You are thinking of a person, and suddenly he phones. “Oh I was just thinking of you!” you say. ‘Funny,” he says, “I was thinking of you so I gave you a call.”
Is this ‘just coincidence’?
Jung spent some time examining if events like this were more than just chance. He called such events Synchronicity.
He first used the term Synchronicity in his papers from the 1930s. Translated from the German;
“An a-causal connection between psychic states and objective events’.
An easier definition; Synchronicity is the simultaneous occurrence of two meaningful but not causally connected events.
Synchronicity is distinguished from events occurring simultaneously but unconnected in meaning.
Much ink has been spilled on what Jung thought was the cause of Synchronicity – did he believe there was some magic or god-like uber-mind causing them to happen?
My understanding is he was rejecting causality as the explanation for everything – A causes B causes C. In Synchronicity A and B happen together and have significance. And from them meaning could be derived. Eventually he went with the belief some coincidental events had a direct psychic connection with an archetype.
I had some psychology teachers go as far as seeing everything as Synchronicity. They reject the word ‘coincidence’ from their vocabulary.
An intriguing thought – nothing in life is coincidence. And from everything we can derive some meaning. I find it a bit chilling.
16 comments
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April 24, 2008 at 6:02 am
TigerYogiji
A church near my home has one of those billboard signs, and it currently says on it:
“Coincidence is the situation where God chooses to remain anonymous”.
What a coincidence that you should post about this!
Urspo - i am curious to see what synchronicity occurs by writing a post on synchronicity.
the next 24-48 hours may be intriguing
April 24, 2008 at 10:28 am
Brent
I find this facinating.
I often wonder about this. As simple as when I walk down a hallway, why to 3 people meet at the door at the same time. If I had sat at my desk for 10 more seconds, they would have been there without me. Of course that probably happens all the time and I just don’t notice it.
The wife does the phone thing all the time, it’s scary.
April 24, 2008 at 10:50 am
johnmichael
I have had many of those “synchronized” moments.
I read a book a long time ago called The Celestine Prophecy–and it basically was about how nothing was coincidence.
April 24, 2008 at 1:00 pm
BentonQuest
Folks like myself would call it the working of the Holy Spirit.
Urspo - indeed. one of my teachers saw synchronicity as the work of angels rather.
April 24, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Greg
And all this time, I thought it was an album from The Police.
I think we’ve all had moments like that. I wonder how it relates to the saying that your ears must of been burning or your nose itching because someone was thinking about you. Very interesting….
Urspo - Sting is open that he went through Jungian analysis, so he is familiar with the terms; some of his music and lyrics are right from jungian ideas, including the song and album Synchronicity.
April 24, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Pink
wow…what a meaningful post…I was just thinking of Jung
I wonder if synchronicity is a manifestation of some kind of collective er was it collective unconscious? I mean if we all tap into the same waves, surely we are eventually going to be triggered by the same impulse at the same time. I think synchronicity would happen more often if we just paid attention.
I love it when it happens. Its a beautiful connection.
xx
pinks
April 24, 2008 at 2:48 pm
deveil
loved this post. My grandmother was a twin, and the synchronicity between the two of them was unreal. But that’s probably another study all together. I’ve always felt things like this is my life. I too think it’s quite a beautiful connection! Big bear hugs, hopefully mine will be getting more muscular, and you can push me anytime!
April 24, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Steven
Like Greg, I was thinking of the Police (is that a synchronicity?
) and what the actual lyrics of the song spoke of. It sounds as “synchronicity” and “in sync” refer to two different things, when I thought they may have been somehow related.
April 24, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Mark H
I should read that Jung reference…..I’ve always “wondered” about this subject….because it does happen to most of us at times………… Thanks for a thoughtful post.
April 24, 2008 at 4:50 pm
cedrorum
I’ve had these moments of synchronicity as well. They are neat when they happen. Something similar happens between my wife and I fairly frequently. Her or I will ask a question or start talking about something that the other was just about to talk about. It will come out of the blue and have nothing to do with our prior conversation. It’s as if we are reading each others minds. Pretty cool.
April 24, 2008 at 5:57 pm
Doug
The latest incarnation of this is “The Secret.” Just someone else trying to make big bucks on a rewrite, touting it as “something new.”
I favor the idea of chance. If *nothing* ever happened simultaneously, then I might wonder. Sometimes things happen simultaneously, most times they don’t. We notice when they do and say, “Ah ha!” But what about the 99.999% of the rest of time time when things happen on their own? To use Brent’s example, like he says, people walk through doors or around corners in their offices all the time. A few times people collide. Most times not. We only remember the collisions.
April 24, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Seamus
This post comes at a moment in time that could not but be explained as “synchronicitous” in nature.
April 24, 2008 at 8:03 pm
Brent
“I find it a bit chilling” . . . or comforting.
April 25, 2008 at 3:42 am
DougT
Sometimes a coincidence is just a coincidence. (With apoplogies to S. Freud).
April 25, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Scott
I have thought about this quite awhile in my more youthful days and came to this stance on synchronicity: Every day we are barraged with a surfeit of information, some of it relevant to us, most of it irrelevant. Our unconscious mind often has a set of plans for us to which we are not usually privy. When things happen/come about/are put in our way that our hidden parts have flagged as being significant, we begin to filter as via this hidden plan. Things that we see as being related are in fact things plucked out of the nearly infinite signs, situations, happenings around us. It’s more metacognitive than magical.
April 26, 2008 at 8:24 pm
Merri
I too love synchronicity. It IS a bit twilight zonish..but still neat!
