Over the past decade, the hunt for genetic connections with behavior has intensified. For any experience, there must be a physical activity in the brain—otherwise, the experience has no basis. Using this irrefutable assumption, researchers have looked for the seat of anger, criminal behavior, gender identification, the sense of self, and many other aspects of human nature. This includes spirituality. Where is God in the brain? To many neuroscientists, that’s not only a valid question but the only one worth asking, insofar as spiritual experiences have any reality.
Now we are hearing about “God in the genes,” as genetics overtakes neuroscience for the top spot in explaining the roots of human experience. Where the brain operates only in the present, genetics peers deep into the past. A geneticist would want to know what evolutionary advantage early humans got from being spiritual—in the broadest sense of the word—that led to a better chance to survive. This whole line of inquiry, whether we’re taking about the brain or our genes, makes sense if you are a materialist. But it runs the danger of saying that spirituality is only about the physical side of the experience, as if music could never be discussed except by looking at pianos and radios, the physical side of delivering the musical experience.
The materialist explanation is filled with philosophical flaws, but instead of focusing on that, it’s more productive to ask how the brain and genes relate to spiritual experience. The physical side must be accounted for, without making it the whole story. To explore a new kind of explanation that embraces both the physical and non-physical, let’s examine an experience that most people have had. Without experiencing God, angels, the soul, or other traditionally religious things, almost everyone has had at least one or two inexplicable coincidences in their lives.
Synchronicity is the commonly used term for a meaningful coincidence, such as thinking someone’s name and having that person telephone a few seconds later, or opening a book at random and finding the answer to a problem you’ve been wrestling with. Synchronicity doesn’t feel random, which is how it is differentiated from coincidences that have no meaning but happen by chance. The spiritual link involves how to explain a meaningful coincidence. When someone is rescued through a string of chance events, did God intervene? If a car is stranded by the side of the road and a stranger appears out of nowhere to offer help, is God answering a need or a prayer? Events without causes lead to all kinds of unusual explanations.
The term synchronicity was coined by the eminent Swiss psychologist Carl Jung for a phenomenon he experienced with clients in psychotherapy. He first publically discussed synchronicity in a short essay describing synchronicity as an “acausal connecting principle.” By using the word acausal he is pointing to the non-local nature of synchronicity. Non-locality is one of the major principles in quantum physics. Non-locality refers to behavior between particles that doesn’t need a specific cause or location in spacetime. Hitting a billiard ball with a cue entails both a cause and a location. The location is the point where the tip of the cue strikes the ball. The force of the strike is the cause that moves the ball.
But in the quantum domain there is a mystery known as action at a distance, where two particles react to each other instantaneously, even though they can be separated by light years. The action occurs without regard for distance or the limitation of the speed of light. Action at a distance has been popularly explained as “You tickle the universe here, and it laughs over there.” Two particles that mirror each other’s behavior are said to be entangled, although the mechanism behind action at a distance is unknown. Entanglement fits the mathematical model underlying quantum mechanics, and that is what counts when physics is arriving at reliable, precise calculations.
In the everyday world, however, non-locality is about people, not particles. It’s part of human experience to have a meaningful coincidence happen that feels too profound—or too spooky—to feel random. A strict materialist would dismiss such feelings as unreliable and subjective, but “meaningful” isn’t simply subjective. Finding meaning in our lives, from any source, is essential. So how can we fit synchronicity into a broader context?
The key is to connect inner and outer, because synchronicity is about an event “out there” that has sudden meaning “in here.” To make the connection, nine principles apply to genuinely synchronous coincidences.
- Synchronicity is a conspiracy of improbabilities. The entangled events break the boundaries of statistical probability).
- The improbable events conspiring to create the synchronistic event are acausally related to each other. (Buddhist traditions call this interdependent co-arising. This is the equivalent of non-local correlation.)
- Synchronistic events are orchestrated in the non-local domain.
- As we become aware of synchronistic events, we move to higher or more expanded states of consciousness.
- Synchronistic events are actually the result of an intention, which organizes the needed outcome. (The intention may have been introduced consciously or unconsciously.)
- Synchronistic events vary in importance. They can seem incidental or can change the course of a person’s life.
- Synchronistic events affect our emotions the way random coincidences don’t. A synchronous event creates the experience of emotional fulfillment and joy.
- Synchronistic events allow us to discover the meaning and purpose of our life.
- Synchronistic events are personal. In effect they are messages from our non-local self.
