In her seminal book, Die Visionen des
Niklaus von Flüe1(The Visions
of Nicholas von Flue; not yet published in English) Marie-Louise von Franz
demonstrates that the peasant,
politician, and soldier, rooted in medieval Switzerland, is "an
absolutely unique and uncommonly original phenomenon among the saints
of the Catholic Church."2 His remoteness in the Swiss
mountains contributed materially to his visions long remaining hidden
from the higher clergy and consequently not, as those of most of the
cloistered mystics, having been "purified" by confessors and
superiors. Since the visions of this extraordinary Christian mystic
carry "the stamp of unconventional authenticity"3, Marie-Louise
von Franz's proof is
fateful that in them the latent heathen world of Germanic mythology
lying behind Christianity is erupting. Surprisingly, the
amplification of the motifs of the visions then reveals that the
Germanic god Wotan, and with him the principle of synchronicity, was
already constellated in Nicholas von Flue five hundred years
ago.
C.G. Jung also dealt with the Swiss
saint in a short essay4. Jung writes: "It is nice to think
that the only outstanding Swiss mystic received, by God's grace,
unorthodox visions and was permitted to look with unerring eye into
the depths of the divine soul, where all the creeds of humanity which
dogma has divided are united in one symbolic
archetype."5
In the following discussion I will
sketch how this "one archetype" that appears to lie at the foundation
of all the religions of our world is symbolically represented in Nicholas von Flue's wheel image. (See figure 1.) From the
perspective of the psychology of religion, this wheel image
corresponds to a renewed image of God in which the
World Soul -- the
objective psyche or the collective unconscious of C.G. Jung -- is
redeemed by humankind, and along side the World Soul, the principle of
synchronicity, takes the place of the Christian God. The empirical
human being experiences the inner, microcosmic liberation and
redemption of the divine World Soul from matter in the process of the
introverted transformation of drive energies which serve in
structuring the deified breath body for life after death.
[Remark of August, 2003: In the
meantime I have seen that we must distinguish the macrocosmic World Soul
as well as the microcosmic body soul from Carl G. Jung's
collective unconscious. The latter belongs to the realm of Logos, the
former to the realm of Eros. The principle of Logos we can compare
with the particle aspect, the Eros with the wave aspect of the matter
of physics.
As synchronicities I define today
events, in which outer Logos, i.e. some sort of a "knowledge of
matter", meets inner Logos, i.e. the preconscious knowledge
(Jung) in an acausal way. Therefore by finding the meaning of
synchronicities, we can come closer to this absolute or preconscious
knowledge, and this realization leads into a much more meaningful
life. This process the revolutionary depth psychologist called the
individuation process.
The World Soul and the body soul,
however, belong to the realm of Eros in its original meaning of
connectedness, and are therefore comparable with the wave principle of
quantum physics. The union of Logos and Eros, of the
"particle" and the "wave", the medieval alchemists
called the coniunctio, the sexual union of the divine masculine
principle with the divine feminine. This union is described by the
Hermetic alchemists, as for example by Paracelsus, his student
Gerardus Dorneus and Robert Fludd (see The
Return of the World Soul). A few years before his
death, Carl G. Jung confessed that he was not yet able to understand
this process. He writes to the physicist and Nobel laureate Wolfgang
Pauli: "The problem of the coniunctio
must be kept for the future; it is more than I can cope with,
and my heart reacts if I exert myself too much along these
lines." [Atom and Archetype, 2001, p. 101; emphasis mine. See
also my remark about synchronicity and the Pauli effect, below.]
Figure 1: The Wheel Image of Nicholas von
Flue.
2.
The Visions of the Terrible Face of God and the Wheel
Image
Nicholas von Flue was born in
the year 1417 in Sachseln, in the vicinity of Lucerne, and died at
the age of 70 in the year 1487. He claimed to have had visions
already in the womb. This series of visions continued during his
earthly life and concluded with the so-called vision of the terrible
countenance of God. (See figure 2.) This last of Nicholas's visions
known to us came to him some ten years prior to his death. According
to the report of the Humanist Bovillus, the countenance carried a "terrifying
expression, full of anger and threat"6, and
consequently was early on associated with the Christ of the
Apocalypse (Revelation 1: 13ff)7. Above it carries a
three-fold crown and below a tripartite beard. The six "sword blades
without handles" that alternately pierced and exited this face
appeared just as terrifying as the facial expression: One of the
blades proceeded from the forehead and pointed upward; two additional
pierced the eyes (and ears?); two more come out of the nose; and the
last pair pierces the mouth8.
Figure 2: The Vision of the Terrifying
Countenance of God
As Jung already saw9,
this vision is completely undogmatic, indeed even heretical, for the
God of the Christian could and can be only good since by definition
the Church fathers eliminated the drive component that still
characterized Yahweh.
However, as I have shown in my
book, Die
Gottsucher10, [see
also my Rome
Lecture] the
heretical character of this vision does not only refer to the summum
bonum but also to the clearly double-triadic structure of the sword
blades, which are further emphasized by the double triad of crown and
beard, by above and below!
Contents of the collective
unconscious break into consciousness in this terrifying way only when
consciousness has not yet grasped an important aspect of
transformation. Viewed psychologically, we must consequently conclude
that Nicholas obviously had not yet understood an important content:
namely, the actual essence of the double-trinitarian aspect of the
new image of God that was constellated in him which had already
emerged in his earlier vision of the lily being eaten by the
horse.
Then we also know that he attempted
to reinterpret that double trinity as the trinity of the Church
fathers11. As Jung emphasizes12, he had no
other option, for otherwise he would have been regarded as a heretic
and dealt with accordingly. Personally it seems to me, however, that Nicholas von Flue
knew much more about the significance of his
wheel image than he disclosed.
