We are so captivated by and entangled in our subjective consciousness that we have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions.
Man feels himself isolated in the cosmos, because he is no longer involved in nature and has lost his emotional "unconscious identity" with natural phenomena. These have slowly lost their symbolic implications. Thunder is no longer the voice of an angry god, nor is lightning his avenging missile. […] No voices now speak to man from stones, plants, and animals, nor does he speak to them believing they can hear. […] This enormous loss is compensated by the symbols in our dreams. They bring up our original nature: its instincts and peculiar thinking.
via: Vasco Brondi, Una cosa spirituale (Einaudi, 2025) — La vita onirica
Info & reflection: dreams as compensation for cosmic isolation, and art as the only possible translator.
Related in anthology
- Una cosa spirituale. Non fare niente, altre forme d'arte — Jung in the chapter on dream life: dreams make up for man's isolation from nature, and Brondi gives art the job of translating them