Introduction
From practically the beginning of his life right through to its end C. G. Jung was absorbed by the kinds of phenomena which can broadly be classified as paranormal - that is, phenomena which defy explanation in normal rational terms. The implications of his engagement with this area for his personal and professional development are pervasive.
Almost all of his major theoretical formulations were influenced by, and in some cases may even have taken their origin from, his attempts to come to terms with his experiences, observations, and studies of paranormal phenomena (see Charet 1993).
The culmination of Jung's lifelong involvement with the paranormal is his theory of synchronicity, the view that the structure of reality includes a principle of acausal connection which manifests itself most conspicuously in the form of meaningful coincidences. Difficult, flawed, prone to misrepresentation, this theory nonetheless remains one of the most suggestive attempts yet made to bring the paranormal within the bounds of intelligibility.
It has been found relevant by psychotherapists, parapsychologists, researchers of spiritual experience, and a growing number of non-specialists. Indeed, Jung's writings in this area form an excellent general introduction to the whole field of the paranormal.
The selections in the present volume - drawn from Jung's letters, seminars, and autobiographical Memories, Dreams, Reflections, as well as from his Collected Works - provide a thematic and roughly chronological overview of his experiences and ideas.
Part I, 'Encountering the Paranormal', contains writings on mediumistic trance phenomena (Chapter 1), the reality of spirits and hauntings (Chapter 2), anomalous events involved in the development and practice of analytical psychology (Chapter 3), and the synchronistic basis of the divinatory techniques of astrology and the I Ching (Chapter 4).
Part II, 'The Theory of Synchronicity', contains Jung's most lucid presentation of his theory of synchronicity (Chapter 5), then illustrates more fully his ideas, both earlier and later, on some of the central subjects involved in its elaboration, specifically parapsychology (Chapter 6), his astrological experiment (Chapter 7), and physics (Chapter 8).
Part III, 'Outer Limits', illustrates those of Jung's experiences and speculations which touch most directly on questions of transcendence and spiritual reality: unitive and other bewildering visions (Chapter 9), intimations of life after death (Chapter 10), the UFO enigma (Chapter 11), and a variety of miscellaneous topics such as the subtle body, the underlying unity of reality, religious miracles, and the role of synchronicity in the evolution of consciousness (Chapter 12).
The remainder of this introduction follows the same pattern as the selections. First discussed are Jung's experiences and interpretations of the paranormal. Then the various other influences that contributed to his formulation of the theory of synchronicity are considered. Next the central ideas of the theory of synchronicity itself are examined in detail.
Finally, there is a review of some of the areas of paranormal experience which Jung addressed once he was equipped with the theory of synchronicity.
Jung and the Paranormal
Jung's early life was spent in a milieu conducive to his developing an interest in paranormal phenomena. Living in the Swiss countryside, he continually heard stories of uncanny happenings (Jung 1963: 102) such as 'dreams which foresaw the death of a certain person, clocks which stopped at the moment of death, glasses which shattered at the critical moment' (Jung 1963: 104).
The reality of these events, he says, was 'taken for granted in the world of my childhood' (Jung 1963: 104). More specifically, paranormal experiences were virtually commonplace in Jung's family. His maternal grandfather, Samuel Preiswerk, had believed himself to be continually surrounded by ghosts and would devote one day every week to conversing with the spirit of his deceased first wife, for whom he kept a special chair in his study (Jaffé 1984: 40).
Jung's grandmother Augusta, Preiswerk's second wife, was believed to be clairvoyant (Jaffé 1984: 40). And the couple's daughter, Jung's mother, experienced 'strange occurrences' with sufficient regularity to write a diary exclusively dedicated to them (Jaffé 1971: 2).
Jung's own experiences of the paranormal began at the age of seven or eight. During a period when his parents were sleeping apart and there was considerable tension in the house, he would sometimes see nocturnal apparitions:
'One night I saw coming from [my mother's] door a faintly luminous, indefinite figure whose head detached itself from the neck and floated along in front of it, in the air, like a little moon'
(Jung 1963: 31).
When Jung was twenty-three and by that time a medical student, a couple of incidents happened which he says were 'destined to influence me profoundly' (Jung 1963: 108). On one occasion a round walnut table in his family home suddenly and inexplicably split with a loud bang.
Two weeks later another loud explosion was heard, and it was discovered that a steel knife which was in perfect condition and had been used to cut bread just an hour before had miraculously shattered into four in a closed drawer (Jung 1963: 107--9). These experiences contributed to his decision to enter the then widely despised field of psychiatry (Jung 1963: 107, 110--11; also Baumann-Jung 1975: 46).
Jung's own account presents these incidents as connected prefiguratively with séances which he claims he heard about and started attending a few weeks later (Jung 1963: 109; Jung 1973: 181) but which in fact he had already been attending for several years and had even initiated (Hillman 1976: 125; Charet 1993: 155--6).
