If you have ever experienced a time when something going on in your mind coincided strangely with something that happened in the physical world, then you have experienced synchronicity. You suddenly think about someone; the phone rings and they’re on the other end. You dream about someone you haven’t seen in years, and discover that they just died. You hear a name that you’ve never heard before, and suddenly you’re hearing it everywhere. You have an idea that you’ve never thought before, and suddenly that idea is everywhere.  

Carl Jung believed that these types of incidents were more than coincidence, and that there is a connection between our psychological states and the physical world. He called this phenomena synchronicity, and referred to it as an “A-causal connecting principle.” Meaning, essentially, that We Are One, and everything is connected, including our minds and inner states and the real physical world around us. Just as the physical world affects us, so we also affect the physical world. We can’t identify a traditional scientific cause and reaction for synchronicity, we can only experience it and recognize that it happens. 

Jung became consciously aware of the existence of this phenomena during an analysis session with a patient. This patient was speaking about her dreams that were centered around some rare Egyptian scarab beatles, when a strange scarab beatle flew through the open window and landed on Jung. This was not an insect that was native to that part of the world, and Jung became convinced that this insect had been produced from the collective unconscious portion of his psyche. 

Once we are aware of the existence of synchronicity, we begin to see it everywhere. We begin to see meaning in coincidences that used to seem like mere chance. We begin to understand that there is a connection between our psyche and the physical world. This is not something that we can explain in terms of cause and effect, and it’s not useful to us to think about in those terms. It is the sheerly symbolic nature of the phenomena that is useful to us. Our unconscious reaches out to our consciousness with these symbols, which represent some knowledge contained in the collective unconscious. If we are open to recognizing and accepting these symbols, it becomes possible for us to consciously “experience” this knowledge in a spiritual sense. 

Western civilization has come to value intellectual and scientific ways of recognizing meaning at the expense of recognizing value in experiential knowledge, but there are many cultures that recognize the importance of these a-causal patterns of meaning. Asian philosophies and ways of life include a strong interdependence on the physical world and state of mind. For example, the art of feng shui is centered around the idea that our physical surroundings effect our tangible and psychological well-being. Native American Indian cultures often name children based on things that occur at the time of birth. For example, if an eagle flies over as a baby is born, that would be considered so important that the child might be named “Flying Eagle.” 

In terms of astrology, we recognize that the phenomena of synchronicity provides some justification for the study of astrology. If our unconscious minds effect the physical world, then we are effecting the stars, and the stars are effecting us, and we can learn something about ourselves by studying our natal charts. Also, the symbolic nature of astrology is a vehicle for messages from the collective unconscious, and thus for spiritual experiences that give us new knowledge of ourselves.