Project Description
Understanding Jungian Synchronicity through Physics, Buddhism, and Philosophy
Synchronicity, Science, and Soul-Making is a comprehensive examination of synchronicity–in which inner psychological states such as dreams or feelings meaningfully correspond with events in the outer world. For example, a mysterious and powerful dream of an estranged father, not seen in decades, occurs the night before receiving news of the father’s terminal illness. Although neither the dream nor the sickness cause each other in the conventional sense, this meaningful correspondence between the inner and outer worlds prepared the dreamer for a much needed rapprochement with his father before death and helped heal a life-long wound. (synchronicity story in detail.) Such dramatic expression of meaning at life’s crucial turning points show that synchronicity is soul-making.
This book engages both the mind and heart of the reader in exploring the psychological, spiritual, and philosophical implications of C.G. Jung’s concept of synchronicity. Through analyzing the largest published selection of firsthand accounts of synchronicity, it shows how it plays an important role in our psychological development. The book enriches the exploration of synchronicity by clearly explaining comer stones of quantum physics and the basic tenets of Middle Way Buddhism–concluding with a radical and provocative world view.
“Bringing together Jungian psychology, Buddhist meditation, particle physics, and analytical philosophy, Mansfield secures a subtle, sophisticated and respectable foundation for a phenomenon that challenges our fundamental beliefs about space and time . . . one of the best attempts to relate the now-familiar oddities of new physics to synchronistic phenomena. Anyone familiar with the crazy behavior of elementary particles will find a fresh approach in Mansfield’s speculations, and his chapters on on-locality and complementarity are excellent introductions for those new to these subjects.”
—Gnosis“Buddhism in clear and simple terms. Definitely a book to take with us into the next millennium.”
—Michael Toms, New Dimensions Radio
