Thread: Coincidences

Originally Posted by Dannon Oneironaut

When faced with a coincidence you have a choice: either discount it as meaningless or apply meaning to it, choose the latter.

See, this is the problem. You are specifically advocating people to divorce themselves from reality.

Now, I am certainly not saying that all coincidences should be dismissed as meaningless. I think it is foolish to apply either strategy indiscriminately.

Also, I must take issue with your choice of the word apply, as in the phrase "apply meaning to it." That does not sit well with me. Even if we assume a given coincidence actually does represent a pattern, we should not expect to discover the correct one if we have literally trained ourselves to apply meaning to things without regard for what is likely to be true.

You're actually teaching people to think wrong. Doesn't that seem problematic to you?

Like I said, I am not pretending to know what reality is, and this is not a technique to figure out what reality is, this is a technique to create patterns of lucidity that carry over from dreamtime to waking life and visa versa. It is a technique. I am not saying making a scientific or a philosophical statement about the nature of reality. It is basically an advanced dreamsign technique where coincidences are dreamsigns during waking life. I use words like exaggerate and artificially induced coincidences. These are not designed to affect reality or even to define reality but to affect consciousness. I like your pragmatism and I encourage this type of pragmatism so that one does not become deluded, I admit, that this is a danger with people who may tend to be Pollyanna new-agers. But if your boundaries are healthy and you understand what this technique is for and what it applies to and what it doesn't, it is a powerful technique. I appreciate your feedback, it helps me to question and refine the technique in order to communicate it to others. It makes sense to me, but to others it may need some further clarification that I have not considered.
I think as a disclaimer we should add: "Any meaning that you find in coincidences doesn't come from the coincidences themselves but from your own mind. Like anything else, coincidences do not have any inherent reality or substance to them other than what you project on to them. Coincidences are manifestations of your own mind." Otherwise we run the danger of thinking that everything is an omen or other such superstitions. The coincidences act as a rorschatte (sp?) inkblot that reflects powerful archetypal forces in the transpersonal subconsious.

Okay, I think maybe we're coming closer together on this.

I would still differ slightly, though, where you say "coincidences are manifestations of your own mind." I'm not saying that a given coincidence does not represent material reality.

Sometimes that's true. When I look at a clock, and it says 7:11, or 9:11, or 4:20, or 12:34, that might only be happening as often as it "should," statistically, but I might notice it disproportionately. In that example there really isn't any coincidence at all, it just seems that way to me.

Other times, what I am noticing might have a mundane explanation that exists outside of my cone of awareness, or might have resulted from pure chance, but it's still a coincidence.

For example, say I meet two people who both have the same birthday as me, while waiting in line at the DMV (or BMV, or License Branch, or whatever they call it where you live). Now, it may not occur to me until later (or never at all) but the mundane explanation might be that this is the last business day before my birthday, which is when my license expires, and they are both there for the same reason. (Statistically, this would be a called a "sampling artifact.")

The explanation turns out to be mundane, but it still qualifies as a coincidence, because I did not imagine any of its immediate aspects.



Beyond all of this, though, it seems like I am not understanding what it is you are getting at. I consider myself to be an excellent Lucid Dreamer, and I think this would be true by most people's standards, but I am not understanding or relating to what you're saying, here, at all.

Originally Posted by RCLefty

Beyond all of this, though, it seems like I am not understanding what it is you are getting at. I consider myself to be an excellent Lucid Dreamer, and I think this would be true by most people's standards, but I am not understanding or relating to what you're saying, here, at all.

Stringing coincidences together like beads on a thread to cultivate lucidity in waking life as well as dreaming. This produces the deja vu feeling which to me seems like some kind of lucidity factor of waking consciousness. Increasing the novelty and frequency of coincidence. Increasing the dialog between subconscious and conscious and bridging dreaming and waking so that they both reflect each other. One can then be guided in waking life by one's dreams and coincidences are the signposts. This increases lucidity in dreams as well as living a lucid life. For example, the Aborigines of Australia live with hardly any belongings and sleep out beneath the stars. They all dream of a kangaroo at a certain spot that will give its life for the tribe. The next day they go find that kangaroo at that spot and hunt it. This is a coincidence and it is because they pay attention to the coincidences and have aligned their dreamtime with their waking life so that each reflect the other that they can trust this connection to feed them and sustain them.

