The Seal of Solomon and psyche's complementary incarnation (part 4b)

Remo F. Roth

Dr. oec. publ., Ph.D.

dipl. analyt. Psychologe (M.-L. v. Franz)

© 2002-2004 by Pro Litteris, Zurich, Switzerland and Remo F. Roth, Horgen-Zurich. All Rights Reserved. dr.remo.roth@psychovision.ch. Republication and redissemination of the contents of this screen or any part of this website are expressly prohibited without prior psychovision.ch written consent.

With many thanks to Gregory Sova, Ph.D. (LA, CA) for translation assistance

Book Project:

THE RETURN OF THE WORLD SOUL

Wolfgang Pauli, Carl Jung and the Challenge of the Unified Psychophysical Reality

This book is intended for private use only, and is copyrighted under existing Internet copyright laws and regulations.

back to Chapter 5, part 4a

5. The Seal of Solomon and the unsolved problem of psyche's complementary incarnation

(part 4b)

Contents:

Part 1:

5.1 Wolfgang Pauli’s “mirror image of the Assumptio Mariae to below“ and the Seal of Solomon

Part 2:

5.2 Wolfgang Pauli’s and Carl Jung’s dispute about the terms psyche, matter and spirit

5.2.1 Philosophical cognition as a creation act

5.2.1.1 The symmetry and complementarity of spirit and matter and of the energy principle

5.2.1.2 Psyche as potential being

5.2.1.3 The separation of psyche and spirit and the superiority of psyche over matter and spirit

5.2.1.4 Carl Jung’s crux with the Seal of Solomon

5.2.1.5 Carl Jung’s approach: Philosophical cognition as a creation act

5.2.1.6 Carl Jung’s antagonistic definitions of the term “psyche”

5.2.1.7 Further clarification and summary

Part 3:

5.2.2 Quantum physical observation as a creation act

5.2.2.1 The quantum physical collapse of the wave function or quantum leap

5.2.2.2 The ending of the Neoplatonic infertility in the collapse of the wave function

5.2.2.3 Carl Jung’s conflict between a causal and an acausal theory of the psyche

5.2.2.4 Wolfgang Pauli’s approach: Quantum physical observation as a creation act

5.2.2.5 The Nobel laureate’s isolation since 1935 because of his dreams about Eros and radioactivity

5.2.2.6 Summary and prospects

Part 4a:

5.3 Synchronicity, the wave function’s collapse and the future incarnatio

5.3.1 The collective psyche as being and as potential being

5.3.2 The difference between synchronicity and the collapse of the wave function

Part 4b:

5.3.3 Jung’s and Pauli’s discussion about the future incarnatio

Part 5:

5.4 Wolfgang Pauli’s incarnatio synchronicity, the alchemical multiplicatio and psychophysical radioactivity

5.4.1 Pauli’s nocturnal experience with the bursting meteorite after the discussion with Jung

5.4.2 The creatio continua out of the unus mundus as the transformation of potential being into actual being

5.4.3 The coniunctio as the background of the creatio continua

5.4.4 The inclusion of the creatio continua and incarnatio into the description of the cosmic evolutionary processes

Part 6:

5.4.5 The bursting meteorite, the alchemical process of the multiplicatio and the red tincture

5.4.6 The multiplicatio of the red tincture and radioactivity

Part 7:

5.4.7 Complementary versus psychophysical interpretation of the term “physical-symbolic radioactivity”

5.4.8 Wolfgang Pauli’s regression into the complementary interpretation of the Taoist Yang/Yin

Part 8:

5.4.9 Carl Jung’s and Wolfgang Pauli’s concept of the complementary relationship between radioactivity and synchronicty

5.4.10 Wolfgang Pauli’s reduction of the multiplicatio to an attribute of synchronicity

Part 9:

5.4.11 Pauli’s and Jung’s dispute about the depth psychological difference between the terms “field” and “radioactivity”

5.4.12 Wolfgang Pauli’s depth psychological interpretation of the radioactive transmutation as a transition of the Self into a more conscious state

Part 10 (not yet published):

5.4.13 Carl Jung’s and Wolfgang Pauli’s lack of understanding of the acausal transformation out of the unus mundus

5.4.14 Radioactivity as a psychophysical transmutation process in the unus mundus

Part 11 (not yet published):

