TrueLife - Myth, Behavior & Conflict: Joseph Campbell Part 4 — Archetypes in Action

Starting point is 00:00:01 Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Hears through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

Starting point is 00:00:40 The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Glad to know, George. Welcome back, everybody. How are you guys doing? You have a good weekend. Have a good morning.

Starting point is 00:01:25 Did you have a good night last night? What you guys got going on? Got a good week ahead of you. You're looking forward to something? I once heard that the secret to life is having someone to love, something to look forward to, and something to do. Do you have all three of those things? If you've got all three of those things, you should be pretty balanced. I hope you're balanced. I got to tell you, I'm really excited to be here with you guys today.

Starting point is 00:01:50 I also got to tell you, super thankful for you taking a few moments to hang out with me. I love you guys and I appreciate it. I've been doing quite a bit of thinking. We did a pretty good series on Terrence McKenna and the archaic revival. I got a lot of great feedback from it. So I thought that I would stay on a similar pathway. The pathway I've been thinking about is a lot like life's journey. In fact, it's the hero's journey, brought to you by our good friend Joseph Campbell.

Starting point is 00:02:26 I've been reading a lot of Joseph. campbell lately and helps to expand your ideas of where we're going by reading the mythologies of yesterday regardless of which culture any of us come from the people that came before us had a rich symbolic history of storytelling and some of those myths i think are the key for us to move forward it seems to me we've lost our way. It seems to me that a lot of us don't have the right direction. A lot of our leaders have lost their way. Which way does it go, George? Which way do they go? A lot of us have lost our way. I think that the way we can find our way back is to look to the past. I want to talk a little bit today about mythology, behavior, and conflict. And where we are.

Starting point is 00:03:26 on that schedule, maybe where you are on that schedule, how we can find our way back, and how maybe you can find your own road back, your own spiritual journey. By understanding and reading about the heroes of the past, we can find new heroes. The truth is, we need a hero, and I think that hero resides within you. All right, let's get started. This is all inspired by our good friend Joseph Campbell, and a lot of what we're going to talk about comes from the book, The Power of Myth. So what is transcendence?

Starting point is 00:04:15 Well, according to Campbell, transcendent is a technical philosophical term, translated in two different ways. In Christian theology, it refers to God as being beyond or outside the field of nature. That is a materialistic way of talking about the transcendent, because God is thought of as a kind of spiritual fact, existing somewhere out there.

Starting point is 00:04:41 It was Hegel who spoke of our anthropomorphic God as the gaseous vertebrate. Such an idea of God as many Christians hold, or he is thought of as a bearded old man with a not very pleasant temperament. But transcendent properly means that which is beyond all concepts. Kant tells us that all of our experiences are bounded by time and space, They take place within space, and they take place in the course of time. Time and space form the sensibilities that bound our experiences. Our senses are enclosed in the field of time and space,

Starting point is 00:05:22 and our minds are enclosed in a frame of the categories of thought. But the ultimate thing, which is no thing, that we are trying to get in touch with, is not so enclosed. We enclose it as we try. to think of it. The transcendent transcends all of these categories of thinking. Being and non-being. Those are categories. The word God properly refers to what transcends all thinking, but the word God itself is something thought about. Now, you can personify God in many, many ways. Is there one God? Are there many gods? Those are merely categories of thought. What you are talking and trying to think about transcends all of that. One problem with Yahweh, as they used to say

Starting point is 00:06:17 in the old Christian Gnostic texts, is that he forgot he was a metaphor. He thought he was a fact. And when he said, I am God, a voice was heard to say, you are mistaken, Samuel. Samuel means blind God, blind to the infinite light of which he is a local, historical manifestation. This is known as the blasphemy of Jehovah, and he thought he was God. By the time I was like three years old, I would have this dream that God has, because God knows everything. It's just super intelligent, omnipresent, unlimited dimensions, but God doesn't know where God came from. There is a wonderful story in one of the Upanishads about the God Indra. Now, it happened at this time that a great monster had enclosed all the waters of the earth,

Starting point is 00:07:12 so there was a terrible drought, and the world was in a very bad condition. It took Indra quite a while to realize that he had a box of thunderbolts, and that all he had to do was drop a thunderbolt on the monster and blow him up. When he did that, the waters flowed, and the world was refreshed, and Indra said, what a great boy am I. So thinking, what a great boy am I? Indra goes up to the cosmic mountain, which is the central mountain of the world, and decides to build a palace worthy of such as he. The main carpenter of the gods goes to work on it, and in very quick order, he gets the palace into pretty good condition. But every time Indra comes to inspect it, he has bigger ideas about how splendid and grandiose the palace should be. Finally, the carpenter says, my God, we are a brighton. We are a brighton. both immortal, and there is no end to his desires. I am caught for eternity. So he decides to go to

