We are born in a state of inflation. In earliest infancy, no ego or consciousness exists. All is in the unconscious.
The latent ego is in complete identification with the Self. The Self is born, but the ego is made; and in the beginning all is Self.
This state is described by Neumann as the uroboros (the tail-eating serpent).
Since the Self is the center and totality of being, the ego totally identified with the Self experiences itself as a deity.
We can put it in these terms retrospectively although, of course, the infant does not think in this way.
He cannot yet think at all, but his total being and experience are ordered around the a priori assumption of deity.
This is the original state of unconscious wholeness and perfection which is responsible for the nostalgia we all have toward our origins, both personal and historical.
Many myths depict the original state of man as a state of roundness, wholeness, perfection, or paradise.
For instance, there is the Greek myth recorded by Hesiod of the four ages of man.
The first, original age was the golden age, a paradise.
The second was the silver age, a matriachal period where men obeyed the mothers.
The third age was bronze, a period of wars.
And the fourth age was the iron age, the period at which he was writing which was utterly degenerate.
About the golden, paradise age, Hesiod says:
(The golden race of men) lived like gods without sorrow of heart
remote and free from toil and grief . . . They had all good things;
for the fruitful earth unforced bore them fruit abundantly and without
stint. They dwelt in ease and peace upon their lands with many good
things, rich in flocks and loved by the blessed gods. ~Edward F. Edinger, Ego and Archetype, Page 7-8
