Why is the sky blue?

This question encapsulates the mystery that is life and the universe. When a child asks this question, she is not asking for the scientific explanation. What she is really asking is: why are things the way they are? She is seeking meaning in life.

Once parents answer this question with science--blue light, because of its shorter wavelength, is absorbed by gas molecules and then is scattered throughout the sky--the child loses the sense of awe she had. She accepts the explanation, because she trusts that her parents know the answer since they are older and have more authority in the world.

Learning the scientific aspect of answers to questions like this is fine, but it’s not the whole answer. Parents shouldn’t feel so smart if this is the only kind of answer they can provide for their child. They are better off saying, “I don’t know.” It’s the wonder and awe of everything that give life its spontaneity and excitement. Once that is taken away, the child is deprived of potential creativity and is set on the path of thinking they know all there is to know as long as they stay up to date with scientific discoveries.

As soon as a child is satisfied with an answer, there is no longer any reason or drive to look for new, possibly better or more fitting, explanations—answers that carry real meaning. If we really want to do our part as human beings to evolve optimally, we have to accept that we don’t have and never had the answers that we asked our parents when we were still kids.

Synchronicity

“People break down into two groups. When they experience something lucky, group number one sees it as more than luck, more than coincidence. They see it as a sign--evidence that there is someone up there watching out for them. Group number two sees it as just pure luck... What kind of person are you? Are you the kind that sees signs, sees miracles? Or do you believe that people just get lucky? Or look at the question this way: Is it possible that there are no coincidences?” --Rev. Graham Hess, Signs

This speech is the crux of M. Night Shyamalan’s film about an alien invasion of Earth. Really, the movie is about the tumultuous re-ignition of one man’s faith in a higher power. Like Nietzsche and many before him proclaimed: “God is dead.” This was never meant to be taken as literally as it sounds--as if God is a figure like Santa Claus, a physical entity watching our every move and judging us to be good or bad, who ate too many of our cookies and bit the dust.

God is meaning, order, the thing that gives man a sense of purpose in life. God’s death is an indication that somewhere along the line we lost our way. We rejected the need within ourselves to believe we are all a part of something bigger. During the Age of Enlightenment with the rise of rationalism also came a force to counteract the superstitions of religion. Reductionist science seeks to explain the processes of the universe in terms of causality, which ultimately points us to the Big Bang theory, not God. This newly acquired freedom to think for oneself led to an exponential increase in innovation and has carried us through the industrial revolution to where we are today. Science and technology have evolved so rapidly, in fact, that we may have been too busy with our so-called progress to notice the smell of God rotting all around us.


We got stuck in our heads, accelerating our intellectualism while sacrificing our ability to feel. What’s the point of all our advances if there’s no one here to play with the toys? Our discovery of the atomic bomb has given us the ability to destroy the entire planet with the push of a single button, and we’ve already shown that we’re foolish enough to do such a thing. When we allow ourselves to become so imbalanced, the collective unconscious is likely to step in and show us that we aren’t aware of our own destructive tendencies. This can be a painful process, but it’s for our own good. These divine interventions come to us in many forms including supernatural encounters (ghosts, UFO’s, etc.) and are quite literally invasions of our consciousness meant to forcefully reveal unconscious aspects of ourselves, since we chose not to take the liberty of seeking them out within ourselves.

One common way the unconscious may choose to reveal itself to us is through synchronicities, coincidences with chances so low that we have no choice but to submit to the fact that there is a higher power at work in the Universe. Carl Jung modernized the concept of synchronicity and investigated its nature while working with his patients.

Psychophysicist Remo Roth explains it best:

In his article Synchronicity, An Acausal Connecting Principle, Carl G. Jung gives an example which has, over time, become famous: "A young woman I was treating had, at a critical moment, a dream in which she was given a golden scarab. While she was telling me this dream I sat with my back to the closed window. Suddenly I heard a noise behind me, like a gentle tapping. I turned round and saw a flying insect knocking against the window-pane from outside. I opened the window and caught the creature in the air as it flew in. It was the nearest analogy to a golden scarab that one finds in our latitudes, a scarabaeid beetle, the common rose-chafer (Cetonia aurata), which contrary to its usual habits had evidently felt an urge to get into a dark room at this particular moment." [Coll. Works, vol. 8, § 843]