But I would like to clarify that the coincidences that are important here are primarily the coincidences between dreamtime and waking life.

Lucky for us, our brains are good pattern recognition machines, which highly facilitates learning of novel information. Unfortunately, this often leads to excessive importance placed upon random co-occurrences - a cognitive bias. And yet, selection attention precludes conscious perception of, perhaps important, novel information.

It should be no surprise that we're eventually re-exposed to previously encountered stimuli - given the vast bits of information we encounter. It's simply that upon some sort of co-occurrence the brain tags the information as important such that it becomes conscious, and is thus inflated compared to the thousands bits of information that pass below the conscious threshold.

Look up the Baader-Meinhoff Phenomenon, which explains the act of noticing that someone, in real life, happens to mention the Baader-Meinhoff Phenomenon since you've read it here in my post.

Quark, that was interesting and helpful.. Ive never heard of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, But it makes sense. Stuff like that happens to me all the time. And sometimes it frustrates me cause I don't know how to explain it, or what it means. But knowing that the brain creates and recognizes patterns makes sense.

Originally Posted by * Diamond Eyes *

Quark, that was interesting and helpful.. Ive never heard of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, But it makes sense. Stuff like that happens to me all the time. And sometimes it frustrates me cause I don't know how to explain it, or what it means. But knowing that the brain creates and recognizes patterns makes sense.

The brain recognizes patterns, but I wouldn't say that it creates them, or even if it does, it is the same as nature creating a pattern, since our brains are part of nature. Just because we see shapes in arrangements of stars doesn't mean that the stars aren't in an arrangement from Earth perspective. Our brains recognize the shape of the constellation the big dipper, but it didn't put the stars in that shape. Our brain recognizes only some patterns, but only a small fraction of all the patterns that exist. I concur that the human mind assigns interpretations to these patterns, hence the name 'Big Dipper' or 'Ursa Major'. Honey bees recognize different patterns than the human mind does and they even communicate the location of nectar rich flowers using trigonometry patterns that takes into consideration the rotation of the Earth, but these mathematical patterns are inherent in the make-up of the universe. Our human minds recognize only the patterns that are meaningful to humans, but we didn't create the patterns, we DO, however, create the meaning in these patterns and project it onto these patterns. The Big Dipper isn't literally a big dipper in the sky, and I doubt anybody ever has mistaken it for one.

But an arrangement and a pattern aren't the same thing. In the case of the Big Dipper, yes, the arrangement exists irrepective of our perception of it, but it is not a pattern on order with the one we perceive.

That is to say, the arrangements of the stars do result from the machinations of our universe and galaxy, but our perception of something "that looks like a dipper" is not on that order; there is no practical relationship to any patterns that exist, and the ones we perceive.

Therefore, we are effectively imagining them, which I admit is a more precise way of putting than saying we "made" the pattern, but that's a semantic issue, in my opinion.

Originally Posted by Quark

Lucky for us, our brains are good pattern recognition machines...

I'm totally nitpicking here, but it must be said: it wasn't luck. If it wasn't for abilities such as pattern recognition, we would have died out long before evolving a complex enough brain to appreciate our own existence. In fact, at some point, some organisms did dies out for that very reason.

In other words, we never had a significant chance of evolving without pattern recognition.

In the case of my correcting you on this, yes, it's total nitpicking, like I said. However, I thought this observation would be a good thing for all of us to keep in mind on this subject.

nothing happens by mere coincidence, there's intelligence and consciousness between every little act.

Originally Posted by mowglycdb

nothing happens by mere coincidence, there's intelligence and consciousness between every little act.

Even if that were true, how could you possibly know it?

because.

Originally Posted by mowglycdb

because.

Never was a finer justification made.

Originally Posted by mowglycdb

nothing happens by mere coincidence, there's intelligence and consciousness between every little act.

^

This sounds like a line taken straight from "The Alchemist".

If you haven't already read it, i suggest you should since it seems in tune with your thinking.

