The article Experiencing the Unus Mundus¹ was published in Psychological Perspectives in 2021. This paper reflects the lamentable state of Jungian psychology today. Its author, Christophe Le Mouël, writes
In Jung’s understanding, the unus mundus is the invisible thrust bringing together the one and the other, whether this opposition takes the form of the female and the male; matter and psyche; or any other conflicting realities. It is a mundus; that is, a world “which the unconscious sees and seeks to produce” (Jung & Pauli, 2001, p. 129), and a psychological reality for the individual who is united with himself. Simply worded: “facing the person who is united with himself is an unus mundus” (Jung & Pauli, 2001, p. 157). In a mysterious way, such a person brings together heaven and earth and becomes a living embodiment of a Sophianic presence. (P. 440)
In this quote, the author seems to have missed the core meaning of the conjunction of opposites and its links with alchemist Gerard Dorn's unus mundus. Below, a few notions will help the reader understand Jung's teachings on those matters.
Dorn's mention of the unus mundus as well the conjunction of opposites is linked to mystical experiences. That was also Jung's interpretation. Those phenomena are always centered on symbols that express the conjunction of opposites. The symbol appear for a short moment in consciousness with an extreme numinosity. Jung's theory is that those experiences are part of the advanced stages of the individuation process. In Mysterium Conjunctionis, he wrote:
“Experience shows that the union of antagonistic elements is an irrational occurrence which can fairly be described as ‘mystical,’ provided that one means by this an occurrence that cannot be reduced to anything else or regarded as in some way unauthentic.” (CW 14, par. 515)
C. G. Jung had two mystical experiences. The first one in December 1913 and the second in June 1917. In AION, he describes the particularities of those experiences. The first experience is a symbol of conjunction of opposites illustrating the merging of the particle with the whole. He used two figures of the Moses' quaternio to illustrate those opposites: Jethro and Zipporah which represent the father and the daughter. Those two opposites have numerous equivalences which always show the opposition of the macrocosm with the microcosm (and because the parent is seen as the whole world by the child). In mystical experiences, the symbol of conjunction of those opposites is often lived as being one with God, the universe, Nature, the Light, etc. In Jung's experience, it was his becoming the leontocephalus or Aion god and having the posture of the crucified Christ at the end of his active imagination of December 26th, 1913. This was the symbol of conjunction of the opposites me-God.
An example of this symbol of conjuction of opposites comes from Barbara Ehrenreich (born August 26, 1941), an American author and political activist. She describes her mystical experience in the following manner:
“[S]omething happened when I was 17 that shook my safely rationalist worldview and left me with a lifelong puzzle … that morning in 1959 when I stepped out alone, [I] walked into the streets of Lone Pine, Calif., and saw the world – the mountains, the sky, the low scattered buildings – suddenly flame into life.
There were no visions, no prophetic voices or visits by totemic animals, just this blazing everywhere. Something poured into me and I poured out into it. This was not the passive beatific merger with “the All,” as promised by the Eastern mystics. It was a furious encounter with a living substance that was coming at me through all things at once, too vast and violent to hold on to, too heartbreakingly beautiful to let go of. It seemed to me that whether you start as a twig or a gorgeous tapestry, you will be recruited into the flame and made indistinguishable from the rest of the blaze. I felt ecstatic and somehow completed but also shattered.”*
According to Jung, the second mystical experience shows the conjunction of the opposites exterior-interior and is represented by the figures of Moses and Myriam in the quaternio. The symbol is felt as if the whole exterior world is inside the mind of the experiencer. That particular experience was the goal of the alchemical process and is known as the conjunction of spirit and matter. In alchemy, it is depicted as the sun (spirit) and the moon (matter), the hermaphrodite, the homunculus, the rebis, the union of the king (spirit) and the queen (matter), etc. When Jung uses the expression filius sol et luna (son of the sun and the moon), he refers to that particular symbol appearing in the second mystical experience. We know Jung did realized this experience because of the stone he carved in his Bollingen retreat as a token of his appreciation².