The suspicion that he could fall
into the hands of the Inquisition perhaps explains why he cloaked
himself in silence regarding this vision much more than about the
other ones13. Consequently his silence compels us to
extract the knowledge concerning the renewed image of God implicit in
the symbol of the wheel image with the help of C.G. Jung's
amplification method.
The three sword blades directed
downward penetrate the mouth and eyes, and perhaps also the ears, of
the Face of God. Regarded psychologically this destruction of "God's
sense organs" (!) signifies that the preconscious knowledge in the
collective unconscious wants to show Nicholas that the dogmatic
Christian image of God has changed and renewed itself in him:
Since the
outward-directed sense organs of the central nervous system are
destroyed, the renewed image of God can obviously be experienced only
by way of the inwardly directed vegetative nervous
system. Moreover, the
destruction of the sense organs is also intended to show Nicholas that
in the last years of his life he must live in a state of the deepest
introversion.
[Remark of August, 2003: Along with Carl G.
Jung I also distinguish between the content that theologians call
"God" and the term "image of God". The former is
defined with the help of intellectual assumptions while the latter is a
deep inner empirical experience. Jung's image of God was what he
called the collective unconscious with its center the (Logos-)Self. My
image of God is bipolar: the masculine Logos and the feminine Eros. In
the process of the coniunctio, described above, these
two divine principles unite and by this create, in an acausal act, new
living matter. This process can only be described by a theory that
contains depth psychology as well as physics and parapsychology, as
the physicist and Nobel laureate Wolfgang Pauli already has seen fifty
years ago. See Wolfgang
Pauli and Parapsychology]
Nicholas von Flue
turned the
terrifying face of God into his famous wheel image14 (see
figure 1). When we compare his original vision with his wheel
image15, the first thing we notice is that there appears
to have been a pronounced tendency in the Swiss national saint
to
abstract from the anthropomorphic face of God
with the help of his wheel
image and to
replace the anthropomorphically conceived Christian God with a
concept of energy transformation.
The symbol of the wheel is suited to this purpose like no other since
its deepest symbolism may well lie precisely in this transformation
of energy. Already here the unconscious obviously reveals through Nicholas that a renewed God image is constellated, the essential
content of which is the double-trinity structure and the energy
transformation that takes place in it.
However, precisely this energetic
image of God, abstracted from all human resemblance, was also
constellated in the Christian alchemists as well as in Hindu and
Buddhist Tantrism, as I documented in my book, Die Gottsucher.
In addition I pointed out there that this renewed Deity, that
ultimately corresponds to the medieval concept of the World Soul and
provides compensation to the Trinitarian God of the Church Fathers
reappears 450 years after Nicholas in the symbolism of quantum physics
as the so-called quark-antiquark-sextet. (See below.) Hence the
problem confronting the medieval mystic turns out to be extremely
current.
Nicholas von Flue
designated
the "sword blades" of the original vision as "spokes" in his wheel
image. But if we orient ourselves more to the image than to the word,
we see that he sketched neither spikes nor swords, but distinct lance
(or sword) points. The two sets of three opposed lance points makes
it immediately clear that, in his wheel image, Nicholas followed an
unconscious drive in emphasizing the double-triadic aspect of the
number six. By emphasizing the oppositional nature of the two triads
he unconsciously but definitively broke away from the Christian
Trinity and expanded it into a double trinity. Viewed structurally,
this naturally corresponds to the Seal of Solomon, the emblem of the
alchemists (see figure 3b), as well as the central symbol of the
heart chakra of Tantrism (see below).
3.
The Seal of Solomon and the Pelican of Alchemy
The Seal of Solomon (the "Star of
David") symbolizes the goal of the alchemical opus16. The
latter consisted in transforming the purely masculine, Trinitarian
God image of Christianity, represented by the upward-pointing
equilateral triangle. The alchemists sensed that the Church Fathers'
definition of an eternally unchanging God could not be ultimate
wisdom. They sensed that a transformation of the image of God had
commenced in the unconscious in the course of the Christian Aeon.
Consequently they came to the extremely heretical conclusion that the
Christian God ages, falls ill, and dies, and descends into matter,
into the human body, or into the realm of human drives. This death of
God created a situation in which every single human being had to take
part in the renewal of the God that had become immersed in matter [for
the following see also The
New Mysticism and the Life after Death].
Since Paracelsus this prima materia
that was to be redeemed, transformed, or refined had likewise been
imagined as trinitarian, as was the Christian God. Moreover, it
turned out to be a feminine divine principle that waited in matter or
in the drives on the human body for its liberation. This World Soul ardently awaited human beings to redeem her, and was represented by
the downward-pointing equilateral triangle, an abstraction of the
female pubic area. Interpreted in terms of depth psychology and the
drives, we discover that the Paracelsian antitrinity was concerned
with the principles of aggression, exploration, and sexuality (see
Paracelsus
and the Renewed Image of God).
As a consequence of freeing and
redeeming this divine feminine trinitarian principle from the human
body, the divine male principle should also have transformed into a
new trinity, which would have meant the definition of a renewed,
upper God image. In this way the renewed upper image of God could
have united in a coniunctio with the redeemed, lower trinity. This
union, which corresponds to the redeemed World Soul, was expressed in
the symbol of the Seal of Solomon.
The transformation of the upper God
image would have meant that the purely masculine Christian Trinity
would have had to be replaced by one comprised of the three
principles of Logos, meditation, and Eros. (See figure 3b.) However,
since the alchemists consciously cleaved to the Christian Trinity,
they were stuck in a religious-psychological conflict between the
lower, drive-based trinity and the upper, Christian one. (See figure
3a.) Since thereby they also excluded the feminine principle of Eros
from their masculine image of God, they were consequently able to
transform drive energy only into the two principles of Logos and
meditation. By projecting the psychic energy into extraversion
following the discovery of America, the interest in meditation
finally also disappeared so that Logos remained the sole
principle.
