Last year, I bought Deciphering the Cosmic Number: the Strange Friendship of Wolfgang Pauli and Carl Jung. The book, by Arthur I. Miller, is fascinating and every so often, I pick it up periodically and read for the sheer delight.
Wolfgang Pauli, whom we’ve written about before, was a theoretical physicist nominated by Einstein for a Nobel. He won the prize in 1945 for the “exclusion principle,” which involves spin theory and the periodic table of chemical elements and atomic structure. Thanks to Einstein, who called Pauli his successor, Pauli was offered permanent positions at Columbia and at the Institute for Advanced Study. In 1946, he was granted U.S. citizenship and could have stayed in the United States just as Einstein had chosen to do. Instead, Pauli returned to Zurich partly because he missed his good friend Carl Jung. The two eventually began collaborating on a study of synchronicity.
In 7 Secrets of Synchronicity, secret 3 is that synchronicity is the granddaddy of all paranormal phenomena, telepathy, precognition, clairvoyance, remote viewing – and telekinesis. This means that Pauli was a testament to synchronicity. “From early on in his career, colleagues couldn’t help noticing that whenever he entered a laboratory, equipment spontaneously broke down,” wrote Miller. “The Pauli effect, as it became known, was obviously impossible; it had to be just a matter of coincidence. But nevertheless, it happened again and again.”
Over time, most of the scientists with whom Pauli worked knew about the Pauli effect. Physicists at the university in Hamburg where he worked were convinced that Pauli’s presence anywhere near a lab led to a breakdown in equipment. Otto Stern, a fellow physicist, forbade Pauli to enter the lab.
One of the most comical anecdotes about the Pauli effect occurred in the late 1920s, when Pauli met Erwin Panofsky, an art historian and expert on Kepler. They were introduced by a mutual friend at an outdoor restaurant in Hamburg. Miller notes that for Panofsky the meeting was unforgettable for many reasons and one of them was that it “provided him with a personal experience of the famous Pauli effect.” At the end of the three-hour lunch, the three individuals stood up and Panofsky and the mutual friend discovered they – but not Pauli – had been sitting in whipped cream for the entire lunch!
Over the years, Panofsky witnessed other instances of the Pauli effect. Once, when Pauli entered a lecture hall, the chairs of the women sitting on either side of him collapsed simultaneously. In another example, “Pauli was on a train when, unknown to him, the rear cars decoupled and were left behind while he proceeded to his destination in one of the front cars,” wrote Miller.
After Pauli and Jung began collaborating on their research into synchronicity, even Jung witnessed the Pauli effect. During the opening of the Jung Institute in Zurich, which Pauli attended, Jung drew attention to Pauli’s work in bringing together psychology and physics. No equipment broke down, but a vase overturned, spilling water everywhere.
In 1955, at the Zurich Physical Society, Pauli was to give a lecture on Einstein to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of the special theory of relativity. Three of his friends met up beforehand for a dinner – minus alcohol. Afterward, they left in their respective vehicles to attend the lecture. David Speiser, a young Swiss physicist, realized his scooter was low on gas and stopped to fill it up. Then it caught fire and although he put out the fire, the scooter was destroyed and he had to walk to the lecture. Arman Thellung, another Swiss physicists, had to walk, too, because he discovered his bike had two flat tires. Ralph Kronig took the tram and although he’d made this journey numerous times, he missed his stop and also had to walk to the lecture.
Marcus Friez, Pauli’s assistant and close friend, contended that Pauli himself believed in his effect. He wrote, “He has told me that he senses the mischief already before as a disagreeable tension, and when the anticipated misfortune then actually hits – another one! – he feels strangely liberated and lightened. It is quite legitimate to understand the Pauli effect as a synchronistic phenomenon as conceived by Carl Jung.”
We’ve heard some personal stories about Pauli effects – stoplights that turn green when you approach, transformer boxes that explode during arguments, clocks that stop at the time a loved one dies, that kind of thing. At the end of one of Rob’s meditation courses, we experienced our own Pauli effect . As we’re chanting I’m sorry, please forgive me, I love you, thank you – chanting it 108 times – the lights suddenly went out. And the lights were NOT on a timer.
Anyone have similar stories?
