Alchemy fall 2010 class iii 2

ALCHEMY CLASS IIIAlchemy, Modern Physics, and Depth

Psychology

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I. QUESTIONS

What do we mean by “Alchemical”?

What makes Pauli a “modern day alchemist” according to

Lindorff?

What is a symbol?

Where is the Unconscious?

Does Subatomic Matter Indicate a Psychic State?

What is the Two-Thousand-Year Old Problem at the Heart of all

Western Alchemy?

II. The Problem of Modern Science

The Evil Backside of the Natural Sciences: “Knowledge is Power”

(Francis Bacon, 1561-1626)

Francis Bacon and Robert Oppenheimer

• “History illustrates that science’s pursuit of truth is motivated often by the desire to enhance the art of war. To Pauli, this was a perversion of values, which was all too evident in the rush to develop the atomic bomb.” (Lindorff p. 64)

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Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958)

• “[Pauli] felt that science had lost touch with that ‘remarkable intermediary stage’ in the 17th century in which the ‘magical-symbolical and the modern, quantitative-mathematical descriptions of nature coexisted.” (Lindorff, p. 71)

Isaac Newton (1643-1727): “The Last Sorcerer”

• “His was a lifelong attempt from two sides, physics and alchemy, at a ‘wedding of the Hermetic tradition with the mechanical philosophy which produced modern science as an offspring.’” (Hillman, Silver and the White Earth II, p. 46)

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Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798-1817):

“With my crossbow / I shot the Albatross”

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Goethe’s Faust (1808-1832)

• “Bodily wings won’t easily / Become companions of the spirit’s wings.”

• “In my breast, two souls with each other strive . . .”

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Pauli’s Personal Crisis

• “The specific danger of my life has been that in the second-half of life I fall from one extreme to the other . . . In the first half of life, I was a cynical, cold devil to others and a fanatical atheist and intellectual enlightener. The opposite to that was on the one side an inclination toward criminality, to brawling (which could have led to murder), and on the other side a . . .wholly nonintellectual hermit with ecstatic states and visions.” (Pauli letter to Jung 1934, as cited in Lindorff, p. 46)

III. Addressing the Problem of Modern Science

Rational Science has an Emotional

(Archetypal/Psychological) Background

• “Such a synthesis must press back to the emotional source of the natural sciences, that is, to the fundamental archetypes and their dynamic.” (Pauli, as cited in Lindorff, p. 213)

Albert Einstein (1879-1955)

“Cosmic Religious Feeling” (“Religion and Science”, New York Times

Magazine, Nov. 9, 1930)

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Pauli

Science as a “Heilsweg” or “path to salvation”

(as cited in Lindorff p. 80)

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IV. Psyche and Matter

Ernst Chladni (1756-1827): Archetypal Patterns in Sound

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Masaru Emoto (1943-): “Messages from Water”

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The Alchemical Albedo : Hillman’s “Silver and the

White Earth II”

Splendor Solis, 1582: “We are Seeking the Nature of the Four

Elements” (Prima Materia)

George Gamow (Responsible for the Theory of the Big Bang, mid 1930’s): “We are Seeking the Nature of the

[92] Elements.”

• “Gamow assumed that the initial components of the universe would have been separate protons, neutrons and electrons, the most fundamental particles known to physicists at the time. He called this mix ‘ylem’ . . . a word he stumbled upon in Webster’s Dictionary. This obsolete Middle English word means, ‘the primordial substance from which the elements were formed.’ [from the Greek “hylem” = “matter”] . . . In addition to the particles of matter, the early universe contained a turbulent sea of light.” (Singh, Big Bang, p. 314)

Jung’s Initial - Dualistic - Hypothesis

• “The real nature of matter was unknown to the alchemist: he knew it only in hints. In seeking to explore it he projected the unconscious into the darkness of matter in order to illuminate it. In order to explain the mystery of matter he projected yet another mystery -- his own unknown psychic background -- into what was to be explained . . .This procedure was not, of course, intentional; it was an involuntary occurrence.” (Jung, CW 12 par. 315-316, as cited in Henderson and Sherwood, Transformation

of the Psyche, p. 2)

Is the Real Nature of Matter Known Today?

The Symbol : “The best possible representation of something

inherently unknown.”

What is Matter at the Microphysical Level?

“Something unknown is doing we know not what.” (Sir Arthur

Eddington)

A Rereading of Jung’s Alchemcial Hypothesis in the Context of

Modern Physics• “The real nature of [subatomic matter] was unknown

to the [modern physicist]: he knew it only in hints. In seeking to explore it he projected the unconscious into the darkness of matter in order to illuminate it. In order to explain the mystery of matter he projected yet another mystery -- his own unknown psychic background -- into what was to be explained . . .This procedure was not, of course, intentional; it was an involuntary occurrence.” (Jung, CW 12 par. 315-316, as cited in Henderson and Sherwood, Transformation of the Psyche, p. 2)

Do Images of our Inner Self Lie at the Heart of Matter?