Figure 3: The Alchemists
religious/psychological conflict and it solution.
The only student of Paracelsus to
suspect that this most profoundly feminine principle had to be
included in the renewed upper trinity was Gerhard Dorn (Dorneus). He
suggests a continuation of the alchemical opus that was to begin with
what he called the unio mentalis17. The unio
mentalis signifies a union of spirit and psyche - he calls them animus and
anima. In order to achieve this union, however,
the body must first be "mortified" or "mummified." In our
psychological parlance we would express this notion by saying that
the body, moved by the drives and by compulsions, must be
deliberately quieted, a demand lying at the foundation of every
serious form of meditation and imagination. C.G. Jung's Active
Imagination is a modern form of this unio mentalis (see C.W.
14, § 705-7).
In the second step of Dorn's opus, in
what he called the unio corporalis, the unification of the
unio mentalis with the previously "mortified" body was to be
achieved. As a consequence of this procedure the dead body comes to
life again and an exchange of attributes takes place: the body
becomes psychic and the spirit-psyche becomes material. With my
Symptom-Symbol-Transformation or Body Centered Visualization I created a modern version of this unio
corporalis (see Die
VISUALISIERUNG psychosomatischer Symptome oder
Symptom-Symbol-Transformation).
My hope is that it will be the beginning of an Archetypal
Psychosomatics based on Carl Jung's Psychology.
The process of the exchange of
attributes is represented by the alchemical pelican. (See figure 4.)
This double bellied container has, in its upper part, two
characteristic tubes that lead back into the lower part. During the
process of boiling and vaporizing a liquid the pelican was tightly
closed so that the vapor was conducted back into the liquid and thus
condensed. This affected the so-called circular or rotary
distillation18, and of course it was crowned with success
only when the pelican remained tightly closed. According to the
alchemists' conception, this procedure brought about an ever more
highly concentrated distillate, which thereby became the essence of
the prima materia which, for its part, was the goal of the entire
procedure.
Figure 4: The alchemical pelican and the
Christian pelican
However, the process depicted in
the Pelican also corresponds to the concretization of the alchemical
dictum, "Make the fixed volatile, and the volatile
fixed..."19. In modern psychological language, this
exchange of attributes refers to the phenomenon of synchronicity
discovered by Jung: the relatively simultaneous appearance of
meaningfully-related inner and outer events. In the phenomenon of
synchronicity, a psychization of matter and a relatively simultaneous
rematerialization of psyche takes place, since "psyche behaves as if
it were material, or matter as if it belonged to our
psyche"20. In the most constructive case, such synchronicities lead to a creative process in the individual; their
destructive variant has entered the history of physics as the
so-called Wolfgang Pauli-effect.
[Remark of August, 2003: In
the meantime, I have seen that we must distinguish Jung's
synchronicity from the Pauli effect. In the former no physical
energy exchange takes place. Therefore Jung combines the inner and
the outer event by their common meaning. The Pauli effect,
however, can only be explained when we assume that a
transformation of psychic energy (yin) into physical energy (yang) and vice
versa takes place. Jung had a hunch about this difference towards the end of his life
(in 1949), but did not publish about it. In a letter, he talks of
a special sort of synchronicity, the "synchronistic effects with a 'vitalizing'
force, i.e., phenomena which are not only synchronistic but also allow the
conjecture that psychic energy influences living or inert objects in such a
way that, as though 'animated' by a psychic content alien to them, they are
compelled to represent it somehow or other." [Jung,
Letters, Vol. I, p. 522; Jan 17, 1949] Then he hunches that this has to do
with a relativization of space and time and with the "subtle
body". (See also A
New Melody, a New Genesis,
§ 14).
If we bear in mind that Jung always avoided
the term "synchronistic effect", because it is a contradiction per se
- synchronicity is by definition acausal, an effect by definition causal - we
can see that he began to doubt his concept of synchronicity himself. Therefore
we are forced to find an extension of the
synchronicity concept which I try with the distinction
between processes happening only in the Logos realm (yang) and other processes
that occur as an exchange of attributes, i.e., "Logos energy" (yang) transforms into "Eros energy"
(yin), and in a parallel
process yin transforms into yang (see Die
mystische Hochzeit (coniunctio)...,section 6.4.5)].
On the basis of the Christian
legend of the pelican, in which the pelican rends its breast in order
to awaken its dead fledglings to new life (a symbol of the lance of
Longinus), it (the pelican) was also equated with the divine Heart of
Jesus. Since, however, the alchemical pelican describes an eminently
introverted procedure (the vas bene clausum), it follows that the
heart, i.e., Eros and introversion unconditionally belong
together.
If we abstract the meaning from the
concrete pelican of alchemy and take it purely symbolically, we see
that it describes a procedure that takes place in a completely
introverted way: Taking the drives as the object of specific
imagination techniques, the modern alchemist sets in motion the
process of psychizing the matter of the body [yang -> yin] to which, on the basis
of the synchronistic modus of this process, also belongs a parallel
process of rematerializing the psyche [yin -> yang]. In this process the matter
newly created by the individual [yin] in an introverted act of creation is
to be understood as subtle or breath-like. It corresponds to the
subtle body, created in this life for the life after death, which, in
turn, is the microcosmic aspect of the redeemed World Soul. I call
this modern parallel to the alchemistic coniunctio the microcosmic or inner synchronicity in order to distinguish this
energetic event, observable only in the deepest introversion, from the
outer-inner synchronicity Jung discovered. It corresponds to the
function of introverted Eros and provides the actual counterweight to
the macrocosmic, external aspect of causality related to matter (Logos).
