Synchronicity as a Bridge to Collective Identity:

Shared Orbits in Lifes Journey

by
Ryan George

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of

Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology

Pacifica Graduate Institute

3 March 2015

ii

2015 Ryan George

All rights reserved

iii

I certify that I have read this paper and that in my opinion it conforms to acceptable
standards of scholarly presentation and is fully adequate, in scope and quality, as a
product for the degree of Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology.

____________________________________
Allen Koehn, D. Min., L.M.F.T.
Portfolio Evaluator

On behalf of the thesis committee, I accept this paper as partial fulfillment of the
requirements for Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology.

____________________________________
Sukey Fontelieu, Ph.D., L.M.F.T.
Research Associate

On behalf of the Counseling Psychology program, I accept this paper as partial

fulfillment of the requirements for Master of Arts in Counseling Psychology.

____________________________________
Avrom Altman, M.A., L.M.F.T., L.P.C.
Director of Research

iv

Synchronicity as a Bridge to Collective Identity:

Shared Orbits in Lifes Journey
by Ryan George
Synchronicity occurs during times of transition: births and deaths, crises and
transformations. It bridges the material and immaterial worlds of matter and mind
through a correspondence of meaning. This experience leaves an indelible mark for
many, and it has important implications for the issue of connectedness in contemporary
society, and for individual and collective experience. The concept of synchronicity is
explored from the work and life of Carl Jung and from the theories of psychologists,
physicists, and philosophers. Parallels from research in quantum physics, field theory,
emergence, cultural and collective identity, and paranormal phenomena are also
examined. Using alchemical hermeneutic and artistic-creative methodologies, the author
examines the intersection of individual and collective experience in part through the
submission of a creative, fictional story, as a representative study of synchronistic
experience.

Acknowledgments
I wish to thank my teachers Allen Koehn, Nino Maiani, and Jamie Hollomon.
Thank you for your guidance, support, and at times, for a much needed push. You
inspired me to share my story and to make my own contribution to the field. Many
thanks, too, for the tremendous staff at the Pacifica Graduate Institute, for their hard work
and all they do to benefit students and create a wonderful atmosphere. To my cohort, I
want to convey so much that cannot be expressed. I learned from each of you along our
shared path, and I felt deeply accepted in all my guises and imperfections. I will always
be grateful.

vi

Dedication
To my parents, Landon and Elsie, who encouraged me to follow my dreams. To
my grandfather, Richard Levin, who was with me in dark hours and who is with me still.

vii

Table of Contents
Chapter I
Introduction ..................................................................................................1
Signposts ..................................................................................................................2
Setting the Stage ......................................................................................................3
Guiding Purpose.......................................................................................................7
Rationale ..................................................................................................................9
Methodology ..........................................................................................................10
The Research Problem ...............................................................................10
The Research Questions .............................................................................10
Methodological Approach .........................................................................11
Limitations .................................................................................................11
Ethical Concerns ....................................................................................................12
Overview of Thesis ................................................................................................12
Chapter II
Literature Review.......................................................................................14
Overview ................................................................................................................14
A Personal Encounter ............................................................................................15
Supporting Evidence ..............................................................................................16
The Meaning Factor ...............................................................................................18
A Bridge to the Collective .....................................................................................21
The Unseen Field ...................................................................................................22
A Unifying Force ...................................................................................................25
Greater Purpose ......................................................................................................29
Chapter III

Synopsis of a Collective Story: The Writers Group .............................34

Chapter IV
Conclusion .................................................................................................37
Summary ................................................................................................................43
Further Research ....................................................................................................45
Afterword ...............................................................................................................46
Appendix: The Writers Group ......................................................................................49
References ..........................................................................................................................81

Chapter I
Introduction
Some journeys choose us.
Feiler, B., 2005, p. 35
A journey begins with a step and the wonders that lie ahead: The sublime joys, the
rending sorrows, all the great triumphs and tragedies, lie in wait, mere glimmers in the
minds eye. In her memoir, Beryl Markham (1942), one of the first African bush pilots,
wrote,
I have learned that if you must leave a place that you have lived in and loved and
where all your yesteryears are buried deep, leave it any way except a slow way,
leave it the fastest way you can. Never turn back and never believe that an hour
you remember is a better hour because it is dead. Passed years seem safe ones,
vanquished ones, while the future lives in a cloud, formidable from a distance.
(p. 131)
In a similar vein, the fantasy writer J. R. R. Tolkien (2012) wrote that its a dangerous
business . . . going out of your door [and] there is no knowing where you might be swept
off to (p. 82).
Our sojourns are not without risk or danger, and we are threatened as much in a
psychological sense as in a physical one. An inner journey parallels the outer. What one
discovers, then, could be seen as an expansion of both worlds, and yet as the founder of
analytical psychology, Carl Gustav Jung (1917/1928), wrote, The ways that lead to
consciousness are many . . . [and] there is no coming to consciousness without pain
(p. 193). We venture nonetheless. In light of the prospect of suffering, one might ask why

2
we do not stay in the known and in the secure. Along these lines, the depth psychologist,
James Hillman (1996), wrote that
sooner or later something seems to call us onto a particular path. You may
remember this something as a signal moment . . . when an urge out of nowhere,
a fascination, a peculiar turn of events struck like an annunciation: This is what I
must do, this is what Ive got to have. This is who I am. . . . If not this vivid or
sure, the call may have been more like gentle pushings in the stream in which you
drifted unknowingly to a particular spot on the bank. (p. 3)
A call is heard; an urge arises; one is pushed. As fellow travelers, we might consider,
then, how much we choose our journeys and how much we are chosen by them.
Signposts
The concept of synchronicity, which was introduced by Jung in 1929 (Jung,
1984), speaks to this interplay between ones volition and a sense of being led or
initiated. In short, synchronicity means that for a moment in time, a meaningful
relationship is created between ones subjective inner world and the objective outer world
(Jung, 1952/2014). Somehow in these instances, the individual life works in tandem with
the cosmos, and this psychophysical parallelism, (Jung, 1973, p. 546) is experienced as
meaningful coincidence (co-incidence) or co-occurrence. On one hand, then, there is
personal volition, and on the other, there are collectives, such as groups, society, and the
world. Between them lies this shared current and the push, perhaps, of something more.
The 16th-century poet and cleric John Donne (1999) described the relationship of the one
to the many like so: No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the
continent, a part of the main . . . any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved
in mankind (p. 63). As human beings, we all live in relation, and in the sense of
synchronicity, we might live in relation to collectives in which we play a part.

3
This thesis addresses the joining of personal and collective meaning by delving
into the concept of synchronicity as a bridge between the inner and outer world(s). What
follows is a brief synopsis of the emergence of synchronicity, a road map of sorts, in
order to place these ideas in context to the exploration of this thesis.
Setting the Stage
Beginning in the 17th century, the perspective of a meaningful universe was
uprooted by the concepts of classical mechanics and Newtonian physics (Combs &
Holland, 2001). From antiquity, the ubiquitous view of the world was that it held
underlying order and was composed of purposeful, interrelated, and essential parts. This
view was undermined with the acceptance of scientific laws that presupposed causal
relationships and that dismissed any evidence that could not be measured or pinned
down. The universe became empty. It was mere space, dotted with particles that struck
one another and matter that interacted according to fixed precepts. With the inception of
Albert Einsteins laws of relativity and the rise of quantum physics, however, the
Newtonian and purely mechanistic paradigms were found insufficient (Gribbin, 1984;
Combs & Holland, 2001).
On a fundamental level, nature could not be measured or defined exactly. If one
measured the momentum of a particle, for instance, then its location was uncertain, and
vice versa (Koestler, 1973). Matter could also exist in multiple states. Light, for example,
behaved as a particle (photon) in some experiments and as a wave in others. Matter
existed in a state of quantum potential, which was not fixed until it was observed in some
way (Gribbin, 1984). The world was governed, then, by outcomes that rested on

4
possibility and chance (see Gribbin, 1984; Wolf, 1994), and science was forced to
accommodate the relative and the uncertain, as well as chaotic and emergent properties.
Furthermore, matter was related by unseen, unknown forces. In one seminal
experiment (see Gribbin, 1984; Thaheld, 2003), two polarized photons were fired in
opposite directions. The two photons were correlated by being fired at the same time, and
as one photon was measured, its polarization became fixed. However, it was discovered
that the measurement also fixed the polarization of the other photon, which was now far
afield, traveling at the speed of light. The photons were not linked by any known physical
law, and yet information passed between them (Thaheld, 2003). As the astrophysicist
John Gribbin (1984) wrote, Some interaction links the two [photons] inextricably [and]
those particles seem to be inseparably connected into some indivisible whole, each aware
of what happens to the others (p. 4). Matter interacted in an irreducible way, as part of
an unseen order.
In one eloquent passage, Lao-Tzu, the legendary 6th-century BCE Chinese
philosopher and poet, described the relevance of the not-seen in the world:
We put thirty spokes together and call it a wheel;
But it is on the space where there is nothing that the utility of the wheel depends.
We turn clay to make a vessel;
But it is on the space where there is nothing that the utility of the vessel depends.
We pierce doors and windows to make a house;
And it is on these spaces where there is nothing that the utility of the house
depends.
Therefore just as we take advantage of what is, we should recognize the utility of
what is not. (As cited in Jung, 1952/2014, p. 487)
As important as the observed world was, there were other unseen components that were
critical and that defined the organization of matter. Observable matter, in fact, makes up
some 5% of the universe, whereas the other 95% is composed of unseen dark matter and

5
dark energy (Ferris, 2015, p. 112). Empty space is suffused with quantum fields, which
are literally everywhere (p. 122). Unseen is not empty. To explain the nature of the
largely unobservable universe, then, require[s] something new: a quantum theory of
space and gravitation (p. 123). This is uncertainty and acausality writ large, on a grand
scale. As the poet Rainer Maria Rilke (2009) wrote, We are not really at home in our
interpreted world (p. 3). The world, it might be said, resists reduction and
compartmentalization.
Further, Jung emphasized the relativity of physical laws of the universe via his
theory of synchronicity (Pauli & Jung, 1992/2001). Einstein had proposed that space-time
was relative, in part from how it was viewed by an observer. Jung proposed, too, that an
observer relativized space and time through interactions between the psyche and the
physical world (Jung, 1952/2014). For many years Jung collaborated with the Nobelprize winning physicist Wolfgang Pauli in the development of his theories (see
Atmanspacher, 2014; Atmanspacher & Fuchs, 2014; Lindorff, 2004; Pauli & Jung,
1992/2001), particularly in regard to the relationship between psyche and matter. Both
men felt that their respective fields were converging and that they were elucidating the
nature of reality from different perspectives (Jung, 1973, p. 546). Psyche entangled
matter, and vice versa. At base, both men conceived of the mental and the physical as
complementary states of the same underlying energy.
For his part, Jung (1952/2014) reestablished a link between the individual
(psyche) and the outside world, and that is where he stopped, for the most part, even as he
hinted at the individuals place in a greater pattern. A collective joining remained
nebulous. Nonetheless, Jung (1952/2014) did emphasize a collective aspect to the psyche,

6
from the inheritance of universal archetypesorganizers of psychic tendenciesand
with a collective unconscious that all individuals shared. These concepts, furthermore,
were analogous to field theory in which interactions took place within a shared medium
(Cambray, 2009).
Other researchers (see Cambray, 2002, 2009; Franz, 1980a, 1978/1980b, 1992;
Hogenson, 2009; Koestler, 1973) have conceived of the field concept as containing
underlying synchronicities, such as in regard to empathy and in group settings.
Neurobiological studies (see Iacobini, 2008) also support the role of a mediumsuch as
the brain or the social environmentin conveying change, and many studies have looked
at the aspect that mirror neurons play in shared psychic states. For instance, if one
observes the physical action of someone drinking water, then this observation activates a
cascade of mirror neurons in ones brain, as electrical signals, so that one internally
experiences the mental and physical act of drinking water (Iacobini, 2008). It is as if the
others intention inhabited my body (Merleau-Ponty, as cited in Iacobini, 2008, p. 78).
In that moment, another person inhabits and becomes part of oneself (Iacobini, 2008).
Specific areas of the brain become metabolically active, also, in response to thoughts and
feelings (Van Lommel, 2006, p. 143). The physical and the psychological commingle,
then, in ones experience of life. Moreover, the neurophysiologist and Nobel-laureate
John Eccles proposed that within the human body, neurotransmitters communicate across
synaptic gaps according to a probabilistic, rather than a fixed, model (Wolf, 1994). Just as
an observer in quantum physics fixes one state amid matters quantum potential, so might
ones mind make choices within the body from a range of neuraptic possibilities
(Thaheld, 2003; Wolf, 1994).

7
One is left to wonder, though, how does one go from a meaningful individual
experience of the world to shared meaningwith another human being or within a group
or culture? Namely, how might ones individual meaning interact with others presumed
meaningful, purposeful existences and is synchronicity still at play? Moreover, might
synchronicity manifest in order to bring individuals into collective relationships that form
group experience, identity, and purpose? I explore this aspect of synchronicity as a
bridge, not only to a meaningful relationship with the world but also as a connector to a
web of interrelations and groups in which human beings might find collective
significance.
Guiding Purpose
I have experienced synchronicities in my life, often during periods of transition.
The psychologist Richard Tarnas (2014, lecture) indicated that these events cluster at
specific times, during crises and transformations and following births and deaths. These
instances of birth and death can hold great meaning and be experienced as crises of
meaning, whereas transitions can be understood as psychic deaths (Aziz, 1990). A part of
the psyche needs to die or be left behind in order for change to occur (Tresan, 2004).
Loss can precede gain; death can precede birth. In any event, deeper meaning is needed
as the immediate ego perspective is often one of catastrophe (Aziz, 1990). As Jungs
protg, the psychologist Marie-Louise von Franz (1997) described, The ego complex
explodes (p. 121), during these periods of great emotional tension. Something more
comes into play.
Over the course of writing this thesis, I have also experienced several
synchronicities, seemingly in service of the work. The phenomenon, von Franz (1997)

8
wrote, frequently appears when one is gripped by a creative process, which is a kind of
emotional possession and the positive version of madness (p. 123). Also, over the
course of this process, I have encountered many individuals who have spontaneously
relayed their synchronistic experiences to me. I have not had to search for this
phenomenon. I only had to pay attention. When I have been able to maintain a curious
state of mind that is at once both attendant, in the sense of being aware, and detached, by
not forcing my perceptions into an egoic perspective, it seems easier to find this meaning
connection to the world.
These events have had a numinous quality in which I have felt myself to be a part
of something greater, and these moments have brought me closer to others and into
deeper relationship. The effect, then, has been to enrich my connection to others and to
the world. Yet synchronicity, as the psychotherapist and scholar Robert Aziz (1990)
wrote, does not make life easier. An expansion of consciousness also implies the
suffering of change and of leaving something behind. A greater reward implies greater
challenge, and perhaps more attention, integrity, and endurance are required to meet that
challenge. As von Franz (1997) wrote, the longer one follows this path, the more difficult
it becomes to tread. Initially, one can commit the most horrible sins of unconsciousness
without having to pay much for it (p. 114), but after a while any faux pas is an abysmal
catastrophe (p. 114). It is all these experiences that I wish to share. Others might relate
to synchronicity as an individual microcosm and perhaps, too, as a purposeful part of a
group in which the whole cannot be reduced to the sum of its parts. Logically, these
ideasone as a microcosm and one as playing a collective role in the One World
exclude one another. Nevertheless, they may both be true.

9
Rationale
The depth psychologist Roderick Main (2011) wrote of the re-enchantment of
society and how Jung sought to transform modernity rather than return to an earlier age.
Society would incorporate aspects of an earlier age, yet those insights would be
understood in a new way, in light of scientific discovery and in light of the present day.
Jung was deeply troubled by aspects of modern life, Main (2011) wrote, including the
depersonalizing effects of society and a stultifying mass-mindedness.
Others were troubled too. From his work with therapeutic groups, the humanistic
psychologist Carl Rogers (1970) wrote of symptoms of modern life, such as alienation
and disconnection from ones rootsfrom ones family and ancestors. The development
of group bonds would help people not to feel alone or adrift in society, and the creation of
collective identity would help foster compassion. The travails of others would be
relatable and irreducible from oneself. Individuals might cooperate and collaborate more,
also, by cultivating group identity and purpose (Rogers, 1970). Furthermore, perhaps
these group formulations, guided by empathic engagement, are creative synchronicities in
nature and are, as such, important to individual experience.
It is important to study this topic because it has the prospect of bringing human
beings into a deeper relationship with ourselves, others, and with the outside world. Much
of the benefit of therapy derives from improved relationship, with oneself and with a
therapist, for instance (B. Duncan, 2010). If one feels more accepting of oneself, and
others, and more aware of connections that he or she might have in the world via
synchronicity, then the world might be perceived as bettermore inclusive and less
threatening. Synchronicity engenders a sense of meaning and facilitates connection. By

10
understanding this phenomenon more clearly, the psychological well-being of individuals
and collectives in society can be promoted while new paths to fulfillment and purpose
might be discovered.
Methodology
The research problem. Jung (1952/2014) introduced synchronicity as
meaningful coincidence and as an acausal connecting principle that joins an individuals
inner, subjective experience with the outside world. These events are unique and creative
and are perceived subjectively (Jung, 1952/2014). Others have examined the junction
between the individual and the outer social order in terms of the synchronistic
matchmaker (Aziz, 1990, p. 203) and with the formation of ones soul-family (Franz,
1978/1980b, p. 177). Cultural synchronicities (Cambray, 2009) have also been studied, in
terms of how these events relate to modern life and shared meaning.
Since synchronicity is experienced subjectively, one way that it might be
perceived is through story and the illustration of experience. My own creative writing
could elucidate this more expansive reality, which joins the seemingly disparate interior
and exterior worlds through an equivalence of meaning. It might illustrate how strangers
and separate lives can be entwined through constellations of shared meaning and how
synchronicity might manifest and catalyze a group identity and narrative.
The research questions. The following questions will be the focus of the
exploration of this thesis: How might synchronicity affect a group of people and coalesce
a common purpose through an intersection of shared meaning? Furthermore, what effects
might this have on an individual basis and on a collective one?

