P. Elwood,

Transcendental Transformation. Kozyrev/Jung Space, where Science and Depth Psychology meet

P. Elwood,

Zurich CG. Jung Institute -Lausanne, Switzerland

The comparison of modern psychology to modern physics is no idle talk. Both disciplines have, for all their diametrical opposition, one most important point in common, namely the fact that they both approach the hitherto “transcendental” region of the Invisible and Intangible, the world of merely analogous thought. ~Carl Jung.

On December 22^nd 2017, I had the privilege of meeting with Alexander Trofimov and his collaborators in ISRICA, Institute of Scientific Research in cosmo anthropoecology, Novosibirsk, Russia. Alexander as researcher and scientist, founder of ISRICA with Vlial Kaznacheev, has been working with Kosyrev mirrors for approximately 22 years experimenting with time/space phenomena.

Following the research of a past famous Russian scientist, Nicolai Kosyrev, Professor Alexander Trofimov and his colleague Academician Vlial Kaznacheev and a team of dedicated scientists, took on the task of delving into the time/space phenomena with the use of Kosyrev Mirrors. These are metal chambers creating a closed space in which the magnetic field of the earth is weakened and where one can observe and receive information from outer fields beyond time and space.

Alexander Trofimov and Vlail Kaznacheev worked together on the exploration of consciousness and cosmic phenomena via their mirrors.

Comparative perspectives on Jung/Kosyrev and time/space beliefs were part of our exchange. Jung himself was passionately interested in science and its discoveries since he had met with Albert Einstein on several occasions from 1909 to 1912, when he invited him to dinner in his home in Küsnacht. Following their meetings Jung became interested in the nature of time. In these discussions he later saw the embryo of his concept of synchronicity.

Based on Nicolai Kosyrev’s findings the Law of Time states; “The velocity of time is instantaneously infinite. It is this principle of time that accounts for telepathy.”(1).

Jung was very interested in telepathy having had many telepathic and premonitory experiences. In his research he had paid attention to the theory of Kammerer’s clusters of time and Rhine’s experiments on ESP in Duke University in North Carolina. Rhine was proving that ESP, (extra-sensory perception), exists and that distance had no influence on telepathic communications.

Jung relates an incident whilst he was on a train between Zurich and Shaffhausen in Switzerland. Going through a tunnel he suddenly lost consciousness of ordinary reality. In a waking dream he saw rivers of blood across Europe, except for Switzerland, which was protected by its mountains. Jung had this kind of perception several times. The vision of Europe and the flowing rivers of blood repeated itself. On July 1^st 1914 war broke out and Jung understood his premonitory vision.

Since early childhood Jung had many dreams which led him to observe the impersonal themes that his unconscious presented to him. He discovered that the deeper unconscious beyond the personal level reveals themes and even knowledge outside of personal experience. Eventually he termed this deeper level of the psyche “the collective unconscious.” Jung says; “Finally I understood that my dreams and my visions came from the subsoil of the collective unconscious” (2).

Jung determined that this level contains instincts and archetypes. Instincts as preceptors of image are activators under certain conditions and this activation leads to the unfolding of archetypal patterns common to all humanity. Archetypes Jung defined as “structuring principles.”

Jung determined that the psyche has an auto-regulating function. Analysis for Jung was not so much aimed at seeking a cure as at seeking the numinous, the archetypal level which activates reorganizing structural patterns and readjusts internal disharmony.

Jung’s plunging into the unconscious meant that his psyche was tuned to, and aware of, inner movements and perceptions. Even in a conscious state he would have experiences of suspensions of time and space.

The validity of the perceptions within the Kosyrev mirrors may have been debated, but for those who have delved into their own psyches there is no doubt about the suspension of time and space. One only has to be aware of the dreams at night to apprehend this reality.

Jung made several statements on the subject which he wrote about in 1952:

In relation to the psyche space and time are, so to speak, elastic and apparently can be reduced almost to vanishing point, as though they were dependent on psychic conditions and did not exist in themselves but were only “postulated” by the conscious mind. (3).

In man’s original view of the world, as we find in primitives, space and time have a very precarious existence. They become fixed concepts only in the course of his mental development, thanks largely to the introduction of measurement. In themselves space and time consist of nothing. They are hypostatized concepts born of the discriminating activity of the mind, and they form the indispensable co-ordinates for describing the behavior of bodies in motion. They are therefore essentially psychic in origin.

But if space and time are only apparently properties of bodies in motion and are created by the intellectual needs of the observer, then their relativisation by psychic conditions is no longer a matter for astonishment but is brought within the bounds of possibility. This possibility presents itself when the psyche observes, not external bodies, but itself. (4).

