The Origins and History of Consciousness

by: Erich Neumann read in 2019

5 "In the beginning is perfection, wholeness." In my view these two assumptions are not only false, but they are the two most misleading and damaging assumptions in all of philosophy (including mathematics) and theology.
5 "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." This sentence can be fixed by replacing "perfection" with 'condition'. AKA "initial conditions.
6 "...a symbol always stands at the beginning, the most striking feature of which is its multiplicity of meanings, its indeterminate and indeterminable character." This strongly suggests a "point" as the symbol—a traveling point on a world-line—SG
105 "Trite as it seems to us, the logical statement of identity—"I am I"—the fundamental statement of consciousness, is in reality a tremendous achievement. This act, whereby an ego is posited and the personality identified with that ego—however fallacious that identification may later prove to be—alone creates the possibility of a self-orienting consciousness."
112 "Man's original hermaphroditic disposition is still largely conserved in the child." B.S. Neuman has evidently never fathered and raised children.
118 "The origin of all things is the Boundless. And into that from which they arise they pass away once more, as is meet, for they make reparation and satisfaction to one another for their injustice according to the ordering of time." —Anaximander
120 "Jung...discover[ed]...that archetypal images are operative in every man and appear spontaneously whenever the layer of the collective unconscious is activated." Does this explain irrational mob behavior?
219 "The development of personality proceeds in three different dimensions. The first is outward adaptation, to the world and things, otherwise known as extraversion; the second is inward adaptation, to the objective psyche and the archetypes, otherwise known as introversion. The third is centroversion, the self-formative or individuating tendency which proceeds within the psyche itself, independent of the other two attitudes and their development." This is reminiscent of Penrose's 3 worlds.
285 "Impulses and instincts, archetypes and symbols, are far more adapted to reality and to the external world than consciousness in its early stages. No instinct—one has only to think of the nesting and rearing instinct—can possibly be adapted to a mere "wish-fulfilling" pleasure principle, for the instincts command a knowledge of reality infinitely superior to our conscious knowledge even today. Animal psychology provides countless examples of an absolutely baffling and inexplicable reality orientation to the surrounding world, to other animals, plants, the seasons, etc. This adaptation of instinct to environment is unconscious, but the wisdom of these instincts is real and in no sense determined by any kind of "wish" whatsoever." I wouldn't be so sure.
296 "Thus, evolving consciousness is at least as much open to internal as to external stimuli. But it is significant that the registering organ which receives these stimuli from inside and outside feels, and necessarily feels, itself remote from them, different and, as it were, extrinsic. It stands like a registration system halfway between the external world and the body as the field of inner excitations. This position of detachment is a primary condition of consciousness, and it is the essence of its functioning to intensify and differentiate this attitude still further. In other words, it is an historical necessity for the organ of registration and control which we call consciousness to be differentiated in two directions at once." Yes! But where exactly is this "organ of registration and control"?
297 "The ego was originally only an organ of the unconscious and, impelled and directed by it, pursued the latter's aims, whether these were personal and vital aims such as the satisfaction of hunger and thirst, or those of the species, such as dominate the ego in sexuality. The discoveries of depth psychology have adduced a wealth of evidence to show that the conscious system is a product of the unconscious. Indeed, the profound and far-reaching dependence of this system upon its interior unconscious foundations is one of the crucial discoveries of modern times." There is a huge elephant in the room here. The glib talk of the "ego" and the "unconscious" as if they are "organs" cries out for a demonstration, or at least a speculation, showing or explaining where the "organs" exist.
297 "It corresponds in importance to the equally profound and far-reaching external dependence of the individual upon the collective." It may correspond in importance, but it definitely does not correspond logically. The "collective" can be identified and demonstrated but the "unconscious foundation" cannot.
300 "The nebulous power of attraction hitherto exerted by the unconscious crystallizes into a negative quality, recognized as being inimical to consciousness and the ego, and a defensive mechanism is thereby set in motion." This sentence typifies the mumbo-jumbo of this section.
303 "By postulating a creative principle at the beginning of his creation myths and placing these at the beginning of the world, man experienced his own—and by projection, God's—creativeness long before the idea of creative evolution was discovered." OK. So, if the creative principle was operative before brains existed, where exactly was the principle embodied?
322 "The fragmentation of the archetype is represented in myths as the deed of the hero; only when he has separated the World Parents can consciousness be born." Typical specious categorical assertion.
327 "...consciousness is built analogously to the eye. There is one spot where vision is sharpest, and larger areas can be perceived clearly only by continuous eye-movements. In the same way, consciousness can only keep a small segment sharply in focus; consequently it has to break up a large content into partial aspects, experiencing them piecemeal, one after the other, and then learn to get a synoptic view of the whole terrain by comparison and abstraction." A fair characterization of Stylus Guy.
436 "In the course of western development, the essentially positive process of emancipating the ego and consciousness from the tyranny of the unconscious has become negative."
442 "...mass illusion is incapable of producing any genuine and durable participation, much less anything constructive."

Summary: IMHO Neuman and Jung have done an admirable and exhaustive job of interpreting the artifacts and records from our species' past and constructed a model of reality attempting to explain consciousness and human life. Unfortunately, their model is based on a 17th century understanding of the world. Recent developments in science, mathematics, and logic should be considered and a new model of reality constructed that could improve on Jung's model. This should include the denial of determinism as discovered in QM, the denial of a single temporal dimension as discovered by Einstein, the denial of certainty and completeness as demonstrated by Gödel, the possibility of extra, large spatial dimensions as discovered by Lobachevski, Minkowski, et.al., the reality of those dimensions as demonstrated by Einstein and which are just now being taken seriously by cosmologists, the discoveries of evolutionary processes, and a detailed understanding of the molecular bases of life and its processes.

We are now in a position to make significant improvements in our understanding of the role and history of consciousness in reality. From the picture presented by Jung and Neumann, it explains that humans, or at least some of them, have some sort of access to another world. It is also clear that the glimpses those people get are confusing, ineffable, vague, and transient. As a result, the accounts they relate to others are vague, mysterious, and no doubt rife with error. Nonetheless, there is a considerable amount of consistency among those accounts that has been analyzed and modeled by Jung as well as could be expected with a 17th century understanding. In addition to our enhanced 21st century understanding, we still have that primitive capability of glimpsing the "other worlds" and it is even more accessible now with modern medicine facilitating NDEs, Lucid Dreaming, etc., and with pharmacology giving us access to altered states of consciousness.

Descartes' 17th century model of Dualism has prematurely been discarded by thinkers since then, but now with recent discoveries, all the objections have been overcome, so it is time to resurrect Cartesian Dualism and incorporate it into a new model of reality.

We stand on the threshold of a new understanding of consciousness and the world, which will finally make sense of all the mysteries which have been so nicely labeled, categorized, and organized by Jung, Neumann, as well as all other philosophers, scientists, theologians, and poets.



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