The Challenge Synchronicity

Its Meaning and Implications for Science & Philosophy

In this paper, I will begin by exploring the notion of “be-cause” as it relates to science and synchronicity, to mechanism and meaning. I will then examine the definition of synchronicity most commonly quoted from Jung, and see how it may pose a challenge to science and philosophy. Next, I will discuss three concepts that, I believe, are key to an understanding of synchronicity. And I will conclude with a comprehensive list of definitions proposed by Jung himself.

Because, Because, Because

Because-1. Explorations of the first “because” are the stuff of science. Here, the foundation question is “How does the world work?” And the answers science provides are along the lines “the world works the way it does because one thing causes another to happen.” According to this view, the world is made up of events that are linked together by causes and effects. “Be-cause,” here, means “events linked by cause and effect.” Because-1, therefore, is causality (a special kind of causality, as we shall see, called mechanism).

Because-2. The second “because” is the stuff of philosophy. It is prompted by questions such as “Why is there something rather than nothing?” “Why do we exist?” “Why is this (rather than that) the state of the world?” And philosophy answers by providing reasons: “Things can happen, must happen or can’t happen because of logical possibilities, necessities, or impossibilities.” Because-2, therefore, means “because there are reasons” (logical necessities) for any particular state of affairs.

Because-3. The third “because” is perhaps the strangest of the lot. It is the stuff of mysticism or spirituality. It, too, can be a response to “why?” questions. But the kinds of answers provided by mysticism tend to annihilate the questions posed. For instance, in response to “Why is the world the way it is?”, or “Why am I not enlightened?”, mysticism might answer: “because that’s just the way it is.” This “just-so” kind of because is actually no because at all. There is no reason, and there are no mechanisms or causes, that will provide satisfactory answers. Answers of the just-so kind require a leap beyond all “becauses” into a realm or state of awareness typified by an expansion of consciousness where instead of reasons or causes, the answer comes as a deepening of meaning.

What is so intriguing about Carl Jung’s work in synchronicity is that it seems to involve events that may serve as a bridge between the three “becauses”—between the causes (mechanisms) of science and the becauses (reasons) of philosophy, on the one hand, and the “nocauses” (meanings) of mysticism, on the other. For synchronicity, as we shall see, seems to involve events that cannot be linked causally yet are conspicuous by being connected through meaning. Synchronicities are neither mechanisms explicable by (standard) science, nor are they purely “just-so” requiring mystical experience. They seem to hover above (below?), or intersect, the domains of scientific causality and spiritual consciousness. Perhaps they are gateways between these two worlds?

But whatever they are, synchronicities call out for explanation—yet by their very nature may elude explanation. Instead of asking “how can acausal connections (synchronicities) intersect the world of causal events?” we may need to ask “why do synchronicities occur at all?” Instead of explanation, we may need to be content with a deepening of meaning and a sense of purpose. Is that their function: to remind us not to stay fixed in the realm of causes and reasons, but to be open to the possibilities for growth that may come with accepting “just-so”? At least in my own case, this has been their predominant effect.

Explanation or Meaning?

This paradigm began to change significantly after the discovery of the quantum. Here, for the first time, science encountered empirical evidence for events that had no causal foundation (e.g. radioactivity, quantum jumps of electrons within atoms). Such events “just happen,” according to standard interpretation of quantum theory. They are completely uncaused, and are, therefore, instances of pure chance (or pure creativity, depending on how you like to view such things). Nevertheless, despite this shift in paradigm, quantum theory is still called “quantum mechanics.” It has remained wedded to the ideal of discovering underlying mathematical laws or descriptions (e.g. probability equations, wave and matrix mechanics) that can account for the sometimes bizarre and profoundly counterintuitive phenomena that occur in the quantum domain.

From classical Newtonian and Maxwellian physics, to Einsteinian relativity and quantum mechanics, modern physics—and therefore modern science in general—is committed to discovering and explaining how the world works. And this “how” is invariably some version of mechanics, of bodies (particles) or fields (waves) in motion and interacting through an exchange of forces. Ever since Einstein’s demonstration of the equivalence of matter and energy (E=Mc2), descriptions of mechanical impact have shifted from accounts of material pushes and pulls to accounts of exchanges of energy. But whether Galilean-Newtonian pushes and pulls, Maxwellian fields of force, Einsteinian warps in space-time, or quantum interactions . . . some form of contact through energy exchange is a foundation assumption. Mechanism reigns supreme.

