Synchronicities

This week I re-watched an episode of The Why Files. Are you familiar with The Why Files? It’s a very fun show I watch on YouTube regularly. The episode I watched again was called Synchronicities, the Science Behind Your Meaningful Coincidences , and this was first broadcast in June of 2025. I enjoyed it a lot. I’d seen it before, but I wanted to watch it again. You know, we talk about synchronicities in the Gnostic community. It’s a word that was created by Carl Jung, and as we know, Carl Jung was Gnostic, and he, in particular, appreciated the Tripartite Tractate, which is the book out of the Nag Hammadi Codices that we use, the Tripartite Tractate. That’s our major focus here on Gnostic Insights. Well, anyway, the name of the host for YouTube is AJ. The episode on synchronicities that AJ talked about was a really astounding episode, and if you haven’t seen it or if you’ve never seen the Why Files, I recommend it. [Another thing I learned this week was that it’s possible to get the transcripts of episodes from YouTube videos. I didn’t know how to achieve that before, but I think now it’s part of the new AI “enhancement” of our world. I put enhancement in quotes because the verdict is out as far as I’m concerned, whether AI is an improvement or not. But anyway, I was able to ask the new YouTube AI for the transcript, and then it magically appeared, and so I have the transcript from that episode that I’m working off of.] The thing I liked most about this episode were the synchronicities that AJ cited. There’s some pretty incredible stories, and I’m going to share a few of those with you today. Then Bill and I talked about it. It was his favorite episode that I’d ever recommended to him, and so then we had one of our long talks yesterday about this episode, and I wish I had recorded it, but I didn’t, so instead I came away with three pages of notes as we were talking on the phone. I’m going to try to coordinate here my notes with the transcript and do it all in a way that makes sense. So here’s the story that AJ tells during this episode of The Why Files, and since I have the transcript, I think I’ll just quote him because he tells it well. Listen to this. “In June of 2001, Laura Buxton released a balloon at her grandparents’ anniversary party. She was 10 years old, living in Stafford, England. She wrote her name and address on a tag, tied it to the balloon, and let it go. The balloon traveled 140 miles south. It landed in a hedge in Wiltshire, where another 10-year-old girl found it, and her name was also Laura Buxton. The second Laura wrote the first, and they arranged to meet. Both girls showed up wearing pink sweaters and jeans. Both brought their pet guinea pigs. Both guinea pigs were orange and white, and of course the guinea pigs had the same name, and the coincidences kept piling up. Both Lauras were the same height. Both had brown hair and blue eyes. Both had three-year-old black labs at home, and both also had gray rabbits. When they opened their bags, both had packed the same stuffed animal, identical. And the odds of all this happening are so crazy that it’s mathematically impossible, but it happened. There’s plenty of photos and video. The news covered the story. This is not an urban legend.” So that raises the question, how does such an impossible thing happen? Well, Bill and I talked about that, and we have a good theory that fits in with our jello universe concept. Let’s go on to another amazing synchronicity. Quoting AJ again, “Anthony Hopkins needed a book. The book was The Girl from Petrovka. He was playing the lead in the film and searched every bookstore in London with no luck. It was out of print. Hopkins had finally given up when he was sitting on a bench, waiting for a train. Someone left a book on the bench. He picked it up. It was The Girl from Petrovka . But this wasn’t just any copy. This one had handwritten notes in the margins, personal observations, character analysis. Hopkins studied the book for his role. Two years later, while shooting the film, Hopkins met the author, George Feifer. While they talked about the book, Feifer mentioned that he’d lent his personal copy to a friend, that the friend had lost it on the London Underground. All of his notes, his analysis, gone. He was disappointed. Hopkins heard this and said, wait here. He ran to fetch the book from his trailer. He showed Feifer. It was the same book. Feifer’s handwriting, his notes, everything. Somehow the universe sent that book to the actor playing the lead, and then the universe sent the book back to its owner.” I’m going to share one more astounding synchronicity with you, and then we’ll get to the discussion of it. Quoting again, “Robert Todd Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln’s son, attracted death, presidential death. April 14th, 1865, Robert was