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Synchronicity and Its Implications
May 9, 2008 @ 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm PDT
Jung’s concept of synchronicity represents one of the most strenuous efforts of the 20th century to construct a bridge across the chasm between mind and matter, self and world, psyche and cosmos. In popular culture, the concept has been surprisingly widely embraced. The term and the phenomena it describes played no small role in the way many individuals make sense of their lives. In the face of the disenchanted modern worldview, the search for a ground of purpose and meaning that transcends human subjectivity has become an urgent spiritual priority. For many today, synchronicities are directly relevant to the search. The concept has also had a unique impact on the intellectual world, from religious studies to physics. In tonight’s lecture, Dr. Tarnas will summarize the origin and history of the concept in Jung’s work, discuss the experiential dimension of synchronistic events, and address their larger metaphysical and perhaps evolutionary implications.
Related Workshop: Art, Culture, and the Planetary Archetypes
Richard Tarnas, Ph.D., is a professor of psychology and cultural history at the California Institute of Integral Studies, where he founded the graduate program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness. He is the author of The Passion of the Western Mind, a history of the Western world view from the ancient Greek to the postmodern widely used in universities. His second book, Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, received the Book of the Year Prize from the Scientific and Medical Network, and is the basis for the upcoming documentary film Changing of the Gods.