0.12 Carl jung  (Page 22/23)

Synchronicity Experience #1 : In February, 1992, our first son, Mark David Kelland, Jr., died at birth. Later that year, I was traveling across the country, taking a whole week to get to a neuroscience convention in California, and I decided to hike up Wheeler Peak, the highest point in New Mexico (13,161 feet). I arrived a little late in the day, but decided I had enough time to make the climb and get back down off the ridge before dark. I just made it, but still had a few miles to go on the jeep trail down to the parking lot. Along the way, I stopped and looked back up at Wheeler Peak. I turned off my flashlight, and in the dark I could just make out the outline of the mountain against the night sky. I prayed to God for a sign that our son was in Heaven. The instant I said “Amen,” a brilliant shooting star streaked across the sky and descended behind Wheeler Peak! I took it to be the sign I had asked for.

Synchronicity Experience #2 : While growing up, we lived next door to Bill and Jackie O’Reilly, who co-owned the corner drugstore in the center of Foxborough, MA. When I was young I mowed their lawn in the summer and shoveled their driveway in the winter. When I was old enough to get a regular job, I asked Mr. O’Reilly for a letter of recommendation for a job at the local newspaper. He declined, saying he wanted me to work at their drugstore. But he didn’t say anything else, until Mrs. O’Reilly told him to give me a job. So, I worked at the drugstore from the age of 15 to 20 years old. I even began college at the same school they had attended: the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy. Although I changed schools and switched my major to psychology, I was always hopeful that the O’Reilly’s would be proud of me. Unfortunately, Bill O’Reilly died a week after I graduated from college. Jackie O’Reilly retired and sold their building, and the old corner drugstore in the center of town ceased to exist.

Eventually I moved away, pursued my career in psychology, got married and had children, and visits to Massachusetts became few and far between. One night, about 25 years after I had worked at the drugstore, I had a very vivid and moving dream. I was standing in the center of Foxborough, looking at the building where the drugstore had been. I was overwhelmed by a profound sense of sadness, sad that things must change with time and cannot remain the same, no matter how much we may long for the past. I awoke from that dream astonished by its sense of reality and its emotional impact. The next morning my mother called me, and told me that Jackie O’Reilly had died during the night! Was it merely a coincidence that I dreamt about O’Reilly’s Pharmacy and felt the sadness of watching time pass away, while Jackie O’Reilly was in reality passing away, or was it something more? There can be no scientific explanation. I searched my mind for anything that might have coincidentally caused me to think about the drugstore the day before, but nothing came to mind except for an alternative explanation, which was not at all scientific. Had Jackie O’Reilly’s spirit passed by and said goodbye, on her way to the great beyond?