The
Psychic Continuum
For Jung the unus mundus is not, to be sure, a mere metaphor; it is a very real
world which subsumes the world of our everyday experience.
For Jung the unus mundus is specifically the world of the psychoid archetype -
the unitary world whose tangible presence is the synchronistic patterning of
events in nature. (Aziz, 1990, p. 133)
Jung (1981) says that the psyche actually lies in an objective continuum,
one parallel to our spacetime continuum, which he calls "a psychically
relative space-time continuum" (p. 231). Jung (1981) together with the
physicist, Wolfgang Pauli, proposed the model shown below.
Space-Time
Continuum
This model suggests that
synchronicity, like causality, unites energy with our space-time continuum.
Because chaos and order also maintain an acausal relationship, we can rewrite
Jung's model as shown below.
Space-Time Continuum
The vertical line of both models represents Einstein's famous equation,
E=mc2 which mathematically relates energy and matter. The
horizontal line of the second model expresses the relationship between order and
chaos, which is similar in kind to the causality/sychronicity relationship in
Jung's original model. According to Jung (1981), since causality is not
absolute, but rather is statistical, causality only holds true for averages
while leaving room for exceptions to occur on an individual basis. These
exceptions allow for synchronistic events.
Consciousness can enter the psychic continuum where it can experience a
synchronistic event, and then return to the physical space-time continuum where
causality regains control. According to Jung (1973a), this explains most
reported ESP experiences. Aziz
(1990) explains:
Just as the psyche as a whole
is understood by Jung to function in a unitary manner in relationship to the
central archetype, the self, so too for Jung does the unus mundus function as a unitary substrate coextensive with nature
in its entirety. (p. 177)
The Self must sacrifice itself for the good of the ego. It intervenes at
times of crises, for example, in order to compensate the ego. Both the ego and
the Self make sacrifices: the Self
in descending to the level of the ego in order to guide it, and the ego in
allowing itself to be assimilated by the Self (Aziz, 1990; Edinger, 1974).
Jung (1981) concludes that “psyche and matter are two different aspects
of one and the same thing” (p. 215). Aziz (1990) points out that when Jung
described the inherent oneness of psyche and matter, he was greatly influenced
by modern physics and especially quantum mechanics which demonstrates that the
observer always influences what is being observed. Since Jung’s day, quantum
physics has gone even farther, and today it questions our basic assumptions
about space-time itself: “There are some indications that, when explored at
very short distances, space-time will cease to be smooth” (Naschie, Rossler
& Prigogine, 1995, p. 101).
The archetype is not a strictly intra-psychic factor, but rather should
be regarded as constituting a “psychophysical continuum of meaning, being
unrestricted by spacial or temporal limitations” (Aziz, 1960, p. 58). Finally,
Jung (1984) writes: “We conclude therefore that we have to expect a factor in
the psyche that is not subject to the laws of time and space, as it is on the
contrary capable of suppressing them to a certain extent” (p. 165).