Ruby <r...@hush.com> wrote:
> I have been moving into a new old house and moving stuff out of storage. > I have about 2000 books, covering every phase of my life's interests. I > just pulled this very book out of a box yesterday, and wondered to myself, > hmm, why do I have this book? > > Now I know! > That's courtesy the Department of Synchrony. I once experienced a case of triple synchrony with a book. The only thing like that I ever encountered. Before the Internet reached Sri Lanka I was in a fax conversation with Arthur Clarke about synchrony and coincidences. I faxed him some pages of the book "Meeting Japan" by Fosco Mariani, in which Mariani described the time he was a civilian POW in Japan and he suddenly sensed that his mother, back in Italy, had just died. Which was true. He found out after the war she had died that hour. Anyway, I faxed a copy of that page and Arthur faxed back something like: "by coincidence I just today picked that book up off my shelf." Not because he remembered that passage, just by coincidence. Or maybe someone brought him a copy . . . It was something like that. I could look it up, since I never throw away anything. Clarke was fascinated by coincidences and mysterious occurrences. I think he was interested in the occult, but he did not want to admit it, being of such a scientific bent. He did a TV series "Mysterious Universe." My guess is that if extrasensory perception exists, Clarke himself had no trace of it, even though he was fascinated by it. In that, he resembles the character Rupert Boyce in his book, "Childhood's End." Boyce is investigating ESP and has a library of books on it. He is described: "He pretends to be open-minded and skeptical, but it's clear that he would never have spent so much time and effort in this field unless he had some subconscious faith. I challenged him on this and he admitted I was probably right. . . . In many ways Boyce is remarkably obtuse and simpleminded. This makes his attempts to do research in this, of all fields, rather pathetic." I believe this is actually Clarke's rueful description of himself. I myself have no trace of ESP. - Jed