11
Methodological approach. The methodology in this thesis is qualitative. It is a
combination of an alchemical hermeneutic approach (Romanyshyn, 2013) and an artisticcreative one (Barrett, 2004). I have been gripped by this topic for more than 20 years, and
the alchemical hermeneutic approach (Romanyshyn, 2013) posits, accordingly, that one
is first chosen by the research (p. 62). The unfinished business in the soul of the work is
differentiated from egoic demands upon it (p. 65), and the re-search process is a returning (p. 74) and a re-membering (p. 78) of knowledge that is already known at some
level. The work is invited into dialogue, with the intention of the ego and manifestations
of the psyche: Dreams, reflections, reveries, and synchronicities can be included and
incorporated as data. The work is alchemical; thus, the researcher is transformed as the
work is engaged and the story unfolds (Romanyshyn, 2013).
The artistic-creative method of inquiry also involves an immersion in the material,
as well as in unconscious material that arises (Pacifica Graduate Institute, 2013). In
addition, a production thesis contains a creative component and a theoretical analysis of
that production and its relevance to the field of psychology (p. 57). Through this creative
work and experience, one gains knowledge that is derived from interactions with the
material and social environment (Barrett, 2004). In the production aspect of the thesis,
chapters of a novel, then, could show, for example, how synchronistic events enlist and
entwine a group of strangers and join their subjective experiences through an equivalence
of meaning.
Limitations. Due to the nature of synchronicity, it may be more suited for study
via qualitative methodologies, which can readily incorporate subjective aspects of reality.
Nonetheless, there have been some quantitative studies of synchronistic phenomena (see

12
Atmanspacher & Fuchs, 2014; Cambray, 2009; Haas & Langer, 2014; Jung & Pauli,
1952/1955; Main, 2011; Perry et al., 2011; Van Lommel, 2006, 2007/2010; Van Lommel,
van Wees, Meyers, & Elfferich, 2001). Although I am not discounting the merits of
quantitative study, I believe there are many ways in which I can elucidate and enrich the
subject of my study within my chosen method. A portion of the study is related to my
experience, so I am limited, somewhat, to my imagination and to my own perceived
connections. Yet the nature of synchronicity suggests that what one experiences as
personal is also universal and relatable (Jung, 1952/2014). If I do my job well in relaying
my sense of the phenomenon, then others might benefit too.
Ethical concerns
I did not use human subjects in my fictional work. I needed to be mindful of the
potential impact and stress upon the researcher, myself, as this type of alchemical
methodology might encompass oneself. I could have been consumed in the creative
aspect of the work, for instance, and I had to be careful not to be too engaged, or too
distant, so that I would be overwhelmed or rendered inert by the creative process.
Overview of Thesis
Chapter II presents a literature review of synchronicity, beginning with Jungs
(1952/1955, 1931/1962, 1984, 1952/2014, 2009) work, which posited the concept,
primarily, in terms of ones individual experience. The review continues with
synchronistic group experiences, including research related to empathy, group therapy,
and emergent systems, and concludes with an exposition regarding meaning that
transcends an individual perspective.

13
Chapter III begins with a prologue to the artistic-creative exploration of
synchronicity, by indicating how the fictional work can illustrate an experience of
synchronicity(ies) and how this phenomenon might manifest itself and encompass a
group of individuals with common purpose and shared identity.
Chapter IV includes a conclusion and a summary of the research and what was
discovered in the process. This is followed by implications for further research and an
afterword. The Appendix contains the presentation of the fictional work.

Chapter II
Literature Review
Overview
The term synchronicity was introduced by Jung in 1929 in a seminar on dream
analysis (Jung, 1984). He referred to images that were created by nonparticipants, but that
mirrored the class material, and wrote, I have invented synchronicity as a term to cover
these phenomena, that is, things happening at the same moment as an expression of the
same time content (p. 417). Jung first used synchronicity in a public address in 1930 at
the memorial for his friend, the German sinologist Richard Wilhelm, and called it the
synchronistic principle, based on an acausal connection between events (Jung,
1931/1962, pp. 141-142).
It was not until 1951 that Jung elaborated his concept of synchronicity at the
Eranos lecture, On Synchronicity. The lecture was drawn from his essay Synchronicity:
An Acausal Connecting Principle (Jung, 1952/1955) as the first half of the book The
Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche. The second half of the book was written by
Wolfgang Pauli, with whom Jung had developed some of his thoughts regarding
synchronicity, including parallels with modern physics (see Jung & Pauli, 1952/1955).
In the foreword, Jung (1952/2014) wrote that the work was making good on a
promise that for many years he had lacked the courage to fulfill (p. 419). He had alluded
to synchronicity for decades, but he felt that the complexity of the problem was too great
and his scientific training too meager for him to tackle such an endeavor. Nonetheless,

15
the phenomenon had drawn closer to him over the years, and his experiences had
multiplied to the point that he was ready to make an attempt at explanation. As a
psychiatrist and psychotherapist, Jung had encountered many people who had
experienced synchronicity, yet they did not reveal their experiences for fear of ridicule.
These experiences, though, had been paramount to many of his patients, so the very
obscure field [was] philosophically of the greatest importance (p. 420), and Jungs
interest rested on a scientific and humanistic foundation.
A Personal Encounter
Jung drew closer to the experience of synchronicity in those intervening years
with his work on the The Red Book (Jung, 2009). He began workon what would later
become The Red Bookin 1913 and continued until 1930, following a process of selfexperimentation in which he gave free rein to his unconscious. He found parallels
between the content of his unconscious mind and the outside world, and he posited that
the individual psyche was connected to a larger collective (Jung, 1960/2010). A
prominent question for Jung, then, was how the individual psyche connected to the
collective and what this interdependence could mean (p. ix). Finally, Jungs work on The
Red Book began to wind down when he received the text The Secret of the Golden
Flower from Wilhelm, and he found that his self-exploration mirrored certain contents of
the I Ching and Eastern philosophy (Jung, 2009). Jung took the arrival of the text, an
alchemical treatise, as portent that his inner exploration had ended, for his individual
content had manifested in the outside world.
In fact, Jung (2009) wrote that his years of self-exploration, recorded in The Red
Book, were the most important of his life and that all his psychological theory was

16
derived from these discoveries. In his view, his personal unconscious corresponded with
a collective unconscious, and this relationship was universally applicable. Furthermore,
there were relationships between inner subjective events and outer objective ones, which
he attempted to unearth and bridge. Synchronicity would become one such bridge.
Supporting Evidence
Synchronicity is defined, in one instance, as a meaningful relationship between
two or more events that are not causally related to one another (Jung, 1952/2014). That is
to say, one event is not caused by the other; rather, the events appear as a falling
together in time (Jung, 1952/2014, p. 435). Jung used several arguments to support his
theory, one consisting of parallels in quantum physics.
Jung (1952/2014) argued that many natural laws are only statistically valid and
applicable at large scales and that they are based on repeating experiments many times to
minimize irregular results. The exceptional results, however, are not eliminatedbut they
are treated as suchand as the number of experimental trials increases (and is postulated
to infinity) then an average outcome is derived (Franz, 1980a). Thus, the average result of
this kind of experimentation is an abstraction that only exists theoretically, as unique cases
are disregarded and considered statistically irrelevant (p. 28). In the natural world, though,
the actual result of experiments is an accumulation of unique cases, not an average that
eliminates heterogeneity (p. 28).
Also, when dealing with minute scales, as in quantum physics, deterministic laws
are inapplicable and predictions are uncertain, because quanta do not behave causally
(Jung, 1952/2014). The physicist Niels Bohr indicated that electrons within an atom
jumped from one orbit to another without apparent cause (Wolf, 1994), and radioactive

17
decay has been cited (Mansfield, 1995; Stein, 1998) as another example of an acausal
phenomenon in nature, along with the ubiquity of the Fibonacci sequence (an ancient
series of numbers often found in biology, music, and art, among other settings) (Main,
1997). All these examples, among others, are just so (Jung, 1952/2014, p. 516) in that
they appear in a particular manner without cause. Moreover, in the subatomic world
causality has been disregarded, in favor of relationships of correlation and influence
(Shoup, 2006). Considering developments in quantum physics, Jungs supporting
evidence has been criticized and modified (see Aziz, 1990; Cambray, 2009; Mansfield,
1995; Sparks, 2007), but his arguments have been taken as relatively sound.
Furthermore, (classical) natural law was founded on the notion of causality and
transfer of energy, based on the observation and measurement of bodies in motion (Jung,
1952/2014). However, if these laws are only statistically valid and relatively applicable,
then causality is of limited use in describing natural processes. Likewise, causality was
inapplicable under certain conditions, such as at the birth of the universe, when space and
time were reduced to almost zero (Jung, 1952/2014, p. 445). Causality is bound up with
space and time, so Jung postulated that there must be acausal connection, too, which has
existed from the genesis of the universe (p. 516). The absence of causality during this
original undifferentiated state is consistent with theories in modern physics (Cambray,
2009), and it gave Jung further evidence for the a priori existence of acausal connection
and synchronicity (Jung, 1952/2014, p. 447, 516).
Jung (1952/2014) also cited the experiments of J. B. Rhine (1934, 1937, 1938), a
researcher of parapsychological phenomena, at Duke University in the 1930s as evidence
of acausal connection. Rhine carried out large-scale experiments in which participants

18
tried to guess images imprinted on one side of a deck of cards. Rhine obtained
statistically significant results, wherein subjects guessed cards at a higher rate than
expected, which supported claims of extrasensory perception (Jung, 1952/2014). The
intriguing results of Rhines experiments have been hotly debated, and subsequently,
some studies have replicated his findings (see Jahn & Dunne, 1987), but others have not
(see Wynn, Wiggins, & Harris, 2001).
Another study (Wackermann, Seiter, Keibel, & Walach, 2003) demonstrated
extrasensory effects where two people were placed in separate rooms that were
acoustically and electromagnetically shielded from one another (p. 60). One person
viewed visual stimuli (p. 61), and that persons electroencephalogram reading (EEG)
changed, unsurprisingly, upon seeing the images. Concurrently, though, a significant
number of the EEG readings for the control groupthe people located in a separate,
shielded roomalso changed, although there was no interaction between the subjects
(p. 60). People may correlate brain activity, the study concluded, although no
biophysical mechanism is known (p. 60). Furthermore, there have been other studies of
synchronicity (see Haas & Langer, 2014; Main, 1997, 2004; Perry et al., 2011), as well as
tests of related phenomena (see Dunne, 2001; Main, 2011; Thaheld, 2003; Wackerman et
al., 2003).
The Meaning Factor
Most pertinent to Jungs work, was that in Rhines studies people tended to guess
more cards correctly at the beginning of experiments and the results that were obtained
did not vary over time or distance (Jung, 1952/2014). For instance, certain people
guessed many cards correctly, even when they were physically separated from the

19
examinerwho could be located several thousand miles awayor they correctly guessed
cards that were only revealed in the future. After meeting with Einstein, Jung
(1952/2014) proposed then that distance and time (space-time) could be psychically, as
well as physically relative (p. 433). In some cases, as in Rhines experiments, events
could not be causal or dependent on classical natural law, since there is no known transfer
of energy that exists outside of space and time (pp. 433-434). The results of Rhines
experiments, that a subjects initial interest and subsequent decline affected the ability to
guess cards correctly, suggested that ones interest was critical to achieving significant
results (p. 440).
Meaning, then, became an organizing factor (Jung, 1952/2014, pp. 447-448) that
constellated a creative moment in time in which events were related through
synchronistic connection. This organizing factor, in which psyche affected matter and the
outside world, was termed the psychoid archetype by Jung (1952/2014), and
synchronicity was one instance in which the psychoid archetype was activated. This was
indicative of a more expansive nature in which psyche and matter entwined (Stein, 1998,
p. 202), via the archetype(s), as different states of energy (p. 209). Aspects of these twin
realities, of the mental and the physical, were synchronistically related and coordinated
(p. 209).
Jung (1952/2014) wrote that the phenomenon of synchronicity often manifested in
impossible situations (p. 440) when there seemed to be no possibility of a solution or a
way forward. In Rhines experiments, it would have taken a miracle to guess unknown
cards correctly (p. 441), even guessing them in advance or guessing them remotely from
thousands of miles away. In practice, Jung cited examples in which a patients therapy

20
was at a standstill and there seemed to be no way to progress toward wholeness and
healing (p. 440).
A famous instance is when Jung had been treating a woman, Maggy Reichstein,
who consistently shot down any of Jungs interpretations, and those of two previous
analysts, that did not align with her rigid views (de Moura, 2014). At a critical moment
(Jung, 1952/2014, p. 438) in her therapy, Reichstein had a dream in which she received a
golden scarab (p. 438). Jung identified this scarab as an ancient symbol of rebirth that
was depicted in Egyptian mythology (p. 439). As she described her dream, a persistent
tapping was heard at the window; Jung opened it, and in flew a greenish-gold scarabaeid
beetle. Jung caught it and presented it to Reichstein (p. 438). The opportune arrival of the
scarab shocked her and had the effect of breaking through her rigid rationality so that her
therapy could progress (p. 439).
Reichsteins case contained a number of synchronicities (de Moura, 2014), and it
was significant for Jung as he treated a Western patient who was connected, in part, to
Eastern consciousness (p. 399). Through her case, Jung could begin to reconcile the
division between a rationalistic Western science that split spirit and matter and subjective
Eastern philosophies (p. 400). In a letter to Reichstein, Jung wrote, simply, I learned a
lot from you (p. 391). He wrote, too, that what he learned would help other people
(p. 391).
There were other synchronicities that Jung conveyed, from his life and the lives of
others. These moments were always accompanied by a numinous feeling, an experience
akin to transcendent awe (Jung, 1952/2014). This specific charge (p. 436) indicated the
activation of an archetype or archetypesin short, the inherited organizing factors of the

21
psyche. This activation allowed unconscious content to arise that was often ancient and
archetypal (p. 437), and in these events, inexplicable knowledge was brought forth
(p. 446). Synchronicity, then, indicated the occurrence of a certain psychic state with one
or more external events that appeared as meaningful parallels to the momentary
subjective state (p. 441).
In sum, the three key elements of synchronicity are meaningful coincidence (or
co-incidents), acausal connection, and numinous feeling (Cambray, 2009). These
qualities are always present, yet no law exists in which synchronicities can be derived, as
they are unique, creative acts in time (Jung 1952/2014, pp. 518-519).
A Bridge to the Collective
Synchronicity inhabits a world in which the distinction between subject and
object has broken down (Sparks, 2007). At times, we become the object of physical
events in the external world that act . . . on us (p. 12). On the surface, this state is akin to
participation mystique, the term credited to the anthropologist Lucien Lvy-Bruhl (Segal,
2007), in which primitive humans saw their lives as inseparable from a collective
relationship with the world. There was no concept of the separate individual in a
primitive society (Jung, 1952/2014). There was no meaningless chance, and
synchronicities were an intrinsic part of life (Franz, 1980a, p. 48). The difference in
modern experiences of synchronicity is that the phenomenon is experienced as
momentary rather than ubiquitous (Segal, 2007). Primitive peoples, in contrast,
experienced the world as if it was an extension of themselves, or they experienced
themselves, rather, as if they were extensions of the world.

