Introduction
This is an attempt to say something coherent about synchronicity. A task which
may be impossible as it seems that the very nature of these phenomena is to
confront one with a direct experience of paradox in which our categories of mind,
matter and time fail. Any deep apprehension of synchronicity must necessarily
leave one with the sense of having encountered an awe inspiring mystery.
Nevertheless, it seems that there may be a potential to frame the problem more
systematically than has so far been achieved.
Much, indeed most, of the material currently in print on synchronicity seems to
spend more time referring back to Jung, what Jung thought and what Jung said,
than actually trying to grapple with primary data in any systematic way. I feel
that this is a serious error for several reasons. In the first place, although
Jung was the first figure in modern times to articulate the issue and gave the
phenomenon the name synchronicity, Jung's style in the face of paradox was to
contradict himself. Secondly, even if his elucidation of the questions had been
flawlessly systematic (which it most certainly was not) the subject at hand
should be the actual realm of phenomena, not one person's thoughts about this
realm. To allow the discussion to degenerate into a debate about Jung's views on
the topic (which were hopelessly contradictory anyway) is only to insure that
the entire field of inquiry will never gain any credibility in the larger world
of ideas.
Definitions
Without going into Jung's various definitions of synchronicity for the moment,
if you asked most people, and some dictionaries, the simple definition of
synchronicity would be: a "meaningful coincidence." These two words raise many
questions. First, what is a coincidence, meaningful or otherwise? The most
obvious answer is that two (or more) events appear to coincide (in time) but
there is no obvious causal connection between them. It might be more accurate to
say that it is our experience of two events which somehow seems to coincide.
Another way to say this would be to say that we recognize an associative
connection or discern a pattern in events, but can see no mechanism to account
for the apparent connection between them. To a rational reductionist the term
"just a coincidence" is as unitary as "damn Yankee" was in the old South. The
rational implication being that any apparent connection is only an illusion
brought about by the inherent ability of our minds (brains) to see pattern even
where none "actually" exists.
It is important to recognize that there is also a further implicit assumption in
our definition of synchronicity; at least half of the pattern exists "out there"
in matter, as opposed to "in here" in our minds. It is easy to see why, if both
halves of the association occur on the interior side of perception, the
experience is less troubling, at least to an outside observer. For the mind
itself may be mysterious and troubling, but it does not call physics into
question. Two ideas arising together in the mind is far from unusual, but is
instead merely regarded as normal thought. From the psychologized Jungian
viewpoint most definitions of synchronicity have built into them the idea that
half of the pattern always originates in an entirely interior experience, most
often in a dream, which is then confirmed, mirrored or reflected by some event
or experience in the exterior material world of consensus reality. It is not
surprising that a psychotherapist obsessed with analyzing dreams would first
encounter synchronicity in this context, but what is odd is that definitions of
the term synchronicity which include this as a necessary condition would
continue to be parroted without question over half a century later.
This brings us to the second word in our definition: "meaningful." This word is
by far the most difficult and troubling of the two. I will not attempt to define
meaning at this point, but will instead review some of the various approaches to
it in the context of synchronicity. At one extreme is the narrow view of
synchronicity advocated by Victor Mansfield. He asserts that only those
experiences which contribute to one's "individuation" (a Jungian term meaning
psycho-spiritual growth) should be called "synchronicity" experiences. By
inference, to Mansfield, only those experiences sufficiently contributing to
this Jungian individuation process would be "meaningful." Mansfield then asserts
that all experiences of coincidence which do not fit this narrow definition
should be classed as expressions of (Jung's) acausal connectedness. He (Mansfield)
then goes on to assert that those astrological experiences which contribute (sufficiently)
to one's individuation may be correctly classed as synchronicity experiences,
while all other astrological coincidences are merely expressions of acausal
connectedness. I find Mansfield's distinction bizarre and artificial, largely
because it is too late. The cat is out of the bag. Synchronicity has a
functional definition in popular culture which is not about to be constrained by
Mansfield or any Jungian apologist even if they did make sense.
