Reviewed by Bernard D. Beitman
Introduction
Tara Swart’s The Signs is a triumph of self-help marketing. The book is endorsed by celebrity podcaster and New York Times bestselling author Mel Robbins. We are told that her episode on the podcast Diary of a CEO is their highest performance of all time, twenty-two million views.
What was once countercultural lore is now packaged in glistening, simplified neuroscience for the self-help market.
The central question for psychical researchers is whether The Signs offers genuine scientific engagement with meaningful coincidences, synchronicity, or psychic phenomena, or whether it represents another case of what might be called “neuro-branding” — the use of simplified brain science to repackage long-circulating holistic ideas for mainstream appeal.
The Opening Story
The book begins with grief.
In the first few weeks after I lost my beautiful husband, Robin, to leukemia, the strangest thing happened: I kept seeing robins in the garden. I had heard various stories in which people said that lost loved ones sometimes appeared soon after their death in the form of various birds, and there is even a saying, ‘Robins appear when loved ones are near’ (p. x).
This poignant introduction immediately situates the book in the genre of bereavement signs, well established in contemporary spiritual literature. The symbolic link between her husband’s name (Robin) and the repeated appearance of robins offers comfort, coherence, and a sense of continuity.
Swart never denies the possibility that these experiences may be communications from the deceased. Yet she does not pursue that line of inquiry. Unlike Laura Lynne Jackson’s Signs: The Secret Language of the Universe (2019), which interprets such events as evidence of ongoing contact with the afterlife, Swart quickly pivots away. The story functions more as an emotional bridge to the reader than as the basis for investigation. The message is clear: you may allow yourself to feel comforted, but do not expect scientific exploration of what (or who) may be behind the comfort.
The Scientific Frame
Swart presents her scientific basis for signs in terms familiar from introductory cognitive psychology. She highlights the ascending reticular activating system (ARAS) as the brain’s filter that determines what stimuli reach awareness. In her account, the ARAS functions as a spotlight, privileging inputs that match our concerns or needs. This explains why, for example, one might suddenly begin noticing a particular symbol — such as robins — at meaningful times.
The ARAS, first described by Moruzzi and Magoun (1949), is indeed central to regulating arousal and wakefulness. Yet to treat it as the master filter of meaning is misleading. In reality, conscious awareness arises from a layered process: thalamic relays that gate sensory input, emotional salience tagging by limbic structures, memory comparison in the hippocampal system, attention switching between dorsal and ventral networks, and finally integration into self-referential narrative by the default mode network. Recent reviews emphasize that these systems do not work in isolation but flexibly reconfigure with salience and control networks to prioritize what matters (Patel et al., 2015; Raichle, 2015; Vossel et al., 2014; Yeshurun et al., 2021).
Only through this layered choreography does raw input become a “sign” — something that not only breaks through to awareness but is woven into a sense of personal meaning. To reduce this choreography to the ARAS is an oversimplification. It is science made tidy for marketing, not for accuracy. In this respect, The Signs exemplifies what could be called neuro-branding: borrowing the authority of neuroscience while discarding its complexity.
The Simulpathity Story
On page 195, Swart recounts a story of what I have termed simulpathity (Beitman, 2016; 2022): simultaneous experiences of physical or emotional states by people at a distance. This is a modern term for what psychical researchers once called “telepathy of the emotions.” She describes the case but concludes that it is “unexplainable.”
This is striking. The ARAS cannot account for simulpathity, since no sensory input is available to be filtered. Nor can selective attention or confirmation bias explain the precise timing of simultaneous experiences. Such accounts recall the crisis apparitions documented by Gurney, Myers, and Sidgwick in Phantasms of the Living (1886), and the telepathic case reports collected by Stevenson (1970).
Swart affirms the reality of the experience but refuses to ask further questions. She does not reference parapsychological literature nor speculate on models of nonlocal mind. Her declaration of “unexplainable” functions less as an invitation to inquiry than as a closure. For psychical researchers, this is the point where investigation should begin.
Self-Help and Lifestyle Emphasis
The bulk of The Signs is not about meaningful coincidences at all but about cultivating an intuitive life through well-being practices. Swart advises readers to:
- Take care of their bodies through nutrition, sleep, and exercise.
- Spend time in nature, attending to its rhythms.
- Prioritize relationships, which form the basis for belonging and support.
- Trust intuition, allowing oneself to feel guided. She defines intuition in body–mind terms without delving into its vast complexity.
- She advises the use of adaptogens, drawing on her role as chief science officer of an adaptogenic mushroom company.
