Synchronicity - Wikiwand

A young woman I was treating had, at a critical moment, a dream in which she was given a golden scarab… ~ Carl Jung

Synchronicity is the phenomenon of experiencing two or more events as meaningfully related, though they are unlikely to be causally related. They are perceived as a "meaningful coincidence", although the events need not be exactly simultaneous in time. A concept of synchronicity was first proposed by Carl Gustav Jung, a Swiss psychologist, in the 1920s. The concept does not question, or compete with, the notion of causality, but rather maintains that just as events may be connected by a causal relationship, they may also be connected by meaning without clear causal relationships — a grouping of events by meaning need not have an explanation in terms of cause and effect. Mainstream science explains synchronicities as "mere coincidences" (underestimated chance events) that can be described by laws of statistics (for instance law of truly large numbers) and confirmation biases.

A

It is in the humble opinion of this narrator that this is not just "something that happened." This cannot be "one of those things"... This, please, cannot be that. And for what I would like to say, I can't. This was not just a matter of chance. … These strange things happen all the time.
- Paul Thomas Anderson, in the introductory narration on the strange synchronicities in the film Magnolia (1999)

B

But from the scientific point of view, synchronicity is neither testable nor falsifiable and must be considered pseudoscience.
- Christopher Bonds in The Skeptic Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience, (2002), edited by Michael Shermer, Vol. 1, p. 241

C

What reasons are there for accepting synchronicity as an explanation for anything in the real world? What it explains is more simply and elegantly explained by the ability of the human mind to find meaning and significance where there is none (apophenia). Jung's defense of acausal connections is so inane I hesitate to repeat it.
- Robert Todd Carroll, in The Sceptic's Dictionary synchronicity

Sympathetic magic is probably the basis for such notions as karma, synchronicity, eating the heart of a brave but defeated warrior foe, throwing spears at painted animals on cave walls, wearing the reindeer's antlers before the hunt, having rape rituals to increase the fertility of the crops, or taking Holy Communion to infuse the participant with Divinity. Sympathetic magic is surely the basis for homeopathy and remote healing.
- Robert Todd Carroll, in The Sceptic's Dictionary sympathetic magic

Carl Jung, like many people who have experienced an uncanny pairing of events, did not think such happenings are mere coincidence. He developed the notion of synchronicity to explain "meaningful coincidences." He described synchronicity as an acausal principle that links events having a similar meaning by their coincidence in time. However, if you think of all the pairs of things that can happen in a person's lifetime and add to that our very versatile ability of finding meaningful connections between things, it then seems likely that most of us will experience many meaningful coincidences. The coincidences are predictable and we are the ones who give them meaning. Given the fact that there are billions of people and the possible number of meaningful coincidences is millions of billions, it is inevitable that many people will experience some very weird and uncanny coincidences every day.
- Robert Todd Carroll in The Sceptic's Dictionary law of truly large numbers (coincidence)

According to Vedanta, there are only two symptoms of enlightenment, just two indications that a transformation is taking place within you toward a higher consciousness. The first symptom is that you stop worrying. Things don't bother you anymore. You become light-hearted and full of joy. The second symptom is that you encounter more and more meaningful coincidences in your life, more and more synchronicities. And this accelerates to the point where you actually experience the miraculous.
- Deepak Chopra, as quoted in Stop Worrying, Start Living : A Guide for the Spiritual Worrier/Warrior (2012) by Caroline Ravenall, p. 303

D

There are certain caveats when it comes to considering synchronicity in the light of creative possibilities. First, we cannot force a synchronicity, nor can we expect to find one on command. Ascertaining the difference between a true synchronicity and a psuedo-coincidence is the goal of forming good criteria. Second, we must always beware of "reading into" things and relying exclusively on personal, subjective meanings. In other words, some events may truly be synchronicity. Recognizing them and their significance can be highly beneficial. But attempting to see synchronicity in each and every event in our life is an almost certain prescription for paranoia and delusional pathology.
- Stephen J. Davis in Synchronicity: trick or treat?

E

F

As they entered the house intending to remove the unfortunate man against his will to a clinic, the lamp in the corridor shattered with a bang, so that suddenly they were all standing in darkness in the midst of the broken glass. The patient saw clearly that what had happened was a supernatural sign: just as the sun grew dark when Christ was crucified, this event was to him a confirmation that he was a savior who was being unjustly arrested. We, on the other hand, would say that he had projected his delusion into the event. Thus the synchronistic phenomenon, in itself meaningful, was instead covered up by a projection. To a person with normal consciousness the "meaning" of the occurrence would be quite different. A lamp, in contrast to the sun, is not a cosmic principle but an appliance invented by man; it usually symbolizes ego-consciousness in dreams and fantasies. The meaning of the unusual event would then more probably be expressed thus: In the moment of intense agitation caused by his imminent arrest the patient's ego-consciousness was shattered and a 'mental blackout' resulted. The patient, however, could not grasp this meaning.[...] Hence synchronistic events occur with conspicuous frequency at such times (although they also occur with normal people when an archetype is activated).
- Marie-Louise von Franz in Projection and Re-collection in Jungian Psychology: Reflections of the Soul (1985) p. 196,197

We could all be mediums, and all have absolute knowledge, if the bright light of our ego consciousness would not dim it. … I have myself observed that in states of extreme fatigue, when I am really dangerously physically exhausted, I suddenly get absolute knowledge; …
- Marie-Louise von Franz, in On Divination and Synchronicity (1992), p. 39

As soon as we notice that certain types of event "like" to cluster together at certain times, we begin to understand the attitude of the Chinese, whose theories of medicine, philosophy, and even building are based on a "science" of meaningful coincidences. The classical Chinese texts did not ask what causes what, but rather what "likes" to occur with what. One can see much the same underlying theme in astrology, and in the way various civilizations have depended on consulting oracles and paying attention to omens.
- Marie-Louise von Franz, in w:Man and His Symbols (1964), p. 227

