In The New York Times August 11, 2002, Sunday magazine cover story, author Linda Belkin investigates the spooky world of coincidence in an age of conspiracy.

Belkin particularly focuses on the coincidental nature of some oddly similar deaths of microbiologists and other scientific personnel around the world.

Belkin consulted Harvard mathematicians, scientific and academically accredited statisticians -- nature's odd makers, the pit bosses of probability.

While Ms. Belkin attitude reflects an urban sophisticate with an appreciation of "grand plan" theories, and perhaps personal meaning attached to odd random occurrence involved in coincidental events (so say the Harvard people), not once in her 20,000 words does she mention Swiss psychologist Carl Jung's theory of meaningful coincidences otherwise known as: synchronicity.

Were "synchronicity" (a word embraced by rock groups and New Age gurus) mentioned the Harvard and Stanford consulted human number machines would pause because they would recognize that this game (the one called reality with a capitol "R") is fixed by an odd order of nature. Not a force mind you, but, we shall claim, a characteristic: synchronicity. More extrapolated: a universal reaction to a stimulus notwithstanding the notion of time. As quantum physicist David Bohm wrote shortly before his death, "science has shown us something science doesn't want to see." The word acuasal comes into play. That is, occurrences seemingly connected more from a dream world logic than one of rationalistic number theory.

Belkin's alliterative coincidence conspiracy connection (appearing exactly 11 months prior to the first anniversary of September 11th) aids the thriller story of international espionage of the potential onset of bio war fare (killing Americans like dogs we are clearly being told via videotape from the Mideast) -- and the opening game by one intelligence agency against another. The greatest game of chess ever played.

These startling deaths could constitute a complete erasure of all the people connected with a planned armageddon so vast, nothing could stop it. Not the architects, nor the umpires of what is reasonable.

Perhaps the giant is having his own force break his back? How eastern minded. After all, it was the US who began bio war fare back in some 1947 labs that got very cold in the 50's, psychedelic in the 60's, revolutionary in the 70's, used in the 80's, found unstoppable in the 90's and now, in the post modern age...anyone's guess. This state of affairs engenders an age of paranoia where, as Belkin points out, neighbors regularly report one another to the FBI for taking out the trash at odd hours.

Let's explore that. Is this theory tainted with paranoia?

What is paranoia?

Is paranoia a state of so called "hyper awareness" where patterns of cause and reaction by the universe at large, disregarding the notion of time, reflect on itself as a property of it's sheer being? Or is it all just one big persecution theory, rampant with ego-driven characters at the center of conspiracies where other players are merely the figments of one imagination? Or is paranoia simple psychotic delusion; preferring unreality as reality?

Take a breath. That was huge.

And so is the nature of things pointed out to us in co-incident events. There has been a cluster, a random sorting with meaning we attach, but no less real for having been put there (intentional thinking) by a player in the game: you and me. On page 46 of Belkin's article she quotes "the stupid power of personal involvement" further noting that "we see coincidences for what we already believe." This, we believe, is false. Coincidences elicit meaning and develop belief. Though it is true that belief can create connections, as well as make anything unreal, real.

Or could it be that a paranoid state induces the individual to see or imagine grand connections or - relationships - of a higher order?

Carl Jung investigated meaning as attached to co-incident events. He based his theories in a life work first noted in 1928, and left unpublished until he had pondered the notion for 34 years in 1952, when his mysterious "On Synchronicity" was finally born. Coincidentally the same year, a few players in quantum physics would hit the world with their theories.

What is synchronicity then? Jung defined his coined term as "a meaningful coincidence." Meaning as applied to a chance encounter of two or more incidents that happen at the same time in the same space seemingly perceived as "beyond chance." Such as thinking about an individual moments prior to that individual calling the person who thought of them.

Rationalist number crunching types disregard any "psychic" or intuitive structure or influence to co-incident events. Enter meaning.

12 microbiologists (or scientific workers) seemingly dying mysteriously. A covert intelligence manner (call it a "style" concerning the barbed wire live bomb victim) adds to the drama.

Yes, truth IS stranger than fiction.

Synchronicity is not the incident but the binding force of being. It has trickster-like qualities: neither this nor that, not possible, but exists.

As inherently creative creatures, we use our creativity to see patterns. When we are hyper aware (as a result of meditation, monk-like acetic life, sexual ecstacy, ingesting of antigens), such as in paranoic states, patterns not only emerge in the mind, but, in nature as well. The rub is meaning.

Meaning is subjective. But meaning is virtually inescapable. In a coincident moment, one is apt to ask "What does this mean? What are we being told?" Clearly, meaning is the "window" through which we interpret or "view" these seemingly impossible occurrences. By noting that "meaning" is a "window" we can also minimize our ego. Noting that ego is a virtue of our species, and therefore not entirely relevant to the phenomenon; the phenomenon will happen whether we notice it or not. An important point: most parapsychologists agree -- a wonder in itself they agree on anything -- that paying attention to "the phenomenon" is an important component of the phenomenon itself. As John A. Keel wisely writes in his stellar Mothman Prophecies "It noticed you noticing it and therefore reacted."

It is part of the package, which we will broadly call psi (pronounced sigh). Psi is short for psychic phenomenon.

Psychic phenomenon has been reported in every culture around the world for thousands of years. There is enough data to not only suggest and document the existence of such phenomenon, but is a likely advent of times in which structure breaks down. The liminal world is the world neither of mass, time, or space...it is the "in between world." It is where trickster-like phenomenon exists and (in a linear construct) emanates from. As the Upanishads tell us, "it just is."

What then of this natural phenomenon and the consequences of the coincident, and synchronistic events -- the dead microbiologists?

To be clear, lately, we cannot chart ahead what the implications of any point of view yield. We can only be aware of the facts and apply meaning as felt, or in some cases, needed.

The synchronicity story relating to presidents Kennedy and Lincoln, damned and lauded the world over, concerning the 16 coincident factors between the two presidents, exist. But, they do not tell us anything from another source -- only from our own minds.

And this is the best of the phenomenon up close: Our own minds applying meaning or, another "layer" as it were, to the co incident events. The nature of the phenomenon is the phenomenon. Beatlemania was not just 4 Liverpool lads. It was the world's attention to the Fab 4 that shook the planet. Similarly, in these rightfully paranoic times, one might even conclude that "coincidences," do not exist -- were we not aware of it. And, being part of it, having added meaning, we are another component of the event, or pattern of events.

Hence, extreme coincidence cannot be divided from meaning.

A deeper understanding of coincidence is wrapped up in Jung's notion of synchronicity -- commingling on anunconscious and truly cosmic level.