BEGIN THE COINCIDENCE

 
I wrote an article that originally appeared in the now defunct Broken Down Furniture News (BDFN), called "A Secret History of Begin the Beguine." In that article I discussed the many intriguing connections and coincidences that that song seemed to have, including the significance of its originally being brought to popularity by the Artie Shaw version.

Although it had appeared in the Cole Porter show, Jubilee, which opened in 1935, it was originally not one of the popular songs from the show (for one thing it was "too long".) So, in 1938 when Shaw recorded it, it was intended as the "B" side of the two-sided old 78 rpm disc. The B side of a disc was not expected to be the popular or hit song, which was signaled to the radio stations by designating an "A" side. Surprisingly then, the Artie Shaw version of Begin the Beguine became one of the biggest hit songs of all time. The A side of the record did all right, but I'm sure that no one from that era remembers what it was.

Well, it turns out that the A side was a song called "Indian Love Call" and, furthermore, the love call in the song is a wordless extended "ooh," almost like an Om. For me this remarkably seems like a parallel to Baba coming to the West, "hidden" behind Gandhi, so to speak, who arrived with much publicity and fanfare on the same boat as Baba in 1931, giving Baba the opportunity to slip in incognito.

So the "Indian Love Call" of the Avatar of the Age quietly enters the West, and the B side of the record will eventually draw our attention to this. Is this, then, a hidden or "silent" message from Baba that he has embedded in the story of that song, and part of its spiritual significance?

There are several other intriguing things about this song that were brought out in that article. Just one other is that the length of the song, 108 bars, is the same number as that of the beads in an Indian prayer "mala." So that raises the question whether Baba is telling us that Begin the Beguine is actually one of his prayers?

At the end of that article, I raised the general question as to whether these kinds of interpretations and the noticing of coincidences are actually correct. I asked, "Did Baba 'mean' all this, or most of it, or even some of it?" Or is it just a flight of our imaginative fancy, a trip to the moon on gossamer wings, as that genius Cole Porter has put it?

I said that I would attempt to answer this question in another issue. Well, I never did. My excuse is that the BDFN stopped publishing before I got around to it. But with the prompting of the Internet and the List Serve, the getting around to it has finally arrived. And, as we shall see shortly, this kind of question has a much greater importance than when I first brought it up in the context of Begin the Beguine.

The main issue hinges on the meaning and significance of coincidences. As most of us no doubt know, this phenomenon, recognized since ancient days, has been given a fancy modern term, "synchronicity." This was coined, in the 1950's I believe, by two prominent men of science, Carl Jung and the Nobel laureate physicist, Wolfgang Pauli, who coauthored an article, which is readily available in the Jung literature, "Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle."

By acausal (or noncausal) they meant that this kind of connection, that of coincidence, is different from the usual basis of connection in modern science or philosophical naturalism, which is causal. A causal connection is a cause and effect connection. This billiard ball hits that billiard ball, and the two balls are connected by their physical contact with each other. This kind of connection is also called material or efficient causality.

Jung and Pauli raised the question of whether certain other kinds of phenomena, such as those that usually fall within the province of the paranormal, demonstrate a real connection that is other than material. Say someone is thinking about a friend of theirs that they haven't heard from in a long time, and shortly after that they get a phone call from that person. Is this "just a coincidence," or is there some kind of real connection between these two events, the thought about the friend and then the phone call?

Later scientists, and particularly quantum physicists, of whom Pauli was an early representative, came up with the related concept of "nonlocal" connection between events. That is, there is a realm of existence that is not at the ordinary physical level (the local) where maybe all things have a connection. From this it can be seen that within the province of a scientist, this is a concept that is getting close to our idea of the One Reality that is identical to God or Baba.

So the significance of coincidences seems to be gaining greater ground in even skeptical modern thought. There are now plenty of books out on synchronicity, and other works, like the very popular novelistic Celestine Prophecy, rely to a great extent on the use of and significance of coincidence.

We can see, then, that one is not off the wall or out to lunch, even by modern standards, for taking these things seriously. So well and good, as far as being "spiritual" in a world where science and philosophical materialism had become God. But what about Baba? How do these things apply to him? Did he, as I asked, really "mean" those connections that seemed to be in the Begin the Beguine story?

