Archives

The first condition, therefore, that any mythology must fulfill if it is to render life to modern lives is that of cleansing the doors of perception to the wonder, at once terrible and fascinating, of ourselves and of the universe…

The dream is a private myth, and the myth is a public dream⁠.

It’s one thing to get the old structure of the hero myth, but now they are pitching it out into the void, into space, where it’s possible to let the imagination go. You’re not bound to historical fact. You get…

Throughout the ranges, not only of the early planting cultures, but also of all those high archaic civilizations . . . two complementary themes are outstanding. One is of death as the generator of life; the other, of self-offering as…

Life is not a problem to be solved, but a mystery to be lived.

The myth does not point to a fact; the myth points beyond facts to something that informs the fact

People talk about the meaning of life; there is no meaning of life––there are lots of meanings of different lives, and you must decide what you want your own to be.

You can’t ask somebody to give The Reason, but you can find one for yourself; you decide what the meaning of your life is to be.

Eternity is not a continuation of time. Eternity is a dimension of here and now. And we have eternal life now. This is what is meant by “The kingdom of the Father is spread over the earth and men do…

My word for young people now who ask me is, follow your bliss. It’ll come. Nobody’s ever been on that road before, and so, where you didn’t know there were doors, there are not only doors but palaces

To find your own way is to follow your own bliss. This involves analysis, watching yourself and seeing where the real deep bliss is––not the quick little excitement, but the real, deep, life-filling bliss

If you want to change the world, change the metaphor. Change the story.

How do you find the divine power in yourself? The word enthusiasm means ‘filled with a god,’ that’s what it means. So what makes you enthusiastic? Follow it. . . .And you know what my answer would be –– where your…

Life lives on life. This is the sense of the symbol of the Ouroboros, the serpent biting its own tail. Everything that lives lives on the death of something else. Your own body will be food for something else. Anyone…

A myth has to work the way a picture works: either you say, “Aha!” or somebody has to explain it to you. And if it has to be explained to you, it’s not working.

“The central point of the world is the point where stillness and movement are together. Movement is time, but stillness is eternity. Realizing how this moment of your life is actually a moment of eternity, and experiencing the eternal aspect…

[Paul Gaugin] was a perfectly prosperous businessman with a family and a house; then he became fascinated by what began to open up for him in painting. You start doodling with things like painting and they might doodle you out…

Whenever a knight of the Grail tried to follow a path made by someone else, he went altogether astray. Where there is a way or path, it is someone else’s footsteps. Each of us has to find his own way

Myth is dreamlike and, like dream, a spontaneous product of the psyche; like dream, revelatory of the psyche and hence of the whole nature and destiny of man; like dream –– like life –– enigmatic to the uninitiated ego; and,…

Marriage is not a love affair; it is an ordeal. If you think of it as that, you will be able to go through with it. The ordeal consists specifically in sacrificing ego to the relationship.

A mythologically grounded culture presents you with symbols that immediately evoke your participation; they are all vital, living connections, and so they link you both to the underlying mystery and to the culture itself. Yet when the culture uses symbols…

Eternity is not future or past. Eternity is a dimension of now. It is a dimension of the human spirit –– which is eternal. Find that eternal dimension in yourself, and you will ride through time and throughout the whole…

Since divinity is the essence of every being, we must not let our moral judgments obscure from us the fact that God is shining through all things, even those of which we cannot approve