His observations at these séances formed the basis for his doctoral dissertation, later published as 'On the Psychology and Pathology of So-Called Occult Phenomena' (1902). The desire to present his findings in an optimally objective light is undoubtedly why this as well as his various subsequent accounts (Jung 1925: 3--6, 9--10; Jung 1973: 181--2; Jung 1963: 109--10) all conceal to various degrees the full extent of his personal involvement.
As F. X. Charet summarizes what is now known:
the séances were conducted in Jung's own home, the medium was his cousin, and the participants, members of his own family. In addition, a number of the spirits with which the medium was allegedly in communication were none other than Jung's ancestors.
(Charet 1993: 288)
This degree of engagement is consistent with other information about Jung's interests at the time. In particular, one of the lectures he delivered to his student fraternity, the Zofingia Society, consists largely of an impassioned and informed appeal for the serious scientific study of spiritualistic phenomena (Jung 1897; see also Oeri 1970: 187--8).
Jung describes his experiments with his medium cousin as 'the one great experience which wiped out all my earlier philosophy and made it possible for me to achieve a psychological point of view. I had discovered some objective facts about the human psyche' (Jung 1963: 110).
The primarily descriptive account given in his dissertation prefigures several of the themes of his mature psychology. The medium's ability when in the trance state to manifest a variety of seemingly autonomous personalities provided evidence for the dissociability and unconscious functioning of the psyche - observations which would eventually lead to the formulation first of complexes and later of archetypes.
While analyzing his cousin's trances psychiatrically, Jung did not dismiss the psychic dissociation as simply pathological; the secondary personalities she was manifesting could also be therapeutic, representing 'attempts of the future character to break through' (Jung 1902: 79). The emphasis here on the positive, prospective tendency of apparently pathological symptoms foreshadows Jung's later ideas of compensation, individuation, and active imagination.
Jung continued to attend séances for at least another thirty years (Charet 1993: 172--4, 197, 269). Already by 1905 he could report that he had investigated a total of eight mediums (Jung 1905: 301).
His publicly expressed view at this time was that the results were,
'of purely psychological interest .... Everything that may be considered a scientifically established fact belongs to the domain of the mental and cerebral processes and is fully explicable in terms of the laws already known to science'
(Jung 1905: 301--2).
Even after the beginning of his association with Freud in 1907, Jung's preoccupation with the paranormal continued. Initially, Freud was highly sceptical and dismissive about the entire field - an attitude expressed most vividly in his exhortation to Jung to make the sexual theory 'a dogma, an unshakeable bulwark' against 'the black tide of mud ... of occultism' (Jung 1963: 147--8).
It is true that this resistance eventually mellowed to the point where he was actually encouraging Jung's experiments and even attending séances himself (Charet 1993: 196--7).
'In matters of occultism', he wrote to Jung on 15 June 1911, 'I have grown humble ... my hubris has been shattered'
(in Jung 1963: 335).
However, he was still not willing to expose the full extent of his interest publicly, nor would he accede to Jung's demand that the theoretical basis of psychoanalysis be broadened to take account of spiritualistic phenomena that were inadequately explained in terms of sexuality.
On one occasion, this tension between Freud and Jung resulted in an argument that had both an interesting psychological context and an even more interesting parapsychological outcome. Earlier in the evening Freud had, as he afterwards wrote in a letter to Jung, 'formally adopted you as an eldest son, anointing you as my successor and crown prince' (in Jung 1963: 333).
Later in the evening, however, in the course of an argument about paranormal phenomena, a seemingly unaccountable detonation went off in Freud's bookcase. When Freud dismissed Jung's parapsychological interpretation of this event, Jung predicted that the same thing would happen again, and so, to Freud's consternation, it did (Jung 1963: 152).
Freud's letter to Jung continues by remarking of this phenomenon, by which he admitted to having been impressed, that it 'then and there [i.e., immediately after his 'anointing' of Jung] ... divested me of my paternal dignity' (in Jung 1963: 333). Whether or not consciously realized at the time, this incident symbolized the inevitable divergence between the two psychologists. One of the main causes of this divergence was the significance each attached to paranormal phenomena.
In spite of Freud's unaccommodating attitude, Jung's understanding of paranormal phenomena undoubtedly benefited from their association. He was led by Freud to appreciate the important role that sexuality can indeed play in spiritualistic phenomena. As he recognized only after he had written his dissertation, the medium had fallen in love with him (Jung 1925: 5) and her inadmissible passion for her cousin - which may in fact have been reciprocal - had contributed significantly to her experiences, many of which involved supposed romances of past members of their shared ancestry.
In effecting his break with Freud, Jung was greatly assisted by the influence of the psychologists Théodore Flournoy and William James (Shamdasani 1995: 126--7). Like Jung, both of them were deeply interested in psychical research and had made close observations of mediums; moreover, they were willing, as Freud was not, to consider the phenomena that emerged in these contexts in a nonpathological light.
While James's influence on Jung was mainly through his writings (Jung 1976: 452), Flournoy's was more personal. In an appendix contained in the Swiss but omitted in the English edition of Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung recounts that during the period of his disaffection with Freud he would regularly see Flournoy, who both helped him formulate his understanding of Freud's limitations and encouraged him in his own researches on somnambulism, parapsychology, and the psychology of religion (summarized in Charet 1993: 235).