22
On this point, von Franz (1980a) described how people acted as if they formed
one body, to comprise a fate community (p. 43). Humans in primitive societies acted as
if they were one body, and if one member of the tribe was starving, then everyone was
anxious. Hence, they always shared food (p. 43). Nearly every issue was communal, for a
problem that concerned one affected everyone. In addition to the embodiment of a fate
community, von Franz (1978/1980b) wrote that people might constitute a symbolic
family.
Von Franz (1978/1980b) wrote that each person garners a soul-family in the world
(p. 177). This group is not formed by accident or mere self-interest but rather is created in
service of deeper, spiritual concerns that go beyond the individual (p. 177). She called
this the social function of the Self (p. 177) wherein others are drawn in to an intrinsic,
peculiar intimacy and relatedness (p. 176). In this gathering, one becomes aware of ones
relation to others as a facet of ones personal development (individuation in Jungs
terms), and one transcends emotional ties to see the objective meaning that underlies
these relationships (p. 177). Von Franz emphasized that in this world created by the Self
we meet all those many to whom we belong, whose hearts we touch (p. 177) and here,
there is no distance, but immediate presence (Jung, as cited in Franz, p. 177). At this
point, Aziz (1990) wrote that the inner pattern and the outer social world unite
(p. 203). The bridge is traversed and the collective is reached.
The Unseen Field
In terms of collective experience, Jungian analyst Joseph Cambray (2009) wrote
of empathy as an experience that temporarily links oneself to another (p. 80). There is a
synchronistic field that underlies empathy, as the causes that activate these connections

23
are often unconscious, with a psychoid quality to them (p. 80). Field theory itself, he
maintained, is the study of expressions or manifestations that indicate the presence of an
underlying connecting principle (p. 42). Cambray referenced the Buddhist concept of
Indras net:
In the heaven of the great god Indra is said to be a vast and shimmering net, finer
than a spiders web, stretching to the outermost reaches of space. Strung at each
intersection of the diaphanous threads is a reflecting jewel. Since the net is infinite
in extent, the jewels are infinite in number. In the glistening surface of each jewel
is reflected all the other jewels, even those in the furthest corner of the heavens. In
each reflection, again are reflected all the infinitely many other jewels, so that by
this process, reflections of reflections continue without end (Mumford, Series, &
Wright, 2002, p. ii). (As cited in Cambray, 2009, p. 44)
This concept is reminiscent of Leibnizs idea of monads, in which each monad
reflects all others and is a microcosm of the universe in itself (as cited in Jung,
1952/2014, p. 499). An underlying unity produces an interrelated web of individuals who
are not causally related to one another but who exist in a pre-established harmony
(p. 498). Thus, each individual is a little world (p. 498) and a representation of the One
universe (p. 499). Individuals or souls, as Leibniz wrote, are living images of the universe
(as cited in Jung, 1952/2014, p. 499). This image of humanity as a microcosm can be
compared to 1 Corinthians Chapter 12:426 in the New Testament (Standard King James
Version):
Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are differences of
administrations, but the same Lord. . . . it is the same God which worketh all in
all. . . . For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of
that one body, being many, are one body: so also is [God]. . . . There should be no
schism in the body [and] the members should have the same care one for another.
And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member
be honoured, all the members rejoice with it.
There are many different divine expressions and each one is a unique representation of a
more complex pattern and a part of that pattern. The Spirit/Pattern/God is enriched by the

24
multitude and harmony of these divine expressions, the diversities of gifts, and it is
diminished by any division among them.
In addition, this arrangement, in which humans constitute an interrelated network
of individual wholes, has similarities to the field of emergence (Cambray, 2009). As such,
a group of individual parts forms a matrix in which new features arise, and the
properties of the whole transcend any and all of the individuals and their interactions
(p. 91). These new properties are dependent on individual interactions, yet they are
unforeseeable from an individual perspective (p. 91). Also, synchronistic and similar
phenomena can appear in groups, and this fosters the quality of emergence in these
groups (p. 92).
On this point, Rogers (1970) wrote of an increased capacity that arose within
himself from his work with groups:
I nearly always feel a genuine and present concern for each member and for the
group as a whole. It is hard to give any reason for this. It is just a fact. . . . I trust
the feelings, words, impulses, fantasies that emerge in me. In this way I am using
more than my conscious self, drawing on some of the capacities of the whole
organism. (pp. 56-57)
Rogers described different qualities that spontaneously emerged from his group
experiences that transcended his individual concerns, and at the same time, he felt that his
individual capacity was enhanced as he was connected to a greater sense of being. These
changes occurred within oneself, as part of a collective, and they emerged in the
interactions between members of the collective. These meetings were supremely
important, Rogers wrote, because they had the capability to overcome any isolation that
one felt in contemporary life (p. 176). As meaningful interactions spread, individuals
began to see themselves as unique and choosing persons, deeply cared for by other

25
unique persons (p. 176). Hence, these interactions allowed one to connect to others, to
humanize society and to live life more fully (p. 176).
Similarly, Cambray (2009) expanded on the importance of synchronicity within
society. He wrote that synchronicities might unfold over the course of many years,
centuries even, within society to create an expansion of knowledge and to form cultural
synchronicities (pp. 99-102). Accordingly, he wrote of mirror neurons, among other
instances, as serendipitous discoveries within society that may contain a synchronistic
core (p. 106). These stunning coincidences, Cambray wrote, have greatly influenced
the emergence of meaning within a modern cultural narrative (p. 106).
A Unifying Force
Main (2011) wrote that Jungs concept of synchronicity contributed to a reenchantment and a re-sacrilisation of the world (p. 148) and that Jung was attempting to
transform modernity by retrieving important aspects of the pre-modern (p. 144). One
such return was to view the universe as a meaningful cosmos (Main, 2011, p. 156).
Another was to view the self as more porous and open to outside influences, which
placed more value on social interactions, such as within groups and in the making of
consensus (p. 150). According to Main, Jung emphasized an experiencefrom the
activation of the psychoid archetype and the manifestations of the unconsciousthat was
identical to how premodern humans perceived God, spirits, and demons (p. 149).
Moreover, the experience of synchronicity functions as an important equilibrating
principle in modern society and as a complement to rigid causality (Jung, 1952/2014). In
Jungs case, Main (1997) wrote that Jungs near-death experience in 1944 following a
heart attack could be understood in that light (p. 37). Jungs perceptions of absolute

26
knowledge, space-time relativity, and his visionary experiences of union (Main, 1997,
p. 37) described synchronistic phenomena that resulted in a kind of mystic marriage [for
Jung] between [his] self and [the] world (p. 37). These revelations shook Jungs
certainty and freed him from psychological reductionism (Main, 1997, p. 39). Jungs
discernment of this overpowering mystery gave him the courage he needed to expand
upon his work (Main, 1997, p. 39). Jung (1961/1989) wrote,
After the illness a fruitful period of work began for me. A good many of my
principal works were written only then. The insight I had had . . . gave me the
courage to undertake new formulations. I no longer attempted to put forward my
own opinion, but surrendered myself to the current of my thoughts. Thus one
problem after another revealed itself to me and took shape. (p. 297)
His experiences of synchronistic phenomena and the insight he gained, during this period,
allowed Jung to set aside a narrow egoic perspective and to tap into a deeper stream of
consciousness.
Jungs experiences have been shared by many others, and near-death states that
involved synchronistic phenomena were subsequently studied to gain objective data. A
study that was initiated in 1988 (Van Lommel et al., 2001) followed 344 survivors of
cardiac arrest from ten Dutch hospitals. The patients had clinically died when their
circulation and breathing had stopped (Van Lommel, 2006, p. 135). According to current
medical concepts it was impossible to experience consciousness at this time (p. 135), yet
18% of the patients did recall the time during their deaths (p. 137). Moreover, doctors,
nurses, and relatives could verify the details that the patients recalled (p. 139). Also,
many of these recollections shared commonalities, such as an instantaneous life review,
nonlocalized perception, a meeting with deceased relatives, an awareness of and positive
emotions toward death, a sense of oneself as an energic field of consciousness, and a

27
connectedness to others as fields of consciousness (pp. 137, 140). Some two thirds (66%)
of the patients that reported these perceptions said they had core experiences that had
transformed their lives, and these beliefs persisted after 2-year and 8-year follow-up
interviews (p. 137). Further, only the patients who had these experiences reported this
transformation.
There is much overlap, then, between Jungs (1961/1989) experience(s) following
his heart attack and the transformative experiences reported in these studies (Van
Lommel, 2006; Van Lommel et al., 2001). In all instances, these experiences seem to be
incredibly important to people. Jungs work, in turn, emphasized this critical meaning.
Ones life and the universe could be experienced as meaningful, he wrote, and
furthermore it should be for the sake of personal and social well-being (as cited in Main,
2011, p. 154).
In terms of the psychological impact of these moments, the Jungian analyst V.
Walter Odajnyk (2011) described these synchronistic experiences as conveying a sense of
unity of being that freed a person from emotional and intellectual entanglements (p. 28).
This experience of life freed one to be oneself. In addition, Rogers (1980) wrote that
when he was at his best, as a therapist and a group facilitator,
I am somehow in touch with the unknown in me [and] whatever I do seems to be
full of healing. . . . When I can relax and be close to the transcendental core of
me, then I may behave in strange and impulsive ways to the relationship, ways
which I cannot justify rationally. . . . But these strange behaviors turn out to be
right, in some odd way: it seems that my inner spirit has reached out and touched
the inner spirit of the other. Our relationship transcends itself and becomes a part
of something greater. (p. 129)

28
Rogers experienced a transcendence of spirit in his clinical work, in which he was in tune
with an intuitive, irrational sense of the world and felt himself to be part of a larger
creation. A group participant elaborated:
I felt the oneness of spirit in the community. We breathed together, felt together,
even spoke for one another. I felt the power of the life force that infuses all of
uswhatever that is. I felt its presence without the usual barricades of me-ness
or you-nessit was like a meditative experience when I feel myself as a center
of consciousness, very much a part of the broader, universal consciousness. And
yet with that extraordinary sense of oneness, the separateness of each person
present has never been more clearly preserved. (pp. 129-130)
This person felt herself (or himself, the gender was unspecified) to be a part of
this newfound community and to participate in and be contained by a greater
consciousness, which promoted a sense of harmony. At the same time, she felt herself to
be distinct, and as one star, if you will, within a wide constellation. In sum, Rogers
(1980) wrote that it was clear that experiences in therapy and in groups involve the
transcendent, the indescribable, [and] the spiritual (p. 130). One was transcended.
This desire to experience greater meaning and to be a part of it seemed to emanate
from within the individual. The 13th-century German philosopher, Albertus Magnus,
wrote, It is the soul who desires a thing more intensely, who makes things more
effective and more like what comes forth. . . . Everything she does with that aim in view
possesses motive power and efficacy for what the soul desires (as cited in Jung,
1952/2014, p. 448). Ones soul (or in Jungs terminology, the Self) manifests
synchronicities (Jung, 1952/2014, p. 449) that are dependent on affect. Through the
souls activation of the psychoid archetype, transcendent meaning is created in the psyche
and shared with the arrangement of an external event (Jung, 1952/2014). Somehow

29
meaning, between the subjective inner state and the objective outer one, is equivalent in
these moments. Thus, the smallest parts are akin to the greatest ones (p. 490).
Greater Purpose
In turning to the purpose of synchronicity, Jung (1952/2014) wrote that where
meaning prevails, order results (p. 488). To an individual, this ordering could serve as
compensation, for example, to a one-sided attitude that is impervious to other views
(Main, 2011). It could also serve to eliminate opposition between ones ego and ones
deeper, more authentic self (Jung, 1952/2014), or it could elicit an experience of psychic
renewal. Cambray (2009) emphasized other experiences of synchronicity, such as when it
was used in the service of greed and domination (p. 95). Moreover, Aziz (1990)
identified three pathological reactions to synchronicity, including a lack of differentiation
from the object, a failure of interpretation, and an aggrandizement of the role of the ego
(p. 191). Tarnas (2014, lecture) posited a shadow aspect to synchronicity. It could serve,
for instance, as a necessary humbling of the ego, or it might be viewed in a paranoid or
narcissistic manner in other instances. Idealization of synchronistic meaning should be
avoided, Cambray (2002) maintained, because various pathological reactions can occur
when there is a lack of differentiation between [the] self and the experience (p. 95).
Similarly, the psychologist and Jungian analyst Donald Kalsched (2013)
cautioned against overidentification with the universe as a spiritual bypass to the
development of human relationship(s). Nonetheless, from his work with trauma
survivors, he wrote that synchronicity could sustain one in the heavens, whereas
unconscious work would link ones thoughts to ones affect-in-the-body. A celestial

30
experience, then, could provide supportive scaffolding until the person was ready to
assume a more engaged, embodied existence.
Jung (1952/2014) also wrote that the meaning of synchronicities was a priori in
relation to human consciousness and apparently exists outside man (pp. 501-502).
Hence the principle of synchronicity existed as a formal factor in nature (along with
causality) before the arrival of humankind (p. 504). Moreover, the greater order that
synchronicity alludes to is indicative of the unus mundus, the One World, in which all
things exist in relationship to one another (Jung, 1952/2014). The Greek physician
Hippocrates wrote,
There is one common flow, one common breathing, all things are in sympathy.
The whole organism and each of its parts are working in conjunction for the same
purpose. . . . The great principle extends to the extremest part, and from the
extremest part it returns to the great principle, to the one nature. (As cited in Jung,
1952/2014, p. 490)
So synchronicity is a manifestation of the connection that exists between all things,
personal and collective, that work together in commonality. It is one illustration of a more
wondrous, expansive, expressive universe (Tarnas, 2014, lecture).
Furthermore, another conceivable aspect of this expanded universe is the concept
of nonlocality in physics (Combs & Holland, 2001; Targ, 2001; Thaheld, 2003;
Wackerman et al., 2003). This refers to matter that interacts in space via an unknown
mechanism. Quanta of light, for example, have been shown to maintain a nonlocal
connection when fired in opposite directions and separating at the speed of light. The
physicist David Bohm termed this concept the holographic universe and wrote that the
essential features of this implicate order are that the whole universe is in some way
enfolded in everything, and that each thing is enfolded in the whole (as cited in Targ,

31
2001, p. x). The universe resembled a hologram, Bohm wrote, in that each region of
space-time contained information about every other point in space-time, for instance, as
demonstrated by the light experiment (Targ, 2001, p. x). Bohm stated that this
information was also available to human awareness, and this implied a wholeness in
which mental and physical states colluded (Targ, 2001, p. x). Thus, there is no real
division between mind and matter, psyche and soma (as cited in Targ, 2001, p. x). So
worlds were coming together: physics and psychology, matter and mind, the observed
and the unseen.
The concept of synchronicity, though, was incomplete, and to Jung it was but one
special instance of acausal connection (Jung, 1952/2014). The underlying order, in which
synchronicity played a part, remained elusive. Jung surmised, however, that the relation
between body and soul may yet be understood as a synchronistic one (p. 500) and if so,
the phenomenon would not be rare or constitute a special instance (p. 500). Van Lommel
(2006) proposed such a theory in which undivided, nonlocal consciousness collapses via
quantum mechanics into ones singular waking consciousness (pp. 146-147). Life creates
this transition, just as observation in quantum physics collapses quantum potential into
singular instances (p. 146). The brain then acts as a receiver or as a relay of consciousness
rather than a generator of it (p. 147). If so, an acausal quantum interface between greater
consciousness and consciousness-in-the-body could implicate synchronicity as a
connecting agent.
Jung wondered (1973), though, if the gap between matter and mind could be truly
elucidated.
The difficulty this problem comes up against is that what we can grasp
psychologically never goes deep enough for us to recognize its connection with the

32
physical. And conversely, what we know physiologically is not sufficiently
advanced for us to recognize what would form the bridge to the psychological. If
we approach from the psychological side we . . . would have to be able to penetrate
into the whole mystery of the psyche. But this is totally unconscious to us, because
the psyche cannot lay itself by the heels . . . Similarlyfrom the other side
physics is tapping its way into irrepresentable territory which it can visualize only
indirectly by means of models. (p. 546)
There remained a core of impenetrable mystery that both psychology and physics were
approaching that could only be defined to a degree. Even so, Jung continued, the fields
were approaching similar terrain.
Both sciences, the psychology of the unconscious and atomic physics, are arriving
at concepts which show remarkable points of agreement. . . . If we consider the
psyche as a whole, we come to the conclusion that the unconscious psyche likewise
exists in a space-time continuum, where time is no longer time and space no longer
space. Accordingly, causality ceases too. Physics has reached the same frontier.
(p. 546)
Essentially the two sciences were describing similar phenomena from their
respective vantage points and the gap was narrowing all the while. Jung (1973) concluded
with the importance of synchronicity to this correspondence:
Since the one line of research proceeds from within outwards and the other from
without inwards, and there is no hope of our reaching the point where the two meet,
there is nothing for it but to try to find points of comparison between the deepest
insights on both sides. . . . There is, however, another possibility that should not be
lost sight of, and that is synchronicity, which is basically . . . correspondentia more
specifically and more precisely understood, and was as we know one of the
elements in the medieval explanation of the world. (p. 547)
Thus, there may be no possibility of defining a precise border, yet synchronicity
shows that there is correspondence between the two worlds and a threshold where the
components of the universe, both physical and mental, infuse one another. It bridges the
gap. Notwithstanding his reservations, Jung (1952/2014) continued to search for a precise
fundamental pattern and wrote that there must be an underlying principle which might
possibly explain all such (related) phenomena (pp. 500-501). That clarity eludes our

33
conscious grasp (Franz, 1980a), though, and we can only assume that such a reality exists
that sporadically manifests in the synchronistic event (p. 98).
In the next chapter, I examine a creative, fictional work that I wrote to envision how
individual and collective worlds might entwine through an equivalence of meaning. A
newfound soul-family (Franz, 1978/1980b) is considered along with its emergent
features, as well as the portrayal of contradictory narratives. This is viewed in terms of a
quantum story that displays contradictions while it represents aspects of a singular order.

Chapter III
Synopsis of a Collective Story: The Writers Group
The creative work in this thesis (see Appendix) can be considered in light of what
von Franz (1978/1980b) called the social function of the self (p. 177). Each person
selects certain others (p. 176), and these others are likewise attracted to oneself in order to
progress in a deeper spiritual sense. These individual selves exist in a network, although
each individual may not see all or any of the connections and intrinsic relationships
between them. Nevertheless these individuals have formed a critically important group, in
this story, to serve as a soul-family (p. 177). This family can address issues that might
seem insurmountable from an individual perspective.
Several interrelated stories and crises occur in the narrative, and the resolution of
these is dependent on the collectiveon a writers group that has been formed in the
outside world. This community goes beyond egoistic motivations to find itself in a timeless
relatedness (Franz, 1978/1980b, p. 177).
From the view of the collective, the meaning of these interactions and any
resolutions is more nebulous and intangible. I address this collective meaning more
explicitly in Chapter IV. Nonetheless, this particular group can be seen as a microcosm, as
a collective and a little world, which is itself contained in the unus mundus, the One World.
Just as an individual may contain seemingly disparate parts that work in tandem, so might
the workings of this particular group be indicative of a larger order.

