Bruce Charlton's Notions

By a Sign I mean when some happening is intended - by God - to teach us something. 

Since this is the function of a Sign, typically the fact of it - its 'form' - is the key to its importance; while the specific 'content' of the Sign is much less important. 

Synchronicity describes a person's experience of coincidences that seem so unlikely as to seem meaningful. Calling it Synchronicity means that we do not believe it is a coincidence. And if not a coincidence, then it is planned. 

Synchronicity could be regarded as a sign that there is a creator, and this creator is God. 

Why? Because the organization of many events to create such coincidences implies that there is a purposive creator, with a unified will; and the fact that the coincidences are personally directed - that we notice them - suggests that  the creator is himself a person (i.e. God); and concerned with individual persons. 

(Because why would an impersonal 'deity' arrange Synchronicities?) 

In other words, the fact that I experience synchronicities (if I accept it as a fact), implies a planner - and what is more a planner who takes a me-focused view of the world. 

But a Synchronicity may be - often/ usually is - something apparently meaningless; or at least trivial. Therefore the significance is in the fact of Synchronicity - not the content of it. Thus Synchronicity is a Sign - designed to teach us some particular thing - but not to teach us everything! 

  

Serendipity could be regarded as a sub-type of Synchronicity when the coincidences make a 'happy accident'. 

Examples of Serendipity include when a scientist makes a fortunate discovery based on some unplanned event - such as Alexander Fleming's happy accident in the discovery of penicillin. 

But fortunate coincidences happen in everyday life - when someone arrives 'just in time' without knowing in advance that time was critical; when someone was in the right place at the right time; or happens to be carrying just exactly what would be needed... etc. 

Serendipity can be considered a sub-type of Synchronicity - a Synchronicity that has fortunate consequences. 

Serendipity could therefore be regarded as a Sign that, not only is there a creator God; but that this God loves us personally.  

Serendipity may therefore be understood as a Sign of the working of the Christian God - or a God much like Him. Not only does He personally arrange events around us to make remarkable coincidences; but these are fortunate coincidences. 

In other words; 'happy accidents' are signs of the truth of the Christian God.

But Synchronicity and Serendipity only work as Signs for those who regard Signs from God as a possibility. 

An atheist/ materialist who assumes that there is only impersonal causation and random chance, can never be convinced of a Serendipity - he has ruled-out the possibility, by his assumptions. 

Signs therefore do not prove anything -  because what counts as proof requires metaphysical assumptions concerning what is real. 

So, if we have already decided (perhaps implicitly, without being aware of this prior decision) against God - that there is no God, or cannot-be God, or that a deity cannot be personal. or if we had re-decided that it is silly wishful thinking to suppose that God might arrange a happy 'accident', a fortunate 'coincidence'... 

Then when the possibilities of a loving, personal, creator God have already-been ruled-out; then clearly any Sign will be ignored, reinterpreted, explained-away. 

And the intended teaching behind that Sign will not be regarded as purposive; so the chance to learn will be missed. Indeed - that there was a chance to learn will be missed. 

Such is normal, mainstream and officially-approved behaviour - here-and-now. 

Therefore, Synchronicity and Serendipity are Signs of the reality and nature of God; intended for those who are open to such possibilities. 

Each instance is tailored for the needs and situation of each particular person. A Sign is 'for' a specific individual and circumstance - not intended as a general proof for everybody. 

The lesson of Signs is to recognize them for what they are; to learn from what is intended by their form - and therefore not to get bogged-down on trying to interpret the specific details of the content. 

Synchronicity is telling us, personally - here and now, that God is active in the world; it does not mean that what happens by remote coincidence is also a form of covert but specific life guidance. Even a serendipitous discovery in science may turn out later to be inaccurate, false - or some better theory may emerge later. The value of a happy accident is intended specifically for the time it happened and that person - not 'happiness forever', nor happiness for everybody.  

If we begin to think in terms of Signs; if we focus on the forms rather than specific contents; we may find great encouragement from the daily events of our lives. 

After all, personal re-affirmations of the reality of God, creator of this world, of His Goodness and Love, are of inestimable value. 

One cannot get too-much of such things!

Note: I got this concept of a Sign from By the Hand of Mormon by Terryl Givens (2003); which is an historical examination of the way that the Book of Mormon functioned as a Sign for most of the history of the CJCLDS. Only recently (the past several decades) did the specific content of the Book - its scriptural teachings - become a focus. Up to the 1970s; the BoM functioned mostly as an instrument of conversion, as evidence of a new 'dispensation'; as evidence of God's active intervention in the modern world by personal revelations. It was more the circumstances and fact of the BoM that was important, and little attention was paid to the teachings that could be gleaned from its text. (Currently, however, Mormons tend to regard the BoM as a scripture on the same level, and to be studied in the same way, as The Bible.) This history clarified for me the nature of a Sign, and the kinds of things it could accomplish. 

Synchronicity is not about communication - it is about relationships - it is what would be expected when we are in a relationship with reality.

We misconstrue synchronicity if we describe it from the assumption of a baseline state of reality as meaningless; acausal, random occurrences without direction or purpose; life as something which (mostly) 'just happens'.

Synchronicity is supposed to arise like an island of meaning against this sea of meaningless background: like a picture emerging from random dots, a tune emerging from 'white noise'. Synchronicity is sometimes seen as being like a 'coded communication' - an indirect attempt to communicate some piece of information to us by some arrangement of 'coincidences'.

But this understanding of synchronicity assumes that Life is nearly-all discrete, granular, autonomous and unconnected events: just 'bits' of information.

In contrast, synchronicityis 'telling' us the opposite about Life - that in reality our Life is a web of relationships between conscious entities - like a dream.

The point of synchronicity is really very simple, and does not need decoding - because it is not a informational message. Synchronicity is the sudden awareness that Life is a web of connected and pusposive relationships; and that there are many entities around us involved in these relationships - things as well as people.

Synchronicity is not information, it is the awareness that there is life and consciousness, meaning and purpose all around us and everywhere: it is a recognition that real life partakes of the quality of a dream; with the implication that there is a dreamer, a creator.   

Jung should not be given much credit for inventing the word Synchronicity to describe meaningful coincidences, since his writings on the subject are so vague and self-contradictory. But there it is.

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Most well-adjusted people have some kind of 'instinct' to guide them throughout life - a sense of what to do, what matters, and whether one is on-track - and I regard Synchronicity as a part of this.

When one is in a good frame of mind, and doing the right kind of things in the right kind of environment - for example, exploring a city on holiday - there may arise a subjective sense of things unfolding just right, of the right decisions being made, of coherent things happening. As a part of this, all kinds of coincidences, links between past and present, tend to arise.

If you have this sense of things, then its implications are actually extremely far reaching - much more far reaching than Jung ever seems to have recognized, and more far reaching than his modern New Age descendents recognize.

For example, James Redfield's popular 'Celestine Prophecy' series of books are mostly built on amplifying the Synchronicity idea and making it the centre of life - so that people are supposed to be guided through life by Synchronicity and to get into a frame of mind that encourages Synchronicity.

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But any idea of the nature of life which sees it as having a path, or way - a proper goal and behaviour for that person, a way which can be walked or from which a person can stray onto the wrong path (wrong for them, that is) - is in the same general category as Synchronicity. 

