Uncovering the body and the previous world with Jung and Pauli

The question of the body for Carl Gustav Jung is rooted in his theory of a “previous world”, in which there is less of a distinction between the physical and psychic spheres, and which underpins reality in as much as it ordinarily reveals itself to us – a theory which he shapes with Wolfgang Pauli, one of the pioneers of quantum mechanics. To examine the body from a Jungian perspective also requires an understanding of the development of this psychophysical plane within our ordinary plane of existence, where the psychic and physical spheres remain distinct and oppose each other. Access to this previous world requires immersion which enables offers us an update to a new genre where the divisions between the internal and the external, between subject and object, are no longer valid. In alchemy as in yoga, this immersion in itself is redoubled by phenomena of externalisation which modify the body and its environment. At the moment of these externalisations the original body is revealed, which is capable of reflecting and exploring elements of the psyche.