Jung and Pauli collaborated on a book about Synchronicity: situations where statistically rare coincidences have “meaning” for humans. The coincidence is between a physical event and a state of human condition where the simultaneity or concurrence of the event altered the human state (or gave it special meaning).

The coincidence of the special Earth-Moon configuration and human triggered attention to the night sky is an example of synchronicity.

My personal life has been filled with many instances of possible synchronicity. For example, I frequently, accidentally discover a book or idea just when it proved very useful to me, just at that time.  One could say that I was tuned to my need for new information and was specially alert to relevant information. This rationalization contributes, but the events were not usually when I was searching. I call this my book genie. Is Gaia tweaking my development, or am I “feedpast bootstrapping” tweaking my own development from my future?

A recent candidate happened this week (09/12/2014).  I was finishing reading SOCIAL PHYSICS by Alex Pentland.  I also started to listen to a CD scifi novel I picked up randomly at the library: CIRCLE, by Dave Eggers. CIRCLE is a dystopian future calling attention to negative consequences of a future, coincidentally as proposed by Pentland. I don’t believe Eggers has read Pentland. I also started another CD futuristic novel, where the main character is named Mae, the main character in CIRCLE.

It is very true that we humans can be deluded in our assessment of the probability of events, and project meaning into situations where there was no meaning. This fact, however, doesn’t prove that real synchronicity may not also be present, at times. A study of the distribution of documented reports of synchronicity might provide evidence of their “reality”.

It is possible that the personal development of some persons, throughout history, have been similarly tweaked. However, I prefer to view synchronicity tweaking as being “caused” by life situations needing the tweaking – and not by a grand master planner. In 1994 I called this Feedpast Bootstrapping. However, synchronicity and feedpast bootstrapping need not be a solely personal phenomenon – it could well involve the social.