Spontaneity

            According to Prigogine and Stengers (1984), "the models considered by classical physics seem to us to occur only in limiting situations such as we can create artificially by putting matter in a box and then waiting till it reaches equilibrium" (p. 9). Classical physics, then, makes too many assumptions. Matter in its natural state contains randomness and irreversibility. Chaos theory says that matter is not the passive substance of the mechanistic world view of our forefathers. Rather, it is spontaneously active. Deep within this random activity, is the creation of order.

            According to Jung (1990), individuation, the process of becoming whole, is a series of spontaneous psychic processes. In his view, life processes are “complicated and difficult .... in this respect, they may be compared with all other biological processes” (pp. 350-351). He was well aware that order can come from chaos. This, he claimed, was the purpose of the mandala:

Experience shows that individual mandalas are symbols of order, and that they occur in patients principally during times of psychic disorientation or re-orientation. As magic circles they bind and subdue the lawless powers belonging to the world of darkness, and depict or create an order that transforms the chaos into a cosmos. (Jung, 1978, pp. 32-33)