THE IMPORTANCE OF JUNGIAN PSYCHOLOGY
Second Edition
By Paul Budding
PART 3
THE NATURE OF REALITY: A JUNGIAN PERSPECTIVE
Key words: psyche, acausal, worldview, space, time, unconscious, psychology, physics
Abstract
Psychology and Physics (psyche and matter) are increasingly converging. As a consequence of this, the old worldview of scientific materialism is evolving into a new worldview based on the relativity of time and space in both the inner world of the psyche and the outer universe. The psyche is the relativizer of time and space and at the deepest unconscious level it reaches a state of absolute spacelessness and timelessness. In depth psychology this realm is referred to as the psychophysical unus mundus. The unus mundus is “pure nature” and it is “number” that is the language of nature. Number (being everywhere) is the answer to Pauli’s search for a neutral language between the inner world of psyche and the outer world of physics.
Introduction
“We have to have enough faith in our world-view to work from it, but not that much faith that we think it’s the final answer.”
(Bohm, 1996, p4)
“[Individual] insights into the nature of reality… matter, time, space, consciousness strikingly converge with the concepts that characterize what has been called the new or emerging paradigm in western science. In other words, the insights that people get into the nature of the cosmos in non-ordinary states are in fundamental conflict with the old, Cartesian-Newtonian worldview, but are very similar in nature to descriptions that we find in quantum-relativistic physics and other avenues of the new paradigm.”
(Grof)
In this essay what Stanislav Grof refers to (above) as “the new paradigm” is discussed and endorsed. It is primarily argued that the new paradigm worldview is both more accurate and healthier than the outdated Newtonian scientific materialism model.
In connection with that, insights from Carl Jung and Marie Louise Von Franz are outlined. Thus substance is given to the claim of this essay that this is both the worldview of the present (its time has come) and is the healthy worldview. This worldview is, for some healthy thinkers… already conscious. (The fore mentioned thinkers became conscious of it) whilst for others it is pre conscious. The aim of this essay is to therefore guide the thinker and reader, step by step into the insights of this wonderful new worldview and in the process of doing so, make a contribution to their psychological health.
As someone who belongs to the Jungian community it can be said here that the author of this work believes in an unconscious that goes beyond the ego. That is my basic starting point.23 However, in this essay I go further than merely experiencing the unconscious by works of art and literature. In this current work I apply the science of the unconscious to the biggest collective issues.
The New Paradigm
Stanislav Grof is a psychologist who has heavily researched altered states of consciousness. He outlined his worldview in an interview with Russell E. DiCarlo, and it
is from this interview that quotes from him are taken…
The first question that we need to ask is what is wrong with the old worldview? In the interview with DiCarlo, Grof says:
“The Newtonian understanding of the world is that matter is indestructible, objects are solid, time is linear, and space is three dimensional. The universe is a totally deterministic mechanical system, where everything is connected through chains of causes and effects. In the worldview of traditional science, the material world exists objectively in an unambiguous way. The observer reflects more or less accurately this “objective reality”, but his or her presence does not change anything – the world is uninfluenced through the act of observation.”
(Grof)
But in the mystical experiences of individuals that span the centuries, in Near Death Experiencers today, and in the modern physics of Quantum Theory… we see a new paradigm…
“In non-ordinary [unconscious] states, the material world is experienced as a dynamic process where there are no solid structures and everything is a flow of energy. Everything is perceived as patterns of energy and behind patterns of energy there are patterns of experience. Reality appears to be the result of an incredibly precise orchestration of experiences and the observer plays a very important role in the creation of the universe. This is exactly the picture that is now emerging from various areas of the new paradigm science. It has become apparent that consciousness has a fundamental role in the cosmos. It is not a side-product of inert, dead, and inactive matter that somehow appeared in the universe more or less accidentally after billions of years of evolution. Consciousness and creative intelligence permeate all of nature and the entire universe has an underlying master blueprint.”
(Grof)
This raises further questions… what is therefore said about physical matter? After all that is real as well isn’t it? Our everyday reality is still experienced the same as before. Also, what is the underlying master blueprint that Grof refers to? To answer these questions not only Grof but also Carl Jung will be quoted.
Both the physical and the psychological are equally valid because both are experienced. Being of one and the same world we can speak of psychophysical oneness (That was the Jungian physicist, Wolfgang Pauli’s preferred way of terming it. Jung refers to the unus mundus.)
