The Creation of Consciousness

The Creation of Consciousness is Edinger‘s most condensed statement of what he takes to be Jung‘s myth — the continuing incarnation of the divine in human awareness. Published in 1984 by Inner City Books, it is the foundational text for the later Transformation of the God-Image and The New God-Image.

The thesis is that consciousness is not an epiphenomenon of nature but its completion. Edinger cites Jung’s pronouncement from Memories, Dreams, Reflections: “man is indispensable for the completion of creation; that, in fact, he himself is the second creator of the world, who alone has given to the world its objective existence” (Jung, cited in Edinger 1984). This thesis governs every Edinger claim about the vocation of the individuating ego.

Edinger identifies three dispensations — Jewish (law), Christian (faith), and psychological (experience): “God is now to be carried experientially by the individual. This is what is meant by the continuing incarnation” (Edinger 1984). The individual who bears consciousness consciously participates in the ongoing creation of meaning. Individuation, in this light, is not self-improvement; it is the cost of being the second creator.

The book is short — the Inner City edition runs 128 pages — but it is the spine of the late Edinger corpus. Every subsequent book on the god-image elaborates on what is compressed here.

Concepts introduced or developed

Cited by

edward-edinger (throughout later God-image works)