Why Does Synchronicity Happen?

Synchronicity is a concept, first explained by psychiatrist Carl Jung, which holds that events are "meaningful coincidences" if they occur with no causal relationship, yet seem to be meaningfully related. -- Wikipedia

That word came to mind recently when reading the wonderful book Bach- Music in the Castle of Heaven by John Eliot Gardiner. He referred to the three musicians born in 1685 as The Class of '85.

In 1685, within a period of eight months, three master composers were born: Scarlatti, Handel and Bach. Although each was extremely influential, they worked in very different ways because of the contrasting demands of their surroundings. --NPR

Three other amazing composers were born around the same time, Gardiner reports. The French composer, Jean-Philippe Rameau was born in 1683 and Johann Mattheson and Georg Philipp Telemann, were born in 1681. In other words, the extended Class of '85 produced, in a four year period six remarkable, significant, and in many ways music-changing individuals.

Synchronicity: Meaningful coincidences.

Why? What happened in that time frame that brought about the start of some incredible musical changes by six men born within the same small window of time?

Coincidence? Sure, I can accept that. It doesn't have to be in any way related. Things happen. Kind of like enough monkeys "typing" on enough computer keyboards (had to update the image) could produce the works of Shakespeare. Except I am not sure that is reality. When things fall into "lucky" place like that, one does wonder why at that point in time and in that place those things happen.

I remember thinking of that about the rise of the major religions of the world as they have become in a relatively small time frame over the turn of the "eras" B.C. (B.C.E) and A.D. (C.E). It has made me wonder what was happening in the Western Hemisphere native peoples at the same time in the development of their religious life? If we could dig deeply enough, a "coincidence" would not surprise me.

Synchronicity: Meaningful coincidences.

I could cite others that I have considered but none of that would answer the question about why do coincidences like that happen? Perhaps even more broadly, why do coincidences happen in every day lives? Yes, many of them are false constructs, I realize. Correlation does not equal causation or even connection for that matter. The connection is in OUR minds and point-of-view; there is no actual connection in most instances.

And yet....

As I was pondering this question while reading Gardiner's book a thought did come to me. It comes out of the reading I have been doing on Quantum physics and waves and resonating frequencies. It is based on the thought that I had in an earlier post on The Physics of the Universe. At that time I wrote that the universe, creation and all of us...

...are energy vibrating, perhaps at our own unique wavelengths. Who knows but that we are finely tuned instruments who respond at our quantum level to the music and vibrations, the energy and pulsing rhythm always surrounding us.

I got this image of wavelengths of sound and energy flowing through the universe or, less grandly, in the vibration of lives and events around the world. As these vibrations propagate from life and the stuff of which this world is made, they interact with each other. They are like the waves from a pebble tossed into a lake interacting with waves from other pebbles, the wake from a passing motor boat, or the moving water kicked up by a fish's fin. It is basic physics that these waves move together or against each other.

In physics, interference is a phenomenon in which two waves superpose to form a resultant wave of greater, lower, or the same amplitude.
--Wikipedia

Like in this picture of waves in water.

At times these waves can produce interesting patterns. Sometimes they come together at points that bring about significant movement or other events.

So, as I pondered the Class of 1685 and the coincidence of time and place I wondered

What if these synchronistic events are a time and place where some of these waves, vibrations, overtones, and resonance come together in a unique way? In so doing they allow for things that have never happened before and in various places, the nodes of these interactions become the sits of coincidence.

Synchronicity: Meaningful coincidences.

Synchronicity: Resonance created by the constructive interference of vibrations and waves of events, people, and even quantum level overtones resulting in similar events that don't appear to have any causal connection, yet seem to be meaningful related.

Just thinking out loud.

The Physics of the Universe

I have always had a strong interest in science and its relationship to life. When I started college some decades (!) ago, I started out as an engineer. In the mid-1960s any student who showed any aptitude at all was directed that way. Well, it didn't work out so well for me, but I never lost my interest in science. In these past 50 years the world of science- and particularly physics- has exploded in all kinds of directions and insights that are nothing more than mind-twisting. Quantum physics and everything related to in has made the universe so much more complicated and interesting.

Sometimes things come together to pique my interest even more.

1. This particular tweaking of my thoughts started about a month ago when I came across the book, The Jazz of Physics by Stephon Alexander. I had just finished the "biography" of physicist extraordinaire, Richard Feynman by James Gleick. When you begin combine jazz and physics I knew it had to be interesting, even if it did look a little more in-depth than I could begin to understand at times.
2. I hadn't had a chance to start it when I was visiting with an old friend. We were talking about all kinds of topics, including religion when he said, "Try this one on for size. What if Einstein's theory of relativity was a way of describing creation?" I no direct answer and kind of filed it away since supper was ready anyway. (Eating and heavy thinking don't often go together. Something about doing two important things at once.) With this question in mind, I picked up the Jazz of Physics book that evening where I found out that Alexander was using jazz as an analogy for physics as a way of coming to an understanding of how the structure of our universe was created. Alexander wrote:

   It had never occurred to me, he wrote, that galaxies and superclusters of galaxies were organized structures, let alone that they could tell us something profound about the nature of the universe, including what it is made of and how it came into being.

3. Next came the fun day in New York City last week with a young friend we have known since he was a young child. One of the things he is working on in his own mind has to do with music, physics, and how humans have "musical sounds." Which is exactly what Alexander does in his book.

Such a confluence of events and thoughts amazes me. Call it serendipity, synchronicity, or plain old coincidence, it usually gets my attention. I have now worked my way through the rest of Alexander's book, often scratching my head at the physics, but understanding the basics he was trying to describe in both physics and jazz. I would describe it in my own very non-technical and
very unscientific way like this:

We are all made of music! And music made us all.

Way back at the beginning of creation when all was infinitely small and of an infinite mass it was the very quantum vibrations of the smallest of particles and anti-particles that began the movement into the universe beginning. Sound, music, is simply vibrations and that early vibrating energy had a tone, a type of "music." Photons and electrons and positrons and whatever else I don't understand, kept the vibrations moving at that quantum level. Somehow or other the building blocks of modern physics including Einstein's work on relativity and Heisenberg's Uncertainty play into this.

Beyond that, I am lost. In fact all I wrote in and of itself is probably so wrong as to be an embarrassment to anyone who knows physics. But that's okay for me. I'm just learning. I may take some time to do some digging into the physics Alexander writes about. In some mystical and marvelous way this relates to improvisation and an understanding of how knowing your next note in a line opens up the possibility for ALL notes.

Underneath it all for me is the idea that we are music. We are energy vibrating, perhaps at our own unique wavelengths. Who knows but that we are finely tuned instruments who respond at our quantum level to the music and vibrations, the energy and pulsing rhythm always surrounding us.

Or, I may be all wet. But I feel the music, I hear the sounds, and something in me responds. Whatever it is, I am grateful.