-year-old named Richard Parker - fell overboard and then made the mistake of drinking seawater to attempt to quench his thirst. Parker started going downhill fast, and that's when his fellow survivors decided they would kill him to ensure their own survival. The men had considered drawing straws, but they figured Parker was so far gone they might as well kill him and drink his blood while it was fresh (instead of risking the contaminated blood that might occur if they just waited for him to die due to illness). After stabbing Parker in the throat with a penknife, the three men devoured him. They were rescued a few days later.

mentalfloss.com...

The next one is about actor Edwin Booth, brother of John Wilkes Booth.

Edwin Booth, perhaps unfairly known today as the brother of assassin John Wilkes Booth, was once upon a time known as the greatest actor in American history. In fact, certain theater historians and steampunk enthusiasts would probably argue that he still is today. His reputation as an actor was described as "mythic," and a statue of him stands in Manhattan's Gramercy Park to this very day.

Booth performed a heroic act, one that would have gotten him into the history books. It took place during the last months of the Civil War at a crowded train station in Jersey City. According to the young man that John Wilkes (sorry) Edwin Booth saved:

The incident occurred while a group of passengers were late at night purchasing their sleeping car places from the conductor who stood on the station platform. ... There was some crowding, and I happened to be pressed by it against the car body while waiting my turn. In this situation the train began to move, and by the motion I was twisted off my feet, and had dropped somewhat, with feet downward, into the open space, and was personally helpless, when my coat collar was vigorously seized and I was quickly pulled up and out to a secure footing on the platform. Upon turning to thank my rescuer I saw it was Edwin Booth, whose face was of course well known to me, and I expressed my gratitude to him, and in doing so, called him by name.

Since Edwin Booth was the kind of guy who did good deeds even when there were no cameras present, he genuinely had no idea who he'd just saved. He simply accepted the lad's gratitude, probably signed him an autograph, and spent the rest of his afternoon on a train reading a terrible fan-script the kid "happened to have on him" about William Shakespeare fighting zombies.

A few days later, Booth received a letter of commendation from Adam Badeau, an officer to the staff of General Ulysses S. Grant. It turned out that this young man Edwin had saved was actually Robert Todd Lincoln, the son of President Abraham Lincoln.

Keep in mind, it's not like the Booth family and the Lincoln family were neighbors, always running into each other. They weren't. They didn't travel in the same political circles -- the Booths were famous theater actors; they toured the country. This incident happened on a random train platform in New Jersey. It could have been any stranger and any random kid.

That act of heroism would have gone down as the only, unlikely interaction between the Booth family and the Lincoln family, if Edwin's brother John hadn't gone off the deep end and assassinated the kid's father only a few months later, nearly killing the country.

www.cracked.com...

Last one is about Philip K Dick and recounted in the transcript of a Speech he gave in 1978 now titled 'How to Build a Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart 2 Days Later'

It is an eerie experience to write something into a novel, believing it is pure fiction, and to learn later on—perhaps years later—that it is true. I would like to give you an example. It is something that I do not understand. Perhaps you can come up with a theory. I can't.

In 1970 I wrote a novel called Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. One of the characters is a nineteen-year-old girl named Kathy. Her husband's name is Jack. Kathy appears to work for the criminal underground, but later, as we read deeper into the novel, we discover that actually she is working for the police. She has a relationship going on with a police inspector. The character is pure fiction. Or at least I thought it was.

Anyhow, on Christmas Day of 1970, I met a girl named Kathy—this was after I had finished the novel, you understand. She was nineteen years old. Her boyfriend was named Jack. I soon learned that Kathy was a drug dealer. I spent months trying to get her to give up dealing drugs; I kept warning her again and again that she would get caught. Then, one evening as we were entering a restauant together, Kathy stopped short and said, "I can't go in." Seated in the restaurant was a police inspector whom I knew. "I have to tell you the truth," Kathy said. "I have a relationship with him."

Certainly, these are odd coincidences. Perhaps I have precognition. But the mystery becomes even more perplexing; the next stage totally baffles me. It has for four years.