The qualitative aspect of the
number three corresponds to the concept of energy21. The Seal of Solomon holds an ambivalent energy concept. In addition to
physico-chemical energy (or the external, physical aspect of matter),
it also contains what Jung called objective psychic energy (or inner,
microcosmic, "subtle" matter), which in quantum physics reappears as
the so-called "negative energy" with its peculiar
properties.
[Remark of August, 2003:
Meanwhile I have seen that Jung's objective psychic energy is only
the yang part of the energetics of the unconscious. The corresponding
macrocosmic yin part is the alchemistic World Soul; the microcosmic
part is what I call the body soul (or soul body or subtle body).]
The practicing alchemist always
vacillated between the macrocosmic procedure of energizing matter
(the liberation of physical energy; [2003: yang]) and the microcosmic psychization
of the matter of the body (liberation of objective psychic energy [2003: of the body
soul; yin]).
But the emphasis on Logos and extraversion had as a consequence that
the extraverted procedure gained the upper hand in the 17th Century
so that the liberation of objective psychic energy [2003: of the body soul] from the matter of
the body (possible only with the aide of the introverted process)
disappeared from the domain of science after the time of Paracelsus.
The macrocosmic liberation of physical energy became the sole pursuit
and goal of science, a development that has lead in our times to the
contemporary delusion of energizing matter (e.g., in the atom bomb,
the squandering of fossil fuels, mobility, and so on).
But the neglect of introversion and
of Eros also carried the consequence that the two primary symbols of
the alchemical opus -- the Seal of Solomon and the pelican -- could
not be united in a single symbol. Granted, the Seal of Solomon has
the double-triadic structure necessary for the exchange of attributes
(i.e., the bipolarity of the concept of energy), but it lacks a link
that can transform the one form of energy into the other. This
transformation can take place only in the pelican, that is, in the
human heart, and therefore only through introversion.
However, the pelican -- the symbol
of the heart and of introversion -- depicts the phenomenon of the
exchange of attributes, i.e., of synchronicity, but it lacks the
necessary double-triadic structure (which the Seal of Solomon
describes).
4.
The Transformation of Energy in the Wheel Image
Let us return to the wheel image of Nicholas von Flue. As we clearly see, the "spokes" correspond to
the "sword points" of the original vision. Since "outer" and "upper"
as well as "inner" and "lower" are psychologically equivalent
symbolic concepts, we can say that the two opposed lance triads of
the vision correspond to the alchemical Seal of Solomon.
Now, in revising his vision, Nicholas added to the double-trinitarian symbolism the two double
circles, one inner and one on the periphery. Hence we must ask
ourselves a question: What content that does not appear in the vision
of the terrible countenance of God appeared so essential to Nicholas that, in the course of working on the original vision, he added to it
(in the form of the double circles)?
During his vision Nicholas experienced the sensation -- which undoubtedly made him extremely
anxious -- of his heart nearly bursting into tiny
fragments22, and he was so overwhelmed that he fell to the
ground. Nicholas's psychosomatic reaction gives us the first hint that
his heart was affected by the vision of the terrifying countenance of
God and therefore is associated with the wheel image.
In the so-called pilgrim's tract,
the anonymous pilgrim mentions that Brother Klaus had taught him to
interpret the inner circle of the wheel image "as the clear mirror of
the living God"23. In Sufism24, the Moslem
mystical tradition, the heart is "the mirror in which God can see
Himself"25, and therefore it is the meeting place between
the divine and the human26. This agrees with the fact that
in mysticism in general the place of encounter with the divine is the
human heart27.
In its purified condition, the
Sufi's heart corresponds to the astral body (the breath body, the subtle body,
the body soul, see also below), which has the ability to ascend to heaven28. In
order to attain its purified state, it must first be
"broken"29 (!) and wants to run away30 (because
it suffers unconsciously). Yet it must become "a ruin"31
(Brother Klaus's feeling that his heart was about to shatter into
little fragments) so that the extra-divine influences in it can be
destroyed. Having it out with one's drive
nature is called the "uninterrupted polishing of the iron mirror of
the heart"32, and this activity results in the
Seal of
Solomon in the heart33.
Here I must point out that the
drive nature is not repressed, as for example in the Christian Sacred
Heart mysticism; rather, the Moslem Sufi mysticism makes the
refinement of the content of the drives into a conscious
task34. Already early on, when Mohammed, the founder of
Islam, was asked how his Shaitan (i.e., Satan, a synonym for his
drive nature) behaved, he answered, "My Shaitan has become a Moslem
and does only what I command him to do."35 One can
scarcely cite a more impressive depiction of the integration of the
shadow and of the drives.
From these amplifications we see
that Sufism is replete with archetypal symbols similar to those in
the Christian mysticism of Nicholas von Flue. This might well be
the reason why today's youth feels such an affinity for Sufism (and
for Tantrism). That the Swiss national saint was seized by the same
archetypal transformation symbolism may not be so well known. The
prophet does not count for much in his own land -- above all not in
Switzerland.
The amplifications from Islamic
mysticism, however, show above all that by the "Mirror of God" (in
the Pilgrim's Tract) which Nicholas equates with the inner double
circle of the wheel image, he means the human heart. Here, in the
human heart, is obviously where the transformation of the Christian
image of God is to take place36.
The three lance points are pointed
to this center, that is, directed at the heart so that a three-fold
piercing of the heart results. Since this heart possesses both human
and divine qualities, this symbolism is reminiscent of the central
motif of the Sacred Heart of Jesus mysticism, the lance of Longinus,
which opens the heart of the God-Man Christ. Granted, this official
Christian mysticism lacks the confrontation and coming-to-terms with
the drive nature. Paracelsus in his alchemical studies made the first
attempt at transformation of these instinctive energies and, as we
have seen, found the suitable transformation symbol in the
pelican.
