Synchronicity

 by Marinus Jan Marijs

“Swiss professor of philosophy Carl Gustav Jung (1875 – 1961) and Austrian physicist Wolfgang Pauli (1900 – 1958) were fascinated by examples of “meaningful coincidences”. They conjectured the existence of undiscovered and mysterious “attracting” forces driving objects that are alike, or have common features, close together in time and space and used the word synchronicity” to describe situations like these. Jung emphasizes his belief that the interrelationship between the internal states of consciousness and the external world is not bound by cause and effect, but something more difficult to define, something like “meaning”. For example If an event has no meaningful importance for the individual, then the event is simply a coincidence and not a synchronicity. He noticed that synchronicity often appears when people are in states of crisis, transformation or pushed to extreme limits – meaningful times in life. synchronicity was transformed from an empirical concept into a fundamental explanatory-interpretative principle, which together with causality could possibly lead to a more complete worldview.

Where Jung’s synchronicity deals with the relationship between subjectivity and the external world”

(“Some Considerations on Seriality and Synchronicity” Elena Nechita)

“Following discussions with both Albert Einstein (When the Einstein was working in Zurich in 1909 and 1912, he was Jung’s dinner guest on several occasions) and Wolfgang Pauli, Jung believed that there were parallels between synchronicity and aspects of relativity theory and quantum mechanics. Jung was transfixed by the idea that life was not a series of random events but rather an expression of a deeper order, which he and Pauli referred to as Unus mundus. This deeper order led to the insights that a person was both embedded in an orderly framework and was the focus of that orderly framework and that the realisation of this was more than just an intellectual exercise, but also had elements of a spiritual awakening. From the religious perspective, synchronicity shares similar characteristics of an “intervention of grace”. Jung also believed that in a person’s life, synchronicity served a role similar to that of dreams, with the purpose of shifting a person’s egocentric conscious thinking to greater wholeness. An example of the mechanism is the ubiquitous phenomenon of multiple independent discovery in science and technology, which has been described by Robert K. Merton and Harriet Zuckerman”. (Wikipedia)

Theoretical physicist F. David Peat made an excellent follow up study: “Synchronicity: The Bridge between Matter and Mind 1987 ”.

Physicist Wolfgang Pauli did see similarities between his exclusion principle that he formulated in 1925 and for which he received the Nobel Prize in 1945, and Jung’s theory of Synchronicity, both deal with an acausal connecting principle. This would suggest that behind this coincidences and Synchronicity there would be a deeper meaning.

Next to the multiples, the concept of multiple discovery, that most scientific discoveries and inventions are made independently and more or less simultaneously by multiple scientists and inventors, see https://marinusjanmarijs.nl/evidence-based-approach/14-research-areas/non-physical-perception-and-communication/parallel-discoveries/ there are David Bohm’s Implicate orders, Ilya Prigogine’s dissipative structures and Rupert Sheldrake’s formative fields. The clustering by which patterns connections and conjunctions are formed, would not be based upon causality but on affinity, similarity.

The fact that there are highly organised systems, like for example the human body, is difficult to explain in connection with the second law of thermodynamics. This law implies that natural processes are always moving to a state of high entropy, disorder and the suggested solutions to this problem seem inadequate and obscurantism. This all seems to suggest that there is a deeper ground of being from which a structuring an creative ordering unfolds and the meaningful coincidences the Synchronicities would be a manifestations of this deeper universal order, of immanent or transcendent forces.

Trans logical intuitions and inspirations would be another example of a manifestation of this deeper universal order.

Theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg, one of the key creators of quantum mechanics suggested more or less the same when he said that Quantum theory showed that the world was a platonic world: ”…..But the resemblance of the modern views to those of Plato and the Pythagoreans can be carried somewhat further. The elementary particles in Plato’s Timaeus are finally not substance but mathematical forms.”

Plato’s eternal forms transcend the physical world, but influence structure and order matter. This all points to a creative dynamic activity of generating principles.

Synchronicity; the connection between:

Matter                  — Mind
Objective             — Subjective
Meaningless        — Meaningfulness
Randomness       — Significance
Analytic               — Synthetic
Algorithmic          — Conscious
Outer                   — Inner
Causal                 — Acausal
Separateness      — Connectedness
Reductionism       — Holism
Mechanic             — Organic
Determinism        — Indeterminism
Scientific              — Spiritual
Technical             — Flow
Facts                   — Values
Separation          — Integration
Individual            — Universal
Conformity          — Creativity
Serialism             — Parallelism
Dissimilar            — Similar
Unrelated            — Complementary
Observer             — Participant
Linear                  — Non-linear
Translation          — Transformation
Individuality         — Collectively
Physical               — Mental
Static                   — Dynamic
Exclusive             — Inclusive
Complexity          — Ontology
Being                   — Becoming