There seems to be an ancient blueprint hidden in all things. A memory of wholeness. The unity that existed before the world inevitably fractured into duality.
This post is a collaboration of Dr. Harry Shirley and Eternalised.
Dr. Harry Shirley has a PhD in organic chemistry and research experience at the University of Oxford. Now an independent scholar, he holds a personal passion for Jungian psychology.
Citation:
Shirley, H. J. (2025). The Buddhabrot and the Unus Mundus: A Qualitative Exploration of Fractal Patterns and Archetypal Symbols. International Journal of Jungian Studies, 1(aop), 1-34.
Unity and Duality
In the Book of Genesis, the Garden of Eden symbolises unity, a state of eternal bliss where there is no duality, and thus no conflict and suffering. The moment Adam and Eve are tempted by the serpent to eat of the fruit of the forbidden tree, they gained knowledge of the opposites: good and evil, and became like “gods”. They transgressed a sacrosanct barrier which led to their expulsion from paradise. This incident led to the fall of man into the world of duality, where the opposites clash together.
Myths are not just stories or superstition, but perennial and timeless patterns that express fundamental aspects of the human condition.
In The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, the English poet and visionary artist William Blake expresses this duality well, writing: “Without contraries is no progression. Attraction and repulsion, reason and energy, love and hate, are necessary to human experience.” And Swiss psychiatrist and psychologist Carl Jung states:
“[M]an’s real life consists of a complex of inexorable opposites – day and night, birth and death, happiness and misery, good and evil. We are not even sure that one will prevail against the other, that good will overcome evil, or joy defeat pain. Life is a battleground. It always has been, and always will be; and if it were not so, existence would come to an end.”
Carl Jung, Man and His Symbols
Felix culpa
Catholic tradition describes the fall from Paradise as the felix culpa, the happy fault or fall.
Psychologically, every infant is born integrated, in a paradisaical state (symbolising original wholeness), whereby one is completely submerged in the unconscious. This is primal unconsciousness, a state of non-differentation, in which we are not yet aware of our potential, which lies undiscovered and undeveloped. It symbolises the principle of individuation in the state of unrealised potential.
The infant’s individuality is in complete identification with the mother, who provides protection, comfort and nourishment. As the infant grows up and adapts to the world, he develops an ego (a sense of “I”), and undergoes disintegration: a necessary fall from wholeness in order to discover and experience our own individuality. This can be likened to the proverbial eating of the fruit from the forbidden tree (the felix culpa), a natural part of psychological maturation.
Nature seems to demand that we leave the mother and face the fire of life, a theme portrayed in many myths as the hero’s journey. Only then can we become our unique selves. It is as if each of us were born to fulfill a soul-essence that holds the meaning and purpose of our lives. Something like a “fall” is necessary and appears to be the sine qua non of self-realisation. Only through self-realisation can we be reintegrated, a lifelong task of reconciling the opposites that divide us.
It is not the light element alone that does the healing; the place where light and dark begin to touch is the most profound religious experience we can have in life. The goal is not perfection, but wholeness.
One is not born enlightened; rather, one must pass through the strife and suffering inherent in duality, and regain that paradisaical wholeness (heaven, nirvana, return to the Tao, etc.), but on a higher level of consciousness.
In short, we are born integrated, we disintegrate, and must reintegrate.
“Only here, in life on earth, where the opposites clash together, can the general level of consciousness be raised. That seems to be man’s metaphysical task.”
Carl Jung: Memories, Dreams, Reflections
Unus Mundus
The medieval alchemists and philosophers, particularly the 16th century alchemist Gerhard Dorn, used the term unus mundus (one world) to describe the unified, underlying reality from which both the physical (earth) and the spiritual (heaven) worlds emerge. It is the ultimate hieros gamos (sacred marriage), which unites all opposites.
Carl Jung described the unus mundus as the underlying reality that unites both psyche and matter. Even though this is a metaphysical speculation, we can still get glimpses of this deeper reality. One such example being synchronicity.
Synchronicity
Jung collaborated with the Nobel prize-winning physicist Wolfgang Pauli on the concept of synchronicity, culminating in the joint volume The Interpretation of Nature and the Psyche. They came to understand synchronicity as an acausal principle that transcends, space, time, and causality. Later, Jung’s essay Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle was published separately. In this work, he distinguishes between two key ideas: acausal orderedness and creation in time.
