It was late at night on a Wednesday, my eyes were red and burning, from staying up and staring at the screen all day. I had spent many hours writing technical reports, and intensely using both right and left sides of my brain, to function effectively in my grant and program writing evaluations. I decided to take a break and watch something banal, in order to distract my mind. Usually I go for something dramatic, scary, or filled with intrigue, so that I can get drawn in and ultimately distracted from the stress at hand. Playing tricks on my conscious mind to distract it.
Where better to watch random (sometimes useless) videos, on endless subjects than YouTube?
I quickly found a video interesting on the "Truth behind Scientology". It is a very interesting video (link below), and psychological exercise in a mass social experiment, into the inner workings of the mind. But that was not the most memorable thing to happen to me yet. It was not until I reached 20 minutes into the video documentary (total about 1 hr) that I was shocked to see how gruesomely distant the story got from its original intention. I would say it was 2 different stories pasted together, into one documentary. One had nothing to do with the other; that is to say--not in an obvious way for an audience. What I saw, was the documentary divert away from the mind control angle, and abuse inflicted by Scientology leaders on their flock, along with the massive elite protections they enjoy while doing it; to a profile of "The Beast of Belgium" Marc Detroux.
Who is Marc Dutroux? Born in Belgium, on November 6th 1956. He is a serial killer, child molester, and rapist. In 1986 he was arrested for kidnapping and raping five young girls. He was released after just 3 years out of a 13yr sentence, by Belgian Minister of Justice (which we would find out later was also part of the same pedophile ring). In 1992, just about 3 yrs after his release, Dutroux's own mother wrote to the Belgian prison director to state that she believed her son was keeping girls hostage and hidden in a cellar under his home; no one ever looked into it--until it was too late. 3 months later they were found dead. Failure of Justice? or Justified Failure in behavior due to his mental illness (obviously)? THIS was the memorable part of my day. Stumbling upon this discovery, was indeed a jewel in the study of the mind, and the "why" people do the things they do.
Consequently, this got me thinking along the following train of thought:
How broken does a mind have to be, in order to justify atrocities as normal? How detached from reality? What kind of pain does a mind have to endure before it cracks? Can one be born like this, with no empathy or regard for life, with sociopathic tendencies? Originally I was a contender of "inherited" wisdom, or knowledge of the mind, that could be passed down by DNA in the form of "genetic intelligence", and I still am in a way (more on that later); however recently, in my own children, I have noticed patterns of behavior that have NOT met this criteria. In my opinion, as a product of their environmental surroundings, developed while away from me for several years, my children lost or "shunned" (or stunted) their inherit genetic intelligence and in turn exhibited behaviors abnormal to our flock. I will give you an example of what I do NOT mean. The son or daughter of a law enforcement officer, that constantly get into trouble with the law. This is exhibiting defiance and psychological behavior that is relevant to personal and sociological reasons. Instead, I refer to the child of a genius, that grows up in a nurturing and educationally induced environment, and still falls off the map on a level less than average. When a mind that is primed for input, whether by genetic design or environmental factors, it is like the saying goes..."it's just like riding a bike; you never forget." So how then is it, that one can fall into such disrepair of the mind, and then willfully dull or dampened the senses? Or is there by definition no answer to this question, because indeed we do NOT posses genetic intelligence, and all intelligence is learned by environment. What do you think?
Let us not stop here in our pondering of the mind. We have explored the dark recesses, now let us explore the opposite side of the spectrum--being a genius. Quite provocative, and and enigma all by itself as a concept. What constitutes a genius? How can ONE person have such extraordinary abilities, while others remain "average"? Let us look into the phenomena of the Genius.
What makes a Genius or Savant? In 2002, outside a karaoke bar near Tacoma Washington, a man was attacked and brutally assaulted, sustaining head injuries that would later render him a mathematical genius, after awakening in the hospital. "I see shapes and angles everywhere in real life" — from the geometry of a rainbow, to the fractals in water spiraling down a drain, Padgett told Live Science. "It's just really beautiful." Apparently, the head trauma sustained unlocked a part of Padget's brain, that allows him to see everything that surrounds him in a mathematical structure.
There are other cases of sudden genius...
