Jung, a psychoanalyst, had his own theoretical system, such as the collective unconscious, the principle of synchronicity and so on. In this text, Jung mainly conveyed two meanings: First, the way of thinking in the Book of Changes is different from science. Science is based on the law of cause and effect. If there is a cause, there will be a result. What science seeks is this law of cause and effect of things.
The Book of Changes does not concern itself with abstract laws of cause and effect. It only discusses the specific situation of things and the probability of such a situation. He believed that modern science has shaken the law of cause and effect, and many so-called natural laws are not inevitable, and even related to human subjectivity. In this way, the mindset of the Book of Changes shows its unique value. The Book of Changes is not modern science. It's philosophy. I agree with that. Its way of thinking is different from what Westerners call causality. After all, it is science, not I Ching, that advances human development.
Second, Jung thought the mindset can be summarized as the "principle of synchronicity. In his words, "there is an interdependence between objective events, and between objective events and the subjective mental state of the observer". He called this simultaneous interdependence a "situation." He believed that the 64 hexagrams represented different situations, and all kinds of special situations, including objective and subjective ones, were presented at the same time when a certain hexagram was counted. This is close to his theory of the collective unconscious. According to the theory of psychoanalysis, people's mental life contains both conscious and unconscious aspects. According to Jung, the unconscious can be divided into the individual unconscious and the collective unconscious, and the collective unconscious is the result of similar experiences passed down from generation to generation. The words in the 64 hexagrams of the Book of Changes seem to have nothing to do with each other. Jung probably regarded them as a collection of experiences, like the collective unconscious. When it comes to divination, past experience and present situation blend together in what he calls "the principle of simultaneity".
The second point to summarize the thinking mode of the Book of Changes as "the principle of synchronicity" may not be accurate. In the Book of Changes, all phenomena are explained by the rise and fall of Yin and Yang. Yin and Yang are the natural law. They are opposites, strong and weak, and balanced, all related to timing. The purpose of fortune-telling is to grasp this moment and guide personal actions. I'm afraid it can't be come down to something like the collective unconscious.
Jung’s understanding reminds me of the religion. Both religion and the ideas in I Ching are regraded as superstructure in different opinpions. The Bibe is thought to be of the same importance of i ching. Most of the content of the Bible can be explained by causality with the history loaded in. But I Ching formulates the idea of synchronicity, where the coincidence of events in space and time matters. The two different kinds of culture source to some degree differ the ancient Chinese mindset from the Western mindset. Both of the causality and synchroinicity are systermatic and ways of viewing the world.
I Ching was approached by Carl Jung as a method of divination and also as a collection of archetypes illustrating his theory of collective unconsciousness. Psyche and matter are not seperated in fact, nor are the inner and outer world. Jung didn't harbor prejudices like other Westerners, but he saw the wisdom inside. "The Chinese mind, as I see it at work in the I Ching, seems to be exclusively preoccupied with the chance aspect of events." Westerners make mush of the casual law while Chinese attach importance to the coincidence. That's the difference. I think that none is superior. It's just a perspective of how to understand the world and how to reckon with issues.
We Chinese often regard "fate " as something sacred and unspeakable. Actually, fate, meaning a doomed result, is no the best word. I think Chinese "缘" it's more like "serendipity ", always unpredictable. This thinking pattern shows our ways to make peace with the world, that is, not to focus on the causes-result rule. I think this is just the thing we need for our modern day living. A cause-result pattern suits a simpler way of thinking: studying hard and you'll make it to a great college, dressing pretty and you'll meet a nice partner, working hard and you'll have a happy life. But is it? Actually we're now losing the ability to letting things go and listen to our heart and the world to know ourselves. I Ching could provide such a belief that one needs no worry about our consequences in this world of chaos, because things just don't follow our way.
Jung doesn’t arbitrarily regard the book of changes as a anti-science book which is used to divine. He proclaims that I Ching uncovering relationships of everything in the world which are not based on western science’s causality. There are many examples in Chinese traditional cultures like the thrive and fall of a family with geomancy, the explanation of the hexagrams with humans’ destiny. There is no causality between each other but a accordance in time which he called synchronicity. Like the Jung believes , I Ching concentrate on integrity of things not details , and chances of things not causality. In fact, it is measured that contingency is the majority in natural environment.
Jung is more pertinent. The I Ching is a fortune telling of 缘，but 缘 contians a untity of chance ans necessity, not the fate as the West thinks of it. It is like Mencius said: 求之有道，得之有命。求之有道 is the relationship between cause and effect in life, and 命 is chance. It is there whether you believe or not. I Ching, on the other hand, is an exploration of the relationship between chance and necessity, just as the Buddhist say 缘起性空，and each concrete person 因因缘聚合， not believing in the abstract person of Plato's concept. However, the concert person is the unity of chance and necessity, and that once one begins to study 具体的人的具体的因缘, the causality of western logic becomes invalid, which is probably why Jung later turned to astrology.
