Mircea Eliade Quotes

Căci ăsta mi se pare lucrul cel mai greu de învăţat în contemplarea iubitei: să ştii cum să-i priveşti ochii. Uneori, privirile noastre lovesc atât de nepriceput oglinda ochilor iubitei, încât o turbură, aburind-o; sau, şi mai grav, fac ochii opaci, le dă un luciu de teracotă, de smalţ colorat. Şi sunt, de asemenea, priviri crâncene, care smulg retina sau o pătrund sălbatic, sângerând-o, sau o întunecă...

Bucureştiul, îndeosebi, are cele mai toxice amurguri, în toate anotimpurile. E greu să rămâi singur, să nu te îndrăgosteşti, să nu-ţi cauţi pereche într-un astfel de oraş, în care soarele se stinge cu atâta melancolie...

These thirty years, and more, that I've spent among exotic, barbaric, indomitable gods and goddesses, nourished on myths, obsessed by symbols, nursed and bewitched by so many images which have come down to me from those submerged worlds, today seem to me to be the stages of a long initiation. Each one of these divine figures, each of these myths or symbols, is connected to a danger that was confronted and overcome. How many times I was almost lost, gone astray in this labyrinth where I risked being killed... These were not only bits of knowledge acquired slowly and leisurely in books, but so many encounters, confrontations, and temptations. I realize perfectly well now all the dangers I skirted during this long quest, and, in the first place, the risk of forgetting that I had a goal... that I wanted to reach a "center".

De obicei, nu-mi plac oamenii trişti; cu atât mai puţin femeile triste. Cei mai mulţi dintre noi suferim de tristeţi umilitoare, de ordin biologic sau psihologic. Suntem trişti, pentru că am ratat o afacere, pentru că nu ne funcţioneaza ficatul sau pentru că am pierdut o noapte la chef sau bibliotecă. Iar cu femeile e şi mai penibil. E ceva de duzină în cele mai multe tristeţi feminine.

The interpretations of Freud are more and more successful because they are among the myths accessible to modern man. The myth of the murdered father, among others, reconstituted and interpreted in Totem and Taboo. It would be impossible to ferret out a single example of slaying the father in primitive religions or mythologies. This myth was created by Freud. And what is more interesting: the intellectual élite accept it (is it because they understand it? Or because it is "true" for modern man?)

Aș vrea să stăm odată de vorbă. Dar aș vrea să stăm de vorbă deschis, așa cum vorbeam altădată.

Setea trupurilor noastre a fost greu de stins atunci. Parcă nu mai era îmbrăţişare contopirea aceea din urmă, când cu adevărat se topeau contururile, dispărea carnea, ne uitam respiraţia, mistuiţi amândoi de o singură - însângerată şi nesăţioasă - gură. De mai multe ori am nădăjduit că la capătul răpirii aceleia vom întâlni, împreună, moartea. N-am ştiut că poate fi atât de ispititoare moartea, atât de caldă - voluptate fără spasm, beatitudine fără strigare.

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.

In virtue of this, the artisan is a connoisseur of secrets, a magician; thus all crafts include some kind off initiation and are handed down by an occult tradition. He who 'makes' real things is he who knows the secret of making them.

Nu-ţi dai seama ce copleşitor lucru e să simţi câteodată că timpul ţi-a luat-o înainte, că n-ai făcut anumite lucruri esenţiale la vremea lor şi că ai să te trezeşti într-o bună zi singur, îmbătrânit, incapabil de a mai repara ceva.

Every world is the work of the gods, for it was either created directly by the gods or was consecrated, hence cosmicized, by men ritually reactualizing the paradigmatic act of Creation. This is as much as to say that religious man can live only in a sacred world, because it is only in such a world that he participates in being, that he has a real existence. This religious need expresses an unquenchable ontological thirst. Religious man thirsts for being. His terror of the chaos that surrounds his inhabited world corresponds to his terror of nothingness. The unknown space that extends beyond his world – an uncosmicized because unconsecrated space, a mere amorphous extent into which no orientation has yet been projected, and hence in which no structure has yet arisen – for religious man, this profane space represents absolute nonbeing. If, by some evil chance, he strays into it, he feels emptied of his ontic substance, as if he were dissolving in Chaos, and he finally dies.

If Samkhya-Yoga philosophy does not explain the reason and origin of the strange partnership between the spirit and experience, at least tries to explain the nature of their association, to define the character of their mutual relations. These are not real relationships, in the true sense of the word, such as exist for example between external objects and perceptions. The true relations imply, in effect, change and plurality, however, here we have some rules essentially opposed to the nature of spirit.
“States of consciousness” are only products of prakriti and can have no kind of relation with Spirit the latter, by its very essence, being above all experience. However and for SamPhya and Yoga this is the key to the paradoxical situation the most subtle, most transparent part of mental life, that is, intelligence (buddhi) in its mode of pure luminosity (sattva), has a specific quality that of reflecting Spirit. Comprehension of the external world is possible only by virtue of this reflection of purusha in intelligence. But the Self is not corrupted by this reflection and does not lose its ontological modalities (impassibility, eternity, etc.). The Yoga-sutras (II, 20) say in substance: seeing (drashtri; i.e., purusha) is absolute consciousness (“sight par excellence”) and, while remaining pure, it knows cognitions (it “looks at the ideas that are presented to it”). Vyasa interprets: Spirit is reflected in intelligence (buddhi), but is neither like it nor different from it. It is not like intelligence because intelligence is modified by knowledge of objects, which knowledge is ever-changing whereas purusha commands uninterrupted knowledge, in some sort it is knowledge. On the other hand, purusha is not completely different from buddhi, for, although it is pure, it knows knowledge. Patanjali employs a different image to define the relationship between Spirit and intelligence: just as a flower is reflected in a crystal, intelligence reflects purusha. But only ignorance

"It was lunar symbolism that enabled man to relate and connect such heterogeneous things as: birth, becoming, death, and ressurection; the waters, plants, woman, fecundity, and immortality; the cosmic darkness, prenatal existence, and life after death, followed by the rebirth of the lunar type ("light coming out of darkness"); weaving, the symbol of the "thread of life," fate, temporality, and death; and yet others. In general most of the ideas of cycle, dualism, polarity, opposition, conflict, but also of reconciliation of contraries, of coincidentia oppositorum, were either discovered or clarified by virtue of lunar symbolism. We may even speak of a metaphysics of the moon, in the sense of a consistent system of "truths" relating to the mode of being peculiar to living creatures, to everything in the cosmos that shares in life, that is, in becoming, growth and waning, death and ressurrection."

Tu îţi mai aduci aminte cine a spus că miracolele sunt irecognoscibile, în sensul că sunt camuflate printre întâmplările de toate zilele, că sunt împlinite, în aparenţă, de către oameni care seamănă cu noi toţi, oamenii de rând?

"Yet it is worth noting that in this example we never witness a complete desacralization of the world, for in the Far East what is called the "esthetic emotion" still retains a religious dimension, even among intellectuals. But the example of the miniature gardens shows us in what direction and by what means the desacralization of the world is accomplished. We need only imagine what an esthetic emotion of this sort could become in a modern society, and we shall understand how the experience of cosmic sanctity can be rarefied and transformed until it becomes a purely human emotion — that, for example, of art for art's sake."