In 1974 the novel was published by Doubleday. One afternoon I was talking to my priest—I am an Episcopalian—and I happened to mention to him an important scene near the end of the novel in which the character Felix Buckman meets a black stranger at an all-night gas station, and they begin to talk. As I described the scene in more and more detail, my priest became progressively more agitated. At last he said, "That is a scene from the Book of Acts, from the Bible! In Acts, the person who meets the black man on the road is named Philip—your name." Father Rasch was so upset by the resemblance that he could not even locate the scene in his Bible. "Read Acts," he instructed me. "And you'll agree. It's the same down to specific details."

I went home and read the scene in Acts.

[Continued...]

Yes, Father Rasch was right; the scene in my novel was an obvious retelling of the scene in Acts... and I had never read Acts, I must admit. But again the puzzle became deeper. In Acts, the high Roman official who arrests and interrogates Saint Paul is named Felix—the same name as my character. And my character Felix Buckman is a high-ranking police general; in fact, in my novel he holds the same office as Felix in the Book of Acts: the final authority. There is a conversation in my novel which very closely resembles a conversation between Felix and Paul.

Well, I decided to try for any further resemblances. The main character in my novel is named Jason. I got an index to the Bible and looked to see if anyone named Jason appears anywhere in the Bible. I couldn't remember any. Well, a man named Jason appears once and only once in the Bible. It is in the Book of Acts. And, as if to plague me further with coincidences, in my novel Jason is fleeing from the authorities and takes refuge in a person's house, and in Acts the man named Jason shelters a fugitive from the law in his house—an exact inversion of the situation in my novel, as if the mysterious Spirit responsible for all this was having a sort of laugh about the whole thing.

Felix, Jason, and the meeting on the road with the black man who is a complete stranger. In Acts, the disciple Philip baptizes the black man, who then goes away rejoicing. In my novel, Felix Buckman reaches out to the black stranger for emotional support, because Felix Buckman's sister has just died and he is falling apart psychologically. The black man stirs up Buckman's spirits and althought Buckman does not go away rejoicing, at least his tears have stopped falling. He had been flying home, weeping over the death of his sister, and had to reach out to someone, anyone, even a total stranger. It is an encounter between two strangers on the road which changes the life of one of them—both in my novel and in Acts. And one final quirk by the mysterious Spirit at work: the name Felix is the Latin word for "happy." Which I did not know when I wrote the novel.

A careful study of my novel shows that for reasons which I cannot even begin to explain I had managed to retell several of the basic incidents from a particular book of the Bible, and even had the right names. What could explain this? That was four years ago that I discovered all this. For four years I have tried to come up with a theory and I have not. I doubt if I ever will.

But the mystery had not ended there, as I had imagined. Two months ago I was walking up to the mailbox late at night to mail off a letter, and also to enjoy the sight of Saint Joseph's Church, which sits opposite my apartment building. I noticed a man loitering suspiciously by a parked car. It looked as if he was attempting to steal the car, or maybe something from it; as I returned from the mailbox, the man hid behind a tree. On impulse I walked up to him and asked, "Is anything the mattter?"

"I'm out of gas," the man said. "And I have no money."

Incredibly, because I have never done this before, I got out my wallet, took all the money from it, and handed the money to him. He then shook hands with me and asked where I lived, so that he could later pay the money back. I returned to my apartment, and then I realized that the money would do him no good, since there was no gas station within walking distance. So I returned, in my car. The man had a metal gas can in the trunk of his car, and, together, we drove in my car to an all-night gas station. Soon we were standing there, two strangers, as the pump jockey filled the metal gas can. Suddenly I realized that this was the scene in my novel—the novel written eight years before. The all-night gas station was exactly as I had envisioned it in my inner eye when I wrote the scene—the glaring white light, the pump jockey—and now I saw something which I had not seen before. The stranger who I was helping was black.

We drove back to his stalled car with the gas, shook hands, and then I returned to my apartment building. I never saw him again. He could not pay me back because I had not told him which of the many apartments was mine or what my name was. I was terribly shaken up by this experience. I had literally lived out a scene completely as it had appeared in my novel. Which is to say, I had lived out a sort of replica of the scene in Acts where Philip encounters the black man on the road.

Might add some more later. Anyone who wishes please feel free to add some other ones, or any thoughts you have on the concept of synchronicity.

Check out the links as well, there are other historical accounts of compelling coincidences.

