The term « syn­chro­ni­ci­ty » first appea­red in 1928 and was coi­ned by the Swiss psy­cho­ana­lyst Carl Gustav Jung. After many revi­sions of the concept, he defi­ned syn­chro­ni­ci­ty as « a tem­po­ral coin­ci­dence of two or more events without a cau­sal link bet­ween them and having the same or simi­lar sense. The term is oppo­sed to « syn­chro­nism », which refers to the simple simul­ta­nei­ty of two events. » [1]

Understanding synchronicities

Two aspects of the same reality

More pre­ci­se­ly, syn­chro­ni­ci­ty is a cor­res­pon­dence in time bet­ween a psy­chic event – that is, a state of conscious­ness – and a phy­si­cal event. The most com­mon example is the per­son we haven’t heard from for a long time, who calls us exact­ly when we think of her. However, we will only talk about syn­chro­ni­ci­ty if this event takes on a par­ti­cu­lar mea­ning for us, we will come back to it in the next article (online soon).

For Jung, these two events – psy­chic and phy­si­cal – would in the end be only two aspects of the same rea­li­ty. He cal­led « Unus Mundus » this concept of uni­ty of rea­li­ty, in which : 

« The strange prin­ciple of syn­chro­ni­ci­ty acts in the world when cer­tain things (…) behave as if they were the same thing, but they are not from our point of view. » [2]

Collective unconscious and archetypes

According to Jung, syn­chro­ni­ci­ties revolve around two fun­da­men­tal notions : col­lec­tive uncons­cious and arche­types. Collective uncons­cious repre­sents the uncons­cious psyche com­mon to huma­ni­ty, i.e. the expe­rience of all human his­to­ry that we have inhe­ri­ted. It is a field through which infor­ma­tion is trans­mit­ted. It would explain, for example, the phe­no­me­na of telepathy.

Archetypes are part of this field of infor­ma­tion, like so many pri­mor­dial images found in tales, legends, dreams or myths of uni­ver­sal lite­ra­ture. They are sym­bo­lic and serve as a model for us. When they are active in our psyche, arche­types uncons­cious­ly pro­duce cer­tain types of beha­viour. The lat­ter can be emo­tio­nal or intel­lec­tual and are com­mon to all huma­ni­ty… since the begin­ning of time ! As a result, the arche­types are both inti­mate and imper­so­nal in nature. Only if the acti­va­ted arche­types in the indi­vi­dual psyche are rela­ted to dan­ger, risk or fatal cir­cum­stances would syn­chro­ni­ci­ties mani­fest them­selves, accor­ding to Jung. 

Yin Yang : meaning and philosophy

The book of transformations

Before deve­lo­ping the notion of syn­chro­ni­ci­ty, Jung became inter­es­ted in the I Ching, the Book of Transformations [3] in 1924. This book was for him a method of explo­ring the uncons­cious. It is consi­de­red to be the oldest Chinese text, howe­ver its date of ela­bo­ra­tion is not known with cer­tain­ty : accor­ding to hypo­theses it varies from the begin­ning of the 8th cen­tu­ry BC to the begin­ning of the Christian era.

I Ching is a book of phi­lo­so­phy and cos­mo­lo­gy that can also be used for divi­na­tion. However bea­ring in mind the notion of evo­lu­tion inherent in the mani­fes­ta­tion of events. That is to say : no situa­tion is ever fixed since it is part of the per­ma­nent move­ment of the uni­verse. The Yin and Yang prin­ciples represent the inces­sant trans­for­ma­tions of all aspects of life and universe.

The mani­fest, the real, is ensh­ri­ned in these prin­ciples. The sta­tic side of the sym­bol that repre­sents them, cal­led Taijitu, is equal­led only by the uni­ver­sal dyna­mics that they car­ry. Taijitu, motion­less, repre­sents the uni­ty beyond the dua­lis­tic move­ment appa­rent­ly gene­ra­ted by Yin and Yang.