In 2006, 39yr old Derek Amato sustained a head injury, when he slammed head first into a concrete pool floor. Emerging as a musical prodigy, Amato was diagnosed with "Aquired Savant Syndrome". He states he suffers from severe headaches, abnormal vision, and he only feels at peace and calm when he plays music; like many other geniuses (or savants) that inherently develop OCD or a compulsion to perform, produce, or use their skill.
John Sarkin, a chiropractor that developed a brain tumor and after brain surgery became a "Savant". Suddenly after his stroke he saw the world differently, more vivdly, and he developed an obsession to create art; becoming a famous contemporary American artist.
According to Berit Brogaard, a neuro-scientist and philosophy professor at the Center for Neurodynamics at the University of Missouri–St. Louis, and her colleagues scanned Padget's brain to understand how he acquired his genius, and said "Acquired savant syndrome is very rare," adding that only 15 to 25 reported cases have ever been described in medical studies. Her research contends that when brain cells die, they release a barrage of neurotransmitters, and this deluge of potent chemicals may actually rewire parts of the brain, opening up new neural pathways into areas previously unavailable.
"Our hypothesis is that we have abilities that we cannot access," Brogaard says. "Because they are not conscious to us, we cannot manipulate them. Some reorganization takes place that makes it possible to consciously access information that was there, lying dormant."
Allan Snyder, a neuro-scientist at the University of Sydney in Australia. Since 1999, Snyder has focused his research on studying how their brains function. He's also pressed further into speculative territory than most neuro-scientists feel comfortable: He is attempting to produce the same outstanding abilities in "normal" people with "undamaged" brains.
In 2013, Snyder published what many consider to be his most substantive work. He and his colleagues gave 28 volunteers a geometric puzzle that has stumped laboratory subjects for more than 50 years. The challenge: Connect nine dots, arrayed in three rows of three, using four straight lines without retracing a line or lifting the pen. None of the subjects could solve the problem. Then Snyder and his colleagues used a technique called transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS). The noninvasive technique, which is commonly used to evaluate brain damage in stroke patients, delivers a weak electrical current to the scalp through electrodes, depolarizing or hyperpolarizing neural circuits until they have slowed to a crawl. After tDCS, more than 40 percent of the participants in Snyder's experiment solved the problem.
The experiment, Snyder argues, supports the hypothesis that the abilities observed in acquired savants emerge once brain areas normally held in check have become unfettered. *The crucial role of the left temporal lobe, he believes, is to filter what would otherwise be a dizzying flood of sensory stimuli, sorting them into previously learned concepts. These concepts, or what Snyder calls mind-sets, allow humans to see a tree instead of all its individual leaves and to recognize words instead of just the letters. "How could we possibly deal with the world if we had to analyze, to completely fathom, every new snapshot?" he says.
Savants can access raw sensory information, normally off-limits to the conscious mind, because the brain's perceptual region isn't functioning. To solve the nine-dot puzzle, one must extend the lines beyond the square formed by the dots, which requires casting aside preconceived notions of the parameters. "Our whole brain is geared to making predictions so we can function rapidly in this world," Snyder says.
"If something naturally helps you get around the filters of these mind-sets, that is pretty powerful."
Daniel Temmet, born January 1979 suffered severe seizures as a child, which he eventually out-grew after treatment. He is Autistic, and he is a savant who speaks 7 languages; once learning a new language in a few days. Temmet is a mathematical genius who can figure out cube roots quicker than a calculator and recall pi to 22,514 decimal places. About 10% of the autistic community is a savant, and about 1% of the non-autistic community is. What if the electric impulses from the seizure, and/or the medical treatment, led to Temmet's savant abilities, just as a severe brain trauma "triggered" those in others?
Theory of Meta-Humans: The Savant Origin Story
Though I am a serious academic (I promise you!), I am also a great fan of science fiction, and the great story telling of Jules Verne, whom would come to inspire contemporary writers like Gene Rodenberry (Creator of Star Trek), and comic book counterparts. Consequently, sci-fi captures me because of the archetypes that can be seen in the profiles of the characters, and the process which is entailed in the "art" of writing or creating a new piece. I am fan of comic books in particular, due to the intricacy of the plots and the details in the background information offered about situations or protagonists. This is called an Origin Story.
