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The Sacrifice to Occam - Section 2
The Sacrifice to Occam is a manuscript I have been working on about the nature of reality and free will, which is an interest that was sparked after I started to experience regular synchronicities.
Section 2 - The Benefits of the Sacrifice
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Chapter 14: Drawing the Threads Together: Connecting the Microcosm with the Macrocosm
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Chapter 15: Determinism not Fatalism
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Chapter 16: Determinism and Criminal Justice
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Chapter 17: Mystical Determinism and Indeterminism
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Chapter 18: The Re-Enchantment of the World
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Chapter 19: Expanding the Scale of Synchronicity
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Chapter 14: Drawing the Threads Together: Connecting the Microcosm with the Macrocosm
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The problem with the concept of free will is that it ‘feels’ so natural. When we decide we want to move one of our fingers, it just happens. In many ways, belief in free will is just that – a belief system based on our own feelings of how the universe should work, rather than how it actually does work. Why would I want to say that something so instinctively natural is no more than an illusion? Well, basically, because of my reading of the scientific evidence plus my own personal experiences, as described in Section 1.
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As I recounted in Chapter 13, I personally started to believe in a deterministic universe as a result of my own experiences of synchronicity. If you take the patterning of synchronicity to its logical conclusion you inevitability realise that everything is patterned, there is no such thing as coincidence, and all events are ‘scripted’. It doesn’t really make much sense to say that some events, as recognized in synchronicities, are scripted meaningful coincidences while others are just the inevitable consequence of randomness in the universe. You really can’t have it both ways; either everything is designed, or it isn’t, and for me, the acceptance of synchronicity basically means acceptance of a deterministic universe. So, it was the evidence of synchronicity in my life which initially led me to question the existence of free will, but it was the evidence coming from science (which, when applying Occam’s razor, points in the direction of a simple, block universe) that later reaffirmed my belief in determinism.
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At the level of the very small, the simple fact is that our knowledge of how the universe works is actually rather limited and this is the reason why there are so many interpretations of quantum mechanics. As already discussed in Section 1, the mathematics of quantum mechanics describes the statistical behaviour of subatomic particles very accurately, what it doesn’t do is give us a clear idea of what the individual particles at the quantum level are doing when we’re not looking at them. It is the multiplicity of quantum mechanical models that allow some people to use quantum mechanics to support their belief in free will and others their belief in determinism. Some quantum mechanical interpretations are deterministic while others aren’t, and some interpretations are local while others are non-local.
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The nature of the Schrodinger wave equation and the indeterminate nature of the outcomes that arise when we investigate subatomic particles, as described by the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, have been used to support the idea of free will. After all, if multiple outcomes are possible at the quantum level, then perhaps this supports the existence of freedom of choice. Models have been proposed for how quantum indeterminism could induce distinct physical outcomes in the brain, i.e., distinct patterns of neuron firing that could correspond to alternate brain states associated with distinct decision-making outcomes. Stuart Hameroff and Roger Penrose (2014) advanced a hypothesis whereby structures called microtubules located in the brain’s neuronal cells could create consciousness through brain-wide quantum entanglement. The problem is that it is difficult to envisage the mechanism of how quantum fluctuations would align with the decision-making process required by free will. As Bricklin (2015) states:
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“Attempts…to link the spontaneous indeterminacies of subatomic physics to the indeterminacies of the thought process are doomed from the start. There is no way to causally link two indeterminate processes without compromising the indeterminacy one of them*.”
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The many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics proposes that all possible outcomes of the collapse of the wave equation exist in parallel universes and it has been suggested that each time a person makes a decision a new set of universes arise, with each universe reflecting a possible outcome of the decision-making process. While this model is in strong alignment with the quantum outcomes suggested by the Schrodinger wave equation, it seems incredibly difficult to square with Occam’s razor. There is currently no direct scientific evidence for the existence of parallel universes, even if theoretical aspects of the interpretation initially appear attractive. Surely it is better to avoid producing a highly speculative and complex theory to explain the reality of our universe. The many worlds interpretation superficially reminds me of the highly complex adjustments Ptolemy made to planetary orbits to maintain a geocentric model of the solar system prior to the advent of the Copernican heliocentric model. People were so enamoured by their pre-existing model of the solar system, that they refused to initially accept the possibility that Earth may revolve around the Sun. In a similar fashion, the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics seems to be merely a way to perpetuate the idea of counterfactual outcomes and, by extension, free will, even if we ignore the problem of how quantum outcomes could be influenced by free will in the first place.
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As mentioned in the introduction, a simple model of the universe is a block universe, building on Einstein’s concept of spacetime and general relativity. In such a model, past, present, and future coexist as time is imagined to be a fourth dimension, equal in importance to the three dimensions of space. The obvious implication of the block universe model is that, since all of time coexists, the universe is entirely deterministic.
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The question could then be asked, how would the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics, as represented mathematically by the collapse of the Schrodinger wave equation, align with the idea of determinism? While superficially, quantum mechanics appears to allow the possibility of free will, the indeterminism at subatomic scales may simply be a consequence of our own lack of knowledge of what is happening at such scales – in other words, the apparent indeterminism at the quantum level may arise from a deeper level of non-linear determinism. Proponents of quantum superdeterminism hold the view that the behaviour of entangled particles and human experimenters is strongly correlated (i.e., it violates statistical independence (see Hossenfelder and Palmer, 2020a)). Essentially, this means that the nature of the equipment used by physicists when conducting experiments on subatomic particles, and the outcome of those experiments, is predetermined. An advantage of superdeterminism is that it provides an explanation for the correlations seen between separated entangled particles, without having to invoke non-local information transfer thorough a Bohmian pilot wave. This is therefore a very simple model for what is occurring at the quantum level. Superdeterminism assumes that everything in the universe happens through local interactions, e.g., particles colliding with each other, rather than through information being transmitted non-locally by a universal field. No universal field or pilot wave is needed to carry information because all the information about what is happening is carried locally, in the particles themselves, and represented by a ‘correlation function’ (e.g., t’ Hooft, 2016) that relates everything to everything else.
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The inherent lack of statistical independence in superdeterminism perhaps also accords at the macroscopic level with the observation of Hardy in Koestler (1972) when he says: “all this experimental work…which depends upon obtaining results above chance, may be really a demonstration of…something implicit in the very nature and meaning of randomness itself…” (see Chapter 8). So, as translated to the macroscopic level, perhaps what we are seeing is apparent disorder arising from an underlying deterministic order. Obviously physical behaviour at the quantum level and the macroscopic level is different and we would not expect the strong correlations of quantum entanglement to continue into the macroscopic world, but what this behaviour at the microscopic level may reflect is the special case of determinism in a fragile quantum system which has been isolated from the wider environment. The entangled state of a pair of particles can be destroyed through the simple act of measuring those particles or, more generally, though their interaction with the macroscopic environment. It is undoubtedly a very special physical system and while the strong correlation between the particles and the experimental settings would break down when that state is destroyed, the underlying determinism would itself remain. In this case, once the entangled state has been lost, it would be harder to observe the underlying determinism because the level of correlation between the experimental settings and the particles has been lost. However, the same level of determinism would still exist in macroscopic situations but would be masked by environmental factors and would appear as a form of ‘apparent’ indeterminism – or of apparently random or chaotic behaviour arising from a simple, underlying, deterministic system. It is worth remembering that even macroscopically strong linear correlations like those associated with gravity are, in the real world, masked to some extent by the effects of other variables such as air resistance.
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Perhaps when we consider determinism we should view it as a factor that pervades the world in much the same way as gravity – a force or ‘interaction’ to which we are all subject but, like gravity, to which we are fully acclimatised and barely notice on a day-to-day basis. The determinism of the everyday macroscopic world is often hard to identify and measure because of the apparent chaotic complexity and indeterminism of the natural world around us. But this indeterminism arises from an underlying order, which is revealed if we strip away extraneous variables that affect the physical system. A feather dropped alongside a hammer on the surface of the moon will, in accordance with Galileo’s Principle of Equivalence, hit the ground at the same time, whereas on the surface of the earth environmental complexities such as air resistance will impact on the measurement and will need to be accounted for. As James Gleick writes in Chaos (1987/1998):
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“The solvable systems are the ones shown in textbooks. They behave. Confronted with a nonlinear system, scientists would have to substitute linear approximations or find some other uncertain backdoor approach. Textbooks showed students only the rare nonlinear systems that would give way to such techniques…Only a few, that is, understood how nonlinear nature is in its soul. Enrico Fermi once exclaimed, “It does not say in the Bible that all laws of nature are expressible linearly!” The mathematician Stanislaw Ulam remarked that to call the study of chaos “nonlinear science” was like calling zoology “the study of nonelephant animals.””
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In other words, the inherent determinism of nature is often obscured from our view because of its complexity but that determinism may appear in episodes of order and patterning emerging from disorder that are characteristic of synchronicity and may also be witnessed in the fragile states of quantum entanglement that have been isolated from the macroscopic environment. When the Schrodinger wave equation collapses and the entangled state is lost that does not mean an end to determinism, it simply means an end to our ability to be able to clearly perceive that determinism through the strong correlations between the entangled particles and the behaviour of the experimenter as expressed in the experimental settings. The lack of statistical independence that is a necessary part of superdeterminism is to some extent masked at the macroscopic level, but perhaps statistical independence is not as widespread as we believe, if we believe that there are also weaker correlations at the macroscopic level that are characteristic of synchronicity. In general, we can probably assume statistical independence when we are conducting experiments at the macroscopic level, but we should probably remember that this ‘apparent’ independence is part of the predetermined script and should not always be taken for granted!
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If everything in the universe acts according to a predetermined script then, as discussed in Section 1, interactions between matter at both the microscopic and macroscopic levels become less about cause and effect and more about correlations. Cause-and-effect is an illusion; correlations between matter and events are the important determinant of how the universe behaves. Why would I make such a counterintuitive statement? Surely it is a silly idea to suggest that causation doesn’t really exist! What I am asking is that people think deeply about what really happens in situations that involve apparent causation. Physics has identified four fundamental forces or interactions of nature: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force, of which gravity and electromagnetism are the forces that directly influence us at the macroscopic level. But, returning to my discussion in Section 1, we can ask: ’What, fundamentally, is gravity other than a construct to help explain correlations between objects possessing mass or energy?’ When a rock rolls down a hill and collides with another rock, people might say that the first rock caused the second rock to move and that the first rock started to move itself because of the force due to the mass of the rock combined with the action of gravity overcoming the friction preventing the rock from moving. But what, fundamentally, is this ‘gravity’ which is ‘causing’ things to move? Similarly, if you accept the evidence discussed in Section 1 that our own thoughts and decisions are predetermined, then we, too, cannot be considered to be a cause, even if we were to give the rock a hard shove at the top of the hill!
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We can also apply to same logic to electromagnetism. We have probably all seen iron filings arrange themselves around a bar magnet during science lessons at school but, again, that doesn’t really explain what the force is that is arranging the filings. Physicists may tell you that the force involves a transfer of particles but even that explanation doesn’t really explain why the effect is happening. Again, the concept of the force is supplied by science to explain correlations between the magnet and the filings.
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If you really insist on having a cause, then you probably need to look to a first cause or prime mover with a blueprint (or what Aristotle called a ‘formal’ cause) that is operating in accordance with teleology or a ‘final’ cause – in other words, the ultimate programmer of the game of the universe or writer of the script of life. Everything else is correlation and the fundamental forces of physics are merely ways to explain these correlations of nature.
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At the macroscopic level, we can see that how matter behaves in a deterministic universe is reflected by the strength of the correlations. In certain situations, such as a stone being dropped on the surface of Earth, there is a very strong correlation between the stone being released and it hitting the ground. In other situations the correlation is weaker, as has been seen in parapsychological laboratory experiments and in other branches of science impacted by the replication crisis (see Chapter 9). The universe can therefore be considered to operate according to a set of predetermined correlations of varying strength.
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There are some similarities between the way, on the microscopic level, the superdeterministic interpretation of quantum mechanics introduces the concept of a correlation function to describe the apparent ‘foreknowledge’ of subatomic particles of the behaviour and characteristics of other particles and experimenters in other locations in the universe and the larger scale correlations and correspondences that are characteristic of synchronicity. Both synchronicity and superdeterminism consist of a meaningful coincidence or correlation between mind and matter, in the former case at the macroscopic level, in the latter case at the microscopic level, where the characteristics of physical subatomic particles and experimental settings as arranged by the mind of the physicist are correlated. At both levels there is a meaningful coincidence.
