SYMBOL MAGNETS: Symbol, Dream, I Ching and the Pauli Effect in the Development of Jung's Synchronicity Theory June 8, 2010

SYMBOL MAGNETS: Symbol, Dream, I Ching and the Pauli Effect in the Development of Jung's Synchronicity Theory

Robert Moss, MA

When Jung was immersed in his study of the symbolism of the fish, the theme started leaping at him in everyday life. In a single 24-hour period, after writing about an ancient inscription involving a fish-man, he noted a sequence of six meaningful coincidences that all related to fish, a “run of chance” in which more than chance seemed to be at play. This was one of the sequences that prompted Jung to ask whether it is possible that the physical world mirrors psychic processes "as continuously as the psyche perceives the physical world.”

Jung found that living symbols engrained in the imaginal history of humankind are charged with magnetic force that can draw clusters of events together. In their origins, “symbol” and “coincidence” mean very nearly the same thing: that which is “cast together” or “falls together.” As Jung discovered repeatedly, the magnetic power of a symbol can bring together inner and outer events in ways that shift our experience and understanding of reality.
In this lecture, Robert Moss, the creator of Active Dreaming and a lifelong student of Jung, will discuss key factors in the development of Jung’s synchronicity theory: Jung’s personal experience of symbol magnets, his guiding dreams, his discovery of the I Ching and his remarkably fertile intellectual friendship with Wolfgang Pauli, the pioneer of quantum physics, who described dreams as his “secret laboratory.” Jung and Pauli goaded each other, in a 25-year correspondence, to step beyond the boundaries of their disciplines and seek to develop a working model of a universe in which mind and matter are constantly interweaving and may unfold from a common fundament, the unus mundus. We’ll explore the mystery of Pauli’s “Chinese woman,” a possible anima figure discussed by Jung and Pauli, who stepped out of his dream life and into the world at the center of a revolution in science, and the notorious Pauli Effect by which big things tended to blow up in the presence of the brilliant physicist and his roiling emotions.

Robert Moss, MA, is the pioneer of Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of shamanism and modern dreamwork. A former lecturer in ancient history at the Australian National University, he is a best-selling novelist, journalist and independent scholar. His seven books on dreaming, shamanism and imagination include Conscious Dreaming, Dreamways of the Iroquois, The Three "Only" Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence and Imagination and The Secret History of Dreaming.

Tuesday evening, June 8, 2010, 7:00 – 8:30 pm

At the C.G. Jung Foundation, 28 East 39th Street, New York, NY 10016

Tickets: $20 Jung Foundation members; $25 general public

Call 212-697-6430 to register

Tickets will also be sold at the door.