The Coniunctio in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

View PDF

From at least the seventeenth century and perhaps from as early as the writings of the pre-Socratics, Western thought has been plagued with a radical dualism which has severed one area of activity and experience from another in such a way that many people now live an “either/or” existence which is less than satisfying and which diminishes the richness of the human experience. The separation of mind from body, spirit from matter, subject from object can be subsumed under the broader paradigm of myth/history. Only occasionally in Western thought have the worlds of rational, linear, thought and of relational, intuitive or imaginative insight been brought consciously together in the works of a single writer. More often, poets and mystics were left to themselves while scientists and historians pursued the “real” facts. This means that fully one half of human experience has been written out of our academic tradition. The depth dimension of existence, that which sees meaning in the fact that God moved, acted, and made known his will on the historical plane, has all but vanished from the perceived reality of a large number of people. (This fact is made distinctly clear to me each semester when, as a teacher of religious studies in a public university, I attempt to get students to come to some understanding of the Numinous or the Holy as Rudolph Otto defines it. For the most part, there is nothing in their experiences which allows them to grasp the meaning of the term.) 

Nevertheless, there remain a few Western writers in whose work this radical dualism is blunted. Two schools of thought stand out in which the overcoming of this division is a central theme or goal. 

The goal of the analytic psychology of C. G. Jung is “centroversion” or learning to live at the intersection of opposites. Throughout his work, Jung refers to this end as individuation, centroversion, recognition of the coinci dentia oppositorum, or, most frequently, as the realization of the archetype of the coniunctio.[1] In developing centroversion or, it may be said, in actualizing the archetypal coniunctio an individual attains psychic health or a secular form of salvation. 

In religious thought it is possible to see, in the New Dispensation Philosophy of Joseph Smith, the archetypal coniunctio.[2] I use the term “New Dispensation Philosophy” to represent an orderly arrangement of the teachings of Joseph Smith, the prophet of the New Dispensation. The method ology used to attain a coming together or coniunctio of myth and history is called mythohistory.[3] This method is a conjunction of opposites attempts to elicit meaning from history by reading and writing it through the double prism of rational thought and of imagination or mythopoiesis. The intent in using Jungian thought and LDS doctrine together has not been to show either that there is something of Jung in Joseph Smith or of Joseph Smith in Jung. Rather, the purpose is to place two thought forms in juxtaposition, one psychological, the other theological, to elicit meaning from and to elaborate on each discipline so that our understanding of both is greater than our understanding of the parts. 

According to Doctrine and Covenants 131:7,8, 

There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes; . . . we cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified we shall see that it is all matter. 

This scripture says that what we call spirit coexists, from the beginning, with matter. As Joseph Smith said, “The intelligence of spirits had no beginning, neither will it have an end,”[4] which is to point out that, in LDS doctrine, spirit and matter are visualized as being paired, or as forming a coniunctio. 

In addition to acknowledging this conjunction of what will initially appear to be opposites but which will come to be seen as a “divine pair,” New Dispensation Philosophy recognizes both experience and thought as avenues to knowledge and both channels of knowledge as mutually complementary and indispensable. We read that “knowledge is not all produced by the action of outward things upon themselves, but partly arises from the natural adaptation of the mind to think things that are true. . . . “[5]

These ideas of the New Dispensation are related to several ideas in the work of Carl Jung, the archetypes being comparable to the “natural adaptation of the mind to think things that are true,” which is to say, universally true because they can be verified in lived experience rather than projected in pure logic only. 

Concomitantly, New Dispensation philosophy recognizes two planes of existence which may be compared to the distinctions usually made between the planes or territories of myth and of history: 

Beginnings and endings for New Dispensation thought have reference to local events within the universe. Such as the creation of a planet, or planetary system; or the peopling of a planet. The opening verse of the Bible for instance—”In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth”—has no reference to any “absolute beginning” or creation from “nothing,” but refers to the “beginning” connected with our earth and the order of worlds with which it is connected.[6] 

We can see in this assertion the recognition of two realms of experience and of two kinds of time. The first realm is one of mythic experience and cyclical time comparable to the “absolute beginning,” while the second comprises the historical time of the “beginning connected with our earth” and is marked in linear time.[7]

The outcome of this LDS thought is neither a radical monism nor a radical dualism but instead is given the term “Eternalism” in which time and eternity (history and myth) are seen to be contiguous but not identical. In other words, LDS philosophy is, from the first, grounded in the conjunc tion of myth and history, and it is expected that time and eternity are in necessary dialogue with one another. 

