Synchronicity

I mentioned this term, coined by Carl Jung, the psychoanalyst. Here's a quick definition and some cautions about using the term. It's a favorite of New Age groupies, but they get it all wrong. Synchronicity is "meaningful coincidence." This means that there is a significance to two or more coincidental events. Where people get confused it is because they think that simply because there is a "meaning" or "significance" that there is an actual causal relationship between the two events. That is wrong and is "magical thinking." "Magical thinking" is a distortion in reality and a temptation to find relationships between unrelated events and then falsely manipulate them (and the people involved).

Here's the classic example that Jung cited. He had a new patient, a woman, and they made very little connection or progress during the beginning of their psychoanalytical sessions. One day she told him that she had dreamed of a golden scarab (a beetle). Before Jung could reply he heard a tapping on the window behind him. Turning in his chair he saw a golden beetle tapping on his window. He opened the window, caught up the beetle in his hand, turned to the woman and showed it to her exclaiming, "Now we can start!" This event, this synchronicity, was the breakthrough event in her therapy and from that point on he reported the analysis went fruitfully and smoothly.

Now gnostic and New Age "thinkers" make the error that there is an actual cause and effect relationship between her dream of the beetle and the beetle appearing. They drag into it ESP, karma, past lives, Egyptian gods and loads of crap. But that is jumping to a conclusion that her dreaming of a beetle and then seeing a beetle is such a magical and mysterious event that surely it must be occult. B*** S***! I never once heard such a person give a logical explanation or want to hear one. Here it is. How much detail do you consciously notice each day? Not so much. There are all sorts of bugs and critters and events that take place all around you that you don't tend to focus on as you hurry to work or your day's errands. The odds are that this woman noticed out of the corner of her eye such a beetle sometime during the days before her dream. Dreams always soak in day to day material where it is useful, whether you actually notice that material or not. So the beetles were on the march, so to speak, in their neighborhood. It's not like a magic gold scarab flew in from ancient Egypt. These are beetles that exist in the environment. So she has a dream because at some point one has been around her home. Where the synchronicity comes in is that one knocks on Jung's window as she relates her dream. Again, it's a coincidence (in other words, she did not "summon" the beetle nor did the beetle "summon" her, neither one caused the other to have their experience). But a meaning, a usefulness, springs into being because of this coincidence. It becomes the breakthrough and fertile event for her analysis. That is why it is "meaningful," not because one caused the other, but because the coincidence of their timing created a potent situation, a "potentiality." The event becomes "significant" because there is something that becomes available to be worked on as a result of this coincidence.

Suppose the beetle tapped on the window during Jung's previous patient, or during his next patient. It would have "missed" being a synchronicity for the patient, but it would have been a synchronicity for Jung himself. If he saw the beetle beforehand, and then she comes in and relates her dream, Jung would have a "Hmm" moment that might have inspired him in some way, but she would not have shared in it because of that mistiming on her behalf. She might even feel deflated instead of inspired if she told Jung this dream and he replied, "Oh, yeah, I saw a beetle like that a few moments before you came in." See what I mean? It's synchronicity because there is meaning to the two parties, to the timing of the two events. Likewise if the beetle had not appeared when she was present, and she told her dream of a beetle as she had shared others with Jung previously, they would probably have had another of their correct but desultory sessions. Jung would have analyzed the dream as usual but without that "zing" that the timely appearance of the beetle created between them. Later if he saw the beetle while he was with his next patient, again he might have had a "Hmm" moment for himself, but it would not have been a synchronicity for the beetle dreaming patient. A matter of a few minutes one way or the other changes the recipient of the synchronicity. It would just be a woman who dreamed about a beetle of the type that does occur in the area, and then one alighting on Jung's windowsill. It is a synchronicity not because an event takes place that is "destined" in a numinous way in the universe, but because two coincidences create a fertile and potently strong connectivity in a mysterious way. Synchronicity is not like electricity that is a real force of nature and occurs here or there, planned (electrical wiring) or not (lightning, or a short). It is two separate, coincidental events that when they occur for their own separate reasons they join together to create something "significant" and "meaningful."

I hope this helps.