Episode 158 – Synchronicity, Serendipity, Meaningful Coincidence w/ Dr. Bernard Beitman

my guest for tonight is dr. Bernard bite man dr. Brightman is a psychiatrist author and researcher he is widely regarded as the first psychiatrist since Carl Jung to systemize the study of coincidences and add scientific rigor to this term synchronicity he developed the

first valid scale to measure point coincidence sensitivity dr. Bernard has written several books one of which received two national awards he's internationally known for his research in panic disorder he attended Yale Medical School and completed his

residency at the University of Stanford dr. Bernard it's such a pleasure to have you on the program sir welcome to hxp thank you very much the Savior thank you very much so dr. Bernard I mean I love this book you know I've heard so much about

synchronicities especially in the last you know several years or so I think this has become more of a meme you know as it were but I know the term comes from Carl Jung Carl Jung termed this phrase so if you would you know if you would just give us a little bit of a

background of how you got into this work because you're a psychiatrist you're a practicing psychiatrist and and also the definition of synchronicity for any anyone that doesn't know what that means please it's an important question what we mean by several of the terms first of

all we can start with the word coincidence what do we mean by the word coincidence becomes our first question and what we're studying is meaningful coincidences ones that somehow seem to have some meaning to the purpose to the person who is experiencing them the

there's three to other words or really three other words to pay attention to synchronicity serendipity and the lesser known word called see reality well go I'll go through all of those because I I'm glad you start with how we define these because that's where we should

start I'm a coincidence by itself a remarkable concurrence of events without apparent causal connection in other words there might be a cause but it is not apparent and that's that's a kind of a teasing definition of the word there there are

other ways people use the term sometimes they they add they add adjectives that make a difference in the way the person thinks about it but the adjectives can be coincidental mere only pure true and just and these suggest that the coincidence should be disregarded

remember the dictionary definition says we don't know what the cause is no apparent cause implying that there might be and I have been drawn by wondering well what might have made them happen and for those that we want to pay attention to and suggest there might be

something to them we call them meaningful remarkable and amazing and those adjectives draw our attention to them from from the word coincidence comes some come funny phrases there are no coincidences say some people sure and what does that mean I mean it's a kind

of a a tantalizing phrase that's almost as ambiguous as the definition I read about whether there's a cause or not when you say there are no coincidences you may mean one you may mean that you know the cause again remember the definition said no apparent cause so now

you know the cause because you can say there are no coincidences when you sweat you know the cause there are no coincidences and what are the two major beliefs about cause of coincidence Savior well one is God and that's the most popular one because a lot of people like to say

quote Einstein but I'm not sure that was who started it coincidences are God's Way of remaining anonymous when you when you when you look at that phrase coincidences are God's Way of remaining anonymous God is no longer anonymous right and I mean you

could even say that God speaks in synchronicity right people say that God is speaking to you through coincidences the Bible both the Old Testament and the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament have lots of coincidences in them and so do the world's major religions have lots of

coincidences in them they are part of religious lore so God is often invoked as having something to do with making them happen if you believe in God God is the final cause and there is no argument about the cause because God in the way this way of thinking is the final cause

and that may be I think there are lots of questions for us to answer about the nature of reality and some of them are like why are we here what's going on around here how did we get here what is my purpose in life why are human beings around you

well coincidences give us clues to all of those once you say God does it all it stops there but I am interested in the variables that get to that final cause if that's where it is because there are many variables that influence what what is I call coincidentally that is the

predisposition to experience coincidences now let's go back to the original question of like what do we mean by these terms meaningful coincidence and the other the other words that I bring in and there are four words that coincidentally I'll be thank you I'll

begin with an S and end in an ity for key words revolving around meaningful coincidences all beginning with an S and ending with an ity the first one is synchronicity right the second is serendipity third is see reality that's from Paul camera or 1919 okay and the

fourth is a word I made up called simulpast II ah okay and words I'm opacity is based on the experience of many people happened to me once and that's got me started and in this or really going in coincidences Sam opacity refers to the experience of the pain of

a loved one at a distance hmm hmm okay so go ahead so someone so someone that you love or care about is going through some sort of emotional trauma and you for some unknown reason you feel it you pick up on it it's like you're your antenna is ringing and and you you call

you reach out to them and you confirm that there is Aires in fact something going on right right and you can feel it in lots of different ways in your body is mostly where simulpast he comes but you can also feel it in your mind you may be experiencing as I did the pain of

the loved one that the loved one is experiencing what happened to me was that I was standing over a sink in San Francisco on Hayes Street in the Fillmore district if you know San Francisco in an old Victorian at the kitchen sink and I was choking uncontrollably and it was 11

