Professor Joseph Campbell was a writer and orator, best known for his work in the fields of comparative mythology and comparative religion. Campbell was also an accomplished athelete, receiving rewards in track and field events.

The Europeans who protested against the empire of mediocrity, themselves failed to attain to the springs of power. So their world of ideas went down before the steamroller. But in Dakshineshwar, only a few miles outside the Victorian metropolis of Calcutta, practising his sadhana not according to enlightened, modern methods, but after the most ancient, most superstitious, most idolatrous traditions of timeless India : now hanging to a tree, like a monkey ; now posturing and dressing as a girl ; now weeping before an image : now sitting, night and day, like a stump ; six years unable to close his eyes, himself terrified at what was happening to him, swooning in the ocean of the Mother’s love ; stunned by the experience of Brahman—Sri Ramakrishna cut the hinges of the heavens and released the fountains of divine bliss.