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As discussed in Section 1, synchronicities occur at different scales, ranging from the intrapersonal, to the interpersonal and the global. Over time, related but apparently unconnected, parallel events have continued to reoccur, giving the impression of global-scale synchronicities shaping the course of human history. To give some examples from the history of science, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace famously made the simultaneous discovery of evolution by natural selection on opposite sides of the planet – Darwin in England and Wallace in East Asia. Darwin had initially formulated his theory of evolution in 1838 and had written a first draft by 1842, but he did not make his work public until some twenty years later, in 1858, in response to receiving a letter from Wallace (who was then working in what is now Malaysia) containing his own very similar formulation of evolutionary theory, which he had arrived at independently of Darwin. Darwin, who published his ideas the following year in his landmark book: On the Origin of Species, was sufficiently shocked by the similarity of Wallace’s theory to his own that he wrote to his friend, geologist Charles Lyell, on 18th June 1858 (Darwin, 1858):
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“I never saw a more striking coincidence. if Wallace had my M.S. sketch written out in 1842 he could not have made a better short abstract! Even his terms now stand as Heads of my Chapters.”
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Similarly, in 1900, the foundations of modern genetics were laid when three European botanists – de Vries, Correns and von Tschermak – independently conducted and published experiments in a single two-month period that verified the groundbreaking but then lost work of Gregor Mendel, which was rediscovered that same year, also independently, by biologist William Bateson some forty years after Mendel initially conducted his work.
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Such large-scale synchronicities, to which Tarnas (2006) ascribes astrological significance, have occurred repeatedly throughout human development in multiple fields, including religion and science. They indicate a meaningful coincidence, or better, a correspondence or correlation between events. We can, then, start to make out a continuum between the microscopic scale, where superdeterminists highlight correspondences between subatomic events and experimental settings that violate statistical independence, and the macroscopic scale where synchronicities, or meaningful coincidences, illuminate correlations between human events:
What both scales illustrate is the dominance of correlations in a deterministic universe. Everything is correlated because it has been ‘programmed’ to be that way according to the predetermined script. Correspondences between subatomic events and human experimental settings according to the superdeterministic view of quantum mechanics on the one hand, and macroscopic events as reflected by the meaningful coincidences of synchronicity, on the other, illustrate the science of correlations as described in Chapter 9. According to this view, causation is an illusion. Matter behaves the way it does because of the strength of the underlying correlations defining the laws of the universe. Strong correlations like those governed by Newton’s universal law of gravitation mean that stones fall to Earth on a regular, repeatable basis when dropped. Weaker correlations also exist, but these are less amenable to the processes of science, which require the presence of regular, repeatable, phenomena. But that doesn’t make them any less a real aspect of the world.
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Considering the universe as a reflection of the strength of correlations also ties in with Bohm’s view of the explicate everyday world as continually arising from and reabsorbing back into an underlying implicate order or deeper ‘foundation’ of reality. From this perspective, nothing we see in the world is permanent, but can be viewed in much the same way as an eddy or whirlpool in a flowing stream – the eddies appear to be stable but are in fact made up of water that is continually entering and flowing out of each eddy. The eddy can only exist because the water of the stream is constantly moving and replenishing the eddy at each moment. If we apply this model to our view of correlations in the everyday world, then in the case of a strong correlation between events, the explicate order will emerge from the underlying implicate order in a concrete, regular, manner as defined by the established laws of science. Where the correlation is weaker, the emergence from the implicate will be less easy to predict and less repeatable according to currently understood scientific principles. In this case there will be an illusion of indeterminism from the perspective of the human observer, though, at the deepest level, determinism will still govern how the everyday reality emerges from the implicate order. Apparently stable objects in the everyday world will be governed by strong, regular, correlations. Material objects such as rocks and people will be like fixed eddies in a flowing stream, being maintained by a constant flow out of and back into the implicate order, or ground of reality. Here, there is the strongest correlation between the object and its behaviour. A mountain, once in existence, will remain in existence and will behave in a regular, predictable way over millennia. Simple physical behaviour, like billiard balls colliding according to Newton’s laws of motion, could be modelled as one eddy moving downstream and somehow moving next to a second, fixed, eddy, which then itself starts to move downstream, not because it has been ‘caused’ to move by the first eddy (or ball) but because the universal script initiates movement of the second eddy at precisely this time in correlation with the first (fluid dynamicists would probably tell me that this is not a perfect analogy, but it probably serves its purpose). More unstable objects would be governed by weaker correlations and would be equivalent to eddies popping into and out of existence in the water of the stream. On the macroscopic level, such behaviour could explain irregularly observed paranormal phenomena and anomalous experiences, such as material objects (e.g., apports) that appear to materialise apparently out of nowhere and do not behave according to the regular, repeatable laws of physical science.
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From our perspective as observers, many everyday macroscopic objects can be modelled as behaving in a regular, mechanistic, way by physical rules such as Newton’s laws of motion. In this case, there is a strong correlation between the predicted and actual behaviour of a macroscopic physical object – in other words, its behaviour is predictable. The everyday world at this level appears mechanistic and deterministic. Quantum mechanics has revealed that, at the subatomic level, the world is fuzzier – particle behaviour is indeterminate during measurement. The microscopic world, according to the work of Bohr, Schrodinger, Heisenberg, and others is apparently probabilistic and indeterminate when we try to look at it. At this quantum level there is apparently a much weaker correlation between the predicted and actual behaviour of a physical object (particle). What this weakness of correlation reflects, however, is not a lack of determinism but rather a lack of knowledge of particle behaviour at this microscopic level. Superdeterministic theories say that the indeterminism of quantum mechanics is underpinned by a deeper level of determinism, the outcomes of which are ‘non-computable’ and look to us to be random and unpredictable. However, while the outcomes are unpredictable, the counterfactual history is declared to be impossible. Therefore, in these models, the randomness of quantum mechanics emerges naturally out of an underlying determinism, it is not a fundamental property of the world itself (Hossenfelder and Palmer, 2020a, b). In other words, the world is deterministic but to us it appears unpredictable. The weak correlation reflects the indeterminism resulting from our own lack of understanding of particle behaviour at the subatomic level rather than any underlying universal probabilistic behaviour. The underlying universe still behaves in a deterministic manner even at this microscopic level, it just appears to us, due to our lack of knowledge and the weak correlation between the predicted and actual behaviour of the physical object (particle), as indeterminate.
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When considering the above model, it is important to recognize what the strength of correlations between events actually represents. The indeterminism of the quantum level, which reflects the probabilistic nature of that realm, means that there is always a weak correlation between the predicted and actual behaviour of a particle when considering it from a purely mechanistic perspective. The equivalent on the macroscopic level would be synchronicity and, in this realm, the more general ‘science of correlations’ could be replaced by the special case of a ‘science of synchronicity’. Synchronicity appears as a meaningful coincidence of objective (material) and subjective (mental) events. The patterning of events such as the coincidence of scientists like Darwin and Wallace discovering evolution at the same time yet in separate and distant contexts, reflects a form of global synchronicity. The mere fact of these meaningful coincidences indicates a deep structuring within nature. Yet again, the correlation is not absolute – synchronicities do not happen on demand, nor are they repeatable in a laboratory. But the mere fact that they occur indicates that the processes leading up to the synchronicity must have been deterministic. Darwin spent twenty years contemplating the theory of evolution before he was forced into presenting the concept at the Linnean Society because of receiving a letter from Wallace outlining the exact same theory. Why did he not deliver his thoughts on evolution earlier, what made him wait?
Astrologers like Richard Tarnas (Tarnas, 2006) believe that they have discovered large-scale correlations between the alignment of the planets and global-scale societal events and discoveries here on Earth. Astrology, in this context, is the largest-scale synchronicity – a genuine reflection of the macrocosm in the microcosm. Considering all the interlocking events that need to take place for a synchronicity, of whatever scale, to occur makes one start to appreciate the requirement for an underlying universal, deterministic, script.
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There are several things going on here. There are the strong correlations between the predicted and actual behaviour of certain physical objects, as recognized in the macroscopic, mechanistic laws of science, such as Newton’s laws of motion. Then there are the weakly corelated, indeterminate aspects of nature, as reflected by the probabilistic behaviour of the quantum realm during the collapse of the wave equation and at the macroscopic level by non-linear chaotic behaviour in both the physical and mental realms. However, this indeterminacy of both the subatomic and macroscopic realms, is likely to be an illusion. The superdeterministic interpretation of quantum mechanics views the behaviour of subatomic particles and the experimenter as correlated – a correlation which can explain phenomena such as quantum entanglement. According to this interpretation, the physicist is not free to choose which experiment to perform when measuring subatomic particles and the outcome of the experiment is predetermined. Similarly, synchronicities could be viewed as a macroscopic version of entanglement – coincidences between correlated distant events in the physical and mental realms. While the strong quantum correlations that are characteristic of entanglement are no longer present at the macroscopic level, the determinism of nature, including the determinism affecting the human individual, is still observable in the form of the patterning of synchronicities within the general disorder of nature:
In summary, synchronicities occur over a range of scales. This is especially true if one assumes that the superdeterministic interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct and quantum entanglement is essentially a subatomic-scale synchronicity governed by an underlying deterministic script or programme that governs how the physicist will define his or her experimental setup.
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So, synchronicities are a key facet of nature that allow us to see through the veil of indeterminism on all levels and view the deeper, underlying, mechanisms of reality. The patterns of synchronicity reflect a range of interlocking events that span both the mental and material realms and act as a bridge between both.
Notes
* So, perhaps quantum entanglement of microtubules does occur in the brain to generate consciousness, but not in a way that would allow for free will. Perhaps this is also the mechanism that might allow a greater mind to interact with our own brains, equivalent to Descartes’ pineal gland.
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Chapter 15: Determinism not Fatalism
I agree that fatalism is undoubtedly an unhelpful worldview. Change is made in the world by people proactively making decisions to affect change. But determinism doesn’t preclude people from doing that. I still have the ‘illusion’ of free will, even if I know in reality it doesn’t exist. No-one, including those who experience precognitive dreams, knows in detail what is going to happen in their lives tomorrow. Even if, at an unconscious level, the decisions you make are not actually ‘free’ but are in fact part of a predetermined script, it still feels as if you are freely making those decisions and that feeling, and those decisions, are equally a part of this highly intricate and complex storyline.
Determinism isn’t fatalism and when you look in more detail it can actually offer a whole host of advantages over a belief in free will, both for the individual and society.
On an individual level, full acceptance of determinism frees one from such feelings as guilt, embarrassment, pride, and jealousy. I’m not saying that such emotions will be immediately extinguished, but if you start to think deeply about the implications of determinism, then you will be inevitably led to the conclusion that these feelings are largely unnecessary. If everything is predetermined then when you look back on your life, you discover that ‘you’ were not ultimately responsible for your actions. If you have had huge success, then you should not ascribe it all to your own intelligence or work ethic but rather to your fortune (remembering that your intelligence and work ethic were also predetermined). Similarly, if you have made mistakes in life, then learn from them, but also forgive yourself – you were ‘supposed’ to do those things and you were ‘supposed’ to learn from them. Do not beat yourself up with guilt, embarrassment, and shame – life is too short. To consider otherwise and dwell on these kinds of emotions is really just a reflection of ego. As with everything, ego is necessary to a certain extent to achieve things in the world but dwelling on negative emotions in any form is a reflection of excessive ego.
I am not the first to say these kinds of things by any means. Thinkers such as Ram Dass in Be Here Now (1971) and Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now (1997), have emphasized the importance of mindfulness and living in the present, without dwelling on the past or possible events in the future over which you have no control. Acceptance of determinism is really just a simple reflection of such ideas. In a deterministic world, living in the ‘now’ is the only rational course of action. To repeat, things that happened in the past were supposed to happen that way – if you have been successful, don’t allow your pride to convince you that you will always be successful in the future. Similarly, if you have made mistakes, then learn from them and don’t repeat them but remember that those things were supposed to happen to you as a learning process, to make you aware of the multifaceted richness of life. All those experiences make you who you are.
