What just happened?

[General Misconception]

Have you ever had an experience you couldn't rationalize?
I have.

It was sometime at night.
I was outside having a cigarette one winter while staying in a hotel in Banff National Park. I had a strange feeling after the first 2 puffs of my cigarette, I felt like I had enough, not because I was finished with it but because..... I was finished I had no reason to continue. At the time I enjoyed my occasional smoke and I cannot quite say in words what this sense of "Your finished with it" felt like but it was not as if I had made the decision, it was quite peculiar indeed and i will never forget what happens next. Because if I had continued smoking i would not be here writing this.

I took the cigarette and held it for a moment watching it burn for a few seconds. then I just threw it into the snow and as it landed in the snow bank, I turned around to walk back in the hotel. I took 2 steps and heard a large CRACK and a sliding sound, on the third step I pivoted to look for the sound. At that moment I saw a chunk of ice the size of my body come down off the roof. I will never forget that piece of ice, it came down straight despite sliding off the angled roof and one corner came before the rest.... right where my head had been 3 seconds prior. it must have been between 200 to 300 LBS. either way I'm sure it would have killed me or disabled me for life.

As I stood there staring at this chunk of ice for the next 2 minutes I tried to comprehend what just happened. If it was coincidence it was very unlikely in my estimation, why did I throw out a cigarette I had hardly started. What i couldn't shake the most though was that feeling that I got "You're done with it"... it was not an intent, it was not a choice. I feel like something happened that I cannot explain or comprehend.

I told my Brother about this one day years after it happened and he had a similar story, only in his he was riding a bicycle, for some reason he crossed the street to realize he was on the wrong side that he intended to be on..... thankfully he was on the wrong side because as he was waiting for the light to change so he could get back on the side he was supposed to be on, a semi truck hit a bus and went through the wall of the building that was behind where he would have been if he had been waiting on the side he had to be on to get to where he was going. to this day he cant explain why he crossed to the other side, he said he knew it was the wrong side but for some reason was compelled to be over there instead of where he thought he should be.

I thought of 2 things that would make sense in a "mystical or paranormal" explanation but nothing as far as logic save probability and chance but somehow nothing can explain these chance encounters.

1. Divine Intervention of some sort
2. We are not what we think we are, our existence extends beyond our personal experience and is not necessarily bound to the laws of reality as we know them in our current perspective
3. Pure Coincidence and/or Chance

I personally cannot prove or disprove any of these nor do I believe or disbelieve one over any other. however I find each of these 3 to be the most plausible explanations.

I would like to hear anyone thoughts, opinions, values beliefs, statistical analyses or even personal experiences of your own that are similar in some form to this one. I am only searching for clues the best I can, I don't feel i know any better than anyone else here.

Sincerely,
GM

 

[mike]

A coincidence is a surprising concurrence of events, perceived as meaningfully related, with no apparent causal connection (Diaconis and Mosteller 1989). Given a large number of events, extremely unlikely coincidences are possible--and perhaps even common. To quote Sherlock Holmes from "The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle," "Amid the action and reaction of so dense a swarm of humanity, every possible combination of events may be expected to take place, and many a little problem will be presented which may be striking and bizarre..." (Conan Doyle 1892, p. 245).

One thing is certain about coincidence. The phenomenon fascinates believers and skeptics alike. It's a porthole into one of the most interesting philosophical questions we can ask: Are the events of our lives ultimately objective or subjective? Is there a deeper order, an overarching purpose to the universe? Or are we the lucky accidents of evolution, living our precious but brief lives in a fundamentally random world that has only the meaning we choose to give it?

For those with a highly empirical bent, a coincidence is happenstance, a simultaneous collision of two events that has no special significance and obeys the laws of probability. "In reality, the most astonishingly incredible coincidence imaginable would be the complete absence of all coincidence," says John Allen Paulos, professor of mathematics at Temple University in Philadelphia, and best-selling author of Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences. "Believing in the significance of oddities is self-aggrandizing," he adds. "It says, 'Look how important I am.' People find it dispiriting to hear, 'It just happened, and it doesn't mean anything.'"

