On Synchronicity

Within a day or two of each other some synchronicities piled up on each other, for me.  First, there was a posting on an email site that I am subscribed to called News With Views from a woman named Constance Cumbey whose name I was familiar with from the past.  To set that part of this blog up in its relevant context: In the fall of 1981 I left the spiritual community in the north of Scotland where I had been a member for nearly six years to return to the States to work with an NGO connected with the UN called Planetary Citizens, to give a hand on a special project that they were the secretariat for, called ‘The Planetary Initiative (For the World We Choose)’.  The purpose of the Initiative was to organize grassroots groups around the world working, with educational assistance materials from us, on various projects to help 'clean up' the planet (sound familiar, in our day?), the whole thing to culminate in a Congress of The People, to help give impetus for the goal of the project.(1)  PC was the brainchild and baby of an American named Donald Keys, via brainstorming with the former Secretary-General of the UN, the Buddhist U Thant.  I mention his religion, because both he and Donald were coming from a ‘spiritual’ perspective; Donald through the so-called New Age movement, with a background in Theosophy and what is called the Arcane School.  Which put him up the noses of various Christians, smelling what they figured was a rat.

Enter Constance Cumbey, who became quite outspoken about the (perceived) dangers of the Planetary Initiative, Planetary Citizens, and Donald Keys himself.(2)  Her outspokenness translated into radio interviews (at the least; I don’t know about any possible TV interviews), and a book, damning the whole New Age Movement, as ‘obviously’ being the work of the devil.  Because it didn’t include Jesus in its picture, of a better world.  

Donald had other problems, too, from other perspectives.  For one, he had been involved with an outfit called SANE - ‘for a SANE nuclear policy’ - and as such, was considered by some ‘conservatives’ (or war hawks) to be, if not an outright ‘commie’ himself, at the least a fellow traveler.  I don’t know about all that.  All I knew him for was a kind, serious, spiritual soul who wanted to help create a better world.(3) 

So that post by Constance brought up the name, and memory, of Donald Keys.  And then, right on those heels, came an email from a friend of mine from those days who mentioned that he had been inspired, in the middle of the night, to think of ‘Donald whatever-his-name was’ of those days, and couldn’t get back to sleep, and asked me to fill him in on the person he had been thinking of ‘in the middle of the night’.  (Which is when we get a lot of our messages.  But to continue.)  Which I then did.  Bringing those halcyon days of yore back to me.

And a further piece, regarding those times, and its setting - when we New Agers were really serious about helping to bring about a better world - came in the current issue of TNA magazine, in an article which I have just gotten around to reading, entitled ‘Russell Kirk and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn - The Centennial of Two Conservative Giants’.  Without going into this link in any great detail here, I will just say, for the purposes of this blog, that one of the things that inspired me from those days in my life was a poster on the wall of one of the bathrooms in Cluny.  It had a quote from Solzhenitsyn (the former inmate of the former Soviet Union's gulag archipelago who survived to tell the tale?  Not so's many today have noticed.  I wonder why.  Not) on it, saying:                 

’If you wanted to set the world to rights, whom would you begin with - yourself or others?’

And another, major quote that I came across in those days that has stuck with me: this, from Donald Keys:

‘’The world will not be healed until we are healed.  The world wilt not be whole until we are whole.’  

Sound advice.  From both parts of the world.  The enslaved world (under the former Soviet Union).  And the free world.  Rapidly becoming enslaved.  Under the same mentality:

Power Over Others.  (POO for short.)  Aka Service to Self.  Rather than Service to Others.  All of it, depending on

you.

P.S. I emailed Ms. Cumbey, in appreciation of her defense of her faith (and giving her a brief report on my background with the PI and PC and Keys; none of which I chose to defend at the time), but encouraged her to read - in the spirit of checking one’s premises - both the Joseph Atwill and the Flavio Barbiero books that I have mentioned in these pages several times; and mentioned in passing the D.M. Murdoch (thoroughly researched) material as well.

   Anyone who is interested in the truth of things has my support.  Especially those who are passionate about it.

—

footnotes:

(1) That actually ended up happening, in the summer of 1983, in Toronto.  With Ram Dass being one of the keynote speakers.

   I had long since returned to the FF, to continue my work ‘for a better world’ there.  Although interestingly enough, in relation to this recital of synchronicities, my first job back at the community was to hold the focus for the cleanup from a fire in the building where I lived for many years in the community, a former hotel named Cluny Hill Hotel, renamed by us new owners Cluny Hill College.  Someone had deliberately set a fire in three places in the building, one of which was our Sanctuary (the former billiard room of the hotel); and during its cleanup, someone took a picture of me high on a scaffold, cleaning the exposed wooden beams (which fortunately only suffered minor burn damage, but needed a major clean from the smoke).  The friend whom I will mention in a moment forwarded me a copy of that photo just yesterday, from a former community member involved in that project who is raising money for an update on the redo of that space from those days.

   Funny how things work, sometimes.  

(2) And another ‘dangerous’ character somewhat associated with the whole thing, including my spiritual community, the Findhorn Foundation, by the name of David Spangler.  David, as a young guru with a following in the New Age genre, had been a co-leader of the FF for three years back at the beginning of the ’70s, and had written a number of books whilst there, before moving back to the States and continuing his spiritual work there, via lectures, books, and music.  He had given an endorsement to the PI, which Cumbey said referenced Lucifer.  I was never able to trace down that quote, as emanating from any of his material that I knew of; in any event, he had nothing to do with the actual workings of the PI, as I can attest to, from having been right in the belly of that, er, beast.

(3) He was known in our circles as ‘God’s secret agent in the UN’.

   Not so incidentally: On the Board of the PI - which met monthly, for the time that I was involved in the project, at least - was a female VP of a bank that David Rockefeller headed up.  Neither she nor Rockefeller had anything to do with the daily workings of the PI; that was just Rockefeller’s way of keeping an oar in with such movements.  (As the book ‘The Strawberry Statement’ pointed out that he had done with the student ‘revolution’ going on in the previous decade, triggered by the Vietnam War; whose author claimed that DR was ‘trying to buy himself a revolution’.)  Donald confided in me one day, with a smile, that he hoped that the word about ‘a Rockefeller’ sitting on the Board of the PI didn’t get out to the mass of the membership.  Why had he allowed that to happen?  Hey - these things cost money.  He was open to any help he could get to get the Project off the ground and running.  After that, it could take on a life of its own.  Which is precisely what happened, as I can attest to from my inside position in the whole thing. 

   A not-so incidental footnote to this one:  Having researched the whole Rockefeller ’thing’ over the years, including reading Gary Allen’s ‘The Rockefeller File’ and excerpts from DR’s own writings, I came to the opinion that David Rockefeller likened himself to a character named in the Bible, as a DavidT who would take on a kingship in the world.  I wonder how he felt, at the end of his journey, in that incarnation. 

   Disappointed, no doubt.  Try as he did, he just couldn’t buy himself a revolution.

   These things coming from within, when they do.