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Originally Posted by (amadeus,) I agree more with your idea of the subconscious being more in charge than any divine power. I'm not very knowledgeable about the sub-conscious, but I hold it in very high regard. It is obviously extremely capable and I think that it is responsible for a lot of things that we attribute to divine intervention, or this "synchronicity".<hr size="1" /></blockquote><span class='postcolor'>
A chap I know has a story on his web site about a trip to a baseball match where his sub-conscious made an interesting contribution to his day. I have a lot of respect for the guy, and don't believe the story is made up.
Basically, watching the bowler throw, he suddenly got the impression that the ball was going to come towards him. He then held out his hand in an appropriate position and waited. Sure enough the ball came flying through the air and landing exactly in his hand.
It sounds absurd, and even if it is, I still believe it could be possible. The main point is that the unconscious mind is busy every second working things out. Most of the time we don't have access to its thinking, but occasionally we get short-circuits in the brain where information gets sent to the wrong place. (Psychologists use this to explain Deja Vu and out of body experiences)
There was a great example of the subconscious mind at work, again done by Derren Brown. Does anybody in the states know who I'm talking about with this guy? He's a psychological illusionist. He uses very subtle techniques to play all sorts of tricks on people... like the time he went on the tube and made people forget what stations they were getting off at!
Anywho. On one occasion he went into what Americans would call a mall. He was armed with a mic, hooked up the sound system through the mall. No-one listens to this stuff, especially when it's just endless talk about which shops have which deals on, etc. But Brown used a technique where he put seed-words into his sentences, such that every other word made a different sentence to the one he was saying obviously.
Of course no-one notices this stuff, but the subconscious mind is constantly searching for stuff like this - subtle patterns. So any way, Derren Brown is ranting away, and the cameras show that a majority of people are heading towards a main central square in the mall. Some people clearly were not affected, as is the case with hypnotism (of which this was just a form). Then he says "If you want to get this deal, reach for the sky... NOW!" and all of a sudden this huge crowd of people who had no idea why they were there just suddenly shot one hand into the air.
Afterwards they interviewed people, and they all insisted they had no idea what was giong on, or why they put their hands up. They hadn't even noticed the voice over the tannoy.
Brown has a DVD out if you're interested. It features all his previous showsplus some more stuff... you'll probably find it on a file-sharing program like DC++
