Encounters With The Greater Personality

In this lecture given in 1986 at the C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles, Dr. Edinger talks about the ego’s encounter with the Self, which Jung also called the Greater Personality. Discussing first the nature of the Self as the second center of the psyche (the ego being the first), Edinger then describes the wounding effect that the Self has on the ego at the first encounter. When the ego perseveres and endures the ordeal, scrutinizing the experience in search of its meaning, there is a divine revelation, by which the ego is rewarded with an insight into the transpersonal psyche. Edinger illustrates the phases of the encounter with the Self by four examples: Jacob and the angel of Yahweh in the thirty-second chapter of Genesis; Arjuna and Krishna in the Baghavad Gita; Paul and Christ in the Book of Acts; and finally Nietzsche and Zarathustra.