Originally Posted by RCLefty

I'm totally nitpicking here, but it must be said: it wasn't luck. If it wasn't for abilities such as pattern recognition, we would have died out long before evolving a complex enough brain to appreciate our own existence. In fact, at some point, some organisms did dies out for that very reason.

In other words, we never had a significant chance of evolving without pattern recognition.

In the case of my correcting you on this, yes, it's total nitpicking, like I said. However, I thought this observation would be a good thing for all of us to keep in mind on this subject.

However, it is not only humans that are endowed with this ability - every entity that has the capacity to adapt to the current environment also has the capacity to derive patterns from the environment. Or put another way, recognising patterns is, generally, fundamental to adaptation, and highly constitutes the basis for learning.

Originally Posted by Quark

However, it is not only humans that are endowed with this ability - every entity that has the capacity to adapt to the current environment also has the capacity to derive patterns from the environment. Or put another way, recognising patterns is, generally, fundamental to adaptation, and highly constitutes the basis for learning.

I agree. But why would that be the case, especially if we are imagining the patterns? Just curious.

Maybe even DNA is a pattern that was imagined. Maybe not.

Because that is what we would expect from evolved, as opposed to designed, brains.

Unlike a computer, which is designed to perform explicit functions, and to interpret narrow sets of data, a brain is part of an organism; the "design" that goes into it is simply that which expedites survival and reproduction. Architectures that assist this function are, naturally, selected for, and those that don't are selected against.

But, it's not a hard-and-fast rule. It's a messy, haphazard process. It will naturally trend toward certain emergent properties, such as consciousness, but there is no standard for perfection.

Because the environment is constantly changing, the evolved organism should be expected to exhibit a high degree of flexibility; the ability to function reactively and make good decisions in previously unknown situations.

So, we find ourselves forced to approach new situations each day, and with each passing generation. The "world" in which we evolve is, itself, a poorly defined variable. It is impossible to construct a system that is perfectly adapted to pattern recognition, in that it will only make "correct" inferences. How do you distinguish a repetitive sound (like dripping water) from a cacophony of chaotic noise? How do you distinguish deliberate sounds, like animal calls, from dripping water? How do you distinguish sounds intending to convey one message from those conveying another?

A rigid structure would quickly break under the strain of natural selection, and a flexible structure must, of necessity, make mistakes. Between the two, the flexible structure is much more adaptive, even with its flaws.

I mean, how would inventing patterns that aren't there help to adapt and survive?
How would imagining that the the stars look like a big dipper help us to survive?

But my original point is, and it is hard to convey so please be patient with me, is this:

I agree that there is not a big dipper in the sky, literally. However, the fact that to some it looks like that, or, a face on the moon, is a cognitive event that phenomenologically speaking, is true subjectively (not objectively or literally). By making connections and recognizing patterns (or imagining them) one can derive new and significant cognitions. If creating cognitive shifts is attractive to you, this is a good method. But I feel that it is important to be grounded in reality when attempting to do this, which is why I appreciate this thread, in order to iron out my technique. For example, there is no inherent pattern or reality when reading tea leaves, but the associations has a way of accessing the subconscious and bringing information to light. Our minds came from nature and exist in nature and in a way pattern recognition may guide nature as a sort of blueprint, or has a potential to. By energy flowing in the path of least resistance. Surely it helps to have an idea of what to do before you try to do it, and if you percieve a pattern (or imagine) and you see what outcome would happen according to that pattern, there will be less resistance for that outcome to occur when following said pattern.

I feel that I am communicating my point very clumsily and will likely be misunderstood, but that is ok.

Let me see if I can come up with a decent example to better illustrate my point...

I work with people who have autism, I am basically a caregiver. One person I work with is nonverbal and doesn't communicate preferences. If I take him out to eat and I order something he doesn't like he will throw it on the ground, which is very embarrassing. I had a dream that he threw a corn on the cob at me and it hit me in the head. The next day I took him out to the buffet restaurant and they had corn on the cob, so I didn't get it for him (and an interesting thing was that I didn't know that his mother was going to schedule me to take him to a restaurant that day, coincidence?). Now, I don't think that I was being superstitious but it felt logical not to get him the corn on the cob. Perhaps on a quantum level it may have been more likely that he would've thrown that corn than he wouldn't have, I don't know. And ultimately, I won't ever know, we never CAN know, but, if we listen to these things it encourages connections between subconscious mind and conscious mind and dreaming and waking life. And from my experience, when we cultivate these connections and integrate dreaming and waking life we can be guided more and more and some very interesting things happen.

