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SYNCHRONICITY and RELATIVITY

2005

Introduction. Why did C.G Jung, in his memorial address to Richard Wilhelm (May 1930), call

a book of divination a Chinese science? In this essay the background to his statement is discussed

and evidence for the idea that he and his friend Wilhelm were influenced by Einstein’s theory of

relativity investigated.1

Wilhelm’s Legacy.

The German missionary Richard Wilhelm worked on his translation of the I Ching between 1913

and 1923. With the help of the scholar Lao Nai-hsüan he translated the pictograms from Chinese

to German and back into Chinese to ensure he had brought out the full meaning of the text.

Before embarking on his journey home, Wilhelm wrote:

Recast again and again, the text has at last attained a form that - though it falls far short of my wish - makes it possible for me to give the book to the world. May the same joy in pure wisdom be the part of those who read the translation as was mine while I worked upon it. Peking, 1923 (I Ching, p.xlvi).

Within six years of his return Wilhelm had died, a disappointed man.2 Far from rejoicing in

the wisdom of the new translation his Occidental associates disapproved of the significance he

1 ‘Jung admired science and wished to emulate Einstein with a theory as powerful as relativity’ (Progoff 1973, p.152). 2 Wilhelm must have suspected that he was treading on dangerous ground: ‘It is no accident’, he mentioned in a lecture given in Peking in 1943, ‘that, of the early Jesuit scholars ... those who concerned themselves

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awarded a heathen text, a prejudice which, Jung alleged, had evoked a ‘spiritual crisis’ that had

undermined Wilhelm’s will to live (CW 3 15, p.62). Nineteen years later, in the foreword to Cary

F. Baynes’ English translation, Jung, having pronounced causality an axiomatic truth of the

Western mind, declared in defence of the I Ching, ‘what Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason failed to

do, is being accomplished by modern physics. The axioms of causality are being shaken to their

foundations: …’ (I Ching, p.xxii). Jung was restating a conviction he originally presented at

Wilhelm’s memorial service:

Some years ago, the then president of the British Anthropological Society asked me how it was that … the Chinese had produced no science. I replied that this must be an optical illusion, since the Chinese did have a science whose standard text-book was the I Ching, but that the principle of this science … was altogether different from the principle of our science (CW 15, p.55).

What motivated Jung to make this statement?

The changes in the I Ching, or, as it is known in the West, The Book of Changes, are explicated

through the action of a binary system in which a straight line is used to represent light/yang, and a

broken line to represent dark/yin. Two stacks of three lines (trigrams) make up a six-line structure

(a hexagram). The Chinese word for line, hsiao, means ‘to imitate’ (I Ching, Ta Chuan, p.327).

The postulation is that the changes illuminated by the lineal figures ‘imitate’ life. The principle

hexagrams from which all the other hexagrams develop are called, 1) The Creative Heaven and,

2) The Receptive Earth. In relation to this pair Wilhelm persistently refers to ‘time’ and ‘space’:

• The Creative energy ‘is represented as unrestricted by any fixed conditions in space and is therefore conceived of as motion. Time is … the basis of this motion’ (Book I, p.3).

• ‘One complete revolution of heaven makes a day, and the repetition of the trigram … creates the idea of time’ (Book I, p.6).

• ‘In the hexagram of heaven ... the doubling of the trigram implies duration in time, but in the hexagram of earth the doubling connotes the solidity and extension in space ...’ (Book I, p.13).

• ‘The Creative represents time, producing sequence: The Receptive represents space, which indicates juxtaposition’ (Book III, p. 396).

• ‘ … The Receptive … represents … space as against time, ... ’ (Book I, p.10).

In the West a written word carries a precise meaning. Chinese pictograms differ in that they

symbolise ideas. James Legge, who published his translation of the I Ching in 1899, applied a

with the Book of Changes were all later declared to be insane or heretic’ (From Eight Lectures on the I Ching, ed., Hellmut Wilhelm, 1970, p.3). 3 Quotes from The Collective Works of Carl Gustav Jung, Routledge & Kegan Paul, are abbreviated CW.

