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It's Characteristic Of Democracy That Majority Rule Is Understood As Being Effective Not Only In Politics But Also In Thinking. In Thinking, Of Course, The Majority Is Always Wrong.

-Joseph Campbell

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It's Characteristic Of Democracy

Joseph Campbell

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It's Characteristic Of Democracy That Majority Rule Is Understood As Being Effective Not Only In Politics But Also In Thinking. In Thinking, Of Course, The Majority Is Always Wrong.

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When You See The Earth From The Moon, You Don't See Any Divisions There Of Nations Or States. This Might Be The Symbol, Really, For The New Mythology To Come. That Is The Country That We Are Going To Be Celebrating. And Those Are The People That We Are One With.

A Dream Is Your Creative Vision For Your Life In The Future. A Goal Is What Specifically You Intend To Make Happen. Dreams And Goals Should Be Just Out Of Your Present Reach But Not Out Of Sight. Dreams And Goals Are Coming Attractions In Your Life.

I Don’t Think There Is Any Such Thing As An Ordinary Mortal. Everybody Has His Own Possibility Of Rapture In The Experience Of Life. All He Has To Do Is Recognize It And Then Cultivate It And Get Going With It. I Always Feel Uncomfortable When People Speak About Ordinary Mortals Because I’ve Never Met An Ordinary Man, Woman, Or Child.

Myth Must Be Kept Alive. The People Who Can Keep It Alive Are The Artists Of One Kind Or Another.

What The Artist Must Render Is A Living Moment Somehow, A Living Moment Actually In Action Or An Inward Experience.

Mephistopheles, The Machine Man, Can Provide Us With All The Means, And Is Thus Likely To Determine The Aims Of Life As Well. But Of Course The Characteristic Of Faust, Which Makes Him Eligible To Be Saved, Is That He Seeks Aims That Are Not Those Of The Machine.

You Know, I Didn't Write My Books For Critics And Scholars. I Wrote Them For Students And Artists. When I Hear How Much My Work Has Meant To Them--well, I Can't Tell You How Happy That Makes Me. That Means That This Great Stuff Of Myth, Which I Have Been So Privileged To Work With, Will Be Kept Alive For A Whole New Generation. That's The Function Of The Artists, You Know, To Reinterpret The Old Stories And Make Them Come Alive Again, In Poetry, Painting, And Now In Movies.

There Have Been Systems Of Religion Where The Mother Is The Prime Parent, The Source, And She's Really A More Immediate Parent Than The Father, Because One Is Born From The Mother...so That The Image Of The Woman Is The Image Of The World.

Mythological Symbols Touch And Exhilarate Centers Of Life Beyond The Reach Of Vocabularies Of Reason And Coercion.

If You Want To Change The World, You Have To Change The Metaphor.

You Know The Rule: If You Are Falling, Dive. Do The Thing That Has To Be Done.

If You Do Follow Your Bliss You Put Yourself On A Kind Of Track That Has Been There All The While, Waiting For You, And The Life That You Ought To Be Living Is The One You Are Living... Follow Your Bliss And Don't Be Afraid, And Doors Will Open Where You Didn't Know They Were Going To Be.

The Perfect Human Being Is Uninteresting.

The Privilege Of A Lifetime Is Being Who You Are.

There's Nothing You Can Do That's More Important Than Being Fulfilled. You Become A Sign, You Become A Signal, Transparent To Transcendence; In This Way, You Will Find, Live, And Become A Realization Of Your Own Personal Myth.

If You Are To Advance, All Fixed Ideas Must Go.

One Cannot Predict The Next Mythology Any More Than One Can Predict Tonight's Dream; For A Mythology Is Not An Ideology. It Is Not Something Projected From The Brain, But Something Experienced From The Heart, From Recognition Of Identities Behind Or Within The Appearances Of Nature, Perceiving With Love A 'thou' Where There Would Otherwise Have Been Only An 'it.'

When You Follow Your Bliss...doors Will Open Where You Would Not Have Thought There Would Be Doors, And Where There Wouldn't Be A Door For Anyone Else.

Life Is Not A Problem To Be Solved But A Mystery To Be Lived. Follow The Path That Is No Path, Follow Your Bliss.

What Is Unknown Is The Fulfillment Of Your Own Unique Life, The Likes Of Which Has Never Existed On Earth. And You Are The Only One Who Can Do It. People Can Give You Clues How To Fall And When To Stand, And When You Are Falling And When You Are Standing, This Only You Can Know. And In The Way Of Your Own Talents Is The Only Way To Do It.

You Are More Than You Think You Are. There Are Dimensions Of Your Being And A Potential For Realization And Consciousness That Are Not Included In Your Concept Of Yourself. Your Life Is Much Deeper And Broader Than You Conceive It To Be Here. What You Are Living Is But A Fractional Inkling Of What Is Really Within You, What Gives You Life, Breadth, And Depth.

