Jung writes on 1945...perhaps something for us in 2017

Dear Mt Pauli, Kusnacht, 7 March 1953

I was very pleased to hear from you once again.

It surprised me greatly that you should be looking at Hiob [Job], and I am indebted to you for taking the trouble to report on it so thoroughly.

It is indeed very unusual for a physicist to make observations on such a specifically theological problem.

You can imagine the excitement with which I read your letter.

That is why I am hastening to reply with the same attention to detail.

As your letter raises so many questions, I had perhaps better take them point by point.

I very much welcome the fact that you generally give credit to the archetype of the feminine for influencing psychology and physics and----last but not least-the Pope himself.

Apparently your initial reaction to Hiob, as the dream indicates, did not contain or make conscious everything that might have risen to consciousness through the reading.

Consequently, in the dream you unintentionally end up in an insignificant (inappropriate) place (Esslingen), but that is where you find what was missing in your reaction namely, the dark anima and the strangers.

As you will see below, it goes even further than that and includes the physical backside of the Assumptia.

Esslingen is indeed incommensurable with the theoretical physics that you pursue in Zurich and hence seems to be unconnected, haphazard, meaningless, and negligible.

his is how the place of the dark anima looks when seen from the standpoint of consciousness.

Had you known before that the dark anima lives or is to be encountered in Esslingen, the Forch railway would probably appear to you in a different light.

But what good can come out of Nazareth (Esslingen)?

Physics, on the other hand, resides up on the Zurich-berg, on Gloriastrasse.

It is clear that the scales are weighted on the side of consciousness and that the dark anima is to be found at the foot of and on the other side of the Pfannenstiel Hill ... animula vagula blandula . .. !

This state of affairs sheds light on your relationship to the dark anima and everything it stands for; I refer to your list, to which I should like to add the pair of opposites psychology-philosophy.

The dark anima has a direct connection with the dogma of the Assumption in that the Madonna is a one-sided light goddess, whose body [womb] seems to have miraculously spiritualized.

The strong emphasis placed on such a figure brings about a constellation of the dark Opposite in the unconscious.

The new dogma had an upsetting effect on many people and made even made even practicing Catholics (let alone Protestantsl) believe it was some political maneuver.

Behind this thought is the Devil, as you rightly point out.

He is the father of this depreciatory interpretation.

The one-sidedness of the light figure was what tempted him to insinuate this interpretation.

Were the new dogma in fact nothing more than a political maneuver, then one would have to point to the Devil as the instigator.

In my view, however it is not a political trick but a genuine phenomenon, i.e., the manifestation of that archetype that much earlier on had occasioned the assumption of Semele by her son Dionysus.

But the dogma of the Assumption is implicitly a concession to the Devil, first because it exalts the feminine, which is related to the Devil (as binarius), and second because the assumption of the body signifies the assumption of Matter.

It is true that the feminine is virginal, and the material is spiritualized, which you justifiably criticize, but the eternally renewed virginity, on the one hand, is an attribute of the goddess, of love, whereas the material is endowed with a living soul.

I did not explicitly present these far-reaching consequences in Job but simply alluded to them through symbols, the reason being that within the framework of Job, the problem of Matter could not really be dealt with.

But I did indicate it with the apocalyptic stone symbolism and with the parallelism of the Savior as the sun and moon son, i.e., as the filius Philosophorum and Lapis.

In my view, the discussion of Matter must have a scientific basis.

That is why I pressed for Hiob and Synchronizitilt [Synchronicity]to be published at the same time, for in the latter I attempted to open up a new path to the "state of spiritualization" [Beseeltheit] of Matter by making the assumption that "being is endowed with meaning" (i.e., extension of the archetype in the object).

When I wrote Hiob I expected absolutely nothing from the theologians, and in fact, as anticipated, I have had only very little reaction; I was thinking much more of all those who have been put off by the meaninglessness and thoughtlessness of the Church's "Annunciation," of the so-called kerygmatics.

It was from these people that I had the strongest reaction.

In your Part II [Letter 58] you yourself reach all these conclusions.

The 'Chinese woman" represents a "holistic" anima, for classical Chinese philosophy is based on the notion of an interplay of psychophysical opposites.

ESP certainly belongs in this context, for if anything at all can be perceived in this field, it is based on the psychoid archetype, which, as experience has shown, can be express itself both psychically and physically.

In the dream, the Chinese woman seems to be uniting opposed positions, which gives rise to “circulation” – i.e., rotation.

Connected with the latter is a change of space in the sense of a contraction.

This also leads to a change in time and causality, in other words, and ESP or synchronistic phenomenon brought about by the archetype.

That is a tangible part of the teaching that you as a professor would have to advocate.

Applied to the objects of physics, that would lead to the definition of physics as a science of the ideas labeled as material (or physical). (See below!).

Inofar as the Chinese woman as the anima represents an autonomous figure and the idea of union, the middle ground where the coniunctio opposition takes place is not yet identical with you but is situated externally—in the anima, which means that it is not yet integrated.

Theprinciple that endows the anima with its special significance and intensity is Eros, attractions and relatedness.

(As an ancient Sabean says, “Attraxit me Natura e attractus sum.”)

Where the intellect dominates, then what you have is primarily a feeling centeredness or the acceptance (assumption) of feelings of connectedness.

That is also the essential meaning of the Assumption B. V. Mariae, in contrast to the separating effect of the masculine logos.

The union of opposites is not just an intellectual matter.

That is why the alchemist said: "Ars totum requirit hominem”)

For only from his wholeness can man create a model of the whole.

It is certainly an indisputable fact that the unconscious has a “periodic" character; there are waves and swells that often produce such symptoms as seasickness, cyclical recurrences of nervous attacks or dreams.