p.m. on February 26 1972 Oh No and and 1971 and I couldn't stop something was in my throat I couldn't stop I couldn't stop I I co-wrote a song about this called the Carl was choking on his was choking on his own blood as the title which is what happened because my father 3,000

miles away at 2 a.m. in Wilmington Delaware was choking on his own blood and dying oh my god that's the kind of thing that gets one's attention yeah my brother called me the next day and told me and and it turned out the next day was February 27th which also happened to

be my birthday Wow it's a it's a it's a sort of thing that you want to look into if you're curious like I was and it stayed with me all these years and was one of the drivers for writing the book connecting with coincidence it's it's one of the drivers that keeps me

interested in all this trying to understand how these things happen yeah I mean I think it's I think it's a great line of you know questioning and thought and my condolences you know but it woke you up to this this notion that things are connected people are

connected perhaps everything is connected perhaps you know God and I refer to God as a sort of intelligence I don't view God as this person in the sky that's judging you know what we're doing it's more of I don't I don't know it's more of the moment here now the

space between me and you you you know and me speaking right now God is everything right so when we when we sort of open our eyes to the reality in front of us it's almost like a feedback loop of information that you can use as you said to gain clues

about your life about which choices to make about which directions to go and it's amazing how those kind of play out and you know it's it's really mysterious and that's that's why I think it's so amazing that you've written this book and sort of followed in the path of Carl

Jung I don't think anyone else has has taken this path so I'm really glad that you you know I've done this but tell us more um you know so when you know you talk it let's move into love you talk about love it's it's the first chapter in your book right romance let's

say that you encounter someone that you feel a mysterious connection to you're just magnetically pulled towards this person you don't know why you don't know why and you know in the book you have several different examples I think I think there's one please forgive me if I

butcher this but I think in in one of the examples there's a guy he doesn't know why and he just goes up to this woman and he says I think I might know you please give me your number she does and they end up you know falling in love how does it work I mean why why do we

feel connected to certain people why do we feel this magnetic resonance to people maybe you know the the musical whole musical South Pacific you don't well there's a song in there that goes some enchanted evening you will see a stranger you will see a stranger across

a crowded room and somehow you'll know even then that's the kind of thing that happens with people why it happens is it becomes a mystery in itself that you recognize it becomes what's so important that there is someone there that you need to be with

the story you might have been talking about was a woman a man was in the airport and saw a woman walking by him and somehow he asked her just like that just like the song and they stayed married for 20 years but they didn't stay married forever they

were in their lives together help each other a lot and that was that there that they they each went on their separate ways and this this challenges the notion of like we're meant to be that and we're meant to be means forever forever is a long long time and and people hold on to

what happened as something that means they have to keep going and it really isn't the case anymore particularly as people live longer but why it happens how they're brought together I mean I love the story of some of of a guy riding around on his motorcycle and I'm

you know in a Caribbean island he was bored with all the jobs he was doing in a hotel were a lot of women liked him but he didn't like them and he just went for a motorcycle ride in there and the beach was a woman all by herself and he rode up there in blah blah you know

that's how it happened I don't know the mechanics of it and people talk about past lives and stuff I I think it's a worthy of a scientific experiment because first we have to establish that this happens and the song I sang and all the stories suggest yes it definitely

happens and the problem is what do we do with it once it happens right right and I've had stories of people just relying on the coincidences between them to keep them together but that ain't gonna work baby that ain't gonna be the way it's gonna

happen you got then do if any of our listeners are married you know it's work you got it you got a you got to learn something called tolerance each other and you got to learn something like when she says recess we gotta talk honey you can't run away you've you've gotta

talk things out and these people I'm talking about lasted for ten years maybe which is pretty good but they never bothered to do the things I just mentioned you know it's it's amazing I think I think that's really important I think you nailed it

you know these coincidences these synchronicities can bring us attract these specific people into our lives and great perhaps they create this environment in which these connections happen but you know at the end of the day there's this old Buddhist you know

quote before enlightenment chop wood carry water after enlightenment chop wood carry water same exact thing when you you know it's not like this magical journey that happens when you when you find you know say you know what's your soulmate or the love of your life you're

going to have to do that work chop wood and carry water perhaps even together you know maybe well maybe one of you chopping wood if you don't carry water hopefully that's gonna have to happen either way right so something else that you mentioned in the book is that sometimes

these types of coincidences line up and these people enter your life for a specific purpose and then they exit your life right why does that take place well when you ask why why do birds saying so sweet and lovers await the break of day I mean why do people fall

in love you want we don't know why why is one of those why is the sky blue questions why is it tough one but I think it's an important question and I want to try to answer it because it has to do with why are we here Xavier why are you here

what is your purpose on being in this planet on this planet what is my purpose mine is I got it now I got an established coincidence study so I'm really glad that you just invited me be on the show because that's my job I've got to get coincident studies going in a