It was also through Flournoy that Jung became interested in the creative imagination and specifically in the 'Miller Fantasies', which were to form the basis for his Symbols of Transformation (1911--12/1952) - the work in which Jung first expressed openly his divergence from Freud (Jung 1963: 158; Charet 1993: 235).
Validating the creative or, as he came to call it, the 'active' imagination was also important to Jung personally. He himself had a facility for imaginative thinking, and what he learned about this faculty from the Miller material enhanced his ability to cope with the deluge of dreams, visions, and paranormal experiences which were released in him in the years following his rupture with Freud (Jung 1963: 165--91).
Prominent among these experiences were Jung's inner encounters with a variety of seemingly autonomous fantasy figures with whom he conversed as though they were spirits (Jung 1963: 174--8). The most important such figure was 'Philemon', whom Jung described as his 'ghostly guru', his 'psychagogue', a representation of 'superior insight' who 'conveyed to me many an illuminating idea', above all 'the insight that there are things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life' (Jung 1963: 176--7).
One of the earliest experiences Jung mentions specifically of a meaningful coincidence concerns this figure: Philemon had appeared in his dreams with kingfisher's wings, and Jung, in order to understand the image better, did a painting of it. While engaged on this, he happened to find in his garden, for the first and only time, a dead kingfisher (Jung 1963: 175--6).
Later, in 1916, Jung relates that he felt 'compelled from within, as it were, to formulate and express what might have been said by Philemon' (Jung 1963: 182). The composition of the resulting Septem Sermones ad Mortuos, a series of texts addressed to the spirits of the dead, was immediately preceded by a remarkable haunting of Jung's house, involving an 'ominous atmosphere' and various apparitional and poltergeist phenomena experienced not just by himself but by his children and other members of the household (Jung 1963: 182--3).
As several writers have noted, the Septem Sermones - whose relation to spiritualistic communications is obvious, if also rather eccentric (see Segal 1992: 37--8) - express in germinal form almost all of Jung's developed ideas: the nature of the unconscious, individuation, the problem of opposites, the archetypes, and the self (see, e.g., Charet 1993: 265--7).
In 1919, while in England, Jung delivered to the Society for Psychical Research a lecture on 'The Psychological Foundations of Belief in Spirits' (1920/1948). In this lecture he explained experiences of one's own soul in terms of complexes of the personal unconscious, while seemingly autonomous spirits were explained in terms of complexes of the collective unconscious, that is, archetypes (Jung 1920/1948: 309--12).
Towards the end of the lecture he admitted to having 'repeatedly observed the telepathic effects of unconscious complexes, and also a number of parapsychic phenomena' (Jung 1920/1948: 318). But on the question of the objective existence of spirits he took a cautious position, in spite of his own experience of three years earlier.
While acknowledging that, from the point of view of feeling, it might well be legitimate to believe in spirits, he considered that, from the point of view of thinking, there are no grounds for holding that they can be known to exist other than as 'the exteriorized effects of unconscious complexes': 'I see no proof whatever', he remarked, 'of the existence of real spirits, and until such proof is forthcoming I must regard this whole territory as an appendix of psychology' (Jung 1920/1948: 318).
But Jung was in fact less skeptical than he says here. For example, in a footnote added at this point to the 1948 revision of the lecture, he admits:
After collecting psychological experiences from many people and many countries for over fifty years, I no longer feel as certain as I did in 1919, when I wrote this sentence. To put it bluntly, I doubt whether an exclusively psychological approach can do justice to the phenomena in question.
(Jung 1920/1948: 318)
In the year following his SPR lecture he was again in England and had some very disturbing experiences while staying over a series of weekends in a house which he learned afterwards was reputed to be haunted: he heard loud thumping and dripping noises, smelled foul odors, and on one occasion saw a figure with part of its face missing lying in the bed beside him - all of which phenomena simply disappeared at the first light of dawn (Jung 1950b: 320--4).
For at least one of these phenomena, the loud dripping noise, he could find no adequate physical or psychological explanation (Jung 1950b: 325).
Jung was also influenced by his continued witnessing of spiritualistic trance phenomena. We are told, for instance, of his attendance at séances with Rudi Schneider in 1925 at which 'telekinetic phenomena and the materialization of human limbs were observed' (Charet 1993: 282--3, n. 230).
At a séance with Oscar Schlag in 1931 'a sample of ectoplasm was secured', and on another occasion Jung 'embraced Schlag when suddenly Schlag's Jacket dematerialized' (Charet 1993: 283, nn. 230--1).