G

It is well known that theoretical physicists cannot handle experimental equipment; it breaks whenever they touch it. Pauli was such a good theoretical physicist that something usually broke in the lab whenever he merely stepped across the threshold. A mysterious event that did not seem at first to be connected with Pauli's presence once occurred in Professor J. Franck's laboratory in Göttingen. Early one afternoon, without apparent cause, a complicated apparatus for the study of atomic phenomena collapsed. Franck wrote humorously about this to Pauli at his Zürich address and, after some delay, received an answer in an envelope with a Danish stamp. Pauli wrote that he had gone to visit Bohr and at the time of the mishap in Franck's laboratory his train was stopped for a few minutes at the Göttingen railroad station. You may believe this anecdote or not, but there are many other observations concerning the reality of the Pauli Effect!
- George Gamow, in Thirty Years That Shook Physics : The Story of Quantum Theory (1966), p. 64

People with schizophrenia develop thinking based on synchronicity, a term coined by psychoanalyst Carl Jung to describe thoughts connecting to outside events. Prophetic dreams are an example of synchronicity. People often observe synchronicity early in their illness and are intrigued by the spiritual and practical possibilities they pose. We believe that synchronicities indicate the possibility for the mind to magically affect the world, and often seek to do things that increase synchronicity in our lives. We begin to see connections--real or imagined--behind these events. The real events of synchronicity give strength to a mystical or religious view of the world that becomes the basis for our new way of thinking.
- Milt Greek in Schizophrenia: A Blueprint for Recovery (2012)

In order for the diverse events of our lives to be interwoven as intricately and artfully as synchronicity implies, there would seem to be a regulating intelligence underlying our world, a central principle organizing all of its elements like notes in a grand symphony of meaning… One needn’t think of this as involving a bearded, anthropomorphic deity on a heavenly throne somewhere, of course. The Neoplatonist philosopher Plotinus referred to this transcendent principle simply as 'the One,' while the Buddhists speak of 'Big Mind,' and the mystic geometers of old described a circle whose 'center was everywhere but whose circumference was nowhere.’ Whatever labels or terms one prefers, the phenomenon of synchronicity hints at a coordinating agency of unimaginable scope and subtlety whereby all the coincidences and correspondences of the world coalesce as if threads in a grand design, and within which our lives are holoscopically nested. Seen in this way, the synchronistic event can be seen as affording us a passing sideways glance, as if through a glass darkly, into the mind of God.
- Ray Grasse in Under A Sacred Sky (2015), p. 166.

Coincidence is but the tip of a far greater iceberg of meaning, the most visible feature of a pervasive framework of design and relationships that undergirds all experience. In a sense, the entire world is a vast matrix of "acausal connections," extending to every aspect of one's experience, from one's body and thoughts to every object and event in the environment. Said another way, everything is a "coincidence" insofar as everything co-incides.
- Ray Grasse in Under a Sacred Sky (2015), p. 163.

H

Synchronicity is an attempt to come up with an explanation for the occurrence of highly improbable coincidences between events where there is no causal link. It’s based on the premise that existing physics and mathematics cannot explain such things. This is wrong, however – standard science can explain them. That’s really the point of the improbability principle. What I have tried to do is pull out and make explicit how physics and mathematics, in the form of probability calculus does explain why such striking and apparently highly improbable events happen. There’s no need to conjure up other forces or ideas, and there’s no need to attribute mystical meaning or significance to their occurrence. In fact, we should expect them to happen, as they do, purely in the natural course of events.
- David Hand in Why Coincidences, Miracles And Rare Events Happen Every Day (Forbes) (2014)
Although they look remarkable and entirely unpredictable, in fact these events are to be expected. No mysteries are required to explain them—no superstitions, no miracles, no gods, no supernatural interventions or psychic powers, no synchronicity, seriality, morphic resonance, or any of the host of other imaginary imps. All that’s needed are the basic laws of probability.
- David Hand in The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day (2014) p. 40

I

We've all had the experience of talking about a long-lost friend with someone, and then out of the blue the phone rings and it's that same long-lost friend. Famous psychobabble quack Carl Jung called these occurrences "synchronicity." Skeptics regard these synchronicities events as mere coincidences. Others posit a pie-in-the-sky cosmic connection linking all things. Take a guess on which side of the argument I fall.
- "Mary Shannon" in In Plain Sight, Season 1, episode 6: High Priced Spread (6 July 2008), written by Matt Ward

J

But I have come across quite a number of cases where it was most astounding to find that two causal chains happened at the same time, but independent of each other, so that you could say they had nothing to do with each other. It’s really quite clear. For instance, I speak of a red car and at that moment a red car comes here. Now I haven’t seen the red car, because it wasn’t possible; it was hidden behind the building until just this moment when it suddenly appeared. Now many would say that this is an example of mere chance, but the Rhine experiment proves that these cases are not mere chance. Now it would be superstitious and false to say, “This car has appeared because here were some remarks made about a red car; it is a miracle that a red car has appeared.” It is not a miracle; it is just chance — but these chances happen more often than chance allows. That shows that there is something behind it.
- Carl Jung, C. G. Jung – Richard Evans Interviews Transcript of the 1957 Films

