What is synchronicity? A self-education reflection on Jung's ideas

As a part of the new journey to educate myself on material that I have never touched during my long university education, I have finished my first book by Carl Gustav Jung, Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle. It was not an easy read, so I used AI to help me better understand and digest Jung’s ideas.

My educational background in pure science and mathematics is very different from Jung’s more mystical perspective on the world. In my field, we are trained to accept only what is measurable, repeatable, and observable.

In his work, Jung explains that there are two types of events. First, events that are connected through causal relationships. For example, the Sun shines on your skin and you feel warmer. Second, there are rarer events that are not caused in this way, but instead are connected through meaning.

Let me explain that a bit more. Imagine you are thinking about a friend and the next day they call you, or you randomly run into them. You cannot say that your thoughts caused them to call you, they had no idea you were thinking about them. Yet the two events feel connected. According to Jung, this connection happens on a layer based on meaning rather than cause and effect. This is what he calls synchronicity.

What I found even more interesting is that Jung tried to support his ideas using statistics. He explored whether these meaningful coincidences could be explained statistically. However, statistics did not strongly support his ideas. That is why he described these events as rare events which fall outside normal probability patterns. But this does not mean they do not exist; it only means they are not likely and so difficult to repeat.

I was also surprised to learn that many well-known scientists and physicists explored similar questions. Figures like Leibniz, Niels Bohr, Wolfgang Pauli, and Max Planck engaged with ideas at the edge of science. In fact, Wolfgang Pauli, the Nobel Prize winning physicist, collaborated with Jung on some of his work. It shows that even highly rational scientific minds were open to exploring ideas that look unreal.

Jung also suggests that these experiences tend to happen more often during moments of emotional intensity, major life changes, or heightened mental states.

Have you ever experienced something like this? I have. In fact, many times. I have even been experiencing more often lately, which is why I felt I needed to read this book. I wanted to understand how great thinkers have tried to interpret such experiences.

This does not mean that I fully believe in Jung’s ideas, but it does open a door to expand my perspective. I do not know whether his ideas are correct, but I know one thing for sure: I do not know many many things and that I have far more questions in my head than answers. In fact, I am gradually losing confidence in many of the answers I once believed were certain.

Below is a link to a YouTube short I made while reflecting on Jung’s ideas about synchronicity during a walk in the woods.

I would love to hear your experiences with synchronicity. Have you ever encountered moments like these? Feel free to share them. The comment section is open 🙂

Take care and wish you a wonderful time 😊