Starting point is 00:08:10 Brahma, the creator God, and complain. Brahma sits on a lotus, the symbol of divine energy and divine grace. The lotus grows from the navel of Vishnu, who is the sleeping God, whose dream is the universe. So the carpenter comes to the edge of the great lotus pond of the universe and tells his story to Brahma. Brahma says, you go home. I'll fix this up. Brahma gets off his lotus and kneels down to address sleeping Vishnu. Vishnu just makes a gesture and says something like, listen, fly, something is going to happen. Next morning, at the gate of the palace that is being built, there appears a beautiful blue, black boy with a lot of children around him, just admiring his beauty. The porter at the gate of the new palace goes running to Indra, and Indra says,

Starting point is 00:09:05 well, bring in the boy. The boy is brought in, and Indra the king god, sitting on his throne, says, young man, welcome, and what brings you to my palace? Well, says the boy with a voice like thunder rolling on the horizon. I have been told that you are building such a palace as no Indra before you ever built. And Indra says, Indra's before me? Young man. What are you talking about? The boy says, Indra's before you. I have seen them come and go, come and go. Just think. Vishnu sleeps in the cosmic ocean and the lotus of the universe grows from his navel. On the lotus sits Brahma, the creator. Brahma opens his eyes and a world comes into being governed by an Indra. Brahma closes his eyes and a world goes out of

Starting point is 00:09:58 being. The life of a Brahma is 432,000 years. When he dies, the lotus goes back and another lotus is formed, and another Brahma. Then think of the galaxies beyond galaxies in infinite space, each a lotus with a Brahma sitting on it, opening his eyes, closing his eyes. And Indras? There may be wise men in your court who would volunteer to count the drops of water in the oceans of the world or the grains of sand on the beaches, but no one would count those Brahmin, let alone those Indras. While the boy is talking, an army of ants parades across the floor. The boy laughs when he sees them. The Indra's hair stands on end and he says to the boy, why do you laugh? The boy answers, don't ask, unless you are willing to be hurt. Indra says,

Starting point is 00:10:51 I ask, teach. That, by the way, is a good oriental idea. You don't teach until you're asked. You don't force your mission down people's throats. And so the boy points to the ants and says, former Indra's all. Through many lifetimes, they rise from the lowest conditions to highest illumination, and then they drop their thunderbolt on a monster, and they think, what a good boy am I? And down they go again. While the boy is talking, a crotchety old yogi comes into the palace with a banana leaf parasol.

Starting point is 00:11:27 He is naked except for a loin cloth And on his chest is a little disc of hair And half the hairs in the middle have all dropped out The boy greets him and asks him Just what Indra was about to ask Old man, what is your name? Where do you come from? Where is your family? Where is your house?

Starting point is 00:11:48 And what is the meaning of this curious constellation of hair on your chest? Well, says the old fellow My name is Harry I don't have a house. house, life is too short for that. I just have this parasol. I don't have a family. I just meditate on Vishnu's feet and think of eternity and how passing time is. You know, every time an Indra dies, a world disappears. These things just flash by like that. Every time an Indra dies, one hair drops out of this circle on my chest. Half the hairs are gone now. Pretty soon, they will all be gone. Life is short.

Starting point is 00:12:24 Why build a house? Then the two disappear. The boy was Vishnu, the Lord Protector, and the old yogi was Shiva, the creator and destroyer of the world, who had just come for the instruction of Indra, who is simply a god of history, but thinks he is the whole show. Indra is sitting there on his throne, and he is completely disillusioned, completely shot. He calls the carpenter and says, I'm quitting the building of this palace. You are dismissed.

