Carl Jung on the Creating Will in Man
[Carl Jung on the “Creating Will” in Man]
For the creator himself to be the new-born child, he must also
be willing to be the child-bearer, and endure the pangs of the
child-bearer. [Nietzsche’s Zarathustra]
You see, that creating will in man, which is so much linked up with his ego, is the father and the mother of the ego, for your creative will creates yourself; you create a new consciousness, a new ego is born.
It is a new generation of the ego one could say, a pregnancy and a birth, and that act of creation must be repeated.
To keep life as ego consciousness you must give birth to yourself repeatedly. The ego, the wider and higher state of consciousness, is first unconscious-that is the pregnancy;
and then something happens.
You hurt yourself against something or you have a tremendous emotion from within, and at that moment a new light comes to you and your consciousness is widened.
It is true that thus far man can be creative; thus far he is a little god.
Therefore, Goethe calls him the little god of this world, for he can produce a man of wider consciousness, and he can do it to a certain extent at will.
You can build up your consciousness, increase it at will, study, read: you are entirely free to have certain experiences.
This is the justification of Nietzsche’s idea that man could create the Superman, perhaps not in his own existence but in a future existence.
Therefore we believe in education, in mental and spiritual development, in everything man can do, for he really can do something.
But he will do nothing, nothing at all, if he leaves it to somebody else; if we do anything we have to do it in the here-and-now, and we will not do it in the here-and-now if we
are not convinced that this is the important place and the important time and that we have to do it here.
One cannot say, “Oh well, God has not granted me certain things so I hope and expect that my children will do them,” and then goad them on to a certain goal in order that they may fulfill what God has not allowed me to fulfill.
I should say, “I have not done it, and my son and daughter are different people, so why should they fulfill what I have not done?”
I must be satisfied with the fact that I have not done it.
Of course I can repent or be glad over it, but I should stick to the fact that I have not done it, and not assume that it was God who bestowed his grace upon me to do or not to do it.
This is the only argument which saves you from passing on your expectations to your children and naturally spoiling their lives by your own choice.
That is a perpetuated selfishness. ~Carl Jung, Zarathustra Seminar, Pages 940-941.