way that brings people together I understand this stuff these synchronicities these serendipities try to be able to figure out how they work and how you can use them that's my job your job includes what you're doing now with your with this this show so much

appreciate being on it and then hearing your questions when you ask why are people brought into your lives I have a radio show myself called connecting with coincidence and this morning when I was interviewing someone it happened again that she

teaches me things about myself she teaches me things about how the world works and she made it clear to me today for example that anger if you get angry look at the possibility there has been a boundary violation in you with my the other person and think of intuition as

something that's there to help you and these were clarifications to me that I could use at this time and this happens to me with people on the radio show what happens with some of my patients where they teach me things that I need to know at this time I'm a little bit of a

little bit of them weirdo in a lot of ways but maybe I'm not so weird and that's what I want to hear it from you is that I think there's there is this earth University that we are here to learn about this reality and our place in it so when people come into our lives

my view is they're here to help you learn become more spiritually and psychologically developed what do you think yeah yeah yeah I'm so glad that you asked you know you put that question forward to me because you know I I really do sit with the material you know

when when a guest comes on to the show I really do my best to absorb as much of it as I can night I sit and I'll cycle sort of questions in my mind and you know your while I was reading your book this idea came into my head and I thought about this before but it was so

clear in this moment you know in this meditation that I was doing was so clear the way I saw it was that you know perhaps we're in a computer perhaps this is a simulation you know perhaps there's different programs that are running and perhaps

you know this tunnel of light that we see if perhaps that's just exiting the so called matrix I mean you even use that word the matrix you could you could say matrix is you know matrix is connecting different events together but you know I I agree I

think we are this is a place that we come to learn to experience the human experience and and I think you know some people enter our lives for sure for to teach us different things so that we can learn so that we can grow so that we can evolve you get into in the book you get

into you know I am hoping and anticipating and believing and seeing that our conversation is going to help each other in this psychological and spiritual development and one of the ways I just heard that happening is you talking about the simulation and one one

because there are different words for it I use the term psycho sphere our mental atmosphere which we can come back to it's a it's a very dynamic thing but the that coincidences are clues to how that simulation works mmm they're clues to how the simulation work

because there is something going on and we don't know what it is do you mr.

Jones we don't know what it is and I am curious and you are curious and our listeners are curious we want to know what's happening and one way to think about that there is a simulation or there is a psycho sphere our mental atmosphere and these coincidences are

hints about how the things work okay I mean there's there's so many different things that I want to ask you right now but let me try I'll do my best to sort of synthesize you know and and wrap that up as much as I can okay so so in the book you talk about generating

these synchronicities or coincidences do you think that and you mentioned that if you if you alter your pattern of doing things like yeah let's say you're you're on a schedule you know 9:00 to 5:00 sort of schedule where you do everything the same way

every single day there was a project that I was involved with for a short time where we were using a quantum number generator - yeah - to assign geolocation data to certain points - to exhibit exactly that to create exactly that event to bring you out of your

everyday sort of you know operation so why why do you think that is do you think you run that by me again because I didn't quite following it because I love that this is such an important question you're asking if you've got a computer model to model this I think that's

really groovy okay okay so um have you heard of the global consciousness project dr. Roger Nelson okay perfect I've had him on the show he he basically runs this quantum computer and it basically just spits out numbers you know just random numbers and it got me a

quote-unquote random and so some friends and I we coated this sort of bot this robot that was that would connect you know it would pull a string from that quantum number generator and then apply that to a latitude and longitude on Google Maps right and we were we were

trying to experiment with this but for me it was it was actually sort of an exercise in psychosis because it it makes you feel like you know every how can we determine what is meaningful and what isn't you know how can we determine how can we say like if we think

everything has meaning then where is the line where is the blue I mean there's some blur there right I mean does that make sense well yes I have been I've been able to try to tease apart meaning of the word meaning in meaningful coincidence it's very

important because the term meaning and meaningful is it's crucial to the way young thought about how coincidences are created but I never saw how he defined meaning because it has so many different meanings I mean it's fun to do that there's an old book from the 1920s

called the meaning of meaning that is still impressed so what do we mean by meaning becomes an important question we can go down that but I'd like to be able to to talk about your question about being in a basic pattern or in your life and and somehow doing something to that

pattern increases coincidences now this is a correlation I've been able to make by reading a lot of stories and the correlation works something like this tear the web of quotidian reality and coincidences fly in okay here the web of kawin of quotidian of regular reality

and coincidences fly in that's an image that I'd have our listeners and you pay attention to it opens up some doors and the parrot the correlates of tearing that web of quotidian reality include need life stress life change and high emotion need life stress and high

emotion and many if not most of the coincidences that are have impact and that's one of the definitions of meaningful is its impact and some unions define synchronicity only or call something meaningful coincidence synchronicity only when and has an

effect on the person's individuation on that person's growth towards psychological and spiritual development that's a very narrow definition but some unions sting stick right to it because it's such an important part of what synchronicities do for people right

