Are strange coincidences fluke events or acts of God?
In February 1973, Dr. Bernard Beitman found himself hunched over a kitchen sink in an old Victorian house in San Francisco, choking uncontrollably. He wasn’t eating or drinking so there was nothing to cough up, and yet for several minutes he couldn’t catch his breath or swallow.
The next day his brother called to tell him that 3,000 miles away, in Wilmington, Delaware, their father had died. He had bled into his throat, choking on his own blood at the same time as Beitman’s mysterious episode.
Overcome with awe and emotion, Beitman became fascinated with what he calls meaningful coincidences. After becoming a professor of psychology at the University of Missouri Columbia, he published several papers and two books on the subject and started a nonprofit, The Coincidence Project, to encourage people to share their coincidence stories.
“What I look for as a scientist and a spiritual seeker are the patterns that lead to meaningful coincidences,” said Beitman, 80, from his home in Charlottesville, Virginia. “So many people are reporting this kind of experience. Understanding how it happens is part of the fun.”
Researchers who study coincidences are divided over their significance. Some, like Beitman, believe they suggest a deeper connection between our minds and the material world than modern science can explain. Others see coincidences as pure mathematical probabilities akin to the “infinite monkey theorem” that states that a monkey hitting keys on a typewriter randomly for an infinite amount of time will eventually produce the works of Shakespeare. Unlikely perhaps, but not inexplicable.
Still, most coincidence scholars agree that noticing coincidences and interrogating them help us gain a greater appreciation of the way the world works.
Beitman defines a coincidence as
“two events coming together with apparently no causal explanation.” They can be life-changing, like his experience with his father, or comforting, such as when a loved one’s favorite song comes on the radio just when you are missing them most.
The element of surprise is essential, said Mark Johansen, a psychology professor at Cardiff University in Wales. “When you experience a coincidence, you are surprised because there was an event that conflicts with your causal model of how the world works,” he said. “There’s a mismatch.”
Although Beitman has long been fascinated by coincidences, it wasn’t until the end of his academic career that he was able to study them in earnest. (Before then, his research primarily focused on the relationship between chest pain and panic disorder.)
He started by developing the Weird Coincidence Survey in 2006 to assess what types of coincidences are most commonly observed, what personality types are most correlated with noticing them and how most people explain them. About 3,000 people have completed the survey so far.
Beitman is still collecting data, but he has drawn a few conclusions. The most commonly reported coincidences are associated with mass media: A person thinks of an idea and then hears or sees it on TV, the radio or the internet. Thinking of someone and then having that person call unexpectedly is next on the list, followed by being in the right place at the right time to advance one’s work, career and education.
People who describe themselves as spiritual or religious report noticing more meaningful coincidences than those who do not, and people are more likely to experience coincidences when they are in a heightened emotional state — perhaps under stress or grieving.
The most popular explanation among survey respondents for mysterious coincidences: God or fate. The second explanation: randomness. The third is that our minds are connected to one another. The fourth is that our minds are connected to the environment.
For Beitman, no single explanation suffices. “Some say God, some say Universe, some say random and I say ‘Yes,’” he said. “People want things to be black and white, yes or no, but I say there is mystery.”
He’s particularly interested in what he’s dubbed simulpathity — feeling a loved one’s pain at a distance, as he believes he did with his father. Science can’t currently explain how it might occur, but in his books he offers some nontraditional ideas, such as the existence of “the psychosphere,” a kind of mental atmosphere through which information and energy can travel between two people who are emotionally close though physically distant.
In his new book published in September, “Meaningful Coincidences: How and Why Synchronicity and Serendipity Happen,” he shares the story of a young man who intended to end his life by the shore of an isolated lake.
While he sat crying in his car, another car pulled up and his brother got out.
When the young man asked for an explanation, the brother said he didn’t know why he got in the car, where he was going, or what he would do when he got there. He just knew he needed to get in the car and drive.
“I don’t say I’m right, but I’m telling you this stuff happens,” Beitman said. “Scientists have difficulty believing it because they don’t know how it happens.”
David Hand, a British statistician and author of the 2014 book “The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day,” sits at the opposite end of the spectrum from Beitman.
He says most coincidences are fairly easy to explain and specializes in demystifying even the strangest ones.
“When you look closely at a coincidence, you can often discover the chance of it happening is not as small as you think,” he said. “It’s perhaps not a one-in-abillion chance, but in fact a one-in-a-hundred chance, and yeah, you would expect that would happen quite often.”