• “Physics was for [Pauli] a way of probing into the very heart of nature. Like the alchemist, who saw images that reflected his inner self within the mysterious chemical transformations . . .’” (Lindorff, p. 80)

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Quantum Physics as Modern Alchemy?

• “I attempt to show that in this it is very easy for the unconscious to replace the alchemistic oven with a modern spectrograph.” (Pauli, as cited in Meier, Atom and Archetype, p. 34)

The Rutherford or Planetary Model of the Atom (c. 1911)

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The Radioactive Nucleus as Symbol: Towards a “Neutral Language” and

“Background Physics”

• “The radioactive nucleus is an excellent symbol for the source of energy of the collective unconscious, the ultimate external stratum of which appears as individual consciousness. As a symbol, it indicates that consciousness does not grow out of any activity that is inherent to it; rather, it is constantly being produced by an energy that comes from the depths of the unconscious and has thus been depicted in the form of rays since time immemorial. The center is thus represented by the Greek Gnostics as Spinther (the spark) or as Phos Archetypon (the archetypal light). (Jung, as cited in Meier, Atom and Archetype, p. 14)

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A Strange Footprint on the Shores of the Unknown

• “We have found that where science has progressed the farthest, the mind has but regained from nature that which the mind has put into nature. We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origin. At last, we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint. And Lo! It is our own.” (Eddington, as cited in Quantum Questions, Wilbur, Ed. p. 74)

Jung’s New - Nondualistic - Hypothesis

• “The psyche . . . seems to belong to the microphysical world.” (Jung, as cited in Lindorff p. 97)

A New Vision of Dreams

• “Dreams are the voice of cosmic matter in us.” (Von Franz, The Way of the Dream [film])

A New Vision of the Perceptual World: Coleridge’s

“Primary Imagination”• “Man inhabits a symbolic world that, to the

degree that he remains unconscious of it as symbolic, he assumes to be literal. He inhabits a mystery -- the unknowable realm of the unconscious -- symbolically represented as the sensible world in the human act of perception.” (Ross Woodman, Sanity, Madness, Transformation: The Psyche in Romanticism, p. 24)

V. Social and Political Dimensions of Alchemical

Process

Vaclav Havel (1936-)

• Czech playwright imprisoned in 1979 for speaking the truth against the Communist state. Later he became the founder of the Czech human rights movement and the first president of the free Czech republic (1993-2003).

“What Can I Do?”: A Holistic Vision of Social/Political

Activism• “If I consider the problem as that which the world is turning

me into -- that is, as a tiny screw in a giant machine, deprived of human identity -- then there is really nothing I can do. Obviously I cannot put a stop to the destruction of the globe, the growing stupidity of nations and the production of thousands of new thermonuclear bombs. If, however, I consider it as that which each of us originally is, or rather what each of us -- irrespective of the state of the world -- has the basic potential to become, which is to say an autonomous human being, capable of acting responsibly to and for the world, then of course there is a great deal I can do.” (Vaclav Havel, Letters to Olga: June 1979-September 1982, p. 295)

VI. Conclusion

“Alchemical” What does that Mean?

Some Aspects of Alchemy• Turning to the Feminine principle “left by the side

of the road” in Western Civilization• Symbolic and Metaphorical Thinking • Processes of Transformation -- Earth to Water to

Air to Fire• The Guiding Function of the Archetypal

Imagination -- Dreams and Visions• The Initiatory Function of Suffering -- Death and

Rebirth and other Archetypal Dynamics• Cosmic Religious Feeling in the Exploration of

Nature -- Science as Humanistic and Holistic• Union of Opposites -- incl. Psychophysical• Symbols of the Individuation Process

What makes Pauli a “modern day alchemist”?

Wolfgang Pauli (1900-1958)

“It would be most satisfactory if physis and psyche could be seen as complementary aspects of the same reality.”

What is the Main Message of Alchemy?

Theodor Abt (1947-)

• “the creation of consciousness by continuously pondering over the symbols that emerge from the unconscious.” (Abt, CALA IB p. 10)

What is the Two Thousand Year Old Problem at the Heart of all

Western Alchemy?

How to Get From 3 to 4: The Fourth as Matter/Body, as Devil,

as Feminine

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Union of Sun and Moon

• “The upper world (symbolized by three suns) has now to be reunited with its origin, the earth or the purified first body, which is now called the second earth or body (symbolized by the moon).” (Abt, The Great Vision of Ibn Umail, pg. 36)

Alchemy as the Myth of Our Time?

• “It is the destiny of the occident continually to keep bringing into connection with each other these two fundamental attitudes, on the one hand the rational-critical, which seeks to understand, and on the other, the mystic-irrational, which looks for the redeeming experience of oneness.” (Pauli, Lindorff, p. 192)