I mean that makes a lot of sense because I mean let's say you know you find something like a like a battery or something you know everyday you know but you can't figure out you know what that battery means or something you know or maybe there's there's someone that

keeps dropping a battery that's following you around or something I don't know no no definitely not talking about spirals following her around okay so so one thing that I can for sure say that happens to me all the time is you know I will see certain numbers you know

in a pattern like 333 or 1111 I think this has become a phenomenon where you know people they see this and they have started to ascribe meaning to this 11:11 sort of it's become a meme and you know for me this is amazing dr. Bernard like without you no exaggeration I really

truly mean this every time there is some sort of turbulent event in my life before that happens before that occurs I will see the number 666 just every time I have no I have no predilection towards the number 666 like I'm not enemies with the number 666

I get you know I get the idea you know of all the spatial dimensions I've studied the Kabbalah I get it so you know I I'm not there's no there's no number racism happening with me in the number 666 but when I see that number and there something will go down

you know so I'm wondering you know what you think you know about this and sometimes and with other numbers I started to I started to you know for a long time before I even really started to discover this work I was always looking for different patterns I think

our brains are connecting you know dots wherever those right so you know I would read like license plates and stuff like that and see if you know I could connect some dots just as a game yeah as a thought experiment so you know I'm sorry twice I call it

exercise exercise okay so you know what do you think about this the brain as a pattern recognizer is so crucial and some people love patterns love finding patterns and you're one of them and I'm one of them I like finding patterns it's fun and that number thing you were doing

is fun to do because it does sharpen your ability to do it in other ways the number one has been a conundrum for me for a long time I had the number 23 which is not an uncommon happy number for people for quite a while it was my football jersey my at 32 was my to my

home address and a lot of other places that 23 and 32 were and five were around for me they made a movie about it yeah they did they did and that that I think there's something to it but there are so many numbers around like on license plates there are so many numbers on and

the media and in newspapers that you can find numbers and you know a stop clock is Right twice a day there there are you're gonna run it I just I had a little nap today and I had there I got up it was it was 444 and I I laugh at those those are funny when they

happen but when you describe 666 as a prodrome to some weird thing happening I pay attention to that those are the ones I look for where somebody who is a good observer pays attention to the correlation between the appearance of the number and something else that's a

that's becomes a correlation that is a signal for you that you got to start paying attention because something is about to happen and that's really cool that you do that right right so okay so I mean this leads me back I don't want to jump too far ahead here

but I do want to move forward a little bit but you know this this leads me back to this idea that we're in a video game this is you know like you you talk about money let's talk about money you know you talk about timely money in your book and I love

this you know and you called them you call them money packs right so it's kind of like an airdrop like where you know maybe you're short on rent that month by two hundred and forty six dollars and whatever the number is and somehow mysteriously you know somehow it

almost never fails it's really strange independent of belief it doesn't matter what you think about this this will happen no matter what so you know I'm just what is going on here it does feel like you know maybe there's an airdrop happening and here's

your maybe your higher-self and it's like here you go here's exactly what you need to get by this month don't worry about it you know just just keep going I wish it were that one-to-one correlation my experience it isn't it does happen and again why it happens is

influenced by need life changes and high emotion because when they need money like the way you're describing it that's more likely to show up a psychology graduate student named Mary Kay Landon in 1990 and this is in in my book connecting with coincidence did a study

cleverly called the study of unexpected money summarized as s um study of studies unexpected money it was I'm not sure how she thought about that but that's the right title for it so she tried to figure out how it happened money that comes into your hands

surprisingly and suddenly without your doing without your earning it so listening it specifically seeking it out or otherwise expecting it it's a little different place from needing it so she wanted to see what it took for people to be correlating that with actually

getting the money and you can read about the details in in the book but if you if you stay receptive and don't push and really need it you're you're more likely to get it and we've heard this lots of times that if if you if you expect if you're relaxed about it and

you expect to get it those are the two things that help you get there positive belief is very much part of making it happen and they come through with prayers and in in other ways when you start thinking about em we know too much that imagining something helps to make

it happen but that's not enough anymore this was a study where people did things but in in life out here in the wild usually have to do something you can't just imagine like a thousand dollar bill on the ceiling of your your bedroom and look at it and it's gonna come to you

it's not gonna happen that way you're gonna have to do something but then you're talking about those times and they're in my book to where suddenly it just happens it's there but some of the stories if you look at them have to do with praying to God for the