Our shorthand answer, therefore, to science’s central question, “How does the world work?” is “The world works only and always by exchanges of energy”—that’s what mechanics means. Whenever we encounter a mechanical explanation, we know some energy exchange has taken place.

The entire edifice of science is built on the premise of mechanism or mechanical causes—that all events in the world always and only involve exchanges of energy. Within this worldview, it is impossible that any event could take place without some transmission of energy. Even spontaneous quantum jumps are described as emissions of quanta, indivisible packets of energy or action (hence quantum mechanics). Both in relativity and quantum theory, an “event” is defined as an energy transfer in space and time (or in space-time).

But what if there are other kinds of events? What if some “happenings” in the world do not involve exchanges of energy? Or at least are not wholly accounted for in terms of energy exchanges? What if some events require us not simply to ask “how the world works” but to ask “why the world works in the way it does?” Whereas “how” questions require answers in terms of mechanical causes, “why” questions require us to look for purposes or reasons—for meanings.

This was Jung’s great discovery, and his great contribution to modern science. He noticed that some events in his own life and in the lives of his patients could not be accounted for in terms of mechanical causation (that is, in terms of energy exchanges), but manifested connections through meaning. Such connections he called “synchronicity.”

Examining Jung’s most familiar definition of synchronicity, we can see if instances of this phenomenon really do pose the kind of challenge to standard science that Jung believed, and that the title of this essay implies.

What is Synchronicity?

Let’s take his definition step by step.

Coincidence in time. First, the notion of “coincidence in time” is by itself unproblematic. All sorts of things happen to coincide at the same moment. Right now, for instance, while these words are being typed a plane is taking off somewhere, waves are breaking on a beach in Australia, and a comet is heading toward the sun. Countless millions of other events are happening together at this and every moment. That’s inevitable in a pluralistic universe. Simultaneity, or coincidence in time, is an unremarkable fact of reality. There is nothing strange or scientifically challenging about events “coinciding in time.”

Causally unrelated. Perhaps the problem is with “causally unrelated”? Clearly, we have no reason to suspect that my typing the previous paragraph could have any influence on a flight take-off, on surf crashing in Australia, or on the trajectory of a comet. And, likewise, all of those events are causally independent. On its own, each event, of course, is the product of a chain of causes and effects. But, precisely because they happen simultaneously, and are separated by distances, none of those events could possibly affect any of the others. They are “causally unrelated,” and that’s exactly what we would expect both logically and scientifically. So, no problem there.

Similar meaning. If there is a challenge, then, does it lie here, where two or more events have the “same or similar meaning”? But why would that be a problem? All sorts of things share similar meanings. For example, my typing fingers, the plane taking off, the breaking waves, and the orbiting comet all share the meaning of “motion.” Or, cows chewing the cud, celebrants feasting at a wedding, bacteria ingesting decaying cells, all share the meanings of “food” and “digestion.” If these examples seem too weak, try the following scenarios.

I have three dimes and two quarters in my pocket, adding up to five coins. Two cars and three trucks on the highway add up to five vehicles. Both sets of objects share the meaning “five.”

• Scenario 1: Suppose I took the five coins out of my pocket at the very instant those five vehicles passed by my house, would that be synchronicity? They “coincide in time,” are “causally unrelated,” and share the “same meaning.” But this would hardly qualify as Jungian synchronicity. What’s missing?
  
• Scenario 2: Suppose, now, that as I took the coins out of my pocket they fell, scattering on the floor, and at that very instant the five vehicles outside my house crashed into each other. Again: simultaneity, causally unrelated events, and shared meaning. But, again, hardly synchronicity. Why not? What’s missing?
  
• Scenario 3: Take it further. Suppose that for some reason I was angry, I took the coins out of my pocket, threw them against the wall, and at that same instant the five vehicles outside my house piled into each other. Again the two events coincide in time, are causally related, and share the same meaning (fiveness). Are we getting warmer? And if so, why? It’s hardly the added ingredient of drama, since surely that was also present in scenario 2.

Let’s say, however, I threw the coins out my window and they hit the driver of one of the cars who swerved and rammed into one of the trucks, triggering a chain-reaction pile up. Clearly that could count as a connection between the two events. But it would be a causal connection. Our second criterion is that the events be causally unrelated, that they be acausally linked.

