. . . [A]mong my dreams you may count coming to quasi-definitive understandings of things. I will list a few of my partial understandings of synchronicity/meaningful coincidences here. But before I do, I need to point out that I and I suspect we still know an infinitesimal amount about ourselves and our world, and perhaps even less about other worlds, or realities. I say this not to humble others but to report what I observe. We, the general _we_, are not very rigorous or precise about what we claim we know. And there are still mysteries that can consume lifetimes of devoted study and service in order to unveil. You may disagree.
In my experience and to my observation, I think I have hardly scratched the surface on what I took over two years to come to understand better. Perhaps others can report more definitive results in their pursuits, but I have been trained now, by doctoral work, to question that conclusion and hopefully help to reveal how it is or might not be so. This calling is an honorable one and comes with an ethic that says respect what others do in trying to push the frontiers of what we can claim that we know. So, on to some modest claims.
"An Inquiry into the Phenomenology of Meaningful Coincidences" can make one major claim. That is, the study describes the experience of having a meaningful coincidence in a more complete way than other studies of the same or similar phenomena. It also lists the qualities and features of that synthesized experience in a way not done by other investigators. The description and catalog of qualities and features of meaningful coincidences can stand on their own and be used by others to extend and expand understanding and be a guide to what is and is not the phenomenon. And I believe my work is sufficiently transparent as a study of my consciousness and of my understanding of other percipients that others, from whatever source of curiosity, can examine how I got what I did.
Among the lesser claims that I could make is that the study revealed a wealth of worlds beyond our words which try to capture our experiences. In the end the experiences are not captured. They are merely glimpsed. And the richness that is can sometimes only be told in a story which has to stand by itself for a self.
The Coincidence experience holds in microcosm a world beyond imagining for those who stop for more than a moment to consider it. And if my study is testament for others to stop for a moment and consider what it might be like in another's world, it will function as a foundation for respectful social action. And I would say that this accomplishment of my study is, for those who take the time and effort to read and experience it, consistent with the highest goals of human development, working with organizational systems, and Fielding's mission to support informed and sensitive social action.
These stories or experiences are important for those who have and report them. They are a part of being and becoming and growing self. And I suspect that Jung was really on to something important when he started this whole business, and is happy to see that I have re-discovered some of that for myself.
An aside. Jung noted names of people and how, apparently quite often, the names seemed to reflect something accurate about the person. I started doing the same thing long before I knew Jung did this. It is like the head of the Colorado Reading Association having the surname of Reading. Now I find great delight in the name of the external examiner for my study of a phenomenon that many people group with magic and the paranormal, things to seriously doubt. I can wait for Keith Doubt's comments, but I am quite curious as to what they might be given my interest in the possibility of the significance of people's names.
[That Keith was an external reader with his significant last name makes the dissertation and process "coincidental" in and of itself, a kind of meta- or over-coincidence. An observation not to be overlooked!]
My study did not convince me that the experience of meaningful coincidences as a type of synchronicity always has a numinous charge. And meaningful coincidences because of symbolic and figurative language will always escape solid, definitive meaning. In saying "Yes, that is what that was and this is what that means," it will be the percipient's convictions and beliefs that makes it so, not a test that can be performed by others, non-percipients. I concur with Searle (1992/1994) that subjective experience is valid and important territory for scientific, in this case phenomenological and hermeneutic, investigation.
There are certainly other findings included in the study, but perhaps these are the main ones that might be discussed in an oral review. The question arises now for me, and it may for you: Having done what I have done and tried so very hard to understand what was there and what was not--to try to come to an understanding of this somewhat common experience that people have--what is a reasonable conjecture for what it is and how it occurs? Good question. The topic of another dissertation, or a fun seminar. One which takes us again to Prague or Paris, or maybe some place new, like Costa Rica, or even our own inner worlds!
AND
The world for the individual and in association with others is optimistically open and full of possibilities. Pessimistically, it is a closed and cold place. Realistically it is a place where what is and can be are mediated and negotiated. I hope for the first view. At times I only see the second. And I live in the third, sometimes reluctantly.
