# Quote — Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

> Campbell: Eternity isn't some later time. Eternity isn't a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is that dimension of here and now which thinking and time cuts out. This is it. And if you don't get it here, you won't get it anywhere. And the experience of eternity right here and now is the function of life. There's a wonderful formula that the Buddhists have for the Bodhisattva, the one whose being (sattva) is illumination (bodhi), who realizes his identity with eternity and at the same time his participation in time. And the attitude is not to withdraw from the world when you realize how horrible it is, but to realize that this horror is simply the foreground of a wonder and to come back and participate in it. "All life is sorrowful" is the first Buddhist saying, and it is. It wouldn't be life if there were not temporality involved which is sorrow. Loss, loss, loss.
>
> Moyers: That's a pessimistic note.
>
> Campbell: Well, you have to say yes to it, you have to say it's great this way. It's the way God intended it.

- Author: [Joseph Campbell](https://www.leafyquotes.com/joseph-campbell.md)
- Book: [The Power of Myth](https://www.leafyquotes.com/joseph-campbell/the-power-of-myth.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Joseph_Campbell#The_Power_of_Myth_(1988)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/joseph-campbell/the-power-of-myth/campbell-eternity-isnt

## More from this book

> This is the threat to our lives. We all face it. We all operate in our society in relation to a system. Now is the system going to eat you up and relieve you of your humanity or are you going to be able to use the system to human purposes? … If the person doesn't listen to the demands of his own spiritual and heart life and insists on a certain program, you're going to have a schizophrenic crack-up. The person has put himself off center. He has aligned himself with a programmatic life and it's not the one the body's interested in at all. And the world's full of people who have stopped listening to themselves.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/joseph-campbell/the-power-of-myth/this-is-the.md)

> This thing up here, this consciousness, thinks it's running the shop. It's a secondary organ. It's a secondary organ of a total human being, and it must not put itself in control. It must submit and serve the humanity of the body.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/joseph-campbell/the-power-of-myth/this-thing-up-here.md)

> One thing that comes out in myths is that at the bottom of the abyss comes the voice of salvation. The black moment is the moment when the real message of transformation is going to come. At the darkest moment comes the light.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/joseph-campbell/the-power-of-myth/one-thing-that.md)