Statisticians often write off synchronicity as nothing more than the collateral overlap of information patterns playing out in an incomprehensibly large numbers game in the universe around us. To such people, it is mathematically likely that the most absurd of coincidences will happen and that there is no inherent significance. There are others who believe grim coincidences constitute more than mere chance. Some believe there is a cosmic meaning to seemingly unrelated events that ties people, places and objects together across space and time.

Paranormal activity as a subject of scientific inquiry came about long before the scientists at Princeton made their discoveries regarding the psi phenomenon (discussed in a previous chapter). In fact, there is a long history of preeminent scientists tackling the intellectually taboo field of parapsychology, one of the first being C.G. Jung. Jung developed the concept of synchronicity, which he was never able to fully define or prove and which remains nebulous to this day. Jung believed synchronicity gave meaning to random coincidences in time and space.

There are several utterly confounding instances of synchronicity to be found in the Elisa Lam case — bizarre coincidences that feel almost otherworldly.

First, what is synchronicity? Jung spent the better part of his illustrious career developing the concept. When he discusses synchronicity, Jung throws around phrases like ‘acausal parallelism’ and even more academic sounding vernacular. At the heart of it, Jung believed in the meaningfulness of random coincidences. If this sounds like a somewhat New Age belief for a renowned scientist to hold, it’s because Jung studied and embraced parapsychology long before there was even something called ‘paranormal activity’ in our collective vocabulary. Back in a time when physicists found themselves puzzled beyond their wildest dreams with new discoveries in quantum mechanics, Jung sought to find a scientific method to the madness of supernatural speculation. He approached the mystery of the so-called ‘ghost in the atom’ from a psychological perspective.

Despite his academic rearing, Jung kept a wide open mind when it came to psychic phenomena and even attempted to produce statistical confirmation of extrasensory perception (ESP), particularly psychokinesis and clairvoyance. Approximately a half century before the Noosphere Project would discovery quantitative proof of a mind-matter connection using state of the art technology, Jung tried to unravel some of the great mysteries of human existence using nothing more than philosophical and psychological query. He wasn’t the only scientist who did so, but he was one of the few who can be said to have crossed over from a skeptic to a believer, though the extent of this is disputed. It is fairly well established that the professional divergence between Jung and Sigmund Freud revolved around the issue of paranormal phenomena — with Freud remaining a hardened materialist while Jung went down the rabbit hole, so to speak.

Specifically, with his writings on synchronicity, Jung posited that in relation to the psyche, time and space are elastic – postulated by the mind. “All reality”, he wrote “[may be] grounded on an as yet unknown substrate possessing material and at the same time psychic qualities.” 36 He also believed “states of mind can express themselves synchronistically in the thoughts of another person, or even in the arrangement of external events.” 37

Jung ruminated over whether dreams have anything to do with ghosts. Part of his fascination with paranormal activity came about because of his own anomalous experiences, including a dream he had the night before his mother died. He also documents at great length the experiences he had with a house he believed was haunted. To be fair, Jung challenged his own mind during these experiences, questioning the legitimacy of so-called paranormal events. He concluded at one point that spirits are the unconscious projection of psychological complexes. Though Jung experienced telepathic and parapsychic phenomena, he stated in more than a few writings that he had no reason to think the phenomena constituted real spirits but rather psychological projections.

Yet Jung believed these projections were strong, so strong he contended we might as well consider them real. For example, Jung had his own fantasy figure, an entity he called Philemon, his ‘ghostly guru’ with whom he actually conversed. He believed such figures in his subconscious created themselves and had a life of their own. This belief figured into an incredible experience he had in his own home, which he considered haunted. In 1916 Jung meticulously documented a week-long haunting, which his children also experienced, that featured apparitions of the dead and poltergeist activity. It didn’t end here. The next year, Jung wrote about waking up to a figure with part of its face missing in bed next to him.

How does Jung’s theory of synchronicity factor into the Elisa Lam case? How do any of the incredible coincidences described above connect? It has to do with the idea of meaningful coincidences and an extrapolated idea we will call ‘the synchronicity of evil.’

