Man becomes aware of the Sacred because it manifests itself, shows itself, as something wholly different from the Profane.

To believe that I could, at twenty-three, sacrifice history and culture for the Absolute was further proof that I had not understood India. My vocation was culture, not sainthood.

A religious phenomenon will only be recognized as such if it is grasped at its own level, that is to say, if it is studied as something religious. To try to grasp the essence of such phenomenon by means of physiology, psychology, sociology, economics, linguistics, art or any other study is false; it misses the one unique and irreducible element in it - the element of the sacred.

to have solely one thought, but it to be capable to destroy the universe.

In imitating the exemplary acts of a god or of a mythic hero, or simply by recounting their adventures, the man of an archaic society detaches himself from profane time and magically re-enters the Great Time, the sacred time.

And I realize how useless wails are and how gratuitous melancholy is.

Man becomes aware of the Sacred because it manifests itself, shows itself, as something wholly different from the Profane.