Transcription
You look at the clock and wow, it is 11:11. It must be a sign from the universe. So, we'd better make a wish. If that is what you thought when you first saw the word synchronicity in the title, then I'm afraid that is a bit of an all too common and and massively misleading oversimplification about what Carl Jung actually meant.
So, the idea of synchronicity, it's a very complex one, as you'll see. So let's actually do it some justice by breaking it down and trying to understand like the true depth and the gravity of what he meant by a word like this. And this follows on directly from the previous lesson when we asked, "Is meaning created, given, or revealed?" So today, we're taking that part of the question much further, much, much further. As you'll see, what you're about to witness is a grown man get extremely and progressively more and more excited as we dive deeper and deeper into this fascinating theory. And if you haven't seen that previous lesson, then don't worry. You'll still be able to make sense of this one. And I'll just pop a cleaner picture on the screen now if you want to have a look at that mind map in more detail. And I will let you know early on that I am pitching this conversation somewhere between the person who says, "Yeah, I know about Jung and I know about shadow work, but I want to know a bit more." And the advanced level Jungian student who wants to learn more about quaterios and the alchemical approach to the the inner world.
So like I say, it can be a heavy concept looking at synchronicity. So let's break it down bit by bit. First things first, let's make it clear what it isn't as well. So, like I was saying, it isn't looking at the microwave and seeing 111 or some other repeating number and then making a wish. It's not necessarily a sign from the universe either, or angel numbers. So, let's establish why with two lovely quotes from this. So, first up from my fancy dictionary, it's going to be on page 595. I am quoting, by the way, Harper's Encyclopedia of Mystical and Paranormal Experiences. It's a very exciting title. So, starts on here. "Synchronicity, the unifying principle behind meaningful coincidences. Psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung termed synchronicity an a-causal connecting principle that links seemingly unrelated and unconnected events." Two important terms there I'm going to go into in a second: meaningful coincidence and a-causal connecting principle.
So let's just take it one tiny little step further on page 596, and then we can like really, really dig into this. Jung said that synchronicity can be found in events that are meaningfully but not causally related. That is, they do not coincide in time and space, as well as in events that do coincide in time and space and have meaningful psychological connections. In addition, synchronicity links the material world to the psychic. Synchronistic events, he said, rest on archetypal foundations.
So, just like in the previous lesson, let's start creating our mind map from here to track what's happening before we get overwhelmed because, like I say, there's a lot going on on here. Just going to put my book on the ground, and then we can make a good start on this. So, what I've done is, just before this lesson started, I've made it really clear these three parts that we're going to go into a bit more detail on. So, if it is going to be a meaningful coincidence, let's start there. That's going to be our simple working definition for this lesson. Then it means that basically any connection that we make has to have, or has to be, a connection of meaning rather than cause. So that is how we're going to start this entire journey. I'm going to put meaning here. Going to put cause here. Like I say, we're making this visual so it's much easier to track.
So, super, super simple example for this. If you're playing snooker, that's going to be a good way to think about it. If you're playing snooker, one ball hits into another, and then the second ball moves because the first one hit it. There's no question around meaning here, like in an existential sense. There's just cause and effect. This happened, then that. There is no interpretation needed. Whereas if you compare that to something like a dream, then that's a different situation. So, one image in a dream doesn't strictly speaking cause another because the laws of cause and effect, they just don't apply in that world. So when you wake up, you don't think, "Oh, of course I dreamt of an octopus because before that there was a tattooed man, and he in turn had to be there because of that big snake."
So, what's more relevant for the dream is the connection to it. So, I'm going to start breaking this down bit by bit on here. In fact, I might even put connection over here just to give us a bit more room as we start to break all this down. So, what's more relevant, like I say, is the connection. There's the interpretation. That's another important word as we start to think about something like this. So, we need to investigate a dream and dialogue with it. Again, all these words, they all start to come together to find that meaning. We need to dialogue with it to find the meaning. So perhaps any particular image was just a coincidence. That's fine. What would raise and transform this coincidence for Jung would be the meaning factor. That's why noticing 11-11 on the clock isn't automatically a synchronicity. It's a coincidence, yes, but it's not laden and imbued with necessarily with meaning.
