IT'S THE SYNCHRONICITY STUPID!

Article #18: The Porous Possibility of Hope and Meaning in Curious Conicidences

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“Out of the blue and into the black, You pay for this, but they give you that. And once you're gone, you ain’t never comin’ back, When you're out of the blue and into the black” Neil Young, Hey Hey, My My

I didn’t have too many arguments with my mother.

Yet, there were plenty of matters we didn’t exactly see eye to eye on. My father was always clear on the root of those disagreements, the causality if you will “ye’re too alike the pair of ye” he would say.

I can remember one particular joust like it was yesterday, even though it was twelve summers ago. We were standing by the window in my brother’s bedroom. My mother had found me rummaging around.

Mam: I just don’t know why you’re doing this.

Me: I just want to follow in his footsteps, the places he was in those photos.

Mam: And then what?

Me: I don’t know.

Mam: I just don’t think it will do you any good.

I had taken two weeks off work and in a couple of days’ time I was due to fly into Madrid and take a train to Salamanca, then over to Valencia. I wanted to trace the footsteps of my brother, as he had spent a brief summer in Valencia on an exchange before spending a year as a university student in Salamanca. Without a doubt, Salamanca, was one of the most formative years of his life and a time when a shy, deeply bereaved young man came out of himself a little.

I don’t know why I felt compelled to go. Maybe it was because he never got to return to those places that held such happy memories for him. Maybe I thought, well if he can’t see them, I’ll see them for him.

My mother thought I was chasing ghosts. I was working in Dublin at the time, and on weekends home she sensed a shift in me, that something was off.

With the benefit of hindsight, she was right. That’s the rub of it you see, my mother could see straight through me with just a glance, no matter what kind of tribute act I was putting on.

Neither of us knew it then, but that trip would change the course of my life.

Anyway, getting back to the room, we had reached an impasse.

I sat on the bed facing the window, my mother stood to my left, looking out the same window out onto the meadow across from the house. At that time, I had my travel itinerary locked. I had a handful of pictures of my brother in a couple of locations, such as in front of the famous cathedral doors in Salamanca. I was determined to stand in those same spots. I had all the locations, bar one.

The one that eluded me was the apartment where he lived while in Salamanca. Now, I’m no Wagatha Christie but I sniffed around like a bloodhound to track that address down. I called his college to see if they had it on record, even chased down a couple of lads in his class who had also been out to Salamaca, and nothing, nada. I was beginning to resign myself to the fact I’d never get to look on the place where he rest his head, the streets he would have walked.

As my mother and I were still locked in our silent impasse, I did something random. I slid open the top drawer of his bedside locker. As much out of sheer nosiness as anything else. And not for the first time, as I had a good snoot around his room on several occasions. As the youngest brother in the house, I was always a nosey little scut.

Upon sliding open the drawer, I see his diary. So, I take it out as it’s familiar to me. It’s a shocking shade of yellow, one of those leather bound diaries that you’d expect to find down the arse end of a summer bargain basket. And I said to myself, I’ll have a flick through this while Mam makes her next move. I turn open the first page and recognise the somewhat scrawly writing straight off. There’s a scrap of paper, with an address written on it. An address in “Salamanca, Spain.”

Don’t Look Back in Anger: My brother taking in a fountain in Valencia in the summer of ‘94.

In a dimmed and darkened room in Zurich in the mid 1920’s, a young woman is lying on the flat of her back on a couch. She’s talking about a dream she had. In that dream she had been given a small golden scarab beetle.

While she is recalling her dream, a man is sitting with his back to the window. He suddenly hears a noise behind him, like a gentle tapping noise. Naturally, he turns around and sees a flying insect knocking against the window pane from the outside. He gets up and opens the window and manages to catch the little creature, mid-air, as it flew in.

