Q:
Is there something in common in every culture that creates the need for god?

A:
Well, I think that anyone who has an experience of mystery at all knows that there is a dimension . . . let's say of the universe, that is not that which is available to the senses.

There's a wonderful saying in one of the Upanishads: ``When before a sunset or a mountain, and at the beauty of this or that, you pause and say `Ahhh . . . ' That is participation in divinity.''

And I think that's what it is.

It's the realization of wonder, and also the experience of tremendous power which people, of course, living in the world of nature are experiencing all the time.

You know that there's something there that's much bigger than the human dimension. And our way of thinking in the west, largely is that God is the source of the energy.

The way in most oriental thinking, and I think most what we call primitive thinking also, is that God is a manifestation, not the source. God is the vehicle.

--Joseph Campbell, from ``Bill Moyers: Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth.''