past is lost life; that which is to come would not be life possessed; and that which is passing is life in decay.
—E DWARD L EEN
The world of places is one with our inner world in this moment in time. Are we living exclusively in time-bound awareness or in unity consciousness in which time and eternity are one? Synchronicity plays out its pattern across the boundaries of time, since time and timelessness are two sides of a single coin in the realm of the Self. We are carefully tied to nature and history but only occasionally get a glimpse of this wonderful simultaneity.
Historic time is linear following the calendar without repetition. Cyclic time continually comes full circle commemorating events like a liturgy. This aspect of time was acknowledged and revered by the ancients. New Year, in early times, coincided with the expulsion of demons and purification of the universe. It was a repetition of the original creation, an abolition of history as linear. New birth included death and resurrection, an eternal return. Death is necessary for life to happen and for the cycle to continue. The moon is a symbol of this cycle since it appears, waxes, wanes, disappears, and reappears.
Synchronicity brings cyclic time into historical time. As we saw earlier, events to the ancients were not irreversible and thus not historical in our sense. In cyclic time everything begins over again at every moment. The year becomes a holy-day cycle of our own ever-recurring journey. “No event is irreversible and no transformation is final. . . . The desire to refuse history testifies to man’s thirst for the real and his terror of losing himself by being overwhelmed by the meaninglessness of profane existence,” says Mircea Eliade in The Myth of the Eternal Return.
In ancient paleo-Oriental religions, revelation happened in mythic time, before the beginning of the world, and then was repeated in an archetypal way. In monotheism, revelation happens at a specific time and place, for example, Moses on Sinai. Events of revelation become precious since they are no longer repeatable but happening once and for all in a historic moment. In that perspective, time is full of hope because it grants us a continuing opportunity for redemption.
Joseph Campbell proposes that “true mysticism releases you from time and then returns you to it.” This is the conception of time as kairos, which in Homeric Greek means “a penetrable opening.” A kairos is a time of immediate opportunity, especially an opportunity for spiritual transformation. Synchronicity makes any moment a kairos since it connects us to destiny.
Kairos in ancient Greece was personified as the god of lucky coincidence (serendipity). Aion was the god of time, originally a vital fluid in all beings. Aion refers to eternal time, the nunc stans: the timeless moment beyond the flux of change. Aion does not abolish time but enlivens it spiritually. Since this time cannot be distinguished from normal time, we are confronted with a combination of opposites, exactly the paradoxical precinct of synchronicity, most appealing to the Self and most scary to the ego.
The Self speaks to us in dreams and synchronicity, showing us that there is no serial time: past first, then present, then future. All time is simultaneous and inseparable in an unboundedly timeless present. This is beyond the conceptual limits of the rational, left-brain mind for which time can only be a succession of past to present to future. Synchronicity is freedom from such succession.
Here is an example that may clarify how it is possible to enter this other sense of time. Yesterday I watched a DVD that you are watching today. In the middle of your watching it, I walk in and I instantly recall the scene you are seeing. I know what will happen to the characters on the screen in this scene and in the rest of the film. I know this without having to take time to think about it. I know all the fates of all the characters and the plot
—E DWARD L EEN
The world of places is one with our inner world in this moment in time. Are we living exclusively in time-bound awareness or in unity consciousness in which time and eternity are one? Synchronicity plays out its pattern across the boundaries of time, since time and timelessness are two sides of a single coin in the realm of the Self. We are carefully tied to nature and history but only occasionally get a glimpse of this wonderful simultaneity.
Historic time is linear following the calendar without repetition. Cyclic time continually comes full circle commemorating events like a liturgy. This aspect of time was acknowledged and revered by the ancients. New Year, in early times, coincided with the expulsion of demons and purification of the universe. It was a repetition of the original creation, an abolition of history as linear. New birth included death and resurrection, an eternal return. Death is necessary for life to happen and for the cycle to continue. The moon is a symbol of this cycle since it appears, waxes, wanes, disappears, and reappears.
Synchronicity brings cyclic time into historical time. As we saw earlier, events to the ancients were not irreversible and thus not historical in our sense. In cyclic time everything begins over again at every moment. The year becomes a holy-day cycle of our own ever-recurring journey. “No event is irreversible and no transformation is final. . . . The desire to refuse history testifies to man’s thirst for the real and his terror of losing himself by being overwhelmed by the meaninglessness of profane existence,” says Mircea Eliade in The Myth of the Eternal Return.
In ancient paleo-Oriental religions, revelation happened in mythic time, before the beginning of the world, and then was repeated in an archetypal way. In monotheism, revelation happens at a specific time and place, for example, Moses on Sinai. Events of revelation become precious since they are no longer repeatable but happening once and for all in a historic moment. In that perspective, time is full of hope because it grants us a continuing opportunity for redemption.
Joseph Campbell proposes that “true mysticism releases you from time and then returns you to it.” This is the conception of time as kairos, which in Homeric Greek means “a penetrable opening.” A kairos is a time of immediate opportunity, especially an opportunity for spiritual transformation. Synchronicity makes any moment a kairos since it connects us to destiny.
Kairos in ancient Greece was personified as the god of lucky coincidence (serendipity). Aion was the god of time, originally a vital fluid in all beings. Aion refers to eternal time, the nunc stans: the timeless moment beyond the flux of change. Aion does not abolish time but enlivens it spiritually. Since this time cannot be distinguished from normal time, we are confronted with a combination of opposites, exactly the paradoxical precinct of synchronicity, most appealing to the Self and most scary to the ego.
The Self speaks to us in dreams and synchronicity, showing us that there is no serial time: past first, then present, then future. All time is simultaneous and inseparable in an unboundedly timeless present. This is beyond the conceptual limits of the rational, left-brain mind for which time can only be a succession of past to present to future. Synchronicity is freedom from such succession.
Here is an example that may clarify how it is possible to enter this other sense of time. Yesterday I watched a DVD that you are watching today. In the middle of your watching it, I walk in and I instantly recall the scene you are seeing. I know what will happen to the characters on the screen in this scene and in the rest of the film. I know this without having to take time to think about it. I know all the fates of all the characters and the plot
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