“Often the hands will solve a mystery
that the intellect has struggled with in vain” (CG Jung)
Visual Journaling musings:
SYNCHRONICITY AND THE END OF THE RED BOOK
Friday
February 20th
The experience of synchronicity
gives us the sense of being
on the receiving end or downstream side of a
much greater process…
Combs & Holland,
“Synchroncity:Through the Eyes of
Science, Myth, and the Trickster” p. 39
Synchronicity can be thought of as a moment of
correspondence between an outer event and inner meaning, accompanied by a
feeling of numinosity (a felt
experience of the cosmic or divine, often accompanied by a sense of awe or even
fear, with a sense of purpose and wonder). Most importantly Jung understood
this phenomena to be acausal, that
is, standing outside time and space.
Jungian analyst Joseph Cambray
has written about Jung’s Red Book that “elaborating the scientific
understanding of synchronicity is so directly and intimately tied to the end of
his work on The Red Book.” (p. 50,
“Entrances and Exits”). What is he saying here?
(Here we will prepare our heads
for some mind bending. Stand and shake and rattle)
“The end of prophecy,
as a personal calling or event in this narrative, is concomitant with the
awareness that the conscious mind is not the true author of our visions/dreams/imaginings
but that the personal sense of self rests upon the archetypal. [note the small
“s”]. Such awareness is probably most readily grasped in contemporary idiom by
embracing a view of the self as an emergent phenomenon…” (Cambray, p. 51)
Emergence is the study of the formation of new life, in
a nutshell. Complexity theory shows that new systems emerge when there is just
the right amount of imbalance; an asymmetry or a weak link (the material we worked with in The Rupture of the
Mandala). It is in this break, or weakness that new patterns, behaviors,
molecules, emerge.
The
importance of weak links in stabilizing complex systems is that flexibility is
provided. The synchronistic event is a kind of disruption of our usual habitual
consciousness that provides the fertile ground for a new way of being, new way
of thinking, a new perspective.
Synchronicity can be
seen as the intersect of the material and psychic worlds. The event affects
both the matter and psyche.
What have been synchronistic events in your life? What was the ego's response?
Dr. Joseph Cambray
essay “Entrances and Exits” in the 2014 publication The Red Book: Reflections on CG Jung’s Liber Novus (Kirsch &
Hogenson, eds.)