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rule he had learnt from Mencius.4 Legge wrote: ‘We must try with our thoughts to meet the scope

of a sentence, and then we shall apprehend it’. He added, ‘It will be his [the translator’s] object to

express the meaning of the original as exactly and concisely as possible. But it will be necessary

for him to introduce a word or two ... to indicate what the mind of the writer supplied for itself’

(preface: xv). Thus the unspecific nature of the Chinese pictogram produces an interesting result.

As the knowledge of the reader grows so the information carried by the pictogram evolves.

Legge uses the words ‘motion’ and ‘renewal’ in regard to heaven, words that imply time,

and ‘capacity’ and ‘things’ in regard to Earth, words that imply space, but the actual words ‘time’

and ‘space’ are absent from Legge’s translation - their introduction into Wilhelm’s translation is

therefore significant.

Einstein published the Special Theory of Relativity in 1905. The theory of relativity forces

us ‘to change fundamentally our ideas of space and time. We must accept that time is not

completely separate from and independent of space, but is combined with it to form an object

called space-time’ (Hawking, 1988, p.23).5 John Carey writes: ‘Relativity theory created shock-

waves in literature and the visual arts as well as popular thought’ (1995, p.273).6 Perhaps a man

as ‘receptive’ as Jung describes Wilhelm to have been would have resonated to ‘shock-waves’

such as these (CW 15, p.54). To surmise that Wilhelm would have introduced this pertinent

theory into pictograms that clearly signified space-time, mass-energy equivalence, is surely not

unreasonable, and it is more than probable that he spoke of this to Jung, thus motivating his friend

to challenge Western arrogance in Wilhelm’s memorial address. 7 That Jung, who was protective

of his personal academic standing, publicly pronounced a pagan book of divination a scientific

text-book when the causal principle was considered sacrosanct can be interpreted as a courageous

act of defiance in defence of both the I Ching and his friend.8

Chinese Relativity.

• Yang = motion (energy).

• Three yang lines = the Creative Heaven (father).

4 A 4th Century Confucian philosopher. 5 Hawking, S. A Brief History of Time, p.23. 6 The Cubist Movement (Paris 1906) was led by a physics student, Juan Gris. William Carlos Williams wrote ‘St Francis Einstein of the Daffodils’ in 1921 in a poetic line that was only ‘relatively stable’ and both Joyce and Faulkner made efforts to incorporate the new ideas (Carey 1998, p.274). 7 See ‘The Principle of Equivalence’, Feynman, Lectures on Gravitation, lecture 7. 8 ‘..when Freud wrote to Jung about the latter’s burgeoning enthusiasm for astrology, [Freud and Jung 1974: 422/233F] his immediate concern was for how much (not whether) this would damage Jung’s reputation’ (Phillipson and Case 2004). Jung noted Freud’s concern; in 1949 he wrote: ‘I have maintained a discreet silence’ (I Ching, p.xxxiv).

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• The doubling of Heaven, the hexagram The Creative Heaven (differentiated by the

capital letter on the definite article) = motion in time.

• Yin = things (mass).

• Three yin lines = the Receptive Earth (mother).

• The doubling of Earth, The Receptive Earth = things juxtaposed in space.

And this is the mother, the matrix – the form into which all experience is poured. The father, on the other hand, represents the dynamic of the archetype, for the archetype consists of both form and energy (Jung 1972, p.35-36). Jung understood the correlation between the symbolism of the I Ching and relativity. Just

as energy (the dynamic) equals mass (the form), so the Creative (father) equals the Receptive

(mother); dual expressions of a single, to use Jung’s term, ‘archetype’. Furthermore, a primary

designation of the Creative is light, while the Chinese symbol for the Receptive Earth is the

square. 9

To state yang = yin x Creative Receptive is taking liberties perhaps, but it is nevertheless an

example of conversion possibilities.10

The Synchronistic Principle, the I Ching, and Science.

