Synchronicity Chapter 1 Exposition

Synchronicity Chapter 1. Exposition

Author: Carl G. Jung Publisher: Publish Date: Review Date: Status:💥

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The discoveries of modern physics have, as we know, brought about a significant change in our scientific picture of the world, in that they have shattered the absolute validity of natural law and made it relative. Natural laws are statistical truths, which means that they are completely valid only when we are dealing with rnacrophysical quantities. In the realm of very small quantities prediction becomes uncertain, if not impossible, because very small quantities no longer behave in accordance with the known natural laws.

The philosophical principle that underlies our conception of natural law is causality. But if the connection between cause and effect turns out to be only statistically valid and only relatively true, then the causal principle is only of relative use for explaining natural processes and therefore presupposes the existence of one or more other factors which would be necessary for an explanation. This is as much as to say that the connection of events may in certain circumstances be other than causal, and requires another principle of explanation.

We shall naturally look round in vain in the macrophysical world for acausal events, for the simple reason that we cannot imagine events that are connected non-causally and are capable of a non-causal explanation. But that does not mean that such events do not exist. Their existence—or at least their possibility—follows logically from the premise of statistical truth.

The experimental method of inquiry aims at establishing regular events which can be repeated. Consequently, unique or rare events are ruled out of account. Moreover, the experiment imposes limiting conditions on nature, for its aim is to force her to give answers to questions devised by man. Every answer of nature is therefore more or less influenced by the kind of questions asked, and the result is always a hybrid product. The so-called “scientific view of the world”2 based on this can hardly be anything more than a psychologically biased partial view which misses out all those by no means unimportant aspects that cannot be grasped statistically. But, to grasp these unique or rare events at all, we seem to be dependent on equally “unique” and individual descriptions. This would result in a chaotic collection of curiosities, rather like those old natural history cabinets where one finds, cheek by jowl with fossils and anatomical monsters in bottles, the horn of a unicorn, a mandragora manikin, and a dried mermaid. The descriptive sciences, and above all biology in the widest sense, are familiar with these “unique” specimens, and in their case only one example of an organism, no matter how unbelievable it may be, is needed to establish its existence. At any rate numerous observers will be able to convince themselves, on the evidence of their own eyes, that such a creature does in fact exist. But where we are dealing with ephemeral events which leave no demonstrable traces behind them except fragmentary memories in people’s minds, then a single witness no longer suffices, nor would several witnesses be enough to make a unique event appear absolutely credible. One has only to think of the notorious unreliability of eye-witness accounts. In these circumstances we are faced with the necessity of finding out whether the apparently unique event is really unique in our recorded experience, or whether the same or similar events are not to be found elsewhere. Here the consensus omnium plays a very important role psychologically, though empirically it is somewhat doubtful, for only in exceptional cases does the consensus omnium prove to be of value in establishing facts. The empiricist will not leave it out of account, but will do better not to rely on it. Absolutely unique and ephemeral events whose existence we have no means of either denying or proving can never be the object of empirical science; rare events might very well be, provided that there was a sufficient number of reliable individual observations. The so-called possibility of such events is of no importance whatever, for the criterion of what is possible in any age is derived from that age’s rationalistic assumptions. There are no “absolute” natural laws to whose authority one can appeal in support of one’s prejudices. The most that can fairly be demanded is that the number of individual observations shall be as high as possible. If this number, statistically considered, falls within the limits of chance expectation, then it has been statistically proved that it was a question of chance; but no explanation has thereby been furnished. There has merely been an exception to the rule. When, for instance, the number of symptoms indicating a complex falls below the probable number of disturbances to be expected during the association experiment, this is no justification for assuming that no complex exists. But that did not prevent the reaction disturbances from being regarded earlier as pure chance.3

Although, in biology especially, we move in a sphere where causal explanations often seem very unsatisfactory—indeed, well-nigh impossible—we shall not concern ourselves here with the problems of biology, but rather with the question whether there may not be some general field where acausal events not only are possible but are found to be actual facts.

Now, there is in our experience an immeasurably wide field whose extent forms, as it were, the counterbalance to the domain of causality. This is the world of chance, where a chance event seems causally unconnected with the coinciding fact. So we shall have to examine the nature and the whole idea of chance a little more closely. Chance, we say, must obviously be susceptible of some causal explanation and is only called “chance” or “coincidence” because its causality has not yet been discovered. Since we have an inveterate conviction of the absolute validity of causal law, we regard this explanation of chance as being quite adequate. But if the causal principle is only relatively valid, then it follows that even though in the vast majority of cases an apparently chance series can be causally explained, there must still remain a number of cases which do not show any causal connection. We are therefore faced with the task of sifting events and separating the acausal ones from those that can be causally explained. It stands to reason that the number of causally explicable events will far exceed those suspected of acausality, for which reason a superficial or prejudiced observer may easily overlook the relatively rare acausal phenomena. As soon as we come to deal with the problem of chance the need for a statistical evaluation of the events in question forces itself upon us.

It is not possible to sift the empirical material without a criterion of distinction. How are we to recognize acausal combinations of events, since it is obviously impossible to examine all chance happenings for their causality? The answer to this is that acausal events may be expected most readily where, on closer reflection, a causal connection appears to be inconceivable. As an example I would cite the “duplication of cases” which is a phenomenon well known to every doctor. Occasionally there is a trebling or even more, so that Kammerer4 can speak of a “law of series,” of which he gives a number of excellent examples. In the majority of such cases there is not even the remotest probability of a causal connection between the coinciding events. When for instance I am faced with the fact that my tram ticket bears the same number as the theatre ticket which I buy immediately afterwards, and I receive that same evening a telephone call during which the same number is mentioned again as a telephone number, then a causal connection between them seems to me improbable in the extreme, although it is obvious that each event must have its own causality. I know, on the other hand, that chance happenings have a tendency to fall into aperiodic groupings—necessarily so, because otherwise there would be only a periodic or regular arrangement of events which would, by definition exclude chance.

