The Origins and History of Consciousness (Princeton Classics, 113 Book 42)

by Erich Neumann

He whose vision cannot cover History’s three thousand years, Must in outer darkness hover, Live within the day’s frontiers. GOETHE, Westöstlicher Diwan

the uroboros. Upon this foundation he has succeeded in constructing a unique history of the evolution of consciousness, and at the same time in representing the body of myths as the phenomenology of this same evolution.

This factor is of the greatest importance in psychology, for the “personal equation” colors the mode of seeing. Ultimate truth, if there be such a thing, demands the concert of many voices.

for the unconscious reveals itself to the conscious mind in images which, as in dreams and fantasies, initiate the process of conscious reaction and assimilation.

The archetypal structural elements of the psyche are psychic organs upon whose functioning the well-being of the individual depends, and whose injury has disastrous consequences:

Neumman aca esta planteando que un ego extremadamente movilizado por energia arquetipica sera entonces dañado con grandes consecuencias

Ego consciousness evolves by passing through a series of “eternal images,” and the ego, transformed in the passage, is constantly experiencing a new relation to the archetypes.

The ability to perceive, to understand, and to interpret these images changes as ego consciousness changes in the course of man’s phylogenetic and ontogenetic history;

Our work therefore links up with that fundamental early work of Jung’s, The Psychology of the Unconscious, even though we may be obliged to make certain emendations. Whereas in Freudian psychoanalysis the evolutionary approach led only to a concretistic and narrowly personalistic theory of libido, analytical psychology has so far failed to pursue this line of inquiry any further.

The evolution of consciousness as a form of creative evolution is the peculiar achievement of Western man.

Wherever this type of creative ego consciousness has developed, or is still developing, the archetypal stages of conscious evolution are in force. In stationary cultures, or in primitive societies where the original features of human culture are still preserved, the earliest stages of man’s psychology predominate to such a degree that individual and creative traits are not assimilated by the collective. Indeed, creative individuals possessed of a stronger consciousness are even branded by the collective as antisocial.4

The individual is the bearer of this creative activity of the mind and therefore remains the decisive factor in all future Western developments.

Any attempt to outline the archetypal stages from the standpoint of analytical psychology must begin by drawing a fundamental distinction between personal and transpersonal psychic factors.

are to be regarded not as external conditions of society, but as internal structural elements.

The evolution of consciousness by stages is as much a collective human phenomenon as a particular individual phenomenon.

We do not therefore maintain that all the stages of conscious development are to be found always, everywhere, and in every mythology, any more than the theory of evolution maintains that the evolutionary stages of every animal species are repeated in man’s evolution.

developmental stages arrange themselves in an orderly sequence and thus determine all psychic development. Equally we maintain that these archetypal stages are unconscious determinants and can be found in mythology,

But the collective aspect of this relationship does not mean that unique or recurrent historical events are inherited,

For this reason analytical psychology considers the structure of the psyche to be determined by a priori transpersonal dominants —archetypes—

we are really dealing with symbols, ideal forms, psychic categories, and basic structural patterns whose infinitely varied modes of operation govern the history of mankind and the individual.

demonstrating the connections between the symbols and the various strata of conscious development. Only against this background can we understand the normal developments of the psyche, as well as the pathological phenomena in which collective problems constantly appear as the basic problems of human existence and so must be understood in that light.

The integration of personal psychic phenomena with the corresponding transpersonal symbols is of paramount importance for the further development of consciousness and for the synthesis of the personality.

The rediscovery of the human and cultural strata from which these symbols derive is in the original sense of the word “bildend”–“informing.” Consciousness thus acquires images (Bilder) and education (Bildung), widens its horizon, and charges itself with contents which constellate a new psychic potential.

We have also to realize that the false, personalistic interpretation of everything psychic is the expression of an unconscious law which has everywhere constrained modern man to misinterpret his true role and significance.

Only when we have made it clear to what degree the reduction of the transpersonal to the personal springs from a tendency which once had a very deep meaning, but which the crisis of modern consciousness has rendered wholly meaningless and nonsensical, will our task be fulfilled. Only

SAVAGEE!!! HAHAHAH

If, on the other hand, transpersonal contents are reduced to the data of a purely personalistic psychology, the result is not only an appalling impoverishment of individual life—that might remain merely a private concern—but also a congestion of the collective unconscious which has disastrous consequences for humanity at large.

sobre identificación arquetipo

the ego not only becomes aware of its own position and defends it heroically, but also becomes capable of broadening and relativizing its experiences through the changes effected by its own activity.

