1. INTRODUCTION
1.2. S IGNIFICANCE
My research is significant from three perspectives: firstly, from a cross-cultural perspective, secondly, from an academic perspective and thirdly from an ecological perspective.
The cross-cultural perspective in my research contributes to recognizing similarities between different cultures and at the same time it enriches the understanding towards different cultures as well as one’s own. This particular study faces Western culture, as based on particularistic study of human and nature, and Chinese culture, of which thought is based on the holistic approach towards man and nature. The study is a response to the fact of future global development, which is characterized by clashes between cultures. This fact is described by Samuel P. Huntington is his work The Clash of Civilizations, where he claims that the primary axis of conflict in the future will be along cultural and religious lines. Inside this context Jung’s concept of collective unconscious helps us to recognize the fundamentals similarities between different cultures.
Collective unconscious means inherited pathways, which were accumulated through history of experience of humankind, and are then passed on to future generations as part of
“collective inheritance”. Jung on the discoveries made on inherited animal instincts and evolution of species assumed that humans through evolution also inherited instincts. If weaver birds consistently produce the same basic form of nest without any instruction in
how to do so, then in humans there also consists this kind of “plan”, which leads human through his/her life. Collective unconscious is universal. Its contents and modes of behavior are the same everywhere in all individuals. It is a common psychic substrate of a suprapersonal nature, which is common in every one of us. The contents of collective unconscious are primordial images, so-called archetypes. Archetypes themselves cannot be made conscious; they are manifested through archetypal images. We can find archetypes in mythology, esoteric teachings and fairytales10. For example, the archetype of old wise man is represented by Philemon11 in Western culture, and Laozi in Eastern, or archetype of mother, represented by Maria in the West and in the East by Guanyin Pusa12. Primordial images or archetype images differ through different cultures and through history, which means the symbols they are expressing themselves in are different. What is inherited are the same tendencies hiding behind these symbols. The symbol itself is not as important as what it represent. We need to get behind the surface of symbols and find out what they signify13.
Similarly, in current cross-cultural research I will elucidate the meaning of synchronicity principle through theoretical framework of Mou Zongsan’s Yi-ology, which is based on
10 Jung, Carl G.: The Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 9i: The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969; p. 4.
11 Jung in his The Red Book (written and illustrated between 1914 and 1930, published in 2009) used the figure of Philemon to represent a guiding spirit. Historically, Philemon orginates from Greek ΦΙΛΗΜΩΝ (philēmōn), which means kindly, affectionate, from φιλέω (phileō), which means I love. Later the name Philemon appears in the New Testament in the Epistle to Philemon. Philemon was known as a saint by many Christian churches along with his wife Apphia.
12 Guanyin Pusa is the bodhisattva found in East Asian Buddhism. Usually portrayed as a female, associated with compassion. Guanyin originates from Sanskrit Avalokitesvara, commonly known in English as the Mercy Goddess or Goddess of Mercy.
13 Progoff, Ira: Jung’s Psychology and its Social Significance. New York: Grove Press, 1953; p. 70-71.
vital holistic natural cosmology and moral metaphysics. In this way we do not only establish the bridge of mutual understanding between two different cultures but we also recognize the same values, which exist between them, and more importantly learn to appreciate these same values.
Secondly, the study is significant in the attempt to pursue a holistic paradigm in academic and intellectual circles in order to interpret human and nature in its wholeness. As mentioned by Roderick Main, Jung’s synchronicity principle has not been integrated into the academic and intellectual fields, since it has been disregarded (look the above quote, p.
6). The reason is because the term is poorly understood since sciences of the West are unable to interpret it from a holistic perspective, as Jung already implied with using mantic method of Yi Jing. Therefore we have to look for another theoretical framework, which in this case can be found in Chinese thought offering a holistic world-view.
Jung discovered a new world-view through Yi Jing. Chinese thought is relational, and connects human and nature into one unity. Thus it offers a new paradigm for the practice of
“life”, which is not reductionist and mechanistic, but holistic and vitalistic. Even in natural science itself (quantum physics), it has been revealed that natural laws of causality are only valid in macro physical quantities. In the realm of microphysics quantities no longer behave in accordance with natural law. Subatomic world acts according to laws of probability and not certainty. The need for holistic paradigm is evident in appearance of complexity theory.
