C.G. Jung here described his concern for the mind of modern people nearly a 100 years ago. He was a strong scientist but not a 'scientific materialist.' That is he saw evidence that humans' personal experience is more than only material, more than only what comes to us through the five physical senses.
Our Western inherited hard-won amazing science, Jung would insist, does not yield the full truth about the human condition when joined with an unwarranted assumption. That assumption being that all important truth for humans comes only through the human capacity to reason logically from what can be observed through our five physical material senses.
Our American culture's worldview is still primarily 'scientific materialism' whether a person yet sees this about onesself or not. Jung here mourns that we have literally lost touch with the part of ourself that is not material. Our inner depths or soul nature has no culturally sanctioned ways to express and practice itself in the intellectual atmosphere of only materialism.
Religions, in spite of their flaws, with their rich storehouse of mythological narratives for many ages provided an expression of the inner life for most people. Unfortunately, today even most religions have succumbed to materialism (matter is the only reality that matters)and offer modern people little real help in finding soul, one's true inner life.
Jung's work and writing are about pointing ways back to the human inner depths where matter and spirit are equally important and valued. Body and spirit, thinking and intuition, inner and outer worlds, physical fact and imagination/dreams, so much still separated in our culture, are in Jung encouraged toward union. And a person stands to find a genuine personal path toward wholeness. This rather than continuously seeking material achievement or some of the many materialistic versions of personal progress.
As a result the ancient honor given to night and daytime dreams, imagination and human intuition are not respected as also essential processes in the human search for more complete and much needed truth and life guidance.
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