From Volume IV, #5, June, 1979

Jung, Synchronicity, and Human Destiny:

Non Causal Dimensions of Human Experience

Ira Progoff

Dell Publishing Co. New York, 1973

This book grew out of a manuscript, the product of two years study, in Switzerland, with C. G. Jung. The twenty year delay in publication was caused first of all by the postponement of the release of Jung’s own findings, on which it was based, and secondly, by Progoff’s decision to include the results of his research on Synchronicity.

When the two existing principles of interpretation, Causality and Teleology, were unable to offer an adequate explanation of certain phenomena, Jung formulated a third principle, Synchronicity. It opened the door to the intuitive wisdom of a number of esoteric texts, not the least of which was the I Ching. Yet it was in Jung’s study of the unconscious, which revealed in microscopic form the presence of macrocosmic events, that the foundation of his approach to Synchronicity lay.

By focussing on the mechanism and significance of synchronistic happenings in terms of individual psychology, Progoff’s book has helped to introduce some order to what has seemed to many a confused and confusing area of investigation.

In discussing the role of the archetypes in synchronistic phenomena, Progoff writes: “(They seem) to serve as the constellating hub of a situation across time, and to be the factor of inner orderedness that give the distinctive ‘set’ to the situation.” They “are the factors within the psyche of man that draw the relevant contents together in terms of their meaningfulness to the human being.” In other words, they give meaning to a coincidence which might otherwise be meaningless. Or to take it a stage further, they may give meaning to a coincidence in the life of an individual which might otherwise be devoid of meaning.

Jung and Progoff are not suggesting that we can bring about the coincidence. They are saying that we can effect our perception of it, and whether we perceive it at all. While both men explored the associated psychic factors of synchronistic phenomena, and the social context within which they occurred, in Progoff’s case, it has gone a step further with the development of techniques for enlarging the synchronistic range of experience.

“It does seem to me to be possible to develop in a person an increased sensitivity to synchronistic events and especially a capacity to harmonize one’s life with such occurrences.” If “we are true to the integrity of the moment, there is some reason to believe that the intuition that was Jung’s, will become a knowledge for all of us.”

–Alice Johnston