The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, pg 44

“…there are several stages of creative thought: first, a stage of preparation in which the problem is consciously worked over; then a period of incubation without any conscious concentration upon the problem; and then the illumination which is later justified by logic. …Indeed, it is sometimes almost as if the problem had to be forgotten to be solved.”

The Origins and History of Consciousness, pg 417

“Humanity as a whole and the single individual have the same task, namely, to realize themselves as a unity.  Both are cast forth into a reality, one half of which confronts them as nature and external world, while the other half approaches them as psyche and the unconscious, spirit and daemonic power.  Both must experience themselves as the center of this total reality.”

The Origins and History of Consciousness, pg 403

“The development of the persona is the outcome of a process of adaptation that suppresses all individually significant features and potentialities, disguising and repressing them in favor of collective factors, or  those deemed desirable by the collective.  Here again, wholeness is exchanged for a workable and successful sham personality.  The ‘inner voice’ is stifled by the growth of a superego, of conscience, the representative of collective values.  The voice, the individual experience of the transpersonal, which is particularly strong in childhood, is renounced in favor of conscience.  When paradise is abandoned, the voice of God that spoke in the Garden is abandoned too, and the values of the collective, of the father, of law and conscience, of the current morality, etc., must be accepted as the supreme values in order to make social adaptation possible.

“Whereas the natural disposition of every individual inclines him to be physically and psychically bisexual, the differential development of our culture forces him to thrust the contrasexual element into the unconscious.  As a result, only those elements which accord with the outward characteristics of sex and which conform to the collective valuation are recognized by the conscious mind.  Thus ‘feminine’ or ‘soulful’ characteristics are considered undesirable in a boy, at least in our culture. Such a one-sided accentuation of one’s specific sexuality ends by constellating the contrasexual element in the unconscious, in the form of the anima in men and the animus in women, which, as part souls, remain unconscious and dominate the conscious-unconscious relationship.  This process has the support of the collective, and sexual differentiation, precisely because the repression of the contrasexual element is often difficult, is at first accompanied by typical forms of animosity towards the opposite sex.  This development, too, follows the general principle of differentiation which presupposes the sacrifice of wholeness, here represented by the figure of the hermaphrodite.”

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 389

“The line runs, as we saw, from the archetype as an effective transpersonal figure to the idea, and then to the ‘concept’ which one ‘forms.’  A good example of this is the concept of God, which now derives wholly from the sphere of consciousness – or purports to derive from it, as the ego is deluded enough to pretend.  There is no longer anything transpersonal, but only personal; there are no more archetypes, but only concepts; no more symbols, only signs.

“This splitting off of the unconscious leads on the one hand to an ego life emptied of meaning, and on the other hand to an activation of the deeper-lying layers which, now grown destructive, devastate the autocratic world of the ego with transpersonal invasions, collective epidemics, and mass psychoses.  For an upsetting of the compensatory relationship between conscious and unconscious is not a phenomenon to be taken lightly.  Even when it is not so acute as to bring on a psychic sickness, the loss of instinct and the overaccentuation of the ego have consequences which, multiplied a millionfold, constellate the crisis of civilization.”

The Origins and History of Consciousness, pg 385

“Compensation is the first requisite for a productive relationship between the ego and the unconscious.  This means that the princess, the soul, is lost to the ego just as much in the patriarchal as in the matriarchal form of castration.

“But, as we have made clear in Part I of this book, behind both forms there looms the original uroboric castration, where the tendencies to differentiation cancel out.  To put it in psychological language: just as mania and melancholia are merely two forms of madness, of the devouring uroboric state which destroys all ego consciousness, so regression to the unconscious, i.e., being devoured by the Great Mother, and the flight to ‘nothing but’ consciousness, i.e., being devoured by the spiritual father, are two forms in which any truly compensated consciousness, and the striving for wholeness, are lost.  Deflation as well as inflation destroys the efficacy of consciousness, and both of them are defeats for the ego.

“Spiritual inflation, a perfect example of which is the frenziedness of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, is a typical Western development carried to extremes.  Behind the overaccentuation of consciousness, ego, and reason – sensible enough in themselves as the guiding aims of psychic development – there stands the overwhelming might of ‘heaven’ as the danger which goes beyond the heroic struggle with the earthly side of the dragon and culminates in a spirituality that has lost touch with reality and the instincts.”

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 329

“Pure existence in the unconscious, which primitive man shares with the animal, is indeed nonhuman and prehuman.  The fact that the dawn of consciousness and the creation of the world are parallel processes which throw up the same symbolism indicates that the world actually ‘exists’ only to the degree that it is cognized by an ego.  A differentiated world is the reflection of a self-differentiating consciousness.  The multiple archetypes and symbol groups split off from a primordial archetype are identical with the ego’s greater range of experience, knowledge, and insight.  Under the total impact of experience in the dawn period no particularized forms could be recognized, for the tremendous force of it extinguished the ego in a sort of numinous convulsion.  But a more informed human consciousness can experience, in the multiplicity of religions and philosophies, theologies and psychologies, the innumerable facets and meanings of the numinous, now anatomized into image and symbol, attribute and revelation.  That is to say, although the primal unity can only be experienced fragmentarily, it has at least come within range of conscious experience, whereas for the undeveloped ego it was utterly overwhelming.”

The Origins and History of Consciousness, pg 298

“Although consciousness is a product of the unconscious, it is a product of a very special sort.  All unconscious contents have, as complexes, a specific tendency, a striving to assert themselves.  Like living organisms, they devour other complexes and enrich themselves with their libido.  We can see in pathological cases, in fixed or compulsive ideas, manias, and states of possession, and again in every creative process where ‘the work’ absorbs and drains dry all extraneous contents, how an unconscious content attracts all others to itself, consumes them, subordinates and co-ordinates them, and forms with them a system of relationships dominated by itself.  We find the same process in normal life, too, when an idea – love, work, patriotism, or whatever else – comes to the top and asserts itself at the cost of others.  One-sidedness, fixation, exclusiveness, etc., are the consequences of this tendency of all complexes to make themselves the center.

“The peculiarity of the ego complex, however, is twofold; unlike all other complexes it tends to aggregate as the center of consciousness and to group the other conscious contents about itself; and secondly, it is oriented towards wholeness far more than any other complex.”

The Origins and History of Consciousness, pg 272

“Common descent from the same tribe, the sharing of a common life, and, above all, common experiences create emotional bonds even today, as we well know.  Social, religious, aesthetic, and other collective experiences of whatever coloring – from the tribal head-hunt to the modern mass meeting – activate the unconscious emotional foundations of the group psyche.  The individual has not yet broken loose from the emotional undercurrent, and any excitation of one part of the group can affect the whole, as a fever seizes upon all parts of the organism.  The emotional fusion then sweeps away the still feebly developed differences of conscious structure in the individuals concerned and continually restores the original group unity.”