Carl Jung, alchemy, and the integration of opposites

 

Mysterium Conjunctionis  is the last great work of Carl Jung, which he finished in his eightieth year. The book gives a final account of his research into alchemy, and is in many ways a summing up of his thought world. The subtitle shows the point of the book: An inquiry into the separation and synthesis of psychic opposites in alchemy. Examples of such opposites in the book are the king and the queen, Adam and Eve, the sun and the moon. Other universal opposites are thought and emotion, mind and body, culture and nature. The process of synthesis of the opposites in alchemy may be symbolically understood as the process of psychic integration, ie. connecting with the parts of the psyche which has been split apart because of social adjustment, trauma or other experiences. Integration includes according to Jung both the individual and collective unconscious, and implies connecting with our wholeness, becoming whole.

To Jung, alchemy is a tradition which originated in Egypt, and has impacted many different traditions like e.g. Gnosticism, Kabbalah and the mysticism of the great religions. Alchemy seems to be about physical or chemical processes, but its language hides deep secrets: Alchemy is actually about processes of the psyche. In a way its about how to connect with the timeless and divine core of reality, which is beyond the polarities of the world in time and space. This dimension of eternity or timelessness is described in many different ways in the great traditions. One of my favourites is the famous poem by the Sufi mystic Rumi: "Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field.  I'll meet you there. When the soul lies down in that grass, the world is too full to talk about. Ideas, language, even the phrase each other doesn't make any sense."

The process of integration is important on an individual level, and we work with our inner longing for wholeness in many different ways through our lives. Some people search explicitly through practices like meditation, bodywork, or therapy, others work to connect with themselves through the activities of everyday life. Integration of suppressed parts will often imply more vitality and flow in our lives. The liberation of the energy which was trapped in inner conflicts between different parts of ourselves, may create a deep experience of aliveness, connection and new possibilities.

To Jung the process of integration was also a process in the collective, and he saw himself as a healer of the collective. He said that the western culture was imbalanced, e.g. expressed through its image of God which was too focused on the light, and hence the dimensions of darkness was suppressed into the cultural shadow. This lack of integration of opposites and imbalances in the collective psyche, led as Jung saw it, to the two world wars in his lifetime.

I wonder what Jung would have said about what is going on today in the world, about Putin’s war, about the environmental crisis and the pandemic. I imagine he would have read the situation as symptoms of deep imbalances in the psyche of individuals in power like Putin, and also in the collective psyche. Some parts are fighting other parts, and the conflicts are threatening the survival of humanity on many levels. The question is, how can we work to integrate the opposites, in ourselves and in the world?