11:11 Synchronicities
Did your strange experience come from the collective unconscious or from your own individual subconscious?
Originally published at Medium.
If you’re like me, you get a kick out of seeing repeating digits. I check the time and it’s 11:11 and I think I’m on the right path. Once, a cashier was excited for my upcoming lucky day when my total came to $7.77. On another day, I made three purchases, each with a nickel back in change: 5,5,5.
Numerology has something to say about repeating digits, and if you ascribe meaning to such numbers, then encountering them is often described as a synchronicity.
But is it?
According to philosopher, professor of religion, and Jungian analyst Jenny Yates, Carl Jung observed that “space and time are part of the conscious mind,” but in the collective unconscious, synchronistic experiences are not bound by space and time.” Synchronicities are “connected through meaning rather than through cause and effect.” They put you in “quantum world of reality rather than in the world of Newtonian physics.”
I do suspect, however, that many “synchronicities” can be explained by the operating system known as the subconscious mind. Here’s one way it unfolds:
My subconscious mind receives the message from the conscious mind: “I like seeing repeating numbers.”
Often, the synchronistic information is readily available. For instance, a clock is right there on the bottom-right of my laptop screen as I type this. I don’t consciously “see” the clock because I’m not focused on it, but it’s in my field of vision and my subconscious mind sees it.
It’s 11:10 and I’m typing away. My subconscious mind is saying, “wait for it… wait for it…” When the clock turns to 11:11, my subconscious mind sends a message to my conscious mind to check the time.
My conscious mind sees 11:11 and thinks, “Cool! Synchronicity! Sign from The Universe!”
Well, maybe, but it seems less the work of the collective unconscious and more the work of the individual subconscious, which responds to the thoughts and intentions of the conscious mind. There’s more “cause and effect” here than what Dr. Yates would describe as synchronicity.
But even if it’s a not a real synchronicity, it makes me wonder: just how powerful is the subconscious mind? Just as it leads our eyes to see the clock at “exactly the right time,” does it also know to choose just the right items to make the purchase total come to $7.77?
I thought of this after recently viewing Jacques Vallee’s 2011 Brussels TED Talk. Vallee recounts hosting a dinner party on July 20, 1996 where a friend said she needed to brush up on her French. Vallee’s wife went to a bookshelf and, seemingly at random, grabbed a French-language novel and gave it to Vallee, who went to a seemingly random page and started reading.
He read a description of a fictional explosion of a Boeing flying out of JFK. Just three days earlier, TWA 800, a Boeing 747, exploded minutes after leaving JFK on July 17, 1996. The dinner party was startled by the coincidence.
But both Vallee and his wife may have received the message to re-enforce whatever they were thinking about. Four days previously, they probably weren’t thinking about Boeing or JFK Airport or explosions at all, but now to some degree they were thinking of all three. Their subconscious minds were on alert to reflect those thoughts back.
Vallee’s wife’s subconscious might have led her to the particular novel, even if it had details she couldn’t consciously remember. Her subconscious mind remembered.
Vallee, likewise, went straight to the relevant page, even if he wouldn’t have consciously remembered it. His subconscious mind remembered.
In other words, what the conscious mind might consider a random choice might not really be a choice at all, it’s an option the subconscious mind selects because it thinks that’s what is wanted.
It’s possible that only one of the Vallees had read the novel. In that case, this was indeed a random coincidence.
But I suspect that much of what we find coincidental or synchronistic is really the creation of the subconscious mind responding to thoughts and intentions of the conscious mind. Its memory and intelligence are far ahead of what our conscious minds can conceive. That’s why it does things that can freak us out.
So perhaps it’s best to live consciously, think happy thoughts, have good intentions, and expect the best. Let the subconscious mind lead us to good things and let others call it coincidence or luck.
James Leroy Wilson writes from Nebraska. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter. If you find value in his articles, your support through Paypal helps keep him going. Permission to reprint is granted with attribution. You may contact him for your writing, editing, and research needs: jamesleroywilson-at-gmail.com.