In 1930 Wolfgang Pauli, a founder of quantum theory, who became a Nobel Prize winner in 1945, held a major post in the renowned ETH in Zurich. Once he happened to sit in on a lecture given by Jung. Following that lecture Pauli made and appointment and went to see him.

Despite his renown and prestigious post in Zurich at that time, Pauli was actually going through a deep depression. His mother had committed suicide at the age of 48, he had just gone through his own divorce, and his father had married a woman younger than Pauli himself.

At the beginning of his analysis Pauli’s unconscious produced series of dreams like a stream of flowing lava. At first Jung confided Pauli to a young analyst who had not much experience, trusting that in such a case she would not interfere with the process in Pauli’s psyche but would just let it unfold as it appeared. For the first five months Pauli had hundreds of dreams. After the five months Pauli spent two months on his own digesting and reflecting on his process. He then contacted Jung once again and began his analysis with him which lasted for two years. The Jung/Pauli correspondence and collaboration lasted for 26 years.

Pauli’s analytical experience presented him with the reality of the irrational. As a one-sided thinking type the irrational as a reality had always been excluded from Pauli’s consciousness. Later he confessed he had always felt the limitation of science and this was due to his perception of its one-sided rationality.

A first comprehension in Pauli’s analysis led to his understanding of the polarity in the psyche as expressed in typology. Pauli as a one-sided rational thinking type had totally repressed his feeling function which led to problems in his daily life. The one-sidedness had to be transformed by the retrieval of a dormant and repressed feeling function. The aim to restore harmony and equilibrium in the psyche is achieved by bringing the ego into a relationship with the contents of the unconscious. The flow of dream lava pouring out of Pauli’s unconscious became his new dedication.

Over the next month Pauli produced “over a thousand dreams and visualizations. Jung observed that Pauli’s dreams revealed the same patterns as found in medieval alchemy. Through his dreams Pauli discovered his own feeling function in the basement of his psyche. He had to go through the shadow on the way but he tackled the confrontation with his unconscious with passion and conviction. Pauli also discovered active imagination as a method for amplifying consciousness.

The flood of dreams and images coming from the unconscious had to be integrated but Pauli also discovered what Jung had defined as the auto-regulation of the unconscious. His inner research and process culminated in a “big dream” of “The World Clock.” Pauli reported that this dream brought with it “the most sublime harmony.”

In Jung’s terms this dream brought about an “enantiodromia” within the psyche of Pauli, as he says; “what we would call — in the language of religion — a conversion.”(5).

“The most sublime harmony” represents the state of Tao, a state of total equilibrium that occurs when consciousness and the unconscious meet and the auto self-regulating function moves into place. It brings with it transcendence to a higher state of consciousness and being.

Pauli’s dream:

There are a vertical and a horizontal circle with a center common to both.

This is the world clock. It is carried by the black bird. [The patient refers here to a preceding vision, where a black eagle had carried away a golden ring.]

The vertical circle is a blue disk with a white rim, divided into 4 X 8 = 32 partitions. A hand is rotating upon it.

The horizontal circle consists of four colors. Four little men are standing upon the circle carrying pendula and the golden ring [of the former vision] is laid around it.

The world clock has three rhythms or pulses:

1.The small pulse: the hand of the blue vertical disk moves on one thirty-second (1/32) at a time.

2. The middle pulse is one complete rotation of the hand. At the same time the horizontal circle moves on by one thirty-second.

3. The great pulse: thirty two middle pulses are equal to one complete rotation of the golden ring. (6).

The World Clock with four 'cabirs'. An impression generated by W. Byer

Jung identified the point of rotation of the disks with the mystical speculum, for it both partakes of the rhythmic movement yet stands outside it. The two disks belong to the two universes of the conscious and the unconscious, which intersect in this speculum. The whole figure together with its elaborate internal movement is therefore a mandala of the Self, which is at one and the same time the center and the periphery of the world clock. In addition, the dream could also stand as a model of the universe itself and the nature of space-time.

But it should also be pointed out that Pauli, as a physicist, was also seeking to discover an inner unity between the elementary particles and their abstract symmetries. The vision of the world clock is therefore capable of many levels of interpretation, and it is indeed a particularly rich image in its resonances of meaning.

Pauli’s rebirth as “a perfectly normal and reasonable person … completely adapted” was therefore the result of sensing a deep inner symmetry to his own mind, a dynamic pattern that had been illustrated in symbolic times by the early Gnostics, the alchemists of the Middle Ages, and the Taoists of ancient China…

The notion of symmetries in nature and in the psyche continued to preoccupy the physicist for the rest of his life. The results confirmed Jung’s findings on what he called the archetypes, dynamic forces and mosaics of energy within the collective unconscious which are revealed to us symbolically through dreams, fantasies, works of art, and myths. (7).