On the 'question of materialization' Jung wrote in 1945: 'I have seen enough of this phenomenon to convince me entirely of its existence' (Jung 1973: 390). Regarding the objective existence of spirits, he recalled in 1946 his discussions many years earlier with the American psychologist and psychical researcher James Hyslop:
He [Hyslop] admitted that, all things considered, all these metapsychic phenomena could be explained better by the hypothesis of spirits than by the qualities and peculiarities of the unconscious. And here, on the basis of my own experience, I am bound to concede he is right. In each individual case I must of necessity be sceptical, but in the long run I have to admit that the spirit hypothesis yields better results in practice than any other.
(Jung 1973: 431)
Of Jung's experiences in this period after 1919 one more deserves mention for the significant bearing it had on the development of his concept of the self as the centre of psychic totality (Jung 1963: 188). He relates that after he had worked this concept out in isolation, he experienced a powerful confirmatory coincidence in which a painting he had done, based on a dream, was paralleled by the core idea of a Taoist-alchemical treatise, The Secret of the Golden Flower, sent to him by Richard Wilhelm (Jung 1963: 188--9).
The timely receipt of this treatise was, he says, 'the first event which broke through my isolation. I became aware of an affinity; I could establish ties with something and someone' (Jung 1963: 189).
Finally, Jung's thinking was also furthered by the experiences accompanying his heart attack in 1944. A series of altered states of consciousness, including a near-death experience, attendant coincidence, and some profound states of mystical union, gave him the insight, and ultimately the courage, to express himself much more forthrightly on a number of controversial topics, including that of synchronicity itself (Jung 1963: 270--7).
Jung's paranormal experiences and the resulting need adequately to understand them were probably the greatest influence on the development of his theory of synchronicity. Such intimate personal engagement both gave him an inside view of the kind of psychological dynamics that can be involved in paranormal experiences and, even more importantly, impressed on him the extent to which the experiences can be meaningful.
Thus, Jung's own experiences seemed to occur at critical junctures in his life:
paranormal events accompanied his decision to make a career of psychiatry, his conflict and eventual breach with Freud, his relationship with his 'ghostly guru' Philemon, the writing of the Septem Sermones ad Mortuos in which he adumbrated much of his later psychology, his formulation of the concept of the self as the centre of psychic totality, and his heart attack and transformative near-death experience of 1944.
Towards Synchronicity
In addition to his personal experiences and observations of paranormal phenomena, a number of further influences also played a significant part in Jung's eventual formulation of the theory of synchronicity. On the level of spontaneous events, there were the meaningful coincidences which he noticed occurring to individual analyzed during therapeutic sessions as well as to others during seminars that were being held in analytical psychology.
Other sources of insight were Jung's practical engagement with the mantic procedures of astrology and the I Ching, and his cultural researches into alchemy and other esoteric traditions. No less important again was his awareness of recent developments in science, above all in the new discipline of parapsychology and the then radically transformed field of physics.
It is worth looking at each of these influences in turn, since their contributions to his developing theory are varied and at times complex.
The therapeutic context
Jung's specific interest in meaningful coincidence dates from the mid 1920s, when, as he says,
I was investigating the phenomena of the collective unconscious and kept coming across connections which I could not explain as chance groupings or 'runs.' What I found were 'coincidences' which were connected so meaningfully that their 'chance' concurrence would represent a degree of improbability that would have to be expressed by an astronomical figure.
(Jung 1952: 437)
In his analytic practice, Jung was impressed both by the frequency with which coincidence phenomena occurred and by their meaningfulness to those who experienced them:
As a psychiatrist and psychotherapist I have often come up against the phenomena in question and could convince myself how much these inner experiences meant to my patients. In most cases they were things which people do not talk about for fear of exposing themselves to thoughtless ridicule. I was amazed to see how many people have had experiences of this kind and how carefully the secret was guarded.
(Jung 1952: 420)
For example, a patient, whose problem lay in her excessive and seemingly intractable rationalism, was telling Jung an impressive dream in which she had been given a costly jewel in the form of a scarab beetle. Just at that moment an insect began tapping against the consulting room window. Jung let it in, caught it in his hands, and, realizing it was a form of scarabaeid beetle, presented it to his patient with the words, 'Here is your scarab'.
The irrationality yet obvious meaningfulness of this paralleling between real life and her dream was so striking that it broke through the patient's resistances and enabled her treatment to proceed (Jung 1951b: 525--6; 1952: 438--9).
The special value of events such as this for the development of the theory of synchronicity lay in the fact that they occurred in a psychotherapeutic context, so that their accompanying psychological dynamics could be observed particularly closely. Jung noted, for instance, that the meaning which coincidences have for their subject, including their attendant emotional charge or numinosity, seems to stem from the underlying presence of an archetype, activated usually in response to the person having reached some kind of psychological impasse. Thus, in the above case, Jung believed the archetype of rebirth had been activated by the patient's inability to see beyond her rationalism, by her need for 'psychic renewal' (1952: 439).
As Robert Aziz has shown (Aziz 1990: 66--90), implicit in Jung's analysis of this and other cases is his understanding of synchronicity as an expression of the process of individuation furthered through compensation. Thus only after the excessive rationalism of the patient's conscious attitude had been compensated from the unconscious by the powerful irrational event of the synchronicity, could her 'process of transformation [i.e., her individuation] ... at last begin to move' (Jung 1952: 439).