Jung continues "The meaningful connection is obvious enough ... in view of the approximate identity of the chief objects (the scarab and the beetle)." [CW, vol. 8, § 845] He then notices that the treatment of this patient would be at first very difficult because she was caught up in a certain rationalism and the possibility of the irrational phenomena would be completely refused. She, therefore, would need a change of perspective whereby her consciousness could open with respect to the irrational. Such a transformation of consciousness is almost exclusively represented by symbols of rebirth. Jung writes: "The scarab is a classic example of a rebirth symbol. The ancient Egyptian Book of What Is in the Netherworld describes how the dead sun-god changes himself at the tenth station into Khepri, the scarab, and then, at the twelfth station, mounts the barge which carries the rejuvenated sun-god into the morning sky." [CW, vol. 8, § 845]

The meaning of this synchronicity consists in the fact that Jung's patient was in a shocking manner pointed to the insight, that in her, symbolically speaking, a rebirth myth was constellated that we interpret psychologically as a transformation of consciousness. This experience caused a deep affect and this again effected that she now could open up with reference to the irrational and could recognize the reality of the world of the unconscious [sic].

Our world today is in a very similar situation as was Jung’s patient. We believe that all our problems can be solved with the assistance of rational, materialistic science and technology. Slowly but surely it is being shown that by this attitude we have fallen into a huge catastrophe that could be of such apocalyptic dimensions that it may mean the end of human civilization.

Synchronicities are constellated then, when an individual or a society is caught in an "impossible" situation where we think there is no way out. Therefore it is to expect that in the near future many people will be surprised by such occurrences that are dismissed as senseless coincidence. We are not used to listen to the messages from the inside, the dreams, and thus leave them out of consideration [sic]. Thus most people experience potential synchronicities as purely external phenomena that can not be compared with a dream, as in Jung's example, and the deeper meaning of the synchronicity can not be extracted. This is why the outer events accumulate as purely destructive accidents, which for the most part are hardly brought into connection with the personal situation, shown in the context of the absent dream. If one considers such an accumulation of coincidences nevertheless at a symbolic level like the above-mentioned emergence of the scarab as a symbol of rebirth, with time they demonstrate that they always speak of the same deepest (archetypal) problem awaiting its solution. In the case of Jung’s client, the recognition of the importance of the transformation of consciousness with respect to the irrational was what has brought the solution. For people who have experienced a series of such destructive accidents, it is therefore of extraordinary importance to extract the meaning behind these coincidences. Like this we can find the constellated archetype, as the archetype of rebirth in the above case. An interpretation of this archetypal occurrence leads to a new flow of life.

Synchronicity bridges mind and matter, inner and outer, microcosm and macrocosm, one and all—and it does so acausally. What this means is that its nature does not abide by the laws of physics that seem so set in stone in our current scientific paradigm. Causality is cause and effect. Acausality is effect without cause. It is the meaningfulness which connects two or more events that are not causally linked, whether or not one labels it meaningful (since this is a subjective judgment). This may seem contradictory, but the feeling of something meaningful is objective and all that is necessary to acknowledge the meaningfulness behind a synchronicity. Experiencing a synchronicity can carry the emotional charge needed to transform the individual’s personality, causing a shift in perspective and thus the potential for healing as seen in the case of Jung’s patient.

Recommended Reading:
Synchronicity, Causality, and Acausality by Lance Storm (free to read online)

'As Above, So Below'

These words originate from Hermetic philosophy, namely from the Emerald Tablet. The axiom basically states that what happens on one level of being effects all others. What happens on this plane of existence is congruent with what happens in another (above or below doesn't really matter). The polar opposites are necessary to properly convey and comprehend the message.

Don't think of above or below in terms of height, though it may be applicable if one is talking about the movement of the stars in relation to events occurring on Earth (see astrology). Instead, take a perspective similar to that of fractal geometry.

A fractal is a shape that is composed of parts that are self-similar to the whole, meaning that every part of the object contains within itself the characteristics of the complete shape. Each part is also made up of smaller self-similar parts which are made of even smaller self-similar parts and so on, ad infinitum. It is therefore an infinite shape that extends to the worlds of the never-ending micro and the never-ending macro. Zooming in and zooming out have the same results. More on this later.

