Synchronicity, coincidence and Causality. True and mysterious stories.

Thank you for these stories,

Its nice to read them, they awaken the philosopher in me
It makes me wonder about our own time and place in the world, and although i've heard many stories like these before, its always inspiring to come across more of them.
To me, it feels like we are connected by invisible strings that pull us towards events or away from them. When the strings of people get entangled these events become special, because we experience the same wonderous "coincidence". I dont now if there is anything at the end of these strings but our own consiousness, but to me it often feels like we are guided by these pulling forces, and if we care to head there call, we feel connected in a wondefull way experiencing beautifull sychronisity.

Here in Owensburg Indiana earlier in the 19th century before WW2 we had a large German immigration, so much so that the local nickname for the town is Dresden. That may account for our population tending to be a little more pragmatic. For example the teenage kids are encouraged to ride bicycles to school rather than drive cars and the obesity statistics would probably bear out a correlation.

Great thread, thanks for the stories. The Lincoln/Kennedy one i have heard before, but it is pretty remarkable. Another story is from Philip K Dick's speech or lecture 'How to Build a Universe that Doesn't Fall Apart 2 Days Later', (which is quite the title) regarding an experience or more correctly a series of experiences he had.

It is an eerie experience to write something into a novel, believing it is pure fiction, and to learn later on—perhaps years later—that it is true. I would like to give you an example. It is something that I do not understand. Perhaps you can come up with a theory. I can't.

In 1970 I wrote a novel called Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said. One of the characters is a nineteen-year-old girl named Kathy. Her husband's name is Jack. Kathy appears to work for the criminal underground, but later, as we read deeper into the novel, we discover that actually she is working for the police. She has a relationship going on with a police inspector. The character is pure fiction. Or at least I thought it was.

Anyhow, on Christmas Day of 1970, I met a girl named Kathy—this was after I had finished the novel, you understand. She was nineteen years old. Her boyfriend was named Jack. I soon learned that Kathy was a drug dealer. I spent months trying to get her to give up dealing drugs; I kept warning her again and again that she would get caught. Then, one evening as we were entering a restauant together, Kathy stopped short and said, "I can't go in." Seated in the restaurant was a police inspector whom I knew. "I have to tell you the truth," Kathy said. "I have a relationship with him."

Certainly, these are odd coincidences. Perhaps I have precognition. But the mystery becomes even more perplexing; the next stage totally baffles me. It has for four years.

In 1974 the novel was published by Doubleday. One afternoon I was talking to my priest—I am an Episcopalian—and I happened to mention to him an important scene near the end of the novel in which the character Felix Buckman meets a black stranger at an all-night gas station, and they begin to talk. As I described the scene in more and more detail, my priest became progressively more agitated. At last he said, "That is a scene from the Book of Acts, from the Bible! In Acts, the person who meets the black man on the road is named Philip—your name." Father Rasch was so upset by the resemblance that he could not even locate the scene in his Bible. "Read Acts," he instructed me. "And you'll agree. It's the same down to specific details."

I went home and read the scene in Acts. Yes, Father Rasch was right; the scene in my novel was an obvious retelling of the scene in Acts... and I had never read Acts, I must admit. But again the puzzle became deeper. In Acts, the high Roman official who arrests and interrogates Saint Paul is named Felix—the same name as my character. And my character Felix Buckman is a high-ranking police general; in fact, in my novel he holds the same office as Felix in the Book of Acts: the final authority. There is a conversation in my novel which very closely resembles a conversation between Felix and Paul.

Well, I decided to try for any further resemblances. The main character in my novel is named Jason. I got an index to the Bible and looked to see if anyone named Jason appears anywhere in the Bible. I couldn't remember any. Well, a man named Jason appears once and only once in the Bible. It is in the Book of Acts. And, as if to plague me further with coincidences, in my novel Jason is fleeing from the authorities and takes refuge in a person's house, and in Acts the man named Jason shelters a fugitive from the law in his house—an exact inversion of the situation in my novel, as if the mysterious Spirit responsible for all this was having a sort of laugh about the whole thing.