money and what happens is the person gets an intuitive feeling of going to a file cabinet and pulling out an unopened envelope and there the money is well it was it was money that the person had received but didn't open so that person knew somehow that the money was there it

didn't just happen she she just had to like recognize what she already knew and I love these stories like this because they like to say it's some outside agency that brought them the money but no you did it yourself you could find it and I look for those

situations that I can explain by the person doing it because the trouble with the phrase there are no coincidences they either say it's random or it's God but a lot of times you and I have something to do with making it happen in fact we're important part of the players

often absolute absolutely I mean you know there there is no road map to any of this so you know we're kind of learn and in adopting as we go along but you know it's it's interesting and you talk about this in the book and the you know we've had many of the people that were

in the movie the secret and that discussed you know the law of attraction on this show and you know this is something interesting that I like to think about at times it's it's as if let's say that you're generating a certain type of frequency and you know

you even talk about it in this book as well um like attracts like it seems you know that's the way it goes here you know it's it's not that opposites attract it's it's that like attracts like so you know if you're if you're resonating at a certain frequency you

tend to attract that same frequency is that is that along the lines of your experience as well it's there along the lines of my theorizing yes okay the actually the actuality of that gets us down to what do we mean by resonating and what is it that's resonating and

where is it what is resonating with and those are the those are questions that Rupert Sheldrake has a has his way of talking about morphic resonance which is great and he's a he's a he was on mine and as I had the pleasure of talking with him in person in British Columbia

this summer and he's he's a wonderful guy to talk with the in what he knows about morphic resonance is very very interesting because he doesn't know what morphic fields are he compares them to magnetism and electromagnetism but magnetism before we knew what a magnetic

field was and he says that's what morphic fields are right now he knows they're there but he doesn't know what the structure of them is I'm getting to think about different levels of vibration I'm looking at the the strangeness of our reality when science

only knows about 5% of what the universe is made out of that the other 95% is made of dark energy and dark matter and I don't I and they don't hear people saying that it's just it seems that I hear people implying that it's always out there this

dark matter and dark energy but no it's right here right here between us right now dark energy and dark matter are in all parts of the universe and they're called dark because we don't know what they're made out of and so for us to to be guessing about what's going on around

here is would be based on not knowing what 5% of not 95% of the universe is made out of but still I go to the quantum ideas to start with not to end with that the universe is made up of not emptiness out there the space is not empty but there's a lot of mind blowing

blowing stuff going on there with a lot of little particles bouncing around and kind of a wild dance their space is not empty these things are moving around and if we go from the quantum little quantum particles and start thinking about how

they come together we begin to maybe go from a very very ethereal to something as solid as us as as the as the microphone holding as the typewriter and for the keyboard in front of me these are solid things so how do we go from those very Spacey things they sparked

things to where we are now I'm just taking a simple version of of the idea saying it's vibrating at various different levels of density and those different levels of vibration have some of them signature of vibrations in them so they you Xavier and I have signature

vibrations that are like fingerprints for us and those fingerprints can be resonating those vibrations can be resonating well not only with each other but also with things and somehow we can resonate at a at the right vibration I'm back to what you were saying earlier to

be able to have things resonate with us and then move toward us okay we wait okay so resonate with certain things okay so let me just play on that and then please if you could please expound on that a little bit so let's say you know let's say that there's someone who

is you know comfortable you know as far as monetarily we'll use that example and but they're dreaming you know they they're dreaming about having millions of dollars they don't need millions of dollars you know they're already surviving they're doing

well you know but but they're they've got these big dreams they've got these big aspirations you know about being rich so perhaps that is not in the line of their you know vibration or their frequency does that make sense is that definitely definitely definitely

because the frequency I think is partly determined by what your role in life is okay so it makes you wonder about a lot of different things about how you know things just play out in your life and direct you in certain ways yeah dr. Bernard like have you ever I'm

sure you've experienced this but have you ever had this happen where it seems like the directions that you're going you just hit a wall it's like no matter what you do you're just you hit wall after wall after wall after wall and because life is almost forcing you to be

at a certain place at a certain time and and you end up there and then it's only after that situation you realize when you look back you know Steve Jobs talked about this a little bit in the realm of business but I think it has to do with life as well it that we only

understand things when we look back at them when we look at back at the event events and the way that they unfolded then we on stand them but when we're in them we're in the the subjective state of them is very difficult to understand like okay

what's going on but doesn't that put into question free will I mean I want to be able to have the choice to you make these decisions but if life is giving me these different walls and putting me here then where's the free will at I like the phrase we we have free will we

have no other choice I love that and that is that that's Isaac Bashevis singer and that the trouble with the question is it's a yes or no question is there free will or not and it's the wrong question it's the degree of freewill we have and it's measured by

