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SYNCHRONICITY
Jung's term for an acausal connection between events that renders them meaningful
to an observer, e.g., precognition, coincidences of dreams with independently
(see independence) occurring events, the frequent cooccurrance of particular
numerals within a short time period of a longer sequence. (Krippendorff)
"Synchronistic events offer us perceptions that may be useful in our psychological
and spiritual growth and may reveal to us, through intuitive knowledge, that
our lives have meaning." --Jean Shinoda Bolen, MD, The Tao of Psychology
Why Does Synchronicity Happen: various sources
Synchronicity reveals the meaningful
connections between the subjective and objective world. Jung
Synchronistic events provide an immediate religious experience as a direct encounter
with the compensatory patterning of events in nature as a whole, both inwardly
and outwardly. Jung.
These events serve to nurture -support, protect and enhance- human life and
spiritual growth. Peck. 1978. The Road Less Traveled.
It is unfathomable power [the fingers of the Morai (fate), or the providence
of God] ordering the web of our inner and outer existence. Greene. 1984.
The Astrology of Fate.
The First Insight Theory: Mysterious coincidences cause the reconsideration
of the inherent mystery that surrounds our individual lives on this planet.
Redfield. 1993. The Celestine Prophecy
They demonstrate the unity of psyche and matter, forcing us to transcend our
rational, scientific, materialistic attitudes. Mansfield, 1995. Synchronicity,
Science, and Soul-making.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Austrian biologist Paul Kammerer advanced his little-known but thought-provoking theory of "seriality." Kammerer supposed that events, objects, or occurrences of a like kind assemble together in space and time through unknown and acausal means. Kammerer defined seriality as "a lawful recurrence, or clustering, in time and space whereby individual members of the sequence-as far as can be ascertained by careful analysis-are not connected by the same active source."(1) Where Jung's synchronicity deals with the relationship between subjectivity and the external world, Kammerer's seriality is more concerned with patterns and groupings of objects that occur in the environment. Many of us have had the experience whereby we encounter a new word for the first time and, surprisingly, we encounter it numerous times after its initial introduction into our lives. For instance, someone rolls off a particularly mellifluous sounding word in conversation, "insouciant," that piques your curiosity but you have no idea of its meaning. Shortly after hearing it the first time, you read it in a book, someone else uses it in conversation-and someone else. This clustering of the word "insouciant" is an example of Kammerer's notion of seriality, and for Kammerer, much to his critic's disagreement, this patterning was not random but meaningful.
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Meaningful coincidences were first
logged and analyzed by Paul Kammerer who suggested that these events revealed
a heretofore unrecognized law of nature which tended to bring like and like
together. Jung carried the analysis further suggesting that the mind transcends
our normal concepts of space and time. Realms of the psyche which he called
archetypes, located in the collective unconscious, were somehow responsible
for collecting or linking similar events which were not related by physical
cause and effect energies but rather by meaning. Seifer introduced the term
"kicker" to denote the extreme precision of the more spectacular synchronistic
events, while Persinger speculated that the geomagnetic pulsations of the earth
may somehow be involved in initiating or acting as carrier frequencies. If the
world is constructed on holographic principles aligned with such concepts as
Leibnitz's monad theory or Mach's Principle whereby in some derivative sense,
each part codes for the whole, it is possible that properties inherent in holography
may represent the physical part of this process, whereas synchronistic phenomena
may be the mental counterpart.
A different approach to a theoretical
(mathematical) model:
Seriality, Synchronicity and Complexity Science (a pdf download) - view
here
as html or here
to download as word file
by Michael A. Forster
Complexity science is used to explain Kammerer’s law of seriality and, by inference, Jung’s synchronicity. However, due to the nature of synchronicity this paper primarily focuses on seriality. A basic model, the Cardland model, is introduced and presented as a theoretical basis for seriality. Observational evidence of Kammerer’s seriality is then presented to demonstrate its relationship with complexity science. It is shown that the sequence of events under the law of seriality is self-organised and follows a power law distribution. The consequences for seriality and synchronicity are then discussed.
SOME REFERENCES ON THE WEB:
Charles Tart : Steps toward clarification of Synchronicity
Synchronicity
references links
what
is synchronicity?