The phenomenon of “synchronicity” is well known. For example, yesterday, in my daily journal on my computer, I mentioned “jet landing on aircraft carrier.” The same afternoon a YouTube video popped up on my screen, uninvited, of a jet landing on an aircraft carrier, and I watched it. How do we know such “synchronicity” is not just “anecdotal evidence” but something more and deeper that connects our thoughts to things, people, and events?
So I posed this same question on the new AI-powered Bing, and the following helpful answer came:
“Synchronicity is a concept first introduced by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung. It refers to the experience of two or more events that are apparently unrelated or unlikely to occur together by chance, yet are experienced as meaningfully connected.
“The phenomenon of synchronicity is often considered to be acausal, meaning that it is not caused by any known physical or psychological mechanism. Instead, it is believed to be a manifestation of a deeper, more fundamental principle that connects our thoughts to things, people, and events in the world around us.
“While anecdotal evidence has been used to describe synchronicity in Jung’s writing, it is important to note that there is no scientific evidence to support the existence of synchronicity as a real phenomenon. However, many people continue to report experiences of synchronicity in their lives, and some researchers have suggested that it may be related to the way our brains process information and perceive patterns in the world around us.
“In conclusion, while the phenomenon of synchronicity remains a topic of debate among scientists and scholars, it continues to fascinate and intrigue many people who experience it in their daily lives.”
This is a good, intelligent, circumspect answer, managing to stay fairly neutral on the issue of synchronicity. At the same time, it reflects a cautious leaning toward the side of material, non-spiritual explanations, in keeping with the dominant standard paradigm of material-based science of the modern era.
However, in my own experience, I have had very many experiences of all different types of synchronicity. Examples are: 1. Thinking of a person and then they appear coming down a path toward me. 2. While riding the Moscow Metro, my wife and I talked about an old friend we hadn’t seen for years, and later that very person steps off another subway wagon right in front of us, and we resume our old friendship for many more years to come. 3. I saw a barrette on a window sill as I walked along, picked it up and pocketed it. The same day a lady teacher (I’m a male teacher) suddenly asked me, “William, do you have a hair pin?” I pulled it right out of my pocket and gave it to her. 4. I teach in the International Dept. and have no connection with Domestic. I just happened to walk into a Domestic classroom I never visit, and cheerfully asked, “All quiet on the western front?” One student was so surprised: He was reading that very book at that very moment, and I had no reason to know that. 5. Flying a Cessna 150 across the Potomac at low altitude (1,500 feet) and far (ten miles) down river from National Airport—the passenger planes don’t fly so low on final approach at that distance—I suddenly lifted my left wing and looked, and right there was a DC-9 heading straight toward me! It was barely a quarter mile away. I dove for the deck, and could hear the roar of the jet engines behind me. 6. I was humming a song to myself as I walked up the front steps to our home in S.E. Washington, D.C. My brother was home as I entered the front door—and he was singing the same song! 7. Don Palm, a Vietnam Veteran, and I were fundraising two separate towns in northern Montana. That day we were very united. When our team captain picked us up at the end of the day and we counted our money, we both had exactly the same amount: $177.77 ! 8. Sitting in a library in Tübingen, Germany, a voice out of nowhere spoke to me: “Walk to Munich.” No one was around. I got up, prepared food and a ground cloth in my backpack, and left, heading by foot toward Reutlingen and then climbing up the steep slope to the Schwäbische Alb. The distance to München is 260 km. A lot of helpful synchronicities (I sometimes call them “miracles”!) happened. Our Antioch Education Abroad coordinator saw me walking and drove me the rest of the way to Reutlingen. As I walked through a forest and out into a clearing, an air force jet continued to circle over my head for five or ten minutes—a very unusual thing. Could he see me? What prompted him or her? Then at night, on top of the mountain ridge, a heavy thunderstorm broke and rain was pummeling down. I encountered a spot where it wasn’t raining at all, and stopped and stood still there. I was about to lie down, because it was pitch dark, and suddenly a lightning stroke flashed, illuminating the place where I stood—it was a big, broad anthill swarming with countless large black ants! Of course I realized I better not lie down there! But I stood still and waited for the rain to stop. The ants didn’t bother me and I didn’t bother them. Three “miracles” are seen here: Somehow the ants were being deliberately or fortuitously protected from the downpour; I was led to that exact spot where they were and also sheltered likewise; and a lightning bolt warned me not to lie down there! Well, I proceeded, walking all night. In the morning the trail crossed a country road through the mountains. I stopped one moment and decided to try my luck at a ride. There were no cars in sight. But a pickup truck happened by, and he stopped for me and took me to a town on the other side of the mountains. If he hadn’t stopped, I would have kept walking along the forest trail. Anyway, the next day I was in Ulm, and climbed a beautiful high cathedral spire and thought many thoughts. There was a cathedral museum there, but it was rife with Marxist commentary about feudalism, etc. from the materialist perspective. While up in the spire, I viewed the city and the farm fields all around. I felt a religious feeling and thought, “That Marxist stuff cannot be right. There is something else that motivates people to build these beautiful cities and this cathedral.” That night I encountered Japanese students; we three stayed in the Youth Hostel—the only guests there. They shared their white bread and I shared my boiled potatoes—the only food we had. Next morning we hitchhiked together for a ways. I finally reached Munich. On the third day, I was witnessed by our Unification Church members, ended up going to the workshop at Camberg near Frankfurt—it was all about why Communism is wrong. They talked about Sun Myung Moon. It wasn’t Divine Principle, but it directly addressed the concerns I had about Lefist ideology. Next morning I woke up early and found a group heading off into the woods (later I discovered they were going to hold Pledge service and prayer—something I was not ready for. But I didn’t know this at the time). Something stopped me, and I told them, “You go on. I’m okay. I’ll go back.” That was the right thing to do. I eventually joined the Church, and here I am today. These are just a few, a sprinkling, of the many fortuitous, serendipitous, downright impossible synchronicities and miracles I’ve experienced.
