The "quantum" instinct of spirituality Towards an analytical quantum-psychoid psychology? Excerpt by "The quantum instinct of spirituality towards an analytical quantum-psychoid psychology"

From "Psyche and Reality"

The hypothesis of the Jungian Self as "quantum -psychoid" transductor of the psyche's evolutionary spiritual necessities. Lao-Tsu quoted by Jung:

We want here to suggest the hypothesis that the finalistic process inherent in the psyche as Jung describes it, is eminently of spiritual nature and "based" on the quantum-psychoid connection between the instinct of religiosity and the Self archetype. Which in our hypothesis evokes the possibility of a plausible extension of the Self quantum psychoid conception, with a series of consequences such as to believe it possible a development in quantum psychoid dimension of the analytical psychology itself.

Let's start with a quotation of Aniela Jaffé's thought (1975, page 153) about the Self archetype:

The Self archetype is "unnamed, ineffable", a hidden X whose materializations are indistinguishable from the images of God ....The individuation must be interpreted as the realization of the "divine" inside the man.

Synchronistic phenomena don't drive us towards the evil, Jung says , and the Self's finalistic process, that we have seen as plausible hypothesis of work to be of quantum-psychoid matrix, seems to us eminently of spiritual character.

When we say spiritual we mean a transcendental process, in the sense that it continuously transcends the initial condition, in view of reaching a broader comprehension of the relation between conscious and unconscious.

Such comprehension turns out in a more balanced capability of judgment, since it practically considers more and more as a whole the psychic functions, in the sense that thought, feeling, sensation and intuition find a more accomplished expression and a more balanced individual space, as Jung tells us.

This seems to us an essentially spiritual process, since it aims at "refining" the ego-centered components, a process which is at the basis of all the greatest spiritualities.

The most adequate space becomes that of the Self realization, but not so that the Ego coincides with it.

As one of the authors has written (Cantaluppi, 1998):

The British scientist (Penrose) indicates in "quantum coherence" the cause of the innermost processes of the brain's activity.

The thought therefore appears quantum and quantum-psychoid, and for the complexity and the simultaneous kind of the required operations the Self appears most of all in its function of quantum psychoid transductor of the psyche's spiritual necessities. That is for instance in its skill to send messages through the dreams, the body, the synchronistic phenomena as said, and by means of sensations and perceptions and even spontaneous fantasies and sudden images that "recall" the work of "further global comprehension" typical of the interpenetrating energetics of the Symbol, as we have seen.

All that seems to encourage the possible consideration that in some cases the finalistic plan may be partially intelligible, just as the possible interpretations of the dream, that belonging to the finalism of the individuation process appears substantially to share the same finality of symbolic compensation we see at work in synchronistic phenomena.

We intend to examine the ambit, that we think real, of the possible inferences with regard to the Selfs compensatory messages in global sense, hypothesizing that they include dreams, synchronisms, spontaneous fantasies, ancestral and symbolic images, possible manifestations at psychosomatic level and interventions in individual existence on the whole.

Conforti's assertion on the matter (2005, page 141) seems quite pertinent to us: " The psyche expresses itself to whoever is interested to hear it." According to this very stimulating author our existence unfolds within the ambit of an "archetypal pre-established web" ( page 38). Conceptions that are completely in tune with what we're saying.

We intend to examine the matter on a possible typological basis connected to this type of compensatory messages, that in our opinion the Self coordinates both in the dream world and in the synchronistic psychosomatic ambit. In the sense that both appear plausible to us : on one side a sort of "differentiation" of the synchronistic, psychosomatic, dream message, or the spontaneous production of images on the basis of the typical receptiveness of individual typologies, on the other side a "phenomenology" of the synchronical events on the basis of the specified function "to be balanced". According to the hypothesis that there is some sort of intelligible and at the same time obscure "selectivity" operating within this type of phenomena that the Self " orchestrates".

A process that is more evident in the dreams, since, according to Jung, a compensatory energy is operating against the conscience's unilaterality.

Moreover, in Jungian approach of active imagination, the transcendental function operates just as compensa tory function, in the evolutionary-spiritual sense we have presented.

But even at the light of various medical histories (that we intend to examine more exhaustively) we think the whole of these phenomena to be of a quantum psychoid character, just as the thought itself is of quantum character, as Penrose suggests.

