““On this second trip, Jung had something like a mystical or metaphysical experience. He suddenly understood the meaning of self-consciousness, in an otherwise apparently oblivious universe. It was through our awareness of existence, Jung understood, that it gains meaning. On a game preserve on the Athai Plains, Jung saw huge herds of animals: antelopes, zebras, gazelles stretched endlessly to the horizon. He felt he witnessed “the stillness of the eternal beginning, the world as it had always been, in the state of non-being; for until then no one had been present to know that it was this world.” Jung separated from his companions until they were out of sight and imagined he was utterly alone. He was trying to re-create the first moment of self-consciousness, when consciousness first recognized the distinction between itself and the world, when it could first regard the world objectively, detached from it, as an observer. “In an invisible act of creation,” man had “put the stamp of perfection on the world by giving it objective existence.””