So, just to be really, really clear on this before we move on. Cause. So causality, that is snooker. That explains how something happens. That's cause and effect. Synchronicity, the dream. That reveals what just about sneaking that on there. That reveals what something could mean. So again, in terms of the connection over here, it's meaning-driven, but it's also narrative-driven. There's got to be an inquiry about the entire thing. So if you want to be really fancy about this, it's non-causal meaningful alignment of the inner and the outer. This is definitely not random, though. There must be an an intention in here somewhere. Just to throw a load of other words on this just to make it all really clear. And already we are absolutely flying. And don't worry, I'm not going to drop a dense line like "non-causal meaningful alignment" without actually breaking that down in some way.
And that is where we're going to turn to the wonderful Murray Stein, and we are going to break down and recreate this simple diagram on page 217. So to understand Jungian dynamics properly, we need a way of viewing and making sense of the the inner and the outer worlds that we occupy. That's what these two parts are referring to here. So now, I said before in that definition, "a-causal connecting principle." It's a very confusing sentence or term. So let's break that down. So if we draw out the y-axis first, we've got space and we've got time. Again, we're breaking all this down. It'll make sense towards the end. If you get a little bit lost in the meantime, don't worry. That's very, very normal.
So to quote Murray Stein, "We need to consider where and when the event happened." That firmly roots us and grounds us in our process. And just to be really clear on this, Jung was fundamentally a scientist, not a mystic. So these explorations, they have to be grounded in the scientific method. So if, let's say for example, with all this, a a rare insect lands on my page as I'm writing this and as I'm talking, there are factual elements to consider. Space, so where did this event take place? Time, when did this event take place? So, like I say, we're grounded in reality in this case, like an objective sense of reality.
So, what's the x-axis then? Well, the x-axis, that ranges from causality, again, we talked about causality just a second ago, and synchronicity, just to bring in that word and make it really clear as to how it all fits in. So again, just to quote Murray Stein, "We also need to think about what led up to this moment and what it means." That's all the x-axis is referring to. So it goes back to this bit over here when we're talking about causes. So that's how, and meaning, which is what. So this is the element that raises something from a coincidence or a cause to a synchronistic moment.
And I didn't just say "insect randomly" by the way, a second ago. Um, I'm referencing a quite a famous scarab beetle incident and and synchronicity from Jung's own accounts. So again, just to be really, really brief on something like this, while in a conversation with Jung, a woman who was having a lot of difficulty in therapy previously was recounting her dream about a golden scarab beetle. And then, as she was talking to Jung about this, Jung noticed that in the window, a small scarab-like beetle was trying to get into the room at that exact moment. And from memory, this wasn't a common type of beetle for where they they lived either.
So in any case, just to be really clear on this, here's the key points. Because that woman felt that this coincidence was significant, it gave her a huge sense of meaning. That's why I was saying before, meaningful coincidence. It was a-causal in the sense that it had no direct cause. Can pop that on here. That's what the "a-" before "causal" means. It means like "not" or "no." So her talking about the beetle doesn't cause the beetle to appear, but it was a moment that felt meaningful to her, as well as being bizarrely unlikely to happen. So if we bridge these two points together, it was a meaningful coincidence, and she connected to that particular moment, but not in a way that was due to cause and effect, like the the snooker example from before.
So, in fact, while we're here, let's just pop "feeling" on that map as well. But let's take this theory further because Jung is absolutely not done yet. And I'm getting excited just talking about something like this. So I have used over here the word archetype, and I've also left a little bit of space intentionally in the lower left corner for a reason. So I'm going to turn to these two aspects now.
So let's, as much as possible, keep things simple with archetype. So archetype comes from two terms: "ar-" and I believe it's pronounced "typos," but spelled like this. So "ar-" that refers to beginnings. Again, it all makes sense, and just being first as well. Anything, uh, anything similar to that. And "typos" that refers to things like patterns. And if you are here from the previous lesson, we talked about blueprints as well. That's where this starts to come back. So patterns and blueprints, impressions, anything else like that. So when we combine "arc" and "typos," we get archetype. So we get first patterns, or original blueprints, something like that.
