The Universal, Magnanimous Mind

Chris posted some links to Gary Weber's blog awhile back and I've been reading it regularly since. (Thanks Chris!) I find Gary's honesty about his experience radically refreshing. He alluded to the following story in a recent article (unfortunately, I can't obtain the link at work), which points to a Universal Mind that seems to have us magnanimously in mind in some way:

[Paraphrased] Gary was scheduled to give a lecture in a pretty remote part of India and before leaving his house he had this strong feeling to put his jumper cables in his car. He knows when such feelings are untainted by ego motivations if he asks the reason for such a feeling and can find none. For example, in this situation, his car and battery were new, so there seemed to be no reason to bring along his jumper cables. Regardless, he packed them and encountered no incident on his way to the lecture. When the lecture left out and he went to return to his car, he discovered an individual whose car had stalled in the entrance to the parking lot. Being a very remote area, there were no jumper cables available except Gary's.

Looks like Gary had some kind of access to knowledge of a future situation, in that he knew what he needed to do to properly prepare. Although he did not know the nature of the situation itself. The other aspect is that it seems the Universal Mind was looking out for the individual whose car broke down by relaying information to Gary prior to the situation. This is where it seems the Universe Mind also had an aspect of magnanimity.

What brings me to this is that I had a similar experience yesterday:

I was leaving work and planned to go straight to the gym as I have been doing. I hate running in the cold. However, as we were going to our cars, my friend asked if I would be running outside since it was such a warm day. I hadn't even though about that, since I was so used to my routine. I thought that was a great idea so I headed home instead. While I was on my run around my neighborhood, a woman in a pickup truck pulled up beside me and asked if I had seen a young man in a red shirt. I said I hadn't. She said, "Oh, that's too bad because he's lost." I expressed my sympathy, but said that I hadn't seen him. She pulled away and about five minutes later I encounter the fellow with a red shirt. He had a shuffling gait, was very quiet, and seemed to confused. He may have had a developmental disability or a mental illness. I stopped and asked him where he lived. He pointed in a general direction. As I continued to walk with him, it became apparent that he didn't really know where lived and was just wandering. He had a book with him and I asked to see it, thinking maybe it contained a phone number we could call. It was an address book. I guess whoever looks after him makes sure he takes this along in case he gets lost. I didn't have a phone with me, so we stopped at a house. The owner called the man's wife--the woman in the pickup truck from earlier--and she came and got him.

What amazes me about this story is that had my coworker not mentioned to me about running outside yesterday--a remark that really carries very little import whatsoever to the remarker--I would not have been there to help this young man. Who knows how long he may have been wandering around the neighborhood, especially since it was growing dark. Of course, it just may be a coincidence: however, I was a very good person to deal with this situation since I had the patience and inclination to help this man. Also, had the woman in the pickup truck not passed me on the road and stopped to ask, I would not have known to even engage the young man. It seems as though there was quite possibly something greater at work here: something guiding the situation akin to what Weber experienced, to ensure that this young man was assisted and remained safe.

Just wanted to share.

I sometimes think "coincidence" is a way to dismiss the meaningfulness of experience. This kind of stuff happens to me all the time in small ways. From getting up and going to the computer to find a long-awaited email has just arrived or getting up just a split second before the phone rings, etc. to "stumbling" onto an unfamiliar store that is selling the very thing I am looking for but haven't been able to find... I think it's a lovely part of the mystery of life.

But Chris, can you or do you ever have things happen that are similar to what Gary and Sunyata (and I) describe? If you do not, is it because you invest such things with no significance and thus don't notice? Or if you do, do you say to yourself "what a happy (but utterly meaningless) coincidence" or do you feel as if there is some meaningfulness to such events when they happen?

This is (clearly) one of those things that I think is served much by laboratory studies, but is about how we experience our own daily life and the meaning we invest in it. When we see life as meaningless or are not very aware of things, fewer thing seem meaningful and we don't see a lot of opportunity and do not have the same sense of connection and flow. During the course of practice, more and more things begin to seem to be meaningful coincidences, and this seems to grow in tandem with a sense of connection, flow and "things falling into place." (That said, I used to know who was calling when the phone rang long before I ever had any kind of official spiritual life. But I used to pretend I could talk to rocks and trees, too.)