This theme of coniunctio, or coincidence of opposites, permeates LDS thought with the hope and promise of “getting it all together.” Man is perceived to have pre-existed this life in the spirit world; but since there are experiences which are not available to a pure spirit form (physical pain, pleasure, death and so on), it becomes necessary to take upon oneself a mortal probationary period during which one lives in a body, or, as the doctrine will have it, the spirit is housed in the tabernacle of the body. I wish to refer to this initial conjunction or coming together of body and spirit as the “first order” coniunctio. It is the first of several conjunctions which are necessary steps toward salvation or exaltation, the highest form of salvation recognized by the Church. 

There is yet another step in this procession of conjunctions. When the body dies, spirit and body are once more separated but, the doctrine claims, all bodies will be resurrected and re-united with their spirits. That is, all but a few: 

The spirits of devils have been deprived of bodies, and that constitutes their curse, that is to say, speaking after the manner of men, you shall be wanderers on the earth, you have got to live out of doors all the time you live.[8]

The curse then, is the separation of body from spirit or the absence of the conjunction of opposites. A devil is one without the possibility of conjunc tion. A god is one who has attained the coniunctio. 

The spirit that the Lord puts into a tabernacle of flesh, is under the dictation of the Lord Almighty; but the spirit and body are united in order that the spirit may have a tabernacle, and be exalted; and the spirit is influenced by the body, and the body by the spirit.[9]

What the world calls death does not, in the Mormon mind, destroy the body. The material of it will be reorganized. What occurs is a temporary separation of body and spirit which will once again be reunited in one of three kingdoms. Only those who blaspheme against the Holy Ghost are cast out, that is, do not attain one of these kingdoms. That is, those who have heard and believed the word and then turn against it—in effect departing from the coincidence of opposites and tension in order to embrace only one pole of the opposition—will experience permanent separation and no hope of conjunction. More will be said of this later. It is sufficient to point out that the person who acts in such a manner is denying what he knows to be true and therefore cannot attain to psychic wholeness or salvation. This person is not what he knows himself to be. He is in a sense separated from his Self. 

So far I have discussed two conjunctions, both concerned with the joining of body and spirit. The first occurs upon earthly birth, the second, after the resurrection. Before this life we were without bodies and thus not whole nor ready for “exaltation.” Upon death we are once again separated from our earthly bodies. The spirit then continues its work in the spirit world until such time as the second conjunction will occur, and the body (this time glorified) will be reunited with the spirit and will enter the eternal kingdoms. 

The doctrine of the LDS Church which best exemplifies the ever recurring theme of coniunctio is that of the New and Everlasting Covenant of Marriage—sometimes referred to as Celestial Marriage since it continues on into the Celestial Kingdom. 

From the Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith we read: 

Except a man and his wife enter into an everlasting covenant and be married for eternity, while in this probation, by the power and authority of the Holy Priesthood, they will cease to increase when they die; that is, they will not have any children after the resurrection. But those who are married by the power and authority of the priesthood in this life, and continue without committing the sin against the Holy Ghost, will continue to increase and have children in the celestial glory.[10]

Further we read: 

in order to obtain the highest, a man must enter into this order of the priesthood (meaning the new and everlasting convenant of marriage): and if he does not, he cannot obtain it.[11]

Then shall they be gods, because they have no end; therefore shall they be from everlasting to everlasting, because they continue; then shall they be above all, because all things are subject to them. Then shall they be gods, because they have all power, and the angels are subject to them.[12]

The wholeness or fullness of salvation can come only when the male and female aspects of being are unified, that is, when male and female convenant to be bound together in both the historical and the eternal (or mythological) realms. When this quaternity or double coniunctio of male/female, heaven/earth is brought about, it becomes as god and goddess being given their own planet or world to create and populate.[13] Thereafter, they together have eternal increase. 