Pauli had had what Jung describes as an experience of the « transcendent function. » The transcendent function belongs naturally to every psychic process and takes place throughout life when transitions are being made from one stage of development to another, or from one level of consciousness to a higher more mature level.

Jung believed that focus on the unconscious and its contents was important for the progression of libido, or psychic energy. This progression, which is essential for the development of psychological maturity, is also responsible for the advancement of evolution itself.

According to Jung: “Consciousness is continually widened through the confrontation of previously unconscious contents, or-to be more accurate – could be widened if it took the trouble to integrate them.” (35). (8).

The participation of the ego in relation to the unconscious contents produces an effect or a transcendence, which leads to a higher state of consciousness. This is what Pauli experienced via his archetypal dream.

This transcendence may take place on a personal level but also on the collective level and may well provide a response to man’s anxiety today about his precarious position on the planet and his role in its recovery.

“With the unconscious and conscious standpoints the confrontation of the two positions generates a tension charged with energy and creates a living third thing, not a logical stillbirth … but a movement out of the suspension between the opposites, a living birth that leads to a new level of being, a new situation.”(9).

Jung used the method of amplification to stimulate the production of this function. The transcendent function remains an unconscious phenomenon which requires intuitive perception to be felt or perceived. As it takes place outside of consciousness its effects may be produced but not consciously apprehended. It does however carry with it a sense of well-being, release and change.

“The secret participation of the unconscious is everywhere present without our having to search for it, but as it remains unconscious we never really know what is going on or what to expect.” (10).

The relationship between Wolfgang Pauli and Jung brought Jung’s theory of synchronicity to a higher state of consciousness for both. They were both interested in the “acausal phenomena” where unexpected connections occur spontaneously and without any participation of conscious intention. These connections belong to an underlying grid beyond the conscious sphere, which is permanently connected and in communication. Jung termed this phenomena “synchronicity”.

Synchronicity according to Jung is not just a simple coincidence, a real synchronistic event carries with it a certain atmosphere, a numinous quality which is compelling and convincing. This kind of event brings a message; coveys true meaning.

Pauli believed that the phenomenon of synchronicity provided the link between science and psychology. He proned that the subjective could be introduced into physics, and the objective into psychology. Pauli made important findings on theoretical scientific questions from his preoccupation with Jungian psychology, especially in matters of symmetry and complementarity. (11).

Paying attention to synchronistic phenomena augments one’s perception of the underlying field of connection. Pauli had many synchronistic experiences in his life even up until his death in 1958.

David Peat, a physicist and a Jungian, and author of Synchronicity, describes a final synchronicity in Pauli’s life.

There exists a number of what are determined as dimensionless constants in physics. Most of them are either enormously large numbers, or very small numbers, but one of them, which relates to the strength of the electromagnetic force to that of the weak nuclear force, is 1/137. That deeply puzzled Pauli, as it did other physicists, because it is the only dimensionless constant that is a humanized number. (12). “

In 1957 Pauli had been to the United States but was received with much criticism and returned to Zurich a deflated man.

Peat relates: Back in Zurich Pauli experienced pain and was accompanied by his assistant to the hospital. In the hospital he asked what room he was in, his assistant replied in room 137, to which Pauli replied,” now I know I shall never leave”. Shortly after Pauli died of pancreatic cancer. (13).

After Pauli’s death Jung wrote in a letter to R.F.C. Hull:

Dear Hull, 27 December 1958

I myself am deeply convinced of the basic analogy between physical and psychological discoveries.

I have often discussed this problem with the late Prof. Pauli, who was also fascinated by what he called the mirror-reflection, causing the existence of two worlds which are really united in the speculum, the mirror, that is lying in the middle.

As Prof. Fierz in his speech at Pauli’s funeral has mentioned: Speculation comes from speculum. Thus “speculation,” a very typical form of consciousness, becomes the real center of the world, the basis of the Unus Mundus.

I met David Peat in Zurich in the 1980’s. He was a close, long term collaborator of David Bohm; he lectured on Implicit Order and Synchronicity. I later visited him in Pari, Italy, where he settled for the rest of his days. David recalled his visit to Zurich Institute in the 1980’s. I was on the benches at that time listening to his lecture.

When he arrived in Kusnacht he was in a hotel beside the institute “Der Sonne.” He said he never prepared a lecture but preferred to follow the interest in the room. Whilst he was at the lakeside he remembered that nothing really came to mind about the subject of the lecture. So he retired to his room for a rest. When he received the key he noted he was in room number 137! That decided it; he would lecture on Pauli.