Another aspect to this is when we encounter periods in life when things don’t appear to go according to our plans. At times like this it can feel as if we are experiencing a train of bad luck and that the world is against us – when whatever we attempt to do to alter that situation appears to have no effect or even makes matters worse. It is during these episodes that we are most vulnerable to falling into fatalism – since nothing we do seems to work and everyone is against us, why should we even bother to try? And here is the important point. There is actually, at times, much wisdom in doing nothing at all – in surrendering to a power (maybe God or the Universe depending on your perspective) higher than oneself. Sometimes the best form of action is inaction - particularly at times when every conscious action that we take appears to make matters worse. As Eckhart Tolle writes in the Power of Now (1997):
“If there is truly nothing that you can do to change your here and now, and you can’t remove yourself from the situation, then accept your here and now totally by dropping all inner resistance. The false, unhappy self that loves feeling miserable, resentful, or sorry for itself can then no longer survive. This is called surrender. Surrender is not weakness. There is great strength in it. Only a surrendered person has spiritual power. Through surrender, you will be free internally of the situation. You may then find that the situation changes without any effort on your part. In any case, you are free.”
But during these periods of surrender, we should do so willingly and with awareness of opportunities for learning and change as and when they arise. Even if you currently feel that you have no direction in your life, remain in the present, with some sense of daily routine and alertness. Always maintain the view that good things are just around the corner when the right opportunity arises. Above all, there will be a reason why you are having these negative experiences and it will be beneficial to be mindful and think about how you can learn from them and develop yourself as a person as a result of them. Whatever happens, do not fall into the trap of fatalism. Dwelling on feelings of impotence in the world will lead to depression. What you do does matter, but there are times when inaction and alertness can be more valuable than counterproductive action. I have previously experienced periods in my own life when I have felt blocked and that I was not getting anywhere. What I did during this time was to read and attend public lectures to increase both my knowledge of the world and to maintain my connection with it. Equally, as described in Chapter 16, there have been times when, to try to make progress, I have taken counterproductive actions which it may have been wiser not to take! Overall, everything should be viewed as a learning opportunity.
The point is, if you have surrendered with alertness and sensitivity to the world around you, then you will be able to grasp opportunities when they eventually arise – which they inevitably will if given enough time. If you fall into fatalism and depression, then you fall into a trap from which it can be very difficult to escape. It may sound trite but maintaining a light-hearted attitude and a positive appreciation of the small things in life and nature during fallow periods will help maintain a connection with the world and an awareness of potential opportunities. There are times when you just need to relax, go with the flow, and stop struggling!
And remember this, if you accept the reality that we live in a deterministic universe, then you will accept the fact that everything that happens was meant to be that way. Even if you do take counterproductive actions then you will accept that they were supposed to happen, while remembering that those episodes also act as an opportunity for personal learning and growth. And if you are in a fallow period of surrender and inaction, then maintain a positiveness and sensitivity to the environment around you and take wise and discerning notice of synchronicities that may act as signposts for future action, bearing in mind that synchronicities tend to have a powerful, often numinous feeling associated with them. It will be this feeling that you should use, in conjunction with your own personal aspirations, if you are going to use synchronicities as signs. But remember, nothing is infallible, and even if you feel that you have used your sensitivity and have, like Jung, taken notice of signs in the wider world (see Chapter 19), and yet, even so, something has gone wrong and you have remained blocked, then don’t despair just increase your own personal learning and wisdom throughout the process and remember that future opportunities will inevitably arise. The following chapter describes a period in my own life when I took an unwise action, but which I have subsequently used as a personal learning opportunity.
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Chapter 16: Determinism and Criminal Justice
What would be the effect on the legal system if we were to accept the existence of a predetermined universe? In reality, nothing much really changes. We cannot allow criminals to play a part in our society if they put people in that society in danger, even if we believe that those individuals were predestined to perform those acts. Deterring others from committing similar offences is also necessary. However, acceptance of determinism also means we should consider more deeply the role of both the criminal and the victim. If considered productive, there should be an opportunity for the criminal to ‘learn’ from the crime as a form of retribution and to ensure that the act is not repeated. But at the same time, when considering the role of determinism in the universe, wider society should be more aware of the personal history of someone who has become involved in crime and, in particular, whether there was something in their past that drove them to commit the act. Equally, each and every one of us should be prepared to be much less prejudiced when it comes to assessing people who have committed criminal acts or who find themselves facing hard times. Ultimately, the way their lives unfolded was part of a predetermined script – a script both they and we can learn from. Certainly, they should be immediately punished for their actions, but following that punishment there should be the opportunity for rehabilitation and forgiveness. In any kind of conflict situation or argument, we should probably behave as Eckhart Tolle writes in the Power of Now (1997):
“Occasionally…two ducks will get into a fight – sometimes for no apparent reason, or because one duck has strayed into another’s private space. The fight usually lasts only for a few seconds, and then the ducks separate, swim off in opposite directions, and vigorously flap their wings a few times. They then continue to swim on peacefully as if the fight had never happened…This is natural wisdom, and it is easy for them because they do not have a mind that keeps the past alive unnecessarily and then builds an identity around it.”
In A New Earth (2005), Tolle expands the analogy:
“If the duck had a human mind, it would keep the fight alive by thinking, by story-making. This would probably be the duck’s story: “I don’t believe what he just did. He came to within five inches of me. He thinks he owns this pond. He has no consideration for my private space. I’ll never trust him again. Next time he’ll try something else just to annoy me. I’m sure he’s plotting something already. But I’m not going to stand for this. I’ll teach him a lesson he won’t forget.” And on and on the mind spins its tales, still thinking and talking about it days, months, or years later.”
In a parallel fashion, if people fall on hard times, we should not immediately rush to judgement and declare that it was their own lifestyle choices that created the situation. Remember, but for the grace of God (or the script), it could be you in that situation. And often these situations are rather easier to fall into than you may initially believe. Acceptance of determinism automatically makes us more aware of the environments that have influenced the lives of others and how these could be improved if necessary. So here again is proof that determinism is not fatalism – it is an awareness that we can learn from the script and that our own proactive decisions are also a part of the unfolding, but predetermined, storyline.
I am personally in a privileged position when it comes to considering the legal implications of determinism as I have previously been a defendant in a rather well publicised criminal case in London. I am not going to discuss the case in any detail as it is not pertinent to what I am trying to discuss. Some media interpretations of the case and that particular episode of my life can, in any case, be found online. However, it has given me some personal insights into how I believe we should treat criminal activity in a predetermined world.
I have already described some of my own personal anomalous experiences since 2005, including frequent episodes of synchronicity and sporadic mind-matter interaction that could be interpreted as psychokinesis or some form of ‘miraculous’ divine intervention. In addition, I believe I receive spiritual communication through muscular pulses (also known as ‘benign fasciculations’) that occur in various parts of my body at times of personal meaning. For many people with an orthodox scientific-materialist worldview, including myself prior to 2009, such statements would appear to be of dubious credibility. However, I have experienced such a considerable number of these events that there is no longer any doubt in my mind as to their validity. As described above, it is largely the frequency of these events and the obvious patterning and correspondence between personal (subjective) and external (objective) events (as is characteristic of synchronicity), that has led me to doubt the existence of free will. Since what was essentially an ‘epiphany’ in early 2009, I have felt very strongly that I have been guided in my life. This guidance has taken the form of providing me with learning experiences that I would never have been inclined to ‘choose’ of my own accord. From a personal perspective, some of the experiences were not altogether pleasant in the short term, but from a longer-term and broader perspective, I have been able to appreciate that they have had a kind of educational quality. These experiences have offered a direct opportunity to encounter and learn from aspects of life and the world that I would have been unlikely to otherwise encounter.
An early example of such an experience was being forcibly sectioned at the Bethlem Royal Hospital in January 2009. Being restrained by a group of police officers and put into handcuffs before being transported in the back of a police van to a psychiatric hospital was, in the short term, not a pleasant experience. It also subsequently highlighted to me the distance the Western mental health community still needs to travel to accommodate spiritual emergences or awakenings into their repertoire of understanding. As I mentioned in Chapter 13, I had already talked with members of the psychiatric community in southeast London about the meaningful experiences I was experiencing, but none of those professionals raised the subject of synchronicity, even though the concept had been initially published by Carl Jung over fifty years earlier.
But from another perspective, and with the benefit of time and hindsight, I came to realise that there was no alternative to my experience of being sectioned in Bethlem. It was my experiences in those twelve days, talking with eccentric patients like John and others (people I would not have encountered in the outside world since very few people in everyday life would openly describe themselves to a complete stranger as being an incarnation of God) that first made me aware that what I was experiencing was a spiritual phenomenon rather than a human-derived conspiracy. I had to pass through that personal tumultuous experience to make me fully aware and accepting of the anomalous experiences of synchronicity I was witnessing.
This then brings me to a second episode in my life that was personally stressful in the short-term, but which also provided a valuable learning experience when viewed over a longer perspective. This was the court case I briefly described above.
Firstly, I wish to say a few things about my own personality and that episode in particular, without in any way seeking to excuse my actions. Without wishing to put words into people’s mouths, I think most people who knew me when I was growing up and at university, would remember me as being studious and possibly a bit deferential to authority. I was not a rebellious teenager, I just wanted to keep my head down, try to succeed in my studies and achieve a place at a good university. But naturally I think I was predisposed to just try to ‘fit-in’ to society, learn what needed to be learned, and embark on a decent career. Those are still threads that tend to define my personality to some extent, though these days I much more regularly challenge that instinct to ‘fit-in’. The point is, I think during my entire time at secondary school I received one detention and most of my school contemporaries would have been extremely surprised to see me as a defendant in a criminal court case later in life. Again, this is not to excuse my actions, but I think that many people would have seen such an event as totally out of character.
And I, also, see that episode as being out of character. I believe I was guided by an outside influence to have that experience as some kind of learning episode. It is not an action I feel I would have undertaken under normal circumstances. I have already described how the muscular fasciculations I experience make me feel that I am in communication with a spiritual presence in some respect. And to be perfectly honest, throughout much of the ‘criminal’ episode I often felt in some way possessed, or driven, to undertake actions that were not entirely of my own volition.
People of a traditional religious persuasion may be tempted at this point to suggest that I was ‘possessed’ by the devil. In fact, I don’t believe in the devil as a source of evil. The term ‘Satan’ is a Hebrew word which literally means adversary or challenger and it shares some similarities with the idea of Hermes the trickster, as described the note to Chapter 4 (see also Combs and Holland, 1990). It is a word which I think accurately describes the process I have experienced – a challenge to my previous knowledge and experience that was completely outside of my comfort zone. In the spirit of Hinduism, Taoism, or perhaps other Eastern religions, I am much more in alignment with the idea of a ‘God’ which displays both positive and negative moral aspects – the light and the dark. Without the dark, it would be impossible to discern the light. So, in summary, I feel that the experience was deliberately imposed, perhaps by God, as a learning process that I would not, given my previous character and disposition, have otherwise experienced.
What I have found interesting is the way that society tends to treat people regarded as criminal in both the short and long term. In the spring of 2018, prior to my trial at Isleworth Crown Court, I was asked to undergo a mental health assessment by a Western-educated psychiatrist and, separately, a psychologist. The tests were specifically undertaken to assess whether I was experiencing previously undiagnosed autism or possibly some other form of mental illness. The conclusion of these assessments, which involved a battery of puzzles and other mental tasks, was that I was not autistic or suffering from mental illness. I agree that, by Western standards, I was not suffering from a mental ‘illness’, but I do wonder whether if the Western mental health community were more open to spiritual experiences they would recognize the significant but transient effect on a person’s mental state of such an experience. In what seemed to be a repetition of my experience prior to being sectioned in the Bethlem Royal Hospital in January 2009, when I tried to discuss Jung’s synchronicity with the psychiatrist assessing my case, he basically dismissed the entire concept. As a result of later research (e.g., Davies, 2013), I have discovered that members of the Western psychiatric community are not trained in psychotherapy or psychoanalysis, so perhaps their ignorance of Jung’s work should not be a surprise. However, it is important to reiterate that by 2018 the concept of synchronicity had been published for over half a century and was well established within both the psychoanalytic community and some sections of the public more generally. It seems to be high time that the mainstream Western mental health profession becomes much more aware and accepting of these common anomalous spiritual experiences.
Outside of the mainstream psychiatric community, it is recognized that spiritual emergences or awakenings can often be confused with mental illness and psychotic episodes. Groups such as the International Spiritual Emergence Network, the Spiritual Crisis Network and authors such as Grof and Grof (1989), Lucas (2011), and Read and Evans (2020), have been trying to emphasize the spiritual nature of many episodes of so-called mental illness, though in the disenchanted, scientific-materialist world we currently inhabit, their words tend to fall on deaf ears within the mental health professions. It is interesting that in traditional tribal cultures, who tend to be far more in contact with the spiritual aspects of the natural environments they inhabit, shamans are regarded as respected members of the community who can provide divinatory skills and wisdom.