This doctrine of the Church, however, depends not simply upon a man and woman contracting marriage in the temple. It depends also upon their keeping the covenants they have made to be faithful. Only when they have followed the covenants on the historical plane (that is, in the mortal probationary period when spirit and matter are together for the first time) can they reach exaltation on the mythological plane and become god and goddess in the second coniunctio of spirit and matter. 

To review thus far: three things are at work here. At two distinct points spirit and matter, body and soul, are united. First, in the mortal probationary period here on earth; secondly, after the resurrection in the eternal kingdoms. And thirdly, there is a vastly superior coniunctio of husband and wife, male and female (yin and yang), which, depending upon their actions in the historical realm, will bring them into the highest state of exaltation in the celestial kingdom or in the mythological realm. Here we see that two realms cannot be separated without forfeiting salvation. 

All of this doctrine runs parallel to the idea of coniunctio described by Carl Jung when he talks about the joining of anima and animus in order to reach wholeness of Self. Wholeness, individuation or “centroversion” in Jung’s work entails the conjunction of consciousness and unconsciousness and is comparable to exaltation in LDS doctrine. The double nature of the Mormon coniunctio is noticeably akin to the coniunctio of the alchemists who, Jung believes, were actually seeking through the gross elements of alchemy an inner transformation not at all unlike the transformation or conversion which the Church desires for its followers. 

In Jung’s thought, the Self image is the God image or is the inner empirical deity. Man is, indeed, made in the image of God. The Self (that is, the psyche/soul and not merely the conscious ego self) expresses itself in “mandala” symbols or symbols of wholeness and conjunction. Edward Edinger in Ego and Archetype says, 

Such themes as wholeness, totality, the union of opposites, the central generative point, the world navel, the axis of the universe, the creative point where God and man meet, the point where transpersonal energies flow into personal life, eternity as opposed to the temporal flux, incorruptibility, the inorganic united paradoxically with the organic, protective structures capable of bringing order out of chaos, the transformation of energy, the elixir of life—all refer to the Self, the central source of life energy, the fountain of our being which is most simply described as God. Indeed, the richest sources for the phenomenological study of the Self are in the innumerable representations that man has made of the deity.[14]

In other words, if we wish to look at our Selves, our best source for doing so is religion. 

The Self at its highest and best is, for Jung, experienced and symbolized as the union of opposites, conscious and unconscious, anima and animus. In the LDS church it is this union of opposites on both the historical and mythological levels or in time and eternity which, accompanied by the sealing of the Holy Spirit of Promise, allows men and women to be as gods. 

Compare this with the thought of an earlier theologian. Augustine distinguishes between the God-image in Christ and the image implanted in man as the possibility of becoming like God. 

The God image is within, not in the body. . . . Where the understanding, is, where the mind is. where the power of investigating truth is, there God has his image.[15]

While LDS doctrine would agree with this, it would go even further to keep from denying the completion of the conjunction of opposites. In Mormon doctrine, God the Father has a body of flesh and bones. How else could one be God? One with spirit only or body only is merely one half of his possibility and therefore cannot possibly be God. Clearly, for Augustine, the God-image is identical with the anima rationalis. In Christ, who became the embodiment of the God, or the supreme example of conjunction, Augustine sees the totality which comes with completion. 

The God-image in man was not destroyed by the Fall but was only damaged and corrupted (“deformed”) and can be restored through God’s grace. The scope of the integration is suggested by the descensus ad infernos, the descent of Christ’s soul to hell, its work of redemption embracing even the dead. The psychological equivalent of this is the integration of the collective unconscious which forms an essential part of the individuation process. St. Augustine says: “Therefore our end must be our perfection, but our perfection is Christ, since he is the perfect God-image.”[16]

Why, for Augustine, is Christ, rather than God the Father the perfect God-image? Because, since God the Father did not have a body in Augus tine’s thinking, He could not himself represent the perfect God-image, coniunctio, or unity of spirit and matter in God. It remained for Christ to become the conjoined figure of spirit and matter. 

