# Pathways to Bliss  ## Metadata - Author: [[Joseph Campbell]] - Full Title: Pathways to Bliss - Category: #books ## Highlights - As Paul says, “I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.”11 ([Location 243](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07K5JL9X3&location=243)) - Tags: [[pink]] - I’ve heard from many of the State Department people that their main problem is to achieve the work as slowly as possible in order to bring about as little damage as they can. ([Location 567](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07K5JL9X3&location=567)) - Tags: [[pink]] - Two of the great artists who have guided me in this manner are Thomas Mann and James Joyce. Just take The Magic Mountain and Ulysses. ([Location 639](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07K5JL9X3&location=639)) - Tags: [[pink]] - Our theology normally lays things out from the point of view of waking consciousness: Aristotelian logic tells us that A is not not-A. But on another level—and it is this level to which all religions, even our own, finally refer, though they prefer to keep it buried—the ultimate mystery is that these two are one: A is not-A. Yet our official religions condemn as blasphemous anyone who says, “I and the Father are one.” Jesus said it, and he was killed for that. That’s what he was crucified for: blasphemy. ([Location 1010](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07K5JL9X3&location=1010)) - Tags: [[pink]] - There is a built-in “no,” a taboo, that is socially, not naturally, governed. This taboo differs from one society to another. Consequently, that which religious people call conscience is a social structure that functions as part of the moral system of the culture in which the child is born. ([Location 1101](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07K5JL9X3&location=1101)) - Tags: [[pink]] - The principal virtue of a student is in Sanskrit called ṣrāddha—namely, absolute faith in the teacher. ([Location 1261](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07K5JL9X3&location=1261)) - Tags: [[favorite]] [[pink]] - This doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t play the social role; it simply means that no matter what you choose to do in life, whether it’s to cop out or to cop in, you are playing a role, and don’t take it too damned seriously. The persona is merely the mask you’re wearing for this game. ([Location 1516](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07K5JL9X3&location=1516)) - Tags: [[pink]] - The laws of society, therefore, are social conventions, not eternal laws, and they are to be handled and judged in terms of their appropriateness to what they are intended to do. The individual makes his own judgment as to how he acts. Then he has to look out to be sure that the guardians of the social order do not misunderstand or make things difficult for him because he is not totally playing their game. But the main problem of integration is to find relationships to the outside world and to live a rich life in full play. In effect, the individual must learn to live by his or her own myth. ([Location 1724](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07K5JL9X3&location=1724)) - Tags: [[pink]] - Survival, security, personal relationships, prestige, self-development—in my experience, those are exactly the values that a mythically inspired person doesn’t live for. ([Location 1798](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07K5JL9X3&location=1798)) - Tags: [[pink]] - Maslow’s five values are the values for which people live when they have nothing to live for. Nothing has seized them, nothing has caught them, nothing has driven them spiritually mad and made them worth talking to. These are the bores. (In a marvelous footnote to an essay on Don Quixote, Ortega y Gasset once wrote, “A bore is one who deprives us of our solitude without providing companionship.”45) ([Location 1803](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07K5JL9X3&location=1803)) - Tags: [[pink]] - He forgot all about Maslow’s values and began simply to live his bliss. ([Location 1816](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07K5JL9X3&location=1816)) - Tags: [[pink]] - Dante likens life to the daily transit of the sun. He names four ages, each of which corresponds to a time of day, and each of which has its proper set of virtues. ([Location 2143](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07K5JL9X3&location=2143)) - Tags: [[pink]] - There are something like 18 billion cells in the brain alone. There are no two brains alike; there are no two hands alike; there are no two human beings alike. You can take your instructions and your guidance from others, but you must find your own path, just like one of Arthur’s knights seeking the Grail in the forest. ([Location 2161](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07K5JL9X3&location=2161)) - Tags: [[pink]] - communicates the sense of going past judgment. ([Location 2251](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07K5JL9X3&location=2251)) - Tags: [[pink]] - In Isaiah, the Lord says, “I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.”66 Now, there’s a god who transcends duality. And, my gosh, in his behavior you can see that he does things that, if a human being did them, would be regarded as evil. For example, in the Book of Job, God behaves atrociously—from a human standpoint. At certain points what might be called the mysterium tremendum et fascinans comes breaking through, the tremendous aspect of the divine, which is fascinating and at the same time horrific. Normally, Yahweh is the god of a moral order where there is good and there is evil. But look at his justification of his actions to Job, and you realize this is a power beyond morality. ([Location 2663](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07K5JL9X3&location=2663)) - Tags: [[pink]] - The important thing, however, is not for the masculine to be the dominant or the feminine to be dominant; what is to be dominant is the coniunctio oppositorum, the conjunction of the two. ([Location 2689](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07K5JL9X3&location=2689)) - Tags: [[pink]] - Christ says, “Love thine enemies . . . That ye may be the children of your Father which is in Heaven: for He maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.”68 Christ read this as a revelation, a realization of an almost Buddhist sense of oneness with the whole of creation, and with the Creator, whereas in the orthodoxy that revelation is quenched. Jesus says, “I and My Father are one.”69 He was crucified for that by the orthodox community because man and God are not one, but he said they are. Al-Hallaj experienced the same fate nine hundred years later for exactly the same reason. ([Location 2719](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07K5JL9X3&location=2719)) - Tags: [[pink]] - kaivalyam—being absolutely isolated from all the calls of the body. ([Location 2794](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07K5JL9X3&location=2794)) - Tags: [[pink]] - If you’re going to enjoy, as I have enjoyed, this eagle flight of the spirit without responsibility, then you should have known that a long time ago and not gotten married. ([Location 2959](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07K5JL9X3&location=2959)) - Tags: [[pink]] - At the moment of his achieving nirvāṇ a, the Buddha was faced with three temptations. The Lord of Lust, Kāma, paraded three beautiful girls before him; their names were Desire, Fulfillment, and Regrets. Well, the Buddha no longer identified himself with his ego. He was identified with the Universal Self, the consciousness, which is in them too. So he wasn’t moved; I mean he was in that still point. Then Kāma turns himself into the Lord Fear, Māra, and he throws at the Buddha all the weaponry of a terrific army. The Buddha is no person anymore, and so he’s not afraid. ([Location 2989](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07K5JL9X3&location=2989)) - Tags: [[favorite]] [[pink]] - the experiences and illuminations of childhood and early youth become in later life the types, standards and patterns of all subsequent knowledge and experience, or as it were, the categories according to which all later things are classified—not always consciously, however. And so it is that in our childhood years the foundation is laid of our later view of the world, and therewith as well of its superficiality or depth: it will be in later years unfolded and fulfilled, not essentially changed. ([Location 3262](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07K5JL9X3&location=3262)) - Tags: [[orange]] - This gets back again to Krishna’s dictum: The best way to help mankind is through the perfection of yourself. ([Location 3309](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07K5JL9X3&location=3309)) - Tags: [[pink]]