35
In the story, a writer struggles to continue after a successful debut novel and after a
personal tragedy. He forms a writing group, seemingly for aspiring writers to tell their
stories and to aid them from his expertise. In actuality, he uses the group to plagiarize their
work since he is stuck and has run out of fresh ideas. The lives of various group members
have intersected in the past, and they are currently interwoven via synchronicity and via the
concept of quantum entanglement (Limar, n.d.) in which field states (of separate
individuals) correlate.
As such, human beings correlate from a cellular level as carriers of quantum
fields of energy, which accounts for synchronicity within these nonlocal acausal fields
(Limar, n.d.). Different outcomes are possible at each moment via quantum potential, and
all these stories are valid even while appearing contradictory (Frenkel, 2015) as aspects of a
singular order. Consciousness is not localized in an individual but simultaneously belongs
to a group of people (Limar, n.d., p. 7). Thus, the existence of multiple narratives is
explored in the story.
Some connections are recognized in this nascent group, while others can be
discerned by the reader from an outside vantage point. The reader, with a more
encompassing view, may find that this aggregation of consciousness expands the sense of
what is possible for this group. The chapters represent the beginning of a novel in which a
multifaceted reality is starting to be defined; later the group consciousness will address
some unresolved personal issues for its members. Furthermore, the group members
eventually discover the ulterior motives of its founder, but they decide to continue working
for other reasons. These deeper motives are consistent with the apprehension of being part

36
of a soul family and thus joined for deeper purpose, aside from any selfish concerns that
may inhibit these spiritual workings.
So many other collectives could be addressed, from the individual human body to
groups, societies, and the world. This is but one that may be illustrative to readers, who
might find the process analogous to a collective that resounds for them. This is only one
story and should not be considered wholly representative of these phenomena, although it
may encapsulate them to a degree.

Chapter IV
Conclusion
It is not too late
to dive into your increasing depths
where life calmly gives out its own secret.
Rilke, R. M., 1981, p. 27
Do I contradict myself?
Very well . . . I am large, I contain multitudes.
Whitman, W., 1892/2000, p. 77
A meeting entails many things. In a moment, the joining expands ones life and
enriches the creation of ones life experience. Joseph Campbell (1991), who wrote of
comparative mythology, described the experience like so:
People say that what were all seeking is a meaning for life. I dont think thats
what were really seeking. I think that what were seeking is an experience of
being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have
resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the
rapture of being alive. (p. 1)
The experience of life is enhanced by the resonance between ones innermost being
and the outside world. When these correspond, one feels the rapture of life, akin to
Jungs (1952/2014) numinosity. One can find this resonance throughout the course of
ones life. As Rilke (2009) wrote,
I live my life in growing orbits
Which move out over the things of the world.
Perhaps I can never achieve the last,
But that will be my attempt (p. 13)

38
There are countless possibilities, and one experiences the world, and is met by it,
time and again in these orbits of life. The terrain changes too, and a broader range of
expression is discovered as new connections and constellations are illuminated.
These elucidations of life are vast, and the universe offers everything from beauty
sublime to character befouled. There is fullness. The author John Steinbeck (1952/2003)
wrote of this unvarnished quality of nature.
There is more beauty in truth, even if it is a dreadful beauty. The storytellers at the
city gate twist life so that it looks sweet to the lazy and the stupid and the weak,
and this only strengthens their infirmities and teaches nothing, cures nothing, nor
does it let the heart soar. (p. 356)
The world can be ugly and harsh too, and any transcendence of spirit must include this
multifaceted essence. Life abounds. If there is truth to ones inalienable existence and in
the joining of inner and outer worlds, then it exists in fullness and in a seemingly
contradictory nature: a dreadful beauty, an embodied spirit, a timeless end.
The phenomenon of synchronicity shows that one might share in the experience
of others and in the fullness of the world, and it implies a second birth, perhaps, a rebirth
to a position where ones life and ones actions matter and affect patterns of life
experience. This rebirth is illustrated by the following story: In one therapy session, Carl
Rogers (S. Duncan, 2013) counseled a woman named Gloria who agonized over how to
express her true feelings rather than the conventional persona that she displayed. She was
frightened that revealing her true self would upset her whole life. Rogers leaned forward
and said, simply, Its an awfully risky thing to live. This seemed a great comfort to her.
She was understood in that moment, and she was connecting to someone in a deep and
honest way. She was risking herself, too, and she was exposed. It spoke also to Rogerss
(1980) philosophy of person-centered therapy. He aligned himself with anothers nascent

39
self (rather than a persona) to show someone that he was here, toorisking too! (and
others were also)and that one was not alone in this struggle.
Living is risky, because how one expresses oneself in the world matters, and it has
real impact both psychically and physically, both within and without. A change in
orientation, in fact, can transform both the inner and the outer worlds. For example, in
1977, two young Buddhist monks undertook an 800-mile pilgrimage for world peace by
walking from a temple in Los Angeles to another near Ukiah, California (Sure & Chau,
2014). The pilgrimage took nearly 3 years as Heng Sure, the lead monk, stopped every
three steps to prostrate himself and pray. Sure and his assistant, Heng Chau, bowed and
prayed at times through unfriendly, gang-ruled neighborhoods, and they found it was
critical to maintain their inner stability. Sure wrote,
When we are sincere, the results are immediately visible . . . the tension dissolves
from street-corner groups that gather to stare at us, and even the heat in the air
seems to cool slightly. . . . If we are false thinking or have any anger or fear in our
own minds . . . the tension builds up and people get hot or uptight as we pass and
we reap the results in increased cursing, anger, and fear from the crowd. (p. 10)
Their inner work was reflected in their outer reception, and they came to see difficult
moments as rare opportunities to test their intention and resolve. Aziz (1990)
contemplated their journey and wrote that success and indeed their survival, they came
to see, depended not on their abilities to defend themselves outwardly . . . but rather, on
their abilities to hold themselves in balance inwardly (p. 119). Their inner balance
maintained outer stability.
Accordingly, there were repercussions when the men lost their inner focus.
Previously, they had been robbed (from their parked car), and Chau dreamed that they
would be robbed again (Aziz, 1990, p. 120). They had been taking extra time to shave

40
and wash and were treating their work more casually (p. 121). In Chaus dream, the
monks had identified with the thieves to a degree and offered little resistance to the theft
(Aziz, 1990). When they set off that day, Sure increased his pace, and at one point Chau
moved far ahead, something that he never did (Aziz, 1990, p. 120). Then, at the top of a
hill Chau saw their parked car and two men trying to break into it. The thieves fled when
they saw him coming. He wrote, What blew my mind was that they were the same men
in the dreamclothes, hair, and all (as cited in Aziz, p. 120). In addition to the
synchronistic experience of inexplicable knowledge, Chau said they were presented with
a choice of outcomes based on their appreciation of the meaning of their journey (Aziz,
1990). They were forced, also, to evaluate their efforts.
So the monks praised the intervention of the thieves because it forced them to
consider why they were undertaking the trip and what was most important to them. It was
as if the universe was communicating, All right if this pilgrimage is important, then you
must take it seriously, or else. Or else stop pretending, for your possessions will be
stolen and your journey will fail. So their inner work dovetailed with their outer efforts
and was just as substantial.
This rebirth, then, is an engagement with the world from ones depth of being, a
re-enchantment, and the journey comes full circle. In setting out, ones internal lived
experience changes. One orbits. The path leads out, and any understanding gained takes
one within, to return to a familiar place and to a homecoming of spirit. A journey may
take place at various levels, also, from the individual to the collective. And it has scope
that may be markedly different from its size.

41
Some of the emphasis of this thesis has been on the granda lifes journey, the
workings of the universe, a vast networkand yet, in regard to synchronicity, size is
relative to meaning. Small things can have great effects; small is writ large. There is a
statement, attributed to Zen Buddhism, that goes how you do anything is how you do
everything (Huber, 1988). The size of the action is relative, small can be immense, in
fact, and there is always an opportunity for connection, meaning, and experience.
The influence of one individual life was poignantly illustrated by the Austrian
doctor and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, who wrote that spiritual freedom cannot be
taken from us (1946/2006, p. 67). After Frankls wife was taken from him at the
Auschwitz death camp, he despairedwhy should he live and suffer anymore? Even in
this place he found something.
I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that
hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a victorious Yes in
answer to my question of the existence of an ultimate purpose. At that moment a
light was lit in a distant farmhouse, which stood on the horizon as if painted there,
in the midst of the miserable grey of a dawning morning in Bavaria. Et lux in
tenebris lucetand the light shineth in the darkness. For hours I stood hacking at
the icy ground. The guard passed by, insulting me, and once again I communed
with my beloved. More and more I felt that she was present, that she was with me;
I had the feeling that I was able to touch her, able to stretch out my hand and
grasp hers. The feeling was very strong; she was there. Then, at that very moment,
a bird flew down silently and perched just in front of me, on the heap of soil
which I had dug up from the ditch, and looked steadily at me. (pp. 40-41)
He found a reason to go on, and he exhorted many others to do so as well, and he
found connection. He wrote that there was meaning even in ones suffering. It could be
stated that he was alone in his suffering, but he was not, and even in a time of despair in a
season of despair, light appeared, a bird arrived, his beloved was present. God was near.
In these moments, Frankl (1946/2006) wrote, one was forced to make a decision on how
to respond to powers which threatened to rob you of your very self [and] your inner

42
freedom (p. 66). One had a choice whether or not to make use or forgo the
opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford (p. 67).
Suffering was a mark of great achievement (p. 67), then, for one had strength enough to
cry and to care. One who knows the why for his existence . . . will be able to bear almost
any how (p. 80). Not only creativeness and enjoyment have meaning, he wrote, for there
is also meaning in suffering and in difficult times and suffering is a part of life.
In this sense synchronicity does not deliver one from hardship, rather ones life is
extended and imbued with an array of experience. As the Buddhist monk and author
Thich Nhat Hanh (1999) wrote, all of us would do well to approach our lives and others
with greater acceptance and compassion for our shared journeys and sufferings. In his
poem Please Call Me by My True Names, he spoke to this human struggle for
understanding. The poem was written after the Vietnam War in 1978, as Vietnamese
refugees, the boat people, fled over the seas.
Dont say that I will depart tomorrow
even today I am still arriving.
Look deeply: every second I am arriving
in order to laugh and to cry,
to fear and to hope.
The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death
of all that is alive.
I am a mayfly metamorphosing
on the surface of the river.
And I am the bird
that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.
I am a frog swimming happily
in the clear water of a pond.
And I am the grass-snake
that silently feeds itself on the frog.
I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,

43
my legs as thin as bamboo sticks.
And I am the arms merchant,
selling deadly weapons to Uganda.
I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by a sea pirate.
And I am the pirate,
my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving. . . .
My joy is like Spring, so warm
it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.
My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.
Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up
and the door of my heart
could be left open,
the door of compassion. (pp. 72-73)
Ones inner struggle resonates with others, with the world, in all its suffering and
triumph, and we are all little worlds with tremendous capacity to affect others. We
strive, we orbit, and we are all in the process of arriving.
Summary
In Chapter III, I discussed a fictional story (included in the Appendix) in which
ones process of arriving might parallel this quality in others. Synchronicity, as a means
to connection, could be seen as a way to enhance the meaning of collective life. The story
showed how individual purpose could be understood as a collective issueof groups,
society, and the world, for instance. The purposeful ordering of collectives can resolve

44
individual purpose, while at the same time these collectives might operate as microcosms
within the firmament. A matchmaker is at play.
As the story unfolded, another unfolding took place in my life. I was finishing my
graduate program in counseling psychology, and I approached this thesis as a solitary
project, even as I wrote of how individual meaning might intersect the collective. The
collective, though, kept bursting through my attempts at isolation.
One night, when I was near the deadline to submit the thesis, I went to dinner with
my father to take a break from the work. I wanted to go someplace new so I suggested a
Thai restaurant (though I suggested another restaurant I had been to once before, so
perhaps I was also resisting new experience) that we had not been to. After dinner, my
Dad noticed a sign on a store window next door: Paranormal Meeting Third Tuesday of
Every Month! It was the third Tuesday of the month, and we could see a half-dozen
people inside this bookstore. Lets go in and check it out, he said. I wanted to go home
and work, but I was curious and the latter option won out. We entered and introduced
ourselves. I said I was a student writing a thesis, and the others wanted to know what it
was about. I told them about my research, and everyone started relaying their own
synchronistic experiences. I wanted to express the idea that synchronicities occur
frequently in therapy, likely due to the constellation of an empathic field, so I started to
tell Jungs account of the golden scarab.
I began telling the story of how Jung (1952/2014) recognized the scarab, from his
patients dream, as an ancient Egyptian symbol of rebirth (p. 439) and then how a scarab
manifested in the outside environment and flew into the therapy room. Suddenly, a
woman in the room shouted, Oh my God, I just put this on and I havent worn it in six

45
months! She held up her hand to show us a gold ring, and in the gold setting was an
oval-shaped pink stone, cut into a scarab beetle. Her aunt had worked in Egypt, she said,
and had bought the old ring there, and it was bequeathed to her after her aunts passing.
Something told me that I had to wear it tonight, she said, and added that her aunt was
very interested in consciousness and concerned with what happened to the soul at death.
After the meeting, I was talking to her in the bookstore, which she owned.
Between us there was a jar that held four large gold pens, and one drew my eye: The top
was cut into an ankh symbol, an Egyptian hieroglyphic that represents eternal life. I
pulled it out and on either side of the symbol were two black scarabs, and at the base of
the pen, around the tip, there were four more black scarabs. She said it was the only pen
she had like it. For me, the meaning of this experience was something like you can learn
something here, and you are in the right place. For the lady, she saw my father and me
as opportune guests who had interesting things to share, and she was touched that her
aunt was present in a way, for she would have liked to have been at this meeting.
I found new connectionand she did alsoto a past synchronicity, then, by
sharing Jungs (1952/2014) story and my own and from an appreciation of the present
moment. A facet was added to my experience. Thus, a story is expanded, and these new
connections are available if we attend to them.
Further Research
On one hand, synchronicity is subjective, and on the other it is based on empirical
facts and observations (Stein, 1998, p. 215). Research that verifies objective accounts of
synchronistic phenomena, as in studies of near-death experiences (Van Lommel,
2007/2010), seems particularly opportune and holds the potential to expand current

46
conceptions of consciousness. More research from the perspective of the collective is
needed, too, in terms of cultural synchronicities (Cambray, 2009), the social function
of the self and ones soul-family (Franz, 1978/1980b), and in terms of the
synchronistic matchmaker (Bolen, as cited in Aziz, 1990, p. 202). Also, neurological
studies (Iacobini, 2008) of field states, such as in regard to mirror neurons, are propitious
and may parallel psychological theory. More could be done to see how networks of
mirror neurons change, for instance, over the course of therapy or from engagement with
social groups.
Subjective accounts are also valuable to remove any stigma from this common
experience and to correlate, as Jung (1973) posited, the deepest insights between the
worlds of mind and matter (p. 547). As the Jungian analyst Murray Stein (1998) wrote,
though, the most-accepted paradigm in the world today is scientific not mythological
(p. 215). The occurrence of synchronistic phenomena on the border between the
verifiable and the unseen seems well suited to intriguing empirical study. Additional
research can serve to further bridge these worlds and to compensate any paucity of
perspective, by infusing the seen with the unseen.
Afterword
The poet T. S. Eliot (1943) wrote,
What we call the beginning is often the end;
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from . . .
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration . . . history is a pattern
Of timeless moments (p. 58)
Too much recollection might diminish our sojourns that occur all the time around
us and within us. Only so much can be expressed with words. One ventures, returns, and

47
hopefully one gains perspective of a shared condition and of different vantage points
along the way. As Jung (1988) wrote, It does not matter whether you do a thing or
whether it happens to you; whether it reaches you from without or happens within, fate
moves through yourself and outside circumstances equally (p. 896).
As humans, when we are most isolated, we might find our way back to life and to
the myriad of connections that are possible. The path can lead outside, and it can take
place within. There are many paths. There is an old Chinese saying, Jung wrote, that
when one reaches superior insight, no matter how remote one is one should be aware of
synchronicity (as cited in Aziz, 1990, p. 245). Wherever a person may be if his or her
words are well-spoken, then they will be heard more than a thousand miles away (p. 245).
Someone is listening. The opposite is also true, as when Chau (Sure & Chau, 2014) wrote
Off an inch in the beginning, off by a thousand miles in the end (p. 38). Chau saw a
turtle in the road, but by the time he woke up and thought to liberate it (p. 38) the
moment had passed. The turtle was crushed. One must act too, when action is called for.
There is a morality implied with an awareness of (inter)connection(s) and of ones
influence in the world. As Stein (1998) wrote, Each of us is the carrier of a bit of the
consciousness that is needed by the times [and] the individual is a cocreator of . . .
reality (p. 216). The individual influences the collective, and the collective depends, to
an extent, on individual co-creation. One doubts, perhaps, that ones actions matter and
that one affects life experience. I reply that ones (in)actions mattered to that turtle, to
those monks, their teacher, other adults, children, and to countless others whom they
encountered along their journey and afterward, to all those who were touched by it.