Your question concerning synchronicity and ideas of reference is very interesting indeed. I have often found that synchronistic experiences were interpreted by schizophrenics as delusions. Since archetypal situations are not uncommon in schizophrenia, we must also suppose that corresponding synchronistic phenomena will occur which follow exactly the same course as with so-called normal persons. The difference lies simply and solely in the interpretation. The schizophrenic's interpretation is morbidly narrow because it is mostly restricted to the intentions of other people and to his own ego-importance. The normal interpretation, so far as this is possible at all, is based on the philosophic premise of the sympathy of all things, or something of that kind. [...] If synchronicities occur in these cases it is because an archetypal situation is present, for whenever archetypes are constellated we find manifestations of the primordial unity. Thus the synchronistic effect should be understood not as psychotic but a normal phenomenon.
- Carl Jung, in Letter to L. Kling (1958)

We Shall Naturally look round in vain 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... The so-called "scientific view of the world" 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.
- Carl Jung, in Synchronicity : An Acausal Connecting Principle (1960), p. 5

A young woman I was treating had, at a critical moment, a dream in which she was given a golden scarab. While she was telling me this dream, I sat with my back to the closed window. Suddenly I heard a noise behind me, like a gentle tapping. I turned round and saw a flying insect knocking against the window-pane from the outside. I opened the window and caught the creature in the air as it flew in. It was the nearest analogy to a golden scarab one finds in our latitudes, a scarabaeid beetle, the common rose-chafer (Cetonia aurata), which, contrary to its usual habits had evidently felt the urge to get into a dark room at this particular moment. I must admit that nothing like it ever happened to me before or since.
- Carl Jung, in Synchronicity : An Acausal Connecting Principle (1960), p. 22

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.
- Carl Jung, in Synchronicity : An Acausal Connecting Principle (1960), p. 33

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. 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 practible. For this purpose there is created in the laboratory a situation which is artificially restricted to the question 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 leave Nature to answer out of her fullness.
- Carl Jung, in Synchronicity : An Acausal Connecting Principle (1960), p. 35

My example concerns a young woman patient who, in spite of efforts made on both sides, proved to be psychologically inaccessible. The difficulty lay in the fact that she always knew better about everything. Her excellent education had provided her with a weapon ideally suited to this purpose, namely a highly polished Cartesian rationalism with an impeccably "geometrical" idea of reality. After several fruitless attempts to sweeten her rationalism with a somewhat more human understanding, I had to confine myself to the hope that something unexpected and irrational would turn up, something that burst the intellectual retort into which she had sealed herself. Well, I was sitting opposite of her one day, with my back to the window, listening to her flow of rhetoric. She had an impressive dream the night before, in which someone had given her a golden scarab-a costly piece of jewellery. While she was still telling me this dream, I heard something behind me gently tapping on the window. I turned round and saw that it was a fairly large flying insect that was knocking against the window from outside in the obvious effort to get into the dark room. This seemed to me very strange. I opened the window and immediately and caught the insect in the air as it flew in. It was a scarabaeid beetle, or common rose-chafer, whose gold-green color most nearly resembles that of a golden scarab. I handed the beetle to my patient with the words "Here is your scarab." This broke the ice of her intellectual resistance. The treatment could now be continued with satisfactory results.
- Carl Jung, in Synchronicity : An Acausal Connecting Principle (1960), p. 109

While Freud was going on this way, I had a curious sensation. It was as if my diaphragm were made of iron and were becoming red-hot -- a glowing vault. And at that moment there was such a loud report in the bookcase, which stood right next to us, that we both started up in alarm, fearing the thing was going to topple over on us. I said to Freud: 'There, that is an example of a so-called catalytic exteriorization phenomenon.' 'Oh come,' he exclaimed. 'That is sheer bosh.' 'It is not,' I replied. 'You are mistaken, Herr Professor. And to prove my point I now predict that in a moment there will be another such loud report! 'Sure enough, no sooner had I said the words that the same detonation went off in the bookcase. To this day I do not know what gave me this certainty. But I knew beyond all doubt that the report would come again. Freud only stared aghast at me. I do not know what was in his mind, or what his look meant. In any case, this incident aroused his distrust of me, and I had the feeling that I had done something against him. I never afterward discussed the incident with him.

When coincidences pile up in this way, one cannot help being impressed by them – for the greater the number of terms in such a series, or the more unusual its character, the more improbable it becomes.
- Carl Jung, in Jung on Synchronicity and the Paranormal (1977) edited by Roderick Main, p. 91

K

L

Some scientists see a theoretical grounding for synchronicity in quantum physics, fractal geometry, and chaos theory. They are finding that the isolation and separation of objects from each other is more apparent than real; at deeper levels, everything — atoms, cells, molecules, plants, animals, people — participates in a sensitive, flowing web of information. Physicists have shown, for example, that if two photons are separated, no matter by how far, a change in one creates a simultaneous change in the other.
- Meg Lundstrom in A Wink from the Cosmos, Intuition Magazine (May 1996)

M

Any parapsychological effect that depends upon volition, upon the subject's intent, must differ from synchronicity.
- Victor Mansfield, in Distinguishing Synchronicity from Parapsychological Phenomena: An Essay in Honor of Marie-Louise von Franz (1998)

Synchronicity's lack of an adequate theoretical structure; its uncontrollability; and its reliance on subjectivity, feelings, and scientifically suspect terms such as meaning make it exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to test scientifically.
- Victor Mansfield, in Head and heart (2002) p. 178

Perhaps most of the people who have, or read about, such experiences accept them as being very unlikely, very uncommon, but not otherwise unusual. Most people seem to feel no need to appeal to supernatural explanations for these events. But we frequently encounter in pseudoscience the claim that such events are in fact miraculous, and that some mysterious force or influence is required to bring about the event at all. Instead of accepting such events as normal events of low probability, there are in fact international organizations devoted to the collection, preservation, and dissemination of examples of such “strange” occurrences, which the organization find highly significant, mysterious, and certainly NOT due to “mere coincidence.” There are even religious cults based on coincidence, or “synchronicity.” Often the examples are rendered more dramatic than otherwise by involving some famous person or media personality, or being part of some famous event in history.
- Dennis McFadden in Unlikely Events and Coincidence

