Book of the Week: Edward Edinger, The Creation of Consciousness

Edinger is out and out brilliant. Here are some excerpts from this cosmic book:

History and anthropology teach us that a human society cannot long survive unless its members are psychologically contained within a central living myth. Such a myth provides the individual with a reason for being

The breakdown of a central myth is like the shattering of a vessel containing a precious essence; the fluid is spilled and drains away, soaked up by the surrounding undifferentiated matter. Meaning is lost. In its place, primitive and atavistic contents are reactivated. Differentiated values disappear and are replaced by the elemental motivations of power and pleasure, or else the individual is exposed to emptiness and despair. With the loss of awareness of a transpersonal reality (God), the inner and outer anarchies of competing personal desires take over. The loss of a central myth brings about a truly apocalyptic condition and this is the state of modern man. (pp 9-10)

Consciousness is a psychic substance which is produced by the experience of the opposites suffered, not blindly, but in living awareness. . . . Every human experience, to the extent that it is lived in awareness, augments the sum total of consciousness in the universe. This fact provides the meaning for every experience and gives each individual a role in the on-going world-drama of creation (pp 32-33)