11:11 Synchronicity

Even though I have been experiencing curious and strange synchronicities over the last two or three years, this one really quite shook me.

A few weeks ago I met up with a member of my FORUM called Dave. During our conversation he told me that he was becoming quite concerned about the numbers 11:11. He told me that he was seeing this set of digits everywhere. He was finding this really very weird. As my books deal with synchronicity and its potential significance we discussed this in some detail. I told him that I knew of no real significance for these numbers other than the fact that they represented the end of the First World War..... and, at the time of our meeting it was building to the commemorations of this day.

Dave insisted that this was not the reason and that his 11:11 experiences had been happening for some time. I asked Dave to place his observations and experiences on my FORUM. This he did.

This can be viewed at:

http://www.anthonypeake.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=838&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=carter&sid=9f8056743c3f0c04e8f8ef760a758d2f

Now what is odd is that my FORUM members tend to be a very well-read bunch but you will note that all acknowledged the strangeness of Dave's observations but that was about it.

Youn will note from my later postings on this thread that 11:11 started to involve itself in my life. This was odd because I had never noticed such a thing. Of course fellow FORUMITE "A Dark Philosopher" has pointed out that this is part of the "Kangaroo Effect" which may be the case. However I found it really odd that two new professional writers have involved themselves on my FORUM in recent weeks. Marie D Jones and Hilary Carter. Marie contacted me out-of-the-blue and, as you will see from my posting, I was stunned to find that she has written a book on 11:11. (http://www.mariedjones.com/ - and scroll down to the third book on Marie's list).But it became odder. By pure chance I was reading my first-ever copy of the Watkins Review and I saw a review of a book written by Hilary Carter entitled The 11:11 Code (check the book out at http://www.hilarycarter.com/2.html .

This really fascinated (maybe even disturbed) me. This was more than a series of coincidences. They seemed to be clustering all at once.

And yesterday it became really weird.

On checking my email in-box I was surprised (and delighted) to receive an Email from Hilary. She informed me that she was amazed as to how the whole 11:11 phenomenon seemed to be facilitating communication with her and I. Indeed in the email she pointed out that she was travelling in India at the moment and just nipped into the first cyber-cafe she could find to pick up her emails. There was one from me. She had just started typing her response to me when she noticed the computer date - she simply could not believe what she was seeing - 11:11 flashed up! Okay, so what, I hear the cynics say. But Hilary informed me in the email that the actual time was 17:40!!!!

Strange eh. Well it doesn't stop there. Literally seconds after reading the email I picked up my half read latest copy of the British satire magazine Private Eye. I found myself flicking through the pages and I did something I never usually do. Looked at the classified adverts pages. What I saw made my stop dead and gasp in amazement. The full advert in front of me is reproduced in the photograph at the top of this posting.

Now this is becoming far more than simply concidence, synchronicity or the "Kangaroo Effect". This is Jungian synchronicity writ large.

So what does this all mean?????

If my theory is correct then 70% of us exist inside an inwardly-generated "illusion" that we perceive to be an external "reality". The philosophers call this the "Phaneron" and I term it the "Bohmian IMAX".

If this is correct than this "world" should be full of self-referential clues that hint at this illusion. I suggest that these clues are presented to us all the time. Some of us see them and others just ignore them as just chance and coincidence. Those who have reflected on these things have another term .... they call it synchronicity. From Karl Jung to Arthur Koestler there has been a fascination with this "significant coincidences. Jmaes Redfield in his "Celestine Prophesy" books came to the same conclusion. These synchronicities mean something. So what should I make of this one:

