Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle
(From Vol. 8. of the Collected Works of C. G. Jung)
11. In the realm of very small quantities prediction becomes uncertain, if not impossible, because very small quantities no longer behave in accordance with the known natural laws.
11. the connection of events may in certain circumstances be other than causal, and requires another principle of explanation.
11. Every answer of nature is therefore more or less influenced by the kind of questions asked, and the result is always a hybrid product.
14. Kammerer holds that though “runs” or successions ofchance events are not subject to the operation of a common cause, i.e., are acausal, they are nevertheless an expression of inertia—the property of persistence.
17. The suspicion that this must be a case of meaningful coincidence, i.e., an acausal connection, is very natural. I must own that this run of events made a considerable impression on me. It seemed to me to have a certain numinous quality.
18. All the events in a man’s life would accordingly stand in two fundamentally different kinds of connection: firstly, in the objective, causal connection of the natural process; secondly, in a subjective connection which exists only in relation to the individual who experiences it, and which is thus as subjective as his own dreams… That both kinds of connection exist simultaneously, and the selfsame event, although a link in two totally different chains, nevertheless falls into place in both, so that the fate of one individual invariably fits the fate of the other, and each is the hero of his own drama while simultaneously figuring in a drama foreign to him—this is something that surpasses our powers of comprehension, and can only be conceived as possible by virtue of the most wonderful pre-established harmony.
18. Schopenhauer believed in the absolute determinism of the natural process and furthermore in a first cause.
19. Thus Schopenhauer, with true philosophical vision, opened up a field for reflection whose peculiar phenomenology he was not equipped to understand, though he outlined it more or less correctly. He recognized that with their omina and praesagia astrology and the various intuitive methods of interpreting fate have a common denominator which he sought to discover by means of “transcendental speculation.”
22. The writer Wilhelm von Scholz has collected a number of stories showing the strange ways in which lost or stolen objects come back to their owners… The author comes to the understandable conclusion that everything points to the “mutual attraction of related objects,” or an “elective affinity.” He suspects that these happenings are arranged as if they were the dream of a “greater and more comprehensive consciousness, which is unknowable.”
24. The fact that distance has no effect in principle shows that the thing in question cannot be a phenomenon of force or energy, for otherwise the distance to be overcome and the diffusion in space would cause a diminution of the effect, and it is more than probable that the score would fall proportionately to the square of the distance. Since this is obviously not the case, we have no alternative but to assume that distance is physically variable, and may in certain circumstanced be reduced to vanishing point by a
psychic condition.
Even more remarkable is the fact that time is not in principle a prohibiting factor either; that is to say, the scanning of a series of cards to be turned up in the future produces a score that exceeds chance probability… They point, in other words, to a psychic relativity of time, since the experiment was concerned with perceptions of events which had not yet occurred. In these circumstances the time factor seems to have been eliminated by a psychic function or psychic condition which is also capable of abolishing the spatial factor.
25. One consistent experience in all these experiments is the fact that the number of hits scored tends to sink after the first attempt, and the results then become negative. But if, for some inner or outer reason, there is a freshening of interest on the subject’s part, the score rises again. Lack of interest and boredom are negative factors; enthusiasm, positive expectation, hope, and belief in the possibility of ESP make for good results and seem to be the real conditions which determine whether there are going to be any results at all.
27. Rhine’s experiments confront us with the fact that there are events which are related to one another experimentally, and in this case meaningfully, without there being any possibility of proving that this relation is a causal one, since the “transmission” exhibits none of the known properties of energy… Therefore it
cannot be a question of cause and effect, but of a falling together in time, a kind of simultaneity.
27. Rhine’s experiments show that in relation to the psyche space and time are, so to speak, “elastic” and can apparently be reduced almost to vanishing point, as though they were dependent on psychic conditions and did not exist in themselves but were only “postulated” by the conscious mind.
27. In themselves, space and time consist of nothing. They are hypostatized concepts born of the discriminating activity of the conscious mind, and they form the indispensable co-ordinates for describing the behavior of bodies of motion.
28. The archetypes are formal factors responsible for the organization of unconscious psychic processes: they are “patterns of behavior.” At the same time they have a “specific charge” and develop numinous effects
which express themselves as affects.
28. As I shall show further on, certain phenomena of simultaneity or synchronicity seem to be bound up with the archetypes.
31. Evidently something quite irrational was needed which was beyond my powers to produce.
31. Any essential change of attitude signifies a psychic renewal which is usually accompanied by symbols of rebirth in the patient’s dreams and fantasies.
32. These apparently quite different situations have as their common characteristic an element of “impossibility.” The patient with the scarab found herself in an “impossible” situation because the treatment had got stuck and there seemed to be no way out of the impasse. In such situations, if they are serious enough, archetypal dreams are likely to occur which point out a possible line of advance one would never have thought of oneself.
32. highlighted – unconscious readiness to witness a miracle, and to hope
33. At all events an affective expectation is present in one form or another even though it may be denied.
33. highlighted – synchronicity definition
34. The dream experience is not synchronous with the death. Experiences of this kind frequently take place a little before or after the critical event.