So, I agree that I was not experiencing mental illness, but I do believe this episode was part of a long-term spiritual process – a kind of Jungian trial. Again, I am not trying to justify or excuse my actions, but I do know that this was a process that was completely out of character with my normal temperament, which I think needs to be recognized.
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What was interesting about being charged as a criminal and going through the trial was to experience the reactions of others. Because this was a high-profile trial, there were some newspaper reports that implied I was sick or mentally ill. I discovered relatively quickly that wider society can act in a judgemental and dismissive way based on the media reporting they read and can treat criminals as outcasts, even if those members of society are not privy to all the evidence that was presented at trial or other background material. Of course, to some extent, in the internet age negative media reports are retained online indefinitely to allow members of the public to continue to form judgements even years after the case has concluded.
At this point we can start to consider the difference in behaviour of people who believe in free will as opposed to determinism when judging historic criminal activity. Believers in free will tend to believe that people are entirely authors of their own destiny and bring it all on themselves. There is often quite a harshness about this attitude. A belief in determinism, on the other hand, will emphasize that everything that happens in life happens for a reason and that we should focus largely on the present rather than judging people on their past behaviour. After a period of punishment, people who have previously engaged in criminal activity should be allowed to move on. Of course, if the criminal engages in recidivism, then he or she will have to be continually punished both as a deterrent and to protect wider society. But in general, if someone does not display such behaviour, they should be offered a second chance.
What has surprised me particularly is the attitude of people I knew from my past, for example ex-friends or people I once knew at university. It has been surprisingly difficult to connect with some of these people. This may be due to a combination of the media reports of the criminal trial and the fact that I have changed my name. However, neither fact essentially changes who I am as a person and I find it quite odd that people should wish to shun me either because they believe that I have engaged in criminal activity, that I am ‘mentally ill’, or that I have changed my name due to my own personal spiritual experiences. In all cases, there seems to be a large element of prejudice in such people’s behaviour. If I wish to change my name to reflect my own spiritual persuasion and my own strong feelings of connection to a larger spiritual entity then that is my prerogative, and it does not fundamentally reflect a change in who I am as a person.
People should not be prejudged on their belief systems, or on their pasts, and I believe that acceptance of determinism would make society much more accepting and willing to value the present, rather than dwelling in the past or worrying about the future. Again, Eckhart Tolle’s Power of Now (1997) or Ram Dass’s Be Here Now (1971) offer much to say on this point.
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Chapter 17: Mystical Determinism and Indeterminism
In Chapter 15 I suggested that to accept the concept of determinism is not to accept fatalism. I have no idea what will happen to me tomorrow and even those who experience precognitive dreams have no long-term clarity about all future events. Natural clairvoyants and those trained in remote viewing do not receive photographic-resolution mental images of distant sites. Instead, their interpretations are often somewhat piecemeal and vulnerable to mental interpretation (known as ‘analytical overlay’ (e.g., Targ, 2004)). So instead of clear knowledge of the future or distant events, in most cases we are limited to making educated guesses and forecasts about what will happen, or what is currently taking place elsewhere. Even if the data from science suggest that the universe operates according to determinism, as the late physicist Stephen Hawking once wrote (Hawking, 1993):
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“Is everything determined? The answer is yes, it is. But it might as well not be, because we can never know what is determined.”
So, from our everyday perspective our universe does not ‘feel’ deterministic, it feels like we have free will, even though this feeling is actually an illusion. From this macroscopic perspective, our lack of future knowledge leads to the idea of indeterminism – an inability to accurately forecast the future in a deterministic universe.
But more than this, with scientific evidence from neuroscience and quantum mechanics and spiritual evidence from synchronicity, we can make the case for ‘mystical determinism’ (Bricklin, 2015). After all, we have yet to establish what, from first principles, has created the universal ‘script’ or ‘programme’. What is the first cause? Mystical determinism re-introduces the idea of a prime mover, or God, as the creator of the script or operating system of the computer programme. It starts to reenchant a disenchanted world and makes it possible to recognize the religious ‘signs’ that were a staple of medieval Western life and that are received and interpreted by shamans in present-day tribal societies who live in close contact with nature. This is mystical determinism in everyday life – an attempt to translate divine messages to make sense of the present and unfolding future, without having any detailed knowledge of the future ‘script’. Mystical determinism therefore avoids fatalism by retaining that element of uncertainty (or indeterminism) regarding the future. Your own future ‘script’ could just as easily incorporate your proactive decision to make substantial changes to your life and surrounding environment as it could to sit down and passively accept (or reject) what life throws at you. The former would be a positive, creative response to life in a deterministic world characterised by indeterminism, while the latter, especially if not accepted in the sense of spiritual surrender, would be a fatalistic response. Fatalism does not have to be a necessary worldview in a deterministic world, especially in a world governed by mystical determinism.
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Chapter 18: The Re-Enchantment of the World
So mystical determinism can be experienced as indeterminism (i.e., lack of knowledge of the content of the script) combined with the knowledge that the script is composed by a prime mover, even if we can’t comprehend the intentions of that prime mover in any detail. Why is this important? Acceptance of a deterministic world, which for us is indeterministic (i.e., “[material reality] is undetermined for us – at the deepest level we can observe it” (Bricklin, 2015)) but has a prime mover or divine ‘operating system’, opens the door to allowing enchantment back into the world.
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Tarnas (2006) makes the point that the world has become disenchanted due to the “tendency of the [modern mind] to assert and experience a radical separation between subject and object, a distinct division between the human self and encompassing world.” This mind therefore experiences a “fundamental division between a subjective human self and an objective external world”. By contrast, the worldview of indigenous cultures (what Tarnas calls the primal world view) is ensouled:
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“It communicates and has purposes. It is pregnant with signs and symbols, implications and intentions. The world is animated by the same psychologically resonant realities that human beings experience within themselves. A continuity extends from the interior world of the human to the world outside.”
In this environment, “Creative and responsive intelligence, spirit and soul, meaning and purpose are everywhere. The human being is a microcosm within the macrocosm of the world, participating in its interior reality and united with the whole in ways that are both tangible and invisible.”
But what is true of today’s tribal cultures was also typical of our own ancestors. Umberto Eco (1959/1986) mirrors Tarnas’s description of the primal world view when he discusses the Western medieval outlook:
“Even at its most dreadful, nature appeared to the symbolical imagination to be a kind of alphabet through which God spoke to men and revealed the order in things, the blessings of the supernatural, how to conduct oneself in the midst of this divine order and how to win heaven…things were more than they seemed. Things were signs. Hope was restored to the world because the world was God's discourse to man.”
More generally, William James in The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902/2018) writes:
“When we see all things in God, and refer all things to him, we read in common matters superior expressions of meaning. The deadness with which custom invests the familiar vanishes, and existence as a whole appears transfigured.”
In fact, the disenchantment of the world under modern Western society was likely to have been a necessary development to drive intellectual and cultural expansion during the time of the scientific enlightenment and afterwards. Without the formation of a strong ego and individualistic sense of self, it would have been impossible to develop the strong ‘protestant’ work ethic necessary to challenge existing institutions and push forward with the developments of the enlightenment and industrial revolution alongside contemporary adjustments to political and social structures.
However, there is now a case to be made that humanity has exhausted the benefits provided by this individualistic work ethic. All corners of the earth have been explored and colonised (for better and worse for the indigenous cultures who were already present). Our science and technologies have allowed us to expand our presence deep underground to build tunnels for transportation and explore for energy resources and into space to create a global-scale GPS and communications system. The rewards of the scientific and industrial revolutions for human society have been unparalleled throughout history, but we are now unfortunately reaping the negative consequences of this human global and technological expansion. Particularly since the middle of the twentieth century, with the publishing of books like Silent Spring by Rachel Carson (1962/2000), we have been becoming increasing aware of our impact on the environment. The Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 marked the beginning of United Nations actions to combat climate change caused by the addition to the atmosphere of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide produced largely through the combustion of fossil fuels for heating and transport, and methane from intensive livestock farming activities. Average global atmospheric and surface temperatures have been increasing rapidly, with the 10-year period to 2020 being the hottest on record (UK Met Office, 2021).
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As global temperatures have been rising so have incidents of extreme weather events. The summer of 2021 saw extensive flooding across western Europe, such as in the Rhine basin of Germany, and destructive wildfires across the western United States. During the same period, historic temperature highs were reported in Europe in Sicily (48.8oC) and the United States in Death Valley (54.4oC). Meanwhile, climate change has been linked to the increasing power and destructiveness of hurricanes, the acidification of the oceans and die-back of coral reefs, and the melting of glaciers and retreat of ice cover, particularly in the Arctic. Arguably, the extreme cold conditions witnessed in Texas, which caused blackouts and deaths due to hypothermia in the winter of 2021 were the result of the weakening of the west-east jet stream in the upper atmosphere and the diversion of cold air from the high arctic to much lower latitudes than would be typically expected. There is also the distinct possibility that rising global temperatures will precipitate the crossing of ‘tipping-points’, when positive feedback starts the process of creating a runaway greenhouse effect due to the release of vast amounts of methane, currently locked up as frozen methane hydrates in the Arctic regions. Methane is an incredibly powerful greenhouse gas, and the release of these geological reservoirs due to rising temperatures would have an incredibly damaging impact on the climate.
Of course, I am saying nothing new here. Climate change and its effects are now regularly reported in the national and international news. But where our current environmental problems are relevant to this book is in the way we as individuals connect with nature and the external world more generally. Returning to the worldview of our own medieval forebears, we see that they were much more connected to their surroundings. They inhabited an ensouled world where the microcosm of the individual reflected the macrocosm of their surrounding environment. The same can be said for today’s indigenous tribal cultures. As discussed above, Western society now lives in a disenchanted world where: “The modern mind experiences a fundamental division between a subjective human self and an objective external world” (Tarnas, 2006). This mindset has been exceptionally productive when it comes to our scientific, technological, and societal development, but it is now overdue a change. We no longer need to expand our global reach. We can no longer afford to. There is nowhere else on this planet that human society can expand to and attempts to colonise other planets seem to be a hugely uneconomic distraction when compared to the costs of repairing our own environmental damage and living within our means. As other environmental commentators have explicitly stated: ‘There Is No Planet B’ (Berners-Lee, 2019)*.
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So, the question is, how do we retain the hard-earned benefits of modern society while improving our sense of equality and opportunity and reconnecting with the wider world on a spiritual level?** While it may be clear that medieval society had a strong connection with an ensouled world, we do not want to return to the fatalistic situation in which people believed that their lives were strictly predetermined by God and where the church and feudal system defined people’s place within society.
The answer would be to accept determinism, not from a fatalistic perspective but instead by recognizing that we cannot predict the future and that the ‘free choices’ we feel like we can make are part of a script that, to us, is uncertain and indeterministic. This worldview could lead to a less individualistic and more just, inclusive, society that is aware of the part individuals play in the destiny of the world and it would give us more of a sense of the underlying meaning in the universe.
So, practically speaking, how do we, as individuals, reenchant the Earth but in a way that moves us away from medieval fatalism and towards a 21st Century mystical determinism? The key seems to be awareness of synchronicity at all times, and on all scales. Synchronicity, as discussed in Chapters 5 & 14, has been considered to be the bridge between mind and matter (e.g., Peat, 1987) and is a way of reconnecting the subjective psyche with the objective material world, as was typical of the way medieval Western societies felt connected with their world or the way indigenous cultures currently act within their own natural environments.
But what does it take to become aware of synchronicities and signs? It may be that some people experience more synchronicities than others, as if these events were a species of divine grace, or others may have an increased sensitivity or talent for recognizing synchronicities. A first step to noticing these events is therefore a sensitivity to our surrounding environment and the world we live in. Here it is worth remembering how Jung, the creator of the synchronicity concept in its modern form, ‘read’ his surroundings to allow him to deduce signs which he could then act upon. Tarnas (2006), gives an example of Jung flexibly altering his position during an argument with a colleague because of noticing a broken watch:
“An instructive example of this self-critical, compensatory approach toward synchronicity in Jung’s own life was recounted by Henry Fierz when he described a meeting with Jung in the 1950s. Fierz had come to discuss whether Jung thought a manuscript by a scientist who had recently died should be published. At the appointed hour of five o’clock, Fierz arrived for the meeting and the discussion began:
“Jung had read the book and he thought that it should not be published, but I disagreed and was for publication. Our discussion finally got rather sharp, and Jung looked at his wristwatch, obviously thinking that he had spent enough time on the matter and that he could send me home. Looking at his watch he said: “When did you come?” I: “At five, as agreed.” Jung: “But that’s queer. My watch came back from the watch-maker this morning after a complete revision, and now I have 5:05. But you must have been here much longer. What time do you have?” I: “It’s 5:35.” Whereon Jung said: “So you have the right time, and I the wrong one. Let us discuss the thing again.” This time I could convince Jung that the book should be published.”
