SECTION D

Marie-Louise von Franz, Number and Time

SELECTIONS
"In the final analysis the idea of an unus mundus [one world] is founded, as he [Jung] says:
"on the assumption that the multiplicity of the empirical world rests on an underlying unity
... . [E]verything divided and different belongs to one and the same world ... . [Jung,
Mysterium Coniunctionis, CW 14, pars. 767-770]
"... Jung stresses, however, that there is little or no hope of illuminating this undivided existence
except through antinomies. But we do know for certain that the empirical world of appearances
is in some way based on a transcendental background. [Footnote: In the sense of 'transcending
consciousness.' I will always use the word 'transcendental' in this sense.] It is this background
which, suddenly as it were, falls into our conscious world through synchronistic happenings." p. 9
"Although the nonperceptual potential continuum or unus mundus appears to exist outside time,
certain dynamic manifestations of it break through into our ordinary temporal sphere in the form
of synchronistic occurrences." p. 11.
"It is not by chance that these models frequently take the form of double mandalas. They all
represent attempts to throw light on the transcendental unity of existence in both a timeless and a
time-bound aspect. The fact that more differentiated models of the unus mundus are double
mandalas and that they are especially liable to appear when the problem of time and synchronicity
becomes constellated, is presumably related to the function of number two as a threshold
phenomenon." p. 95
"It is as if we are more inclined to ask the unknown 'What shall I do?,' while the East prefers the
question: 'To what total order does my conduct belong?'" p. 120
"Jung used the expression unus mundus to designate the transcendental unitary reality underlying
the dualism of psyche and matter. The idea of such a unity behind all existence is based on an
archetypal foundation. The expression unus mundus originated in medieval natural philosophy,
where it denoted the timeless, preexistent, cosmic plan or antecedent world model, potential in
God's mind, according to which he realized actual creation. Joannes Scotus Erigena, for instance,
describes the process of creation (in imitation of Dionysius the Areopagite) as a transition of the
excellence of God's seminal power from a 'nothingness which lies beyond all being and nonbeing,
into forms innumerable.' This God accomplishes by means of his Wisdom (through the Son
'through whom he knows himself''). These 'causae primordiales' know themselves, for they were
created in Wisdom and remain eternally in her. The Sapientia Dei [wisdom of God] or Sophia is a
kind of primal unity, a uni-form image which reproduces herself, yielding a multitude of primal
forms, which abide simultaneously in the unity. These 'primal forms' possess self-consciousness;
Joannes Scotus Erigena also calls them the 'rationes rerum,' 'ideae,' or 'prototypa' of all existent
things. Hugo de St. Victor likewise termed the Sapientia Dei the 'exemplar' of the universe, or the
'archetypus mundus' in God's mind, in whose pattern the visible world was created. ...

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"A notion similar to that of medieval theologians is also to be found in the works of certain
alchemists. But they did not only conceive of the unus mundus as the initial plan of the universe
existing in God's mind; for them it was also identical with the goal they were seeking, the lapis.
It, like the res simplex or the philosophers' stone, was the one world. According to Paracelsus'
pupil, Gerhard Dorn, the highest grade of the alchemical coniunctio consisted in the union of the
total man with the unus mundus.
"The medieval philosophers merely ascribed potential reality to the 'one world' ... ; Jung also
stresses the fact that he views the unitary reality underlying synchronistic phenomena as a
'potential' reality 'in so far as all those conditions which determine the form of empirical
phenomena are inherent to it.' [CW 14, par. 769] The phenomena of synchronicity, however,
represent sporadic actualizations of this unitary world. In contradistinction to the medieval
speculations, synchronistic phenomena provide us, as Jung emphasizes, with empirical evidence
of the existence of such a unus mundus." [CW 14, pars. 767f.] pp. 171-174
"[S]ynchronistic events appear to be linked up with an individual's inner development and in
some way dependent on it." p. 190
"In Mysterium Coniunctionis, [CW 14, par. 662] Jung made the important statement that the
mandala is the inner psychic counterpart, and synchronistic phenomena the parapsychological
equivalent, of the unus mundus." p. 195
"[T]he unconscious actually appears to contain a kind of 'knowledge' which is not identical with
ego consciousness. In his paper 'On the Nature of the Psyche,' [CW 8] Jung took great pains to
demonstrate that the archetypes of the unconscious possess a kind of 'quasi intelligence' which is
not the same as our ego consciousness. Jung applied the term 'luminosity' to this quasi
consciousness of the archetypes, in order to differentiate it from the 'light' of ego consciousness.
The same phenomenon can be observed from another angle when a synchronistic occurrence
takes place. Inner and outer facts then behave as if their meaningful relation were in some
way known, but not to our personal consciousness. Differently expressed, a 'meaning'
manifests itself in synchronistic phenomena which appears to be independent of
consciousness and to be completely transcendental. [CW 8, par. 948] It consists of
representational images ... , and its appearances seems to be connected with the momentary
activation of an archetype manifesting itself simultaneously in physical and psychic realms in the
form of acausal orderedness. [CW 8, pa. 965] The meaning that unites these inner and outer
happenings consists of knowledge unmediated by the sense organs. This quality of knowledge is
what Jung calls 'absolute knowledge,' since it seems to be detached from our consciousness. [CW
8, par. 148] In other words, although the initial significance of a synchronistic event can only be
experienced subjectively, the fact of a meaningful coincidence on psychic and physical levels
suggests that the meaning may also have been originally present in the objective event itself;
something rational or similar to meaning may inhere in the event itself. [CW 8, pars. 921923]