Our Life Has Become So Economic And Practical In Its Orientation That, As You Get Older, The Claims Of The Moment Upon You Are So Great, You Hardly Know Where The Hell You Are, Or What It Is You Intended. You Are Always Doing Something That Is Required Of You. Where Is Your Bliss Station? You Have To Try To Find It.

The Big Question Is Whether You Are Going To Be Able To Say A Hearty Yes To Your Adventure.

The Ultimate Dragon Is Within You, It Is Your Ego Clamping You Down.

Knowing Who You Are

One Looks, Looks Long, And The World Comes In.

Christianity Isn’t Moving People’s Lives Today. What’s Moving People’s Lives Is The Stock Market And The Baseball Scores. What Are People Excited About? It’s A Totally Materialistic Level That Has Taken Over The World. There Isn’t Even An Ideal That Anybody’s Fighting For.

I Think Of Mythology As The Homeland Of The Muses, The Inspirers Of Art, The Inspirers Of Poetry. To See Life As A Poem And Yourself Participating In A Poem Is What The Myth Does For You.

The Adventure That The Hero Is Ready For Is The One He Gets.

Whatever The Hell Happens, Say, 'this Is What I Need.'

The Principle Of Compassion Is That Which Converts Disillusionment Into A Participatory Companionship. This Is The Basic Love, The Charity, That Turns A Critic Into A Living Human Being Who Has Something To Give To - As Well As To Demand Of - The World.

A Hero Is Someone Who Has Given His Or Her Life To Something Bigger Than Oneself.

She Was ... The Arch Personification Of The Power Of Space, Time, And Matter, Within Whose Bound All Beings Arise And Die: The Substance Of Their Bodies, Configurator Of Their Lives And Thoughts, And Receiver Of Their Dead. And Everything Having Form Or Name-including God Personified As Good Or Evil, Merciful Or Wrathful-was Her Child, Within Her Womb.

You Yourself Are Participating In The Evil, Or You Are Not Alive. Whatever You Do Is Evil For Somebody. This Is One Of The Ironies Of The Whole Creation.

Follow Your Inner Heart And The World Moves In And Helps.

Your Life Is The Fruit Of Your Own Doing. You Have No One To Blame But Yourself.

Modern Romance, Like Greek Tragedy, Celebrates The Mystery Of Dismemberment, Which Is Life In Time. The Happy Ending Is Justly Scorned As A Misrepresentation; For The World, As We Know It, As We Have Seen It, Yields But One Ending: Death, Disintegration, Dismemberment, And The Crucifixion Of Our Heart With The Passing Of The Forms That We Have Loved.

There Is No Greater Privilege In Life Than Being Yourself.

If You Follow Someone Else's Way, You Are Not Going To Realize Your Potential.

Dragons, You Know, We Have A Good Deal Of Biology And Zoology About The Dragon; We Know Their Habits. The Dragon Tends To Guard Things, And He Usually Has These Guarded In A Cave... Now Dragons Don't Know What To Do Either With Beautiful Girls Or Gold, But They Just Hang On. There Are People Like This. We Call Them Creeps.

This Is All I Ever Wanted - To Help Students And Artists See Myth As A Reflection Of The One Sublime Adventure Of Life, And Then To Breathe New Life Into It.

Change The Focus Of The Eye. When You Have Done That, Then The End Of The World As You Formerly Knew It Will Have Occurred, And You Will Experience The Radiance Of The Divine Presence Everywhere, Here And Now.

Eternity Is Not Future Or Past. Eternity Is A Dimension Of Now.

An Old Apache Storyteller Reminds Us

What We Are Really Living For Is The Experience Of Life, Both The Pain And The Pleasure.

The Idea Of Buddha Consciousness Is That All Beings Are Buddha Beings, And Your Whole Function In Meditation And Everything Else Is To Find That Buddha Consciousness Within And Live Out Of That, Instead Of The Interests Of The Eyes And Ears.

Every Myth Is Psychologically Symbolic. Its Narratives And Images Are To Be Read, Therefore, Not Literally, But As Metaphors.

The Less There Is Of You, The More You Experience The Sublime.

The Old Skin Has To Be Shed Before The New One Can Come.

I Think That Jean Houston Has Broken Through To A New Understanding Of The Sense And Uses Of Inward-turned Contemplation-a N Understanding That Leaves The Freudian Schools Of Technique And Theory Far Behind. The Accent Is Not On The Curing Of Disease But On The Enlargement, Rather, Of Our Health.

The Latest Incarnation Of Oedipus, The Continued Romance Of Beauty And The Beast, Stand This Afternoon On The Corner Of Forty-second Street And Fifth Avenue, Waiting For The Traffic Light To Change.

I Should Have Said, 'follow Your Blisters.'