The first thing I think we can say about a question such as this, is that a word like "mean" or "intend" that we use about ordinary humans, really doesn't apply to Baba (or God). In a shorthand and quick way we may say or ask something like that, "Did Baba mean or intend this?" as I asked above. But, being more careful about our language and thinking, we would never really want to say or ask that.

Baba doesn't "intend" things like human beings do. To talk that way would be to mean that Baba, like us, has an idea, plan, or intention, and then he attempts to carry it out. That also would mean that he has an ordinary mind (or a mind at all) so that there is a separation between idea or intention and the act. But we know that this is not God. All is one with God, and in his reality there is no separation of this kind.

One of the best places to see this in Baba's literature is in the message "Purposelessness in Infinite Existence," in The Everything and the Nothing. There Baba says that God has no purposes like ordinary people do, since God is already complete. To have purpose is a part of being incomplete and separate in illusion: "Purposelessness is of Reality; to have a purpose is to be lost in falseness."

So I believe that this tells us that the question, "Did Baba intend all those coincidences and connection in Begin the Beguine?" is a wrong and misconceived question. If so, what is the right question?

To answer this I would look to the experience of close and intimate lovers of Meher Baba like Darwin Shaw and Charles Haynes. They and others have said that when they have had the question, "Is my experience or thoughts or connections that I feel Baba has with me, real or just in my mind?" They have found Baba to confirm to them when they were with him physically, that it was always real, that it was Baba, and it was not just in their mind.

So the right question is not, "Is this meaning or connection that I see, really about Baba?" Because to that question, as I have just tried to show, the answer is that it is always about Baba. To put it in scientific terms, Baba help me, is that he is the nonlocal, that transcendental realm where all things are connected. Simply put, everything is he. Even Maya itself, where all these appearances take place, is still about him, as Maya is his shadow.

Therefore, I would say that the Begin the Beguine article is a legitimate Baba exercise, as it has to be. But is that all we can say about it? I think not. It is of utmost significance what the quality of the work is, which in this case is one of interpretation and speculation. Otherwise we can just plop down any old thing we please and say that it's Baba. While that's true, it doesn't do justice to the quality that he is.

Another way to put this is in terms of "artfulness," just as in a Baba song or a work of art. Because, as I am arguing in a case like this, we can have no other standard, such as "truth," but only a kind of poetical truth. Is a given exercise of this sort an artful expression, or does it leave us unmoved and unconvinced? We could even say of something like this that it "co-creates" Baba's truth by the quality of its own truth.

To put it yet another and final way, does it express in the world of forms, as Baba has put it in "The Game" statement, "truth, love, purity and beauty?" (Discourses, p. 200) That is for every reader to judge for himself or herself in each case.

Now to come to the matter of much greater importance than the Begin the Beguine article, and I referred to this near the beginning of this essay. Although in the case of the article, as I have just said, truth in a literal sense cannot be the issue. But what I am about to refer to next may be in a different category, and one where truth in a literal sense is very much the issue.

I can make a bridge to this from Begin the Beguine by referring back to the Artie Shaw record. Recently, by great good fortune, and Baba's direction (not in my mind, right?), I happened to get hold of the original 78, which I had never seen, but only heard about. Rather worn out, with a little bit of the label rubbed out (we're talking 65 years), but there it was and is. The B side and the A side of the label and all that.

Interestingly, and of further synchronicity is the company, which was "RCA Bluebird." Bluebird, of course, refers to "the bluebird of happiness," a well-known expression from the old days. The logo on these old RCA products was a "Victrola," which was a record player with a megaphone and a dog listening to it. The logo caption, which you can still faintly see on my record is, "His master's voice." How about that one?

But that still doesn't get us to the truth issue. On each side of the record label is the serial number of this record. And here the number 77 is easily seen as it is slightly separated from the remaining serial number of two other digits. Then I ask us to recall that although the show Jubilee opened in 1935, it was certainly going strong in 1936, before Artie Shaw recorded the song two years later. So what is the significance of these two latter items?

For that we turn to the work of Harry Thomas. That is presented in the write-up I did for the upcoming Maine Baba newsletter of Harry's recent appearance at the Maine Baba meeting. That is available in a separate email from me. A third email, yet to be written, will take up the truth question, as it applies to this material.