Jungian psychologist Edward Edinger said: ‘It is evident to thoughtful people that Western society no longer has a viable functioning myth….. 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 transpersonal reality (God), the inner and outer anarchies of competing personal desires take over’. (Edinger, 9) (my italics)Sound familiar?
‘The loss of central myth brings about a truly apocalyptic condition and this is the state of modern man’. (Edinger, 10)
But in 1979 before Edinger published this, this is what Rajneesh (Osho) thought: he saw his movement as the route to the preservation of the human race. He said: "If we cannot create the 'new man' in the coming 20 years, then humanity has no future. The holocaust of a global suicide can only be avoided if a new kind of man can be created." (Rajneesh)
Never mind what I say......
Image: Alex Grey
Edward Edinger, 1984, Creation of Consciousness: Jung's Myth for Modern Man (Studies in Jungian Psychology, 14.) Inner City Books.
