The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, pg 79

“It is not that the vague general ideas of a psychological causation appear first and then the poet gives them concrete pictorial form by inventing gods. It is, as I shall show later in this essay, just the other way around. And when it is suggested that the inward feelings of power or inward monitions or losses of judgment are the germs out of which the divine machinery developed, I return that the truth is just the reverse, that the presence of voices which had to be obeyed were the absolute prerequisite to the conscious stage of mind in which it is the self that is responsible and can debate within itself, can order and direct, and that the creation of such a self is the product of culture. In a sense, we have become our own gods.”

The Origins and History of Consciousness, pg 400

“Characteristic of the process of differentiation in childhood is the loss and renunciation of all the elements of perfection and wholeness, which are inherent in the psychology of the child so far as this is determined by the pleroma, the uroboros.  The very things which the child has in common with the man of genius, the creative artist, and the primitive, and which constitute the magic and charm of his existence, must be sacrificed.  The aim of all education, and not in our culture alone, is the expel the child from the paradise of his native genius and, through differentiation and the renunciation of wholeness, to constrain the Old Adam in the paths of collective usefulness.

“…The drying up of imagination and of creative ability, which the child naturally possesses in high degree, is one of the typical symptoms of impoverishment that growing up entails.  A steady loss of the vitality of feeling and of spontaneous reactions in the interests of ‘sensibleness’ and ‘good behavior’ is the operative factor in the conduct now demanded of the child in relation to the collective.  Increase in efficiency at the cost of depth and intensity is the hallmark of this process.

“On to the ontogenetic plane there now ensue all the developments which we have described as indispensable for ego formation and the separation of the conscious and unconscious systems.  The child’s primarily transpersonal and mythological apperception of the world becomes limited owing to secondary personalization, and is finally abolished altogether.  This personalization is necessary for the growth of personality now beginning and is effected with the help of ties to the personal environment upon which the archetypes are at first projected.  As the personal ties grow stronger, the archetype is gradually replaced by the imago, in which personal and transpersonal characteristics are visibly blended and active.”

The Origins and History of Consciousness, pg 393

“The picture we have drawn of our age is not intended as an indictment, mush less as a glorification of the ‘good old days’; for the phenomena we see around us are symptoms of an upheaval which, taken by and large, is necessary.  The collapse of the old civilization, and its reconstruction on a lower level to begin with, will justify themselves because the new basis will have been immensely broadened.  The civilization that is about to be born will be a human civilization in a far higher sense than any has ever been before, as it will have overcome important social, national, and racial limitations.  These are not fantastic pipe dreams, but hard facts, and their birth pangs will bring infinite suffering upon infinite numbers of men.  Spiritually, politically, and economically our world is an indivisible whole.  By this standard, the Napoleonic wars were minor coups d’état and the world view of that age, in which anything outside Europe had hardly begun to appear, is almost inconceivable to us in its narrowness.

“The collapse of the archetypal canon in our culture, which has produced such an extraordinary activation of the collective unconscious – or is perhaps its symptom, manifesting itself in mass movements that have a profound effect upon our personal destinies – is, however, only a passing phenomenon.  Already, at a time when the internecine wars of the old canon are still being waged, we can discern, in single individuals, where the synthetic possibilities of the future lie, and almost how it will look.  The turning of the mind from the conscious to the unconscious, the responsible rapprochement of human consciousness with the powers of the collective psyche, that is the task of the future.  No outward tinkerings with the world and no social ameliorations can give the quietus to the daemon, to the gods and devils of the human soul, or prevent them from tearing down again and again what consciousness has built.  Unless they are assigned their place in consciousness and culture they will never leave mankind in peace.  But the preparation for this rapprochement lies, as always, with the hero, the individual; he and his transformation are the great human prototypes; he is the testing ground of the collective, just as consciousness is the testing ground of the unconscious.

The Origins and History of Consciousness, pg 377

“The hero is not creative in the sense that he decorates embellishes the existing canon, although his creativeness may also manifest itself in shaping and transforming the archetypal contents of his age.  The true hero is one who brings the new and shatters the fabric of old values, namely the father-dragon which, backed by the whole weight of tradition and the power of the collective, ever strives to obstruct the birth of the new.”

The Origins and History of Consciousness, pg 376

“The important thing is that the archetypal canon is always created and brought to birth by ‘eccentric’ individuals.  These are the founders of religions, sects, philosophies, political sciences, ideologies, and spiritual movements, in the security of which the collective man lives without needing to come into contact with the primordial fire of direct revelation, or to experience the throes of creation.”

The Origins and History of Consciousness, pg 355

“Creativity in all its forms is always the product of a meeting between the masculine world of ego consciousness and the feminine world of the soul.”

The Origins and History of Consciousness, pg 317

“The uroboric tendency of the unconscious to reabsorb all its products by destroying them so as to give them back in new, changed form is repeated on the higher plane of ego consciousness.  Here, too, the analytical process precedes the synthesis, and differentiation is the prime requisite for a later integration.

“In this sense all knowledge rests on an aggressive act of incorporation.  The psychic system, and to an even greater extent consciousness itself, is an organ for breaking up, digesting, and then rebuilding the objects of the world and the unconscious, in exactly the same way as our bodily digestive system decomposes matter physiochemically and uses it for the creation of new structures.”

The Origins and History of Consciousness, pg 316

“At first the ego is overpowered by the content newly emerging into consciousness – namely, the archetype of the antagonist – and goes under.  Only gradually, and to the degree that the ego recognizes this destructive tendency as being not just a hostile content of the unconscious, but as part of itself, does consciousness begin to incorporate it, to digest and assimilate it, in other words, to make it conscious.  The destruction is now separable from its old object, the ego, and has become and ego function.  The ego can now use at least a portion of this tendency in its own interests.  In fact, what has happened is that the ego, as we have said, ‘turns the tables’ upon the unconscious.”

The Origins and History of Consciousness, pg 291

“The metabolic symbolism of mutual exchange between body and world is paramount.  The object of hunger, the food to be ‘taken in,’ is the world itself; while the other, productive side of the process is symbolized by ‘output,’ that is, evacuation.  The dominant symbol is not the semen; in creation mythology, urine, dung spit, sweat, and breath (and later, words) are all elementary symbols of the creative principle.”

The Origins and History of Consciousness, pg 131

“Although the separation of the World Parents is, strictly speaking, an integral part of the hero myth, the developments which, at that stage, could only be represented in cosmic symbols now enter the phase of humanization and personality formation.  Thus the hero is the archetypal forerunner of mankind in general.  His fate is the pattern in accordance with which the masses of humanity must live, and always have lived, however haltingly and distantly; and however short of the ideal man they have fallen, the stages of the hero myth have become constituent elements in the personal development of every individual.”