Jung refered synchronicity. It reminds me that 仁心通感，“宇宙内事，即分内事，己分内事乃宇宙分内事。”. And Jung also initiated modern astrological psychology. The human life, need to find the answer from itself, rather than to look for 心外理,“知无涯，而生有涯，以无涯随有涯，怠矣。”Excessive pursuit of 心外理 will eventually lead to nihility.
Westerners have a limited mindset and worship causality a lot. But in fact, this kind of mindset tend to analyze the world in a simple but incorrect way. There are so many factors that contribute to one thing but when thinking with a cause-effect mindset, it's easy to neglect other factors. If this mindset is deeply rooted in mind, people will inevitably live in narrow inner world which is full of limitations and stereotypes.
However compared with westerners, ancient Chinese people tend to think as a whole. All factors may contribute to one thing and there is never the only factor function in it. Chinese people have a mindset which is systematic and holistic. Corelation does not equal to causation.
That's one of the biggest differences between Chinese and westerners which causes mutual incomprehension.
Westerners prefer causality, which is more likely to lead to the deep-rooted fatalism, causing people to pay too much attention to the results rather than the things obtained in the process. In addition, when facing causality, people tend to ignore various external factors.
Chinese people may pay attention to the relationship between the whole and the part, and their thinking is more macroscopic. The Chinese people also pay more attention to internal cultivation and efforts, while "knowing the destiny of heaven", they are also willing to "do their best in personnel".
There exists a strong sense of "binary opposition" in the causality mindset of Westerners, because everything is tagged with "cause" or "outcome", and they are against each other. However, in the system of I Ching, everything is connected: the weather, the mountains, the rivers, they are all connected with us, or with our fate. This mindset gives Chinese people a peaceful and tolerant mind, because we believe that all everything is fated and what we can do is to know it (by divination or something else) and accepts it calmly. Also, we believe that bad things and good things can transform into each other, so all we need to do is to wait for the proper time and the transformation will happen naturally. In this way, we are less aggressive. This spirit constitutes the foundation of Chinese "round" character and it can be found everywhere in Chinese cultures, such as the saying of "无为而治" in Taoism.
In Jung's view, synchronicity was a cognitive concept, as diametrically opposed to Western causalistic procedures. Given that the causalistic procedure is only statistically significant and not an absolute truth, it is only a cognitive premise that defines the relationship between the beginning and the end of things. On the contrary, synchronicity regards the accidental events that occur in time and space as a cause and effect, so it emphasizes not only the interrelationship between things, but also the interrelationship between things and subjects. That's Chinese way of thinking.
Chinese mind seems to be concerned only with the probability of events, while the law of cause and effect espoused in the West is almost ignored. He believes that Westerners must admit that probability is very, very important.
Jung did made some understanding of I Ching. He saw the significance of synchronicity in Chinese minds. However, he said we ignore the effects of causality, which I think is a stereotype, because we, actually, pay attention to cause and effect yet from a much broader aspect. We, Chinese, always talk about karma, believing what's you done will finally pays you back, from which we can tell we have a mind of causality, but we don't spend time and effort on much details. We usually see the whole process of life.
In Jung's opinion, the only criterion of the validity of synchronicity of the 64 different situation of I Ching is that the observer believe that those hexagrams is a reflection of his psychic condition. It seems to be mysterious, but actually we can compare such a mindset with modern psychotherapy.
In my experiences of taking psychotherapy, a psychiatrist won't make a definite diagnosis, or give the patient direct suggestions as physicians or surgeons does. Instead, the always make patients to be their own doctors. They ask questions and guide the patients to their own conclusions and solutions hidden in their own minds. Maybe the roll of a psychiatrist is what Jung think I Ching plays. When a person is in struggle and confusion and the person looks for I Ching for help, the condition that a hexagram represents is like a guidance. If the person trust the answer, he or she would compare his current situation with the answer and try to be prudent to keep a good situation or prevent a bad situation. This might be the reason why that I Ching emphasize"changing" of good and harm. It is always trying to leads us with an optimistic hint and cautions us to be prudent.
Jung's reflection on causality and synchronicity reminds me of my thinking limitations. I have never realized that there is something wrong in the causality before. Chinese mind and western mind are totally different. Western mind is abstract. After observation they usually extract logic relationship between things. However, the relationship between things is not only logical. Psychic state of a man also affects the development of a thing. Reality is too complex and flexible to defined by just causality. Compared with western mind, Chinese thinking is more concrete, and Chinese picture of the moment can contain more relationships at that time.
The moment under actual observation appears to the ancient Chinese view more of a chance hit than a clearly defined result of concurring causal chain processes.
This assumption involves a certain curious principle that I have termed synchronicity.
Jung does understand I ching and explains well to us how this system works. But he understood the I Ching from a Western perspective. I think Westerners find it difficult to accept our I Ching, just as we cannot understand the Western Bible.
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