Alchemical Stages
The third and highest degree of conjunction was the union of the whole man with the unus mundus . . .
the potential world of the first day of creation, when nothing was yet “in actu,” i.e. divided into two and many but was still
one. . .
the eternal Ground of all empirical being. . . .
The third degree of conjunction is universal: it is relation or identity of the personal with the supra-personal
atman, and of the individual Tao with the universal Tao. . . .
He [the alchemist Dorn] expressly meant not a fusion of the individual with his environment, or even his adaptation Undoubtedly the idea of the unus mundus is founded on the assumption that the multiplicity of the empirical world rests on an underlying unity. . .
everything different and divided belongs to one and the same world. . . .
All that is not encompassed by our knowledge, so that we are not in a position to make any statements about its total nature. . . .
But this much we do know beyond all doubt, that empirical reality has a transcendental background.
. . . The common background of microphysics and depth psychology is as much physical as psychic and therefore neither, but rather a third thing, a neutral nature which can at most be grasped in hints since in essence it is transcendental.
. . . The transcendental psychophysical background corresponds to a “potential world.”. . .
The third and highest conjunction. . . would consist, psychologically, in a synthesis of the conscious with the unconscious.
The result of this conjunction or equation is theoretically inconceivable, since a known quantity is combined with an unknown one; but in practice as many far reaching changes of consciousness result from it as atomic physics has produced in classical physics. . . .
Not unnaturally, we are at a loss to see how a psychic experience of this kind – for such it evidently was – can be formulated as a rational concept.
Undoubtedly it was meant as the essence of perfection and universality, and, as such, it characterized an experience of similar proportions.
We could compare this only with the ineffable mystery of the unio mystica, or Tao, or the content of Samadhi, or the experience of satori in Zen, which would bring us to the realm of the ineffable and of extreme subjectivity where all the criteria of reason fail.
Remarkably enough this experience is an empirical one in so far as there are unanimous testimonies from the East and West alike, both from the present and from the distant past, which confirm its unsurpassable subjective significance. . . .
It is and remains a secret of the world of psychic experience and can be understood only as a numinous event. ~Carl Jung, CW 14, Pages 767-771.
Image:
Chakrasamvara and Vajravarahi in Union Painting on cotton, Nepal, c. 1450
The union of Tantric deities can embody unio mystica at the levels of the synthesis of opposites: the conscious and unconscious, the personal with the supra-personal.