Acausal orderedness simply refers to patterns or orders in nature that are not caused, but simply are. For example, light travels approximately at 300,000 kilometres per second (186,000 miles per second). It is simply a law of nature. It is not caused by anything, it is just so. This is an example of acausal orderedness in physics.
Synchronicity would be the same thing, but an act of creation in time, something new happens in time. It is created on the spot, and is a unique event which will very likely not repeat itself. Synchronicity occurs when an inner image appears in the outer world, as if the boundaries between psyche and matter momentarily collapsed and became one. It is not just acausal, but also a meaningful coincidence of events that appears to be linked to our inner development and is in some way dependant on it.
To give an example of this, Jung once treated a highly rational young woman who was “psychologically inaccessible” and rejected the idea of the unconscious. At a crucial moment, she dreamt of being given a golden scarab. As she recounted the dream, a tapping noise came from the window behind Jung. Turning around, he caught a scarabaeid beetle—a rose chafer, the closest match to a golden scarab in the region—attempting to enter the room. Handing it to her, Jung said, “Here is your scarab.”
The experience broke through her intellectual resistance and helped her get in touch with her feelings, linking her dream world to waking life. Her ego died, and gave birth to a new self. This experience connects with the scarab as an important Egyptian symbol in the form of the archetype of rebirth and transformation. Thus, we see how synchronicity could be a manifestation of the deepest layer of reality where psyche and matter collide and become indistinguishable.
Mandala and the Self
Another manifestation of the unus mundus is the mandala (Sanskrit for circle), a sacred geometric symbol used for spiritual purposes and an instrument of meditation on the sacred wholeness of the world. For Jung, the mandala is an archetypal image which symbolises the wholeness of the Self (God-image or total personality). As a rule, it always contains a centre around which the rest is ordered, symbolising the Self as the organising principle of the psyche.
Jung writes:
“Only gradually did I discover what the mandala really is: “Formation, Transformation, Eternal Mind’s eternal recreation” … This insight gave me stability, and gradually my inner peace returned. I knew that in finding the mandala as an expression of the self I had achieved what was for me the ultimate. Perhaps someone else knows more, but not I.”
Carl Jung: Memories, Dreams, Reflections
In The Way of The Dream, Jungian analyst Marie-Louise von Franz states that in most religions, there is an allusion to a divine centre from which all order and organisation stem. If we were to speculate on the origin of dreams, we might say they emerge from this very centre. It sometimes appears within the dream itself as a mandala, an inner city, a circle, a square, or some other abstract formation. At other times, it takes the form of a particular figure—such as a divine saviour child, a wise old man or woman, or a symbolic animal. All of these point towards that ultimately unknown and unknowable greater centre within the psyche.
One might say that the true journey of life is the adventure of encountering the Self within. It is something we have to explore all of our lifetime, for nobody knows what the Self in one wants. The dreams are the messages from this master-pattern that guides us throughout life.
Mandalas appear universally across cultures with consistent geometric form and symbolism. Their circularity represents eternity, unity, and the cyclical nature of life; their symmetry signifies harmony and balance; and they are often structured as a quaternity. Examples include Buddhist thangkas, Christian rose windows, Hindu yantras, Native American Medicine Wheels, and Tibetan sand mandalas. These structures not only express order, they also create it.
Jung states:
“The mandala symbolises, by its central point, the ultimate unity of all archetypes as well as of the multiplicity of the phenomenal world, and is therefore the empirical equivalent of the metaphysical concept of a unus mundus. The alchemical equivalent is the lapis [philosophers’ stone] and its synonyms, in particular the Microcosm… If mandala symbolism is the psychological [or empirical] equivalent of the unus mundus, then synchronicity is its parapsychological equivalent.”
Carl Jung, C.W. Vol. 14: Mysterium Coniunctionis
Jung observed that the psychic images of wholeness which are produced spontaneously by the unconscious are as a rule quaternities, or their multiples (8, 12, 16, etc). That is why they generally appear in times of psychic disorientation in order to compensate a chaotic state or as formulations of numinous experiences. The mandala contains a mathematical structure, a detail which made Jung realise that the unconscious somehow avails itself of the properties of whole numbers.
Numbers and Psychoid
“I… believe that from the psychological point of view at least, the sought-after borderland between physics and psychology lies in the secret of the number.”
