Is the universe a mirror of our unconscious mind, reflecting our deepest thoughts back to us? Or are we searching for ourselves in the chaos of coincidence? Perhaps the greater mystery is not whether the universe speaks to us, but whether the boundary between the observer and the observed was ever really separate to begin with.
Two Girls, One Name
One of the most well known stories of coincidence happened in June 2001.
A girl named Laura Buxton, nearly 10 years old, released a red helium balloon from her home in Stoke-on-Trent, England. Attached was a message: "Please return to Laura Buxton," along with her address.
The balloon traveled approximately 140 miles before landing near the home of another girl. Her name? Laura Buxton.
Even stranger, the second Laura was also around 10 years old.
When the girls eventually met, they discovered more similarities. Both had brown hair, were approximately the same height, and reportedly arrived wearing pink sweaters and jeans. They also shared interests and had similar pets, including rabbits and guinea pigs.
Their remarkable story eventually caught the attention of Radiolab, which explored the coincidences surrounding their meeting.
What are the chances?
Was it simply an extraordinary coincidence, or was there something meaningful about the circumstances?
What if some of the greatest mysteries of the universe have been hiding in the ordinary moments of our lives? A chance encounter or a thought followed by a coincidence so strangely timed that it leaves us wondering whether something more is happening behind the scenes.
Over the years, many people have shared their personal experiences of synchronicity with me.
Do I believe in synchronicities? Absolutely. Because I'm a curious scientist at heart.
That might sound contradictory to some people. After all, aren't coincidences supposed to be meaningless? Psychology even has a word for perceiving meaningful connections in random or unrelated information: apophenia.
But what about the opposite?
We can overlook genuine patterns, miss important relationships, or fail to notice something simply because our attention is elsewhere. Psychology calls one form of this inattentional blindness, while statistics recognizes Type II errors, where we fail to detect an effect that actually exists.
So why are we so quick to label someone else's pattern recognition as a cognitive error while rarely questioning our own tendency to dismiss unfamiliar relationships?
Or perhaps we should just invent another psychological term for people whose interpretations don't agree with our preferred metaphysics. After all, nothing says intellectual superiority quite like giving someone else's worldview a fancy name and calling it a cognitive bias.
Ah, the familiar colonial tradition of turning one's own worldview into the standard by which everyone else's is judged.
Recognizing patterns and relationships in nature is one of the foundations of scientific discovery. It's how we began understanding the movements of the cosmos, changes in weather, and countless other phenomena.
So what happens when someone notices a connection that doesn't fit our current understanding of reality?
Do we investigate it, dismiss it, or question the assumptions we're using to interpret it?
And more importantly, who gets to decide?
Carl Jung, Wolfgang Pauli, and the Mystery of Synchronicity
Synchronicity refers to events that appear meaningfully connected despite having no apparent causal relationship.
The concept is most famously associated with psychiatrist Carl Jung, whose thinking was influenced by ancient Chinese philosophy, particularly the I Ching (Book of Changes), alongside his psychological observations and Western philosophical traditions.
Jung also exchanged ideas with Nobel Prize-winning physicist Wolfgang Pauli, who was interested in the relationship between consciousness and the physical world.
Pauli had quite the reputation among his fellow physicists. Laboratory equipment supposedly malfunctioned or broke whenever he was nearby. His colleagues called this the Pauli effect. Physicist Otto Stern was even said to have kept Pauli out of his laboratory!
Whether those incidents were coincidence, exaggeration, or something else, they became part of the folklore surrounding Pauli.
But the intellectual questions Jung and Pauli explored were far more interesting.
Could meaningful coincidences reveal relationships between mind and matter that conventional explanations of cause and effect didn't fully capture?
Questions about consciousness and its relationship with the world existed across philosophical and cultural traditions long before Jung. His work was one contribution to a much older conversation, not the beginning of it.
And that history raises a question about scientific knowledge itself.