In the foreword to the I Ching Jung states his belief that: ‘The ancient Chinese mind contemplates

the cosmos in a way comparable to that of the modern physicist’ (I Ching, p.xxiv). In October,

only five months prior to Wilhelm’s death in March 1930, Einstein, the ‘modern physicist’

responsible for relativity theory, was quoted in the Saturday Evening Post as saying:

Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned at a distance by an invisible piper (New York, 1929).

Taking into account Jung’s well-publicised experiences of ‘meaningful coincidences’ (Progoff,

1973),11 and his awareness gained through his work with Freud of the power of the instincts, is it

surprising that Jung reached a rational and, to his way of thinking, ‘scientific’ conclusion, that:

archetypal patterns arise ‘synchronistically’ out of a ‘collective unconscious’. That our

psychophysical environment ‘synchronises’, in an act of ‘imitation’, a divination ‘in tune’ with

9 ‘Straight square great’ (line two: The Receptive). ‘The Chinese conceived of the earth as a great cube’ symbolising three dimensional mass (Legge: Notes on the Receptive: 61). 10 These symbols translate as: energy = mass x light/motion squared. 11 Progoff, I. Jung, Synchronicity, and Human Destiny: C. G. Jung's Theory of Meaningful Coincidences, New York, Julian Press, 1973.

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Einstein’s ‘mysterious dance’ between energy and mass, in I Ching terminology, yang and yin,

clearly integrates this book of divination with science..

Synchronicity takes the occurrence of events in space and time as meaning something more than mere chance, namely, a peculiar interdependence of objective events … as well as … the subjective states of the observer .. (Hyde, 1992, p.128).12

Relativity was understood to be an ‘altogether different’ science. In 1930, when Jung first

presented his synchronicity theory in the memorial speech, the binary system of the I Ching,

imitating and illuminating in some obscure way the archetypes at the root of psychic experience,

was therefore also an ‘altogether different’ science - abstruse, perhaps, compared to Einstein’s

quantitative elucidation, but from Jung’s phenomenological perspective, one of great

psychological value (I Ching: xxxix). Twenty-two years later Jung formally published his treatise

on synchronicity, his scientific status supported by the physicist Wolfgang Pauli who published

an essay in the same volume (Jung and Pauli, 1952). 13

Synchronicity in Action.

Jung’s synchronicity principle, looked at in the light of relativity, offers a possible line of

investigation into the divinatory reputation of The Book of Changes. Reading Maggie Hyde’s

Jung and Astrology in preparation for this essay I learn that the planet Pluto was discovered in

early 1930, less than two months before Jung’s theory was first presented at Wilhelm’s memorial

service.14 Einstein’s statement, that all is ‘determined’, had been published a few months earlier.

Pluto is a planet astrologers identify with fate (Greene 1984, p. 36-51); fate a concept that asserts

‘all is determined’. Pluto, once discovered, took over rulership of the sign Scorpio from Mars -

Scorpio’s old ruler on Claudius Ptolemy’s Chaldean system of paired positive and negative

signs.15 Since Mars symbolises birth, which, from a phenomenological perspective, posits the

coming into being of a moment in time, and Pluto symbolises death, the passing away of a

moment (Philp, Book II 1996, p.24), this planetary pair can be conceptually coupled with the

12 Hyde, M. Jung and Astrology, p.128. 13 In 1952 Jung was 77 years old. Three years earlier he wrote in the foreword to the English translation of the Wilhelm edition of the I Ching. ‘I can take this risk because I am now in my eighth decade, and the changing opinions of men scarcely impress me any more; the thoughts of the old masters are of greater value to me than the philosophical prejudices of the Western mind’ (xxxv). 14 Hyde, M. Jung and Astrology, p.152. 15 Ptolemy, an astronomer, astrologer and geographer, lived in Alexandria in the first Century CE. Chaldean refers to earlier Babylonian astrologers. Chaldea is the Biblical name for Sumeria, (southern Iraq), the birthplace of writing, the 360 degree circle, and the 60 minute hour.