What I Think Is That A Good Life Is One Hero Journey After Another. Over And Over Again, You Are Called To The Realm Of Adventure, You Are Called To New Horizons. Each Time, There Is The Same Problem: Do I Dare? And Then If You Do Dare, The Dangers Are There, And The Help Also, And The Fulfillment Or The Fiasco. There's Always The Possibility Of Fiasco. But There's Also The Possibility Of Bliss.

Men Sometimes Confess They Love War Because It Puts Them In Touch With The Experience Of Being Alive. In Going To The Office Every Day, You Don't Get That Experience, But Suddenly In War, You Are Ripped Back Into Being Alive. Life Is Pain; Life Is Suffering; And Life Is Horror - But, By God, You Are Alive.

The Conquest Of The Fear Of Death Is The Recovery Of Life's Joy. One Can Experience An Unconditional Affirmation Of Life Only When One Has Accepted Death, Not As Contrary To Life, But As An Aspect Of Life. Life In Its Becoming Is Always Shedding Death, And On The Point Of Death. The Conquest Of Fear Yields The Courage Of Life. That Is The Cardinal Initiation Of Every Heroic Adventure - Fearlessness And Achievement.

A Temple Is A Landscape Of The Soul.

Opportunities To Find Deeper Powers Within Ourselves Come When Life Seems Most Challenging. Negativism To The Pain And Ferocity Of Life Is Negativism To Life. We Are Not There Until We Can Say 'yea' To It All.

Follow Your Bliss. The Heroic Life Is Living The Individual Adventure.

The Best Advise Is To Take It All As If It Had Been Your Intention.

Knowing Who You Are

When You Go Through Life ... It All Seems Accidental At The Time It Is Happening. Then When You Get On In Your 60s Or 70s And Look Back, Your Life Looks Like A Well-planned Novel With A Coherent Theme ... Incidents That Seemed Accidental, Pure Chance, Turn Out To Be Major Elements In The Structuring Of This Novel. Schopenhauer Says, 'who Wrote This Novel? You Did.'

The Cave You Fear To Enter Holds The Treasure You Seek. Fear Of The Unknown Is Our Greatest Fear. Many Of Us Would Enter A Tiger's Lair Before We Would Enter A Dark Cave. While Caution Is A Useful Instinct, We Lose Many Opportunities And Much Of The Adventure Of Life If We Fail To Support The Curious Explorer Within Us.

Every Moment Is Utterly Unique And Will Not Be Continued In Eternity. This Fact Gives Life Its Poignancy And Should Concentrate Your Attention On What You Are Experiencing Now...that Source Of Eternal Energy Is Here, In You, Now.

It's Only When A Man Tames His Own Demons That He Becomes The King Of Himself If Not Of The World.

Let The World Be As It Is And Learn To Rock With The Waves.

If You Will Think Of Ourselves As Coming Out Of The Earth, Rather Than Having Been Thrown In Here From Somewhere Else, You See That We Are The Earth, We Are The Consciousness Of The Earth. These Are The Eyes Of The Earth. And This Is The Voice Of The Earth.

Each Of Us Has Capacities. The Real Trick Is Knowing The Machinery Of The Boat In Which You Are Crossing The Channel.

How Does The Ordinary Person Come To The Transcendent? For A Start, I Would Say, Study Poetry. Learn How To Read A Poem. You Need Not Have The Experience To Get The Message, Or At Least Some Indication Of The Message. It May Come Gradually. (92)

The Departure From The World Is Regarded Not As A Fault, But As The First Step Into That Noble Path At The Remotest Turn Of Which Illumination Is To Be Won.

Love Is Perfect Kindness.

The Way To Find Out About Your Happiness Is To Keep Your Mind On Those Moments When You Feel Most Happy, When You Really Are Happy-not Excited, Not Just Thrilled, But Deeply Happy. This Requires A Little Bit Of Self Analysis. What Is It That Makes You Happy? Stay With It, No Matter What People Tell You. This Is What I Call "following Your Bliss."

Love Is The Burning Point Of Life, And Since All Life Is Sorrowful, So Is Love. The Stronger The Love, The More The Pain. Love Itself Is Pain, You Might Say -the Pain Of Being Truly Alive.

The God You Worship Is The One You're Capable Of Becoming.

The Hero, Whether God Or Goddess, Man Or Woman, The Figure In A Myth Or The Dreamer Of A Dream Discovers And Assimilates His Opposite (his Own Unsuspected Self) Either By Swallowing It Or By Being Swallowed.

If You Have The Guts To Follow The Risk...if One Follows What I Call One's "bliss" - The Thing That Really Gets You Deep In The Gut And That You Feel Is Your Life - Doors Will Open Up...if You Follow Your Bliss, You'll Have Your Bliss, Whether You Have Money Or Not.