LDS theology can be more direct since God the Heavenly Father also has a body and himself represents a perfect God-image. Christ also represents a perfect God-image and holds out this possibility to all men. When man/woman together reach exaltation, they also shall be as gods. Coniunctio is required in the earthly realm through marriage for time and eternity and the continuation of this marriage or union into eternity by keeping the covenants made in the temple (eternal space within time). This faithfulness will then allow the historical covenant to be sealed by the Holy Spirit of Promise and the conjunction will then continue after the resurrection on into the eternal realm. In the LDS church then, we have the perfect double coniunctio or quaternity.[17] Men and women are not left to flounder here on earth; they live a form of the coniunctio which will be sanctified and they then shall be as gods and goddesses, given eternal increase in order to people their own worlds. Only out of this conjunction can come the godlike quality of creativity, just as it is the psychically whole person who is able to experience the “both/and” possibilities of life and thus become the creative person.[18]

In analytic psychology Jung found that the unconscious produces totality images or mandalas which arise as spontaneous symbols of the Self or of wholeness and cannot be distinguished from the God-image. In other words, Jung found that on the psychological plane it was possible for those who attained the completed Self to become as gods insofar as the Self-image and the God-image become identified. 

Anti-Mormon literature has frequently zeroed in on the plurality of gods or on the belief that it is possible for men and women to become as gods in the celestial kingdom. This has been considered one of the “heresies” of the Latter-day Saints. However, this alleged heresy seems, if we are to listen to Jung, to be more in accord with psychological wholeness than the doctrine of traditional Christian theology. Jung finds a somewhat dangerous and disintegrative idea in the mainline Christian theological position which underestimates the power of evil to the degree that it frequently disappears from the theology. He says: 

There can be no doubt that the original Christian conception of the imago Dei embodied in Christ meant an all-embracing totality that even includes the animal side of man. [Italics mine.] Nevertheless, the Christ symbol lacks wholeness in the modern psychological sense, since it does not include the dark side of things but specifically excludes it in the form of a Luciferian opponent. . . . [19]

The psychological concept of the Self . . . cannot omit the shadow that belongs to the light figure, for without it this figure lacks body and humanity. In the empirical self, light and shadow form a paradoxical unity. In the Christian concept, on the other hand, the archetype is hopelessly split into two irreconcilable halves, leading ultimately to a metaphysical dualism—the final separation of the kingdom of heaven from the fiery world of the damned.[20]

Here again, the “heresy” of Mormonism seems to provide a psychologically satisfying response. First of all, God does indeed have a body or “dark” material side. Secondly, there are degrees of glory which incorporate varying degrees of light and dark, reward and punishment. Thirdly, there are those who are cast out along with those who were the adherents of Lucifer in the original spirit world. And precisely their sin (or Lucifer’s) was that he would have, given the opportunity, taken away man’s free agency by placing man in the situation where he could choose only the good and never be faced with the opposite. In other words, Lucifer’s primary evil centered on the elimination of opposition, which opposition is necessary in order for man to be able to “get it all together” in a coniunctio. That is, if all is good, there is no opposition, there is no coming together, no conjunction, and hence no possibility for wholeness in the psychological sense or salvation in the religious sense because both psychological wholeness and salvation rely upon the coming together of the opposites in order that one may glorify the other. 

“For as the man is not without the woman, neither is the woman without the man in the Lord.” I believe that we usually read this rather casually to infer that men and women need one another. Perhaps closer attention to the last three words of that phrase can disclose a deeper meaning. The verse in its entirety can mean that men and women can certainly be without one another but that without one another they cannot be in the Lord. That is, they cannot realize their full potential which is salvation in religion and individuation in psychology. 

There is yet another area in LDS theology in which the opposites are inextricably bound together. Mormonism, unlike other Christian religions, does not see the Fall or the act of Mother Eve as totally without good purpose. 