Yesterday I was travelling through on the Merseyside Metro system from Liverpool James Street Station to my home station of Spital. I was reading the Michael Shallis book [i]On Time[/i]. Michael has a fascinating section on coincidence and meaning and I had just started this as the train left Birkenhead Central. As usual I was listening to my Archos MP3 player (as you all know from previous postings this machine has around 14,000 individual MP3 songs and I was, as usual, listening on random play. So there is a 1 in 14,000 of any one track being played. As we approach Rock Ferry Station I was overcome with what initially felt like a mixed deja senti/vu sensation. The first few bars of the Duffy song "Rockferry" started to play as we drew into Rock Ferry station. Now many of you know that a few months ago I recorded on this FORUM that exactly the same set of circumstances conspired to select this track as I was looking at the song's subject matter through the train window. And it was happening again! The odds of this happening once are very high .... but twice on a "random play" starts to stretch belief. Of course in order for coincidences to be significant there has to be another linkage at work. That was that I was reading a chapter on COINCIDENCE AND CHANCE!!! Indeed at that point Michael was discussing the statistics of coincidence and what made them significant. I got home feeling quite strange about all this.

That is interesting I hear you say, but not THAT interesting.

I agree, but today it continued.

Usually my journey to work consists of a metro journey, then an overground train journey then a short bus journey. For the last three weeks there has been improvement work on the Central Loop Line of the Liverpool metro service. This means that I have been obliged to take a bus from central Liverpool to my work location in Speke. Every day I have caught a bus numbered the 500. This goes to John Lennon Airport (note the Beatle link) and takes the quickest route. This morning I am at Paradise Street Bus Station waiting in my usual place. A bus draws in and I assume it is the 500 and get on. It is only as it drives away towards the city centre that I realise I have got on the wrong bus. I knew that this route would get me to work eventually but the route takes much longer and drives through the inner suburbs of the city before heading out to the airport. I have my archos on (random play as usual) and I am still reading the Shallis book and enjoying some of the fascinating coincidences that he describes. As a Wirralian I do not know Liverpool that well so I was not exactly sure where I was when The Beatles starting playing on the Archos. As soon as the song began to play and I recognised the tune a shiver went right up my spine (I mean this literally, it was one of those "somebody walking over your grave" type sensations). I knew exactly where I was going to be as I looked out the bus window. Literally (and I mean literally to the second) as the Beatles sang

"Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes

There beneath the blue suburban skies

I sit, and meanwhile back ...."

The road sign "Penny Lane" appeared in my field of vision. This really scared me more than anything that has ever happened in my ITLADIC journey.

This was really significant. Think about this. "Penny Lane" was indeed "in my ears and in my eyes". I was listening to it through headphones and I was looking at Penny Lane through the bus window. But it gets weirder. As many of you know Liverpool is in the North West of England. Known for its rainy skies. This morning had clear blue, cloudless skies..... I was in the Liverpool suburbs looking up at "Blue suburban skies". Now I admit that on its own this is of no significance but taking into account what was happening that I also had blue skies above me added to the weird feelings going through my head. Oh, and of course ..... I was sitting.... ("I sit" as the lyrics say). So when this 14,000 to 1 track came on I could have been walking (I wasn't I was sitting) the skies could have been cloudy (they were not, the were clear blue). I was in Penny Lane. I was reading a book about coincidences. The night before I had the Rockferry incident. It was verrrry weirdddd ..... almost Twilight Zone stuff). I have just done a quick check on my Archos about local place names in song titles within the 14,000 tracks. I am sure I am right but I only know of four:

Penny Lane by The Beatles,

Strawberry Fields Forever by The Beatles,

Rock Ferry by Deaf School and

Rockferry by Duffy (what is it about Rock Ferry that inspires people to write about it in song?)

As I got off the bus I watched it drive away. Along the side of the bus was painted a large picture showing, among others, John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Now I need to check this but I am also sure that the road sign "Penny Lane" was featured in this advert for Liverpool 08. As it disappeared in the distance its destination was shown on the back of the bus ..... "John Lennon Airport". I felt the shiver hit yet again!

Synchronistic "Reality Check"?

As you all know my books suggest that many of us are living within an inwardly generated illusion that I term "The Bohmian IMAX". This fabricated universe, similar in many ways to the "Matrix" (and even more similar to the 'world' perceived by David Aames in the movie "Vanilla Sky" and Jacob Singer in the movie "Jacob's Ladder".

If I am right then the world I perceive as real is generated by my mind and manipulated by my Daemon. Sometimes these manipulations are placed as clues to the real nature of what is happening.

