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In ‘Roles of causation and meaning for interpreting correlations’ (2014), Harald Atmanspacher replies to ‘Causality as individual essence: its bearing on synchronicity’ (Tougas 2014) and to ‘A commentary on “Causality as individual essence: its bearing on synchronicity”’ (Willeford 2014). Atmanspacher concludes with a fundamental metaphysical view. He writes, ‘Since the formal cause of a coincidental correlation [between mind and matter] that is constitutive for synchronicity is some constellated archetypal activity in a collective, impersonal unconscious, there is an additional, objective component to the meaning that finally becomes subjectively attributed and experienced’ (2014, p. 432).
I will now go over parts of this conclusion, bit by bit. It affirms that there are archetypal activities or activities in original patterns. They are said to exist in a collective, rather than singular, and impersonal, rather than personal, unconscious rather than consciousness. I then wonder how the archetypal activities and their mentioned characteristics are evident or accessible, to me or to anyone, insofar as they are unconscious and unknown.
The impersonal character of the unconscious is then said to account for an ‘objective component’ of meaning that, at best, secondarily ‘becomes subjectively attributed and experienced’. Insofar as ‘objective’ means ‘there for anyone to observe’ or ‘accessible to anyone who seeks’, however, an ‘objective component’ of meaning can be experienced by any subject; therefore, being experienced subjectively is primary. An object completely independent of subjective experience is impossible to consider, as considering is a subjective act.
Atmanspacher speaks of ‘the psychophysically neutral reality of Pauli and Jung’ (2014, p. 432). A ‘psychophysically neutral reality’ means a reality that is neither psychic nor physical. How the existence of such a reality is made evident is not said. At best, it is posited, hypothesized, imagined or guessed