Intersection of Consciousness and the Collective Unconscious

 

Formless Yet Complete

“Elements of synchronicity and causality connect through meaning.”

Victor Mansfield (from An Essay in Honor of Marie Louise von Franz, March, 1998)

          I have been studying the Jungian concept of synchronicity for a presentation scheduled for November. For ages incidents of synchronicity have been considered “paranormal” and associated with the intersection of life and death. An example would be the way people sometimes see a sign that their recently deceased loved one is sending them in the form of a bird or a butterfly. I’ve been watching the Australian series “McLeod’s Daughters” on Hulu and in one scene, Tess is trying to make a decision as to whether to stay at Drover’s Run, her ancestral home, or go to Argentina with her husband, Nick, for him to follow a dream job. She is torn about the decision, and so asks her deceased sister, Claire for a sign. As she is thinking these thoughts, the mare that had been Claire’s horse, jumps the fence of his corral and runs off to join the wild stallion whose baby she carries. It was the sign Tess needed to make her decision.

          But for Jung, synchronicity was more than that. It was, he believed, an intersection between the individual person’s conscious mind, and the collective unconscious and the bridge was meaning. The fact that we find meaning in such events is what causes them to feel connected.

          Here is what Jung wrote, which is heavily influenced by Lao Tsu’s Tao Te Ching, translated by Arthur Wayley in his book, The Tao and Its Power (1934)

“There is something formless yet complete

That existed before heaven and earth.

How still! How empty!

Dependent on nothing, unchanging.

All pervading, unfailing.

One may think of it as the mother of all things under heaven.

I do not know its name,

But I call it ‘Meaning.’

If I had to give it a name, I should call it ‘The Great.’” (Jung, 1978c, p. 918)

          When I read this, I thought immediately of the description of the universe as a web of consciousness that holds everything together, connects all things, and yet is invisible to our eyes. In my worldview, this is as good a description of the Divine as any. It comports with Tillich’s definition of God as the “ground of our being.” If I had to give it a name, I would call it “The All.”

                                        In the Spirit,

                                        Jane