But the phenomena of unconscious production represent the psyche's most considerable aspect as regards its energetic strength, also considering the "collective" unconscious dimension, therefore we consider it correct to interpret not only in quantum, but even in quantum-psychoid sense the psyche's global work, that has its heart in the Self: heart that appears to us exactly of evolutionary-spiritual nature.

We want also to sketch out the hypothesis that synchronistic phenomena are present at collective level too, as unexpected propulsive strength of general compensatory character, both because this hypothesis has been considered in different ways by the human thought and seems to have a character of universal appeal, and since we seem to realize in the present day world a monodimensional accentuation of the extroverted thought, thinking of jungian typology.

In agreement with the Jungian energetic, it seems that this forced and unilateral extroversion may 'throw' a complementary potentially explosive shadow: on the purpose, Jung has illustrated us the risks that the humanity runs at collective level.

Following Jung's thought we think that an unexpected, unthinkable compensatory energy may operate at collective level, in tune with we would saythe "non localistic" character of Jung's psychology, a sort	of diffuse and numinous center with its own apparently impenetrable, nevertheless potentially inteingible laws.

We definitely think it possible a collective extension of synchronistic phenomenology in the sense suggested by Cambray (2009).

The Self's capacity to simultaneously resound in different areas implying the same type of message, seems"to us quantum psychoid

and seems to go through the body, the space, the time, a quantity of data and evidences demanding that they are absorbed into a new coherent theory that support them. As Von Franz (1988, page 192) reminds us.

In the dreams of our childhood we often find the pattern of an entire human life: it's something like a sort of "glitter"....

What should we think about that?

The synchronistic phenomena have art evident quantum-psychoid matrix but our thesis is just that they are evidently governed by the Self that then becomes a transductor of the psyche's spiritual necessities, thus involving the Symbol's energetics with the selfcompensatory properties, the transcendental function and the individualization process itself in a whole simultaneously present and active.

The process seems to develop in a quantum simultaneous and superimposing way and appears to operate in a wider field of psychoid character.

The psyche in its whole appears to have this type of matrix that it shares with the matter in an interpenetrated sense, with the unexpected consequences still to come.

Let's quote on the purpose Jean Baudrillard's thought. With considerable subtlety he writes (1984, pages 146-147):

... but what science realizes by this time at the boundaries of its activity in the fields of physics and biology is that there isn't only a fluctuation, an uncertainty, but a possible reversibility of the physical laws. That would be the absolute enigma: not a hyperformula or metaequation of the universe ( as the theory of relativity still was), but the idea that any law may become reversible (not only the particle in the particle, the matter in the antimatter, but the very laws). Such reversibility, whose hypothesis great metaphysics have always formulated, is the fundamental principle of the game of the appearances, of the metamorphosis of the appearances against the time, the law and the sense's irreversible order... Causality and determinism, but even fluctuation causality, probability, uncertainty, relativity, are no more the final word : reversion and reversibility are. Things wouldn't therefore be linked according to the law, not even would they be free and indeterminate according to the case: they would be reversible according to the rule.

It's probably this type of reversibility to come into play in the Self s quantumpsychoid 'inclination': in fact it appears to operate in an ambit of continuous "fluctuation" between corporeal, psychical, physical, temporal planes, shifting, in our hypothesis, the whole field of proto-information, for various reasons available in conscious and unconscious sense, in signs or messages (dream, synchronistic, psycho-corporeal messages) in some way "audible" or "perceptible" by our psycho-sensory systems: something similar to the reversibility between wave and particle.

We think that the is possibility of transduction between the wave of the psychotic ambit and the particle of its signs and manifestations is of an evolutionary-spiritual character, as we are going to prove.

Again from Baudrillard (ibid., page 150):

Everything is in the beginnings, in the sense that nothing happens unless through the necessary, unavoidable mark of its appearance, nothing changes unless through the necessary unavoidable sign of its metamorphosis.

The Self then seems to expand its transductor action with the numinous strength of the wholeness archetype, sort of analogical and ineffable divine mark, in the sense that it behaves with the attractive power of what's beyond the consciousness, the Absolute, of the sensed point of Light outside us.

One would therefore be more and more driven towards an ineffable desire that might present itself in various forms, according to the person's specific qualities typologies in Jungian sense, but that anyway reveals a fundamental longing for the sublime, the transcendental: something that by means of the linking action between the instinct of spirituality and the Self might in the end be acknowledged as spiritual and religious feeling. As Greene asserts in fact (1984, page 339):

In other words the Self is an image of the religious instinct, of that aspect of the psyche that longs for an experience of unity or divinity.