Kammerer holds that, though “runs”5 or successions of chance events are not subject to the operation of a common cause,6 i.e., are acausal, they are nevertheless an expression of inertia—the property of persistence.7 The simultaneity of a “run of the same thing side by side” he explains as “imitation.”8 Here he contradicts himself, for the run of chance has not been “removed outside the realm of the explicable,”9 but, as we would expect, remains inside it and is consequently reducible, if not to a common cause, then at least to several causes. His concepts of seriality, imitation, attraction, and inertia belong to a causally conceived view of the world and tell us no more than that the run of chance corresponds to statistical and mathematical probability.10 Kammerer’s factual material contains nothing but runs of chance whose only “law” is probability; in other words, there is no apparent reason why he should look behind them for anything else. But for some obscure reason he does look behind them for something more than mere probability warrants—for a law of seriality which he would like to introduce as a principle coexistent with causality and finality. This tendency, as I have said, is in no way justified by his material. I can only explain this obvious contradiction by supposing that he had a dim but fascinated intuition of an acausal arrangement and combination of events, probably because, like all thoughtful and sensitive natures, he could not escape the peculiar impression which runs of chance usually make on us, and therefore, in accordance with his scientific disposition, took the bold step of postulating an acausal seriality on the basis of empirical material that lay within the limits of probability. Unfortunately he did not attempt a quantitative evaluation of seriality. Such an undertaking would undoubtedly have thrown up questions that are difficult to answer. The casuistic method serves well enough for the purpose of general orientation, but only quantitative evaluation or the statistical method promises results in dealing with chance.

Chance groupings or series seem, at least to our present way of thinking, to be meaningless, and to fall as a general rule within the limits of probability. There are, however, incidents whose “chancefulness” seems open to doubt. To mention but one example out of many, I noted the following on April 1, 1949: Today is Friday. We have fish for lunch. Somebody happens to mention the custom of making an “April fish” of someone. That same morning I made a note of an inscription which read: “Est homo totus medius piscis ab imo.” In the afternoon a former patient of mine, whom I had not seen in months, showed me some extremely impressive pictures of fish which she had painted in the meantime. In the evening I was shown a piece of embroidery with fish-like sea-monsters in it. On the morning of April 2 another patient, whom I had not seen for many years, told me a dream in which she stood on the shore of a lake and saw a large fish that swam straight towards her and landed at her feet. I was at this time engaged on a study of the fish symbol in history. Only one of the persons mentioned here knew anything about it.

The suspicion that this must be a case of meaningful coincidence, i.e., an acausal connection, is very natural. I must own that this run of events made a considerable impression on me. It seemed to me to have a certain numinous quality.11 In such circumstances we are inclined to say, “That cannot be mere chance,” without knowing what exactly we are saying. Kammerer would no doubt have reminded me of his “seriality.” The strength of an impression, however, proves nothing against the fortuitous coincidence of all these fishes. It is, admittedly, exceedingly odd that the fish theme recurs no less than six times within twenty-four hours. But one must remember that fish on Friday is the usual thing, and on April 1 one might very easily think of the April fish. I had at that time been working on the fish symbol for several months. Fishes frequently occur as symbols of unconscious contents. So there is no possible justification for seeing in this anything but a chance grouping. Runs or series which are composed of quite ordinary occurrences must for the present be regarded as fortuitous.12 However wide their range may be, they must be ruled out as acausal connections. It is, therefore, generally assumed that all coincidences are lucky hits and do not require an acausal interpretation.13 This assumption can, and indeed must, be regarded as true so long as proof is lacking that their incidence exceeds the limits of probability. Should this proof be forthcoming, however, it would prove at the same time that there are genuinely non-causal combinations of events for whose explanation we should have to postulate a factor incommensurable with causality. We should then have to assume that events in general are related to one another on the one hand as causal chains, and on the other hand by a kind of meaningful cross-connection.

Here I should like to draw attention to a treatise of Schopenhauer’s, “On the Apparent Design in the Fate of the Individual,”14 which originally stood godfather to the views I am now developing. It deals with the “simultaneity of the causally unconnected, which we call ’chance.’”15 Schopenhauer illustrates this simultaneity by a geographical analogy, where the parallels represent the cross-connection between the meridians, which are thought of as causal chains.16

All the events in a man’s life would accordingly stand in two fundamentally different kinds of connection: firstly, in the objective, causal connection of the natural process; secondly, in a subjective connection which exists only in relation to the individual who experiences it, and which is thus as subjective as his own dreams. … That both kinds of connection exist simultaneously, and the selfsame event, although a link in two totally different chains, nevertheless falls into place in both, so that the fate of one individual invariably fits the fate of the other, and each is the hero of his own drama while simultaneously figuring in a drama foreign to him—this is something that surpasses our powers of comprehension and can only be conceived as possible by virtue of the most wonderful pre-established harmony.17

