I have an open mind with regard to coincidences but I have had a few interesting experiences of it. When I did a regular hour and a half commute each way to Manchester every day, I read a lot of books. After reading Jung's 'Synchronicity' I decided on a little personal experiment: having read a book, I would choose the next one to read at random from the bibliography. This was an interesting journey that led me, after several months, to read Koestler's 'The Act of Creation'. One morning a woman boarded the train at Leeds and sat opposite me as I was reading it. She opened her briefcase, took out a large envelope, opened it and began to read from a sheaf of papers. After a few minutes she began to glance over at me with a curious look (I have that effect on people!). After a while she leant over and said: "Excuse me, are you doing the Open University Course on the Psychology of Art?". I said not and asked why. "Well," she replied, "I am and I'm just off for a tutorial at Huddersfield University. I've just got my tutor's reading list here and the book you're reading is at the top."

What's even more curious is that Koestler himself wrote "The Roots of Coincidence".