The first cycle of myth is the creation myth.

While yet in the fold of the creation myth it enters upon the second cycle, namely, the hero myth,

In the beginning is perfection, wholeness. This original perfection can only be “circumscribed,” or described symbolically; its nature defies any description other than a mythical one, because that which describes, the ego, and that which is described, the beginning, which is prior to any ego, prove to be incommensurable quantities as soon as the ego tries to grasp its object conceptually, as a content of consciousness.

El contenido del incosnciente sobre pasa la energetica capaz de ser procesada por el ego.

For this reason a symbol always stands at the beginning, the most striking feature of which is its multiplicity of meanings, its indeterminate and indeterminable character.

The self-representation of the dawn of human history can be seen from its symbolic description in ritual and myth.

in all peoples and in all religions, creation appears as the creation of light. Thus the coming of consciousness, manifesting itself as light in contrast to the darkness of the unconscious, is the real “object” of creation mythology.

in a series of discursive explanations, and reduce them to clarity by logical analysis.

el discurso como una forma para representar el mundo

The act of becoming conscious consists in the concentric grouping of symbols around the object, all circumscribing and describing the unknown from many sides.

The symbolic story of the beginning, which speaks to us from the mythology of all ages, is the attempt made by man’s childlike, prescientific consciousness to master problems and enigmas which are mostly beyond the grasp of even our developed modern consciousness.

The psyche blends, as does the dream; it spins and weaves together, combining each with each. The symbol is therefore an analogy, more an equivalence than an equation, and therein lies its wealth of meanings, but also its elusiveness.

Circle, sphere, and round are all aspects of the Self-contained,

all these symbols with which men have sought to grasp the beginning in mythological terms are as alive today as they ever were; they have their place not only in art and religion, but in the living processes of the individual psyche, in dreams and in fantasies. And so long as man shall exist, perfection will continue to appear as the circle, the sphere, and the round; and the Primal Deity who is sufficient unto himself, and the self who has gone beyond the opposites, will reappear in the image of the round, the mandala.

The time of the beginning, before the coming of the opposites, must be understood as the self-description of that great epoch when there was still no consciousness. It is the wu chi of Chinese philosophy, whose symbol is the empty circle.21 Everything is still in the “now and for ever” of eternal being; sun, moon, and stars, these symbols of time and therefore of mortality, have not yet been created; and day and night, yesterday and tomorrow, genesis and decay, the flux of life and birth and death, have not yet entered into the world. This prehistoric state of being is not time, but eternity, just as the time before the coming of man and before birth and begetting is eternity. And just as there is no time before the birth of man and ego, only eternity, so there is no space, only infinity.

Mythology, however, is the product of the collective unconscious, and anyone acquainted with primitive psychology must stand amazed at the unconscious wisdom which rises up from the depths of the human psyche in answer to these unconscious questions.

Anything deep—abyss, valley, ground, also the sea and the bottom of the sea, fountains, lakes and pools, the earth (illus. 10), the underworld, the cave, the house, and the city—all are parts of this archetype. Anything big and embracing which contains, surrounds, enwraps, shelters, preserves, and nourishes anything small belongs to the primordial matriarchal realm.

For always this mother is she who fulfills, the bestower and helper. This living image of the Great and Good Mother has at all times of distress been the refuge of humanity and ever shall be; for the state of being contained in the whole, without responsibility or effort, with no doubts and no division of the world into two, is paradisal, and can never again be realized in its pristine happy-go-luckiness in adult life.

There is, as a counteracting force, the desire to become conscious, a veritable instinct impelling man in this direction.

The struggle between the specifically human and the universally natural constitutes the history of man’s conscious development.

So long as the infantile ego consciousness is weak and feels the strain of its own existence as heavy and oppressive, while drowsiness and sleep are felt as delicious pleasure, it has not yet discovered its own reality and differentness.

World Parents, who are the answer to the question about the origin, are themselves the universe and the prime symbol of everlasting life.

This initial movement, the procreative thrust, naturally has an affinity with the paternal side of the uroboros and with the beginning of evolution in time, and is far harder to visualize than the maternal side.

Judaism and Christianity between them—and this includes Freud—have had a heavy and disastrous hand in this misunderstanding.

The desecration of pagan values in the struggle for monotheism and for a conscious ethic was necessary, and historically an advance; but it resulted in a complete distortion of the primordial world of those times.

The creative word, creative breath—that is creative spirit. But this breath concept is only an abstraction from the image of the procreative wind-ruach-pneuma-animus, which animates through “inspiration.