Why Are Synchronicities Happening Everywhere?
Bernard Beitman on global mystical experiences, human connection, and what Humanity must remember.
Why do so many different paths seem to lead to similar places?
Across cultures, religions, and continents, people describe extraordinary experiences that can sound remarkably similar: overwhelming love, a sense of sacredness, expanded identity, profound interconnectedness, and a direct feeling of knowing.
In this episode of Connecting with Coincidence, psychiatrist and coincidence researcher Bernard Beitman, MD turns the questions on himself, exploring an idea that has emerged from conversations with researchers, experiencers, and spiritual thinkers throughout the podcast.
Mystical experiences can arise through very different doorways—meditation, psychedelics, near-death experiences, spontaneous moments of transcendence, and even emerging technologies such as virtual reality. Yet people frequently describe common themes of connection, love, unity, and an expanded sense of self.
Bernard asks whether the similarities themselves might constitute a meaningful coincidence on a much larger scale: not simply a synchronicity in one person’s life, but a global synchronicity unfolding across Humanity.
And the message may be different from what we expect. Rather than encouraging us to escape the physical world or transcend our bodies, these experiences may be directing attention back toward them—to listen more carefully to our bodies, love and be loved, recognize our connections with other people, and understand ourselves as part of the living Earth.
Seen this way, mystical experience is not simply about glimpsing another reality. It may also be about learning how to live differently in this one.
Watch the episode now:
About Bernard Beitman, MD
Bernard Beitman, MD, is a psychiatrist and one of the leading researchers working to systematize the study of meaningful coincidences. A graduate of Yale Medical School who completed his psychiatric residency at Stanford University, he served for 17 years as chair of psychiatry at the University of Missouri-Columbia School of Medicine.
He is the founder and president of The Coincidence Project, host of the Connecting with Coincidence podcast, and author of three books about meaningful coincidence, including Meaningful Coincidences: How and Why Synchronicity and Serendipity Happen. His work explores how synchronicity and serendipity may help us better understand ourselves, our relationships, and the nature of reality.
Learn more at Coincider.com and The Coincidence Project.
Have a meaningful coincidence to share? Visit The Coincidence Project and tell your story.
Looking for more coincidence content? Check out all our other fascinating podcast guests in our Connecting with Coincidence library of episodes.
I wonder if we are starting to "feel" the eternal elements within us. If the cosmos is one "implosion/expansion" then penetrating inward would come from all around thru the spheres, piercing each individual iota, and continuing beyond the solar system, galaxies and universe.
The "stuff" would pre and post exist human duration, so our physical nature would be a "re enactment," too cumbersome to perform as swift as what is already there, where we are, but not always recognized, like a "conscience."
A "radioactive breakup," like at perhaps rare, ephemeral parallax vortexes, synthesized to land 'just so' that given "coincidence" resulted.
Like an observer on the shore watching a straight beam of light pointed directly at them, as the s…