N

O

P

In Princeton, I unexpectedly had the opportunity to discuss the synchronicity phenomenon on several occasions. In doing so, I preferred to use the term “meaning-correspondence” rather than “synchronicity,” so as to place more emphasis on meaning rather than on simultaneity and to link up with the old “correspondentia.”
- Wolfgang Pauli in letter to Jung, 1950

Many physicists and historians have of course advised me to break the connection between my Kepler essay and C.G. Jung in the English translation. On mature reflection however I have still decided not to do so: it is not important to be entirely loyal personally to C.G. Jung (and not so important to him either). But it is very important to remain loyal to my own unconscious. This presents me constantly with something that it calls ‘radioactivity’, which roughly coincides with what Jung calls ‘synchronicity’. I am indifferent to the astral cult of Jung’s circle, but that, i.e. this dream symbolism, makes an impact! The book itself is a fateful ‘synchronicity’ and must remain one. I am sure that defiance would have unhappy consequences as far as I am concerned. Dixi et salvavi animam meam!
- Wolfgang Pauli in letter to Markus Fierz, 1954

"One can see here the probable origin of the legend of the Pauli effect. This was a kind of spell he was supposed to cast on people or objects in his neighbourhood, particularly in physics laboratories, causing accidents of all sorts. Machines would stop running when he arrived in a laboratory, a glass apparatus would suddenly break, a leak would appear in a vacuum system, but none of these accidents would ever hurt or inconvenience Pauli himself. At one reception this Pauli effect was to be parodied, and a chandelier had been suspended carefully by a rope which was to be released when Pauli entered, causing the chandelier to crash down. But when Pauli came, the rope became wedged on a pulley and nothing happened—a typical example of the Pauli effect!"
- R. E. Peierls, 1900-1958 The Royal Society obituary of Wolfgang Pauli , Published 1 February 1960.DOI: 10.1098/rsbm.1960.0014

Earlier I suggested that true synchronicities are relatively rare events and should not be confused with the trivial coincidences of daily life. However, there are special occasions when, for a time at least, an inexplicable series of synchronicities appear to cluster around a person. This can happen when someone is in a time of crisis, close to a mental breakdown, pushing creativity to a limit - or when they have fallen head and heels in love! In such liminal states the hard and fast boundaries between subjectivity and objectivity temporarily dissolve and a constellation of synchronicities act to precipitate a major change in a person's life.
- F. David Peat, in Time, Synchronicity and Evolution, 1999

Q

R

We do not create our destiny; we participate in its unfolding. Synchronicity works as a catalyst toward the working out of that destiny.
- David Richo, in The Power of Coincidence: How Life Shows Us What We Need to Know, p. 18

Synchronicity is at work when something occurs that substantiates a belief or philosophy of life.
- David Richo, in "The Power of Coincidence: How Life Shows Us What We Need to Know", p. 18

Synchronicity is [thus] a major tool of soul-making, divulging immortal meanings through personal events so that we can find our way towards integration. We can find his way through practices.
- David Richo, in "The Power of Coincidence: How Life Shows Us What We Need to Know", p. 18

S

With one breath, with one flow
You will know
Synchronicity
A sleep trance, a dream dance,
A shared romance
Synchronicity
A connecting principle
Linked to the invisible
Almost imperceptible
Something inexpressible
- Sting, in "Synchronicity I", on Synchronicity (1983)

If we share this nightmare
Then we can dream
Spiritus mundi
If you act as you think
The missing link
Synchronicity
- Sting, in "Synchronicity I", on Synchronicity (1983)

A star fall, a phone call
It joins all
Synchronicity
It's so deep, it's so wide
You're inside
Synchronicity
Effect without a cause
Sub-atomic laws, scientific pause
Synchronicity....
- Sting, in "Synchronicity I", on Synchronicity (1983)

Mother chants her litany of boredom and frustration
But we know all her suicides are fake
Daddy only stares into the distance
There's only so much more that he can take
Many miles away something crawls from the slime
At the bottom of a dark Scottish lake
- Sting, in "Synchronicity II", on Synchronicity (1983)

Daddy grips the wheel and stares alone into the distance
He knows that something somewhere has to break
He sees the family home now, looming in his headlights
The pain upstairs that makes his eyeballs ache
Many miles away there's a shadow on the door
Of a cottage on the shore
Of a dark Scottish lake
- Sting, in "Synchronicity II", on Synchronicity (1983)

Jung believed there was a large pattern to life, that it wasn't just chaos. Our song Synchronicity II is about two parallel events that aren't connected logically or causally, but symbolically.
- Sting, on the song Synchronicity II, as quoted in "Official Police business" by Jay Cocks, in TIME magazine (15 August 1983), p. 50

Synchronicity has long been described as an ‘acausal’ connecting principle. However, the use of this descriptor is not only misleading, but also outright false on any seriously considered picture of synchronicity due to admissions of multiple types of causes. Furthermore, previous attempts to clarify the ‘acausal’ label have served only to further muddy the waters of discussion. A ‘multi-causal’ conception of synchronicity is proposed to ease and encourage future discussion in many disciplines.
- Zachary Stinson in A Multi-Causal Approach To Synchronicity (2011) Stance 4 p. 49

T

I have tried to distinguish a variety of forms of causality and synchronicity. I think it is important to make these distinctions conceptually, even if it is not clear how we can make all of them in practice. Not only should it improve the clarity of our communication about these matters; it might also protect us from a danger inherent in the concept of synchronicity. This danger is the temptation to mental laziness. If, in working with paranormal phenomena, I cannot get my experiments to replicate and cannot find any patterns in the results, then, as attached as I am to the idea of causality, it would be very tempting to say, "Well, it's synchronistic, it's forever beyond my understanding," and so (prematurely) give up trying to find a causal explanation. Sloppy use of the concept of synchronicity then becomes a way of being intellectually lazy and dodging our responsibilities.
- Charles T. Tart in Causality and Synchronicity - Steps Toward Clarification (1981)

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

Anonymous

I have been this way before, only I cannot remember when, or why, only that I have been this way before.