My point is that although such ideas are a part of New Age alternative spirituality, of spiritual seeking, of - in other words - a philosophy which sees itself in contrast to and separate from 'institutional religion', separate from 'dogma' and so on - Synchronicity actually carries the implication that the universe is (in some sense) organized around the well-being of each individual human.

If coincidences can be regarded as meaningful for a person, and clearly many people do think this way, and if these phenomena point to a proper path through life - a proper set of decisions leading to a 'way'; then that person, and all other people, are all at the centre of the universe - the world must be organized-around them.

For instance, someone like Heidegger will talk about walking a way, being en route to an unknown goal, as if it was in contrast to Christianity - he talked about waiting for God or a new God or hoping for a God. As if he did not acknowledge the reality of God at the moment, but hoped to do so at some point - or that at some point society would enable this. But the fact is that by saying he was on a path, finding a proper way through life, Heidegger had already assumed the reality of a personal God.

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In other words, for there to be a path, or even to look for a path (assuming such might exist), or even to deny knowledge of the right path but to believe that oneself (or mankind) has strayed from the right path - there must be a God, and that God must potentially be in a personal relationship with each individual.

So that, although New Age spirituality believes that it has rejected a personal God, in fact it has not. A personal God is logically entailed by even the most explicitly non-religious spirituality of this type.

Jung never saw this point - or at least never acknowledged it clearly, and neither do his modern descendents - but it seems to hold, nonetheless.

A meaningful path implies a personal God.

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Synchronicity may be explained by angels.

Synchronicity usually refers to happy and extraordinary occurrences in life, when it feels that things have been arranged for one's personal benefit.

I have found that it occurs in a particular mood or emotional state, when I just know that things are building-up towards a synchronous event.

Reflecting on the meaning of synchronicity was a factor in my becoming a Christian - as it implies that the universe is, to a significant extent, interested in me as an individual, which implies a 'personal God'.

But I hadn't thought much about the mechanisms of synchronicity - how such events might be effected in practice.

Then reading (again) about angels (and demons) in Peter Kreeft's book on the subject, I realized that the properties of Guardian Angels, as he describes them, drawn from the writings of Aquinas and others, would be a plausible explanation of to effect synchronicity.

Angels have greater knowledge than humans, greater intelligence, can move very fast, can effect change in the world, and communicate with humans (especially by emotions and general ideas) - and using these abilities to generate synchronicitous events would be a good method of helping specific humans (that being the role of guardian angels).

Of course, human will necessarily remains free - and a synchronicity leads to a choice which could go either way; and humans are free to interpret anything as a meaningless coincidence if they choose; but presumably angels do what they can, within such necessary constraints.

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William Arkle's Geography of Consciousness (1974) is so densely written that it is extremely difficult to understand - so it was only yesterday that I grasped the meaning of Chapter Sixteen The Will - and recognised that (without mentioning the term) it provided an explanation for a phenomenon which so interests me: Synchronicity.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=synchronicity

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My previous understanding was very general and external - that synchronicity was an indirect form of evidence for the reality of a personal God since it implied that 'the universe' was being 'arranged' such that I experienced certain events of special significance.

*

Arkle's explanation is related to a contrast between The Will versus Will Power.

Will Power is taken in its usual secular and common sense definition, and interpreted as the use of normal psychological disciplines to attain a particular goal.

Will power is a matter of 'getting what we want or believe we need'; it is a matter of strategically using our mind, understanding, predictive ability, force and manipulations to attain an objective.

Will Power may or may not achieve what it sets out to achieve - but it is essentially an attempt to impose ourselves upon the world; and therefore extremely prone to be evil in motivation and effect.

*

The Will is something altogether different in its nature and operation. It is our true, higher, individual Self; that contains an element of, and is in communication with, God.

Therefore The Will is a source of the power strength, and purpose of God as this specifically applies to our (real) selves.

The Will is therefore necessarily good, and (being divine) this good is harmonised with the good of all other things.

We have no conscious power to influence The Will by a strategic decision - any more than we could change God's will; we can only recognise The Will, and choose either to accept or to reject it.

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Mostly we choose to ignore or reject The Will, and instead attempt to impose our false selves upon the world by Will Power.

And mostly this is un-successful - and this failure is both necessary and fortunate as the results of success would be disastrous to ourselves and to others (including the whole environment).

When (as is usual) the Will Power goes against The Will; The Will 'sabotages' our plans, by all kinds of means including psychological sabotage, but not confined to that - since The Will is divine it has power to influence other things in the environment - leading to what may be termed 'bad luck' but is actually a necessary failure to get what we want, because what we want is opposed to what God wants, and therefore creation is 'weighted against us'.

*

But a person who knows, accepts and lives by The Will (in however brief and incomplete a fashion) finds the opposite - he finds that not only his own mind (mental powers) but also 'things in general' cooperate in ways that are good.

This includes genuine synchronicity - which is a consequence of harmony between ourselves and our environment working towards the good, caused by The Will spontaneously (over time) reproducing in our surroundings 'a drama which represents the significance of our being': i.e. synchronicity, or 'meaningful coincidence' (as we interpret it).

*

By this account synchronicity is mostly an operation of God-within-us, rather than a situation created by God's power external to us. It is evidence of a truly vast and intrinsically good power - a divine power of subtle harmonisation that we may recognise (or reject); but which it is impossible for us to control, exploit or 'use' to achieve our personal desires.

This also explains divine providence, that sense of God's Will working in the world (but only with our chosen cooperation) can make situations that seem like a near-incredible 'good fortune' by a sequence of apparent 'luck'.

*

This may be the explanation for Great Men (in religion, theology, politics, arts, sciences etc.) who are (who 'happen to be') in the right place at the right time, and whose (small) decisions and acts are amplified (by invisible processes) to have vast consequences.

Arkle's example is Winston Churchill; whose personal qualities in the role of Prime Minister during the Battle of Britain were a consequence of extraordinary sequences of 'luck' - with world historical consequences.

"If you are a Churchill, you make a few small noises into a microphone, and you set forces in motion in people's natures which make all the difference..."

The lesson is that if we want real power in life, like Churchill, or the Greats in other domains of life; then this can be had only by renouncing Will Power, and embracing The Will.

*

We tend to suppose that the 'main problem' of life is 'amplifying our voices' - using force, cunning, chance to make the world take notice of what we think is important; but this is the false self at work deploying Will Power.

When the true self, The Will, is at work comes a recognition that our proper main problem, something that only we can do, is to recognise and nurture our true self, our highest consciousness which contains and harmonises with the divine.

And insofar as this achieved (and whether we know this is happening or not, and whether we are personally credited with it or not) the goodness of a true self in higher consciousness will quite easily and quite naturally be 'amplified' and propagated by innumerable instances of 'luck', sequences of meaningful coincidences: synchronicities.
*

*
William Arkle's Geography of Consciousness (1974) is so densely written that it is extremely difficult to understand - so it was only yesterday that I grasped the meaning of Chapter Sixteen The Will - and recognised that (without mentioning the term) it provided an explanation for a phenomenon which so interests me: Synchronicity.

http://charltonteaching.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=synchronicity

*

My previous understanding was very general and external - that synchronicity was an indirect form of evidence for the reality of a personal God since it implied that 'the universe' was being 'arranged' such that I experienced certain events of special significance.

