326: It is a known fact that the "functional" gods of religion eventually become functions of consciousness. Originally, consciousness did not possess enough free libido to perform any activity- plowing, harvesting, hunting, waging war, etc.- of its own "free will" and was obliged to invoke the help of a god who "understood" these things.
cf Jaynes, "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" : did the gods 'talk' when invoked, as Jaynes concludes? Interestingly, he reaches the same conclusion Neumann does about the weakness of early consciousness, but if one looks at his references, it is clear he and Neumann did not read the same people.
327: The importance of this fragmentation [of archetypes] is particularly clear in the case of a bivalent content such as we showed the Great Mother to be... The antithetical structure of such a content makes conscious orientation impossible and eventually leads to fascination. Consciousness keeps on returning to this content, or to the person who embodies it or carries its projection, and is unable to get away from it.... Affective reactions resulting from fascination are dangerous; they amount to an invasion by the unconscious.
This strikes me as a very concise description of what I am inclined to call the libidinal flow of romantic love, which is caricatured in the borderline ego-selfobject relationship.
An advanced consciousness will therefore split the bivalent content ... into good and evil[:] consciousness can then take up an attitude....
Again, the borderline pattern of devaluing an unsatisfactory selfobject, and again a very common response to a failed "normal" love-affair (causing me to think once again that "normal" love is, from a rational perspective, stereotypical psychopathology which enjoys the protection of social sanction so that we shall not "perish from the earth").
331: The trend of evolution makes it clear that the medullary man is being superseded by the cortical man.... It is only now, in the present crisis of modern man, whose overaccentuation 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" with his medullary region.
What is the solution to the crisis? A lowering of the center of gravity of consciousness, or some less repressive integration of conscious and unconscious components?
347: ...the pain of the "vanquished" unconscious system does not remain unconscious. ... Myths express this phenomenon in the feeling of primordial guilt which accompanies the separation of the World Parents.
This is "Original Guilt", which is presumably present in any consciousness in which repression is operative, and is perceptible to the degree that the repression is 'dis-embedded' (am I using this term right?) or incomplete. Feelings of guilt and inauthenticity would seem to be a 'normal' part of any borderline state, whether pathological or transformational.
364: The collective transmits to the maturing individual ... such contents as have strengthened the growth of human consciousness, and it proscribes all developments and attitudes that run counter to this process.
Of course there are exceptions: special individuals, generally sacred, taboo or otherwise set apart, whose social role is the seeking of the Other (numinous, unconscious), and whose practice and life-style often or even generally involves alteration or reduction of rational consciousness. Artists (including writers, musicians, etc.), shaman-wizard-priest types, etc.
This tendency of the collective could be viewed in evolutionary terms as adaptive so long as the social 'organism' created by the individuals shaped in this way by that same 'organism' is the 'fittest' in competition with neighboring 'social organisms' and in its ability to cope with its environment in general. Viewed in this way, our highly rational consciousness and the Western culture associated therewith would be seen as highly successful: we have been able to kill or absorb other less dynamic, aggressive and rationally focused cultures, and largely dominate the environment.
Of course, if a 'social organism' becomes such that it starts to degrade the components (individuals) it is composed of to a significant degree, or degrades the physical environment that said individuals need (the literal physical Ground of their being), then the 'social organism' will change or will decline. This seems to be one way of describing the "present crisis of modern man".
So: if the collective is transmitting a set of individual-shaping values, and the society composed of these individuals is generally perceived to be in such a crisis, one would expect counter-positions to aspects of the cultural canon to develop: the organism begins to cast about, to probe for a new direction or new configuration to move from crisis to stability. In the current situation, primitivist, anti-rational, spiritual and anti-materialist tendencies clearly present at least from Romanticism thru the '60s "counter-culture" and still active today (despite the fake world-image projected by the capitalist media, politicians, academics etc. in which capitalist rationality has finally and irrevocably triumphed and resistance is futile) can clearly be seen as an expression on a social/collective scale of 'linking back' or Regression In the Service of Transcendence (RIST).
376: The important thing, however, is that the archetypal canon is always created and brought to birth by "eccentric" individuals. These are the founders of religions, sects, philosophies, political sciences, ideologies, and spiritual movements....
I take comfort in this.