Aztec Unconscious and Synchronicity Explored

I came across the following doodle amongst my notes as I cleared out a drawer. It was done by a friend and it took me a moment to recollect when exactly he had drawn it. I soon realized it was done during a cram session for a previous course on the Aztec and we were watching the documentary (which, I have learned within the Peep Diaries that a Canadian made the 1st documentary and another fellow Canuck coined the term) Blood and Flowers - In Search of the Aztecs.

What struck me about it was the interesting idea that I read this morning by Jung on defining the features of synchronicity. His definition is as follows, "Synchronicity designates the parallelism of time and meaning between psychic and psychological physical events, which scientific knowledge so far has been unable to reduce to a common principle."  He admits how his term explain nothing, but this now allows for the idea that those chance happenings we experience are real and the enticement of them dwells within the waiting for the other shoe to hit. The when of the matter is what creates that aura of the unknown and mystical. Coincidences that I have perceived across time baffle me the most.  When it's the day after day similar theme within those chance happenings.

Getting back to the drawing. It was the collective imagery of the face within a face and the specific animals that he choose to use, which obviously was highly influenced by the documentary and his mood. The affective state is where I am curious as these are the inclinations that Jung was getting at in his discourse. By mentioning the JB Rhine psi experiments on predicting cards and such he points out how the affective state was correlated to the mood of the subjects. "An initial mood of faith and optimism makes for good results. Skepticism and resistance the opposite effect, that is, they create an unfavorable disposition."

That statement is at the heart of all paranormal research, hypnosis, altered states of consciousness, and even conventional therapy treatments.  Set and setting are the vitals keys to varying the viewpoint of one's own and others reality tunnel. Prehistoric shamans did this very often and many religions and nationalists today use these features to aid in  persuasion.  It is why all sides of the ideological landscape use the same, or similar, methods but for opposite goals, the tools that work are always utilized.

Some quick examples that come to mind on the influence of set and setting during emotional interactions are; Khalid Abdul Muhammad holding a political debate on the site of the Amadou Diallo shooting, the scarab beetles appearance during one of Jung's therapy sessions, rituals of isolation like the Temptation of Christ or the Xhosa peoples custom of male circumcision, the use of "Plant Teachers" as Cognitive Tools, and even maybe the glitzed up magic antics of Criss Angel.

Jung groups such synchronistic phenomena into three categories:

1. The coincidence of a psychic state in the observer with a simultaneous, objective, external event that corresponds to the psychic state or content (e.g., the scarab), where there is no evidence of a causal connection between the psychic state and the external event, and where, considering the psychic relativity of space and time, such a connection is not even conceivable.
2. The coincidence of a psychic state with a corresponding (more or less simultaneous) external event taking place outside the observer's field of perception, i.e., at a distance, and only verifiable afterward (e.g., the Stockholm fire).
3. The coincidence of a psychic state with a corresponding, not yet existent future event that is distant in time and can likewise only be verified afterward.

The first category is what I believe would be most relevant to the rediscovery of the drawn image and my day's readings and assignments.  There still remains in my mind though as to whether or not it was not simply due to the affective state of my mind in the morning and the priming features of reading Jung's article. Either way I was happy with the events.

Article:

Jung, Carl Gustav

1973, Appendix: On Synchronicity. In Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, translated by R. F. C. Hull, pp. 104-115. Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey.