We have all had experiences with what we call coincidence.
We’ve picked up the phone to call someone only to discover they
are already on the line, we’ve heard a word we have never heard
before only to hear it yet again within 24 hours, we’ve run into
someone we know in the middle of a huge crowd while half way
across the country (someplace like Disneyland, a shopping mall
or airport) or even something as simple as having spaghetti for
lunch only to discover that we are going to end up also having
spaghetti for supper that very same day.
We think of coincidence as those things that happen that we
just don’t expect because the chance of them happening is very
low. Of course just because something has a low chance of
occurring doesn’t make it a coincidence if it happens. For
example we know the odds of being dealt a Royal Flush in a 5-
Card Stud Poker game is exceedingly low, but if it happens we
would not necessarily think it is a coincidence. However, if
two or more people in the same hand are dealt a Royal Flush we
would consider it either an amazing coincidence or else someone
is “stacking the deck.” The chance of being dealt a Royal Flush
in 5-Card Stud Poker is 1 in 649,739. However, the chance of
two people being dealt a Royal Flush in the same hand is less
than 1 in 420,000,000,000 (420 billion).
Even though there are incredible odds against something
happening this does not mean that it cannot happen at the very
next opportunity. This is why someone can put only $1 into a
slot machine and win millions even though the odds against doing
this are stupendous. That is because the odds against something
happening really tell us nothing about “when” the unexpected
will happen, just how often we might expect it to happen. Of
course then there are the coincidences where the odds can not
even be calculated.
In 1898, Futility by Morgan Robertson was published. This
was the story of a 40,000 horsepower 800 foot long ship named
the Titan, the largest afloat, crashing into an iceberg in April
in the north Atlantic. The Titan didn’t have enough lifeboats
for its passengers and sunk with great loss of life. Sound
familiar? It should, but the story was written 14 years before
the 45,000 horsepower 880 foot Titanic crashed into an iceberg
in the North Atlantic on April 14, 1912.
Robertson later wrote a book, Beyond the Spectrum, which
described a future war fought with aircraft that carried “sun
bombs.” Incredibly powerful, one bomb could destroy a city,
erupting in a flash of light that blinds all who look at it. The
war begins in December, started by the Japanese with a sneak
attack on Hawaii. When did he write about something that sounds
like World War II? It was 1914, twenty seven years before the
fact.
We could call these coincidences, but should we? Clearly
they seem prophetic, and such things actually happen all the
time. On March 4, 2001 a pilot show for a short running
television series aired (The Lone Gunmen). In the pilot episode
there are people with an agenda that take control of a domestic
airliner with the objective of crashing it into the World Trade
Center. The scenes of an airliner heading for the World Trade
Center twin towers are rather eerie. Of course, TV being what
it is, the heroes narrowly avert the disaster. Six months later
(9/11) the reality of airliners hitting the WTC towers was not
averted.
Many Earth cultures, including the Mayans and the
Australian Aborigines, believe history is cyclic rather than
linear. They believe that the world lives and dies and lives
again, a little different every time but always following the
same general historical sequence of events. Sometimes this is
summed up by saying that all of this has happened before, and
all of this will happen again. The idea being that, rather than
foretelling the future with these seemingly coincidental
stories, what is happening is somehow recalling the past in some
previous cycle of history.
Strangely enough there are theoretical physicists today who
also subscribe to this idea. They are beginning to think that
the 4-dimensional universe we perceive is the result of the
cyclic collision of branes in a 10-dimensional universe. This
results in the creation, expansion, eventual collapse and
rebirth of the 4-dimensional universe over and over and over
again. What is unknown is how similar, if not identical, each
succeeding 4 dimensional universe may be to its predecessor.
A similar concept involves considering that from some
extra-dimensional perspective everything past, present and
future actually exists simultaneously. If so one might under
certain circumstances literally “recall” the future. If this is
true then one might answer the yet-to-ring telephone, place the
dollar in the yet-to-pay-off-a-jackpot slot machine, or even
write the story of a yet-to-happen tragedy.
Another possibility that could make coincidence a
nonsensical concept is that everything that makes up reality
just might be consciously related. That is, everything we see,
touch, taste, smell, hear and feel is connected to every other
part of reality by some conscious cause that operates
independent of the restrictions of time. If this is true then
that which makes up our brain and body can know that the phone
will ring because it is connected to the person who is making
the call. We could sense that the slot machine will pay off
because the consciousness of the universe has decided to let it
pay off and simply allows us to know what is coming.
Foreshadowing of future events could then happen because the
consciousness of the universe knows what it is planning.
