‘Boy, this happens all the time…’. That's what Ian Read, The famous South African wilderness guide, said during our podcast ‘Leaders into the Wild’ #10. Niek and I talked to him about synchronicity, either 'significant coincidence’.
As an introduction I had asked Ian what happens when we are in the circle with the ‘talking stick'. Ian antwoordde: ‘In that little circle, that microcosmos, the whole macrocosmos is reflected. Every time to sit in that circle, and to be connected to everyone, the words which then come out are the truth. If you see their faces, they don’t even know where the words came from. Everyone takes the time to speak and listen deeply from the heart. And listen to what is not being said at all. The earth, the cosmos, is speaking back, is backing up what people say and feel. People are getting meaning from things that are happening around them.’
Ian said that when one of the participants experienced a deep transformation moment, a large swarm of white butterflies circled above the group. And also when someone experienced a huge inner strength, an elephant walked past the group. What is stronger than an elephant?
In my PhD research I have shown that such defining moments or peak experiences always stay with you. They are stored in episodic memory and resurface every time in your life, right at moments that matter. They then give direction to your leadership.
Psychoanalyst Carl Jung (1875 -1965) was the first to delve into synchronicity. Jung came into conversation about this, or rather, in a years – long exchange of letters, with physicist Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958). Pauli himself was also a regular ‘victim’ of synchronicity, so much so that a physical phenomenon is named after him: the Pauli effect. Pauli was a theorist. However, scientific equipment broke down remarkably often in the presence of Pauli. So often even that some experimentalists denied Pauli access to their lab.
In their mutual correspondence, Jung came up with a model that they called unus mundus (‘One World’). The world we perceive is only one aspect of reality, namely the tangible, physical aspect. The psychic part, formed by consciousness and the collective unconscious, is another – complementary – part of reality.
Building on this recently, Alberto Kastrup PhD, phd, with a sharp increase in acclaim from renowned, international scientific circles, argues that everything comes from Universal Consciousness: The entire material universe is the outward manifestation of universal consciousness.
That might be suggested as follows. We, as living beings, are separate waves dancing on the ocean of Universal Consciousness. We are separately recognizable and at the same time part of that ocean. Sometimes the boundaries of the waves become somewhat porous and we feel deep connection with the other, with the big picture, with everything in nature. For example, with peak experience in nature during a trail, with deep meditation, with yoga, near-death experience, or with out-of-body experiences. Perhaps Jung and now Kastrup have lifted a hint of the veil of the mystery of consciousness with these far-reaching hypotheses.
Thus, it seems that in the ocean of universal consciousness synchronicity has free rein and it falls to us if we are open to it.
Boy Van Droffelaar, PhD
