Hidden meaning in coincidence

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There are times in our lives when things happen — in a totally unexpected way. Defying laws of probability, taking you by surprise, and in the long run, turning out to be a part of a bigger picture.

Consider this — you are running late for a meeting and you are saying your prayers, trying hard to keep yourself from getting into panic mode. Upon arrival at the venue, you can’t find a parking lot. Or worse still, the parking lot attendant waits till you just about manage to fit the car neatly into the space available, before letting you know that the space is reserved for x or y. You back out to find another slot, double-check with him if it’s fine and charge in. And at that very same moment, the important contact whom you have been dying to meet for some months and days shows up. What a coincidence! If it hadn’t been for the initial delay and the parking lot attendant driving you up the wall, you could have missed bumping into this person.
Just labelling it a coincidence is simplifying things a bit too much. The concept of synchronicity or coincidence — the occurrence of two or more events that are ‘casually unrelated, occurring together’ — was first explained by the Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Gustav Jung.
Experts had for long identified only two main drivers of psychological processes — mechanism, which in simple terms is a cause and effect function (you do x and y follows) and teleology, which deems that we are led forward by our ideas about a future state — in other words, self actualisation of sorts.
Synchronicity was a third dimension that Jung added. An oft-quoted example he used is of a client in his office, who was describing a dream involving a beetle — when at that very same instant, a beetle flew in through the window. No one could have engineered that. Which, as Jung says, happened because we are connected with our fellow living beings through what’s called the collective unconscious.
The concept of the collective unconscious is credited to Jung — a part of an individual’s psyche that has not been personally acquired. The personal unconscious, in Jung’s opinion, is the conscious mind, and includes memories that are forgotten or suppressed, but can be easily brought to the surface. On the other hand, the collective unconscious is a sort of “psychic inheritance” and a “reservoir of our experiences as a species”. It is something that we are all born with but are never really conscious of — so to speak.
Which brings us back to the link between synchronicity and the collective unconscious. Jung explained that when we dream or meditate, we sink into our personal unconscious, coming closer and closer to our true selves, the collective unconscious. It is in states like this, that we are especially open to communication from others.
When the unconscious flows into the conscious, certain deep truths normally hidden from the conscious mind, or things that we never thought we knew, suddenly surface. These are the kind of times when meaningful coincidences happen.
The power of coincidences is waiting to be tapped. If we remain absolutely calm and meditative as we sail through life, coincidences have a way of happening. And if we learn to recognise these seemingly chance occurrences, and listen to what they are conveying, we will realise that they are little signs pointing us in a certain direction.
And what’s more, we learn to optimise our chances for the best outcome in any situation.
People who regularly meditate or practise forms of healing like Reiki, generally have specially honed abilities and seem to attract coincidences a great deal more than those who don’t.
Deepak Chopra, physician, pioneer of alternative medicine, bestselling author and co-founder of The Chopra Centre, calls it ‘synchrodestiny’ (he has written a book of the same title and runs a workshop too). “When you live your life with an appreciation of coincidences and their meanings, you connect with the underlying field of infinite possibilities. This is a state I call ‘synchrodestiny’ — in which it becomes possible to achieve the spontaneous fulfillment of our every desire. Synchrodestiny requires gaining access to a place deep within you while at the same time awakening to the intricate dance of coincidences in the physical world,” he explains.
There can’t be a better clincher than a quote from Jung, who said, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

The writer has a keen interest in spirituality and philosophy