So for Jung, it is through the archetypes that we connect to something larger than us. So we don't just exist as personal and individual selves. We also exist as part of a collective as well. And we can observe that we all share these same propensities or or potentials, or we all fall into the groove of following these same basic patterns. So, just really, really simple example. If you watch, for example, like Lord of the Rings, and Star Wars, and Harry Potter, you'll probably immediately recognize something deeper that connects characters like Gandalf, Yoda, and Dumbledore. And that would be, for example, if we're talking about archetypes, the the wise old man, or the or the magician, or the sage. It would probably be one of those that you'd immediately go to. So what you're seeing is the examples, and then from there you can tell what pattern it originally came from. They're clearly not, for example, warriors or kings.
So if we go back to that dream example from before, if you were to receive advice from a from a wizard-looking character, then it's probably a good sign that you're in a a healthy connection to the archetype. And the reason why I am mentioning this is because Jung, he theorized that archetypes and synchronicities and a new word, so I left some space here, the Self with a capital S, are all connected as part of a bigger theory. So let me just put connection here because that's going to be extremely important when we go into the the weeds of all of this. So it's all connected as part of something bigger. The Self here, that's referring to the the totality of the psyche. It's all of the the the conscious and the unconscious elements put together. So when you think of who you are, or you're using the phrasing of "I" when we're talking about the ego, for example, that the Self is considerably more than that. So if you think about the ego, that would be like the center of consciousness, but the Self is the is the the conscious and the unconscious combined.
So the bigger task in life, especially in the second half of life for Jung, it's about unification. Pop that on here because that's again, really important. It's about unifying the ego with the unconscious and integrating the person's otherwise unlived life up until that point. That's how something like shadow work would fit in with all this. So if we go back to the very, very start of all this, if you thought of synchronicity and you thought, "Yeah, I know about Jung, I know about shadow," that's one tiny, tiny, tiny element within all of this overall. It's absolutely huge. So the Self, just to be really clear when we talk about the shadow and how this connects, it's the Self that is calling to us. It's driving us towards purpose, towards a key, key word here, wholeness. That's really important for Jung. It's encouraging us to face and to realize and ultimately embody and integrate, where possible, the the unrealized potential that's lying dormant in us, or that's just been pushed out of sight. Again, if we want to use one other fancy word here, come on to this another time. He uses the term individuation. That's how all of this would fit in if you want to think about it in terms of Jung's idea.
Now, it might feel like I've gone on a bit of a tangent there, but if you want to take Jungian theory more seriously than just like a casual glance at a shadow work video on YouTube every now and again, you need to grasp how the Self, the archetype, and synchronicity are all intimately connected. That is absolutely key for something like this. So, to realize your full potential, you're going to need a personal philosophy. And that has to include, where can I fit this on here? I'm going to sneak it in the middle. It's going to have to include the rational and the irrational side of life. That's a key Jungian idea. Personally, I would prefer the term "nonrational" rather than "irrational," but I am sticking with Jung's own wording for the sake of this lesson. And I'll go into that, uh, into detail on that a little bit more, uh, in a future lesson on exactly how the the archetypes, for example, they're actually biological in nature for Jung rather than mental. Because I know this sounds really abstract so far, but the archetypes are biological for him. It's just enough to know at this particular point in time that archetypes are both physical and, uh, and, and psychic. So I'm going to actually use the word I was just debating whether to put it on, but I think it is relevant. It is psychoid. That's the that's the word that he uses in the sense that it bridges the gap between the, uh, the personal and the collective. That's why I'm just popping this on here. And again, it bridges us over towards wholeness and so on. Lots and lots and lots of links to be made. So, it bridges the gap between the person and the collective, the conscious ego and the unconscious contents, the "I" and the Self. It's massive. Can, can you see how all of this starts to come together? But also how, uh, just how much more complex Jungian theory is rather than just, for example, like the persona versus the shadow.
