Customer Reviews

Synchronicity : Through the Eyes of Science, Myth and the Trickster

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I read the first edition of this book years ago and the concepts in it have haunted me ever since. Then, I bought my own copy of this second edition and found that the ideas contained in it had lost none of their power and were every bit as profound as I had remembered.

Briefly, this book deals with the concept of synchronicity or meaningful coincidence. It deals with it on two levels, the level of science and the level of myth. Indeed, it is shown that synchronistic events in themselves demonstrate the interpenetration of matter (the realm of science) and mind (the realm of myth.) Synchronicity is shown to leap the gap between not only the conscious and unconscious aspects of the mind, but between the world of mind and the world objective events. In this way it corresponds very well to the myth of Hermes, the god of boundaries, and the messenger between the world of the gods and the world of men.

The greatest strength of this book over other treatments of the topic is the clear and up-to-date manner that it addresses the possible scientific explanations of synchronicity. It draws primarily from the world of the new physics. Here is an extremely clear explanation of Bohm's theories on a holographic universe with explicate (physical, day-to-day) and implicate (hidden and fundamental) orders. In spite of the references to the modern world of subatomic physics, it struck me that this sounds remarkably like the hidden currents of the cosmos that occultists have always alluded to. The pattern based theories of Sheldrake, Laszlo, and Chester are also examined and compared. Indeed, the concepts of morphic fields and resonance seem to uncannily resemble the old magical principles of sympathy and correspondence between our own world and the world of archetypes. Indeed, it is shown that a balanced mind (both hemispheres at the same frequency) in deep meditation or prayer may be able to "range" the implicate order and bring about increased instances of synchronicity. Since it is suggested that synchronicity is the real basis for all ESP phenomena ( telepathy, precognition, psychokinesis, etc.) it could be said that this is an effective explanation for the concept of sympathetic magic.

The use of the concept of the mythological trickster is especially appropriate and effective. Many times synchronistic coincidences seem to exist for no other reason that to shatter our preconceived and ossified concepts of the universe. That was also the function of Hermes/ Mercurius/ Coyote in mythology. It is also the function of this book in a world still mired in the dogma of materialistic scientism.

I read the first edition of this book years ago and the concepts in it have haunted me ever since. Then, I bought my own copy of this second edition and found that the ideas contained in it had lost none of their power and were every bit as profound as I had remembered.

Briefly, this book deals with the concept of synchronicity or meaningful coincidence. It deals with it on two levels, the level of science and the level of myth. Indeed, it is shown that synchronistic events in themselves demonstrate the interpenetration of matter (the realm of science) and mind (the realm of myth.) Synchronicity is shown to leap the gap between not only the conscious and unconscious aspects of the mind, but between the world of mind and the world objective events. In this way it corresponds very well to the myth of Hermes, the god of boundaries, and the messenger between the world of the gods and the world of men.

The greatest strength of this book over other treatments of the topic is the clear and up-to-date manner that it addresses the possible scientific explanations of synchronicity. It draws primarily from the world of the new physics. Here is an extremely clear explanation of Bohm's theories on a holographic universe with explicate (physical, day-to-day) and implicate (hidden and fundamental) orders. In spite of the references to the modern world of subatomic physics, it struck me that this sounds remarkably like the hidden currents of the cosmos that occultists have always alluded to. The pattern based theories of Sheldrake, Laszlo, and Chester are also examined and compared. Indeed, the concepts of morphic fields and resonance seem to uncannily resemble the old magical principles of sympathy and correspondence between our own world and the world of archetypes. Indeed, it is shown that a balanced mind (both hemispheres at the same frequency) in deep meditation or prayer may be able to "range" the implicate order and bring about increased instances of synchronicity. Since it is suggested that synchronicity is the real basis for all ESP phenomena ( telepathy, precognition, psychokinesis, etc.) it could be said that this is an effective explanation for the concept of sympathetic magic.

The use of the concept of the mythological trickster is especially appropriate and effective. Many times synchronistic coincidences seem to exist for no other reason that to shatter our preconceived and ossified concepts of the universe. That was also the function of Hermes/ Mercurius/ Coyote in mythology. It is also the function of this book in a world still mired in the dogma of materialistic scientism.

For all those potential readers and for those previous reviewers, I state that this book is one of a mere handful of books to adequately treat this subject with the respect and wonder that it deserves. Though few books deserve the title of "perfection" I must defend the authors in their attempt at covering this subject, however misunderstood.

This book is a brief attempt at exploring the concept of synchronicity. That being said, for what it is, it is an excellent coverage of the subject. Easy to read and quite relative to those who have experienced the phenomenon, (which, I assume, includes nearly every single one of us) this little text is a very wise choice for inspiration towards the wonder that is meaningful acausal experiences.

Yours truly,
Ph.D. student at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology

Synchronicity has long been a subject of much fascination but also much confusion as generally it is handled more in a poetic than a scientific way. A strength of Combs and Hollands' book is its bold use of new science to try to move toward the adequate answer to the question of how synchronicity works in scientific as well as experiential terms. Here, as with his classic work on consciousness The Radiance of Being -- hands down one of the best on this subject -- Allan Combs displays why he has gained a reputation as one of the most firmly grounded of researchers who can also bring difficult concepts to life with the rare skill of an Arthur Koestler.