First, let’s consider that there are three primary belief systems held by people who have looked into Elisa Lam’s death at length. The first is that Elisa died of her own accord, that she essentially accidentally (or possibly purposely) committed suicide as a result of an intense bipolar episode. The second belief is that Elisa was murdered. The third belief is that Elisa was possessed by a paranormal entity, which caused her to commit suicide or be physically displaced in some way so as to end up in the water cistern.

Jung’s theory of synchronicity holds that the psyche ‘exists in a continuum outside time and space’ 38 and that this continuum contains archetypes that produce meaningful coincidences that seem random but which actually are interconnected in a way that we do not fully understand.

There are at least four incredible instances of synchronicity that arise in the Elisa Lam case. No doubt, Jung would have had a field day with this mystery.

The first instance is the history of the hotel itself. While there are mathematical explanations for the statistical anomalies that seem to arise in these cases, it remains nonetheless wholly jaw-dropping that one hotel would experience so many strange macabre episodes. As previously noted, at least two serial killers lived in the Cecil, one of which lived on the same floor, the 14th, on which Elisa stayed (after she was transferred because her roommates complained about her abnormal behavior). The history also includes a brief visit by the Black Dahlia, or Elizabeth Short the night she was brutally murdered (although some historians dispute that she ever stepped foot in the Cecil).

Further, the similarities between Elisa Lam and the Black Dahlia are synchronistic as well. The site Esotouric.com, which notes that the Cecil Hotel is now the top crime bus tour stop in Los Angeles, summarizes them well:

~Both have names derived from Elizabeth.

~Both were women in their early 20s, traveling alone and using public transportation.

~Both of them had loose travel plans that were known only to themselves.

~They were both petite, attractive brunettes, with personalities described as charismatic and outgoing. Both also suffered from depression.

~Each one traveled from San Diego to Downtown Los Angeles in January.

~Each was last seen in a Downtown hotel.

~Neither woman’s disappearance was immediately reported. Both were missing for a number of days before being discovered, dead, in a shocking location.

~And the deaths of both of these unfortunate young women has inspired enormous media attention and speculation.

If the psyche exists outside of space and time, and if states of mind can express themselves in others’ psyches, as Jung believed, then hypothetically it is conceivable that the derangement of the past events in the Cecil (particularly the killings by Ramirez, who lived on the same floor as Elisa’s elevator experience) played a role in Elisa’s demise.

Jung believed in something called a ‘psychoid,’ an archetype with the ability to manifest itself synchronistically in both material and psychic contexts – 36 I submit that the Cecil Hotel is inhabited by a psychoid, a manifestation of horror and evil that continues to claims lives.

I consider the history of the hotel as anecdotal synchronicity, the accumulation of coincidences over the course of many decades that results in a weighted pattern.

The next instance of synchronicity is a real doozy.

In the 2002 film Dark Water, a girl falls into a water tank at the top of a hotel and drowns. The infected water creeps down into the hotel walls and eventually taints the hotel water, spurring tenant complaints. Sound familiar? There is even a scene in which a female character is flipping out in an elevator. In the 2005 American remake of the film, two of the characters are named Dahlia and Ceci, which align roughly with the Black Dahlia and the Cecil Hotel.

The third instance of synchronicity in the Elisa Lam case is almost hard to believe. During the course of the investigation, independent reporters discovered that there had been an outbreak of tuberculosis in downtown Los Angeles at around the same time as Elisa Lam’s disappearance. According to the CDC, 4,500 people were exposed to a drug-resistant form of TB.

Incredibly, the name of the TB test used to make this diagnosis is called….the LAM-ELISA test. It is a whopping coincidence, one that has actually led online conspiracists to conclude that the Elisa Lam case is part of a much more convoluted conspiracy, though, as with many of the conspiracy theories related to this case, there is little if any hard evidence to be found.