Atom and Archetype: The Pauli/Jung Letters (1932-1958)
Besides the quantitative numbers that determine the geometric structure of mandalas, there are also qualitative numbers that convey symbolic meanings beyond mere counting. For Pythagoras, numbers were not just tools for counting or measuring, but the fundamental principle of the cosmos. It is generally believed that numbers were invented, but for Jung, it is equally possible that they were discovered.
Number represents one of the most primitive archetypes, autonomous entities with their own life, that exist within the collective unconscious. More than anything else, it serves to bring order to the chaos of appearances. Number is the archetype of order par excellence.
It is a common misunderstanding that archetypes exist only within the psyche; they also exist externally, in the world around us. Jung uses the term psychoid (soul-like) to refer to the irrepresentable nature of all archetypes, which do not fully belong in the psyche, nor in matter, but rather transcends both and yet provides a bridge to them as the unifying element, the unus mundus.
By the time Jung was too old to continue on his work on numbers, he handed his notes over to one of his closest colleagues, Marie-Louise von Franz, who wrote the notoriously difficult book, Number and Time: Reflections Leading toward a Unification of Depth Psychology and Physics.
Von Franz was struck, particularly since the discovery of quantum physics in the early 20th century, that both the mind and nature have numbers built into their very essence. She explores how mind and matter are both structured by numbers, suggesting that the inner world and outer world are connected in the unus mundus.
She dealt with the numbers 1 to 4, concluding that they reflect the deep structure of reality itself: 1 represents a state of unity, non-differentiation and potential; 2 marks the origin of conflict or duality, which brings potential into consciousness; 3 signifies the resolution of that conflict through a synthesis, and 4 means the integration of the unconscious insight into human consciousness, enabling progress towards wholeness—a return to unity on a higher level of consciousness—which remarkably symbolises the human creation myth and the purpose of life.
Archetypes
Jung emphasised that archetypes cannot be visualsed in themselves, as they exist beyond space and time. What we see are the archetypal images: the wise old man, the fool, the hero, and so on.
Archetypes may be likened to what Immanuel Kant called noumena, things as they are in themselves, independent of how we perceive them. They represent the world as it actually is, beyond the veil of appearances. However, since noumena lie outside the bounds of sensory experience, they cannot be directly known. Thus, we are forever stuck in the realm of phenomena, the world as it appears to us, shaped and limited by our senses.
Philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus and St. Augustine argue that the intellect, as the highest faculty of the soul, must discipline the lower appetites in order to attain true knowledge, contemplate eternal truths, or reach union with the divine.
Until we do so, we remain—as Plato describes—prisoners chained in a cave, only seeing the shadows of the objects on the wall and mistaking those shadows for reality. The true world lies outside the cave, symbolised by the eternal Forms or Ideas, which can only be perceived once the soul turns toward the light, toward the sun itself, the Form of the Good.
With that said, fractals may offer a visual representation of what the archetype in itself could look like.
Fractals
Fractals are shapes or patterns that become increasingly detailed by repeatedly applying the same simple rule to a shape or number. With each repetition, the pattern grows more complex, yet the overall shape remains similar to itself at every level of zoom, a quality known as self-similarity. This process is recursive, meaning the same rule is applied over and over, with each step building upon the last. This repetition can go on infinitely, generating infinite complexity, and perhaps echoing the idea of an infinite cosmos as symbolised by the mandala.
The most well-known fractal is the Mandelbrot set, first visualised and studied in detail in 1980. It was created by iterating a simple mathematical formula and has quite literally changed the way we see numbers.
Jung would likely have found the visual similarities between mathematical fractal patterns and mandalas intriguing. At the end of his life, contemplating on the idea of rebirth, Jung wrote:
“I could imagine that I might compensate for my current life in the future by again being a pioneer, but in a different field, perhaps in the natural sciences.”
Reflections on the Life and Dreams of C.G. Jung by Aniela Jaffé
Fractals are not limited to computers, they arise in the natural world—in snowflakes, blood vessels, branching trees, lightning bolts, and neural pathways in the brain. Fractal patterns also emerge in psychedelic visions, schizophrenic experiences, and spontaneous symbolic expression. Their presence in both the inner world and the outer world suggests a deeper unity between psyche and matter, which supports the idea of their relationship to the unus mundus.
