Jung used the term synchronicity to describe uncanny correspondences between inner psychic states and outer physical events, defining the phenomenon as an acausal connecting principle. For many years, I adhered closely to this strict formulation. If synchronicity is truly acausal, then any proposed example would require ruling out every possible causal mechanism—including unknown or anomalous forms of causation such as clairvoyance or psychokinesis. In practice, such certainty is unattainable.

Recent dialogue with psychiatrist Bernard Beitman has encouraged me to reconsider this rigidity.
Jung himself, influenced by his collaboration with physicist Wolfgang Pauli, entertained the possibility that causality and acausality might both emerge from a deeper unity—the Unus Mundus—in which psyche and matter are not fundamentally separate. From this perspective, causal and acausal descriptions may represent complementary ways of viewing events whose ultimate ground remains unknown.

Jung nevertheless retained the acausal definition of synchronicity and resisted applying the term to coincidences whose causes were merely hidden or unexplained. His formulation is conceptually powerful, but difficult to use operationally. Demonstrating true acausality would require a degree of knowledge unavailable to finite observers.

This difficulty suggests a need for clarification. Either a new term—such as parallelism—could designate meaningful correspondences without asserting acausality, or Jung’s definition could be relaxed to include coincidences whose causal status remains indeterminate. What matters psychologically is not proof of acausality, but the experience of meaningful convergence between inner and outer events.

Such convergence becomes especially significant in periods of collective uncertainty, where patterns of coincidence may constellate around archetypal images of transformation. In this sense, synchronicity may function less as a metaphysical claim than as a phenomenological signal—indicating moments when psyche and world appear to move in symbolic alignment. It is within this broader field of meaning that synchronicity intersects with what I call the “Singularity Archetype.”

(See this PowerPoint talk I gave recently at the Society for Scientific Exploration for an
introduction to the Singularity Archetype.)

A key aspect of the Singularity Archetype is that as we approach and cross two parallel event horizons, death and species metamorphosis, reality becomes more ideoplastic or thought responsive. The metabolism of synchronicity intensifies, and the parallelisms between the inner reality of the psyche and what appears outside increase to the point that apparent synchronicities become more the norm than remarkable exceptions. This is already the case when we cross the event horizon of waking consciousness into the dreamtime, where outer seeming events usually parallel the contents of the psyche.

Though synchronicities are still exceptional events, of all paranormal phenomena, they are likely the most common. Understanding and working with them can help us prepare for an increasingly ideoplastic world, especially if we remain aware of the trickster aspect of the unconscious that governs the paranormal. People with a sophisticated relationship to synchronicity recognize the pitfalls of overreading them. Similarly, Jung cautioned that dreams should not be interpreted as the voice of God.

Decades ago, I coined a saying, “Wherever you cast your obsessive attention, there shall you find weird patterning.” (Conspiracy theorists take note.) If something has a strong psychic charge, for example, a romantic infatuation, the likelihood of synchronicity increases. This, however, does not necessarily indicate we are on the right track. Perhaps I am contemplating whether an object of romantic obsession shares my feelings, and a love song comes on the radio featuring a beloved with the same name. That could deceive me into thinking my affections are returned when the synchronicity might merely reflect my obsession. It may act as a trickster, tempting me to further obsess about someone who does not return my interest. This is the danger of overreading synchronicities and assuming that they all represent divine guidance. Synchronicities and other forms of parallelisms are a sword that cuts both ways.

Human technology and consciousness evolve in parallel, and ever more clever algorithms put content into our feeds that parallel our interests, obsessions, and prejudices. While algorithms work mechanistically and causally, psychologically, the relevant content they manifest may be experienced as synchronistic, as signs and portents (often delusional and dangerous) that may trick us into believing we are on the right track as we pursue fake conspiracies, extreme political ideologies, sexual obsessions, etc.

The iconic object of the early industrial age was the iron locomotive, a single-purpose object that ran on linear tracks. The iconic object of our present age is the pixelated screen. The ubiquitous screens that occupy so many of our waking moments are like magic mirrors that reflect our psychic contents. Even if we are fully conscious of how they work—we entered a search term and relevant content is displayed—we still experience an ideoplastic parallelism.

Virtual reality, still in an early stage of development, could provide an even more immersive parallel environment. Using off-the-shelf hardware we’ve had for decades, like eye-tracking hardware that can recognize which part of a screen we stare at, could be used by video game designers to tailor the virtual environment to parallel psychic content. For example, let’s say an adolescent male is playing a video game with eye-tracking. The system could observe that his eyes linger on NPCs (non-player characters), and from this, it could deduce his sexual interests and romantic type. It could observe, for example, that his eyes focus on a female dominatrix, Amazonian warrior-type NPC, and if the game had sufficient processing power, it could fabricate such an NPC, tailored to his sexuality, and bring it forward to be his key ally in the game to captivate his interest and keep him investing more and more of his emotional and social energy on a virtual world that is more flattering and responsive to his needs than the difficult and ever-more-fragmented world of social interactions with actual people. His video game skills will improve, but likely at a high cost to human social skills and relationships.

As Sophocles said, no great gift enters the mortal sphere without a curse attached. The effects of this technology on particular users will vary, and some may find comfort and companionship in virtual environments. For example, both Dr. Beitman and I benefit from having Socratic dialogues with ChatGPT 5.2, but we are both older guys who developed social skills long before such tech existed. We aren’t going to use LLMs as a substitute for relationships with people, so our use of such a thought-responsive technology is less likely to harm us than a vulnerable and socially isolated adolescent male becoming ever more immersed in an ideoplastic VR game.

Another key feature of the Singularity Archetype is what I call “Homo Gestalt” (a term borrowed
from sci-fi writer Ted Sturgeon’s brilliant 1952 novel, More than Human.) Homo Gestalt involves a group of people forming a telepathic network. According to season one of The Telepathy Tapes, this is happening with non-speaking autistic kids who interact with others of their kind at a non-spatial-temporal place they call “The Hill.” Alongside the suggestive reports presented there, the extraordinary popularity of The Telepathy Tapes podcast—which in some markets surpassed The Joe Rogan Show—signals a widespread cultural resonance with the possibility of Homo Gestalt as an emergent theme. The extreme popularity of the Apple streaming series Pluribus, which reflects the ego’s fear of telepathic networks, is another example of this emergent signal.

If you are living within a telepathic network, parallelisms would increase dramatically. Meeting just the right person at just the right time would not have to depend on an extraordinary synchronicity; it could be affected by distant sensing of those on parallel wavelengths.

It seems increasingly plausible that human and technological evolution will continue to parallel each other, moving us toward an ever more ideoplastic world where parallelisms, for better and worse, will become the norm. The work of Dr. Beitman and others on synchronicity is, therefore, crucial “equipment for living.” Understanding the psychology and phenomenology of synchronicities is vitally important work, and those who remain unaware of these dynamics may find themselves living within increasingly self-reinforcing virtual environments in which the trickster aspect of parallelisms plays a dominant psychological role.