48
As Campbell (2004) stated, This is the mystic realization: you and that divine immortal
being of beings of which you are a particle, are one . . . you are that . . . you are yourself
the divine mystery you wish to know (p. 71). Each person is a divine fragment and
through synchronicity, one might connect to other divine expressions and to an undivided
wholeness of being. In the Talmud (Mishnah, Sanhedrin 4:5) it is written that each person
is a world. Whoever saves a life saves an entire world, and whoever destroys a life
destroys an entire world. Each person carries a spark of consciousness and has a role that
one may fulfill. On this Jung (1961/1989) wrote.
As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light
in the darkness of mere being. It may even be assumed that just as the
unconscious affects us, so the increase in our consciousness affects the
unconscious. (p. 326)
Just as a candle kindles a light, so might ones life illumine ones surroundings. An
increase in consciousness affects oneself, others and illumines a connected world.
A greater purpose can be to raise the worldmind and matter into a higher,
more integrated state of consciousness by animating matter with spirit. By doing so,
human beings might join the most concrete building blocks to the most ephemeral
essence and realize the unity of the world that synchronicity points to. There is a choice
as to how one exists, and we are all little worlds with influence over our co-created
reality.
As T. S. Eliot (1943) wrote,
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time. (p. 59)

49
Every journey ends, and every orbit takes one to the place where one began. There is a
birth and a death and a place that the Soul returns to, the way home. A step out is a step
in, and when we walk that path, we become it. There we will meet again.

Appendix
The Writers Group
Prologue
The wind rising off the East river on a crisp fall morning, howling over the
buildings edges, scouring its planes until acute angles are made smooth,
irregularities worn and filed. The thin whistle it makes as it keens towards us, 55
stories up, makes my bones feel like hollow sticks. A sound that will lift you up
only to cast you down.
I look at my father; one of his weathered hands grips the armrest of a
plastic deck chair. The table next to it still has its sun umbrella, although summer
has long-since passed and the daylight is dim and refracted. His face is a
weathered slate of deep fissures, hollowed-out craters and scorched earththe
marks of lean years that eroded his landscape.
Theres a storm coming, he says, his blue eyes squinted against the
wind. See those flat clouds, he points north. Well, when its coming like this it
hits fast. I nod automatically. He scans the horizon as if he knows anything. I
wonder what he really knows about storms, about trees that dont bend but
break, and about rivers choked by pack ice. Maybe his father spoke to him like
so, passing on a smidge of folk wisdom, like a quaint parable or a second-rate
heirloom. I stepped to the edge of the building. The river was a painting below,
ribboned whitecaps over a cobalt swath.
I bet you never thought youd make it up here he says. Growing up in
Sweetwater, well I suppose it was all over really, he winks. And just look at you
now, Mr. Bigshot, the vice-president of Moriah bank. His thin lips twingethe
makings of a smile, approval, pity? Hieroglyphics on the moon.
Sure Dad. I hear myself say. I made it, nice of you to stop by after all
these years. All that was unspoken cut between us like barbwire, eliminating
further approach. I heard about a fence on the Israel-Syria border. Families had
members on both sides of the border so they would met at the fence, separated
by 50 feet of no-mans-land, filled with razor wire and mines, and shout across
the space. That was how news traveled: weddings, promotions, babies, deaths
all of life mixing and melding in that space between worlds.
Did you ever miss us? I say.
There isnt a day that goes by that I dont, he says. Youre off in your
own head son and you forget about everything else and everyone else. Youre

50
just trying to get through the God-damn day, just trying his voice trails off. I
nod dully, turning away so that he cant see his words on my face.
I jump. My toes extend for a moment then leave the purchase of the roof
as the wind bites over my face. The river starts to shift and waves ripple along
the surface. Not far off, I can see people in the street, striding along, waiting at
streetcorners, nestled in sidewalk cafes that grow larger by the second. I see all
of this. Then I close my eyes as the ground rushes to meet me.
I hate it.
Carson sprawls in the corner of a burgundy-colored loveseat where he bats a
blond dreadlock between his fingers.
I mean it just ends man. he says, seemingly surprised that he spoke out loud and
that everyone was now listening. Its like in a movie and youre waiting for someone to
tell you whats happening, just bust out with some meaning you know? said Carson,
kicking a corduroy-clad leg to make his point. And then the credits start rolling.
I want my money back, says Will. Ripples of laughterCarson turns and settles
back into a generous fold of the upholstery.
I also wanted something more, said Taya. She uncrossed her long legs from her
seat, gathered her breath. It was so dramatic but whoever wrote it, she glanced at the
assembled group, in various states of awkward repose on the mismatched furniture.
Whoever wrote it wanted to shock us, she said. He wanted to get our attention.
Why are you assuming the writer is a man? Sophie, a five-foot-six powerhouse
of piercings and butterfly tattoos, snapped into life.
Its about a son and his father for Gods sake.
Just because a man narrated the story doesnt mean a man wrote it, Sophie
snapped.
Did you write it then? said Taya. Sophie glared, her eyes spitting stiletto stab
wounds.
No youre not writing about your relationship with your father as a man? said
Taya, arching her eyebrows. So that leaves four guys here, said Taya, looking around.
The room was cramped but comfortable, one wall was lined with cubby holes
filled with travel treasurestwo carved African masks with snake and leopard headdress,
a 10-inch long rose prism, a yak-bone prayer wheelwhile three bay windows streamed
in the morning light from the opposite wall. A frayed Persian carpet hid a scuffed pine
floor and the room was delineated by a small couch and several mismatched chairs that

51
had crossed the threshold from aesthetic to accommodating. The steady tick of a
grandfather clock could be heard distinctly from upstairs, staccato notes that descended
the oak staircase. In the alley outside, two cats were either locked in a vicious attack or an
amorous embrace; it was impossible to say.
Lets stop here. Rusty frowned and brushed some renegade locks from his
brow. His face was stubbled and there were dark rings under his eyes; he was slim and
wiry but not from exercise it appeared, rather the sinews of his body were pulled taut. I
asked you to send in your stories anonymously, because I dont want to know who wrote
each one.
Why not? said Will.
Because I would judge the stories based on who you are, Rusty said. I cant be
impartial when I have my own notions of what you might be capable ofwhat you could
and couldnt write.
Thats cool though, said Carson, whose voice seemed to emanate from the
depths of the loveseat.
Thank you. No its not, said Rusty. I want us to see each story with a blind eye
and a fresh perspective.
That might be an issue for some people here, said Sophie. Taya glanced over
and flipped her hair cooly.
Since I will be the brutal dictator of this classroom, my living room he said
with a thin smile, this goes for you too.
Well figure it out anyway, said Taya drily.
You cant fool us man, were on to you, said Carson.
So we can say that this story is disturbing, shocking even, but is there anything
else that we can glean from it, something outstanding that we might see? Tick ticking
from the grandfather clock. The street cats seemed at peace, their soft mewing wafted
from the alley.
Let me put it like this: are there any symbols or clues of the writers intention?
Silence. Xang what do you think?
Xang had his head lowered. He was dressed conservatively with a white buttondown under a silvery-grey jacket. His jeans were unstained and his dark hair was cleancut, belied only by a nautilus-like cowlick and by several scars along his jawline and
neck. He looked up, not meeting Rustys eyes. I go by Sean.

52
Fine Sean. Any thoughts?
Im not sure, Sean squirmed in his chair, uncomfortable in the spotlight.
Well get back to you, Rusty said. Let me remind you all that were here to
comment and debate and criticize one another so lets have at it, I want to hear what you
really think.
I can jump in, said Sophie.
Ill bet you can, said Taya. Rusty gave her a sharp look.
Anyway, before I was interrupted, just now, I remembered that Id heard this
story before, about a father and son, and one jumps off the building, but I thought it was
the father who jumped, said Sophie. He is showing off his empire or his estate to his
son and saying that it will all be passed on to him and its so wonderful that hell inherit it
and get this material wealth, and then he commits suicide in front of him. It shows the
emptiness of capitalism and how we need more than materialism to be happy.
This is naive, said Isaac, his gaze direct and firm. He had a quiet intensity to
him and seemed very aware and on edge at the same time. He grimaced and the stubble
shifted along his jawline and upwards to where his head was shaved. You need money
to support yourself. Its only the rich that talk about the emptiness of capitalism, because
they can afford to.
Rusty interjected. Sophie youre correct that in the original story, the father
shows his son the view and then leaps to his death, said Rusty. Here it was reversed.
Did you like it better?
No one said anything. Taya looked at Rusty with a concentrated look, her brow
furrowed.
Well leave it for now then, he said. I do want to bring attention, though, to
one story where the author conveniently left his name. He shuffled through a thin stack
of papers. My Cousin and The Pond, Sean why dont you read it, you havent said
much today.
Or any day, Will muttered under his breath.
My Cousin and The Pond, dedicated to Mr. Ernest Hemingway. Sean stopped
and looked at the professor. I didnt know Id have to read it.
Great keep reading.

53
The doorbell rang. It was a chime that was perhaps once bright larksong, but
which had deteriorated to a sort of choked warble that ended in a frogs croak.
Its open, called Rusty.
Someone began to knock on the door to the tune of Shave and a Haircut, Two
Bits, which steadily increased in volume, bah da da duh duhbum bum. There was a
pause. The bird loosed another tortured cry and the knocking started again.
Open the damn door, come in already, Rusty shouted.
The door swung open a few cracks and a tan, coffee-colored face peered around
the frame, a sheepish smile on this discombobulated head.
I sincerely apologize for being late Rusty, the traffic on the freeway was
murderous and my great-aunt was sick this morning, Oh I probably shouldnt bring that
up, not the place and all, the Parkinsons and the incontinence, practically every morning,
not to mention
Just sit down Sebastian so we can continue, Rusty said, making an effort to
contain his voice.
Oh sure, he held up his hands in a sign of surrender. Pardon the interruption, I
wont say anything else, he said. Just going to walk in and take my seat now, said
Sebastian. Just sitting down here, oops I didnt see you Carson.
Dude Xang was talking, said Carson.
Xang was talking really? said Sebastian.
Its Sean, said Sophie.
Sean whos Sean, do we have the pleasure of a new student in the class Rusty?
Sit down. Listen. Now.
Sebastian grabbed the opposite corner of the couch from Sophie who scowled and
moved a few inches over. He gave her a zipping-the-lips-and-I-just-threw-away-the-key
gesture.
Sean continue, said Rusty. Sebastians ears perked up at the name and lit on
Sean, who stood and began to read.

54
My Cousin and The Pond
The pond was deep and dark and filled with catfish holes. In the summer
my cousin, Joe Bob, and I fished for catfish in the murky water with our hands
and smoked cigars. They called it noodling in this part of the South. They called it
different namesgurgling, catfisting, hoggingin other places. Many catfish
were caught near the shores bosom, where the water was shallow and the
noodling was less dangerous. The pond was good.
Joe Bob had spent many summers in the pond and brought catfish home
for his girl to fry in a special skillet that hung over the stove. He was large and full
of life with a knowing grin and a fiery disposition like a Spanish matador. His
hands and arms were scarred where the catfishs spines had cut him deep. He
knew the pond like a brother and did not fear so much when he put his hands
into a hole now. Joe Bob taught me how to noodle and I loved him.
To noodle you would squat in the shallow water and put your hand into the
deepest, darkest hole that you could find. Joe Bob always found the best holes.
When the catfish bit, you would make a strong fist and the beast would seize
your hand and arm in its great maw. You had to wrestle the wild creature to the
surface to claim him.
It had been almost three months since Joe Bob had caught a catfish, from
the day of the Monster Truck Pull Off and Demolition Derby.
My father forbid me to fish with him anymore and said that he was bad
luck like a peach moon or a jumper toad before a wedding. He said that Joe Bob
was washed up and that if I wanted a Cajun catfish sandwich I had better noodle
with someone else.
After my school studies and chores, I found him on the setting porch in the
evenings. We talked about Nascar, chewed tobacco and looked at the girly
magazines. Sometimes he talked about wanting to noodle in a far-off place, in
Africa, and how they probably had a catfish there he didnt even know of.
I want to noodle in Africa, said Joe Bob. They probably have a catfish
there I dont even know of.
Sunday afternoon, after our church prayers and the clambake, the sun
was falling on the sky when Joe Bob decided to go to the pond.
Dont go Joe Bob, I said, my mouth half-full of baked clam so that it
sounded like Wront know Joe Bob.
What? he said.
Wront know yuh shun know.
I dont understand a word youre saying. Not a word, said Joe Bob.

55
Noo Wront Know! Sss Wanjeruss! I said.
Your breath is horrible, he said. Im going to the pond.
I spit out the clam. You wont make it home before dark.
Its time, he said. I havent noodled a catfish since the Monster Truck
Pull.
But those holes are fished out.
Not where Im going, he said with a far-off gaze.
He left then, swaying and burping softly as he walked away.
I wanted to follow but Pa watched me from the grass where he sat with his
friends. His eyes said Boy dont you go after him or He blinked. or therell
be a switching you wont soon forget.
A few hours later, I slipped away from the houseto hell with Pato
check on Joe Bob. I thought to bring him some beer and the new issue of Hot
Rods and Chicks to relax him and help put him to bed. When I got to the
General Store, a few men were talking, excited-like, on the porch.
Couldnt believe the size of it.
Like a monster.
Biggest catfish I ever seen. How he even carried that beast.
He had to stick his knife in it just to put it down. That he did.
That he done.
Looked like it was holding him up, it was so big-like an angel.
A catfish angel.
I never seen nothing so beautiful in all my lifeThe catfish angel.
Lets get gone and grill that sucker up.
You done said it.
Hasty-like.
I left the store and hurried to Joe Bobs house to see what had happened.
Past the trailer park, I saw the pink flamingo on the lawn and the door wide open.
I ran up the steps.
Joe Bob, Marlene, anyone home? I heard a moan and stepped inside. I
found him on the pantry floor, the giant catfish cradled in his arms.

56
Dont let em take it, said Joe Bob. Its like a brother to me.
I brought a cushion from the Lazy-Boy reclining sofa and placed it gently
under his head.
I cant see him fried and served with barbeque sauce and relish, he said.
Its indecent.
Saying this, Joe Bob turned his head towards the pantry floor. I tried to
separate him from the catfish, but his arms were locked tight around its body.
The catfishs tail lay above them, stiff and straight, like a sentinel or a proud
matador. I sat there for a long time, watching his eyes move back and forth in his
sleep. I supposed he was dreaming about Africa.

Sean stopped reading and set the paper down.

Yeah thats what Im talking about, said Carson. Hilarious. A few scattered
claps, Taya beamed and Will gave a thumbs-up.
Rusty wasnt smiling.
There are serious consequences for plagiarism, he said. The room got quiet.
I read The Old Man and The Sea when I was in high school and its considered
to be one of Hemingways greatest novels, even though its only about 100 pages. He
knocked the hair from his brow, a vein pulsed there, red and angry.
Think about it for a second, he said, standing up. Everyone expected a big
novel, another The Sun Also Rises, a For Whom The Bell Tolls and instead
Hemingway writes something small, this gem. He surprised all of them, all his critics and
his readers, and in the end he created something original and daring. He turned to Sean
who was rooted to the Paisley rug like he was mired in quicksand.
Give it here.
Sean handed the story over with the tips of his fingers, his arm outstretched. The
others watched the exchange warily.
This, Rusty said, brandishing the pages is shit.
Sean flinched.
This shit is a God-Damn travesty to Hemingway and to anyone that appreciates
an artists work. Its an absolute theft and Im not going to let Sean or any of us go down

57
that path. He waved the story in front of them like it was evidence of a crime, stained
with culpability.
I didnt copy his words, said Sean quietly. He looked at his story, clutched and
crumpled in Rustys hand.
Plagiarism isnt just when you steal words verbatim Sean, its also when you
steal intellectual property, said Rusty. When you decided to steal Hemingways work,
Sean, you took something original and made it banal and cheap.
Its a satire, said Taya. Cant we make an exception for that?
One second, two seconds, three. The silence lengthened, thick and charged, and
the room felt hot and cramped. Isaac watched closely, tapping his foot on the floor.
Sophie shook her head and Carson was quiet, while Sebastian avoided eye contact. Will
sweated.
Ill show you what we can do for Sean, said Rusty and tore the story in half. He
ripped the pages into smaller and smaller pieces, and they started to escape his hands and
fall to the floor like confetti. He finished with a handful of shreds, which he flung in front
of them.
I want each and every one of you to think very carefully about what happened
here today, about what Sean has done, so that it never happens again. Sean watched,
embarrassed and stunned, his mouth framed in a tight O.
Plagiarism is never acceptable, whether its in the guise of satire or in any other
form. Keep that in mind so that we dont have to involve the authorities.
Now listen. The room was as silent as a morgue. Next week write about
synchronicity. Write about a chance encounter or an apparent coincidence that had an
impact on your life, he said.
Its fine if you want to lighten it up and use a humorous style, he said, and his
demeanor relaxed slightly. But dont write anything that could be recognized as being
derivative of someone elses work. The group was already stirring, ready to leave
Rustys house.
I also want you to submit at least five other story ideas based on the theme of
interconnectedness as an exercise for your benefit. Of course this is only the beginning of
our class, but Ill remind you that the deadline has passed for you to change your
schedule, he gave them a long look. Your grade, pass or fail, will be based on your
effort and complete participation. Rusty stopped as Will started to pack away his things.
Will froze.

58
Were creating characters and stories that will live on regardless of who we are
and what we do, said Rusty. We have a chance to create another world here through
our writing and maybe he let out a deep sigh. Maybe we can create something special,
said Rusty. I will remind you to take this seriously, he said. This is your life.

That guy is a fucking psycho, said Will, catching up with Sophie as they walked
away from the house. Im Will by the way. I know we never talked or anything before.
Sophie nodded.
I mean he just tore that guy a new one just because he took some liberties with
almighty Hemingway, Will insisted.
Well hes trying to teach us the right way to do things and to be responsible for
our work, Sophie insisted. You cant expect a teacher, especially a great writer like
Rusty Connor, to just ignore plagiarism.
Im saying that he needs to ease up; have you heard of constructive criticism?
Well we need to adapt to him and absorb his teaching, rather than expect him to
dumb it down for us, Sophie pouted and thrust her shoulders back, Monets water lilies
jutting from the front of her T-shirt. No one asked Michelangelo to justify his painting.
The guy wrote one great book, stop treating him like hes Moses on his trek
down from Mount Sinai. Youre sucking up to him.
You are so crass, said Sophie and turned her back. Her tan wool pants stretched
tight over her hips, in contrast to the colorful Pokemon lunchbox that she hefted.
Asshole, she said and gave him the finger.

