Part 11 (1/2)
The audience of strangers is eager to learn more, but Pauli leaves and finds himself back with the piano teacher. He tells her that while giving the lecture he has produced a ”child” for her. The ”child” is a product of his unconscious indicating that the woman is indeed his anima, and represents a new holistic att.i.tude-a fusion of psychology, physics, and biology. The problem is how to make it acceptable to everyone. The answer, Pauli realizes, lies in numbers. He suddenly notices that the teacher has Chinese eyes, like the Chinese woman who, in his earlier dream, had led him to the lecture hall.
A voice says, ”Wait, transformation of the evolutionary center.” Suddenly the teacher has a ring on her finger marked with the mathematical symbol i-the square root of 1. She tells him that it symbolizes the oneness of the rational and the irrational. But Pauli sees another oneness: i is a key element in Schrodinger's wave function in quantum physics. It describes the wave and the particle properties of matter and symbolizes the unity of wave and particle.
Pauli puts on his coat and hat. He is about to leave when he hears the teacher play a four-note chord. The three-note chord he played at the beginning of the fantasy has mutated into four. A wholeness has been achieved, a child has been produced, and Pauli's thoughts are now focused on the archetype of number, particularly on three and four and how the s.h.i.+ft from one to the other brings about a unity.
The two-thousand-year-old problem.
Nevertheless, the great problem remained unresolved. As Jung put it, ”Oddly enough, the problem is still the same 2,000-year-old one: How does one get from Three to Four?” Pauli's own thoughts on this date back to his discovery of the exclusion principle and the ”difficult transition from three to four.” That was really the main work,” he added. Now it began to lead him into other aspects of numerology.
Writing to von Franz, Pauli continued the introspective and numerical mode of The Piano Lesson: ”One can not at all proceed from three to four.” As far as the 2,000-year-old question was concerned, he was stymied. But perhaps he could try a different approach. ”However, one can proceed in various ways to three and four,” he went on. Then he had a brain wave. Four times three equals twelve; but twelve can also be expressed as two times six. He played with this conundrum at the start of his letter: A. To the sign of 6.
B. 2 6 = 12.
The professor who shall calculate numerically.
Twelve, he remembered was the number of constellations in the zodiac. ”My path proceeds via 2 6 to the zodiac, since what is still older is always the newer,” he concluded.
In the zodiac, the twelve signs were divided into four triangles of three signs. So perhaps the zodiac contained the solution as to how to get from three to four. Perhaps its symbolism, focusing on the quaternity, was more in touch with irrationality than was Christianity, which emphasized the Trinity. Followers of Christianity, he wrote, were ”cosmic babies, 'greenhorns,'” their religion akin to the physics of people who ”believe that the full moon and the new moon” are not the same moon.
Then he received a letter from his friend and one-time a.s.sistant, the physicist and Jungian disciple Markus Fierz. Fierz told him about a dream described by the sixteenth-century Cambridge Platonist Thomas More. In his dream, More glimpsed twelve sentences written in gold but he could recall only the first six. He was aroused from his dream by the braying of two donkeys.
Pauli set to work to a.n.a.lyze the dream. He reasoned that the splitting of the twelve sentences in More's dream into two sixes, along with the two donkeys, rendered ”the quaternity” impossible.... The natural splitting of 12 would be realized in 3 4, which also corresponds to the splitting in the zodiac (of which Fludd always spoke). But the time was not ripe for a quaternary world-picture, and the dark half relapsed into the unconscious.” In More's time, the zodiac must have been seen as two sixes-6 2. The world was not ready for the number four to emerge in Western thought.
It was a case of synchronicity. Pauli had homed in on 2 6, not realizing at first that he was reimagining the dreams of a man of the Renaissance, when these topics were hotly debated.
The division into two-symbolized by the two donkeys-reflected an era in which there was a split between matter and mind, soon to be manifested in the emergence of modern science in the work of Kepler and Descartes. Early scientists focused on matter because it could be described by mathematics in three-dimensional s.p.a.ce, another case, like the Trinity, of three.
Or perhaps the two donkeys in More's dream had something to do with Pauli's own ”two life phases.” ”A Zen Buddhist would understand this, as G.o.d speaks to us always in riddles,” he added.
