World Kaleidoscope

The question arises: can there be unconscious synchronicity? Or does synchronicity only take place when it is realized? In accepting the first picture of the world, we will have a much broader and, so to speak, frequent synchronicity. Many events that happen to us, which seem to us so small and insignificant that we either do not notice them or immediately commit them to oblivion, may turn out to be full of deep, but unknown to us, meaning. Moreover, this is the meaning that directly concerns us, influences the subsequent course of our life, and possibly determines our destiny. In the strongest version of this hypothesis, all events may turn out to be synchronic. I do not insist on this hypothesis, but I do not reject it either.

Acceptance of the second hypothesis destroys the first one. Suppose a necessary condition for the synchronicity of events is the realization of their acausal coincidence filled with meaning, then in the meeting of the characters in a forest glade, where the field hospital is located. In that case, it is impossible to find a grain of synchronicity. A synchronic meaning to these events is given only by the fact that the author knows about the role of these coincidences in the whole plot of the novel. Moreover, he communicates this knowledge to the reader.

Everyday consciousness is hostile to synchronicity: it interprets even its obvious availability as “simple” coincidences that have no semantic meaning. Sometimes it seems that cases of synchronicity are deliberately thrown into the world in order to discourage ordinary consciousness.

The best explanation of the phenomenon of synchronicity will be the recognition of the fact that the World was created and realized in all its detailed integrity by a certain Author. Of course, they will point me out that the hypothesis of “author's intention” goes beyond what is acceptable in modern rationalistic-scientific discourse. I proceeded from the metaphor “the world is a work of art.” But the metaphorical explanation is not scientific. The metaphor does not explain anything, and it can only illustrate.

Someone might argue: “If you explain synchronicity in the real world by comparing it to the plot of a work of art, then someone also wrote the real world?” I have to give a positive answer to this question. The real world should be understood as a plot, not in a figurative, but in a literal sense. Synchronous coincidences are possible if and only if the real world is a plot composed by a certain Author. Synchronic coincidences are the author's signs scattered in the text called “The Universe.”

The framework of what is permissible in scientific discourse is flexible, and what is unacceptable in one period of the development of science may turn out to be acceptable in another period. Moreover, my discourse is not scientific, but philosophical, although, in any case, it remains rationalistic. Science does not have a monopoly on rationalism.

6.3. Synchronicity and kaleidoscopicity. Genuine and Illusory Causation

Some metaphors permeate world culture, like knitting needles on which the yarn of meaning is strung. The world tree, the world as a human organism, the wheel of fortune, the world as a theater, the world clock, etc. The impressive inventions of modern science and technology can also be used as a metaphorical encompassing of the world whole. For example, the world is like a computer.

I propose the metaphor “the world is like a kaleidoscope” to use for another explanation of the phenomenon of synchronicity.

Let us imagine that the process of world development is not a sequential and gradual change of events within various causal chains, sometimes diverging and then intersecting, but a change of integral “pictures.” These pictures are, as it were, integral states of the world - a kind of world gestalt. Pictures are separated by emptiness, nothingness, non-existence. There is no causal relationship between two pictures, one of which directly replaces the other. And in general, no picture has a causal relationship with any other picture. It resembles a variety of figures made of colored glass or other multi-colored objects when turning a kaleidoscope. These figures, impressive in their beauty and brightness, in fact, represent an optical illusion formed due to the arrangement of multi-colored glasses, reflected several times by mirrors, of which, in fact, the body of the kaleidoscope consists. The number of figures seems to be infinite, but in reality, their number is limited, since, although extremely large, the number of combinations of glass is not infinite. When a kaleidoscope containing 20 glasses rotates at a speed of 10 times per minute, it will take about 500 billion years to view all the figures (Perelman, 1986: 142).

At first glance, it seems that this or another figure is caused by the interaction of the glasses. Of course, this interaction takes place. Glass 1 hits against glass 2, glass 2 hits against glass 3 (...) glass n - against glass n + 1 - and as a result, a holistic figure is created, pleasing our eyes with intricate combinations of bright-colored fragments. Each piece of glass takes its place, being hit by other pieces of glass and being squeezed by neighboring pieces of glass.

Interestingly, in fact, the glasses collected in the patterned chamber are a chaotic heap. The pattern appears due to their reflection in the longitudinal mirrors of the kaleidoscope tube, and this pattern can only be seen by a child looking through the eyepiece of the kaleidoscope. An adult is also capable if he knows how to play like a child.

Let us get back to our causality. The real reason is not at all the collision of the glasses - the real single reason for the figure is the Player's hand, which turns the kaleidoscope. Collisions are illusory causation.

