Conversations with Marie-Louise von Franz on Synchronicity and Numbers: Insights and Amplifications
Conversations with Marie-Louise von Franz on Synchronicity and Numbers: Insights and Amplifications
The “cut” is a basic concept in mathematics and in the philosophy of science. Semantically, the word “cut” refers especially to the Cartesian separation between subject and object, and there is some variation about how you make it in quantum physics. But here, in Roy’s dream, the unconscious makes a “cut”; the water cuts the rock. In Chinese philosophy, the Taoists marvel at the fact that water, which is the softest, most ductile of things, can hollow out granite. Chang Tzu tells the story of an imperial cook who doesn’t sharpen his knife when he cuts the meat because he cuts only through the hollow places. He knows so exactly where the hollow places are that he never has to sharpen his knife for years. The art of the cut is softness and knowhow, instead of brutality. And that should be used in our science of the psyche. That is a new, creative idea which comes from your dream. ~Conversations with Marie-Louise von Franz on Synchronicity and Numbers: Insights and Amplifications, Page 72
There are truly imaginary absurdities, but they are not limited to numbers. You can’t say “madness times madness.” By using i this way, physicists think they have included uncertainty in their formula, but they have not.
Therefore, i is not a true symbol. A true symbol is something unimaginably mad, like the centaur. The centaur is a true symbol because it is something that does not exist only in matter [in material reality]—half horse and half man. But i is not a true symbol. Conversations with Marie-Louise von Franz on Synchronicity and Numbers: Insights and Amplifications, Page 73
Nothing is, in itself, a true symbol. It depends on how you react to it. Imagine you dreamt of a cup of tea one night and that it synchronistically breaks the following day exactly as you dreamt it; then the cup of tea becomes numinous and a true symbol. But in itself it is not a true symbol. Anything can be a true symbol. As soon as I am emotionally shaken and have fantasies and ideas about something—I can even grab it—the power it exerts on me demonstrates that it is a true symbol. If I show you a triangle with an eye in it and tell you that it is God, you might say: “So what?” If it doesn’t impress you, then it is not a true symbol. Something can be a true symbol for one person and not for another. That is why specific religions do not speak to everybody. Fatima is a true symbol for a Muslim, but for us, it is a lady with a father complex—not a true symbol. Scientists take every symbol they use concretely; they do not let any symbol work on them. ~Conversations with Marie-Louise von Franz on Synchronicity and Numbers: Insights and Amplifications, Page 73
I had no contact with him over it. Now we come to this. The end of “Die Klavierstunde” (The Piano Lesson) contains the secrets of Pauli’s death. Therefore, If one understands this fantasy, one knows where he got stopped.
This is the reason why I want to talk about my letter. In it, I only ask questions that Pauli should have asked in the fantasy: “Why? Why? Why? Why?” I would like to give you the answer to these questions. There is nothing in my letter to Primas about this. You need to remember the end of Goethe’s Faust, Part Two, to understand this answer.
According to Jung, Mephistopheles is not the Devil, but he is instead Mercurius and the principium.
Individuationis. In Faust, it was Goethe’s mistake to banish him into hell because he is the Fourth completing the Trinity. Faust remains a boy because Goethe never really grew up and instead remained a puer. In the end of the play, Faust needs Christian hermits to educate him further, so there is a regression to Christianity.
With Pauli, such a regression to Christianity is also anticipated, and I can show you where. The “stranger” in Pauli’s material is Mercurius, the creative spirit in the unconscious of Pauli, and he is also a real person, as you will find in his correspondence. In other dream material, the anima in Pauli is afraid of him, and Pauli is also awed by him. The “stranger” is a god-image. At the end of “The Piano Lesson”, the anima shows him trapped in the ring i. The questions arise: “Does he accept his situation?” “Is it a good solution?” “Or is it a trap?” That is what Pauli should have found out instead of taking his hat and going away. The Chinese anima is a tricky figure in Pauli’s dreams who, typically, shows him an image but doesn’t explain it. “Look,” she says wickedly. It would have been Pauli’s task to ask her: “Why are you showing me this?” Instead, he just stares at the image. There is a parallel with Doctor Marianus’ prayer to the Madonna at the end of Faust. You will find in Eva Wertenschlag’s thesis at the Institute the information that Doctor Marianus is an early Christian alchemist. Marianus is identical with Morienus, an archaic Christian from antiquity.
