Synchronicity names the phenomenon of meaningful coincidence - events connected not by causation but by significance. Carl Jung coined the term in the 1950s to describe experiences where inner psychological states correspond with outer events in ways that feel deeply relevant yet defy conventional explanation. A person dreams of a rare beetle, then one taps against the window during their therapy session. A book falls open to precisely the passage needed. The right stranger appears at the necessary moment.
Jung developed the concept partly through his engagement with the I Ching and conversations with physicist Wolfgang Pauli, seeking a principle that could account for experiences the Western causal framework dismisses as mere chance. He proposed synchronicity as an “acausal connecting principle” - a mode of relationship between events based on meaning rather than mechanism. This places the concept in tension with materialism while resonating with Taoist notions of alignment with the Tao and indigenous understandings of an ensouled, responsive cosmos.
The phenomenon raises uncomfortable questions about the nature of Consciousness and its relationship to the external world. Does synchronicity reveal an underlying interconnectedness, a universe that somehow “knows”? Or does the pattern-seeking mind simply impose significance on randomness? Perhaps the more generative question is functional: what happens when one begins attending to coincidence as if it matters? The answer often involves a subtle shift in perception - from passive observer to participant in something larger.