In The Field Of Consciousness Research-and Also In Physics And Astronomy-we Are Breaking Past The Cause-and-effect, Mechanistic Way Of Interpreting Things. In The Biological Sciences, There Is A Vitalism Coming In That Goes Much Further Toward Positing A Common Universal Consciousness Of Which Our Brain Is Simply An Organ. Consciousness Does Not Come From The Brain. The Brain Is An Organ Of Consciousness. It Focuses Consciousness And Pulls It In And Directs It Through A Time And Space Field. But The Antecedent Of That Is The Universal Consciousness Of Which We Are All Just A Part.

If We Fix On The Old, We Get Stuck.

Their Task [creative Artists], Therefore, Is To Communicate Directly From One Inward World To Another, In Such A Way That An Actual Shock Of Experience Will Have Been Rendered: Not A Mere Statement For The Information Or Persuasion Of A Brain, But An Effective Communication Across The Void Of Space And Time From One Center Of Consciousness To Another.

Nothing Can Happen To You That Is Not Positive. Even Though It Looks And Feels At The Moment Like A Negative Crisis, It Is Not. The Crisis Throws You Back, And When You Are Required To Exhibit Strength, It Comes.

The Creative Act Is Not Hanging On, But Yielding To A New Creative Movement. Awe Is What Moves Us Forward.

At Such Moments, You Realize That You And The Other Are, In Fact, One. It's A Big Realization. Survival Is The Second Law Of Life. The First Is That We Are All One.

The Fates Guide Those Who Will And Drag Those Who Won't!

I Don't Have To Have Faith, I Have Experience.

Whether You Call Someone A Hero Or A Monster Is All Relative To Where The Focus Of Your Consciousness May Be.

The Notion Of This Universe, Its Heavens, Hells, And Everything Within It, As A Great Dream Dreamed By A Single Being In Which All The Dream Characters Are Dreaming Too, Has In India Enchanted And Shaped The Entire Civilization.

Have You Ever Looked Inside One Of Those Things [computers]? It's A Whole Hierarchy Of Angels- All On Slats. And Those Little Tubes-those Are Miracles.

When An Idea Is Important To A Person Or Culture It Will Find Its Way Into Imagery.

Myths Are Public Dreams, Dreams Are Private Myths. We Must Be Willing To Get Rid Of The Life We Planned, So As To Have The Life That Is Waiting For Us. I Have Bought This Wonderful Machine — A Computer ... It Seems To Me To Be An Old Testament God, With A Lot Of Rules And No Mercy.

Art Is The Clothing Of A Revelation

There Is No Make-believe About Heaven, Future Bliss, And Compensation, To Alleviate The Bitter Majesty, But Only Utter Darkness, The Void Of Unfulfillment, To Receive And Eat Back The Lives That Have Been Tossed Forth From The Womb Only To Fail.

You Have To Strive Every Minute To Get Rid Of The Life That You Have Planned In Order To Have The Life That's Waiting To Be Yours. Move, Move, Move.

The First Step To The Knowledge Of The Wonder And Mystery Of Life Is The Recognition Of The Monstrous Nature Of The Earthly Human Realm As Well As Its Glory, The Realization That This Is Just How It Is And That It Cannot And Will Not Be Changed. Those Who Think They Know How The Universe Could Have Been Had They Created It, Without Pain, Without Sorrow, Without Time, Without Death, Are Unfit For Illumination.

The Importance Of The End Of Time Is As ... A Psychological Event ... When You Have Seen The Radiance Of Eternity Through All The Forms Of Time ... And It Is The Function Of Art To Make That Visible To You ... Then You Have Really Have Ended Life In The World As It Is Lived By Those Who Only Think Only In The Historical, Concretizing Terms. This Is The Function Of Mythology.

The Place To Find Is Within Yourself.

In The Orient The Ultimate Divine Mystery Is Sought Beyond All Human Categories Of Thought And Feeling, Beyond Names And Forms, And Absolutely Beyond Any Such Concept As Of A Merciful Or Wrathful Personality, Chooser Of One People Over Another, Comforter Of Folk Who Pray, And Destroyer Of Those Who Do Not. Such Anthropomorphic Attributions Of Human Sentiments And Thoughts To A Mystery Beyond Thought Is-from The Point Of View Of Indian Thought-a Style Of Religion For Children.

For Those In Whom A Local Mythology Still Works, There Is An Experience Both Of Accord With The Social Order, And Of Harmony With The Universe. For Those, However, In Whom The Authorized Signs No Longer Work-or, If Working, Produce Deviant Effects-there Follows Inevitably A Sense Both Of Dissociation From The Local Social Nexus And Of Quest, Within And Without, For Life, Which The Brain Will Take To Be For 'meaning'.

Is The System Going To Flatten You Out And Deny You Your Humanity, Or Are You Going To Be Able To Make Use Of The System To The Attainment Of Human Purposes?