*

Arkle's explanation is related to a contrast between The Will versus Will Power.

Will Power is taken in its usual secular and common sense definition, and interpreted as the use of normal psychological disciplines to attain a particular goal.

Will power is a matter of 'getting what we want or believe we need'; it is a matter of strategically using our mind, understanding, predictive ability, force and manipulations to attain an objective.

Will Power may or may not achieve what it sets out to achieve - but it is essentially an attempt to impose ourselves upon the world; and therefore extremely prone to be evil in motivation and effect.

*

The Will is something altogether different in its nature and operation. It is our true, higher, individual Self; that contains an element of, and is in communication with, God.

Therefore The Will is a source of the power strength, and purpose of God as this specifically applies to our (real) selves.

The Will is therefore necessarily good, and (being divine) this good is harmonised with the good of all other things.

We have no conscious power to influence The Will by a strategic decision - any more than we could change God's will; we can only recognise The Will, and choose either to accept or to reject it.

*

Mostly we choose to ignore or reject The Will, and instead attempt to impose our false selves upon the world by Will Power.

And mostly this is un-successful - and this failure is both necessary and fortunate as the results of success would be disastrous to ourselves and to others (including the whole environment).

When (as is usual) the Will Power goes against The Will; The Will 'sabotages' our plans, by all kinds of means including psychological sabotage, but not confined to that - since The Will is divine it has power to influence other things in the environment - leading to what may be termed 'bad luck' but is actually a necessary failure to get what we want, because what we want is opposed to what God wants, and therefore creation is 'weighted against us'.

*

But a person who knows, accepts and lives by The Will (in however brief and incomplete a fashion) finds the opposite - he finds that not only his own mind (mental powers) but also 'things in general' cooperate in ways that are good.

This includes genuine synchronicity - which is a consequence of harmony between ourselves and our environment working towards the good, caused by The Will spontaneously (over time) reproducing in our surroundings 'a drama which represents the significance of our being': i.e. synchronicity, or 'meaningful coincidence' (as we interpret it).

*

By this account synchronicity is mostly an operation of God-within-us, rather than a situation created by God's power external to us. It is evidence of a truly vast and intrinsically good power - a divine power of subtle harmonisation that we may recognise (or reject); but which it is impossible for us to control, exploit or 'use' to achieve our personal desires.

This also explains divine providence, that sense of God's Will working in the world (but only with our chosen cooperation) can make situations that seem like a near-incredible 'good fortune' by a sequence of apparent 'luck'.

*

This may be the explanation for Great Men (in religion, theology, politics, arts, sciences etc.) who are (who 'happen to be') in the right place at the right time, and whose (small) decisions and acts are amplified (by invisible processes) to have vast consequences.

Arkle's example is Winston Churchill; whose personal qualities in the role of Prime Minister during the Battle of Britain were a consequence of extraordinary sequences of 'luck' - with world historical consequences.

"If you are a Churchill, you make a few small noises into a microphone, and you set forces in motion in people's natures which make all the difference..."

The lesson is that if we want real power in life, like Churchill, or the Greats in other domains of life; then this can be had only by renouncing Will Power, and embracing The Will.

*

We tend to suppose that the 'main problem' of life is 'amplifying our voices' - using force, cunning, chance to make the world take notice of what we think is important; but this is the false self at work deploying Will Power.

When the true self, The Will, is at work comes a recognition that our proper main problem, something that only we can do, is to recognise and nurture our true self, our highest consciousness which contains and harmonises with the divine.

And insofar as this achieved (and whether we know this is happening or not, and whether we are personally credited with it or not) the goodness of a true self in higher consciousness will quite easily and quite naturally be 'amplified' and propagated by innumerable instances of 'luck', sequences of meaningful coincidences: synchronicities.

Repost from 2014: http://williamarkle.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/william-arkle.html

Synchronicity may be an experience of divine providence. It may be a sign of God's personal intervention in our personal life; and therefore an indication that our live has purpose, hence meaning. 

On the other hand; some synchronicities seem to be meaningless and coincidental, in they seem to make no sense or seem merely trivial - so as to make a mockery of providence: on the lines of: "If God has nothing better to do that that, then what kind of a God is it?"

And apparent synchronicity can be faked (using information gathered through surveillance or 'stalking', for example) and our feelings thereby manipulated; and this can be done by human intervention - or indeed by demonic. 

Indeed; I think it likely that a considerable amount of evil is accomplished by strategic demonic manipulations of a synchronistic type - that are intended to lead to sin committed under the delusion of 'destiny', therefore un-repented sin, thus value-inversion. 

(This seems to have happened frequently among New Age spiritual seekers, - especially with regard to sex.)

So someone who was to regard all synchronicity as evidence of destiny, could be led into evil. 

In other words; synchronicity is not always A Good Thing. 

We need to discern synchronicity in our own lives - since, like most things, it may be motivated by evil; as well as being a potential manifestation of Good. 

One of the most painful - although, it turns-out necessary - trends through my life, has been the leaching of magic, of enchantment, from all institutions, and almost all places. 

This is the familiar 'public world' of materialist assumptions: that the world is made of 'things'; that subjective mind (consciousness) is separate and thoughts are epiphenomenal; that Beings are ultimately mere artefacts of the 'laws' of physics and statistical chance...

Although the theme of modern life becoming disenchanted goes back a long way, to the first Romantics around 1800; and the sociologist Max Weber defined it as characteristic of modernity more than a century ago. And it was also Weber who also named the Iron Cage of bureaucracy, which has been the primary mechanism by which enchantment has been destroyed. 

For me, the disenchantment of universities was probably the most painful of these trends; since I had grown-up the son of a 'professor' (consultant/ senior lecturer in dentistry) and known from an early age that this was a known world I felt organically a part-of. I was an insider. 

Right into the 1990s, there was a residuum of magic about academia - albeit a thin and dwindling stream compared with the height of the middle ages. 

But it was evident - here and there, again and again; and I valued that magic despite that hardly any of my colleagues noticed it, and even fewer liked it. Indeed, as an atheist, I depended on that enchantment at a deep level; for a sense of meaning and purpose in life, larger than myself.

The process of diminishing enchantment was partly driven by the evil destructiveness of bureaucracy (whose 'reforms' were always based upon lies and denied, unexamined false assumptions) - but also, underlying, by the long-term trend that Men were progressively less and less susceptible to enchantment. 

Magic, gradually, ceased to work. 

 

This can be seen everywhere - indeed, even in the world of magic itself: I mean the 'esoteric' societies of ritual magic that grew up from the late 19th century. 

In the late 19th century people were claiming all kind of magical manifestations; the rituals seemed objectively effective, indeed potentially dangerous - hence they were kept secret. But by the 1980s or 90s nobody was even claiming this, thus there seemed no need for secrecy; and the activities of magical societies were hard to distinguish from group psychotherapy, artsy 'happenings', or ritual pageantry. 

For most people, nearly all the time; Magic just doesn't work anymore. 

 

The old systems and symbolisms (alchemy, astrology, numerology, ritual objects and actions...) - are left looking more like bureaucratic flow-charts. People can still learn about the history of magical stuff, and intended correlations; but it is clear that objects and actions no longer animate people. 