To the mystically inclined, however, coincidence is a synchronicity, the purposeful occurrence of two seemingly unrelated events. The argument is not likely to be resolved anytime soon. Of late, though, the phenomenon of coincidence has begun to yield new scientific insights. It turns out that we may actually be hardwired to connect anomalies in a meaningful way. Many of the remarkable feats our brains regularly perform—including our ability to learn the meaning of words or decode the unspoken laws of social decorum depend on our penchant for noticing coincidences. In fact, mathematicians, cognitive scientists and paranormal researchers are applying the tools of statistics and probability to tease out just where coincidences lie on the bell curve of everyday experience. Are they easily explained, or so improbable they must signify something?

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200407/the-power-coincidence

Improbable occurrences are to be expected, say statisticians, especially considering there are 5 billion people on the planet. "We're awash in a torrent of names, numbers, dates, addresses, acronyms, telephone calls, e-mails, calendars, birth dates," says John Paulos. "The information-rich environment of modern life itself is a source of many coincidences." Even "prophetic" dreams can be explained by probability, says Paulos

Bloody heck Elizabeth Targ again ?

No doubt a coincidence

 

[Skymon876]

Excellent thread! I am super busy and will chime in with much more later.

 

[Pegusta]

That is interesting. While I do not recall having a similar experience myself, I have on the other hand heard from more than one person recollecting something similar.

A few months ago at a funeral I heard two such stories which they (I guess) interpret as being divine intervention. The first case involved two women driving in a car in the countryside. They were driving along with no other cars in sight, when they reached a train crossing. When they were in the middle of the train crossing suddenly the car engine stopped, and they were lifted up into the air, turning around and being dropped on the road a few meters from the train crossing. And moments after they had been put to the ground a freight train shot past them. Naturally they were pretty shook up, albeit immensely grateful, having been through this incident. Let me point out that both these women were no nonsense people, well known for being trustworthy and respected in the local community.

When this experience was being retold, another woman came forward with a similar story having taken place in an area not far from the train crossing. She recollected sitting with a small gathering of people in her garden, which was located near the same road as mentioned above. Anyway, they were sitting there drinking coffee and eating biscuits having a good time, when suddenly they heard a car engine, at which point they looked up at the road and saw a car rapidly headed straight for them. They did not have any time to react and get out of the way, as moving swiftly seldom is the primary talent when you are in your 70s. To their amazement they then saw the out of control vehicle suddenly come to a stop just when it reached their garden, and they were shocked to see that it was suspended in the air as it gently glided past them, and turned back towards the road. It dropped down and drove off.


I have no idea what to make of these events, but find it fascinating that they seem to have happened in the same area. Locality seems to be a very prominent factor in many cases. I plan on going there this summer to track down the witnesses I haven’t already spoken with. The ultimate thing would be to find the driver in the second car and get his/her point of view, but he/she might prove hard to find. Nevertheless, my ambition is to get as many pieces of this puzzle together, hopefully forming as complete a picture as possible.

 

[TalkingMeatSuit]

In my experience, Barry Taff's view on things (women issues aside) resonated with me in terms of life being a fairly scripted event.

I don't claim to know the mechanisms involved, but my gut leans towards the fact that you weren't supposed to die yet.

 

[Polterwurst]

I had a strange feeling after the first 2 puffs of my cigarette, I felt like I had enough (...) I cannot quite say in words what this sense of "Your finished with it" felt like but it was not as if I had made the decision, (...)

Well, if not you, who else? I suppose the feeling was not of something bad about to happen (possible precognition) but more like someone was telling you to finish (possible "psychic" intrusion)? Did you or do you sometimes have a feeling of someone familiar around when there actually isn't? Is there maybe someone ho passed on who might be "looking out" for you? Of course, the question is why you didn't just feel an urge to leave your position or even hear something like the words "move away" (which has been reported in similar cases), but just that sense of "finished here".

Maybe Mike is right, but if you really felt something anomalous before the event, and it seems strange enough for you to want to discuss it here, I hink that points in another direction. I chose option Nr 2 because it seems nearest to my opinon that it might have been an outside consciousness (probably discarnate) influencing yours.

