Kevin's Watch

In her very readable book 'Beyond Explanation' Jenny Randles tells of her personal encounter with the phenomena of synchronicity. Jenny, who is a well known writer and broadcaster, received a strange telephone call one evening telling her of a UFO sighting in the Liverpool area. When she went into the local radio station to broadcast she was checking the news and found that two young men had been killed on a railway line at exactly the same time as the UFO sighting. Thinking they might be linked Jenny thought to call the police. But she decided not to.

As Jenny sat in the Radio City studio she saw, through the glass partition, two uniformed police officers enter. They had arrived to interview some member of the stations staff, not Jenny. However the sight of the police officers seemed significant to her. Then, on her way to the bus station, heading home, she bought a record review magazine and the feature album was by The Police titled 'Synchronicity'. Putting these events together Jenny decided she was being guided by some unseen force to contact the police and tell them what she knew of the UFO and accident link. This she did. But the story does not end there. Some weeks later Jenny was given a lift into Liverpool by a CID officer in plain clothes. As they drove in he told her that he was one of the officers investigating the death of the two young men. He also said he had seen the report of her UFO and that it was considered quite possible that these two men had been scared by something and, as they tried to escape, had been hit by the train.

Jenny Randles is one of the few UFO researchers that I respect. Anyway, what are people's thoughts concerning synchronicity?

(thanks to Malik23 for bringing the idea up)

Don't really know what to say...the more meaningful people find these things, the more meaningful the things they'll find?

I don't know. Synchronicity exists as something that can be described, but whether it actually means something... Naturally, what I don't like is the "guiding" aspect of this particular example. *shrug*

--A

I'm of the school that thinks, as I have posted elsewhere, that synchronicity occurs post-sensory or at the cognitions stage; that is we link together seemingly disparate events and weave a story or explanation. And it's made worse by a forward effect of cognitions: the priming thought where we have a 'theme' or 'framing' (contextual) effect and pick out events suitable to the theme. So Randles may have done just that: built up a story as it went along.

I'm quite a paradox when it comes to issues such as these. Intellectually, I know that the human mind is quite adept at taking random, chaotic input and imposing order or pattern onto it, much like seeing familar shapes in the clouds. But on the other hand, if one suddenly saw a complex geometrical shape in a cloud, it wouldn't be naive at all to suppose that this wasn't a case of us IMPOSING a pattern upon it, but DETECTING a pattern. Further, it would not be unreasonable to wonder if this curious pattern had a source beyond the random motions of air and water vapor.

So perhaps the relevant question here is: where is the line between the mind imposing form upon chaos, and the mind detecting patterns actually inherent within apparently chaotic events? Also: can synchronicity ever be on the rational, objective side of this line? My personal opinion is that people who answer "no" to this latter question are just as naive as the blind conspiracy theorists.

Wherever this line can be drawn, it must always have something to do with the limits of our incredulity. At some point, it becomes ridiculous to suppose that, for instance, a perfectly octagonal cloud is an accident. At some point, the continued use of the terms "coincidence" becomes denial.

Now how you decide for yourself where this line can be drawn will depend largely upon your own experiences. For me, I've had some experiences that I can no longer dismiss as coincidence. For instance, I've dreamed too many things that have come true--very specific, nonrepeating things--for me to doubt that humans possess some kind of "psychic" abilities. Also, stories I have written contain very specific, detailed descriptions of things that have later come true. I think that when our subconscious, creative mind is engaged, it can tap into a level of knowledge that is not limited by time and space. And yes, people who travel down this path and engage their intuitive mind, do notice more coincidences than others.

But, being a rational, educated man, I am very skeptical of such claims when they are made by others. I don't blame you at all if you are skeptical of mine--in fact, I'd think less of you if you weren't. Like I said, I'm paradoxical when it comes to this issue. But I find it's a contradiction I can't avoid.

(this should get interesting..... )

i think we want to impart order to things. how many feelings of synchronicity turn out to be nothing? we forget those and latch onto the things that we can fit into a pattern. isn't it possible to find any random incident and make it fit into a pattern?

That is an excellent post, Malik23! Damn good points.

I don't know what to think about Synchronicity. At some point it makes me sit back and wonder. The other day I was finishing off part one of my novel and I reached a descriptive part and typed 'myosis'. I knew that this was the wrong word to use, so I opened my massive biology 'bible' and the first word I saw was 'mitosis' (in the terminology section) which was exactly the word I needed. Then a flicked open an earlier part of the book and the it happens the page was describing cellular mitosis. Either I am meant to write that section/paragraph or that unique, unlikely events happen now and then completely without design and I read too much into it.

Unlikely events happen from time to time, and we read too much into it.

To consider Maliks excellent post, of course there are patterns in things that we can sometimes detect. That is not to say though that they are anything beyond a pattern.

Throw 10,000 yarrow stalks up into the air, and some of them will fall in patterns that appear to represent things.

Just because a cloud looks like a mushroom, doesn't mean that it's not just a cloud.

The imposition of patterns comes from the recognition of patterns perhaps. Because we can see them, we do see them.

I'm not hard and fast either way though. I certainly agree with him that there is no reason that the mind (mind I tell you! ) isn't capable of far more than we currently know/expect/experience.

--A

Avatar wrote:I certainly agree with him that there is no reason that the mind (mind I tell you! ) isn't capable of far more than we currently know/expect/experience.

--A

True.

Loremaster wrote:

Avatar wrote:I certainly agree with him that there is no reason that the mind (mind I tell you! ) isn't capable of far more than we currently know/expect/experience.

--A

True.

- false logic/ all we know is that we can't disprove many things.

And if we can't disprove them, then they have an equal chance of being true as they do of being false.

--A

so we base the avenues we want to explore on blind chance?

Not sure I understand. All avenues start off by blind chance at some point. *shrug*

--A

but we can eliminate some that have no practicle use. would you approve of millions spent on esp research? or contacting the dead? we should focus on what we know the brain can do, and the echoes of false hopes. that is to say, i believe in the concrete and believe that abstract ideas tend to be little more than rainbows and fairy dust.

sgtnull wrote: believe in the concrete and believe that abstract ideas tend to be little more than rainbows and fairy dust.

And where does that leave religion? Where is the concrete?

Good question LoreMaster. Still, apart from the fact that millions have probably been spent on researching ESP, it's not important. No avenue is closed, it's just ignored.

We focus on the profitable, but just knowing that the possibility is there is enough that one day somebody might have a startling new experience or idea that will lead to a breakthough.

--A

The problem with ESP research is that 99% of tests in the lab show nothing.

Lore: there were witnesses to CHrist's miracles.

Who says those witnesses are trustworthy? The bible has been through many translations, so I am sure there has been some distortion. Regardless, do you see where this leads, Null? There are witnesses to Caeser's birth who saw signs of the god Jupiter's approval. There are witnesses to miracles in Islamic religion, as well as in Buddhism. So where do you draw the line? if you accept religious text as truth, why is it your text is the true one? Or do you accept every historical text?

I accept mine by faith. as i have stated before, my faith is the one place I don't apply logic. so I am like most, with my own blind spot.