Oh, two more things I realized at the Camberg Workshop: First of all, I somehow felt that, ideally, one should become a Korean citizen to truly stand in the center of the mainstream, and it took me almost forty more years before I could finally achieve this (I got Korean citizenship in 2014). Secondly, without anyone mentioning it, I sensed somehow that Rev. Moon is the Messiah we have been waiting for.
I have no doubt there is a realm of the information field, angels or spirits, God Him/Herself, or the Universe’s natural way of functioning, that enables such synchronicities and “miracles”.
The amazing thing is that such things don’t happen to everyone. I was raised in an agnostic or atheist home, though “with Christian values” as I told someone who asked me about my religious faith. But we have very good ancestors going back fifteen generations to the Pilgrim Fathers and Mothers (five are our forebears). Anyway, from God’s viewpoint, He created the Universe miraculously, with marvelous precision, as we now realize. All this labor of countless millennia and millions of years has finally consummated in the goal of it all: God can come down and dwell in and with the human beings who have finally been restored to perfection according to his original ideal, vision, hope and dream! Therefore this time is the most important moment God has been waiting for—the very time that True Parents are here on earth leading us directly, gathering together those who are led to True Parents, those who can recognize, believe, follow, and persevere through much opposition and many trials. Moreover, I’m a special person who can talk with God and with True Father as well as some others in the spiritual world, for I have an important mission involving a lot of tasks directly related to God’s providential work at this time.
These include recognizing the Messiah of the Second Coming, joining True Parents’ workforce (“family!”), going through all the training of MFT and witnessing, reaching out to Christian churches and pastors, receiving the Blessing, graduating from the UTS seminary, working as a missionary in Zambia and Russia for eighteen years, finding the solution to the Unified Field Theory, raising a Blessed Family, coming to Korea, learning Korean, working at CheongShim International Academy as an English Literature and Western Culture teacher, meeting the scientists also working on Unified Field Theory (Theory of Physical Vacuum), getting Korean citizenship, working with Dr. Jin Sung-bae on many projects in the philosophical, ideological, and scientific area, and translating for our Church.
But, most important, in my mind and in God’s, is accomplishing the Heaven-and-Earth Unification and the East-West (Global, Cosmic) Unification dispensation, which is the cornerstone for the actual Kingdom of Heaven, and which True Father spoke about, in many different ways, between 1988 and 1999. Through this, we could enter God’s Direct Dominion in Shimjeong, become One With God and True Parents, and establish CheonBo Blessed Family status.
So synchronicity and miracles are a phenomenon of the transcendental “information field” and are supported for high-level, specific purpose, intelligently and purposefully planned and coordinated by God with the help of angels, spirits, and the information field in the physical vacuum. The universe itself cooperates centering on God’s purpose. If our mind is in synchrony with God’s purpose, or other purposes, or with nature, people, machines, computers, and events—then we can experience synchronicity.
The phenomenon of synchronicity reveals an aspect of the working of the universe in conjunction with human consciousness (and subconscious), the way of all things, and God Him/Herself.
Moreover, synchronicity or miracles can be the tools of “Destiny” which strives to realize the purpose of love in bringing destined people together to meet and form a family, raise children, seed a lineage, and play a significant role in human history. Destiny, love, consciousness, karma, indemnity, and God’s will all play a part in this.
williamstoertz 