To ill.u.s.trate the letter to von Franz, Pauli drew two six-sided stars of David, which he labeled as the two stages of his life: ”the youth phase (until 1928) [and] the phase after World War II until the summer of 1953.” The two stars sprang from Pauli's ”active imagination”-two six-sided stars: 2 6.
In the years between these two life phases-1928 and 1945-Pauli lived through many turbulent events: two marriages, divorce, flight from Europe, rejection by colleagues at the ETH, the lonely war years in the United States, and his a.n.a.lysis by Jung, which had led to a deeper understanding of himself and the world about him. He depicts these two contrasting periods in three pairs of opposing archetypes.
The ”youth phase” of Pauli's life, to 1928. (Based on Pauli's drawing in his letter to von Franz.).
In the youth phase of his life the archetypes are the ”Light Anima” (superior; Pauli's intellectual side which was dominant in that ”at the time I was completely absorbed in physics”) versus the ”Shadow, projected entirely on the father along with repressed negative emotions about Judaism” the ”intellectual side of the 'Self' projected onto the teacher” versus the ”Dark Anima [whom Pauli saw as] (”inferior,” a ”prost.i.tute”); and the ”Ego” versus a ”Real woman (mother) with whom I had a positive relations.h.i.+p.”
The period of Pauli's life from 1946 to 1953. (Based on Pauli's drawing in his letter to von Franz.).
The transforming event in Pauli's life, as he remembered, was his marriage to Franca. This brought about the adult phase. Here the archetypes appear in new forms. The Light Anima, now inferior and projected onto the ”wicked stepmother,” is set against the Shadow. But the Shadow is no longer projected onto the father even though Pauli still regards him as ”controversial, intellectual, divested of feeling.” The ”Ego” is set against the ”real woman” with whom Pauli now has the ”positive feeling of being at home” this woman is no longer his mother. The third pair includes the ”Master Figure” whom Pauli a.s.sociated with Merlin. In an earlier letter to Emma Jung he described him as seeking a way to move from three to four solely by rational reasoning, using physics. But Pauli now knows this cannot be accomplished by logic alone and so places him in opposition to the Dark Anima who is now superior, appearing as the ”Chinese woman.”
Pauli then laid out the pattern of this, the second half of his life.
The connection with physics cools off. A positive connection with Kabbalah (and Cha.s.sidism) arises.
Then: the Kepler work.
Good and evil appear relativized and coincide with light (spiritual) and dark (chthonic).
Religion: is sought for.
Values of the youth phase threaten to be lost. At the high point of this phase a compensatory stagnation kicks in with anima-projections upon actual women.
Pauli continued to mull over three times four, six times two, and the zodiac. An ”inner storm” raged. Finally his ”'active imagination' or perhaps 'synchronicity'” led him to realize something he had missed: ”the dilemma regarding the patriarchalistic versus the matriarchalistic sphere [and the] dilemma concerning 3 versus 4-these seem to me to be merely two aspects of the same problem.” In other words, the contrast between the patriarchalistic view (that is, the male-dominated view of the world in which the number three or Trinity predominates) and the matriarchalistic view (that is, female-dominated view of the world in which the quaternity predominates). According to ancient creation myths, the matriarchalistic world was overthrown and the patriarchalistic one took over.
Because ”every 'correct' solution (i.e., meeting the demands of nature) must contain 4 as well as 3,” Pauli tried different approaches including 16 (4 4) which can be mathematically tied to 12 (the number of signs in the zodiac). He explained why 12 and 16 were related: ”The professor further calculates numbers. In the sign of the 12. 12:16 = 3:4-a problem with thorns and horns.” Dividing each term in the ratio 12:16 by four gives the ratio 3:4.
But there was still something missing in the number twelve and its relations.h.i.+p with three and four, something Pauli could not quite put his finger on. He became weary and set aside the problem.
That night he had a dream. In his dream three others are present. One is a Chinese woman-now elevated to a ”Sophia,” a seer or wise woman. She tells Pauli, ”You must play every conceivable combination of chess.” Chess involves the opposition of black and white and thus of dark and light, the two animas. Dark is compa.s.sion and feeling, light is rationalism. It is like the teacher's advice in The Piano Lesson, that every possible melody can be played on the black and white keys: ”It is only a question of knowing how to play.” In his dream Pauli works on the problem of how to make four emerge from two, three, and six, but still can't solve it. He suddenly wakes up.
