The Universal Tapestry
Synchronicity implies wholeness and meaningful relationships between causally unconnected events Or at least from our limited perception that is how it appears eighty5nine . I am so intrigued by the vastness of the Universe. I get lost in the powerful images that come to us through the Hubble Telescope as it speeds through time and space far beyond our reach.
Science has been rediscovering the view of the world as an unbroken fabric in which seemingly separate events do not occur in isolation, but form pieces interwoven into a common tapestry. Wholeness as an idea is emerging as a major theme of our cultural. South African philosopher and states man Jan Smuts articulated this view in his book Holism and Evolution back in 1926. He told us that the cosmos was formed of wholes, each interlacing with others to form larger, interconnected tapestries. He explains from his viewpoint that these structures are not static, but evolve toward increasingly inclusive complex, and even creative forms. He called this picture of the universe of interwoven and evolving wholes "holism" after the Greek halo meaning whole.
Biologist Rupert Sheldrake's theory of morphic fields continues this conversation in modern terms. Morphic fields are a network of resonance that form webs of mutual influence beyond the usual limitations of space and time. I am fascinated by his theories. There is so much more to life than any of us understand or know. That thrills me. I am curious about the nature of our true reality and environment.A number of scientists have studied animals and their ability to learn or know tasks without contact with the trained animals. One famous example of this remote "shared learning" occurred in Britain, where milkmen for over one hundred years have left bottles of milk undisturbed at the doors of homes in the early hours of dawn. But in 1921 this all changed. Rupert Sheldrake discusses the behavior of a small bird called the blue tit in the town of Southampton, England in his book The Presence of the Past. A small number of these birds learned how to open bottles of milk. There were even reports of blue tits following delivery trucks and breaking into bottles while the drivers made deliveries. By 1937, eleven species of birds had begun this activity, and it spread to eighty-nine different cities in England. Then the jump occurred.
Strangely enough, milk bottles were not used in Holland during the years of World War II, and were only reintroduced in 1947. None of the blue tits alive then could have ever seen a milk bottle, and as soon as the milk bottle reappeared the blue tits began to attack them. Certain facts point to Sheldrake's theory of morphic resonance in the spread of this behavior. Blue tits are birds that do not usually travel far from their breeding place; but the habit of opening the milk bottles appeared at a number of locations far from the previous cities. Sheldrake estimated that the habit must have been rediscovered independently at least eighty-nine times in the British Isles alone. Also as this behavior began to be practiced by more numbers of birds, it spread with increasing speed, suggesting a quantum leap as numbers increased.