 

[Pegusta]

@TalkingMeatSuit
Yes, Taffs views on the importance of locality is very interesting indeed. And what is up with him and his elaborate descriptions of women in every interview?

@General Misconception.
There certainly seem to be something odd going on, that to the surface appear external to the human mind. What it is is another question however. I would think that every individual has to really decide for themselves what it is. One could easily get the impression that we live in some kind of simulation, due to synchronicity and fascinating experiences like the ones you described.

Or it could be that the human mind subconsciously is trying to manage and come to terms with the concept of its inevitable death, by giving life meaning through seeing signs and patterns, interpreting them in ways that have a comforting and ensuring effect = life is meaningful = life has purpose = life has continuation. A cynical psychoanalytical approach i guess.

Who knows?


I think it is ultimately up to each and every one as individuals to make up their minds concerning things like these.

 

[Wade]

In my experience, Barry Taff's view on things (women issues aside) resonated with me in terms of life being a fairly scripted event.

I don't claim to know the mechanisms involved, but my gut leans towards the fact that you weren't supposed to die yet.

I have at times thought like that but if we were living a scripted life to which extent would it be?

To use generalmisconceptions...great name btw I wish I had thought of that...it life was scripted you could make an argument that the whole scenario was set up before GM was born. In other words he was destined from the beginning to go out and have a smoke at the time because "life" needed him there to experience narrowly being missed by a falling icicle (which was destined to fall at that time) in order to have an epipheny of sorts. It makes your head spin and it's thought experiences like this that I have tended to dwell on and lose a good deal of sleep mulling it all over, and now having read this post I'll probably be doing it again before I retire tonight. So thank you for sharing gm and damn you for doing so

 

[TalkingMeatSuit]

In other words he was destined from the beginning to go out and have a smoke at the time because "life" needed him there to experience narrowly being missed by a falling icicle (which was destined to fall at that time) in order to have an epipheny of sorts. It makes your head spin and it's thought experiences like this that I have tended to dwell on and lose a good deal of sleep mulling it all over, and now having read this post I'll probably be doing it again before I retire tonight.

O damn, it's getting inception level 3 up in here haha!

 

[TalkingMeatSuit]

As I had mentioned in another thread, I did a past life regression last year and was a little overwhelmed by the emotion and realness of it all.

During this regression I only recognized 2 people that I know in this life. One of them is an ex-girlfriend that impacted my life in a major way. Due to a broken, insane religious family I spent my childhood moving all over the place, and so far as an adult I've done the same. For me to wind up living in a random town, in yet another new state (where I knew no one but 1 relative), then crossing paths with this woman - it seemed like a pretty big coincidence to me if I did in fact know her from before.

Was I scripted to be a vagabond drifter, then to meet this person I've known before after getting divorced and trying out a seemingly random new city and state?

Granted, the entire topic of past life hypnosis is pseudo-science at best, and it's entirely possible that it was just my imagination filling in the blanks. But who knows? If we had all the answers we probably wouldn't be here discussing UFO's and the esoteric.

 

[Randall]

The first experience helps prove smoking poses a serious health risk. If the universe is trying to tell you something ... that's it. On the second incident ... what was he smoking . But more seriously, strange things have happened to me and members of our family. Many other people out there report strange things. You're not alone. Don't rule out the possibility of an influence that we don't fully understand.

 

[mike]

I have a friend who has various degrees in the sciences including mathmatics, He gives a very good explanation of the math behind what we think are co-incidences.

COINCIDENCES, CHAOS, AND ALL THAT MATH JAZZ

EDWARD B. BURGER AND MICHAEL STARBIRD

For some people, the complicated equations and mathematical symbols behind probability, statistics, and chaos theory chaos theory, in mathematics, physics, and other fields, a set of ideas that attempts to reveal structure in aperiodic, unpredictable dynamic systems such as cloud formation or the fluctuation of biological populations. seem frustratingly abstract or downright boring. However, these concepts are at play in many intriguing in·trigue

v. everyday occurrences, such as finding out that you share a birthday with a coworker co·work·er or co-work·er
n.
One who works with another; a fellow worker. , seeing how there are only seven degrees of separation between you and your favorite celebrity, and risking your dollar on the unlikely chance of hitting the lottery. Math professors Burger and Starbird reveal how many seemingly surprising events are rather ordinary when the mathematics behind them is explained.

