Carl Gustav Jung, Quantum Physics and the Spiritual Mind: A Mystical Vision of the Twenty-First Century

• Main Authors: Lothar Schäfer, Diogo Valadas Ponte
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2013-11-01
• Series: Behavioral Sciences
• Subjects: archetypes; cosmic consciousness; mysticism; non-empirical reality; potentiality; quantum physics; spirituality; Unus mundus; virtual states
• Online Access: http://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/3/4/601

We describe similarities in the ontology of quantum physics and of Carl Gustav Jung’s psychology. In spite of the fact that physics and psychology are usually considered as unrelated, in the last century, both of these disciplines have led at the same time to revolutionary changes in the Western understanding of the cosmic order, discovering a non-empirical realm of the universe that doesn’t consist of material things but of forms. These forms are real, even though they are invisible, because they have the potential to appear in the empirical world and act in it. We present arguments that force us to believe, that the empirical world is an emanation out of a cosmic realm of potentiality, whose forms can appear as physical structures in the external world and as archetypal concepts in our mind. Accordingly, the evolution of life now appears no longer as a process of the adaptation of species to their environment, but as the adaptation of minds to increasingly complex forms that exist in the cosmic potentiality. The cosmic connection means that the human mind is a mystical mind.