This is one of my favorite types of books: short, profound and beautifully written. It moves smoothly back-and-forth between cutting-edge scientific support for synchronicity, real-life examples, and the mythological underpinnings of synchronicity. It is so lucidly written that the reader will probably read it from start to finish, and never realize that they are dealing with difficult concepts. A truly wonderful book.

The previous reviewer ("Throw out a life line") - who seems to be trying to sell an unpublished science fiction story to Hollywood - is typical of the mental-rational minded types who see the Universe as a big clockwork toy, a camera, a sewing machine and other metaphors governed by his own unique take on Planck's theory (see his website). Whatever. Such hyper-rationalist always miss the point of such informative, playful and subtle books as Comb's and Holland's "Synchronicity".

Maybe the point is indeed to drown - the rational ego that is - which is continually trying to wrap the Trickster up in neat mechanistic metaphors. This book is a wonderful introduction to the archetypes and psychological and scientific theories constellating around the acausal realm of 'coincidences.' I feel in good company with Georg Feuerstein, the late Willis Harman, David Loye and Guy Burneko in recognizing that this book speaks to us at the mythic, mental and integral or intuitional levels of consciousness and holds them all together with a light eloquent style that belies it's intent - as the authors say at the end: "Dance, like play, is a metaphor for a state of being that is both relaxed and disciplined.Both are open and responsive to relaxed intuition... To dance is to move in the rhythm of this entire orchestration. And so we must learn to dance."

Along with many other excellent books on the Trickster - including Lewis Hydes' "Trickster Makes This World", Antoine Faivre's, "The Eternal Hermes", and two classics, Norman O. Brown's "Hermes the Thief", and Raphael Lopez Pedraza's "Hermes' Children," this book reveals a powerful yet hidden god for the Western mind which needs no lifeline back to the leaky ship of rationalism.

I was waiting for some intersting insights on how synchronicity accounts for threshold leaps in complex systems, and what place does it take overall from scientific prespective. I really struggled with the unstructured, swing-like style of the book. The example with Jung and the beattle must have been repeated more than 10 times. The language was awful, thoughts flying back and forth, ignoring the titles of chapters. Some of the concepts are facinating, but if anything, this book turns me away from synchronicity, because of its incoherence. This kind of writing is not scientific enough. The authors should have written this book in the style of 'Chaos' or 'Complexity'. It is sad that book on such interesting subject is written in such a way.

Kudos to Combs & Holland for their superb presentation of what is arguably a very insubstantial concept. The selective exclusion of conflicting evidence or logical thought processes supports their thesis that "synchronicity" is not only a true phenomenon, but may in fact be the underlying fabric of the universe and all reality. I found the book to be an immensely enjoyable read, merely out of respect for the craftsmanship in manipulating tiny pieces of unrelated coincidence into a plausibly-reading worldview concept that will fly past the intellect of most readers (and may even gain acceptance as credible at the "metaphysical" level). These guys have outmanipulated even the world's top trickster of the moment, Karl Rove, by using his own techniques of selective evidence to support otherwise clearly flawed or weak arguments. Check it out!

I give this a five-star rating because it so engagingly and cleverly presents a scientific view of the alleged phenomenon of synchronicity, thus appearing to have dealt with it fairly. And yet the book is centered on a basic fallacy: the idea that synchronicity has actual existence. In reality, synchronicity is merely a label for a general category of illusion: the illusion of connectivity -- of meaning, between or among elements that in reality are unrelated and meaningless as a pair or set. If a person is thinking of Hershey's chocolate and then sees a Hershey's wrapper on the ground, this may seem to possess meaning. But in reality a sense of meaning is only an idea that the person projects upon, and assigns to, these two factors that are, in reality, most often unrelated. That is, though the name Hershey obviously relates the two factors, the fact that the person sees the wrapper after thinking of the name is not necessarily other than a meaningless coincidence. After all, we think all the time, and see things all the time, and sometimes a thought and an object seen will match. Considering the plethora of thoughts and objects, this is only to be expected.

Combs presents a seemingly credible, but merely strawman, account of the scientific view of synchronicity, leaving a door open for Combs' mystical scenario, which to any competent psychologist or mathematician is simply nonsense. In this regard, Combs' presentation is analogous to the way creationists review the evidence for evolution -- only enough to present a substantial-seeming strawman which allows the creationist view to then appear to "prevail."

Realistically, each person's daily experience contains factors so numerous that, occasionally, two or more unrelated factors will seem to pair up in a related way. But this is much more reasonably accounted for by the human brain's pattern-finding, and therefore association-finding, tendency. Each human brain organizes percepts and concepts into arrangements that are meaningful for that individual. This is essentially the same mechanism that allows us to see faces in clouds, and lets us think that certain sequences of numbers on tossed dice constitute "runs of luck." I think it's a shame that Combs doesn't fully develop the common-sense thinking that accounts for coincidences in sensible ways, but I do understand that if he had done so, he wouldn't have produced a book that appeals to mystical-minded readers as does this one.

This product was delivered in a timely manner and was just as the description had listed... Positive purchase experience.