59
Little Worlds
Xang held the phone about an inch from his ear and still he could hear his mother
clearly. Ill try to make it Mom. Its really hard right now. Theres so much work in my
classes and Im working at the lab too, spread before him on a thin veneer desk were a
dozen books stacked in small pileshe still had 300 pages of reading to do before Friday
and a five-page quiz to study for. He sighed, I know its important to me too. He heard
his roommate Victor greeting someone down the hall.
Sorry I didnt get that. Aunt Hanh is coming all the way from Louisiana great.
Oh that writing class, yeah its okay, he tried to keep the emotion out of his voice. No
fine, its just the teacher said that I had to make some changes to what I wrote. I know.
Ill do better. Thanks Mom tell him Ill do my best. Talk to you soon.
What are you reading? his roommate Victor walked into their small dorm room.
They got along well, considering they had only met a few weeks ago. Victor blasted his
music sometimes and he was way more outgoing, but he liked to be outside of Unit 2, the
grey and yellow dorm block at Berkeley, so it worked out for both of them. He had filled
their small refrigerator with 60 tamaleshe said his family made 500 of them at
Christmas every yearand he snuck him in to Kips where he knew the bouncer and they
could get a pitcher on the sly. Xang helped him with his O-chem homework and it was a
done deal.
Hey, its for astrophysics class, the many worlds theory, string theory, that sort
of thing.
Oh yeah whats that all aboutlike the universe has 9-dimensions or
something? Victor said.
Its pretty cool; there are other dimensions that interact with our world from
quantum entanglement. Victor gave him a blank look. So at the quantum level, the
microscopic level, you have all these potential actions, but any time you try to set up an
experiment, all the possibilities collapse to one outcome, based on what youre looking
for. Buuuuut he smiled. The other outcomes are still there and they interact in ways
that we can see mathematically.
Sean I know youre a smart guy, buuuut why does it matter if its only
theoretical? said Victor. He took off his backpack. He was wearing a tight grey and
yellow Cal Lacrosse T-shirt that showed off his tan skin and muscles.

60
Thanks buff Victor. It turns out that people are actually fields of energy and our
bodies and our brain states are interacting all the time from these unknown forces. And
by the way youre getting fat.
Bro you are hurting my feelings, he gave a pained look. Is that what youre
working on at the laboratory? Victor sprawled out on their standard-issue light-blue twoseater; there wasnt much room so they had put it under their beds, which they stacked
bunk bed style. They had a few potted plants that Seans mother had brought over and a
couple of postersThe Flaming Lips and St. Vincentthat Victor had put up.
Kind of. We hooked up an EEG to people in different rooms. We showed
pictures to a person in one room, and the EEG reading also changes for the person in the
other room.
Whoa, so theyre not in contact?
No. Not that we can see. People are in these correlated fields we think and
theres lots of possible outcomes from this quantum entanglement model.
Dude step off, you said only one gets picked.
Yes buuuut I need a drumroll. Victor rapped his fingers against the coffee table
ratta tat tat tat tatWell Victor this information is passing all the time, except its
unconscious, and all those other outcomes really exist in dimensions we dont see,
according to the many-worlds theory.
Now you sound a little crazy, not going to lie. So thats the many-worlds worlds
orlds sss . . . theory? Victor rolled his eyes.
Its like every choice in your life, even the small ones have these branches that
you might have chosen and all these outcomes exist at some level.
But we experience one?
Were not sure. It seems theres this greater reality that includes everything, all
these possible stories, and theyre contained in these field interactions, and somehow its
all a part of you. At least thats what the math shows. Sean rummaged through a box
containing some different teas. Yogi Spice. He clicked the electric water heater on.

61
Whatever Im just pre-med, but if we dont see all of that, then how is it going to
help me on my date tomorrow?
You have a date tomorrow? said Sean.
Yeah I asked this girl Sarah from my journalism class. Gotta love those
electives.
Im jealous; Im always scared to do that.
Hey in another life you did right, but never with Sarah you dirty baboso.
Babose-what? Sean asked.
Retard, you retard.
Oh, we know shes muy grosso if shes wants to go out with you. Muy
unattractivo Victor. Anyway I have to get to work and write this story again.

62
The Walk Back
We used to walk through the woods at night. Ray couldnt stay and he didnt want
to go home alone. So David and I went and brought along flashlights and sticksIn
case were attacked by a rabid animal, David said, or a psychotic drifter, I added. We
told Ray he was chickenshit of course and that, if it had been us, we would have walked
home alone and not bothered our friends. He wasnt afraid, though, he just wanted us
there.
Rays parents fought. These werent the type of fights that started with threats, but
ended with whispers and amends. These fights ended with trips to the emergency room.
Sometimes Ray came to school with bruises and welts that his long shirts and pants
couldnt cover. Sometimes he didnt come at all.
I wrestled with Andrew, he said one day, his jaw and temple swollen to a
violent shade of purple and red. Andy was a wispy, shy kid, a few years younger than
Ray. Those marks were from a man and not from wrestling his younger brother, but we
didnt argue with him. We knew and he just wanted to forget.
We had plans. I was planning to go away to college, although it was a few years
away and David was too. Ray would need to save money, but he wanted to join us,
assuming we got into the same school. His uncle was a contractor and he worked in the
meantime, on weekends and during the summer. We didnt know anyone down south, in
the Bay area, but that didnt stop us from saying that things would be different. Wed run
that college, go to all the best parties and date all the hottest girlsnothing like the stuck
up ones from our schooland it seemed an adventure and a relief that wed leave our
little hick town.
Ray would apply to the engineering program. He wanted to work with his hands
and make something good; thats what he actually said.
Ray, how do you expect to get into a fancy engineering program, said David
when you wont even pass geometry, because you keep staring at Ashleys ass? Ray
grinned and said it was better than staring at our ugly-ass faces for an hour. This face,
this face? said David, pointing in disbelief. You could create the Sistine chapel Ray and
still never approach the level of beauty in this work of art. Ray said he needed
something to wash down the vomit that had risen in his mouth.
We believed in him. It wasnt that he was incredibly smart, although he was
perceptive and quick-wittedit was the force he conveyed when he spoke. You felt the
intensity of his words. It was as if there was only a pause between formation and action,
before his words uncoiled like a spring. We wanted to be somewhere else and he needed
to be. That was the difference.

63
It was still that night. It had rained earlier, and the air seemed thick and heavy, the
night sounds muffled. It was almost a new moon, and the dim road seemed to flow into
the forest. We walked down the center of the road; it was convex so that water ran off it
during the storms. It was wet and inky now, swirling patterns of oil and sediment. I was
walking ahead, then David and Ray.
I try to remember every detail now, however small or insignificant it seemed at
the time. Sometimes I wonder what actually happened and what Ive invented with the
passing of time and emotion. Im walking ahead in the thick, humid air and I can hear
Davids heavy step and his wheezing. He has asthma. An abandoned barn appears over a
hill, the roof is broad and slanted, and theres a horseshoe affixed to the front along with
faded Christmas lights. Gravel lanes spike out to nearby houses. Dogs start barking.
Go home mutt, David whizzes a rock in their direction. Come and get us,
says Ray. He makes little clucking noises and the dogs are barking furiously now. A
semis high beams blaze over the crest of the hill.
Shit get to the side, I say. The light is blinding and throws 20-foot shadows
behind uswhy doesnt he turn off his high beams? The driver must have seen us then
and theres a deafening roar as he releases the Jake brake. The semi hurtles forward,
screaming waves of noise, heat and dirt, and its as if its motion proceeds in a series of
jerky vignettes. Hes going too fast and the trailer starts to skid. I see the man, outlined in
the lit cab, trying to muscle it around, trying to align two wheels in the direction that the
other 16 have taken. The frame jumps forward and theres the whine of warped steel and
the acrid smell of charred rubber as the trailer tilts towards us. The hapless scream of the
brakes pounds against my ear drums. Another frame and the trailer smashes against the
asphalt, carrying the cab and driver with it. Im running, away from the tortured steel,
throwing foul water, orange and red sparks. One more frame and the truck careens off the
road, shearing second-growth fir and dropping out of sight.
I rub my eyes, shake my head to try to get the ringing out. David is on one knee,
coughing with his head bent over. He looks up, Are you allright? Your hands? I bring
my hands up and theyre skinned badly, deep cuts mixed with stone and dirt. I must have
fallen.
Yeah Im fine, it stings a little. I look behind us, to where the truck passed by us
and nothing is there, only fresh skid marks to prove that something happened. Wheres
Ray? Did you see him? David shakes his head. Well so he justhe must havemy
thoughts trail off, I cant find an explanation that reassures me.
Lets go look. David nods quickly and I catch a scared look on his face. I shine
my light over the dropoff. Only the woods, a few stunted pines that cling to the side of
the hill.

64
Hey Ray are you down there? No answer. Theres a break in the undergrowth
next to the road there, a void in the forest and its as if the truck, the driver and Ray have
been swallowed. Eaten up.
Come on, we have to go down. We start down the hillside, zigzagging back and
forth down the steep slope, clutching at stunted trees and brush to stop our slide through
the scree.
At the bottom we find the truck. The cab is resting on its side, cratered and
covered with mud and the glass windows are shattered. I peer in. The cab is empty,
except for some blood on the seat and the dash. I reach over the busted glass to open the
glovebox and pull out a wallet and a Maglite.
Henry Dewynne, from Klamath Falls, Oregon. I put the wallet away, lingering
on the picture. I have the feeling that time has sped up, that its flat-out moving and its
passing is crucial; outcomes are being decided now. We have to hurry.
We start to search the area, choked with brush and stumps, calling out to each
other every few moments, You got something?
No.
You allright?
Yeah.
In between breaths I yell for Ray. After a few minutes we find Henry. His leg is
twisted in an acute angle. The bones stick out.
Hes bleeding bad, says David, his pants are soaked. I grab my shirt and try to
rip it but it stretches out. I need something else, my belt!I practically slap myself with
the obvious and take it out, cinching the leather around Henry Dewynnes mangled leg. I
look up at David, We have to find him.
We cant just leave this guy, he wont make it, says David, his eyes wide.
Im not leaving Ray out here. We cant leave him, I say, getting frantic.
We dont have a choice, he says quietly.
Ten minutes, lets look for ten minutes.
Five minutes, says David.
I nod reluctantly and we walk away from the man.

65

I dont know how long we searched but he was gone. David grabbed my arm to
stop me and I nearly struck him. We had to get help he said.
We went back to my house and then all the questions started. We called Rays
house, he wasnt there. A deputy came.
Your friend probably got lost in the woods, hell find his way back in the
morning. You saved that mans life, thats the important thing.
The morning came and went. A search party was sent out, dogs, even a helicopter,
and they swept the forest all the way into the mountains miles away.
A volunteer found Rays flashlightmy flashlight actuallynot far from the
road, hidden in some brush. Nothing else was ever found.

I think about it sometimes. Mostly it comes in a rush, something he said and I

laugh, grinning to myself, or I smell somethingsword-ferns, redwood bark, pine cones,
and instantly Im back and I think of where he might be.
I write him into my stories. Ray leads a group down the Rogue river, on a fishing
expedition; theres an unsolved murder in a small town, and Ray is the deputy that solves
the case; Ray walking through a cathedral, Ray standing in the open foundation of a
worksite, all his plans laid out before him. Its a way to keep him around I guesshes
growing up in my stories. I imagine what he might look like, what hed do, and nothing
ever touches him, no one ever hurts him.

Isaac looked at Rusty. You saw a lot in that first reaction, he thought, not from
what someone said, but from how they acted. Sometimes words were a lie and people
spoke when they didnt say anything. Rusty was distracted, catching fireflies as his
Dad used to say, and then he seemed to reach a decision.
Its rough but you should be able to turn this into a decent story, said Rusty.
Youll need to make some changes.
They were wedged into a narrow booth at the Istanbul caf where Rusty held his
office hours. A few stragglers passed through, but you had to know the little caf, tucked
in the Sather passage between Bancroft Way and Durant Avenue, to find it. Otherwise
you passed by a bank and a book store and wondered at the hints of cardamom and
nutmeg. Rusty would grab a booth and sit for hours, downing shots of sweet, black

66
Turkish coffee, with ceramic dishes of baklava, knafeh and pistachio wedges for
reinforcement.
Instead of Rays mysterious disappearance lets add an assailant earlier on
someone that knew Ray or had a connection to him, Rusty said. Well put that person
in and establish a relationship, then later on after Ray disappears
Then Id be making something up, Isaac finished. Thats not what happened. I
want to write something that actually happened to me.
Who cares Isaac? Rustys face darkened. As soon as you write youre making
up a story. As soon as you start putting words together, youre creating fiction. Maybe
you remember the details differently, you didnt notice a few things then that you notice
now, a few things happened that you left out, you forget. What youre left with never
really happened. Isaac could feel his whole body tensethis meeting wasnt going at all
like he planned, in fact he wished hed never come.
I read a lot of psychology. I find it fascinating, what makes people tick, said
Rusty. He caught the eye of the waitress, thumbing her new eyebrow ring at the counter
and motioned to his empty cup. Anyway, they did this study where they asked
someones parents to ask their son or daughter about a big trip they went on as a kid. Like
when Dad took his boy to the fair for the first time. So of course the kidsthey were
adults nowthey did their best to remember the trip. Maybe they had cotton candy, won
a stuffed bear and they remembered being scared of the costumes: the pirate, Bugs
Bunny, whatever, or maybe they rode the Ferris wheel and held Dads hand. The point is
that they never went to that fair. The parents purposely had them fill in the details of a
trip that they never went on. They had convinced themselves of the fact of the trip and the
mind filled in all the details, never doubting the story for a second. My point Isaac is how
can you be so sure about what you remember? Maybe its your way of creating meaning
from an event that you dont understand. What if your friend was cutting across the
woods to see a girl and her Dad found out about it, would that change the story?
He would have told us, said Isaac. Why would he hide something like that?
Maybe he was embarrassed or she wanted to keep it quiet. Isaac shook his head.
Or what if, Rusty continued Ray was dealing on the sidesome weed, pillshe
needed to save the money and Dad wasnt going to help. We cant be sure what really
happened. Thats my point. So if youre creating a story in any case, why not make it
how you want it to be, why not make it your own?
It feels wrong, said Isaac. It feels like Im doing a disservice to Rays memory,
and to what he stood for. He looked away, caught his breath, he was starting to get
emotional and he didnt want to break down in front of Rusty.

67
Youre honoring him by including him in your story, said Rusty. Youre
Jewish right?
Yeah. Why does that matter? said Isaac.
Im thinking of a story, your story if you will. Have you visited before, do you
have family there?
Israel? Rusty nodded. I went once when I was 7 or 8, during the holidays but I
dont remember much, Isaac said. I went to this summer camp for a couple weeks
when I was 13. Rusty looked at him steadily and waited for him to continue. So yeah I
was there for a couple of weeks: we did some hikes around the country, learned some
history. I remember Jerusalemwe met some cool Israelis there. It was the standard
lets support Israel trip.
I see, lets say that Ray disappears
He disappeared.
Fine so he disappears and then you decide that you need some time away. You
cant go to college when the time comes, its too much, so you go to Israel to stay with
your family there.
Isaac struggled to wrap his brain around the idea. You mean I would go live in
Israel, but I dont have family there. My parents grew up in America.
So your Mom visited a kibbutz in the 70s and she fell in love with an Israeli guy
and you were born in Jerusalem, but you spent most of your life in the US. They split up,
culture shock and all, and Mom moved back. So you go back to Israel to escape; you join
the army because you want to forget. You want to be exhausted at the end of the day, you
dont want to think about your friend who got mixed up in drugs and disappeared, you
want things to turn out different. Rusty leaned back against the wooden backing and
shifted to a more comfortable position. Why dont you start writing that instead, he
downed the dregs of his coffee. That would make a good story.

