The Search for Meaning

There is a passage from “Ego and Archetype” which is a Jewish legend. I will quote that legend here.

Prior to the birth of a child, God calls the seed of the future human being before him and decides what its soul shall become: man or woman, sage or simpleton, rich or poor. Only one thing He leaves undecided, namely, whether he shall be righteous or unrighteous, for, as it is written, “All things are in the hand of the Lord except the fear of the Lord.” The soul, however, pleads with God not to be sent from the life beyond this world. But God makes answer: “The world to which I send thee, is better than the world in which thou wast; and when I formed thee, I formed thee for this earthly fate.” Thereupon God orders the angel in charge of the souls living in the Beyond to initiate this soul into all the mysteries of that other world, through Paradise and Hell. In such manner the soul experiences all the secrets of the Beyond. At the moment of birth, however, when the soul comes to earth, the angel extinguishes the light of knowledge burning above it, and the soul, enclosed in its earthly envelope, enters this world, having forgotten its lofty wisdom, but always seeking to regain it.

Quoted by Gerhard Adler, Studies in Analytical Psychology. New York, C.G. Jung Foundation, 1967, p. 120f

I’ve written about this effect, before, here. The search for meaning in life wakes us up.

Here ends today’s lesson.