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In Sanskrit, the word Veda means life. The Vedic tradition of knowledge, which is often referred to as Vedanta, deals with the meaning of life, the purpose of life, and the place of life in the universe as a whole. According to Vedanta, there are two symptoms of enlightenment. They are indications that a transformation is taking place within you toward a higher level of consciousness.

The first symptom is that you stop worrying. Things do not bother you anymore. You become lighthearted and full of joy. The second symptom is that you encounter more and more meaningful coincidences in your life, more and more synchronicities -- and this accelerates to the point where you actually experience the miraculous. A miracle is just a synchronistic event in which the time span between the intention of an event and the manifestation of the event is dramatically shortened. That is what synchronicity is all about, and that is what spirituality is about, too. Whatever spiritual tradition you study anywhere in the world, you also hear about miracles. So losing your worries is one symptom of enlightenment and increased synchronicity is the second one. And that is it. Those are the only two symptoms of enlightenment.

Whether you are a vegetarian or not, it really does not matter. Whether you believe in the peace movement or not, it does not matter. After all, there are a lot of people who believe in lots of things; but they are full of worries and they cannot sleep at night. They have a big burden on their shoulders. A person might have been in a monastery for thirty years, but it does not matter. They are not moving in the right direction. Because according to Vedanta there are only two symptoms that indicate that we are becoming intimate with the spirit.

What Is Synchrodestiny ?

So you can see why I consider this program on synchronicity, or meaningful coincidence, to be a very important one. It is especially important because, in my opinion, synchronicity is not something that just happens by itself -- just as spiritual development does not happen by itself. We can foster synchronicity by introducing attention; and we can use synchronicity by introducing intention. When those two elements--attention and intention -- are linked to the phenomenon of meaningful coincidence, synchronicity is transformed into SynchroDestiny, and our lives are transformed into something that is truly magical.

The purpose of this program is to show what that means, and to explain in detail exactly how you can make it happen. The first time I heard about synchronicity was for me a synchronistic event. I was reading about Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist, on a plane flight from New Delhi to London and then from London to New York. Jung was an early colleague of Freud, but they eventually had some fundamental disagreements. Freud believed that altered states of consciousness were essentially forms of psychosis -- forms of insanity; but Jung thought of altered states as the capacity to be in touch with a hidden reality. One of Jung's most important books is called "Dreams, Premonitions, and Wishes."

As I was reading this book on the plane from India to England, Jung was discussing about a patient who had described a dream. In this dream there was a very large beetle, a scarab beetle, and it was trying to break through the patient's window into his bedroom. As the patient was describing this dream to Carl Jung, they heard a rattle, and Jung looked around and saw that a beetle was trying to break in through the windowpane. So this was a synchronistic event. The fellow was describing his dream, and then that very thing happened in real life, just at the moment that he was describing it. So I was reading about this on the airplane. Then a few pages later the book said that because of their great differences, Jung and Freud finally parted ways, and Jung established a practice in Lucerne, Switzerland. Just at the moment that I read that sentence, the pilot announced that if you look out your window on the right side of the plane, we are flying over Lucerne, Switzerland. So immediately I was convinced that there was some message here for me, that I was going to pursue this topic of synchronicity I have been thinking about that topic ever since, and out of it has evolved this new concept of SynchroDestiny. In your own life, the more you become aware of these events, the more they will happen.

The more attention you put on synchronicity the more frequently you will encounter it. Because there is a very important principle that says whatever you put your attention on becomes stronger. If you withdraw your attention from something, it becomes weaker. So one of the first things I would like to suggest, on a practical level, is that you start paying attention to the synchronistic events that happen in your life. The more alert you are to them, the more they will happen. And then when you introduce intention, your intentions will be expressed and manifested through these events. So to sum this up for a moment, synchronicity is always a coming together of seemingly unlikely events. On the surface it seems like pure coincidence. But in reality there is much more to it than that. So right now at the outset, let me suggest something very practical that you should begin to do. Start putting attention on the synchronistic events that happen in your life -- and also introduce the intention that you will experience at least one synchronistic event each day. Then later, have the intention of experiencing at least two synchronistic events. Gradually you will see these things begin to accelerate in your life, because attention and intention makes any phenomenon grow stronger.

This message comes to you via the Namaste mailing list, hosted by Deepak Chopra and The Chopra Center for Well Being.

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