Genèse du projet, par Patrick Kersalé

My research is atypical and my methodology is protean. I am not affiliated to any institution or university, so I have complete freedom of decision, funding and publication, with my work being shared on the net. This independence does not prevent me from calling on international experts in fields such as sculpture, metallurgy, ceramics, epigraphy and linguistics.

The beginnings of my research in Cambodia date back to 1998 and took shape in 2009. Right from the start, a terrible observation: with very few exceptions, articles and books dealing with ancient musical instruments have been written by non-musicologists who, copying each other, have confirmed for all eternity a plethora of absurdities. This is why I decided, in good conscience, to start from scratch, using iconographic sources from temples, epigraphy, objects from excavations and ethnography.

But all these research methods belong to the field of classical research. It is limited by the finiteness and inviolability of the sources and by our physical, intellectual, and material limitations. After more than thirteen years of studying temple iconography, my expert eye could no longer see the big picture. It was time to make arrangements. The first was to share and confront my knowledge on the ground, in the temples, with Cambodians and Westerners alike. Their questions became a source of new reflections and sometimes "eureka" moments! The second was to repeat certain visits with a newcomer whose fresh eyes were able to grasp the general rather than the specific and to ask far-reaching questions. The third was to work with mediums to try to recover what nature and the vagaries of history had erased, but only with non-Cambodians to limit the risk of cultural collusion. Finally, the fourth was to trust myself and develop certain personal gifts, such as intuition, validated by synchronicities, or inquiries in the Unified Field.

Between 2017 and 2020, I was commissioned by UNESCO and the Cambodian Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts to conduct research on a Khmer musical instrument listed as a cultural heritage site: the Chapei Dang Veng, literally "long-necked lute". Through this research, I discovered synchronicities, which is the simultaneous occurrence of at least two events that are not causally related, but whose association makes sense to the person perceiving it. Synchronicities usually occur after intense work on a subject in the service of the common good, in this case the reappropriation of the Cambodian people's ancient culture.

Synchronicities manifest themselves in many ways. They occur at unexpected moments, through improbable encounters with physical persons, sounds audible in real time in relation to the object of a request, written messages, or the accidental dropping of heavy objects that are normally sealed. They occur in bursts, with a time lag of a few days to several weeks. Finally, they are accompanied by an indescribable joy that leaves no doubt as to their nature. I would summarize the process of discovery as follows:

• Case 1: Classical investigation => Discovery
• Case 2: Classical investigation => Intuition
• Case 3: Classical investigation => Intuition => Validation by synchronicity => Formal validation if possible.

In general, our mission on Earth is guided by the consciousness that governs the universe. On the path of life, everyone has a free choice. But how much choice do we have? How can we distinguish the right path from our personal desires? When we find ourselves on a path, be it physical or spiritual, and are presented with two options, reason sometimes suggests the former and intuition the latter. It seems that the brain works in a quantum way, and that these two options are superimposed in the manner of particles! It's at moments like these that a synchronicity powerfully confirms our intuition and beats back the onslaught of the mind. With time and the succession of synchronicities, a sense of trust and complicity develops between the Self and Consciousness.

On the basis of these experiences, which at first I considered extraordinary, but in the end just "normal", I see no taboo in using this kind of tool for research. Acceptable or not, tangible, verifiable results prove the relevance of the methodology.

So it's around these two experimental paradigms, synchronicity and the Unified Field, that my research continues. I understand your skepticism! I understand and respect it. But if these two paradigms were just a fantasy, how do we explain the fact that we can find what's hidden? I'm not talking about unverifiable data, but factual elements that anyone can see or touch. When a synchronicity confirms an intuition, and science confirms the synchronicity, it's because somewhere in the universe there is a memory of the past (and of the future, too, since quantum physics claims that the future already exists!) This simple observation brings us back to our illusory concept of time. Didn't Albert Einstein say that past, present and future are just a stubbornly persistent illusion?