Coincidence, Synchronicity, and Serendipity (“CSS events”) involve a convergence of energy and information. They appear to reach backward and forward in time, and in this sense are a connector or bridge between Past, Future, and Present. They do not appear to be constrained by conventional laws of physics, causality, and space-time. They suggest that all of Nature, including human beings, are a living part of open systems where everything is interconnected and interdependent.
Organizations can make strategic use of CSS events:
- They provide apparently “outside” commentary on what is happening in both our inner and outer lives.
- They invite or present important questions on vital issues often in the language of metaphor or stories.
- They can point the way to answers to important questions in our lives.
- They have an oracular quality, because CSS reflect back to us patterns.
Case Example: (excerpted from Julian Gresser, How the Leopard Changed Its Spots—Evolutionary Values for an Age in Crisis)
Typhoon. Our team at Discovery Engineering International was hired by a prominent Midwest foundation interested in supporting frontier research in human consciousness. Our assignment was to demonstrate our EEG biofeedback system by training the president and other members of the board of directors. The basic protocol was for each participant to harness up to the machines, learn to enter creative reverie, and then to record our images, which would be discussed afterwards. There was to be no prior disclosure of the images.
The images that appeared were remarkably similar: a wolf’s head, swamps, quicksand, someone drowning, a typhoon brewing. In many instances, two or more participants reported the same image. The board did not know what to make of this odd collective phenomenon.
In our final report we simply reported back to the participants their own images and suggested that the members of the board be on the alert for trouble, even upheaval, at the foundation. Our admonition was ignored. But a few months later exactly the events that the shadowy images foretold occurred. There was a palace coup, the president and his personally selected board were fired, and a new board appointed.
Exploring Emergence in a New Science of Complexity
Welcome to Module 11. I’m Julian Gresser, your guide on this Resilient Explorers Journey. Iam excited to invite you tojoin with me now at a new frontier of Resilience. In this module, I advance a novel hypothesis that you can test, validate, and refine by yourself and with your fellow explorers in this course. I suggest that Integral Resilience can be a seedbed for synchronicities, meaningful coincidences, and serendipities. Moreover, such ostensibly chance events can hold startling unnoticed clues about risks, and point the way to how we as individuals and communities can adapt creatively in chaotic environments. These questions will take us to a beginning understanding of the role of emergence in a new science of complexity.
A few definitions are in order:
- Integral Resilience—As its name suggests, our focus is on different dimensions or levels of resilience—physical, emotional, relational, and spiritual –where each dimension intersects and dynamically reinforces another.
- Meaningful coincidences, synchronicities, serendipities refer to chance happenings where the causal connection is obscure, but nonetheless the event or connection intimates or appears to have potentially great significance. The term Synchronicity was coined by the great Austrian psychiatrist Carl G. Jung referring to a chance event where the causal connection, as I mentioned, was unclear; in other words, acausal. A related concept of Serendipity or chance occurrences–which evoke a sense of flow, lightness of being, even humor– was first used by 18th century English writer, art historian, man of letters, antiquarian, and Whig politician, Horace Walpole. “Meaningful coincidences” is deeply explored by my colleague Dr. Bernard Beitman, who authored a book by this name. I will refer to all three phenomena, which overlap, simply by the acronym “CSS.”
I will give you an extraordinary example from my own life that continues to reverberate and is alive in my memory, as if it happened just 10 minutes ago. It is my encounter with Brother David Steindl-Rast. Here is how I described it in my book.
In early spring 2017, I was riding my bike on Cabrillo Boulevard in Santa Barbara, and had been musing for nearly an hour with deep gratitude about Brother David Steindl-Rast’s wonderful teaching—Stop Look Go—which I was planning to include in my new book and webinars. Precisely—I mean precisely and simultaneously—as I was cycling home just by Santa Barbara Wharf (a bridge, perhaps itself a metaphor), I observed an elderly man and his young companion. Ordinarily, I would have simply passed by. But something told me to look more closely. And lo!—the elderly gentlemen appeared to be Brother David Steindl-Rast. I dismounted, and said to him, “I can’t believe this, are you Brother David!? How is this possible? You are a monk, and you live in a monastery in Austria, not in Santa Barbara. What are you doing here? I was just thinking of you! You have materialized!”
“Why, yes, I am,” he replied in his deep, melodious voice (with just a slight hint of an Austrian accent), smiling and bemused, as if nothing remarkable was happening. “Please let me introduce my young friend. He is Cesar Chavez’s grandson,” he said kindly.
“But what are you doing here?” I insisted. “I am a great admirer of your work, In fact, I was completely engrossed for the last half hour in your wonderful teaching, Stop Look Go.”