68
The Call
The road was empty as he climbed the rocky hills to Jerusalem. Most days he took
the freeway from Tel Aviv, an hour-long drive that traversed millennia, between two
cities that existed in separate worlds. Ancient Jerusalem was Israels capital, and, as the
government liked to proclaim, would never be forsaken or divided.
We were building in Jerusalem 3,000 years ago and well continue to build
today, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said at todays press conference. The
Americans were pressuring Israel to stop construction in east Jerusalem, in the areas the
Palestinians wanted to claim as their future capital.
To most Israelis, Jerusalem was the capital only in name, a backward, provincial,
dirty city that was fast becoming Arab and ultra-orthodox, while the citys other
populationnon-orthodox Jews as well as a smattering of Christiansdwindled every
year. Tel Aviv was the real capital and the center of modern Israel; its where everyone
wanted to be. It was just as dirty, but it had the beach, wild nightlife and few trappings of
religiosity. Even Jerusalemites ran from the hills, once they enlisted in the army and had
a chance to leave home.
Isaac was on his way back home though, rising up through the hills of the West
bank. Today, Orthodox Jews were burning tires and blocking the main freeway to protest
the armys withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
Jerusalem was beautiful, glimpsed after winding ones way through narrow
valleys, then appearing like a proud sentinel on top of the Kidron ridge, impregnable and
timeless. In the evening, the fading light turned the Jerusalem stone, of which the city
was composed, into blended hues of gold, scarlet and crimson. Despite its outer beauty,
though, the city existed in a perpetual state of conflict. A third of the city was Arab,
another third ultra-orthodox and the rest was comprised of Jews in varying stages of
religiosity, and these groups were at odds over who owned the city and what it would be
in the future. It was tense. To him going up to Jerusalem felt like closing inhe
constricted as the valleys narrowed and sharpened.
Highway 443 was wide, smoothly paved, and connected the two cities along with
settlements inside the Green line. This meant little in theory; the 67-borders were just
lines on a map, the city/settlement of Modiin Illit itself had more than 35,000 residents.
Grey cinder-block housing of Palestinian towns dotted the ridges and lined the valleys
and high walls had been erected to prevent shooting attacks on passing cars. Concrete
barricades were placed at town entrances to prevent Palestinians from entering the road.
Israelis had been sniped in their cars and burned to death from homemade firebombs,
although not for a while now. The Israeli Supreme court had ordered the army to reopen

69
the road to Palestinians and to local traffic between the villages, but the army was
delaying the move. His phone rang and he put a headset to his ear.
Where are you?
Im on the way, theres another protest, he said. Im passing Modiin now.
Silence on the line. He checked to see if he had lost the connection.
Are you there?
Im always here, there was a pause and Isaac imagined his father reminding him
that Jerusalem would always be home, that he was a Jew, not an American or a European
and that his heart would not rest until he admitted it.
I can be a Jew anywhere abba, hed say not everyone cares about this endless
war, about who gets what piece of land here or there.
Thats what we said in Morocco, we got along with our neighbors, we were
essential to the country, just like everyone else. They threw us out like garbage hed say.
America isnt Morocco abba and Germany isnt Germany anymore. A Jew
doesnt have to fear that hell be expelled, hed answer.
The great America, the great hope of the liberal Jew, to assimilate and become
just another goy, his Dad would say. One day theyll burn Crown Heights and it wont
be any different than Sanaa and Tripoli.
Im tired of this conversation Dad, he said.
Beseder, call me when you get to the city.
Beseder, I wont stop to eat hummus with the Arabs today.
God forbid. You heard about the shooting? An Arab shot a soldier in Hebron.
I heard, he said. Ill be there soon.
Is she coming?
No shes not feeling well.
Shes always sick when you come to see us. Maybe she is sick of our family.
I dont have the energy for this.
Yallah have a safe trip.

70
Yallah bye.
The light started to dim and cast a soft hue over the hills, outlining ancient
terraces, whose stones mottled tan and gold. He watched a Palestinian town pass by in the
valley, below were apartments, with colors of straw, orchid and aquamarine. They were
pressed tightly together, roofs slanted into side walls and living rooms, damp clothes
brushed against the neighbors line, dirt roads twined up the valley floor. Multistory
buildings dotted the ridgeline, separated from one another like crooked teeth. Spots of
emerald green winked in and out, marking mosques and slender minarets. Even the
streetlamps used different colored bulbs.
That was one of the first things she noticed, Sarah told him, that you could tell
whether a town was Jewish or Arab by the color of its lights.
An old man and a boy were disassembling a fruit stand at the side of the road,
stacking boxes of dates, plums, and oranges. A tattered green tarp waved and cracked in
the wind. Isaac pulled over.
They looked up, the man was holding a rolled cigarette, his black hair, tinged with
streaks of white was cut close to the scalp, his skin was dark and weathered. The boy
chewed sunflower seeds and peered at him without expression.
Halan, hows it going?
Praise to God, thank you, the man said in clipped Hebrew.
Quiet today?
No many people bought from us.
Its because of the protest, said Isaac. It took me forever to get out of Tel
Avivthey piss everyone off when they block the road.
Why are they angry? said the man, drawing the cigarette to his lips.
Theyre upset the government destroyed the settlements in Gaza, said Isaac.
They are moving, said the man. We moved toofrom Jaffa, Haifa,
Jerusalembut we cant ever go back. The boy had stopped chewing and was watching
them closely. The settlers can go to Tel Aviv or to somewhere else, he said.
It was always the same argument, the same sides Isaac thought. He reached for his
cigarettes. They could but they feel they lost their home, he answered, and tried to light
his cigarette in the wind. He motioned the boy over, to cup his hands over the flame.

71
We know this feeling, the man said. We will come back, it is written. The
smoke trailed at his side and rippled in the wind.
We have a destiny too, said Isaac. Give me a jar of olives and a bag of dates.
The man filled a bag and set it on a small scale.
Less than that.
The man shrugged and poured out some. The boy started putting the food into a
plastic bag.
How much? he said. The man turned his palms out as if to say you decide.
Twenty.
He frowned and shook his head.
Twenty five. He nodded and Isaac pulled out his wallet. I have thirty shekels,
do you have change? The man clucked his tongue, no, and looked away.
Keep it, he said, dropping the money on the scale. Shabbat shalom.
Shabbat shalom.
Back in the car, with his food resting on the seat, his thoughts wandered. Sarah
would be at the apartment, sitting on the balcony with a caf hafuchIsraeli
cappuccinowith the radio on, her feet resting over the metal railing, looking out onto
Dizengoff street. She loved the weekends when it was quiet.
Whats so bad about not watching TV for a day or not going out, she said.
Why not have a break once a week?
Ill break when I choose to and not because someone tells me I have to. Do you
think God cares if I watch a movie or not?
I think that you should enjoy your time off more and slow down, appreciate the
good things in life as they say, she showed a wry smile.
I enjoy you and there will be time to slow down when I die, he said.
He was coming to a checkpoint and he slowed and rolled down the window. A
girl with long amber hair, tied-back, looked at him casually, an M-16 slung on her hip.
Where are you coming from, she said.
Tel Aviv.

72
Where are you going?
Jerusalem, I grew up there.
She motioned him through, flicking her fingers. Have a good trip.
He weaved through the barricades and then accelerated. She wanted to stay, he
wanted to leavethat was the irony. His whole life people had preached to him about
how much it meant to live here, how different and special it was and how it was a great
gift to the Jewish people. Sometimes he wanted to give it back.
Youre not even Jewish, he said. Why does it matter to you where we live?
My Dad was Jewish, she said. So I am Jewish, according to the Reform
tradition and besides I like it here. She waved her hips back and forth, Galgalatz was on
in the background, an Arik Einstein songthe music was always more relaxed on the
weekend he thought. Sof shavua reguah im Galgalatz went their little jingle, which meant
relaxed weekend with Galgalatz.
You dont know what its really like to live here and what is this Reform
anyway? I can eat pork, marry anyone I want, do anything I want and Im still religious?
said Isaac. What if I worship Jesus and kill someone am I still good with the Reform
Judaism? he said, making his exaggerated big-eye-face at her.
She laughed. You eat pork and shrimp and everything else so why does it matter
to you?
My love, Im not the rabbi.
No youre definitely not, you are a bad influence on my Jewish education.
I can educate you in other areas, he said and placed his hand along her hip. He
moved close to where he could feel the movement of her body, her breath, the caramel
and lychee scent that she put on.
Is that your answer for everything? Honestly Im starting to doubt whether we
will actually make it through a serious conversation. She frowned but didnt pull away.
You worry too much. Lets enjoy what we have while we have it and later well
walk down the boulevard and I wont buy anything, not even cigarettes, he made a show
of taking his wallet out and putting it into his sock drawer.
I knew it! You are ready to wear a kippa and go to synagogue, she wrapped an
arm around his shoulder and trailed her fingers over his shoulder-blade, stroking the
valley of his back. Now all you have to do is quit smoking and youll be a real saint.

73
Sarah Im serious. Lets leave here, I have friends in Germany and you could
report from there. Or we could go to Californiamy mother has told me that I could stay
with her and we could find a place together, Isaac held her close.
You havent even seen your Mom since you were a little kid and all of your
friends are here, everything you know. I finally have a correspondents job, reporting
from Tel Aviv and why cant we just enjoy a good thing?
Isaac gulped, his body twitched. Theres something I didnt tell you, I didnt
want you to worry.
She recognized the tone, What is it?
I got called by my commander this morning. They want me for training next
month in the north at Mount Hermon.
Okay so reserve duty, a few weeks to play cards and drink with the guys right?
The border is heating up, theres been a lot of movement by Hezbollah fighters.
Jesus. Why didnt I hear anything about it?
The army is keeping it quiet I think until they know more, but its going to be
big. This is going to be a real war he said quietly.
Sarah held him tight. She looked like she wanted to cry but she just put her head
on his shoulder and stroked his hair. She wanted him to shave it, like many of his friends
but he was proud of his Jew-fro, as she called it.
Im scared for you. For me too.
Yiyeh beseder (it will be allright). He held her face with his hands. Think
about it. We can talk when I get back from Jerusalem.

74
The Blank Page
Rusty Connor. He said the name aloud, tested it to see how it felt. Ru-sty Connor, he said it again. Four syllables, two surnames actually, the first whistled through his
lips and the second was drawn out from his throat. Precision and ambiguity in one neat
package.
His eyes wandered over the desk: his manuscripta lean pile of chapterswas
stacked at one corner, weighted down with a pair of tiny silver shoes set in cherry,
Maya, Our Greatest Success; was inscribed. Several of his students short stories lay
scattered with his corrections red-penned in the margins, there was a picture of Ariella
and he at a roller rink, huddled together, beaming in the direction of the camera, an Elvis
coffee cup and a single .38 caliber bullet.
Ariella had been freezing that night at the roller rink and he kept buying her cups
of hot chocolate to keep her warm. They joked that she was addicted to eight-ounce cups
of hot chocolate and that it was her substitute for sex, before she had met him of course.
Of course, she said, rubbing her hands together to create friction, my life is
soooo vastly different now that weve gone out a couple of times. Ariella had a sharp
wit he found and it was almost impossible to catch her off guard.
This is all it takes to warm you up? he said and handed over the steaming cup.
I am bringing double strength for you then, giving her a sly glance. She looked him
directly in the eyes and said that it was tasty and that he would have to do better, much
better than that. He tried to kiss her and she turned away, but she didnt make him feel
bad about it and they were having a great time, albeit freezing. She said that he could be
patient.
Patience. Rusty let out a snort. That had been his homework assignment from
Dr. Douglass, their marriage counselor. It grated on him every time he saw her bill, in a
card decorated with daisies and poppies, Sam how are you today? Ill see you again on
Thursday, just keep up the good work, youre making great progress! 125 dollars a
pop for a seat on the learned doctors couch.
He looked at the bookshelf, which occupied a wall of the study, to where his book
sat. His portrait was tilted slightly askew, a rakish grin on his face. Rusty Connors
Unforgettable Debut Novel, Over 37 Weeks on the New York Times Bestseller List!
That wasnt his name, or more accurately it hadnt been his name. His name was
Samuel OConnor, although everyone had called him Sam for as long as he could
remember. Used to call him Sam.

75
I feel like Im dating a farmer, Ariella said, when she discovered his high
school yearbook. Samuel OConnorMost Likely To Win The Nobel Prize In
Physics!
You were a scientist? she was amused.
And why is that so hard to believe, you dont think Im smart? he said.
No its not that. Its just hard to picture you with a microscope and a lab coat is
all, a long matronly coat, oh my, she held a little fist in front of her mouth to stifle a
giggle. God how he loved that. That sound had made his whole day, pushing through any
frustrations, the struggle of sitting, writing, day after day.
Hey maybe I was a badass rebel scientist, with ripped jeans and a T-shirt, rolled
up with a place to put my cigarettes. In any case that was a long time agoI was a
physics student uncovering all the mysteries of the universe.
Mysteries of the universe good, smoking bad, she laughed. The sound had bells
on, twinkling, dancing around the room, around them. So who did you want to be Sam?
He sighed and put their picture away, to where he couldnt see it. Now everyone
called him Rusty. His agent insisted.

James appraised him at that first meeting, three years before, had sized him up
like a cut of meat at the butchers shop. James looked at his chocolate-colored wing tips;
his tan slacks, relaxed-fit; his white dress shirt, ironed the night before and at his navyblue sports jacket, off-the-rack yet classy Sam had thought; and halted at his unruly shock
of red hairthere was brown and grey peppered in, but that had been airbrushed out of
the jacket photoand said that his name would be Rusty.
Rusty Connor, James said and held out his hand. Sam hesitated, confused, and
then realized that James was referring to himself. He was calling him Rusty. Sam shook
his hand before it got uncomfortableJames gripped his hand before giving it back.
Rusty. It feels rebellious, gritty in a kind of I-dont-give-a-fuck-what-you-think
way and people love that Rusty, he smirked and his teeth shone like porcelain. And its
short so we can blow it up on the jacket. We are going to sell the shit out of this book
Rusty. I mean if it hits the New York Times bestseller list, check that, when it hits the
New York Times bestseller list, he grinned, Ill even give it a read.
Sam grimaced. He had spent two years, isolated, practically clinically
depressedactually clinically depressedwriting his first novel and this asshole hadnt
even bothered to skim it? He didnt even try to pretend that he would represent his work,

76
Sam thought, instead he only wanted to sell some image of him, something that he was
not. He glanced at his watch: hed been in James office, James Jacobson, Literary Agent
as the prominently displayed, oversized gold-lined placard reminded him, for three
minutes now after waiting outside for more than 45 with a busty, gum-popping
receptionist who promptly ignored him.
A first-time author, how wonderful for you, she said and returned to her
magazine. An array of magazinesGQ, Rolling Stone, Playboy, The New Yorkerwas
arrayed before him in a pseudo-Japanese foyer replete with bamboo trees, an arched
wooden bridge and a shallow pond where a few fat koi were barely moving. Paper globes
were strung overhead, and lit with amber and fuchsia-colored lights. This place is a bad
metaphor waiting to happen he thought.
Ariella had vouched for him, though, and said that he was very good at his job.
The two of them had been friends in college.
No we never dated, not that its any of your business.
I just dont want any favors from some guy you were screwing.
Honestly Sam you can be a real jerk sometimes, the lines along her forehead
creased, she was angry. Well he had a right to know.
Just go see James, she said. At least hes an agent that we know and hell give
your book a chance.
That you know, but he didnt press it.
Besides, agents werent exactly beating down his door to represent him. They
wouldnt answer his phone calls in fact. Hed finished the book, ground it out, trimmed it
and polished it to where he knew it was good. He knew, knew, that it would move people
and he couldnt get an agent to read it; no one gave a shit. That was a fact.
We are not considering unsolicited manuscripts at this time. How many times
had he got that cheerful rejection? That one kicked you in the gut, just left a pit there, not
even consideringjust read it! he wanted to scream, just read the damn book and give it
a chance. He called, he emailed, he even dusted off some old stationary and wrote letters
in cursive. His phone calls werent returned; his emails and letters werent responded to,
aside from the news that his work would not be considered, best of luck to you in your
future endeavors.
Writing the book was the easy part, his published friendsGod damn them and
their smug attitude, like they were members of some private little club that he wasnt

77
allowed to joinhad told him unhelpfully. The hard part, they said, was convincing an
agent that the book and others, that would soon follow, would sell.
Ive written about half of the second novel and outlined a third already, he had
emailed James. He got an email back that said that they should meet, and to set up an
appointment with his secretary for the following week. Sam figured that he owed it to
himself to listen to the guya real live literary agentfor at least a few minutes.
Rusty Im kidding, I read the book and its fantastic. You should know that I
dont normally meet with new authorseven those who come recommended by the
lovely Ariellabut you have got something here its different and its compelling and
thats what were looking for.
The Lovely Ariella, what the hell was that supposed to mean? Was that a jab at
him, a little I had her first reminder? Well shes with me now asshole.
Weve got a shot at the Pen/Faulkner, the National Book Award, at all the bestyoung-author, best-first-novel awards and guess what Rusty, we can win. Youre 32
right? He glanced at his Blackberry before he could answer and made a clicking noise
with his tongue.
Thirty-seven, whatever, that passes. Look Rusty, the hard part is over. You
slaved over this baby, youve been living in a dark cave to finish it, to edit it, to do all the
rewrites when you thought you were already done, and now comes the fun part. He
leaned over the glass desk, his knuckles pressed into it.
You are going to get the credit that you deserve. When I open Vanity Fair, you
are going to be the voice of a new generation, when I drink my first cup of coffeea
double espresso actuallyIm going to see your book, the next great American novel,
profiled in the Times literary supplement and when I turn on the flatscreen, Ill see your
face telling me how the book is about hope and transcendence and Thank you so much I
had an amazing time writing it and I just hope that it can change and enrich other
peoples lives, the way that it has mineno thank you for having me and you have a
wonderful day as well. Your book will be pulled out and displayed on the middle shelf
in every bookstore and its going to be supersized and overpriced in every airport, train
station, wherever, from here to fucking Vanuatu. RustyI know the name must feel
weird now but youll get used to it; in fact, from now on dont even respond to Samuel or
people will think youre some sort of society prick or Sam even, that name screams
androgynous wimp. Of course, youll have to legally change the name too, details, well
worry about all of those later. Rusty, man you need to relax and embrace this, think of it
as a game if that helps. He pushed the intercom.

