by Dr. David Sanders
The number I track (or does it “track” me?) is the number 111. It shows up as one would expect, randomly, on license plates, room numbers, occupancy totals and as the time remaining on a parking meter. Then there are times when it feels synchronistic, as if I am being guided to pay attention, a signal that says, “David, up your awareness.”
Numerology, or as it is referred to in Kabbalah as Gematriyah, traverses from letter and word to number and from number to letter and word. Each one of the Hebrew letters was designated with a numerical value from 1-1000. For the number 111 the corresponding Hebrew letter is the letter Alef having the numerical value of its name equal to 111 (Alef =1, Lamed =30, Peh=80). Hebrew words of significance which equal 111are the words for hope (Kavay), wonder (Peleh), and for intimate connection (Davkah). Tying those concepts together, when I see 111 and the circumstances feel orchestrated, I take it as a sign that my will and a greater Will are in silent, sacred alignment.
My awareness of the personal significance of numbers, what we have come to know as one’s “awake number”, started with the number 11. In the span of one week 22 years ago, three women, separately asked me the significance of the number 11. One was born on 11-11, another was waking each night at exactly 11:11 pm and a third had been encountering the number 11 wherever she went. I then started noticing the number 11 as well. Had I not noticed it before? or was I now alert to a number that seemed over-represented and synchronistic. Later on, I began to pay attention to the uncanny presence of the number 111.
Amidst all the overwhelm of violence and death traumatizing our daily consciousness there was another tragic airplane crash in the Indian city where Mahatma Ghandi established his non-violent protest movement. It was a routine early morning flight out of Ahmedabad, from India to England, but it lasted just seconds after takeoff. Of the 242 people on board all perished except for one man. The lone survivor managed to release himself, climb out of the plane and walk away from the burning plane. His name is Vishwash Ramesh and it was revealed that he had been sitting in an exit row, seat 11A.
I have always been perplexed by the seeming contradiction of randomness and synchronicity. Following the plane crash stories emerged of people who were late for boarding the plane and were grateful they got to the airport late. There was also the report that Vishwash’s older brother, Ajay, who was sitting in a different row, died along with everyone else in the crash. How are we to reconcile that on the one hand we experience amazing synchronicities as if there is some energetic alignment of where we are to go, who we are to meet and that a number, a seat assignment, a numerical value of a word, serve as signals and guideposts while on the other hand who lives and who dies is as random as Vishwash or his brother Ajay respectively surviving or dying?
My wife Rita suggested what I have adopted as an answer to this conundrum. Randomness is not a contradiction to synchronicity, it explains both propositions.
Let’s use the example of Vishwash in seat 11A, his brother Ajay occupying another seat and a woman who (as reported) missed getting on the flight because she was late arriving to the airport.
As we teach, for any event to occur, a billion (or more) things need to coalesce for it to manifest. Imagine if you threw dice a billion times. The expected permutation of the times the dice would combine for an 11 is 55,555,556. Relative to other numbers that does not reflect a high frequency. On any given roll of the dice the probability of an eleven is small but that does not limit the possibility of rolling 11, 11 times (or more) in a row. The law of averages will catch up with randomness and create a certain pattern but each roll, while having a probability, is random. Possibility in this sense is a perturbation of probability.
Randomness placed Vishwash in 11A. Even if 11 is his favorite (awake) number and he has sat in that particular row and seat on other flights 11 times or even (however unlikely) 111 times in a row, Vishwash, like any other passenger cannot guarantee that a particular seat will be available and so, a billion (mostly unseen) things need to occur for that to manifest. The same is true for Ajay who was in a different seat. The woman who was late could have been on time and would have presumably been one of the hundreds who died. In addition to all the baffling permutations of the dice rolling for Vishwash, his brother and the woman who was late, there is the plane that crashed just 30 seconds after takeoff. People, you and I, will still get on planes because the probability is that there will not be a malfunction but roll the dice billions of times and …
…Our earth came into existence in a similar fashion. There may be other planets situated in “goldilocks” fashion, for developing organic life. We know there are more than a trillion galaxies, so roll the dice of galaxies (and the solar systems in them) and there will be some form of animate life on many of them as there is on planet earth.
Randomness allows for possibility. It allows for me or you to be mystified when a synchronicity occurs, or an unexpected frequency of a number appears. It allows for Vishwash to live, his brother Ajay to die and the woman who was late to the airport to choose to get on a different flight or never fly again. If we were living in a predetermined matrix of probability (let alone a matrix of predestiny) the dice would be weighted, and the outcomes would be far less flexible and mysterious.
Because of randomness we can awaken to the improbable with awe, pause, perhaps as dazed and bewildered as Vishwah was leaving the wreckage and wonder, how did that just happen?
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