Dual Realms in Divination, Psychology, and Physics

Abstract

Ancient and traditional cultures have claimed another realm exists beyond everyday experience that can be accessed by shamanic and divination methods. Modern science views such claims with suspicion. Evidence is presented that this may be changing. Carl Jung proposed a conscious realm and an unconscious realm—the unconscious realm included the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. Later, with his theory of synchronicity, he proposed a material realm and a psychic realm arising from a unitary realm. This essay follows Jung’s colleague, Marie-Louise von Franz, and her efforts to identify ideas in science similar to Jung’s. Von Franz found two French scientists with two realms similar to what Jung proposed: Olivier Costa de Beauregard and Albert Lautman. At the time von Franz published Divination and Synchronicity, quantum physicist David Bohm likewise proposed two realms: an implicit order and an explicit order. Recently, English physicist and Anglican priest Sir John Polkinghorne published his version of two realms. Contemporary physics claims there is an everyday world modeled by causal mechanistic science and a different quantum realm. This leads a contemporary physicist to sound like a shaman or diviner. The examples just considered are theoretical. In contrast, two examples from experimental physics—the hydrogen spectrum and Shaw’s dripping faucet—embody a realm of time and a timeless pattern. The evidence considered supports Polkinghorne’s suggestion that changes are underway, transforming science in ways similar to Jung’s and von Franz’s dual realms.