"In the City of God there will be a great thunder. Two brothers are torn
apart by chaos, while the fortress endures. The great leader will succumb. The
third big war will begin when the New City is burning. In the year of the new
century and nine months, from the sky will come a great King of Terror. The sky
will burn at forty five degrees.
Fire approaches the great New City" (Quatrains X.72, VI.79). These words seem
to describe the destruction that hit New York City on 11 September 2001. The
"two brothers torn apart by chaos" appear to be the twin towers of the World
Trade Center which collapsed in the attack. "The fortress endures" might be the
Pentagon Building, which sustained heavy damage during the terrorist operation.
"The great leader" could refer to Osama bin Laden, "wanted dead or alive",
according to U.S. President George Bush, who blamed the prominent Islamic figure
for terrorism against America. In September, 2001, "the year of the new century
and nine months", the sky-jacked airliners come "from the sky", and "fire
approaches the New City". New York City?
The extraordinary feature of this quotation is that it was spoken nearly half
a millennium before the event it portrayed. The source of this exceptional
prediction was a most remarkable man. Born Michel de Nostredame in Saint-Remy,
France, 14 December 1503, Nostradamus is history's most famous astrologer.
During his mid-forties, he began making prophecies, which were first published
in 1555. They are composed of rhymed quatrains, or four-lined stanzas, grouped
in hundreds; each set of a hundred quatrains was identified as a "Century".
For the last 500 years, the "Centuries" of Nostradamus have gained
international attention for many predictions that have allegedly come to pass,
and especially because those which are yet unfulfilled seem strangely relevant
to our time. His apparently prophetic statement about the September, 2001
terrorist attack on New York City forms the first half of a meaningful
coincidence. Such a phenomenon occurs when two or more seemingly disconnected
events cross paths to create a previously unsuspected, significant relationship.
According to a report in "The Southern Illinoisian", three days after the
World Trade Center disaster, David Severin, the owner of a display store in the
town of Benton, received an order for forty small American flags. Due to
patriotic fervor in wake of the attack, however, flags were nowhere to be
obtained, and he was unable to fill the purchase request. Soon after reluctantly
turning down the order, Severin got another phone call, this time from his
mother.
"It was strange that I had just hung up the phone with somebody that was
looking for flags," he said, "and she calls asking if I know anybody looking for
flags". She had forty of them, the precise number requested by Severin's
customer. His mother had been going through the personal effects of her late
husband, when she found the flags. Despite their age of more than three decades,
they had never been unwrapped and were in pristine condition. Remarkably, their
sales ticket, likewise preserved, indicated that the flags had been sent from
New York City on 11 September 1970 --- thirty one years to the day that New
York's Twin Towers were destroyed. No less incredibly, the customer who ordered
the forty flags resided at the same house address where Severin's late father
lived at the time he received the package of flags that were never opened. These
were the kinds of inexplicable, although common events investigated by the great
Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung. He devoted the last twenty five years of his life
to the research of meaningful coincidences --- those always unexpected,
apparently random moments in which we find ourselves at the crossroads of
seemingly disconnected events which suddenly, always unexpectedly flash with
personal significance. Synchronicity implies that our linear concept of time is
only relative to our earthly existence. The universe runs on a different
timetable and breaks through to or interfaces with our human realm only in
instances of meaningful coincidence. Jung found that incorporating such events
into therapy generated invariably positive, sometimes transforming results among
his patients.
At an early stage of his investigation into the phenomena, he might of have
agreed with the noted Egyptologist, John Anthony West, who observed that "a
determination to see connections everywhere may be absurd, but it is no more
absurd than the equal and opposite determination to see connections nowhere".
Jung's book, Synchronicity, described some of his cases, in which meaningful
coincidence was used as a tool that often provided his clients with feelings of
connectedness to a spiritual reality more experienced than seen.
Although geared toward reaching a general audience, my book, "There Are No
Coincidences" (MD: PublishAmerica), follows Jung's lead in recognizing
meaningful coincidence as the modern-day mystical experience which everyone, not
only Jung's sufferers from chronic neuroses, need to connect with the spiritual
reality that pervades all existence. This investigation defines the phenomenon
in rich anecdotal material, such as the Titanic disaster, which attracted a
constellation of synchronicity never described so thoroughly before.
"There Are No Coincidences" informs readers how they may interpret the often
puzzling elements in synchronicity. These details include the significance of
recurring numbers, and how we may discover our parallel lives. The intimate
secret of synchronous phenomena and their fundamental mechanism lie within each
human being; this is the chakra system, comprising seven major energy-centers
rising along the human spinal column. Re-examining our chakras in the context of
meaningful coincidence reveals that each one corresponds to a human personality
type. In fact, they are nothing more than expressions of the chakras all
individuals carry within themselves. We examine each chakra, define its
personality, and associate it with a particular deity and gemstone that best
exemplifies its qualities. The natural spiritual organization that thus emerges
demonstrates a fundamental relationship underpinning not only all mankind, but
beyond to a spiritual reality linking every individual human being to the
illimitable organizing power of existence.
The ultimate purpose of Synchronicity is integrating our spiritual vortexes
with mystical experiences through meaningful coincidence. "It is this experience
of the infinite that cuts through every moment in time," according to Mark
Thurston, the 21st Century biographer of Edgar Cayce, the previous Century's
most famous psychic. "Once we perceive that unity links the apparent differences
in life, then it's our challenge to return to the world of distinctions and
apply what we have learned as practical mystics. We can bring this sense of
oneness to everything we do ... We are born to bring the creative, spiritual
world into the daily material world --- 'making the infinite finite'. ... each
of us is born with a personal mission, a 'soul purpose' ... There is an aspect
of service to soul-purpose, a sense of making a contribution to the world."
The current, or fourteenth Dalai Lama likewise believes that the perception
of the underlying inter-relatedness of the universe is the key to fulfilling our
true purpose in life, and, through and beyond that, to attaining spiritual
illumination. "Whoever sees the interdependent nature of reality," he says,
"sees the dharma. And whoever sees dharma, sees Buddha. The universal truth is
interconnectedness."
Dharma is Sanskrit signifying the work most appropriate for a particular
human being. It is the path, task or mission that is uniquely true for him or
her in the service of their own inner truth. For Tibetan Buddhists like the
Dalai Lama, "seeing the Buddha" is a manner of saying that they have "seen the
light"; i.e., achieved enlightenment. To be sure, anyone who experiences
Synchronicity and fully appreciates its mystery will "see Buddha"; i.e., the
"Awakened or Enlightened One".
In "There Are No Coincidences", readers learn how to apply this "modern day
mystical experience" toward unraveling the singular mystery of their own lives
and unique destiny.
Copies of Frank Joseph's "There Are No Coincidences" are available from ---
http://www.publishamerica.com, or http://www.amazon.com
Copyright 2007 by Frank Joseph
All rights reserved.
Reprinted with permission.