Mansfield's argument becomes even more self-contradictory when one realizes from
Marie-Louise Von Franz's more comprehensive treatment of Jung's works that Jung
himself apparently most often used the term "general acausal connectedness" to
refer to invariant physical constants and the individual qualitative properties
of the natural numbers. In other words he used this term to describe the
predictably observable properties of the world which (apparently) could not be
explained by any causal argument. These phenomena are inherently different than
those unique phenomenological experiences which Mansfield is now attempting to
redefine the term "acausal connectedness" to apply to. In this case I do not
think that Jung's use of the term "general acausal connectedness" is necessarily
any better than Mansfield's, but Mansfield would have been wiser to instead coin
his own new term to describe only his subset of synchronicities which involve
seminal experiences in one's psycho-spiritual growth or "individuation process".
So, from Mansfield we find that the narrowest definition of "meaningful" might
be only that which contributes to one's "individuation".
Jung himself often tried to build into the definition of synchronicity some
connection to his own term the "archetype." "(Synchronicities) seem to manifest
only when an archetype is constellated in the collective unconscious." Thus by
inference we might conclude that to Jung "meaning" was somehow tied up with the
archetypes. I find this line of argument involving the definition of
synchronicity through "the archetype" to be the most circular and damaging to
the whole field of inquiry into synchronicity. It is essentially definition by
tautology. It is asserted that the archetypes are not things. It is asserted
that they can not be defined concretely but always contaminate each other. It is
asserted that they do not cause anything. About the most concrete thing we do
know about the archetype is that they are associated with emotional, or at least
psycho-spiritual intensity, and that they represent patterns of content which
transcend individual experience. So empirically what we really have is a very
slippery term for a "transpersonal pattern" associated with "psychic intensity."
Even Von Franz admits that the Archetypes might just as well be called "patterns
of human behavior". Jung asserts that synchronicities only happen when an
archetype is "constellated" i.e. present. Well this brings us back to the same
problem as Mansfield's narrow definition of synchronicity. Is an unexplainable
coincidence only "meaningful" if it involves some deep psycho-spiritual
transformation of the individual psyche? Jung himself asserts that "such
synchronicities must represent only a small part of a larger continuum." Thus we
see that Jung himself was at the root of the confusion as to the definition of
meaning in synchronicity experiences.
Jung was in a sense right in all the various possibilities that he affirmed, but
his lack of systematic rigor laid the foundation for even greater confusion in a
field already inherently riddled with paradox. I can point to many of my own
experiences of meaningful coincidences which do not involve any hint of a
Jungian archetype being "constellated", nor did they contribute noticeably to my
"individuation" apart from their incremental contribution to my overall
apprehension of a general acausal interconnectedness of absolutely everything.
My point is that there are a vast realm of different types of experiences which
in modern popular culture are now referred to under the general rubric of
synchronicity but Jung is going to be of absolutely no help in sorting out and
categorizing this primary phenomenological data. Indeed many of the terms or
definitions he left us are so confused and conflated that we are likely to be
better off to start over from scratch.
Before I launch into a more detailed discussion of these I should say something
about my own functional definition of "meaning". It seems to me that what is
really implicit in both Jung's definition of the archetype and in the popular
intuitive definition of synchronicity is pattern recognition, our ability to
distinguish figure from ground. To discern pattern is to distinguish the
meaningful from the meaningless. The Jungian archetype is essentially a pattern
which we are able to infer from a collection of images, words and feelings. In
the case of the archetype these patterns seem to be transpersonal, that is they
transcend and pervade individual human experience. So by this definition, what
is common to all synchronicity experiences is that they involve pattern
recognition. And the existence of the patterns in question can not be explained
by any normal mechanism. Thus they stand out from the background of our normal
expectations about the behavior of material reality. I believe that it is this
violation of our rational expectations about the relationship between matter and
consciousness which is in and of itself meaningful. In some cases the pattern
may be part of a larger pattern which Jung characterized as an archetype, but it
need not be for the pattern to be noticed, and I hold that it is the act of
apprehension of some discontinuity with our expectation of reality which
constitutes a synchronicity experience. They are almost always psycho-physical.