Starting point is 00:12:53 so the carpenter got his intention. He is dismissed from the job, and there is no more house building going on. Indra decides to go out and be a yogi and just meditate on the lotus feet of Vishnu. But he has a beautiful queen named Indrani. And when Indrani hears of Indra's plan, she goes to the priest of the gods and says, Now he has got this idea in his head of going out to become a yogi. Well, says the priests, come in with me, darling, and we will save. sit down and I'll fix this up. So they sit down before the king's throne and the priest says,

Starting point is 00:13:28 now I wrote a book for you many years ago on the art of politics. You are in the position of the king of the gods. You are a manifestation of the mystery of Brahma in the field of time. This is a high privilege, appreciate it, honor it, and deal with life as though you were what you really are. And besides now, I am going to write you a book on the art of love. so that you and your wife will know that in the wonderful mystery of the two that are one, the Brahma, is radiantly present also. And with this set of instructions, Indra gives up his idea of going out and becoming a yogi, and finds that in life he can represent the eternal as a symbol, you might say, of the Brahma.

Starting point is 00:14:14 So each of us, in a way, the Indra of his own life, you can make a choice either to throw it all off and go into the forest to meditate, or to stay in the world, both in the life of your job, which is the kingly job of politics and achievement and in the love life with your wife and family. Now, this is the type of myth that we can all learn from. There's a lot in there. I think that it speaks to what modern day science is discovering, that time is endless,

Starting point is 00:14:48 that there are galaxies and galaxies and galaxies, and that God or our personification of God and his son and the mystery is for our set of time. Culture, our culture has always influenced our thinking about ultimate matters. Culture can, it can also teach us to go past its concepts. That is what is known as initiation. A true initiation is when the guru tells you. There is no Santa Claus. Santa Claus is metaphoric of a relationship

Starting point is 00:15:28 between parents and children. The relationship does exist, and so it can be experienced, but there is no Santa Claus. Santa Claus was simply a way of cluing children into the appreciation of a relationship. Because you're being notated, so you're in a notie list. Monkey speed off.

Starting point is 00:15:55 Life is, and it's very essence. and character, a terrible mystery, this whole business of living by killing and eating. But it is a childish attitude to say no to life with all its pain, to say that this is something that should not have been. Only death is no trouble. People ask me, do you have optimism about the world? And I say yes. It's great just the way it is, and you are not going to fix it. Nobody has ever made it any better. It is never going to be any better. This is it. So take it or leave it. You are not going to correct or improve it. You yourself are participating in this good and evil or you are not alive. Whatever you do can be evil for somebody else. This is one of the ironies of the whole creation. What about this idea of good and evil in mythology of life as a conflict between the forces of darkness and the forces of light?

Starting point is 00:16:56 This is a Zoroastrian idea which has come over into Judaism and Christianity. In other traditions, good and evil are relative to the position in which you are standing. What is good for one is evil for the other. And you play your part, notwithstanding from the world when you realize how horrible it is, but seeing that this horror is simply the foreground of a wonder, a mysterium tremendous et faciness, all life is sorrowful is the first Buddhist saying and so it is it wouldn't be life if there were not temporality involved which is sorrow loss loss loss you've got to say yes to life and see it as magnificent

Starting point is 00:17:49 this way for this is surely the way God intended it is joyful just as it is I don't believe there was anybody who intended it. But this is the way it is. James Joyce has a memorable line. History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake. And the way to awake from it is not to be afraid. And to recognize that all of this as it is, is a manifestation of the horrendous power that is of all creation.

Starting point is 00:18:23 The ends of things are always painful. But pain is part of their being. being a world at all. Moderator. But if you accepted that as an ultimate conclusion, you wouldn't try to form any laws or fight any battles. Joseph Campbell, I didn't say that. Moderator.

Starting point is 00:18:43 Isn't that the logical conclusion to draw from accepting everything as it is? Campbell, this is not the necessary conclusion to draw. You could say, I will participate in this life. I will join the army. I will go to war and so forth. You must participate in the game. It is a wonderful, wonderful opera, except that it hurts. Affirmation is difficult. We always affirm with conditions. I affirm the world on condition that it gets to be the way Santa Claus told me it ought to be, but affirming it the way it is. That's the hard thing, and that is what rituals are about. ritual is group participation in the most hideous act which is the act of life namely killing and eating another living thing we do it together and this is the way life is the hero is the one who comes to participate in life courageously and decently in the way of nature not in the way of personal rancourt disappointment or revenge the hero's sphere of action is not the transcendent but he

Starting point is 00:19:55 Here, now, in the field of time, of good and evil, of the pairs of opposites. Whenever one moves out of the transcendent, one comes into a field of opposites. One has eaten of the tree of knowledge, not only of good and evil, but of male and female, of right and wrong, of this and that, and of light and dark. Everything in the field of time is dual, past and future, dead and alive, being and non-being, but the ultimate pair in the imagination are male and female, the male being aggressive and the female being receptive, the male being the warrior, the female, the dreamer.