Mother Eve partook of the forbidden fruit. We should not have been here to-day if she had not; we could never have possessed wisdom and intelligence if she had not done it. … We should never blame Mother Eve, not the least. I am thankful to God that I know good from evil, the bitter from the sweet, the things of God from the things not of God.[21]

The Devil had truth in his mouth as well as lies when he came to Mother Eve. Said he, “If you will eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, you will see as the Gods see.” That was just as true as anything that was ever spoken on the face of the earth. She did eat, her eyes were opened, and she saw good and evil. She gave of the fruit to her husband, and he ate too. What would have been the consequence if he had not done so? They would have been separated, and where would we have been? I am glad he did eat.[22]

We see here that the LDS emphasis on reconciliation of the opposites brings about an interpretation of the doctrine of the Fall which is consider ably different from that usually put forth. In this case Eve (usually the epitome of woman as evil) becomes something of a heroine because it is she who, by initiating the Fall into opposites, lays open the possibility for the later conjunction of these same opposites. The action of Eve is interpreted not so much as a fatal fault of pride which brought only death into the world, but also as an action which gave to men and women the opportunity of becoming as gods. The necessity of opposition to the gaining of salvation is further seen in the Book of Mormon. 

For it must needs be, that there is an opposition in all things. If not so, my first-born in the wilderness, righteousness could not be brought to pass, neither wickedness, neither holiness nor misery, neither good nor bad. Wherefore, all things must needs be a compound in one; wherefore, if it should be one body it must needs remain as dead. . . . [23]

In other words, that which has not two aspects, is not bipolar, remains as dead. Life and vigor result from what is perceived to be the dynamic of a necessary opposition. The Book of Mormon further states: 

And if ye shall say there is no law, ye shall also say there is no sin. If ye shall say there is no sin, ye shall also say there is no righteousness. And if there be no righteousness there be no happiness. And if there be no righteousness nor happiness there be no punishment nor misery. And if these things are not there is no God.[24]

This is to say that God is indeed the result of oppositions being reconciled or that God is the coniunctio. The traditional Christian view of arrogating all to one side of the pairs of opposites results in death or, psychologically, in imbalance, distress, and the absence of any sense of wholeness in the psychic life of man. 

Not only is the Fall perceived as good and necessary since it points out the fact that nothing is known apart from its opposite; it also provides for man the dynamic means by which he can, through free agency, work out his salvation by once again attaining this union of opposites. Or, in psychological terms, he can find wholeness by integrating the numerous pairs of opposites, good and evil, light and dark, with which he is daily assaulted. 

The LDS Church has squarely faced the opposition of good and evil and pronounced that evil is not without its benefits. Jung would find in this precisely that which he finds lacking in traditional Christianity and its theology, which has either banished the idea of evil altogether, or so severely segregated it that it has fallen into unconsciousness. In Jungian thought, that which is permitted to fall into the unconscious and to remain cut off from the light of conscious awareness, takes on a dynamic of its own which can then reappear when least expected with the power of the irrational to lend it impetus. This leaves the person vulnerable to being “taken over” by unconscious direction which he cannot explain, much less control. 

Mormonism has retained, and no doubt will continue to retain the tension of opposition as the only way open to making truly moral decisions. Jung would find that this is also psychologically sound because it accommodates within the religious symbol system the unconscious content of psyche which can then be reintegrated into consciousness. 

Repeatedly, Church members can be heard to say that as hard as one tries in the Church and the more the Lord has in store, the harder Satan works to defeat this. I take this to be less an objective statement about Satan than a recognition of the psychic reality of the tension of opposites with which we are all daily confronted. This tension between good and evil remains very much alive in the LDS Church and therefore precludes the pitfall which Jung finds in mainline Christian denominations which, of late, have nearly eliminated the idea of evil. Jung would find the same defect in the doctrine of total depravity which would see only the other pole and find that finitude is totally evil. Psychic wholeness or salvation is dependent upon the maintenance of the tension and balance between the oppositions of our lived reality. As a Mormon, one is confronted daily with the real possibilities of both good and evil in one’s own life. There is, on the part of the Church, a refusal to relinquish either half of the conjunction. 

There is a Jungian psychological truth in the Mormon Church or LDS truth in Jungian psychology; each includes and accounts for both sides of human experience: good and evil, spirit and matter, masculine and feminine, and finds salvation theologically in the same way, by attempting to live life at the coincidentia oppositorum, which restores psychic wholeness and eventually allows the Self, united as anima and animus, to become as God. 