Then, in a waking vision, he hit on the solution. ”This I will never forget. The experience had a numinostic character (obviously of archetypal nature),” he wrote in wonder, caught up in the moment of enlightenment. ”In my youth I often had such experiences with physics problems,” he added.
In the vision, a voice-possibly the Chinese woman's-wakes him from his dream. The voice tells him the solution in clear tones: ”In your drawings [the six-sided stars in Pauli's previous letter to von Franz] one element is perfectly correct and another transitory and false. It is correct that the lines number six, but it is false to draw six points. See here”-and I saw a square with clearly marked diagonals. ”Can you now see finally the 4 and the 6? Namely, 4 points and 6 lines-or 6 pairs* out of 4 points. They are the same six lines that exist in the I Ching. There the 6, containing 3 as a latent factor, is correct. Now observe the square more closely: 4 of the lines are of equal length, the other two are longer-they are irrationally related, as you know from mathematics. There is no figure with 4 points and 6 equal lines. For this reason symmetry cannot be statically produced and a dance results. The coniunctio refers to the exchange of places during this dance. One can also speak of a game of rhythms and rotations. Therefore the 3, already contained in a latent form in the square, must be dynamically expressed.”
The square where the dance of diagonals occurred in Pauli's ”waking vision.”
Finally here was the solution to the problem that had been nagging at Pauli for so long. The four, or quaternity, emerged intact, while the three was also already contained ”as a latent factor” in the square. This is the way it is in the I Ching, in which each hexagram used for divination is made up of six lines subdivided into two three-line segments (trigrams).
In mathematics the diagonals of a square cannot be expressed as whole numbers. Mathematicians refer to the relations.h.i.+p of the diagonals to the sides of a square as ”irrational.” Pauli extended the meaning of this term to psychology. In the dance of the diagonals, three and four are both present in a coniunctio resulting from ”a game of rhythms and rotations” in which diagonals and sides transform into one another. Pauli recognized the influence of the I Ching-with its ”6 lines and play of transformations”-on this solution.
Perhaps what catalyzed this line of thought for Pauli was that the tetraktys plus its mirror image make up the holy quaternity. Two equilateral triangles fused along one of their sides form not a square but a parallelogram, while laying two equilateral triangles one on top of the other produces the star of David. Pauli's friend and former a.s.sistant, Markus Fierz-who was, we should remember, an acolyte of Jung's-had argued along these lines in a letter he wrote to Pauli a month earlier where he represented the opposition of light and dark each with its own tetraktys.
Fierz's geometric figure formed from two triangles, each a tetraktys.
The four-sided figure formed from the two triangles-one white, the other black-represents a state of the unconscious in which, Fierz wrote, light and dark ”must either fly apart or flow one into the other,” as the unconscious (represented by the dark lower triangle) flows into the conscious.
The other case in which three and four occurred simultaneously had been in Pauli's dream image of the world clock in which ”three rhythms are contained.” However, since the ”image of the zodiac is not yet correct, then also is the 12 'incomplete,'” Pauli wrote to von Franz. The zodiac is ”not yet correct”-he felt, but didn't know why. Perhaps the error lay in something Jung had missed in examining why the patriarchal view arose in Christianity: he had limited his clues to those within Christianity. It occurred to Pauli that the Zodiac had pre-Christian roots. He decided to look into the cultural history of something that Jung and his circle ”too strongly neglected”-horoscopes. Even though Pauli had nothing but disdain for them, he saw their importance as a cultural artifact.
He discovered that the horoscope then in use was based on the zodiac of third-century-B.C. Babylonia. But this was a time when patriarchy had replaced matriarchy. So this zodiac is a.s.sociated with the all-male Trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost which, being three, is incomplete. The use of this patriarchical horoscope had much to do with the masculine slant of Christianity and so, too, its preference for the number three over four. Jung had been wrong to focus his attention on the Christian era in his search for the emergence of four from three.
