When the Impossible Happens Read Online Free PDF Page B

dreams, which play such a crucial role in psychoanalysis—are truly, using Freud’s words, a “royal road into the unconscious.” And right there and then, I decided to dedicate my life to the study of non-ordinary states of consciousness.

PART 1: THE MYSTERY OF SYNCHRONICITY: Twilight of the Clockwork Universe

    Many of us have experienced instances in our lives when the seemingly logical and predictable fabric of everyday reality, woven from complex chains of causes and effects, seems to tear apart, and we experience stunning and highly implausible coincidences. During episodes of holotropic states of consciousness—holotropic meaning “moving toward wholeness”—these violations of linear causality can occur so frequently that they raise serious questions about the worldview with which we have all grown up. Since this extraordinary phenomenon plays an important role in many stories described in this book, I will briefly discuss its relevance for the understanding of the nature of reality, consciousness, and the human psyche.

    The scientist who brought the problem of meaningful coincidences defying rational explanation to the attention of academic circles was the Swiss psychiatrist C.G. Jung. Aware of the fact that unswerving belief in rigid determinism represented the cornerstone of the Western scientific worldview, he hesitated for more than twenty years before making his discovery public. Expecting strong disbelief and harsh criticism from his colleagues, he wanted to be sure that he could back his heretic claims with hundreds of examples. He finally described his groundbreaking observations in his famous essay entitled “Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle” (Jung 1960).

    Jung began his essay with examples of extraordinary coincidences occurring sometimes in everyday life. He acknowledged the Austrian Lamarckian biologist Paul Kammerer, whose tragic life was popularized in Arthur Koestler’s book The Case of the Midwife Toad (Koestler, 1971), as one of the first people to be interested in this phenomenon and its scientific implications. One of the remarkable coincidences Kammerer had reported involved a situation wherein one day his streetcar ticket bore the same number as the theater ticket he bought immediately afterward. In addition, later that evening, the same sequence of digits was given to him as a telephone number for which he had asked.

    In the same work, Jung also related the amusing story told by the famous French astronomer Flammarion about a certain Monsieur Deschamps and a special kind of plum pudding. As a boy, Deschamps was given a piece of this rare pudding by a Monsieur de Fontgibu. For the ten years that followed, he had no opportunity to taste this delicacy until he saw the same pudding on the menu of a Paris restaurant. He asked the waiter for a serving, but it turned out that the last piece of the pudding had already been ordered and eaten by Monsieur de Fontgibu, who just happened to be in the same restaurant at that time.

    Many years later, Monsieur Deschamps was invited to a party where this pudding was served as a special treat. While he was eating it, he remarked that the only thing lacking was Monsieur de Fontgibu, who had introduced him to this delicacy and had also been present during his second encounter with it in the Paris restaurant. At that moment, the doorbell rang and an old man walked in looking very confused. It was Monsieur de Fontgibu, who burst in on the party by mistake because he had been given the wrong address for the place to which he was supposed to go.

    The existence of such extraordinary coincidences is difficult to reconcile with the understanding of the universe developed by materialistic science, which describes the world in terms of chains of causes and effects. And the probability that something like this would happen by chance is clearly so infinitesimal that it cannot be seriously considered as an explanation. It is certainly easier to