Why does this pagan figure, suddenly tamed, become Christian and pray to the Madonna instead of remaining a wild, mercurial nature spirit? This must be the effect of the ring i, which castrates him so that he appears as a submissive Christian. Conversations with Marie-Louise von Franz on Synchronicity and Numbers: Insights and Amplifications, Page 73-74
Eldred: Why do you say that Western alchemy never got out of Christianity?
von Franz: Because in Christianity, man is the master of matter, the master of nature, the master of the mercurial spirit. Then, in my letter, I hint that Merlin has been bewitched by the anima in the hawthorn bush into an eternal coniunctio with Morgana. Until today, literary historians do not know whether to praise that or not. According to Heinrich Zimmer, it is wonderful, eternal divine bliss in the arms of his lady, in retreat from the world and its problems. The usual interpretation is that this wicked lady has trapped the wise old man and castrated him into a child. That is Pauli’s problem too. ~Conversations with Marie-Louise von Franz on Synchronicity and Numbers: Insights and Amplifications, Page 75
Yes. That is the turning point of Western science. Faust is the highlight of European culture. According to Jung, the end is unsatisfactory. Faust did not grow up; he remained a puer, and the problem of evil was just banished, sent to hell. Pious hermits—that means unmarried men!—banished the feminine, although their lives were called to educate the poor. It is a very sad end, and that is why it keeps on haunting us. We have to find another end to our problem. Faust was the most advanced response, but not to the end. I think it is interesting that a great man like Pauli was involuntarily picked up, actuated by the Faust problem, and got stuck. Our Foundation should try to find a really gifted person to write a book about it, at length and thoroughly. ~Conversations with Marie-Louise von Franz on Synchronicity and Numbers: Insights and Amplifications, Page 75-76
You cannot eliminate history from this question. This split started historically with the Jewish tradition of monotheism prevailing against the chthonic mother goddesses. Rationalism became a power base. Later on, scientists hoped that, with ratio, everything could be compartmentalized. “We can work around this problem” was at the center of their attitude. You could say that understanding is taking possession. Jung said that you should not try to understand your patients. Only suffering heals. When people say, “Oh, I understand you; I see exactly what you mean,” I think: “You bet!”
It is power. Understanding is a power appropriation. {pause} The relationship of Socrates and Xanthippe is an illustration of how, with the development of ratio, the hatred of women began. Another example is what Descartes called his “mistake,” alluding to his marriage. He said: “Thankfully, God prevented me from ever backsliding.”
Rationalism is a triumph of the male world: Plato, Pythagoras, Socrates, Descartes. And the response to it from the female world is black magic. That is why Kurt Gödel refused food at the end of his life. He thought someone was making black magic and wanted to poison him. Poison is the feminine way of dealing with power. That is why nowadays there is a trend for esotericism and magic. Rationalism is taught at the university and shapes men and women into being inhuman and heartless. The feeling reaction of the feminine is also inhuman and heartless.
Completely. I know men who have been ruined by the feminine. We live in a time when men and women are all at battle. Beware, gentlemen! {laughter} ~Conversations with Marie-Louise von Franz on Synchronicity and Numbers: Insights and Amplifications, Page 75-76
I am reading a book, Sternstunde der Mathematik, which brings a lot of [new] ideas. One idea is about the creation of two things by doubling, or by splitting. It is not the same operation, but in set theory taken to be the same.
I had a dream about this; however, I must first give you an association. I got from Brazil half of a round stone. The outside is rough, and on the inside is a beautiful crystal pattern, which you can discover only if you split the stone.
Otherwise, it is rough. Now in the dream, I went in the high mountains to a hut, and the man who lived there had placed two stones at the entrance: one to the left of the entrance; the other to the right. Both stones had a complicated, but exactly the same pattern, to the millimeter. And I said this pattern could not be the mark of a change. It was not made by the splitting of a pattern, but by the exact doubling of a pattern.
Doubling is a nature miracle connected with synchronicity. Splitting is something banal. That is why I think Mandelbrot’s fractal geometry is not the right tool to describe nature in depth, because it proceeds by splitting.
