At the Heart of Matter: Synchronicity and Jung’s Spiritual Testament

This is an extraordinary book.  It is important both for its clarification of the phenomenon of synchronicity and for its implications for the survival of Western civilization.  It also points the way toward an integration of matter and spirit that has eluded humankind for so long.  Rather than the conflict between the two that has fueled too many wars large and small, it offers us the gifts of balance and creativity.

The author, a Jungian analyst schooled in religious studies and the sciences, takes readers gently through a basic understanding of physics, from classical Newtonian to modern quantum, and weds that to C.G. Jung’s long-standing inquiry into the enigmatic relationship between matter and spirit, selfhood and destiny.

Here we meet the conjunction in time of three great minds: Swiss psychiatrist C. G. Jung, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Wolfgang Pauli, and the celebrated analyst-scholar Marie-Louise von Franz.  Together they struggle to understand the mysterious interpenetration of time and the timeless, everyday life and the transcendent.

The journey is exciting and illuminating.  For physicists it invites a widening of perspective at the spiritual borders of their craft.  For therapists, it is certain to mark a watershed in an understanding of the individuation process and the evolving practice of analytical psychology as a holistic approach to dealing with psychological suffering.