The true source of religion
a feeling as of something limitless
unbounded -as it were oceanic
a sensation of eternity *

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Touch the loom of god and see how heaven and earth are woven together by patterns of light;

feel the traces in the sand, temporal signs of eternity;

step from stone to stone on a path leading to sacred and scientific insight;

try to unravel the outdated messages in knotted cords and guess the opened ended questions in unconnected wires and cables;

put a petrified object on a magic mirror revealing different parts of the mythosphere;

take up a sea shell or a cellular phone and listen to creation myths, ancient and modern;

hit the drum and call the messenger, let him show you the sixteen ways of the shaman;

unroll the scrolls, be inniated in the sources of shamanistic knowledge;

enter the yurt, a network of woven wood, recite the barcode mantras, connect to myriads of belief on the World Wide Web;

lay down in a hammock, from which rivers of white light flow, and dream away, rocking to and fro in an ocean of sound.



* Sigmund Freud summarizing a passage from a letter written to him by the French writer Roamin Rolland in a reaction of Freud's interpretation of "religion as an illusion" (The Future of an Illusion, 1927). Rolland agreed with Freud's judgment on religion itself, but thought that Freud had not properly appreciated "the true source of religious sentiments", after which follows Rolland's description of what came to be known as "The Oceanic Feeling".