The way towards 'wisdom' or towards 'freedom' is the way towards your inner being. This is the simplest definition of metaphysics.
Mircea EliadeRead
To whatever degree he may have desacralized the world, the man who has made his choice in favor of a profane life never succeeds in completely doing away with religious behavior.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Even those who choose a secular life cannot fully escape religious behaviors and beliefs.
Mircea Eliade suggests that while a person may consciously choose to live a life devoid of sacredness and religious structures, they still exhibit behaviors and practices that reflect a deeper, intrinsic connection to spirituality or religion. This indicates that the human experience is inherently tied to the search for meaning, transcending mere secularism.
Themes
ReligionSecularismBehaviorChoiceSpirituality
In practice
Example use cases
A speaker at a philosophical conference might use this quote to discuss the intersection of religion and secular life.
More from Mircea Eliade
All quotes →The sacred tree, the sacred stone are not adored as stone or tree; they are worshipped precisely because they are hierophanies, because they show something that is no longer stone or tree but sacred, the ganz andere or 'wholly other.'
Mircea EliadeRead
In imitating the exemplary acts of a god or of a mythic hero, or simply by recounting their adventures, the man of an archaic society detaches himself from profane time and magically re-enters the Great Time, the sacred time.
Mircea EliadeRead
For those to whom a stone reveals itself as sacred, its immediate reality is transmuted into supernatural reality. In other words, for those who have a religious experience all nature is capable of revealing itself as cosmic sacrality.
Mircea EliadeRead
The Experience of Sacred Space makes possible the founding of the world: where the sacred Manifests itself in space, the real unveils itself, the world comes into existence.
Mircea EliadeRead
Psychoanalysis justifies its importance by asserting that it forces you to look to and accept reality. But what sort of reality? A reality conditioned by the materialistic and scientific ideology of psychoanalysis, that is, a historical product.
Mircea EliadeRead
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We were taught to believe that the Great Spirit sees and hears everything, and that he never forgets; that hereafter he will give every man a spirit-home according to his deserts: if he has been a good man, he will have a good home; if he has been a bad man, he will have a bad home. This I believe, and all my people believe the same.
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Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?
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