A coincidence is a small miracle where God chose to remain anonymous.

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A

It is in the humble opinion of this narrator that this is not just "something that happened." This cannot be "one of those things"... This, please, cannot be that. And for what I would like to say, I can't. This was not just a matter of chance. … These strange things happen all the time.
- Paul Thomas Anderson, in the introductory narration on the strange synchronicities in the film Magnolia (1999)

B

But from the scientific point of view, synchronicity is neither testable nor falsifiable and must be considered pseudoscience.
- Christopher Bonds in The Skeptic Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience, (2002), edited by Michael Shermer, Vol. 1, p. 241

C

What reasons are there for accepting synchronicity as an explanation for anything in the real world? What it explains is more simply and elegantly explained by the ability of the human mind to find meaning and significance where there is none (apophenia). Jung's defense of acausal connections is so inane I hesitate to repeat it.
- Robert Todd Carroll, in The Sceptic's Dictionary synchronicity

Sympathetic magic is probably the basis for such notions as karma, synchronicity, eating the heart of a brave but defeated warrior foe, throwing spears at painted animals on cave walls, wearing the reindeer's antlers before the hunt, having rape rituals to increase the fertility of the crops, or taking Holy Communion to infuse the participant with Divinity. Sympathetic magic is surely the basis for homeopathy and remote healing.
- Robert Todd Carroll, in The Sceptic's Dictionary sympathetic magic

Carl Jung, like many people who have experienced an uncanny pairing of events, did not think such happenings are mere coincidence. He developed the notion of synchronicity to explain "meaningful coincidences." He described synchronicity as an acausal principle that links events having a similar meaning by their coincidence in time. However, if you think of all the pairs of things that can happen in a person's lifetime and add to that our very versatile ability of finding meaningful connections between things, it then seems likely that most of us will experience many meaningful coincidences. The coincidences are predictable and we are the ones who give them meaning. Given the fact that there are billions of people and the possible number of meaningful coincidences is millions of billions, it is inevitable that many people will experience some very weird and uncanny coincidences every day.
- Robert Todd Carroll in The Sceptic's Dictionary law of truly large numbers (coincidence)

According to Vedanta, there are only two symptoms of enlightenment, just two indications that a transformation is taking place within you toward a higher consciousness. The first symptom is that you stop worrying. Things don't bother you anymore. You become light-hearted and full of joy. The second symptom is that you encounter more and more meaningful coincidences in your life, more and more synchronicities. And this accelerates to the point where you actually experience the miraculous.
- Deepak Chopra, as quoted in Stop Worrying, Start Living : A Guide for the Spiritual Worrier/Warrior (2012) by Caroline Ravenall, p. 303

D

There are certain caveats when it comes to considering synchronicity in the light of creative possibilities. First, we cannot force a synchronicity, nor can we expect to find one on command. Ascertaining the difference between a true synchronicity and a psuedo-coincidence is the goal of forming good criteria. Second, we must always beware of "reading into" things and relying exclusively on personal, subjective meanings. In other words, some events may truly be synchronicity. Recognizing them and their significance can be highly beneficial. But attempting to see synchronicity in each and every event in our life is an almost certain prescription for paranoia and delusional pathology.
- Stephen J. Davis in Synchronicity: trick or treat?

E

F

As they entered the house intending to remove the unfortunate man against his will to a clinic, the lamp in the corridor shattered with a bang, so that suddenly they were all standing in darkness in the midst of the broken glass. The patient saw clearly that what had happened was a supernatural sign: just as the sun grew dark when Christ was crucified, this event was to him a confirmation that he was a savior who was being unjustly arrested. We, on the other hand, would say that he had projected his delusion into the event. Thus the synchronistic phenomenon, in itself meaningful, was instead covered up by a projection. To a person with normal consciousness the "meaning" of the occurrence would be quite different. A lamp, in contrast to the sun, is not a cosmic principle but an appliance invented by man; it usually symbolizes ego-consciousness in dreams and fantasies. The meaning of the unusual event would then more probably be expressed thus: In the moment of intense agitation caused by his imminent arrest the patient's ego-consciousness was shattered and a 'mental blackout' resulted. The patient, however, could not grasp this meaning.[...] Hence synchronistic events occur with conspicuous frequency at such times (although they also occur with normal people when an archetype is activated).
- Marie-Louise von Franz in Projection and Re-collection in Jungian Psychology: Reflections of the Soul (1985) p. 196,197

We could all be mediums, and all have absolute knowledge, if the bright light of our ego consciousness would not dim it. … I have myself observed that in states of extreme fatigue, when I am really dangerously physically exhausted, I suddenly get absolute knowledge; …
- Marie-Louise von Franz, in On Divination and Synchronicity (1992), p. 39

As soon as we notice that certain types of event "like" to cluster together at certain times, we begin to understand the attitude of the Chinese, whose theories of medicine, philosophy, and even building are based on a "science" of meaningful coincidences. The classical Chinese texts did not ask what causes what, but rather what "likes" to occur with what. One can see much the same underlying theme in astrology, and in the way various civilizations have depended on consulting oracles and paying attention to omens.
- Marie-Louise von Franz, in w:Man and His Symbols (1964), p. 227