That is they challenge our notions of mind and matter, and frequently also call
into question our notion of time and hence causality. This was at the root of
Jung's choice of the word synchronicity, suggesting things coming together in
time. Indeed Marie Louise Von Franz, following Jung, asserts that one cannot
imagine a synchronicity not involving coincidence in time, but instead involving
coincidence in space. This seems to be an example of very limited imagination
uncharacteristic of Von Franz. It seems to me that all that would be necessary
would be to repeatedly have a similar unlikely event happen at the same place at
different times. In any case, most actual synchronicities do seem to involve
internal and external events coming together in time without any apparent cause,
or even possibility of a cause according to Einstein locality i.e. no
communication faster than the speed of light.
Maps of Mind and Matter
Obviously the details of exactly which expectations of the behavior of
reality are violated in what way by any particular incident are manifold and
varied. But it may only be in the detailed exploration and articulation of
exactly which rules are violated in what way that any larger meta-patterns
concerning a wide range of phenomena may emerge. For example, if one allowed
telepathy, which synchronicities would be adequately explained, if one allowed
communication from the dead, if one allowed telekinesis etc. I have found in my
own thought experiments based on this approach to the analysis of my own
synchronicity experiences that the paradoxes in most transcend even these and
other categories, but I believe it may still be a useful exercise. Especially as
it is premature to discount the possibility that we are actually dealing with a
variety of phenomena which have been lumped together out of our own ignorance.
To date I have not encountered any attempt to organize and categorize such data,
much less conduct the thought experiments necessary to articulate the paradoxes
in detail. Only by doing so would we begin to have an understanding of which
expectations of science are violated in what ways by which phenomena, and what
if any adjustments to existing theory might hope to accommodate, if not account
for, the primary phenomenological data.
To instead assert an idealist philosophy such as Middle Path Buddhism as Victor
Mansfield does is, I believe, an irresponsible position for a scientist to take
in the face of the challenge. This is not to say that an idealist philosophy may
not be correct in the deepest analysis, but the problem of the scientific
endeavor is to articulate in detail how things work, not to explain
philosophically why. Even if everything is a consequence of the one Mind, we are
still left with the problem of how the details of the appearance of reality
residing within Mind are constrained. We have through science been able to
articulate those patterns of constraint and predictability in great detail. We
are now faced with a realm of data which seems to contradict or at least to lie
perpendicular to that line of inquiry. It is not enough to assert an idealist
philosophy and ignore the problem, especially for physicists such as David Peat
or Victor Mansfield.
The tack taken by Pauli and Jung seems more productive. Though Jung's attempt to
make a perfectly valid linear dichotomy into a four fold system seems forced and
unconvincing. Pauli and Jung point out that causality and what the Chinese
regarded as "the tendency of things to arise together" might be seen as two
complimentary aspects of reality. This complementarity might be seen as a
parallel to the wave particle paradox wherein the result one gets is dependent
upon how one asks the question and designs the experiment. Thus, as Von Franz
points out, an act of divination designed to take a reading of the particularity
of a situation might be seen as the exact reciprocal complement to a statistical
program of many measurements designed to determine what is most invariant. One
can in a sense know one or the other, but not both from any particular
experiment. Thus, divination might be seen as being to particularity what
probability is to predictability.
When it comes to particularity there is a deeper implicit question of the
relationship between mind and matter which so far has been systematically
excluded from causality. Jung for the most part paid homage to this keystone of
rational reductionism in the realm of causality, asserting that in all questions
of synchronicity consciousness apriori is not causal. For the most part
it has consistently been shown not to be in statistical investigations. Yet,
Jung may have been too quick to concede the point in the realm of the particular.