If we pop back up to this little chart over here as well, um, you can see all of this at work all at once. So my conscious and aware sense of self with a lowercase "s," that is located in a physical body. So I have to take into account space and time. I have to take into account where those things happen. That's the y-axis. That's why it's physical, it's science, it's it's objective reality when we talk about it that way. But if we want to raise something from just causality to synchronicity, then we're going to have to go beyond the rational into something more. And so at that stage there, again, I'm very much running out of room here, that would be the realm of something like religion. Um, maybe art as well. That would be relevant here. And again, that still also connects to reality, except the difference is that one is more of an objective reality. This one is a bit more of a subjective one instead.
So these ideas of synchronicity and Self and the connection between the the personal, uh, or the individual and the collective. And these all come through the archetypes. It's all part of the same theory. These aren't separate at all. They all support each other. And they only make sense because of one another. Like I said before, synchronicities, they rest on archetypal foundations. If you want one, one other little quote here just to like ground this even more. Can you, can you see how fun this is? Or, or is this just me? Like compared to where we started with like about 15 minutes ago with like 11-11 and this super vague idea of of the universe speaking to us, and we've ended up with something like this which is just so incredibly rich. It's like paths upon paths upon beetles upon beetles. It's it's genuinely it's soul-nourishing conversation, conversation for the whole soul, and nothing but the soul, or should I say Self rather than soul. There's so much with all this. Hopefully, you, hopefully my excitement maybe, uh, maybe radioactively emits to you via this video. But let's land this Jungian plane because we're getting a bit carried away.
So to answer that original question that was posted last time, "Is meaning created, given, or revealed?" Well, we've just done a pretty thorough examination of the revealed aspect. So as we are looking at this, just to be really, really clear, the Self, I'm going to bring it all together now. The Self as the organizing principle of the psyche that drives us towards wholeness. But we can only individuate, which means actualizing our potentials, by going beyond our ego and connecting to something bigger. And we can't fully integrate the archetypes because they're just so powerful and they're so vast, but we can activate, create certain patterns that are lying dormant within us if we learn again how to meaningfully connect with them. So meaning, that can be revealed to us, if we go back to that idea from before, revealed, can be revealed to us via the Self or via this archetypal connection, just as long as we don't fall victim to traps of, I'm going to pop this down here, of grandiosity. This is definitely something I'm going to talk about in a future video. That would be like claiming that we are the archetype, or we are fully and consciously the whole Self. So it's just, it's just not possible, basically.
So when we encounter an event or a coincidence and it feels meaningful to us at that particular moment, then our inner and outer worlds are are aligning at that particular point. So again, that's important, not because of cause and effect, but because of something that is nonrational. That's where a cause will start to fit in with this. So it's not cause and effect, it's nonrational. So meaning is revealed to us, not created by us, according to this, this theory. So the Self is trying to let us know something, but do we dare to actually listen to it? That's the question, and that's the big task. So that is a more, uh, detailed exploration of of this revealed section that we, uh, that we gave a bit of an overview in the previous lesson. I've intentionally left out active imagination on purpose because I think that just needs a full video in itself. And there's already, as you can see, quite a lot of terms. It's a really tough lesson to film, that one. So I hope, I hope that makes sense. I hope my passion for all this comes through as well, because I genuinely get really, really excited. Um, you might need to go back over it because it's not easy to get your head around at first, and it goes so much deeper than all this still. I've just decided just to stop there, and that's it.
So, same as last time, I'll tidy up my diagrams and post them on here. And I'm also keeping a log of them on Instagram as well. So, by all means, give me a follow over there because I'm going to build up this, this database of visuals. "The undiagrammed life is not worth living." That's what I've called this playlist, and I'm enjoying creating these diagrams for you as well. So hopefully they're useful. Just let me know what you think. And even with all of this, actually, let's bring it relevant. Let's make it relevant for you. So have you experienced any synchronicities recently? Or even more than that, how might you be more open to synchronicities in the future? And is just making all of this up and reading too much into it? Are they just coincidences, and that's it? There's a lot to think about. So, let's keep this conversation going, and I will see you next time for lesson three in this series.