As an extreme example from real life: Kid who thinks nothing works, does rituals and magick and meditation, feels total doubt that there's any point, but really wishes something would "happen." (Well, all kinds of things are happening, but he can't see anything.) After much coaching and months of dedicated effort, he suddenly starts "seeing" - the coincidence of the words of a song answering a question that had been on his mind; seeing a symbol in a dream, and then stumbling on it the next day; starting to feel like there's some spiritual connection and that his rituals and practices are having results. This change in perception is encouraging for a beginner, and I think it's very important. Some of it is about paying attention and reading into stuff that would have been ignored before. Some of it isn't. One doesn't have to attribute it to there being a God running things, though that's easy enough to do. I would say, though, that that sense of meaning is a quality of awakening which peeks through quite readily in the lives of many people.

Anyway, thoughts?

Chris - I will need to go back and look to see exactly how Gary interprets this exact experience. From my exchanges with him, he does feel that there is a larger consciousness--he refers to it as "She"--that does not reveal its mechanisms to us.

I think Gary's story about the jumper cables is very telling because the probability of Gary having this particularly strong feeling for which there is no rational basis line up with a situation in which jumper cables are sorely needed is infinitesimal. What makes the story even more convincing for me is the fact that Gary is so attuned to his experiece as well as the relative rarity of these strong feelings in his life.

.02 deposited

What do you mean "telling" and "convincing"? Of course it happened. It happens to people I know all the time. It happened to you with the man with the red shirt (a lovely story, btw). Do you have some doubt about what happened?

Yeah I do have a little doubt. This is the first time I haven't more or less explained something away. Part of it has to do with reading Gary's blog.

Ah, I see. I think explaining it away (as what? something you didn't experience?? something that didn't happen?) is not productive. You don't have to get all religious about it. Just accept it as the beautiful connected flow of the universe. Cool beans! What fun!

Well it seems some things may be simply coincidental whereas others have some import to them. That's why Jung identified synchronicities as "meaningful coincidences." So it's possible I think to "explain some away" as coincidental whereas others are pregnant with meaning. You just feel it. I may have had a problem with explaining away the pregnant ones (I did this all the time to my parents when I was younger. I was pretty promiscuous.).

I think as practice progresses, these synchronicities become more and more common.

Also, it seems as though some people may not feel that the "meaning" is not a sufficient criterion for establishing the "truth" of such an occurence. This is because the meaning itself is supplied by the experiencer. I dealt with this a lot before and would just shrug off these interpretations as nonsensical and unfounded. But I have a different feeling this time about the red shirt man. The story seems miraculous to me. Weber talks about this too: how if your great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother had been 15 minutes late for that party, you would have never been born. Just as if my coworker hadn't mentioned running outside, that fellow might still be adrift.

@Chris - this is what I was trying to say earlier. "Meaningful coincidences" - the key word is meaningful. The deeper practice goes, the more *every moment* is equally worthy of mindfulness. We tend to put our attention on things that seem important (big views, scary moments, pretty things, ugly things) while ignoring the rest (boring, irrelevant). The more one becomes "in synch" with the moment, by attending to the unfolding moment, the more every moment seems pregnant with importance or significance.

As they say in magick, when working with the Holy Guardian Angel, "I vow to see every event in my life as a direct communication from my HGA." When one's perspective begins to shift (both through intention and through the fruit of practice), that becomes literally true. Everything is connected, real, true, whole, equally important, equally worthy of mindfulness, even reverence...and thus much more likely to be invested with meaning.

The mysterious events where one grabs the jumper cables the day the car breaks down - I'm certain this is just another manifestation of the same kind of "stuff" - that is, part of being more connected. The mechanism is not merely about a change in perception, clearly, but I think there's a link and that the two kinds of events (meaningfulness and anticipating future events) are interrelated somehow.

That last sentence is purely speculative. The rest is opinion.

I'll provide a recent pre-cog experience of mine, acknowledging its anecdotal status (which does not render it insignificant):

A few months ago, I was driving to work while listening to a talk by Reggie Ray on the theme of "trusting your experience." I naturally dropped into a state that I've come to recognize now. It's sort of mischivous, and quiet, and connected. I stopped at a stop sign to allow a middle-aged man to talk across the street. No one else was in view (which is important).

While looking at the man, I saw a mental image of a young woman carrying a large department store bag; like the ones you get when you buy something. It caught me off guard, and I felt sort of puzzled. As the man made his way across the street, a young woman carrying a large department store bag walked up to the very same street corner and began to cross the street. It was early in the morning, and there isn't any shopping near my office building. And it's not like she was just carrying a large bag of any kind, like a purse or a grocery bag. No, it was clearly a large department store bag, just like the one that appeared to my consciousness moments before she physically appeared.

