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 of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, pg 1

“O, What a world of world of unseen visions and heard silences, this insubstantial country of the mind! What ineffable essences, these touchless rememberings and unshowable reveries! And the privacy of it all! A secret theater of speechless monologue and prevenient counsel, an invisible mansion of all moods, musings and mysteries, an infinite resort of disappointments and discoveries. A whole kingdom where each of us reigns reclusively alone, questioning what we will, commanding what we can. A hidden hermitage where we may study out the troubled book of what we have done and yet may do. An introcosm that is more myself than anything I can find in a mirror. This consciousness that is myself of selves, that is everything and yet nothing at all – what is it?

And where did it come from?

And why?”

Mere Christianity

“Suppose someone asked me, when I see a man in a blue uniform going down the street leaving little paper packets at each house, why I suppose that they contain letters? I should reply, ‘Because whenever he leaves a similar little packet for me I find it does contain a letter.’ And if he then objected, ‘But you’ve never seen all these letters which you think the other people are getting,’ I should say, ‘Of course not, and I shouldn’t expect to, because they’re not addressed to me. I’m explaining the packets I’m not allowed to open by the ones I am allowed to open.’ It is the same about this question. The only packet I am allowed to open is Man. When I do, especially when I open that particular man called Myself, I find that I do not exist on my own, that I am under a law; that somebody or something wants me to behave in a certain way.”

Living Buddha, Living Christ

“Some people say that Buddhist practice is to dissolve the self. They do not understand that there is no self to be dissolved. There is only the notion of self to be transcended.“

The Origins and History of Consciousness, pg 400

“Development in the first half of life is marked by two decisive crises, each of which corresponds to a fight with the dragon.  The first crisis is characterized by the encounter with the problem of the First Parents and by the formation of the ego.  It is enacted between the ages of three and five, and psychoanalysis has made us familiar with certain aspects and forms of this parental encounter, under the guise of the Oedipus complex.  The second crisis is puberty, when the dragon fight has to be fought out again on a new level.  Here the form of the ego is finally fixed with the support of what we have called ‘heaven.’  That is to say, new archetypal constellations emerge, and with them a new relation of the ego to the self.”

The Origins and History of Consciousness, pg 353

“Evil, no matter by what cultural canon it be judged, is a necessary constituent of individuality as its egoism, its readiness to defend itself or to attack, and lastly, as its capacity to mark itself off from the collective and to maintain its ‘otherness’ in face of the leveling demands of the community.  The shadow roots the personality in the subsoil of the unconscious, and this shadowy link with the archetype of the antagonist, i.e., the devil, is in the deepest sense part of the creative abyss of every living personality.  That is why in myths the shadow often appears as a twin, for he is not just the ‘hostile brother,’ but the companion and friend, and it is sometimes difficult to tell whether this twin is the shadow or the self, the deathless ‘other.’”

The Origins and History of Consciousness, pg 256

“As though a Copernican revolution has taken place within the psyche, consciousness faces inward and becomes aware of the self, about which the ego revolves in a perpetual paradox of identity and nonidentity.  The psychological process of assimilating the unconscious into our present-day consciousness begins at this point, and the consequent shifting of the center of gravity from the ego to the self signalizes the latest stage in the evolution of human consciousness.”

The Origins and History of Consciousness, pg 143

“The masculine trend, however, is towards greater co-ordination of spirit, ego, consciousness, and will.  Because man discovers his true self in consciousness, and is a stranger to himself in the unconscious, which he must inevitably experience as feminine, the development of masculine culture means development of consciousness.”

What Do You Say After You Say Hello?

“The feeling of ‘Self’ is a mobile one. It can reside in any of the three ego states at any given moment, and can jump from one to the other as occasion arises. Whenever one of the ego states is fully active, that ego state is experienced at that moment as the real Self.”

In My Own Way

“If we get rid of all wishful thinking and dubious metaphysical speculations, we can hardly doubt that – at a time not too distant – each one of us will simply cease to be.  It won’t be like going into darkness forever, for there will be neither darkness, nor time, nor sense of futility, nor anyone to feel anything about it.  Try as best you can to imagine this, and keep at it.  The universe will, supposedly, be going on as usual, but for each individual it will be as if it had never happened at all; and even that is saying too much, because there won’t be anyone for whom it never happened.  Make this prospect as real as possible: the one total certainty.  You will be as if you had never existed, which was, however, the way you were before you did exist – and not only you but everything else.  Nevertheless, with such an improbable past, here we are.  We begin from nothing and end in nothing.  You can say that again.  Think it over and over, trying to conceive the fact of coming to never having existed.  After a while you will begin to feel rather weird, as if this very apparent something that you are is at the same time nothing at all.  Indeed, you seem to be rather firmly and certainly grounded in nothingness, much as your sight seems to emerge from that total blankness behind your eyes.  The weird feeling goes with the fact that you are being introduced to a new common sense, a new logic, in which you are beginning to realize the identity of ku and shiki, void and form.  All of a sudden it will strike you that this nothingness is the most potent, magical, basic, and reliable thing you ever thought of, and that the reason you can’t form the slight idea of it is that it’s yourself.  But not the self you thought you were.”