Thus Pauli resolved the 2,000-year-old problem of how to go from three to four-to his own satisfaction, at least. In fact, he realized that the problem was more than 2,000 years old, harking back to Babylonian times and the venerable I Ching. Pauli's liking for mathematical symmetry carried over to the I Ching, which, as he put it, exhibited ”the exact symmetrical mental att.i.tude of the pairs Yin (feminine, chthonic, dark = moon) and Yang (masculine, intellectual, light = sun).” Horoscopes, however, exhibited no such symmetries.
In Pauli's opinion horoscopes ”far exceed all rational thought” and so had no value at all. But the I Ching with its properties of synchronicity appealed to him ”instinctively.” And he now knew, thanks to Jung, that intuition was the psychological function best suited to take in the whole situation.
Pauli did however once have a horoscope drawn up and included it in a letter he wrote to Jung in December 1953. It was not published in the Jung/Pauli correspondence and the two never discussed it in their letters. It is not known who constructed the horoscope and it is unlikely that Pauli attached much significance to it. Yet it may or may not have had something to do with Pauli's statement to Jung that equinoxes were times of ”relative psychic instability, which can manifest itself both negatively and positively (creatively).” In Pauli's horoscope the spring equinox (the boundary between Pisces and Aries) is on the cusp between the seventh house, the ”house of conjunction,” and the eighth, the ”house of the unconscious” and the autumn equinox is on the cusp between the first house, the ”house of the ego” and the second, the ”house of material things.” One interpretation of Pauli's instabilities might be that they reflected the instabilities of these boundaries between houses.
In working on the psychological side of the problem of how we go from three to four Pauli had gained a deeper understanding of himself and how the whole course of physics seemed to be guided by the ”archetype of the quaternity.” He saw this course as leading to an extension of archetypes out of the collective unconscious into a new form of physics. This would surely be a major result of his joint work with Jung. He wrote to him: In this way, the ancient alchemical idea that matter indicates a psychic state could, on a superior level, experience a new form of realization. I have the impression that this is what my physical dream symbolism is aiming at.
PAULI had definite ideas on how an appropriate form of mysticism would appear. He was adamant that ”my real problem was and still is the relation between Mysticism and Science, what is different between them and what is in common. Both mystics and science have the same aim, to become aware of the unity of knowledge.... And who believes that our present form of science is the last word in this scale? Certainly not I.”
In the summer of 1957 Pauli described his att.i.tude to mysticism in a letter to the Israeli physicist and historian of science, Shmuel Sambursky: ”In opposition to the monotheist religions-but in unison with the mysticism of all peoples, including Jewish mysticism-I believe that the ultimate reality is not personal. Thus is it also in the Vedantic philosophy, and so it is in Chinese Taoism, the Nirvana of Buddhists...and the En-Sof of Jewish mysticism. It is the task of mankind, through personal a.s.sociation not to implement these forms themselves (Yoga-teaching).... In this sense only is Yahweh for me a local demon who displays his efficacy primarily in Israel. How has he behaved with me? He was relatively mild, he only beat me gently on the left ear.” Why ”left”? Perhaps Pauli was thinking of his unconscious. Or perhaps he meant that G.o.d gently chided him for suggesting the existence of the neutrino, the weak particle that ended up causing a revolution in physics because it spins only to the left.
As for von Franz, in 1955 Pauli was writing to her using the familiar ”Du.” But two years later their exchanges abruptly ended. Perhaps Pauli felt he opened up too much to her. As he once wrote to her, when it comes to feelings ”there I am no celebrity, but underdeveloped, even infantile.” Von Franz claimed that he had become unpleasant and wanted her to a.n.a.lyze his dreams for free. She was bitter about this and, in turn, became critical of him.
According to Carl A. Meier, who knew both of them, ”she totally misunderstood Pauli, failing to appreciate his efforts to conduct an a.n.a.lytic dialogue with her and that their relations.h.i.+p was tragic.”
A supreme example of synchronicity: The Pauli effects pile up.
On May 26, 1955, Pauli was due to give a lecture on Einstein at the Zurich Physical Society, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of the special theory of relativity. Before the lecture, three of his friends and colleagues met up for a teetotal dinner. Then they all set off for the meeting.