probability of a coincidence - question

 

[mike]

Coincidences fascinate us. They seem to compel a search for their significance. More often than some people realize, however, they're to be expected and require no special explanation. Surely no cosmic conclusions may be drawn from the fact that I recently and quite by accident met someone in Seattle whose father had played on the same Chicago high school baseball team as my father had and whose daughter is the same age and has the same name as my daughter. As improbable as this particular event was (or as particular events always are), that someevent of this vaguely characterized sort should occasionally occur is very likely.

More precisely, it can be shown, for example, that if two strangers sit next to each other on an airplane, more than 99 times out of 100 they will be linked in some way by two or fewer intermediates. (The linkage with my father's classmate was more striking. It was via only one intermediate, my father, and contained other elements.) Maybe, for example, the cousin of one of the passengers will know the other's dentist. Most of the time people won't discover these links, since in casual conversation they don't usually run through all their 1,500 or so acquaintances as well as all their acquaintances' acquaintances. (I suppose with laptop computers becoming more popular they could compare their own personal databases and even those of people they know. Perhaps exchanging databases might soon be as common as leaving a business card. Electronic networking. Hellacious.)

There is a tendency, however, to home in on likely co-acquaintances. Such connections are thus discovered frequently enough so that the squeals of amazement that commonly accompany their discovery are unwarranted. Similarly unimpressive is the "prophetic" dream which traditionally comes to light after some natural disaster has occurred. Given the half billion hours of dreaming each night in this country - 2 hours per night for 200 million people - we should expect as much.

Or consider the famous birthday problem in probability theory. One must gather together 367 people (one more than the number of days in a leap year) in order to ensure that 2 of them share a birthday. But if one is willing to settle for a 50-50 chance of this happening, only 23 people need be gathered. Rephrasing, I note that if we imagine a school with thousands of classrooms each of which contains 23 students, then approximately half of these classrooms will contain 2 students who share a birthday. No time should be wasted trying to explain the meaning of these or other coincidences of similar type. They just happen.

One somewhat different example concerns the publisher of a stock newsletter who sends out 64,000 letters extolling his state-of-the-art database, his inside contacts, and his sophisticated econometric models. In 32,000 of these letters he predicts a rise in some stock index for the following week, say, and in 32,000 of them he predicts a decline. Whatever happens, he sends a follow-up letter but only to those 32,000 to whom he's made a correct "prediction." To 16,000 of them he predicts a rise for the next week, and to 16,000 a decline. Again, whatever happens, he will have sent 2 consecutive correct predictions to 16,000 people. Iterating this procedure of focusing exclusively on the winnowed list of people who have received only correct predictions, he can create the illusion in them that he knows what he's talking about. After all, the 1,000 or so remaining people who have received 6 straight correct predictions (by coincidence) have a good reason to cough up the $1,000 the newsletter, publisher requests: They want to continue to receive these "oracular" pronouncements.

I repeat that a useful distinction in discussing these and other coincidences is that between generic sorts of events and particular events. Many situations are such that the particular event that occurs is guaranteed to be rare - a certain individual winning the lottery or a specific bridge hand being dealt - while the generic outcome - someone's winning the lottery or some bridge hand being dealt-is unremarkable. Consider the birthday problem again. If all that we require is that 2 people have some birthday in common rather than any particular birthday, then 23 people suffice to make this happen with a probability of 1/2. By contrast, 253 people are needed in order for the probability to be 1/2 that one of them has a specific birth date, say July 4. Particular events specified beforehand are, of course, quite difficult to forecast, so it's not surprising that predictions by televangelists, quack doctors, and others are usually vague and amorphous (that is, until the events in question have occurred, at which time the prognosticators like to assert that these precise outcomes were indeed foreseen).