We think that the psyche itself in its whole is spiritual, moreover we think that there is a sort of animation in the whole matter (a psyche in some way touching the matter and a matter with a latent psyche, in Jung and Pauli's sense), a teleological animation exactly of the same nature as the relations between the Self and the Conscience.

We think in fact that this teleological process is inherent in the field

superimposed on the psyche and matter's orders so as to take the form of something like a psychical universe, in the sense of the French physician Beauregard.

Therefore the Self appears to have a not simply evolutionary but rather eminently spiritual finalism that recalls Avicenna's nous poietikos according to wish God has created inside the things themselves a creative intelligence of divine origin, on which the sense of cosmic events depends.

In Jung's opinion it's possible to individuate in the Self a sort of divine image, an archetypal entity operating with the strength of the numinous; the concept of image is central in the Jungian structure of the psyche's order; its behavior in fact unfolds according to a psychoid tonality with a spiritual telos. Let's quote Jung (1921, pages 452-453):

And again:

Jung (pag.122)

Meier 1992, Jung's letter n.59, page 100.

lt seems important here to recall Jung's conception of the Spirit according to Aurigemma's interpretation (1989, page 125)

The following pages aim to recall the reality of an essential dimension of jungian psychology. On the subject no negligence is allowed at the risk of deforming, not to say nullifying the specific character of Jungian psychotherapeutic perspective.

And the Spirit is (page 130)

This energy of a different level but of the same substance (omousia) as the psychic energy in its whole. Being present at the peak level of the psychic structure as archetypal disposition of extractio, of release of the essential quality from any existential carrier it is this peculiar energy, active and by its very nature moving , moreover generator of more conscious knowledge up to then only possible, that Jung has precisely called "der Geist", the Spirit.

We want now to deal with an essential dimension we've already referred to but that we can now discuss with full knowledge in the light of the previous considerations on the Spirit. We are referring to the Self's obscure aspect. Let's see Aurigemma's words (page 133) :

In fact Jung realized how dangerous the "divine superiority" of the spiritual energy maybe to the psychic balance with its character of revelation and absolute authority; since, he writes, we know too many cases in which the spirit takes possession of the man in such a way that he doesn't live any more, only the spirit lives, and not in the sense of a richer and more complete life for the man, but in a way contrary to life.

Let's see another aspect of what Jung refers to as the dual Self's obscure side, with Devescovi's words (2006, page 176) :

The developed side of the personality is often represented by caring or hostile figures that protect or oppress the other vulnerable side.

This dynamic, that aims at protecting the interior and innermost nucleus of the personality from the reoccurring of the trauma is defined to as " the psyche's archetypal self remedial system".

Such system is considered a system of defence of the Self, since it appears deeper than the normal defence mechanisms of the Ego... Once established in fact this defence system protects from the reoccurring of the trauma, at the cost of a persecution of the whole personality, caught in a vice-like grip by this part of the Self often taking the form of terrible and demoniacal figures attacking with violence and cruelty.

But paradoxically our most obscure point is another, according to Jung. Let's see Antonelli's interesting thought (2010):

The significance of raising consciousness is obscure and, following the gnostics' thought, comes to a total paradox. And it couldn't be otherwise if we think that it is just the personality conscious of the Ego the piace where, according to Jung, our most obscure point is to be recognized. In archetypal perspective that appears perfectly understandable. The personality conscious of the Ego is a fantasy, an image, a projection of the parallel AnimusSoul.

The Ego emanates from the Animus 'side. On the Soul's side the conscience is pro-duced, by means of the instinct of reflection.

But another most paradoxical and worrying assumption of analytical psychology comes from the parallel Animus Soul. The fact that consciousness comes, by means of reflection, from the Soul, doesn't prevent the Soul itself from producing unconsciousness, ignorance. The Soul produces consciousness and unconsciousness at the same time, therefore, unavoidably, it produces anxiety.

To produce unconsciousness and anxiety seems to be a Soul's necessity. In this sense the Soul fulfills its religious function: to make the man the object of a divine experiment. The Ego is a reflection, a projection of the unconsciousness (unawareness ?) and therefore of the ignorance that obscures the whole. lt's not surprising that Jung has identified in the personality conscious of the Ego our most obscure point.