According to Nicholas the outer
double circle of the wheel image signifies the "visible things and
the effects they evoke in us"37. This expression, of
course, refers to the external world perceived by the five senses and
their influences on our psyche. If we equate these "visible things"
with the material aspect of the cosmos in general, we also include
the human body and its drives. The result is that the three
inward-directed lance points in the wheel image obviously are rooted
in the material or bodily sphere and penetrate the heart.
By adding the two double circles to
the double trinity of the original vision, a decisive shift took
place in Nicholas. In contrast to the Heart of Jesus mysticism --
which denies the connection between the human-divine heart and the
body and its drives and hence represses the transformation of drive
energy, resulting in a sentimentalized romanticism -- Nicholas accomplishes a union of the bodily and the drive spheres with the
heart.
As the examination of the pelican
symbolism has shown, the word "heart" signifies a total introversion
and synchronicity. Viewed psychologically, Nicholas's uniting of the
drive sphere with the heart therefore means that drive energies are
turned inward (introverted) so that the inner synchronistic process
described above is set in motion.
With this the Swiss mystic created
the necessary precondition for the introverted working through of the
energetic impulses stemming from the drive triad. But at the same
time -- consciously or unconsciously -- he became a Christian heretic
since he was ready to acknowledge his drive nature as the prima
materia of an opus in which the latter was to refined
into the quintessence.
According to the statement in the
vision, influences obviously proceed also from these externals, the
"things of the senses," but which destroy the "sense organs" of the old
image of God. A renewed image of God therefore appears to be
essentially associated with a blindness, deafness and muteness in
relation to the exterior38, which manifestly means that
the renewed Deity intends to exert no causal influence on the outer
world, i.e., on that aspect of creation dependent on cause and
effect.
From the psychological point of
view, the exclusion of the human sense organs from the equation is
always compensated by a concentration on the "inside of matter," that
is, on the vegetative body. The externals that destroy the sense
organs -- the "things of the senses and the effects they evoke in us"
-- that Nicholas symbolizes by the two outer double circles thus
effects a concentration on the vegetative nervous system. By adding
the outer double circles to his vision of the terrible countenance of
God, Nicholas von Flue achieved nothing less than a deification
of the vegetative nervous system, which placed him at the pinnacle of
heresy.
The lance points proceeding from
the heart appear to touch the bodily world (the outer double circles
in the wheel image) in some way. Since Nicholas attempted to reduce
the energetic double trinity of the renewed God image that was arising
in him to the Christian Trinity, he could not yet recognize -- in
contrast to Paracelsus, the Sufis, and the Tantrists (see below) --
that the lance points coming from the heart serve the creation of the
divine breath body, i.e., a more subtle form of bodily matter. Yet he
experienced this transformation process with all the certainty of
bodily sensations. Moreover, he appears to have had an unconscious
premonition of this nexus, for he links the outward-extending lance
points with the virgin birth and with the host39, thus
with two concepts of Catholic dogma that have an inner relation to
those of the astral or breath body and to subtle matter.
Now we understand why Nicholas,
following an inner urgency, did not simply draw one outer and one
inner circle, but two double circles: The outer double circle intends
to make clear that a new, subtle matter -- the divine breath body
itself -- is constructed from the material body via the vegetative
nervous system, and the inner double circle shows that this formation
takes place synchronistically (in the inner, "subtle," aspect of the
heart, that is, in anahata, which I will discuss below in greater
detail).
As the reader can easily see from
my exposition, the two double circles of the wheel image correspond
to
the
two double circles of the wheel image correspond to the symbolic content of the
pelican, i.e.
the
process:
body => heart =>
introversion => synchronistic event => exchange of attributes
=> body soul (soul body, subtle body),
whereas
the double triad of the "spokes"
correspond to the symbolism of the Seal of Solomon, i.e.,
the double
triadic structure and the bipolar energy concept
With the wheel image, Nicholas von Flue succeeded in
uniting the Seal of Solomon and the alchemical pelican in one
symbol in which now the
two triads of the Seal of Solomon are linked in such a way that the
transformation of energy can take place. Since the hub of the wheel
image corresponds to the heart, the exchange of attributes takes
place in the heart; i.e., in total introversion. And only in
introversion -- in the absolutely sealed pelican -- is the formation
of the divine feminine principle of Eros possible.
Therefore both a psychization of
matter and a relatively concurrent rematerialization of objective
psychic energy in a subtle (breath body) form of matter can take
place. Thus the wheel image becomes a more complete symbol than the
double triad of the Seal of Solomon since in the former the formation
of the breath body is possible according to the introverted synchronistic modality. Hence it also becomes a symbol of what I
earlier defined as inner synchronicity, which serves the deification
of the human body, i.e., the formation of the subtle body.
As we saw above, the microcosmic or
inner synchronicity corresponds to the functional principle of
introverted Eros. Obviously Nicholas, in the deepest introversion,
succeeded in uniting the third aspect of the renewed God image -- the Eros principle -- and the attendant formation of the breath
body.
That Nicholas von Flue lived an
extraordinarily intense Eros is attested by the fact that in his
solitude he developed such a deep capacity for relationship that he
soon became the advisor of hundreds of people whose souls he could
read intuitively. As we can gather from the reports of his
contemporaries, at times his hermitage was veritably besieged by
supplicants and his fame as an advisor spread across half of Europe.
Thus the Swiss saint ultimately became the model of the archetype of
the priest-physician, again intensely constellated, an advisor in
both psychological and spiritual questions40.
