Edward F. Edinger: Unity and Multiplicity
f unity, singleness, and indivisibility are the hallmarks of individuality, then multiplicity and dispersal must be understood as its opposites, the shadowed twin of the singular self.
This opposition is exemplified in the traditional philosophical problem of the one and the many, a tension that echoes through myth, metaphysics, and the fractured psyche.
We have already seen how the myth of Narcissus can be understood as representing a process which breaks up original unconscious unity and submits it to dismemberment and dispersal, a fragmentation that marks the analytic phase of developing consciousness.
But given a state of psychic fragmentation, a unifying or synthetic phase sets in, and the soul begins its long journey toward recollection, toward the gathering of what was lost.
There are many examples in the Gnostic literature of the image of gathering together that which has been dispersed, as if the soul were a scattered constellation waiting to be redrawn.
For example, in The Gospel of Eve, quoted by Epiphanius, is the following passage:
I stood on a lofty mountain and saw a mighty Man, and another, a dwarf, and heard as it were a voice of thunder, and drew nigh for to hear; and it spake unto me and said: “I am thou and thou are I; and wheresoever thou art I am there and I am sown (or scattered) in all; from whencesoever thou wiliest thou gatherest Me, and gathering Me thou gatherest Thyself.”
The mighty man and the dwarf refer to the theme of “the bigger than big and smaller than small,” which describes the paradoxical nature of the experience of being an individual—both infinitesimal and infinite.
The individual is nothing in collective, statistical terms, but is everything from the inner standpoint, a cosmos unto itself.
The mighty man who is both great and small is the Anthropos, the original Monad, which has undergone dispersal in the process of the incarnation of the ego.
Adaptation to the real world of multiplicity requires attention to and involvement in particulars which fragment the original state of unity, scattering the soul across the landscape of experience.
Our text advises that these scattered fragments must now be gathered together, as if the soul were a broken mirror seeking its own reflection.
In another passage from Epiphanius quoting the Gospel of Philip, the soul is justifying itself as it ascends to the heavenworld:
I have recognized myself and gathered myself together from all sides. I have sown no children to the Ruler, (the Lord of this world), but have torn up his roots; I have gathered together my limbs that were scattered abroad, and I know thee who thou art.
A theological version of the same image is found in Augustine, who writes:
Since through the iniquity of godlessness we have seceded and dissented and fallen away from the one true and highest God and dissipated ourselves into the many split up by the many and cleaving to the many; it was necessary that . . . the many should have joined in clamor for the coming of One (Christ) . . . and, justified in the justice of One, be made One.
Again we have the remarkably psychological expression of the same idea in Origen:
There was one man. We, who are still sinners, cannot obtain this title of praise, for each of us is not one but many . . . See how he who thinks himself one is not one, but seems to have as many personalities as he has moods.
Dispersal or multiplicity as a psychological condition can be seen from either the inner or outer standpoint, each revealing a different face of the same fragmentation.
Seen from within, it is a state of inner fragmentation involving a number of relatively autonomous complexes which, when touched by the ego, cause changes in mood and attitude and make the individual realize that he is not one but many.
From the external standpoint, multiplicity is manifested by the exteriorization or projection of parts of the individual psyche into the outer world, where they take on the form of people, places, and events.
In this condition one finds his friends and his enemies, his hopes and his fears, his sources of support and his threats of failure, concretized in outer persons, objects, and events.
In such a state of dispersal there can be no experience of essential individuality, for one is in thrall to the “ten thousand things,” scattered across the surface of life.
The inner and outer aspects are only two ways of seeing the same fact, two mirrors reflecting the same broken image.
Either way we see it, a process of collecting is needed, a gathering of the soul’s scattered limbs.
This collecting process is what occupies the majority of time in the course of a personal analysis, the slow stitching together of the psychic fabric.
Over and over again the analysant must be able to say and to know, “I am that,” whether he is dealing with a dream image or with an affect-laden projection.
The process of self-collection, or better self-recollection, involves accepting as one’s own all those aspects of being which have been left out in the course of ego development.
Very gradually in the course of this process the realization begins to dawn that there is a unity behind the apparent multiplicity and that indeed it is this pre-existent unity which has motivated the whole arduous task of self-collection in the first place.
A modern dream will illustrate the themes we have been discussing, a vision that condenses the entire chapter into a single image.
The dreamer saw a one-celled organism, a small mass of pulsating protoplasm like an amoeba.
In the center where the nucleus would ordinarily be was a hole.
Through this hole he saw another world, a landscape stretching to a horizon.
Some of the associations that the dreamer had were these:
The one-celled organism reminded the dreamer that life is carried by discrete, individual units, the cells—here is a definite reference to Monad symbolism.
Protoplasm was described as the basic life stuff, the source of all biological urges to survive, the seat of concupiscence and desirousness of all kinds.
The pulsation brought to mind the ebb and flow of the tide, systole and diastole, and the alternation between day and night.
The hole in the center of the cell reminded the dreamer of the rabbit hole which was the entrance to another world in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
The fact that the center of the cell was empty also recalled a passage the dreamer had read in Jung to the effect that traditional religious mandalas have the image of the deity in the center but the center of modern individual mandalas is usually empty.
The overall effect of the hole was described as a window looking into another world, a portal through the pulsating veil of desire.
The dream thus gives us a picture of the Monad in its biological form, the cell, composed of pulsating protoplasm signifying the psyche’s basic hungers, lusts, and urge to live.
At the very center of this trembling mass of concupiscent desires is the window or entrance to the other world, the archetypal psyche.
The implication is that one gets a glimpse of the other world by piercing to the center of the protoplasmic urges, certainly not by rejecting protoplasm.
In other words, the experience of individuality as a transpersonal fact is found at the very center of our personal, selfish urges to power, lust, and self-aggrandisement.
This dream has a parallel in one reported by Jung:
The dreamer found himself with three younger travelling companions in Liverpool. It was night and raining. The air was full of smoke and soot. They climbed up from the harbour to the ‘upper city.’ The dreamer said, ‘It was terribly dark and disagreeable, and we could not understand how anyone could stick it here. We talked about this, and one of my companions said that, remarkably enough, a friend of his had settled here, which astonished everybody. During this conversation we reached a sort of public garden in the middle of the city. The park was square, and in the center was a lake or large pool . . . On it there was a single tree, a red-flowering magnolia, which miraculously stood in everlasting sunshine. I noticed that my companions had not seen this miracle, whereas I was beginning to understand why the man had settled here.’ ~Edward F. Edinger: Ego and Archetype, Page 172-175
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