I won't lie; it freaked me out a little. It was both cool and unsettling. And, I've come to find that these types of experiences happen more often when I'm in that particular state of mind (which is the same state I drop into when doing 'parking spot magick' in the city - I'm not kidding).

I don't claim to know how this works, and I have no empirical support. It's all very subjective. Still, I can't deny that this woman and her shopping bag were brought to mind prior to may having a chance to see her with my eyes. And, there does not appear to be a special reason for why it happened. I didn't talk to her, and I didn't avert any crisis, to my knowledge. It was like a glitch in the Matrix or something

Anyway, just thought I'd share something specific.

Excellente, Jackson! I love these tales. Life is more fun with mysterious things happening. That's a great one.

Hi Jackson,



Maybe you've related it somewhere else, but could you talk about parking spot magick a little? My teacher told me he used to do this when he was in graduate school. He said he'd purposely go out-of-body to try and find a parking space.

Jake2, I don't think I've talked about magick much in these forums. I'm no adept. I also don't know if it's a good idea for me to go explain exactly what I do. I may just leave that to those with more experience.

I don't go out-of-body to do it. It has more to do with being very clear about intentions, and also making a commitment to a sense of well-being regardless of the outcome. That is to say, if I don't get a parking spot as desired, I don't throw a fit. I'm OK with however it turns out. Learning to practice jhanas makes this easier. When you can cultivate a sense of well-being that isn't dependent on sense objects, there's little room for disappointment.

I avoid practicing magick of any kind unless it either benefits others (which can include me; basically, I'm not willing to benefit at the expense of others), or aids in spiritual development in some way. These two criteria drastically reduce "lust for result," which is, in my experience, one of the greater obstacles to getting good results.

@jackson - spoken like a good magician

Jackson, What you describe is very similar to the instructions that Jeffery Martin provides in the God Formula, his distillation of self-help tools such as the Secret and Law of Attraction. Did you pick this up somewhere or did you naturally start doing it?

Chris, This is what Gary Weber had to say about the "jumper cable" event:

"Many of you have heard about my "put your jumper cables in the car"
event prior to a workshop i was part of @ Kripalu.
As it was early
fall and my car (and battery) were in great condition, the "message"
made no sense.
i went to the workshop w/o incident, and towards the
end of the workshop, a feeling emerged to go down to the front desk,
which i did.
Nothing there.

Another feeling emerged to go out
into the parking lot which i did; sitting in the exit of one of the
major parking lots was a car with, you guessed it, a dead battery.
No
one had any jumper cables and as Kripalu is somewhat remote, nothing was
happening, until "my" jumper cables appeared.

This could all
just be "serendipity", with alternative explanations, of course, but
they do happen frequently and typically with less time delay before the
event.
These "precognitive" messages are sufficiently common that
Adyashanti in a workshop of 300 folk talked at some length of how he
decides whether they are "truth", or "just the mind doing its thing".
If you ask "why does that make any sense?" (or its equivalent), and
there is an answer, that's "just the mind doing its thing".
If it is
the "truth", there will be no answer/reason.
i have done this many
times and it certainly does appear to "work".

The philosophical
and scientific conundrums represented by these phenomena are significant
and i truly don't have a good model for how it works beyond saying "the
Universe does it and She's not telling".
It is what it is, whatever
it is."

Weber doesn't refer to a Universal Mind. He just refers to the Universe itself that is the working mechanism.

I have never felt more in tune with the universe, that all things are interconnected, than I have this past week. I do believe, still, that meaning is assigned. That's why we have arithmetic, geometry, calculus, and statistics. I live inside an infinitely interconnected web of cause and effect but it is impossible for me, this tiny little human being, to deconstruct all that complexity. I suspect (but cannot prove) that time and space are constraints only because of the way we humans are constructed and thus perceive them and not because they are ultimately real limitations on the universe at large.
So... I believe in my heart that all possible explanations and interconnections remain open. I have no idea what the "truth" of these things might be - precognition, presentiment, what have you. Anything could be.

-cmarti

That's basically how it looks to me.

We are assigning meaning when we aren't having precognition or presentiment. What one person thinks of as normal another person suddenly having the same experience might identify it as extraordinary.

I've known people who to me, just always seemed "lucky," for want of a better word -- everything just always fell into place for them while I watched -- including parking places. But to them, it was just normal -- no special meaning assigned.

Chris,

I think Gary may also be referring to something other than systemic causality as well. This is informed by the strong feelings he has to do something for no explicable reason. He chalks this up to the Universal mystery that has yet to be cracked and may never be cracked.