Overview
of the Concept of Synchronicity
Synchronicity, as defined by psychologist C. G. Jung, is "...a coincidence
in time of two or more causally unrelated events which have the same or
a similar meaning...". Before he described the concept of this phenomena
we could only use the term coincidence for these meaningfully related
parallels between our inner thoughts and outer things. Yet some of them
are so intriguingly complex and pervasively present that the word coincidence
just doesn't adequately describe the awsome power that they have to affect
our psyches.
For those who are not familiar with synchronicity here is a simple example.
Suppose that you had an old friend named John Smith that you had not seen
in 20 years. Then suppose that you met someone at a friend's house whose
name was also John Smith. Then, on the evening news, there was a news
story about yet another person named John Smith. And finally, the original
friend of yours, named John Smith, telephoned you out of the blue the
next day saying that he was coming to visit you.
| Jung used the term "acausal" to explain what he saw happening in synchronistic events. Acausal meant to him that no ordinary, physical "cause" could be discerned that could account for the effect that was being observed. In other words, the normal "cause and effect" reality that we believe ourselves to be living within while awake, which is the only reality that modern science admits as valid, does not account for the observed effects of synchronicity, unless one decides that "meaning" itself is a valid cause...as Jung seemed to suggest in his wonderful little book, where he laid out the problem and the concept, titled Synchronicity |
The problem that I see with using the term "acausal" to explain how something works is that it simply "doesn't". Nothing is acausal in a cause and effect reality where time and space are present...such as is the case in our waking lives. There must be a cause if there is an effect. Therefore acausal is a useless and meaningless word that can only mean that we are not yet aware of the cause. Jung used this word only because he had to, since there was no precedent in the scientific vocabulary for thoughts to directly affect things. Yet it seems clear that non-material thoughts are the causal agents that Jung postulated in his attempt to explain synchroncity. Do you see the conundrum that he had to contend with? His task was much like trying to explain glaciers to Amazonian forest dwellers who had no concept of, or word for, ice. Yet he did a remarkable job of getting his point across, I think, and left it for posterity to do the rest. But he did leave us a valuable clue, and that clue is wrapped up in the word "meaning".
That
little word, "meaning", just might be the most important word
in the English language, because surely upon it hinges and swivels our
"understanding" of everything. Our entire ability to perceive,
both inner and outer "things", is made possible because of meaning.
This is how selective attention works. Only things which have meaning
to us are noticed or paid attention to by us. Elsewhere in DreamWorks
I speak of the importance of meaning to the understanding of what is really
happening in our lives and certainly it must be taken into account for
us to logically comprehend the full informational value that our dreams
have to us.
I have found first in my dream studies, and over the last 4or 5 years
in my synchronicity and LifeDream studies, that for all practical purposes,
"meaning is everything"
to the perceiving mind. In fact I would make that Don's Axiom #1, for
understanding our dreams, our waking life experiences (LifeDreams) and
indeed, also our synchronicities.
These personal studies have shown me that there is a continuum of various
experiences that are essentially all the same experience. The only difference
between what we call normal experiences and what we think of as dreams
and synchronicities seems to be caused by the part of mind which we use
to experience with.
We experience our waking lives with our bodily senses and our conscious
minds. We experience our dreaming lives with our inner senses and our
subconscious minds. But synchronicity is a phenomena which serves as a
bridge that crosses both. To observe it, to notice it, we must look within
and without, at the same time!
In this way we can begin to see that the outer world of our reality experience
is a reflection of the inner world of our reality. Why do I say this?
Because the inner world, the world of the psyche, precedes the
outer world of hard reality. Synchronicity shows this quite clearly. And
the direction that this flows in, from thought toward thing, is most often
diametrically opposed to the current scientific worldview where things
exist first and thoughts come later. To see a tiger and then think of
tigers is normal. To think of tigers and suddenly see a tiger is not.
Synchronicity is the
evidence that our belief...that information flows ONLY in one direction–from
the world out there to the world of mind inside us...is a paradigm that
is at best incomplete and at worst, exactly wrong. And
this is why Jung had so much trouble trying to express his ideas in papers
and books that did not conflict with the scientific establishment. Even
saddled with such a weight, he managed to do a remarkable job of trying
to explain what was going on without stepping too far outside the bounds
of the current paradigm of his professional peers.
But there are titillating hints within Jung's writings that he could not
say all that he eventually came to believe regarding the nature of the
psyche and synchronistic, as well as psychic, phenomena. For he was intelligent
enough to know that, had he strayed too far from the bounds of conventionality,
his works would have received discreditation and we would not have the
benefit of his lifetime of thought and experience in these areas. This
happened to Wilhelm Reich, Alfred Wegener, Nikola Tesla, Immanuel Velikovsky,
Viktor Schauberger and many others. Many today have never heard of any
of these men. Yet all of these men created new knowledge about the universe
we live in, and each was either mercilessly persecuted by the guardians
of vested interest in establishment science or else totally ignored.