Grof) “In non-ordinary [unconscious] states, the sharp distinction between what is ‘real’ and what is ‘unreal’ tends to disappear. Our ordinary material world appears less real and the world of the archetypal beings and other aspects of the transpersonal world become very convincing and believable… Once we realize that in both instances [ordinary conscious states and non-ordinary unconscious states] we are dealing with “virtual realities”, the distinction between what is “real” and what is derived becomes rather arbitrary.”
Hence Grof is not in denial about the physical material world. It’s real like the non-ordinary unconscious experiences are… just as real or just as unreal.
Grof) “To borrow an analogy from electronics, material reality is just one “holographic cosmic channel”. There are other “channels” that are equally real or unreal as this one.”
Grof) “The traditional point of view of Western materialistic science is that we are Newtonian objects, made up of atoms, molecules, cells, tissues and organs, that we are highly developed animals and biological thinking machines. If we seriously consider all the data amassed in the last few decades by consciousness research, we discover that this point of view is incorrect, or at least incomplete. It is just one partial aspect of a much more complex picture. It can be maintained only when we suppress all the evidence from parapsychology and the study of non-ordinary states of consciousness, such as mystical, psychedelic, and near-death experiences, or trance phenomena and meditation. In all these situation[s], we can also function as [infinite] fields of consciousness which can transcend space, time, and linear causality.”
Jung (quoted by Salman in Eisendrath & Dawson, 1997, p53) “Undoubtedly the idea of the unus mundus is founded on the assumption that the multiplicity of the empirical world rests on an underlying unity, and not that two or more fundamentally different worlds exist side by side or are mingled with one another. Rather, everything divided and different belongs to one and the same world, which is not the world of sense but a postulate whose probability is vouched for by the fact that until now no one has been able to discover a world in which the known laws of nature are invalid. That even the psychic world, which is so extraordinarily different from the physical world, does not have its roots outside the one cosmos is evident from the undeniable fact that causal connections exist between the psyche and the body which point to their underlying unitary nature… The background of our empirical world thus appears to be in fact a unus mundus.”
So let’s take a breather. Already there have been some huge statements made here. The observer plays a very important role in the creation of the universe, time and space isn’t just linear and causal but also has an acausal aspect… and ultimately the psychological and physical are linked into a psychophysical oneness (or unus mundus as Jung puts it). Clearly for Jung, the psyche goes well beyond the ego… taking in the deep psyche, the collective unconscious. When the depths of this psyche are experienced, spaceless and timeless reality is experienced.
Grof was influenced by altered states of consciousness research (parapsychology, the Near Death Experience etc). But what was Jung influenced by? Well, Jung often had dinner with Einstein and was impressed by the great physicists work on the theory of relativity (which of course, is to do the outer universe in physics). Jung then collaborated with another great physicist, Wolfgang Pauli. And together they concluded that in no way is relativity only true for the outer universe, but is true for the inner universe as well.
Jung quoted from Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1995, p335 & 336) “There are indications that at least a part of the psyche is not subject to the laws of space and time. Scientific proof of that has been provided by the well-known J.B. Rhine experiments. Along with numerous cases of spontaneous fore-knowledge, non-spatial perceptions, and so on – of which I have given a number of examples from my own life – these experiments prove that the psyche at times functions outside of the spatio-temporal law of causality. This indicates that our conceptions of space and time, and therefore of causality also, are incomplete. A complete picture of the world would require the addition of still another dimension; only then could the totality of phenomena be given a unified explanation. Hence it is that the rationalists insist to this day that parapsychological experiences do not really exist; for their world-view stands or falls by this question. If such phenomena occur at all, the rationalist picture of the universe is invalid, because incomplete. Then the possibility of an other-valued reality behind the phenomenal world becomes an inescapable problem, and we must face the fact that our world, with it’s time, space, and causality, relates to another order of things lying behind or beneath it, in which neither, ‘here and there’ nor ‘earlier and later’ are of importance. I have been convinced that at least part of our psychic existence is characterized by a relativity of space and time. This relativity seems to increase, in proportion to the distance from consciousness, to an absolute condition of timelessness and spacelessness.”
The last sentence of Jung’s (above) would be meaningful to someone who had experienced a Near Death Experience (NDE). This is because they couldn’t be any further away from consciousness… and they have the most profound experiences of timelessness and spacelessness. Thus they confirm Jung’s viewpoint.
