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 6

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

(part 7)

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 7)

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

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

Pauli continues the above quote as follows:

“Experience has shown me that what you call a ‘conjunction process’ is generally conducive to the appearance of the ‘synchronistic’ phenomenon (referred to as ‘radioactivity’ by the ‘stranger’).“ [emphasis mine]

As we can see in many other letters, it was the “stranger”, his inner guru, who tried to convince him that he should replace the term synchronicity with radioactivity.

Already in the year 1935 - surely as a result of his occupation with the not yet published very enigmatic dreams about a possible connection of radioactivity with Eros, past and future history (see section 5.2.2.5)) during that time – he writes, that these dreams use “physical analogies to denote psychic facts.” Then he continues in saying that he has solved this problem with

“the attempt to draw up a table (or lexicon) for the translation of the (symbolically interpreted) physical expressions into their psychological language.”

In the specific case of the radioactive nucleus he compares this physical fact with Carl Jung’s depth psychological term Self and concludes that the analogy between the two must have something to do with a transformation of the Self and as a result of this transformation in the collective unconscious with a radiating outwards of it.

Because up until the year 1946 Carl Jung defined the term archetype and therefore also the Self in a strictly psychic way, i.e., only encompassing what he called the collective psyche (see section 5.2.1.2), we can be sure that Pauli compares here a basically physical with a basically psychic fact. As a true follower of Niels Bohr’s complementary theory, he is familiar with thinking in analogies. Therefore he stresses the assumption that also Jung’s Self should be characterized by a transmutation and a respective “radiation” (i.e., a multiplicatio).

In 1946 Pauli had already read about the infans solaris, the product of the coniunctio in the opus of Robert Fludd, which belongs however to an intermediate realm beyond our modern distinction between matter and psyche. In the context of the dream of the objectivation of the rotation of 1946 ([32P]) he talks therefore of the radioactive nucleus in its physical-symbolic meaning as “the intermediary layer where the infans solaris used to be,“ connecting like this physical radioactivity with the “psychophysical” alchemical infans solaris, which exists beyond the split in physical and psychic.

It seems therefore that Pauli, in 1946, began to interpret the physical-symbolic meaning of the term radioactivity not as a depth psychological but as a psychophysical fact. On the level of the unus mundus “radioactivity” could however be a process that transforms or even transmutates the physical as well as the psychic part of our split world. It seems therefore that the physical term “radioactivity,” interpreted on a psychophysical level, means an even deeper process than Carl Jung’s synchronicity (further conclusions see below).

In 1948 (see [35P]), Pauli calls radioactivity the cause of synchronicity, and initiated by the unconscious. In the above quote of 1949 he combines the physical radioactivity not only with the depth psychological term synchronicity but also with the alchemical coniunctio archetype, which is of course intimately connected with this intermediary layer, and therefore with what we would call today the psychophysical reality or the unus mundus.

The very interesting aspect of this attempt is the comparision of a physical, a depth psychological and a psychophysical fact. We will see that the comparision of radioactivity with synchronicity defines this relationship as complementary (see below). The alchemical expression coniunctio is however a psychophysical term, the intention of which is to overcome the distinction between physical and psychic. Thus, it seems that Pauli, by comparing the physical with the psychophysical term, tried again to overcome the complementarity principle of physics. We will see that he did not succeed – analogous to Carl Jung, who, as we have seen, wrote about his failure corresponding to the archetype of the coniunctio in letter [59J] (see section 5.3.3).

Eventually, in letter [69P] of 1956, one of his last letters to Jung, Pauli writes: “The word ‘radioactive’ is used in my dream language to mean the same as C.G. Jung’s term ‘synchronistic’.“

We can therefore conclude that Pauli vacillated in his letters between different meanings of this “abusive” physical-symbolic use of the term radioactivity by the stranger. First he interpreted this term as complementary, later however as an attribute of a process on a psychophysical level, by this overcoming the complementarity principle.

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

We know further that in the decisive year 1948 the Nobel laureate compared the complementarity with the Taoist yang/yin bipolarity. In his Background Physics – written as a consequence of the Fludd/flood synchronicity at the foundation ceremony of the Zurich C.G. Jung Institute (see Chapter 2) – we read the crucial statement:

“The ancient idea of polar opposites, such as the Chinese Yang and Yin, is … replaced in modern thinking by the idea of the complementary (mutually exclusive) aspects of phenomena.”

In this decisive moment, Wolfgang Pauli ends his vacillation between a complementary and a psychophysical understanding of nature and decides, as a quantum physicist, for the former: In a regressive way, he interprets the Taoist Yang/Yin bipolarity as an opposition of two principles in a complementary way; he reduces the dynamic bipolarity to a mutually exclusive and therefore static pair of opposites.

That is to say that the central idea of Taoism is not an opposition, a mutually exclusiveness of the two energetic principles, but is rather a bipolarity. On such a bipolar background of the universe an exchange of attributes of the opposites is possible: In the moment of the Tao, the far-eastern equivalent to the alchemic coniunctio, Yang transforms into Yin, and in the same moment Yin becomes Yang. The two bipolar principles exchange their attributes and like this transform into each other.

In quantum physics, however, a particle cannot change into a wave. In the so-called double slit experiment, for example, when opening only one slit, we see the photon as a particle, when letting a photon pass through both slits, it behaves as a wave: A strict complementarity, i.e., a mutual exclusiveness of the two events.

Let us now briefly return to the beginning of this chapter. We have seen there, that the Nobel laurate began – after the dream of the objectivation of the rotation of 1946 – to deal intensely with the alchemist Robert Fludd. He realized that the latter’s Hermetic opus is characterized by the coniunctio archetype, to which the processes of the exchange of attributes belongs, further, the creation of the lapis, the infans solaris or the red tincture in the intermediate, psychophysical world, and the multiplicatio, we are dealing with in these sections.

With the reduction of the Taoist Yin/Yang to the quantum physical complementarity in 1948, Pauli decided however also against the bipolarity of the energy term, like this of course against the exchange of attributes, namely the transformation of one aspect of the bipolar energy into the other one and against an understanding of the multiplicatio on a psychophysical level.

Our challenge will therefore be to answer the question of how it could be possible to overcome such an unipolar energy term. Only like this can we accept one of the central meanings of Wolfgang Pauli’s Fludd/flood synchronicity in the same year 1948 – the necessity of the inclusion of the energy term’s bipolarity (see Chapter 2).  

[Part 7 proofread by GJS, 7.2004] 

Chapter 5, part 8

See also further articles about Wolfgang Pauli in

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

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  September 1st, 2004