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101 " In the Bardo Thodol, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, the dead man receives instruction, and the instruction culminates in the doctrine that he shall know himself identical with the great white light that shines beyond life and death: "
― Erich Neumann , The Origins and History of Consciousness
102 " The sun is brahma—this is the teaching. Here is the explanation: In the beginning, this world was nonbeing. This nonbeing became being. It developed. It turned into an egg. It lay there for a year. It burst asunder. One part of the eggshell was of silver, the other part was of gold. The silver part is the earth, the golden part is the sky…. What was born of it, is yonder sun. When it was bom there were shouts and hurrahs, all beings and all desires rose up to greet it. Therefore at its rising and at its every return, there are shouts and hurrahs, all beings and all desires rise up to greet it.6 "
103 " When, with growing self-awareness, he experiences his relation to an opponent, and the sacrificed realizes his identity with the sacrificiant, and vice versa, the hitherto cosmic opposition of light and darkness is experienced as an opposition between human or divine twins, and the long succession of fraternal feuds in mythology opens with the squabbles between Osiris and Set, Baal and Mot.7 "
104 " This original tie with the body as with something “peculiarly one’s own” is the basis of all individual development. Later the ego relates to the body, to its superior powers, and to the unconscious—with which its processes are largely identified—in a different and even contrary way. As the higher principle working through the head and consciousness, the ego comes into conflict with the body, and this conflict sometimes leads to a neurotic, partial dissociation which, however, is only the product of a later overdifferentiation. "
105 " The animating principle of mana, the effect of magic, the magical efficacy of spirits, and the reality of collective ideas, dreams, and ordeals are all governed by the laws of this interior reality which modern depth psychology is trying to bring to the surface. "
106 " Only then, as a result of his light-creating and space-creating intervention, was there heaven above and earth below, back and front, left and right-in other words, only then was space organized with reference to an ego. "
107 " The fact that, for the Great Mother, father and son are nothing but the fertilizing phallus can also be formulated from the masculine standpoint by saying that victor and victim are always the same: the triumphant sacrificer himself becomes a future sacrifice. Consciousness "
108 " 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. "
109 " task of the hero, which is to “awaken those sleeping images that can and must come forth from the night, in order to give the world a better face,” is far indeed from “masturbation. "
110 " Therefore the demiurge made the world in the shape of a sphere, giving it that figure which of all is the most perfect and the most equal to itself. "
111 " Ego formation can only proceed by way of distinction from the nonego and consciousness only emerge where it detaches itself from what is unconscious; and the individual only arrives at individuation when he marks himself off from the anonymous collective. "
112 " Pain and discomfort are among the earliest factors that build consciousness. They are “alarm-signals” sent out by controversion to indicate that the unconscious equilibrium is disturbed. "
113 " The form of representation peculiar to the unconscious is not that of the conscious mind. It neither attempts nor is able to seize hold of and define its objects in a series of discursive explanations, and reduce them to clarity by logical analysis. The way of the unconscious is different. Symbols gather round the thing to be explained, understood, interpreted. The act of becoming conscious consists in the concentric groupings of symbols around the object, all circumscribing and describing the unknown from many sides. Each symbol lays bare another essential side of the object to be grasped, points to another facet of meaning. Only the canon of these symbols congregating about the centre in question, the coherent symbol group, can lead to an understanding of what the symbols point to and of what they are trying to express. "
― Erich Neumann
114 " It is, however, impossible to find the treasure unless the hero has first found and redeemed his own soul, his own feminine counterpart which conceives and brings forth. "
115 " THE AIM of the extraverted type of hero is action: he is the founder, leader, and liberator whose deeds change the face of the world. The introverted type is the culture-bringer, the redeemer and savior who discovers the inner values, exalting them as knowledge and wisdom, as a law and a faith, a work to be accomplished and an example to be followed. "
116 " The psychic world of images is a synthesis of experiences of the inner and outer world, as any symbol will show. "
117 " From the union of the hero’s ego consciousness with the creative side of the soul, when he “knows” and realizes both the world and the anima, there is begotten the true birth, the synthesis of both. "
118 " 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. "
119 " Stability and indestructibility, the true goals of centroversion, have their mythological prototype in the conquest of death, in man’s defenses against its power, for death is the primorial symbol of the decay and dissolution of the personality. "
120 " The important thing is that consciousness as the acting center precedes consciousness as the cognitive center, in the same way as ritual precedes myth, or magic ceremonial and ethical action precede the scientific view of the world and anthropological knowledge. "