The fourth instance of synchronicity in the Elisa Lam case concerns none other than the legendary and infamous occultist Aleister Crowley, who practiced black magic and sex rituals in the 19th century. In 1888, Crowley was introduced to George Cecil Jones, a member of the occult society known as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, of which Crowley would soon be a member. Crowley would go on to be an influential member of many occult groups and even formed his own religion, called Thelema, that is still practiced today. Crowley considered himself a prophet with the rare ability to communicate with demons and entities from other dimensions.

Crowley never stayed at the Cecil Hotel where Elisa died. However, he did stay at the Hotel Cecil in England and it was here that Crowley supposedly composed a poem called Jephtha. One blog notes that Jephtha was an Israeli judge who burned his daughter, Seila, as a sacrifice. Seila, one might notice, is an anagram for Elisa.

The lines of the poem Jephtha read as follows:

Let my LAMp, at midnight hour, 

BEEN SEEN IN SOME HIGHLY TOWER

Where I may oft outwatch the Bear

The spirit of Plato, to unfold.

What Worlds, or what vast Regions hold

The immortal mind that hath forsook

HER MANSION IN THE FLESHY NOOK.

And of those Daemons that are found

In fire, air, flood, or under ground,

Whose power hath a true consent.

With Planet, or with Element.

Some time let Gorgeous Tragedy

In Sceptr’d Pall come sweeping by.”

“Il Penseroso.”

The lines that open the poem are perhaps the most enigmatically relevant here. A lamp is referred to at the ‘midnight hour,’ which police believe is approximately the time Elisa disappeared. ‘Been seen in some highly tower,’ could be construed to refer to the water cistern in which Elisa’s body was found.

Moving further into the Crowley connection, it should be noted that according to Thelemic legend, Crowley came into contact with either an interdimensional alien or demon named LAM. He drew a sketch of LAM and it looks almost identical to modern reports of Grey aliens.

The LAM demon became so important to Thelema and Crowley followers that one disciple, Kenneth Grant, composed a document called The Lam Statement, which is an operational instruction book on how to open ephemeral cosmic gateways and conjure the demon (or order of being) LAM. LAM, which is also the Tibetan word for Way or Path, was hence referred to as an order of consciousness, as opposed to an individual being.

According to Thelemic follower Brian Butler, sometimes called Crowley’s contemporary protege,

“[LAM is] eternal. It’s ancient. And it’s also futuristic. It’s from a dimension that’s beyond what our perception of time is, too. So not only is it not a warm-blooded creature, it’s also transcending the barriers of time and space. There are certain limitations you need to function in the world—such as a body—so it’s impossible for a human being to fully comprehend what it could be, just by nature of being alive. If you don’t retain those things, such as an ego or sense of logic and reason, then you can’t function in society. These entities operate outside of those rules. So it’s very difficult to classify them. We can see a small part of them, but the whole thing is too much, it’s overwhelming. It helps you to evolve, and it also can be terrifying, the vastness of where they’re coming from.”

Is there a real connection between Elisa Lam and Aleister Crowley? It’s a stretch, certainly, but the instances of synchronicity are striking here. Let’s also repeat that Crowley’s LAM demon looks almost identical to modern Grey aliens. According to MUFON and Nuforc, there were 18 recorded UFO sightings in Los Angeles between January and February of 2013, when whatever happened to Elisa happened. A UFO connection is tenuous at best. Jung had an interest in UFOs and advanced early iterations of the idea that UFOs are poltergeist events. This parapsychological hypothesis doesn’t directly pertain to the Elisa Lam case, but it’s interesting to consider the idea that UFOs are physically manifested by the human mind.

Also, with regards to Crowley’s supposed ability to summon beings from other dimensions, I’d be remiss not to mention that at one point in his life Crowley lived in a home overlooking the Loch Ness Lake.

The theory of synchronicity is fascinating and, though it is still not fully understood or proven, it may help to inform a wide variety of paranormal anomalies and parapsychological events that continue to confound the human race.