Starting point is 00:20:35 We have the realm of love and the realm of war, Freud's eros and sonatos. Heraclitus said that, for God, all things are good and right and just, but for man, some things are right and others are not. When you are a man, you are in the field, of time and decisions. One of the problems of life is to live with the realization of both terms, to say, I know the center, and I know that good and evil are simply temporal aberrations, and that, in God's view, there is no difference.

Starting point is 00:21:10 Moderator. That is the idea in the Upanishads, not female, nor yet male is it. Neither is it neuter. Whatever body it assumes, through that body, it is served. Joseph Campbell. That is right. So Jesus says, judge not that you may not be judged. That is to say, put yourself back in the position of paradise before you thought in terms of good and evil. You don't hear this much from the pulpits, but one of the great challenges of life is to say, yay to that person or that act or that condition which in your mind is most abominable moderator most abominable campbell there are two aspects to a thing of this kind one is your judgment in the field of action and the other is your judgment as a metaphysical observer you can't say

Starting point is 00:22:13 there shouldn't be poisonous serpents that's the way life is But in the field of action, if you see a poisonous serpent about to bite somebody, you kill it. That's not saying no to the serpent. That's saying no to that situation. There's a wonderful verse in the Rig Veda that says, On the tree, that's the tree of life, the tree of your own life. There are two birds, fast friends. One eats the fruit of the tree, and the other,

Starting point is 00:22:47 not eating, watches. Now, the one eating the fruit of the tree is killing a fruit. Life lives on life. That's what it's all about. A little myth from India tells the story of the great God Shiva, the Lord whose dance is the universe. He had, as his consort, the goddess Pervorthy, daughter of the mountain king. A monster came to him and said,

Starting point is 00:23:15 I want your wife as my mistress. Shiva was indignant. So he simply opened his third eye and lightning bolts struck the earth. There was smoke and fire. And when the smoke cleared, there was another monster, lean with hair like the hair of a lion flying to the four directions. The first monster saw that the lean monster was about to eat him. Now, what do you do when you're in a situation like that?

Starting point is 00:23:44 Traditional advice says, to throw yourself on the mercy of the deity. So the monster said, Shiva, I throw myself on your mercy. Now, there are rules for this God game. When someone throws himself on your mercy, then you yield mercy. So Shiva said, I yield my mercy.

Starting point is 00:24:05 Lean monster, do not eat him. Well, said the lean monster, what do I do? I'm hungry. You made me hungry to eat this guy. Well, said Shiva, eat yourself. So the lean monster started on his feet and came chomping up, chomping up. This is an image of life, living on life. Finally, there was nothing left of the lean monster but a face.

Starting point is 00:24:31 Shiva looked at the face and said, I've never seen a greater demonstration of what life's all about than this. I will call you, Kurtimuka, face of glory. And you will see that mask. that face of glory at the portals to Shiva shrines and also to Buddha shrines. Shiva said to the face, He who will not bow to you is unworthy to come to me. You've got to say yes to this miracle of life as it is,

Starting point is 00:25:05 not on the condition that it follows your rules. Otherwise, you'll never get through to the metaphysical dimension. Once in India, I thought I would like to meet a major guru or two, teacher face to face. So I went to see a celebrated teacher named Krishna Menon. And the first thing he said to me was, do you have a question? The teacher in this tradition always answers questions. He doesn't tell you anything. You are not yet ready to hear. So I said yes, I have a question. Since in Hindu thinking, everything in the universe is a manifestation of divinity itself. self. How should we say no to anything in the world? How should we say no to brutality, to stupidity,

Starting point is 00:25:55 to vulgarity, to thoughtlessness? And he answered, for you and for me, the way is to say yes. We then had a wonderful talk on this theme of the affirmation of all things, and it confirmed to me in the feeling I had had that, who are? are we to judge? It seems to me that this is one of the great teachings, also of Jesus. Moderator, in classic Christian doctrine, the material world is to be despised, and life is to be redeemed in the hereafter in heaven, where our rewards come. But you say that if you affirm that which you deplore, you are affirming the very world which is our eternity at the moment. Joseph Campbell. Yes, that is exactly what I'm saying. Eternity isn't some later time.

