The Invited Philosopher
Sofia
This is the first virtual dinner/lunch I’ve had. Sofia had dinner in Oldenburg, Germany, while I had lunch in Miami, Florida, USA.
2 Menus
- Sofia’s dinner: German Abendbrot ohne Brot (A colorful plate of cheese, prosciutto, olives, pickles, almonds, walnuts, blueberries, raspberries)
- Paty’s lunch: Korma fish curry with Basmati rice and a side of lentils
- Sofia’s Wine: Sangre De Toro, 2018
- Paty’s Wine: 2018 Monterustico Bianco, G.D. Vajra*
*Courtesy of a friend who brought it to my last party
The Philosophy
Our topic was Synchronicity, a concept introduced by Carl Gustav Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. Synchronicity is defined as a non-casual event in the external world which coincides with things going on in the internal world, such as our thoughts, feelings and dreams. Two good articles on the topic are this Medium article and this philosophical analysis linking Taoism and Jung. Jung’s earliest thinking on synchronicity was prompted by a conversation over dinner with Albert Einstein sometime between 1909 and 1913. Einstein was developing his first theory of relativity and this started Jung thinking about the relativity of time and space and their psychic conditionality. The concept of Synchronicity then emerged during the time when Jung was studying the “I Ching”, a Taoist Chinese book he studied during the summer of 1920.
The Summary
Jung believed that the human psyche was composed of three components:
- The ego (conscious mind)
- The personal unconscious
- The collective unconscious
The collective unconscious is a collection of knowledge and imagery that every person is born with and is shared by all human beings due to ancestral experience. The collective unconscious is thought to be a pseudoscientific theory because it is difficult to scientifically prove that images of mythology and other cultural symbols are inherited and present at birth. The deepest levels of the collective unconscious participate in the underlying patterns of the external world of nature, and when the two are brought together a significant moment of synchronicity is experienced. It may trigger an event that happens in our life which is seemingly beyond the realm of chance without explanation or cause. Such coincidences are meaningful only to the person who experiences them. Carl Jung used synchronicity in therapy to help clients derive value from coincidental events. A client may overcome negative thought patterns and self-limiting beliefs by analyzing the meaning of seemingly coincidental events.
Analysis
Personal Synchronicity Examples
Synchronicity examples are fun to discuss and share. We all have them. There were more, but here are 3 we shared during our dinner/lunch.
A rent-free apartment
Sofia, who lives in Lima Peru, loves to spend time in Germany for months at a time. She is always considering moving there or at least spending some time there. She told me that she had been looking to rent an apartment in Oldenburg, Germany, to stay for 3 months. She had sent numerous emails to different renters, and as she put it, she was too honest in revealing that she planned to work virtually from the apartment and teach music, or give violin lessons. Most renters declined to rent their apartment with the explanation that the neighbors might complain about the music. Then she remembered that she did once housesit for a family in Oldenburg and she wrote to them to ask if they knew someone who was renting an apt. The answer she received was surprising. They answered that they have an apartment and that the current renter was leaving. Although they would not rent it out and keep it for their adult children to use, she could stay there for the 3 months, and also housesit again while they were on vacation for 2 weeks and without the need to pay rent.
We can all relate to events like that in our life. I have many to tell, but often we call it a “lucky coincidence”. Religious people may call it “the hand of God”. Jung calls it synchronicity, a coming together of the universe to fulfill our conscious or unconscious desires or help us along in some meaningful way.
Wine in the fridge
This synchronicity event that occurred to me today is more of a lucky coincidence but I call it synchronicity because I was in a sad mood and needed to make the event feel special. I always have red wine but I never drink red wine before the evening, and for my lunch I needed perhaps a fine white or rose wine. I never have good white wine in the fridge, except for a bottle I use for cooking, and as I opened the fridge, I looked for an alternative, and see the cooking wine and a Prosecco I bought recently. I cannot drink the whole bottle of Prosecco and it will lose its bubbles if I store the rest back in the fridge. Then suddenly, what a surprise! I see a wine bottle there that was not there before. It looks like a fine wine and I guess, one of my friends must have brought it for my last party (although they should all know that I usually only drink red wine). Well, the wine was delicious, and I still have to find out who brought it. Or I will thank the universe!
3 Same-day messages by 3 different-people about avoiding responsibility
Someone I know, shared with me a few days ago that he was surprised to hear the same message from three different people on the same day. The message was that he avoids responsibility. He more or less agrees that he avoids responsibility but he does not know why he received the message 3 times on the same day. The first time he heard it was during a therapy session when his psychologist noted that he seems to avoid responsibility. The second time that same day, his girlfriend called him “Mr. No responsibilities” because he does not want to plan for a future together. The third time he heard it on the same day, was when his colleague at work asked why he does not seek a higher position, like a director role, and when he replied that it would be too stressful, his colleague noted that he seems to avoid responsibility. It is unclear what he will do with the message as he sticks to patterns and is not open to new insights. Yet, it was a message from the universe, revealed through the consciousness of three different people. Perhaps it is a message to embrace being more confident, generous and giving, and that there is joy in opening up to new ways of being.
Magical Thinking and Superstitions
At our lunch/dinner, Sofia argued that one could judge these coincidences as magical thinking or superstition. She mentioned that the family who invited her to live in the apartment are religious people and would say that it was a “sign of God”. Taoism, which influenced the concept of synchronicity, is rooted in “correlative thinking,” a sort of perennial philosophy of Chinese civilization, also described as “cosmological resonance” or: “the principles of the cosmos are the same as the principles of the mind”.
The identification of opposite personality types (e.g., introversion versus extroversion) gave Jung the insight that every judgment made by an individual is conditioned by how his or her personality type relates to the surrounding world. He adopted the Taoist view of people living in harmony with the Tao and thereby avoiding falling into one extreme or the other, neither introvert nor extrovert, to use Jung’s terms, but striking a balance between the two. To accept the Chinese interpretation of mind, modern Westerners might need to drop for the moment their fixation on rational and causal thought as the only valid thinking. All of this confirmed Jung’s intuition of a connection that is potentially present in each of us between our inner psychic realm and the external cosmos.
Does it help to be aware of it?
As with any concept, life lesson, or philosophy that was studied systematically by brilliant luminaries in the pursuit of a better understanding of life, the answer is yes, it helps. When we become aware of “synchronicity” in our life, we should ask ourselves: What does it mean?
As in the 3 more personal examples, the meanings may be different but, in a way, obvious. We may discover something of importance that benefits our life, for example, that we should not fear responsibility, that the universe has our back. Or it could be a much simpler, straightforward message that we are on the right track, as in the case of the free-rent apartment, or the wine in the fridge. It encourages us to be more in tune with the moment and the universe, to grow our intuition, to worry less, to wait for opportunities, and to go with the flow.
Below is a commentary by Jung about human suffering. I think that synchronicity helps us avoid suffering by reaching consciousness (or enlightenment) quicker, if we are aware and respond to those synchronicity events.
“… the atmosphere of suffering, seeking, and striving is common to all civilized peoples: it is the tremendous experiment of becoming conscious, which nature has imposed on mankind, uniting the most diverse cultures in a common task.”
― Jung in his Commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower