Synchronicity, Science, and Soulmaking: Understanding Jungian Syncronicity Through Physics, Buddhism, and Philosphy

by Victor Mansfield

Book Overview

The central motif running through this thought-provoking book is Jung's most misunderstood concept, synchronicity. By deftly meshing his interpretation of synchronicity with key concepts in quantum physics and Middle Way Buddhism, Victor Mansfield brings fresh insight to our understanding of synchronicity.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0812693043
• ISBN13: 9780812693041
• Release Date: December 1998
• Publisher: Open Court
• Length: 270 Pages
• Weight: 1.02 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.0" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

The best thought-out analysis of synchronicity I've found.

This is perhaps the best thought-out analysis of synchronicity that I've read. The author (a professor of physics and astronomy) interweaves quantum physics, depth psychology, and Buddhism into a most satisfying explanation. All the world about us is a creation of mind- matter is not directly knowable, and space and time are outright creations of our mind. We are cocreators of reality (or at least our higher Self is) which explains how such impossible but meaningful coincidences can occur. He holds that our conventional materialist world view is the cause of our spiritual crisis and bankruptcy in the West- as do I. This is an extraordinary book- as good or better than the _Tao of Physics_.

Great read!

This was a very well written, easy to understand book about subjects that can prove to be difficult. The author does an excellent job of integrating concepts from Jung's synchronicity, quantum theory, and Middle Way Buddhism. It's a great read for anyone who believes there's more to our universe than meets the eye.

Best Update to Capra's 'Tao of Physics'

We need more multidisciplinarians like Mansfield and Capra these days. The story of Pauli and Jung is as fascinating as that of Bohr and Einstein, it seems to me, and deserves a book and a movie all its own! One omission in this book, is the connection between the 'kundalini' experience and synchronicity, as the former is well known to stimulate the latter, giving rise to a common phenomenon known as 'synchronicity storms'. Another omission is discussion of the schizophrenic experience of living in a totally synchronistic universe, which the book 'Madness and Modernism' by Sass describes quite well. As Dr. Peat says, Synchronicity is a key 'anomaly' in the worldview of science these days, and as much as critics like Victor Stegner would like to pooh-pooh it as totally subjective, (which merely begs the question of the locus of 'meaning' after all), it does seem to point to the 'bridge between matter and mind'. Science has far too rigidly adhered to Newton's adamant 'Hypotheses Non Fingo' in banishing all discussion of 'meaning' from physics. i.e. the 'meaningless universe' of Stephen Weinberg et. al. is merely an artifact of an ad-hoc methodology, not an inherent attribute of Nature. 'Meaning' is where it's at, after all! And why *should* it be purely 'objective'?

Mindblowing introduction to mind and matter - do you exist?

I approached this book with initial scepticism due to its subject matter; quantum physics and mentalism. However, this book is so gracefully written that it guides the reader with relative ease through Einstein's special relativity and seriously questions reality as we know. This book is thought provoking in the utmost - well worth it.

Fascinating: the best "new science" work in decades

This book is a fascinating excursion through contemporary quantum physics, buddhist emptiness, and Jungian psychology. Much ado has been made in pop-science about the failure of the Cartesian dichotomy and the search for quantum-informed world-views, quantum physics and its possible effects on health, consciousness, the nature of reality, and so on and on. Some of it is rather interesting. But most of those works remain at the level of sympathetic magic, turning on mere analogies. This book was written by a practicing physicist and buddhist, and next to it, the highly influential (but much over-rated) "Tao of Physics" pales by comparison. The author delves deeply into what it might mean to our world-view to take seriously the non-local nature of physical reality and the fundamental connectedness of the universe, as implied by Bell's theorem, buddhist "dependent origination," and synchronicity. If, like me, you remember learning about Kant and the death of metaphysics, you will find the description of Bell's theorem as "experimental metaphysics" (p. 75) simply staggering. And if nonlocality does prevail in our universe, it provides some support for Jung's concept of synchronicity, not just for explaining those eerie coincidences but as an enlarged perspective on linear cause-and-effect. Remember that Jung was not a physicist so in some ways his theory needs to be informed by a physicist. And anyone who's had a powerful synchronicity experience knows how radically it can upset our day-to-day notions of physical reality and causality. Much of the virtue of this book is that it isn't just some philosophical arguments and popular science spiced up with a few graphs and equations. The book creatively weaves a view of physics, mind, and causality around descriptions of the lived synchronicity experience of various friends and colleagues. For example, the "Philosopher's Stone" describes a woman's shamanic experience of discovering a stone face by a lake-shore (pp. 161-165). "The spirits of the lake love to hear their old name," she was told, "They respond." So she chanted. Well, they responded by directing her, via feeling warmth on a cold day, to a small stone face laying on the shore (see cover photo). It turned out to be named Singing Stone, from an old Native American story about a woman's search for her true self, and the stone itself "a compelling carrier for the archetype of the self." The story about Jung's "Aion" spontaneously leaping several feet off a bookshelf (p. 162) is equally astonishing. I'm a little surprised the author doesn't discuss Everett's "many worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics--after all, it gets rid of the need for a external observer of the universe by postulating the existence of all alternative event outcomes, with some rather obvious connections to transmigration. Despite my sympathy, I also have to wonder about the merit of this connection with "soul-maki