But in a decisive way he also aided
Switzerland that was threatened with civil war at that time: Without
leaving his retreat, he became the successful mediator at the Stans
Convention, thanks to his radiant Eros. Consequently he is regarded
as the real father of the Accord of Stans of 1481, a peace treaty
between rural Inner Switzerland and the cities which created a new
order in the relationships among Swiss citizens. This Accord provided
the basis for Swiss civil life for the next three hundred years, and
was so infused with Eros that it survived even the turmoil of the War
of Reformation. Without Nicholas von Flue, therefore, Switzerland
in its present form would hardly exist41.
Further we know that during the
last twenty years of his life, Nicholas did not eat
anymore42. It is apparent that, with the aid of the
synchronistic Eros principle, the formation of the breath body had as
a consequence his lack of need for any earthly nourishment in this
life. His contemporaries also report that he was seen at various
other places, especially at the shrine of the healing Black Madonna
in Einsiedeln43. In parapsychology this phenomenon is
called translocation or bilocation. He himself tells that he left his
body and in this way went from his hermitage to
Sachseln44, reminiscent of the out-of-body experiences. Nicholas is also said to have had the gift of
"cardiognose"45, that is, he saw directly into the hearts
of his fellows and was able to point out their evil deeds
clairvoyantly. All these phenomena can be explained only with the aid
of Jung's synchronicity principle, and they also appear in the
developmental process of the Sufis46 and above all of the
Tantricists47. Therefore we shall turn to the latter in
order to show that in the Christian mystic Nicholas, in addition to
Moslem mysticism, Buddhist and Hindu mysticism, concerning with the
formation of the breath body, was constellated, too.
5.
The Wheel Image and the Creation of the Subtle Body in
Tantrism
As we have seen above, the motif of
the destruction of the "divine sense organs" leads to a deification of
the vegetative body. The concept of the deification of the vegetative
body is one of the central motifs of Hindu and Buddhist Tantra. In addition to the gross material view of the world and the human body --
the sthula aspect -- the Tantrist recognizes yet another dimension
-- the so-called suksma aspect48. The latter
has a divine quality and can be experienced only inwardly.
With the help of an
introspective-searching attitude, the Tantrist have discovered
that this divine energy concentrates in seven centers of the
vegetative human body. The sthula aspect of these centers corresponds
to certain plexes of the vegetative nervous system; the suksma
aspect aligns with the chakras associated with these plexes. (See
figure 5.)
As I have shown in Die Gottsucher49 the lower chakras correspond, expressed in
psychological terminology, to the drive triad of exploration,
sexuality, and aggression. Tantrism therefore aims at the same
introverted coming-to-terms-with the drives which is, as we saw
above, a central motif in Sufism and in Paracelsus's
alchemy.
In order to attain the goal of
refining the drive energies, the Tantrist opens the chakras in an
introverted, meditative process, proceeding from below
upward50, and causes the energy contained in them to flow
into the chakras above the diaphragm, but especially into the anahata
chakra. The image associated with this, particularly in Hindu Tantrism, is of the
Kundalini serpent ascending from below and
penetrating the chakras. When the three qualitatively different
energies are set free in this introverted process, the Kundalini
finally pierces the anahata chakra, the suksma aspect of the
vegetative heart plexus. In this manner the first step is taken
toward forming the subtle body51.
[Remark of August, 2003: With the
help of my work with my patients I have - already at least 15 years ago
- seen that we in the Western civilization are not allowed to imitate this Tantric process.
In order to do so we must first consciously
quit the brain and enter the belly, because we have already
performed a limited part of the Tantric process once, and are now
identified with the 6th chakra at the front. I have
shown the relative ideas in two articles:
Neotantrism
and Body Centered Visualization and Bilder
aus dem Bauch - Tantrismus und Alternative Psychosomatik(in German).
Nicholas von Flue
was not at all an
intellectual. He was a simple peasant and a mystic; therefore he did
not need to first quit the brain.
Similarly, the consciousness of the Buddhist and Hindu Tantrist
was situated in the belly, therefore the Kundalini had first to
rise.]
It is immediately apparent that
this symbolism corresponds to that of the three lance points in Nicholas's wheel image, which, proceeding from the physical, penetrate
the heart.
If we interpret the center of the
wheel image as the heart, we note that the three remaining lance
points proceed from it. This also agrees with the Tantric symbolism:
three additional chakras are situated above the anahata which
likewise will be penetrated by the Kundalini serpent after it has
broken through the heart chakra (see figure 5). In this manner the
higher aspects of the breath body are constructed52. The
trinitarian aspect of this breath body immediately reminded us, of
course, of the renewed upper Trinity of the alchemical opus, and its
qualitative content -- the three upper koshas -- are reminiscent of
the principles of meditation, of Logos, and of Eros.
Buddhist Tantra; Depth
Psychology; Vegetative nervous system/
sahasrara; Eros/
ajna; Logos/
vishuddha; meditation throat
plexus/
anahata; introspection; heart
plexus/
manipura; aggression; solar
plexus/
svadhisthana; sexuality; abdominal
plexus/
muladhara; exploration; coccyx plexus
Figure 5: Psychological interpretation of the
chakra system according to Avalon and the plexes of the vegetative
nervous system
Anahata, the suksma aspect of the
heart, thus forms the center of two opposed triads. The lower three
chakras obviously contain the suksma aspect of what I have called
the drive triad, i.e., in psychological language that aspect of
exploration, sexuality, and aggression that can be experienced in
introversion; the three upper chakras contain the renewed upper
Trinity of Logos, meditation, and Eros, so that anahata ultimately
links the lower and the upper trinities. It follows that the heart
chakra also contains the Seal of Solomon (cf. figure 5), the union of
the instinctive with the spiritual/psychic Trinity which is found in the human heart. This union of the double
triadic symbol with the heart, however, corresponds to the structure
of the wheel image.
