Carl Jung: What is it, at this moment and in this individual, that represents the natural urge of life?

What is it, at this moment and in this individual, that represents the natural urge of life?

That is the question.

That question neither science, nor worldly wisdom, nor religion, nor the best of advice can resolve for him.

The resolution can come solely from absolutely impartial observation of those psychological germs of life which are born of the natural collaboration of the conscious and the unconscious on the one hand and of the individual and the collective on the other. Where do we find these germs of life?

One man seeks them in the conscious, another in the unconscious.

But the conscious is only one side, and the unconscious is only its reverse.

We should never forget that dreams are the compensators of consciousness.

If it were not so, we would have to regard them as a source of knowledge superior to consciousness: we should then be degraded to the mental level of fortune tellers and would be obliged to accept all the futility of superstition, or else, following vulgar opinion, deny any value at all to dreams. Carl Jung, CW 7, Page 290.