Let’s consider that evil is not universal. Maybe humans create evil and then it takes on a life of its own, a psychic fog that passes through space and time, picking up minds and devouring them along its way. A wave of defaced souls trundling like hell on earth. The many discrete fogs sometimes merge; like currents to storm fronts, across the gulf of reality different incarnations of evil operate, manufactured by human minds with the ability to knowingly and unknowingly project their suffering and wickedness onto the world around them.

Source: https://steemit.com/synchronicity/@jakeofthefoliage/synchronicity-and-the-elisa-lam-case

The final live footage of Elisa Lam is the weirdest element of this strange story. The security video was released to the public was that of an elevator in the Cecil Hotel. The deliberately jumbled and tampered-with timestamp at the bottom of the video, along with a brief segment of missing footage, raises questions without answers. 

But it’s Lam’s absolutely bizarre and erratic behavior on the tape that is the most unsettling.At the start of the video, Lam enters the elevator and proceeds to press a series of buttons. She waits for a while before becoming frightened. She pops her head out to see if there is someone outside the elevator. 

It is unclear whether or not there is, but Lam jumps back into the elevator and proceeds to hide in the corner. She takes another look out to see if there is anyone there. This time, she steps out of the elevator and starts walking in an almost choreographed fashion, first in a square and then side to side.Lam walks out of frame and returns a few moments later, holding her head and grabbing onto the elevator as if she were off balance.

She presses more buttons and then exits the elevator once again. While it is impossible to know if she was communicating with someone, she gestures her hands in such a peculiar fashion that one could interpret she might have been. 

Elisa walks out of frame for the last time and after a brief pause, there is an abrupt edit in the footage and the elevator door closes.The next time Elisa Lam is seen is when her deceased naked body is discovered in the water tank on the hotel roof. Ultimately, the Los Angeles County Coroner ruled the death an accidental drowning, with bipolar disorder being a significant contributing factor.

The plot is somewhat similar to Elisa Lam’s case, where the main girl (Ceci or Cecilia) gets stuck in a water tank on the roof of a run-down hotel. Ceci even wears a red coat like Elisa’s in the movie. The mom’s name is Dahlia, just like Black Dahlia who also disappeared in The Cecil Hotel in 1947. The main theory I’ve seen on this is that Elisa or someone else might’ve replicated this movie’s plot or there was some sort of inspiration taken from it. Some merely see this as yet another“life imitates art” situation.

Lam was found in the Cecil Hotel's water tank about a week after the LAPD posted a video of her acting strangely in the lift. Before her body was found, guests complained about the low water pressure and strange tasting and discoloured water. It was almost like life imitated art — people legitimately wondered if someone or some higher power was deliberately playing out the movie's plot.

For anyone unaware of how he was brought up in this case at all, he had a lot of obscure songs and music videos depicting death. A couple in particular were thought to be coincidentally connected to Elisa Lam’s death and the internet tried to put the blame on him because he was an easy target. All of this and any of his involvement is already debunked and he was wrongly and sadly accused for Elisa’s death.

People started digging up songs on his channel about someone drowning and young woman being chased and murdered. Web sleuths thought that he was leaving crumbs to flaunt the fact that he murdered Lam. But by his account in the docuseries, Vergara wasn't in the country when Lam died. However, people flagged his social media handles, and his YouTube, email, and Facebook accounts were eventually terminated.

These graffiti words were found painted right next to the water tanks Elisa was found in. This translates to “In fact, she was a cunt”. A post from Elisa’s tumblr, posted a day after she went missing (possibly posted by tumblr queue) read as follows:

”Cunt again? It was odd how men... used that word to demean women when it was the only part of a woman they valued.” -via womankings

In China, rooms marked 514 are avoided to stay in as it’s connected to suicide and death. 514 is pronounced Wu Yao Si , and is similar to Wo Yao Si, which translates to “I want to die/I want death”. This belief rooted from a suicide case in room 514 in a dorm at a University in China and is now looked down upon. (For anyone unaware, Elisa and her family are Chinese, so this is not just a random translation pulled out of nowhere. It’s her language)

Elisa left for her trip to L.A. and died all in the same time of the zodiac dates for Aquarius. Aquarius in Latin means water bearer or water carrier. Aquarius, aqua, water.. you get it.

