Our schizophrenic patient is actually experiencing inadvertently that same beatific ocean deep which the yogi and saint are ever striving to enjoy: except that, whereas they are swimming in it, he is drowning.

—Joseph Campbell

spirituality schizophrenia stability drowning

About Joseph Campbell

Portrait of Joseph Campbell

Joseph John Campbell (March 26, 1904 – October 30, 1987) was an American writer. He was a professor of literature at Sarah Lawrence College who worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work covers many aspects of the human condition. Campbell's best-known work is his book The Hero with...

More quotations from Joseph Campbell

Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.

—Joseph Campbell

The ultimate aim of the quest… must be neither release nor ecstasy for oneself, but wisdom and power to serve others.

—Joseph Campbell

We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.

—Joseph Campbell

life acceptance planning

We keep thinking of deity as a kind of fact, somewhere; God as a fact. God is simply our own notion of something that is symbolic of transcendence and mystery. The mystery is what’s important.

—Joseph Campbell

God mystery deity transcendence

God is a metaphor for that which transcends all levels of intellectual thought. It’s as simple as that.

—Joseph Campbell

understanding God religion thought

More quotations tagged with “spirituality”

Spiritual awakening is frequently described as a journey to the top of a mountain. We leave our attachments and our worldliness behind and slowly make our way to the top. At the peak we have transcended all pain. The only problem with this metaphor is that we leave all the others behind.… In the process of discovering our true nature, the journey goes down, not up.… Instead of transcending the suffering of all creatures, we move toward the turbulence and doubt.… We explore the reality and unpredictability of insecurity and pain, and we try not to push it away. If it takes years, if it takes lifetimes, we will let it be as it is. At our own pace, without speed or aggression, we move down and down and down. With us move millions of others, our companions in awakening from fear. At the bottom we discover water, the healing water of compassion. Right down there in the thick of things, we discover the love that will not die.

—Pema Chödrön

To be a consumer is the most primitive level of being. It is to be a mouth, an eater, a devourer of things. To discover the truth of who we are, we must discard the consumer mentality and reclaim our spiritual dignity.

—David Frawley

spirituality discovery dignity consumer mouth mentality

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

—Martin Luther King Jr.

spirituality power science

We have attempted to separate the spiritual and the erotic, thereby reducing the spiritual to a world of flattened affect, a world of the ascetic who aspires to feel nothing.

spirituality feelings seperation eroticism asceticism

The mistake we make is to turn upon our past with angry wholesale negation.… The way of wisdom is to treat it airily, lightly, wantonly, and in a spirit of poetry; and above all to use its symbols, which are its spiritual essence, giving them a new connotation, a fresh meaning.

—John Cowper Powys

spirituality wisdom poetry mistake

History

23 Nov 2014 Added