I read The Origins and History of Consciousness, by Errich Neumann, and wanted to do a summary for myself, as the book was pretty lengthy and hard to understand (given all the myths and psychoanalysis stuff in it). Hope you enjoy a little escapade into understanding the development of the conscious self directed psyche.
The evolution of consciousness is the evolution of the psychological. From unconsciousness to consciousness. This topic is of interest to me because I spent a lot of time in Eastern philosophy working backward towards the uroboros for a state of samadhi, or enlightenment by becoming one with the universe. This doesn't seem to be the trend in the evolution of consciousness. Or at least it is a counter trend. The trend of waking up to the source. However, if there is no development of a voluntary conscious ego structure, you tend to melt into a psychic unity of forces that possess you. I took this so far that I had to admit myself to the hospital, as I had destroyed my ego. I was at the whim of psychic forces that drove me to paranoia and isolation. I became the universe, but I lost my soul in doing it. Here I hope to outline the development of the soul (or psyche) to give a clear picture of how consciousness developed, so having “woken up” my consciousness to a lack of separateness, I can discover some of the processes involved in “growing up” consciousness as a mature voluntary ego.
According to Erich Neumann, the evolution of consciousness occurred by three gradual steps. First was the unconscious Uroboros, symbolized by the serpent eating it's own tail. Second came the separation of the world into two “parents”. Thirdly, the ego engages in a “dragon fight” with the unconscious. A key term is centroversion, which is a development of the personality traits extroversion and introversion. Mastering the internal world of the soul and the external world.
In the beginning was the Uroboros. The unconscious wheel that turns itself. This manifest themselves in unselfconscious animals and in our own unconscious mechanisms of our minds. Like eye blinking, or breathing, or walking. The outer world is also unconscious and is self sustaining and goes on its own. Like the Upanishads say, “The wind blows and the grass grows”. We used to be like this before we became self conscious. And there still is in us a strong desire to stay unconscious. To crawl back in the womb of the mother so to speak. When we were early in our evolution, like that of a child of two years old, we were possessed by our unconscious. We acted reflexively. To primitive man, the ego felt its existence as a heavy and oppressive burden. Because of this, it sought self-dissolution out of nastalgia for the perfection of the unconscious state. It was a place of paradise and bliss. But, the upward spiral of evolution took us out of the garden of Eden. The uroborus still is the source of creativity, for those that can tap into that unconscious side of themselves.
Later, the world was split into two “parents”. These are symbolized by the yin and yang as the opposites. The whole became parts. We began to become conscious of the differentiation between things. As we began to conceptualize them. The sky was different from the earth. The worldly was different from the spiritual (or psychological). Reality was split into mother nature and father culture. And ever since the distinction was made, we have been at war with our mother, the unconscious and nature. As Errich Neumann says, “it is the mark of man to be pitted against the world, it is its sorrow and his specialty*; for what at first seems loss turns out positive again”. This war against “the world” in favour of the spiritual takes form in the hero's fight with the unconscious, where he goes into the underworld of what is unconscious to him and rescues the treasure of knowledge from the dragon.
The uroboros was also split into two worlds. The world of the spiritual, which is the creation of man, and the worldly, which is the creation of nature. Neumann says, “the victorious hero stands for a new beginning, the beginning of creation, but creation which is the work of man and which we call culture, as opposed to natural creation which is given to man at the outset and overshadows his beginnings.” This is shown by the motto, away from the mother, and towards the father. Away from nature, and towards culture. Still, there is a longing for the paradisal unconscious state, where we are ruled by biological urges. But fear keeps us from melting back intro the uroboros. Because it is not adaptive to forgo self regulation. The evolution of consciousness takes birth through culture, religion, art, and science, which spring from the urge to overcome this fear by giving it concrete expression.
