Customer Reviews

What A Coincidence!: The wow! factor in synchronicity and what it means in everyday life

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"That's the thing about coincidence that is so intriguing, and a little infuriating: it always seems to be *about* something, though what that something might be is often fleeting, whisked by in a blink of the inner eye." - From the book

Synchronicity is a term invented by Swiss psychologist Carl Jung to describe meaningful coincidences. In the book What a Coincidence!, author Susan Watkins offers personal anecdotes about "coincidence clusters" and how they have the uncanny ability to reach into the past, present and even the future. Painstakingly recording her dreams and waking coincidences for over 37 years, she notes that some of these clusters can seem small and insignificant while others are so mind-bendingly complex that it verges into infinity-if not absurdity.

Watkins asks some intriguing questions about coincidences:

* What if the mind is sorting through far more than what we think of as daily life?
* What if the mind has an infinite reach, encompassing everything that is possible and probable in a constant, dazzling organizational display from which we pick and choose the shape of our experience?
* What if the workings of that display show itself all the time, in a "paranormal" context that we tend to ignore or belittle?
* What if everything we need to know is contained in our conscious minds, of which we habitually employ the merest surface layer?
* How could we consciously employ these different forms of information, and what would it mean to us in the daily practical world to do so? And how far should we go with this idea?

She offers that she's unsure *anyone* can arrive at an empirical conclusion about synchronicity, clairvoyance and precognition. Acknowledging that a lot of nonsense has been attached to dreams, ESP, and alternative perceptions, she maintains that swinging the pendulum the other way--tossing out coincidences and dreams as meaningless--cuts us off from an entire psychological landscape. According to Watkins, this stance is a hopeless folly that diminishes a sense of community and optimism.

So why bother examining the nature of coincidence? Moreover, why invest the time and energy to catalogue these coincidences and dreams tinged with clairvoyance and precognition? Watkins answers:

"...in the middle lies a window to the workings of consciousness; clues as to how and why we got here and maybe even a way to mitigate (or at least expose the roots of) messes. And this is where I think an anecdotal, yet sensible look-see at coincidence and oddball connections and encounters is worth a study, or at least an inquiry, without specifying proof or disproof as an absolute..."

The author suggests that coincidence clusters can reveal important information about individuals and human consciousness as a whole. For example, the "Google Mind", as she calls it, can "attract" to us desired information and, acting as a form of precognition, can retrieve information into forms like "charged patterns". The resulting "coincidence parable" would illustrate, by association, the central issue that called up one's precognitive radar in the first place. Watkins also explains how coincidence "updates" itself-and, interestingly, both illuminate and *change* the past!

What a Coincidence! logs dozens of synchronistic happenings-from the complex to the simple. While a few of the situations are downright amazing, the intricacies of the personal anecdotes outweigh the surprise, at times. It's like having a stranger tell you a complex story involving various relatives and friends, towns and shops, while your head spins trying to keep track of it all. Interesting, yes, but keeping track of the details can be mind numbing.

Nevertheless, this book was a (mostly) engrossing read about one woman's experience with meaningful coincidences. Some of these coincidences span years and intersect with startling timing.

However, the author comes across as a fussy, cranky, aloof individual. I found it interesting that the synchronicities she depicted-while providing a mental "aha! Isn't this neat!" experience for her-didn't seem to influence her towards a more positive, compassionate outlook in life-despite the fact that they appeared to be customized for her own attitudes. Because of the lack of transformation, the book seemed incomplete-or, at least, unsatisfying. Why painstakingly catalogue dreams and coincidences for mere mental masturbation, I wondered?

If you're fascinated by meaningful coincidences, this book provides some remarkable stories and theories about the origin, nature, and significance of synchronicities. Also, if you've been considering keeping a journal for dreams and/or coincidence clusters, What a Coincidence! just might give you that nudge you've been looking for.

Please delete my earlier review and instead publish the following final version:

For A lover of coincidences like me this book is a feast: a veritable smorgasbord of coincidences, dreams, precognition and psychological insight served up in the most delicious conundrums of often funny and utterly honest everyday occurrences. Written in down to earth language with the most innovative word coining phrases What a Coincidence is at the same time simple and vastly complex, and a definite page turner. My personal little coincidence with this book must not be overlooked here either. It fits right in. On September 23, 2005 my daughter and a friend went to see George Clooney's new movie Good Night, Good Luck at the New York Film Festival. I had started reading What a Coincidence the day before and on the 23rd found myself on page 111 when the phone rang. The last sentence I had read was: "I'll just have to settle for ogling George Clooney until I can reeducate myself on the pertinent allegorical derivations, that's all." Ever since George's aunt Rosemary had sung William Saroyan's Come On-a My House Armenians have a soft spot for the Clooneys. It doesn't hurt that George is a hunk. As in all true coincidences (are there any others?) the time element is so important. For it was at this moment, this precise point in time (the book is published by Moment Point Press, after all), not the sentence before or the one after, that the phone rang and my daughter informed me that after the movie none other than George Clooney had shaken her friend's hand. A great big WOW for Sue Watkins and What a Coincidence!