Whist in the lecture hall he made a statement and an old man at the back began to laugh. Later he wrote an equation on the blackboard and the old man called out; “that will not work”. David Peat then exclaimed “Ah! Pauli is in the room!”

After the lecture the old man had disappeared but David learnt who he was; he was the assistant who had accompanied Wolfgang to his room number 137 in the hospital in 1958!

Following my visit to ISRICA and my experience with the Kosyrev mirrors on my return to Switzerland in December 2017, I immediately contacted David Peat only to discover that he had died on June 6^th 2017, the exact date of Jung’s own passing.

Synchronicities are actually occurring all the time under the level of consciousness, but is the ego in a state of sufficient maturation to perceive what is happening on the other deeper plane?

David Peat had been a close collaborator of David Bohm. During the 1980’s Bohm produced his thesis on the implicate Order. I remember receiving this thesis as a kind of celebration. David Bohm actually had a waking vision of a net of interconnectedness covering the earth.

Peat says; For Bohm the world we see around us, of well-defined objects interacting together in space and time, is more of a surface reality; The Explicate Order. But behind it lies something deeper. The Implicate Order. Reality is therefore dynamical, it is a constant process whereby aspects of the implicate order unfold into the Explicate and fold back again. So things that are separate and distinct in space and time are in fact enfolded together in the underlying Implicate Order. In other words, what we see as objects in our Explicate world are in fact deeply interconnected within the implicate Order. What is more, while we distinguish between mind and matter within the Explicate Order, they are aspects of one whole within the Implicate Order (14).

Today our exchange between science and the depth psychology of Jung follows a continuity of intention already prepared by the collaboration of our predecessors.

The Noosphere, corresponding to the Unus Mundus, or Spiritus mundi, represents the net of interconnectedness that Jung describes in the collective unconscious; that Vernadsky and Teihard de Chardin described in the 1920s and

joins up with the theories of Bohm on the Implicate Order and Jung on Synchronicity.

The reality of interconnectedness was clear for Alexander Trofimov and Vlial Kaznacheev. A. Trofimov and V. Kaznecheev observed that the world’s culture and intellectual space may diverge towards the necrosphere. Their statement is; “The world of the unknown is the only world of our possible salvation.” (15).

In Jungian terms; the realm of the unconscious is the source of our own salvation. This is truly where we meet and what Jung professed.

“Not nature but the ‘genius of mankind’ has knotted the hangman’s noose with which it can execute itself at any moment.” (16).

How do we pretend to transit from one state to another, from the Noosphere to the Neo-noosphere?

By doing what the predecessors did, by delving into the unknown and continuing the exploration of spheres beyond or present awareness.
By gathering density or unity of consciousness across the disciplines
By trusting that the unknown spheres react to our efforts as the unconscious does to the ego attitude
By knowing that outside of time and space realization is already a reality; Unus Mundus exists.

We can observe in the youth of today a gathering of unity, of density in a collective intention to save the planet, to change attitudes and to renew old worn out patterns of behavior and belief. Let’s recognize and support the younger generation.

« Nowhere else but in the psyche of the individual can the union be completed and the essential identity of Idea and Matter be experienced and perceived. » (17).

It remains for me to offer a heartfelt thanks to Alexander Trofimov for his intellectual and humane generosity, for his crossing of the borders of disciplines and reestablishing the link between science and depth psychology. May our contribution to the interconnectedness that our planet and mankind are in need of continue across the Kosyrev/Kaznacheev/Jung space; as Jung says; both approaching and tending towards the hitherto “transcendental” region of the Invisible and Intangible.

I leave the last words to Jung;

The great events of world history are, at bottom, profoundly unimportant. In the last analysis, the essential thing is the life of the individual….This alone makes history, here alone do the great transformations first take place, and the whole future, the whole history of the world, ultimately spring as a gigantic summation from these hidden sources in individuals…In our most private and most subjective lives we are not only the passive witnesses of our age, and its sufferers, but also its makers. We make our own epoch.” (18).

List of References:

1. Introduction: ISRICA, Russian Cosmism and the Kosyrev Mirrors p. 1

2. Memories, Dreams and Reflections, Carl Jung

3. CW, Vol 8, On Psychic energy

4. Ibid.

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6. From C G Jung – Psychology and Religion,  The History and Psychology of a natural symbol.

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8. Jung, CW Vol. 8, P. 89 pp188

9. Jung, CW Vol.8, P.90, pp89

10. Jung, CW Vol.8, Pp 181

11. David Peat; Synchronicity: The Bridge Between Matter and Mind, p.41