The objectivity that linked magical things and doings with predictable real world effects has gone. Such correlations have become merely theoretical - or else reduced to (transient) feelings.  

The human mind seems to have become more and more resistant to magic. 

And not only among Westerners. The 19th century Amerindians 'needed' to introduce peyote in order to attain the mystical states that had previously arisen spontaneously. However, peyote is a mild, slow-acting psychedelic; requiring additional supportive group immersion and ritual actions. 

But among Westerners the psychedelic drugs of the 1960s were relatively a 'necessary' chemical sledgehammer of ultra-potent, or mega-dose, brain impairment agents; such extreme measure needed in order to create some warped simulacrum of the 'larger consciousness' that most people could experience naturally earlier in human history. 

Psychedelics are a last gasp of the idea that spiritual experience should come from outside, be objective and irresistible, should overwhelm the mind... and, of course, psychedelics have overall proved to be not merely a failure as 'entheogens', but actively counter-productive.

Cause and effect have worked together - and by now I find that the disenchantment of public life and my compelled withdrawal of reliance upon it has been an advantage - a necessity; as the whole organisational world moves ever deeper into more explicit evil. 

Anyone now mentally-dependent on any kind of institution is drawn into supporting the agenda of Satanic evil which has swept the world in 2020. 

Enchantment of our social world is now an illusion rather than an insight - albeit a flimsy and ineffectual illusion in a world where all institutions are permanently convulsed by externally-bureaucratic-media-imposed transformations, driven by global Establishment priorities (birdemic, climate change, antiracism, sexual revolution...). 

 

Here and now any magic must come from within - and modern institutions have no 'within'; they are permeable and hollow; the imperatives of The System sweep through them unopposed and uncontradicted - they are mere subsections of The One System.

This is related to an increased awareness of synchronicity as a 'mechanism' of enchantment. Synchronicity as the basis of a way of life was the core message of the 1993 bestselling New Age 'novel' The Celestine Prophecy; and this is indirect evidence that there are no longer effective magical 'systems'.

Magic is now something that unpredictably happens-to us - our job being to recognise and understand it when it happens. 

 

But mainly; our 'job' is to create the frame of mind (frame of Being) in which synchronicities happen more often, more powerfully and meaningfully; become 'normal', and link-together towards Good ends. 

Because - although this is seldom recognised - synchronicity entails a loving creator God. Acknowledgment and understanding of synchronicity takes us most of the way to Christianity!

Thus a modern Christian - at his most Christian - would experience life as a continuous-web of synchronicity. Quite naturally so - because a life of meaning and purpose would be full of positive and striking 'coincidental' happenings; one leading onto another. 

Our mortal life is sustained because of our need to learn - to learn for the resurrected life to come; and sychronicity is a kind of learning-opportunity. 

Thus synchronicity is not a code - not a system of objective correlatives, like the old magical system; but a natural aspect of a Christian life in this 2020 world where all meaning must come from God and from the divine within; because pretty much all of external life has become evil, meaningless and purposeless. 

2020 Magic just is Christian; not institutional. 

Note: moderated commenting has returned...

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One interesting aspect of synchronicity is that it is individually focused - when experienced, the coincidence was focused on me specifically.

And when the coincidence is 'meaningful' (as the usual definition of synchronicity implies) - then it implies something for me specifically.

If so, then the experience of synchronicity implies some generally-operative power which has some kind of specific interest or concern with me specifically.

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It was this line of reasoning which led me from a New Agey belief in the importance of synchronicity, to the inference that - if real - it implied (entailed) a personal god having a personal relationship with me specifically (not an abstract god-of-the-philosophers).

From there, and the fact I am not a Jew, pure reasoning pointed to 'some kind of Christianity' as having a clear reason for god's concern with me specifically. That reason is god's love for me specifically.

(Pure monotheism lacks any reason why an 'omni god' who created everything from nothing should be concerned with individual humans.)

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Having arrived at the assumption of a real, 'personal God', what kind of Christian should I be?

That took a while to sort-out; but in retrospect I can see that there was a strongly philosophical process of evaluation going-on.

I explored the major classical theologies: Aristotelian Christianity (Thomism) and Platonic Christianity (Orthodoxy) - but always there were serious nagging doubts about their ability to explain the most important aspects of Christianity - and the sense that Christianity was being fitted-around these (pre-existing) philosophies; to the detriment of Christianity.

My stable conviction for the past two and some years has been that the most philosophically-solid and coherent branch of Christianity - the one which most clearly and simply and un-evasively explains the most important aspects of Christianity that seem to need explaining - is Mormonism.

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(The key trigger, the clarifying experience, was reading and understanding Sterling M McMurrin's Theological Foundations of the Mormon Religion - written by an ex-Mormon (or non-believing Mormon) philosopher who treats the religion comparatively and abstractly.)

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Most people would regard it as bizarre to assert that Mormonism (of all things!) is the most philosophically coherent explanation of Christianity - especially when compared with the long and professionalized scholastic tradition, or any other theology devised by generations of full-time professional priests and professors.

But the reason I find Mormon theology philosophically convincing (miraculously so) is exactly that it does not require high-level abstraction and educated skills to explain those things that most need explaining.

As an intellectual system, Mormon theology displays the kind of stunning focus, simplicity and clarity which is characteristic of the most important breakthroughs in science.

As a lifelong lover of science, a professional science theorist and theorist of science, and ex-editor of a theoretical of a journal of theoretical bioscience; no wonder I love it so much!

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Of course, this above account is excessively abstract and leaves out far more than it includes - but a grasp of the unique philosophical solidity of Mormonism (among Christian theologies) was, and remains, of great importance and significance to me.

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Reference: http://theoreticalmormon.blogspot.co.uk

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Common assertion: Meaningful coincidences are meaningless, non-causal, because humans are built to recognize patterns. We are pattern-recognizing animals. It is just like seeing faces in the fire: we evolved to see faces and so we see them all over the place.

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Question: But what is a pattern?

Answer: A pattern is a form, an arrangement of stuff.

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Bigger question: How do we recognize form?

Answer: Because we have that form within us. We are indeed pattern-recognizers, because we are form recognizers and because we have form: we are form- if we were not then we could not perceive pattern or form.

But: how could an animal evolve to recognize form from the infinite variation and boundless stimuli of the world? How could natural selection ever find the form by random search among the possibilities from matching an unbounded possible number of forms with the undifferentiated mass of nature when not perceived via form?

Conclusion: There must be a finite number of forms, and they must be preinstalled both in reality and in creatures - or else nothing could ever happen (no analysis could ever get started). This is a necessity - the only debate is over where forms come from: whether these forms just are,  or whether they were created.

*

Reformulation of common assertion: Meaningful coincidences are meaningless - because they are not causally connected. Or, because synchronicity is not connected by identifiable sequences of causes, then it cannot be meaningful.

Comment: Hey, wait a minute! Are you saying that events are meaningless unless their causal connectivity is unknown? That a pattern is not a pattern unless we know all the causes of that pattern? Do you live by this metaphysical assumption? No - I thought not.

*

Further comment: And are you saying that when the causes are known then the pattern is meaningful? Because that is false: a sequence of known causes does not make a pattern, but just itself. 'A causes B causes C causes D' is not a pattern - it is just what happened. Nothing to suggest that that precise sequence of causes makes a pattern; it was just contingent history.