"The idea that meaning lies concealed in events themselves was, as Richard Wilhelm has
shown, predominant in earliest Chinese culture. We also come across it in the West, in Heraclitus'

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conception of logos, to mention one example. Another version of this view is to be found in the
Aristotelian idea of the nous poietikos, an active intelligence inherent in the physical universe
which is secondarily manifest in the human soul as the 'natural light' and is capable of
influencing man's thinking.
"In his work on synchronicity, Jung cites a number of other thinkers, both ancient and medieval,
who believed in ... a correspondentia or sympathy of all things, whose 'meaning' lay hidden in
objective phenomena of the outer world and could be investigated with the help of mantic
procedures. These are the residue of a primitive magical thinking which has been more or less
eliminated in the development of our more exact modern sciences. In the course of the
development of these sciences, however, the baby has, as so often before, been thrown out with
the bathwater, so that the directly observable manifestations of 'absolute knowledge' in the
collective unconscious have also been thrown away." pp. 199-201
"Jung ... describes genuine synchronistic phenomena as 'parapsychological,' marginal phenomena
which are only observable when our ego consciousness becomes 'dimmed.' This would mean that
the luminosity of a constellated archetype, which shines forth in the 'meaning' of a synchronistic
event, increases its energetic charge in proportion to the degree that the light concentration of ego
consciousness diminished ... ." p. 225
"[T]he use of a divinatory oracle represents an attempt to induce a spontaneous manifestation of
the ... autonomous spirit by offering him 'his' speech ... . By means of the chance throw of coins
or twigs, a 'hole' is introduced into the field of consciousness through which the autonomous
dynamism of the collective unconscious can break in." pp. 226f.
"[A]ccording to Jung, the manifestation of an archetype in synchronistic phenomena can appear
both as an 'act of creation in time' and as the 'eternal presence of this single act.'" p. 254
"The God Shiva ... bore the title of Maha-K la ('great time') or K la Rudra ('all-consuming time').
As Heinrich Zimmer remarks, he symbolized the energy of the universe, the forms in which he
revealed himself eternally creating, preserving, and destroying. The personification of Shiva as
time was later incorporated into another image, the goddess K li (a word signifying the feminine
form of k la, 'time'), who represented his activating energy (shakti). With good reason Hermann
Gntert equates the world k la with the Greek kairos which means 'to attach the thread of a web
together.' In this sense kairos signifies the 'right order' in time. The association of kairos with the
goddesses weaving time alludes once again, we must mention in passing, to the idea of a 'field' in
which 'meaningful connections' are interwoven like threads of a fabric." pp. 255f.

"When such a constellation exists and eternity breaks through momentarily into our temporal
system, the primal unity actively manifests itself and temporarily unites the double structures into
one, so to speak. This is how the unus mundus becomes revealed in the phenomenon of
synchronicity." 263
Concerning the divinity Fa and the soul, ye, in the beliefs of the Fon tribe of West Africa: "Every
living person possesses an invisible soul (ye), but he does not understand its meaning; 'therefore

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whoever seeks the mystery of his life must for this reason approach Fa. He is called Fa and is the
only principle (ye) which can reveal the truth about the greater life.'" p. 267
"According to certain ideas of the alchemists, the individuated human being who has become
unified must join himself to this mercurial spirit, 'not with the world of multiplicity ... but with a
potential world, the eternal foundation of all empirical experience ... '" p. 270
[A] preconscious spiritual order lies at the base of all love relationships. Because there seems to
exist such a spiritual 'objective' order at the base of Eros, it is expressed in the seemingly abstract,
feelingless, impersonal order of numbers, as a clear, immutable factor free from illusions." p. 293
The "cosmic ordering of the Self constitutes the ultimate mystery behind all human desire and
behavior, an unfathomable and fearsome mystery.
"The dead, according to many people's beliefs, concern themselves with this inexorable objective
order behind all existence." p. 293
"According to ... myths the dead occupied themselves with the primal ordering of existence, in
which all things lie in their natural order beyond the realm of the wishes and desires haunting our
ego and its temporal earthly existence." p. 298
Behind synchronicity "lies the operation of a cosmic Eros which corresponds to an individual's
urge to individuation and which, paradoxically, leads men in the end to a state of universal
relatedness with existence." p. 299
"Since the concept of the unus mundus transcends consciousness, it is represented in mankind's
historical Weltanschauungen by symbols, which most frequently consist of a double mandala
portraying both the timeless and time-bound order of existence. While the timeless order seems
to relate to the general concept of acausal orderedness in the physical and psychic realms, the
time-bound order refers more to peripheral phenomena, such as synchronistic happenings, that are
creative acts in time. The timeless acausal orderedness lies at the base of all transmittable
information and cognition processes operating in man, and the time-bound synchronistic
phenomena underlie those individually experienced messages of the unconscious which can only
be adequately interpreted by the individual. The two systems are incommensurable, and because
of this they form a fitting symbol for the ultimate unity of existence as a coincidentia
oppositorum. In their mirrored images, as one reality reflects off the other, lies the mystery of
their experienceability by the individual." pp. 304f.
bold emphases mine
CW = The Collected Works of C.G. Jung