This brings me to the so-called Jeane Dixon effect, whereby the few correct predictions (by psychics, disreputable stock newsletters, whomever) are widely heralded and the 9,839 or so false predictions made annually are conveniently ignored. The phenomenon is quite widespread and contributes to the tendency we all have to read more significance into coincidences than is usually justified. We forget all the premonitions of disaster we've had which didn't predict the future and remember vividly those few which seemed to do so. Instances of seemingly telepathic thought are reported to everyone we know; the incomparably vaster number of times this does not occur are too banal to mention.

Even our biology conspires to make coincidences appear more meaningful than they usually are. Since the natural world of rocks, plants, and rivers does not seem to offer much evidence for superfluous coincidences, primitive man had to be very sensitive to every conceivable anomaly and improbability as he slowly developed science and its progenitor, "common sense." Coincidences, after all, are sometimes quite significant. In our complicated and largely man-made modem world, however, the plethora of connections among us appears to have overstimulated many people's inborn tendency to note coincidence and improbability and led them to postulate causes and forces where there are none. People know more names (not only family members' but also those of colleagues and a myriad of public figures), dates (from news stories to personal appointments and schedules), addresses (whether actual physical ones or telephone numbers, office numbers, and so on), and organizations and acronyms (from the FBI to the IMF, from AIDS to ASEAN) than ever before. Thus, although it is a very difficult quantity to measure, the rate at which coincidences occur has probably risen over the last century or two. Still, for most of them it generally makes little sense to demand an explanation.

In reality, the most astonishingly incredible coincidence imaginable would be the complete absence of all coincidences. Then again, some things that appear coincidental are not random at all: say, among 100 people gathered in a room, some are (mutually) friends and some are not. What is the probability that two people have (among the present) the same number of friends?




an excerpt from
J.A.Paulos,
Beyond Numeracy

 

[boomerang]

Time is not as we experience it. And things connect beneath the surface of everyday perception in weird ways. Glad you are still here to share this !

 

[Wade]

I am quite accepting of the law of numbers as a possible explanation to events that we call synchronicity or even a coincidence and, given the existence of the “law”, the observation that because of the sheer number of probabilities out there waiting to be fulfilled it should be tha coincidences are the norm BUT

Admitting that I only read the extract mike pointed out and not the full article there is an aspect of the phenomenon that I don’t ever recall seeing mentioned and that is the age of the percipient. It seems to me that synchronicities/coincidences (s/c)were a numbers thing then those numbers should rise incrementally with age. What I mean is there is a pair of “factors” to any s/c. Fir starters you have be exposed to a thing in order to appreciate the other thing to deem it a s/c. That is to be expected as one gets older as you expose yourself to so many things and your thoughts both conscoiusly and unconsciously are flooded with meandering thoughts so that you are bound to experience more than a few s/c , but as I’ve mentioned elsewhere in this forum even at a young age ( 11 MAYBE younger) I thought I could predict the future as I would think of a person and within a few minutes I”d see or here them, I’d think of a song and I would hear it within a few minutes upon turning on the radio and or tv…admittedly we may tend to define our own standards on what could constitute a s/c based on the lag time between thought and realization but that’s a different argument…and I was and still am a demon with determining what time it is but that probably just comes down to being a whiz and guessing the amount of time passed since I last saw the clock but given my young age and the limited access i had to information i didn't have a lot of incoming informstion which to compare with what i had already retained.

And I think this is what was bothering me when angelo posted a link to a site that explained why the law of numbers was at work in these cases, and it may very well be in some cases but as with many things I don’t see this as black and white issue. This should need to be taken into consideration There has to be a control in place in order to determitne what does or does not constitute a law of number issue, and that control would be the number of events one has been exposed to in order to be able to realize the second of the pair regardless of its significance. Even though greater minds than mine may have determined otherwise I don’t think you can just throw out an infinite number of factors out there and say of course it’s a numbers thing ,, look at all the possibilities waiting for you, othetwise its a one size fits all scenario There are two sides to sn s/c he triggering event and the otiginal retained event.

When you're eleven years old and live in a cow town and have somewhat limited exposure outside media as i did it does make you wonder. Admittedly i was...and am...a very curious felliow and as a young teen for some strange reason i familiarized myself as best as i could with the Afghanistan war (the russian one) so i wasn't niaeve (?) but i did have limited access to information until i was in my late teens and got my first shortwave.