A conclusion: if causal sequences are the only reality - then there can be no pattern. The structure of linear sequential causality denies, makes impossible, the reality of pattern recognition

...including the reality of that pattern we call linear sequential causality.

This is a self-refuting metaphysic: necessarily invalid.

*

Looping back: Man is a pattern recognizing animal, reality is patterned. But (banal truism coming-up) Man is not infallible and may fail to perceive patterns and may falsely identify patterns.

The proper question is whether this specific instance of synchronicity is real. Who needs to be convinced? And what is the baseline: are all instances to be denied absent conclusive evidence of their massive improbability; or to be accepted absent evidence that they are false positives?

On what grounds do we choose between these? On whose authority?

*

Or maybe there is discrimination preinstalled along with the pattern precognition: not infallible of course, but good enough - if  we take notice of its promptings.

But do we take notice of its promptings? Do we not, are we not trained to (actually brainwashed to), ignore the promptings of our pattern discriminating faculty?

*

The importance of this matter: In a nutshell, atheism.

Modern people adopt a self-refuting metaphysic (the unique validity of linear causal reasoning) which they then believe has proved itself by observation of reality. A consequence is that all instance of synchronicity are known, a priori, without discussion, to be random coincidences, a product of the human pattern making tendency.

These same people - who define in advance that all instances of pattern are illusory, then claim that there is no evidence for the reality of God (I mean, God in a generic sense); despite that thousands of years of previous humans found such evidence all about them.

And, due to their aversion from metaphysics, their extreme distractability and short attention span, they may be trapped - they trap themselves - by this incoherent logic.

*

e.g. Bertrand Russel: "Not enough evidence God. Not enough evidence!"

*

Maxim: Good philosophy probably cannot convert a soul; but bad philosophy can damn one.

*

*
Discernment is the ability to know the right thing to do - in fact to know the right thing and distinguish it from wrong things: especially wrong things in disguise. Discernment can be imagined as our guidance-system.

Many traditional Christian denominations and churches are set-up on the basis that we will be taught the right things, and given good advice, by those in authority - so the guidance system comes from priest and pastors - and sometimes from Kings and judges too.

But the modern world is characterized by the fact that it is precisely those in authority who are most deeply wicked; who are teaching the wrong things, giving bad advice (advice to be bad), and punishing good behaviour - they are not just muddling-up the right and wrong things, but deliberately reversing the labels...

And the modern world is huge, noisy, distracting, and the good and the right are mixed with, and almost lost in, much larger quantities of their opposites.

*

So the modern condition is characterized by a greater-than-ever need for a guidance system; while at the same time traditional guidance systems have been subverted and sabotaged.

One single source of guidance is inadequate, because all guidance is general and imprecise, and there will always be ambiguities and uncertainties when specific situation are tested against general rules.

The inadequacy, insufficiency, distortedness of trying to be guided wholly by list of laws and rules should be obvious; and furthermore it is anti-Christian to suppose that our job in Life is merely to obey - it is not.

We are each of us persons - hence unique; and our main job in Life (having accepted the reality and Goodness of God) it is to chisel-out our our own 'salvation', that is to follow the path of theosis, sanctification, spiritual progression or deification - towards the goal of becoming Sons of God and able and worthy of living with and communicating with God - person with person.

So in pursuing this complex path through a complex world; we need a multi-level, multi-step guidance system - and, luckily, we have one:

*

Knowing God's nature

If we have a reasonably clear understanding of the kind of person God is; what he is like and what he wants from us, and the attributes he most values in us (love above all, intelligence, strength, creativity etc)  - then this provides the general background and basis for our guidance.

In particular, God being our loving Father and we his children whom he wants to raise to be Sons of God and 'divine friends' - this understanding rules out a lot of false, deceptive and just-plain-mistaken teachings.

Then we communicate with God by prayer.

*

Knowing God is in us

If God was out there, and could only reach us by the normal methods of communication - then our situation would be hopeless.

But God is within us - he has planted a glowing coal of His divine nature in each person.

Once we know this glowing coal of divinity is in each of us, we can learn to feel and abide by its guidance - with attention to its promptings, through quiet contemplation and listening, by sensitivity to intuition sent from it, by meditation.

*

Our free will, agency, autonomy operating on personal revelation

Personal revelation can be grounded in firstly the faith that God is a real person and also within us, and knowing the general direction of God's wishes and hopes for us; and secondly recognizing our own radical autonomy to decide what to do about this.

We know something of God's nature, and we feel something of God in us - and then we are able, and indeed we must and do choose either to recognize God's will, and ally ourselves with Him in His hope for us and for the world - or we oppose it.

*

Synchronicity

Synchronicity is one important but neglected mode of personal revelation.

(Is you, here, now, reading this an example of synchronicity?)

Meaningful, enlightening, and Good coincidences occur and show us the proper or best path life lays before us through the world.

Representing fate, destiny - all these in a wholesome sense because always entailing and requiring our personal choice, decision, whether or not to follow this path.

Good choices are rewarded: when synchronicity is recognized, and when the decision is good, then Life becomes enhanced, infused with a kind of 'magic'.

The channels of communication between ourselves and God open-up, and our path becomes clearer both before and behind us - as if lit by an inner glow.  

*

Personal Revelation

Personal revelation (God's multi-modal communications to us, personally, for our personal guidance and benefits) takes us from the general to the specific. Takes us from the general knowledge of the kind of thing we must do, and must not do; to specific personal guidance about what exactly we must do, or not do.

*

We have a superb, flexible, infallible, guidance system!

But, typically, Life is trial and error, and discernment works by zig-zags.

We are engaged with Life, and we make mistakes and we sin due to ignorance, weakness, short-termism - and deliberately too, as an act of defiance.

But as we err and sin - we also discern our sins and errors, and can repent them, and repudiate them. Almost certainly, we will not be able altogether to stop making mistakes and stop yielding to temptations - but that is not what is asked of us nor what we are equipped to do.

We are equipped to try our best but make mistakes, to try our best but yield to sins - and then for discernment to make clear to us what we have done, so that we can (and do) know what was good and what we must repent.

*

So, our guidance system will lead us to good choices, but it is not perfect and neither is our will; and then the guidance systems will discern what has happened, and reveal our situation so we can do the right thing.

In sum our guidance system - like all sophisticated and really-useful guidance systems - has a predictive element which tells us what to aim at and do; but also a retrospective and corrective element: which alerts us when we are aiming off-course or have travelled down a wrong path and points the direction to get back on course or states the need to stop, turn around and retrace our steps.

*

(When I say corrected, I do not mean reversible - because once done mistake and sins, like everything else, are permanent. But by the atonement of Jesus Christ, repentance negates any and all sin. Thus - the major function of discernment is not avoidance but repentance.)

*

Our guidance system is therefore superb and infallible when taken as a whole and understanding its proper function - including both the predictive but also the corrective elements as back-up. 

We will make mistakes because the predictive element is imperfect, and we will make mistakes because of our imperfect and sinful nature and the difficulties of our situation - but these mistakes will always be detectable and correctable because the back-up element is an intrinsic part of the guidance system.