What happens when different ways of understanding the world reveal something our training and equipment overlooked?
When Different Ways of Knowing Reveal What Science Has Overlooked
In a 2026 study published in Communications Earth & Environment, researchers examined how Indigenous Iñupiat knowledge in Alaska helped identify important relationships in the Arctic environment that scientific models had failed to adequately capture.
Through generations of living in and closely observing their environment, Iñupiat communities developed detailed knowledge of ocean conditions, sea ice, weather, and animal behavior.
Their observations helped researchers identify limitations in existing Arctic Ocean models.
The relationships weren't absent from nature. They were absent from the models being used to understand it.
Now, this study wasn't about synchronicity. It was about environmental knowledge. But it illustrates how different methods of observation can reveal different aspects of the same world.
And that matters.
Our education, culture, language, and philosophical assumptions influence what we notice and which explanations we consider.
Intellectual diversity is more than a matter of representation. It expands the questions we're even asking.
But before we go searching for hidden connections in the universe, there's another mystery worth investigating.
The mind that's doing the searching.
Psychology: Are We Discovering Patterns or Creating Them?
You've probably heard the familiar psychological explanation. You know, the boring party pooper who tears up our ticket to an adventurous journey into the unknown by reminding us that our attention, emotions, expectations, and beliefs influence which coincidences we notice.
And they're right.
But explaining the mechanism and how we recognize a connection isn't necessarily the same as explaining why the events occurred.
Think about it. Understanding how our eyes process light doesn't tell us everything about the objects we're looking at.
Our minds can recognize genuine relationships, but they can also create connections between events that have nothing to do with each other.
This is why understanding the mind doing the interpretation is so important.
Dr. Bernard Beitman: The Psychology of Meaningful Coincidences
Psychiatrist Dr. Bernard Beitman, co-founder of the Coincidence Project and author of Meaningful Coincidences: How and Why Synchronicity and Serendipity Happen (2022), has spent years investigating these experiences.
Several psychological factors are particularly relevant to his work.
Self-Observation: Our ability to examine our thoughts, emotions, and reactions. Rather than immediately assigning meaning to an unusual event, we can stop and consider why it caught our attention.
Pattern Recognition: We can mistakenly see relationships that don't exist, but we can also overlook genuine connections. Both possibilities deserve consideration.
Personality: Not everyone notices or interprets coincidences the same way. Research suggests that personality, openness, intuition, and religious or spiritual beliefs can influence how frequently people experience meaningful coincidences.
But our philosophical assumptions matter. Someone who believes consciousness extends beyond the physical world may consider relationships that a committed physicalist would interpret differently.
Beitman also explores whether meaningful coincidences involve relationships beyond conventional psychological explanations, while recognizing that just because two events appear connected doesn't mean one caused the other.
They may share a common cause, occur by chance, or have a relationship we haven't identified. Are we creating our reality or are we merely passengers?
And sometimes a coincidence can be deeply meaningful without requiring a mysterious explanation. Jung's concept of archetypes offers another way to understand this. An ordinary event might resonate with powerful themes in our unconscious mind, giving it personal meaning regardless of what caused it.
I've deliberately avoided going too deeply into Jungian psychology here. Many readers familiar with occult traditions already know his work. It's insightful, certainly, but I'd rather explore questions that move the conversation further.
Which brings me to something that happened to me several years ago.
Omen or Accident?
About five years ago, I was driving down a street when a bird suddenly flew straight into my windshield.
The impact broke its neck. Ironically, my windshield was perfectly fine. My car window wasn't particularly shiny. I barely wash it. So that was weird.
Now, in some Irish, Scottish, and Welsh folk traditions, a bird striking a house or window can be interpreted as an omen, sometimes even a warning of death.
Depending on whom you ask, this could have been a message from beyond, an unfortunate coincidence, or a bird having a very bad day.
But I didn't immediately interpret it as an omen.
Why?
