Every morning I walked through the peaceful Tuscan village, exchanging Buon Giornos with some of its inhabitants: the wine presser next door as he prepared to foot stomp grapes into wine, the tavern owner cleaning his portico after the late evening, and the owner of the small store that sold anything useful from safety pins to radios. In the evening, after an amazingly delicious Italian dinner washed down with a drop of Chianti, I sat in the balcony of my rented house, meditating to the magical silence of the valley below that was punctuated only by the melody of crickets and distant farm dogs. And in the hours of the day in between, I listened to an acclaimed physicist talk about synchronicity and some of the latest theories about it, and discussed MindScape with psychologists and mathematicians. Oh how I wish I could say this was a typical day in the life of a MindScape senior instructor, but it was really only one special week last month when I was taking part in a se! minar in Italy. This event was Synchronicity: The Bridge Between Mind and Matter and it was organised and led by physicist and author Dr.David Peat.

The village of Pari was truly an apt background for this seminar, as the place seems to defy time itself, life moving at same snail's pace it has done for centuries between the walls of this medieval village. The seminar brought together a small group of participants from around the world, to discuss synchronicity from the viewpoint of the various specialty disciplines that ranged from theoretical physics and Jungian psychology to spiritual traditions and art, intuition and sacred geometry. With the last two being my own fields of study, it was a privilege to be invited by Dr Peat to deliver a morning presentation to the delegates, where along with sacred geometry, I had the opportunity to address the principles and techniques of MindScape, Advanced MindScape and BodyTalk, and how they tie in to the overall concept of synchronicity.

Synchronicity is generally taken to refer to connected or coincidental events which occur beyond the bounds of the (known) laws of chance and probability. These events usually also carry some level of meaning for the person they happen to, and almost invariably occur in a space of suspended rationality. Carl Jung dedicated much work to the serious study of synchronicity, with the well-known scarab incident being instrumental to his inspiration on the subject. The story goes that in Jung's clinic, a patient was describing a recurring and meaningful dream about a scarab beetle, the sacred symbol of resurrection in ancient Egyptian cosmology. At that moment, Jung heard a tapping on his window, and upon investigating, found a scarab beetle hitting against the glass as it tried to enter the room! A crucial component of Jung's legacy in this subject matter, were his discussions on synchronicity with the prominent physicist Wolfgang Pauli, a landmark name in the evolution of physics and quantum theory, and for years they exchanged some letters on the topic. The material of these letters featured prominently in the Pari seminar, and many stimulating points of discussion were raised. For example, in one letter Jung attributes synchronistic happenings to archetypal forces within the psyche. Pauli was not entirely sure that the synchronous event can be actually attributed to the archetype. He also suggested that the archetypal forces were not just within the personal psyche, but on a broader universal level. This interested me as it concurs perfectly with the view of the ancient sacred geometers, and ties in with the archetypes of form I work with in my sacred geometry workshops. By correlation it would even parallel aspects we touch on in BodyTalk, such as working with Five Elements and with planetary and other influences. In the Pari seminar, Dr Peat tied in Pauli's idea of archetypal influences with the forces and dynamics studied in classic! al and quantum physics.

David Peat is a highly respected name in the scientific world, with some of his books addressing the 'consciousness' aspect of physics, such as Synchronicity the Bridge between Matter and Mind, Seven Life Lessons of Chaos: Spiritual Wisdom from the Science of Change and several others. Two areas for which Dr Peat is known for are his studies on the correlations of Native American philosophies with contemporary physics, which he explored in Blackfoot Physics, and his tributes and follow-ups into the work of David Bohm, the originator of the theory of the Implicate & Explicate Order. One of Peat's own motivations for his exploration of synchronicity also involved a scarab beetle, not unlike Jung.

