About Synchonicity

Synchronicity is a term first made popular by the well-known psychologist Carl Jung, and one of the most famous stories of a synchronistic event comes from Jung’s writings. When he was conducting a therapy session with a difficult female client who had recently had a dream involving a scarab beetle (a large beetle which often appears in ancient Egyptian art and has a great deal of meaning in their mythology), a beetle very much like a scarab suddenly flew into the window of the room where Jung and the patient were. The incident helped Jung and the patient break through her psychological ‘block’ and inspired Jung to work more on the phenomenon he had experienced.

 

The topic of synchronicity has also been discussed at length by transpersonal psychologists such as Stanislav Grof. Grof describes a huge number of phenomena where dreams or other experiences have been linked in strange ways to real world events in his patients’ lives, and he has this to say on the subject:

‘Neither the inner experiences nor the external events are necessarily unusual in themselves; rather, it is the acausal [pattern of connection that cannot be explained by direct causality] link between them that is striking. The existence of synchronicities of this kind suggests that psyche and matter are not independent of one another but that they can enter into playful interactions where boundaries between them fade or dissolve altogether’.  

Synchronicity is now a popular concept, and people observe synchronicities in many forms. The main feature which defines a synchronicity is an unusual and often highly improbable or unlikely combination of events, which all seem to be connected to the same theme in the life and thoughts of the observer, despite sharing no common physical cause. Phenomena like this have been recognised, under different names, by many cultures. They are often associated with a mythological figure and Jung characterised these characters as expressions of the ‘Trickster’ archetype, such as Hermes in ancient Greek myths, Coyote in a number of Native American cultures and many others. Many people have described events which seemed to be ‘signs’ from some unknown source, such as seeing images which appeared to ‘answer questions’ which were in their thoughts; these can range from trivial to life-changing events in the life of the observer.

 

It is difficult to prove that these events take place on a ‘scientific’ level. Even if one accepts what Grof says about them in the above quotation, it’s quite another matter to explain these in terms of physics! It is more important to consider the meaning these phenomena have for our own lives, as many cultures throughout history have attached considerable significance to them. It’s also important to keep a balanced perspective, and not to over-interpret every event in our lives, synchronicities are usually quite rare events which stand out as particularly meaningful and relate to major themes in our lives.

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