And here, I believe, we meet a weakness in Jung’s definition quoted above. It is not enough that the simultaneous events be “causally unrelated,” they must be also acausally connected. Being “causally unrelated” is not the same as “acausally connected.” The first is an absence of causality; the second is a presence of acausality. As we’ve seen, all sorts of simultaneous events are (and must be) causally unrelated, but it would be completely unwarranted to claim they are, therefore, acausally connected. Any such universalizing claim would make the notion of acausal connection vacuous. The problem, or the mystery, occurs when we are presented with evidence that two simultaneous events without any possibility of a causal (mechanistic) relationship are, nevertheless, connected. Here, because they are causally unrelated andconnected, the connection must be acausal. The problem is to account for how, in the absence of causality, they could possibly be connected. Jung proposed such events are linked through meaning. But is the presence of shared meaning a sufficient condition for “connectedness”?

As we’ve seen, in all three scenarios both events (coins and autos) were linked by the number five. They shared the meaning of “fiveness,” and to that extent they were related. But in any of these cases, was this a meaningful link? Did the link deepen our understanding or experience of ourselves or the world in some way? Although we could say that the coins and the vehicles were “linked” by the meaning “five,” we would be tempted to say this was just a “chance linking,” a “chance shared meaning,” and therefore a very weak “link” indeed.

There is, it seems, a difference between mere “shared meaning” and a “meaningful link.” But what is this difference? And how does it give synchronicity its tradmark distinction? What is it about true synchronicity (if there really is such) that lifts it beyond mere chance coincidence and chance shared meaning? What missing ingredient would compel us to accept a coincidence of causally unrelated meanings as an instance of synchronicity and not just chance?

Whatever this “extra ingredient” is, it seems we need to add it to Jung’s initial definition of synchronicity (see below for a more comprehensive list of Jung’s definitions). In addition to a “coincidence in time” of two or more “causally unrelated” events which have the “same or similar meaning,” I propose that the differentiating ingredient is a numinous quality—an experience of the numinous.Numinosity is the “charge” we experience when we find ourselves involved in events we suspect are unrelated by cause yet are acausally related through a meaning that transforms us in some way. Try this:

• Scenario 4: Suppose, this time, that I wrote down the dates on all five coins, and that after the fact of the auto pile up I discovered that five people injured or killed in the crash were born the same years as the five dates on my coins. Here, any suggestion of “chance coincidence” or “chance meaning,” would feel like a stretch. (Or it would bestow on chance a quality of orderedness which would be self-contradictory.) Instead of chance, the overwhelming feeling would be a sense of hidden order or pattern, accompanied by a tone of eerieness, a wonderousness, a mysteriousness, an inexplicable sense of meaningful connection between those five coins and those five people, at that shared moment in time.The sense of inexplicable meaningful connection and coincidence, combined with a knowledge that this could not be due to any thinkable causal connection, would be accompanied by an unmistakable sense of numinosity: Some deeper, higher, or wider pattern enfolds these otherwise apparently unconnected events.

This is what Jung is pointing at with his notion of synchronicity, where mind and matter, psyche and physis, are “guided” together by the deeper formative matrix of the archetypes.

The Challenge to Science

But, as we have seen, one of the key hallmarks of synchronicity is that its constituent events are acausal. If synchronicity is true, then, the entire scientific enterprise based on causal laws comes sharply into question. But perhaps the situation need not be quite so drastic. It remains possible that acausality could exist alongside causality (as, indeed, prima facia, seems to be the case), and that both are related through some form of complementarity. Perhaps both are “at work” in the universe. However, even in this case, we would still want to know how science would move beyond universal mechanism, and expand, or open up, to include synchronicity within its worldview.

Ironically, the deep challenge facing science may in the end turn out not to be synchronicity but causality itself. Despite its foundational role in science, and however obvious it may seem to commonsense, causality remains profoundly problematic philosophically. Although mechanism has produced great successes in science and technology (judged, of course, according to criteria inspired by mechanism itself), it may yet turn out that its foundational assumption, causality, will prove to be a metaphysical fiction. And perhaps the limitations, dangers, and failures of mechanism when applied to living and sentient systems will be overcome only when attachment to “nothing-but” causality is given up, and some other, noncausal, principle is seen to be more (or comparably) fundamental.

The problem with causality goes back to Hume. But before we take up Hume’s critique, I want to look at the meaning of three concepts that are central to an understanding of synchronicity—beginning with meaning itself.

The Meaning of Meaning

In materialistic science, meaning is reduced to mechanism, to explanations of causal physical relations. When a particular model or theory is said to correspond with empirical data, with how phenomena in nature are observed to interact (i.e. cause-effect measurement), we say we have scientific explanation (for example, kinetic energy of molecules “means” heat). But such a definition of meaning as causal explanation leaves something out of what we normally mean by meaning, something that has to do with significance, something that resonates in some way with our experience of self.