“Well, I’m here only for the day. I’ve been interviewed by Oprah Winfrey,” he observed casually.
Our conversation then flowed easily toward many topics of shared interest. As we are both lovers of music, Brother David recommended his favorite Hayden Symphony #22. It was if we were old friends meeting after many years apart. Brother David invited me to visit his monastery in Austria, and I gladly accepted. The following year out of the blue I received a birthday greeting from him. To this day I treasure Brother David and honor him in my heart.
I return to a last definition: Science of complexity. Complexity science suggests that emergent properties of the whole are inexplicable by the parts. Emergent states manifest at the border of order and chaos. This course itself is a living example in which we are intentionally creating conditions that are conducive and actively encourage emergence. Meaningful coincidences, synchronicities, serendipities are examples of emergent phenomena. They can lend unique insight into how communities, cities, and allied bioregions such as the tri-county California Central Coast can anticipate and adapt resiliently to significant challenges such as climate turbulence.
I will restate the core hypothesis:
The incidence of meaningful coincidences, synchronicities, and serendipities will increase as communities become more integrally resilient. Of course, many such happenings can occur randomly and spontaneously with no apparent relationship or meaning in our lives or that of our communities. However, as I have already suggested, what we discover as meaningful can itself be closely related to our resilience—in other words, our ability to discover hidden or embedded (often metaphorical) meaning in ostensibly “random” events will develop as our integral resilience itself increases.
General Qualities and Attributes
First let us consider the experience of Synchronicity itself. My encounter with Brother David in that late afternoon in springtime 2017 seemed at the time entirely random. It unsettled my accepted view of reality. Such things are not supposed to happen. I did not invite it. It just happened, and there it was. Many people who have such experiences report a sense of breaking through a fabric or container, of wonder, awe, and surprise. I felt all of these and a deep sense of gratitude. His sudden appearance, as if it were an apparition, impressed in my Mind and Heart the deep significance of his core teaching, Stop Look Go!
Some commentators suggest that such synchronous events provides glimpses of an implicate coherent order of the universe. Others point out that Synchronicities are often accompanied by child-like innocence, openness, humility, a willing toward not knowing, a diminishing sense of the small self.
At times, CSS appears in periods of great stress, as tender mercies from the universe. As I explain in a later module, I have discovered that acts of Paying Forwardin themselvescan potentiate Synchronicities and meaningful coincidences.
For me, CSS events create and confirm a sense of connection and connectedness—with each other, with our community, Nature and the living world around us. CSS ultimately sheds light on some of the most fundamental of questions of who we really are.
Here are several other initial observations:
- CSS involve a convergence of energy and information.
- CSS appear to reach backward and forward in time, and in this sense are a connector or bridge between Past, Future, and Present.
- CSS do not appear to be constrained by conventional laws of physics and space-time. But all of Nature, including human beings, are a living part of open systems where everything is interconnected and interdependent.
So now that you have an overview of CSS, let’s turn to:
Some Practical Uses of Synchronicity, Meaningful Coincidences, and Serendipity
CSS:
- Provide apparently “outside” commentary on what is happening in both our inner and outer lives.
- Invite or present important questions on vital issues often in the language of metaphor or stories.
- Can point the way to answers to important questions in our lives.
- Can have an oracular quality, because CSS reflect back to us patterns. I have discovered there is a river of archetypal symbolic meaning that flows just beneath the surface of our awareness or consciousness. In my autobiography you can read about many examples from my own experience. For me this river became so palpable, I had the odd sense the book was writing itself, as I was in constant dialogue with CSS happenings that occurred at the precise time that I was writing a section of the book.
In some of the stories I describe the salient data was readily available, in the form of premonitions of catastrophic events which were presented in dreamlike images, but these were ignored by the protagonists in these events; in all these cases the premonitory warnings actually came about under conditions as the CSS warning foretold.
- CSS can shed light on our Past and endow past events with new meaning; indeed memories of the Past can surface and coincide with present transactions in mysterious, helpful, indeed wonderful ways.
- CSS can point the way to evolutionary values that will increase our chances of collective and planetary survival; and finally,
- CSS apply not only to individuals but also to entire communities.
This last point deserves some elaboration, for most of the literature on CSS focuses on the individual. However, there is ample evidence that community-wide CSS has occurred throughout history; and we know from the anthropological literature that CSS is a living reality of indigenous communities, and essential to their community-wide resilience. Indeed, it is quite possible that CSS may reflect, even amplify the Resilience Multiplier Effect (discussed in a later module), engendered by individual acts of generosity and Paying Forward throughout a community.