SCHOLAR ISLAND

Coincidence

 

"Accident, hazard, chance, whatever you choose to call it-a mystery to ordinary minds-becomes a reality to superior men."

Napoleon

 

 

"It is wrong then, to chide the novel for being fascinated by mysterious coincidence, but it is right to chide man for being blind to such coincidences in his daily life. For he thereby deprives his life of a dimension of beauty."

Milan Kundera

 

"What does it mean that the driver of the van that hit us was named Daniel Murphy? And the real estate agent that sold our house in Sag Harbor while we were in Ireland-another calamity-was also named Daniel Murphy? And the head of the Irish Arts council was named Patrick Murphy? Was I in the grip of some overwhelming forms of Murphy's Law?"

-Spalding Gray

 

 

"Still, one thing that makes me think I might be on the right path, or at least some path, is that I've started to notice how the right book, person, situation are constantly presenting themselves. Maybe when you're open in a certain way, everything seems like the right thing. ...

-Heather King

REDEEMED

 

 

"First a shudder runs through you,

and then the old awe steals over you."

-Plato

 

"Every time I have become aware of  a synchronicity experience, I have had an accompanying feeling that some grace came along with it."

-Jean Shinoda Bolen

 

 

"The essence of living is spontaneity and Intuition."

-Emerson

 

 

"With considerable justice, it can be said that the Greeks named the experience of synchronicity "Hermes".

-Murry Stein

In Midlife

 

 

 

"Nothing under the sun is accidental."

-Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

 

 

"Hermes has been called "the friendliest of the gods to man."

-Allan Combs

Synchronicity: through the eyes of science, myth, and the trickster

 

 

"Coyote is at once a clown and a creator, gift giver and thief. Above all, he mocks and disrupts convention, order, and preconception. In his pranks , his thievery, and his disdain for convention, Coyote is very much like Hermes, especially in the latter's childhood."

-Allan Combs Synchronicity

 

 

"At dinner-time I was strangely haunted by what I would call the sense of preexistence-videlicet, a confused idea that nothing that passed was said for the first time, that the same topics had been discussed, and the same persons had stated the same opinions on the same subjects. "

Walter Scott

Journal Feb. 17, 1828

 

 

"We all have some experience of a feeling, that comes over us occasionally, of what we are saying and doing having been said and done before, in a remote time-of our having been surrounded dim ages ago, by the same faces, objects and circumstances-of our knowing perfectly what will be said next, as if we suddenly remembered it.

Charles Dickens

David Copperfield

 

 

"Yet there are things in my life so extraordinary as to make me believe in predestination."

Isadora Duncan

 

 

"Chains of more-than-coincidence occur so often in my life that, if I am forbidden to call them supernatural hauntings , let me call them a habit! Not that I like the word super-natural - I find these happenings natural enough, though superlatively unscientific."

Robert Graves

 

"I have encountered too many synchronistic experiences, both in my life and that of others, to ignore them. Yet these surprisingly common experiences pose tremendous psychological and philosophical challenges for our world view. They are especially troubling experiences for me as a physicist trained within the culture of scientific materialism."

-Victor Mansfeld

 

"Synchronicities are the jokers in nature's pack of cards for they refuse to play by the rules and offer a hint that, in our quest for certainty about the universe, we have ignored some vital clues."

-F. David Peat

The Bridge Between Matter and Mind

 

"While working on the trilogy, coincidences became so commonplace I grew almost blasé about them. Things that at other periods in my life might have stood out as being wildly synchronistic were accepted with barely a second thought. Looking back at the way people, events, and images aligned themselves, I find it laughable that I could have thought that I was master of my art, let alone my fate. For me, synchronicity is a way of confirming the rightness of action. It is only in its absence that I realize I'm out of kilter with, for want of a better term, the collective unconscious."

-Nick Bantock

Artful Dodger

 

"For a great artist, Nemesis works to an impeccable time table, with no wavering, no unpunctuality, no hesitation. "

Phillipe Julian

 

 

"The Chinese mind as I see it at work in the I Ching, seems to be exclusively preoccupied with the chance aspect of events. What we call coincidence seems to be the chief concern of the oriental mind. "

Carl Jung

 

"Life is infinitely stranger than anything which the mind of man could invent. We would not dare to conceive the things which are really mere commonplaces of existence. If we could fly out of that window hand in hand, hover over this great city, gently remove the roofs, and peep in at the queer things which are going on, the strange coincidences, the planning's, the cross-purposes, the wonderful chain of events, working through generations, and leading to the most outre results, it would make all fiction with its conventionalities and foreseen conclusion most stale and unprofitable."

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 'A Case of Identity"

 

SERENDIPITY an apparent aptitude for making fortunate discoveries accidentally

 

"There are a few persons, even among the calmest thinkers, who have not occasionally been startled into a vague yet thrilling half-credence in the supernatural, by coincidence of so seemingly, marvelous a character that, as mere coincidences, the intellect has been unable to receive them."

Edgar Allen Poe

 

"What you have wanted to be all your life may be synchronous with what the universe needs from you to fulfill your destiny of happiness and the capacity to give to others what only you can give. What has held you back from going for it? What has propelled you toward it? Thank the people who encouraged your self-emergence. Let yourself feel anger, but not blame, toward those who interfered with your achievement of your life goals. What will it take for you to let go of blame and shame and to move on under your own steam? Are you saying to yourself that it is too late? If you are, picture Grandma Moses now and tell her that in your mind. She began painting in her seventies and died at one hundred and one!"

-David Richo

The Power of Coincidence: How Life Shows Us What we Need to Know

 

******************

Book: The Roots of Coincidence" by Arthur Koestler

 Book: "The Celestine Prophecy" by James Redfield

Book: "Coincidence Or Destiny? Stories of Synchronicity That Illuminate Our Lives" by Phil Cousineau

Book: A Little Book of Coincidence" by John Martineau

Book: "Serendipity, Accidental Discoveries in Science" by Royston M. Roberts

Book: "Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle" by C.G. Jung

Book: "Coincidence or Destiny? by Phil Cousineau

Book: "When God Winks: How the Power of Coincidence Guides Your Life" by Squire Rushnell

Book: "The Spontaneous Fulfillment of Desire: Harnessing the Infinite Power of coincidence" by Deepak Chopra

 

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