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ontological ‘changes’ human beings, through feeling and intuition, experience as Merleau Ponty’s

‘perpetual incarnation’ (Ponty, 1961 p.192), the arising ‘moment’, rather than the structured tick

tock of Saturn’s chronological clock. 16

On a personal note but germane to the subject of this essay, that of synchronicity and the

Wilhelm Memorial address, as I write Pluto is opposing (0.12˚ orb) the position of Mars on the

day of my own birth, a rare occurrence as Pluto requires 245 years to orbit the Zodiac; it is also

conjunct Jung’s natal Mars position, the old ruling planet that along with Pluto, the new, rules

Jung’s medium coeli, an important position that marks the highest point the Sun will reach on the

day of his birth.

Wilhelm died on March 1st, and I realise that in a couple of hours it will be March 1st.

Whether this is interpreted as synchronicity or mere coincidence must, at present, due to

inadequacy in our present knowledge base, be left to subjective evaluation.17

16 Ponty, M. The Phenomenology of Perception, 1962, Routledge & Kegan Paul, UK, p.192. 17 I final synchronistic event: A friend reading this essay a few days later reminded me that her birthday was March 1st.

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Bibliography

Feynman, R. P. Lectures on Gravitation, ed., F. B. Moringo, W. G. Wagner and B. Hatfield, UK, Penguin Books, 1999. Freud, S. and Jung, C. G. The Freud/Jung Letters, ed., W, McGuire, London, Hogarth & Kegan Paul, 1974. Greene, L. The Astrology of Fate, London, George Allan & Unwin Ltd, 1984. Hawking, S. A Brief History of Time, London, Transworld Publishers Ltd, 1988. Hyde, M. Jung and Astrology, London, The Aquarian Press, 1992. I Ching, ed., R, Wilhelm, trans., C. F. Baynes (London: Arkana, Penguin Books Ltd, 1989). Jung, C.G. and Pauli, W. ‘Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle’, Jung, and ‘The Influence of Archetypal ideas on the Scientific Theories of Kepler’, Pauli. Published in Naturerklärung und Psyche. Studien aus dem, Jung Institute, Zurich, IV, 1952. Jung, C.G. Collected Works Vol 8. ‘Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche’. Collected Works Vol 15, ‘The Spirit in Man Art, and Literature’. Trans., R. F. C Hull, (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1971). Jung, C.G. The Four Archetypes, ed., H. Read (extracted from CW Vol 9 ‘The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious’ 1968), London: Ark Paperbacks, Routledge 1972. Jung, C.G. (1959) The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, trans., R. F. Hull (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1980). Phillipson, G. and Case P. (2004) ‘Psychometrics, Leadership Development and the Occult: an Unexpected Refrain’, paper presented in Knowing, Learning and Developing at the Centre for Leadership Studies, University of Exeter, UK. Philp, M. C. The Golden City: Reality Model for a New Age, U.K, M. C. Publishing. 1996. Ponty, M. The Phenomenology of Perception, UK, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962. Progoff, I. Jung, Synchronicity, and Human Destiny: C. G. Jung's Theory of Meaningful Coincidences, New York, Julian Press, 1973. The Faber Book of Science, ed., J, Carey. London, Faber and Faber Ltd, 1998. The Sacred Books of the East, trans., Legge, J. Vol., XVI, ‘The Sacred Books of China, The I Ching’, ed., F. Max Muller. (New York: Dover Publications, Inc. UK: Constable and Company, Ltd, 1963). Time-Life, series director, R, Conlan, ‘Computer Basics’, (USA, Time–Life Books Inc 1985). Wilhelm, R. Eight Lectures on the I Ching, ed., H, Wilhelm (Peking, 1943), (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul Ltd, 1970).