The most precise description of the Self comes from Jung's Book AION, Studies into the Phenomenology of the Self. To him, the Self contains all opposites and is experienced as a conjunction of opposites, the very symbol that appears in mystical experiences.
The Self is basically Jung's hypothesis to explain mystical experiences. To him, the Self contains all opposites and always expresses itself as a symbol of conjunction of opposites. In his book AION, researches into the phenomenology of the Self, Jung used the Moses quaternio of Gnosticism to show the opposites that appear in the transcendent experience. Those symbols are:
The quaternio of Moses is really one of the most important findings that Jung has put forward. The first pair of opposites is composed of Jethro who is the father or the sage and Zipporah who is the child or the pupil. The second pair of opposites are Moses as the hero, the conscious ego, and Miriam as the anima or the unconscious. Each one of these opposites has many correspondences which always have the same symbolic meaning.
According to Jung, those two pairs of opposites constitute the blueprint of the Self. The first pair on the horizontal axis is always a representation of the opposites me v. the world (Zipporah-Jethro) which may also be expressed as particle v. Whole. Here are a few correspondences that show the same dynamic.
Parent Child
= Father or Mother Son or daughter
= Wiseman or Great Mother Apprentice-pupil
= Master Student
= Senex (old) Puer (young)
= World (God) Me
= Universe or Macrocosm Part or microcosm
As such, the relation of the child to his parents or the pupil to his master represents the opposites particle v. whole. To the child, the parent is his whole world and to the pupil, the master holds all knowledge. In the end, those two symbols always represent the relation between me and the universe or me and God.
The opposites of the vertical axis represent the opposites consciousness v. unconscious (Moses-Myriam). It is the relation between the conscious ego and the unconscious being either personal or collective.
Hero Anima
= King Queen
= Interior Exterior
= Conscious Unconscious
= Ego Anima
= Sun Moon
= Spirit Matter
= Male Female
That relation between consciousness and the unconscious has many correspondences which express the same thing. In Alchemy, the King and the Queen represent that pair of opposites. The king always shows the conscious ego, the sun and the male principle. The queen portrays the matter, the unconscious and the female principle. Because the king is linked to the symbolic interior, the queen is representation of the exterior.
What Jung has taught in his books after 1944 is that mystical experiences are always a conjunctio oppositorum (conjunction of opposites). Those experiences are always a powerful symbol of conjunction of opposites that enters consciousness for a short moment. When we decode the symbol, we always find one of the two pairs of opposites of the Moses quaternio.
In the first transcendent experience, it is always a symbol that illustrate the opposites me v. the universe or me v. God. Edgar Mitchell was the sixth person to walk on the moon as a Apollo 14 crew member. We see the conjunction of the opposites me—universe in his experience:
I had completed my major task for going to the moon and was on my way home and was observing the heavens and the earth from this distance, observing the passing of the heavens. As we were rotated, I saw the earth, the sun, the moon, and a 360-degree panorama of the heavens.
The magnificence of all of this was this trigger in my visioning. In the ancient Sanskrit, it’s called Samadhi. It means that you see things with your senses the way they are–you experience them viscerally and internally as a unity and a oneness accompanied by ecstasy.¹
In the second experience, it is a symbol expressing the merging of the exterior with the interior. One of the best descriptions of that transcendent experience comes from Forrest Reid (1875–1947) who was a Northern Irish novelist and critic. He described his mystical experience as follows:
“It was as if I had never realized before how lovely the world was. I lay down on my back in the warm, dry moss and listened to the skylark singing as it mounted up from the fields near the sea into the dark clear sky. No other music ever gave me the same pleasure as that passionately joyous singing. It was a kind of leaping, exultant ecstasy, a bright, flame-like sound, rejoicing in itself. And then a curious experience befell me. It was as if everything that had seemed to be external and around me were suddenly within me. The whole world seemed to be within me. It was within me that the trees waved their green branches, it was within me that the skylark was singing, it was within me that the hot sun shone, and that the shade was cool.”¹
When one understands those teachings from Jung's AION, he has the key to all his obscure explanations.
¹ From IMERE website.
For further reading, see
Carl Jung's Answer to Job: the Birth of the Self