The more technical word used for “coincidence” is “synchronicity,” first introduced by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung in the 1920s, but given more detailed definition and examples in his Eranos lecture in 1951.
Synchronicity is commonly defined as the “simultaneous occurrence of two unrelated but meaningful events.” The most famous and often quoted example of a classic synchronistic event was provided by Jung himself. It concerned a woman patient who was so rationalistic and analytical in her thinking that he couldn’t penetrate her logical barriers.
Jung said he was hoping something “unexpected and irrational would turn up” that would penetrate her rational wall “within which she sealed herself.
“One day she told me about a vivid dream she had the previous night in which someone had given her a golden scarab— a costly piece of jewellery. While she was still telling me this dream, I heard something behind me gently tapping on the window. I turned around and saw that it was a fairly large flying insect” trying to get inside.
“I opened the window,” continued Jung, “and immediately caught the insect in the air as it flew in. It was a scarabaeid beetle whose golden green color most resembles that of a golden scarab. I handed the beetle to my patient with the words, ‘Here is your scarab.’ This experience punctured the desired hole of her intellectual resistance. The treatment could now be continued with satisfactory results.”
Cannot be explained
Coincidences have long fascinated me because I have experienced many of them, as I am sure many individuals all over the world must have, and I had no way of explaining them rationally. But isn’t that precisely the essence of a coincidence— that it cannot be explained rationally?
Here are more examples of incredible and documented coincidences:
- Biologist Paul Kammerer, in his book “The Law of Seriality,” gave the following example among so many he collected for over 20 years:
“On Sept. 18, 1916, my wife, while working for her turn in the consulting room of Dr. JH, reads the magazine Die Kunst, as she is impressed by some reproductions of pictures by a painter named Schwalbach, and makes a mental note to remember his name because she would like to see the originals. At that moment the door opens and the receptionist calls out to the patients: “Is Frau Schwalbach here? She is wanted on the telephone.” (Source: “Roots of Coincidence” by Arthur Koestler)
- “A certain Mr. Deschamps, when a boy in Orleans, was once given a piece of plum pudding by Mr. De Fortgibu. Ten years later he discovered another plum pudding in a Paris restaurant, and asked if he could have a piece of it. It turned out, however, that the plum pudding was already
ordered—by Mr. De Fortgibu.
“Many years afterwards, Mr. Deschamps was invited to partake of plum pudding as a special rarity, while he was eating it he remarked that the only thing lacking was Mr. De Fortgibu. At that moment the door opened and an old, old man in the last stages of disorientation walked in—Mr. De Fortgibu, who had got hold of the wrong address and burst in on the party by mistake.” (Source: “Incredible Coincidence” by Alan Vaughan)
- “In February 1994, Australian Peter Burns lost his watch in the see at Byron Beach, 700 kilometers north of Sydney, New South Wales. About six weeks later, in a printing shop in a Sydney suburb, he mentioned this casually to an employee wearing a similar watch. ‘I think this is yours,’ said the young man. His mother had found it on Byron Bay beach.” (Source: “Almanac of the Uncanny” by Reader’s Digest)
Tip of the iceberg
One of the hidden laws of nature is the Law of Causality, which states that everything has a cause, that nothing happens by chance. If so, how then do we explain the obvious undeniable occurrence of coincidences which seemingly do not have a cause? One theory was expounded by Kammerer, who felt that “Coincidences, whether they come singly or in a series, are manifestations of a universal principle in nature which operates independently from physical causation. Single coincidences are merely tips of the iceberg which happened to catch our eye, because in our traditional way we tend to ignore the ubiquitious manifestations of seriality.”
According to Jung, coincidences could be just the two visible ends of a series of invisible causes in between. We only see the end results, which do not have an obvious logical connection to each other.
Concludes author Koestler in Roots of Coincidence: “We have heard a whole chorus of Nobel Laureates in Physics informing us that matter is dead, causality is dead, determinism is dead. If that is so, let us give them a decent burial, with a requiem of electronic music.”
After almost a hundred years of discussing this topic, science is still at a loss how to explain the simultaneous occurrence of meaningful but causal events. Perhaps it can never be rationally explained, given our state of scientific knowledge. We have to now go beyond science.
The next Basic ESP & Intuition Development seminar will be on Septe. 17-18, from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Call 8107245 or 0998-9886292, or e-mail: jaimetlicauco@yahoo.com.