One of the most common ways to dismiss an idea is to say "it's just a coincidence." But how do
we know if something really is a coincidence? It's something that even scientists struggle with. When
you think of a scientist you probably imagine a very logical person. Someone who accepts facts
and observation above all else. But that's not always the case. Let me show you what i mean.
Try to remember the first time you looked at a picture of the Earth. You probably noticed that
it looked a lot like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that fit together. They look like this because
at one point they were all connected, in one super continent called "Pangaea" about 100 million years
ago. And over time the pieces broke apart and moved away from each other, to create the world as
we see it today. This idea is called continental drift. This seems obvious to us now but there was
a time when it wasn't obvious to everyone. And it wasn't obvious to most scientists.
In the early 1900s almost no one believed that continents could move or shift around.
To explain this, many scientists believed that there was once a huge bridge of land that
connected Africa and South America. A bridge that somehow disappeared without a trace. But a german
geophysicist named Alfred Wegener believed that Africa and South America seemed to fit together
like puzzle pieces precisely because they were connected at one point, in one huge mass of land.
To test his theory, Wegener looked at the rocks and fossils on the coasts of Africa
and South America, and he found that they were remarkably similar. In 1912 he published his
findings in his theory of continental drift. You'd think that the scientific community
embraced all this evidence, but they didn't. Most scientists dismissed it as just a coincidence.
In fact the idea was so controversial, and scientists were so threatened by Wegener's
findings, that the American association of petroleum geologists held a forum for the sole
purpose of trying to tear down the continental drift theory. All because it didn't fit
their world view. Think about that for a second. Scientists, people we expect to be
logical and driven by facts, all got together to reject an idea just because they didn't like it.
Even though there was a huge amount of evidence to support that it was true.
And they did this even though it's something so obvious that even a child could notice. It
wasn't until the 1950s almost 40 years later that the scientific opinion began to change,
and the scientific community began to accept Wegener's continental drift concept. What this
shows is that the fact that South America and Africa look like puzzle pieces that fit together
wasn't a coincidence at all. The history of science is filled with examples just like this,
and this alone should make us skeptical whenever so-called experts dismiss something
as "just a coincidence." In the words of the Nobel Prize-winning physicist Percy Williams-Bridgeman
"coincidence is what you have left over after you've applied a bad theory." And this shouldn't
be all that surprising because according to german philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer,
all truth passes through three stages: First it's ridiculed; Second, it's violently opposed,
and Third it's accepted as self-evident. And what this suggests is that we should be very careful
about immediately dismissing things as mere coincidence. And it also has
important implications for many of the things we experience in our everyday lives. Things we might
be tempted to dismiss as just a coincidence. Take for example the real life story of Paul Gratchen.
Paul had just started dating a woman named Esther and he was thinking about asking her to be his
girlfriend. He was standing in a deli, paying for a sandwich, when he noticed a dollar bill
with the name Esther on it. "How strange," he thought to himself that the name Esther
would appear at the exact moment he was thinking of their relationship. For some reason he decided
not to spend it and instead he took the bill home with him, something he would never normally do.
He decided that this dollar bill would be a funny gift for Esther, and so he put it in a frame and
he gave it to her on the day that he planned to ask her to make their relationship official.
But when Esther unwrapped the frame with the dollar bill inside she didn't laugh. She was
absolutely speechless. As she stared at the dollar bill she seemed shocked and confused.
After some silence, Paul told her that it wasn't quite the reaction he was hoping for.
He asked her if something was wrong. Esther replied that everything was fine,
and she happily agreed to date Paul exclusively. Two years went by without any mention of
the dollar bill. They grew closer and Paul eventually proposed to Esther. They got married.
And it wasn't until they moved into their new home together that Paul saw the dollar bill again.
He was surprised that Esther had kept the dollar after all this time. It was only then that Esther
finally revealed why she reacted the way she did to the bill all those years ago. It turns
out that when she was 19 years old she was in an unhappy relationship. It was ending. And in
the middle of that breakup she remembers thinking that she wasn't sure if true love was even real.
