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Weston La Barre on Religion

d. 1996 United States

← All quotes by Weston La Barre

3 quotes

We have too long supposed that the Unknown mysterium tremendum et fascinosum of religion was outside us, when in fact that Unknown, although ego-alien or unconscious, was all the while within us: the alleged “supernatural” is the human “subconscious.”

Hallucinogens and the Shamanic Origins of Religion (1972)

A religion is a kind of group dream.

Like the paranoid schizophrenic, the vatic personality pretends to be talking about the grandiose outside cosmic world, but he is really talking grandiosely in symbolic ways only about his narcissistic self and his inner world. The mystic pretends to discard his sensory self in order to meld with the cosmic Self; but in discarding his senses he abjures his only connection with the cosmos and re-encounters only himself. The realities he expounds are inside him.

Hallucinogens and the Shamanic Origins of Religion (1972)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Weston La Barre (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.