Remo F. Roth Dr. oec. publ., Ph.D. dipl. analyt. Psychologe (M.-L. v. Franz)

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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

 © copyright 2002-2004 by Pro Litteris, Zürich. All rights reserved

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

back to Chapter 5, part 4b

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

(part 5)

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 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

Surely occupied with deep thoughts about this extraordinary interesting and deeply moving discussion about the incarnatio, on his return home from Kusnacht to the neighbouring village of Zollikon, Pauli experienced a very impressive synchronicity. It seemed to be so important for him that he informed the depth psychologist about it in the same letter of May 17^th, 1952.

When he left the train and walked up the mountain to his home, he suddenly saw a meteorite, which flew relatively slow and eventually exploded. Like this it demonstrated “ein eindruchsvoll-schönes Feuerwerk”, “a deeply moving beautiful fireworks.” Pauli continues:

"Ich nahm es als ein günstiges 'Omen', dass unsere allgemeine Einstellung zu den geistigen Problemen unserer Zeit im Sinne des 'Kairos', d.h. eher eine 'sinngemässe' ist."

English translation:

“I took it as a favorable[1] ‘omen’ that our general attitude towards the spiritual problems of our time is in accordance with the ‘kairos’, i.e., a rather ‘meaningful’ one.”

This statement shows that Pauli sees his nocturnal experience in fact as a synchronicity, i.e., as a meaningful coincidence between the content of the just ended conversation about incarnation on the one hand, and the “accidentialy” heavenly spectacle of the meteor’s fireworks on the other.

With the “meaningful general attitude towards the spiritual problems of our time,” he means of course his and Jung’s agreement concerning the incarnatio. So it seems that Pauli saw the meteorite as an affirmation of the collective unconscious’ preconscious knowledge on their agreement about the inclusion of the incarnatio hypothesis into a modern scientific worldview.  

But what does it mean, when Pauli tells us that such an incarnatio is “in accordance with the ‘kairos’?” As we have seen in section 3.3.7, “kairos” means the qualitative time, in which things change spontaneously and unpredictably. Because Pauli relates the above statement to the spontaneous appearance of the meteorite, we can conclude that he means that the meteorite appeared at the right qualitative time for being an “omen” for the incarnatio: The meteorite heralds a future incarnatio.

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

As we have seen, Jung answered Pauli’s letter immediately and wrote that he uses the expression incarnatio in the meaning of creatio continua. This expression itself, he continues, is the realization of a potential reality, of the unus mundus – an expression that goes back to the alchemist Gerardus Dorneus, a student of Paracelsus, we mentioned briefly above and will deal with later. The unus mundus – and this is the very important aspect for us – is supposed to have existed before the first day of creation. In our modern language we would say that it is a state of the universe before the big bang, the great singularity mathematically not describable[2].

Needless to say the definition of such a realm is a merely metaphysical statement, which we can, from a modern epistemological standpoint, only accept, if we can find empirical evidence for it. As we have seen, from the point of view of quantum physics the unus mundus is potential being which we can only prove by the observation of its transformation into actual being, i.e., by the observation of a single quantum leap.

But let us go back to Jung’s and Pauli’s discussion. We can hypothezise with a great likelihood that Jung and Pauli agreed in the idea that mankind is situated in a situation shortly before a new incarnatio. This incarnation is, however, not based on the creatio ex nihilo. The nexus of this creation is the background of the modern version of the Genesis, the big bang, which tries to describe a causal development of the universe.

In contrast, the new type of incarnation roots in the compensating acausal creatio continua, which is the possibility of a continuous indeterministic creation and incarnation that happens after the initial creatio ex nihilo, the Jewish/Christian Genesis or its modern version, the big bang. As we have seen (see section 5.2.2.3), Carl Jung was convinced that synchronicity happens after this principle. Later, I will however demonstrate that there is yet a deeper creation act that happens after this nexus, transmutates however not only the spirit-psyche but also matter and the physical body of man.

