Accounts of synchronicity have always fascinated me. So when I experienced a very surprising synchronous event late last month, in connection with my new book, it made me reflect a little deeper on this phenomenon. Was it just a coincidence or did it have special significance? Here’s what happened.
In order to publicise The Big Book of Reincarnation, which was published a week or so ago, Hierophant Publishing (part of the U.S.-based Hampton Roads Publishing group) asked me to provide various documents to be used in the book’s promotion. One of these was an article that summarised the book and my reasons for writing it.
I decided to cite just one of the almost 100 cases referred to in its pages, and I selected the impressive example of Aiz Nouhad Abu Rokon, a Druze boy living in the village of Usfiyeh, northern Israel, who claimed not only to remember being a truck driver, who was murdered near his home in Baalbeck, Lebanon, but who also recognised his past-life wife in the street when she visited Israel.
For readers unfamiliar with that part of the Middle East, I decided to indicate in my article the distance between Usfiyeh (sometimes spelt Isfiya or Ussefiya) and Baalbeck. To do that I opened up Google Maps on my computer and searched for both locations, then calculated that they were about 200 kilometres apart.
I also noted, as I continued with my research, that Usfiyeh is a Druze village on Mount Carmel, in a district dominated by Haifa, Israel’s third largest city. It has a particular significance for the Druze – a religious offshoot of Islam that believes strongly in reincarnation – because it is the site of the tomb of Abu Abdallah, one of three leaders chosen by Caliph Al-Hakem in the 10th century to proclaim the Druze faith.
My research completed, and my article written and dispatched, I turned my mind to other matters. Later that same day, I checked my email and saw I had received a message from someone with whom I had not had contact for more than a decade.
Rona Hart was information officer at the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the main representative organisation of British Jewry, when I first met her in 1995. We both lived and worked in London. Rona had interviewed Rabbi Philip Berg, the man who made it his mission to explain and make relevant the mysteries of the Kabbalah, including reincarnation, to non-Jews. His 1984 book, Wheels Of A Soul: reincarnation and Kabbalah, has influenced the lives of many people, including Madonna and Barbra Streisand.
Rona’s interview with Rabbi Berg was first published in The Guardian on 8 July, 1995, and I received her permission to reprint it in Reincarnation International which I was then publishing. After that, she agreed to be a consultant to the magazine, and we communicated regularly and met occasionally.
Our last meeting was probably in 1996 at Jacque’s Wine Bar, close to where she worked in Tavistock Square. After that we lost touch. I moved from London but I assumed Rona was still living and working in the capital. So the arrival of an email from her, 15 years after we were last in contact, was a very pleasant surprise. An even bigger surprise was the information it contained. She wrote:
“In 2008 I moved back to Israel and now live on Mt Carmel – on the way from town to the Druze villages of Dalilyat el Carmel and Ussefiyeh, in fact!”
It transpired that, on the same day I was looking at that very spot on the map, Rona – who now lives there – was looking at www.ParanormalReview.com and decided to say “hallo” by email.
The synchronicity doesn’t end there. I had first heard of the Aiz Nouhad Abu Rokon case when, in 1995, a reader of my magazine drew my attention to a well-researched, illustrated feature in the Jerusalem Post, written by Sue Fishkoff, which told Aiz’s story in great detail, along with other cases. That person was none other than Rona Hart, a fact acknowledged in my earlier book, Reincarnation: True Stories of Past Lives” target=”_blank”>Reincarnation: true stories of past lives (published in the United States as One Soul, Many Lives.).
Was it just chance? Did I choose that particular case of reincarnation as an example because of some telepathic link with Rona as she was looking at my website? Or was my choice influenced by a premonition that I was about to hear from someone living in that region of northern Israel? I’m undecided. All I know is that when you encounter synchronicity of this kind – as Arthur Koestler’s The Roots of Coincidence explored – you can’t help feeling that it has a deeper meaning.
I’ll have more to say about The Big Book of Reincarnation once it gets some reviews. It’s a 300-page in-depth exploration of rebirth covering everything from early beliefs through to the latest and best-documented cases. Right now, I’m pleased to say there’s plenty of media interest and I’m preparing for a series of radio interviews over the next few weeks.