16 P. 39. [Irvine, pp. 39 f.]

17 P. 45. [Irvine, pp. 49 f.]

Decisive evidence for the existence of acausal combinations of events has been furnished, with adequate scientific safeguards, only very recently, mainly through the experiments of J. B. Rhine and his fellow-workers,30 who have not, however, recognized the far-reaching conclusions that must be drawn from their findings. Up to the present no critical argument that cannot be refuted has been brought against these experiments. The experiment consists, in principle, in an experimenter turning up, one after another, a series of numbered cards bearing simple geometrical patterns. At the same time the subject, separated by a screen from the experimenter, is given the task of guessing the signs as they are turned up. A pack of twenty-five cards is used, each five of which carry the same sign. Five cards are marked with a star, five with a square, five with a circle, five with wavy lines, and five with a cross. The experimenter naturally does not know the order in which the pack is arranged, nor has the subject any opportunity of seeing the cards. Many of the experiments were negative, since the result did not exceed the probability of five chance hits. In the case of certain subjects, however, some results were distinctly above probability. The first series of experiments consisted in each subject trying to guess the cards 800 times. The average result showed 6.5 hits for 25 cards, which is 1.5 more than the chance probability of 5 hits. The probability of there being a chance deviation of 1.5 from the number 5 works out at 1: 250,000. This proportion shows that the probability of a chance deviation is not exactly high, since it is to be expected only once in 250,000 cases. The results vary according to the specific gift of the individual subject. One young man, who in numerous experiments scored an average of 10 hits for every 25 cards (double the probable number), once guessed all 25 cards correctly, which gives a probability of 1: 298,023,223,876,953,125. The possibility of the pack being shuffled in some arbitrary way is guarded against by an apparatus which shuffles the cards automatically, independently of the experimenter.

30 J. B. Rhine, Extra-Sensory Perception (Boston, 1934) and New Frontiers of the Mind (New York, 1937). J. G. Pratt, J. B. Rhine, C. E. Stuart. B. M. Smith, and J. A. Greenwood, Extra-Sensory Perception after Sixty Years (New York, 1940). A general survey of the findings in Rhine, The Reach of the Mind (London and New York, 1948; in Penguin Books, 1954), and also in the valuable book by G. N. M. Tyrrell, The Personality of Man (Pen guin Books, London, 1947). A short résumé in Rhine, “An Intro duction to the Work of Extra-Sensory Perception,” Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences, Series II, XII (1950), 164 ff. S. G. Soal and F. Bateman, Modern Experiments in Telepathy (London, 1954).

After the first series of experiments the spatial distance between the experimenter and the subject was increased, in one case to 250 miles. The average result of numerous experiments amounted here to 10.1 hits for 25 cards. In another series of experiments, when experimenter and subject were in the same room, the score was 11.4 for 25; when the subject was in the next room, 9.7 for 25; when two rooms away, 12.0 for 25. Rhine mentions the experiments of F. L. Usher and E. L. Burt, which were conducted with positive results over a distance of 960 miles.31 With the aid of synchronized watches experiments were also conducted between Durham, North Carolina, and Zagreb, Yugoslavia, about 4000 miles, with equally positive results.32

31 The Reach of the Mind (1954 edn.), p. 48.

32 Rhine and Betty M. Humphrey, “A Transoceanic ESP Experiment,” The Journal of Parapsychology (Durham), VI (1942), 52 ff.

The fact that distance has no effect in principle shows that the thing in question cannot be a phenomenon of force or energy, for otherwise the distance to be overcome and the diffusion in space would cause a diminution of the effect, and it is more than probable that the score would fall proportionately to the square of the distance. Since this is obviously not the case, we have no alternative but to assume that distance is psychically variable, and may in certain circumstances be reduced to vanishing point by a psychic condition.

Even more remarkable is the fact that time is not in principle a prohibiting factor either; that is to say, the reading of a series of cards to be turned up in the future produces a score that exceeds chance probability. The results of Rhine’s time experiment show a probability of 1: 400,000, which means a considerable probability of there being some factor independent of time. They point, in other words, to a psychic relativity of time, since the experiment was concerned with perceptions of events which had not yet occurred. In these circumstances the time factor seems to have been eliminated by a psychic function or psychic condition which is also capable of abolishing the spatial factor. If, in the spatial experiments, we were obliged to admit that energy does not decrease with distance, then the time experiments make it completely impossible for us even to think of there being any energy relationship between the perception and the future event. We must give up at the outset all explanations in terms of energy, which amounts to saying that events of this kind cannot be considered from the point of view of causality, for causality presupposes the existence of space and time in so far as all observations are ultimately based upon bodies in motion.

Among Rhine’s experiments we must also mention the experiments with dice. The subject has the task of throwing the dice (which is done by an apparatus), and at the same time he has to wish that one number (say 3) will turn up as many times as possible. The results of this so-called PK (psychokinetic) experiment were positive, the more so the more dice were used at one time.33 If space and time prove to be psychically relative, then the moving body must possess, or be subject to, a corresponding relativity.

33 The Reach of the Mind, pp. 75 ff.

One consistent experience in all these experiments is the fact that the number of hits scored tends to sink after the first attempt, and the results then become negative. But if, for some inner or outer reason, there is a freshening of interest on the subject’s part, the score rises again. Lack of interest and boredom are negative factors; enthusiasm, positive expectation, hope, and belief in the possibility of ESP make for good results and seem to be the real conditions which determine whether there are going to be any results at all. In this connection it is interesting to note that the well-known English medium, Mrs. Eileen J. Garrett, achieved bad results in the Rhine experiments because, as she herself admits, she was unable to summon up any feeling for the “soulless” test-cards.

These few hints may suffice to give the reader at least a superficial idea of these experiments. The above-mentioned book by G. N. M. Tyrrell, late president of the Society for Psychical Research, contains an excellent summing-up of all experiences in this field. Its author himself rendered great service to ESP research. From the physicist’s side the ESP experiments have been evaluated in a positive sense by Robert A. McConnell in an article entitled “ESP—Fact or Fancy?”34

34 Professor Pauli was kind enough to draw my attention to this paper, which appeared in The Scientific Monthly (London), LXIX (1949), No.

35 Kammerer has dealt, not altogether convincingly, with the question of the “countereffect of the succeeding state on the preceding one” (cf. Das Gesetz der Serie, pp. 131 f.).