She devotes a chapter to “finding your tribe,” language that recalls the countercultural lexicon of the late 1960s and 70s in San Francisco, where “tribe” was a common term for communities of belonging. Likewise, her emphasis on dance as a way of integrating body and mind echoes practices long present in holistic and spiritual movements, including 5Rhythms, now global in its reach.
These are valuable practices, but they are not novel. They represent a rebranding of countercultural and holistic motifs for the general public, now framed in neuroscientific and self-help language. Swart’s contribution is not originality but accessibility.
Avoidance of Deeper Inquiry
A consistent pattern runs through the book: Swart validates the feeling of being guided but avoids asking who or what may be guiding. The robin story affirms comfort but avoids after-death communication. The simulpathity story affirms anomaly but avoids nonlocal mind. Readers are encouraged to trust their instincts but are not invited to question the ontology of the guidance.
This restraint may be deliberate. Swart’s authority depends on her identity as a neuroscientist, and for a mainstream publisher, overt engagement with psi or afterlife phenomena might risk credibility. However, from the perspective of psychical research, the absence is glaring. The Signs avoids precisely the territory that matters most.
Co-Authorship and Style
The copyright page lists Paul Murphy as co-writer. Nowhere on the cover is his name mentioned. The book’s smooth, self-help tone suggests his role was substantial. The language lacks the hesitations of a researcher probing anomalies; it has the polished cadence of a wellness manual.
This hidden co-authorship raises questions of voice and transparency. The reader believes they are hearing a neuroscientist’s direct reflections. In reality, they are likely reading a collaborative product designed for mass market readability.
Continuity with The Source
Swart’s earlier book, The Source: The Secrets of the Universe, the Science of the Brain (2019), recast manifestation and the Law of Attraction in neuroscientific terms. The Signs continues this trajectory. Both books follow the same strategy: take holistic or esoteric motifs — intuition, tribe, manifestation, dance, synchronicity — and reframe them as neuroscience-validated practices.
This strategy works. It makes countercultural and transpersonal ideas palatable to secular audiences. But it also avoids the very questions that psychical research exists to ask.
Comparison with Other Coincidence Research
Swart’s approach overlaps with, but ultimately diverges from, contemporary work in coincidence studies. In my own research (Beitman, 2016; 2022), I argue that while selective attention and cognitive biases can help explain some everyday coincidences, they cannot account for all of them. Coincidences often function as psyche–world bridges: moments when inner states and external events align in ways that reveal hidden structures of connection.
A key example is simulpathity — simultaneous emotional or physical experiences shared at a distance. When a mother clutches her chest at the moment her son suffers a heart attack miles away, no filtering mechanism like the ARAS can explain the timing. Such cases belong to the same lineage as the crisis apparitions documented by Gurney, Myers, and Sidgwick (1886), and the telepathic impressions collected by Stevenson (1970). Swart acknowledges these experiences only to declare them “unexplainable,” whereas I treat them as test cases for nonlocal mind, requiring theoretical expansion rather than dismissal.
Beyond individual experience, I have proposed that coincidences can function as diagnostic signals for the Collective Human Organism (CHO), a concept developed through psychotherapy and systems theory. Just as individuals develop a Personal Self-Observer (PSO) to monitor inner states, humanity may be developing a Collective Self-Observer (CSO) — a kind of meta-awareness that perceives and reflects on global patterns. Coincidences, synchronicities, and shared anomalies may be the very mirrors by which this CSO becomes conscious.
From this perspective, coincidences are not merely private guides for personal decisions, as Swart frames them. They are also public signals, reflecting psychological, cultural, and planetary conditions. The difference is one of scope and curiosity: Swart reassures readers that it is safe to trust intuition and to feel guided, but avoids asking who or what is doing the guiding. Coincidence research within psychical research insists on asking those questions. The Signs brings synchronicity into the mainstream; the study of coincidences seeks to discover whether meaningful coincidences reveal deeper structures of reality — and whether, through them, the collective human mind is learning to observe itself.
Conclusion
The Signs is compassionate, polished, and market-savvy. It will comfort grieving readers, reassure professionals that intuition has value, and encourage wellness practices that are broadly beneficial. But it will frustrate those seeking genuine scientific engagement with meaningful coincidences.
By relying on oversimplified neuroscience and avoiding deeper inquiry into anomalies, Swart limits her book’s relevance for psychical research. The robin story comforts but avoids afterlife implications. The simulpathity story intrigues but avoids psi. The guidance affirmed is never interrogated.
For the Society’s readers, the value of The Signs lies less in its science than in what it reveals about cultural appetite: people want to believe in signs, but they also want reassurance that they can do so without leaving science behind. It is left to psychical researchers to ask the harder questions Swart avoids: what is the nature of guidance? What connects minds at a distance? What does it mean when coincidence reaches beyond bias into telepathy?
References
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