Peace. ~

We can understand theology's attempt at theft of Jung's concept: they used to like hanging around Jung's place on Lake Constance for any tidbits of information after Jung's deep dives into the Unconscious. Ditto for the Buddhist monks as that protection racket entered China: they would sneaup to the grottoes to spy on Taoist adepts as they read their texts by the light of glow-worms or mushrooms. The dance and graphics are covered by a disciple of Jung, Marie Louise von Franz, in her Psyche and Matter. The Dance, so primitive it cannot help but to attract the offspring of the bone-arrangers from the crypts of Neolithic Europe (and all of its 'esoteric' knowledge) who would go on to become theologians.

What's hot, rather, is both the flint quarries and the springs at Aachen, for elsewhere we connect these with Grannus, the cult of Diana, etc. along trajectories concerning gun control and the origins of Al Qaeda.

I've never had much of an issue with seemingly crazy coincidences. If you take a second as the minimum time an event can occur in then the odds of experiencing a 1 in 3600 event once every hour, a 1 in 100,000 event in a little more than a day, a 1 in a 2.5 million event in one month, a one in 30 million event in one year, a one in 300 million event in 10 years, and a 1 in 3 billion event in 100 years. Combine that with 6 billion people each experiencing one event a second and all coincidences get from me is a shrug.

That's just my two cents though.

Originally posted by phyrefly
We can understand theology's attempt at theft of Jung's concept: they used to like hanging around Jung's place on Lake Constance for any tidbits of information after Jung's deep dives into the Unconscious. Ditto for the Buddhist monks as that protection racket entered China: they would sneaup to the grottoes to spy on Taoist adepts as they read their texts by the light of glow-worms or mushrooms. The dance and graphics are covered by a disciple of Jung, Marie Louise von Franz, in her Psyche and Matter. The Dance, so primitive it cannot help but to attract the offspring of the bone-arrangers from the crypts of Neolithic Europe (and all of its 'esoteric' knowledge) who would go on to become theologians.

What's hot, rather, is both the flint quarries and the springs at Aachen, for elsewhere we connect these with Grannus, the cult of Diana, etc. along trajectories concerning gun control and the origins of Al Qaeda.

Interesting. I have read a Marie Louise von Franz book before, I believe it had to do with mythology. Jung has always been an interesting person to me. How I was first introduced to him was in itself somewhat of a 'coincidence', it was a class in high school of about 20-30 students and everyone picked a psychologist from a list to look up in the library to do a report on. I picked Jung, never having heard of him and figuring he would be an Asian psychologist.

Don't forget the insane coincidences around Lincoln and Kennedy. Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy and Kennedy one named Lincoln. Oswald killed the pres from a warehouse and was caught in a theater. Booth shot Lincoln in a theater and was caught in a warehouse. There are more and I encourage you to google the subject.

Also I love the Phillip K. Dick speech you posted. The man was something special.

Originally posted by Mkoll
Don't forget the insane coincidences around Lincoln and Kennedy. Lincoln had a secretary named Kennedy and Kennedy one named Lincoln. Oswald killed the pres from a warehouse and was caught in a theater. Booth shot Lincoln in a theater and was caught in a warehouse. There are more and I encourage you to google the subject.

Also I love the Phillip K. Dick speech you posted. The man was something special.

edit on 4-2-2013 by Mkoll because: (no reason given)

Hey thanks, and for anyone that's interested the entire book 'Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said' can be found here. ----> www.naderlibrary.com... not to mention some of his other novels and short stories (I recommend Valis, Flow My Tears.., A Skanner Darkly or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep which was the story Bladerunner was based on. Going to try Vulcan's Hammer myself at some point, can't remember if I've read it yet or not).

Was pretty amazed to find them online for free actually, from the 'Ralph Nader library'. Props to you Nader, Americans should really give independents more love at election time. That's another issue though and I'm not too versed in politics anyways let alone American politics.

I'm in the process of reading 'The Exegesis of Philip K Dick', and it is pretty wild stuff. A lot of it he wrote during his Valis phase. Dick has always been a real interest of mine, and one of my favorite authors.

I know this isn't a PKD thread, but i started it so I can do what i want right lol, so here is part of a speech he made in 1977 in which he talks about his mystical experience.



peace. ~