In particular, Meta-Humans and their origins are of relevance to this discussion. In the DC comics universe (realm of stories), Meta-Humans are "enhanced" human beings, which for a myriad reasons (usually after a freak event/accident/stress), they suddenly develop "super-human" powers (abilities). Ring a bell? The equivalent for this term in the Marvel comic universe is In-Humans; in which innate "dormant" abilities lie asleep (in certain individuals), that manifest themselves as the subject experiences trauma or exposure to certain phenomenon. Is this what happened to the sudden "activated" savants of this story so far? Is this THEIR origin story? are they the first recorded (in modern times) cases of Meta-Humans? Leaving all "fantastic" notions of "Alien DNA" and sci-fi rants, think like a philosopher and like a scientist. Think of the 'why?' and think of the theories behind this line of thought, and think of the idea as a hypothesis based on facts. Facts that may be embellished and taken into the realm of sci-fi. But even in every lie there is a grain of truth.
Albert Einstein, the consequential image of the modern genius, did not speak until he was three years old. It has been proposed that the expansion of his parietal lobes, especially in his speech-dominant left hemisphere, in effect intruded on his language areas; early language function was usurped by precocious mathematical and visuo-spatial capacities. Leaving behind the folklore figure of a genius who was slow to speak, Einstein’s early academic path showed great promise; he received the highest or next-highest marks in mathematics and Latin. In 1896, as a prerequisite to enrollment at Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule in Zurich, he obtained the Matura (a high school diploma) with superior grades in mathematics and the sciences but less than excellent results in technical and artistic drawing and geography. It becomes difficult to envision Einstein’s parietal lobe as the crucial element in his key theoretical constructs. Our senses cannot detect the curvature of space (as in the theory of general relativity) or the infinitesimal changes in time and dimension that occur with the velocities encountered in daily existence (as in the theory of special relativity). Einstein’s discoveries were not based on direct sensory experience but were pure thought experiments performed in his imagination. Such experiments are not easily reconciled with the current view of the parietal lobe as a provider of strategies to interact with and integrate direct sensory input from outside oneself.
Einstein was undeniably a genius, but to qualify him as a parietal genius is premature, based on our current and relatively primitive understanding of cortical function. Anthropologists assert that the great leap in technological sophistication, widespread cave art, clothes, and stereotyped dwellings occurred around 40 thousand years ago, even though the brain achieved its present size almost a million years earlier. We may follow a cultural mandate in studying the brain of a genius, but gaps in our knowledge of the physical and structural basis of cognition are humbling. What if there was another explanation? What if there are a combination of factors that make a genius, and therefore brain is NOT mind, and though "Genius" requires the right hardware, there are other factors at play in downloading information? Some people propose this theory as "The Collective Unconscious".
What is The Collective Unconscious?
Carl Jung, a modern psychiatrist that founded the principles we use today in analytical psychology, coined the tern The Collective Unconscious. Jung asserts that the term represents a form of the unconscious (that part of the mind containing memories and impulses of which the individual is not aware) common to mankind as a whole and originating in the inherited structure of the brain. It is distinct from the personal unconscious, which arises from the experience of the individual. According to Jung, the collective unconscious contains archetypes, or universal primordial images and ideas. The collective unconscious is an universal datum, that is, every human being is endowed with this psychic archetype-layer since his/her birth. One can not acquire this strata by education or other conscious effort because it is innate. We may also describe it as a universal library of human knowledge (that lays mostly dormant), the very transcendental wisdom that guides mankind without our "conscious" knowing.
The Greeks believed that they were inspired by the "muses". This meant that when the muse (whom was a spirit of inspiration) was present, it was believed that they entered the individual, and then they were "Inspired" to create something grand or amazingly creative. Something worthy of a genius. If we break down the meaning and the etymology of the word "inspire" then "in-spirit" comes to mind! Filled with spirit (i.e. ideas). To this date, we say as writers/musicians/creative types "I am looking for my muse", implying we are looking for the keys to the kingdom of ideas that resides within each and every human being. Is it possible that by reaching this altered state of consciousness (untapped regions of our brain) we can come in contact with this collective of thoughts and knowledge, as a repository (pre-loaded), like a server, in an "idea" web? Perhaps only accessible to geniuses or savants?
