After I heard remarks on the show that struck me also as "seeming contradictions" (@ Extra Postage Required) I started again from the beginning and I took two pages of notes while listening. Dr. Surprise is an engaging speaker, learned, and evidently has an actual day job of some importance. He made a number of remarks that I liked.
However . . .
In one place he dismissively remarked about people with "fixed delusional religious systems going," yet in another place he told us the secret of his work, that he'd "married Theosophy, Special and General Relativity, and M theory" to produce "a rational explanation." Ah. Hello? Theosophy can be turned into something rational?
As noted, Dr. Surprise seems to have incorporated the concept of the Ishta Deva into his work. From my meager knowledge, that idea originated in Hinduism and was inherited by Buddhism. I may have misunderstood, but Dr. Surprise seems to eliminate the potentially repulsive idea of visualizing a separate superior deity during meditation, but that part of the conversation did not come out very clear. Nor did his response to Gene's question as to whether or not he thought there might be a Supreme Deity.
Dr. Surprise did say that as an undergrad he'd already been practicing meditation and metaphysics "for many years." So, to me, this interview could lead one to suppose that young Kirby Surprise "became a scientist" to verify and confirm his already established beliefs. Maybe not.
In another place though, Dr. Surprise fesses up and says that his work to "marry Theosophy's planes of consciousness to physics is unprovable, and off the rails, but it works." Pray tell! "Works" as what? He evidently gave that answer in another place where he said that he wrote his book for people with a touch of psychosis, especially relating to being overwhelmed with synchronicities. So, could his therapy merely provide temporary relief without actually resolving underlying issues? That's the whole precarious issue, IMHO.
Genesis 24, especially verses 12 – 22 contains a potent example of a "requested synchronicity" that had virtually instant, life-changing importance for several people. So synchronicity has been noticed, and requested, for a long time (around 4,000 years on the prima facie view of that text). That particular synchronicity in Genesis was made highly specific in several particulars, and was requested from, and attributed to, the Supreme Being.
Could there actually be external agents that involve themselves with our mental processes during the outworking of synchronicities? Dr. Surprise says no. If there were no possible deleterious consequences I would not care what anyone asserts. But what if there are entities that can inject themselves into, or even interfere with our thought-perception processes? Plenty of people believe that ETs contact humans via telepathy, or even automatic writing. Is it possible that this telepathic phenomenon is related to synchronicity? Mike Clelland said that during his second three-owls-synchronicity he heard a voice screaming in his head, "UFOs," and this led to his mental deterioration for a time. So, to me, these murky subjects are dangerous and not to be treated lightly.
I also wondered if Dr. Surprise has heard of Ted Phillips. I suppose one could conjecture that the trace cases Phillips has accumulated do not eliminate their origin from the human observer, if you take it for granted that humans can actually cause such physically interactive visualizations. Personally, I don't think so.
Interesting show all-in-all . . .