If You Can See Your Path Laid Out In Front Of You Step By Step, You Know It's Not Your Path. Your Own Path You Make With Every Step You Take. That's Why It's Your Path.

He Who Thinks He Knows, Doesn't Know. He Who Knows That He Doesn't Know, Knows.

The Hero’s Journey Always Begins With The Call. One Way Or Another, A Guide Must Come To Say, 'look, You’re In Sleepy Land. Wake. Come On A Trip. There Is A Whole Aspect Of Your Consciousness, Your Being, That’s Not Been Touched. So You’re At Home Here? Well, There’s Not Enough Of You There.' And So It Starts.

Where Is Your Bliss Station? You Have To Try To Find It.

[comedies], In The Ancient World, Were Regarded As Of A Higher Rank Than Tragedy, Of A Deeper Truth, Of A More Difficult Realization, Of A Sounder Structure, And Of A Revelation More Complete. The Happy Ending Of The Fairy Tale, The Myth, And The Divine Comedy Of The Soul, Is To Be Read, Not As A Contradiction, But As A Transcendence Of The Universal Tragedy Of Man. ...tragedy Is The Shattering Of The Forms And Of Our Attachment To The Forms...

Computers Are Like Old Testament Gods; Lots Of Rules And No Mercy.

We Are Standing On A Whale Fishing For Minnows.

Now I Found It In Writing Sentences. You Can Write That Sentence In A Way That You Would Have Written It Last Year. Or You Can Write It In The Way Of The Exquisite Nuance That Is Sriting In Your Mind Now. But That Takes A Lot Of ... Waiting For The Right Word To Come.

This, I Believe, Is The Great Western Truth: That Each Of Us Is A Completely Unique Creature And That, If We Are Ever To Give Any Gift To The World, It Will Have To Come Out Of Our Own Experience And Fulfillment Of Our Own Potentialities, Not Someone Else's.

Mythology Helps You To Identify The Mysteries Of The Energies Pouring Through You. Therein Lies Your Eternity.

Life Is Without Meaning. You Bring The Meaning To It. The Meaning Of Life Is Whatever You Ascribe It To Be. Being Alive Is The Meaning.

It's A Shame To Waste [the Uniqueness That Is You], By Doing What Someone Else Has Done.

We Must Be Willing To Get Rid Of The Life We've Planned, So As To Have The Life That Is Waiting For Us. The Old Skin Has To Be Shed Before The New One Can Come. -

When You Make The Sacrifice In Marriage, You're Sacrificing Not To Each Other But To Unity In A Relationship.

All Life Stinks And You Must Embrace That With Compassion.

Writer’s Block Results From Too Much Head. Cut Off Your Head. Pegasus, Poetry, Was Born Of Medusa When Her Head Was Cut Off. You Have To Be Reckless When Writing. Be As Crazy As Your Conscience Allows.

Marriage Is Not A Simple Love Affair, It's An Ordeal, And The Ordeal Is The Sacrifice Of Ego To A Relationship In Which Two Have Become One.

Our True Reality Is In Our Identity And Unity With All Life.

You Have To Learn To Recognize Your Own Depth.

We're Not On Our Journey To Save The World But To Save Ourselves. But In Doing That You Save The World. The Influence Of A Vital Person Vitalizes.

The Deadheads Are Doing The Dance Of Life And This I Would Say Is The Answer To The Atom Bomb.

Thinking In Mythological Terms Helps To Put You In Accord With The Inevitables Of This Vale Of Tears. You Learn To Recognize The Positive Values In What Appear To Be The Negative Moments And Aspects Of Your Life. The Big Question Is Whether You Are Going To Be Able To Say A Hearty Yes To Your Adventure.

We're So Engaged In Doing Things To Achieve Purposes Of Outer Value That We Forget The Inner Value, The Rapture That Is Associated With Being Alive, Is What It Is All About.

Money Is Congealed Energy, And Releasing It Releases Life's Possibilities.

I Don't Believe People Are Looking For The Meaning Of Life As Much As They Are Looking For The Experience Of Being Alive.

Vegetarians Are People Who Cannot Hear Tomatos Screaming.

It Is The Function Of Art To Carry Us Beyond Speech To Experience.

Apocalypse Does Not Point To A Fiery Armageddon But To The Fact That Our Ignorance And Our Complacency Are Coming To An End. The Exclusivism Of There Being Only One Way In Which We Can Be Saved, The Idea That There Is A Single Religious Group That Is In Sole Possession Of The Truth—that Is The World As We Know It That Must Pass Away. What Is The Kingdom? It Lies In Our Realization Of The Ubiquity Of The Divine Presence In Our Neighbors, In Our Enemies, In All Of Us.

Life Is Without Meaning. You Bring The Meaning To It.