Jung survived, his reputation intact, but we are the losers caused by
his justified fears, I think. I often wonder what he would have said if
he had been truly free to express all of his opinions.
| One of the hints that he left us with was his explanation of "flying saucers" or "ufo's". He said roughly that they appeared to be "exteriorizations" of the internal psyche. Exactly what he meant by this is appropriately vague. However, it is clear that the non-material psyche is the causal agent that he postulated. And this brings me to the holographic universe idea of physicist, David Bohm, and the work of brain researcher Karl H.Pribram, which is described in one of my favorite books of recent years......The Holographic Universe, by Michael Talbot. |
This
book and the ideas of Bohm and Pribram, among others presented, most closely
approximates what I have independently found to be true in my dream and
synchronicity studies and reflect the also independently arrived at phenomena
that I've observed which I chose to call LifeDreams. LifeDreams are covered
elsewhere in DreamWorks but synchronicity is an especially bright
phenomena that is included within the bounds of LifeDreams. I often say
that it is like a bright, flashing, neon sign on a long, dark, empty highway
of human ignorance about who and what we really are, and how reality really
works. And this is the narrow highway that the exclusive use of our conscious
mind and linear (masculine) thinking has led us down...ever since communication
by words replaced communication by pictures....to the exclusion of an
even greater part of our mind...the feminine subconscious.
| For the latter concept, I must credit the innovative ideas of Dr. Leonard Shlain that are expressed in his recent book, The Alphabet Versus the Goddess : The Conflict Between Word and Image. Shlain traces the development of the written word and shows that when mass production of written materials, through the introduction of printing, allowed the greater public to have access to knowledge, linear thinking became dominant and the "age of the goddess" was over. Thus matriarchal social processes gave way to patriarchal ones, and wholism became subservient to divisionism. This was great, and certainly even necessary for the development of technology, but when left brained, linear thinking is not balanced with right brained, wholistic thinking, then an individual and indeed a society is not living up to all it can be, in my opinion. It leads to our neglect of the dreaming mind and all that it has to show us about the only reality that makes a real and immediate difference to us, our own personal one. Even Einstein showed that he fully understood this principle when he said "Imagination is more important than knowledge." |
| And Shlain's book, Art and Physics: Parallel Visions in Space, Time and Light, as mentioned in the DreamWorks page on dreams, also shows that all new information and ideas about the nature of reality flow from within to without–not the other way around. That this is so has huge implications regarding synchronicity, and the operational factors that allow it to happen as it does, I think. As I reiterate all over this site, it shows that our present scientific understanding of the powers of the subconscious mind is incomplete and/or wrong, since the evidence shows that its ability to directly affect our reality is much greater than believed. Yet many in ancient cultures seemed to know this. Have we thrown the baby out with the bathwater when science attempted to expunge superstition from its "truth"? |
Read
what Saint Albertus Magnus, a thirteenth century philospher, teacher and
church administrator from Bavaria, had to say about the subject of the
effect of emotions on reality, which in those days was called simply "magic":
From Synchronicity by C. G. Jung....
I discovered an instructive account [of magic] in Avicenna's
Liber sextus naturalium, which says that a certain power to alter
things indwells in the human soul and subordinates the other things to
her, particularly when she is swept into a great excess of love or hate
or the like. When therefore the soul of a man falls into a great excess
of any passion, it can be proved by experiment that it [the excess] binds
things [magically] and alters them in the way it wants, and for a long
time I did not believe it, but after I had read the nigromantic books
and others of the kind on signs and magic, I found that the emotionality
of the human soul is the chief cause of all these things, whether because,
on account of her great emotion, she alters her bodily substance and the
other things towards which she strives, or because, on account of her
dignity, the other, lower things are subject to her, or because the appropriate
hour or astrological situation or another power coincides with so inordinate
an emotion, and we [in consequence] believe that what this power does
is then done by the soul. ...Whoever would learn the secret of doing and
undoing these things must know that everyone can influence everything
magically if he falls into a great excess...and he must do it at that
hour when the excess befalls him, and operate with the things which the
soul prescribes. For the soul is then so desirous of the matter she would
accomplish that of her own accord she seizes on the more significant and
better astrological hour which also rules over the things suited to that
matter....Thus it is the effective and more like what comes forth....Such
is the manner of production with everything the soul intensely desires.
Everything she does with that aim in view possesses motive power and efficacy
for what the soul desires.
Now if we substitute the words subconscious
mind's database of memory and its psychokinetic projection (or affectation)
of reality through the naturally creative force of emotion
where Albertus Magnus uses the word soul,
I think we will begin to understand that we have within us...each of us...a
creative power to affect things in the outer world of reality with nothing
more than the emotions called desire. And
it should become clear, after some personal experimentation with synchronicites
and LifeDreams, that the soul...which I equate with what is now called
the subconscious mind...is the engine which creates and alters our reality
in real time...all of the time...whether we consciously realize
it or not.
Once this is understood, synchronicity is no longer an odd duck that
can't be explained. Under this system, if synchronicity did not exist,
we would have to invent it.
And
one final note: It is now my opinion that when we make ourselves able
to "see" both LifeDreams and synchronicities...at will...then
we will have arrived at the ability to remember the future. That is my
opinion because I have proved it by posting a "sync-a-day" on
an internet discussion list that I belonged to for three or four years.
And that is what I think the value of studying this phenomena has to us.
It is part of our evolutionary path of understanding...another signpost
on the path. Joseph Campbell, near the end of his very fruitful life,
once told a friend that "Synchronicity is a sign that you are on
the right path."
My Collected Writings on Synchronicity
For the past three or four years I have been transcribing and posting
my synchronicities to a discussion list as I became aware of them along
with my thoughts and reflections about them, their meanings and their
causal factors. I will be involved with editing these for some time to
come, with the intention of putting them in this public archive, and possibly
into book form, but for now you can read a few selected ones by clicking
the link below:
Go to synchronicity archives 
Join
the new synchronicity email discussion list
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