This brings us to the concepts of the microcosm and the macrocosm. The macrocosm is the entire Universe, which is basically the same concept as infinity itself--not an easy concept to grasp and might make you a bit dizzy thinking about, so don't worry too much about it. The microcosm is then any singular part of the Universe, like you for instance.

Every individual is a microcosm of the Universe, and if that's the case then according to the principle of 'As above, so below', each of us effects the Universe at large (perhaps better understood here as: 'As below, so above'). Sure, this is common sense. How can something exist without having effects on the environment in which it lives? It might not be so easy to accept the fact that every single particle in the Universe effects everything else. This will come up again soon when I talk about emergence and synchronicity.

The effects implied here are more than meet the eye. The ripples of our thoughts and actions, our very existence, never cease rolling and continuously interfere and interact with others in ways we would have a hard time imagining. Not only do we see the immediate consequences of our choices, but we can be sure that a multitude of subsequent events occur beyond our scope, like a confluence of dominoes toppling into each other over the horizon. And this just demonstrates the causal aspect of the impact we have on the world.

'As above, so below' is more profound in the sense that our current state of being somehow corresponds to and is intimate with all levels of being. This is most easily understood by pointing out one schism that causes modern man a lot of anxiety--the split between the inner world and the outer world. This disconnect we have between us and the world could be said to be a symptom of an even deeper problem, which is the division within ourselves. As above, so below.

Life is uncertain, and this troubles man. We search for answers in hope that they will comfort the dis-ease of uncertainty. The only sure thing in life being death is itself often approached as a disease. We have turned our backs against nature. Instead of embracing it, we seek a cure to our own mortality. We peer into microscopes to pick apart particles in a desperate attempt to know the fundamental ingredient of the universe; we squint into telescopes, collecting as much light as we can from the oldest regions of space, maybe in hope of finding another speck with life on it, floating in the vast emptiness. We look to the past to discover our origins; we even try to anticipate the future, sometimes taking measures to prevent something from happening that we weren't even sure was going to happen in the first place.

Yet we still like to think we know all there is to know, when the truth is we don't know anything. Like the fractal, any direction we take we end up with the same never-ending dissection of something that refuses to cooperate with the best of our well-intentioned efforts. If we look within, however, and work on ourselves to heal our shattered psyches, we may be surprised at the results that follow.

The union of the self is essential to adapting a healthy and peaceful relationship towards oneself, others, and the world. The more unified we become, the more unified the Universe becomes and the more opposites begin to dissolve into One.

'Begin Within'

I once saw these words on a car’s bumper sticker and was reminded of Gandhi’s famous quote: “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

If we want to see change in the world, we have to understand that it’s not going to change the way we want it to on its own. It is the responsibility of each of us to become what we must in order to see the world become a better place.

Better how? Who are we to think we know what is best for the world, each other, or even ourselves? Discovering what we truly want is an important step in becoming that change, because it is the guiding principle which determines the way we act.

The car with the bumper sticker was in a bank parking lot which is appropriate, since in dreams money or gold often represents spiritual wealth. Dreams are a good place to start accessing your inner self. They serve as a primary connection to the collective unconscious.

The collective unconscious may be thought of as the spiritual realm. It is the world of archetypes which Carl Gustav Jung, the founder of analytical psychology, described as “primordial images”--patterns that have evolved through history, emerge in myths, and express themselves in dreams as entities that embody a particular set of qualities.

For example, a common archetype is that of the Hero, a myth that appears innumerably and across many cultures, featuring an unlikely candidate who is chosen by fate to accomplish an extraordinary task and reluctantly embarks upon the quest to fulfill his destiny. This archetype is prevalent today, especially in the West with the recent surge of superhero films and TV shows.

By relating to archetypes and associating with symbols we are able to interpret our dreams and understand their messages. In doing so, we bring unconscious aspects of ourselves to conscious awareness. These unknown parts belong to what is commonly called the Shadow (a major archetype). Integrating the shadow aspect of ourselves leads to a more whole sense of being.

The more we know of ourselves, i.e. the more we integrate our personal unconscious, the more we make our dark side conscious, the less chance there is that we will consciously unleash destructive forces upon the world. This process of unifying one’s self is known as the individuation process and is a lifelong task that each of us must face if we are to avoid the self-annihilation of our species and the cause of extinction of others as well.

The only way out is in.

Recommended Reading:
The Undiscovered Self by C. G. Jung
Man and His Symbols by C. G. Jung