Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1exp 11/4/83; site hlexa.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!harpo!eagle!mhuxl!mhuxj!mhuxi!mhuxh!hlhop!hlexa!hsf From: hsf@hlexa.UUCP Newsgroups: net.books,net.philosophy Subject: Time and Immortality (part 10) Message-ID: <751@hlexa.UUCP> Date: Wed, 7-Dec-83 18:27:09 EST Article-I.D.: hlexa.751 Posted: Wed Dec 7 18:27:09 1983 Date-Received: Fri, 9-Dec-83 08:24:29 EST Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Short Hills, NJ Lines: 133 (c) Copyright 1983 by Henry Friedman (Copying for personal use by users of net is authorized.) What a Coincidence -- (continued) Various nonpsychic methods of divining the future -- such as astrology, "I Ching," and Tarot cards -- were also con- sidered by Jung to be synchronistic. Jung, himself, used astrology as an aid in his practice of clinical psychology. He viewed the blending of the 12 signs of the zodiac in a patient's birth chart as closely related to his own concept of archetypal personality patterns. The term "archetypes," as used by Jung, refers to mythic images and behavioral pat- terns from the "collective unconscious" of our species. (In later efforts to clarify his concept of the collective unconscious (see "Man and His Symbols"), Jung explained that he had concluded that the tendency to form archetypal images -- though not the specific images themselves -- was genetically transmitted.) Some modern astrologers quite agree with the astronomers who scoff at the idea that the planets either cause or influence human events (or personality traits). Like Jung, they believe that a planetary configuration that allows them to predict a series of events is, itself, simply one event in a synchronistic cluster. In other words, astrological phenomena would also be another example of "meaningful coin- cidences." The planetary configuration would no more believed to be the cause of the predicted event than a clock is believed to cause the sun to rise. A debate about the possible validity of astrology is not within the scope of this series (and would be heavy baggage indeed for my thesis to bear in the face of a largely techn- ical audience). But although none of the ideas developed here depend upon astrology, we shall see that the subject suggests interesting and useful ramifications. In my own fairly extensive experience with the subject, I have found that the results of a complete natal horoscope are very dif- ferent from the meaningless generalities of newspaper sun- sign columns, are usually impressive (to me) and often star- tlingly accurate. (Just an example: I once asked a young woman whose chart I had just completed whether she had had a particularly serious accident during a specific week several years in the past. I had just met her, after a relative of hers had asked me to do the chart as a "blind test." She replied that she had fallen off a horse that week and had broken her back.) But I realize that a belief in astrology is anathema to most scientists, and it is not my intent here to try to convince anyone otherwise. However, if astrology *were* a valid synchronistic phenomenon, that would be especially significant because of astrology's cyclical nature. This would mean that many coincidences are not only statistically meaningful, but are also of a recurring nature. Ancient civilizations believed that the seemingly eternal rising and setting of the sun and changing of the seasons were, in themselves, proof of mankind's immortality. And recurring cycles of meaningful coincidences *are* central to the concept to be developed here, as will be further explained in the next chapter. In the first chapter, two opposing philosophies of time were discussed (time as a process of change versus the philosophy of the "manifold"). Still another widely held concept of time, prior to the 19th century, was that time was cyclical, i.e., that it would eventually repeat itself. One ancient Greek belief, related to the above discussion of astrology, was that events of any given day would be exactly repeated every Great Year. A Great Year would would have passed when the planets, Sun, and Moon returned to the precise relative configuration as had existed on the day in question. Although I do not want to be misunderstood as espousing such cyclical views of time -- that time will come full circle in an exact repetition -- several interesting parallels between the concept to be developed in this series and those ancient concepts will become apparent. When we call a coincidence "meaningful," we often mean several different things: 1) that the coincidence was recog- nizable, that is, that it was comprised of elements that we perceived to be related, 2) that the striking nature of the coincidence appeared to be statistically meaningful (not within normal chance expectancy), 3) that the coincidence appeared to carry an aura of the mysterious or spiritual (Jung's favorite word for this is "numinous"), and 4) that the experience had an inner personal significance for us. Jung strongly emphasized the final two points and stated that all synchronistic experiences involve archetypal images or dreams. While I am not personally convinced that mythic archetypal symbols are always involved, this does seem often to be the case. I will relate one such personal synchronistic experience that occurred several years ago, a few weeks before my mother's unexpected death. Shortly after falling asleep, I had wakened with a start, thinking that someone had called out to me from outside. I immediately felt a deeply depressing awareness of death -- not like a premonition of impending death, but rather a full sense of my mortality. The next morning, after breakfast, I looked outside and saw a large reddish songbird lying dead on the deck, a short distance from the bedroom. It was one of a beautiful pair that I had greatly admired. I associated the bird's death with my experience during the night, with the thought that I had perhaps sensed that the bird lay out there in the dark- ness, dying. Later, after my mother's death, I recalled that Jung had written that images of birds lighting on a house were arche- typal symbols of death. I also recalled that I had carried the bird through the house in a plastic bag to reach the entrance, on the floor below. I thought of the old super- stition that if a bird flew into one's house, someone in the family would soon die. Despite its weakness as an example of striking coincidence, the above synchronistic experience does qualify as a classic example of archetypal meaning. But one of the problems with Jung's contention that synchronicity ranks with the funda- mental laws of nature is that experiences like mine, above, seem too subjective to reflect a fundamental law of nature. Is there any scientific support for synchronicity, or must we just dismiss the concept as another superstition, or as an unfortunate example of undisciplined eccentricity on the part of Jung? As mentioned earlier in this chapter, the exciting realm of quantum physics, where causality is subor- dinated to probability, seems to offer such a beginning. (Chapter to be continued in part 11.)