Death By Synchronicity And The Life Of Pi

by Gary S. Bobroff

“That bungled goodbye hurts me to this day. I wish so much that I’d had one last look at him in the lifeboat . . . ‘Richard Parker, it’s over. We have survived. Can you believe it? I owe you more gratitude than I can express I couldn’t have done it without you. I would like to say it formally: Richard Parker, thank you. Thank you for saving my life.’”’ – Yann Martel, Life of Pi

C. G. Jung recognized that in the moment of their greatest creative expression, the artist is an unconscious vehicle for something beyond themselves. At these times, their pen carries the unspoken voice of the collective whole of their culture. Like a medium or indigenous healer, what comes through them at this time can be a curative–healing comes as we hear the unspoken thing, as the needed but rejected quality in us comes into consciousness. Here the shadow’s waiting gift is born into our hearts.

Psyche’s roots are webs connecting us all. And more than that, the deepest place inside of us touches somewhere beyond time and space. Jung witnessed innumerable examples of our extending around these bounds in his client’s lives and dreams and in his own. He saw how often we do this, often only recognizing it later, sometimes when it’s too late. ‘Déjà vu’–French for ‘seeing again’–references this part of our cultural experience.

Great art is made for and from the collective–the artist is only a vehicle. (Perhaps this explains why so many artists cease producing great work after they become personally identified with their fame–the true source of their art is no longer available to them, once they think it’s them that’s making the art). A non-ego orientation is your best bet here as the artist can never quite be sure of the value of what they have brought forth.

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, Edgar Allan Poe’s only novel, was published in 1838. In it, the whaling ship Grampus capsizes during a storm. Four crew members, including cabin boy Richard Parker, survive but are left without food and water. They are able to capture a tortoise and eat it, but are soon starving. Parker suggests that they cast lots to see who should be cannibalized. He loses and is immediately stabbed to death and consumed by the others, his hands and feet thrown overboard. Poe later called the book “very silly.”

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Philosophers stone – selected views from the boat http://philosophers-stone.co.uk