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The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience – Dr Robert Masters and Dr Jean Houston

The legends... reflect the allegory of the self in search of wholeness.  As Jung has observed, the various 'heroes “may be regarded as illustrating the kind of psychic events that occur in the entelechy or genesis of the 'self'' “.

The miraculous birth tries to depict the way in which this genesis is experienced.  Since it is a psychic genesis, everything must happen non empirically e.g. by means of a virgin birth, or by miraculous conception, or by birth from unnatural organs. 

The motifs of insignificance exposure, abandonment, danger, try to show how precarious is the psychic possibility of wholeness, that is the enormous difficulties to be met with in attaining this 'highest good'. 

They also signify the powerlessness and helplessness of the life urge which subjects every growing thing to the law of maximum self-fulfillment, while at the same time the environmental influences place all sorts of insuperable obstacles in the way of individuation.