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 9

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

(part 10)

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:

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 10)

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

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

In the above quotations, the Nobel laureate compares the radioactive decay with a transformation of the Self, the spiritual-psychic center of the collective unconscious. Because he dreamt so much about the radioactive nucleus that should replace Jung’s Self, and he has further seen the physical-symbolic correspondence between radioactivity and the red tincture, he compares however the radioactive nucleus also with the lapis of the Hermetic alchemists.

As he stresses in several letters, radioactivity is characterized by an acausal transmutation in the physical world. The goal of Hermetic alchemy, the “stone of the philosophers,” exists however in or is a subtle intermediate realm between matter and spirit, out of which - in the process of the coniunctio - the birth of the infans solaris or the extraction of the red tincture happens. Because of its psychophysical background, the alchemical lapis is therefore a deeper principle than physical radioactivity as well as Carl Jung’s Self.

We have further seen (see section 4.3) that the lapis is the God-image of Hermetic alchemy. It differs very much from the Christian God, because it is not situated in the Heaven, but in an intermediary layer between Heaven and earth. As a God-image it is however nonascertainable, i.e., we can postulate its existence in some sort of such an in-between realm, but do not have any empirical proofs for this fact.

The question arises therefore, if this Hermetic God-image can indirectly become ascertainable by a transformation or even a transmutation in it, i.e., if this God-image is not transcendental - hypothetical and unprovable being the believer believes in, or nonbeing for the nonbeliever - , but potential being that can become actual being with the help of an observation by a human consciousness (i.e., Eros consciousness), and by this becomes an observable fact.

The answer of Carl Jung we find in his letter [49J] to Pauli. Concerning the quantum physicist’s idea of the lapis as a symbol of the radioactive nucleus as well as of the Self, the depth psychologist writes:

“The way you deal with the image of the lapis raises the question for me of whether ultimately the symbols accompanying the lapis, such as the multiplicatio, do not indicate a transcendental basis common to both the physical and the psychic.” [Meier, 2001, p. 70; emphasis mine]

We see that Jung seems to believe in what he calls the unus mundus, but he looks at it as a transcendental basis, i.e., the nonascertainable. In Pauli’s words we would talk of a metaphysical hypothesis that cannot be proven by human observation.

As we have seen in section 5.2.1.5, the depth psychologist does not distinguish between a hypothetical transcendental being, the nonascertainable, on the one hand, and potential being on the other, i.e., he cannot see that there exists a per se nonascertainable, which can however become ascertainable in the act of the observation, in which potential being becomes actual being. It is exactly this lack of differentiation of the transcendental into the really nonascertainable on the one hand and into the potential being on the other, the former leading to unprovable metaphysical or transcendental statements, the latter to observable actual being, which is the background of this decisive insufficiency in the depth psychologist’s wordview.

We can therefore conclude, that first for Jung the unus mundus – the Hermetic-alchemical description of this metaphysical world - stays for ever transcendental and second that he does therefore not see an empirical method for transforming the transcendental into actual being.

Let us now have a look at what Pauli thinks about such a possibility. In the above quotation he equates the alchemical process with the psychic, i.e., with Carl Jung’s observation of the Self, as a result of which a spiritual-mental multiplicatio, a synchronistic spreading out of novel ideas happens. Therefore he reduces the alchemical opus to a completely spiritual-psychic process.

After this statement he talks about the physical process of radioactivity and sees it in contrast to depth psychology as well as to alchemy. He states that in the former a material transmutation takes place, which is further acausal. In alchemical words, he speaks of course of radioactivity as the material multiplicatio.

We can conclude that because of his complementary thinking the Nobel laureate distinguishes a spiritual-psychic from a material multiplicatio, the former an attribute of depth psychology and alchemy, the latter an attribute of quantum physical radioactivity. Like this, he denies the possibility of a psychophysical multiplicatio though he states that such a psychophysical reality or unus mundus exists behind or beyond the split between spirit-psyche and matter.

The Nobel laureate cannot realize that Hermetic alchemy reaches deeper than physics on the one hand and as depth psychology on the other, because it describes – though on a less differentiated level of scientific epistemology, i.e., without the distinction between possible causal and acausal events - transformations in the psychophysical unus mundus that involve the spiritual-psychic as well as the material part of our split world.

Thus, in this crucial moment, in December 1950, Wolfgang Pauli initiates a development which is completely contrary to Carl Jung’s and his idea of the unus mundus or the unified psychophysical reality, the common background of physics and depth psychology, of matter and spirit-psyche. His complementary thinking forbids him to take into account that there could perhaps exist a psychophysical world beyond the split between spirit-psyche and matter, in which some sort of an acausal or indeterministic “psychophysical radioactive decay” can happen. By this, he excludes further the hypothetical possibility that – in an act of observation - a human consciousness could experience the autonomous, acausal transformation of psychophysical potential being into actual being, i.e., an incarnation act out of the eternal and omnipresent unus mundus into our time- and space-bound world.