A very interesting aspect for our investigations is the fact that Pauli combines the incarnatio intuitively with the kairos. We have seen in section 5.3.3 that a modern concept of the kairos is the empirically observable spontaneous transformation of potential being into actual being, i.e., the so-called quantum leap or collapse of the wave function of quantum physics. We can therefore, in addition to Pauli’s interpretation of his incarnatio synchronicity, state that, symbolically seen, the incarnatio, symbolized by the metorite appearing at the kairos, represents the spontaneous transformation of metaphysical potential being into empirical actual being, as for example in the collapse of the wave function. Pauli’s connection of the spontaneous appearing meteorite with the kairos transforms therefore the causally explainable event of the bursting meteorite into a symbolic-acausal event. We will see later, that this interpretation combines the kairos of the spontaneously exploding meteorite also with the singular natural radioactive decay.  

The acausal creatio continua constellated today, the compensatory creation act to the big bang, happens out of the unus mundus as well, i.e. out of the state before the big bang. This compensatory creation act is however, in contrast to the latter, possible by accident at any time and at any place. If we can therefore show that such an acausal, i.e., spontaneous creatio continua out of the unus mundus in the moment of the kairos leads into a result that is empirically observable, we have demonstrated that it corresponds exactly to the above described transformation of potential being into actual being. Therefore this other nexus of creation and incarnation is absolutely important for our further investigations.

5.4.3 The coniunctio as the background of the creatio continua

As we can see from Pauli’s letter to Jung, the latter was convinced that this future incarnation will be based on the archetype of the Hermetic alchemical coniunctio, the Holy Wedding, the symbolic image of a sexual union of a god and a goddess. Thus, it is of course not derived from the principle of separation, as the Genesis, but marked by the principle of union or reunification, i.e., by the principle I called Eros in its most general meaning. The future incarnation will therefore be a creation and incarnation after the nexus of synthesis, i.e., the reunification of the separated caused by the creatio ex nihilo, the separation event or big bang.

The fact that this paradigma shift will be rooted in the principle of the Eros, and there especially in the sexual drive, gives the Christian part of mankind great troubles. Therefore, it is on the one hand repressed, on the other, however, lived out in the so-called “sexual liberation” that began during the revolution of the 60s of the last century. Because the problem of this “sexual liberation” is only partly rooted in the personal unconscious, but deeply anchored in the today constellated archetype of the divine coniunctio, it is consequentially not only a problem of the human cross-sexual relationship, as Sigmund Freud would have proposed, but the tip of the iceberg of the future incarnatio in the universe, predicted by Carl Jung.

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

To understand such a today constellated, revolutionary psychic and physical transformation in the universe, an immense paradigm shift in our scientific worldview is necessary. We have therefore to ask ourselves, what such a spontaneous quantum leap could look like. 

The answer we will find through a further interpretation of Pauli’s synchronicity. As we have seen, he saw this synchronicity as an affirmation of the preconscious knowledge in the collective unconscious to his and Jung’s discussion about the incarnatio, i.e., that the exploding meteorite heralds a future incarnatio the depth psychologist and the physicist had just previously discussed.

The appearance of a meteorite is however a cosmic event. Therefore we can conclude that the synchronicity talks of the necessity of an inclusion of the incarnatio hypothesis into a novel understanding of the cosmic processes.

Because the meteorite appeared spontaneously, - “made by accident by the universe,” so to speak – we can further state, that the synchronicity would like to tell us, that the cosmic incarnation process compensatory to the big bang, will happen after the nexus of the creatio continua. This means further, as we have seen in section 5.3.3, that such an incarnation will consist in singular acausal creation acts that happen “accidentally” in space and time and are therefore acausal compensations to the causal big bang.

[Part 5 proofread by GJS, 6.7.2004]

Chapter 5, part 6

See also further articles about Wolfgang Pauli in

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

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August 1st, 2004