Cases such as this also enabled Jung to observe that coincidences can be symbolic in their meaning. His reason for supposing the archetype of rebirth to have been active in the woman's experience was his knowledge that 'The scarab is a classic example of a rebirth symbol' (Jung 1952: 439).
The seminar context
From 1925 to 1939 Jung held a series of English language seminars at the Psychological Club in Zurich, during which meaningful coincidences sometimes occurred. Indeed one can actually monitor Jung, during the course of the 1928--1930 seminars on dream analysis, moving towards a first formulation of the concept of synchronicity.
On 14 November 1928 the seminar group was discussing the meaning of certain forms of ritual sport, since one of the dreams being examined (the important 'initial dream' of the analysis) contained an image of a square amphitheatre which made the dreamer think of the game of jeu de paume, an early form of tennis.
Amplifying on the idea that this game could be viewed as a form of symbolic ceremonial, Jung associated the game with the sport of bull-fighting, which in turn he connected with the ancient cult of Mithras, the bull god (Jung 1928--30: 24--5). This turned out to be the first coincidence, for it happened that, unknown to Jung, one of the participants at the seminar had dreamed the night before that she had been present at a bull-fight in Spain (Jung 1928--30: 35).
When this dream was mentioned at the next meeting a week later on 21 November, it was followed by a discussion of its meaning and the meaning of the bull symbol generally, during which Jung reported that 'not long ago I had a letter from a patient [in Mexico], a lady who had just been to a bull-fight ...' (Jung 1928--30: 36).
Then, at the meeting following this, on 28 November, Jung began by announcing that the discussion of the bull dream and the meaning of the bull-fight had 'brought interesting coincidences to light' (Jung 1928--30: 43).
For he had just received another letter from the woman in Mexico in which she commented on the bull-fight she had been to in terms very similar to those used by Jung when he had initially spoken about the bull-fight symbol. Allowing time for postage, Jung calculated that the letter must have been written 'just about the day when we first spoke of the bull in the seminar' (Jung 1928--30: 44).
He remarks:
'My friend is a quite independent observer, but she got the gist of [the symbolic significance of the bull-fight] and in that moment found it necessary to convey it to me'
(Jung 1928--30: 44).
Equally strikingly, Jung reported that the person whose dreams were being analyzed in the seminar (a patient not a participant at the seminar) had spent from the 20th to the 24th November 'making a picture which he could not understand' (Jung 1928--30: 43). It was of a bull's head holding the disc of the sun between its horns, as in representations of sacred bull gods.
Thus he drew just what was being discussed by the seminar group and over the very period when they were discussing it.
'I told him', Jung reported, 'that we were talking of the bull in connection with his dream, and that his drawing synchronizes with that'
(Jung 1928--30: 43; emphasis added).
Coincidences such as these, Jung told the seminar group, have a sort of 'irrational regularity' (Jung 1928--30: 43), which is why we notice them. 'The East bases much of its science on this irregularity', he continued, 'and considers coincidences as the reliable basis of the world rather than causality. Synchronism is the prejudice of the East; causality is the modern prejudice of the West' (Jung 1928--30: 44--5; emphasis added).
In November 1928 Jung is recorded as having used the words 'synchronize' and 'synchronism'. A year later, on 4 December 1929, another incident occurred. The five-year-old child of one of the participants at the seminar made two drawings incorporating symbols (principally the cross and the crescent) that were being talked about, yet the child had not actually been exposed to any information about the seminars. Jung remarks:
Since I have seen many other examples of the same kind in which people not concerned were affected, I have invented the word synchronicity as a term to cover these phenomena, that is, things happening at the same time moment as an expression of the same time content. (Jung 1928--30: 417)
From this series of incidents two important points can be noted about the way Jung was initially conceiving of synchronicity. First, he was understanding it to be a phenomenon which could have its impact on the widest collective level.
Thus, the whole nexus of bull coincidences manifested via four different people:
Jung himself, who first mentioned the cult of the bull god Mithras
the seminar participant who dreamed of a bull-fight the night before Jung mentioned the bull god
the person whose dreams were being analyzed and who felt moved to draw a bull's head
the correspondent who wrote to Jung with her symbolic interpretation of the bull-fight she had recently attended
The last two of these people were not even present at the seminars, and one of them was many thousands of miles away in Mexico. Again, of the bull-fight dream Jung remarked that 'any one of us might have dreamt it' (Jung 1928--30: 36).
The second point is that Jung was stressing the idea of the quality of particular moments of time.
'In 1929', he remarked at the end of one seminar (27 November 1929), 'everything has the cast and brand of this year. And the children born in this year will be recognizable as part of a great process and marked by a particular condition'
(Jung 1928--30: 412).
This idea also played a central role in the way Jung generally articulated his understanding of astrology and the I Ching.
