The Creation of Consciousness By Edward Edinger

According to Edinger's analysis our Western society is suffering with a lack of myths. There is no meaning for life when the individuals lost the consciousness of a transpersonal reality. And consequently it happens the reactivation of primitive unconscious contents.

The mankind, as the second creator of world, should become aware of these unconscious contents in order to create more and more consciousness what will constitute the new myth of the modern man.

The process where the psychic contents make contact with the ego, thus integrating themselves, is called individuation and corresponds to an encounter and union of opposites, a consciousness of completeness. In the first moment this process is a conflict of dualities and the consciousness is full of anguish and affliction. After that it comes a new quantum of consciousness and the individual gets a transcendent view feeling a still blessedness. Thus the individual ego becomes a receptacle to a transpersonal consciousness what holds the Holy Graal' symbolism.

The amount of consciousness created by each individual during his life increases the total sum of consciousness in the universe. According to this, the goal of different ways of psychological development is the achievement of the highest grade of consciousness what occurs in a context of duality - subject /object, Ego /Unconscious, a separation by conscious discrimination and reflection.

Edinger points out the two sides of the process of knowledge: being the subject of knowledge and being the known object. In the first situation we can find the function of culture, dreams and fantasies as a mirror for the knowing subject to see and know about himself. In the second situation we can cite the psychotherapy, felt as a scared experience like being seen by the eyes of God, that is, being an object known by a transpersonal subject. In this sense we may understand the Final Judgement as a projection of the encounter of the individual ego with the transcendent Self.

In sum, we come from an unconscious state as a known object to a conscious state of knowing subject due to the ego's growth and then, by the ego's renouncement to the Self, to get the experience of "knowing with" where there is a relationship with an other outside (a person) or an other inside (the Self).

Besides that, Edinger notes that there is a process of changing in the God's image that comes concomitantly with the transformations in human consciousness. And more than that, these two process are inexorablely linked, acting on each other in a manner that the evolution of consciousness brings about a new God's image and an advanced God's image increases the evolution of consciousness.

Jung studied the relationship between man and God, understanding God as a psychic reality, an archetype of completeness. He concluded that by the conscious knowledge the man rises above God, changing Him and otherwise God becomes human. That is to say, the ego is necessary to the Self-realization.

Following this thinking, Edinger underlies that to know the transpersonal center of psychism, living based on this knowledge, represents to be incarnating the God's image what is in other words the individuation process. There is a progressive consciousness of transpersonal psychism whose energies become humanized. Thus the ego is more and more led by this psychism what means that the man becomes a tool of God.

In sum, the individual existence is a necessary condition to the transformation of God what consequently brings the idea of the continuous incarnation of God by some more advanced individuals. They offer themselves as receptacles for the transcendent reality and dare to face their primitive affections and energies for being changed and integrated, although the individuals experience it as a tormenting process of punishment, huge conflicts, death and finally transfiguration. For each new perception brings a new hard responsibility. That is, the individual becomes responsible for his own existence and evolution and for the existence and evolution of God.