Synchronicity

-22- More than coincidence?

When I was younger, I don’t even once recall thinking about the word synchronicity. If I did, I didn’t spend much time on it. I moved on like I did with just about everything else other than video games and space documentaries. That being said, I’m sure that I encountered many instances where two seemingly unrelated events appeared to line up in some synchronous way. For the life of me, I can’t recall any of them; I would have just labelled them all strange coincidences and left it at that.

Admittedly, I can’t say that I have always believed in some ulterior notion of synchronicities. As a child, and even as a young adult, I suppose I never found any reason to. It would have been too improbable in those early years to view this concept with any greater meaning. Thus, I never paid any attention to the topic. But as I’ve become older (and hopefully a tad bit wiser), I’ve begun to ask questions about the concept of synchronicities that leave me slightly perplexed and without any reasonable explanation.

I don’t expect to ever receive one either. I don’t think I could ever put a definition on what is happening or what this all means that could ever satisfy the somewhat mystical quality of the experience. In a way, it’s akin to something best left undescribed, like a joke or a poem. Somehow, placing emphasis on any one particular aspect of these things seems to dilute the entire thing. There’s a category of experiences that fall under this heading, they’re full of meaning and symbolism but devoid of clear and logical definition. They leave us with a sense of comprehension, but without a sense of explanation. In other words, there’s a kind of knowing without knowledge attached. If we try to explain any of it, we end up changing the entire meaning altogether. We break the spell.

So if talking about synchronicities won’t help my understanding of them, then what am I supposed to do? Why do I even care about them? Why do they seem to excite me and everyone else so vigorously the moment we experience them? And why do we always seem able to interpret them as some sort of ‘sign’ or ‘signal’?

The aspect of talking about a synchronicity is a rather peculiar part of it, because there appears to be a sort of baseline compulsion to do so. We’re actually served in a stimulatory way by synchronicities, and influenced into sharing them with others, and there is reasonable science that shows this to the case. We actually experience an increase in dopamine at the moment of encountering one. Go figure! So when we’re immersed in a synchronous experience, not only do the reward pathways in our brains suddenly light up, but we’re motivated to share the experience. We want to talk about it, and tell people about the strangeness of what happened to us. Perhaps part of the reason for this is because often we are incapable of fully deciphering the code, and thus we put it on others to give us the proper encryption keys.

That’s a tall order though. We’re asking someone else to read our minds, to feel our emotions, and distinguish our meaning from theirs. It’s an all-around impossible task to assign to anyone. But I imagine as well that some part of our re-treading of synchronicities is an active attempt to re-establish that intense feeling of excitement, which surely it does do some of that. Still, I would take the position that reminiscing about the situation does little to enhance the overall meaning of it, rather it probably just dilutes it, and we end up applying impressionable explanations onto the event rather than allowing our own internal comprehension to guide us through it. After all, synchronicities are singular experiences that we can only interpret subjectively. By that right, they’re impossible to capture effectively into words; they’re impossible to truly denote. But regardless, they do occur, and they can carry immense weight within our minds.

Again, I wonder once more why this is the case. I wonder why I wonder about this. On the surface, we can be as reductive as we like and say that there is no rational physical explanation for an observer to experience a synchronicity. We could call it a completely random event that happens to be a coincidence. Fair enough, but how does such a rote description account for the meaningful aspect of said ‘coincidence’? Why is it that people will claim to have experienced a synchronicity and felt deeply moved by it as well, enough to share and contemplate the depth of its meaning? Even though I think it’s quite fruitless to share it, I still acknowledge that the compulsion is quite fascinating.

This is where I take an esoteric route towards the idea of synchronicities. Since it is the case that we find meaning within them - seemingly random chance events - there must be something else worth investigating here. Something we can’t just brush off as purely coincidental. Because after all, a synchronicity is capable of changing us. We can literally become a different person through the experience. Can we really get away with simply calling this random?

I would draw an analogy to the famous double slit experiment in quantum physics, in which a quantum particle can be measured to behave in either a wave-like pattern, or as a classical particle depending on whether or not an observer is present. It seems to me that such an experiment says something to the effect of: we possess the fundamental tools (consciousness?) through which to manifest meaning into physical reality. In other words, matter and energy can exist as mere potential and then suddenly collapse into meaning as soon as we interact with it. What if we applied the same lens to synchronicities as well?