Meaning involves intentionality in the sense of directed awareness. It is awareness that refers to something beyond itself with which it participates in some way. If a particular event means something to me, it is because my consciousness “reaches out” and draws it into my field of being (or, alternatively, it reaches out and attracts my consciousness). When one thing means some other thing, at least part of its being is about that thing. Meaning, therefore, implies connection with not-self through some form of awareness or knowledge. It represents or signifies—projecting itself into the “other” or introjecting the “other” into itself.

As a useful working definition of meaning we might pursue the following: Meaning is about significant relationship between the experiencing self and the event or item being experienced. Its strong sense includes a deepening of either (or both) self-understanding and relationship to the world. It is about communication and information flow (not to be confused with energy transfer)—a non-mechanistic in-forming.

As a locus of being or experience, the self as bodymind is in constant communication with its environment, constantly exchanging energy and information in multiple forms—food, air, water, light, sound, smells, radiation, ideas, emotions, concepts and so on. We are constantly sharing messages with the world around us, picking them up in our bodymind, processing or metabolizing them, and expressing some residue back out. We call this process “life.”

The significance of this exchange of messages—this discourse with our environment—depends on the quality of relationship between self and not-self. In short, it depends on the fit between self and its environment. If the bodymind-self cannot receive, process or feed back information or energy with its environment, it experiences a “misfit,” and its ability to develop or grow is at stake. If the misfit is sufficiently acute or chronic, the individual will die.

The significance, or meaning, of the messages, then, is ultimately a matter of the organism’s growth or survival. Meaning is the experienced fit between self and its environment. The key word here is “experienced.” Meaning is a first-person, subjective phenomenon, and cannot be accounted for merely by what Ken Wilber calls “functional fit”—that is, third-person, objective relations between parts of a system. As the self opens up to respond to more environment—whether physical, mental or spiritual—the experience of self expands and more of what was not-self is incorporated. Ultimately, when the sense of self expands to encompass the entire realm of being, as mystics tell us, the distinction between individual self and the cosmic Self, or Cosmic I, disappears. The entire cosmos, then, resonates with meaning.

Mechanism

Mechanism, in short, is nothing but interactions of physical causes and effects. That is, it depends entirely on contact or contiguity between physical bodies, be they particles or fields. All action-at-a-distance or action-through-the void is ruled out. Nothing can happen in such a universe through influences exchanged or shared synchronistically—that is, through acausal connection which does not involve communication through space. The data of quantum mechanics that expose reality as being discrete or discontinuous (through quantum jumps, amounting to “holes” in space) and as nonlocal effects (intrinsic universal interconnectedness) result in deep paradoxes. In such a reality, the ubiquitousness of mechanism breaks down, and quantum “mechanics” must change to become “quantum dynamics,” “quantum systemics” or even “quantum semantics”—signifying connectedness through meaning, not through mechanism.

Causality

However, limiting causality to mechanical causation, as we saw in the case of quantum physics, means scientific causal explanations are inadequate to the task of accounting for all the data. The same is true in other sciences, such as evolutionary biology, neurosciences, psychology, cosmology, where other anomalies require alternative explanations. The Institute of Noetic Sciences has published a series of reports from its Causality Project addressing this particular issue.

In addition to a reinvestigation of alternative forms of causation, the indeterminacy of quantum physics and the concept of synchronicity in Jungian psychology suggest an even more radical break with mechanism and causality. It may be that the universe operates and holds itself together through other noncausal processes, such as meaning, in addition to the dynamics of mechanism. For example, Jung’s hypothesis is that a more accurate and adequate model of reality is one where both psyche and physis are aspects of some underlying “psychoid” continuum (von Franz, 1992). Throughout the entire continuum, psyche and physis interpenetrate each other, though in different gradations or predominances of one or the other. For instance, at one level, physis would be predominant, and here causality and mechanism would operate as, indeed, physicalist science has discovered. However, at the other end, where psyche predominates, causal mechanism would be replaced by acausal connections through meanings or synchronicities. At levels in between there would be varying admixtures of causality and acausality, of mechanism and meaning.

The “definitions” covered here emphasize the intimate relationship between consciousness and meaning. To live in a world where science is brought back to consciousness would be to live in a world where the technology of mechanism is complemented by the significance of meaning—a world that is both useful and meaningful. In such a world, our practical uses of technology would be guided by the wisdom of knowing our deep interrelatedness with the whole environment in which all our actions and being are embedded. In such a world, science would be imbued with a sense of the sacred.

Such a “sacred scie

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