synchronicity

Jung first used the term “synchronicity” only in 1930, in his memorial address for Richard Wilhelm,4 the translator of the I Ching, or Book of Changes.

Space, time, and causality, the triad of classical physics, would then be supplemented by the synchronicity factor and become a tetrad,

that in principle new points of view are not as a rule discovered in territory that is already known, but in out-of-the-way places that may even be avoided because of their bad name.

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.

Natural laws are statistical truths, which means that they are completely valid only when we are dealing with macrophysical 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 experimental method of inquiry aims at establishing regular events which can be repeated. Consequently, unique or rare events are ruled out of account.

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.

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.

Tao never does; Yet through it all things are done. [Ch. XXXVII.]