We could also zero in on the idea of chance events themselves - coincidences if you like. I would point to the idea of cause and effect. As the Hermetic Principle of Cause and Effect states: every cause has its effect; every effect has its cause. Even Newton’s third law says a similiar thing: every action has an equal and opposite re-action. So really, is there any such thing as coincidence? Everything seems to happen for a reason; everything happens because something else happened before it. I point all this out because I think it’s worth understanding the impossibility of the odds that had to become true for a synchronicity to have the potential to occur in the first place. A condition needed to be set up, and furthermore, we, as observers, needed to also be present in order to experience said condition. It sets up a scenario of impossibly unlikely causes and effects, and an impossibly unlikely mind capable of interpreting the interaction and adding meaning to the whole thing!

To my mind, the idea of cause effect puts the notion of “randomness” into question. How can anything be truly random? How can chance really exist, other than perhaps in an artificially designed environment such as in a computer? Even in this case though, one could be swayed into believing that not even a randomly derived computer program is capable of producing complete random outcomes. But aside from this - that is, randomness in an artificial capacity - I don’t buy into the idea that randomness exists in nature, not when we understand the principle of cause and effect, and Newton’s third law. Randomness doesn’t exist in nature, as far as I’m concerned. I think nature rather acts intentionally at all times. Consciousness as well acts intentionally, despite what some might say about the ‘determined’ nature of our brains and our lack of ‘free will’.

So with respect to that line of thinking, is it really fair to call a synchronicity a mere coincidence? If everything I’ve just stated can be true, and I admit that I have no authority to admit as much, then it follows that they are not mere coincidences, that they are in fact intentional events manifested for our own understanding.

I know that when I say that we can manifest synchronicities it may sound too good to be true, or outright false, but I would say that the more we come to understand the quantum nature of the universe, the less trivial this idea becomes. I would go so far as to say that the idea that two seemingly random events can be synchronous starts to sound like actual reality. If the double slit experiment has taught us anything, it’s that our mind - consciousness perhaps - is capable of far more than we can currently comprehend. If consciousness is somehow able to collapse reality, that is, it can create some kind of coherence at a distance by interacting with and affecting quantum states, then what else are we not realizing about what consciousness is and what it is capable of? Can it effect synchronicities as well?

The key outlier, and the reason I ask these questions is simply because of the fact that often times, a synchronicity can occur at a pivotal moment in our lives. At times when perhaps we’re at a crossroads, or faced with a tough decision, or in the midst of contemplating a significant change. It’s as though our intention brings about some kind of potential. We bring about some kind of alignment. We force into existence some kind of signal at just the right moment when clarity can ensue. That’s why it always feels like a breakthrough; an aha! moment. We feel prepared to have witnessed it. Call me crazy, but I can’t help but be unsatisfied in leaving whatever that feeling is to mere chance.

I know my own biases. I want to believe that everything I have said is true, but ultimately, these are just my own thoughts and reflections. Part of me as well believes that most people, not just I, would like this to be true as well. However, the trouble is in the unfalsifiability of it. I’m no scientist, but I do think that’s a pretty important aspect. We need to be able to test things, and reproduce them, and determine when they’re proven to be false. Otherwise, the idea that we can affect matter and energy at a distance through the use of our conscious intention is like a really grand way of implying that we all have the power to perform some sort of jedi mind trick. In reality though, nothing like a ‘trick’ is really happening. It’s certainly not magic either. Reality is, at its core, quantum. Our brains as well, on some level, operate in that same frequency range. And it’s been proven, again through experiments such as the double slit, that we can literally affect that reality, and manifest outcomes in the quantum realm simply through observation. So is it then a major leap to say that, within those same quantum frequencies, we are also capable of manifesting other kinds of realities at a distance, simply through intention? When the moment has been set up, and when the frequencies perfectly align, that’s when the meaning suddenly appears. In other words, we force a cause through our intention, and then interpret via meaning the effect of that intention. This we call: a synchronicity.

There are undoubtedly far deeper levels to reality than typically meets the eye. Quantum physics proves this clearly. Whether or not synchronicities are merely coincidences without any significant connotation attached to them is an entirely subjective opinion. I have chosen my interpretation based on two distinct qualities: (1) the idea that they can be associated with intense meaning, and (2) the peculiar way in which they appear with ‘signal-like’ quality in our most helpless moments. Combined, these give me reason to speculate on what might be occurring. In all fairness, perhaps a rudimentary explanation can and ought to be applied to this, and perhaps that explanation can be as simple as saying that our minds are biased toward particular interpretations; we see what we expect to see; we hear what we want to hear. I understand these arguments from a psychological point of view, but I don’t think synchronicities are a purely psychological phenomenon. I think quantum physics teaches us that much; that consciousness itself is much more than a happy accident; that perhaps it is deeply intertwined with this thing we call reality all around us. Perhaps it’s capable of much more that we could ever dream of.

Perhaps comprehension is much more than explanation; knowing, much more than knowledge; meaning, much more than a definition. Perhaps synchronicities are more than meets the eye.