Through a meditative process
[dhyana53], Buddhist Tantrism54 also
endeavors to construct the two principles of creative cognition
(prajna) and active compassion (karuna). Clearly, the Eros and Logos
principles are to be constructed with the aid of meditation. This
meditation refers to the "drive energies"55 that the Tantrist wants neither to unite nor to negate, but rather seeks "to
purify and transform in the fire of cognition so that they become
forces of enlightenment."56 Buddhism also structures these
drive energies as a lower trinity, the introverted aspect of which is
visualized as the three lower chakras, muladhara, svadhisthana, and
manipura. Moreover, there is the idea that the sushumna, the central
channel in the spine that links the chakras (see figure 5),
penetrates the chakras. It is apparent that here, too, the energies
in the exploratory, the sexual, and the aggressive drives are first
of all channeled into the anahata chakra which in turn is penetrated
by the sushumna.
If then, proceeding from anahata,
the three upper principles are developed through a further
transformation, a unification of prajna and karuna takes place, and
this "is the perfect path of enlightenment."57 That is to
say, when prajna, "the still, all-embracing, all-receiving and
all-generating Eternal Feminine is joined with the dynamic-masculine
principle of active compassion (karuna), the all-pervading force of
active love . . ., then perfect Buddhahood has been attained. For
understanding without feeling, knowledge without love, cognition
without compassion leads to pure negation, to petrifaction, to
spiritual death, to nothing but vacuum; whereas feeling without
reason, love without cognition (blind love), compassion without
knowledge leads to vagueness and complete disintegration. But where
both strands are joined, where the great synthesis of heart and head,
feeling and reason, highest love and deepest knowledge has come to
pass, there wholeness is created, perfect enlightenment
attained."58
6.
"Was die Welt im Innersten
zusammenhält"
("What holds the innards of the world
together")
This union of Eros and Logos with
the aid of meditation (imaginatio) also corresponds to the goal of the
alchemical opus, the creation of the incarnated God-Man in the
empirical human being, which, of all Paracelsus's students, only
Gerhard Dorn described, as we have seen. Following his unio
corporalis, in which the inner synchronistic exchange of attributes
takes place, he goes one step farther, describing the goal of the
opus in the typical mythologizing language of the
alchemists59: After the lapis -- a synonym both of the
deified breath body as well as of the renewed God image -- has been
formed through the alchemical procedure, "a dark red liquid, like
blood, sweats out drop by drop from their material and their
vessel."60
Of course we immediately think of
the similarity between this process and the symbolism of the wheel
image in which the three "lances" pierce the heart which is naturally
associated with letting the blood of the God-Man. But also the
central motif of the Sacred Heart mysticism, of Longinus's lance
piercing the heart of Christ, comes immediately to mind. Yet as Jung
emphasizes, this process cannot represent a return to the Sacred
Heart mysticism. Because the alchemical lapis is formed through human
effort and, moreover, is rooted in the realm of human instinctual
drives, it cannot correspond to the historical Christ. According to
Gerhard Dorn's statements, the stone sweating blood therefore
symbolizes the putissimus
homo, whom Jung
interprets as the "most authentic" and "unfalsified" human being in
contrast to Christ, who represents the homo purissimus, the
pure God-Man, i.e., free from all sin. As Jung explains, Dorn's goal
of the blood-sweating lapis has to do with
the
God-Man of the future incarnated in the very ordinary human
being, the alchemical
Servator cosmi or Salvator macrocosmi, who shall come
at the beginning of the apocalyptic period and "who shall bring about
what the sacrificial death of Christ has obviously left unfinished,
namely the deliverance of the world from evil."61 And Jung
draws the conclusion that, from the viewpoint of depth psychology,
the incarnated God-Man has to do with the union of the principles of Eros and Logos which is effected by working on the human drive
nature, that is, obviously via a meditative principle.
The goal of incarnating the
putissimus homo therefore corresponds to the formation of a
renewed God image which alchemy attempted to represent in the double
trinity of the Seal of Solomon with the aid of which the redemption
of the World Soul -- entrapped in matter, in the human body, and in
its drives -- was supposed to come to pass62. However, as
we have seen, alchemy failed due to the fact that it clung to the
Christian Trinity. Therefore it was not able to see that the Double Trinity would
have to consist of a renewed upper Trinity
- which I interpret as the three principles of Logos, meditation, and Eros - which would be distilled out of their
material mirror image, the lower trinity of aggression, exploration,
and sexuality. Further we have seen that this abstract God image
lacks the energetic aspect, that is, above all a point binding the
opposites together in which this transformation could take place.
Therefore alchemy could not yet unite its two primary symbols, the
pelican and the Seal of Solomon, in one unified symbol.
Nicholas von Flue's wheel image
was the first to contain the idea of energizing
the abstract God image,
an idea inherent in both the Tantric and the Sufi processes. And only
by energizing the image -- which, viewed empirically, corresponds to
a dimmed consciousness coming to terms with the human drives in
introversion -- is it possible to create the precondition for the
redeemed World Soul (or putissimus homo or the Servator
cosmi that Jung mentions) to be able to penetrate the realm as an
experiencer through human consciousness. Moreover, the wheel image shows
us that the macrocosmic redemption of the World Soul corresponds to
the formation of a microcosmic, deified breath body in which the two
Trinities are bound together via the symbol of the heart, i.e.,
through the experience of inner synchronicity.
In this manner the 2 x(3+1)
structure of the wheel image arises out of the double trinity of the
Seal of Solomon, i.e., a very specifically structured
ogdoad63. Precisely this structure turns up today in the
so-called meson octet64 of quantum physics, which in turn
arises from the double-triadic quark-antiquark sextet (see figure 6).