*

*
Synchronicity is defined (sometimes) as 'meaningful coincidence' - but that begs the question as to what is meaningful. (Plus, of course, when something is meaningful, it is not coincidence - but somehow causally linked - purposive.) In particular, meaning may only become apparent later, or may only become apparent under certain circumstances.

So coincidences that seems so unlikely they can hardly be coincidence, may nonetheless be apparently rivial or bizarre and difficult to regard as either significant communication. The may indeed soon soon be forgotten (although if the synchronicity events had been understood they might well have been remembered).

My analogy is the dream images and frangments mentioned in Tolkien's Notion Club Papers, pages 189-191 -
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.co.uk/  

- which evoke in the character Ramer a strong 'feeling of hidden significance' - the nature of this significance remains hidden until much later; when he realizes the scenes are fragments of a larger story.  

**

And that strong feeling of hidden significance in remembered fragments: my experience now, though it is still very imperfect, certainly bears out my guess, as far as my own dreams go. My significant fragments were actually often pages out of stories, made up in quieter dream-levels, and by some chance remem- bered. Occasionally they were bits of long visions of things not invented.

 'If long ago you'd either read or written a story and forgotten it, and then in an old drawer you came on a few torn pages of it, containing a passage that had some special function in the whole, even if it had no obvious point in isolation, I think you'ld get very similar feelings: of hidden significance, of lost con- nexions eluding you, and often of regret.'

 'Could you give us any examples?' asked Jeremy. Ramer thought for a moment. 'Well,' he said, 'I could have done so. I've placed several of my fragments in their proper setting now. But the difficulty is that when once you've got the whole story, you tend very soon to forget which part of it was the bit you used to remember torn out. But there are a couple that I still remember, for I only placed them recently; and I still remember my disappointment. The whole stories are often not particularly good or interesting, you know; and the charm of the fragments is often largely in being unfinished, as sometimes happens in waking art. The sleeping mind is no cleverer than itself; only it can be less distracted and more collected, more set on using what it has.

 'Here's one case: it's only interesting as an illustration. A row of dark houses on the right, going up a slight slope. Their backs had little gardens or yards fenced with hedges, and a narrow path behind them. It was miserably dark and gloomy. Not a light in the houses, not a star, no moon. He was going up the path for no particular reason, in a heavy aimless mood. Near the top of the slope he heard a noise: a door had opened at the back of one of the houses, or it had closed. He was startled and apprehensive. He stood still. End, of fragment.

 What would you expect the emotion to be that this aroused?' 'Like going round to the back-door after closing-time and hearing that just being shut as well?' suggested Lowdham. 'It sounds reasonable enough,' agreed Ramer with a laugh.

 'Actually it was a happiness that brings tears, like the thrill of the sudden turn for good in a dangerous tale; and a kind of dew of happiness was distilled that spilled over into waking, lasted for hours, and for years was renewed (though diminishingly) on recollection.

 'All my waking mind could make of it was that the picture was sombre. It did rather remind me of - or rather, I identified it, in spite of some misfit, with a row of cottages near where I lived as a small boy. But that did not explain the joy. And, by the way, if it had really been a picture of that row, there should have been a pump just at the top of the slope. I put it in. I see it now in dark silhouette. But it was not there in my earliest recollection, not in the original version. Also, I was only the he of the scene in the way one does (or I do) identify oneself variably with this or that character in a tale, especially with regard to the point of vision. The scene was observed more or less from his point of view, though I (the producer) was just behind (and a little above) him - until he stopped. At the emotion-point I took his place.

 'The story that scene came out of is known to me now; and it's not very interesting. Apparently it's one I made up years ago, somewhere in the fifties, at a time when, while awake, wrote lots of things of the sort. I won't bother you with it all: it had a long and complicated plot, mainly dealing with the Six Years' War; but it wasn't very original, nor very good of its kind. All that matters at the moment is that this scene came just before a lovers' reunion, beyond the hope of either the man or the woman. On hearing the noise he halted, with a premonition that something was going to happen. The woman came out of the door, but he did not recognize her till she spoke to him at the gate. If he hadn't halted, they would have missed one another, probably for ever. The plot, of course, explained how they both came to be there, where neither of them had been before; but that doesn't matter now. The interesting thing is that the remembered fragment, for some reason, ended with the sound of the door and the halting; but the emotion left over was due to part of the story immediately following, which was not remembered pictorially at all. But there was no trace of the emotions of still later parts of the story, which did not finally have a happy ending.

**

So, the fragments get their significance, apparent meaningfulness, their from the surrounding and narrative which links and continues the snapshots of memory.

Perhaps unexplained synchronicity-type coincidence will likewise yeild meaningful content at some future time - if we pursue their meaning and are alert to the clues. 
*

I am fascinated by synchronicity - 'meaningful coincidences' - which have played an important role in my life, and indeed my late conversion to Christianity.

The specific meaning of a specific synchronous event in one's life cannot (as a rule) be interpreted by anybody else other than the person experiencing it: there is no objective symbolism to synchronicities, they are not a code.

The way to understanding one's own synchronicities is through Primary Thinking.

In Primary Thinking all truths concerned with synchronicities are linked meaningfully by the thread of thought; so the reality of specific aspects of synchronicities ought to become clear, by the context they occupy in the thinking of other truths. This is the method of discernment.

Why? because in this time and this place; all conspires to ensure that we can each make spiritual progress only by voluntary, free, personal, intuitive thinking.

We cannot make the next step from alienated modernity passively; not by unconscious processes -- we cannot be compelled to take the next step, neither can we do it by obedience; we cannot be informed by (external) inspiration; logic and reason are of no help for this purpose; experience is no good either...

These were good, right and effective in other times and other places - but not for us, here and now. 

This makes sense to me because we are being invited (offered the gift) to begin thinking in the divine way ('final' participation); functioning as the agent (minor) deities we are (sons and daughters of God); so that detailed discernment needs to come from the divine-within us, and not by obedience to the divine-without us (which can contradict error, but not discern truth).

So... there is indeed something significant in the specific details of synchronicities - they are not merely quantitative and general in significance (although they are that too); but only you can discover what that significance is, and only for your own synchronicities.

But this you can do - via Primary Thinking.

*
Modern man is prone to destroy his own possibility of happiness by adopting a nihilistic framework of belief - that is, Man adopts a set of basic, metaphysical assumptions about reality, which makes-impossible anything more than momentary and unrelated 'incidents' of 'subjective' happiness.

*

In contrast, we need to recognize that

1. We are not separate from reality, we personally are part of the whole manifestation of everything. What applies to reality, also applies to us as individuals.

2. We are not accidental. We are purposive; there is reason for things being the way they are, happening the way they do.

We are thus an intentional part of all the on-going schemes in the universe.

*

We are also free agents within this scheme - we are each a source of causation, not just a passive consequence of other causes.

We are each an active part of a kaleidoscopically-evolving pattern.

*

If we saw things aright, then the perception of synchronicity - that paradox of meaningful coincidence - would be normal, not exceptional. We would know it, not guess it: learn from it, not doubt it.

We would recognize that although life is a matter of problems; alienation and nihilism (subjective-isolation and meaningless-purposelessness) are neither of them real problems - they are modern pseudo-problems: implanted in us by a false, destructive, self-hating, self-annihilating impulse.