Let's recall Plotino's thought, according to which only the matter is evil, since no-being (no soul, owing to which "the soul can't be wicked in itself '[ Magris, 1984, page 150]).

Antonelli also tells us that Imago Dei means the relations between the Ego and the unconscious Beziehungen .

Even if we intend to deal with the subject more exhaustively, we don't think that the Ego should melt away into the Self; anyway it's important to talk about this relation: we think of it as of a quantum interpenetration in which the parts live superimposed but distinct, just as the subatomic particles of the microphysics kingdom.

What Andolfo writes (2008, page 290) about Plotino seems to us illuminating from the heuristic point of view:

"Yet, between the One and the intellect and the loving intellect alterity has already intervened, and that drives me to share Arnou's interpretation of Plotino's ecstasy according to which the mystical union is the union between the One and the soul (turned into loving intellect) , beyond any difference, but only in so far as such "fusion" is possible to the soul (Kath'hoson dynatai). So, also when the soul goes back to the prime beginning, when it " touches" it and finds itself in the state in which it found itself before separating from it, it can see " all what can be seen of it by its very nature..."

But this limited capability of the beings, this impossibility to receive all what could give the absolute power, this limit they oppose to its action, isn't that maybe under different names, the necessity that limits them, chains them, makes them finite?

They want, they aim, but it is just of their essence not being able to exhaust the infinite Being's gifts and that, Plotino thinks, even at the moment of the innermost union: at that moment too, in fact, there exists between them the margin posed by the divine transcendency. Another proof is that in this unity a virtual multiplicity is always present.

Moreover, in IV,4,2,29 Plotino himself emphasizes that "the human soul fuses without weakening" with the One, it gives up its own consciousness of itself not in return of a state of irrational or hyporational unconsciousness, rather achieving a state of hyperconsciousness equivalent to the One's super intellectual ability.

And that's exactly the ineffable sense in which we signify the relation between Ego and Self and the concept of unity that always remains a virtual multiplicity; this state of hyperconsciousness equivalent as Plotino says to the One's overintellectuality, appears to us a process substantially of quantum-psychoid matrix, in evolutionary spiritual sense.

We want here to sketch out some considerations on synchronicity that seem to us to confirm the finalistic evolutive spiritual character we are attributing to it, in the ambit of the hypothesis of the Self as quantum psychoid transductor of such necessity, intrinsic in the psyche.

Let's follow therefore Hopcke's thought.

Hopcke (1998, pages 242-243) underlines, for instance, that the birth of particular sons corresponds to synchronistic lessons for the parents, as an accomplish ment of their own psyche, in order to understand and grow:

Our Ego's encounter with the case transforms symbolically and emotionally the story of our life. To accept what happens to us and understand the significance of it doesn't attach more significance if what happens is the coming of a new life. Yet to many parents whose past, whose personalities and whose stories constitute an obstacle to such receptiveness, who is their son gets a synchronistic significance... The children symbolic future of the past of each of us, make us face the meaning our life has had, possibile becoming the special place to understand ourselves and grow.

The following passage quoted by Hopcke (page 257 of the text) is about the meditation of a Chinese monk. Hsu Yun, that survived to a mortal accident. We think it worthy of mention:

My concentration achieved such a degree of purity that I couldn't feel my body any more. After twenty days or little more all the troubles went suddenly away. A night, during a pause in the meditation, I opened my eyes and suddenly saw a bright light spreading as if it were broad daylight I was able to see anything, inside and outside... I've never felt such a complete joy in all my life. It was as if I had woken up from a dream... I thought of the so many years I had gone on wandering around the world after becoming a monk... lf I hadn't fallen into the water and hadn't been seriously taken ill, if I hadn't lived good and less enjoyable moments that were lessons to me and changed my understanding of things, then perhaps I would have missed this opportunity and this day would have never come.

Beyond the spiritual significance of the previous assertion, from a synchronistic point of view having survived death becomes to many people a meaningful experience that teaches them how to appreciate the existence in its unfolding.