Taken together, these principles enable us to receive clues about the essential unity of two realities that seem to be separate: the inner world of thoughts, feelings, memories, fantasies, desires, and intentions, and the outer world of spacetime events. The inner and outer are the same field, one non-dual consciousness that simultaneously creates both the subjective world and the objective world.
Therefore, synchronicity isn’t simply a passing anomaly that can be shrugged off. Something crucial is happening. This piece is the first in a series of articles, in the next post we’ll discuss the implications of that something as it applies to everyday life.
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This article was co-written by Deepak Chopra and Jordan Flesher
Deepak Chopra, MD is the author of more than 80 books with twenty-two New York Times bestsellers. He serves as the founder of The Chopra Foundation and co-founder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing. His latest book is The 13th Disciple: A Spiritual Adventure.
Jordan Flesher offers sessions for those interested in exploring, developing and healing their own consciousness and psychology in a therapeutic setting. Jordan is in school to be a psychologist. The type of work that he does with clients is very in depth and is based in the view that therapy is an art. As a result, the work is very intuitive, artistic, and open to the mystery of consciousness, synchronicity, dreams and energy. His work is different than most psychological therapies, in that, most therapies try to get the individual to conform or “adjust” to society, whereas, Jordan’s work is to get the individual to be free within society, and to access a creative-rebellion within themselves that still allows them to function and integrate themselves within society, while not being a slave to society. This is based off of the saying of ancient Sages that to “be in the world, yet not of it” is the highest form of spiritual enlightenment. Jordan’s work is heavily influenced by some of the following rebel-hearts, and rebel-geniuses: Jiddu Krishnamurti, Osho, Alan Watts, Colin Wilson, Rainer Maria Rilke, Rumi, Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, Deepak Chopra, A.H. Almaas, Anais-Nin, R.D. Laing, Fredrich Nietzche, Micahel Foucault and many more. (Facebook) (Twitter) – Jordan can also be reached privately by phone (1-312-730-8322) or via e-mail (troyofis@gmail.com)
aren’t sound waves also an integral aspect to the physicality of music?
I know Jung and Pauli used the term “acausal” but this also seemed problematic for me. How can things be related acausally? Isn’t this an oxymoron? What is the nature of the “acausal” connection if it’s not causal?
I think that what we mean by “Acausal” is that for exemple, two things happening in synchronicity, are not coming from a common bound. In fact, these two things are not related, but the fact that they happen both, make an emergent properties, that make sens to the perceiver.
I think that, what make them synchronous (meaningful…), is the link through the simultaneity.
The relationship between them, is like everything in nature, you have, hydrogen, you have oxygen, and then nature create water ! No link between O2 and H, but put together, you have something bigger, with new properties, differents behaviors and so on…
IMO Synchronicities are everywhere, the architecture of the universe itself is based on this principle.
Well Said,
coincidence or two things that happen at the same time?
Yes you are accurate. The concept of a- causal connectedness is a contradiction in terms. My 50 year research of the nature of synchronicities indicates that whereas linear scientific causality is an inadequate explanatory principle re synchronicities it is not a good reason to dismiss the potential utility of utilizing an alternative form of causality such as psychodynamic causality which I have successfully done in my work on
Demystifying Meaningful Coincidences (Synchronicities): The Evolving Self, The personal Unconscious, and The Creative Process. See amazon
Funny…In my thesis “Managing paradigms to create work-life synergies in executive counseling: a hermeneutic and individual phenomenological approach” (ISBN 978-90-77983-96-6) published by Uitgeverij Quist (Leidschendam- the Netherlands) in June 2013, this topic was also addressed:
P. 46) Moreover, parallelism–the doctrine that mind and matter function together synchronously but without any causal connection–could prove helpful in appreciating the profound significance and value of the relationship between organization and synthesis in a practical and psychological sense (Assagioli, 1975).
P.133) To underpin the notion of the cosmic dream, it is worth noting that quantum physicists, neurophysiologists, and biochemists have concluded that the growth of the universe as an organized complexity was not accidental, that the dialectics in matter alone could never have led to its high degree of order, and that some nonmaterial living-principle must have preceded it (Davies, 1994; Gribbin, 1989; Ouweneel, 1988). Taoists (500 BC) called this vital force chi’s (Holbrook, 1981). The Greek philosopher Anaxagoras (500–428 BC) coined the self-organizing principle nous (spirit) (as cited in Bor et al, 1997). The nonmaterial living-principle could somehow be the glue holding the common cosmic dream together without taking any space or time; it would enable one to grasp its reflection as down-to-earth holism, namely the microscopic and macroscopic unity of the universe (Capra, 1991).