Whether I actually believe this to be the case as an absolute truth is open to debate . I know that there is strong circumstantial evidence to believe it to be so but I may be misinterpreting this information and the 'truth' is very different.

But just sometimes an event takes place that not only presents me with strong evidence that the reality around me is being manipulated ... a manipulation that is both significant and directly related to the circumstances surrounding it. These events are similar to those experienced in Philip K Dick's book UBIK. Clues to the deeper nature of reality deliberately placed to jolt the observer out of complacency.

The event that took place two evenings ago has both fascinated and (I must be honest) scared me a little bit. It really does seem to be a message. Lets see what you guys make of it.

Just before Christmas I came across a reference to a book that seemed really itladian in its content I referred to this book elsewhere. it is called "Permutation City" by Greg Egan.

I managed to source a copy and I started reading it about a week ago. Because of other distractions I have not made particularly good progress ... which is annoying because the book is exceptional. It is profoundly Dickian and creates a world in which the 'about to die' are, in the final seconds of their life, have a full body scan down to the molecular level. This scan includes all the neuronal pathways of the brain. The data is then downloaded into a super computer and the person is 'recreated' as a simulation within a world very similar to a super-realistic "Second life".

Those of you that have been on this site will know that you can create an "Avatar" of yourself and this sprite 'exists' within the cyber universe of SL. Egan's book takes this to its logical conclusion (surprisingly prescient in that he wrote this book in 1994). In the book the equivalent of an SL avatar, called a "Copy" is created from the scaned data. It creates an absolutely physically identical cyber-clone of the dying person ... a cyber-clone that also has all the memories and personality of the subject. These "Copies" are self-aware and believe themselves to be a literal continuity of the now dead subject.... does it remind you of another theory close to our hearts?

I am really enjoying the huge parallels with my "Cheating The Ferryman" theory ... particularly Egan's plot device whereby the cyberreality can be manipulated by the programmers without the knowledge of the "Copies". Things like synchronicities and coincidences are evidence of manipulation. (Another Dickian similarity is that living people can have simulations of themselves generated in the programme to directly communicate with "The Copies" - just as happens in the PKD novel - and movie "Total Recall").

Now this is where it becomes strange ... and frighteningly self-reflective.

Two das ago I met our fellow Itladian and member of this Blogsite, Ed (Its Cool To Care) Gilchrist at the Costa's coffee shop in Borders at Speke, near Liverpool.

Ed had phoned me just before lunch suggesting that we meet up. I made my way across and Ed had already arrived, two steaming mugs of welcoming capucchino (capucchini?) on the table. After a general chat things moved to isuues itladian. Ed described to me a theory he had with regard to his son, Mark. As you may be aware if you are a regular reader of this Blogsite, Mark is profoundly autistic. Ed described how he thought that Mark's concept of time seriality was different to 'normal' people. He suggested that whereas in our lives events progress from one to another, that one event effectively brings about another creates, in the 'normal' mind the illusion of time. As Ed described it "A brings about B, which leads to C". This continuity defines how we become "aware". We become sentient by perceiving past-present-future. Ed then said for Mark the sequence doesn't work. His autism facilitates are very different perception of time. Events become discrete and do not follow on from each other. In this way Mark exists in a continual present whereby events perceived six months ago meld with an event perceived 'now'. Indeed we debated that even the 'future' may be perceived in this way by Mark. This is why he becomes so confused.

A great theory and one that I hope Ed will post on soon. However that is not what intrigued and scared me ... that happened that evening as I was on my way home on the bus.

I had not read "Permutation City" for a few days but something made me pick it up and read from where I had left off. I had literally read two pages and I turned the pages over. My eye caught a red ink mark on the last paragraph of page 90 and the first paragraph of page 91. This consisted of a line and a question mark. This was weird. This was a library that had only been loaned out twice according to the stamp section in the last 18 months. One of those readers had decided, for some odd reason, to specifically mark a paragraph. But for whose attention? We all sometimes may make a note in a book but that is when the book belongs to us and we wish to check the reference again sometime in the future. No, this had been placed in the book for somebody to read .. a future reader who decides to take the book out on loan.

