Wolfgang Pauli: In the first half of my life I was a cold and cynical devil...

Dear Dr. Jung, May 24, 1934

I have just received your letter, and it would be very convenient for me to meet you on Monday at the earlier time of 11 o’clock.

May I take this opportunity of adding a few remarks?

In the meantime, I have to a very large extent become clear about the danger specific to my life, which had been projected onto the wasps.

The alternating light and dark stripes must be diametrically opposed psychic attitudes, or dispositions to forms and behavior.

Moreover, they are very closely related to ethics, religion, and relationships toward other people, as well as to sensual feelings, eroticism, and sexuality.

The specific limit to my life has been the fact that in the second half of life I swing from one extreme to another (the enantiodromia).

In the first half of my life I was a cold and cynical devil to other people and a fanatical atheist and intellectual "enlightener."

The opposite to that was on the one hand, a tendency toward being a criminal, a thug (which could have degenerated into me becoming a murderer), and, and, the other hand, becoming detached from the world-a totally unintellectual hermit with outbursts of ecstasy and visions.

So the purpose of my neurosis was to keep me from this danger of changing abruptly into the opposite.

In marriage there can only be the balance of the happy medium, the Tao.

My wife has a similar problem of opposites, but the reverse of mine.

Up to now, all that she has lived out externally has been social relationships and human kindness, and she makes unrealistic ethical demands, such as Everybody should be good.

Consequently, as I have been able to observe by looking closely, the demand of the evil side for recognition
has accumulated in her unconscious, and her animus has an extremely robust, nay even violent character.

A nd that is wby sbe fell in love with my shadow side, because it secretly made a deep impression on her.

But in my view this creates the prerequisites for balance in marriage.

But there is more to it than that: This abrupt swing into the opposite is a danger not just for me but for our whole civilization.

This is what the dream with the 3 giant horses is saying; in this moment everything can turn into primitive barbarianism, unless Tao and individuation step in.

This is why my personal problem is also a collective one, and, conversely, the danger that I personally was faced with was greatly heightened by a disposition that was forced upon me by the collective unconscious.

I spent Whitsuntide in Melchtal and I visited the Bruder Kalus chapel at great length, studying the pictures hanging there, which represent his visions.

I was thoroughly fascinated by them and felt a strong and immediate rapport with them.

His life was really turned upside down when be left his family and went into the wilderness.

And he had that peculiar vision of the Trinity, which gave him such a terrible fright.

As far as I mow, no attempt has yet been made to explain this fright.

I believe that it must have been a similar fright, albeit much greater and stronger, to the one I had in the dream with the 3 giant horses.

Now Bruder Klaus knew nothing about individuation or any alternative to Christianity.

He must have had a vision or something like the end of the world.

And the relationship to the Trinity is perfectly understandable to me, for I once had a dream in which the Trinity
turned into the 3 rhythms (the "world clock").

And the interplay of the latter is said to involve danger at a certain point in time.

Do you find this point of view outlandish?

Perhaps it is.

But we must not lose sight of the fact that these are objective, psychic facts, which all come from the same collective unconscious.

So I am really looking forward to seeing you again next Monday at U o'clock, and remain,

with best wishes,

Yours sincerely,

W PAULI ~Wolfgang Pauli, Atom and Archetype, Pages 27-28

Dear Professor Jung 3.VI. 40

Owing to circumstances beyond my control, I am sending you the enclosed dream material from the years '937-1939, so that it does not get lost.

In the middle of May I suddenly and quite out of the blue received an invitation to be a guest professor at Princeton, where I have already been once before.

I may be leaving this week; it all depends which of the two will win the race: the passport and visa bureaucracy or the war looming up in the Mediterranean.

I mention this here in order to justify the fact that I am sending you the material without any additional remarks, which I would have liked to have worked out beforehand.

With the concept of time (in particular the dream from 12.-111-1939). I have since made some progress by studying the writings of Wilhelm, especially his commentary to the IChing (comments on “Kreislauf des Geschelhens” pp 155 ff in Der Mensch und das Sein; p. 176f on transmigration of souls/reincarnations).

And I have also read the part in the text of the goldenen Blute pp. 142-143 of the 1st edn. [Baynes translation, 1931, p. 55.] about the possibility of multiplication in a moment when the pairs of opposites counterbalance each other (relationship of the “tree series” to my periodic dream symbols).

The motif of the projection of various periodic processes onto each other, as a sort of associative connections, seems to play an important role here, especially as, psychologically speaking, the concept of time is based on memory, powers of recall, and association.

This projection of cycles onto each other was later actually represented by me in dreams by abstract, mathematical symbols.

I believe I agree with you totally when you say that a “metaphysical” assumption of reincarnation is not necessary.

In the meantime, now that I have worked through the 1934 material again, another aspect of the rhythms has become clear to me, especially the “great vision" with the world clock published by you in your 1935 lectures.

This link has already been hinted at with the word "pulse" and concerns the relationship of the rhythm to the heartbeat and to circulation.

Unfortunately, I no longer have time to compile the relevant material, but I do feel that this relationship is a crucial one.

The dreams seem to express the idea that an archetypal image of the four-beat stands for a permanent, automatic,
steady rhythm, with self-regulation as the aim of both a physical-biological process as well as a purely psychic one (cf. here the "Eternal City"), and that this image of the objective psyche also causes, as it were, the circulation of the blood. (The four chambers of the heart seem to have a link with the quaternity of the mandala.)

With me, this then gave rise to the question of whether, in the comparative anatomy of the animal order or in the embryonic development of lower animals with single blood vessels up to the actual formation of the heart, there do not emerge parallels to the individuation process (with its formation in the middle").

I have often talked about this with Dr. C. A. Meier,' and he has informed me of an interesting vision from his material that seems to be related to this question.

But this whole problem is far beyond my personal competence as well as my education and training.

Do you perhaps still have a copy of the German edition of Psychology and Religion for me? (I never got a copy of the English edition.)

With my best wishes to you in this difficult time,

Yours sincerely,

W. Pauli ~Wolfgang Pauli, Atom and Archetype, Pages 29-30