Tarnas then goes on to comment:
“Here the synchronistic event is of interest not because of its intrinsic coincidental force but because of the meaning Jung drew from it, essentially using it as a basis for challenging and redirecting his own conscious attitude.”
So once we begin to recognize the existence of these events and their importance in our lives, we can begin to act on them within the world at large.
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Notes
* In his book, Berners-Lee is disparaging about determinism because he sees it as making a case for procrastination:
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“Most claims that our future is pre-determined look to me like ways of dodging the challenge of trying to make the changes we need to see.”
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To the contrary, what I am arguing here is that a widespread embracement of determinism, by highlighting the patterning of the world and the connections between people and nature, may in fact aid our attempts to “do the things that are difficult”. Remember: determinism is not the same as fatalism.
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** Outside of our current environmental problems, the recent growth of conspiracy theories may also, to some extent, represent a general lack of awareness of the spiritual within society. In Chapter 13, I described a period in my life when I believed I was at the centre of a conspiracy which involved actors being sent into my business in southeast London. This was an unpleasant episode of paranoia driven by the fact that I had no awareness of spirituality or Jung’s synchronicity. However, there are now conspiracy theorists who actively believe that ‘crisis actors’ are being used by government and other organisations to fake Covid-19 hospitalisations and other events (e.g., Spring, 2022). Perhaps a lack of awareness of the spiritual patterning in the modern world has led some people to believe that human agencies are conspiring to orchestrate certain events; events which we might previously have ascribed to the actions of some higher power. Perhaps increasing our awareness of the spiritual in the world would reduce some of these feelings of human-derived conspiracy and paranoia. The ‘blame’ for these events would then lie with the mystical, or ‘God’, rather than with other people.
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Chapter 19: Expanding the Scale of Synchronicity
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Many books containing accounts of unusual meaningful coincidences have been published over the last fifty years. To sceptics, these reports are fabricated ‘anecdotes’ or examples of false memory. However, what makes them powerful is the accumulated evidence. Each individual story may not carry much weight but, in combination, such collections of coincidences provide the replication that is an essential part of science.
In many ways, analysis of synchronicities is much like the way sciences such as geology are studied. As with field geology, synchronicities cannot be researched in the laboratory but must instead be studied in situ when and where they occur in nature. If certain relationships and trends are discovered in multiple occurrences of synchronicities then certain characteristics of the phenomenon can be established, in much the same way as studying the relationship between different rock formations in different locations can give rise to a more general understanding of geological relationships. So, as with geological field-relations, repeated in situ observations of synchronicities are required to gain an understanding of how the phenomenon behaves more generally. Once substantial evidence has been accumulated, as exemplified by the work of Koestler in Hardy et al. (1973), Vaughan (1979), Inglis (1990), Plimmer and King (2004) and other popular science works like Hough (1996) and Crompton (2013), then our general understanding of synchronicity is much improved.
One shortcoming of most current studies of synchronicity is that they tend to focus on relatively small-scale occurrences – associated with one particular individual, family, or small group environment. For the individuals concerned, the synchronicities may often be no more than amusing, though in some cases they may also have a profound impact on the direction of people’s lives due to the numinosity involved. The impact of the events may be lost, however, on those who are merely reading about them from a distance (see the discussion of Falk’s work in Chapter 5). To try to enhance the relevance of synchronicities for larger groups within the global population, one option would be to expand the scope of the event to include more people. At a time of global news and social media, one method of doing this would be to highlight the connectedness people from different backgrounds feel with national and international news events. If people independently experience meaningful coincidences between their lives and objective news events it will quickly expand the scale and scope of the synchronicities, while at the same time bringing some enchantment back into the world. People would be able to recognize the coincidences as signs, as is typical in indigenous cultures.
The larger the scale of the synchronicity or ‘numinous’ sign, the more the macrocosm of the objective world and universe will be reflected in the microcosm of an individual life experience. At the largest scale, these synchronicities are encapsulated in the work of modern astrologers like Richard Tarnas (2006) who view the correspondences between objective planetary alignments and subjective human events as a form of global-scale synchronicity. Tarnas provides an excellent example of a large-scale synchronicity when he describes the process of authoring the novel Moby Dick. Both the birth of author Herman Melville and the timing of publication of his novel coincided, respectively, with two extremely rare episodes of whaleships being repeatedly rammed and sunk by the whales they were pursuing – the Essex in August 1819 and the Ann Alexander in August 1851 – the only two well-documented cases of such incidents. As Tarnas writes:
“…these events and coincidences just recounted, the whaleship-sinkings, the births of Melville and Moby Dick, and the cosmic movements and archetypal patternings with which they all so precisely coincided, suggest a form of synchronistic orchestration in nature that…are awe inspiring in their epic magnitude…These extraordinary double synchronicities in the human and cetacean realms are, on their own terms, sufficiently astonishing to compel deep reflection.”*
Of course, irrespective of their scale, a re-enchantment of the Earth through a widespread recognition of signs and synchronicities is only possible if people are willing to openly discuss their experiences. Synchronicities are often felt as deeply personal spiritual events. In the foreword to his book Synchronicity, Jung (1952/1972) noted that:
“[synchronicities] were things which people do not talk about for fear of exposing themselves to thoughtless ridicule. I was amazed to see how many people have experiences of this kind and how carefully the secret was guarded. So my interest in this problem has a human as well as a scientific foundation.”
But the fact is, unless people who are spiritually inclined are prepared to discuss their experiences, we are unlikely to achieve the broad reconnection of the subjective psyche with the objective material world. Without this reconnection, Western society will continue to view mind as limited to the human brain and people as isolated individuals existing within a disenchanted, meaningless universe.
Studying synchronicities is a quest for meaning. It is to highlight the meaning inherent in the world – perhaps the opposite of what Richard Dawkins describes in his book River out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life (1996):
“The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference”.
Meaning comes in the form of connections between people, places, and nature. People are natural storytellers and they like to feel that their lives have some kind of direction and purpose even if they do not always recognize the existence of a concrete script underpinning their destiny.
If we wish to bring more meaning into the world then we should recognize and highlight the connections emphasized by synchronicities. We may be able to see the ‘story’ of our lives, not in some made-up, artificial, or confabulated way, but directly from our connections with others and nature that come from our experiences of meaningful coincidence. The wider the scope of the synchronicities we recognize and experience, the greater will be our sense of connectedness with others, nature, and the universe more generally.
Bearing this in mind, I would like to share some of my own examples of macro-, or global, synchronicity. These are recent episodes of meaningful coincidence in my life that have corresponded with national or international news events, i.e., the objective aspects of these synchronicities are events that were significant enough to make the news headlines, nationally or internationally. The subjective aspect of the synchronicity is something that happened in respect of my own personal life, as related to my own psyche, which allowed me to feel meaningfully connected with the news event at a level above mere interest. It felt to me like a numinous connection, or even a sign. The advantage of focusing on news events to enhance interconnectedness and global re-enchantment is that they offer the opportunity for people from many different backgrounds and environments to experience meaningful coincidences between their subjective personal lives (the microcosm) and the larger objective world (the macrocosm).
What I wish to provide here is a direct example of the story-like connections I have recognized in my own life in recent times as a result of experiencing synchronicities surrounding the creation of this book, which is something I have been thinking about on-and-off for a few years, but in its current form derives from a presentation I gave at a joint meeting of the Society for Scientific Exploration (SSE) and the Parapsychological Association (PA) in 2021, called Connections 2021.
I initially submitted my proposal to present at the conference at the end of April 2021. Between then and the time I gave my presentation at the end of July I logged, amongst others, the following synchronicities based on global news events. The way I have recorded the synchronicities is as a number of individual ‘threads’, or small events, that weave together to form the meaningful pattern. To get an overall impression, it is a good idea to read through all the threads to then build up the holistic picture at the end.
The first example was not presented at Connections 2021 due to time constraints, but it is a good place to start as it is related to the conference itself:
Background: I used to go to the gym on a regular basis, but I was considering that it might be more economic to buy my own exercise bike rather than pay for a monthly gym subscription.
Thread 1 (27th May 2021, 17:18 [according to my internet history]): First time I search for ‘spin bikes’ on a particular internet retailing site. I continue to do so intermittently over the coming weeks.
Thread 2 (16th June 2021, PM): I read an article on the BBC website about the dimming of the star Betelgeuse due to a dust cloud (Amos, 2021).
Thread 3 (19th June 2021, 08:25): I start thinking about the outlines of my talk for Connections 2021 and (somewhat absentmindedly) open a blank presentation and type ‘Life, the Universe and Everything’ into a title slide (as a placeholder title). I wasn’t consciously thinking about the origins of this common phrase.
Thread 4 (19th June 2021, 19:18): During the day I think about the phrase and put it into an internet search engine. It autocompletes as Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, which I then also search online. [I have never read the book by Douglas Adams, but I recall seeing parts of a screen version and was aware of 42 as being the answer to ‘everything’, but I hadn’t directly connected it with ‘Life, the Universe and Everything’].
Thread 5 (19th June 2021, 21:31): To improve my vague knowledge, I decide to order an audio version of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (Adams, 1978/2012).
Thread 6 (19th June 2021, 22:05): I order a book about quantum mechanics called The Ghost in the Atom (Davies and Brown, 1986/2008), which is a transcript of a 1980s BBC Radio 3 documentary series.
Thread 7 (20th June 2021, PM): I start listening to the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy audiobook and discover that one of the main characters (Ford Prefect) comes from the Betelgeuse star system and that the ancient planet of Magrathea (home to the builders of Planet Earth) was located in the Horsehead Nebula dust cloud and was presumed missing/mythical.
Thread 8 (20th June 2021, PM): I make a couple of bids for used exercise bikes online but am outbid.
Thread 9 (21st June 2021, 09:00): I buy a cheap exercise bike online [though I later have to apply for a refund because for some reason the bike is never actually delivered].
Thread 10 (21st June 2021, 18:46): I receive today’s Nature Briefing email (Nature Briefing, 2021), with the subject: ‘Betelgeuse’s ‘great dimming’ was just dust’, which links back to a Nature article originally published on 16th June.
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Thread 11 (22nd June 2021, 20:12): I am still listening to approx. 1 hour of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy each day. I vaguely recollect a connection between Douglas Adams and exercise bikes. I remember reading somewhere that he used to cycle on an exercise bike when suffering from ‘writer’s block’. I put ‘douglas adams exercise bike’ into an internet search engine and discovered that he actually died following a heart attack on an exercise bike in May 2001.
Thread 12 (24th June 2021, 21:16): I receive an email from the SSE about the Connections 2021 conference. The first sentence says: "New information has been added to the SSE-PA Connections 2021 website: 42 confirmed presenters & talks, with more to come!“ At 22:35, I finally finish listening to The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
Thread 13 (25th June 2021, 15:37): I check my online watch list – I discover that the exercise bike I bought was one of 42 that were sold in that lot before the advert was taken down.
Thread 14 (25th June 2021, 23:41): Still waiting for The Ghost in the Atom book to arrive, which I should have received by today at the latest. I think about whether to send a follow-up email to the supplier today or wait a few days. Decide to send one now and get an autoreply from Marvin (of Rare & Antiquarian Books Customer Service) to wait until 14 days after the order date. ‘Marvin’ is an unusual name and the name of the paranoid android in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
Thread 15 (26th June 2021, 11:33am): Check my mailbox – The Ghost in the Atom has arrived. If the book hadn’t been delayed and/or I hadn’t sent my follow-up email, I would not have heard from Marvin.
There seems to me a connection between all of these threads – the references to Betelgeuse and to Magrathea being hidden in a dust cloud in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and parallel references to contemporary research concerning Betelgeuse as being ‘hidden’ in a dust cloud, the references I kept getting to the number 42 (even though I wasn’t particularly looking for them), and my communications from Marvin – an unusual name that I only remember coming across once previously in real life about 30 years ago. Then there was the exercise bike (which was not something I had previously considered buying) and its connection with Douglas Adams. I was even 42 years old at the time of these events.
At the Connections 2021 conference itself, I gave two further examples. They both have the common theme of energy or electricity in human society and nature. The first is, in many ways, a down-to-earth situation:
Background: I pay my electricity bill by direct debit from my bank account every month. I rarely adjust how much I pay or make any additional payments. I live in an area of west London with a heavy French presence (including the French Embassy) and which has been nicknamed Paris’s 21st arrondissement.