But the meson octet describes nothing less than atomic force itself
which binds together the elementary particles of every atomic
nucleus. From another point of view, "Was die Welt im Innersten
zusammen hält" -- what holds the innards of the world together
-- is Nicholas von Flue's wheel image.
Figure 6: The quark-antiquark sextet and
the meson octet:
Distribution
of the simplest meson family and the quarks that constitute it in a
coordinate system I3-Y, with Y = hyper charge,
I3 = the third component of the isospin.
************
1
Franz, Marie-Louise, v.: Die Visionen des Niklaus
von Flüe, 2. ed., Zurich, 1980 (not yet published in English)
4
Jung, CG: Brother Klaus, CW, vol. 11, § 474-87
5 Jung, CG: CW, vol. 11, § 487
10 Roth, Remo F.: Die Gottsucher:
Eine Vereinigung der christlichen Mystik und der Quantenphysik in der
Synchronizitaet C.G. Jungs. Frankfurt (1992).
13 "It
appears that the saint
cloaked himself in secrecy more here than regarding the other
phenomena so that even his trusted friends and contemporaries knew
nothing exact about it and consequently chose to remain silent."
Stoeckli, A., Die Visionen des seligen Bruder Klaus, Einsiedeln,
Switzerland, 1933, p. 33.
14 In this connection I must point
out explicitly that the medallions with Christian content painted
together with the wheel image on the wall of the church in Sachseln
are not from Nicholas' hand, but rather are a later addition. (cf. von
Franz, Visionen, p. 121, note 22, and Stöckli, Die Visionen des
seligen Bruder Klaus, p. 42ff.)
16 see Roth, Remo, F.: Die Gottsucher, chap. 4
21 Cf. Roth, Die Gottsucher,
chapter 2.
22
von Franz, Visionen, p. 115. It
is also told of Muhammed, the founder of Islam, that his heart was
torn asunder.
24
In Nicholas there are a large
number of symbols that also play a great role in Sufi
mysticism.
36 As we will see below, the heart
here refers to the breath-body (or astral body), which in Tantrism is
called anahata. In anahata the gross material aspect of bodily
substance is transformed into the subtle aspect.
38 On the basis of this insight I
have developed what I call the Body Centered Visualization or Symptom Symbol
Transformation process, an imaginative method based on
C.G. Jung's active imagination and Paracelsus's insights, in which
the inner images are sought that correspond to the symptoms or to a
somatic illness. This method consists in a conscious "blindness" vis
à vis the somatic symptom (what psyche sees as "external")
with the purpose of extracting the symptom's inner image that arises
from the vegetative nervous system. The interpretation of such images
appears to set in motion a negentropic process that exerts a healing
effect. On the basis of this approach, moreover, it is possible to
develop a new, archetypal psychosomatics based on Jung's psychology.
(For more on this see Remo F. Roth, Hat AIDS einen Sinn? (What
Does AIDS Mean?)).
39 That the phenomenon of the
renewed upper Trinity is associated with the astral body in this way
ought to give quantum physics something to think about. Quantum
physics, with its three antiquarks -- anti-up, anti-down, and
anti-strange -- postulates a renewed upper Trinity. Obviously,
negative energy, appearing behind antimatter, is related to the
subtle body.
42 According to
Nicholas's
statements, attested by his confessor, attending Mass and watching
the priest during communion was sufficient to keep his body alive!
Obviously the saint had found a pathway to synthesize negentropic
(life-sustaining) energy, a further indication that he had
unconsciously succeeded in constructing the subtle body.
45 Von Franz relates the gift of
cardiognose with the development of the Eros principle which makes
possible direct access to the "preconscious" or "absolute knowledge"
of the collective unconscious.
49 See Roth,
Die Gottsucher, Ch.
5.
50 Since the
Tantrist localizes
"consciousness" in the belly at the beginning of the process, energy flow from below upward results. The contemporary occidental
individual, in contrast, identifies all too much with consciousness
that resides somewhere in the region of the head, for which reason he
or she must first submit to a process moving from above downward.
This process corresponds to the fall of the God-Man.
62 As I have shown in Hat AIDS
einen Sinn? Behandlungsmöglichkeiten der HIV-Infektion auf der
Grundlage tiefenpsychologischer Imaginationsmethoden (English:
What Does AIDS Mean? HIV Treatment Possibilities on the Basis of
Imaginal Methods in Depth Psychology), the human immune deficiency virus (HIV) corresponds symbolically and phenomenologically to the
World Soul (Purusha). Therefore liberating it from the human body by imaginal
methods offers a highly promising depth-psychological approach toward
treating HIV infected persons.
63 This ogdoad, of course, is
reminiscent of Jung's typology with its eight possible functions in
which the inferior function, the link with the collective unconscious
or the World Soul, occupies a special place.
politician, and soldier, rooted in medieval Switzerland, is "an
absolutely unique and uncommonly original phenomenon among the saints
of the Catholic Church."2 His remoteness in the Swiss
mountains contributed materially to his visions long remaining hidden
from the higher clergy and consequently not, as those of most of the
cloistered mystics, having been "purified" by confessors and
superiors. Since the visions of this extraordinary Christian mystic
carry "the stamp of unconventional authenticity"3, 
Buddhist Tantra; Depth
Psychology; Vegetative nervous system/
14 In this connection I must point
out explicitly that the medallions with Christian content painted
together with the wheel image on the wall of the church in Sachseln
are not from Nicholas' hand, but rather are a later addition. (cf. von
Franz, Visionen, p. 121, note 22, and Stöckli, Die Visionen des
seligen Bruder Klaus, p. 42ff.)