And then I read what the paragraph actually said ... and in horror, and then wonder, realised it was for me!!!!!! Something had manipulated the BIMAX (or at least my BIMAX) to give me an absolute categoric clue that something is not quite right about my reality.
Egan had written the following:

"In a human, or Copy being run the usual way, the physics of brain or computer meant that the state of mind at any one moment directly influenced the state of mind that followed. Continuity was a dsimple matter of cause and effect; what you thought at time A affected what you thought at time B affected what you thought at time C....But when his subjective time was scrambled, the flow of cause and effect within the computer bore no relationship whatsoever to the flow of his experience - so how could it be an essential part of it?

When the programme spelt out his life DBCEA, but it still felt exactly like ABCDE .... then surely the pattern was all, and cause and effect were irrelevant. the whole experience might just as well have arisen by chance." (pages 90-91 Permuation City by Greg Egan . Millennium Books 1994).

Now this is a 'significant coincidence' on so many levels. Indeed Egan uses almost exactly the same words that Ed did to me that very afternoon!!!!

Now the only explanation is that Ed has been involved in an elaborate and time consuming hoax on me. Of course this is impossible. Not only would Ed not dream of doing such a thing but even if he did ... how did he get hold of my copy of the book and how did he manipulate the circumstances so I would read that very page three hours later!

Is this proof or am I really losing the plot?

Now this is really weird!!!!

Last night I found that I couldn't really sleep. I had lots of things going through my head. My mind drifted to thinking about the Blog. I then thought about the weird coincidences I described in my "Postcard from Tony" kindly posted for me by Karl.

(http://cheatingtheferryman.blogspot.com/2008/06/postcard-from-tony.html

As I thought about in in my minds-eye something struck me. I thought about how it had been possible for me to send to Karl the photograph I took that very evening (23rd) and how he had placed it on the blog. I then woke up fully. I realised that I had not sent any photo to him because I emailed him on my phone a few hours before. It was impossible as I had not taken the photograph then, but a few hours later, and yet I was sure that Karl had posted my actual photograph. I emailed Karl this morning and he confirmed that he had selected a picture at random that he found on the web that was of my hotel - he chose, quite by chance, one that was virtually identical to the one I was about to take (check it out - the one above is mine). This was taken from our room. Of the fifty or so rooms in the Hotel Belvedere only two have balconies that have this view so the chances of Karl picking a photograph at random that was exactly my view as I wrote a posting for the blog on...now what was the subject? Oh yes, weird synchronicities!!!!

Is this fascinating or just a little bit scary!

Mobius Dick

Hi everybody. Great to be back. May I firstly thank Karl for keeping the blog as vibrant as ever during my "Sicilian Vespers". I have yet had the chance to catch up with the Sunday Itladic Digests but they seem really fantastic. The amount of work Karl puts into these posts staggers me. I would also like to thank him for placing the LBC interview on the blog. This was the second interview/phone-in I had been involved in with LBC and in my opinion it is probably the best I have done. I guess it is because of the time factor. Such a complex subject as itlad/CTF needs time to be explained. Secondly I would like to thank the regular bloggers for making such fantastic contributions. This blog really is becoming a phenomenon!

The reason for this posting is that Karl loaned me a copy of a book entitled Mobius Dick by Andrew Crumey three or four months ago. I decided that I would wait until I was on holiday to do the book justice.

I read this book in one sitting (well loafing really as I was lounging around a swimming pool at the time!). I found it a fantastic read. To say that it is itladic is an understatement. No wonder Karl was keen to have me read it.

The book deals with many of the subjects dear to the hearts of all involved in this blog - Everett's Many-Worlds (Many-Minds), Synchronicity, The Eternal Reccurence etc etc. Clearly Crumey is influenced by (although he does not state this in the book) Philip K Dick and Jorge Borges. Indeed the story has echoes of Dick's Man In The High Castle and Borges' Garden of the Forking Paths. (I wonder if the 'Dick' in Mobius Dick was as much a play on PKD's name as Moby Dick).