We will return to this point later. Jung did however make a significant
contribution to modern thought with his (re)introduction of the idea of a
Unus Mundus, a deeper unified realm underlying both mind and matter. This
idea is in many ways similar to David Bohm's idea of the implicate order,
a rigorous interpretation of the mathematics of modern science which has been
criticized by other physicists for not leading to any new testable hypotheses.
In a sense they are correct, but then the same criticism should apply to the
Copenhagen, and all of the other, interpretations of quantum mechanics. Yet, the
implicate order provide the most effective bridge so far advanced for
integrating the troubling phenomena of consciousness which most other scientists
are still trying to ignore. However, precisely because it is largely an
interpretation of existing mathematical physics, even Bohm's concept still lacks
a rigorous link between consciousness and physics, and thus between
synchronicity and science.
It was Jung's very quest to be seen as "scientific," what I might call his "science
envy," which I believe may have been responsible for some of the most
unfortunate linguistic baggage which we are now saddled with in the discussion
of synchronicity phenomena. Some of this was not his fault but was a logical and
inevitable outgrowth of the foundations of psychology laid by his mentor Sigmund
Freud. Freud had discovered the individual "unconscious. So it was only logical
that when Jung found that the deeper one went into an individual's unconscious,
the more it began to look like some sort of universal collective phenomenon, he
would name this realm the "collective unconscious." So far so good. But as Jung
began to open to a more transpersonal view of the human psychological growth
process he noticed that it seemed to be guided by something larger than, and
different from, the existing Freudian concepts of the ego, super ego and id. He
noticed that this element in consciousness was associated with images of the "Godhead"
so for some bizarre reason he named this the "Self" with a big "S." Perhaps he
meant to make reference to the Buddhist notion of the "true self". It is true
that in many spiritual traditions it has been pointed out that the place to seek
the Divine is within yourself. But everything Jung has to say about the Self
are properties we might first associate with traditional conceptions of God. Yet
Jung, being "scientific" could not call it that, and to his credit the
Judeo-Christian conceptions of God carried plenty of extraneous baggage he did
not want to invoke, perhaps most notably the conception of some vengeful bearded
guy pulling the strings. But, at least today, when you get into a conversation
with most people and they wish to make a distinction between the small ego
consciousness and some sort of larger conception to transpersonal awareness, the
word most likely to be used to describe ego consciousness is "self." In
conversation as opposed to print it is very difficult to make clear that it is a
capital S on Self, and putting "The" in front of it is only marginally more
clear. On top of this, the other word which Jung used for transpersonal
consciousness, "the unconscious," or at best "the collective unconscious" is, as
Sheri Ratchin pointed out, a bit like calling the ocean an "un-island." Thus, we
are now stuck with two cumbersome and counterintuitive Jungian words for
describing transpersonal consciousness. In my opinion it would have been better
if Jung had said what he really meant and had just called it God, or because he
couldn't do that, he could have just called it "the un-God." In any case I find
the Jungian language unfortunately counterintuitive and we do need a shorter
term than "transpersonal consciousness."
[ I just paused to figure out what to say next and noticed that this was line
23.]