Despite the seeming arbitrariness and, so to speak, “frivolity,” the picture we have sketched has considerable explanatory power. It explains not only the existence of synchronicity. It explains very well the phenomenon of luck, for instance. Why are some people incredibly lucky, but others are not? Moreover, both luck and bad luck have nothing to do with either the actors' moral or intellectual properties or their talent or mediocrity. It is just because of the location of the glasses. It is for you that they are located like that.

Cases like Swedenborg's vision of the fire in Stockholm fit nicely into the kaleidoscopic explanation of synchronicity. Some people may have the ability to see a complete picture of a kaleidoscopic figure. When the world kaleidoscope turns, such a person instantly sees all the details of an integral figure. And he instantly sees all the coincidences, correspondences, concordance, etc.

The image of a kaleidoscope has not yet been in demand in culture for metaphorization of the Universe, unlike, e.g., the images of a theater, a book, or a clock. The explanation for this is quite simple: the kaleidoscope was invented relatively recently - in 1816 by the Scottish physicist D. Brewster.

The metaphor of the world kaleidoscope smoothes away C. Jung's rough indeterminism. Jung believes that “synchronic phenomena, in principle, cannot be associated with any concept of causality” (Jung, 1997: 222). The archetypal explanation assumes that synchronicity is made up of random equivalences, so “a causal explanation for synchronicity is out of the question” (Jung, 1997: 301). I believe that denying the possibility of a causal explanation for synchronicity is too categorical. The hypothesis of the world kaleidoscope brings causality into synchronicity, although this causality is transcendental. If the chains of cause and effect within the world gestalt are, in some way, “inauthentic” causality, then the true and only cause is the will of God, which changes the gestalts.

I have already cited C.G. Jung's opinion on the combination of mental and physical arrangement in synchronicity. The arrangement of natural numbers or certain physical phenomena has existed for eternity, and the forms of mental arrangement turn out to be acts of creation in time (Jung, 1997: 303). This concept fits perfectly into both the eventheme theory and the kaleidoscopic hypothesis. There is a set of eventhemes or a set of “pictures.” This set is timeless; it represents an unchanging aspect of the Universe. The acts of turning the World Kaleidoscope that is, the acts of changing the world gestalts, unfold in time. These are creative acts of the transcendental Superintelligent Power. According to C. Jung, we should consider causeless synchronistic events “as creative acts, as a continuous creation of a scheme that exists forever, sporadically repeating and does not have any visible sources” (Jung, 1997: 304).

In such a picture of the world, not only the unity of necessity and contingency is realized, but also the unity of necessity and freedom. At first glance, contingency is an essential characteristic of synchronistic events. This is repeatedly emphasized by C. G. Jung; this follows from our analysis of the concept of “coincidence.” Here is the final idea of the work “Synchronicity: the acausal unifying principle”: “For these reasons, I believe, it is necessary to introduce, along with time, space and causality, a category that gives us not only the opportunity to understand synchronistic phenomena as a special class of natural events, but also a certain contingency as an eternally existing universal factor and, in part, as the sum of the countless individual acts of creation taking place in time” (Jung, 1997: 305).

This is especially for lovers of dialectics: the hypothesis of the world kaleidoscope assumes the unity of true causality, necessity, and freedom, as well as the unity of illusory causality, contingency and non-freedom. The change of world gestalts occurs thanks to the free creative acts of God. These acts are the real cause of all events. At the same time, these acts are necessary: on the one hand, for the actors within the gestalt, on the other hand, in God, necessity and freedom coincide. The glasses of the kaleidoscope are positioned randomly every time. In any case, the superficial consciousness of many actors perceives the events that happen to them as accidental. But each actor is a piece of glass, squeezed by adjacent pieces of glass and, therefore, not free. The lack of freedom of individual actors is the general restraint of glass.

We return to the Stoics and Spinoza: freedom is reconciliation with the world by seeing its whole picture.

7. Conclusion

I proposed three hypotheses to explain synchronicity: the eventhemes hypothesis, the world plot hypothesis, and the world kaleidoscope hypothesis. Let me remind you: in my opinion, these hypotheses are complementary. Ultimately, they can all be combined into one. For me personally, the hypothesis of the world kaleidoscope is preferable. Firstly, it is preferable due to its visible aestheticism: we, as it were, contemplate with our own eyes the change of beautiful pictures that capture the integral states of the Universe. Secondly, the kaleidoscope hypothesis fits in best with the fragmented worldview of a modern person. However, nothing prevents us from inscribing the theory of the eventhemes and the metaphor of the world plot into the general kaleidoscopicity.

They brought us the skull of a one-horned ram. Ultimately, both Anaxagoras and Lampon are right.

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