Sublime

Religions are psychotherapeutic systems in the truest sense of the word, and on the grandest scale. They express the whole range of the psychic problem in mighty images; they are the avowal and recognition of the soul, and at the same time the revelation of the soul's nature. From this universal foundation no human soul is cut off.

what I definitely believe is that the great religions, all of them and the great mystical traditions of Buddhism and Taoism, and so on, have central truths that they hold in common, and that these are a kind of wisdom that are not appreciated, unless one is brought up in a tradition that helped one see

them. And our tradition is dead against seeing

The prevailing materialistic culture has created a divided world where the sacred is relegated to churches and temples, the body to the gym, mental health to pills from the pharmacy. Economic growth is pursued as if it had nothing to do with the environment and ignorance, racism, and warfare continue to separate people and nations. These divisions

Derrida, who argued in several important writings that we need to rediscover ‘religion without the religions’.

He says that in his professional writings he uses the term ‘the unconscious’, but is aware that he ‘might equally well speak of “God” or “daimon” if I wished to express myself in mythic language’.

The phenomena that interested Romantic philosophers might appear somewhat arbitrary. Mental illness, ghosts, animal behaviour? But anomalous and exceptional phenomena can be thought of as a point of weakness between the perceived material world and something greater beyond.