The word genius originally derived from a Latin word meaning, ‘attendant spirit present from one's birth, innate ability or inclination,’ The original sense ‘tutelary spirit attendant on a person’ gave rise to a sense that ‘a person's characteristic disposition’ (late 16th century), which led to a sense of ‘a person's natural ability for unnaturally exceptional tasks’ (mid 17th century), hence bringing us to our modern definition of a genius being extraordinary, though we have forgotten the original insinuation that the ’genius’ did not come from an individual’s brain, rather there is a notion that this ’access’ to inspiration comes from an outside influence, as implied by the definition of the ’attendant spirit’, following the train of thought of the muse in Greek mythology. Is there any credence to the theory?
Albert Einstein had the ideas that inspired his theory of relativity (E = mc 2) in a dream, as he often cited was his process for solving complex formulas.
In 1865, Friedrich August Kekulé solved the riddle of the benzene molecule while in a day dream trance. Then there is the amazing story of brilliant Russian chemist Dimitri Mandeleev, whom discovered the periodic table of elements. Of his inspiration, Mandeleev is not shy to say... “In a dream I saw a table where all the elements fell into place as required. Awakening, I immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper.”
There is a Hindu belief in a collective unconscious of their own, which they believe contains a matrix of consciousness where all gnosis that is, and ever was, is present and existent available to anyone that can access its database, the subject of which (on how to obtain that) is of great debate. The virtual ethereal repository is called the Akashic records, or Book of Life. It is said that only those chosen by the gods may enter this realm, or those whom have obtained enlightenment also roam that realm of consciousness, which functions on a higher plane of existence, as is the tradition in the Hindu belief system.
Modern research studies also suggest that Alpha waves in the brain are produced when a person is in a state of calm, or trance, indicating no immediate conscious thought, but implying that the brain is accessing other realms of function. It has been suggested that geniuses have an innate ability to manipulate the intensity, or are more receptive by design, to alpha waves, which in turn may be the frequency of access to the repository of genius. Like a receptor that is activated, or virtual antenna that grows out of the psyche of our mind, altered by the structure of the brain. Deep stuff!
Now let me throw a monkey wrench in this grand theory we just tied up neatly in a bow; What about the geniuses that accessed the collective at the same time, for the same idea? Like the collective has a mind of its own, and it wants an idea or theme to manifest at given intervals of time. In February 1876, Alexander Gram Bell applied for a U.S.patent on a harmonic telegraph, a device that can transmit vocal sounds. At the same time, Elisha Grey, another scientist, had previously filed for the same type of device, which would eventually become the modern telephone. In fact, the synchronicities were so over the top, that each genius accused the other of stealing their ideas, and even went as far as suing each other in court; only to have the courts decide it had been a case of independent simultaneous invention (download). Curiously, simultaneous invention is not that uncommon.
On 1922, two Columbia University sociologists, William Ogburn and Dorothy Thomas, published an academic paper entitled Are inventions inevitable? Their research found at least 148 instances of simultaneous invention, all without knowing of their counterparts research or process. Ogburn and Thomas concluded, that if the geniuses had died and never made public their discoveries, or never even invented them, that another genius would thus be triggered by the collective to download, or invent that notion around the same time. Thus concluding. that maybe there is some sort of information floating in the air, that perhaps some human beings, like geniuses, have access to. What is your opinion?
Steve Jobs, the inventor of Apple and the iPhone, openly says that he first got the ideas, for what would transform the world as we knew it with technology, while meditating in a Zen Buddhist temple in the California Mountains. He constantly performed zen meditation, as he says he felt his thoughts quiet down and his mind gain access to other realms of inspiration, which existed outside his body. "Your mind just slows down and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more, than you could see before." Did Steve Jobs inadvertently, in the creation of the iPhone, mirror the macrocosm of the human consciousness and how it functions? In giving the world the iCloud, as a repository of data, and in giving user interface through a qualified device, is this perhaps a parallel to how we access the collective or the Akashic records. In that, the theory states that just because you own an iPhone it does not mean it holds all the knowledge of collective society within it, however it CAN connect to the internet, where it will have access to the raw data. Thus, the iPhone is the right hardware, to interface or access the internet data, similar to the genius that has access to invention or creative innovation.
