Osho on Carl Gustav Jung and the the law of synchronicity

 

 

※ Osho speaks on the the law of synchronicity discovered by Carl Gustav Jung.

Jung (26 July 1875 – 6 June 1961), the Swiss psychotherapist and psychiatrist who founded analytical psychology, created some of the best known psychological concepts, including the archetype, the collective unconscious, the complex, and synchronicity. His interest in philosophy and the occult led many to view him as a mystic.

 

Jung says,

Synchronistic events provide an immediate religious experience as a direct encounter with the compensatory patterning of events in nature as a whole, both inwardly and outwardly.”

 

 

 

Question 3

Osho,

You say, "do not imitate christ, buddha or you," but cannot one learn by imitation? cannot one learn by following? cannot one become one's true self by the light of christ, buddha or you?

 

 

To imitate is to go against yourself. To imitate simply means you are denying yourself and you are imposing somebody else upon you. Love Christ if you can find him, but don't imitate him. Understand the Buddha if by chance you meet him, but don't follow him. You are here with me: BE with me in deep love, in deep trust; allow me to have a communion with your heart -- let our hearts meet, merge, mingle with each other. But please don't imitate me, don't follow me.

 

You have to go on your own. You have to be a light unto yourself. You have to BE YOURSELF! If you imitate Christ you will be a Christian but never a Christ -- and to be a Christian is ugly, and to be a Christ is one of the most beautiful happenings. The most precious happening in the world is to be a Christ.

 

To be a Buddha means to be awakened to your inner light. How can you be awakened by following somebody? My sannyasins are not my followers, they are my friends, they are my lovers. They are not my followers! I am not giving you any instructions about how to live; I am not giving you any commandments about how to behave. I am not giving you any character to cultivate. I am simply sharing my insight -- I am simply sharing with you what has happened to me. I am simply telling my story to you. And I am grateful that you are listening to it.

 

Just listen to it as totally as possible, and then something will start happening in you. It will not be a following, it will not be an imitation. It will not be caused by me: it will be a synchronicity. It will be acausal.

 

The law of synchronicity has to be understood. This is one of the greatest contributions of Carl Gustav Jung to modern humanity: the law of synchronicity.

 

Science is based on the law of causality. The law of causality is mechanical. You heat water to a hundred degrees -- it evaporates. Where you heat it is irrelevant -- in the temple, in the church, in the mosque, it doesn't matter; in India, in Tibet, it doesn't matter. If you heat water to a hundred degrees, it evaporates; the water has no say in it. The water cannot say, "Today I am not feeling like it." Or, "Today is Sunday and I am on a holiday, and I am not interested in becoming vapour." Or, "Today I am not in the mood, and you can go on heating and heating and I will not evaporate." Or, "Today I am suddenly feeling very generous towards you so I will evaporate at fifty degrees. I will favour you." No, the water has no choice. The law is mechanical, it is causal. If you create the cause, the effect HAS to follow. And it is without any exception.

 

Because of this law of causality, science cannot believe in the existence of soul, in the existence of consciousness, in the existence of God -- because they are non-mechanical phenomena. The very methodology of science prevents it from accepting them; they cannot be absorbed in the scientific world. They will disturb it, they will destroy its whole edifice. They have to be kept out -- God, soul, consciousness, love -- they have all to be kept outside the temple of science. They cannot be allowed in. They are dangerous: they will sabotage its whole structure. They are acausal. But they must be following some other law.

 

The credit goes to Carl Gustav Jung. The law has been known down the ages, but nobody had named it exactly. He called it 'the law of synchronicity'. It suddenly happened to a scientist. A scientist a hundred years ago was staying in an old house. In that old house there were two old clocks on the same wall. He was surprised to see that they always kept exactly the same time, second to second: "Old clocks, and so perfect? Not even a single second's difference?"

 

Being a scientist he became curious. He put one clock five minutes back, and after twenty-four hours in the morning when he looked again, they were again keeping the same time. Now it was a great puzzle. He enquired... nobody had changed, nobody had touched anything. He tried again and again, and again and again they would come to the same rhythm. Then he tried to find out: "What is happening? -- something strange. They are disconnected!"

 

Then he observed more minutely and he came to conclude: "The vibration of the one clock, which is more powerful, the bigger clock, goes through the wall -- just the vibration -- and keeps the other clock in tune. It is a subtle rhythm. Nothing is visible."

 

That was the beginning of a new phenomenon... then many many more things happened. And by the time Carl Gustav Jung started working on how things happen in consciousness, he came to conclude that the vibe of one heart, if it is powerful enough, can change the rhythm of another heart -- just like the bigger clock was changing the smaller clock.

 

The vibe is invisible. There is not yet any way to measure it, but it is there. It is not tangible, but it functions. It is not causal.

 

That's what happens in SATSANG -- in communion with a Master. If you are with a Christ, he is a tremendous power -- he is God! He is a window to God. God is flowing through him. If you come close to him -- and that's what disciplehood is all about: to come close to a Master, to come close to a window from whom God is flowing -- his power, his vibe, will set the rhythm of your heart. It is acausal, one of those mysterious intangibles, but it has been happening down the ages.

 

-Osho, “The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty, #3”