Felix, Jason, and the meeting on the road with the black man who is a complete stranger. In Acts, the disciple Philip baptizes the black man, who then goes away rejoicing. In my novel, Felix Buckman reaches out to the black stranger for emotional support, because Felix Buckman's sister has just died and he is falling apart psychologically. The black man stirs up Buckman's spirits and althought Buckman does not go away rejoicing, at least his tears have stopped falling. He had been flying home, weeping over the death of his sister, and had to reach out to someone, anyone, even a total stranger. It is an encounter between two strangers on the road which changes the life of one of them—both in my novel and in Acts. And one final quirk by the mysterious Spirit at work: the name Felix is the Latin word for "happy." Which I did not know when I wrote the novel.

[Continued...]

A careful study of my novel shows that for reasons which I cannot even begin to explain I had managed to retell several of the basic incidents from a particular book of the Bible, and even had the right names. What could explain this? That was four years ago that I discovered all this. For four years I have tried to come up with a theory and I have not. I doubt if I ever will.

But the mystery had not ended there, as I had imagined. Two months ago I was walking up to the mailbox late at night to mail off a letter, and also to enjoy the sight of Saint Joseph's Church, which sits opposite my apartment building. I noticed a man loitering suspiciously by a parked car. It looked as if he was attempting to steal the car, or maybe something from it; as I returned from the mailbox, the man hid behind a tree. On impulse I walked up to him and asked, "Is anything the mattter?"

"I'm out of gas," the man said. "And I have no money."

Incredibly, because I have never done this before, I got out my wallet, took all the money from it, and handed the money to him. He then shook hands with me and asked where I lived, so that he could later pay the money back. I returned to my apartment, and then I realized that the money would do him no good, since there was no gas station within walking distance. So I returned, in my car. The man had a metal gas can in the trunk of his car, and, together, we drove in my car to an all-night gas station. Soon we were standing there, two strangers, as the pump jockey filled the metal gas can. Suddenly I realized that this was the scene in my novel—the novel written eight years before. The all-night gas station was exactly as I had envisioned it in my inner eye when I wrote the scene—the glaring white light, the pump jockey—and now I saw something which I had not seen before. The stranger who I was helping was black.

We drove back to his stalled car with the gas, shook hands, and then I returned to my apartment building. I never saw him again. He could not pay me back because I had not told him which of the many apartments was mine or what my name was. I was terribly shaken up by this experience. I had literally lived out a scene completely as it had appeared in my novel. Which is to say, I had lived out a sort of replica of the scene in Acts where Philip encounters the black man on the road.

Full transcript at link below.

deoxy.org...

Several years ago, I walked into a recording session. The engineer was at the console, reading a newspaper. I walked up behind him, bent over and said "Look at my earrings. Aren't they cute? They're little portraits of Elvis Presley."
He went absolutely ashen. I said "What's the matter?" He pointed to the paper and said "Look at what I'm reading." I did—the article said "She bent over his shoulder, leaned in close to his face and said 'Look at my earrings. Aren't they cute? They're little portraits of (another singer)."
We were both so rattled that I cannot even remember the other singer's name!
But my life has been filled with odd and eerie happenings like that, though this was definitely one of the most peculiar.

CC

History repeats itself with the Erdington Murders: www.huffingtonpost.com...

Unfortunately other such supposed coincidences are just inaccurate stories. www.67notout.com...

A little over a year ago I experienced an odd moment of synchronicity. While sitting at the dining table, it occurred to me to wonder when corporations took over the world--was it around 1978, with Apple? My mom was watching TCM, and at the precise moment when the thought was in my head, a promo came on for Network featuring the brilliant and classic speech which starts about 40 seconds into this clip: www.youtube.com... I had never seen Network, but happened to know it was from 1976, and thought, "Wow, it started earlier than I realized! I HAVE to see this movie!" This was only about a week after Mary Tyler Moore died, so the movie was half an incredible experience of nostalgia seeing all the shows of yesteryear, and half the most mind-blowing wakeup call imaginable. How often is a movie over 40 years old actually MORE relevant than when it originally came out? The issues brought up by "mad as hell" Mr. Beale have only grown worse while others have been added such as office workers going postal and school shootings. The current sorry excuse for government is not the disease, it is the symptom of decades of a situation going down the dumper!