If any of these alternatives are true then coincidence
(i.e., the amazing chance occurrence of a low probability
combination of events) becomes meaningless. Why? Because being
in the right place at the right time is not necessarily a matter
of chance, putting the dollar in the right slot machine is not
necessarily a matter of chance, picking up the phone that hasn’t
rung yet is not necessarily a matter of chance, running into
someone you know half way across the country in a crowd is not
necessarily a matter of chance and that which we consider
coincidence really is only the illusion of coincidence.
So perhaps when we think an amazing coincidence has
happened we may be sensing a future event that already exists in
a higher dimensional space, we may be recalling the echoes of a
previous cycle of the universe or the ultimate consciousness of
the universe might be simply letting us know about or moving us
to do the very thing we need to do to allow the seeming
coincidence to take place. If this is so, then how is it
possible to preserve the illusion of coincidence?
The only thing necessary to preserve the illusion of
coincidence is for seemingly “coincidental” events to not happen
so often as to flaunt any deviation from being rare events.
That is, only rarely can a book seemingly foretell a future
event, only rarely can a slot machine pay off to provide money
that is needed, only rarely can you pick up a phone to find the
person you are calling is already there. However, the fact that
these happen rarely doesn’t mean that they are obeying any laws
of probability. In fact it is impossible to tell simply because
no one compiles such events against the number of opportunities
in order to determine whether such instances are defying chance
occurrence.
On a personal note, numerous life and death “coincidences”
have occurred in my past. In one case I jokingly tell people
that I have had a car accident that started in Arizona where I
then slid through New Mexico and wound up in Colorado.
One November night in the late 70’s I was the passenger in
a Pinto station wagon that hit a patch of black ice as we topped
a small rise right near the four corners area of Arizona, New
Mexico, Colorado and Utah. Seeing headlights on our side of the
road the driver tried to stop and suddenly we were watching
helplessly as the car was sliding sideways down the road. As we
nosed into the snow bank at the side of the road the car rolled
completely over and continued sliding down the road as we
eventually backed into the snow bank on the opposite side of the
road and came to a stop. Everyone was unharmed but the car was
totaled. As we got out I spotted something in the middle of the
road. It was my 30 pound tool box that had been in the back of
the station wagon. It was sitting upright in the middle of the
road without a scratch on it. How did it get out of the car?
As the car rolled it apparently had passed right between my head
and to door post and went through the window right beside me
without even touching me. Coincidence?
On another occasion I was conducting some tests of
electrical equipment at work only to find my self being
electrocuted. In one hand I had hold of a grounded cable and
in the other hand I had hold of a cable connected to 120 volts
AC. This happened because of a fault in a piece of equipment
that had strangely not caused a fuse to blow. For what it’s
worth, being electrocuted doesn’t exactly hurt. Both of my arms
were vibrating and completely out of my control so that I had no
ability to release the cables. All I could manage to do was
yell, take about two steps back and fall backward on the ground.
Unfortunately the cables came with me so I was still being
electrocuted and helpless. Just when everything seemed hopeless
the power suddenly cut off. Someone in the lab saw what was
happening and quickly found just the right plug to pull to cut
the power that was reaching me. I had been electrocuted from
arm to arm for eight seconds but suffered no injury other than a
few sore muscles. There had been no reason for this person to
be in the lab at the time, nor was there any reason for him to
know exactly which plug to pull. Coincidence?
I’m one of those people who don’t take much time to get
going when a traffic light changes from red to green. In fact I
tend to be a little impatient with people who always seem to
have their head in the glove box when the light changes to
green. However, on one occasion, for no reason, when a traffic
light changed from red to green I just sat there for a good two
seconds (just about enough time to normally get me into the
middle of the intersection). The intersection was a blind one
where you couldn’t really see what was coming on the cross
street. As I sat there at the green light I watched an 18
wheeler blaze through the red light at about 45 miles per hour.
If I had gone the car would have been right in front of him.
Why did I wait? Coincidence?
On May 24, 1979 three people I was working with and I were
returning from New York to Phoenix via Chicago O’Hare airport.
We had missed our scheduled connection at O’Hare and managed to
wangle standby seats on a later flight, a DC-10. We even got to
sit in the first class section which was pretty nice. As the
flight progressed across country I listened to the air traffic
channel on the entertainment headphones. I noted that night
that we dodged thunderstorms all the way across the country and
could see the lightening first on one side and then the other
during the flight. We ultimately arrived home that night and
the next morning we went into work only to find that a DC-10 had
crashed at O’Hare that morning (May 25th). Later in the day we
found that the aircraft we had flown the night before had
traveled back to O’Hare and was the very aircraft that crashed
on its next take-off because of a damaged engine pylon that
allowed an engine to break loose. Turbulence from one of those
thunderstorms we dodged the night before could just as easily
have broken that engine loose a few hours earlier while we had
been on board. Coincidence?
So often it is true that “you don’t know why”
coincidental events take place, but maybe we really should ask
that question more often rather than just chalking things up to
random chance.