Pauli thought the repetition of identical patterns was almost a God-made secret of nature. I have not thought much about this idea, but I am sure that future mathematics will have to deal with this question. ~Conversations with Marie-Louise von Franz on Synchronicity and Numbers: Insights and Amplifications, Page 79-80
Rationalization is an apotropaism. It comes out of fear. {pause} At the end of Jung’s life, I caught myself having such a reaction. Jung once told me that he had read an interesting story. A father left his fortune to his daughter and two sons in equal parts, but the sons cheated the sister. The sister went to her father’s grave and said: “Father, you would turn in your grave if only [you knew].” And she saw the earth move, and a big hole formed. The cemetery guard or janitor came and said: “Yes, yes, here he was!” I had such a shock [in response] that I exclaimed, “Yes, but it’s only because the coffin collapsed.” I caught myself in a rationalization, thinking: “It’s only that… !” {laughter}
Jung once said: “If I would put a match down and conjure it to rise up into the air, all the men would leave the room, but the women would simply say: “What’s that?!” ~Conversations with Marie-Louise von Franz on Synchronicity and Numbers: Insights and Amplifications, Page 80
There is a need for feeling and understanding. That is why Jung said scientists should always discuss their ideas with women. They might not fully understand the ideas, but they would have the right feeling! There is an audiotape of Jung where he talks about a German Heideggerian philosopher who came to him for analysis.
He was high up in the air [inflated], his head filled with theories. So Jung referred him to a woman analyst he knew. And she called Jung once and asked: “What have you done, G.? You sent me a man who is obviously crazy. He rolls on the floor and sobs.” Jung only said, “He is not crazy. He is just a German philosopher.” {laughter} ~Conversations with Marie-Louise von Franz on Synchronicity and Numbers: Insights and Amplifications, Page 81
Another dissertation for the Foundation could be about numerical systems and divination. The I Ching is based on a specific numerical system—a magic square. Geomancy has its own numerical system. Those systems could be studied like animals by comparing them with each other. Each numerical system claims to contain the world secret. But there are many of them, so what is in common between them and what is different? This would make a completely new study of divination. It has never been done.
{pause} It would be quite an interesting angle of research, from inside out, like with the question of music and number. Music has its basic numerical systems. Scientists found that we do not hear music properly. The music we hear is remodeled by our ear, so we do not really hear the music outside of us. Now think of that.
Number is something in between us and nature, not something found only in nature. ~Conversations with Marie-Louise von Franz on Synchronicity and Numbers: Insights and Amplifications, Page 82
My association was to a stone from Brazil, a crystal ball cut into two, and the two sides contained the same, identical pattern. In my dream, a voice explained that the identical pattern had been made by doubling, not by halving, and that therefore they were different. That was the message of the dream. Our conversation last time made me think one should ponder “process-oriented mathematics.” How are processes oriented psychologically?
The duality that comes from a splitting is different from the duality that comes from a doubling. The process which leads to a result influences the quality of that result. If someone wrote a book about process-oriented mathematics…{beginning to laugh}…this would drive people mad! ~Conversations with Marie-Louise von Franz on Synchronicity and Numbers: Insights and Amplifications, Page 84
In physics, there are only trajectories of photons and so on; no abstract lines. {Drawing a circle on her notepad.} When children dance around like that and make a circle, the drawing corresponds to the reality of time.
Western mathematicians are Platonists who would say: “This is not a circle; a real circle is a static idea. We are concerned with the timeless.” I would say the circle is both. There are two ways of looking at it. I am convinced time is related to a geometrical configuration. ~Conversations with Marie-Louise von Franz on Synchronicity and Numbers: Insights and Amplifications, Page 87
The professor and the nixie cannot exist without each other. Listen. Without him, the reservoir flows over. There is an inundation. Crazy madness. Imagine Africa invents a new religion, Voodoo, a form of occultism. It sweeps the world. People break their machines, smash their computers, destroy every part of rationalism, praising life. Think of the mess and catastrophe that would result, and the swamp it would end in Death.