5.4.15 Summary

5.4.16 Conclusions

5. The Seal of Solomon and the unsolved problem of psyche’s complementary incarnation

(part 4b)

5.3.3 Jung’s and Pauli’s discussion about the future incarnatio

It seems that Carl Jung was half conscious, first, about the conflict of his two contradicting theories, and, second, about the fact that synchronicity cannot be an incarnation act in matter like the collapse of the quantum physical wave function. As Wolfgang Pauli was also very engaged in these problems, in May 1952, the depth psychologist invited the physicist to his house in Kusnacht-Zurich for a discussion. Shortly before the publication date of their common book Naturerklärung und Psyche (The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche, 1955) – containing Jung’s synchronicity article and Pauli’s Kepler/Fludd essay –, they were thus engaged in an intense oral discussion about these subjects.

In a letter of May 17^th, 1952 Pauli thanks Jung for the “pleasant evening”. Its content shows that he must have been deeply impressed by the depth psychologist’s ideas. He writes:

“What made the deepest impression upon me was the central role played in your thinking by the concept of 'incarnation' as a scientific working hypothesis. This concept is of particular interest to me, first of all because it is interdenominational ('Avatara' in India) and also because it expresses a psycho-physical unity. More and more I see the psycho-physical problem as the key to the overall spiritual situation of our age, and the gradual discovery of a new ('neutral') psycho-physical standard language, whose function is symbolically to describe an invisible, potential form of reality that is only indirectly inferable through its effects, also seems to me an indispensable prerequisite for the emergence of the new hieros gamos [originally written in Greek letters; RFR] predicted by you." [emphasis mine]

What is so remarkable for Pauli is Jung’s attempt – obviously as a continuation of his synchronicity theory - to integrate some sort of incarnation into his theory. For the Nobel laureate such an incarnation out of “an invisible, potential form of reality that is only indirectly inferable through its effects”, seems to be the key term for the solution of the psychophysical problem.

What Pauli calls here the "psycho-physical unity" and "an invisible, potential form of reality," is nothing else than the unus mundus Carl Jung borrowed from the Hermetic alchemist Gerardus Dorneus. Using the definitions of the Nobel laureate, we will shorten it to the term unified psychophysical reality and assume that it is potential being. Further, it corresponds to the term Psyche in its second meaning, defined in section 5.2.1.6 as the ligament between spirit and matter. As Pauli states, it is invisible and only potential, therefore only inferable through its effects.

Thus, such an observable “effect,” sought-after by the quantum physicist, could perhaps correspond to the process we are looking for, i.e., a spontaneous incarnation out of the Psyche into matter, a hypothetical single collapse of the Psyche’s "wave function". If we can show the truth of such a correspondence, Pauli’s crucial question for the solving of the psychophysical problem, the description of a coniunctio (= hieros gamos) with its corresponding incarnatio, could perhaps be answered.

As we have seen, the coniunctio is a process that involves the principles of spirit and matter and results in an incarnation into matter. Therefore, Jung’s use of the terms hieros gamos (= coniunctio) and incarnatio in the discussion with Pauli shows that he did not speak of an incarnation process in the “spirit-psyche”, i.e., of the process he called synchronicity. On the contrary, it seems that the depth psychologist anticipated an incarnatio, i.e., a spontaneous creation act in the matter of the universe as the result of the today constellated archetype of the coniunctio (hieros gamos) – as did the Hermetic alchemist Robert Fludd, Pauli’s favourite, some 300 years ago.

Because the quantum physical collapse is, in contrast to synchronicity, an incarnation into matter, too, Wolfgang Pauli must have suspected that Jung was willing to go on a step further and try to supplement the concept of synchronicity by one, in which also an incarnation into matter takes place.

This view of the affairs is backed by Jung’s answer to Pauli of May 20^th, 1952, where he writes that the term incarnatio means incarnatio continua, and that it is

“… synonym mit ‘creatio continua’ und bedeutet eigentlich die Verwirklichung einer potentiell vorhandenen Realität, eine Actualisierung des ‘mundus potentialis’ des ersten Schöpfungstages, bezw. des 'Unus Mundus’, in welchem noch keine Unterschiede vorhanden sind.“

English translation:

“… synonymous with creatio continua and actually means the realization of a potentially available reality, an actualization of the mundus potentialis of the first day of creation, or of the Unus Mundus, in which there are as yet no distinctions or differences.”

