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 5

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

(part 6)

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 6)

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

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

Similar to the star of Bethlehem, Pauli’s meteorite seems to herald an incarnatio. If we have however a closer look at this meteorite, we see that it distinguishes in a very decisive aspect from the messenger of Christ’s coming: It eventually explodes and ends in a “ eindruchsvoll-schönen Feuerwerk”, “a deeply moving beautiful fireworks.” As stone based[i], the meteorite Pauli experienced at this memorable evening, did not end as one single light trace but multiplied into very many sparks. This multiplication seems to be the event that moved him so deeply.

We do not know if the Nobel laureate was conscious about the symbolism of this event. It is however a fact that already three years before, in 1949, he began to deal with the alchemical motif of the so-called multiplicatio. As we will soon see, the multiplication is one of the most important attributes of the so-called red tincture.

During the discussion about the synchronicity problem that Jung began with him in letter [36J] in 1949, Pauli compared in his answer [37P] the alchemical term of the red tincture phenomenologically with the depth psychological term of synchronicity on the one hand and with the quantum physical radioactivity term on the other.

We will come back to the supposed connection between the alchemical multiplicatio, the quantum physical radioactivity and the depth-psychological synchronicity in the succeding sections. For understanding such a very strange interrelation, we must however first understand more exactly, what the alchemical expression means.

The multiplicatio belongs to the last phase of the Opus. When the lapis, the stone - which was thought of as belonging to an intermediate world of subtle matter - was established, it began to “multiply”. Such a “multiplication” was imagined by the idea of a deeply penetrating radiation of some sort of a subtle matter sent out by the intermediate world or the lapis, transforming like this the whole surroundings or even the whole universe. As a result of this procedure, what we call today dead matter, as well as the world of the plants, the animals and even of the humans were transformed in a positive way; by such a multiplication of the deified lapis, the whole universe was provided with a subtle body, and it is obvious that such a transformation was thought of as leading to a higher state of the universe.

Another image of this goal and its characteristic was the philosophical gold having such a supernatural radiation that it transformed everything around it also into gold. Such a radiation can therefore be compared with the final goal of Gerardus Dorneus, the red tincture, which had the same effect when extracted from the lapis. Further, as we have seen in section 4.3, Robert Fludd’s newborn infans solaris was thought of as having the same miraculous effect and was something Pauli was very aware of at this time because of his studies of the alchemist’s work.

Thus, we can conclude that the goal of the alchemical Opus, the lapis, was some sort of subtle matter that had the ability to “multiply,” i.e., send out a “radiation,” which was called the red tincture by Gerardus Dorneus and the infans solaris by Robert Fludd. The latter’s work Wolfgang Pauli knew however very well when he experienced the bursting meteorite after his discussion with Carl Jung about the incarnatio.

We have seen that this future incarnation expected by Carl Jung will happen after the nexus of the creatio continua. Therefore, we can further deduce that the synchronicity between the incarnatio discussion with Carl Jung and the spontaneous appearance of the meteorite that “multiplied”, would like to show us that this future incarnation, will have to do with spontaneous, acausal events, in which a “subtle substance” will be produced that initializes a transformation in the universe. Such acausal incarnation events will happen in one or some few places or humans on our earth, but have in the same moment happened in the whole universe – as a result of the multiplicatio. Later, we will call such a nexus the psychophysical nonlocality.

5.4.6 The multiplicatio of the red tincture and radioactivity

As we have seen in section 2.2, Pauli’s reaction to his Fludd/flood synchronicity at the foundation ceremony of the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich in 1948 was the composition of a paper he called ”Hintergrunds-physik“, i.e. “Background Physics.” In it he postulated a “neutral language,” which should describe the supposed common background of physics and depth psychology in neutral terms. As he writes in letter [37P], he likes now to complete his comments about such neutral terms with the inclusion of radioactivity.

The reason for such a strange addition is, as we have seen in section 2.2, the fact that in the year 1935 he began to dream about such physical expressions. The “stranger”, Pauli’s inner guru, used them however in a very different way than the one he was familiar with in physics.

We have further seen (see section 5.2.2.5) that these not yet published dreams bring physical expressions, especially the radioactive nucleus, together with parapsychology, with magics, with sexuality and the Eros principle, and eventually with past and future history.

After a period of resistance against this “abuse” of physical terminology he described later in his “Background Physics” of 1948, Pauli began to understand that there must exist a deeper world he called the psychophysical reality, behind or beyond the split into physics and depth psychology, in which these expressions have an extended meaning.

Further, during his occupation with Robert Fludd and alchemy in general, he had seen that in this Medieval counter-current to the official Christianity a subtle body-like, intermediate sphere had been postulated – of course on a much more archaic level - that we can describe with the term psychophysical reality (or unus mundus).

This is the reason why Pauli compares now (1949) the alchemical term “red tincture” - describing a subtle matter “multiplied” into the whole universe out of one or a few sources, the lapis - with the term “radioactivity” of quantum physics. In letter [37P] he writes:

“With regard to the example in question - that of 'radioactivity’ - what strikes me first from the psychological angle is that a far-reaching parallel exists with what the alchemists referred to as the ‘production of the red tincture’.” (Meier, 2001, [37P], p. 40; emphasis mine)

Of course, the radioactive nucleus is – as Pauli also stresses in a letter [47P] of December 12th, 1950 – another source of a multiplicatio as is the red tincture, insofar as “the radioactive rays generally produce new radioactive centers where they encounter matter.”

The physicist talks of a “far-reaching parallel“ between the extraction of the red tincture and the radioactive decay, which means that he was very astonished about the phenomenological parallelism between the alchemical and the modern physical term. On the other hand he knew that the red tincture and the infans solaris radiated from the lapis, defined in an intermediate world between matter and spirit, i.e., in the psychophysical reality or unus mundus. Therefore, Pauli’s phenomenological comparison of the red tincture with radioactivity is a further hint to the fact that he began to anticipate the phenomenon of the radioactive decay on a deeper, psychophysical level.

As we know from the latest event, i.e., Chernobyl, but of course already since Hiroshima, the physical radioactive multiplicatio has – in contrast to the alchemical red tincture, based on the subtle body-like psychophysical reality – a destructive transformation effect on the matter in its neighborhood. This destructiveness distinguishes the modern invention in a decisive way from the alchemical red tincture. The question arises therefore, if we, with the artificial liberation of radioactivity, do not play the dangerous game of the sorcerer’s apprentice that cannot stop the destructive effects of his deeds anymore?

Chapter 5, part 7

See also further articles about Wolfgang Pauli in

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

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  August 22nd, 2004