G

It is well known that theoretical physicists cannot handle experimental equipment; it breaks whenever they touch it. Pauli was such a good theoretical physicist that something usually broke in the lab whenever he merely stepped across the threshold. A mysterious event that did not seem at first to be connected with Pauli's presence once occurred in Professor J. Franck's laboratory in Göttingen. Early one afternoon, without apparent cause, a complicated apparatus for the study of atomic phenomena collapsed. Franck wrote humorously about this to Pauli at his Zürich address and, after some delay, received an answer in an envelope with a Danish stamp. Pauli wrote that he had gone to visit Bohr and at the time of the mishap in Franck's laboratory his train was stopped for a few minutes at the Göttingen railroad station. You may believe this anecdote or not, but there are many other observations concerning the reality of the Pauli Effect!
- George Gamow, in Thirty Years That Shook Physics : The Story of Quantum Theory (1966), p. 64

People with schizophrenia develop thinking based on synchronicity, a term coined by psychoanalyst Carl Jung to describe thoughts connecting to outside events. Prophetic dreams are an example of synchronicity. People often observe synchronicity early in their illness and are intrigued by the spiritual and practical possibilities they pose. We believe that synchronicities indicate the possibility for the mind to magically affect the world, and often seek to do things that increase synchronicity in our lives. We begin to see connections--real or imagined--behind these events. The real events of synchronicity give strength to a mystical or religious view of the world that becomes the basis for our new way of thinking.
- Milt Greek in Schizophrenia: A Blueprint for Recovery (2012)

In order for the diverse events of our lives to be interwoven as intricately and artfully as synchronicity implies, there would seem to be a regulating intelligence underlying our world, a central principle organizing all of its elements like notes in a grand symphony of meaning… One needn’t think of this as involving a bearded, anthropomorphic deity on a heavenly throne somewhere, of course. The Neoplatonist philosopher Plotinus referred to this transcendent principle simply as 'the One,' while the Buddhists speak of 'Big Mind,' and the mystic geometers of old described a circle whose 'center was everywhere but whose circumference was nowhere.’ Whatever labels or terms one prefers, the phenomenon of synchronicity hints at a coordinating agency of unimaginable scope and subtlety whereby all the coincidences and correspondences of the world coalesce as if threads in a grand design, and within which our lives are holoscopically nested. Seen in this way, the synchronistic event can be seen as affording us a passing sideways glance, as if through a glass darkly, into the mind of God.
- Ray Grasse in Under A Sacred Sky (2015), p. 166.

Coincidence is but the tip of a far greater iceberg of meaning, the most visible feature of a pervasive framework of design and relationships that undergirds all experience. In a sense, the entire world is a vast matrix of "acausal connections," extending to every aspect of one's experience, from one's body and thoughts to every object and event in the environment. Said another way, everything is a "coincidence" insofar as everything co-incides.
- Ray Grasse in Under a Sacred Sky (2015), p. 163.

H

Synchronicity is an attempt to come up with an explanation for the occurrence of highly improbable coincidences between events where there is no causal link. It’s based on the premise that existing physics and mathematics cannot explain such things. This is wrong, however – standard science can explain them. That’s really the point of the improbability principle. What I have tried to do is pull out and make explicit how physics and mathematics, in the form of probability calculus does explain why such striking and apparently highly improbable events happen. There’s no need to conjure up other forces or ideas, and there’s no need to attribute mystical meaning or significance to their occurrence. In fact, we should expect them to happen, as they do, purely in the natural course of events.
- David Hand in Why Coincidences, Miracles And Rare Events Happen Every Day (Forbes) (2014)
Although they look remarkable and entirely unpredictable, in fact these events are to be expected. No mysteries are required to explain them—no superstitions, no miracles, no gods, no supernatural interventions or psychic powers, no synchronicity, seriality, morphic resonance, or any of the host of other imaginary imps. All that’s needed are the basic laws of probability.
- David Hand in The Improbability Principle: Why Coincidences, Miracles, and Rare Events Happen Every Day (2014) p. 40

I

We've all had the experience of talking about a long-lost friend with someone, and then out of the blue the phone rings and it's that same long-lost friend. Famous psychobabble quack Carl Jung called these occurrences "synchronicity." Skeptics regard these synchronicities events as mere coincidences. Others posit a pie-in-the-sky cosmic connection linking all things. Take a guess on which side of the argument I fall.
- "Mary Shannon" in In Plain Sight, Season 1, episode 6: High Priced Spread (6 July 2008), written by Matt Ward

J

But I have come across quite a number of cases where it was most astounding to find that two causal chains happened at the same time, but independent of each other, so that you could say they had nothing to do with each other. It’s really quite clear. For instance, I speak of a red car and at that moment a red car comes here. Now I haven’t seen the red car, because it wasn’t possible; it was hidden behind the building until just this moment when it suddenly appeared. Now many would say that this is an example of mere chance, but the Rhine experiment proves that these cases are not mere chance. Now it would be superstitious and false to say, “This car has appeared because here were some remarks made about a red car; it is a miracle that a red car has appeared.” It is not a miracle; it is just chance — but these chances happen more often than chance allows. That shows that there is something behind it.
- Carl Jung, C. G. Jung – Richard Evans Interviews Transcript of the 1957 Films

Your question concerning synchronicity and ideas of reference is very interesting indeed. I have often found that synchronistic experiences were interpreted by schizophrenics as delusions. Since archetypal situations are not uncommon in schizophrenia, we must also suppose that corresponding synchronistic phenomena will occur which follow exactly the same course as with so-called normal persons. The difference lies simply and solely in the interpretation. The schizophrenic's interpretation is morbidly narrow because it is mostly restricted to the intentions of other people and to his own ego-importance. The normal interpretation, so far as this is possible at all, is based on the philosophic premise of the sympathy of all things, or something of that kind. [...] If synchronicities occur in these cases it is because an archetypal situation is present, for whenever archetypes are constellated we find manifestations of the primordial unity. Thus the synchronistic effect should be understood not as psychotic but a normal phenomenon.
- Carl Jung, in Letter to L. Kling (1958)

