In addition to the causal relationships found in nature, which are the basis of our science – that is, event A causes event B – Carl Jung showed us another equally important and useful relationship. This relationship is acausal, based rather on meaning – that is, event A and event B occurring at the same moment in time, share in the meaning of that moment. He named this acausal relationship synchronicity.

This relationship underlies the use of the I Ching. The results you obtain from the yarrow stalks or the three coins tell you which particular hexagrams are relevant for you at that particular time. They do this by themselves being events that share in the same moment and meaning as do your present situation and state of mind.

Jung saw many examples of synchronicity in the dreams and the lives of his patients. He spoke of it as a meaningful coincidence. He defined it more formally as “the simultaneous occurrence of a certain psychic state with one or more external events which appear as meaningful parallels to the momentary subjective state.” (Jung, CW, Volume VIII, p. 441) He sites an interesting example in this same essay, one that he had gotten from Camille Flammarion, the astronomer. I quote it here in full:

“A certain M. Deschamps, when a boy in Orleans, was given once a piece of plum-pudding by a M. de Fortgibu. Ten years later he discovered another plum-pudding in a Paris restaurant, and asked if he could have a piece. It turned out, however, that the plum-pudding was already ordered—by M. de Fortgibu. Many years afterwards M. Deschamps was invited to partake of a plum-pudding as a special rarity. While he was eating it he remarked that the only thing lacking was M. de Fortgibu. At that moment the door opened and an old, old man in the last stages of disorientation walked in: M. de Fortgibu, who had got hold of the wrong address and burst in on the party by mistake.” (p. 431)