As he carefully prized open his clenched fist, the wee thing revealed itself to be a scarab beetle - or to be precise, the closest thing a Zurich climate has to offer. The man showed the insect to the young woman, asking her was this what she saw in her dream? She confirmed it was.

The man in question was Carl Jung. At the time he had been researching the idea of a collective consciousness and kept coming across connections which he simply could not explain as a cluster of chance groupings or some sort of random streak. These coincidences were simply too curious to explain away.

For him the appearance of the little beetle at his window had to be more than just a coincidence. It was a coincidence with a meaning. Right up to the moment of the beetle’s arrival, the young woman on the couch was at an impasse in her treatment. Prior to Jung, three other doctors had tried in vain to ease her troubled mind, but to no avail.

Yet the sight of the little beetle that day did something and signified some sort of psychic shift in her, a real breakthrough. And the scarab beetle just happens to be an ancient Egyptian symbol of rebirth and resurrection.

Jung struggled to dismiss these kinds of curious connections. He didn’t have the courage to try and apply some of his intellectual rigour to it, one reason being that he was aware of the ridicule the topic invited. Yet, he desperately wanted to try and codify these little curious coincidences cloaked in meaning. Eventually he did and he gave it the same name as a Police album long before Sting thought of it: Synchronicity.

Jung defines synchronicity as a meaningful coincidence in time, a psychic factor independent of time and space. Say you’re thinking of an ex of yours, and within a short timeframe you bump into them or see them on a street somewhere, or like the beetle, they come knocking on your window out of nowhere! Or, you’re thinking of someone and the phone rings, and yep, their name appears calling on your screen.

Jung argues that not only does this phenomenon challenge and compliment the classic view of cause and effect – causality – it also forces a rethink of the meaning of probability, coincidence and singular events in our lives. And it also can make you sound like a thundering tree hugger if you talk about it out loud (There is research to suggest trees have their own inner life, but that’s for another day).

Defining synchronicity is one thing. Trying to really examine it and draw some rigorous conclusion is another. Like trying to capture lightning in a jam jar.

Bless Me Monica

Yet in his book Synchronicity, Jung challenges us, and himself, to look beyond the rational explanation to one that requires us to reach beyond what can be explained away. The promise of something unknowable, becoming knowable in some way.

It’s a Tuesday morning in late August and I’m at home in Galway. The night before I got this inkling to go to mass. Don’t ask me why. The last mass I was at was the funeral mass of my mother nine months previously. My mother had always been prodding me to say the odd prayer and claimed she lit enough candles for my intentions over the years to burn St. Peter’s Basilica to the ground. So I ask my father for a lift.

He suggests we pay a visit to Renville cemetery first. It might sound like a morbid idea, but it’s not. Renville is located on a hill overlooking the edge of the Atlantic ocean and as resting places go, it’s up there. The graveyard is situated at the foot of a park where people come to walk every day. I always feel those that are buried there are never alone. Someone is always passing, glancing in, even the yuppies with their four by fours and designer dogs.

So we pay our hushed respects and my father drops me off at Oranmore church. It’s not a stretch to say there wasn’t exactly a stampede to get in that morning. There was a scattering of people gathered for a spiritual fix. I sat near the back, not wanting to come across as too fanatical, you know yourself.

As it turned out, that particular Tuesday happened to be the feast day of St. Monica, who happens to be the patron saint of Mothers.

I can’t say I keep abreast of the Catholic calendar, but what are the odds? Fr. Hogan delivers a swift sermon and at nine-thirty, I make the two-minute trek up to Poppy Seed to grab a coffee. On my way up I pass Calasanctius College on my left, beyond the astro turf, my old school where my brothers and I all went.

I’ve nothing but good memories of the place, so it makes me smile as I walk. I look at the spot where my mates and I used to gather at 11 o’clock break and talk absolute shite. And then a thought pops into my head: I must reach out to my former drama teacher there, Caroline. She bumped into my mother a couple of months before her passing and they had a great chat. I make a mental note to reach out to her that day.