Now fast forward two days later, after our story first starts with my eyes burning, from being over worked. After 2 days of pondering all the above discussion, I again find myself engulfed in a task. This time it was a philosophy book, and I was reading about Truth. In it, the opening chapter reads: 'What is Truth? And then the paragraph starts... In 2002 a Belgian jury found Marc Dutroux guilty of murder....' What?--Synchronicity anyone?--The article goes on to discuss an officer's testimony in court that stated that he had left evidence for the judge to review in regards to evidence to issue a warrant, and the judge lied about never receiving it, insisting it was hand delivered to his office. The judge, on the other hand, states under oath that he never received such video evidence, and that he did not abscond any evidence, he simply did not get it. Each accused the other of corruption and bias. The argument placed in front of me was there are objective truths, relative to the individual whom experiences them. That there is no transcendent truth, and that in fact there are only partial truths and that Truth is relative. In the book I was asked to analyze the following statement, and this got my wheels turning... (I promise this all relates to our discussion--hang in there.)
Do you think that there are two kinds of truth, subjective and objective, truth as an individual perceives it, and truth as it actually is?
This was my official answer:
Yes I do believe there are two kinds of truths. As the text relates, I am in agreement that Truth is relative to the one who experiences it. And two people may experience the same truth differently. Consequently, if each individual has been subjected to the exact same circumstance, how can both perceive it to be un-alike? The short answer is PERCEPTION. The longer version is a subject for another post (that is the PERCEPTION of reality subjective to the persona of the individual as the experiencer). So to re-cap, subjectively the truth belongs to each of us alone, and while will concur others will undoubtedly not agree.
Objectively, there exists another truth, and ultimate truth; hence the role of the "Judge" or "Arbiter". By definition this truth implies to be related to, and inevitably linked to the material facts and truths of both language and experience. It is a way of looking at things from "an outside perspective" as an observer, much employing the Socratic method in rational questioning, in order to obtain what is perceived as the ultimate truth. Under this theorem our justice system is supposed to be based on. Most of our system comes from the ancient Athenians, which we know were influenced by the great thinkers-geniuses of the day (i.e. Socrates and others.. hint hint)
“. . . the mind connects and unifies its sensations into a unified world of interrelated objects because it must.” Does this remind you of Dr. Allan Snyder? *
I believe that the mind is a thinking thing, in other words, it wants to "make sense" of what it sees, feels, or experiences. Similar to the way that we have invented computers to function. There are parameters that the brain follows to compute the experiences that we take in. When something is out of context, or it does not make sense, our mind goes into "does not compute" mode, and this translates to migraines, strokes, and all sorts of other physical manifestations of this dilemma. SO in my opinion, the statement implies, that because the mind has tendency to look for or correlate experiences to the "sensible" world it knows, it will always seek to make order of the chaos.
How does George Berkeley's theory of Subjective Idealism support or refute the ideas expressed in the statement?
Berkeley asserted that there is no reality but that which is experienced subjectively by the beholder. In that sense this statement would not be in support as it implies a "unity" of thought or absolute idealism. To what extent do the ideas of primary and secondary properties support or refute the quote? For Locke, primary qualities are those that are NOT related to the subject: Size, Shape, Solidity. Secondary properties are more the things that cause a sensation or reaction out of the subject: Color, Taste, Smell. Primary and Secondary properties therefore, would apply to this quote in that it states that the sensations of the mind are unified in the world of interrelated objects, and in turn these sensations could be attributed to , and or analyzed or perceived as primary and secondary to experience.
How do I know what I know? and the processes that we recognize as knowledge
Because I am a Rene Descartes die hard fan, I have to include him when discussing philosophical models. I am of the school of thought of his methods, although I do subscribe to some empirical ones, but my heart lies in rationalism. In regards to how we "know" what we know, it is hard to say. I used to be of the idea that most character traits or "quirks" are inherited, however we already discussed how I have concluded otherwise. Then there is the findings of William Ogburn and Dorothy Thomas in 1922. Hmmm....
I hypothesize that just EXPOSING a subject to the information is NOT enough to teach or learn how to be a genius inherently. That in order for the perceiver to LEARN or KNOW what you want them to, a click must occur in which the mind engages into physical action after the mental exercise is completed. This goes back to the singularity of the common traits of all geniuses, in my opinion they can all access this greater knowledge because something clicked in their brain to activate that ability. In addition, I can extend my theory to include that there is indeed an innate quality that lies dormant in most human beings, sleeping in the dark is this inaccessible WiFi router that needs a password to access the encrypted network of worldly gnosis, or as Carl Jung puts it, the very transcendental wisdom that guides mankind. Could this be so?
Synchronicities and Conclusions...