Yin sym­bo­lizes dark­ness, cold, inter­io­ri­ty, sup­ple­ness, femi­ni­ni­ty, while Yang is asso­cia­ted with light, heat, exte­rio­ri­ty, rigi­di­ty, mas­cu­li­ni­ty. Yin and Yang can only be defi­ned in rela­tion to each other : they inter­act in interdependence.

Our wes­tern vision pre­sents them as oppo­sites, whe­reas they are com­ple­men­ta­ry. They evolve in a move­ment that inva­ria­bly pro­duces a pas­sage from one to the other, offe­ring a conti­nuous expe­rience of each prin­ciple. This pas­sage is only the fruit of a mutual limi­ta­tion since the Yin mani­fests itself as soon as the Yang reaches its maxi­mum, and vice versa.

Towards synchronicity

Thus the phases of growth and decrease of each prin­ciple alter­nate conti­nuous­ly, the growth of Yin being simul­ta­neous and pro­por­tio­nal to the decrease of Yang, and vice ver­sa. We are tal­king about the alter­na­tive cir­cu­la­tion of the oppo­sites.

This shift from one prin­ciple to the other will take place gra­dual­ly, lea­ding to an inevi­table chan­geo­ver. Kind of like the last straw. If one observes the drip without having access to the water level in the silt, one can never know whe­ther one is in the slow muta­tion phase – which causes the water level to rise gra­dual­ly – or very close to overflow.

Furthermore, we will see that there are suc­ces­sive sub­di­vi­sions of Yin and Yang. They result in a series of 64 six-pointed figures. Called hexa­grams, these represent the 64 pos­sible com­bi­na­tions of Yin and Yang. Thanks to them, all pos­sible trans­for­ma­tions can be interpreted.

Within the fra­me­work of a divi­na­tion, it is then suf­fi­cient to let the uncons­cious know­ledge emerge, which will reso­nate with the state of conscious­ness of the consul­tant. In Chinese thought, it is Tao that under­lies the phy­si­cal and psy­chic events invol­ved in this pro­cess. And that’s what Jung was trying to trans­late when he coi­ned the term « synchronicity » :

« Orient bases its thin­king and its eva­lua­tion of facts on ano­ther prin­ciple. We don’t even have a word for it. Of course Orient has a word for it, but we do not unders­tand it. The orien­tal word is Tao… I use ano­ther word for it, but it’s pret­ty poor. I call it syn­chro­ni­ci­ty. » [4]

When physics meets philosophy…

If the I Ching shows the com­ple­men­ta­ri­ty of the Yin and Yang prin­ciples, it also reveals their suc­ces­sive subdivisions.

Yin and Yang can each be divi­ded infi­ni­te­ly into Yin and Yang sub-elements. For example, in win­ter, it is the Yin prin­ciple that mani­fests itself more than the Yang. A win­ter day will be mani­fes­ted by Yang in Yin. A win­ter day twi­light will be mani­fes­ted by Yin in the Yang of Yin. And we can go on and on and on forever.

This infi­nite divi­sion of Yin and Yang is not remem­be­red by the Fourier trans­forms, which deploy a fun­da­men­tal har­mo­nic into an infi­nite sum of har­mo­nic fre­quen­cies. In other words, it is remi­nis­cent of the frac­tal principle.

The phy­si­cist Nassim Haramein argues that « I Ching encodes the geo­me­try of space-time, and Yin Yang encodes the dyna­mics of space-time » [5]. In his theo­ry, there is indeed a direct ana­lo­gy bet­ween the sym­bol of Yin and Yang and the dyna­mics of the uni­verse. The Taijitu sym­bol repre­sents a double torus seen from above, that is to say a black hole in which infor­ma­tion cir­cu­lates. This hap­pens thanks to a feed­back loop that acts conti­nuous­ly from vacuum to mat­ter and from mat­ter to vacuum (see the article The frac­tal and holo­gra­phic uni­verse). In this sense, vacuum is very close to the notion of the col­lec­tive uncons­cious des­cri­bed by Jung.