I make my way to the door of Poppy Seed coffee shop, open it and step inside. And who do I see sitting on the inside left table? Yep, you guessed it, my former drama teacher, Caroline.

Now, before I buy a commune, grow my beard out, start wearing sandals, growing tulips and posting random bullshit quotes on instagram, I think I know what you’re thinking: All I’ve done is demonstrate selective attention, confirmation bias and recency illusion. And sure don’t random things happen all the time? And I’m clearly trying to drag myself through the first dire months of life without the sight or sound of my mother, by attaching meaning to almost anything and everything.

Maybe you’d buy the St. Monica’s bit, but the teacher? Sure, teachers have it handy. Yer wan is probably sat in that same seat in that coffee shop sipping a latte most Tuesday mornings. I just happened to swan in on one of them. No biggie.

And I couldn’t call you crazy for thinking that comrade.

Counting Cards

But try this one for size. J.R. Rhine conducted a wild experiment way back in 1934.

He got an experimenter to turn up a deck of cards, one after another. Each pack had twenty-five cards, five of each had either a plus, circle, square, star or wavy line. At the same time a punter is sitting across from said experimenter, separated by a screen. The punters task is guessing what sign comes up as the cards are being turned up.

The experimenter does not know the order of the cards and the punter has no chance of seeing the cards. The deck is shuffled automatically by a machine.

Each punter gets plenty of goes at it. The average result was 6.5 hits for 25 cards, which is 1.5 more than the chance probability of 5 hits.

The study goes into a lot more detail and variations, including increasing the physical space between the experimenter and punter, from being in the next room, to 250 miles away. Some later experiments went right up to 4,000 miles apart with the aid of synchronized watches. When the punter was in the next room, one hit rate was 9.7 for 25. When two rooms away the hit rate was 12.0 for 25.

Rhine and company would also experiment with time, asking the punter to pick 25 cards only for those cards to be turned up at a future date.

Rhine’s work was considered ground breaking. And it displayed a healthy irreverence for time and space considerations, a must for any cause and effect explanation.

But that’s not what popped for me. Jung notes that “One consistent experience in all these experiments is that the number of hits scored tend to sink after the first attempt, and the results then become negative. But if, for some or outer reason, there is a freshening of interest on the subject’s part, the score rises again. Lack of interest and boredom are negative factors. Enthusiasm, positive expectation, hope, and belief in the possibility of Extra Sensory Perception (ESP) make for good results and seem to be the real conditions which determine whether there are going to be any results at all.”

They even had Irish born psychic, Eileen J. Garrett, take part in the Rhine card experiment. She underlined the point that belief is a factor, as she openly admitted to believing the card experiment to be “soulless”. She is quoted as once saying: “It is only by scientific patience, over long years, that real spiritual insight for reality can be achieved, and thus clear away the sentimental emotionalism that has long been the main enemy of true psychic research.”

Ah yes, I’ve always been a sucker for that old emotionalism. That old hope and belief.

A Brave New World: My brother in the late summer of ‘96 just before he left for Salamanca.

It’s around 10PM on a Sunday and I’m sitting on the edge of my mother’s bed. The bedside locker lamp is on. It’s warm shade of light I’m all too familiar with.

With the bedroom door usually ajar, its shard of light shoots out into the hallway like a lighthouse. A reassuring signal that my mother was retired for the night, usually in the company of the radio, a book or a TV series she’s hooked on. Or all three.

I used to peer in the door and bid her goodnite, often settling in the chair opposite her at the foot of her bed for a chat.

But tonight, there’s no radio. An unfinished Maeve Binchy book remains bookmarked on the locker. Tonight, there is the familiar sight of a warm lamp light but the deafening sound of silence.