Having reduced modern man to despair, modernity then offers the palliatives of pleasure and self-forgetfulness via the mass media, self-medication and sex - that is, those momentary and unrelated 'incidents' of 'subjective' happiness we started-with.

If happiness is defined as subjective, and when happiness is momentary, and when each state of happiness is seen as detached from each other - neither linked in a pattern nor organized by a purpose - then happiness itself becomes a source of despair.

Which is the modern situation.

*

You most probably already know all this, in your innermost true and real self - yet that real self is not in control; and instead the real you is being passively-carried from one state and situation to another, by a false personality self that was supposed to be a servant to your real self, but has ended up as master.

So now, your automatic responses to the world have become organized and linked-together to make a formidable obstacle to your real happiness. Something which is, and ought to seem easy - i.e. recognizing that we are apart of a purposeful reality - has come to seem absurd and impossible.

The simple act of recognition of the meaningfulness and purposefulness of all things and our intrinsic place in this scheme... this simple mental act has to work-against a net of linked illusions and the inertia of entrenched habit - it is so 'natural' to lapse back into the prevalent illusions of nihilism and alienation; and if you don't you will be seen as dumb/ crazy/ dangerous by those who are paralysed and passive.

*

In the end, it is up-to-you and your-responsibility; only you - the real you - has the power to make the necessary decision to recognize and acknowledge your true situation.

You have the power both to recognize it or to deny it. 

And the worst of all uses of this power is to deny-to-yourself that you-yourself have this power - but instead to pretend-to-yourself that you are merely a passive, contingent, sense-less, self-deluded, momentary spark in a void.

That is the ultimate in alienation and nihilism; and it is ultimately self-imposed. 

*

Surveying my life, one fact seems clear - that there was a destiny at work. And the only real choice was to accept or reject it - it was not possible to pursue a different fate than the real one.

This is the opposite to the mainstream view, and the one to which I adhered; which said that we could and should choose our own path through life: that we could create the life we wanted.

What I see is that whenever (and this could go on for years) I was trying to create my own future, I failed. Anything other then my destiny was sabotaged by events.

Often self-sabotaged. I would decide what I wanted, I would set myself to trying to achieve it; but things would happen, all kinds of things, to prevent it. Or, if I got it; then it was nothing like I imagined or hoped - and my own motivation would inexorably evaporate. I could not make myself hold-onto what I had grasped. 

I was never forced (I could not be forced, apparently) do do the right thing (to follow destiny), and I generally avoided doing the right thing for a very long time; but doing the wrong thing could be and was sabotaged again and again - tirelessly, relentlessly!

I spent a great deal of time purposefully doing the wrong things, with the wrong people; pursuing wrong career ideas; trying to live in wrong places..

William Arkle explains this in terms of us having two kinds of will, one deep and the others on the surface. The deep will is the real will - that is, the will of our real, divine, eternal selves. But above this are potentially several 'personality wills' - or 'ego' wills... these are what people mean by 'will power', when someone sets out to create their own future by channelling their efforts in a specific direction.

Because it is divine, the real will operates by innumerable unperceived 'mechanisms' to align events in its favour - that is, the real will is sustained by synchronicity. In contrast, synchronicity works against the personality will, whenever it conflicts with the real. 

What is this destiny, and what is it for? Well, it is Not a plan leading to a specific outcome; because life is not like that. Life is the experiences we most need for our eternal benefit; and destiny is teaching us what we most need to learn. 

Destiny is divine, and destiny is our teacher. But whether we learn from it depends on us.

So long as we strive against destiny, we will get negative lessons. Experience will be teaching us: No, not this. No, not this either... on and on. We may experience a great deal of pleasure; but it will be undercut by existential despair.

When we are on the path of destiny, by contrast, we will experience a deep happiness and hope which continues underneath our surface sufferings.

Someone who lives in accordance with destiny is distinguished by getting from mortal life what his  eternal soul most needed from mortal life. But one who avoids his destiny has wasted his life.

*
http://www.jrganymede.com/2015/06/30/interpreting-synchronicity/
*

It seems to be a human trait that - at least in the short term (of a few years) we can get stuck accepting an incoherent and partial explanation that does not really explain. If we are honest, however; sooner or later we should realize our error and modify our convictions. 

The mainstream and official metaphysical assumptions of the modern world have it that life has no purpose or meaning; because the universe happened due to physical processes that are some mixture of rigidly determined and utterly 'random', and are indifferent to human life. Human life is due to an historical process of natural selection that was not aiming anywhere, and merely represents the operation of differential rates of reproductive success...

Yet plenty of people would assert that they Do have some sense of meaning and purpose in life - or, to put it negatively, that their lives are Not utterly random Nor arbitrarily determined by prior causes... That is not their experience.

How can this be, given the imbibed 'truths' (i.e. unexamined assumptions) that there cannot be purpose or meaning to human life? In particular - how can people assert meaning or purpose despite continuing to hold to the same assumptions that rule-out any such possibility?   

Here we come-up against a multitude of half-explanations; that in one sense seem at least to take-the-edge of the craving for meaning, if not to satisfy it - yet in removing the urgency tend to block progress towards a full and coherent explanation. 

One example of this is synchronicity - which at one point I 'got stuck on', while yet an atheist. I had the partial belief that the external events of my life were not just meaningless coincidences, but that they were a guide to what I 'ought' to do - at least in the sense of telling me what would make me happiest and most fulfilled. 

I held to another half-explanation that there was a 'path through life' which I again 'ought' to follow - and that when I was off this path, I would become more and more miserable and demotivated; which was meant to be a signal that I should seek my 'proper' path. 

So, I remained an atheist, and continued to hold the mainstream-official assumptions that life was - really and ultimately - meaningless and purposeless (a product of physics and biology, and nothing more) - yet I also asserted that my life did, in fact, have purpose (a 'destined path') and meaning (with synchronicities, not arbitrary coincidences). 

I needed to ask how this was possible. I needed to Get real. I needed to take my own assertions serious, and follow through to their conclusions. 

I needed to explain how a destined path and meaningful guiding events could possibly occur - to ask what kind of universe was implied if these were real and true?   

Eventually, I did ask these questions, and was rather disturbed to discover that the only coherent explanation was that there was a creator-god, who had-made and was-shaping the world. This was the only way that the tiny events of my life in a vastly complex reality be lined-up such as to communicate meaning. 

And further, that this creator-god must love me, personally; in order to accomplish this careful alignment of millions of events to my own life (among billions of Men and far more other organisms) for my benefit. 

...Because, there was no doubt that I regarded synchronicity and destiny as 'for my own benefit' - they were operating to tell me what it was 'best' to do, what would (in some sense) make me happier and more fulfilled, and would lead to better outcomes for people I loved and the world more generally. I regarded it as Important that I follow My destiny. 

These are what I assumed in my actual life; and I eventually acknowledged that my assumptions pointed at a personal God, who was creator and create-ing; and who loved me personally. 

Thus I became a theist - this was around the middle of 2008 - and after that it was merely a matter of 'choosing my religion' from among those who acknowledged that God was of this nature. 

*
CG Jung is unusual among geniuses, in that he was dishonest about his own work and its implications.

