In a recent thread discussion with fellow member Truthlover, the issue of synchronous coincidences arose. By this I mean temporally coincident events where each event by itself is not significant but taken together temporally the events can be interpreted as having great significance based on the subject matter or based on the great improbability of the events occurring coincidently. There is a wiki article that describes Synchronicity more precisely and gives an example:
Synchronicity - Wikipedia
Often the significance is tied to religious or spiritual underpinnings.
Carl Jung coined the word Synchronicity to describe this phenomena. He first became interested in this phenomena when he experienced the following:
Synchronicity, An Acausal Connecting Principle, Carl G. Jung writes:
A young woman I was treating had, at a critical moment, a dream in which she was given a golden scarab. While she was telling me this dream I sat with my back to the closed window. Suddenly I heard a noise behind me, like a gentle tapping. I turned round and saw a flying insect knocking against the window-pane from outside. I opened the window and caught the creature in the air as it flew in. It was the nearest analogy to a golden scarab that one finds in our latitudes, a scarabaeid beetle, the common rose-chafer (Cetonia aurata), which contrary to its usual habits had evidently felt an urge to get into a dark room at this particular moment.
I know I have experienced Synchronicity on many occasions with varying degrees of “significance”. As a recent example:
quote:
Some time back I started a Thread asking people why the Bible is the “Word of God”. (I got whipped for the use of the term but that is another story).
During the course of the thread Truthlover mentioned that one of the reasons for his faith is that he frequently experiences synchronous coincidences. A few days after my discussion with Truthlover I was going to the library with my wife and I described to her the thread I started and Truthlover’s coincidences.
When we got to the library I browsed the “New Book” section and I casually selected several books and sat down to skim them. One of the books, “This I Believe” had a very similar theme to the thread I had started and just discussed with my wife. In the forward of the book there was a really great quote by Thomas Paine, that piqued my interest in this historical person whom I knew little about. When I looked at the other books I had selected I was surprised to noticed that one them was Thomas Paine’s “Age of Reason”. I selected that book based on the title and not the author’s name.
Not an earth shaking collection of events, but synchronous coincidences nonetheless.
I would be interested in hearing other people’s experiences with Synchronicity by sharing a recent experience or one of great significance.
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