Jung in collaboration with Pauli was in-tune with the first wave of the discoveries of quantum theory. Quantum theory had broken with the principle of causality. The principle of linear space-time and causality had been found to be only statistically valid and relatively true.
Jung. Quoted from Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, 1973, p5) “This is as much to say that the connection of events may in certain circumstances be other than causal, and requires another principle of explanation.”
For Jung, space and time are psychic in origin. He also believed that the archetypal energy within each of us, being at the deep realm of the psyche, impacted on the material world. It was the physicist, Wolfgang Pauli who influenced Jung in this area. It is clear from the experiences of millions of people, that when one has a precognitive dream the dream itself is experienced as deep, meaningful, numinous. In other words the precognition isn’t brought about by a light, flakey dream but rather by a dream that feels special. A Jungian would say that the deep psyche had been experienced and that the special numinous feeling-tone could be described as archetypal energy. It can also be said that an abaissment du niveau mental: i.e. a radical lowering of the level of consciousness is required for such relativization of space and time experiences. Hence in one sense, the deep unconscious is a realm of absolute knowledge. This is well beyond personal ego consciousness. It is a realm equating to “ordering in the spaceless-timeless reality.”24 The physicist, Wolfgang Pauli’s influence on Depth Psychology is worth noting here. 25 He regarded the archetypes as ordering factors in the deep unconscious. The deeper we go the more that psychic energy becomes archetypal energy and thus attains a physical component… hence can impact on the physical material world… hence Pauli’s “Psychophysical Oneness” (Jung’s unus mundus). Pauli therefore regarded archetypes as the ordering factors of both mind and matter.26
Archetypal energy exists before and beyond individual psychic energy. The individual psychic energy is relativized and transformed by the stronger archetypal energy. Hence we can see why people in the Jungian and Post-Jungian world are so keen to get us to see beyond personal ego consciousness… because there is a whole vast world to explore. That’s why!
Number Archetypes
“The field that Jung himself felt would be most fruitful for further investigations was the study of basic mathematical axiomata – which Pauli calls “primary mathematical intuitions.”
(Von Franz in Jung, 1964, p385)
Marie Louise Von Franz herself, took up the baton of looking into number archetypes as Jung was too old to do so himself. Numbers as the “archetype[s] of order”27 are inextricably linked to the unus mundus. Numbers are everywhere. Everything is bound up with number. So true is this that Von Franz was able to say that as transmitters of knowledge, number is more important than anything else, including mythological images.28 And Jung said that
“Number helps more than anything else to bring order into the chaos of appearances. It is the predestined instrument for creating order, or for apprehending an already existing, but still unknown, regular arrangement or “orderedness.” It may well be the most primitive element of order in the human mind.”
(Jung, 1973, p40)
Clearly then, number is highly relevant to all that I have been discussing so far. Number is the key connecting psyche and matter. Von Franz highlights Jung’s point by saying…
“The deepest and most clearly distinguishable archetypal factor, which forms the basis of psychophysical equivalence is, the archetypal patterns of natural numbers… In respect to mathematical structure, the acausal orderedness in matter is of the same kind as that in the psyche and each is continually reflected in the other.”
(Von Franz, 1980, p194)
Elsewhere Von Franz explains:
“As an archetype, number becomes not only a psychic factor, but more generally, a world-structuring factor. In other words, numbers point to a background of reality in which psyche and matter are no longer distinguishable.”
(Von Franz, 1992, p216)
Hence number clearly reflects the order of the unus mundus. Number is the ordering factor of psyche and matter as can be seen when one thinks about numbers effectiveness in ordering the physical world.
“In the last analysis, the mystery of the unus mundus resides in the nature of number.”
(Von Franz, 1974, p54)
Von Franz looked into the first four integers. The numbers 1 – 4 can be regarded (roughly) as
“One” is undifferentiated, unity. It is what Erich Neumann described as the “Uroboric” condition… the archetypal totality where the snake is depicted eating its own tail. This can also be seen in the baby sucking at the mother’s breast.
“Two” is conflict, division, opposition, a split, thesis and antithesis.
“Three” is synthesis of the thesis and antithesis.
“Four” is stability and unity.
Wolfgang Pauli believed that the number archetypes would equate to the holy grail of constructing a neutral language between psychology and physics. What Pauli meant by ‘neutral’ was
“neutral with respect to psychophysical distinction.”
(Card, C, & Morariu, V. V, 1998)
Author: Paul Budding: Freelance Jungian Psychology writer
