I had a strange and fascinating CMPE on Christmas Eve. A new forum on synchronicity has opened up, associated with an upcoming film called Wonderland. They have been posting invitations on all sorts of relevant blogs and I decided to add my two cents. In the theory section, I added a post titled “Could something be speaking to us?”

I have a long-time interest in synchronicity. For some years now I have been recording instances of an extreme form of synchronicity. Its defining characteristic is that two events occur together, seemingly by chance, and objectively share not just one common feature, but a long list of them. In other words, the two event have an extremely improbable amount of things in common.

My experience of tracking these occurrences is that they seem to be speaking to me. I don’t say this lightly. It is easy, of course, to see an intelligent communication where there is really just random noise. It happens all the time. But I honestly don’t think that is what is happening here. The messages expressed by these occurrences are extremely wise and helpful. They have also often been accurately predictive. They take definite stands; it’s not all mushy generalities. They seem too intelligent and too helpful to be anything but intentional messages.

I also think this is an extremely widespread experience. I’ve come across people who don’t seem to believe in anything who yet have made important decisions in the belief that some remarkable coincidence was a case of “the universe” speaking to them.

If this is really what’s happening, if something is speaking to us, then I don’t have hope for something like quantum physics to explain synchronicity, or at least the more impressive cases of it. How can quantum physics explain something crafting and sending intelligent messages to us?

So if we take seriously the possibility that something is speaking to us, we need to be prepared, I think, to look outside the realm of impersonal scientific laws, and be willing to explore the possibility that there is an actual intelligence or intelligences capable of arranging the seemingly random events of our daily lives into a message. 

On the morning of Christmas Eve, I read this reply from the site administrator:

When you say “something is speaking to us” what exactly do you think that is?

John C. Lilly thought synchronicities were controlled by the Earth Coincidence Control Office (E.C.C.O). He detailed this in his book “The Dyadic Cyclone”. Lilly posited that human experiences were set up as a chain of “coincidences” , being played out here on Earth (and beyond), while being governed by some unexplainable force or set of rules. By defining E.C.C.O.’s existence Lilly was able to give a name to the seeming unfathomable connections and possibilities in the universe that man was, and often still is, incapable of grasping. Being such a scientific mind as he was, I believe that this was John’s way of defining his own “god”, making the concept into a tangible thing.

Some calling this “speaking” the voice of the universe. Some call it their higher selves. Some call it chance and projection.

What do you think the source of the “speaking” is? Perhaps a conscious universe?

Also some of your examples of “extreme synchronicity” would be a pleasure to read.

I was quite excited when his reply became event 1 of just such an example, which I wrote about in the following reply:

I really appreciated your reply. You asked for examples of the extreme form of synchronicity I mentioned, and as luck would have it, your reply was part of one! So I’ll tell the story as a way of familiarizing you with the phenomenon.

In the morning, I read your reply and found myself pleasantly surprised by how intelligent and informative it was. I had never heard of John Lilly’s E.C.C.O., and was intrigued by a scientist positing some kind of cosmic intelligence controlling events in our lives. I was so struck that I talked about your response to my wife and told myself that I really should find myself a copy of Lilly’s book. I knew Lilly was quite “out there,” but I thought it would be useful to know his thoughts on the matter anyway.

Later in the day, my 20-year-old son came over. He barely got in the door before he handed me a book he said he was lending me, and then began telling me about its contents. The book is DMT: The Spirit Molecule: A Doctor’s Revolutionary Research into the Biology of Near-Death and Mystical Experiences, by Rick Strassman, M.D. He sat down and began telling me about it. It was about government-approved experiments conducted at the University of New Mexico using DMT, a plant-derived psychedelic that is also manufactured by the brain itself. My son said that through this research, Strassman had come to believe in other dimensions of reality and even in nonhuman intelligences that lived in these other dimensions and seemingly interacted with his research subjects.

While he was talking, I began to see a number of parallels between what he was saying and what you had said. Following the link you provided to the John Lilly bio on Wikipedia, here are the parallels I can see, the features shared by both your reply and the conversation with my son:

1. Someone tells me about a book.
2. The book is by a medical doctor who is also either a psychiatrist (Strassman) or psychoanalyst (Lilly).
3. He did government-approved or -funded research in a university setting.
4. His research involved researching the structures of the brain (Lilly “began researching the physical structures of the brain”; Strassman focuses on the pineal gland, which releases DMT).
5. He did extensive research on psychedelic drugs (Lilly is well-known for his research into psychedelics; Strassman’s book is about his psychedelic research).
6. Though beginning as a conventional scientist, his research takes him beyond conventional scientific views into the spiritual and mystical.
7. Specifically, he comes to accept the existence of nonphysical dimensions of the universe,
8. And of nonhuman intelligence(s) in those dimensions that can interact with our lives.
9. The book recounts his explorations into consciousness and the conclusions he has drawn.

In my mind, this goes way beyond chance. Can we realistically imagine two independent events just happening to share this many features? You can probably see why I call this an extreme form of synchronicity. In Jung’s famous scarab beetle story, a patient tells him a dream about a scarab beetle and then Jung hears a scarab beetle tapping at the window. There you have two events that share only one feature in common: a scarab beetle. Here, though, you have two events that share at least nine features, some of them strikingly specific, and all of them coming together to tell a coherent story. And it’s actually a quite interesting story: Someone tells me about a book in which a conventional scientist’s research into psychedelics takes him beyond the pale of conventional science and into the spiritual and mystical.

What, then, does this CMPE mean? I think it has what I call a dual subject situation. The first event is about coincidence and synchronicity, while the second event is about something entirely different: psychedelic research. So I think we need to apply the gist of the parallels to these two different situations, coming up with basically two different messages. 

In event 1, I say that I think something is speaking to us through synchronicities, or at least the most extreme of them. The site administrator replies and talks about a scientist who, from the standpoint of his own “scientific mind,” is led to essentially the same conclusion. He conceives a kind of quasi-scientific notion of “god” as the Earth Coincidence Control Office. 

This sign, I believe, is basically confirming the essence of all that—saying that the extreme coincidences I am talking about (CMPEs) could lead even a very scientific mind to believe that, yes, something God-like is speaking to us through coincidences. It is possibly saying that I should read Lilly’s book that was mentioned, The Dyadic Cyclone.

In event 2, my son strongly recommends I read a book on research into a psychedelic compound manufactured by our own body. This scientist’s research leads him (just like Lilly) beyond conventional scientific views into the spiritual and mystical, to the point of believing in nonhuman intelligences that can interact with us. 

Since this basic pattern shows up so strongly in the parallels, I think this sign is confirming that there is something right about all that. In other words, I should read the book and do so with an open and welcoming mind. I am actually doing that now, and finding it fascinating. 

Two observations: First, the signs return again and again to the idea that they are a scientifically-investigable way in which God speaks to us. They love this theme and just won’t let it go. My Horton CMPE had shades of this, among many others (the best of which is recounted in the Epilogue to Signs). 

Second, this CMPE seems to be paralleling CMPE research (which has yet to happen, but stay tuned) with psychedelic research. It characterizes them both as cases where scientific research can lead us into the realm of spirit. I find that an extremely fascinating idea, don’t you?