Therefore, these two great scientists of the 20^th century deny implicitly the hypothesis of an observable psychophysical reality as a common background and root of acausal and indeterministic creation and incarnation processes. Carl Jung does it because of his prejudice of the transcendence of the nonascertainable and of his lack of understanding of the quantum physical observation process as a creation act, Wolfgang Pauli because of his hypothesis of the complementarity of the physical and the psychic world that inhibits the hypothesis of observable transformation acts from potential being into actual being out of the unus mundus by a human consciousness.

When we look now back to Chapter 2, we see that Pauli’s Fludd/flood synchronicity at the foundation ceremony of the C.G. Jung Institute showed that we have the challenge to return – on a higher scientific level, i.e., by an inclusion of the results of quantum physics and depth psychology – to Robert Fludd’s Hermetic alchemy. Exactly this task the two scientists inhibited by their beliefs, based on the physics and depth psychology of the 20^th century.

5.4.14 Radioactivity as a psychophysical transmutation process in the unus mundus

At the beginning of the 21^st century more and more regarded as the hour of birth of a new eon, we should therefore ask ourselves, whether the radioactive radiation, the multiplicatio of quantum physics, does not - like the alchemical red tincture and the infans solaris on the deeper level of the psychophysical reality or unus mundus - represent a much more fundamental event. Could “radioactivity” be a process, in which - with the help of the subtle body aspect of matter - unique transmutations in the psychophysical background of the universe take place that correspond to an acausal incarnatio following the nexus of the psychophysical archetype of the divine coniunctio and multiplicatio, transforming in contrast to synchronicity not only the spiritual-psychic but the material aspect of the world as well?

In the above mentioned letter [32P], Pauli writes that the “blonde” – a symbolic synonym for the stranger – does not distinguish between “physical” and “psychic,” but that he speaks in a “neutral language” that “seems to reanimate the intermediary layer where the infans solaris used to be”. Then he adds that, in a modern language, this intermediate infans solaris corresponds to the “radioactive nucleus.” We have seen that the intermediary layer, the lapis of the old alchemists, as well as the infans solaris and the corresponding red tincture, are thought of as consisting of a subtle matter. Synchronicity has however nothing to do with the subtle body[1].

It is therefore very likely that the stranger would have liked to convince the Nobel laureate of the fact that the empirically observable synchronicity principle should be completed and extended by an even deeper one, which happens on the psychophysical level and includes – in contrast to synchronicity – the subtle body aspect of matter, some sort of a transmutation and a multiplicatio defined not on a spiritual-psychic but on a material or even a psychophysical basis.

Could it be therefore that such acausal events can be described on the basis of an extended term, comparable however with physical beta radioactivity, which contains also the subtle body aspect of the psychophysical reality? Is it further possible that -- because of a novelly understood psychophysical nonlocality as the basis of such a psychophysical radioactivity -- an incarnation process in one or some few humans following the nexus of the multiplicatio, is accompanied by a parallel new creation and incarnation in the whole cosmos? If yes, this would mean that the Hermetic alchemical coniunctio, i.e., the creation of the lapis, the exchange of attributes and the succeeding birth of the infans solaris or the extraction of the red tincture will occur in such individuals and because of the psychophysical nonlocality at the same time in the whole universe.

Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung were not yet able to answer this question. The depth psychologist had however already in the year 1929 such a hunch when he postulated the extremely revolutionary but up until today unproved hypothesis:

“So far as I can grasp the nature of the collective unconscious, it seems to me like an omnipresent continuum, an unextended Everywhere. That is to say, when something happens here at point A which touches upon or affects the collective unconscious, it has happened everywhere.“ [Letters, vol. 1, p. 58]

He related this statement to the phenomenon he later called synchronicity. But if we assume that there exist also phenomena which are deeper than synchronicity and result in a transmutation of matter (or of the “matter-psyche,” as we will call this observable reality later), we can see that such a psychophysical transmutation must have to do with some sort of a process on the background of a novel psychophysical nonlocality.

To understand such hypothetical processes, we must however - on a higher level, i.e., including quantum physical and depth psychological concepts - return to Hermetic alchemy, as Wolfgang Pauli’s Fludd/flood synchronicity (see chapter 2) has shown us.

We will see that the most important aspect of such a transformation and transmutation is the exchange of attributes, a process that was described in Wolfgang Pauli’s Vision/Audition of the Seal of Solomon and the square (or quintessence) he was however not yet able to understand.

Chapter 5, part 11 (will follow)

See also further articles about Wolfgang Pauli in

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

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  November 11, 2004