As is only to be expected, every conceivable kind of attempt has been made to explain away these results, which seem to border on the miraculous and frankly impossible. But all such attempts come to grief on the facts, and the facts refuse so far to be argued out of existence. Rhine’s experiments confront us with the fact that there are events which are related to one another experimentally, and in this case meaningfully, without there being any possibility of proving that this relation is a causal one, since the “transmission” exhibits none of the known properties of energy. There is therefore good reason to doubt whether it is a question of transmission at all. The time experiments rule out any such thing in principle, for it would be absurd to suppose that a situation which does not yet exist and will only occur in the future could transmit itself as a phenomenon of energy to a receiver in the present.35 It seems more likely that scientific explanation will have to begin with a criticism of our concepts of space and time on the one hand, and with the unconscious on the other. As I have said, it is impossible, with our present resources, to explain ESP, or the fact of meaningful coincidence, as a phenomenon of energy. This makes an end of the causal explanation as well, for “effect” cannot be understood as anything except a phenomenon of energy. Therefore it cannot be a question of cause and effect, but of a falling together in time, a kind of simultaneity. Because of this quality of simultaneity, I have picked on the term “synchronicity” to designate a hypothetical factor equal in rank to causality as a principle of explanation. In my essay “The Spirit of Psychology”36 I defined synchronicity as a psychically conditioned relativity of space and time. Rhine’s experiments show that in relation to the psyche space and time are, so to speak, “elastic” and can apparently be reduced almost to vanishing point, as though they were dependent on psychic conditions and did not exist in themselves but were only “postulated” by the conscious mind. In man’s original view of the world, as we find it among primitives, space and time have a very precarious existence. They became “fixed” concepts only in the course of his mental development, thanks largely to the introduction of measurement. In themselves, space and time consist of nothing. They are hypostatized concepts born of the discriminating activity of the conscious mind, and they form the indispensable coordinates for describing the behaviour of bodies in motion. They are, therefore, essentially psychic in origin, which is probably the reason that impelled Kant to regard them as a priori categories. But if space and time are only apparently properties of bodies in motion and are created by the intellectual needs of the observer, then their relativization by psychic conditions is no longer a matter for astonishment but is brought within the bounds of possibility. This possibility presents itself when the psyche observes, not external bodies, but itself. That is precisely what happens in Rhine’s experiments: the subject’s answer is not the result of his observing the physical cards, it is a product of pure imagination, of “chance” ideas which reveal the structure of that which produces them, namely the unconscious. Here I will only point out that it is the decisive factors in the unconscious psyche, the archetypes, which constitute the structure of the collective unconscious. The latter represents a psyche that is identical with itself in all individuals. It cannot be directly perceived or “represented,” in contrast to the perceptible psychic phenomena, and on account of its “irrepresentable” nature I have called it “psychoid.”

The archetypes are formal factors responsible for the organization of unconscious psychic processes: they are “patterns of behaviour.” At the same time they have a “specific charge” and develop numinous effects which express themselves as affects. The affect produces a partial abaissement du niveau mental, for although it raises a particular content to a supernormal degree of luminosity, it does so by withdrawing so much energy from other possible contents of consciousness that they become darkened and eventually unconscious. Owing to the restriction of consciousness produced by the affect so long as it lasts, there is a corresponding lowering of orientation which in its turn gives the unconscious a favourable opportunity to slip into the space vacated. Thus we regularly find that unexpected or otherwise inhibited unconscious contents break through and find expression in the affect. Such contents are very often of an inferior or primitive nature and thus betray their archetypal origin. As I shall show further on, certain phenomena of simultaneity or synchronicity seem to be bound up with the archetypes.

The extraordinary spatial orientation of animals may also point to the psychic relativity of space and time. The puzzling time-orientation of the palolo worm, for instance, whose tail-segments, loaded with sexual products, always appear on the surface of the sea the day before the last quarter of the moon in October and November,37 might be mentioned in this connection. One of the causes suggested is the acceleration of the earth owing to the gravitational pull of the moon at this time. But, for astronomical reasons, this explanation cannot possibly be right.38 The relation which undoubtedly exists between the human menstruation period and the course of the moon is connected with the latter only numerically and does not really coincide with it. Nor has it been proved that it ever did.

36 Trans, in Spirit and Nature (Papers from the Eranos Yearbooks, 1; New York, 1954; London. 1955).

37 To be more accurate, the swarming begins a little before and ends a little after this day, when the swarming is at its height. The months vary according to location. The palolo worm, or wawo, of Amboina is said to appear at full moon in March. (A. F. Krämer, Über den Bau der Korallenriffe, Kiel and Leipzig, 1897.)

38 Fritz Dahns, “Das Schwärmen des Palolo,” Der Naturforscher (Lichterfelde-Berlin), VIII (1932): 11, 379-82.

The problem of synchronicity has puzzled me for a long time, ever since the middle twenties,39 when I was investigating the phenomena of the collective unconscious and kept on coming across connections which I simply could not explain as chance groupings or “runs.” What I found were “coincidences” which were connected so meaningfully that their “chance” concurrence would be incredible.

meaningful coincidences usually present themselves in practical life.

Had such an incident occurred in a dream, that interpretation would be justified by the comparative psychological material.

Meaningful coincidences—which are to be distinguished from meaningless chance groupings42—therefore seem to rest on an archetypal foundation.

Although anyone with any experience in this field can easily recognize their archetypal character, he will find it difficult to link them up with the psychic conditions in Rhine’s experiments, because the latter contain no direct evidence of any constellation of the archetype. Nor is the emotional situation the same as in my examples. Nevertheless, it must be remembered that with Rhine the first series of experiments generally produced the best results, which then quickly fell off. But when it was possible to arouse a new interest in the essentially rather boring experiment, the results improved again. It follows from this that the emotional factor plays an important role. Affectivity, however, rests to a large extent on the instincts, whose formal aspect is the archetype.