Because I had learned to pay attention to how I personally experience unusual events rather than automatically assigning them traditional meanings.
Self Observation
I think omens are contextual to the culture and time period. So I don't pay attention to them much. In my own experiences, what I interpret as ancestral guidance or encounters with other beings has generally come through dreams, meditation, or visions. I’ve never believed in God or belonged to organized religion. So, I just go with personal experience.
I've also noticed recurring physical sensations that I associate with certain experiences.
Sometimes there's an unusual heaviness in the atmosphere accompanied by irritation. Other times, I've experienced a light, airy sensation, a sweet smell resembling cotton candy, or a sudden feeling of euphoria.
These are personal associations developed through years of observing my experiences to maintain accuracy in assessing unusual events.
One of the earliest lessons I learned in spiritual practice from my mother was to know yourself and use discernment.
If I find guidance useful, I consider it. If I find it problematic, I discard it. If it doesn't correspond with my waking reality to prove it’s validation, it's probably bullshit.
After all, you wouldn't blindly trust some random person walking down the street, so why would you automatically trust an entity or knowledge from your subconscious?
And this bird incident didn't fit the patterns I had come to recognize.
Something about it seemed odd, but not necessarily mysterious.
Pattern Recognition
Then I remembered something.
My mother had described a similar bird collision in that same area. So had my brother-in-law.
Three incidents involving the same location?
Now that caught my attention.
I wondered whether there was an environmental explanation nobody had bothered to investigate. So I returned to the scene.
There were two large apartment buildings on opposite sides of the road, both with reflective glass windows. Nearby were trees, a park, and a huge shiny metal statue along the sidewalk.
The bird had been traveling from the park toward a large tree behind one of the buildings.
Suddenly, the bird splatted on my windshield didn't seem like a statistical anomaly.
The reflective surfaces could have confused the bird's vision. The park and trees suggested a possible flight path, while the surrounding buildings might have affected local wind conditions.
I couldn't establish exactly what caused the collision, but there were several plausible explanations.
Between the possible flight path, reflections, and wind turbulence, that poor little bird didn't stand a chance in hell.
And considering five years have passed and I'm still alive to tell the tale, I think it's safe to say the bird was the one who needed a warning from the universe, not me.
The Beauty of Not Knowing
Of course, not every unusual experience comes with an explanation waiting around the corner.
Sometimes further investigation reveals an ordinary cause. Sometimes events happen by chance. Sometimes we recognize connections through forms of perception that don't fit neatly within Western scientific frameworks. And sometimes we simply don't know.
And that's okay.
Ultimately, the person who had the experience gets to decide what it means to them. We should be able to openly discuss unusual experiences without feeling pressured to defend every little detail. Surround yourself with open-minded friends and a supportive community.
Frankly, I think there's a certain arrogance in assuming our species possesses the intellect or perceptual abilities to comprehend every aspect of existence. Other species experience reality in ways we can barely begin to imagine. Who are we to assume that the limits of human perception are the limits of reality itself?
Some people look at the universe and see nothing but meaningless coincidences, an empty void destined to be swallowed by darkness and death. Others see lifetimes of mysteries waiting to be explored, a universe unfolding with possibilities for discovery, creation, and wonder.
Personally, I'd rather remain the curious child, spending my life creating art, chasing mysteries, and playing with the universe, than become the arrogant human who mistakes the limits of their own understanding for the limits of existence itself.
But our interpretations can have consequences, particularly when unusual experiences become a concern within the mental health system.
Synchronicity and Mental Health: Why the Distinction Matters
Unfortunately, when someone describes an unusual experience, the discussion can sometimes shift toward their mental health before the experience has been carefully considered.
Having a psychiatric diagnosis doesn't automatically mean someone is wrong about reality.
A person with a psychiatric condition can make accurate observations while also experiencing symptoms that require treatment. Both can be true.
Let's be honest, though. Sometimes the whimsical child and the nihilistic adult both need a little therapy and medication. Neither has a monopoly on sanity, let alone reality.
