To Jung, mystical experiences are symbols of conjunction of opposites that enter consciousness for a short moment. The philosopher's stone (lapis) of alchemy is the second mystical experience of the process, the small stone or albedo being the first. Jung was fond of the alchemist Gerhard Dorn because his system contained three successive conjunction of opposites or mystical experiences.
In Mysterium Conjunctionis, he wrote:
“The production of the lapis was the goal of alchemy in general. Dorn was a significant exception, because for him this denoted only the completion of the second stage of conjunction. In this, he agrees with psychological experience. For us the representation of the idea of the self in actual and visible form is a mere rite d’entrée, as it were a propaedeutic action and mere anticipation of its realization.” (CW 14, par. 759)
That second mystical experience is often lived as a conjunction of spirit and matter where the outside world is experienced momentarily as being inside the psyche. In alchemy, this is the hieros gamos (sacred marriage) or the union of the King and the Queen where the King represents the spirit and the Queen, matter. Other names such as filius sol et luna (son of the sun and the moon) or filius philosophorum (son of the philosopher) are also alchemical terms that Jung used to talk about that second mystical experience. But above all, it is the philosopher’s stone or the stone which is not a stone, the lapis philosophorum (the stone of the philosopher). That experience is particularly rare because one must have lived the first experience to access the second one. In Jungian psychology terms, we would say that the shadow and the anima must be integrated to access the second mystical experience.
In the illustrations of the alchemists, we often see the marriage of the king and the queen or the double thing (the rebis) made up of the male and female. The figure below is a good example. It is a symbolic description of the second mystical experience, in other words, the conjunction of spirit and matter.
In this figure, the rebis surmounts the dragon which is always a symbol of the unconscious. It has two heads, one of a man and one of a woman (male and female).
The rebis is a particularly strong symbol of the experience of the Philosopher’s Stone because male and female, king and queen, sun and moon are all symbols of the conjunction of spirit and matter.
Other observations can be made. The four astrological symbols (Jupiter, Saturn, Venus and Mars) in the illustration are Jung’s four archetypes of the quaternio of Moses that appear in the mystical experience. The astrological sign of mercury is in a star that lies between the two heads of the rebis. Mercury is the god of revelation and represents the mystical experience itself. Finally, the sun (spirit) and the moon (matter), on either side of the head of the rebis, show the conjunction of spirit and matter. Note that the rebis is represented in the sky (spirit) and the round earth (matter) is under the dragon both sky and earth are in the oval shape that represents the experience. We should emphasize that the earth has wings and is therefore spiritualized, which means that matter is in spirit. This whole image symbolically illustrates the mystical experience of the philosopher’s stone using the conjunction of male and female, heaven and earth and sun and moon. These symbols and many others were alchemists’ way to illustrate the mystical experiences in the shade of the Inquisition.
Accounts of the second mystical experience are difficult to find but two examples will follow. Thomas Merton’s second mystical experience happened in 1948, at the age of 33. He was in a commercial district at the corner of Fourth and Walnut Streets in Louisville. He says of this experience:
“I was suddenly overwhelmed by the realization that I loved all these people, that they were me and I was them. We were not strangers to each other even though we didn’t know each other. It was like coming out of the dream of duality or the false sense of being alone.”
Here, the characteristics of the second mystical experience appear. The non-duality, the unity of the world where everything is felt as part of oneself somewhat emerge. Forrest Reid (1875–1947) was a Northern Irish novelist and critic. He described his mystical experience as follows:
“It was as if I had never realized before how lovely the world was. I lay down on my back in the warm, dry moss and listened to the skylark singing as it mounted up from the fields near the sea into the dark clear sky. No other music ever gave me the same pleasure as that passionately joyous singing. It was a kind of leaping, exultant ecstasy, a bright, flame-like sound, rejoicing in itself. And then a curious experience befell me. It was as if everything that had seemed to be external and around me were suddenly within me. The whole world seemed to be within me. It was within me that the trees waved their green branches, it was within me that the skylark was singing, it was within me that the hot sun shone, and that the shade was cool.”
For more, see
https://www.academia.edu/119327280/Carl_Jungs_Second_Mystical_Experience_2024c_