This brings us to the core of Dr. Harry Shirley’s study: the Buddhabrot.
The Buddhabrot
The Buddhabrot was computed in 1993 by Melinda Green, and is a unique way of visualising the Mandelbrot set. Instead of mapping static boundaries, the Buddhabrot traces the paths of points that escape to infinity. By following these paths, it creates a new, interesting image. The resulting image is radiant and has an archetypal quality. Its shape resembles classical depictions of Buddha, hence its name. Though some argue it is simply a case of pareidolia, the tendency to see familiar patterns in something random, in order to make sense of chaos.
Whatever the case may be, sacred structures, ancient symbolism (such as alchemy and Kabbalah), visionary and psychedelic art, and even the art created by schizophrenic patients all seem to echo the Buddhabrot.
Here are a few examples for illustration:
These are merely a few illustrative examples, more can be found in Dr. Harry’s paper. As one might expect, not every piece of art will mirror the Buddhabrot’s structure perfectly. Many do not fit the structure at all, while others align with it with uncanny precision, and most importantly, in a manner that is both meaningful and symbolic.
Let us look at a brief example.
We may associate the first of the ten sefirot (Keter or Crown) with the Crown Chakra (Sahasrara), known as the thousand-petalled lotus, symbolising the culmination of the spiritual ascent, where the yogi realises “I am That” (Aham Brahmasmi), that is: “I am Brahman”, the infinite and unchanging reality.
The Crown Chakra represents the union of Shakti—the divine feminine energy manifesting as Kundalini, the coiled serpent that rises from the Root Chakra (Muladhara)—with Shiva, the essence of pure consciousness. This sacred ascent culminates in moksha (liberation from the cycle of birth and death). The hieros gamos is the classical ending of the individuation process.
In New Age thought, chakras are associated with colours. The Crown Chakra is violet (the colour with the highest frequency and shortest wavelength in the visible spectrum), while the Root Chakra is red (lowest frequency and longest wavelength). This reflects the ascent from dense matter to subtle spirit.
When God appears to Moses, he says, “I Am That I Am.” (Exodus 3:14). The Tetragrammaton, the name of God in the Hebrew Bible, contains four letters: yod, he, waw, he (transliterated as YHWH – Yahweh). There are three different letters, with the fourth being a repetition of the second. To that extent, the essential name is a triad. But since the letter “he” is doubled, the name is also a quaternity.
Jung often cites the ancient alchemical axiom of Maria Prophetissa, “One becomes two, two becomes three, and out of the third comes the one as the fourth.” This means that the number three, taken as a unity related back to the primal one, becomes the fourth. This four is understood not so much to have “originated” progressively, but to have retrospectively existed from the very beginning.
A similar notion is found in Taoism:
“The Tao gave birth to One,
The One gave birth to Two,
The Two gave birth to Three,
The Three gave birth to all of creation.”
Laozi, Tao Te Ching, 42. Translation by John H. McDonald
We can also compare the Buddhabrot’s “third eye” to Tantric descriptions of the third eye, described as a luminous centre with two petals, frequently emphasising its radiance and whiteness. At the centre is the symbol of Om and a triangle, and above the centre a flame-like form.
Could the Buddhabrot be a sign of a universal image that is present in archetypal images around the world? Perhaps, like the natural laws of physics, this has always existed. We are simply revealing what has been concealed.
Modern man can easily accept that the material world might be governed by mathematics, yet resists the idea that their mind is also governed in such a way. There is still much resistance to the reality of the inner world of the unconscious, it is disregarded as unreal or nonsense—a prejudice that inevitably leads to one-sidedness and neurosis. It is an old idea that what is within is also without, what is above is also below. The microcosm reflects the macrocosm. Thus, the increase of consciousness of mankind has an influence in the universe, which we may view as a living organism.
We might venture to say that the Buddhabrot is an image not just reflecting the structure of the Self like the mandala, but an image of the archetype of the Self, of which Buddha is an example of. It is the realised Self. We are, as if it were, granted a glimpse into what lies within the unknowable and eternal realm of the unus mundus. An image drawn by the universe. Thus, the Buddhabrot may represent the Self not as appears in dream, myth, or historical figures, but as a structure embedded in the fabric of reality itself.