There is yet another psychological analogy between my two cases and the Rhine experiments, though it is not quite so obvious. These apparently quite different situations have as their common characteristic an element of “impossibility.” The patient with the scarab found herself in an “impossible” situation because the treatment had got stuck and there seemed to be no way out of the impasse. In such situations, if they are serious enough, archetypal dreams are likely to occur which point out a possible line of advance one would never have thought of oneself. It is this kind of situation that constellates the archetype with the greatest regularity. In certain cases the psychotherapist therefore sees himself obliged to discover the rationally insoluble problem towards which the patient’s unconscious is steering. Once this is found, the deeper layers of the unconscious, the primordial images, are activated and the transformation of the personality can get under way.

In the second case there was the half-unconscious fear and the threat of a lethal end with no possibility of an adequate recognition of the situation. In Rhine’s experiment it is the “impossibility” of the task that ultimately fixes the subject’s attention on the processes going on inside him, and thus gives the unconscious a chance to manifest itself. The questions set by the ESP experiment have an emotional effect right from the start, since they postulate something unknowable as being potentially knowable and in that way take the possibility of a miracle seriously into account. This, regardless of the subject’s scepticism, immediately appeals to his unconscious readiness to witness a miracle, and to the hope, latent in all men, that such a thing may yet be possible. Primitive superstition lies just below the surface of even the most tough-minded individuals, and it is precisely those who most fight against it who are the first to succumb to its suggestive effects. When therefore a serious experiment with all the authority of science behind it touches this readiness, it will inevitably give rise to an emotion which either accepts or rejects it with a good deal of affectivity. At all events an affective expectation is present in one form or another even though it may be denied.

Synchronicity therefore means the simultaneous occurrence of a certain psychic state with one or more external events which appear as meaningful parallels to the momentary subjective state—and, in certain cases, vice versa.

The unconscious, however, often knows more than the conscious, and it seems to me possible that the woman’s unconscious had already got wind of the danger. If, therefore, we rule out a conscious psychic content such as the idea of deadly danger, there is an obvious simultaneity between the flock of birds, in its traditional meaning, and the death of the husband. The psychic state, if we disregard the possible but still not demonstrable excitation of the unconscious, appears to be dependent on the external event. The woman’s psyche is nevertheless involved in so far as the birds settled on her house and were observed by her. For this reason it seems to me probable that her unconscious was in fact constellated. The flock of birds has, as such, a traditional mantic significance.44 This is also apparent in the woman’s own interpretation, and it therefore looks as if the birds represented an unconscious premonition of death.

The interpretation of the birds as an omen is, as we have seen, based on two earlier coincidences of a similar kind. It did not yet exist at the time of the grandmother’s death. There the coincidence was represented only by the death and the gathering of the birds. Both then and at the mother’s death the coincidence was obvious, but in the third case it could only be verified when the dying man was brought into the house.

I mention these complications because they have an important bearing on the concept of synchronicity.

Experiences of this kind frequently take place a little before or after the critical event.

Synchronistic events rest on the simultaneous occurrence of two different psychic states. One of them is the normal, probable state (i.e., the one that is causally explicable), and the other, the critical experience, is the one that cannot be derived causally from the first. In the case of sudden death the critical experience cannot be recognized immediately as “extra-sensory perception” but can only be verified as such afterwards.

In all these cases, whether it is a question of spatial or of temporal ESP, we find a simultaneity of the normal or ordinary state with another state or experience which is not causally derivable from it, and whose objective existence can only be verified afterwards. This definition must be borne in mind particularly when it is a question of future events. They are evidently not synchronous but are synchronistic, since they are experienced as psychic images in the present, as though the objective event already existed. An unexpected content which is directly or indirectly connected with some objective external event coincides with the ordinary psychic state: this is what I call synchronicity, and I maintain that we are dealing with exactly the same category of events whether their objectivity appears separated from my consciousness in space or in time. This view is confirmed by Rhine’s results in so far as they were not influenced by changes in space or time. Space and time, the conceptual coordinates of bodies in motion, are probably at bottom one and the same (which is why we speak of a long or short “space of time”), and Philo Judaeus said long ago that “the extension of heavenly motion is time.”46 Synchronicity in space can equally well be conceived as perception in time, but remarkably enough it is not so easy to understand synchronicity in time as spatial, for we cannot imagine any space in which future events are objectively present and could be experienced as such through a reduction of this spatial distance. But since experience has shown that under certain conditions space and time can be reduced almost to zero, causality disappears along with them, because causality is bound up with the existence of space and time and physical changes, and consists essentially in the succession of cause and effect. For this reason synchronistic phenomena cannot in principle be associated with any conceptions of causality. Hence the interconnection of meaningfully coincident factors must necessarily be thought of as acausal.

Here, for want of a demonstrable cause, we are all too likely to fall into the temptation of positing a transcendental one. But a “cause” can only be a demonstrable quantity. A “transcendental cause” is a contradiction in terms, because anything transcendental cannot by definition be demonstrated. If we don’t want to risk the hypothesis of acausality, then the only alternative is to explain synchronistic phenomena as mere chance, which brings us into conflict with Rhine’s ESP discoveries and other well-attested facts reported in the literature of parapsychology. Or else we are driven to the kind of reflections I described above, and must subject our basic principles of explanation to the criticism that space and time are constants in any given system only when they are measured without regard to psychic conditions. That is what regularly happens in scientific experiments. But when an event is observed without experimental restrictions, the observer can easily be influenced by an emotional state which alters space and time by “contraction.” Every emotional state produces an alteration of consciousness which Janet called abaissement du niveau mental; that is to say there is a certain narrowing of consciousness and a corresponding strengthening of the unconscious which, particularly in the case of strong affects, is noticeable even to the layman. The tone of the unconscious is heightened, thereby creating a gradient for the unconscious to flow towards the conscious. The conscious then comes under the influence of unconscious instinctual impulses and contents. These are as a rule complexes whose ultimate basis is the archetype, the “instinctual pattern.” The unconscious also contains subliminal perceptions (as well as forgotten memory-images that cannot be reproduced at the moment, and perhaps not at all). Among the subliminal contents we must distinguish perceptions from what I would call an inexplicable “knowledge” or “immediate existence.” Whereas the perceptions can be related to possible or probable sense stimuli below the threshold of consciousness, either the “knowledge” or “immediate existence” of unconscious images has no recognizable basis, or else we find recognizable causal connections with certain already existing, and often archetypal, contents. These images, whether rooted in an already existing basis or not, stand in an analogous or equivalent (i.e., meaningful) relationship to objective occurrences which have no recognizable or even conceivable causal relationship with them. How could an event remote in space and time produce a corresponding psychic image when the transmission of energy necessary for this is not even thinkable? However incomprehensible it may appear, we are finally compelled to assume that there is in the unconscious something like an a priori knowledge or immediate presence of events which lacks any causal basis. At any rate our conception of causality is incapable of explaining the facts.