And if we go on being too rational, we destroy everything as well. If one of the two is ruined, the other is a dead battlefield. The rationalist has to sacrifice the call of his ratio and the nixie has to sacrifice the call of her love. She has to be reasonable and let him go. And he has to be irrational. ~Conversations with Marie-Louise von Franz on Synchronicity and Numbers: Insights and Amplifications, Page 88-89
Now I would like to add the following concerning the role of the brain. Imagine a chaos of energy waves. Out of this chaos, abstract structures emerge as configurations of motion that exist for a while, then disappear. Among them are the constants of nature, which manifest as doublets, triplets, quaternios, and so on. They are all natural numbers: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, etc. Some of these patterns come to us in the form of sound waves or any other kind of energy waves. Our brain either clicks with those numbers or it does not. We only know these patterns when they click with our brain.
The clicking does not happen consciously. Bees see ultraviolet light as a color, but we cannot see it with our human eyes because ultraviolet light does not click with our brain. Our whole understanding of the outer world is dependent on that clicking of numbers, the clicking with the numerical structure of energy waves. That is what Pauli’s world clock vision problem alludes to. ~Conversations with Marie-Louise von Franz on Synchronicity and Numbers: Insights and Amplifications, Page 89
Yes, that is what I mean. Modern science wants to “zack,” get there in one leap. You cannot get there simply. Science has to go a long way…“It’s a long way to Tipperary.” Brain scientists are shocked that the brain works so slowly. It is meant to be so. Jung said the brain works slowly to slow down the intensity of the psyche. Think of a new star born in the now. Page 93
von Franz: Form is static. If you give any thought a form, you slow it down and stop it. That is why, when you have an intuition, you understand things in their entirety. Then you have to slow down what you perceived in a flash and write a ten-volume book. Otherwise, you can only say: “Yeahh.” Jacob Boehme saw the whole thing in a ray of light. All the findings of modern brain research confirm Jung. Jung gives us the explanations they do not have. ~Conversations with Marie-Louise von Franz on Synchronicity and Numbers: Insights and Amplifications, Page 93
Being archetypes, numbers are not static structures. They are dynamic structures in the sense of Prigogine’s chaos theory. In this archetypal sense, numbers are not definite entities; they are only an approximate order. They are precise and not precise at the same time, like strange attractors. They appear to have a definite shape, but when you look more closely, they are clouds of thought. For example, the natural number five is 5 and not 4.99999999….Five is a limit. One has to reconsider the whole mathematical theory of limits in that sense. A large part of mathematics operates under the assumption of the limit theory. Leibniz was concerned with this theory of limits.
We should ask a specialist to look into this. You could say that 4.99999 with 9 going ad infinitum is five and understand it precisely. Or you could say this number approximates eternally five, but is never five because there is always another number in the attic. The number Five is five and is not 4.99999….It is qualitatively precise in the pleroma, but it is only an approximation when it manifests in matter. Numbers are both precise and imprecise or approximate.
Precision refers to the continuum aspect of numbers, and approximation refers to the finite aspect of numbers. The situation is similar to the paradox of Schrödinger’s cat in quantum mechanics. Is the cat alive or not before you open the box? There is an uncertainty factor in numbers. Now—I make a jump here—Jung says the development of One, Two, Three … to Ten, etc., is a cosmogony. The proofs of this statement can be found in my book Creation Myths. Every cosmogony is a tale of the origin of reality, of the outer universe, and the origin of our awareness. More precisely, it is a tale of the origin of how our awareness picks up reality. Full stop.
All of the outer universe came into being through speculation. But all creation myths proceed from the One to the Two to the Three to the Four. In Jung’s note on numbers, Jung begins with the Gnostic pleroma. First there is a principal deity, the Hochgott (highest god) of the pleroma, called the Nothing, of water, of air, of fire, a male god; a hermaphroditic god. The Gnostic pleroma is also in the Gospel of St. John. It is the plenitude of everything. And because it is everything, it is also nothing. Like the content of an egg, it is nothing. There is no chick, but the whole world of the chick is potentially in the egg.
In order to become something, the plenitude has to be diminished. In the Gospel of St. John, it is written that Christ lived in the plenitude of the Father and was the plenitude of the Father. According to the conception of the kenosis, God “ekenosed” Himself, which means that He emptied Himself in order to become Jesus of Nazareth, an ordinary human being. At first, He was God before the Creation—the potential cosmos and everything—and the pure God-Man. Then He “ekenosed,” or emptied himself into Mr. Maier. That’s the theological teaching of the kenosis. In the note, Jung applies this teaching to the number One. One is the infinite minus one. What is new about Jung’s concept of One is that it brings two definitions.
