Who has never experienced a situation in which it seemed like the universe was trying to tell them something? You think about someone and that person calls you. You dream about someone and then you bump into them on the street. In the same week, someone tells you about a song, film or book and it seems like they are everywhere. And what about that strange connection between twin brothers, explored in the cinema, where one has an accident and the other feels pain? This type of situation is usually called a coincidence. But is it just that, an arbitrary event?

This type of phenomenon is being increasingly studied within the fields of parapsychology and related fields, and it seems that science is now beginning to understand this a little better and explain these things in a ‘scientific’ way. But if we go back a little in history, these situations were already experienced and understood by mystics.

In Hermeticism, an ancient philosophical and magical system attributed to the mysterious Hermes Trismegistus, author of the famous “Emerald Tablet” among other texts, there are some concepts that explain how the Universe works. According to the book The Kybalion, a classic of Hermetic literature, the first of these concepts is the law of mentalism: “The whole is mind, and the Universe is mental”. If we consider this concept of nature, everything is interconnected, as if it were a great universal mind.

In his Analytical Theory, Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung developed a concept that can help explain these types of phenomena and this reality of interconnectivity: the “Collective Unconscious”. Roughly speaking, for Jung, beyond our conscious, subconscious and unconscious (postulated by Freud), there is an even deeper layer shared by all individuals, therefore collective, to which we are all subject. It is as if it were a large network, which is present in each one of us, and in all of us.

A more or less superficial layer of the unconscious is undoubtedly personal. We call it the personal unconscious. However, this layer rests on a deeper layer, which no longer has its origin in personal experiences or acquisitions, but is innate. This deeper layer is what we call the collective unconscious. I have chosen the term “collective” because the unconscious is not of an individual nature, but universal; that is, unlike the personal psyche, it has contents and modes of behaviour which are cum grano salis the same everywhere and in all individuals. In other words, they are identical in all human beings, thus constituting a common psychic substratum of a suprapersonal psychic nature that exists in each individual. (JUNG, 2000, p. 15)

Considering this concept, we can understand the phenomenon of coincidences as something that Jung himself called synchronicity, which would be the “simultaneity of a psychic state with one or more events that appear as significant parallels of a momentary subjective state and, in certain circumstances, also vice versa” (JUNG, 1991, par. 818). In other words, it is the perception of a phenomenon that generally contains a symbolic meaning, through situations that do not share any type of apparent relationship, that is, acausal, and express an internal psychic state shared with an objective and external event.

Jung’s interest in this type of phenomenon has always caused some discomfort in the scientific community. However, the new concepts of reality presented by modern quantum physics are beginning to explain this interconnection in a scientific way, corroborating Jung’s conceptions of these phenomena. It is worth mentioning that Jung was friends with Wolfgang Pauli, one of the first scholars of quantum physics.[1]

In short, quantum physics works with atomic and subatomic particles, i.e. atoms, molecules, electrons, protons, neutrons, etc., and studies the dynamic interactions of these particles. Among these particles, we can mention photons, which are the smallest particles involved in electromagnetic radiation. It may seem that we are a bit off topic, but contemporary scientists have already carried out experiments in which, despite being separated by great distances, two photons interact with each other, even without presenting a causal connection, i.e., it is as if there were something connecting them, which goes beyond the physical and observable reality.

If we use the example of two correlated photons, where it is possible to change the state of one of them, changing the state of the other and instantaneously, then it would be possible to have a non-local correlation between the unconscious of all human beings, which would result in Jung’s Collective Unconscious and his Analytical Psychology. (NUNES, 2009, p. 8)

All this interconnection of consciousness is no longer theoretical and is being proven. There is an experiment, carried out between 1993 and 1994 by Jácobo Grinberg, a neurophysiologist at the University of Mexico, which consisted of having two people meditate together, with the intention of communicating directly, without exchanging signals or conversation. These people were isolated from each other in “Faraday cages”, electromagnetically impermeable chambers, and their respective brains were connected to electroencephalogram machines.

After a brief period of meditation, only one of the subjects was shown flashes of light, and his brain electrical activity changed in response to the flashes. This is where things get interesting. The electroencephalogram of the other subject who did not receive any flashes of light showed that his brain received a potential that was virtually equal in intensity and strength, with electrical activity varying from 65% to 75%. This is a very substantial value, and the conclusion of the experiment is that the electrical activity of one brain is transferred to another brain, without any electrical connection or contact. This experiment was replicated by Peter Fenwick in London and Leanna Standish and her group at Bastyr University in Seattle. They all concluded the same thing: there is a transfer of information from brain to brain, without any electromagnetic connection.

These conclusions are very interesting and significant, and end up explaining, even if partially, the phenomena of synchronicity. However, despite explaining non-local communication between individuals, little is known about why these manifestations occur at certain times, or with certain people. In the American best-selling novel “The Celestine Prophecy”, James Redfield tells the story of a manuscript found in Peru that contains nine visions, or nine stages, that human beings need to develop in order to evolve individually as individuals and collectively as a species. The first stage of this process is described as becoming aware of the “coincidences” that surround us. It is argued that in order to evolve, the first step to be taken is to perceive these synchronicities and not consider them as mere chance, but rather an intuitive way of seeking information in everyday life that drives us to improve and expand our consciousness.

I therefore think it is pertinent to conclude by saying that we should pay attention to our surroundings and analyse these coincidences, understand what they tell us and where they point to. When we do this, these situations will occur more and more often and indicate to us that we are on the right path. Little by little, we integrate destiny and free will, expanding our consciousness and approaching the horizons of the soul’s journey.

Bibliography

CAMAYSAR, R. O Caibalion. São Paulo: Pensamento. 2000.

JUNG, C. G. Os arquétipos e o inconsciente coletivo. Petrópolis: Vozes. 2000.

_______. Sincronicidade. Petrópolis: Vozes. 1991.

NUNES, A. L. Física e psicologia: um diálogo interdisciplinar. XVIII Simpósio nacional de ensino de Física. 2009.

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[1] To learn more about this friendship, read A permuta dos sábios: um estudo sobre as correspondências entre Carl Gustav Jung e Wolfgang Pauli, by César Rey Xavier.