In view of this complicated situation it may be worth while to recapitulate the argument discussed above, and this can best be done with the aid of our examples. In Rhine’s experiment I made the assumption that, owing to the tense expectation or emotional state of the subject, an already existing, correct, but unconscious image of the result enables his conscious mind to score a more than chance number of hits. The scarab dream is a conscious representation arising from an unconscious, already existing image of the situation that will occur on the following day, i.e., the recounting of the dream and the appearance of the rose-chafer. The wife of the patient who died had an unconscious knowledge of the impending death. The flock of birds evoked the corresponding memory-images and consequently her fear. Similarly, the almost simultaneous dream of the violent death of the friend arose from an already existing unconscious knowledge of it.

In all these cases and others like them there seems to be an a priori, causally inexplicable knowledge of a situation which is at the time unknowable. Synchronicity therefore consists of two factors: a) An unconscious image comes into consciousness either directly (i.e., literally) or indirectly (symbolized or suggested) in the form of a dream, idea, or premonition. b) An objective situation coincides with this content. The one is as puzzling as the other. How does the unconscious image arise, and how the coincidence? I understand only too well why people prefer to doubt the reality of these things. Here I will only pose the question. Later in the course of this study I will try to give an answer.

47 “virtus”

48 “quando ipsa fertur in magnum amoris excessum aut odii aut alicuius talium.”

49 “fertur in grandem excessum alicuius passionis invenitur experimento manifesto quod ipse ligat res et alterat ad idem quod desiderat”

50 “affectio”

51 “cum tali affectione exterminata concurrat hora conveniens aut ordo coelestis aut alia virtus, quae quodvis faciet, illud reputavimus tunc animam facere.”

52 De mirabilibus mundi, incunabulum in the Zurich Zentral-bibliothek, undated. (There is a Cologne printing dated 1485.)

After these general considerations let us return to the problem of the empirical basis of synchronicity. The main difficulty here is to find an empirical material from which we can draw reasonably certain conclusions, and unfortunately this difficulty is not an easy one to solve. The experiences in question are not ready to hand. We must therefore look in the obscurest corners and summon up courage to shock the prejudices of our age if we want to broaden the basis of our understanding of nature. When Galileo discovered the moons of Jupiter with his telescope he immediately came into head-on collision with the prejudices of his learned contemporaries. Nobody knew what a telescope was and what it could do. Never before had anyone talked of the moons cf Jupiter. Naturally every age thinks that all ages before it were prejudiced, and today we think this more than ever and are just as wrong as all previous ages that thought so. How often have we not seen the truth condemned! It is sad but unfortunately true that man learns nothing from history. This melancholy fact will present us with the greatest difficulties as soon as we set about collecting empirical material that would throw a little light on this dark subject, for we shall be quite certain to find it where all the authorities have assured us that nothing is to be found.

Reports of remarkable isolated cases, however well authenticated, are unprofitable and lead at most to their reporter being regarded as a credulous person. Even the careful recording and verification of a large number of such cases, as in the work of Gurney, Myers, and Podmore,55 have made next to no impression on the scientific world. The great majority of “professional” psychologists and psychiatrists seem to be completely ignorant of these researches.56

55 Op. cit.

56 Recently Pascual Jordan has put up an excellent case for the scientific investigation of spatial clairvoyance (“Positivistische Bemerkungen iiber die parapsychischen Erscheinungen,” Zentralblatt für Psycholherapie, Leipzig, IX, 1936, no. 3). I would also draw attention to his Verdrängung und Komplementarität (Hamburg. 1947), concerning the relations between microphysics and the psychology of the unconscious.

The results of the ESP and PK experiments have provided a statistical basis for evaluating the phenomenon of synchronicity and have at the same time pointed out the important part played by the psychic factor. This fact prompted me to ask whether it would not be possible to find a method which would on the one hand demonstrate the existence of synchronicity and, on the other hand, disclose psychic contents which would at least give us a clue to the nature of the psychic factor involved. I asked myself, in other words, whether there were not a method which would yield measurable results and at the same time give us an insight into the psychic background of synchronicity. That there are certain essential psychic conditions for synchronistic phenomena we have already seen from the ESP experiments, although the latter are in the nature of the case restricted to the fact of coincidence and only stress its psychic background without illuminating it any further. I had known for a long time that there were intuitive or “mantic” methods which start with the psychic factor and take the existence of synchronicity as self-evident. I therefore turned my attention first of all to the intuitive technique for grasping the total situation which is so characteristic of China, namely the I Ching or Book of Changes.57 Unlike the Greek-trained Western mind, the Chinese mind does not aim at grasping details for their own sake, but at a view which sees the detail as part of a whole. For obvious reasons, a cognitive operation of this kind is impossible to the unaided intellect. Judgment must therefore rely much more on the irrational functions of consciousness, that is on sensation (the “sens du réel”) and intuition (perception by means of subliminal contents). The I Ching, which we can well call the experimental basis of classical Chinese philosophy, is one of the oldest known methods for grasping a situation as a whole and thus placing the details against a cosmic background—the interplay of Yin and Yang.

