Marmalade Daydreams

One beautiful thing about life is the way that being able to see both sides of a philosophical question reveals the beauty of a Zen koan. Currently, I'm awash in what might be called "synchronicities"; if you are unfamiliar with Jung's term, it refers to a coincidence, or often a series of coincidences, which have an inexplicable internal logic. One good one from today:

I was thinking about a crazy street art religious project I ran into over the holidays: a broom was laid in the middle of a busy sidewalk, perfectly aligned with the stone squares. Near the base was a small sign that read "Leviticus 7". A few blocks later, I came across a second installation, where a umbrella was bent into a backwards 7 with a plastic water jug over its handle. An identical sign was next to it. I had put the whole thing on the backburner of my mind. Today, for whatever reason, I thought of the incident and checked out the passage. Turned out to be fairly standard Leviticus -- the instructions on how to perform a sacrifice properly.

I was messing around on the Internet when I came across this spooky/funny old Sesame Street bit about a number painter. I had just watched the one where he's painting the number 7 when I realized that the first video under "director videos" in the right hand column (which typically have nothing to do with the video you're watching) was for a film preview of some film called "Lucky Number S7even". I thought that was kind of funny, so I watched it. Turns out that the film is largely about apparent coincidences that turn out to be something more. Thought I'd post about it, and realized that the date is 1/17/07. Aside from having two sevens in it, the date numerologically adds up to seven (1+1+7+0+7=16 1+6=7). The date of my previous post was 1/7/07. I'm 27. Last night I met a guy who's 37. He said that the two of us were "the sevens".

Traditionally, seven is thought to be lucky in Western culture, probably going back to at least the story of Creation in Genesis. Seven symbolizes the union of male (3) and female (4); it can thus be seen as a hierogamy (sacred marriage of heaven and earth). In the ancient world, there were seven wonders, seven sisters, seven celestial "wanderers" (the sun, the moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn), and the seven notes on the diatonic musical scale. The Christians have their seven virtues and their deadly sins, and the Great Beast has seven heads. The Japanese have seven lucky gods, Snow White is rescued by the seven dwarves. and who could forget "Seven Brides For Seven Brothers"?

Skeptics think that the perception of syncronicity is a function of the will to believe, a symptom of apophenia, or seeing connections in random data. Was my series of sevens today merely a perceived connection between meaningless phenomena? Did my consciousness simply tune out "noise" to pick up an arbitrary "signal"? Shamanic traditions and New Age neo-Jungians agree that synchronicities appear as alarm clocks and signposts -- to rouse a slumbering consciousness and indicate when changes can occur. Is this belief simply a mechanism to occasionally pay mind to the possibility of change, thus self-fulfilling the prophetic belief in synchronicity, a feedback cycle of reinforcement? Or are there patterns in the dynamics of the cosmos which simultaneously organize physical and psychic worlds, thus accounting for the acausal connections? As above, so below.

The Global Consciousness Project uses random-number generators (RNGs) in a method first developed at Princeton to test for possible interactions of consciousness with unrelated physical systems. The output of these RNGs is sent to a central computer which analyzes the statistical resonance and varience of the data. The researchers are looking to see if the focused psychic energies of a large number of individuals (mostly due to a televised event such as sports contests or awards ceremonies) affect the randomness of the data produced by RNGs. Interestingly enough, the results of these studies suggest that the data produced by the RNGs is significantly more coherent (less random) during those times of mass focused attention. Supposedly the biggest spike of global coherence was while the world watched the events of 9/11 unfold on live television and, perhaps most fascinating, the coherence patterns began to rise hours before the event ever happened, implying some reverse causality. If you're interested in a possible physical explanation about future events influencing the past (and you like the double-slit experiment, quantum mechanics' answer to the koan), I refer you to the delayed choice experiment, my brain candy for the month.

One last funny apophenic/synchronous story for the night. This evening, I tried to go to an event at the gallery where my sister works. An artist they represent has published his project, "An Illustration For Every Page of Gravity's Rainbow", and they were hosting a signing. On the way I picked up a copy of The Onion. It had an interview with the artist. I was under the impression that the event ran from 8 to 10. Around 8:30, I was at the closest subway stop to the gallery, when i decided to stop in Boston Market. I hadn't been to a Boston Market for years, and I had a craving for cornbread. I ate, then walked over to the gallery. It was about 9 by then, and the gallery was dark and closed. I called my sister. She had just gotten home -- the event ended at 8. She said she had been at the gallery until about 8:30, when she walked to the subway station. She saw the Boston Market, thought to herself that she hadn't been to a Boston Market in years, and had a craving for cornbread. She must have left the restaurant just as I was walking in. How bizarre that the first time that either of us had ever gone into this establishment (which I would probably frequent regularly if it were next to my subway stop) must have been within minutes of each other, drawn by some urgent craving. Or maybe not. I like to think that, just like the particle-wave duality, or the one-hand clapping, or any other paradox, it's neither-nor as well as both-and.