Thread 1 (3rd May 2021): At approx. 08:00 I decide to make a one-off £20 payment and add an additional £10 to my monthly direct debit to my electricity supplier to make up for a shortfall in my account and recent electricity price rises. My electricity supplier is a French organisation with UK business operations.
Thread 2 (4th May 2021): At 00:04, I receive a confirmatory email from my supplier for the increase in my direct debit.
Thread 3 (4th May 2021, 14:25): I order Just One of Those Things (JOTT) by Mary Rose Barrington (Barrington, 2018) as an eBook which I begin to read that day. One early passage sticks in my mind: Mary Rose's description of how she came up with the term JOTT (at 1% into the eBook, under the heading Jott defined): “Jott is a collective word like "fish”, and like it can also be used as singular or plural, an all-purpose word”.
Thread 4 (4th May 2021, 17:05): I submit a job application for the role of Science Educator at the Natural History Museum located directly opposite to the French Embassy Consular Section in the ‘French’ area of west London.
Thread 5 (4th May 2021, 21:30): A report is carried on the BBC website about the news that France is threatening to cut off the electricity supply to the British island of Jersey (95% of its electricity coming from France) over French fishing rights in the island’s waters (the island lies 14 miles from the French coast) (BBC News, 2021a).
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Thread 6 (4th May 2021, 22:24): I receive a confirmatory email from my electricity supplier about my additional one-off payment.
Thread 7 (5th May 2021, AM): Reports in UK newspapers carry details of the diplomatic spat over Jersey’s fishing rights.
Thread 8 (5th May 2021, PM): The Jersey row escalates and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson sends gunboats to defend Jersey as described in an article on the BBC website (Harrison, 2021) (since updated on 6th May 2021).
So again, there are threads connecting the subjective situation of my payments to my French electricity supplier (which I very rarely adjust) and what I was reading online regarding the objective situation of the electricity supply to the island of Jersey and its fishing rights.
The second example I presented at the conference is, unfortunately, tragic and an example of “nature at its most dreadful”. It is probably also an example of a ‘synchronicity of synchronicity’ (see below and Chapter 5) as the threads seemed to take on a life of their own when I came to present the material at the Connections 2021 event:
Background: I have had a few run-ins with soccer over the years, including, amongst other things, a PhD supervisor who was also a Scottish premiership football referee and at one point I worked for a bank that assisted in the sale of English premier league football clubs:
Thread 1 (10th May 2021): Rockets are fired by Hamas from Gaza into Israel. The Israelis respond with airstrikes on Gaza. This marked the first escalation of the Israel-Palestine conflict for seven years (since 2014).
Thread 2 (10th May 2021, 17:32): Booked to see Prof. Michael Grosso present his talk entitled ‘Miracles in an Age of Disbelief: Theory and Practice’ at the Scientific and Medical Network.
Thread 3 (11th May 2021, 17:00): A nine-year-old boy died after being struck by lightning during a football coaching session in Blackpool, NW England (as reported at approx. 21:30 on the BBC website (BBC News, 2021b).
Thread 4 (11th May 2021, 22:14): Manchester City FC won the English Premier League title tonight after second-place Manchester United FC lost (1-2) to Leicester City FC at Old Trafford in Manchester, NW England.
Thread 5 (12th May 2021, 16:14): I buy Smile of the Universe: Miracles in an Age of Disbelief by Michael Grosso (Grosso, 2020) as a Kindle eBook.
Thread 6 (12th May 2021, 18:23): I get multiple ‘pulses’ in a muscle (right tricep) on seeing a news report about the boy killed by lightning yesterday, who has now been named as Jordan Banks. (A BBC report on their website (BBC News, 2021c) states that: “on average in the UK two people are killed by lightning every year. BBC Weather meteorologist Simon King said lightning was not uncommon, especially during the spring and summer months. There were an estimated 3,000 lightning strikes across northern England between 16:00 BST and midnight on Tuesday.” This is a sensitive subject, but what are the odds of a child footballer called Jordan Banks at a football coaching session being killed struck by lightning on the same evening that the Premier League winners were decided and on the same week that the conflict was happening in Israel (cf. River Jordan) and Gaza? To put this in some context, the chance of any particular person being killed as a result of being struck by lightning in the UK is estimated to be around 33 million to one (Elsom and Webb, 2017).
Thread 7 (12th May 2021, 19:30 – 21:30): I attend the talk by Prof. Michael Grosso: ‘Miracles in an Age of Disbelief: Theory and Practice’ at The Scientific and Medical Network.
Thread 8 (13th May 2021, 10:39): I see a BBC website update on the conflict in Gaza which has seen 65 people killed in Gaza, including 14 children, and seven dead in Israel (BBC News, 2021d).
While not on first impression an uplifting story, Jordan Banks was described as an “extraordinary young man” and a “superstar footballer”. The UK is fortunate in that it is a relatively safe country, with a temperate climate, does not suffer from regular natural hazards like earthquakes or volcanoes, and is not at war. One thing this incident perhaps serves to do is to highlight other situations overseas, such as on the banks of the River Jordan, and the connection between the sublimated ‘war’ of soccer and the real conflicts that should be the focus of active diplomacy.
As I was preparing to give my presentation at Connections 2021, a number of other incidents arose which made me wonder whether this was a case of a synchronicity of synchronicity – i.e., because I was preparing an analysis of synchronicity, further synchronistic threads then appeared in response. Prior to giving my live presentation at the end of July 2021, I made a backup video of the talk in case of any communications failures on the day:
Thread 1 (10th July 2021, 11:53): I book a slot to make a video recording of my presentation with the event organisers at 17:00 on 12th July 2021. Prepare and rehearse my presentation on 10th and 11th July.
Thread 2 (12th July 2021, 08:14): Read an article on the BBC website (BBC News, 2021e) about a lightning strike which killed 16 people taking selfie photographs from a 12th Century watchtower in Jaipur, India on Sunday (11th July).
Thread 3 (12th July 2021, 16:15): As I prepare to record a backup copy of the presentation for Connections 2021 (at 17:00) an electrical storm begins across west London, including regular lightning bolts, which continues throughout the recording of my presentation.
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Thread 4 (12th July 2021, 19:45): An article appears from Sky News about flash flooding in west London due to an hour-long deluge: 'London flooding: Travel disruption for commuters as roads and stations closed after 'hour-long deluge‘’ (Sky News, 2021a). A similar article appears on the BBC website at approx. 19:30 (BBC News, 2021f).
Thread 5 (13th July 2021, 19:22): Read an article on the BBC website about a lightning strike that hit three people taking a selfie photograph in west London during the storm yesterday. The selfie actually captures the instant of the strike at 17:05 on 12th July 2021 (Shah, 2021).
Thread 6 (21st July 2021, 13:00 – 15:30): Return books to the Society for Psychical Research (SPR) library on the first day it has reopened since the Covid-19 lockdown. I have no prior intention of borrowing any new books out but see one on display that catches my attention: ‘Changed in a Flash’ (Krohn & Kripal, 2018) about a near-death experience (NDE) following a lightning strike, which I decide to take out.
Thread 7 (21st July 2021, 21:08): Learn that the inquest for Jordan Banks, the child struck by lightning, was today. The reports indicate that the weather changed in the last ten minutes of the football training session. The coroner stated: "This was an extremely rare occurrence. Although the weather had changed, it had changed very quickly and there appears to be no obvious reason why Jordan was struck by lightning." (Nsubuga, 2021) & (Sky News, 2021b).
So again, I felt a meaningful coincidence between making a video copy of a presentation that included content concerning electricity and lightning strikes and the news reports of lightning strikes in the media, one of which happened while I was actually recording the talk. Of course, thunderstorms happen regularly, but the coincidence of people being struck by lightning while taking photographs on two consecutive days in two countries on opposite sides of the world and both of those events being reported in the news media caught my attention.
After the conference concluded I decided to travel to the Lake District in the north of England to undertake some seasonal work in one of my favourite parts of the country. I thought that by spending a period of time in that area I would also get some inspiration regarding my ideas. It was in the Lake District that I later wrote the bulk of the text for this book and where the themes of energy and electricity again appeared in my life. I was working in a hotel in a remote but beautiful location – Wasdale. But it was only after arriving that I discovered the owner of the hotel was actually someone I had previously met fourteen years earlier in London under completely different circumstances when we were both working in our previous careers in the energy industry – the owner having subsequently moved into the hospitality sector. That was, in itself, a meaningful coincidence.
The energy theme continued on 27th September 2021, when at approximately 5pm a thunderstorm, which also brought torrential rain and hail, produced a lightning strike which knocked out the electricity supply to the entire Wasdale valley. Following almost 24 hours without power, at 4pm the following day a generator was installed at the head of the valley as the local electricity supplier seemed unable to re-establish the mains electricity connection.
None of this is ‘causal’ of course, just as the choir did not cause the gas explosion at the West Side Baptist Church in Nebraska, but it was a meaningful coincidence for me in the same, though perhaps more subtle, way as the explosion was for them. The event may also have had different but significant meaning for others who witnessed it. For example, I met a guest at the Wasdale hotel who told me that he had stayed there only once before – some twenty years previously – and that at that time there was also a significant power-cut (power cuts do happen, especially in remote locations, but they are still a relatively unusual occurrence). He also said he had a generator in his rural home and offered some advice, so he probably felt a meaningful connection with this event himself.
By the time I returned to London at the start of November I had the text of the book largely completed and I just needed to edit it to put it into a presentable format. This process was complete by early 2022, when I got to the stage of making the final corrections and adding the personal examples of synchronicity to this section – the final part to be written.
On 15th January 2022, a large underwater volcano erupted near the island of Tonga in the Pacific Ocean. Being a geologist by background I always have an interest in such events, but I thought that this one was meaningful for two reasons. The first was that I had recently written about the precognitive dreams of two people – J.W.Dunne and Elizabeth Krohn, the first of whom had a famous premonition about a volcanic eruption and the second of whom had a premonition of the ‘Miracle on Hudson’ aircrash, which happened on 15th January 2009, 13 years to the day before the Tonga eruption and tsunami and coincidentally during my stay in Bethlem Royal Hospital. I remember the Miracle on the Hudson incident quite clearly because of where I was at the time. The second connection I felt with this event was that I had previously experienced another synchronicity involving a geological event and tsunami – the earthquake event located offshore of Fukushima, Japan on 11th March 2011. On that day I had made an unusual journey from London to Dublin to attend a job interview for a position as a researcher studying geological faulting. I was feeling rather ambivalent about the job because it was funded by the oil industry, and I had by that time developed an environmental outlook. The fact that the earthquake offshore of Fukushima initiated a tsunami that inundated the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was a further connection. Here was another synchronicity involving energy and electricity – in this case geological faulting and energy involving harmful emissions; in the case of Fukushima, radioactive emissions, and in the case of the oil industry-funded project on geological faulting that I had just interviewed for, emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide. In a reflection of that prior event, the Tonga eruption also resulted in environmental damage when the subsequent tsunami crossed the Pacific Ocean and caused crude oil to spill from a refinery on the coast of Peru. So again, I felt a meaningful connection with this incident.
But what are the reasons for making observations of this sort? The first is to become aware of meaning in the general sense – the fact that there is something ‘there’ rather than random meaninglessness. As Umberto Eco states (see Chapter 18): “Even at its most dreadful, nature appeared to the symbolical imagination to be a kind of alphabet through which God spoke…things were more than they seemed. Things were signs.” In this way, therefore, recognizing synchronicities enhances our feeling of connectedness to nature and the world, even at its most destructive.
The second reason is the specific meaning that each individual person can derive from their synchronicities. In my case there was the theme of electricity, energy, and the environment, which have also been themes throughout my working career when I was previously employed by the traditional energy industry and later investigating the development of biofuels – i.e., this is something of personal significance in my life.