Astrology
Jung's interest in astrology dates from around 1911. In a letter to Freud of 12 June of that year he reports:
My evenings are taken up very largely with astrology. I make horoscopic calculations in order to find a clue to the core of psychological truth. Some remarkable things have turned up .... I dare say that one day we shall find in astrology a good deal of knowledge that has been intuitively projected into the heavens. For instance, it appears that the signs of the zodiac are character pictures, in other words libido symbols which depict the typical qualities of the libido at a given moment.
(Jung 1973: 24)
This interest continued to the end of Jung's life. For example, in a letter to B. V. Raman dated 6 September 1947, he reaffirmed the practical importance of astrology for the psychologist:
In cases of difficult psychological diagnosis I usually get a horoscope in order to have a further point of view from an entirely different angle. I must say that I very often found that the astrological data elucidated certain points which I otherwise would have been unable to understand.
(Jung 1973: 475)
This practical involvement provided Jung with data which seemed to support the idea of moments of time having particular qualities. Thus, in a letter to B. Baur (29 January 1934), after discussing the precession of the equinoxes, he remarks:
The fact that astrology nevertheless yields valid results proves that it is not the apparent positions of the stars which work, but rather the times which are measured or determined by arbitrarily named stellar positions. Time thus proves to be a stream of energy filled with qualities and not, as our philosophy would have it, an abstract concept or precondition of knowledge.
(Jung 1973: 138--9)
Initially, Jung seems to have hoped that astrology might be able to demonstrate objectively a relationship of synchronicity between temporal determinants and individual character (Jung 1976: 476; Jung 1952: 454--5).
Later, however, his attitude became more complex and ambivalent. This change stemmed partly from his own astrological experiment, which revealed the extent of the astrologer's psychic participation in the handling of astrological material (Jung 1952: 459--84; see also Hyde 1992: 121--39), and partly from recent discoveries concerning the possible influence of planetary positions on solar proton radiation.
Those discoveries suggested that there might be some causal basis for the apparent efficacy of astrology (Jung 1951b: 527--8; Jung 1976: 23--4) - or even that astrology might be partly causal and partly synchronistic (Jung 1976: 177, 421, 428--30).
Finally, for all his early enthusiasm for the idea of qualitative time, which was articulated even more fulsomely in relation to the I Ching, Jung did eventually (in a letter of 1954) express dissatisfaction with this notion, rejecting it as tautological and, rather than using it as the basis for an explanation of synchronicity, claiming to have 'replaced it with the idea of synchronicity' (Jung 1976: 176).
The I Ching
Around 1920, Jung began experimenting with the ancient Chinese oracle system of the I Ching, or Book of Changes, and was deeply impressed by its effectiveness in yielding pertinent answers to his questions.
He relates how, one summer, he,
resolved to make an all out attack on the riddle of this book .... I would sit for hours on the ground beneath the hundred-year old pear tree, the I Ching beside me, practicing the technique by referring the resultant oracles to one another in an interplay of questions and answers. All sorts of undeniably remarkable results emerged - meaningful connections with my own thought processes which I could not explain to myself .... Time and again I encountered amazing coincidences which seemed to suggest the idea of an acausal parallelism (a synchronicity as I later called it).
(Jung 1963: 342)
Jung's appreciation of the I Ching deepened considerably a couple of years later when he met and befriended the German Sinologist Richard Wilhelm, who had just produced a new German translation of the book. Jung refers to his friendship with Wilhelm as 'one of the most significant events of my life' (Jung 1930: 53).
He appears to have been particularly impressed by Wilhelm's own mastery of the I Ching:
At his first lecture at the Psychological Club in Zurich [in 1923], Wilhelm, at my request, demonstrated the use of the I Ching and at the same time made a prognosis which, in less than two years, was fulfilled to the letter and with the utmost clarity.
(Jung 1930: 57)
It was with reference to the I Ching, at a memorial address for Wilhelm in 1930, that Jung made his second recorded use of his new concept:
'The science of the I Ching', he asserted, 'is based not on the causality principle but on one which - hitherto unnamed because not familiar to us - I have tentatively called the synchronistic principle'
(Jung 1930: 56).
He referred to 'psychic parallelisms which simply cannot be related to each other causally, but must be connected by another kind of principle altogether' (Jung 1930: 56).
The essence of this other principle he considered to consist 'in the relative simultaneity of the events', for time, as he still understood it,
far from being an abstraction, is a concrete continuum which possesses qualities or basic conditions capable of manifesting themselves simultaneously in different places by means of an acausal parallelism, such as we find, for instance, in the simultaneous occurrence of identical thoughts, symbols, or psychic states.
(Jung 1930: 56).
Referring also to the data and claims of astrology, he asserted that 'whatever is born or done at this particular moment of time has the quality of this moment of time', adding confidently that 'Here we have the basic formula for the use of the I Ching' (Jung 1930: 56--7).
A fuller exposition of the principle, again preceding the publication of his main essays on synchronicity, was also made with reference to the I Ching in Jung's 'Foreword' to the English rendering of Wilhelm's German translation (Jung 1950a: 590--3).
