Synchronicity: On the Spectrum of Mind and Matter Saturday, April 12, 2014 2:30-4:30 pm Past Event Watch the video » “I have no doubt that the placing side by side of the points of view of a physicist and a psychologist will also prove to be a form of reflection.” —Wolfgang Pauli “Since physicists are the only people nowadays who would be able to deal with such a concept successfully, it is from a physicist that I hope to meet with critical understanding, although…the empirical basis seems to lie wholly in the realm of psychic phenomena.” —C. G. Jung The concept of synchronicity was developed by the Nobel Laureate quantum physicist, Wolfgang Pauli and the Swiss psychiatrist C. Jung in the middle of the twentieth century. It stressed the empirical fact of meaningful coincidence—a special sense of coincidence of two or more causally unrelated events which have the same or similar meaning. Synchronistic phenomena cannot in principle be associated with conceptions of causality, and thus the interconnection of meaningful coincident factors must be thought of as acausal. While such occurrences are improbable from the perspective of causality, they are not infrequent. How may such phenomena be noted and approached today? Both physics and psychology explore mind on a continuum with matter, and so operate at the conjunctions of the mental and material. As an emergent meeting in the No-Time of fundamental physics and the tensed Time of daily life, synchronicity moves toward meaning at intersections of the objective and subjective, met both in our experimental sciences and in our felt registers of experience. Participants: Harald Atmanspacher Physicist, The Collegium Helveticum (ETH Zurich, Switzerland) View Papers / Presentations » Harald Atmanspacher, PhD, is a senior scientist and staff member at Collegium Helveticum, University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, since 2007. After his PhD in physics at Munich University (1986), he worked as a research scientist at the Max-Planck-Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics at Garching until 1998. Then he served as head of the theory group… read more » Joseph Cambray Jungian Analyst; past President of the International Association of Analytical Psychology Joseph Cambray is a Jungian Analyst, and past President of the International Association of Analytical Psychology. He has been a faculty member at Harvard Medical School, Center for Psychoanalytic Studies, at Massachusetts General Hospital, Psychiatry Department, and adjunct faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute. He is the former US Editor of the Journal of Analytical Psychology…. read more » Edgar Choueiri Professor of Applied Physics, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Associated Faculty, Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Program in Plasma Physics, Princeton University Professor Edgar Choueiri is Director of Princeton University’s Program in Engineering Physics, and Director of Princeton’s Electric Propulsion and Plasma Dynamics Laboratory (EPPDyL). He is tenured Full Professor in the Applied Physics Group at the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department, and associated faculty at the Astrophysical Sciences Department/Program in Plasma Physics at Princeton University. He… read more » Farzad Mahootian Faculty of Liberal Studies, New York University Farzad Mahootian is a Clinical Associate Professor of Global Liberal Studies at New York University since 2010. He has an interdisciplinary background (PhD Philosophy, Fordham; MS Chemistry, Georgetown). His research focuses on interactions between philosophy, science and society within the mythological imagination of technoscience and with guidance from process philosophy, biomimicry, artificial intelligence, and premodern… read more » Beverley Zabriskie Jungian Analyst, a founding faculty member and past President of New York’s Jungian Psychoanalytic Association Beverley Zabriskie is a Jungian Analyst, a founding faculty member and past President of New York’s Jungian Psychoanalytic Association (JPA; associate editor, Journal of Analytical Psychology, (JAP) London; Board Member of The Philemon Foundation which is producing the unpublished works of Jung. Her sixty publications include “Time and Tao in Synchronicity” in The Pauli-Jung Conjecture… read more »
Harald Atmanspacher Physicist, The Collegium Helveticum (ETH Zurich, Switzerland) View Papers / Presentations » Harald Atmanspacher, PhD, is a senior scientist and staff member at Collegium Helveticum, University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, since 2007. After his PhD in physics at Munich University (1986), he worked as a research scientist at the Max-Planck-Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics at Garching until 1998. Then he served as head of the theory group… read more »