The once-grand Cecil Hotel provides a nightmarish backdrop for the disappearance of Elisa Lam. Her final footage in an elevator triggers a viral hunt.

Web sleuths dissect Elisa's social media posts. A grisly discovery changes everything at the hotel already known as the Night Stalker's onetime lair.

The mystery deepens: Did a crime occur? The obsessed descend on the Cecil hoping to solve the case and tumble down the rabbit hole of conspiracy.

A long-awaited autopsy report arrives, but suspicions linger. Today, an unlikely target speaks his mind as experts weigh in on persistent mysteries.

• Closed figures

• Facade Color

• Windows

• Red color with degradations

• Water

• Reservoir

• Blue Sky

• White Clouds

• Asian figure with red and blue clothes

The other two circles are essentially the same: the "circle of the (zodiac) signs" and the "circle of the lunar mansions". These refer to the apparent orbit of the Sun, which would be called the ecliptic in modern terms. It is considered in the Kālacakra system that the Sun and the stars of the zodiacal signs and lunar mansions rotate around the central Mt. Meru once every day, bringing the change of day and night to the various continents, and that throughout the year, the Sun moves through the zodiac signs, and a change in orbital disposition brings about the changing of the seasons.

Both of these two main types of gola are depicted in pictures of this kind. The basic gola are described very briefly in the Kālacakra Tantra and its commentary the Vimalaprabhā. Like many such descriptions in this literature, they are so brief as to be open to multiple interpretation, and there are approximately half a dozen different systems described in the Tibetan literature. The most common of these is known as the "Twisted ball of string" (dru gu 'dzings ma).

I am yet to see a painting of the "Twisted ball of string" or any other gola system that could be said to be to-scale. Normally the orbit of the Sun is given a smaller diameter, as in the illustration on the right. The small circle in the centre divided into four quadrants represents the base of Mt. Meru. These quadrants would normally be coloured according to the colours of the sides of Meru: east, black (or blue); south, red; west, yellow; and north, white. Usually, one would expect the southern side to be at the bottom – this is where our continent of Jambudvīpa is said to be located – in the position of the letter "A". The tight concentric circles represent the alternating continents, oceans and mountains that are said to surround Meru, there being six of each. The area from the outermost of these tight circles, out to the next circle, which has a diameter that is half of the largest circle, represents Great Jambudvīpa; this is the area that was described above, that holds the main twelve continents, including our own, Jambudvīpa. The area between this circle and the outermost one represents the top surface of the great salt ocean that rises up from the disk of water below.

But what is the intention of this description of the two halves of the zodiac as having shape? The shape of a bow is commonly meant simply to imply a semi-circle. But the Tibetans normally consider that the shape of a lotus petal is curved, with a sharp inward, or concave, point. This is the interpretation followed by the late Kojo Tsewang Namgyal (Tsenam, see here for a description of his approach to the calendar, developed and published at Sherab Ling monastery, in Himachal Pradesh, northern India.)

A representation of his interpretaion of the gola is shown on the right. The heart-shaped curve represents the orbit of the Sun, and in one sense is more true to the concept of the ecliptic – but more about this later. In Tsenam's system the seasonal points are offset by 23°, but we can ignore this for now. The point "A" is the position of the Sun at the time of the spring equinox, and so this is ususally the First Point of Aries – the point from which longitude is measured. The thick circular line at that point represents effectively the equator. The point "B" is the position of the Sun at its northernmost position, the entry to the sign of Cancer, and the summer solstice. Similarly, the point "C" is the autumn equinox, and point "D" the winter solstice, the entry of the Sun into Capricorn.

This is easily seen in the gola on the left that was made by Tsenam. The orbit itself is made of card, and pinned to the centre of the gola with a yellow pin. Rotate that around fully, and you get the motion of the orbit in one day. This has good and bad points. Certainly it is more true to the nature of the ecliptic, that it itself together with all the stars, Sun and planets, appears to move around the Earth each day. And this is a model that seems to match the Vimalaprabhā description of the shape of the ecliptic. However, this method strongly contradicts the Vimalaprabhā on other points.