78
Jessica, get Rusty, no the guy that just walked in, get him an appointment with
Phillip for a fitting and to buy some normal clothes, and set him up ASAP with a trainer
and dietician, crash course, yes, take it out of the advance. And draft a press release, no
pictures yet Jesus, thats all we need, about Rustys fantastic, groundbreaking new novel
and send it to me when youre done, thanks Jess. Oh lunch is on me when you finish.
Sure boss Ill get right on it, Jessicas voice sparkled on the intercom.
Listen James, I appreciate the effort that youre putting into this, I really do, but
is this all necessarythis whole production? James stopped texting on his blackberry.
He felt the energy in the room deflating fast but he pressed on.
I mean Im doing fine, Ariella and I are fine, and if the book is well-received and
I can get a decent advance for the next one, then thats what Ive wanted all along.
James fingered the sculpted bit of stubble under his lipthe soul patch hed heard
it calledand focused on him. Sam let me spell it out, are you listening? He nodded.
Dont you want to be, for once, the guy that everyone else looks up to, the guy
who everyone else wants to be? No hear me out, he said when Sam started to respond.
Dont you want to be the guy with the killer tan, the washboard abs, the guy who
just got back from a couple of weeks in the Caribbean? The one who throws the best
parties, who has the best taste, style, the best drugs, the best of everything? The man
whos whisked past the door to the VIP booth, the one dating the bitchy models, the Dcup wanna-be starlets, not to mention the pert, eager literary groupies?
James Im married.
You get my point, he leaned in. Come over here, get in closer, this is
something that you need to hear. Youve been working on this book for a very long time
right? He didnt say anything.
Ding ding, thats a yes. Ill also guess that youve been writing your entire life,
am I right? They were staring at each other now. Im going to hit him Sam thought.
Right on the bridge of the nose to shut him up.
Mr. Samuel OConnor, Mr. modest family man, writer extraordinaire, its time
that you got the credit and the rewards that are coming to you, because frankly, you
deserve it. Do you hear me? Let me run that by you once moreyoufucking
deserveit. He held up the manuscript. I couldnt have done what you did, seriously
most people couldnt, granted I probably would have just ended my writers angst years
ago and just pulled the triggerthats a joke. Seriously, are we going forward with this,
he turned the title page towards him. A Novel by Samuel O Connor.

79
Rusty are you with me?

That was three years ago. Gods and Beggars was a huge success. The New Yorker
wrote that Connors deft prose is as quick-witted as it is insightful intrinsically
powerful and timely themes, and a story that is remarkable in its originality as well as in
its impact upon a generation hungry for substance. Publishers Weekly called it sharp
and cutting, with social commentary that is as at times raw and invariegated, but with
intentions that are always noble and trueConnor delivers the goods. Vanity Fair outlauded them all in the fever to categorize his work and proclaimed that Wayne Evans is
the anti-hero for a generation, like Holden Caulfield and Huck Finn before him, Connors
lost protagonist strikes us with equal measures of whimsy and pity. We envy his journey
as much as it reflects our own meanderings towards selfhood and we also realize that we
dont much like the bastard.
A generation hungry for substance, Rusty pictured a frenzied pack of
undergrads wrestling for the last copy of Gods and Beggars, pushing, clawing, bookbags
upended, splashes of scalding latte flying through the air. He set the book down and
picked up a glass of scotch. Hed taken lately to having an afternoon pick-me-up when
the writing was slow, its not even half a glass Ariella, give me a break already. He
swirled the aged alcohol over the cubes, drank it down in a gulp and immediately thought
about the rest of the bottle in his desk.
He was happy, they were happy, the book sold like hotcakes. He was feted, dined.
He started off with small readings at book stores, sprinkled with a few literary buffs,
kindhearted middle-aged avid female readers who happened to be perusing the aisles.
Over the course of a few months, his talks started to fill up and become literary events.
James full-court media press began to take its toll and his book was being displayed
front and center, just like he said it would be. Teenagersor young readers as they were
called in publisher lingolit up when they saw him, adults, women, men, it was as if
some kind of alt rock star was in town. And they hung on every word; they looked up to
him.
Thanks but Im just a guy who wrote a book, he wanted to say. Look it took
me a really long time and I probably could have done many more constructive things
with my life and I also wasted a lot of time and fucked around so dont look at me like
Im an example of how to live your life because thats not me; I was a shitty husband and
a negligent father and now Im just trying to get everything back in order and keep it
together so just dont look at me as an authority. Please. Im only reading here.

80
He started bringing his manuscript to cafes and the park, fiddling with it, editing a
few pages sentence by sentence, sometimes editing it back to a previous version, wax on
wax off. He finished, had finished, is finishing, he played with tenses when he was really
stuck.
He picked up a students story. Blah blah blah the cat jumped over the fence, the
dog chased the cat around the yard. The cat scratched the dog, the dog bit the cat, the cat
filed a sole custody claim and accused the dog of being a shiftless drunk which was so
clearly not true, that was neither here nor there. Therefore the dog was royally pissed and
needed a drink but was going to hold out just to show the cat and kitten and even himself
that yes he was actually fine, great in fact, and that he didnt need any alcohol, he just
enjoyed a glass from time to time. It was all under control. The cat and the kitten looked
dubious.
She had left him after the accident, said that she didnt see any hope for a future
together. I still love you Sam and I forgive you, but I cant live with you anymore. He
gripped the table to stop his hands from shaking. He would give anything to take back
that night. He was driving too fast, he accepted that, although the officer on duty had told
him that it could have happened to anyone. As if that was some comfort. He couldnt
make sense of it, just couldntwhy have a child, Maya, he forced himself to say her
name, why have a child to go through that? He couldnt understand and he didnt know if
he could have done anything differently, he lost control, maybe the car seat didnt fit
perfectly, maybe if he had taken 280 and not the busier 101, maybe if there was less
traffic and the road hadnt been slick from a light shower that afternoon, maybe, maybe.
Maybe theyd all be better off if he had never met Ariella and never fell in love. Maybe it
was time to chamber the .38.
So he had his reasons, shitty as they might have been, for starting the writing
group, and he was ashamed for stealing the students work and using it for his next book.
But he was so stuck, in a black hole, and when he started writing again, and using their
words, changing the phrasing, admittedly it was wronghe knew it was wrong. But he
felt hope again. He felt that some days this was the only thing that kept him going, kept
him sane. And he never expected anyone to find out.

References
Atmanspacher, H. (2014). Psychophysical correlations, synchronicity and meaning.
Journal of Analytical Psychology, 59(2), 181-188.
Atmanspacher, H., & Fuchs, C. A. (Eds.). (2014). The Pauli-Jung conjecture and its
impact today. Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic.
Aziz, R. (1990). C. G. Jungs psychology of religion and synchronicity. Albany: State
University of New York Press.
Barrett, E. (2004, April). What does it meme? The exegesis as valorization and validation
of creative arts research [Special issue no. 3], TEXT. Retrieved from
http://www.textjournal.com.au/speciss/issue3/barrett.htm
Cambray, J. (2002). Synchronicity and emergence. American Imago, 59(4), 409-434.
Cambray, J. (2009). Synchronicity: Nature and psyche in an interconnected universe.
College Station: Texas A&M University Press.
Campbell, J. (1991). The power of myth (Anchor Books ed.). New York, NY: Random
House.
Campbell, J. (2004). Mythic worlds, modern words: Joseph Campbell on the art of
James Joyce. Novato, CA: New World Library.
Combs, A., & Holland, M. (2001). Synchronicity: Through the eyes of science, myth, and
the trickster. New York, NY: Marlowe.
de Moura, V. (2014). Learning from the patient: The East, synchronicity and transference
in the history of an unknown case of C. G. Jung. Journal of Analytical
Psychology, 59(3), 391-409.
Donne, J. (1999). Devotions upon emergent occasions and deaths duel. New York, NY:
Vintage Books.
Duncan, B. (2010). On becoming a better therapist. Washington, DC: American
Psychological Association.
Duncan, S. (2013, May 14). Carl Rogers and GloriaCounselling (1965) full session.
[Video file]. Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24d-FEptYj8

82
Dunne, J. W. (2001). An experiment with time. Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads.
(Original work published 1927)
Eliot, T. S. (1943). Four quartets. New York, NY: Harcourt.
Feiler, B. (2005). Walking the Bible. New York: William Morrow.
Ferris, T. (2015, January). A first glimpse of the hidden cosmos. National Geographic,
pp. 108-123.
Frankl, V. (2006). Mans search for meaning: An introduction to logotherapy (I. Lasch,
Trans.). Boston, MA: Beacon Press. (Original work published 1946)
Franz, M.-L. von. (1980a). On divination and synchronicity. Toronto, Canada: Inner City
Books.
Franz, M.-L. von. (1980b). Projection and re-collection in Jungian psychology:
Reflections of the soul (W. H. Kennedy, Trans.). Peru, IL: Open Court. (Original
work published 1978)
Franz, M.-L. von. (1992). Psyche and matter. Boston, MA: Shambhala.
Franz, M.-L. von. (1997). Alchemical active imagination (Rev. ed.). Boston, MA:
Shambhala.
Frenkel, E. (2015, February 20). The reality of quantum weirdness. New York Times.
Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/opinion/sunday/the-realityof-quantum-weirdness.html
Gribbin, J. (1984). In search of Schrodingers cat: Quantum physics and reality. New
York, NY: Bantam Books.
Haas, A. S., & Langer, E. J. (2014). Mindful attraction and synchronization: Mindfulness
and regulation of interpersonal synchronicity. Neuroquantology, 12(1), 21-34.
Hillman, J. (1996). The souls code: In search of character and calling. New York, NY:
Random House.
Hogenson, G. B. (2009). Synchronicity and moments of meeting. Journal of Analytical
Psychology, 54(2), 183-197.
Huber, C. (1988). How you do anything is how you do everything: A workbook. Mountain
View, CA: Keep It Simple Books.
Iacobini, M. (2008). Mirroring people: The science of empathy and how we connect with
others. New York, NY: Picador.

83

Jahn, R. G., & Dunne, B. J. (1987). Margins of reality: The role of consciousness in the
physical world. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace.
Jung, C. G. (1928). Contributions to analytical psychology (H. G. Baynes & C. F.
Baynes, Trans.). London, England: Routledge & Kegan Paul. (Original work
published 1917)
Jung, C. G (1955). Synchronicity: An acausal connecting principle (R. F. C. Hull,
Trans.). In C. G. Jung & W. Pauli, The interpretation of nature and the psyche
(pp. 1-146) (Bollingen Series, 51). New York, NY: Pantheon Books. (Original
work published 1952)
Jung, C. G. (1962). Commentary (R. Wilhem, Trans.). In R. Wilhelm, The secret of the
golden flower: A Chinese book of life (Rev. & augmented ed., pp. 81-138) New
York, NY: Harcourt Brace. (Original work published 1931)
Jung, C. G. (1973). C. G. Jung Letters, Vol. 1: 1906-1950. (Bollingen Series 95) (G.
Adler & A. Jaff, Eds.) (R. F. C. Hull, Trans.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Jung, C. G. (1984). Dream analysis: Notes of the seminar given in 1928-1930 (Bollingen
Series 99) (W. McGuire, Ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Jung, C. G. (1988). Nietzsches Zarathustra: Notes of the seminar given in 1934-1939 (S.
L. Jarrett, Ed.) (Vols. 1-2). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Jung, C. G. (1989). Memories, dreams, reflections (A. Jaff, Ed.) (R. Winston & C.
Winston, Trans.). New York, NY: Random House. (Original work published
1961)
Jung, C. G. (2009). The red book: Liber novus (S. Shamdasani, Ed.) (M. Kyburz, J. Peck,
& S. Shamdasani, Trans.). New York, NY: W. W. Norton.
Jung, C. G. (2010). Synchronicity: An acausal connecting principle (R. F. C. Hull,
Trans.) (Foreword by S. Shamdasani). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
(Original work published 1960)
Jung, C. G. (2014). Synchronicity: An acausal connecting principle (R. F. C. Hull,
Trans.). In H. Read et al. (Eds.), The collected works of C. G. Jung: Complete
digital edition (Vol. 8, pp. 417-519. Retrieved from http://www.ebscohost.com
(Original work published 1952)
Jung, C. G., & Pauli, W. (1955). The interpretation of nature and the psyche (Bollingen
Series, 51). Including Jung, Synchronicity: An acausal connecting principle
(R. F. C. Hull, Trans.); together with Pauli, The influence of archetypal ideas on

84
the scientific theories of Kepler (P. Silz, Trans.). New York, NY: Pantheon
Books. (Original work published 1952)
Kalsched, D. (2013, December). Trauma, synchronicity and paranormal experiences in
analysis. Paper presented at the conference for psychotherapists, by the Santa Fe
Center for Alchemical Studies. Santa Fe, NM.
Koestler, A. (1973). The roots of coincidence. New York, NY: Random House.
Lindorff, D. P. (2004). Pauli and Jung: The meeting of two great minds. Wheaton, IL:
Quest Books.
Limar, I. (n.d.). C. G. Jungs synchronicity and quantum entanglement: Schrodingers cat
wanders between chromosomes. (Originally published in NeuroQuantology,
9(2), 313-321). Retrieved from http://www.academia.edu/1248055/
Carl_G._Jung_s_Synchronicity_and_Quantum_Entanglement_Schrodinger_s_Cat
_Wanders_Between_Chromosomes
Main, R. (Ed.). (1997). Jung on synchronicity and the paranormal. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Main, R. (2004). The rupture of time: Synchronicity and Jungs critique of modern
Western culture. New York, NY: Brunner Routledge.
Main, R. (2011). Synchronicity and the limits of re-enchantment. International Journal of
Jungian Studies, 3(2), 144-158.
Mansfield, V. (1995). Synchronicity, science, and soul-making. Chicago, IL: Open Court
Press.
Markham, B. (1942). West with the night. New York, NY: North Point Press.
Nhat Hanh, T. (1999). Call me by my true names: The collected poems of Thich Nhat
Hanh. Berkeley, CA: Parallax Press.
Odajnyk, V. W. (2011). Gathering the light: A psychology of meditation. Carmel, CA:
Fisher King Press.
Pacifica Graduate Institute. (2013). Counseling psychology thesis handbook for 2013 and
2014 matriculates. Carpinteria, CA: Author.
Pauli, W., & Jung, C. G. (2001). Atom and archetype: The Pauli/Jung letters, 1932-1958
(D. Roscoe, Trans.) (C. A. Meier, C. P. Enz & M. Fierz, Eds.). Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press. (Original work published 1992)

85
Perry, R., Landon, M., Greyson, B., Whitfield, C., Whitfield, B., & Perry, N. (2011). An
initial study of extreme, measurable forms of synchronicity. Psychiatric Annals,
41(12), 577-583.
Rilke, R. M. (1981). Selected poems of Rainer Maria Rilke (R. Bly, Trans., Ed.). New
York, NY: Harper & Row.
Rilke, R. M. (2009). Duino elegies and the sonnets to Orpheus (First Vintage int. ed.) (S.
Mitchell, Trans., Ed.). New York, NY: Vintage Books.
Rogers, C. (1970). On encounter groups. New York, NY: Harper & Row.
Rogers, C. (1980). A way of being. New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin.
Romanyshyn, R. (2013). The wounded researcher: Research with soul in mind. New
Orleans, LA: Spring Journal.
Segal, R. A. (2007). Jung and Lvy-Bruhl. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 52(5),
635-658.
Shoup, R. (2006). Physics without causalitytheory and evidence. AIP Conference
Proceedings, 863(1), 169-189.
Sparks, J. G. (2007). At the heart of matter: Synchronicity and Jungs spiritual testament.
Toronto, Canada: Inner City Books.
Stein, M. (1998). Jungs map of the soul: An introduction. Peru, IL: Open Court.
Steinbeck, J. (2003) East of Eden (Steinbeck Centennial ed.). New York, NY: Penguin
Books.
Sure, H., & Chau, H. (2014). Highway dharma letters: Two Buddhist pilgrims write to
their teacher (3rd ed.). Ukiah, CA: Buddhist Text Translation Society.
Targ, R. (2001). Preface. In C. Dunne, An experiment with time (pp. vii-xi).
Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads
Tarnas, R. (2014, September). Varieties of synchronistic experiences [Lecture]. Presented
at Synchronicity: Matter & Psyche Symposium at Joshua Tree Retreat Center,
Joshua Tree, CA.
Thaheld, F. (2003). Biological non-locality and the mind-brain interaction problem:
Comments on a new empirical approach. Biosystems, 70, 35-41.
Tolkien, J. R. R. (2012). The fellowship of the ring (Del Rey mass market ed.). New
York, NY: Ballantine Books.

86

Tresan, D. I. (2004). This new science of ours: A more or less systematic history of
consciousness and transcendence. Part II. Journal of Analytical Psychology,
49(3), 369-396.
Van Lommel, P. (2006). Near-death experience, consciousness, and the brain: A new
concept about the continuity of our consciousness based on recent scientific
research on near-death experience in survivors of cardiac arrest. World Futures:
The Journal of General Evolution, 62(1/2), 134-151.
Van Lommel, P. (2010). Consciousness beyond life: The science of the near-death
experience (L. Vroomen, Trans.). New York, NY: HarperCollins. (Original work
published 2007)
Van Lommel, P., van Wees, R., Meyers, V., & Elfferich, I. (2001). Near-death
experience in survivors of cardiac arrest: A prospective study in the Netherlands.
Lancet, 358(9298), 2039.
Wackerman, J., Seiter, C., Keibel, H., & Walach, H. (2003). Correlations between
electrical activities of two spatially separated human subjects. Neuroscience
Letters, 336, 60-64.
Whitman, W. (2000). Leaves of grass (Signet Classic ed.). New York, NY: Penguin
Putnam.
Wolf, F. A. (1994). The dreaming universe: A mind-expanding journey into the realm
where psyche and physics meet (First Touchstone ed.). New York, NY:
Touchstone.
Wynn, C. M., Wiggins, A. W., & Harris, S. (2001). Quantum leaps in the wrong
direction: Where real science ends and pseudoscience begins. Washington, DC:
Joseph Henry Press.