We Shall Naturally look round in vain 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... The so-called "scientific view of the world" 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.
- Carl Jung, in Synchronicity : An Acausal Connecting Principle (1960), p. 5

A young woman I was treating had, at a critical moment, a dream in which she was given a golden scarab. While she was telling me this dream, I sat with my back to the closed window. Suddenly I heard a noise behind me, like a gentle tapping. I turned round and saw a flying insect knocking against the window-pane from the outside. I opened the window and caught the creature in the air as it flew in. It was the nearest analogy to a golden scarab one finds in our latitudes, a scarabaeid beetle, the common rose-chafer (Cetonia aurata), which, contrary to its usual habits had evidently felt the urge to get into a dark room at this particular moment. I must admit that nothing like it ever happened to me before or since.
- Carl Jung, in Synchronicity : An Acausal Connecting Principle (1960), p. 22

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.
- Carl Jung, in Synchronicity : An Acausal Connecting Principle (1960), p. 33

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. 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 practible. For this purpose there is created in the laboratory a situation which is artificially restricted to the question 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 leave Nature to answer out of her fullness.
- Carl Jung, in Synchronicity : An Acausal Connecting Principle (1960), p. 35

My example concerns a young woman patient who, in spite of efforts made on both sides, proved to be psychologically inaccessible. The difficulty lay in the fact that she always knew better about everything. Her excellent education had provided her with a weapon ideally suited to this purpose, namely a highly polished Cartesian rationalism with an impeccably "geometrical" idea of reality. After several fruitless attempts to sweeten her rationalism with a somewhat more human understanding, I had to confine myself to the hope that something unexpected and irrational would turn up, something that burst the intellectual retort into which she had sealed herself. Well, I was sitting opposite of her one day, with my back to the window, listening to her flow of rhetoric. She had an impressive dream the night before, in which someone had given her a golden scarab-a costly piece of jewellery. While she was still telling me this dream, I heard something behind me gently tapping on the window. I turned round and saw that it was a fairly large flying insect that was knocking against the window from outside in the obvious effort to get into the dark room. This seemed to me very strange. I opened the window and immediately and caught the insect in the air as it flew in. It was a scarabaeid beetle, or common rose-chafer, whose gold-green color most nearly resembles that of a golden scarab. I handed the beetle to my patient with the words "Here is your scarab." This broke the ice of her intellectual resistance. The treatment could now be continued with satisfactory results.
- Carl Jung, in Synchronicity : An Acausal Connecting Principle (1960), p. 109

While Freud was going on this way, I had a curious sensation. It was as if my diaphragm were made of iron and were becoming red-hot -- a glowing vault. And at that moment there was such a loud report in the bookcase, which stood right next to us, that we both started up in alarm, fearing the thing was going to topple over on us. I said to Freud: 'There, that is an example of a so-called catalytic exteriorization phenomenon.' 'Oh come,' he exclaimed. 'That is sheer bosh.' 'It is not,' I replied. 'You are mistaken, Herr Professor. And to prove my point I now predict that in a moment there will be another such loud report! 'Sure enough, no sooner had I said the words that the same detonation went off in the bookcase. To this day I do not know what gave me this certainty. But I knew beyond all doubt that the report would come again. Freud only stared aghast at me. I do not know what was in his mind, or what his look meant. In any case, this incident aroused his distrust of me, and I had the feeling that I had done something against him. I never afterward discussed the incident with him.

When coincidences pile up in this way, one cannot help being impressed by them – for the greater the number of terms in such a series, or the more unusual its character, the more improbable it becomes.
- Carl Jung, in Jung on Synchronicity and the Paranormal (1977) edited by Roderick Main, p. 91

K

L

Some scientists see a theoretical grounding for synchronicity in quantum physics, fractal geometry, and chaos theory. They are finding that the isolation and separation of objects from each other is more apparent than real; at deeper levels, everything — atoms, cells, molecules, plants, animals, people — participates in a sensitive, flowing web of information. Physicists have shown, for example, that if two photons are separated, no matter by how far, a change in one creates a simultaneous change in the other.
- Meg Lundstrom in A Wink from the Cosmos, Intuition Magazine (May 1996)

M

Any parapsychological effect that depends upon volition, upon the subject's intent, must differ from synchronicity.
- Victor Mansfield, in Distinguishing Synchronicity from Parapsychological Phenomena: An Essay in Honor of Marie-Louise von Franz (1998)

Synchronicity's lack of an adequate theoretical structure; its uncontrollability; and its reliance on subjectivity, feelings, and scientifically suspect terms such as meaning make it exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to test scientifically.
- Victor Mansfield, in Head and heart (2002) p. 178

Perhaps most of the people who have, or read about, such experiences accept them as being very unlikely, very uncommon, but not otherwise unusual. Most people seem to feel no need to appeal to supernatural explanations for these events. But we frequently encounter in pseudoscience the claim that such events are in fact miraculous, and that some mysterious force or influence is required to bring about the event at all. Instead of accepting such events as normal events of low probability, there are in fact international organizations devoted to the collection, preservation, and dissemination of examples of such “strange” occurrences, which the organization find highly significant, mysterious, and certainly NOT due to “mere coincidence.” There are even religious cults based on coincidence, or “synchronicity.” Often the examples are rendered more dramatic than otherwise by involving some famous person or media personality, or being part of some famous event in history.
- Dennis McFadden in Unlikely Events and Coincidence

N

O

P

In Princeton, I unexpectedly had the opportunity to discuss the synchronicity phenomenon on several occasions. In doing so, I preferred to use the term “meaning-correspondence” rather than “synchronicity,” so as to place more emphasis on meaning rather than on simultaneity and to link up with the old “correspondentia.”
- Wolfgang Pauli in letter to Jung, 1950