My first introduction to Peat's work was from two of his books which Dr John Veltheim brought with him during one of his trips to Malta in the early 1990s (the pre-BodyTalk days). John had bought these books in London during a seminar, and read them by the time he arrived in Malta (it always amazed me how fast John could digest books!). One book was Blackfoot Physics, the other was Peat's work on Synchronicity. There was an interesting element of synchronicity in my own subsequent encounter with David Peat's work on Synchronicity some years later, while I was teaching MindScape in Vashon Island, off Seattle. While at the home of Katharina Hirsch, I was looking through a book belonging to her son which included the text of the famous speech of Native American leader Chief Seattle, with its highly poignant message. This included one of the earliest known use of the term and concept "web of life" in the west, which epitomizes the connectedness of everything, which! term has since then been used by physics, chaos theory and new age writers. The next morning, a student gave me a lift into town to look for a particular bank branch I needed to visit. But no matter who we asked in the street, nobody knew where this bank was. After driving around in vain for a while, I thought it was high time to use my MindScape tools (I was in a state of alpha anyway after driving around in circles!). In my Workshop, I found myself pulling down a projector-type screen from the wall. On this screen appeared a basic street map, with an X mark in one place and a red flashing dot on one of the streets. Taking the X to be the destination and the flashing dot to be the car (guess who watched too many spy movies...) I gave the driver directions according to this map. I was intrigued – though not surprised, knowing the power of MindScape – to find the bank exactly where the X mark on the map had showed. But the real synchronicity followed when half an ho! ur later I found myself walking inside a used book store. I pu! lled out the first book on the shelf which called to me, which happened to be David Peat's The Philosopher's Stone. I casually flipped it open, right on chapter one entitled Maps and Journeys, and the place my eye fell on was a paragraph which talked about ancient Native Americans "having a map in the head", and "tracing their way through the land"! This incident had stirred my curiosity deeply to learn more about synchronicity and resonance, and how they are connected with the work we do in MindScape. It had also contributed to the growing motivation to develop Advanced MindScape in 2004.

In Pari, it was an interesting experience to be an ambassador of MindScape to these professionals, in my presentation. The focus of my talk was on how the manifestation of life through universal archetypal forms and themas, and the parameters of intuition work (as exemplified by MindScape), all point to the underlying holistic unity that supports synchronicity. I highlighted the MindScape mental scanning and the 'field' techniques of Advanced MindScape as examples of tuning in to the level of inter-connectedness. I also mentioned BodyTalk in terms of its core precept of the innate wisdom, and its far-reaching, multi-level effects. Other topics addressed in detail in my presentation were the resonance principle and the sacred geometrical energies which underlie the forces of nature.

The seminar also included a presentation by Shantena Sabaddini, an Italian physicist and author of one of the most comprehensive translations of the I Ching, the Book of Changes. For an entire day, we explored the workings and techniques of this most ancient oracle method. Another presentation was by Dr Jean-Francois Vezina, a Canadian psychologist who specializes in archetypes and chaos theory as subconsciously expressed in films.

It was particularly nice to have the opportunity to talk about 'our subjects' (MindScape and BodyTalk) to the various professionals in this event. Particularly fruitful for me were the one-to-one discussions I had with Dr Peat as we sat in the balcony of his house overlooking the Pari valley. One of the themes we discussed is one which has always fascinated me no end – David Bohm's Implicate and Explicate Order. This is similar to the holographic principle of "the whole being enfolded within the part", which basically ties in with all that we do in BodyTalk and MindScape. It also explains the synchronicity techniques we work with in Advanced MindScape, especially the 'scribble' and 'collage' techniques. Another interesting discussion touched on the shamanic-type technique of tuning in to plants and trees, which we also touch on in MindScape and practice in Advanced MindScape. It was quite heartening to learn from Dr Peat about one respected scient! ist who encourages his students to explore this type of method as an adjunct to botanical knowledge.

This exposure to different perspectives to synchronicity was a fascinating experience, and I know the insights evoked and the synergy gained could be a helpful ingredient for the further evolution of MindScape and Advanced MindScape.