GENIUS FORUMS

How do you explain this synchronicity ?
This really interests me :)

Kunga wrote:How do you explain this synchronicity ?

During a dream recall many of the lapses in our story are instantaneously filled in with anything that is picked up subconsciously at the moment of recalling. It's quite possible the woman saw the scarab on the window during or before the dream retelling where she was accessing as well as further forming her memory of the dream. Only after that Jung consciously noticed the same animal.

For Jung a wonderful moment to break the skepticism of the lady and sell his treatment for what likely was a made up disorder. :-)

No, really, I'm a great admirer of Jung's work but his ideas of a collective subconsciousness that floats around somewhere are quite dated. The complex synchronization of individual organisms within groups through signs and symbols is better researched now and provides good alternative explanations. Also backwards are many of the psycho-analytical concepts: the access to the "repressed emotion", liberation of hidden selves, accessing childhood memories, dream interpretations and so on. Jung didn't seem to be capable of recognizing how malleable the human mind with its memories was and how easy the weaker ones would go along with the Therapy and Analytical, as new candidates for a religious experience.

Fascinating.

i never got into psychology or Jung...for some strange reason it always bored me .
Anyways...it makes sense to me (logical) that synchronicity has something to do with intuition/premonitions/psychic abilities and the collective consciousness ?

"All things are ready if our minds be so"

~William Shakespeare (Henry V/Act 4 )

Kunga wrote:i...it makes sense to me (logical) that synchronicity has something to do with intuition/premonitions/psychic abilities and the collective consciousness

The one thing you can be quite certain about is that when the underlying process of some phenomenon is not mapped to some extent, it will always appear as magical or psychic, as such qualifiers satisfy most people more than labeling it as just 'unknown'. In the churches these phenomenons are regarded as evidence God is blessing the event. Or if the event is "evil" that the devil is at work.

The more one starts to realize, to see the interconnections between everything that appears to us, all in a tangible, psychical, often also traceable manner, the less one needs to juggle with the concept of synchronicity. The processes of life are very circular: our sense of time, the seasons, there's so much which tends to occur and re-occur. And all these wheels within wheels have all kinds of interlocking going on, making stuff appear to happen coincidental to anyone not overseeing the whole chain of cause and effect. And who does?

While intuitive leaps could be crucial in sensing the synchronization, there is remarkable little evidence that psychic abilities or some collective "consciousness" are reasonable candidates to provide us any explaining power to what appears to happen in our life. But it's always good to take notice of all the little things, the interconnections - each and every time we spot them. But it can also become the road to paranoia and self-delusion, if we put too much meaning in it every time.

Personally I'm quite used to the amount of syncing by now. Life is [in] sync by my definition.

so...if you had a dream about a scarab beetle....and the next day or week someone caught one for you and handed it to you...you would not connect that dream to intuition/premonition...you would just think of it as....as what ????

it's interesting how average people (such as myself) and highly intelligent people (Geniuses) think/conceptualize/rationalize :)

i don't go crazy thinking about every little occurence that happens...i kinda take everything in stride...but sometimes a repetitive/unusual/peculiar thing will get my attension.....

Diebert wrote: "Jung didn't seem to be capable of recognizing how malleable the human mind with its memories was and how easy the weaker ones would go along with the Therapy and Analytical, as new candidates for a religious experience."

Despite Diebert's reductions, and though it is true a whole world of research has occurred since Jung wrote, I don't think his ideas can be so quickly and 'rationalistically' swept aside, a predictable habit of our dreary geniuses, who know it all, who pronounce on everything and everyone. There is a certain bad faith in that, as well as a lack of 'wisdom', it seems to me.

Human consciousness, within this sphere where life is taking place, has and gives constant evidence of its deep mysteriousness, if one looks for it. And there are many ways to do that (and not only rationalistically). One might of course take issue with any particular within what is his system of thought, his means to organize understanding, but what is interesting about it is that it is a step toward a complete model, and a way to locate man within the strictly materialistic and the spiritual. He said once that 'one generation carries the torch and passes it onto the next', which is certainly true about his ideas. I also think he was acutely aware of a dangerous point of fissure where moderns find themselves. No defense of him means that other parts of his ideas are not critiquable. But what one notices from the Fourth Genius is the rapid dismissal, the sweeping off the table, but with no counter-offering of any substance.

Apparently, there is only One Authority 'round these parts, one view, one road, one goal.

David wrote: "In essence, all I do is inform others about this fantastic treasure I have found and how they might find it for themselves. But people tend to get very uppity about it, as their own egos are involved."

I've heard so much about this, David, and yet when I think about it I have heard you say nothing at all concrete. What are you talking about? What is this fantastic treasure you are talking about? You make grand allusions but nothing is really offered up.

It's WOMAN (THE FANTASTIC TREASURE) he wanted ya'll to back away from them so he could have more for himself....lol

Alex T. Jacob wrote:I don't think his ideas can be so quickly and 'rationalistically' swept aside, a predictable habit of our dreary geniuses, who know it all, who pronounce on everything and everyone.

Then you should be happy nobody has been sweeping "his ideas" aside. The majority of his work, as you know, is not about the stuff I commented on.