just how many options do we have at any particular moment some some people in this world have such limited options that they they are genetically and environmentally or environmentally constrained by anything for anything for them to exercise their thought their

beliefs their desires they just gotta just do what's right in front of them and some of that is almost by choice people put themselves there but so there's so much poverty and and an oppression and that a lot of people have trouble making those decisions but even

in those circumstances there is some free will but the question that it's the degree to which you can make a decision looking back there's two things that you mentioned that I think need to be separated hitting a wall sometimes those are great things to happen I was a I was

a faculty member at the University of Washington and wanted to get promoted and they got rid of me it wouldn't promote me and it turned out to be great for me to get out of there and I went on to be chairman at the University of missouri-columbia

psychiatry department for like 17 years and I wouldn't have happened if I stayed at the University of Washington sure so that hitting those walls are really useful but then the freewill question I'm not sure how you bring in freewill to the wall I mean if if life is putting

these walls up so that you go a certain way it's directing your will you know it's directing your realm of choice like you said degrees of freewill so it's it's like okay you have the choice to keep going a certain direction and I I find also that you know

sometimes lessons will be repeated until they are learned oh yeah oh yeah you know so so it's like it will spot it's a spiral it's it's not really you know a circle it's more of like you go up until it's these higher degrees of learning and perhaps perhaps assimilating that

learning increases your degrees of free will I think you're right there I really think you're right right there that's good okay so so I want to I want to cover this we're close to the end can't believe it flew by but okay so you talk about you talk you you define

different you give these four coincidences but you you talk about the analysis of different coincidences and I just I just want to read them off okay so the first the first being emotional charge coincidences usually provoke surprise wonder curiosity or interest

emotional charge creates a feeling of significant and meaningfulness number two parallel content two or more elements of the coincidence signify the same or similar ideas or things they have a meaning in common number three explanation coincidences

usually trigger the question what does this mean this question can indicate a search for how the coincidence happened its cause or its explanation and last one number four is use the question what does this mean also indicates and attempt to understand implications for

the person's future its personal significance the coincidence implies something about a decision whether to make it or not a course of action or a new possibility those are the four meanings in a meaningful coincidence that you just were talking about and they I was it

took me a while to be able to get the clarity that you just were able to read it's fun to hear them again but I don't those are the four meetings and I'm not what what are you asking me about about them I'm just glad you read them okay I mean I'm trying to get a picture

of this you know if if we can understand the realms of of synchronicity then perhaps we can start to establish the roadmap you know and oh yeah oh yeah that's what I'm trying to do but but also you know Sigmund Freud was sometimes a cigar is just a cigar right

sometimes the coincidence is just something to not pay attention to like me waking up with four four four in the clock and some of them are just like funny they're just like what sometimes when that happens I think I say hey you're playing with me again right yeah

it's like there are other elements around me that I sense that may be influencing what's going on with me and that's what some of these coincidences like that don't seem to have any particular personal meaning but they're the meaning they do have is that that

I've been used to seeing the number four four four before so it's kind of personally meaningful because I see a pattern being repeated and that's that's different from the explanation problem or the even use problem so what I'm looking go ahead at what I'm trying to

say is that I think I'm trying to do what you're talking about is how do we establish making coincidences more likely when we want to okay okay I love that I love that and that was leading me up to I'm get I was getting there but okay so negative coincidences either these

are a thing right we talked about this in the book why would that be necessary why would we be why would a coincidence be engineered to be negative it's there's a lot of different forms of negative coincidences there that one of them you just talked about which is

hitting the wall when you're going forward and nothing there's nothing there but it turns out to be a very helpful part of your life it called it's called negative but then when you look back as I did with not getting tenure at the University of Washington then you

look back and say boy I'm sure glad that happened so that negative can be negative at first but turn out to be positive later some coincidences can be positive at first like meeting the person of your dreams and turn out to be awful later so it's positive first and

then negative later some of them are just awful and one of the ones that is just awful has to do with the assassination of John Lennon Mark David Chapman was was the is the person who murdered John Lennon and and he followed a series of coincidences that

led him to actually pull the trigger on December 8th and 1980 Chapman was standing si the apartment building in which John was living the Dakota in New York City in Manhattan he had traced a series of thoughts that he had interpreted as coincidences this was the

building where the movie Rosemary's Baby was filmed Rosemary's Baby was directed by Roman Polanski who was the husband of Sharon Tate another actress who was eight months pregnant with her own with their unborn son when she was killed by Charles Manson's gang

the gangs favorite song was helter skelter which was written by Lennon and McCartney as he thought about these things the actress Mia Farrow who played the character of rosemary in the movie walked by this meant to Chapman that today was the day to kill John Lennon