First, One is the normal one; the natural number one followed by two, three, four, five, etc. One is the first counting unit. Then Jung adds a second definition of One: the infinite minus One. This second definition involves a retrograde counting like the One found in the teaching of Fa-Tzang I mentioned in Number and Time.
You will need to find an expert on Chinese mathematics to work out the association with the retrograde counting steps of the Asians and what it means in the East. Roy already worked on the number two in his poem. That work has to be translated into serious scientific language! What the poem says is Two is not two; it is the Twoness of One. And there I propose to include a commentary on biological cell division, the separation of the DNA strings.
In The Web of Life, Fritjof Capra writes that there are DNA strings which simply divide and reunite with other strings, and there are other DNA strings which, as a whole, unite with other strings.
There are many variations on the origin of twoness. For example, the origin of the fractal twoness is through separation. The fractal geometry of Mandelbrot is arrogant in its claims and must be put in its proper place because it is nonsense. There is a two by division, but also a two by addition, a two by coniunctio, and the illegitimate two: that is, the hermaphroditic two, which was too quickly united and was not properly separated at first. Two is a threshold between pleroma and number. Three is only a number, but One and Two are principles, not numbers. They are the principles of God the Father and God the Mother. What is my illness?
I have such a brainstorm of new ideas that they topple, one over the other. And in my old age, I have not the strength to stop them; they just fall, each one after the other. That is why I have these blockages. So investigate this in terms of brain functioning. It has something to do with stopping. In schizophrenia, which looks exactly like a hasty invasion of consciousness, too much comes to consciousness all at once and blasts it apart. In many cases, psychotherapy consists of supporting the breaking. When one comes and says he is Jesus Christ, you say: “Wait, Wait! You are quite right, but let’s go at it a bit more slowly.” Here there seems to be a problem of timing. Every truth has its time, and when it becomes conscious too soon, it has a destructive effect. In psychoanalysis, if a patient hears a truth too early, it can destroy him. Truth has its time.
Truth out of time is a lie. We live in a dynamic universe. Therefore, time is essential. For example, at Roy’s lecture at the ETH, did he say what he had to say “in time” or “out of time?” If they cannot hear him, if they reject him, is that then a timely truth or an untimely one? Is it a clearly separated step from the One to the Two? Is it timely or untimely in relationship to the deeper truth? It will decide his fate. It is not fun; it is a question of life or death.
Coniunctio can also be murder. That is why fundamentalists are either dead right or dead wrong. Yes. When the original One gets lost, it cascades into matter. God either empties Himself into matter in order to be revealed, or He gets entangled and caught in matter; that is, for example, in ambition. The difference between genuine creativity and ambition is that in the latter, one creates for the wrong reasons; for instance, because “one wants to reveal.” And it is all “constructed.” When Christ came to the Christians, the Jews said he got caught in matter and ambition; that he wanted to be “King.” The Christians, on the other hand, claimed he revealed himself out of charity. This type of conflict is still raging in the Middle East, or among the Swiss banks today. In the final analysis, quality entails synthesis, and quantity entails splitting up. That is why there are cooks who do it according to the rules and those who do it with feeling. The qualitative cooks are the better ones.
The pleroma is Greek thinking. Latin thinking is rational and dry. The unus mundus is Neoplatonism. Greek thinking is more creative. The pleroma is the schöpferischre Urgrund [the primordial creative source]. It is Lao Tse’s Mother of the World; that is the title he gives to the Tao. It is an Erkenntniswolke [cloud of cognition]. he unus mundus has a divine aspect, but it is a Neoplatonic concept representing the sum of Plato’s ideas. It is more rational and masculine. ~Conversations with Marie-Louise von Franz on Synchronicity and Numbers: Insights and Amplifications, Page 112-113
Yes… God is still continuing to empty himself. He is not Mr. Jones. That will come in the Age of Aquarius.
Jung speaks of the prestages of the incarnation. Now don’t get blown up by that. You are not it yet. {She laughs with Eldred.} You are, unconsciously, but that does not count. A Hindu disciple goes to his guru and asks what he should do when he is afraid. The guru says: “When you are afraid, don’t forget you are the atman.”
