Jung and Divine Self-Revelation

Abstract

The Seven Sermons to the Dead provides what Jung called the “supreme meaning” of his opus, which is the reconciliation of opposites. However, his choice of a Pleroma in the Sermons that consists of both fullness and nothingness hints at a deeper meaning veiling a mystical vision he must have had but never revealed. In choosing to follow Basilides's concept of a Pleroma, the deeper meaning, as asserted in this paper, is divine self-reflection: making the purpose of individuation to become an instrument through which the divine can witness its own creation. It was not until Answer to Job that Jung referred to man as being the “instrument into which God enters to attain self-reflection” but that mystical vision is exposed in the Sermons and, therefore, informed his later work.