The third reason is to use these events as an opportunity to increase the interconnectedness between people and nature more specifically. I have highlighted synchronicities across a range of scales in the examples given above. Obviously only a few people were present during the lightning strike in Wasdale, and the influence of that particular event was limited in its extent. However, larger news events have the potential to act as ‘nodes’, or focal points of meaning for people leading widely different lives but who may feel meaningful coincidences between whatever they are doing in their personal situation and these particular events. Each connection will be different but, at a time of global media and the internet, we are at an unparalleled point in history where, if we were to investigate, we may discover correspondences between the subjective aspects of synchronicities and the meaning that people ascribe to such global events so that we may be able to use them to study patterns of synchronicities. Each synchronicity will, of course, be unique, but because the underlying objective aspect in each case will be identical, there will be similarities between each person’s experience and it would offer the opportunity for many people to establish a meaningful connection to a global event in a deep and significant way. This technique is really just an extension of what people already do on social media when they feel moved to create pictures and memes connected with significant events. Using synchronicities would just require recognition of a numinous meaningful coincidence connecting the individual to the wider objective world and environment**. Undoubtedly, some of these synchronicities would feel more significant than others and it may be necessary to spend time developing a sensitivity to the occurrence of these phenomena. As Tarnas (2006) recounts:
“[Jung] paid special attention to the sudden or unusual movements of nature for their potential synchronistic significance, whether of wind and water or of birds, insects, fish, and other animals…For Jung, the symbolic connection between the [inner subjective and outer objective event] was as transparently intelligible as if he were reading a newspaper, and he acted accordingly…Jung saw nature and one’s surrounding environment as a living matrix of potential synchronistic meaning that could illuminate the human sphere. He attended to sudden or unusual movements or appearances of animals, flocks of birds, the wind, storms, the suddenly louder lapping of the lake outside the window of his consulting room, and similar phenomena as possessing possible symbolic relevance for the parallel unfolding of interior psychological realities.”
So maybe we should be more sensitive to the signs and synchronicities present in the world around us. But of equal importance we should be extra mindful of the things we as individuals do ‘without thinking’ on an unconscious level. If we are all actors in the script of life, then everything we do on both the conscious and unconscious levels will be imbued with a sense of meaning to an extent that that perhaps we don’t always immediately appreciate and to which it would be helpful to become accustomed. Taking time to consider even the most subtle of our personal actions will bring this meaning to the forefront of our consciousness. This kind of deep awareness of our current thoughts, sensations and movements is characteristic of many forms of meditation, such as vipassana Buddhism, and it opens us up to becoming more aware of our actions in the world on many levels. This could also be thought of as an awareness of how you are being ‘guided’ in a deterministic world. There is a connection here with the systems approach to cognition introduced by Daniel Kahneman in his book: Thinking, Fast and Slow (2011), in which System 1 produces unconscious, automatic, intuitive thinking and works in conjunction with System 2, which is our slow, deliberative, and effortful conscious awareness. Similarly, as already mentioned in Chapter 9, Claxton (1999) suggests that the correlation of our conscious intentions and voluntary actions derives from our ‘preconscious processes’, which he also terms the ‘intelligent unconscious’ or ‘eco-bio-computer’. He concludes his paper by noting that:
“There are even suggestions from scurrilous seers and disreputable mystics that the eco-bio-computer, if we will let it, can be wiser than ‘we’ are.”
Perhaps the more we reflect and become mindful of our daily actions, the more we will bring the actions of the intelligent unconscious, or perhaps what some may call ‘God’, into our conscious awareness. In reality, this is where God is, in all of us. I am God, but so are you and so is everyone else. It was partly due to this realisation that I changed my name in 2016. No, I am not suffering from solipsism, grandiosity, or an inflated ego, but I have no problem in calling myself God and nor should anyone else, since: “…the kingdom of God is within you.” (Luke 17:21)***.
One further way of subjecting ‘oneself’ to mental analysis is to look for correspondences in your life across annual and other cycles, which I alluded to above when I talked of my own repetitions of synchronicities across multiple years. Gordon White offers a personal example of this in his book Pieces of Eight (2016):
“From the late summer of 2015, I began to discern a string of curious personal ‘replays’ that matched the same time in 2013… a half-year that resulted in the culmination of an unsatisfying career phase as well as a dramatic rise in wealth and opportunity. So I spent those autumn and winter months deliberately replaying some of the high points of the same period in 2013: we went to the same market towns in Wiltshire, we ate at the same restaurants, I even re-read some of the books I was reading and re-watched some of the television programmes I was watching in 2013. In the end, the same outcome was achieved from both a career and success perspective. I cannot be sure if that would have happened without the ritual behaviour but why would I ever risk finding out the hard way?”.
While we need not become overly superstitious, if we do recognise and engage with signs and synchronicities, we might be able to encourage positive outcomes and the occurrence of further synchronicities in what has previously been called a ‘synchronicity of synchronicity’ (Vaughan, 1979; Schwartz, 2017; see also Chapter 5). In other words, if we were to start actively engaging with our synchronicities then more of these events would begin to appear in our lives and the whole process would become enhanced. But, if this is to be the case, we would have to be actively willing to engage with the process for the synchronicities to appear. It may be that at the largest scale, emergent properties of consciousness could then develop in what palaeontologist, philosopher, and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin called the ‘noosphere’ or global consciousness. Combs and Holland (1990) make the comment:
“Ira Progoff, one of Carl Jung’s most accomplished students of synchronicity, suggests that something is missing in the way Teilhard de Chardin conceptualises the organization of noosphere activity with regard to higher levels of evolution. In the first chapter of Jung, Synchronicity, and Human Destiny, Progoff suggests that synchronicity fills the bill very well.
Here we have a perspective on synchronicity as a direct manifestation of a higher reality, the organizing presence of the omega point. It represents a bridge to a higher, more luminous level of being.”
Teilhard de Chardin (1955/2015) envisaged the omega point as a leap of global consciousness. In the same way as individual neurons form essential components of the brain, so individual human minds are imagined to form essential components of a noosphere or global consciousness. According to Teilhard de Chardin, it is at the omega point where emergent properties of a global consciousness arise.
Perhaps the most important development, whether we consider synchronicities merely at an isolated individual level, or if we realize their full potential to enhance our spiritual connectedness with each other and our environment, is to recognize that even if they suggest the presence of a patterning in the universe, that patterning need not lead to fatalism. Even if one recognizes synchronicities as a reflection of an underlying deterministic universe, that universe also shows inherent indeterminism as far as we are concerned. We can move from the rigid determinism of the medieval religious and astrological outlook to a 21st Century mystical determinism, which takes account of the simplicity of a deterministic model of the universe from the scientific perspective but also the fact that, for us, indeterminism makes the underlying ‘script’ impossible to discern in any detail.
Notes
* Incidentally, yesterday (23rd September 2021), a colleague of mine, who writes children’s books, told me that she was inspired to write a surreal book about the Loch Ness Monster moving to our local lake – Wastwater, in the Lake District – and transforming itself into a whale to escape from tourists, which is perhaps a synchronicity itself, albeit on a smaller scale! This morning I read, for the first time, the chapter ‘Moby Dick and Nature’s Depths’ in Cosmos and Psyche (Tarnas, 2006), which discusses the synchronicities associated with Herman Melville and Moby Dick described above. In fact, it was these synchronicities over the last two days that inspired me to use the Melville example in the current text.
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** If you feel that you have experienced a large-scale synchronicity of this sort then please feel free to contact me at: www.globalsynchronicity.com where I am aiming to collate examples of these types of experiences and to discern the trends, if any, in such phenomena.
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*** It is worth quoting Peter Kingsley’s Catafalque (2018, pp.19-24) at length on this subject:
“And you are told and warned, will read, are taught, that this ordinary human being must never ever identify with one of the divine archetypes. That way lies the danger of psychological inflation. That way, for any human, lies madness.
But the terrible secret which has been forgotten is that humanity, itself, is an archetype.
It can be quite amazing to watch how people will diligently
observe, study, even become obsessed about everything else – and miss this…This is the hidden, unspoken danger. Even the most enlightened…can avoid every other danger to the best of their ability – and forget the danger of identifying with being a human being…
…One only needs to add that when we identify with ourselves as humans, when we accept our oneness with the collective human race, we are suffering the greatest inflation of them all.
And what happens when we identify with being a nice, modest, ordinary human being? The answer is simple: We die. When we live like everyone else, we die like everyone else; start to lose our faculties as we turn sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety; drift off into trivialities and completely forget what life is all about…
…In other words we have divided ourselves off for a hundred good reasons, without even noticing it, from the divine.
And this is really what I would like to talk about: the hubris, the inflation, the insanity of separating ourselves from the sacred.”
I agree – my only quibble with Kingsley is that he seems to ignore the full implications of his belief in determinism. As he states himself:
“As Jung repeated consistently until the very end of his life, it’s not a question of what we do with the archetypes but of the use that the archetypes make of us; and, at bottom, this brings us back to the way he criticized even his own pupils for being superstitious enough to believe in free will when any such free will is just an illusion.” (Kingsley, 2018, Note 49, p.563)
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The problem is, if we fully accept the reality of determinism, then we can’t chastise humanity for its own hubris, inflation, and insanity, when those aspects of the human archetype were, in truth, foisted upon us. What we can do now, of course, is accept that the useful traits humans developed during the enlightenment and scientific revolution are no longer, on their own, fit for purpose. Following Kingsley, the archetypes made use of us in the way they so determined during our expansion across the face of the earth. Now is the time when we should become more spiritually conscious and accept our inherent oneness with each other and the divine.
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Conclusion
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So, the question is – have I convinced you? As I stated in the introduction, the grand ambition of this book was to develop a simple, parsimonious, model of the universe in accordance with current scientific evidence. The major expense in creating the model was to be a sacrifice from every reader of their own free will.
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So, are you prepared to sacrifice your free will to have a simpler, clearer, understanding of the how the universe really operates? Personally, I would prefer to know the truth about reality rather than be blinded by wishful thinking based on how I would like the world to be. If it is true that I have no free will, and I believe from my own personal experiences of synchronicity and from the scientific evidence that this is the case, then I would prefer to be aware of that reality rather than live under an illusion of false pretences just to make me feel better by believing that I am in control of my own destiny.
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The previous paragraph highlights the reason why many people are so against the idea of a predetermined universe. When we talk of determinism we always talk of a ‘lack of control’ or that we are ‘puppets’ or ‘zombies’ in the control of some other higher entity. Use of such language inevitably leads to fatalism and such thoughts as: ‘if I’m not in control of my own life then why should I bother to do anything, why should I take any action, what’s the point of it all?’
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But determinism is NOT fatalism. Fatalism is a mindset to be avoided, it is not an inevitable reality. According to my worldview, I know that I don’t have free will but equally I am not fatalistic and do not have a fatalistic outlook on life. I do not know what will happen tomorrow any more than anyone else does. Even those people who do experience detailed precognitive dreams don’t have precise accounts of their own future lives over extended periods of time. Just because I believe the universe is scripted doesn’t mean I know the details of that script – I don’t. I FEEL as if I have free will and that is all that really matters. Any action I decide to take, if I take it, was obviously meant to be part of the predetermined script and any creative act or event forms an essential part in the story of life.
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This kind of worldview has previously been called ‘compatibilist’ – the idea that free will is somehow compatible with a deterministic universe. But perhaps this isn’t quite the right way of thinking or the correct terminology. I most certainly don’t believe in free will – it simply does not exist. I believe in a deterministic universe, but I am happy in the knowledge that my thoughts and actions form an integral and essential part of the universal storyline. Everything I do, everything you do, was meant to be that way.
But acceptance of a deterministic worldview does have implications. My question to you is: Are you prepared to make the sacrifice to Occam’s razor to make your universe:
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i) easier to understand,
ii) more equal, just, connected with others, and with less ego-driven individualism, and
iii) more filled with a sense of intelligent, God-given destiny rather than governed by random chance,
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while challenging your instinctive ‘feeling’ of free will? Let us explore these points in a little more detail:
i) A deterministic model of the universe is simpler and easier to comprehend than a model incorporating free will. In Chapter 2, I introduced the evidence from neuroscience (Libet, 1983; 1999) which suggests that our thoughts ‘appear’ in our brains before we are consciously aware of them. What Benjamin Libet and others have shown is that if we decide to move one of our fingers, evidence for the thought of moving a finger appears in our brain before we are even consciously aware of having that thought. This suggests that thoughts are appearing in our minds without us generating them – as if they ‘pop’ into existence in ‘gaps’ in our ‘train’ of thought, much as previously suggested by William James (e.g., Bricklin, 2015). This also fits with the idea of ‘inspiration’, where many authors and other creatives feel as if they act as conduits for a ‘script’, which arrives from some kind of higher power. Perhaps the most extreme example of this occurrence is the automatic writing of mediums, who claim to be able to channel information from other, spiritual, sources.