The hero comes to the forefront in the history of consciousness, when the ego has gained enough energy by transforming the world through symbols, to set itself free of the temptation of unconsciousness. However, instead of fearing the uroboros, the ego goes right where it is most afraid. It plunges itself into the unconscious to make the unknown known. As Neumann says, “The activity of the hero in his fight with the dragon is that of acting willing and discrimination ego which no longer fascinated and overpowered and abandoning its youthful attitude of passive defense, seeks out the danger, performs new and extraordinary deeds, and battles its way to victory. ...Fear of dissolution held the ego back from regressing to the Great Mother and to the uroboros. It must conquer the fear that once protected it and do the very thing of which it was most afraid. It must expose itself to the annihilating force of the uroboric mother dragon without letting itself be destroyed.”. With the power of the Logos, the Word, the ego is able to cut up the dragon of chaos, and make the world out of it. The hero uses the symbol to free up energy in his fight with the unconscious. Neuman says, “the symbol is a psychological machine which transforms energy. ...But the symbol, as an object animates by projection, fascinates, and, the extent that it grips and stirs him, sets his libido in motion and with it the whole man.” These symbols come out as archetypes through stories that we tell. One of them would be Christ and the Devil. Each being the most descriptive of good and evil that we can come up with. “possession by the archetype links the individual to humanity again: he is dipped in the torrent of the collective unconscious and is regenerated through the activation of his own collective layers. ...the individual is secure in the network of the cultural canon, sustained by its vitality, but held fast.” So it becomes important to stick to our culture, which has the symbols we need to organize the narratives of our lives. They free up energy by making the world make sense, so we aren't overwhelmed with relativity. As Neumann says, “Before being so split, the contents is not merely good and bad at once, it is beyond good and evil, attracting and repelling, and therefore irritating to consciousnesses. But if there is a division into good and evil, consciousness can then take up an attitude. It accepts and rejects, orientates itself, and thus gets outside the range of fascination”. And so we have gone up a level from total Being as such, to a place where there is an “aught”, and not just an “is”. This is the battle that us humans are blessed and cursed with. Just telling someone who is suffering to live in the moment will not always help. That would be prescribing and “is” to someone who may need an “aught” to answer. The theme in the East is to renounce good and bad, and to let go into suchness. To get with the “is” and let go of attachment. I don't think that involves the ego enough in it's battle for survival. That is an egoless tactic, which can be useful if there is too much ego involved. As Neumann says, “It is only now in the present crisis of modern man whose over accentuation of the conscious, cortical side of himself has led to excessive repression and dissociation of the unconscious, that it has become necessary for him to link back to the unconscious.”. In this sense, linking back to the unconscious through Eastern mysticism might be useful, because many practices involve getting back to autonomic unconscious feelings, or the breath, through non-judgmental mindfulness.
I've outlined the Origins and History of Consciousness a bit here. A major theme is the development of a judging ego that can split the difference between right and wrong. Another theme is making what is unconscious conscious, as dramatized in the dragon fight. We went from unconscious existence, unaware of ourselves and unable to self regulate, to a place where we were no longer overcome by uroboric self begetting being. We now have a soul that can voluntarily take on the unknown, and fight against the unconscious. That being said, the unconscious is not ultimately an enemy. Neumann says, “The devil is the deepest sense part of the creative abyss of every living personality. Only by making friends with the shadow do we gain the friendship of the Self.”. This means that the unknown pops up in our psyche's all the time, like the snake appearing in the garden of Eden. We are constantly tempted by the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and by doing battle with our snakes, we get the treasure of knowledge, becoming more like God. The friendship of the self means that the psyche is unified in conscious and unconscious life, and isn't fragmented into parts that don't jive with each other. A smoker who runs at the same time, has two contradictory “spirits” in him. He is possessed by these states of seeking a cigarette and going out for a run. These are parts of his psyche. By making the unconscious conscious, the hero addresses his smoking addiction and why he smokes, then quits having become conscious of how bad it is for him. Then he is less unconscious of what he is doing, and his actions are more in line with his goal, to be fit. This process is not passive, because it requires energy to give order to the chaos of the unconscious. It takes an acting willing participant who has overcome his fear, to address his dragon, and cut it up into real parts (i.e. Talking about it, watching videos about it etc.) to make the world. We've come a long ways from the uroboric state of floating through life unreflectively and uncritically. Unconsciously and habitually. Possessed by drives and desires. Hopefully having a little more thought put into how consciousness works, and how it may have developed, will help you confront your dragons, and split the world up into parts, while you speak magic words that give order to the unknown, giving you more energy to be the master of your house.