That he was a genius I think is correct; he made numerous discoveries and conceptual breakthroughs  - and he is an unseen but pervasive influence behind vast areas of modern culture including psychology, psychiatry, therapy and (especially) that vast and vague phenomenon called the New Age movement (almost everything about the New Age has a Jungian lineage - even when this is not generally known or acknowledged).

But that Jung was a thoroughly-dishonest and deceptive man is something equally undeniable. Jung was never plain and honest when that was inexpedient - Jung was not driven by a pure pursuit of truth; because truth was readily and repeatedly sacrificed when the consequences were unwanted by Jung.

He craved respectability as a Professor, psychiatrist, scholar, scientist - and would trim his published views to ensure this. He wanted wealth, status, admiration - and patients were charmed, strung-along and generally exploited to ensure this.

Jung wanted to be regarded as an unworldly sage - but worked to create an organization dedicated to his own self-promotion. He was a wholesale sexual seducer of his patients and trainees right into old age; and had a long-term live-in mistress who functioned as a second wife (while being unmentioned in his autobiography - he also used his personal magnetism to maintain a household of handmaidens to dote upon and serve him.

*

The point is that Jung's many compromises, deceptions, evasions, and lies are so consistently dedicated to his own comfort, convenience and gratification that the picture is one of a highly charming and dominant; but heartless, manipulative and selfish psychopath.

*

So far, Jung is the precursor of the modern intellectual - the 'tenured radical', the charismatic bureaucrat, the bourgeois bohemian, the alpha-male academic, the medical research project manager, the therapist-entrepreneur, the charity CEO, the self-help/ help-yourself guru, the sexual healer...

But this could be put aside as mere hypocrisy - and that is something of which we are all guilty (it would be hypocritical to pretend otherwise). But Jung's dishonesty went even deeper than that, to invade his primary achievement.

Because Jung's work is incoherent at the very deepest level - and this incoherence has afflicted his legacy. And this incoherence was not the result of confusion, but the result of dishonesty.

*

An example is the idea of synchronicity; which has become an extremely influential cultural idea - but which is deployed in a way that makes no sense. And this incoherence is not due to misunderstanding Jung, but comes directly from Jung's written contradictory accounts and evasions of the implications of his own insight.

Colin Wilson exposed this in his marvelously insightful short study: Lord of the Underworld: Jung and the twentieth century (1984); especially the chapter the Sage of Kusnacht, where Wilson goes through the writings on synchronicity with a fine toothed comb, and tries to pin down what Jung really believed, or meant - and comes up against a mass of obfuscation and self-refutation: of giving with one hand and taking back with the other.

Jung's last recorded words from his death bed seem appropriate: "Let's have a really good red wine tonight." The final statement of a man whose personal gifts were astonishingly great - but who consistently and successfully deployed them for his own comfort, convenience and glory.

*

It is an error to look for 'evidence' of God's activity in this world - this is a mind set that leads to a life trapped in end-less, open-ended 'research' - one will become a seeker, never a finder.

But, if you instead begin with acknowledgement that it is possible that this world was created by a personal God, who loves us as individuals; then there are plenty of events in your life which are consistent-with such an assumption.

Yesterday I mentioned personal-miracles. For example, you pray for something and it happens in such a way that you, privately - by your own standards and nobody else's, regard it as a miracle.

This granted-prayer may be absolutely 'trivial' both in terms of the world at large and your own life-span - but that is not the point. The point is that such miracles are consistent with the vision of this world as purposive and meaning-full.

Another example is synchronicity - phenomena that are oxymoronically described as meaningful-coincidences. Typically these events are also trivial; but the point of them is that synchronicity is exactly what would be expected in a world of divine Providence; a world in which God was 'behind the scenes' and organising things.

Peak experiences are another instance - brief times of transcendent happiness that come (apparently) out of the blue; and in which we powerfully feel life to be meaningful, coherent, purposive, benign.  

I think it is usually an error to try and understand the implications of the content of these spiritual gifts such as miracles, synchronicities, peak experiences. Not all are pregnant with guidance; some really are quite 'trivial'.

Such spiritual gifts are mostly 'signs' of the kind of world we live in. And they are also signs of us living well, living in a proper mode of consciousness - and such spiritual signs will apparently increase when we are in a Good frame of mind; and may well be utterly absent from a life wrongly-lived.

Spiritual signs might be absent from a materialist life that assumed there was no meaning or purpose, that the world was determined and/ or random (not created) - and if such phenomena do happen to occur, they will be regarded as insignificant, lacking importance, merely a species of delusion.

In sum - spiritual gifts are best understood as signs, consistent with the nature of reality; and we need not get too concerned by what the specific-content of each specific-sign specifically-implies for our own specific-life, or beyond...

If the magic of Original Participation was Sympathetic Magic; and that of the modern Consciousness Soul era was Ritual Magic - then the magic of the future could be Magical Thinking.

Magical Thinking is Primary Thinking - considered as a form of magic. 

In Magical Thinking, the real self - that is the divine self, that which we inherited from God as being Sons and Daughters of God - knows, predicts and creates.

You have probably experienced this - for example during 'enchanted' times when you knew that the world was an unfolding delight, and that you could depend on 'synchronicity' to make good things happen. Those times and moods when you know that around that corner, over that hill, in that cafe there will be something important and delightful: and there always is.

As long as we stay in the enchanted mode of thinking, then life is good, we are involved-with the world and other people, and all will go well. This is Magical Thinking.

It is Enchant-ment but is Not Enchant-ed - this state of being is not 'imposed' by the surroundings, nor is it 'imagined' by our-selves - instead Magical Thinking is precisely that there is participation going-on between both self and world.

In Primary Thinking, our knowledge of the world is based on our participation-in the unfolding reality of the world; and therefore is bound up with the creativity of our real selves.

Creativity is intrinsic to the Final Participation situation, because Primary Thinking is the thinking of our real, divine and free selves: free in the sense of agent, and agent meaning that the divine mind is an origin of thinking (having 'free will' should be understood in this sense of being an uncaused cause: specifically, an uncaused-cause in the realm of Primary Thinking).

In different words: The real self is divine, hence generates thinking not merely caused, but itself causal - hence the real self knows reality, and is original and creative. The real self knows reality directly, unmediated; and this is also a consequence of Participation - the real self knows reality because in its Primary Thinking, it is identical-with reality.

(In the Original Participation of childhood or early tribal man, the individual also knows reality directly; because he lacks full consciousness, his self is passively immersed in reality. The purpose of the developmental evolution of consciousness is exactly that we become able to participate in reality again; but actively-participate; with freedom and creativity: the fully-divine mode of being.)

Thus in Primary Thinking the thinking is original and generative - it is intrinsically creative. The thinking participates-in the world and brings something new to this world.

Thus Magical Thinking is something by which you change the world, but not by 'manipulating' reality. Instead, the world inevitable changes as a consequence of the unity of the self with reality; and the fact that the self brings something new, original, self-generated to reality.

Magical Thinking is therefore our individual contribution to the God's ongoing creation. It is a real magic, because we personally can know reality including some ability to predict reality; and we personally make-a-difference to reality.

But by Magical Thinking we cannot and will not shape reality to our own personal ends - but only to divine ends.

Thus there cannot be a 'black magic' of Magical Thinking. Magical Thinking is (as we experience it) intrinsically good because it is the divine in us (God immanent) really participating-in the reality of continuing divine creation.