Joseph Cambray Jungian Analyst; past President of the International Association of Analytical Psychology Joseph Cambray is a Jungian Analyst, and past President of the International Association of Analytical Psychology. He has been a faculty member at Harvard Medical School, Center for Psychoanalytic Studies, at Massachusetts General Hospital, Psychiatry Department, and adjunct faculty at Pacifica Graduate Institute. He is the former US Editor of the Journal of Analytical Psychology…. read more »
Edgar Choueiri Professor of Applied Physics, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and Associated Faculty, Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Program in Plasma Physics, Princeton University Professor Edgar Choueiri is Director of Princeton University’s Program in Engineering Physics, and Director of Princeton’s Electric Propulsion and Plasma Dynamics Laboratory (EPPDyL). He is tenured Full Professor in the Applied Physics Group at the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department, and associated faculty at the Astrophysical Sciences Department/Program in Plasma Physics at Princeton University. He… read more »
Farzad Mahootian Faculty of Liberal Studies, New York University Farzad Mahootian is a Clinical Associate Professor of Global Liberal Studies at New York University since 2010. He has an interdisciplinary background (PhD Philosophy, Fordham; MS Chemistry, Georgetown). His research focuses on interactions between philosophy, science and society within the mythological imagination of technoscience and with guidance from process philosophy, biomimicry, artificial intelligence, and premodern… read more »
Beverley Zabriskie Jungian Analyst, a founding faculty member and past President of New York’s Jungian Psychoanalytic Association Beverley Zabriskie is a Jungian Analyst, a founding faculty member and past President of New York’s Jungian Psychoanalytic Association (JPA; associate editor, Journal of Analytical Psychology, (JAP) London; Board Member of The Philemon Foundation which is producing the unpublished works of Jung. Her sixty publications include “Time and Tao in Synchronicity” in The Pauli-Jung Conjecture… read more »
To the Participants: I’ve just registered for your roundtable. I look forward to meeting all of you and learning first-hand about synchronicity’s place among or within theories of consciousness. With thanks and best regards, Sander Rabin MD JD Reply
I have been working in the area of Integral Psychology, developed from Ken Wilber’s Integral Theory, especially re ego psychology, derived from Wilber’s early works. When the ego is defined as ‘the seat of localized consciousness,’ then we can define ego as localized, embodied subjectivity, which can develop in two ways: (1) Psychologically (Wilber’s “structure-stages”) and (2) in self-awareness in (or as) gross-waking, subtle, causal, and in combination, non-dual awareness. The category divisions are only conveniences for thinking about and communicating about, as all ideas are; and I believe that Wilber is to consciousness theory what Freud was to psychodynamic theory. I-theory rests on a post-scientific paradigm and explains synchronicities as occurrences where gross-waking consciousness (and gross body) and subtle consciousness (and subtle body), at the least, are both activated in explicit (not only implicit) awareness. I hope this made some sense. I look forward to hearing the discussants’ ideas about this amazing phenomenon, synchronicity, can be understood, and constructively harnessed. Thank you. Joanne Rubin Reply
I’m not a professional in any field. Imagination (Which William Blake wrote was man’s greatest faculty) beyond my conscious intents and impulses that were irresistible have driven me to do things that made no sense when I acted on them. Such as going to a hardware store where I bought an 18 inch long segment of thick hemp rope, bound with wire at one end to prevent the three coiled strands from separating. I unraveled the other end so the separate strands were free from the shape of the rope. for several inches. Then I laid the rope segment on a bed of white flowers growing near my house and took pictures of the rope on the flowers. This was before digital cameras, it was in the mid 1980s as best I can remember. When the pictures were developed I felt oddly weird because this was a nonsense picture. After other events of a similar strangeness happened I felt there was a connection but I wasn’t ‘getting’ it. I glanced at the picture a few years ago when I was sorting keepers from non-keepers and I saw the meaning quite clearly and suddenly. The flowers were white alyssum, or ‘heavenly scents’ as my grandmother used to say about them, they do smell quite sweet. The rope, tightly bound at one end but frayed into individual strands at the other end, removed from the shape of the coils of hemp were each free and individual, unconnected apparently to the ‘whole object’, of which it was a part. I saw the beginnings of a process in such non-senses. The meanings always emerged spontaneously, not from my interpretations, that was the important fact. Reply