Many physicists and historians have of course advised me to break the connection between my Kepler essay and C.G. Jung in the English translation. On mature reflection however I have still decided not to do so: it is not important to be entirely loyal personally to C.G. Jung (and not so important to him either). But it is very important to remain loyal to my own unconscious. This presents me constantly with something that it calls ‘radioactivity’, which roughly coincides with what Jung calls ‘synchronicity’. I am indifferent to the astral cult of Jung’s circle, but that, i.e. this dream symbolism, makes an impact! The book itself is a fateful ‘synchronicity’ and must remain one. I am sure that defiance would have unhappy consequences as far as I am concerned. Dixi et salvavi animam meam!
- Wolfgang Pauli in letter to Markus Fierz, 1954

"One can see here the probable origin of the legend of the Pauli effect. This was a kind of spell he was supposed to cast on people or objects in his neighbourhood, particularly in physics laboratories, causing accidents of all sorts. Machines would stop running when he arrived in a laboratory, a glass apparatus would suddenly break, a leak would appear in a vacuum system, but none of these accidents would ever hurt or inconvenience Pauli himself. At one reception this Pauli effect was to be parodied, and a chandelier had been suspended carefully by a rope which was to be released when Pauli entered, causing the chandelier to crash down. But when Pauli came, the rope became wedged on a pulley and nothing happened—a typical example of the Pauli effect!"
- R. E. Peierls, 1900-1958 The Royal Society obituary of Wolfgang Pauli , Published 1 February 1960.DOI: 10.1098/rsbm.1960.0014

Earlier I suggested that true synchronicities are relatively rare events and should not be confused with the trivial coincidences of daily life. However, there are special occasions when, for a time at least, an inexplicable series of synchronicities appear to cluster around a person. This can happen when someone is in a time of crisis, close to a mental breakdown, pushing creativity to a limit - or when they have fallen head and heels in love! In such liminal states the hard and fast boundaries between subjectivity and objectivity temporarily dissolve and a constellation of synchronicities act to precipitate a major change in a person's life.
- F. David Peat, in Time, Synchronicity and Evolution, 1999

Q

R

We do not create our destiny; we participate in its unfolding. Synchronicity works as a catalyst toward the working out of that destiny.
- David Richo, in The Power of Coincidence: How Life Shows Us What We Need to Know, p. 18

Synchronicity is at work when something occurs that substantiates a belief or philosophy of life.
- David Richo, in "The Power of Coincidence: How Life Shows Us What We Need to Know", p. 18

Synchronicity is [thus] a major tool of soul-making, divulging immortal meanings through personal events so that we can find our way towards integration. We can find his way through practices.
- David Richo, in "The Power of Coincidence: How Life Shows Us What We Need to Know", p. 18

S

With one breath, with one flow
You will know
Synchronicity
A sleep trance, a dream dance,
A shared romance
Synchronicity
A connecting principle
Linked to the invisible
Almost imperceptible
Something inexpressible
- Sting, in "Synchronicity I", on Synchronicity (1983)

If we share this nightmare
Then we can dream
Spiritus mundi
If you act as you think
The missing link
Synchronicity
- Sting, in "Synchronicity I", on Synchronicity (1983)

A star fall, a phone call
It joins all
Synchronicity
It's so deep, it's so wide
You're inside
Synchronicity
Effect without a cause
Sub-atomic laws, scientific pause
Synchronicity....
- Sting, in "Synchronicity I", on Synchronicity (1983)

Mother chants her litany of boredom and frustration
But we know all her suicides are fake
Daddy only stares into the distance
There's only so much more that he can take
Many miles away something crawls from the slime
At the bottom of a dark Scottish lake
- Sting, in "Synchronicity II", on Synchronicity (1983)

Daddy grips the wheel and stares alone into the distance
He knows that something somewhere has to break
He sees the family home now, looming in his headlights
The pain upstairs that makes his eyeballs ache
Many miles away there's a shadow on the door
Of a cottage on the shore
Of a dark Scottish lake
- Sting, in "Synchronicity II", on Synchronicity (1983)

Jung believed there was a large pattern to life, that it wasn't just chaos. Our song Synchronicity II is about two parallel events that aren't connected logically or causally, but symbolically.
- Sting, on the song Synchronicity II, as quoted in "Official Police business" by Jay Cocks, in TIME magazine (15 August 1983), p. 50

Synchronicity has long been described as an ‘acausal’ connecting principle. However, the use of this descriptor is not only misleading, but also outright false on any seriously considered picture of synchronicity due to admissions of multiple types of causes. Furthermore, previous attempts to clarify the ‘acausal’ label have served only to further muddy the waters of discussion. A ‘multi-causal’ conception of synchronicity is proposed to ease and encourage future discussion in many disciplines.
- Zachary Stinson in A Multi-Causal Approach To Synchronicity (2011) Stance 4 p. 49

T

I have tried to distinguish a variety of forms of causality and synchronicity. I think it is important to make these distinctions conceptually, even if it is not clear how we can make all of them in practice. Not only should it improve the clarity of our communication about these matters; it might also protect us from a danger inherent in the concept of synchronicity. This danger is the temptation to mental laziness. If, in working with paranormal phenomena, I cannot get my experiments to replicate and cannot find any patterns in the results, then, as attached as I am to the idea of causality, it would be very tempting to say, "Well, it's synchronistic, it's forever beyond my understanding," and so (prematurely) give up trying to find a causal explanation. Sloppy use of the concept of synchronicity then becomes a way of being intellectually lazy and dodging our responsibilities.
- Charles T. Tart in Causality and Synchronicity - Steps Toward Clarification (1981)