So the disciple is on a path in the jungle and an elephant comes, and the elephant says: “Get out of the way.” And the disciple says: “No, I am the atman.” The elephant takes him and throws him into a thorn bush. So he goes back furious to his guru and tells him what happened. The guru says: “Oh, sorry, I forgot to tell you that the elephant is atman too.” ~Conversations with Marie-Louise von Franz on Synchronicity and Numbers: Insights and Amplifications, Page 114
Make it clear that the point of this article is to explain what Jung meant and not what we mean. Explain the history of how we got Jung’s note—how we got the paper. First explain how we got the paper, then do a photocopy of the note, then a transcription, then a translation. Then write a new heading, new title, new commentary: “What did Jung mean?”
Get those parts of the Jung-Pauli correspondence where Jung explains to Pauli about numbers being the next step. Pauli did not get it. Only Jung’s answer is worthwhile. Pauli thought Jung meant the numerical N-continuum and set theory. That was not what Jung meant. ~Conversations with Marie-Louise von Franz on Synchronicity and Numbers: Insights and Amplifications, Page 116
Yes. I explain that in Number and Time. You should stick only to what Jung meant. Pick up on what Pauli missed. Stick to amplifying Jung in context. The text of the article should have a new title: “Pleroma and Kenosis.” Provide an explanation of these two concepts. Then you should have a new chapter: “Retrograde Counting,” then another one on Jung’s “Trinity” article.
Freeman: Is that everything now?
von Franz: No; add a chapter on number as a pattern of movement. Finally, the conclusion should be about “Where do we go from here?” Jung created a new paradigm that is valid for all hard sciences like chemistry and so forth. [This pertains] to every area where one operates with number. ~Conversations with Marie-Louise von Franz on Synchronicity and Numbers: Insights and Amplifications, Page 116-117
Yes—and much more. I did not know about the Chinese way of thinking when I wrote Number and Time. Your dream of the reservoir in China is important in this regard. The whole number paradigm of Jung is an amplification of synchronicity. Chinese thinking is purely synchronistic instead of causal. In China, they counted one, two, three, four to the 10,000 things, and they also showed how the 10,000 things return to the one. These two points of view are complementary. ~Conversations with Marie-Louise von Franz on Synchronicity and Numbers: Insights and Amplifications, Page 117
Experts are good for information but not for thinking things through. Jung confronted this time and again. One can easily get off on a tangent—like Pauli, who went off from one and two to the N-continuum. Pauli missed the whole point. The answer Jung gives implies that the basic mathematical concept was to consider numbers as archetypes. Pauli went off on a tangent. ~Conversations with Marie-Louise von Franz on Synchronicity and Numbers: Insights and Amplifications, Page 117
A synchronistic event, if understood correctly, is proof of God. It proves that there exists a unified, cosmic creative power—not a personal, white-bearded lord in heaven. ~Conversations with Marie-Louise von Franz on Synchronicity and Numbers: Insights and Amplifications, Page 119
Jung was concerned about the fact that people can be healed by turning to the numinous. He clearly states that he does not accept medical goals when treating patients. He wants to train patients to go towards the numinous because—even if their illness persists—they can endure it. And the second drive was his friendship with Richard Wilhelm. ~Conversations with Marie-Louise von Franz on Synchronicity and Numbers: Insights and Amplifications, Page 120
That’s the worst imaginable problem. Is there magic? Is it possible to consciously influence the charged content of an archetype by recognizing it, and so on? There are hints in Confucius that if you understood this problem, you could rule the world as if it were spinning on a wheel. There might be a hub—an axis point—holistically present in world affairs. And if you look at the axis point, you can influence world events. This would be magic. The rainmaker said it best. He said: “I dared to come here and then, naturally, it rained.” But he did not say it causally. In the words “naturally, it rained,” he indicated that everything is connected. ~Conversations with Marie-Louise von Franz on Synchronicity and Numbers: Insights and Amplifications, Page 123
Meaning is more than order. There is an order that does not contain any meaning—like a honeycomb. A honeycomb is ordered, but it does not necessarily contain the meaning of the world. ~Conversations with Marie-Louise von Franz on Synchronicity and Numbers: Insights and Amplifications, Page 123
In nature, we find archetypes as highly energetic agglomerations of psychic energy. The archetypes originated in a certain constellation during the creation of the world. At this point, we do not have negentropy yet. We can also look at dissipative structures, where structural order is only temporarily present—yet disappears at a lower or higher level. Similarly, ephemeral order can form during the cooking process and disappear again at higher temperatures. In many cases, we have to consider order as a transitional state. ~Conversations with Marie-Louise von Franz on Synchronicity and Numbers: Insights and Amplifications, Page 123
When I wrote my lecture on the goddess Nike and military victory, I thought about what determines the outcome of a battle: the armament or the number of people on the field? This is important—but not always! For example, look at the Swiss Confederates at the Battle of Morgarten or Sempach. They were peasants who were full of rage.
