137 - Arthur I. Miller [103]
“It would be most satisfactory of all if physics and psyche could be seen as complementary aspects of the same reality,” he wrote. “To us, unlike Kepler and Fludd, the only acceptable point of view appears to be one that recognizes both sides of reality—the quantitative and qualitative, the physical and the psychical—as compatible with each other, and [one that] can embrace them simultaneously.”
AS CARL A. MEIER, the first director of the Jung Institute and editor of the Pauli/Jung letters, recalled, “neither Pauli nor Jung needed much persuading to have their works published jointly,” though there had in fact been some pressure on Pauli not to do so. As Pauli wrote to Fierz in 1954:
Many physicists and historians have of course advised me to break the connection between my Kepler essay and C. G. Jung…. I am indifferent to the astral cult of Jung’s circle, but that, i.e., this dream symbolism, makes an impact! The book itself is a fateful “synchronicity” and must remain one. I am sure that defiance would have unhappy consequences as far as I am concerned. Dixi et salvavi animam meam! [I spoke and thus saved my soul].
Looking back on Pauli’s relationship with Jung from a twenty-first-century viewpoint, it is important to remember that Jung, Pauli, and their contemporaries considered Jung’s research to be quite as important as Pauli’s work in physics. Jung’s exploration of the human psyche was just as serious as quantum mechanics’ exploration of the physical world. Whereas today we take for granted the conclusions of quantum mechanics, most of us are less ready to accept concepts like synchronicity or archetypes. They are not part of our current currency of belief. But when Pauli and Jung were having their conversations, Pauli took for granted that Jung’s research was every bit as weighty and significant as his.
Dreams of Primal Numbers
A system of morals for a world without God
PAULI WAS a frequent dinner guest at Jung’s. It was a great honor; Jung did not often entertain. He detested small talk and chose his dining companions with care. Similarly, Pauli often refused dinner invitations.
For Jung the dining room and library were the center of the house. The dining room, on the ground floor, was the largest room. In the center, dominating the room, was a large wooden table and at the far end a fireplace that in winter held a roaring fire. Jung had a passion for food, insisting that his meals be exquisitely prepared with only the finest ingredients. After a hearty meal the two friends would sit gazing out at the lawns sweeping down to Lake Zürich, swathed in evening mists, sip an excellent French wine—preferably Bordeaux—and smoke their pipes. Among much else, their talk turned to what seemed to many in those days the growing threat of nuclear war. In the post–World War II years the Cold War was in full swing, and with the availability of nuclear weapons, Armageddon seemed a real possibility.
In 1951, Jung published Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self. It is a study of archetypal images, especially those of wholeness and quaternity, and looks into Christian symbolism, Jesus Christ, and the problem of evil—a problem that, Pauli wrote to Jung, “has once again become an urgent necessity for modern man.”
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