Wow now sometimes I wonder dr. Bernard like are we insane I mean are we crazy to think about this stuff like I really think about I think I mean how do you even determine that you know so because sometimes perhaps you you signify you know you give something meaning that has

no meaning whatsoever you know it's just a just a banana just a cigar it's just that and yet you use it to propel your life in a certain direction that can be very negative on the first part of that is we make up stories or patterns see patterns that aren't there that's the

first part of it the negative part can be next there's a word for that now we called apophenia that is seeing patterns that aren't there I made up another word called crypto FINA which means not seeing patterns that are there and those are the two types of mistakes

I'll say in pattern recognition that people can make what you want to do is find out the ones that are really they're not making up ones are not missing ones but then there's the question of making a decision and sometimes sometimes it looks like a good

choice to make it doesn't seem like it's something it's something you're making up it looks like a coincidence that you should follow because it's so clear and this is not making it up this is like a coincidence that well I maybe should follow it and that can lead you into a

lot of trouble following ones that you haven't thought clearly about enough to be able to do I knew somebody who had lots of coincidences with a woman and each one of them seemed like delicious but following them meant he got closer and closer to her

and the closer he got to her the more pain he felt and a final final coincidence was was just running into her in a place where he kind of hoped that he would and she just ignored them she just ignored him and he he almost got the message that time it took him

some time later to be able to figure it out coincidences that he wanted to have happen but it didn't work mmm-hmm so so dr. Brown what if coincidences and these events are just like a sort of broadcast or like a signal you know they're like if if you

were to say I mean I don't know if you've ever studied like just signal-to-noise ratio right yeah so yeah so what if what if coincidences are a signal that breaks apart the sort of noise and use you you just that's all it is you know it's just a signal and yet

and humans because we have this tendency to connect dots you know we connect whether it's positive if we connect whether it's negative big based on the events that surround those those coincidences those signals it's very important in answering that

question to recognize that the human tendency to look for causes in correlations in correlations has of strong survival value this is the way we figure out how things happen two things happen around the same time are they connected the simple start is a baby

cries and the mother comes the baby begins to notice there's a coincidence between crying and the mother coming then he begins to notice there's a there is a cause involved that if he cries she comes and we do that in life all the time sometimes we make bad guesses about

there being something there that's a cause but it the way react this is the way we study reality in this matrix is studying coincidences and seeing if we can find by good scientific methods if there is a cause that we can then apply into the

future so you mentioned this earlier and was saving this a little bit towards the end but how do we generate luck how do we generate you know the positive coincidence is there a meditation that we can do is there a mantra a chant I mean how does it work and one more thing

I want to bring up after this after this part all I can do is talk about the circumstances that increase coincidentally I haven't been able to develop yet a way to actually make them happen and but when I say them there are all kinds of coincidences that that

range from personally created where I did it but I don't know it nice several stories that I can tell you about that but but people do coincidences then blame it on somebody else or in something else outside of them and then there is the the telepathy clairvoyance

precognition ones and those are very real and we don't know how they work but we know that they happen and we have good data to show that they happen in here it's only a matter of belief if you can't believe they happen then they don't happen but simulpast 'ti and so

many other experiences suggest that telepathy is a real thing and i like to think of our technology as a modern technology current technology is like a reflection of our latent human capacities that Follette a--they is like texting somebody as well as the

telephone and that clairvoyance is like having a webcam these are things that we are using but we also have the capacity to use but the fun ones are they are not even those other ones that are beyond telepathy and clairvoyance and precognition

maybe even psychokinesis there are there's a mystery out there that I want to be able to help settle the way you do it where you can increase them that's all I can say is that one mention about need and life stress and high emotion but psychedelic drugs you mentioned you

betcha meditation drumming things that lower what some people call the filter between the brain and the greater consciousness and that filter gets lessened and it's strength and our minds can go wandering out in the psycho sphere in our mental

atmosphere stuff can happen and just what it is that's happening out there when we do it is part of the fun of figuring out how this matrix we're in operates amazing I love it's so much so much you know um we were gonna get back to meant the

mental atmosphere and I think that's really important and I'm so glad that you mentioned psychedelics and psychedelic drugs I was kind of wondering whether to ask you about that or not but you know since you brought it up um it is it makes sense it makes

sense that that would connect with this because you know what if what if there is a there is a larger reality that's that we are just accessing and and as you said these these compounds simply lower the veil they simply allow us to see and connect past the veil so so it

would make sense that perhaps it's adjusting your frequency or your resonance to a point where it would increase the amount of coincidences after you take a psychedelic drug for example you you betcha you just start seeing more stuff I I was

one of my best education was on Haight Street in the late 60s early 70s and during that time I was getting blown out by coincidences I just had there were so many of them that I I hadn't just stopped and so that flood of coincidences helped