{smiling} Is it the fighting mood of the troops, or is it the maneuver of the troops? Sometimes you know in advance that one side is about to lose. They are not fighting. They will throw their rifles away at first chance; you just have to scream, “Buh!”
And then I investigated the Battle of the Marne and discovered that the Germans lost because a certain Lieutenant Häneke left a command line on a desk and did not pass it on. Sometimes battles can be organized so fully that a small mistake can ruin the whole story. What had caused Lieutenant Häneke not to pass on the order? He was a good, ignorant German lieutenant. {smiling} At this point, I wrote the sentence: “Sometimes a very insignificant man holds the threads of world history in his hand without knowing it.”
Right at that moment, the telephone rang. I put down the pen. It was a telephone call from Rome. The person on the phone spoke with bad English: “I can’t give you my name. I belong to the diplomatic corps.” {von Franz smiles.} “My secret number is ABC, etc. Could you please let Colonel van der Post know that Prince Charles [later King Charles III of England] will be murdered? I can’t say more,” and—bang!—he hung up.
As it turned out much later, he [Prince Charles] was at the exact same moment on the Britannia reading my book on alchemy, as van der Post later found out. I called van der Post but could not reach him. Then I called a high-ranking Englishman at the Metropolitan Police who said they would pursue the issue. I never heard about this matter again. Later, The London Times stated that a terrorist had been arrested. He had rented an apartment in Rome and intended to murder Prince Charles. I went back to my lecture. There was my pen and the words on the paper: “Sometimes a very insignificant man holds the threads of world history in his hand without knowing it.”
I read the sentence again and said: “It is obviously true!” {smiling} That was the craziest synchronicity I have ever experienced. I do not think the Metropolitan Police caught the terrorist because of me. They were probably looking for him for a long time. But everything was synchronized: Prince Charles reads my book; I write the sentence; a madman in Rome calls me—a whole bouquet. Eventually, the dull Swiss police called to question me, and they said: “That was certainly a crazy patient of yours who tried to outsmart you.”
I answered: “Yes, yes, that could also be the case.” But the bouquet is beautiful. Now ask another question. ~Conversations with Marie-Louise von Franz on Synchronicity and Numbers: Insights and Amplifications, Page 124-125
Yes. I do not think that you could dissolve the hard sciences as they exist. That would not be desirable. One should only teach those scientists who know they only hold partial knowledge—while other scientists have the illusion that they have it all, that they know it all. Those scientists should question themselves in their private lives: “Why am I studying chemistry? What is my personal motivation?”
Subsequently, they should develop their personalities following dreams and synchronicities. But do not tell the other scientists. Synchronistic events are, by definition, acts of creation that cannot be classified. They are spontaneous, and one must let them be so. I can imagine someone with good intentions working in conventional physics or chemistry and, in their private home, self-reflecting and thinking, “Yes, but—!”
This person should pose the crucial questions in the privacy of their home and see whether synchronistic events guide them. And then they might have to conceal these synchronistic events for the rest of their life—or, if they have dreams telling them so, communicate about them. Jung wrote Answer to Job for himself and decided not to publish it. After a year, he had a dream to publish this work, and he risked it. Pauli experienced all these “Pauli effects.” Then he dreamt he should stand in front of people and tell them about these experiences, so he had to do it. If this happened today, it might be better not to tell anybody and keep their questioning private. ~Conversations with Marie-Louise von Franz on Synchronicity and Numbers: Insights and Amplifications, Page 125-126
Carl Jung Depth Psychology Blog
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