maya

"The word maya comes from the root ma, which means 'to build or measure forth.' Maya has three powers. One power is called the obscuring power; it obscures our understanding of the pure light. The second power is called the projecting power. It converts the pure light into the forms of the phenomenal world as a prism turns white light into colors of the rainbow. These are the powers that turn the transcendent into the temporal, spatial world that we know and all its things.

"Now, if you take the colors and put them on a disk and spin the colors, they will reveal white again. The colors of this world can be so inflected; they can be arranged in so artful a way that they will let you experience through to the true light. This is called the revealing power of maya -- and the function of art is to serve that end. The artist is meant to put the objects of the world together in such a way that through them you will experience that light, that radiance which is the light of our consciousness and which all things both hide and, when properly looked upon, reveal." --Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss.

the ultimate truth

"The ultimate truth, the ultimate mystery of life and being, is absolutely transcendent. One cannot define the absolute. One cannot picture it. One cannot name it. Nevertheless, that which is absolute being and absolute mystery is also one's own inner reality: one is that. The absolute is both transcendent and immanent: that is to say, both beyond the universe of the senses and within each particle of the universe. All that can be said about it is . . . nothing. All that can be said points to it. Therefore, the symbols, the rites, the rituals, and the acts are involved in a world of human experience but point past themselves to that transcendent, immanent force; the rites and symbols lead one to the realization of one's identity with that absolute. Identity with the transcendent is one's essence . . ." --Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss.

what i've been reading . . .

"Your bliss can guide you to that transcendent mystery, because bliss is the welling up of the energy to the transcendent wisdom within you. So when the bliss cuts off, you know that you've cut off the welling up; try to find it again. And that will be your Hermes guide, the dog that can follow the invisible trail for you. And that's the way it is. One works out one's own myth that way. --Joseph Campbell, Pathways to Bliss

what i've been reading . . .

"The way that mythologies work their magic is through symbols. The symbol works as an automatic button that releases energy and channels it." --Joseph Campbell in Pathways to Bliss, Mythology and Personal Transformation