So I'm reading There Are No Accidents and Hopcke (the author) is talking about Jung's writings on synchronicity. [Aside: I have generally avoided Jung as a source because his collective unconscious idea/explanation makes me cringe.] And I read...
"Jung, in fact, specifically developed his idea of synchronicity as an acausal connecting principle in order to be able to discuss the phenomenon of meaningful coincidences - a universal experience among humans - in a purely descriptive way without obliging himself to make metaphysical statements on the nature and structure of the universe, a theological and philosophical task he considered beyond the purview of empirical psychology." (p. 141)
And I'm thinking "That is a wise man."
And not too much later the author, in a discussion on synchronicity involving dreams, adds a similar bit of wisdom...
"To see this dream as 'predicitive' rather than synchronistic is to understand the event in a wholly different, and much less subjective fashion. If a dream of mine is able to predict the future, then I must certainly be endowed with rather special abilities. It would be these special abilities of mine - my clairvoyence, my psychic talents, my chosenness by God - and not the symbolic subjectiveness of the outer event which would take center stage, a shift in emphasis which, for almost anyone's ego, exerts quite an attraction." (p. 149, my emphasis)
Wouldn't it be great if science has finally reached a place where we can discuss this phenomenon without referred to anything metaphysical?
And, in a accidental quote search of the wrong name, I came upon our third wise man... "It is wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence."