P.134) Thanks to the metaphysical self-regulating living-principle, i.e., the guru within each person, one always gets what one needs to reawaken to his or her spiritual nature, as indicated by the holistic saying that “we might not get what we want, but always what we need.” For this reason, people in the highest stage of spiritual psycho-synthesis might experience a sense of communion with their outer encounters, as though everything in their lives fit together as a profoundly meaningful solved puzzle (see Posidonius’ cosmic sympathy; as cited in Hamilyn, 1996). They have internalized the basic principle that their intentions when making choices decide the final outcome of their lives…. Jung introduced the term synchronicity to refer to meaningful acausal connections between inner and outer events (Andersen, 2004; McFarlane, 2000; Meier, 2001), that is, simultaneous occurrences that are meaningfully related but not causally. In my view, Jung’s acausal connecting principle is a causal connecting principle in a metaphysical sense, namely the nonmaterial living-principle (Davies, 1994; Gribbin, 1989; Ouweneel, 1988), the Spirit (Assagioli, 1975), or the guru within each human.
A very interesting piece, thank you!
It is not new that body and spirit are one and the same and are separate entities at the same time, intertwined and inseparable, as paradoxical as it may sound. I find lots of answers in the Kabbalah, as it explains how the spirit can be afflicted by influences or simply go “out of tune”. There is lots of explanation about this here: http://gershnubirg.com/spiritual-protection/ There is lots of wisdom in such theories, and the benefits of practicing them are unmistakable.
Thank you, I am very grateful for your thoughtful discourse. Being a conscious being observing my thoughts as I read this, it is intriguing and well its lots of fun to entertain ones mind, enquiring why we are conscious… and observing the thinking patterns leading to deeper thinking patterns. who supposed what model and how can it be tested and what is in and out of the model….. all the desire of the mind to explain something, making it real.. really.? all a delusion really?. The mind wants to draw one into reasoning when there is no reasoning… and now i am drawn in. … Well thats my two bits anyway.
Additional comments: I’m in the Tam and Brandon camp. My 50 year research of these gloriously mysterious and challenging anomalies indicates that they are able to be scientifically investigated. Additionally – at least for the ones I have investigated as an outgrowth from my work as a psychoanalysis both with my own as well as some of my patient’s synchronicities – it is clear that the ‘messages’ are derived from a combination of their conscious and personal unconscious idiosyncratic creative processes utilized to resolve a seemingly unsolvable personal problem in the areas of being (identity), and. or doing (directing libido towards the attainment of meaningful connections i.e. with people, work, etc. My theory is fully explained in my book called: DEMYSTIFYING MEANINGFUL COINCIDENCES (SYNCHRONICITIES): The Evolving Self, The Personal Unconscious, and The Creative Self. See Amazon. I expect the paper edition to be released in three or so months. If further interested see my web site http://www.gibbsonline.com and press the theories tabs for some original papers on this fascinating subject matter. One good one is on the “Scarab” synchronicity in which I indicate that it was probably much more significant for Jung than it was for his patient. The patterns we search for are a synthesis of streams of information including cognition, messy feelings, intuitions, bodily sensations, and experiences of fate, luck, possible karma, serendipity, and the likes all combined into what I refer to as experiential logic (equivalent to what is referred to as psychodynamics.)
Last Sunday week I woke early and watched a fantastic old English movie called ‘The man upstairs’ (1958, starring Richard Attenborough) on the ABC here in Australia. When it finished I pulled out my dusty old copy of Leonard Maltin’s Movie Guide. Silly old me, I looked up the movie under ‘T’ for “The” and couldn’t believe it wasn’t in there! Three days later when my daughter was doing her homework I turned from helping her and reached back to grab the book and thought to myself “I wonder what movie I will open it at?” The first film I looked at – from over17,000 movies – was “Man upstairs,The.1958, starring Richard Attenborough” – obviously under ‘M’. The very film I had been looking for a few days earlier, in a book I had not picked up for years. This reminded me of the evening a few years ago when I wondered if Ingmar Bergman was still alive or if he had died without me finding out. The next day I saw on the news that he had passed away overnight (our time). I had not watched television or heard any news in the day preceding this as the surf was up and I was in a very different place than online … as we know it anyway. I wonder whether the fact that I am a film lover and surf film maker contributed to the synchronicity?