36. We often dream about people from whom we receive a letter by the next post. #texting #calling #communication
37. Synchronistic events rest on the simultaneous occurrence of two difference psychic states. One of them is the normal, probable state (i.e., one that is causally explicable), and the other, the critical experience, is the one that cannot be derived causally from the first.
38. highlighted – unexpected content/ space time
40. highlighted – influenced by an emotional sate
41. However incomprehensible it may appear, we are finally compelled to assume that there is in the unconscious something like an a priori knowledge or an “immediacy” of events which lacks any causal basis. At any rate our conception of causality is incapable of explaining the facts.
41. highlighted – synchronicity two factors unconscious and objective
42. highlighted – Albertus magnus magic
42. H – Goethe magic quote #loa
42. We must therefore look in the obscurest corners and summon up courage to shock the prejudices of our age if we want to broaden the basis of our understanding of nature.
42. Unlike the Greek-trained Western mind, the Chinese mind does not aim at grasping details for their own sake, but at a view which sees the detail as part of a whole.
42. H – science limits possibilities of nature, not the
whole picture, not fullness
43. astrology… at least in its modern form, claims to give a more or less total picture of the individual’s character… The meaningful coincidence we are looking for is immediately apparent in astrology, since the astronomical data are said by astrologers to correspond to individual traits of character…
44. H – astrological data and marriage
46. There is something peculiar, one might even say mysterious, about numbers. They have never been entirely robbed of their numinous aura… The most elementary quality about an object is whether it is one or many. Number helps more than anything else to bring order into the chaos of appearances. It is the predestined instrument for creating order, or for apprehending an already existing, but still unknown, regular arrangement or “orderedness.”
47. the unconscious uses number as an ordering factor.
51. Accordingly it would seem that natural numbers have an archetypal character. (goes on to talk abt archetypes and numbers H)
64. There are thre main positions, viz., those of sun, moon, and the so-called ascendant; the last has the greatest importance for the interpretation of a nativity: the Asc. Represents the degree of the zodiacal sign rising over the eastern horizon at the moment of birth.
67. H – earth’s magnetic field, astrology
67. Investigation of these disturbances seems to indicate that the conjunctions, oppositions, and quartile aspects of the planets play a considerable part in increasing the proton radiation and thus causing electromagnetic storms. On the other hand, the astrologically favourable trine and sextile aspects have been reported to produce uniform radio weather.
68. As large-scale studies are lacking, I decided to investigate the empirical basis of astrology, using a large number of horoscopes of married pairs just to see what kind of figures would turn up.
69. The statistical view of the world is a mere abstraction and therefore incomplete and even fallacious, particularly so when it deals with man’s psychology.
83. There are of course the three main components of the horoscope, namely the ascendant, or rising degree of a zodiacal sign, which characterizes the moment, the moon, which characterizes the day, and the sun, which characterizes the month of birth.
83. Yet the exceptions—and my results are exceptions and most improbable ones at that—are just as important as the rules. Statistics would not even make sense without the exceptions.
88. H – Rhine constant renewal of interest
88. For the unconscious psyche space and time seem to be relative; that is to say, knowledge finds itself in a space-time continuum in which space is no longer space, nor time time. If, therefore, the unconscious should develop or maintain a potential in the direction of consciousness, it is then possible for parallel events to be perceived or “known.”
88. We are so accustomed to regard meaning as a psychic process or content that it never enters our heads to suppose that it could also exist outside the psyche. #pirsig
91. The synchronicity principle asserts that the terms of a meaningful coincidence are connected by simultaneity and meaning.
106. Therefore every kind of natural or living power in bodies has a certain “divine similitude.”
106. H – Gottfried Wilhelm – preestablished harmony
106. Each “simple substance” has connections “which express all the others.” It is “a perpetual living mirror of the universe.”
108. for the primitive mind synchronicity is a self-evident fact; consequently at this stage there is no such thing as chance. No accident, no illness, no death is ever fortuitous or attributable to “natural” causes. Everything is somehow due to magical influence.
138. H – coma, sympathetic system
138. The problem that runs like a red thread trough the speculations of alchemists for fifteen hundred years thus repeats and solves itself, the so-called axiom of Maria the Jewess (or Copt): “Out of the Third comes the One as the Fourth.”
These page numbers are just wrong on kindle cloud man
138. The archetype represents psychic probability, portraying ordinary instinctual events in the form of types.
138. H – magic, wishes, wishing rod
138. Meaningful coincidences are thinkable as pure chance. But the more they multiply and the greater and more exact the correspondence is, the more their probability sinks and their unthinkability increases, until they can no longer be regarded as pure chance but, for lack of a causal explanation, have to be thought of as meaningful arrangements.
138. H – synchronistic phenomena as a class of natural
events, eternity
138. “An immutable order binds mutable things into a pattern, and in this order things which are not simultaneous in time exist simultaneously outside time” (Prosper of Aquitaine, St. Augustine)
APPENDIX: ON SYNCHRONICITY
138. The sentiment du déjà-vu is based, as I have found in a number of cases, on a foreknowledge in dreams, but we saw that this foreknowledge can also occur in the waking state.
138. An initial mood of faith and optimism makes for good results. Skepticism and resistance have the opposite effect, that is, they create an unfavorable disposition.