Individuation
The Buddhabrot seems to align with motifs of the individuation process: tree of life, chakras, hieros gamos, etc. Although individuation is frequently depicted as a vertical and linear ascent, the spiritual journey is more complex. Self-realisation is not a linear evolution, but a circumambulation of the Self, a circular movement towards the centre.
Jung writes:
“The way is not straight but appears to go round in circles. More accurate knowledge has proved it to go in spirals… the whole process revolves about a central point or some arrangement round a centre, which may in certain circumstances appear even in the initial dreams. As manifestations of unconscious processes the dreams rotate or circumambulate round the centre, drawing closer to it as the amplifications increase in distinctness and in scope.”
Carl Jung, C.W. Vol. 12: Psychology and Alchemy
And:
“[T]he right way to wholeness is made up, unfortunately, of fateful detours and wrong turnings. It is the longissima via [longest path], not straight but snakelike, a path that unites the opposites in the manner of the guiding caduceus, a path whose labyrinthine twists and turns are not lacking in terrors.”
Carl Jung, C.W. Vol. 12: Psychology and Alchemy
Individuation is the soul’s journey to become whole, and leads to the realisation of the Self as a psychic reality greater than the ego. It is how individual beings are formed and differentiated, the goal being the development of the individual personality. By delving deep within oneself, one simultaneously discovers one’s role in the world.
“Individuation does not shut one out from the world, but gathers the world to itself.”
Carl Jung, C.W. Vol. 8: The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche
While the goal is wholeness of personality, the true value of individuation lies in what happens along the way.
“The goal is important only as an idea; the essential thing is the opus [work] which leads to the goal: that is the goal of a lifetime.”
Carl Jung, C.W. Vol. 16: The Practice of Psychotherapy
The pattern of individuation is not just a human process, but is deeply embedded in nature.
“A plant that is meant to produce a flower is not individuated if it does not produce a flower, it must fulfil the cycle, and the man who does not develop consciousness is not individuated, because consciousness is his flower; it is his life, it belongs to our process of individuation that we shall become conscious.”
Carl Jung, Visions: Notes From the Seminar Given in 1930-1934 (22 June 1932)
Conclusion
The Buddhabrot does not reveal something new, but an old truth visualised through mathematics (number being the bridge between matter and psyche), showing the interrelation between science and psychology, spirituality, and mythology. These fields are not mutually exclusive, but instead overlap. In this way, the Buddhabrot may be seen as an empirical union of the logical and the symbolic.
Its alignment with motifs of the individuation process suggests that the soul’s journey towards wholeness is not just symbolic but fractal in structure, appearing both in the natural world and in altered states of consciousness. This suggests a deeper unity between psyche and matter, supporting the concept of the unus mundus.
Perhaps the Buddhabrot is one among many seemingly ineffable manifestations of the unus mundus, as encountered in psychedelic visions, schizophrenic art or spontaneous artistic expression. Each of which reveals the true nature of reality, the archetype or the Platonic Form, behind the shadowy veil of appearances. One might say that the Buddhabrot is an image of the realised Self, embedded within the very fabric of reality.
The Self is never fully attained, as it is a lifelong process. This aligns with Jung’s view of individuation as a circumambulation towards the centre, an insight drawn from his investigation of the unconscious. As the microcosm influences the macrocosm, and viceversa, knowledge of oneself influences the knowledge of the cosmos. The universe appears not just dead matter but a living organism, intimately bound to the human condition.
The unus mundus may be imagined as a kind of living entity, an Over-soul of humanity, or the source that contains the collective consciousness of mankind, to which the individual contributes the “fruits” of the soul gathered over a lifetime through the increase of consciousness, mirroring the tree’s natural tendency to bear fruit.
In this light, the Buddhabrot evokes the image of a pre-existent realm of unity, from which the soul descends into the bodily vessel. This descent is necessary to experience duality and its inevitable suffering, to reconcile the opposites, and ultimately return to that paradisaical state on a higher level of consciousness.
Dr. Harry Shirley continues his quest to uncover the numerical order linking mind and matter. His current work investigates anecdotal reports of Buddhabrot forms appearing as inner images, emerging spontaneously in dreams, psychedelic experiences and visions.
Contact
Get in touch with Dr. Harry:
Email: thebuddhabrot@gmail.com
Dr. Harry’s Collab with After Skool
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