Why I chose Jacques Villon as pseudonym (part 2)

Keywords: synchronicity, coincidence, chaos, chaos theory, chaotic, chance, choice, random, determinism, esp, ego, metaphysical, spiritual, freedom, body of christ, tango, universe

The third reason for choosing Jacques Villon as pseudonym I only discovered coincidently at the end of 2002 when I did a www.google.com search on the phrase "Jacques Villon" and discovered that I'm not the first artist to choose the name as pseudonym. Studying his life and work I stumbled over some striking coincidences/synchronicities between his and my life, which I will point out after a discussion on synchronicity, a biographical section and a description of Cubism, the style in which Villon excelled.

Synchronicity

To demonstrate what synchronicity is I will discuss a series of everyday events that took place in my life last week. I went to the bank to make a transfer of money to England. On arrival at the shopping center I realized that I had forgotten my passport, so I had to return home to fetch it. As I drove up our driveway I noticed a familiar car in front of me. As I stopped in front of our townhouse, my Tango partner waved from the other car. She had come to pay her friend and our neighbour, the same neighbour who introduced me to the dance venue where I started Tango lessons in 2001 and where I met her, an impromptu visit because she happened to be in the neighbourhood. In January this year he was hospitalized with a hemorrhage on the brain after a wok had slipped from a kitchen cupboard while he was doing repair work and had fallen on his head. A part of his skull was only put back in April. He is recovering very well now, but my Tango partner, had not seen or spoken to him in 2 months. They know each other because she is a photographer and attends to her cameras. Two weeks ago she told me about a strange coincidence: she was in our area at midday and thought about phoning him. The next day he phoned her and when she told him that she thought about him the previous day, he said that he had called her that day at midday, but that that she was not at home.

I greeted her, went inside to fetch the passport and left again to complete the business at the bank. I decided to have a cappuccino before returning home and as I reached the coffee shop I noticed that the double bass player who taught at the same music school in Soweto where I used to teach was sitting there waiting for his wife. Amongst other things we discussed the double bass player with whom I regularly perform because they had seen us performing in the same shopping center before Christmas. I told them that my colleague, who used to be a cello pupil of mine, was so tall and has such big hands that he is able to tune his double bass like a cello (in fifths instead of fourths) and play it like a cello. There is a shortage of double bass players in Johannesburg at the moment. So because of this "chance" meeting he is now invited to a master class next month and will hopefully get some more freelance work through networking with other musicians at that occasion.

I wanted to post 2 CDs as well, but when I saw a long queue in the post office I decided to post them at a post office closer to home. On my way home I forgot to do so and as I stopped in front of our house my Tango partner came out of our neighbour's house on her way home again. She was surprised to see me and said: "Strange how we arrived together and see each other again as I am leaving." She had come through to our side of town to buy a photo album from a photo shop, but before buying it, wondered where another photo album supplier had moved to because she preferred his albums. She has not seen him in the last five years. During her visit to our neighbour the photo album supplier walked in. She said to me: "This is ESP!" I said: "Call it ESP, intuition or synchronicity - it is all the same thing!"

My point is that an infinite number of factors had an influence on the exact timing of my double meeting with my Tango partner that day. If any of these factors had been different, neither of us would have had that "this is weird" experience. If my neighbour were not Chinese, a wok would not have fallen on his head. If I had not forgotten my passport, I would not have returned home to see my Tango partner and I would not have met up with the double bass player. If they had not seen us performing before Christmas, and if we had not taught at the same school, we would not have had the exact length of discussion we had. If the queue had been shorter I would have posted the CDs immediately. And if all this did not happen in exactly the way it did, I would have had to dig into pages and pages of recorded synchronicities in my life to find the appropriate synchronicity to share with you, but then this perfect example of everyday synchronicity happened exactly on the day that I new I had to write about synchronicity!

I first became aware of the phenomenon of synchronicity during my first period of illness in 1991. After spending 5 weeks in hospital I recovered in the home of my parents for 6 months. During this time I was afraid to watch television due to the grotesque hallucinations I had experienced watching television in the house of my brother in London on my way from Germany to South Africa. I therefore made sure that I never watched by myself, just in case I saw something that needed verification from another person. During these months, amongst the other programs, I saw exactly 2 programs that were filmed in Germany. The first one I saw was a detective story made in Hamburg and the second was part of a Canadian series called the "Dick Francis Mysteries". One of these episodes was filmed in Freiburg. I freaked out when I saw this. During the months I lived with my parents I regularly accompanied my mother to her weekly Bible study group where a reborn ex-Satanist was invited to lecture us on the occult, spiritual warfare and triumph over Satan through faith in Christ. At the time I interpreted this coincidence of the 2 programs that were made in the same 2 German cities I studied in as a demonic conspiracy against me.

In essence the 2 examples of synchronicity has one and the same spiritual message: everything in the world is interconnected in a profoundly spiritual way. Everything, in the most granular and seemingly insignificant way and everything in a big and seemingly significant way, yes, all things, great and small, happens with a reason - that is what I like to call "total metaphysical determinism"², destiny or fate. We do not exist as independent egos, but as parts of a "machine" called the Universe. Freedom starts when I recognize that I am part of a whole, one ant in an anthill, one cell in the Body of Christ. The greatest enemy of this sacred truth is the ego - that part of me that also enables me to be conscious, to discern between myself and other things. However, without consciousness "experience" is impossible. It is therefore inevitable for the ego to develop, but it is not the final stage of human development. All the great religions require of us to step down from being the centers of our egocentric little universes, to sacrifice our ego for the common good. Happiness can ultimately only be experienced in the group. Can the heart say that it rather wants to be the brain? Can the eye say that it is more important than the foot? Can the buttock say that it does not want to sit next to the anus?

Along with the words "chaos", "choice", "chance" and "random", "coincidence" is one of the words that bear an "abnormal" meaning in my mind. There exists in my mind no chaos, mere coincidence, choice, chance or randomness. Everything has a perfect and sacred structure. Have you ever heard someone denying the spiritual significance of a fateful synchronicity with the words: "That was just a mere coincidence?" It is the same word that different people use to express exact opposites. The same goes for the word "chaos". Chaos theory² actually describes the exact opposite of what people generally express with the word. Did you hear the reporter describing what he saw at the WTC on September 11^th, 2001: "We have chaos and pandemonium?"  

This picture is a graphical representation of a chaotic mathematical formula. Though at the first glance it seems truly "chaotic" in the popular sense of the word, the beauty and complexity of an underlying structure is remarkable. Nature itself is a display of chaotic structures as is evident in the images of a snowflake, a tree, a flower, etc. The same beauty, complexity and structure evident in the physical world I observe in the metaphysical/spiritual world.

	Also read: Why I chose Jacques Villon as pseudonym (part 1)
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