Wednesday, August 1, 2012

Are synchronicities illusions

Some phenomena are so rare that they cannot be studied scientifically. However, this does not mean that they do not occur.

For example, suppose you have experienced something very strange and want to tell about it. Maybe you have experienced an incredibly weird coincidence, a synchronicity. Those who have to listen to your story try to be polite, so they say, “How interesting,” Then they continue the conversation with another topic. They are clearly not interested in your story.

Other people react differently. They love synchronicities and experience them everyday. They explain to you what you have to do in order to experience paranormal phenomena more frequently. You can immediately hear that they don’t know much about synchronicities and that they have never had any such experiences. They have picked up what they know about it on the internet or in New Age books.

The internet and the New Age bookstores are teeming with information about synchronicities and paranormal phenomena. Most of this information is just nonsense. It is obviously very difficult for those who have never experienced any synchronicities to discriminate between true stories and delusions. It is therefore almost impossible to discuss these things with them.

Dean Radin and Russell Tarc have tried to prove scientifically that telepathy and remote viewing are not just fantasies. They used well-accepted scientific methods and advanced statistics to prove their case. They could show that most people have some kind of sixth sense and that some people have this sense more developed. I don’t know anything about scientific statistics and methods so I have to take their word for it. I am not able to judge if their mathematics and methods are flawed. However, those who know about mathematics and scientific methods seem to be in disagreement about their findings.

Synchronicities are even more difficult to study with scientific methods. My experience is that you cannot create them on demand. Such phenomenons cannot be reproduced in laboratories. Synchronicities are spontaneous and rare events and they are therefore impossible to study scientifically.

I know that synchronicities are real phenomena. I have experienced them myself, but I cannot prove that I am right. Of course, it’s possible that I have deceived myself, definitely. Illusions are common. But what if my synchronicity experiences are not illusions? And what if some of the many other synchronicity stories out there are also true stories? How shall we interpret these observations? How shall we sift the wheat from the chaff?

It’s a pity that there are so many nonsense discussions about these things in the so-called spiritual circles. It’s not possible to discuss synchronicity and telepathy with New Age people, not with religious people and of course not with scientifically minded people. It’s difficult to discuss these things with almost everybody.

This is the reason why sincere people who have experienced synchronicities and paranormal phenomena often avoid talking about them.