At the Heart of Matter:

Synchronicity and Jung’s Spiritual Testament

J. Gary Sparks

Toronto, Inner City Books, 2007, 187 pp.

For anyone with an interest in the intersection between science and Jungian psychology, this book is indispensable reading. In it, Sparks, who is a Jungian analyst practicing in Indianapolis, Indiana, examines Jung’s concept of synchronicity. He also devotes considerable time to the relationship between Jung and Wolfgang Pauli, one of the founders of quantum physics and a Nobel laureate. In addition, he explores the connection that existed between Pauli and Marie-Louise von Franz, one of Jung’s closest collaborators.

Pauli was an Austrian who worked in Denmark, Germany, Switzerland and the United States, and is best known for the Pauli exclusion principle, which he formulated in 1925. In layman’s terms, this states that in a complex atom (all atoms other than hydrogen) each quantum level or valence shell can be occupied by at most two electrons, and that these electrons are of opposite spin.

Pauli was in the first ranks of science, collaborating with Niels Bohr and receiving an invitation to work on the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb during World War II. During his time in Zürich, Pauli consulted Jung for help with marital problems. The scientist cultivated a deep interest in his dreams and began a long correspondence with Jung, who himself had a strong inclination toward science.

This is such a rich book that it is difficult to summarize. One of the most interesting parts of it concerns the dreams Pauli had of a character he called “The Persian.” Sparks associates The Persian with the pre-Christian religious figure of Zoroaster, as this figure was delineated in Nietszche’s book Thus Spake Zarathustra. In this book Nietzsche propounded a theory of the death of a God who was associated only with spirituality and was not involved in the world. Nietzsche proclaimed that “to blaspheme the earth is now the dreadfulest sin, and to rate the heart of the unknowable higher than the meaning of the earth.” (p. 104)

Although this book was published in 1883, it now seems very timely in light of the present preoccupation with the possible disappearance of humans and inevitable disappearance of many species of animals on account of global pollution and warming. The recent selection of environmental activist and former Vice-President Al Gore for the Nobel Peace Prize underscores the importance of the environment issue.

According to Sparks:

The spirit and matter issue is something we are all being called to face. The task of our time is to make life in time and space, the relationship to the physical events of life, the sacred altar of being. Zarathustra is a personification of what moves us as lust for the world eclipses the self-righteous and sky-oriented excesses of Christianity. (p. 105)

Jung was very much interested in the correlation, if any, between science and psyche. Although he determined after discussions with Pauli that there was no demonstrable link between the two, he still believed such a link existed. He posited the concept of synchronicity as this link, where events in the outer world seem to mirror those encountered in dreams or imagination. Sparks supports this view, and discusses a couple of striking examples of synchronicity he has encountered in his own life and analytical practice.

Sparks believes, with Jung, that a synchronistic event points in the direction where the psyche wishes to go, where helpful developments can occur. An example of synchronicity Sparks examines at length occurred in his own life while he was close to terminating his studies in Zürich. An older Swiss couple made him feel distinctly unwelcome in their country, although he himself believed he spoke Swiss German quite well. He took this as a sign that it was time for him to pack up and return to North America to pursue his analytic practice, rather than staying in the cocoon of Europe, and particularly Switzerland, as he might have preferred.

Synchronicity, according to Sparks, must involve both coincidence and meaning.

Apparently the purpose of a synchronicity is to educate us into a deeper layer of our own genuine self. In order to understand a synchronistic experience we must ask, ‘What does my psyche want me to do between now and some future time?’ The point of view is teleological ... Synchronistic experiences occur in moments of disorientation and have the effect of providing orientation as they convey the information necessary to bring the future into being. (p. 50)

Pauli suffered great anguish because of the use to which science was being put, particularly the development of the atomic bomb. He refused to participate in the Manhattan Project, although some of his students did, and he felt that he was living in a criminal atmosphere in the United States after atomic bombs were dropped on Japan in 1945. He returned to Switzerland the next year and lived there until his early death from cancer in 1958.

In any case, this book provides plentiful food for thought for the scientist and non-scientist alike. It brings together perhaps too many ideas and tries to deal with too many different characters, but it is written sufficiently clearly that while it is complicated, it is not impenetrable.

—Margaret Piton

Sparks thinks that Jung’s work on the relationship of matter to spirit is his spiritual testament. “Matter is now asking us to make the material world, the events of physical life, our locus for discerning the guidance of the spirit,” he says. Jung’s contribution to us is that matter with its storms and the complications that life throws at us can be just as much a vehicle for spirit as the older idea that spirit descends from above, according to Sparks. ???