Let me say, first of all, that I have tremendous respect for the work you do. I hope it is as rewarding as I am sure it must be difficult.

I'm not sure if you communicated your ideas "clumsily," or not. They might just be difficult to convey. Also, I'm not sure exactly what your ideas are, but I could guess at a vague shape of those ideas.

Let me discuss the dream, first. Was it a coincidence that you dreamed of him throwing a corn cob at a restaurant the day before you took him to one? Maybe, maybe not.

In this case, there are many possible explanations--which are all perfectly plausible--for how it might NOT be merely a coincidence. Perhaps there had been some subtle clues that his mother wanted him to go there, but you only noticed them subconsciously. Perhaps she out-and-out told you about it, but you forgot. Perhaps (for all I know) going to a restaurant is fairly common for the two of you, and even though you didn't know it would happen on this particular day, it was a distinct possibility.

On the other hand, the idea that it WAS merely a coincidence is also very plausible. After all, restaurants are a common feature of waking life for most of us, and the possibility of being publicly embarrassed by your charge is something I imagine you cope with frequently. That a dream occurred which featured these things is not at all unusual.

Now, I don't know this for a fact, but I don't believe that your dream was metaphysically prophetic. It may have been prophetic in a more mundane sense. For example, let me make a prediction right now that the Colts and the Saints will meet at the Super Bowl. This is a mundane prediction, in that I am basing it only on my knowledge of the game itself, current statistics, and the opinions I draw from those things. No supernatural element involved, in other words, and of course my prediction may be wrong. There are a lot of variables at work.

From my point of view, although it seems you have been straightforward in your description of events, (I don't detect any signs that your story is selectively edited, or otherwise told in a deceptive manner,) I still don't know the subtleties of your work, or your relationship with this patient. It might have been that your subconscious had specific reasons, based on your previous encounters with him, to expect he would react this way to corn-on-the-cob.

What I certainly don't believe is that your dream influenced his attitudes about food. Undeniably, it influenced your behavior (and I don't blame you) but, as you pointed out, we will never know the truth of how he feels about corn-on-the-cob.



I want to give another example, and let me be clear that I am not accusing you of any specific error in perception, here. Rather, I'm just trying to illustrate a larger point about coincidences.

In the past, I was in a debate with a Creationist, and he used as an argument the fact that the moon's size and distance from the Earth make it perfectly suited to block the sun during an eclipse, and that this fact suggested that the world was designed.

I responded by asking him to think of all of the other coincidences that might have appeared, but didn't, which would have been equally impressive. What if, for example, the North and South hemispheres had had the same surface area of land, within a margin of a hundred square miles? Or what if the five tallest mountains on Earth were all exactly the same height? Or what if every major landmass has similar deposits (in terms of quantity) of fresh water, precious metals, and fossil fuels? Or what if all human societies that met after extended separation were at comparable levels of technological progress when they met?

There are thousands and thousands of such coincidences we could name that did not happen. The likelihood of a particular anomaly appearing can seem very impressive after-the-fact, but this ignores the much higher likelihood of any random unspecified anomaly appearing.

I think this principle can be applied to your dream.

Originally Posted by Dannon Oneironaut

I mean, how would inventing patterns that aren't there help to adapt and survive?
How would imagining that the the stars look like a big dipper help us to survive?

In and of themselves, they don't. To borrow terminology from the field of software, these are bugs, not features. But, it is important to realize that they are inevitable; exactly the sorts of bugs we would expect to see in evolved (as opposed to designed) brains.

Your brain is coded with all sorts of very flexible, loose logarithms that depend on recognizing patterns.

Let's look at two related behaviors with which our hominid ancestors would have spent a lot of time coping; tracking prey and avoiding predators.

Both of these depend on recognizing environmental factors that suggest the recent presence of distinct animal types. For example, it is advantageous for me to have brain architectures in place that will allow me to recognize the path a mammoth traveled to get water, or the place were a dire wolf slept.