But please carry on blabbering unrestrained by those little details that can make the difference between a truth and a lie. Nothing as good as rolling around in the gray blubber of "it seems", "to me", "perhaps" and that smelly old comfy "deep mystery", don't you think?

Diebert wrote: "But please carry on blabbering unrestrained by those little details that can make the difference between a truth and a lie. Nothing as good as rolling around in the gray blubber of "it seems", "to me", "perhaps" and that smelly old comfy "deep mystery", don't you think?"

Conventions of disputation! (Though I stick by 'deep mystery', and the way that 'deep mystery' pops up through 'exploding metaphors'...)

But, let's try to be more specific:

What do you think about these statements (I thought I'd start with Jung before the Baal Shem Tov):

"Reason alone does not suffice."

"We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling. Therefore, the judgment of the intellect is, at best, only the half of truth, and must, if it be honest, also come to an understanding of its inadequacy."

"The great decisions of human life have as a rule far more to do with the instincts and other mysterious unconscious factors than with conscious will and well-meaning reasonableness. The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases. Each of us carries his own life-form—an indeterminable form which cannot be superseded by any other."

The reason I threw them into the mix is not to present Jungian per se ideas but to bring to the table certain ideas that, it seems, run counter to the classical QRS position. Remember, the conversation hinges on the idea that there is much to admire in QRS but that it is possible to take issue with certain 'definitions, answers, solutions'. To post these little quotes, and the 2,354,839 other quotes I hold in abeyance (from the Book of Multiplex which I have in first edition and signed)(I can't tell you the author, I'll freak Tomas out...).

I argue that, in spiritual life, we need to focus on the concrete, the 'real', the human, and in the context of a holistic relationship to our tangible existence. I don't quite know what you are arguing for (sometimes I am not sure you know either, to be truthful) and I'd like to push this conversation toward a kind of 'confrontation' between these two poles.

I asked for David to please offer an outline of what he advocates for so strongly. This 'treasure' he gets all worked up about, almost tenderly tearful. And I ask you the same thing. Please explain, please talk about 'it'.

Is that too much to ask. ;-)

Kunga wrote:How do you explain this synchronicity ?

An ordinary coincidence combined with wishful thinking.


Alex quotes Jung:

"My example concerns a young woman patient who, in spite of efforts made on both sides, proved to be psychologically inaccessible. The Difficulty lay in the fact that she always knew better about everything. Her excellent education had provided her with a weapon ideally suited to this purpose, namely a highly polished Cartesian rationalism with an impeccably "geometrical" idea of reality. After several fruitless attempts to sweeten her rationalism with a somewhat more human understanding, I had to confine myself to the hope that something unexpected and irrational would turn up, something that burst the intellectual retort into which she had sealed herself. Well, I was sitting opposite of her one day, with my back to the window, listening to her flow of rhetoric. She had an impressive dream the night before, in which someone had given her a golden scarab-a costly piece of jewellery. While she was still telling me this dream, I heard something behind me gently tapping on the window. I turned round and saw that it was a fairly large flying insect that was knocking against the window from outside in the obvious effort to get into the dark room. This seemed to me very strange. I opened the window and immediately and caught the insect in the air as it flew in. It was a scarabaeid beetle, or common rose-chafer, whose colden green color most nearly resembles that of a golden scarab. I handed the beetle to my patient with the words "Here is your scarab." This broke the ice of her intellectual resistance. The treatment could now be continued with satisfactory results."

---Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle (1960)

Recent studies indicate that the average person dreams around four "premonitions" a night - that is, amongst the thousands of events dreamed at night, there is always the occasional one which naturally, in line with the laws of statistics, aligns with an event occurring the next day. The same study also stressed that the average person has a very poor understanding of coincidence and statistical frequency, which explains, in part at least, why people tend to seek paranormal explanations whenever they are confronted with something unusual.

For example, last night, I dreamed for what what seemed like hours - thousands of events, countless objects, numerous interactions with people, etc - an action-packed saga that never seemed to end. A typical night for me, in other words. In light of this, it would be exceedingly odd if there wasn't the occasional alignment between what I experience during the day and what I dreamt the night before. Indeed, an absence of "synchronicity" is far more likely to prick up my ears, than an occcurance of one.

It was a neat trick on Jung's part to break down the girl's defenses, I'll give him that. But to me, that was the only interesting thing about the incident.

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David Quinn wrote:It was a neat trick on Jung's part to break down the girl's defenses, I'll give him that. But to me, that was the only interesting thing about the incident.

A more up-to-date version of that trick I saw performed by Derren Brown in his recent series Messiah with his "Dream Machine". Or at least it has surprising similarities. Not that Jung might have been realizing he was doing tricks, he's a natural!

Alex T. Jacob wrote:David wrote: "In essence, all I do is inform others about this fantastic treasure I have found and how they might find it for themselves. But people tend to get very uppity about it, as their own egos are involved."

I've heard so much about this, David, and yet when I think about it I have heard you say nothing at all concrete. What are you talking about? What is this fantastic treasure you are talking about? You make grand allusions but nothing is really offered up.