No matter what side of the coin you fall on you can't deny that awareness has to be a consideration but given the broadness of the law of numbets somwhere this very second a two year old is experiencing a coincidence.

 

[stonehart]

I have had a similar experience but I just put it down to primal instinct.

The story is: I was supposed to be working in the roof of an auditorium and the cavity I would have been in is 30m above the ground and the only thing between you and that fall is an inch thick ceiling panel. Was going to go up but just felt very uneasy about being up there that day so called quits for the day and walked home. 20mins latter the city got hit by a 6.5 earthquake and part of the ceiling fell out.

Not divine intervention just animal instinct... we are still animals after all.

 

[General Misconception]

It makes your head spin and it's thought experiences like this that I have tended to dwell on and lose a good deal of sleep mulling it all over, and now having read this post I'll probably be doing it again before I retire tonight. So thank you for sharing gm and damn you for doing so

As the saying goes " you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him think" admiting i know nothing is humbleing, and letting go of what i thought i knew is a lesson in humillity. In the moments i can do both are those that let me hold these experiences for what they are, a mystery.

One can choose to analise and diceminate such things with constructs of our minds makeing, and that may satisfy us to some degree.

Remember though the sun rises and sets every single day, if knowing why made it any less awesome then i would vote to never know. Thankfully thats not the case.

GM

 

[General Misconception]

Well, if not you, who else? I suppose the feeling was not of something bad about to happen (possible precognition) but more like someone was telling you to finish (possible "psychic" intrusion)? Did you or do you sometimes have a feeling of someone familiar around when there actually isn't? Is there maybe someone ho passed on who might be "looking out" for you? Of course, the question is why you didn't just feel an urge to leave your position or even hear something like the words "move away" (which has been reported in similar cases), but just that sense of "finished here".

Maybe Mike is right, but if you really felt something anomalous before the event, and it seems strange enough for you to want to discuss it here, I hink that points in another direction. I chose option Nr 2 because it seems nearest to my opinon that it might have been an outside consciousness (probably discarnate) influencing yours.

I dident feel anything "Anomalous", there where no voices and there was definitly no cognition, i was not thinking anything. I was outside enjoying a ciggoret alowingmyself to really enjoy the moment alone outside on a trip to banff breathing the cold air and smelling the scent of the beautifull pine trees. Mmm it was nice. I dont go on trips often.

I see what you're trying to get at but that's not the case at all.

Something I can't describe happened when I was looking at the cigarette The moment before I tossed it, I had an "instance" words cannot do it justice, if i am to make you understand, its as if my mind took Silence of its own accord While looking at the cigarette. Then nothing mattered anymore, there was no reason to go on smoking, the desire just dident exist anymore. Do i decide to smoke it anyway or let it go. And i let it go. i said it was not a decision at that point, because honestly who likes smoking if there's no inherent desire no craving to be filled Or filled?

We do things based on motivation many times to fill a want or need. When your mind is actually Silent (thank you i know, i mean subjectively silent) there is nothing there, no need no want or desire.

If you want to take this and lead yourself to belive it has to do with some set idea of what "paranormal" activity should be like to you. I wont stop you. But to me it was just what i needed at that moment, for whatever reason. They say smoking will kill you. Well in this instance the immediacy of that statment could have been ironic.

If there was a joke there in that experience, i got it, and i was quite amused. In fact it kind of led me to believe that it was a part of me that set it up, knowing that i would get a kick out of it. This is why i am inclined to feel that we are not what we "think".......

 

[Polterwurst]

I dident feel anything "Anomalous", there where no voices and there was definitly no cognition, i was not thinking anything. I was outside enjoying a ciggoret alowingmyself to really enjoy the moment alone outside on a trip to banff breathing the cold air and smelling the scent of the beautifull pine trees. Mmm it was nice. I dont go on trips often.

Yeah, anomalous is obviously the wrong word. But I guess it was at least odd enough for you to wonder if it was just coincidence and to open this thread.So... what do you think, was it coincidence?

And who knows if psychic intrusion, if such a thing should exist, would register as something extraordinary? It might just seem like some random thought or semi-conscious idea.