Psychoanalysis justifies its importance by asserting that it forces yo — Mircea Eliade

"The worldly man lives in society, marries, establishes a family; Yoga prescribes absolute solitude and chastity The worldly man is “possessed” by his own life; the yogin refuses to “let himself live”; to continual movement, he opposes his static posture, the immobility of aasana; to agitated, unrhythmical, changing respiration, he opposes praanaayaama, and even dreams of holding his breath indefinitely; to the chaotic flux of psychomental life, he replies by “fixing thought on a single point,” the first step to that final withdrawal from the phenomenal world which he will obtain through pratyaahaara All of the yogic techniques invite to one and the same gesture—to do exactly the opposite of what human nature forces one to do From solitude and chastity to samyama, there is no solution of continuity The orientation always remains the same—to react against the “normal,” “secular,” and finally “human” inclination"

"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."

"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."

"The History of Religions is destined to play an important role in contemporary cultural life. This is not only because an understanding of exotic and archaic religions will significantly assist in a cultural dialogue with the representatives of such religions. It is more especially because … the history of religions will inevitably attain to a deeper knowledge of man. It is on the basis of such knowledge that a new humanism, on a world-wide scale, could develop."

"The history of religions reaches down and makes contact with that which is essentially human: the relation of man to the sacred. The history of religions can play an extremely important role in the crisis we are living through. The crises of modern man are to a large extent religious ones, insofar as they are an awakening of his awareness to an absence of meaning."

"As long as you have not grasped that you have to die to grow, you are a troubled guest on the dark earth."