Mental health professionals have a responsibility to assess distress, safety, and functioning while considering a person's cultural background and beliefs.
Experiencing synchronicity isn't, by itself, a sign of psychosis. But during mania or psychosis, someone may become intensely preoccupied with perceived messages, patterns, or personal significance in everyday events.
Let's remember, clinicians aren't there to settle metaphysical debates about the nature of reality. They're looking at the bigger picture. Is the person sleeping? Eating? Experiencing anxiety or depression? Are they becoming so fixated on these experiences that they're neglecting themselves or struggling with everyday life? And how does their cultural background shape their understanding of what's happening?
The goal is to reduce distress, prevent harm, and help people get back to living their lives.
Respecting someone's interpretation doesn't mean ignoring symptoms that may require care. Someone can need medication, therapy, or simply a little help getting grounded without everything they've experienced being dismissed as false.
Finding a counselor who understands your worldview is important. If you're interested in exploring consciousness, spiritual experiences, and personal transformation, you might consider a transpersonal therapist. If you prefer a more structured approach focused on thoughts and behavior, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) might be a better fit. Liberation and decolonial therapist for more diversity.
For my fellow philosophers, consider an existential psychotherapist or a psychologist with a background in philosophy. The National Philosophical Counseling Association (NPCA) at NPCAssoc.org also provides information about philosophical counseling and consultation.
Whatever approach you choose, make sure the professional is appropriately licensed if you're seeking mental health treatment. Philosophical consultants aren't necessarily licensed mental health professionals.
You shouldn't have to abandon your worldview at the therapist's door just to receive compassionate mental health care.
Who Gets to Decide?
Science gives us powerful methods for investigating the world, but no philosophy or knowledge tradition holds a monopoly on reality.
We can investigate the psychological mechanisms behind unusual experiences without assuming those mechanisms tell us everything about what occurred. We can respect different ways of knowing without abandoning critical thinking.
Perhaps the question isn't who gets to decide, but why we assume anyone has the final word.
Some mysteries may eventually find their explanations. Others may challenge the very assumptions we use to understand them. And some will remain beyond our reach.
I don't believe the universe will reveal all her secrets, no matter how much we try to force her. But sometimes, when we quiet our thoughts, she whispers.
The question is whether we are listening.
Further Reading and Support
To explore meaningful coincidences and share your own, visit The Coincidence Project co-founded by psychiatrist Dr. Bernard Beitman.
For those seeking mental health support related to distressing spiritual experiences or a spiritual crisis, SpiritualEmergence.org offers a directory of professionals in the United States familiar with spiritual crises. For readers outside the United States, the International Spiritual Emergence Network (SpiritualEmergenceNetwork.org) provides information about support networks in different countries.
References
Coleman, S. L., Beitman, B. D., & Celebi, E. (2009). Characterizing high-frequency coincidence detectors. Psychiatric Annals, 39(5), 271–279.
Jung, C. G., & Pauli, W. (1955). The interpretation of nature and the psyche. Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Jung, C. G. (1960). Synchronicity: An acausal connecting principle. Princeton University Press.
Beitman, B. D. (2022). Meaningful coincidences: How and why synchronicity and serendipity happen. Park Street Press.
Indigenous Iñupiat knowledge and Arctic Ocean models
Hauri, C., Hauser, D. D. W., Adams, B., Buschman, V. Q., Glenn, R. T., Heeringa, K., Irving, B., Leavitt, J. M., Pagès, R., & Schaeffer, R. (2026). Indigenous Knowledge and observations improve Arctic Ocean model skill and relevance. Communications Earth & Environment, 7, Article 748.
Abumrad, J., & Krulwich, R. (Hosts). (2009, June 15). Stochasticity [Audio podcast episode]. In Radiolab. WNYC Studios.
American Psychiatric Association. (2022). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (5th ed., text rev.).