Carl Jung introduces here the term creatio continua, which is compensatory to the creatio ex nihilo. The latter describes the singular act of creation out of nothing initialized by God. It is, so to speak, the Jewish/Christian “big bang” of the Genesis, the archetypal idea of a creation by separation that eventually resulted in a world view describable by the causal physical laws of Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein.

Creatio continua, however, means a creation principle that is analogous to the quantum physical collapse of the wave function, an acausal and indeterministic interruption of the classical laws, which, of course, is identical with an incarnation of a “new world”. It is the creation principle of the anima mundi, of the World Soul. Therefore, the hypothetical spontaneous incarnation out of the Psyche into matter we are looking for, seems to correspond to this repressed principle.

We have seen that Neoplatonic philosophy is based on the idea of eternal immutability. It leads to the idea of finding eternal laws, unchangeable “fixed stars”, with the help of which one can describe motion, which is obvious in our world, out of eternal motionlessness, the change out of the unchangability. It is this archetypal idea Kepler was possessed of when he found the laws of planet’s motions, and Newton as well projected this archetype into his “eternally motionless” differential equations that describe motion.

The same is true for Carl Jung’s quaternity. His fascination for the Neoplatonic concept of the Assumptio Mariae shows us that he sought after an eternal law, the archetype of motionlessness out of which motion is causally explainable. As we have seen above, he tried to apply this method in his book Aion for the purpose of explaining the development of the God-image during the Christian eon.

It is obvious that such a philosophical background is not the right model description for the above mentioned idea of the incarnation, constellated in the 21^st century. The term “incarnation” implies a spontaneous change of a given situation, a discontinuity that interrupts the continuity. In the Neoplatonic concept there is no room for such a “quantum leap” because no change of the eternal Ideas is possible; the “law” never changes: Everyone goes home and says: “Nothing happened” – The Hornberger Schiessen! (see section 4.2)

We can now also interpret Pauli’s obscure statement of the Holy Mary as a “disinfected” spiritualized matter that completes the Christian trinity to Jung’s quaternity (see section 3.3.1). The behavior of matter defined in such a Neoplatonic manner cannot contain acausality and discontinuity. Therefore, Jung’s quaternity describes a causal or deterministic world in which no spontaneous change is possible.

Carl Jung must have had a hunch of this deficiency of the quaternarian Self in relation to the archetypal process of the coniunctio and the incarnatio. However, at the advanced age of 78 years he throws in the towel. In a letter of 1953, in the answer to Pauli’s “To be or not to be”, he writes:

“The problem of the coniunctio must be kept for the future; it is more than I can cope with, and my heart reacts if I exert myself too much along these lines. My essay on the ‘Der Geist der Psychologie’ (The Spirit of Psychology) [today as On the Nature of the Psyche in CW 8, §§ 343; RFR] of 1946 resulted in a serious attack of tachycardia, and synchronicity brought on the rest.“ [emphasis mine]

The very interesting fact is, that Jung refers to exactly the article, Pauli was so fascinated of, the one, in which the depth psychologist for the first time extended the psychological term archetype to the material world. We have seen that he was forced to this step because of the synchronicity principle.

Synchronicity is an acausal phenomenon and contradicts therefore the idea of a continuous development on the basis of the eternal immutabile laws of Jung’s Neoplatonic quaternity. But it describes “only” an incarnation into the realm of the Psyche we will later call “spirit-psyche”. The process Wolfgang Pauli looked for and called “only indirectly inferable through its effects” out of “an invisible, potential form of reality”, a hypothetical event we called “a spontaneous incarnation out of the Psyche into matter”, is not contained in the synchronicity principle.

Therefore, it seems that Jung’s heart troubles had to do with exactly this sought-after incarnatio into matter, which can, however, as we will see later, only be perceived with the help of the Eros consciousness. In the Buddhist and Hindu Tantrism, such a consciousness is described using the heart Chakra anahata (see end of section 4.3.1) that is itself related to the three vegetative centers manipura, svadhisthana and muladhara in the belly, the so-called three lower Chakras.

[Section 5.3 proofread by GJS, May 29, 2004]

Chapter 5, part 5

See also further articles about Wolfgang Pauli in

http://www.psychovision.ch/rfr/roth_e.htm

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14.7.2004