---

[1] Throughout the analytic psychology of Jung the archetypes can be seen as universal structures of Being. They cannot be gotten at cognitively nor can they ever be seen or known of themselves. They are a universal propensity for imaging in patterns given apart from individual existence; but, like genetic patterns, they are dormant until activated through individual content. Jung, through massive collection and comparison of dreams, myths, stories, poetry and art was able to discover recurrent patterns in man’s cultural enunciations. In each case the content given to the pattern was individual but the form itself was transpersonal and transcultural, unbound by time or place. The coniunctio is one of the most frequently cited archetypes to be found in Jung’s work. The reader is referred to the Collected Works of Carl Jung, 17 vols., Bollingen Series, XX, Princeton University Press. Future references to this series will be cited once by title and volume number and thereafter referred to as CW, vol. X. All references are to 2nd editions where such have been compiled. 

For work on the coniunctio see especially, Mysterium Coniunctionis, R. F. C. Hull, 2nd ed., Bollingen Series, XX, The Collected Works of Carl Jung, Vol. 14 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970). 

The elements which come together in the coniunctio are first perceived as a dualism either in direct opposition to one another or attracted toward one another. Only later, when integrated, are these two seen to be One. 

[2] The reader is referred to B. H. Roberts, A Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Vol. II (Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1965) pp. 381-412. It is important to recognize that, while Joseph Smith did not teach a systematic philosophy, we can derive philosophical understandings from his teachings. Roberts has here organized these teachings in such a way as to illuminate some of the intellectual content of LDS doctrine.

[3] See my “Mythohistory: Applied Methodology/’ an address to the American Academy of Religion, October 1975, and “Mythohistory Via Carl Jung: Where the Historian’s Language is Spoken Without Him,” in Myth and the Crisis of Historical Consciousness (Missoula, Montana, Scholar’s Press: 1975.) 

[4] Roberts, Vol. 2, p. 382.

[5] Ibid. p. 410. 

[6] Ibid. p. 410. 

[7] I do not here (or ever) use the word “myth” in the popular sense of lie or falsehood. Rather “myth” refers to, as Mircea Eliade has frequently said, “the way things really are”‘ in absolute time and in ultimate significance. Myth operates in illo tempore or in the fullness of time. I am also assuming that Joseph Campbell is correct when, in The Masks of God and elsewhere he speaks of the four functions of myth as the 1) numinological function or that which inspires a sense of awe; 2) cosmological function or that which, in the myth, renders a view of the cosmos 3) sociological function or that which supports the society and makes the individual aware of his place in it; and 4) the psychological function. This is for people today perhaps the most important function of myth and serves to introduce the person to his own psyche. 

[8] Brigham Young, Discourses of Brigham Young, selected and arranged by John A. Widtsoe (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1961) p. 68. 

[9] Brigham Young, “Faithfulness and Apostacy,” Journal of Discourses, Vol. 2: 255-6. 

[10] Joseph Fielding Smith, Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith, (Salt Lake City: Deseret, 1974) pp. 300-301. 

[11] Joseph Smith, DHC, 5:392 (May 16, 1843).

[12] D&C 132:20. 

[13] Jung views symbols of the quaternity or double coniunctio as the most integrated and balanced images of the Self. Some common symbolizations of the quaternity would be the rosetta window, the squared circle, the Mandala symbols of Buddhism and Tantrism, and images of the city or temple with its sides embracing all four cardinal points. He also points out the need for developing the quaternary function of ego—thinking, feeling, sensation and intuition. 

[14] Edward Edinger, Ego and Archetype (Baltimore: Penguin, 1973) pp. 3-4.

[15] Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos, XLVIII, Sermo II. 

[16] C. G. Jung, Aion, The Collected Works of Carl Jung, vol. 9ii, Bollingen Series XX (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968) p. 39. 

[17] LDS doctrine would seem to draw together the two conjunctions, one in the earthly realm, one in the eternal, to make the ideal quaternity (see note 13). This projection of the coniunctio into eternity or the transcendent would seem to preclude the error of assuming that the self is all. 

[18] Jung, CW, 9ii, p. 40.

[19] Jung, CW, 9ii, p. 41. 

[20] Jung, CW, 9ii, p. 42. 

[21] Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, 13:145. 

[22] Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, 12:70. 

[23] Book of Mormon, II Nephi 2:llff.

[24] Book of Mormon, II Nephi 2:13.