Over a period of 3 years, from mid-December to mid-January, I have observed in myself similar dreams that have made a very deep impression on me.

Your compilation of physical and psychological statements is most interesting and illuminating. I should just like to add:

The smallest mass particle consists of corpuscle and wave.

The archetype (as structure element of the unconscious) consists of static form on the one hand and dynamics on the other.

As regards "being" and "nonbeing," it is clear that virtually all those who operate with the concept of "nonbeing" simply have a different understanding of "being," such as the concept of Nirvana, for example.

That is why I never talk of "being" but of the ascertainable and the nonascertainable, and very much “hic et nunc”.

As there is something sinister about the nonascertainable e, the people of the ancient world (and the primitives) feared it, and because, when it materializes, it is always different from what one expects, it is even evil.

Plato made this experience with the two tyrants Dionysius [Elder and Younger] of Syracuse (see Symbolik des Geistes p.341.

The incommensurable mixture of "Good" and "Being" and of "Evil" and “nonbeing” seems to me essentially a relic of primitive indiscrimination.

By way of contrast, the potential "being" of Matter in Aristotle marks a major step forward. In my view, "being" and "nonbeing" are inadmissible metaphysical judgments that just lead to confusion, whereas “ascertainable”
and "nonascertainable" take into account hic et nunc the relatedness of the actual and the nonactual to the indispensable observer.

Without wishing to cast aspersions on Bohr', originality, I should nevertheless like to point out that Kant had already demonstrated the necessary the necessary antimony of all metaphysical statements.

Of course, this also applies to statements concerning the unconscious, in that the latter is in itself nonascertainable.

As such, it can either be "a potential being" or "nonbeing."

I would, however, place these last two concepts in the category of metaphysical judgments, where in fact all concepts of "being" belong.

Aristotle was not able to create sufficient distance from the influence of Plato to see the merely postulated character of his concepts of "being."

In that "spiritualism" and "materialism" are statements on Being, they represent metaphysical judgments.

They are only admissible as necessary elements in the process of apperception; namely, as the labeling of categories of ideas, such as "that is of mental (or spiritual) origin" or "that is of physical (or material) origin."

Metaphysical judgment, however, always places an element of the psychic in an external location, thus preventing a union of Idea and Matter.

Only in a third medium (of Plato) Plato, see Symbolik des Geistes [Symbolism of the Spirit). p. 339ff.
pars. 182-S3]) can the union of the two spheres take place, where both Idea and Matter are removed from their "in and for itself being" and adapted to this third medium-namely, the psyche of the observer.

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.

I view metaphysical judgments-forgive this heresy-as a relic of the primitive participation mystique, which forms the main stumbling block to the attainment of an individual consciousness.

What is more, metaphysical judgments lead to one-sidedness such as spiritualization or materialization, for they take a more or less large or significant part of the psyche and situate it either in Heaven or in earthly things, and then it can drag the whole person along with it, thus depriving him of his middle position.

If, in epistemological self-limitation, we characterize Spirit and Matter "in and for itself" as non-ascertainable, this does not detract in any way from their metaphysical Being, for it is absolutely impossible for us even to approach it.

But we have prevented the projection of the psychic into an external location, thus promoting the integration of the wholeness of man.

The psyche as a medium participates in both Spirit and Matter.

I am convinced that it (the psyche) is partly of a material nature.

The archetypes, for example, are Ideas (in the Platonic sense) on the one hand, and yet are directly connected with physiological processes on the other, and in cases of synchronicity they are arrangers of physical circumstances, so that they can also be regarded as a characteristic of Matter (as the feature that imbues it with meaning).

It is part of this non-ascertainability of their being that they cannot be situated in place.

This is particularly the case with the archetype of wholeness-that is, of the Self.

It is the One and the Many.

As you rightly say, the wholeness of man holds the middle position, namely between the mundus archetypus, which is real, because it acts, and the physis, which is just as real, because it acts.

The principle of both, however, is unknown and therefore not ascertainable.

Moreover, there are grounds for supposing that both are just different aspects of one and the same principle; hence the possibility of setting up identical or parallel physical and psychological propositions on the one hand and on the other the psychological interpretability of religious revelations.

(Theologians have the same resistance to psychologists as physicists, except that the former believe in Spirit and the latter in Matter.)

The fact that on the whole our views coincide is very pleasing to me, and I am very grateful to you for presenting your opinions in such detail.

It seems to me that you have done a great deal of thinking and have covered a lot of ground, which would give you quite a lot to tell the strangers about.

If one moves too far forward, it is often impossible to remember the thoughts one had before, and then the public finds one incomprehensible.

If I have presented my views rather briefly here, much of what I say may sound apodictic, but that is not my intention at all. It is much rather that I am aware of how improvised and makeshift my definitions are and how much I am dependent on your goodwill and understanding.

I am not yet in the best of health.

I still suffer from occasional bouts of tachycardia and arrhythmia and have to be especially careful not to overexert myself mentally.

This letter was already too much of an effort and one that I must avoid repeating for a while.

The problem of the coniunctio must be kept for the future; it is more than I can cope with, and my heart reacts if I exert myself too much along these lines.

My essay on the "Der Geist der Psychologie" [The Spirit of Psychology) of 1946 resulted in a serious attack of tachycardia, and synchronicity brought on the rest.

I would be very interested to hear about you "impressions of India sometime.

I must just wait until my health is a little more stable.

At the moment I can only receive visitors in the mornings, as I have to rest in the afternoon.

I must practice patience and thus force others to acquire the same virtue.

With best wishes,

Yours sincerely, [C. C. JUNG) ~Carl Jung, Atom and Archetype, Pages 97-101