The president of Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, USA, George A. Cowan said:
“The royal road to a Nobel Prize has generally been through the reductionist approach…dissecting the world into the smallest and simplest pieces you can. You look for the solution of some more or less idealized set of problems, somewhat divorced from the real world, and constrained sufficiently so that you can find a solution…And that leads to more and more fragmentation of science. Whereas the real world demands – though I hate the word – a more holistic approach. Everything affects everything else, and you have to understand that whole web of connections…In part because of their computer simulations, and in part because of new mathematical insights, physicists had begun to realize by the early 1980s that a lot of messy, complicated systems could be described by a powerful theory known as “nonlinear dynamics”. And in the process, they had been forced to face up to a disconcerting fact: the whole really can be greater that the sum of its parts. … It was disconcerting for the physicists only because they had spent past 300 years having a love affair with the linear systems – in which the whole is precisely equal to the sum of its parts.”(from Waldrop, M. Mitchell: Complexity: The emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992, p. 12)14
Overall, this means there is a need for a new paradigm, which can grasp all the aspects of human life and nature. And as Jung suggested, the new paradigm would not eliminate but include the unique and non-repeatable occurrences called ‘chance’:
“We have not sufficiently taken into account as yet that we need the laboratory with its incisive restrictions in order to demonstrate the invariable validity of natural law. If we
14 Aziz, Robert: The Syndetic Paradigm. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2007; p. 37.
leave things to nature, we see a very different picture: every process is partially or totally interfered with by chance, so much so that under natural circumstances a course of events absolutely conforming to specific laws is almost an exception.”15
That does not mean we have to discard the already existing natural law, since as practice shows it is useful in everyday life. What Jung suggests is that the already existing paradigm has to be complemented by incorporating synchronicity principle. With synchronicity principle we take into consideration the irrational, acausal aspect of our everyday life as representing a crucial part for understanding the human nature as well as nature as a whole.
In contrast to rational facts, obtained through natural sciences based on sacred Trinity of space, time and causality, the irrational part is as much important since it incorporates the notion of meaning.
Even though present zeitgeist is different from Jung’s, which was dominated by one-sidedness of statistical truths, loss of tradition and mass man, in my opinion we did not move any farther in elucidating the aspect of irrational and coincidental in our lives.
Synchronicity events continue being discarded as ‘coincidental’. This means that we are still caught inside the pigeonholes of natural science and humanity studies, each contributing to a partial understanding of human and nature, and are therefore unable to make a revolutionary step towards a more holistic approach.
15 Jung, Carl Gustav: Psychology and the East (translated by R.F.C. Hull). Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1976; p. 190.
Thirdly, the concept of synchronicity is based on idea of unity between man and nature, which concerns present ecological problems. Pan Chaoyang 潘朝陽 in his work 《心靈。
空間。環境。》16 discusses the ecological message of Zhou Yi and Yi Zhuan. He warns that the Descartian-Newtonian mechanistic worldview brought ecological crisis, because world was not seen as a spiritual entity, as a nurturing mother, but as a perfect soulless mechanism, ticking like a perfect clock. On the other hand Chinese onto-cosmology is based on environmental ethics, which originates from the unity of man and nature dating back to the period when people settled down and started cultivating the natural environment.
On the basis of hardship they faced with cultivating their land, the Chinese recognized the value and wisdom of life seen in the concept of unity of man and nature, which they wrote down in Yi Jing and Confucians in Yi Zhuan. Therefore Yi Jing is not only a divination book, but also carries the message of environmental existentialism and environmental ethics.
Nowadays the appreciation for nature (and also human being) is not as high as appreciation for economical growth and success. The pollution in the world is still one of the most significant problems, not to mention the consequences of global warming, which all warn us about the mistreatment of our natural environment. With emphasizing the wisdom of organic, vital connection between nature and man, which was already known to people thousands of years ago, we will be able to appreciate nature as a vital part of our lives, which we have to nurture in order that nature will nurture us in return.
16 潘朝陽：《心靈。空間。環境。》。臺北：五南圖書出版股份有限公司，2005年，頁415-451.
Jung’s story about synchronic relationship between man and nature is most inspiring. It is a story about the rainmaker of Kiaochau told by Richard Wilhelm. When Wilhelm was in China there was a great draught where he lived. When none of the local religious prayers and rituals was effective in calling the rain, they decided to call for rainmaker from another province. The rainmaker, “dried up old man”, came and asked for a little quiet house, where he locked himself for three days. On the fourth day there was a great storm with snow. Wilhelm was overwhelmed and asked the rainmaker how he did it, and he replied:
“I come from another country where things are in order. Here they are out of order, they are not as they should be by the ordinance of heaven. Therefore the whole country is not in Tao, and I also am not in the natural order of things because I am in a disordered country.
So I had to wait three days until I was back in Tao and then naturally the rain came.”17