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Health & Fitness

Are Synchronicities Just a Coincidence?

I often wonder about the nature of meaningful coincidences, what the late psychologist Carl Jung called “synchronicities.”

A synchronicity occurs when causally unrelated events, that are unlikely to happen together, do so in such a striking manner that it appears as if the universe is sending us a personal message.

Are seemingly profound synchronistic events just unrelated random coincidences, that only appear to be ordered, and are made meaningful merely by our easily deluded minds? 

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Is there a designing intelligence lurking behind the scenes of reality that is somehow creating these curious events, that stop us in our tracks, and leave us with our jaws hanging? 

Or are people, places, and events somehow interconnected in a way that transcends normal perception and logic? 

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In the same league as great unkowns like the origin of life, and what happens to consciousness after death, synchronicities are some of the most intriguing mysteries around. 

One particularly striking synchroncity happened to me after I wrote a letter to the national newspaper USA Today many years ago.

I wrote a letter about President Jimmy Carter’s daughter Amy, who had teamed up with the late Yippie cofounder Abbie Hoffman to protest CIA recruitments on college campuses. 

I wrote something like, “Rah, rah Amy Carter! That’s the American way.” 

For the next few weeks I checked the paper to see if the editors printed my letter, but it never showed up. 

A few months later I received a package of mail from my mom, a bundle of letters that had been sent to my old home address. 

Amongst the letters there was a copy of USA Today, and I didn’t understand why it was there. I almost threw it away. 

Then I thought, hey maybe my mom sent this to me because my letter was printed in there. I turned to the letter section of the paper, and sure enough, there it was on the letter page.

So I called my mom to thank her for sending this to me, and I said that she should have let me know about my letter being in the paper because I had almost thrown it away. 

Then she said, “What are you talking about?” I said, “You know, the paper that you just sent me with my letter in it.” 

She had no idea what I was talking about. “Why did you send me that copy of USA Today?” I asked her. 

She replied, “Oh, just because you used to read it when you were living here, and when I was putting together your mail I thought that I’d throw it in.” 

She had never sent me a copy of the paper before or since. How does something like this happen? Could it really just be a mere coincidence?

Few people had more to say about this fascinating phenomenon than the late author Robert Anton Wilson.

When I interviewed Wilson and asked what his favorite model for interpreting synchronicity was (as he said that he always had “at least seven models for anything”), he replied:

“Bell’s Theorem combined with an idea I got from Barbara Honegger, a parapsychologist...she gave me the idea that the right brain is constantly trying to communicate with the left.”

“If you don’t listen to what it’s trying to say, it gives you more and more vivid dreams--and if you still won’t listen, it leads to Freudian slips.”

“If you still don’t pay attention, the right brain will get you to the place in space-time where synchronicity will occur. Then the left brain has to pay attention. “Whaaaat!?””

To learn more about synchronicity, check out my latest book, The New Science of Psychedelics: At the Nexus of Culture, Consciousness, and Spirituality:

http://www.amazon.com/New-Science-Psychedelics-Consciousness-Spirituality/dp/1594774927/ref=la_B001K...

If you enjoy my column, and want to learn more about psychedelic and cannabis culture, “like” my Facebook page:

www.facebook.com/pages/David-Jay-Brown/115740098445882?ref=ts

and follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/DavidJayBrown

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