137 - Arthur I. Miller [94]
Dunne proposed that time might not always unfold in a straight line, as in physics. Perhaps during sleep the psyche was freed from the rigid march of time and time took on a multidimensionality in which haphazard combinations could occur. Jung wrote glowingly to Pauli about Dunne’s clairvoyance.
In May 1930, in a memorial lecture for Richard Wilhelm who had recently died, Jung spoke of the philosophy behind the I Ching, which Wilhelm had translated. He said, “The science of the I Ching is based not on the causality principle but on one which—hitherto unnamed because not familiar to us—I have tentatively called the synchronistic principle.”
Synchronicity, he often boasted, was “one of the best ideas” he ever had. His experiences as a psychologist had convinced him that scientific laws of causality were insufficient to explain “certain remarkable manifestations of the unconscious.” Jung was well aware, however, that physicists would have nothing to do with acausality. He was eager to find a way to back up his developing ideas with scientific rigor. He desperately needed guidance. It was at that point that he met Pauli.
Synchronicity and telepathy
In 1934 Pauli put his friend and successor at Hamburg, Pascual Jordan, in touch with Jung. Jordan was a highly respected physicist who had carried out ground-breaking research in the new quantum mechanics. He was also a rather eccentric character with a pronounced stutter; his wife used to attend his lectures and make bird noises to distract him whenever he lost control of his words. He modeled his hairstyle on Adolf Hitler’s, which, unfortunately, reflected his politics. (This was the friend to whom Pauli wrote the postcard addressed to PQ–QP.) In the 1930s Jordan moved from pure physics research into studying the effect of quantum physics on biology and also began looking seriously into telepathy.
Pauli sent Jung one of Jordan’s articles, which the editor of the highly respected scientific journal Die Naturwissenschaften had asked him to referee. It was on the subject of parapsychology. Pauli was skeptical but also curious. He told Jung about Jordan’s physics credentials, his speech defect, and his personal problems. Jordan often complained that he had “run out of luck in physics,” which was what had led to his “preoccupation with psychic phenomena.”
Jung was ecstatic that a physicist of such high repute was interested in the paranormal. Jordan’s interpretation of telepathy was that it was sender and receiver sensing the same object simultaneously in a common conscious space. Jung, conversely, considered that the instance of telepathy occurred not in a conscious space but in a common unconscious with only one observer “who looks at an infinite number of objects,” not just one.
Jung wrote directly to Jordan in glowing terms, congratulating him on his interest in psychology. He drew his attention to Wilhelm’s translation of The Secret of the Golden Flower. “Chinese science,” he wrote, “is based on the principle of synchronicity, or parallelism in time, which is naturally regarded by us as superstition.” Jung also suggested that Jordan look at the I Ching.
Synchronicity in physics and psychology
It was not until many years later, in 1948, that Pauli and Jung began to look deeply into synchronicity. In a letter, Pauli asked whether Jung would use the term synchronous, or synchronistic,