How to get across from the sexual to the spiritual, not only from the scientific standpoint, but as a phenomenon in the individual?
The next portion of the book deals with creative energy in a different aspect.
Energy can show itself in manifold forms and in a process of transition from one form to another.
The basic transformation is that which ensues when the energy passes from strictly biological needs into cultural achievements.
From this point on it is a matter of evolution.
How is it possible then to get across from the sexual, for example, to the spiritual, not only from the scientific standpoint, but as a phenomenon in the individual?
Sexuality and spirituality are pairs of opposites that need each other.
How is the process that leads from the sexual stage to the spiritual stage brought about?
The first image that comes up is the hero.
It is a most ideal image whose qualities change from age to age, but it has always embodied the things people value the most.
The hero embodies the transition we are seeking to trace, for it is as though in the sexual stage man feels too much under the power of nature, a power which he is in no way able to manage.
The hero is a very perfect man, he stands out as a human protest against nature, who is seeking to rob man of that possibility of perfection.
The unconscious makes the hero symbol, and therefore the hero means a change of attitude.
But this hero symbol comes also from the unconscious, which is also nature, that same nature which is not the least interested in the ideal that man is struggling to formulate.
Man comes then into conflict with the unconscious, and this struggle is that of winning free from his unconscious, his mother.
His unconscious, as I said, forms images of perfect people, but when he tries to realize these hero types, an other trend in the unconscious is aroused,
[a trend] to the attempt to destroy the image.
So is developed the terrible mother, the devouring dragon, the dangers of rebirth, etc.
At the same time the appearance of the hero ideal means the strengthening of the hopes of man.
It gives man the notion that he can reorganize the lines of his life if the mother will allow it.
This can’t be done by a literal rebirth, so it is accomplished by a transformation process, or psychological rebirth.
But this is not to be done without serious battle with the mother.
The paramount question becomes, Will the mother allow the hero to be born?
And then, What can be done to satisfy the mother so that she will allow it? ~Carl Jung, 1925 Seminar, Page 31