[Then I looked at my watch and it was 7:23]
This leads to my next point: meaningless cumulative low level synchronicity. By
that I mean a pattern which one may discern which in no way noticeably
contributes to one's personal individuation and carries no particular intrinsic
meaning other than the fact that you notice it -- a lot. The cumulative nature
of such patterns mean that they can occur and expand at any time without need
for any specific prior internal state of consciousness. This seems to work best
with a "synchronicity number." Mine is 23 which I caught from Robert Anton
Wilson (they do appear to be at least potentially contagious). My friend Tom's
is 13, our mutual friend Robert's is 117, Catherine's is 11 and Juliana's is 7
etc... Many people might describe them as lucky numbers, but at least in the
case of Robert and Tom they too already had a long sting of synchronicities,
which they identified as such, in exactly those terms, associated with each of
their own numbers when I met them. None of us regarded our respective numbers as
"lucky" per se. It was much more a matter of them simply appearing so often that
they came to represent the phenomenon of synchronicity itself in our lives. It
is interesting to note that these numbers are all prime and while the sample is
far too small to be definitive, it seems that synchronicity numbers do tend to
be prime. In fact I can't think of anybody I know who has one that isn't prime.
I have known several people who identify with 7 and 11 in particular. These
prime numbers seem to embody a quality of non-rational randomness. My point is
that here we have a phenomenon of a synchronicity-like phenomenon which is at
least somewhat common in modern popular culture (at least among my circle of
self selecting weird friends) which is outside of the strict Jungian definition
of synchronicity. I suppose that Jung might argue that in these cases it is the
archetype of the number which is constellated, but then for each of us that
archetype would have to always be constellated, and it would further mean that
the "constellation" of the archetype was apparently totally independent of any
process of "individuation." Or else one would have to concede that once someone
is embedded in a process of cumulative low level synchronicity their entire life
can be seen a process of individuation (psycho-spiritual growth) even without
the benefit of Jungian analysis! My friends and I would all tend to favor the
latter view. Indeed we all tend quite naturally to talk in terms of low level
vs. high level synchronicity and tend to see absolutely everything as part of
one massively interconnected unity which we are becoming more and more
consciously aware of through cumulative synchronicity experiences.
This brings us back to the question of general acausal connectedness. Von Franz
points out that Jung saw synchronicity as a unique and special phenomenon in
contrast to Leibniz who had instead postulated a massively parallel correlation
between psyche and matter which we become aware of only when it is exhibited in
sporadic phenomena. She also points out that Jung opposed any causal connection
of consciousness acting on matter. He made a distinction between unique
synchronicity phenomena which were unpredictable, rare and un-repeatable and a
concept of a general acausal connectedness which he seemed to use to refer to
the consistent and predictable, but causally unexplainable just-so-ness of the
natural numbers, radioactive decay, non-locality in atomic interactions etc. Yet
Von Franz also touches on a number of other areas which seem related to but
outside of these two categories. Among these are various psi phenomena, acts of
intentional divination and astrology. To this list I would add ceremonial magic
and intentional manifestation, but these two areas are apparently taboo even for
the Jungian's as they have concluded apriori that there can be no actual
influence of consciousness on matter. I am not arguing that there necessarily is,
but in some cases there certainly appears to be an associative connection and I
do not feel is actually "scientific" to rule out the possibility in advance from
all possible provisional maps and models based on the empirical data.
There are several distinctions I would like to make in what I see as a continuum
of phenomena. First, Jung himself states that he is sympathetic to a view in
which various psi phenomena are seen as special cases of synchronicity rather
than trying to explain away synchronicity in terms of posited psi phenomena. I
am also sympathetic to this view, but I think that it may be a very useful
exercise to engage in the detailed thought experiments to see just how absurd
the paradoxes become as one details exactly what psi phenomena would be required.
It is only as a result of having engaged in exactly this type of thinking that I
support the general synchronicity view. So, we see that even Jung grants psi
phenomena provisional synchronicity status. But, then he insists that
synchronicity is always an unpredictable "act of creation." What about
divination? Is not each act of divination essentially an exercise in intentional
synchronicity and therefore not entirely unpredictable? Here we have a further
distinction as well.