Here, as late as 1949, Jung was still emphasizing the factor of the quality of moments of time. He writes that 'synchronicity takes the coincidence of events in space and time as meaning something more than mere chance, namely, a peculiar interdependence of objective events among themselves as well as with the subjective (psychic) states of the observer or observers' (Jung 1950a: 592).
The specific style of thinking implied in this is then explicated as follows:
How does it happen that A', B', C', D', etc., appear all at the same moment and in the same place? It happens in the first place because the physical events A' and B' are of the same quality as the psychic events C' and D', and further because all are the exponents of one and the same momentary situation. The situation is assumed to represent a legible or understandable picture.
(Jung 1950a: 593)
Apart from consolidating his understanding of qualitative time, the I Ching provided Jung with a means of generating experiences of meaningful coincidence with some measure of regularity. At times he practically recommended it to others for such experimental purposes (Jung 1976: 491).
Again, largely because of this amenability to experimental investigation, the system offered a context for looking at some of the dynamics of synchronicity. The I Ching hexagrams, for example, seemed to Jung to be a kind of readable representation of archetypes (Jung 1963: 294; Jung 1976: 584).
This connection between hexagrams and archetypes, combined with the fact that the method of consulting the oracle is essentially based on number, led Jung to speculate on the archetypes of natural numbers and on the possibility of their having a special relationship to synchronicity (Jung 1952: 456--8).
Finally, the simple fact that the I Ching was such a prominent cultural force throughout Chinese history encouraged Jung's efforts to present his ideas on synchronicity by providing him with a major precedent for the recognition of an acausal principle of connection between events.
Alchemy and other esoteric research
No less significant for the development of the concept of synchronicity was Jung's extensive research into the esoteric traditions of the West. The ancient Greek conception of 'the sympathy of all things', the medieval and Renaissance theory of correspondences, and above all the alchemical understanding of the unus mundus (one world) and of the relationship between microcosm and macrocosm also provided acausal connections between events (see Jung 1952: 485--98).
At times Jung presents his theory of synchronicity as simply an up-dating of these esoteric views: 'Synchronicity', he writes at the end of his 1951 Eranos lecture, 'is a modern differentiation of the obsolete concept of correspondence, sympathy, and harmony' (Jung 1951b: 531).
At other times he recognizes that his theory differs from these earlier views - for example, in his rejection of the notion of 'magical causality', the view that coincidences and paranormal phenomena, rather than being acausal, are 'somehow due to magical influence' (Jung 1952: 501).
What the early theories suggest to him instead is that there may be a dimension of meaning that does not depend on human subjectivity or projection but is 'transcendental' or 'self-subsistent' - 'a meaning which is a priori in relation to human consciousness and apparently exists outside man' (Jung 1952: 501--2).
Not only did these esoteric worldviews themselves present a challenge to causality, but Jung believed that in the course of his researches into them he had actually uncovered some extraordinary objective synchronicities:
'my researches into the history of symbols,' he writes in the 'Foreword' to his 1952 essay, 'and of the fish symbol in particular, brought the problem [of synchronicity] ever closer to me'
(Jung 1952: 419).
The reference here is to the coincidence, mapped out in detail in Aion (Jung 1951a),
'between the life of Christ and the objective astronomical event, the entrance of the spring equinox into the sign of Pisces'; his discovery of this was another of the factors which 'led to the problem of synchronicity'
(Jung 1963: 210).
Parapsychology
While Jung was actively interested in psychical research throughout his life, few bodies of work within this field made such a deep impression on him as the parapsychological experiments carried out by J. B. Rhine in the first parapsychology laboratory, established at Duke University in 1932. These experiments appeared to give statistical, that is to say, scientifically respectable, confirmation of the reality of both extrasensory perception (ESP) and psychokinesis (PK).
More importantly the positive results of Rhine's experiments did not diminish if the subjects attempting the ESP or PK tasks were separated from the target objects by even great distances in space or time (Jung 1952: 435). Jung concluded that 'in relation to the psyche space and time are, so to speak, "elastic" and can apparently be reduced almost to vanishing point' (Jung 1952: 435).
Another of the ways in which Jung came to characterize synchronicity was therefore as 'a psychically conditioned relativity of time and space' (Jung 1952: 435). In fact, Jung suggests that spatio-temporal relativity of this kind is the basic condition within the unconscious psyche, as though space and time 'did not exist in themselves but were only "postulated" by the conscious mind' (Jung 1952: 435).
Knowledge of events at a distance or in the future is possible because, within the unconscious psyche, all events co-exist timelessly and spacelessly:
For the unconscious psyche space and time seem to be relative; that is to say, knowledge finds itself in a space-time continuum in which space is no longer space, nor time time. If, therefore, the unconscious should develop or maintain a potential in the direction of consciousness, it is then possible for parallel events to be perceived or 'known'.
(Jung 1952: 481)
This space-time relativity is different from the notion of qualitative time. In qualitative time the idea of a 'moment', and hence of relative simultaneity, is of paramount importance. In space-time relativity any natural understanding of 'moments', and certainly of simultaneity, becomes irrelevant, as the experience of foreknowledge clearly indicates.