57 Trans, by Cary F. Baynes from the Richard Wilhelm translation (New York, 1950; London, 1951).

This grasping of the whole is obviously the aim of science as well, but it is a goal that necessarily lies very far off because science, whenever possible, proceeds experimentally and in all cases statistically. The experiment, however, consists in asking a definite question which excludes as far as possible anything disturbing and irrelevant. It makes conditions, imposes them on Nature, and in this way forces her to give an answer to a question devised by man. She is prevented from answering out of the fullness of her possibilities since these possibilities are restricted as far as practicable. For this purpose there is created in the laboratory a situation which is artificially restricted to the question and which compels Nature to give an unequivocal answer. The workings of Nature in her unrestricted wholeness are completely excluded. If we want to know what these workings are, we need a method of inquiry which imposes the fewest possible conditions, or if possible no conditions at all, and then leaves Nature to answer out of her fullness.

In the laboratory-designed experiment, the known and established procedure forms the stable factor in the statistical compilation and comparison of the results. In the intuitive or “mantic” experiment-with-the-whole, on the other hand, there is no need of any question which imposes conditions and restricts the wholeness of the natural process. It is given every possible chance to express itself. In the I Ching the coins fall just as happens to suit them.58 An unknown question is followed by an unintelligible answer. Thus far the conditions for a total reaction are positively ideal. The disadvantage, however, leaps to the eye: in contrast to the scientific experiment one does not know what has happened. To overcome this drawback, two Chinese sages, King Wen and the Duke of Chou, in the twelfth century before our era, basing themselves on the hypothesis of the unity of nature, sought to explain the simultaneous occurrence of a psychic state with a physical process as an equivalence of meaning. In other words, they supposed that the same living reality was expressing itself in the psychic state as in the physical. But, in order to verify such an hypothesis, some limiting condition was needed in this apparently limitless experiment, namely a definite form of physical procedure, a method or technique which forced nature to answer in even and odd numbers. These, as representatives of Yin and Yang, are found both in the unconscious and in nature in the characteristic form of opposites, as the “mother” and “father” of everything that happens, and they therefore form the tertium comparationis between the psychic inner world and the physical outer world. Thus the two sages devised a method by which an inner state could be represented as an outer one and vice versa. This naturally presupposes an intuitive knowledge of the meaning of each oracle figure. The I Ching, therefore, consists of a collection of sixty-four interpretations in which the meaning of each of the possible Yin-Yang combinations is worked out. These interpretations formulate the inner unconscious knowledge that corresponds to the state of consciousness at the moment, and this psychological situation coincides with the chance results of the method, that is, with the odd and even numbers resulting from the fall of the coins or the division of the yarrow stalks.59

The method, like all divinatory or intuitive techniques, is based on an acausal or synchronistic connective principle.60 In practice, as any unprejudiced person will admit, many obvious cases of synchronicity occur during the experiment, which could be rationally and somewhat arbitrarily explained away as mere projections. But if one assumes that they really are what they appear to be, then they can only be meaningful coincidences for which, as far as we know, there is no causal explanation. The method consists either in dividing the forty-nine yarrow stalks into two heaps at random and counting off the heaps by threes and fives, or in throwing three coins six times, each line of the hexagram being determined by the value of obverse and reverse (heads 3, tails 2).61 The experiment is based on a triadic principle (two trigrams) and contains sixty-four mutations, each corresponding to a psychic situation. These are discussed at length in the text and appended commentaries. There is also a Western method of very ancient origin62 which is based on the same general principle as the I Ching, the only difference being that in the West this principle is not triadic but, significantly enough, tetradic, and the result is not a hexagram built up of Yang and Yin lines but sixteen figures composed of odd and even numbers. Twelve of them are arranged according to certain rules in the astrological houses. The experiment is based on 4 × 4 lines consisting of a random number of points which the questioner marks in the sand or on paper from right to left.63 In true Occidental fashion the combination of all these factors goes into considerably more detail than the I Ching. Here too there are any amount of meaningful coincidences, but they are as a rule harder to understand and therefore less obvious than in the latter. In the Western method, which was known since the thirteenth century as the Ars Geomantica or the Art of Punctation64 and enjoyed a widespread vogue, there are no real commentaries, since its use was only mantic and never philosophical like that of the I Ching.

60 1 first used this term in my memorial address for Richard Wilhelm (delivered May 10, 1930, in Munich). The address later appeared as an appendix to The Secret of the Golden Flower (London and New York, 1931), where I said: “The science of the I Ching is not based on the causality principle, but on a principle (hitherto unnamed because not met with among us) which I have tentatively called the synchronistic principle” (p. 142).

61 I Ching, I, pp. 392 f.

62 Mentioned by Isidore of Seville in his Liber etymologiarum, VIII, ix, 13 (in J. P. Migne, Patrologia latina, LXXXII, cols. 73-728).

63 Grains of corn or dice can also be used.

64 The best account is to be found in Robert Fludd (1574–1637), De arte geomantica. Cf. Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, II (New York, 1929), p. 110.

Though the results of both procedures point in the desired direction, they do not provide any basis for a statistical evaluation. I have, therefore, looked round for another intuitive technique and have hit on astrology, which, at least in its modern form, claims to give a more or less total picture of the individual’s character. There is no lack of commentaries here; indeed, we find a bewildering profusion of them—a sure sign that interpretation is neither simple nor certain. The meaningful coincidence we are looking for is immediately apparent in astrology, since the astronomical data are said by astrologers to correspond to individual traits of character; and from the remotest times the various planets, houses, zodiacal signs, and aspects have all had meanings that serve as a basis for a character study or for an interpretation of a given situation. Marriage can thus be “based” on Ĩ ☌ ☾ in the horoscopes of the partners; or a peculiarly lucky or unlucky fate may be based on ♄ ☍, ⫪ ☾, or on an unusual amount of aspects, or, again, on an old astrological maxim like Mars in medio coeli semper signiftcat casum ab alto, as in the horoscope of Emperor William II. It is always possible to object that the result does not agree with our psychological knowledge of the situation or character in question, and it is difficult to refute the assertion that knowledge of character is a highly subjective affair, because in characterology there are no infallible or even reliable signs that can be in any way measured or calculated—an objection that is also raised against graphology, although in practice it enjoys widespread recognition.

