Jung's equation of the ground of being with the ground of psyche.

This paper explores Carl Jung's and the alchemist Gerhard Dorn's concept of the 'unus mundus,' the unified ground of reality. It argues that Jung and Dorn identify this ground with an experience of divinity that is the common origin of both the individual and the whole of existence. The work notes the monistic and pantheistic implications of this experience and amplifies it through the medieval mysticism of Meister Eckhart and Paul Tillich's modern philosophical theology. The authors conclude that the Jungian psychological understanding of ground surpasses monotheistic consciousness and supports a new societal myth that identifies the ground as the source of all divinities. This myth, they argue, is urgently needed to alleviate the threat that monotheistic consciousness poses to human survival.

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Abstract

The paper amplifies Jung's psychology of ground associated with the culmination of the alchemical process in the unus mundus. It argues that Jung and Dorn identify the experience of the ground with the experience of divinity as the common originary source of individual and totality. It notes the monistic and pantheistic implications of the experience and goes on to amplify the experience through Eckhart's mediaeval mysticism of ground and Paul Tillich's modern philosophical/theological understanding of ground. It concludes that the Jung/Dorn psychological understanding of ground supersedes monotheistic consciousness. Their vision supports the emergence of a societal myth based on the identification of the ground as the source of all divinities and faith in them. This source currently urges a mythic consciousness that would surpass its past and current concretions and so alleviate the threat that monotheistic consciousness in any domain now poses to human survival.