What Is The Meaning Of Life

Perhaps Some Of Us Have To Go Through Dark And Devious Ways Before We Can Find The River Of Peace Or The Highroad To The Soul's Destination.

The Essence Of Oneself And The Essence Of The World: These Two Are One. [ The Aim Is Not To See, But To Realize That One Is, That Essence; Then One Is Free To Wander As That Essence In The World.] Hence Separateness, Withdrawal, Is No Longer Necessary. Wherever The Hero May Wander, Whatever He May Do, He Is Ever In The Presence Of His Own Essence-for He Has The Perfected Eye To See.

Opportunities To Find Deeper Powers Within Ourselves Come When Life Seems Most Challenging.

Art Is The Set Of Wings To Carry You Out Of Your Own Entanglement.

When You Realize That Eternity Is Right Here Now, That It Is Within Your Possibility To Experience The Eternity Of Your Own Truth And Being, Then You Grasp The Following: That Which You Are Was Never Born And Will Never Die. . . . (90)

For We Have Not Even To Risk The Adventure Alone, For The Heros Of All Time Have Gone Before Us.

When You No Longer Are Compelled By Desire And Fear . . . When You Have Seen The Radiance In Eternity From All Forms Of Time . . . When You Follow Your Bliss . . . Doors Will Open Where You Would Not Have Thought There Were Doors . . . And The World Will Step In And Help.

All The Old Bindings Are Broken. Cosmological Centers Now Are Anywhere And Everywhere. The Earth Is A Heavenly Body, Most Beautiful Of All, And All Poetry Is Now Archaic That Fails To Match The Wonder Of This View.

I Think What We Lack Isn't Science, But Poetry That Reveals What The Heart Is Ready To Recognize

The Fates Lead Him Who Will; Him Who Won't They Drag.

Suddenly You’re Ripped Into Being Alive. And Life Is Pain, And Life Is Suffering, And Life Is Horror, But My God You’re Alive And Its Spectacular.

We're In A Freefall Into Future. We Don't Know Where We're Going. Things Are Changing So Fast, And Always When You're Going Through A Long Tunnel, Anxiety Comes Along. And All You Have To Do To Transform Your Hell Into A Paradise Is To Turn Your Fall Into A Voluntary Act. It's A Very Interesting Shift Of Perspective And That's All It Is... Joyful Participation In The Sorrows And Everything Changes.

Every People Is A Chosen People In Its Own Mind. And It Is Rather Amusing That Their Name For Themselves Usually Means Mankind.

So I Think The Guru Can Be A Delusion. But Everything Can Be Deluding. The Thing Central About The Guru In The West Is That He Represents An Alien Principle Of The Spirit, Namely, That You Don't Follow Your Own Path; You Follow A Given Path. And That's Totaly Contrary To The Western Spirit! Our Spirituality Is Of The Individual Quest, Individual Realization- Authenticity In Your Life Out Of Your Own Center. So You Must Take The Message Of The East, Assimilate It To Your Own Dimension And To Your Own Thrust Of Life, And Not Get Pulled Off Track.

You Have Been Thinking One Way. Now You Have To Think A Different Way.

The World Without Spirit Is A Wasteland. People Have The Notion Of Saving The World By Shifting Things Around, Changing The Rules, And Who's On Top, And So Forth. No, No! Any World Is A Valid World If It's Alive. The Thing To Do Is To Bring Life To It, And The Only Way To Do That Is To Find In Your Own Case Where The Life Is And Become Alive Yourself.

All We Really Want To Do Is Dance.

When You Look At That Nature World It Becomes An Icon, It Becomes A Holy Picture That Speaks Of The Origins Of The World. Almost Every Mythology Sees The Origins Of Life Coming Out Of Water. And, Curiously, That's True. It's Amusing That The Origin Of Life Out Of Water Is In Myths And Then Again, Finally, In Science, We Find The Same Thing. It's Exactly So.

Society Has Provided [children] No Rituals By Which They Become Members Of The Tribe, Of The Community. All Children Need To Be Twice Born, To Learn To Function Rationally In The Present World, Leaving Childhood Behind.

The Images Of Myth Are Reflections Of Spiritual And Depth Potentialities Of Every One Of Us. Through Contemplating Those We Evoke Those Powers In Our Own Lives To Operate Through Ourselves.

The Function Of Artists Is "the Mythologization Of The World."

We Can Safely Say, Therefore, That Whereas Some Moralists May Find It Possible To Make A Distinction Between Two Spheres And Reigns-one Of Flesh, The Other Of The Spirit, One Of Time, The Other Of Eternity-where Ever Love Arises Such Definitions Vanish, And A Sense Of Life Awakens In Which All Such Oppositions Are At One.

You Don't Ask What A Dance Means. You Enjoy It. You Don't Ask What The World Means. You Enjoy It. You Don't Ask What You Mean. You Enjoy It.