The most important of these is that the text describes very clearly that when it is summer in, say, the southern continent, it is winter in the northern continent, and so on for all the others. It describes there as being twelve different northern progressions and twelve different southern progressions. Tsenam's system only allows one. Also, look at the lengths of the signs. Although there are no signs indicated in the diagram above, there are three signs between the points "A" and "B", but also three between "D" and "A". This does not match up with the fact that each sign is considered to contain equal longitude.

In my opinion, a simple error lead to this interpretation being rather compelling. If we look at the diagram above, the thicker circle that passes through the point "A" is equivalent to the equator, and the other circles to lines of latitude on the surface of the Earth. These circles are equally spaced, and just as the distances in a north-south direction over the surface of the Earth between lines of latitude are approximately the same, so the distances in a north-south direction between these lines is also the same. If you project the ecliptic onto the surface of the Earth, it crosses lines of latitude both north and south of the equator. However, there is no linear relationship between longitude along the ecliptic, and latitude of line crossed. The angle at which the ecliptic crosses the equator is greater than the angle that it crosses the next line you choose north, and this continues until you reach the highest point north, where the ecliptic is parallel to a line of latitude – just over 23° for the real Earth.

In the close-up on the right, one can see that simple constellations have been drawn around the ecliptic card. At the top right can clearly be seen the Pleiades, and at the bottom left, Ursa Minor. The numbers are longitude, and the figures given for the summer solstice point are 5;1,30 – this is equivalent to 7° Gemini. In the Phugpa system, the summer solstice is considered to appear at that position in Tibet, because that tradition considers that as Tibet is far to the east of India, the solstice will be observed there three weeks before it is observed in India. This is completely wrong, of course, but this is the theory underlying the main Tibetan, or Phugpa, calendar! Tsenam did not share that view, but he also considered the solstice to appear at the same longitude, for reasons that I have not yet fully understood.

On a final point, what could possibly be the meaning of the northern part of the ecliptic being likened to an "excellent lotus petal". In my opinion, the meaning is probably very simple – just look at a lotus flower, below. The southern half of the zodiac is said to be like a bow, simply a semicircle, and this part of the zodiac, when it is all above the horizon and visible, lies in a low arc across the sky from east to west. The northern half, on the other hand, when all above the horizon and visible, rises very high into the sky, almost reaching up to the zenith, certainly when observed from India – just like a fine lotus petal. Maybe...

Source: http://www.kalacakra.org/phyinang/golconf.htm

Deciphering the Cosmic Number: The Strange Friendship of Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung

Born in 1900, Wolfgang Pauli’s debut as a physicist came in 1921 with the publication of a review paper on relativity so thorough and incisive that Einstein wrote of it “No one studying this mature, grandly conceived work would believe the author is a man of twenty-one”. Three years later, Pauli formulated the exclusion principle that bears his name, and that forms the basis of atomic and molecular structure; this work earned him the 1945 Nobel Prize for Physics. In 1930 he introduced the concept of the neutrino, which is central to modern elementary particle physics. By then, he had already become the key arbiter in the year-long discussions held in Copenhagen between Werner Heisenberg and Niels Bohr that had led to the modern formulation of quantum mechanics. He was also the holder of a prestigious professorship in Zurich, Switzerland, where young physicists from around the world – including Felix Bloch, Max Delbruck, Lev Landau, J Robert Oppenheimer, Rudolf Peierls and Victor Weisskopf – were flocking to work with him. Hence, by the age of just 30, Pauli had already established himself as one of the 20th century’s great physicists.