I can highly recommend Susan's book on the theme of coincidence. I was just thinking of how it provides a really excellent introduction into the field of trance, hypnosis and NLP as they especially deal with the communicative energy/behavioural patterns that roam our subconscious and structure our waking life without our acknowledgement.

There is really no such thing as a coincidence in the sense of a pure accident. Rather, each event coincides because all events convene at a certain point of greatest opportunity. The NOW moment.

Becoming aware of and using the additional capacity in your own mind, and that it takes in everything around you, even though your waking consciousness is busy focusing on small details, is the point of co-incidents. That comes clearly across in this book.

Considering also there is no time in the accepted sense, simply stores of patterns which we combine or divide in the now and that we are each human electromagnetic transmitters/receptors who ceaselessly communicate with others on the same bandwidth, it should not be astounding that we can pick up on events which we project into (what we describe as) a future with strong intention.

Thus the intent of A to call B can be felt by B before or at the same as the action is being carried out, as the thought is instantaneously transmitted. Maybe in future we can do without the phone and simply learn just to transmit by thought - we are doing it already.

Dogs and cats often wait for their owner from the moment they pick up the thought of the master 'coming home' (several experiments to verify this phenomenon have been successfully carried out). Coincidence is really based on a transmission of intent to a tuned-in receptor accepting or rejecting the information (combining or dividing). There are so many other examples of attraction and repulsion of information, which, based on our basic behavioural value patterns intice us to co-create the moment or event we then call a coincidence or accident. In that sense we do not react to events, but we co-create in advance, and mould, the events we then reflect on as our reaction.

To that extent none of us can ever claim to really be a victim. We simply ould not be involved in any action, had we not on some level consented to be there and then. Synchronicity is the one place we all live in. Susan's book wonderfully expands on these themes and gives the reader assistance in exploring the vast realm of the mind and its workings.

I can also heartily recommend this book as an inspiration to students of clinical hypnosis and to NLP practitioners for pattern awareness and timeline work because it enhances one's own peripheral views of effect and affect in action.

For someone who reads murder mysteries almost exclusively, I loved this book. One of the things which drew me in was Sue Watkins' intimate, cozy style of writing. I'm new to the subject, but that was not a problem at all. A fascinating and enjoyable book, full of life's little mysteries.

The author of this book comes across as quite self-absorbed. Most of her examples of coincidence are self-related and given much more length in coverage that they warrant. My biggest problem, though, with this book that so much of what she covers is not what I have understood synchronicity to be. I have understood it to be meaningful coincidence which has some message or guidance aspect that is relevant to your life if you pay attention to it. There is still meaningless coincidence such as "small world", "what are the odds?" like when you find out a new coworker grew up in a house your Aunt and Uncle lived in and sold to their family. I thought most of her examples were of this variety. Also, several of her stories were more ESP related - thinking of someone from your past and running into them shortly after. In her longest story of this type there seemed to be no meaning or life guidepost aspect to the meeting again. For me, the "knowing who's calling on the phone" type of thing is indicative of ESP or intuition, but not synchronicity.

I was looking for a book that explored synchronicity as an expression of the phenomenon of connectedness and meaning in the world and this book really disappointed me.

My first reaction to this book was, WOW, someone thinks like me!

I haven't been documenting the subject of synchronicity (meaningful coincidence) for as long as the author but I have kept up a journal and index file on my personal clusters for some 16 years now. Before this I thought that no one else seemed to have personally experienced as much as I did, but now I see that at least one person may have experienced even more than I. I mean, most writers on this subject trot out a mere handful of synchronistic events in their books (and then pad it with regurgitated theory and other peoples' experiences- usually the same old famous cases.) Here we have chapters filled with new examples. Even the speculations on how they work and what they mean have a freshness and originality to them.

Nor is the author completely credulous. She is repeatedly wondering if she isn't dealing with selective attention or self-fulfilling prophecy (Texas Sharpshooting- drawing a bullseye around a shot that you've already fired.) She rightfully comes to the conclusion that she is dealing with a real phenomenon that seems to transcend time and space. Not only that, but she doesn't narrowly pigeonhole what is happening but realises that coincidence, precognition, clairvoyance, telepathy, and dreams are all interconnected.

I do not know if this book will convince anyone else. It has been my experience that most people simply cannot grasp the existence or importance of such occurences unless it has happened to them. However, once you have experienced such things, and have let them soak in, then your life will be changed forever. As the author says, once you've asked those questions, you can never quite go back to thinking of your position in the world as meaningless or mechanical.

Loved the book. Gave lots of examples and made you think of the synchronicity in my day to day life. Would highly recommend it.

I never write reviews. What a coincidence the first book I write about is titled What a Coincidence!