She decided to leave her fate in the hands of the universe. She took ten different one dollar
bills and on each of them she wrote her name. She said to herself if I'm meant to find my true love,
then one of these bills will end up in the hands of the man i will marry.
And so when Paul gave her the dollar bill with her name on it, in that moment, she knew that
she would marry him. But she didn't want to reveal this so early in their relationship.
It's an astonishing and unlikely story, and as of today
Paul and Esther have been married for more than 19 years, and they have three children together.
Gregg Lavoy once said when you're on the right path the universe winks and nods at you from
time to time just to let you know. And once you start noticing these little cosmic clues,
once you understand that you're on a path at all, you'll begin to see them everywhere.
These clues are what swiss psychologist Carl Jung called "Synchronicity." In 1952 Jung published a
paper explaining that in the same way that we can connect events by cause and effect,
we can also connect them by meaning. Synchronicity happens when there's a meaningful coincidence.
And we find it when an event in the world coincides meaningfully with a thought or feeling
in the mind. Often this happens when you're thinking of something and then almost instantly
you notice something else that's connected to what you were just thinking or feeling.
Like what happened when Paul Gratchen found himself thinking about Esther and immediately
noticing a dollar bill with their name on it. Why does this happen? Jung believed that life
is not a series of random events, but rather an expression of a deeper order which he called "unus
mundus." In fact Jung's concept of unus mundus bears a striking similarity to Pythagoras idea
that everything in the universe is connected by a basic structure of numbers. According
to Jung we're all connected within a network that gives us a sense of universal wholeness,
and this realization is more than just an intellectual exercise, it's a spiritual
awakening. Jung says that synchronicity plays a role similar to that of dreams,
and its purpose is to shift our conscious thinking to connect with this greater universal awareness.
Jung is careful to point out that he's not denying that coincidences can happen,
but at the same time we also have to admit that there are some coincidences that are connected
so meaningfully, that their chances of happening would be so unlikely,
so improbable, that they're virtually impossible to explain. And it's for this reason that we
shouldn't ignore synchronicities when they happen. We should pay careful attention to them.
Here's another common example: If you dream about someone one night and the next day you run into
that same person, you should ask yourself, why is this person coming into my life at this moment?
What does this mean, and what's the message i'm supposed to draw?
This takes us into a realm beyond the material world,
and it implies a deeper and unseen order in the universe. Because in a much broader sense,
our whole universe and life itself can be thought of as an almost impossible coincidence.
Many scientists have pointed out that the physical laws we see all around us seem to
be perfectly arranged, in just the right way, in order to support life as we know it. We also know
that there are mathematical constants in nature all around us, like the speed of light, and the
strength of gravity. And all of these numbers seem to be just right for our universe to contain life.
If they were just a little bit different, the universe would collapse
or it wouldn't have the right chemical elements needed for stars or planets to form.
It's a question worth asking. Is it just a coincidence that the laws of nature and the
mathematical constants we see in the universe, happen to be exactly the way they are? And that
they just so happen to be arranged in a way that makes it possible to support life? This has led to
what many scientists have called the idea of the "fine-tuned universe." And if we go even deeper,
we find another type of synchronicity that shows up in relation to numbers. According to numerology
when you see numbers that keep appearing in your life over and over again, in different situations
and in different ways, it's not an accident. It's happening for a reason. In much the same way that
a recurring dream can be understood as a message from your subconscious mind, a number that you
keep seeing in your life, can be understood as a message from the universe. But whether or not you
take advantage of that message is entirely up to you. In numerology, these recurring numbers are
called "angel numbers." And they can give valuable clues into the opportunities that already exist
all around you. If you stay with me in a future video we'll go deeper into what these angel
numbers mean, how to spot them, and what they reveal about your path throughout this life.
Have you noticed any strange or beautiful coincidences in your life? Let me know in
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Thanks so much for watching take care of yourselves and i'll see you in the next video.