And yet all was far from well. Although Pauli continued to flourish professionally, his personal life was a shambles. His father, a talented scientist but also a womanizer, had fallen in love with a sculptor who was Pauli’s age and had left his wife, Pauli’s mother. In a fit of despondency, she committed suicide in November 1927. Pauli – never a picture of health and athleticism – began drinking and smoking more heavily. He had always been a night owl, a frequenter of bars and cabarets, and these tendencies also increased. In 1929 he married a dancer, but their union lasted less than a year; his wife left him for another man.

In crisis, Pauli decided to consult a psychiatrist. In 1930s Zurich the obvious choice was Carl Gustav Jung, a pioneer in psychiatry and its broad ramifications in other areas, including religion and mythology. What happened next is the subject of Arthur I Miller’s Deciphering the Cosmic Number, which charts the unexpected friendship that developed between the troubled young physicist and the eminent psychiatrist.

The Pauli–Jung friendship is an ideal subject for Miller, who trained as a physicist but has had a long-time interest in the boundary between science and art, particularly in imagery and questions of creativity. He has explored these topics in previous works, including a joint study of Einstein and Picasso. In this book, he first introduces Pauli, then Jung before beginning to weave their story together. He focuses in particular on Jung’s analysis of Pauli’s dreams – several of which Jung later published along with their interpretation, but without identifying their source other than as “a distinguished scientist”. It makes for a fascinating and an unlikely story, one that Miller follows exceedingly well through its twists and turns. His style is both brisk and accessible, making the book exciting to read as well as informative.

In 1930 Jung had already become an icon in 20th-century intellectual thought. Some 25 years older than Pauli, he placed great emphasis on integrating the analytical, scientific mind with the emotional and the unconscious self. He wrote voluminously, but also had an extended clinical practice. Though interested in Pauli’s condition, he initially felt that his new patient’s analysis would be more successful if he did not carry it out himself. Instead he directed Pauli to Erna Rosenbaum, a young woman whom Jung had trained, feeling that her presence would not threaten or intimidate Pauli in any way. She would act as a conduit, encouraging Pauli to record his dreams and free his unconscious.

Two years later, Pauli began consulting Jung directly, gradually forming an association that had elements of simple friendship and collaboration in addition to the expected doctor–patient relationship. By 1934 Pauli felt himself cured of his neurosis. He remarried, this time happily. His scientific productivity continued unabated, but he seldom mentioned his explorations of the unconscious to his colleagues, although such topics continued to interest him. Indeed, the connection between Pauli and Jung lasted for nearly 25 years, ending only with Pauli’s early death from cancer in 1958. During this period, Pauli sent Jung more than a thousand dreams, transcribed for his own benefit and for Jung to study. The two also carried on a voluminous correspondence, much of which has been published; see, for example, C A Meier’s Atom and Archetype: The Pauli–Jung Letters (1992, Princeton University Press).

The relationship clearly stretched both men and must have been strained at times. Jung’s pursuits of phenomena such as extrasensory perception, unidentified flying objects and astrology were not to Pauli’s liking. However, their bond continued unabated, focusing on issues such as synchronicity and the potential deeper meaning of numbers. In exploring such issues, Pauli also began to study the works of Kepler and his contemporaries, looking for the origins of the so-called scientific mind and what may have been lost in its adaptation to a modern world – both topics of great interest to Jung.

In exploring all these aspects of Pauli and Jung’s relationship, this book also includes a number of visual illustrations that clarify the questions being discussed. Among the most interesting of these are a series of drawings that represent graphic interpretations of important Pauli dreams. The book concludes with a chapter on Pauli and Jung’s interest in the significance of the fine-structure constant, which specifies the coupling of charged particles to the electromagnetic field. Was it really equal to 1/137 and, if so, what did that mean? Was there some deep explanation for that value? As of 2009 the answer is no; the latest value for the inverse of the fine-structure constant is 137.035999070. Nevertheless, the ideas of both Pauli and Jung remain very much part of our intellectual heritage, even if they do not apply to the fine-structure constant as we understand it today. The interaction between the two men, very well told in this book, remains one of the 20th century’s most interesting links between two thinkers who were apparently so different.

Source: https://physicsworld.com/a/dreams-of-a-quantum-pioneer/