Jung on coincidence and on reincarnation

Monday, July 27, 2015

7 a.m. Dr. Jung, I’ll ask Bernie’s question, and then, as a sort of birthday present to myself, I may ask something that has been on my mind for some while. Bernie wants to know what you think of the coincidence that I emailed you on your birthday. “How to explain it and how to interpret it.”

As you are realizing, this interaction between Dr. Beitman and you has more to do with different views of the nature of reality than it does of specific items to be discussed. This specific question, like all questions, contains and proceeds from a matrix of unconscious and therefore unconsidered assumptions. To answer the questions as posed is to acquiesce in those assumptions, at least in effect. To question or correct or even take note of the assumptions is to seem to evade the specific question.

Old dilemma. The guys upstairs made me aware of it many years ago.

Yes, but that does not automatically make others aware of it. The fact that you have written of the dilemma leads you to think of it as old business, but old business is always new to those who have not encountered it previously.

So how do we deal with it in this instance?

Truly, the only way to deal with anything is directly, via first-hand experience. But not everyone is open to that.

Meaning, in this case, that Bernie should get into contact [with Jung] directly?

He could if he could bring himself to try, but that is up to him. As an experienced professional, he might have to struggle with being a novice again. I know I did! But the struggle pays dividends.

So, today?

Today what we can do is answer the question as asked, and merely note that things that don’t seem to make sense are indicators of hidden areas of disagreement over premises. Not hidden deliberately, you understand, but hidden by the nature of so many unexamined assumptions about reality.

Which may serve as teasers.

May, or may serve to turn his attention elsewhere! Nonetheless it is a practicable approach.

Yes, I can’t see him sitting still for the long explanations necessary, and I’m not sure I can see me sitting still for writing them out yet again. I find that what has become obvious to me requires lengthy explanations which often enough requires argument when I have no need to argue it.

Yes. However the question as posed is, how do I explain and interpret the fact that you contacted me on my birthday anniversary date. I see the question’s context but – well, let us begin, and we shall see where we end up. In the soup, likely as not!

Let us peel the layers.

First, you and I could have had the same conversation on any other day of the year. In this particular instance, the only effect of the coincidence was to spark Dr. Beitman’s interest. The nature of our communication was not affected otherwise. So this particular coincidence was as close to “mere” coincidence as one could ask.

Nonetheless, it serves as a loose example of the identity of internal and external reality. That is, when you see sensory and super-sensory, or perhaps we should say pre-sensory, as one and the same reality, perceived differently because perceived in two different ways, this coincidence, like all coincidences, becomes unremarkable.

Coincidence serves more as a marker than as an intrinsically valuable thing in itself, and indeed Dr. Beitman is seeing this himself, and reflects it even in how he sorts and accumulates his data. I don’t think he quite appreciates that the true significance of coincidence is that, taken seriously, it is evidence of the identity of two seemingly separate parts of reality. But he does see, already, that there is value in studying them because it is going to lead to something.

An analogy will help, I think. If one were to see a bird in a nest with one’s eyes, and at the same time see that bird on a TV screen because a camera was mounted so as to see the same thing from another angle, the bird, the nest, would not be the important thing in themselves (in terms of perception), but the fact that one’s experiences could be in effect multiplied, so that direct sight could be complemented by the camera and television screen.

I see it. I like the analogy, too – basically it isn’t what we’re looking at, so much as the light it shines on how we look.

Now, this is enough for the present. Your normal session fills perhaps ten pages and this is only six, but we are beginning de novo, and small steps are best, so that we may gather objections and incomprehensions. Also, you had other questions.

I did, and I do, but on reflection I may wait for a fresh session.

Your choice, as always. May I offer you happy birthday wishes?

Thank you. Not nearly as many candles for me.

But enough, eh?

Just about. A few more, maybe, but of course I don’t know anything about it.

No, and no reason to think much about it. The only real day is today, and you will be carried through that automatically.

Maybe I will ask the question –or pose it, anyway, since I cannot expect a short or simple answer. Given what the guys, and now Rita, have said about what we really are as opposed to what we think we are, where is the room for reincarnation? I have addressed this repeatedly and have gotten answers that satisfied me at the time, only to realize after a while that I still don’t have it. How can there be the strong reincarnational patterns we sometimes see, if each soul is fabricated, let’s put it, for each incarnation?

Even as I begin my reply, you see, you again get the sense of it, so that while our minds are linked you understand. When we are less coupled, you may find it again hazy.

That’s true, as soon as I had asked the question, I got the sense of a core self being fitted with this or that additional trait or set of traits, so that it was continuing (seen one way) yet unprecedented (seen another).

That is more or less correct, except, remember, your 3D circumstances distort the reality of it, because they make you tend to see things through the lens of implacably passing moments of time. What is not intrinsically a sequential process almost must be conceptualized as one, because seeing it otherwise contradicts the rest of your sensory experience. This is why theoretical mathematics is so productive an approach: It is not required to relate to the world as commonly perceived – until it attempts to communicate its strange results!

Well, if I got the sense of it, does that mean that in the beginning were all those souls with different centers of gravity defining their natures, so that we all went off in different directions and began long careers of incarnating individuals pursuing different forms of perfection, or completion?

Remember, as you try to get a firmer grasp on this, don’t allow yourself to forget what else you know. It will do you no good to concentrate on the individual and forget that in a larger sense there is no disconnected individual.

Well, I knew it would be hard.

Intricate, perhaps, more than hard. Persistence brings reward.

All right. Many thanks.

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