Apart from experimental confirmation of this crucial insight concerning space-time relativity, Rhine's work also appeared to support Jung's observation that paranormal experiences are usually attended by heightened emotionality. For Rhine's work identified the so-called 'decline effect', the fact that the most significant results were generally obtained towards the beginning of the experimental session when the subject's interest (emotional engagement) can be supposed to have been at its greatest (Jung 1952: 434, 436--7).
On Rhine's initiative, a correspondence between him and Jung developed which continued intermittently from 1934 to 1954. Rhine repeatedly pressed Jung to write down accounts of his paranormal experiences and observations as well as his theoretical reflections concerning them (see Jung 1973: 180--2, 378--9).
Though somewhat reluctant, because fearing incomprehension on the part of the public (Jung 1973: 190), Jung did comply to a certain extent and in a letter of November 1945 gave in response to a series of direct questions submitted by Rhine a tentative preliminary formulation of the theory of synchronicity as he would eventually present it in terms of the psychic relativization of space and time (Jung 1973: 493--5).
Physics
Jung's language in discussing the implications of Rhine's experiments - his references to 'relativity' and a 'space-time continuum' - is clearly reminiscent of Einstein's theories of relativity in physics, and in fact the influence of Einstein on Jung is a real and substantial one. When the physicist was working in Zurich in 1909 and 1912, he was Jung's dinner guest on several occasions, and, as Jung recalls, 'tried to instill into us the elements of [his first theory of relativity], more or less successfully' (Jung 1976: 109; see also Jung 1935: 67--8).
Jung continues:
It was Einstein who first started me off thinking about a possible relativity of time as well as space, and their psychic conditionality. More than thirty years later this stimulus led to my relation with the physicist Professor W. Pauli and to my thesis of psychic synchronicity.
(Jung 1976: 109; see also Progoff 1989: 151--2)
Perhaps an even more significant influence on Jung were certain developments within the other great physics theory that arose in the early part of the twentieth century: quantum mechanics. Jung was impressed by both the principle of complementarity formulated by Niels Bohr and the ability to predict subatomic events only probabilistically. It was to the legitimacy of mere probabilistic prediction that Jung most often appealed in support of his concept of acausality.
With reference to one such subatomic event, radioactive decay, he quotes Sir James Jeans:
'Radioactive break-up appeared to be an effect without a cause, and suggested that the ultimate laws of nature were not even causal'
(in Jung 1952: 512).
The principle of complementarity was utilized by Jung in his presentation of the status of synchronicity. Bohr considered that one of the central paradoxes of quantum physics - the fact that subatomic entities behave in contradictory ways, either as particle or as wave, depending on the method by which they are observed - cannot be resolved by considering one of the forms of manifestation more essential than the other.
Both, in his view, are fundamental: the two forms of manifestation complement each other and together give as complete a picture of the actual subatomic entity as is possible given the intrinsic limitations of human cognition (see, e.g., Honner 1987).
Jung saw causality and acausality as standing in a similar relationship. As the title of his principal essay indicates, synchronicity is for him 'an acausal connecting principle'. As such, it is 'a hypothetical factor equal in rank to causality as a principle of explanation' (Jung 1952: 435).
It is 'equal in rank' precisely in the sense of being complementary to the principle of causality: causality accounts for one kind of connection between events - 'constant connection through effect', as Jung epitomizes it (Jung 1952: 514) - and synchronicity accounts for the complementary kind of connection - 'inconstant connection through contingency, equivalence, or "meaning"' (Jung 1952: 514).
Together, the two principles give, in Jung's view, a complete account of the kinds of connections that can exist between events. Jung also draws attention to the complementarities between consciousness and the unconscious and between physics and psychology (Jung 1947/1954: 231--2).
The implications of these points from physics were explored by Jung largely through his friendship with the physicist Wolfgang Pauli, which lasted from 1932 until Pauli's death in 1958. The full extent of Pauli's and Jung's influence on each other has only recently begun to be evaluated (see, e.g., Erkelens 1991; Meier 1992; Zabriskie 1995; Lindorff 1995a and 1995b).
One can note in particular that Jung's principal essay on synchronicity was originally published in the same volume as a companion essay by Pauli on 'The Influence of Archetypal Ideas on the Scientific Theories of Kepler' (Jung and Pauli 1955).
In his own essay Jung credits Pauli with having helped him formulate the quaternion diagram in which the complementary relationships between causality and synchronicity and between indestructible energy and the space-time continuum were set out (Jung 1952: 514). Indeed, Pauli himself appears to have been particularly prone to experiencing synchronicities, especially of the psychokinetic variety, and discussed them in detail in his letters to Jung (Hinshaw 1995: 129--30).
Furthermore, in a letter to the physicist M. Fierz (22 June 1949) Jung actually refers to a draft of one of his essays on synchronicity as a 'manuscript which Pauli has prompted me to write' (Jung 1973: 530).