I recall for a moment being sat in the room next door, on my brother’s bed as she looked out the window. Out of pure instinct, I slide open the first drawer of her bedside locker. I told ya – a nosey little scut. One time, I must have been about seven, I remember being in the kitchen of distant neighbours whom my father was visiting. I was sat at the kitchen table, drifting in and out of their adult conversation. So I got up, and started looking through their kitchen cabinets, literally climbing inside one of them. My father was mortified. The neighbour reminded me what happens to curious cats. I just thought cats had nine lives.

Back to the bedside locker. I don’t know what I was expecting. I had sifted through it months before. I’d had some good fortune in lockers of loved ones, so it’s a habit I indulge as often as possible. I highly recommend you sifting through the belongings of those you’ve loved and lost if the opportunity presents itself. The guilt will kick in almost immediately, yet you’ll be compelled to continue your search in the hope of stumbling on some long-lost treasure.

The contents of the now open drawer reveals itself to me. Some rosary beads, headphones, biros and a small radio. No long-lost treasure this time kido.

I prime myself to get up and head back up to the living room, to return to the warm fire and company of my father.

I decide to slide open drawer number two. A series of mass booklets and leaflets exactly in the same arrangement as I’d seen before. Again, no long-lost treasure. I begin to slide the drawer closed. That is until I spot what looks like a letter.

Had I not seen that before?

I delicately remove it from its half hidden home. It has “The Bishop Family” written on it. My heart beats. I recognise that somewhat scrawly writing.

Inside are two A4 pages, two letters and yep that is his writing. The top left handside of the first one says “Dear Everyone” and the second page reads “Dear Niall”. I look at the top right-hand corner of the letter and it has a date “10-11-97” and underneath an address. An address that reads “Salamanca, Spain.”

I begin to read. I can hear his voice in my head, in that Morgan Freeman Shawshank redemption kind of way, minus the Thomas Newman soundtrack.

I realise within the first few words that I’ve never read this letter before, or, at least if I did, my memory doesn’t serve. It’s like talking to him again. Like the chats we used to have, our first in sixteen long winters.

I’m immediately transported back almost three decades to that long lost world contained between the lines of scrawly writing. A world where he tells me how beautiful the Spanish girls are, and no he hasn’t plucked up the courage to roll the romantic dice just yet. How disappointed he is Ireland drew with Belgium at Lansdowne Road and how he doesn’t think we’ll qualify for the world cup in France the following year. His frustration at not being able to watch the match on television anywhere in Salamanca.

He tells me he promises he will keep his head up. And I think, why did I ask him to do that? And I remember. Of course, our eldest brother had passed the previous September. And he tells me try and get my head down in Yeats College. And then I remember. Of course, I had enrolled in a school that locks you up to study until ten at night, because I made a pigs ear of my Leaving Cert the previous year.

And then I remember. We both were separated in the year after our eldest brother passed. How could I have forgotten that?

He tells me he misses home and wishes he was there with us. He is looking forward to coming back for Christmas. He tells me to look after myself and that he’ll see me soon.

He also puts a P.S. at the bottom of the page to send him a couple of floppy disks if I can. They are in the drawer in his room. He has a heap of them and wants to use them up. He also tells me not to worry if I forget and not be rooting around for anything else.

As soon as I get to the P.S. bit, I go back to the start and re-read again.

On finishing the second reading, I take a minute. Will I take this letter with me? But what if I lose it? I’m an awful gobshite for losing things. Reluctantly, I place it back in the drawer, nestled between the mass booklets, back to where it came form. Back to where my mother stowed it.

I slide the drawer closed. And with it, slide closed the portal on my all too brief return to another place, another time.

I overhear my father’s footsteps in the kitchen and the faint sound of a kettle beginning to boil. I make for the bedroom door, before stopping.

My father calls out: “Niall, are ya havin’ tea?”

I make my way up the narrow dimly lit hallway to the kitchen. On my way, I think there’s a curious little coincidence I would like to share with him.

Will he believe it? I’m not sure.

Might he take some sort of meaning from it? I hope so.