It is inefficient, and therefore maladaptive, for me to have separate algorithms in place to recognize these signs. For one thing, it is an inefficient use of brain space and cognitive energy, but for another, it is inflexible. What if I move to an area where my prey is wild boar, instead of mammoth, and my chief predator is the saber-tooth, rather than the dire wolf?

Clearly, it is more advantageous for me to have a generalized pattern recognition system that can be applied to all sorts of animal signs, such as droppings, fur traces, footprints, tail-marks, and plant destruction.

Now, I also have to cope with other phenomena, such as changing seasons, the passage of night into day, weather patterns, and dangerous non-predator animals such as poisonous insects, arachnids, and reptiles.

Then, there are radically different approaches to prey, such as trapping and fishing as opposed to hunting.

All of these separate issues require the recognition of patterns to be resolved, and again, it would be inefficient, as well as inflexible, to have separate algorithms for separate patterns.

So, we have a very vague, generalized ability to recognize patterns. And, we would expect errors from such a system, just like the errors we have now. You will, occasionally, think you see a pattern where actually there is none. Or, you will correctly identify the presence of a pattern, but misapprehend its precise nature.

Look at face recognition. It is highly advantageous for us to recognize faces, as they are a major tool of communication both within our species, and even between species. (You can have effective two-way communication with many different animal species through facial expression. Think about the last pet you had, assuming it was a mammalian predator species, like yourself, a dog, or a cat.) Also, faces, both human and non-human, are ubiquitous in our environment, and responding correctly is vitally important.

So, your brain has shortcuts that allow it to make the most likely-to-be-correct response as quickly as possible. As a result, we immediately recognize the presence of faces even in coincidental arrangements that happen to resemble the typical face paradigm.

As an example of how this produces cognitive errors, think of the last time you heard of some major religious figure being seen in a mundane object, like Jesus in a pastry, or Mary in a grilled cheese sandwich. These cognitive tendencies are so strong, that many people will incorporate them into a worldview and, in the case of these religious examples, believe their perception represents material reality.

RC Lefty,
I am not taking a philosophical position one way or another on the nature of these coincidences being real or precognitive in objective reality. That isn't what interests me, because based on the facts one could believe anything one wants to and that doesn't make a difference. My interest is in the cognitive aspects and subjective ways that coincidence affects consciousness, if we let it.

For example, in India they say that the world is a dream. Sure, many people probably believe that philosophically. But they are missing the point. When the rishis of India said that the world is an illusion or dream they didn't say it as a philosophy to be converted to or to believe. They meant it as a technique for meditation and lucid dreaming. It probably was the first lucid dream technique. If one looks at the world as if it is a dream, that helps attain lucidity in dreams, whether or not the world is really an illusion or not.

Likewise, coincidences can be used as a technique as well, regardless of what the objective reality is, which, like I said, we won't know, regarding the situation I posted above.

But just to respond, no the mother didn't plant any subconscious indications that I would be taking him out for lunch, but yes, it is a fairly regular thing. I don't know how he would react to corn, but I know how he reacts to rolls and donuts. Sure, there can be logical explanations, but these are for the purpose of explaining away the coincidence. There are explanations to support the fact that it is a coincidence also, but like I said, I am not interested in believing one way or another. It is not about belief in what reality is. Reality is what reality is no matter what we believe. I try not to have beliefs, but to use opportunites as subjective techniques.

Well, I do often find myself ruminating on the relationship between my waking and dreaming lives, but I do it in a reality-first way.

That is to say, I look at how my dreams exhibit echoes of prior waking experiences or thoughts. To me, it would be very difficult to establish a helpful relationship between dreams and later waking periods.

But, it's worked very well for me. Very often lucid dreams will be triggered by a feeling that is similar to deja vu, but of a subtly different quality, in which I am having an experience that is a dreamed response to a waking thought or experience.

I suppose if I had to characterize it, I would say the whereas deja vu is the sensation you are doing something you have done before, this feeling is more that you are doing the sequel to something you have done before. Hopefully, you will know what I mean by that, because it would be difficult to explain better.