We wonder whether synchronistic events are necessarily the answer to the soul's deep need for evolution in spiritual sense. The person is obviously involved in its whole ....In many points of the text anyway one can perceive the fragmentation of the various individual components, as if the author wanted implicitly to stimulate the reader to a more careful reflection on himself and his own experiences, to perceive himself in global way, possibly to be able to achieve the aims that he attributes to the synchronistic dynamics; we refer most of all to a more corporeal and more experienced perception of the narrative sense of the existence. This narrative sense, in fact, seems to be definitely important, by the light of the description of the human beings as continuously in search of, and aiming at the maintenance of a hard unity of sense. What makes the human being one whole thing is not the body, nor the mind or its emotions, bu t just that unity of sense without which even the memory function can't make us 'sense' our individuality. Let's quote Hopcke again:

lf one refuses to see the synchronistic character of an event it's the subjective character that the events take on for the people involved to be neglected or not completely understood ...A synchronistic experience has by definition its own significance, whose perception gives a sense of order, coherence and integrity to our existences... But when we meet the death, we meet a limit that has been put to our life, that none of us can escape and to which there's no happy ending...

the death process is a painful and distressing experience of loss, of disorientation and fragmentation ....; besides there's the experience of surviving somebody you loved, an experience close to our very death, since fe, such as we know it, proves devastated by it.

In the last section the author faces the theme of rebirth and of the life cycle, and asks himself:

What's the end of life? Does life really come to an end?

He asserts that synchronistic events help to grasp the continuity of the existence, in which the vital cycle appears evident, since before our earthly death we die many times, with regard to several experiences and (pages 264-65):

The synchronistic event helps to transform the obscurity in a moment of continuity, giving us a further opportunity to recall and tell who we are.

To do this it would be necessary to find the courage to stop, to abandon the frenzy the modern society daily lives in and make room for silence, that helps the personal reflection. Visiting foreign cities or societies different from ours it's indicative to realize how people live at slower pace, appearing calm, thoughtful, certainly in closer touch with their own soul.

Silence certainly helps to put order in one's past experiences, to think over the events and give a sense to one's existence. But not all can do that in autonomous way.

Signs and synchronistic events have a symbolic and healing significance: they talk to us and intensely drive us to the rebirth and to continue on our way.

To prove that Hopcke tells a story where a synchronistic experience partially gives back the emotions lost owing to a dear person's death and stimulates the rebirth of meaning in life.

A woman loses her young son, a university student, in a terrible accident, and cannot find peace. She spends most of her time at looking at photos and crying. A few months later she receives an envelope her son sent her before his death: inside there are photos of the last Christmas they had spent together. Here's the woman's comment (pages 266-67) :

I don't think it possible to completely recover from such an experience, but the coincidence of those photos was to me as if things had come full circle: his life and his death were rejoined before my eyes. From then on I was able to carry on. I can't believe it.

lf one moves to an upper level, says Hopcke, if one looks and considers the whole in a global dimension, certain synchronistic events find a significance, sometimes in a very precise and moving sense in the existential personal framework. In the above mentioned event maybe the parcel of letters should arrive late, since it had to soothe a mother overwhelmed by grief.

At this point Hopcke puts a question: "Does really a driving force moving the synchronistic events exist, just as a subtle web?", remembering the connection web destiny that the ancients suggested us, whose threads are moved by a super-ordered Entity. A sort of animation of the matter which could interact with the individual and collective psyche and seems to show an intelligent and finalistic weave?

Hopcke ends by confirming the guidelines of his text: to adopt a symbolic approach, to analyse the meaning of what happens and put in motion " our skill to create a whole" about synchronistic and non-synchronistic events, so as to understand that nothing happens by chance.

We don't know whether nothing happens by chance and do not pass any opinion on the matter; anyway, by the light of what considered so far, we think that everything potentially has sense, more precisely that all that exists aims at an ineffable, "quantum" type of sense to be "experienced at different levels". We think, as said, at the present state of nowadays "knowledges", that synchronicity is first of all a special and partially intelligible way of reacting of the quantum-psychoid "layer"of reality, probably the deep "constituting" layer.

As to us, present day people, we grant a risky and almost complete privilege to the functions of the left hemisphere of our brain, that is in charge of the logical activities.

The right hemisphere is the hemisphere of the nocturnal side of the existence, of fantasy, of imagination, of creativity, of the symbolic and analogical world, and it doesn't seem a case that it is more in tune with the feminine world: the world that has a privileged relation with what is nocturnal, seductive, what is mystery and generally non-dual, maybe for good reasons of biological defence in regard to the life that the feminine being can create.

First our conscience itself then aims at directing towards broader, less linear climates, governed by the binary aversion to the aut aut and or so or so.

lt's a conscious research, but carried out by an unconscious powerful strength driving towards the Eastern culture and that is present in any of us, Western people.