I promised you to tie this all up neatly in a bow. The fact is that I started this article for my blog, with the intention to only discuss the mind, both the dark recesses that entertain atrocities, and the opposite spectrum that is the phenomenon of being a genius, and all things knowledge. I am more interested in the thoughts behind the behaviors, and the archetypes we see repeated like patterns--left like clues in a puzzle--than the acts themselves that these opposite sides of the spectrum have performed. Yet, I at the beginning I throw a banal story about Marc Dutroux and it seems like it is out of context, and totally does not fit in with the rest of the subject matter--until it appears again towards the end of this article. But there was too much coincidence to ignore!
Now, understand that as a serious writer, what I should have done, and almost did, was delete all references to Dutroux, and compiled the article without that info. Instead, I felt it so essential to my point, that I left it in at the possible cost of loosing my readers in the beginning, and risking that not everyone might guess the inferred connection. Hence, why I chose to write this re-cap. The Dutroux phenomenon, as I have come to call it, floored me, especially as I ran across it as described, and let me add now an additional piece to the narrative... right after the Dutroux story had danced its way across my field of vision twice in one week, in unrelated circumstances, or content, I then had a moment of insight. There had to be a significance to the Dutroux story, a connection that I could not identify right away, like Dr. Snyder and his experiment on problem solving.
Finally, after I reached a point in my train of thought, and in my readings, when I was pointed to the collective unconscious--that is when it all came clear. It was my proof, my personal experience to attest to the phenomenon is REAL. Without knowing I had just been witness to the most amazing quirk in life, proof of living intelligence with a design. Not many get that validation in their life of a theory of that scope. It was as if the Universe was speaking to me. Yes I know it is cliche to use the words... but it is TRUE!
Maybe I am influenced by my spiritual beliefs, and maybe that is where my rationalism ends and my blind faith begins, but being part Native American and believing in traditional teachings does not allow me to think of the world, or the universe for that matter, in a jaded, or static way. I believe it is very similar in most native, or primal cultures. The Koori, whom are Australian aborigines, live in a primal reality that is all-encompassing including past, present, and future, all in one. The belief system is that creation was done in a realm of fluidity and this world was created in a more static form, where we have things and concepts like gravity, time, and space. We are constrained by those boundaries, unless we enter the dreamtime, through which all aspirations are possible. Not a day dream, or even a vivid dream, but more of a lucid dream, with qualities of having tangible events influencing connective events in real time on earth plane existence being manifested. That is the purpose of the discussion of Truth, and how it is relative.
Carl Jung stated that the religious experience must be linked with the experience of the archetypes of the collective unconscious. Thus, God himself is lived like a psychic experience of the path that leads one to the realization of his/her psychic wholeness. The collective unconscious - so far as we can say anything about it at all - appears to consist of mythological motifs or primordial images, for which reason the myths of all nations are its real exponents. In fact, the whole of mythology could be taken as a sort of projection of the collective unconscious... We can therefore study the collective unconscious in two ways, either in mythology or in the analysis of the individual. (From The Structure of the Psyche, CW 8, par. 325.)
I think we know what we know NOT by the perceptions we walk away with, but with the actions we sense and experience instead.
On Feb. 25, 1953, in a letter to Carl Seelig, the Swiss author and journalist who wrote a biography of Albert Einstein. Jung wrote, "Professor Einstein was my guest on several occasions at dinner. . . These were very early days when Einstein was developing his first theory of relativity [and] It was he who first started me on thinking about a possible relativity of time as well as space, and their psychic conditionality. More than 30 years later the stimulus led to my relation with the physicist professor W. Pauli and to my thesis of psychic synchronicity."
Following discussions with both Albert Einstein and Wolfgang Pauli, Jung believed that there were parallels between synchronicity and aspects of relativity theory and quantum mechanics. Jung was transfixed by the idea that life was not a series of random events but rather an expression of a deeper order, which he and Pauli referred to as Unus mundus. This deeper order led to the insights that a person was both embedded in an orderly framework and was the focus of that orderly framework and that the realization of this was more than just an intellectual exercise, but also had elements of a spiritual awakening. From the religious perspective, synchronicity shares similar characteristics of an "intervention of grace". Jung also believed that in a person's life, synchronicity served a role similar to that of dreams, with the purpose of shifting a person's egocentric conscious thinking to greater wholeness.
So what do you believe now? To be or not to be, suddenly is not the question... but the answer!