Had a brief but curious synchro late yesterday afternoon while riding in the car (as a passenger). One of my in-laws had an endoscopy Tuesday, and I was silently wondering how she was doing and what the results were, and I was also thinking about the discomfort and the sore throat that follows it, etc. At the moment we were in the country where there were very, very few billboards. But just as I was thinking about the endoscopy (a medical procedure where the patient is heavily sedated and a camera is inserted down the throat and into the GI tract for the gastroenterologist to have a visual peek at anything going on in there), a huge billboard appeared to the right of our vehicle that had a photo of a physician in a white coat, and it was an advertisement announcing his new position in a local hospital as a gastroenterologist who performs procedures such as endoscopies, etc. It was startling, to say the least! There I was thinking about that exact thing, and an unusual billboard appears with it on it in huge letters! A synchro, indeed. Nothing to do with the Pauli Effect, but certainly interesting as a synchro!
Strange synchro, math! But definitely a synchro.
Most of my life seemed to be around the synchronicity of trauma. I have only recently begun to work on being aware of symbol based synchronicity. I find it hard to keep the aperture of symbolic synchronicity open for more than a few days. I do not know why that there is a cut off. With this cut off , it also seems to disconnect to the ones that i need most to connect with.
I will add to this discussion when i feel a little bit more comfortable with this blog.
Be well
Laurence
Laurence we’re all groping in the dark here. Please share your synchros. You don’t know who might be impacted.
Rob and Trish,
It is funny in a hmmm way not a ha ha way that the synchronicity of trauma has shown up.
From a post on another site to the pauli effect, and subsequent posts here, to a discussion on a mainstream blog about trauma today. With the added benefit of how research is finding where the emotion of trauma holds sway in the brain ( amygdala), to where the memory of the event is held, or is collected in the brain ( hippocampus)
I guess the best way for me right now is to learn to reframe away the emotional aspects of the trauma . To consider it in a much broader sense as an initiation. Some of the ancient mystery schools, greek, egyptian, used some pretty terrifiying techniques to help the neophyte to move into the greater realm of the cosmos through traumatic ritual.
In the book ” Voices from the First Day” ( might have title wrong)
The initiation of boys was and still is a extreme ordeal. As a side note some aboriginal tribes consider a woman/ girl to be born initiated.
Any how, my stories on synchro and truama are coming to. Your blog soon.
Be well
Laurence
We look forward to any synchro stories you feel comfortable sending us, Laurence. Thanks for stopping by!
yeah, the lottery numbers thing makes my kids CRAZY!!! especially cause it happens ALL the time – the thing is, it really works better when it’s just spontaneous – i mean, like when i don’t think at all about them – when they just “fall” out of my mouth – course, there was the time in little rock when i played the horses for a state trooper friend of mine – but i’ve told that story before – anyway – yes, i agree about the fine line between all these different labels –
like MWW i’ve done the traffic light thing [changing red to green] since i was a kid – and always thought everyone could – and way back then [as a kid] i remember even when i was skating around town, i’d “wish” away traffic when i came to the end of the sidewalk and had to come down off the curb to cross the street – i never liked to have my momentum interrupted with having to wait for cars – the little town in which i skated was one of those little “courthouse square” towns and my grandmother lived just a block off main street so i would skate from her house down to main and make a block or two over and then back –
– in my last job situation, and i hadn’t really thought of it in great detail until reading your post, and might not have remembered it without this post reminder – but anyway, it became an office joke that my computer and others would crash if i were “feeling” a certain way – now, i cannot describe that “feeling” for me – it wasn’t as if i were in a bad mood or anything like that – it was like that “feeling” i have when other weird things happen – but i could walk into the office and “know” it was “one of those days” – and i always knew before i even sat down at my desk – about the time i hit my office door coming down a long hallway, i “knew” – and sure enough – the silly computer would do something weird – which would ultimately lead to others in the office messing up as well –
and i don’t think this falls into the pauli category actually – probably precognitive – but there is the thing of walking into a room past a tv that’s on when the lottery numbers are being called and i call them out before the announcer – or when i’m having a conversation about something or someone and happen to turn on the tv and there, on tv, is a discussion about the same thing that i was talking of –
very neat post – i love the pauli stories!
Maybe there’s a fine line between all these different labels – pauli effect, precognitive, empathic. Neat stories, gypsy. Now, about those lottery #s!
