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Post by heartfelt7 on Jul 22, 2013 9:21:56 GMT -6
This is a rather long quote from Sigmund Freud's "Civilization and Its Discontents." I only post it because it is a unique confirmation to me of my spiritual beliefs from (of all people) a confirmed atheist. (ha)
"One of these exceptional few calls himself my friend in his letters to me. I had sent him my small book that treats religion as an illusion, and he answered that he entirely agreed with my judgement upon religion, but that he was sorry I had not properly appreciated the true source of religious sentiments. This, he says, consists in a peculiar feeling, which he himself is never without, which he finds confirmed by many others, and which he may suppose is present in millions of people. It is a feeling which he would like to call a sensation of 'eternity', a feeling as of something limitless, unbounded – as it were, 'oceanic'. This feeling, he adds, is a purely subjective fact, not an article of faith; it brings with it no assurance of personal immortality, but it is the source of the religious energy which is seized upon by the various Churches and religious systems, directed by them into particular channels, and doubtless also exhausted by them. One may, he thinks, rightly call oneself religious on the ground of this oceanic feeling alone, even if one rejects every belief and every illusion."
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Post by anirbas on Jul 22, 2013 14:10:06 GMT -6
Interesting... Thanks for sharing, m'lady!
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