also my looking at this one of the ways of thinking about what psychedelics do you can go to something called the default mode network of the brain and the default mode network is what is what goes on when there's nothing else going on but it it just

keeps going it's the default mode it just keeps going well my mom my mom with psilocybin that default mode network doesn't increase it gets decreased and I think of the inactivity and I think of the default mode Network as a possible analog of what I call the mind brain

membrane there's a membrane between our brains and our minds and the psycho sphere this membrane gets loosened as you're talking about gets opened up under certain conditions that correlate with the default mode Network being slowed down and opens us up to the

psycho sphere in which there's a lot of stuff happening and we can get contact with it and do telepathy and clairvoyance and all kinds of other things as we get to know how that psycho sphere operates I mean it makes it a lot of sense it just fits the puzzle the

puzzle puzzle pieces fit here you know i think i think even meditation would open doors changing would or so this yeah so it really connects and i mean that's why i'm so grateful that we you know found each other really dr.

bernard because i don't think there's anyone else that is you know picking up where carl jung left off that's what you're doing here and you know i think i think you're building the legacy until at least we discover more and I think I think really we're at a point where now

we are we are sort of asking the the questions that need to be asked and science is getting to a point where they're defining they're starting to define the terms and we're coming up with the connection between science and these these other sort of realms of

thought and energy and then when you look at the current you know sort of space of of things the global environment of things it seems like we are on the precipice of disaster global disaster it feels like we are on the verge of something huge I mean the Veda

is called it the Kali Yuga perhaps it's that but it does feel like there's something in the air oh yeah and remember need life stress and high emotion we got all of those right now as you just described so the veil is being torn open of quotidian reality and new

stuffs is gonna is coming in and what I am doing is you summarize so nicely I'm writing another book that is called the fundamentals of meaningful coincidences and it's meant to be a textbook for a future class at Earth University on coincidences and it it's doing what you

were saying I am categorizing coincidences the different kinds the different uses the different explanations as a prelude to hopefully more people coming together to study them now I'm not the only one writing about coincidence there are more and

more books about coincidences about synchronicity and serendipity there's even something called the serendipity society that had its first meeting in London I went last this past September and where it's becoming an academic thing serendipity is so there there is a

growing movement to study in just the way you were talking about I was delighted to hear the way you were saying it Xavier that we need to study scientifically and science begins with categorizing the phenomena I mean dr.

Barnard we're gonna wrap up here soon but you know um it can you imagine if we were in school and we learned about this in school we just were taught this so I think I think that your writing you know something educational that could be you

know delivered into the hands of someone that could help them understand even all of this and I don't I don't want to you know go down conspiracy lane too much here but it does seem that in the system that we're in this earth life system it does it seems like there isn't

a oppression of information of knowledge oh yeah and we have to be looking ourselves and I think that's that's one of the main reasons that I created this show and bringing on you know guests such as yourself is because I want to give people the roadmap I want to create

that roadmap that we've all been looking for and if you look at the shows you know we've we've been doing that so you know dr. Bernhard if we could there's a lot of people are gonna hear this episode so you know if we could kind of tie it into a bow and wrap it together

somehow that would be amazing just to wrap it up is there anything that maybe we could tell someone that is listening that maybe needs a coincidence maybe that needs is looking for that meaning maybe there's they're going through a hard phase in their life right now when

you're going through a hard phase in your life pay attention to the possibility that there will be help and assistance out there it appears that many of us I don't say everyone because I can't tell you this can open ourselves up to being helped I hear so many people

saying that when they look they find you've got to be able to be open the dog that trots about finds a bone keep moving keep looking keep imagining because what you are needing can show up and you have to be ready to look at it and seize it

sometimes it'll be really quick and it's gone you have to be ready but when you're in need in a major life transition and you have a lot of emotion driving you look around you might find some love right there for yourself I love it dr. Bernard thank you so so much

for pursuing this work and you know really you're you're so credentialed I love this book I can't recommend it more to anyone listening to the show right now if you're a fan of the show you're going to really truly love this book dr. Bernhard where can

people find your work where can people get to your website all of that please the book is called connecting with coincidence and its course that's on Amazon there's an audiobook that you can also get through Amazon I have a Psychology Today blog so if you're

interested if you're sitting following me in any way just put connecting with coincidence in your web browser and you'll find my Psychology Today blog you'll find my website you'll find my book and you'll find my radio show perfect guys wow what a show I mean I love these

episodes so much and we are spoiled we're truly spoiled with such such amazing guests and such good shows the book is called connecting with coincidence dr. Bernard white men we will you will make that link available for you guys on the website make sure

you're on the mailing list of the website the human xpcom and if you want to find all of our links if you want to do in the community you can go to all my links calm / the human XPe if you want to leave us or a review on iTunes please go do that it is really

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