A year or two ago i recorded this piece with Ken Wilber during one of the live conference calls at Integral Spiritual Center, and i found the discussion to be absolutely fascinating. Synchronicity has long been a defining texture in my own spiritual path, and was a topic which, until this call, i had never heard Ken speak or write about. Although i can certainly understand his silence around the subject, still i believe that the Integral vision can give us a much more lucid understanding of how synchronicity actually works, beyond the deeply confused interpretations offered by New Agers, Quantum Meta-Physicians, and peddlers of various consciousness-scams such as The Secret.

Do you think the Integral map can help us to better understand the energetic mechanics of synchronicity? Is such an inquiry even useful for integral practicioners? Let me know your throughts!

Synchronicity: A Post-Metaphysical Interpretation

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My question to Ken:

“Synchronicity has long been an intrinsic part of my own spiritual path, something i have come to regard as a sort of “experiential faith”, and i have long desired to find a place for it within the integral model. For me, synchronicity feels almost like a collapse of the four quadrants of my holon into a singular experience of tetra-emergence, in which my UL intention, my UR actions, my LR circumstances, and my LL sense of meaning and context all fall into perfect symmetry with each other. In these moments, there is a sensation that the totality of my subject suddenly becomes object in my awareness, a sort of bird’s-eye-view of self–and perhaps more profoundly, there is usually a sense of presence of and sometimes even subtle interaction with an intelligence that is undeniably greater than my own.

In the twenty tenets, there is a wonderful description of the relationship that exists between junior and senior holons, namely that the lower determines the possibilities of the higher, the higher determines the probabilities of the lower–so that of all the things that could possibly happen, certain things become more likely to happen. Could this have something to do with synchronistic experiences? Would this explain why there have been so many different names for this synchronicity throughout history: magenta fate, red destiny, amber miracles and grace, orange luck and coincidence, green “interconnectivity of the web-of-life”…. And if there is indeed a higher holon determining the probability fields of my human experience, what/where/who is that higher holon?”

Some interpretations of Synchronicity, according to altitude:

  • Magenta: fate, omens
  • Red: destiny, the “law of attraction” (e.g. The Secret, a red wolf in green clothing)
  • Amber: miracles, divine providence, grace, karma
  • Orange: luck, chance, coincidence, “statistical anomalies”
  • Green: web-of-life interconnectivity, Celestince Prophecy type Synchronicity, Hippie Karma
  • 2nd Tier: symmetrical collapse of intention (UL), behavior (UR), meaning (LL), and circumstance (LR)

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