Patrick Harpur Biography & Quotes

Source: The Secret Tradition of the Soul

“The idea of imagination implies deep participation and the harnessing of real desires in order to effect self-transformation”

Philosophy Imagination Transformation

Book:The Secret Tradition of the Soul

Source: The Secret Tradition of the Soul

“We cultivate soul by seeking depth, interiority, and connectedness - in short, by exercising imagination.”

Life Soul Philosophy Imagination Meaning

Book:The Secret Tradition of the Soul

Source: The Secret Tradition of the Soul

“Imagination, not reason, is the chief faculty of the soul.”

Soul Philosophy

Book:The Secret Tradition of the Soul

Source: The Secret Tradition of the Soul

“The trick is to cultivate “double vision” … A sense of metaphor, of translation - of two worlds interpenetrating - must be maintained. But this is also the essential movement of the imagination. We see through the literal world to the shape-shifting Otherworld behind.”

Soul Philosophy Gnosis

Book:The Secret Tradition of the Soul

Source: The Secret Tradition of the Soul

“The paradox is that we can only truly love each other when we also love something beyond each other.”

Love Soul Philosophy

Book:The Secret Tradition of the Soul

Source: The Secret Tradition of the Soul

“The more we realize our selves, the less they seem to be our selves, as if the world-soul merely wishes to reflect itself through our eyes. The less self-important we are, the more important we are as selves, with a unique perspective on the cosmos.”

Life Soul Self Philosophy Meaning Cosmos

Book:The Secret Tradition of the Soul

Source: The Secret Tradition of the Soul

“Death is a portal into that greater reality that can already be glimpsed in this world as an imaginative experience of the Otherworld.”

Soul Philosophy Death

Book:The Secret Tradition of the Soul

Source: The Secret Tradition of the Soul

“Death is not the opposite of life but of birth - life is a continuous realm out of which we are born; that (as Plato says) we can dimly remember during our existence; and to which we return when we die - to that totality of life compared to which mortal existence seems but a dreamlike fragment.”

Life Soul Philosophy Death Birth

Book:The Secret Tradition of the Soul

Source: The Secret Tradition of the Soul

“Each of us is an individual manifestation of the collective world-soul … we are also and paradoxically contained by the world-soul, like droplets in the ocean.”

Soul Philosophy

Book:The Secret Tradition of the Soul

Source: The Secret Tradition of the Soul

“Soul is what turns ordinary events into experiences; what imparts to the passing moment depth, connection, and resonance … The effect is unmistakable: an experience of stillness in our heads and, in our hearts, a fullness … Soul is what is transmitted and received in the experience that we call love.”

Love Soul Philosophy

Book:The Secret Tradition of the Soul

Source: The Secret Tradition of the Soul

“However much we wish the soul’s path to be straight, upward, and ascending, it is more likely to be meandering, full of regressions, downward turns, and backward glances.”

Soul Philosophy

Book:The Secret Tradition of the Soul

Source: The Secret Tradition of the Soul

“We are constantly distilling our selves out of ourselves like fountains that gush from underground wellsprings, flash briefly in the sun, and return to their source.”

Soul Self Philosophy

Book:The Secret Tradition of the Soul

Source: The Secret Tradition of the Soul

“Ideologies can only ever hope to change our lifestyles; it takes soul to change our lives.”

Life Soul Philosophy

Book:The Secret Tradition of the Soul

Source: The Secret Tradition of the Soul

“We are more like a many-faceted whole, and it is our task in the course of a lifetime to realize each facet of our selves - a journey that is more likely to be downward, circular, and labyrinthine than upward, onward, and straight.”

Life Soul Self Philosophy

Book:The Secret Tradition of the Soul

Source: The Secret Tradition of the Soul

“The task of the human soul is simply to return from its exile in our shadowy, less-than-real material world to an ecstatic union with the One Source of all reality.”

Soul Philosophy

Book:The Secret Tradition of the Soul

Source: The Secret Tradition of the Soul

“The way of soul, we notice, is downward rather than the upward flight of the mystic.”

Soul Philosophy Mysticism

Book:The Secret Tradition of the Soul

Source: The Secret Tradition of the Soul

“Our waking consciousness, so contained within our heads, so ego-centered, so floodlighted, makes the dream seem dim and ill-defined. It naturally flees from the light and from a consciousness that would grab it, badger it for subliminal messages, interpret it, handcuff it, and interrogate it for its secret. If, however, we were to cultivate a more daimonic consciousness, we could slide more easily into dreams, adapt to them, changing shape if necessary, and so return to wakefulness with full memory of our otherworldly sojourn. We might even learn to let the dream surface while we are awake, for dreaming goes on all the time - it is nothing other than soul’s imagining.”

Soul Philosophy Consciousness Dreams

Book:The Secret Tradition of the Soul

Source: The Secret Tradition of the Soul

“The ego breaks free of the soul, its matrix, in order to reflect soul, to make its potential actual, and eventually to be reunited with the realized soul to form the totality of the self.”

Soul Self Philosophy Ego

Book:The Secret Tradition of the Soul

Source: The Secret Tradition of the Soul

“The soul needs feeding - where “feeding” signifies heeding.”

Soul Philosophy

Book:The Secret Tradition of the Soul

Source: The Secret Tradition of the Soul

“Our lives are like a piece of embroidery: on one side, all loose ends, cut threads, and knots; but, turned around at death, a marvelous, coherent picture.”

Life Soul Philosophy Meaning

Book:The Secret Tradition of the Soul

Source: The Secret Tradition of the Soul

“There are many other worlds - but they are all in this one.”

Life Soul Philosophy Worlds

Book:The Secret Tradition of the Soul

Source: The Secret Tradition of the Soul

“The unconscious reflects back at us the face we show to it.”

Life Soul Philosophy

Book:The Secret Tradition of the Soul

Source: The Secret Tradition of the Soul

“As part of the Soul of the World we are part of a cosmic dance of which it is meaningless to ask the purpose and meaning - because it is all purpose and meaning.”

Life Soul Philosophy Purpose Meaning

Book:The Secret Tradition of the Soul

Source: The Secret Tradition of the Soul

“Emotion and intellect, matter and spirit, body and soul, One and Many, male and female, human and divine, freedom and necessity - all the contradictions of our fractured existence are most marvelously woven together in the wedding of soul and spirit, which preserves our twofoldness right into the heart of the One.”

Life Soul Philosophy Spirit Purpose Unity Meaning

Book:The Secret Tradition of the Soul

Source: The Secret Tradition of the Soul

“Destiny is the inner meaning of chance.”

Philosophy Chance Destiny

Book:The Secret Tradition of the Soul

Source: The Secret Tradition of the Soul

“What you knew in your childhood is true; the Otherworld of magic and enchantment is real, sometimes terribly real - and certainly more real than the factual reality which our culture has built up, brick by brick, to shut out colour and light and prevent us from flying.”

Reality Magic Childhood Otherworld

Book:A Complete Guide to the Soul

Source: A Complete Guide to the Soul

Patrick Harpur Biography

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