This criticism, together with the absence of reliable criteria for determining traits of character, makes the meaningful coincidence of horoscope structure and individual character seem inapplicable for the purpose here under discussion. If, therefore, we want astrology to tell us anything about the acausal connection of events, we must discard this uncertain diagnosis of character and put in its place an absolutely certain and indubitable fact. Marriage is such a fact.65

Since antiquity, the main traditional astrological and alchemical correspondence to marriage has been the coniunctio Solis (⨀) et Lunae (☾), the coniunctio Lunae et Lunae, and the conjunction of the moon with the ascendent.66 There are others, but these do not come within the main traditional stream. The ascendent-descendent axis was introduced into the tradition because it has long been regarded as having a particularly important influence on the personality.67 As I shall refer later to the conjunction and opposition of Mars (♂) and Venus (♀), I may say here that these are related to marriage only because the conjunction or opposition of these two planets points to a love relationship, and this may or may not produce a marriage. So far as my experiment is concerned, we have to investigate the coincident aspects ⨀ ☾, ☾ ☾, and ☾ Asc. in the horoscopes of married pairs in relation to those of unmarried pairs. It will, further, be of interest to compare the relation of the above aspects to those of the aspects which belong only in a minor degree to the main traditional stream. No belief in astrology is needed to carry out such an investigation, only the birth-dates, an astronomical almanac, and a table of logarithms for working out the horoscope.

As the above three mantic procedures show, the method best adapted to the nature of chance is the numerical method. Since the remotest times men have used numbers to express meaningful coincidences, that is, those that can be interpreted. There is something peculiar, one might even say mysterious, about numbers. They have never been entirely robbed of their numinous aura. If, so a text-book of mathematics tells us, a group of objects is deprived of every single one of its properties or characteristics, there still remains, at the end, its number, which seems to indicate that number is something irreducible. (I am not concerned here with the logic of this mathematical argument, but only with its psychology!) The sequence of natural numbers turns out to be unexpectedly more than a mere stringing together of identical units: it contains the whole of mathematics and everything yet to be discovered in this field. Number, therefore, is in one sense an unpredictable entity. Although I would not care to undertake to say anything illuminating about the inner relation between two such apparently incommensurable things as number and synchronicity, I cannot refrain from pointing out that not only were they always brought into connection with one another, but that both possess numinosity and mystery as their common characteristics. Number has invariably been used to describe some numinous object, and all numbers from 1 to 9 are “sacred,” just as 10, 12, 13, 14, 28, 32, and 40 have a special significance. The most elementary quality about an object is whether it is one or many. Number helps more than anything else to bring order into the chaos of appearances. It is the predestined instrument for creating order, or for apprehending an already existing, but still unknown, regular arrangement or “orderedness.” It may well be the most primitive element of order in the human mind, seeing that the numbers 1 to 4 occur with the greatest frequency and have the widest incidence. In other words, primitive patterns of order are mostly triads or tetrads. That numbers have an archetypal foundation is not, by the way, a conjecture of mine but of certain mathematicians, as we shall see in due course. Hence it is not such an audacious conclusion after all if we define number psychologically as an archetype of order which has become conscious.68 Remarkably enough, the psychic pictures of wholeness which are spontaneously produced by the unconscious, the symbols of the self in mandala form, also have a mathematical structure. They are as a rule quaternities (or their multiples).69 These structures not only express order, they also create it. That is why they generally appear in times of psychic disorientation in order to compensate a chaotic state or as formulations of numinous experiences. It must be emphasized yet again that they are not inventions of the conscious mind but are spontaneous products of the unconscious, as has been sufficiently shown by experience. Naturally the conscious mind can imitate these patterns of order, but such imitations do not prove that the originals are conscious inventions. From this it follows irrefutably that the unconscious uses number as an ordering factor.

68 Symbolik des Geistes (Zurich, 1948), p. 469.

69 Cf. Gestaltungen des Unbewussten (Zurich, 1950), pp. 95 ff. and 189

It is generally believed that numbers were invented or thought out by man, and are therefore nothing but concepts of quantities, containing nothing that was not previously put into them by the human intellect. But it is equally possible that numbers were found or discovered. In that case they are not only concepts but something more—autonomous entities which somehow contain more than just quantities. Unlike concepts, they are based not on a psychic assumption but on the quality of being themselves, on a “so-ness” that cannot be expressed by an intellectual concept. Under these conditions they might easily be endowed with qualities that have still to be discovered. I must confess that I incline to the view that numbers were as much found as invented, and that in consequence they possess a relative autonomy analogous to that of the archetypes. They would then have, in common with the latter, the quality of being pre-existent to consciousness, and hence, on occasion, of conditioning it rather than being conditioned by it. The archetypes too, as a priori ideal forms, are as much found as invented: they are discovered inasmuch as one did not know about their unconscious autonomous existence, and invented inasmuch as their presence was inferred from analogous conceptual structures. Accordingly it would seem that natural numbers have an archetypal character. If that is so, then not only would certain numbers and combinations of numbers have a relation to and an effect on certain archetypes, but the reverse would also be true. The first case is equivalent to number magic, but the second is equivalent to inquiring whether numbers, in conjunction with the combination of archetypes found in astrology, would show a tendency to behave in a special way.

🔮 The Cosmos

Synchronicity Chapter 1. Exposition

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