Synchronicity. Introduction
Synchronicity is a concept developed by Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung. It refers to meaningful coincidences that occur in our lives, where events are not connected causally but by meaning.
Synchronistic events are not easily explained or predicted by conventional scientific laws, as they transcend the boundaries of linear cause-and-effect relationships. They support Jung’s conviction that psyche is not connected to time and space.
Synchronicity and Chinese philosophy
Jung was deeply introverted person looking not only at the external events but also in his “inner world” consisting of dreams and visions. Observing other people and taking in account his own experiences Jung noticed the unusual occurrence of phenomena not connected causally but by the meaning. For example, someone who thinks about a person whom he didn’t see for decades will receive just in this moment a call from this person. Jung called the meaningful coincidence “synchronicity”. He wrote:
A coincidence in time of or more causally unrelated events which have the same or similar filing’ – as when one dreams of the death of a distant friend the very same night that she dies. There can be no causal connection between the two events, yet we experience them as meaningful
CW VIII, Para. 849
The concept of synchronicity, a non-causal phenomenon meets the same difficulties from the mainstream science as his other concept, the intuition.
This “acausal connecting principle”, as Jung called it, is the basis of the ancient Chinese attitude to reality incorporated in the I Ching – namely, that anything that happens is related to everything else that happens at the same time.
Our Western world-view teaches that time is a purely abstract measure, but, if we are honest, it never feels as if it is. Jung intuitively felt this pointing to an acausal archetypal order at the root of all phenomena which is responsible for the meaningfulness. He extended this to the coincidence of associated physical and mental events. With the synchronicity concept he suggested that there is a deeper order or interconnectedness in the universe.
In his research on synchronicity Jung cooperated with the physicist Wolfgang Pauli, who became Jung’s patient after having developed a personal crisis. Working with Pauli, a Nobel Prize winner, Jung wanted to find a connection between the non-causal phenomena of synchronicity and the quantum physics. It seems that the results of this research were never published due to Pauli’s worries about his reputation as a serious scientist.
Examples of synchronistic events
Synchronistic occurrences are occasionally part of the experience of most of us, and there is something inherently unsatisfactory about the way in which they are dismissed in our culture as “mere coincidence”. Below some examples of synchronistic events which might be customary to the majority of us:
Expectation of an event without any signs that such event might happen. Below one examples described by Jung during his visit by Freud.
Dreaming or day-dreaming with vivid imagery of a future event, for instance, someone might dream of a loved one passing away and then the event will be confirmed later as truth. In his biography Jung described his visions and dreams, pre-cognitive phenomena announcing a major catastrophe which was WWI. In other part of his biography, Jung described following occurrence: he woke up at night with excruciating headache. The pain was moving from the front to the back of his head. Next day he received a news that one of his patients committed suicide killing himself with a gun. The bullet penetrated the front and stopped on the back side of the skull.
Thinking of a person, for example a friend, we didn’t see and thought about for years and in the same moment we meet the person on the street or receive from him a call or email.
Witnessing the repetition of specific numbers could also be a synchronistic sign. These numbers might manifest for instance on clocks, license plates or bills. The probability of the occurrence of such numbers in a certain sequence in a particular time period is nearly impossible.
Jung, Philemon and Kingfisher
In his biography “Memories, Dreams, Reflections”, Jung mentioned a dream in which he saw an old man with kingfisher wings flying across the sky. After the dream, Jung painted the image, not understanding the meaning of the dream. While painting the kingfisher man he found in his garden a dead kingfisher, a bird he never saw before in Zurich.
“During the days when I was occupied with the painting, I found in my garden, by the lakeshore, a dead kingfisher! I was thunderstruck, for kingfishers are quite rare in the vicinity of Zurich and I have never since found a dead one. The body was recently dead – at the most, two or three days – and showed no external injuries”.
MDR
Jung’s pre-sensation
During his visit by Freud in Vienna, Jung heard a sudden cracking sound coming from the shelf. He mentioned to Freud that he felt it before the event happened. Freud declared it as nonsensical. Few second later Jung predicted another cracking sound.
…I had a curious sensation. It was as if my diaphragm were made of iron and were becoming red-hot a glowing vault. And at that moment there was such a loud report in the bookcase, which stood right next to us, that we both started up in alarm, fearing the thing was going to topple over on us. I said to Freud: “There, that is an example of a so-called catalytic exteriorization phenomenon”.
“Oh come,” he exclaimed. “That is sheer bosh.”
“It is not,” I replied. “You are mistaken, Herr Professor. And to prove my point I now predict that in a moment there will be another such loud report!” Sure enough, no sooner had I said the words than the same detonation went off in the bookcase. To this day I do not know what gave me this certainty. But I knew beyond all doubt that the report would come again. Freud only stared aghast at me…
MDR
Jung’s dreams and visions prior to the outburst of WW I
In his biography Jung describes his visions and dreams from spring and summer 1914:
While I was alone on a journey, I was suddenly seized by an overpowering vision: I saw a monstrous flood covering all the northern and low-lying lands between the North Sea and the Alps. When it came up to Switzerland, I saw that the mountains grew higher and higher to protect our country. I realized that a frightful catastrophe was in progress. I saw the mighty yellow waves, the floating rubble of civilization, and the drowned bodies of uncounted thousands. Then the whole sea turned to blood…. An inner voice spoke. “Look at it well; it is wholly real and it will be so. You cannot doubt it.”
…Soon afterward, in the spring and early summer of 1914, I had a thrice-repeated dream that in the middle of summer an Arctic cold wave descended and froze the land to ice. …On August 1 1914 the World War I broke out.
MDR
Summary
Synchronistic phenomena are familiar to all of us but they are neglected as a “pur coincidence”.
It was Jung’s unique approach that he was concerned with all experiences even the irrational and apparently unconnected manifestations of human psyche as seriously as the rational and connected ones.
Jung believed that there is a hidden harmony or unity between the psyche and the external world. He called it “unus mundus” (unitary world).
If the synchronistic events are acausal, transcending the boundaries of linear cause-and-effect relationships, they must refer to a deeper, non-material reality.
Such revolutionary ideas have been rejected by the classical science pressing Jung and his psychology out of the main stream of science calling it even esoteric.