Von Franz repeats a call from Jung for an experiment in which people who are at
points of great emotional intensity would each be the subject of multiple acts
of divination. The specific techniques suggested include I-Ching, Tarot, and
Transit Astrology. I believe that this proposal itself illustrates a lack of
understanding of a fundamental distinction between transit astrology and all
other methods of divination. While Jung's point was to determine whether various
different methods of divination gave consistent results. The key insight he is
missing, in my opinion, is that transit astrology, unlike any other method of
divination, is far more like Jung's acausal orderedness. It provides a map of a
general archetypal configuration which is consistent across all observers. If
one ignores signs and houses, the angular relationship between where the planets
are now and where they were when you were born is consistent across virtually
all systems of astrology around the world. If you ask two different astrologers
to give transit readings for the same time you will get substantially the same
result. This consistency and predictability is not found in any other system of
divination. All other systems of divination (including horary astrology) tend
instead to be like flash photos, snapshots in time which are unique and
un-repeatable. In that sense they are more like the narrow definition of
synchronicity, unique and un-repeatable, yet not like synchronicity in the
strict narrow sense of the word in that they are intentional. Thus, we have a
continuum from transit astrology, through divination to spontaneous
synchronicity phenomena. I believe that this may be a critically important
distinction to bear in mind in trying to understand the nature of the whole
spectrum of general acausal connectedness. One might frame it as a distinction
between general synchronicity, including all related phenomena and special
synchronicity involving only spontaneous episodes with tremendous emotional
charge. This crude model still leaves out the question of intentional
manifestation and various psi phenomena.
Scientific Speculation
For the most part the most interesting speculative models seem to have been
given short shrift in the major popular works on synchronicity. David Peat
touches on, but does not elaborate on, the flatland metaphor originally
articulated in the classic work by Edwin Abbot. The core of this idea is
essentially that a being who understood only a two dimensional reality would
encounter points which would seem totally disconnected, much as columns appear
in an architectural floor plan. But seen from a higher dimension these would be
seen to be part of a coherent integrated structure. We can elaborate this idea
in at least two or three different ways. First we might simply posit space as a
higher dimensional manifold. If super string theory currently requires a twenty
six dimensional model, then one could in some sense infer twenty three enfolded
dimensions in which to embed hidden interconnectedness. This numerical example
is far too literal and simple minded and is only meant to illustrate the concept.
The next step would be to infer that dimensionality might somehow refer to the
conceptual space of consciousness interpenetrating with spatial reality such
that not only spatial dimensions, but also virtual dimensions of consciousness
were somehow inter-enfolded. I am not sure exactly what this implies, but it is
an interesting model for potential thought experiments.
The final extension of flatland is the one I find most interesting. It has
frequently been stated that we live in three space dimensions plus time, or in a
four dimensional space-time continuum. But this is not in fact the case. We
understand time as having only one direction and therefore one sign. Thus, it is
really only half of a dimension. If you wanted to say something to someone in
flatland to make them realize that they in fact live in a larger and more
interconnected reality you would say, "hey look up." "Up" would be in the
direction of the next higher dimensionality. But we don't have to go a whole
dimension higher, only half a dimension. If we actually live in a three and a
half dimensional space time continuum, "up" to us would be into the future to
meet that other half a dimension coming backward toward us. This suggests that
the direction a higher level of interconnectedness might come toward us would
appear to be from out of the future. This bears a startling similarity to many (but
by no means all) synchronicity phenomena, which appear to us to be violations of
our conventional view of temporal causality.
This idea becomes more rigorous in the form of work done by John Wheeler and
Richard Feynman in the nineteen forties and recently extended into quantum
mechanics by John Cramer. This work essentially points out that the most
consistent interpretation of the mathematics underlying quantum mechanics is to
interpret certain lines in the Feynman diagrams as illustrating virtual
particles moving backward in time. As Cramer points out, in his transactional
interpretation of quantum mechanics, one may essentially trade acausality for
negative temporality. That is to say, if one is willing to accept virtual
particles moving backward in time, one may avoid the conventional quantum
paradoxes. Perhaps this may also be true of the paradox of synchronicity.