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| The Bollingen stone |
“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.”*
What was appealing to Jung in Gerard Dorn's writings was that a third conjunction of opposites was possible after the first two (CW 14, par. 759). For Dorn, the first conjunction is the unio mentalis and it corresponds to the conjunction of the opposites particle-whole. The second one is the lapis philosophorum or philosopher's stone, the conjunction of matter (exterior world) and spirit and the third is the rotundum, the mysterium conjunctionis according to Jung. Jung writes
It is significant for the whole of alchemy that in Dorn’s view a mental union was not the culminating point but merely the first stage of the procedure. The second stage is reached when the mental union, that is, the unity of spirit and soul, is conjoined with the body. But a consummation of the mysterium coniunctionis can be expected only when the unity of spirit, soul, and body is made one with the original unus mundus. (CW 14, par. 664)
To Dorn, the rotundum is the conjunction of the integral man, the one who has achieved the second mystical experience with the unus mundus. This unus mundus is not a metaphysical and hidden reality where all the opposites are in conjunction, neither is it the collective unconscious. The unus mundus is the res simplex, the simple thing. Jung writes
The One and Simple is what Dorn called the unus mundus, This “one world” was the res simplex. For him the third and highest degree of conjunction was the union of the whole man with the unus mundus. (CW 14, par. 760)
The unus mundus is pretty easy to illustrate. The first and the second mystical experience are merged in the third as Jung shows in AION. If the first bears the symbol I am one with the universe or God, and if the second one is the universe is in me, the third conjunction is I am God which also corresponds to the mystical union of the Christian mystics. The symbol "I am God" shows the simplest thing where all opposites are merged in the symbol God.
Of course, the symbols appearing in mystical experiences are only symbols and do not mean anything metaphysical. As we know from the study of dreams, the mind produces symbols that do not have a metaphysical meaning. They always represent psychological states or processes. It is also the case with mystical experiences. Those symbols represent normal but rare psychological states that Jung linked to a consciously performed individuation process.
Jungians are generally attracted to mysterious and inexplicable things. Their world is magical, visionary and fantastic. That is why they love Jung. But this worldview has a price which prevents them, most of the time, to see what is in front of them. As such, they have great difficulties to get to a logical conclusion that is not steeped in metaphysical lore. When they comment Jung's writings on alchemy and Gnostiscism, they always show their incapacity to decode the core of Jung's message. Speaking of Jung's hieros gamos vision of 1944 after his heart attack, Le Mouël writes in the same article
Jung’s visionary experience of the conjunction of opposites appears as a new birth within the beatific womb of a unitary reality, the unus mundus. It provides an essential restoration of Jung’s life after the bond between his body and psyche had been almost irremediably cut. (P. 439)
The delirium during Jung's sickness is only the recalling and mixing of images seen many times and it is definitely not linked to a new birth and a restoration of Jung's life. This is a misunderstanding of Jung's life and writings. The real life changing experience occurred on December 26, 1913 not in 1944. It was this experience that lead Jung to study Gnosticism and alchemy.
In Mysterium Conjunctionis (1956), Jung wrote:
“For thirty years I have studied these psychic processes under all possible conditions and have assured myself that the alchemists as well as the great philosophies of the East are referring to just such experiences, and that it is chiefly our ignorance of the psyche if these experiences appear ‘mystic.’” (CW 14, ¶ 762)
This is the proof that it was not the vision of 1944 that changed Jung's life because his study of mystical experiences or conjunction of opposites has already begun thirty years prior to the book Mysterium Conjunctionis. After his 1913 and 1917 mystical experiences, Jung's lifelong goal was to find if those experiences had ever been mentioned in historical traditions. He first found that Gnosticism was about the gnosis resulting from those experiences. Ten years later, he recognized in alchemy, the continuation of Gnosticism according to him, the symbolic depiction of his two mystical experiences. His books become surprisingly clear when we consider this factor.
Sadly, none of the contributors to the #64:4 (2021) of Psychological Perspectives on the unus mundus has shown any understanding of Jung's interpretation of Dorn's writings, a sign of the lamentable state of Analytical psychology today. It is surprising that Jungians, who are easily attracted to ghosts, astrology, tarot, UFO, mysteries, and other New Age pseudoscientific interests, have not been able to consider the logical conclusion that Jung could have been speaking about mystical experiences all along.
Is Analytical psychology a science? I will let you think about that and reach your own conclusion.
B. R.
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¹Christophe Le Mouël (2021) Experiencing the Unus Mundus, Psychological Perspectives, 64:4, 437-442
² See Carl Jung's Second Mystical Experience (2024c) on Academia.org
* Both accounts of mystical experience come from IMERE website.