The Quest For Fire Occurred Not Because Anyone Knew What The Practical Uses For Fire Would Be, But Because It Was Fascinating.

You've Got To Say Yes To This Miracle Of Life As It Is, Not On Condition That It Follow Your Rules.

Knowing Who You Are

The Realms Of The Gods And Demons - Heaven, Purgatory, Hell - Are Of The Substance Of Dreams. Myth, In This View, Is The Dream Of The World.

Everything Starts With A Story.

Poets And Artists Who Speak Of The Mystery Are Rare.

What Gods Are There, What Gods Have There Ever Been, That Were Not From Man's Imagination?

It May Be A Species Of Impudence To Think That The Way You Understand God Is The Way God Is. (60).

Our Life Evokes Our Character And You Find Out More About Yourself As You Go On.

The Mighty Hero Of Extraordinary Powers, Able To Lift Mount Govardhan On A Finger, And To Fill Himself With The Terrible Glory Of The Universe, Is Each Of Us: Not The Physical Self Visible In The Mirror, But The King Within.

I Prefer The Gradual Path My Feeling Is That Mythic Forms Reveal Themselves Gradually In The Course Of Your Life If You Know What They Are And How To Pay Attention To Their Emergence. My Own Initiation Into The Mythic Depths Of The Unconscious Has Been Through The Mind, Through The Books That Surround Me In This Library. I Have Recognized In My Quest All The Stages Of The Hero's Journey. I Had My Calls To Adventure, My Guides, Demons, And Illuminations.

To Find Your Own Way Is To Follow Your Bliss. This Involves Analysis, Watching Yourself And Seeing Where Real Deep Bliss Is -- Not The Quick Little Excitement , But The Real Deep, Life-filling Bliss.

The Insecure Way Is The Secure Way.

Poets Are Simply Those Who Have Made A Profession And A Lifestyle Of Being In Touch With Their Bliss.

I Always Tell My Students, Go Where Your Body And Soul Want To Go. When You Have The Feeling, Then Stay With It, And Don't Let Anyone Throw You Off.

The Garden Is A Metaphor For The Following: Our Minds, And Our Thinking In Terms Of Pairs Of Opposites--man And Woman, Good And Evil--are As Holy As That Of A God. (50)

A Ritual Is The Enactment Of A Myth. And, By Participating In The Ritual, You Are Participating In The Myth. And Since Myth Is A Projection Of The Depth Wisdom Of The Psyche, By Participating In A Ritual, Participating In The Myth, You Are Being, As It Were, Put In Accord With That Wisdom, Which Is The Wisdom That Is Inherent Within You Anyhow. Your Consciousness Is Being Re-minded Of The Wisdom Of Your Own Life.

You've Got To Find The Force Inside You.

How To Get Rid Of Ego As Dictator And Turn It Into Messenger And Servant And Scout, To Be In Your Service, Is The Trick.

God Is The Experience Of Looking At A Tree And Saying, 'ah!

Positive Thinking

What's Made Up In The Head Is The Fiction. What Comes Out Of The Heart Is A Myth.

Without Passion, Men Are Not Willing To Pay Any Price Or Bear Any Burden To Set The Captives Free.

Within The Field Of A Secular Society, Which Is A Sort Of Neutral Frame That Allows Individuals To Develop Their Own Lives, So Long As They Don't Annoy Their Neighbors Too Much, Each Of Us Has An Individual Myth That's Driving Us, Which We May Or May Not Know.

Secular Society

Don't Do Anything That Isn't Play

Nonviolent Communication

When You Are On Your Path, And It Is Truly Your Path, Doors Will Open For You Where There Were No Doors For Someone Else.

The Adventure Is Always And Everywhere A Passage Beyond The Veil Of The Known Into The Unknown; The Powers That Watch At The Boundary Are Dangerous; To Deal With Them Is Risky; Yet For Anyone With Competence And Courage The Danger Fades.

If You Live With The Myths In Your Mind, You Will Find Yourself Always In Mythological Situations. They Cover Everything That Can Happen To You. And That Enables You To Interpret The Myth In Relation To Life, As Well As Life In Relation To Myth.

Finding Yourself

What Is A God? A God Is A Personification Of A Motivating Power Of A Value System That Functions In Human Life And In The Universe.

They Thought That It Would Be A Disgrace To Go Forth As A Group. Each Entered The Forest At A Point That He Himself Had Chosen, Where It Was Darkest And There Was No Path. If There Is A Path It Is Someone Else's Path And You Are Not On The Adventure.

You May Have Success In Life, But Then Just Think Of It - What Kind Of Life Was It? What Good Was It - You've Never Done The Thing You Wanted To Do In All Your Life. I Always Tell My Students, Go Where Your Body And Soul Want To Go. When You Have The Feeling, Then Stay With It, And Don't Let Anyone Throw You Off.