Don't be silly, Alex. If it was something that could be placed on a platter for all the world to see, then the human race would have been enlightened a long time ago. But alas, it is hidden, inside everyone's mind, behind their egotistical defenses, patiently waiting for someone to take an interest in it.

I am always pointing to it whenever I speak, but you don't look. You have already convinced yourself that there is nothing to see.

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Diebert van Rhijn wrote:

David Quinn wrote:It was a neat trick on Jung's part to break down the girl's defenses, I'll give him that. But to me, that was the only interesting thing about the incident.

A more up-to-date version of that trick I saw performed by Derren Brown in his recent series Messiah with his "Dream Machine". Or at least it has surprising similarities. Not that Jung might have been realizing he was doing tricks, he's a natural!

Of course he was! No contrived clutching at straws for him!

He was bit of a fuddy-duddy, though wasn't he. It wouldn't surprise me if his largest fan base consisted of elderly women.

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Alex T. Jacob wrote:What do you think about these statements (I thought I'd start with Jung before the Baal Shem Tov):

"Reason alone does not suffice."

To me that means nothing but that one can not live by bread alone. Or by air alone. But moldy bread or polluted air leads to illness or death nevertheless.

"We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling. Therefore, the judgment of the intellect is, at best, only the half of truth, and must, if it be honest, also come to an understanding of its inadequacy."

The moment a feeling is able to apprehend, grasp, understand or bring into consciousness this world, we're actually talking about a thought in the most usual interpretation of that term. Jung uses here a different conception of "intellect", one that doesn't appear to be related much with wisdom or reason in the broader, deeper sense. In some ways Jung seems to promote perhaps without realizing a gap, instead of bridging it, repeating Descarte's error.

The great decisions of human life have as a rule far more to do with the instincts and other mysterious unconscious factors than with conscious will and well-meaning reasonableness.

Spinoza and Nietzsche have written about this ad nauseam. It's not something that is in dispute. The more interesting question is about the future: do we need more of those great decisions or can we aim for wise ones instead? Do we aim for making conscious what has been unconscious so far? Will this start to hurt our greatness. This is the direction things are moving at any rate but, and this might surprise you, I'm not confident that this is a good thing, a good thing being here defined as beneficial for the majority of people.

Carmel wrote: I wrote a more detailed response to you, but it didn't post properly, and now, the moment has passed...

Thanks for the discussion, thus far, perhaps I'll pick up on it at a later time.

No problem. I've learned to always make a copy of my posts before sending them, particularly the longer ones. Having to retype a long post ......

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David Quinn wrote: the average person has a very poor understanding of coincidence and statistical frequency, which explains, in part at least, why people tend to seek paranormal explanations whenever they are confronted with something unusual.

Intuition or even psychic abilities are natural..not paranormal wouldn't you say ?
Even if the scarab appearing was totally coincidental, wouldn't it be against all odds even if it was a statistically frequent occurrence ????? (or is that a contradiciton ?) Oy Vey ...

Cold hard logical explainations is all there is ?

David Grohl's telephone

Alex T. Jacob wrote:David wrote: "In essence, all I do is inform others about this fantastic treasure I have found and how they might find it for themselves. But people tend to get very uppity about it, as their own egos are involved."

I've heard so much about this, David, and yet when I think about it I have heard you say nothing at all concrete. What are you talking about? What is this fantastic treasure you are talking about? You make grand allusions but nothing is really offered up.

Been doing some Remote Viewing on David's new book he's writing. He's presently working on Page 118 though having a bit of writer's block, that's why he's reappeared here over the past few weeks. He's attempting to glean some words of ******* from a few select resident geniuses who navigate their ways around these parts.

ok...how about the woman that lost her ring in a lake...and then buying the fish and cutting it open with the ring inside...that is just too damn illogical !!!!! You call that ordinary coincidence & statistical frequency ?????

That kind of thing would happen once in a zillion !

Steven : you frustrate the shit out of me ! LOL

Just havin' some fun love

Kunga wrote:ok...how about the woman that lost her ring in a lake...and then buying the fish and cutting it open with the ring inside...that is just too damn illogical !!!!! You call that ordinary coincidence & statistical frequency ?????
That kind of thing would happen once in a zillion !

That's true, but the frequency is irrelevant. It happened. There is no occurance, however unlikely, that has not or will not happen. Every twist and turn possible is covered by causality, it literally can not be otherwise.

prince wrote:

Kunga wrote:ok...how about the woman that lost her ring in a lake...and then buying the fish and cutting it open with the ring inside...that is just too damn illogical !!!!! You call that ordinary coincidence & statistical frequency ?????
That kind of thing would happen once in a zillion !

That's true, but the frequency is irrelevant. It happened. There is no occurance, however unlikely, that has not or will not happen. Every twist and turn possible is covered by causality, it literally can not be otherwise.

yes...it's not impossible...everything is possible....is it also possible that there is some kind of intelligence playing with us here ?

No, definately not. As Dan said in the psychology thread,

"Psychology does not manipulate reality; it engages it according to its type."

Meaning, it follows patterns of recognition. The patterns being purely arbitrary, and infinitely overlapping.