I have a hard time understanding what useful patterns you have found in what I would call dream-first coincidences (in which a dream seems to presage real life events, as contrasted from the reality-first dynamic I described above. Especially since you seem to agree with me that these probably don't represent any metaphysical reality, I guess I'm just not understanding what it is you get from them.

PS: The post about cognitive evolution was intended to directly address your question. Did it succeed? Either way, I would also be curious to hear your thoughts about it.

Originally Posted by RCLefty

For example, let me make a prediction right now that the Colts and the Saints will meet at the Super Bowl.

I guess that gives me a 100 percent accuracy rate on my predictions. Sylvia Brown, eat your chain-smoking heart out.

Well, I also do the waking-life first- dream second thing that you are talking about RCLefty. I understand what you mean. I think that this is aa more obvious approach. But I don't call it reality first. When we are discussing 'reality' what is it that we mean by reality? Are we talking about the physical world of nature? Are we talking about a higher spiritual order? Are we talking about what we can percieve through our senses? You see, these are all philosophical concepts, and reality is not a concept. Reality is.... and we can't give it a name. So the methods I am talking about dealing with coincidences are not saying anything about what I may think reality is or isn't. I use a phenomenological approach. If it works, then I use it.

Originally Posted by RCLefty

I have a hard time understanding what useful patterns you have found in what I would call dream-first coincidences (in which a dream seems to presage real life events, as contrasted from the reality-first dynamic I described above. Especially since you seem to agree with me that these probably don't represent any metaphysical reality, I guess I'm just not understanding what it is you get from them.

Well, the example of the dream of the corn on the cob is an example, but not such a dramatic one. A better one might be the one I think I related earlier in this thread where I dreamed I was in love with a girl that I had never seen before at a coffee shop and I was sitting on a bench where I never had sat before, so I went down there the next day and sat on that bench and she pulled up in her car and walked right over to me and introduced herself. That was a dream first-waking life next scenario. And this came at a time when I was practicing this method a lot. There were many small dream first incidents during this time. Like when I dreamed of a pyramid of high-pressure fire. The next day I see the same pyramid of fire in a kiln at a pottery demonstration. These are useful for me to by arousing the deja vu and me making the connection to prior dreams, thus making me do a reality-check. I feel that connections are being made in my brain or mind between conscious and subconscious. And I believe that acknowledging these small coincidences and keeping an eye for them led up the big one that blew my mind. I was so stunned that I couldn't even talk to the girl.

Originally Posted by RCLefty

The post about cognitive evolution was intended to directly address your question. Did it succeed? Either way, I would also be curious to hear your thoughts about it.

Are you referring to people seeing the virgin mary or jesus in a tortilla or on condensation on a window?

If so, I do see what you mean. You can see what you want anywhere. And you can see things from your dreams anywhere also. That is how it works. But instead of taking it as a sign from some 'outer' spiritual thing communicating something to you, take it as a dream-bridge or a connection between your subconscious and your conscious mind. Dreams are subconscious unless they are lucid, then they are conscious. Dreams have messages in them from the subconscious. By making the subconscious conscious we are expanding our knowledge of ourself and our world. Wouldn't it be great if we could find messages from our subconscious in the world around us? I don't think that this is metaphysical, I think it is psychological, as most mysticism and esoteric practices are, such as meditation etc.

I don't know the nature of reality. All I know is what I experience. When something I dream about happens in waking life later, it can be either
1. a coincidence
2. a cognitive projection (which is what it seems to be most of the time)
3. a prophetic experience

Now, this presents a problem to people who have made up their minds that they believe reality is materialistic. If I believe that matter comes from consciousness, that is a belief in a philosophy based on an assumption. If I believe that consciousness comes from matter (ie. the brain) that is a belief in a philosophy based on an assumption. For me, I don't know, so I try not to be too philosophical, or I use philosophies as techniques without belonging to them. For example, I mostly use Tibetan Buddhist methods, but I don't belong to Buddhism, Buddhism belongs to me. This subtle difference is important. I can quickly use the materialist philosophy in order to check myself and strengthen my rationality. At the same time, I don't put too much importance on rationality because that too is a philosophy, and the most beautiful things in this Universe are irrational. And Buddhism works well for me because it is so rational it is almost scientific. Buddhism has been called the science of the mind.