musings
October 2007 
Parallel Synchronized Randomness (PSR)
Posted on Oct 1st, 2006
by 
zencowboy
zencowboy
That’s what they called it in the new film The Science of Sleep. Jung called it synchronicity. So did Sting. One of my favorite authors, Paul Auster, wrote a small collection of stories, The Red Notebook, about it.
All I know is that I love it. I’m going along living the daily drama that is unfolding before me, and then without warning I fall through a tear in the fabric of everyday life and am face to face with the wonder of the unknown. You know, that shit that you just can’t explain away no matter how hard you try, and you’re not sure exactly what “it†means but you know “it†means something, or does it?
Here are two of my most recent “meaningful acausal coincidences.â€
One:
I have been friends with V. for twelve years, maybe longer. We go through periods when we see each other a lot and then periods when we don’t. Usually, V. moves away for a while and we lose contact. The funny thing is, V. and I always seem to run into each other within a few weeks after she comes back to town. In the past, I could have written it off as the fact that the Phoenix art scene is small and we hang at similar gigs.
Maybe eight years ago that was true but now we are running into each other at even the most mundane settings, like at a grocery store on a Sunday afternoon. She’s here until March, and then it’s off to Spain.
This also seems to happen within days after V. has quite prominently popped back into my head and I wonder what she’s up too. I have other old friends even an x-wife who still live in Phoenix. They pop up in my mind from time to time too, but I never run into them. Why V.?
Two:
L. and I met this summer at a study retreat with Roshi Bernie in Massachusetts. We sat zazen next to each other for about five hours a day for four days and had some great conversations off the cushions. After the retreat ended L. went home to Jersey and I went to New York City to visit family and friends.
About a week later, I was supposed to meet a friend on the Upper East Side for lunch. She had to cancel at the last minute, and since I was already in the neighborhood I went to the MOMA to check out a Dada exhibit. I spent several hours enthralled with early twentieth century ready-mades and cut-ups. I tried to take a picture of Duchamp’s R. Mutt with my cell phone but the guard wouldn’t let me.
Before I left the museum, I went out to the gardens to feel the sun as I checked in with my wife. I’m sitting on a bench about to dial the phone when someone says my name inflected with a question. I turn around and there is L. with his wife.
L. hadn’t been to the MOMA since he was a kid and wasn’t even a fan of Dada. I live in Phoenix, Arizona and don’t get to the MOMA that often myself. Like me, they came on a whim. I stood there amazed at this chance encounter in the middle of a tiny island in the midst of millions of people. And yet, if this encounter had happened a week earlier, we would have passed each other as strangers.
These moments leave me with an itch in my mind that I just can’t reach to scratch. I want them to mean something. They are mysterious and leave me in wonder. I want them to be part of a greater context.
But, I just don’t know.
Maybe, "You can only find truth with logic if you have already found truth without it." G.K. Chesterton: The Man Who Was Orthodox
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I was 7 when I went to the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry. While I was there, they had a topography exhibit that looked at three dimensional representations of fourth dimensional shapes. The math guys had 3-d sculptures to represent what a 4-d objects 3-d shadow would look like. The logic goes like this, If you take a three d object, say an apple, and shine a light onto the apple, you get a 2-d shadow on the wall. If you take a light on the plane of the shadow object and shine it, you get a 1-D line shadow. Again along the plane of the line, you get a point 0-D. Now take this logic and apply it the other direction from a 3-D object up to a 4 D- object. What you find is that the topography of the 4-D sphere, has 3-D “shadow: which has shpere surfaces that intersect, and self contained surfaces that are separated in 3-D space.
Another point from physics: There is a phenomenon called spooky action at a distance. If you alter some property of a photon, there are observed changes in seeming unconnected photons over a distance. This has been measured in distances of miles.
Enter another point of theoretical physics, string or M theory. Both are theories that are trying to explain how the universe operate under a single unified theory (gravity, space, times, nuclear forces, matter, etc) Under both theories, in order to explain the physical phenomenon at hand, we have to assume that there are many more physical dimensions than the 3-D that we see. At the beginning, the universe existed in a 22-D state and rapidly collapsed to a 3-d state. The collapsed dimensions are proposed to still exist, however, they can only exist at some quantum level. The math works out surprisingly well and many physicist think this approach is an accurate way of describing our universe and all the functions within it
The conclusion from physics is that seemingly unconnected objects are potentially connected at some physical higher-D dimensions (science not metaphysics). The higher you go in # of dimensions, the greater likelihood of connection between objects, until some concept of unity is derived.
Enter Buddhism, What is karma- logical consequences, right? Dharma - what it is that I am supposed to do, right? The argument can fall between determinism (life mapped out) vs. indeterminism (random chance).
The meaning of things, If you tend towards determinism, there is a plan, and therefore some sort of supreme deity that directs us towards certain events and actions independent of our will. In an indeterminate universe, chance, chance, chance and nothing else.
Let’s take a simple Buddhist concept, all things are interconnected. We use a simple concept to break down the boundaries of ego and concept of distinct self and release into something greater, agreed? Add a little theoretical physics, and you have a universe where being interconnected isn’t just looking at an apple and seeing the sunshine, the soil, the rain, the pollinating insects, the farmer plucking it. There is a real physical connection between the sun, rain, farmer and the apple. We just can’t detect it with our own perceptions. At the quantum level it is possible.
Enter a third option, we will call it the middle path, what if each individual life had free will, however, there are real connections between people, and consciousnesses that lie in the 3-D+ nature of our universe. Is it possible that we are connected at some level at higher dimensions and that we have developed a sort of collective consciousness that is the direct culmination of our individual actions and thoughts? In this universe there is no independent Deity (perhaps we are connected to It) , yet things are not just chance occurrences. Perhaps, we have created a collective karma and we may follow a collective Dharma as well. Don’t get me wrong, I am not arguing there is no Supreme being. Why and how the universe works the way it does is still a mystery to me. Nor am I arguing that this is still chance. My guess love holds all of this together. Where does that come from?
That is the best I can figure, there is still this unkown quality of “chance meetings” that eludes me. My training tells me that they just are, there is some mechanism underlying it be it Karma, Destiny, or just blind luck.
What matters is what I do with it. it measn nohing and everything at the same time. serendipitous events to me just means that I have to love each other well, because we are all connected.