Exploring Synchronicity

Jung, Pauli and the I Ching
with Shantena Augusto Sabbadini and Cruz Manas Sabbadini

 

July 12 – 16, 2018

The I Ching is a formidable psychological system that endeavours to organize the play of archetypes…
into a certain pattern, so that a reading becomes possible.
(C.G. Jung)

The term “synchronicity” was coined by Jung and refers to those meaningful coincidences in which outer circumstances reflect in surprising ways the inner process of the person involved, sometimes with life transforming implications.

In this seminar we will investigate synchronicity both  as an interpretative principle and as a psychological experience through the actual consultation of the oracle. We will use the Eranos I Ching, an innovative translation by the sinologist Rudolf Ritsema and myself, the fruit of fifty years of research by my co-author and a decade of Round Table Sessions at the Eranos East-West study centre, founded under Jung’s supervision in 1933.

The I Ching is an ancient Chinese oracle, rooted in a shamanic tradition almost four thousand years old. Its images are a map of the dynamics of archetypal energies in and around us.

The most effective way to come to understand this map and to become familiar with it is by using it as a mirror, opening a dialogue with it about a concrete situation we are presently involved in. We shall read the images the oracle reflects back to us as ‘evoked synchronicity’, as if if they were a dream offered in connection with the specific question we have asked. This will allow hidden symbolic dimensions of our situation to emerge into consciousness – and this enlarged perspective will help us align our choices with the flow of the “great river”, with the movement of Tao, and to act in a more aware and responsible way.

The work consists of:

– An introduction to the concept of synchronicity and to the Pauli-Jung dialogue

– An introduction to the I Ching

– Formulating individual questions to the oracle

– Learning the yarrow stalk consultation procedure

– Interrogating the oracle

– Reading the answers

The work with the I Ching will alternate with walks in nature and exploring the wonders of the region.

The text we shall use is The Original I Ching Oracle or the Book of Changes, translated by Rudolf Ritsema and myself (a new edition by Watkins Publishing will come out in May 2018), the result of half a century of I Ching scholarship by Rudolf Ritsema and of a decade of oracular studies at Eranos, an East-West Center founded in 1933 at Ascona, Switzerland, under the auspices of C.G. Jung. This translation is conceived as a tool for psychological enquiry, focusing primarily on the images conveyed by the shamanic texts and allowing an interpretation to emerge from the direct interaction of the consultant with the oracular images.

Shantena Augusto Sabbadini (www.shantena.com) worked as a theoretical physicist at the University of Milan, Italy, and at the University of California. He was involved in research on the foundations of quantum physics and in the first identification of a black hole. In the 1990’s and early 2000’s he helped organize the Eranos Round Table Sessions and lectured at Eranos about the I Ching, physics and philosophy. He is director of the Pari Center for New Learning (www.paricenter.com). His most recent book, Pilgrimages to Emptiness, has been published by Pari Publishing.

 

 

 

Cruz Manas Sabbadini (www.cruzmanas.com/en/) was born in Cordoba, Spain and, although she has lived in different places, she feels she belongs to the landscape of the Sierra Morena. She has always been interested in the secrets of the human heart, and for this reason she writes poetry. She is a clinical psychologist and a postgraduate in psychological research. She has given clinical and psycho-educational treatment in the penitentiary environment and  was a researcher for some years. Now Cruz works as a psychotherapist. Her Jungian therapeutic orientation leads her to bring consciousness to psychic symptoms in order to transcend them and move along an individuation process of autorealization. She is interested in holistic forms of intervention based on a more integral approach than the prevailing biomedical one. She believes in psychology as a tool for social change, since any improvement we may wish for in this world starts with ourselves. Being involved in other projects that work for social, ecological and spiritual change helps her to keep learning by sharing her resources.