Coincidence is a very peculiar thing, because it is not really in the world, yet, to the experiencer, this perspective is usually the most compelling. In fact, the observer is the domain in which the coincidence takes place; by what we might agree is the unique application of certain modes of memory, modeling, comparison, recognition of like features, and conclusion. These, it would seem, involve ‘a story’ or narrative description of events in temporal succession and such. And this nearly always involves confabulation.

But leaving that aside for the moment, let us merely recognize that the ‘event domain’ for the coincidence is -never- and can never be the world. For coincidence is, in the first and final analysis, a human observational evaluation of experience or perspective. It is not a report on circumstances in reality. It takes place only in human minds, and thus, we must suggest with great force that coincidence is a -psycho-relational- phenomenon. Its primary domain of existence is the minds of waking observers. This puts a bit of a crimp in the popular synchronicity religions.

While these facts do not strip coincidence of meaning or profundity, they do encourage us to remove some of the popular ideas and fairy-tales we love to tell ourselves — nearly all of which present coincidence as a phenomenon in the world, implying that divine or supernatural forces may either be speaking or at play. While that is not entirely impossible, it is far more likely that confirmation bias-like delusions are at play; particularly where the selective reverence of seeming-coincidence achieves a status not unlike religious hysterias in the mind of some one or group thus confused.

The phenomenon remains interesting, but if we understand it as something that happens in us, rather than in the world, we will at least begin on a footing where we have preserved the possibility of integrity in terms of comprehension and discovery.