The Goal Of Life Is To Make Your Heartbeat Match The Beat Of The Universe, To Match Your Nature With Nature.

A Real Artist Is The One Who Has Learned To Recognize And To Render... The 'radiance' Of All Things As An Epiphany Or Showing Forth Of The Truth.

All Men Are Capable Of Reason. That Is The Fundamental Principle Of Democracy Because Everybody's Mind Is Capable Of True Knowledge, You Don't Have To Have A Special Authority, Or A Special Revelation Telling You That This Is The Way Things Should Be.

One Can Experience An Unconditional Affirmation Of Life Only When One Has Accepted Death, Not As Contrary To Life, But As An Aspect Of It.

A One Sentence Definition Of Mythology? Mythology Is What We Call Someone Else's Religion.

There Are Now No More Horizons. And With The Dissolution Of Horizons We Have Experienced And Are Experiencing Collisions, Terrific Collisions, Not Only Of Peoples But Also Of Their Mythologies. It Is As When Dividing Panels Are Withdrawn From Between Chambers Of Very Hot And Very Cold Airs: There Is A Rush Of These Forces Together.

The Purpose Of The Journey Is Compassion. When You Have Come Past The Pairs Of Opposites, You Have Reached Compassion.

When You Translate The Bible With Excessive Literalism, You Demythologize It. The Possibility Of A Convincing Reference To The Individual's Own Spiritual Experience Is Lost. (111)

Man Was Not Breathed Into The Earth. Man Came Out Of The Earth.

......the Interesting Thing Was That The Roman Catholic Monks And The Buddhist Monks Had No Trouble Understanding Each Other. Each Of Them Was Seeking The Same Experience And Knew That The Experience Was Incommunicable. The Communication Is Only An Effort To Bring The Hearer To The Edge Of The Abyss; It Is A Signpost, Not The Thing Itself. But The Secular Clergy Reads The Communication And Gets Stuck With The Letter, And That's Where You Have The Conflict.

The Problem In Our Society And In Our Schools Is To Inclulcate, Without Overdoing It, The Notion Of Education, As In The Latin Educere--to Lead, To Bring Out What Is In Someone Rather Than Merely To Indoctrinate Him/her From The Outside. (89)

The Ground Of Being Is The Ground Of Our Being, And When We Simply Turn Outward, We See All Of These Little Problems Here And There. But, If We Look Inward, We See That We Are The Source Of Them All.

You Must Have A Place To Which You Can Go In Your Heart, Your Mind, Or Your House, Almost Every Day, Where You Do Not Owe Anyone And Where No One Owes You - A Place That Simply Allows For The Blossoming Of Something New And Promising.

I Think Of Mythology As A Function Of Biology; The Energies Of The Body Are The Energies That Move The Imagination. These Energies Are The Source, Then, Of Mythological Imagery; In A Mythological Organization Of Symbols, The Conflicts Between The Different Organic Impulses Within The Body Are Resolved And Harmonized. You Might Say Mythology Is A Formula For The Harmonization Of The Energies Of Life.

If You Can See Your Path Clearly In Front Of You, It's Probably Someone Else's.

Participate Joyfully In The Sorrows Of Life

Man Should Not Be In The Service Of Society, Society Should Be In The Service Of Man. When Man Is In The Service Of Society, You Have A Monster State, And That's What Is Threatening The World At This Minute.

The Priests Used To Say That Faith Can Move Mountains, And Nobody Believed Them. Today The Scientists Say That They Can Level Mountains, And Nobody Doubts Them.

The Person Who Thinks He Has Found The Ultimate Truth Is Wrong.

I Am Shiva-this Is The Great Meditation Of The Yogis In The Himalayas...hea Ven And Hell Are Within Us, And All The Gods Are Within Us. This Is The Great Realization Of The Upanishads Of India In The Ninth Century B.c. All The Gods, All The Heavens, All The Worlds, Are Within Us. They Are Magnified Dreams, And Dreams Are Manifestations In Image Form Of The Energies Of The Body In Conflict With Each Other.

Poetry Comes Out Of An Elite Experience, The Experience Of People Whose Ears Are Opened To The Song Of The Universe.

The Function Of The Society Is To Cultivate The Individual. It Is Not The Function Of The Individual To Support Society.

Preachers Err By Trying To Talk People Into Belief; Better They Reveal The Radiance Of Their Own Discovery.

Half The People In The World Think That The Metaphors Of Their Religious Traditions, For Example, Are Facts. And The Other Half Contends That They Are Not Facts At All. As A Result We Have People Who Consider Themselves Believers Because They Accept Metaphors As Facts, And We Have Others Who Classify Themselves As Atheists Because They Think Religious Metaphors Are Lies.

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