However whilst reading the book there was a series of synchronicities that were simply startling - absolutely significant to my circumstances at the time and in the past.

On arrival in Taormina I noticed a CD in the window of a record store. I was so taken by this that I took a photograph of the window front. At the time I was interested because in the window was a CD by the Welsh singer-songwriter Duffy. This album is entitled Rockferry. Now Rock Ferry is a place about three miles from where I now live on Wirral. At the time I was just simply interested in the geographical link.

On my return to the hotel I started reading the book. It was then that a coincidence became a series of synchronicities. I found the book so readable that I was swiftly getting through the pages. On page 241 Andrew writes about a letter sent to Nathanial Hawthorne by Herman Melville in 1856. Melville writes in the letter that "Liverpool, your home, was as welcome to me, as colourful, as strange, as an Arab bazaar." Now Nathaniel Hawthorne had worked in Liverpool at that time. However his house, where Melville would have stayed (Hawthorne's 'home') was, in fact across the river in a place called .... Rock Ferry! This made me sit up and take notice, particularly because the whole theme of Andrew's book is they way in which the world around us is created by our own mind and that every coincidence is significant. I read on, literally waiting for the next synchronicity - and it was not long in coming, and it was a cracker!!!

On page 243 Andrew has Melville write the following:

"The churchyard is romantic and overgrown, though the church is of but recent make, subscribing to a local Presbyterian sect more unfathomable than the Messina Straits."

I burst out laughing at the joke specifically made for me, created within my own phaneron and Bohmian Imax. Why? Because I raised up my eyes across the swimming pool and stared at the dark blue waters of ..... the Straits of Messina!!!!

Birthday Stuff

I would like to thank everybody who has been involved in the massive surprise I had when opening the blogsite. I was ready for something because the enigmatic Dark Philosopher had left a cryptic text message on my mobile. Organising such a pulling together of all the International Association of Itladian Philosophers (IAIP) was a task of huge proportions. Thanks Karl, it really is appreciated.

Among my presents is Jean-Paul Sartre's Being And Nothingness - weighty tome of 656 pages but a book that I have planned to read for many years. This is a present from my mother-in-law, a true francophile (thank you Veronica).

Now this is where things get a little weird. For the last twenty three years I have had a ritual that I have followed on my birthday. Way back in 1985 I bought a book called The Book of Ages by Desmond Morris. This was not one of his most successful books but still a great idea. Each chapter deals with a year of life. For example for the age 25 it gives lots of info of what physiological, psychological and emtional changes usually take place at that age. It also discusses characters from history for whom huge events took place at that age. It then mentions a short list of selected famous people who died at that age.

On receiving Karl's text I delayed reading the chapter for age 54 to read what was on the blog. I noticed that Karl had specifically mentioned me being born on the day rock music started when Bill Haley recorded Rock Around The Clock. (indeed as an aside on my 20th birthday way back in 1974 the UK newspaper The Daily Mirror had a huge block headline which read "April 12 1954, The Day That Rocked The World". I was so taken by this that I placed it on the wall of my wall at university. Everybody I knew afterwards was convinced that it was a mock headline that I had had done).

After reading through your wonderful comments (and thanks again). I then settled down to breakfast and opened up the pages of the Morris book that dealt with the age 54. I was very depressed (pure Existentialist angst) when I read the following:

Fifty four is the year when 'old age' becomes visible in the distance. Previously out of sight, it now becomes a small speck on the horizon.

Great I thought. Sartre and old age! However what made my heart jump was on the next page (the only picture in the section) was one of Bill Haley, of Rock Around The Clock fame. Apparently he died at age 54. I pointed this out to my wife and she verbalised what I had initially thought. "Well, its not that strange because the article is about 1954". But we both realised that it was strange because the article was about the age 54, not the year 1954.

Yet further proof that we are continually creating our own phaneron from information in our minds - just as the Tom Cruise character David Aames does in the movie Vanilla Sky.