I usually have “a story ” of some kind to tell about my travels too.
My Pauli effect was with answering machines, I finally gave up and got answer call through my phone.
I tend to have an effect on electrical things. If I am having computer problems I know to walk away and let someone else fix it. Also cash registers. I’ve been at stores and if I get upset “my” register will have problems so I always try to be aware of that.
When I was a child I loved to change red lights to green! I am not as good at that anymore.
lastly, I think I shared with you how my family and I were on the Boardwalk in Ocean City MD and every time my husband and I walked under a light it would go out. My daughters at first laughed but then wanted me to “stop” it when others noticed it. I couldn’t stop it though! That has happened several times with street lights.
Telekinetic!!
Great post.
Great post. I was wondering if there are different degrees of the Pauli Effect, some of which are brought about by expectation. What we come to expect we get.
A simplistic example is a friend who always seems to have problems when he goes away on holiday (vacation). His car will break down, in one instance his wife broke a bone in her foot, he gets the flu and so on and so on. Before he goes away he’ll actually say, “Wonder what will go wrong this time!” And sure enough he’ll arrive back with some sob story or other.
Other degrees of the Pauli Effect may be supernatural or lots of other causes.
I’m sure expectations played into it for Pauli. And once all his science colleagues started believing in it, that added momentum, right?
i definitely believe there is a degree – perhaps even a large degree of the expectation/belief/knowing thing involved – it seems very self-forwarding/fulfilling to me – but regardless all that, such an incredible thing –
Thanks for a very interesting post. I will have to get that book about Jung and Pauli.
There’s even a section in it on the I Ching.
Could the Pauli Effect be similar to Poltergeist activity? Sounds quite like it in many ways. Don’t know if this is a Pauli Effect but I shared it with it to you guys not long ago via email when the white feather descended from nowhere onto my computer keyboard. My story sounds like an exaggerated tale or imagination, yet it is very, very true. One of the signifcant reasons that I had to retire from hands-on nursing was because of extremely weird incidents that constantly occurred; incidents that were frightening to the patients, to the other medical personnel, and often to me, although I considered them to be just more psychic/paranormal events in my life. Whenever I would draw medication from a vial into a syringe to administer it to a patient, I would immediately, through my hand, somehow absorb the effects of that medication. I’ve never taken drugs or been able to even drink alcohol due to life-threatening sensitivities to most substances, so it wasn’t that I KNEW what the body felt like under the influence of a particular medication. But The medication would somehow escape the syringe and be absorbed into my skin, its effects would rush through my body, from the crown of my head, then flow down and out through the tips of my toes. Not only that, handling pills and tablets had the exact same effect and still does, even when the pills are in bottles. Also, whenever I would touch a patient…and I am definitely a “toucher” by nature…I would take on the exact physical appearance of that patient, temporarily. If the patient had suffered a stroke and was paralyzed on one side of the face, with mouth drawn down, etc, things that couldn’t possibly be faked, I would mirror that image for a few moments and would feel what the patient felt. Oddly, during the moments when I felt the patient’s discomfort, whatever it might be, theirs would “disappear” during that timeframe. This was pretty terrifying to people around me, and often to me even though it didn’t last. I no longer work, but am careful in crowds and around groups of folks. Most people consider me “germophobic”, (like the TV personality Howie Mandel), because I avoid touching as much as I can. But I can walk by a person who has a headache and will “pick up” the headache for a few seconds, on and on and on. I’ve never thought about the Pauli Effect; have always considered these unusual incidents to be part of my “extreme empathetic psychic abilities” and have attempted to arrange my life accordingly, to accomodate these incidents without undue stress to myself and others. Doesn’t work. The effects are part and parcel of my life. Does this constitute some kind of Pauli Effect?
It seems like it would be a kind of Pauli effect, math. Then again, what you’re describing could be empathic. Our friend Renie, now deceased, used to pick up people’s ailments in that way.
I also pick up other peoples headaches etc. and like you I have learned to deal with it. I know people think I am strange but, that’s nothing new!!
So is it perhaps like being a planetary empath?
same thing here – picking up on the physical ailments of others – it became very constant when my sister first began her health crisis a number of years ago – and even if i was not in the same town as her – just by talking on the phone – or reading her medical reports – to me, it seems more empathic –