Evidence from quantum physics suggests that the microscopic reality of our world is inherently fuzzy. The Schrodinger wave equation and Heisenberg uncertainty principle illustrate that the subatomic realm is probabilistic and indeterminate when we try to look at it. Yet quantum entanglement indicates that subatomic particles which have previously been in contact are correlated. While the mathematics of quantum mechanics is strong and has been proven time and again to accurately describe the behaviour of subatomic particles, it has very little to say about the actual reality of our universe at the level of the extremely small. Some interpretations of quantum mechanics – such as the Copenhagen interpretation – say that we can know nothing about the true nature of reality at this scale. Others say that quantum mechanics postulates the existence of parallel universes, while still others that everything in the universe is connected by a field, or ‘pilot wave’, that allows instantaneous, non-local, transmission of information between particles that may be located on opposite sides of the universe. But perhaps the simplest, most parsimonious, theory is that of superdeterminism, which envisages that the behaviour of particles and the settings of the detectors measuring them are strongly correlated, such that they violate statistical independence. The correlations reflect the underlying determinism of the universe and they imply that experimental physicists, conducting analyses on particles, are constrained to act in certain predetermined ways. In other words, as its name suggests, the superdeterministic approach to quantum mechanics supports a deterministic worldview.
At the macroscopic level, i.e., at the scale of everyday life, synchronicities, and other similar anomalous experiences offer powerful evidence for the underlying patterning and correlations of nature. For these meaningful coincidences to occur inevitably requires some kind of design. Throughout human history, there have been a plethora of examples of synchronicities occurring on a variety of scales. Meaningful coincidences have apparently happened during the course of scientific discovery, such as the simultaneous but independent development of the theory of evolution by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. On a smaller scale, such coincidences also litter many people’s personal lives – the example given in Chapter 5 of the West Side Baptist Church in Nebraska and the Jim twins of Ohio, in Chapter 6, are powerful examples of this. It is difficult to envisage a mechanism for such events other than by assuming we exist within a predetermined universe. On the grandest of scales, astrologers have worked to emphasize the synchronistic correspondences between planetary movements within the solar system and individual and societal events on Earth.
If the superdeterministic interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct, then we may be able to assume that synchronicities and correlations occur at all scales, from the subatomic to the macroscopic levels of human life and the wider universe.
ii) ​My point in writing the above passage is to emphasize that a deterministic universe is the simplest model of the universe that fits with the scientific and observational data and is therefore in accordance with Occam’s razor. In which case, why is the idea not more widely recognized and adopted? The problem is not a lack of evidence for a deterministic universe but a lack of willingness to accept that we may not be endowed with free will. People dislike the idea of determinism because they feel it inevitably leads to a lack of control over their own lives, that they must think of themselves as robots, puppets, or zombies at the mercy of fate or a higher power of some sort. But, and this is the important point, this is only a mindset, a worldview, or way of thinking that leads to fatalism. Fatalism is not an inevitable result of determinism; it is only the inevitable result of a particular state of mind. Looked at in another way, determinism presents a positive outlook of how individuals and society could develop. Viewing the universe as deterministic could lead to a more egalitarian and just society.
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On the individual level, if you entertain the feeling that all things ‘were meant to be’ it allows you to reduce excessive feelings of pride, embarrassment, guilt, or jealousy. This is, in fact, one of the main positive implications of performing Occam’s sacrifice – yes, you will lose your free will but the potential gains for both yourself and society are immeasurable. Viewing the universe through the lens of determinism is another way of being continuously in the present.
If you feel you have made a mistake that causes you embarrassment then maintain a constant state of mindfulness and think: ‘It was meant to be, I will learn from this experience’. It takes a lot of the pressure from your shoulders. You can look at the situation, maybe have a laugh, and move on. Similarly, feelings of guilt that have arisen as a result of some past action can also be dismissed. They were supposed to happen that way – don’t dwell on the experience, try to move on, but wherever possible see the event as a learning process. Obviously, this may be easier to do in some circumstances rather than others depending on the nature of the experience, but wherever possible try to do this – it will make your life easier!
On the flip side, if you have experienced considerable success in your life, try to avoid taking an egocentric view of your achievements. The successes in your life were, like your failures, ‘meant to be’ – try to avoid dwelling on them as they might not last! It is certainly true that you can take advantage of opportunities presented to you as they arise, but those opportunities are part of the script, so try to avoid believing that your successes are all due to your own hard work. Luck will have played a significant role in any success or failure and just as you should try to move on from any failure and learn from the experience, so equally you should not gloat over success and ascribe it solely to your own past actions. In his book Outliers (2008), Malcolm Gladwell highlights how successful entrepreneurs and businesspeople have benefited from being in the ‘right place at the right time.’ If you have a deterministic worldview, then your successes should be seen as a component of the script of life and perhaps you should take an empathetic view towards those less fortunate (if you don’t already)! What this entails in practice is being less judgemental about people and their personal situations when those people find themselves in difficulty. As mentioned above, while it is true that we should expect people to learn and grow from their past negative, perhaps even criminal, experiences to avoid repeating them, those in a fortunate position should avoid being excessively judgemental about those experiences. In short, our successes and failures are not truly our own and in a deterministic world we should be able to heal some of the extreme ego-driven individualism that is a natural consequence of a belief in free will.
Feeling that we are not, at a fundamental level, responsible for our own actions can enhance our feelings of connectedness and empathy for the personal situations of others that may be substantially different from our own. Free will is not a panacea and I personally believe that our world would benefit substantially if it were to eliminate the self-centeredness and rampant individualism that seems to derive from a belief in personal responsibility. Again, to repeat, this does not mean that I believe we should not punish people for criminal activity. But we should engage in retribution only to prevent those individuals from repeating their actions within wider society and to act as a deterrent to similar actions from others. But fundamentally I do not believe criminals are personally responsible for their actions as I do not believe they have free will. Perhaps we should pause to think about why those people engaged in their actions. In other words, without condoning their criminal activity, perhaps we should consider what drove them to engage in that activity in the first place. Is there something in their personal backgrounds that may have encouraged them to act in that way? Were they somehow ‘dealt a bad hand’ in life? Perhaps, ‘but for the grace of God’ we would have been in that position ourselves? A move away from a belief in free will, which as discussed in Section 1 is largely based on our own personal ‘feelings’, and towards a deterministic worldview would encourage us to think not just about our own roles within the script but also the roles of others. This, I believe, would lead to increased understanding and connectedness between people, which can only be a good thing!
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iii) Finally, adopting a mystical deterministic worldview, i.e., that we are avatars in a universal script, provides much needed meaning in a world that is currently bereft of enchantment and mythology. The current materialist worldview that dominates science suggests that we, and evolution more generally, are the result of unlikely accidents in a meaningless universe. In contrast, the patterning of synchronicity at the macroscopic level suggests the presence of a universal design. In the conclusion to his book The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902/2018), William James makes the case for a future of knowledge involving a marriage between the objectivity of science and the private, subjective experience characteristic of religion:
“…so long as we deal with the cosmic and the general, we deal only with the symbols of reality, but as soon as we deal with private and personal phenomena as such, we deal with realities in the completest sense of the term…The world of our experience consists at all times of two parts, an objective and a subjective part, of which the former may be incalculably more extensive than the latter, and yet the latter can never be omitted or suppressed” [highlighted in the original].
The question is, to what extent can we observe and experience the synchronicities underlying our daily personal lives and to what extent can we use such observations to re-enchant the Earth? Can we instigate a science of synchronicity (as a special case at the macroscopic level of a more general ‘science of correlation’), which brings together the objective and subjective as envisaged by James?
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Paranormal anomalous experiences such as telepathy, clairvoyance and precognition could be just another form of the inspiration and channelling recognized by Nietzsche, Blake and other authors and poets throughout history. These experiences could all be interpreted as forms of synchronicity, as part of the underlying script. The point is, anomalous experiences including precognitive dreams could be ‘introduced’ thoughts in much the same way as the mental, subjective, aspects of wider synchronicities and the inspiration of authors and mystics are introduced thoughts and visions from an outside source. As Tarnas (2006) states:
“…Jung repeatedly described the appearance of the numinous as the abrupt intrusion of another reality into the ordinary conscious state, as something that suddenly crosses one’s path, that stops one up short, that is imbued with an uncanny, challenging, often destabilizing quality. It overwhelms one with its alterity. It is autonomous, tricksterlike, beyond anticipation or control.”
Similarly, Hildegard von Bingen, as quoted in Tarnas (2006), had an extreme epiphany in 1141:
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“And it came to pass…when I was forty-two years and seven months old, that the heavens were opened and a blinding light of exceptional brilliance flowed through my entire brain. And so it kindled my whole heart and breast like a flame, not burning but warming…and suddenly I understood of the meaning of expositions of the books…”
However, although feelings of inspiration and spiritual epiphany are perhaps the most impactful, all thoughts, even the most everyday variety, seem to just arise or appear in our minds, in the gaps within the stream of consciousness, as if from nowhere (Bricklin, 2015). The source of these thoughts is the operating system of the universe, the omnipotent author of the underlying script.
The author of the script has a mixture of characteristics, which are reflected in Jung’s archetypes. Sometimes it has a juvenile, tricksterish character known as the puer – or boy, at other times it takes on the persona of the ‘wise old man’ (known as the senex), at other times the caring ‘elder mother’, but often it is a mixture of all characters. Throughout his life, Jung himself struggled with a ‘tension of archetypal opposites’ whereby inner contradictions in character are held in a state of conflict until there is an eventual deliverance from the polarised condition. But he also understood that resolving the tension was a valuable part of the psychoanalytic process at both the individual and societal levels:
“With considerable courage and fortitude, he also attempted to sustain the tension of opposites in the larger human condition, and to bring forth a new and different resolution to the spiritual demands of the modern age. Hence we see Jung’s immense labors and genuinely titanic struggles with the great cultural schisms of his and our time, to integrate the opposites between science and religion, spirit and nature, inner and outer, feminine and masculine.” (Tarnas, 2006)
There is an obvious similarity here with the Taoist concept of yin and yang, in which ‘God’, as reflected in the archetypes, has a mixed character that is both ‘black and white’ or ‘good and evil’ and which reflects the inherent variety of the world.
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Mystical determinism therefore reintroduces meaning into our world, through the positive and the negative, the dark and the light. To quote Alice Coltrane speaking about the inspiration that permeated John Coltrane’s jazz music (Tarnas, 2006):
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“Call it Universal Consciousness, Supreme Being, Nature, God. Call this force by any name you like, but it was there, and its presence was so powerfully felt by most people that it was almost palpable.”
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And in contrast, to quote Giacomo Leopardi in John Grey’s book The Soul of the Marionette (2015):
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“My philosophy makes nature guilty of everything, and by exonerating humanity altogether, it redirects the hatred, or at least the complaint, to a higher principle, the true origin of the ills of living beings.”
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In other words, perhaps we need to be honest and upfront about who God really is – a saint and a criminal.
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Section 2 - The Benefits of the Sacrifice
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At the beginning of this book, I commented that to understand reality in a way that fits with the scientific evidence as simply as possible, i.e., in accordance with Occam’s razor, it would be necessary to make a sacrifice of your own free will.
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But perhaps you are now asking the question, ‘why should I do this’? ‘I feel like I have free will!’ ‘I feel that, despite what various experiments may have shown, when I make a choice to move my finger, it is my own free choice.’ And what about personal responsibility? If we decide that free will is an illusion, that every event in the universe, including our personal decisions, was predestined to occur, then where does that leave the legal system with its emphasis on personal responsibility?
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The answers to these questions can be found in an analysis of personal mindset. Generally speaking, people do not like the idea of determinism because they believe it inevitably leads to fatalism. But this is a false choice. In the opening passage of his book, The Illusion of Will, Self, and Time (2015), Jonathan Bricklin writes:
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“People love a sense of destiny without loving destiny itself. We love to feel we have arrived at where we were always meant to be – but only at certain points along the way. Believing, say, that something mysterious – more than chance and chemistry – was responsible for bringing us together with our beloved, we embrace the concept of fated encounters yet spurn the concept of Fate.”
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A belief in fate does not inevitably lead to fatalism. Fatalism is merely a state of mind, and an incredibly negative and unhelpful one at that. Fatalism, in its most extreme form, says: “Everything in my life is predetermined, I have no control over my future. What is the point of even trying to do anything? I have no freedom as I have no control over my own destiny”. I want to state emphatically that this mindset is both entirely wrong and primarily responsible for giving determinism such a bad name.
People are so desperate to avoid fatalism that they will overlook determinism entirely. They will overlook the simple, parsimonious, scientific evidence for a deterministic universe and introduce a whole lot of complication just so that they can maintain the concept of free will.
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To begin this next section, I will revisit the scientific evidence one last time to explain why a belief in determinism simplifies our understanding of the universe over a range of scales. I will then explore the implications of this viewpoint in further detail.
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