Starting point is 00:26:53 Eternity isn't even a long time. Eternity has nothing to do with time. Eternity is that dimension of here and now that all thinking is temporal terms cut off. And if you don't get it here, you won't get it anywhere. The problem with heaven is that you will be having such a good time. there you won't even think of eternity you'll just have this unending delight in the beatific vision of God but the experience of eternity right here and now in all things whether thought of as good or as evil is the function of life moderator you talk a lot about consciousness Campbell yes moderator what do you mean by it Campbell

Starting point is 00:27:45 It is a part of the Cartesian mode to think of consciousness as being something peculiar to the head. That the head is the organ originating consciousness. It isn't. The head is an organ that inflicts consciousness in a certain direction, or to a certain set of purposes. But there is a consciousness here in the body. The whole living world is inform. by consciousness. I have a feeling that consciousness and energy are the same thing somehow. Where you really see life energy, there's consciousness. Certainly the vegetable world is conscious.

Starting point is 00:28:28 And when you live in the woods, as I did as a kid, you can see all these different consciousness relating to themselves. There is a plant consciousness and there is an animal consciousness. and we share both these things. You eat certain foods, and the bile knows whether there's something there for it to go to work on. The whole process is consciousness. Trying to interpret it in simply mechanistic terms, it won't work. Moderator, how do we transform our consciousness? Joseph Campbell.

Starting point is 00:29:08 That is a matter of what you are. disposed to think about. And that's what meditation is for. All of life is a meditation. Most of it, unintentional. A lot of people spend most of life in meditating on where their money is coming from and where it's going to go. If you have a family to bring up, you're concerned for the family. These are all very important concerns, but they have to do with physical conditions. But how are you going to communicate spiritual consciousness to the children if you do not have it yourself? How do you get that? What the myths are for is to bring us into a level of consciousness that is spiritual.

Starting point is 00:30:01 For example, I walk off 51st Street and 5th Avenue into St. Patrick's Cathedral. I've left a very busy city in one of the most economic. economically inspired cities on the planet. I walk into the cathedral and everything around me speaks of spiritual mysteries. The mystery of the cross. What's that all about? The stained glass windows, which bring another atmosphere into the room. My consciousness has been brought up onto another level altogether.

Starting point is 00:30:38 And I am on a different platform. And then I walk out and I'm back on the level of the street again. Now, can I hold something from the cathedral's consciousness? Certain prayers or meditations are designed to hold your consciousness on that level, instead of letting it drop down here all the way. And then what you can finally do is to recognize that this is simply a lower level of that higher consciousness. The mystery that is expressed there is operating in the field of your money, for example. All money is congealed energy. I think that that's the clue to how to transform your consciousness.

Starting point is 00:31:23 Moderator. Don't you sometimes think as you consider these stories that you are drowning in other people's dreams? Joseph Campbell, I don't listen to other people's dreams. Moderator. But all of these myths aren't these other people's dreams? Campbell. Oh no, no, they are not. They are the world's dreams.

Starting point is 00:31:50 They are archetypal dreams and deal with great human problems. I know when I come to one of these thresholds now, the myth tells me about it, how to respond a certain crisis of disappointment or delight or failure or success. The myths tell me where I am. Moderator, what happens when people become legend? Can you say, for example? Joseph Campbell. When a person becomes a model for others' people's lives,

Starting point is 00:32:23 he has moved into the sphere of being mythologized. Moderator, this happens so often to actors and films. It's where we get so many of our role models. Joseph Campbell, there is something magical about films. The person you are looking at is also somewhere else at the same time. That is a condition of the God. If a movie actor comes into the theater, everybody turns and looks at the movie actor. He is the real hero of the occasion.

Starting point is 00:32:55 He is on another plane. He is a multiple presence. What you are seeing on the screen really isn't he. And yet, the he comes through the multiple forms, the form of forms, out of which all of this comes is right there. there. Moderator. Movies seem to create these large figures while television merely creates celebrities. They don't become models as much as they do objects of gossip. Campbell, perhaps that's because we see TV personalities in the home instead of in a special temple like the movie theater. Moderator, the poet Yeats

Starting point is 00:33:45 felt we were living in the last of a great Christian cycle. His poem, The Second Coming, says, Turning and Turning in the widening gear. The falcon cannot hear the falconier. Things fall apart. The center cannot hold. Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world. The blood dim tide is loosened and everywhere, the ceremony of innocence is drowned. What do you see slouching towards Bethlehem to be born? Joseph Campbell, I do not know what's coming anymore than Yeats knew, but when you come to the end of one time and the beginning of a new one, it's a period of tremendous pain and turmoil. The threat we feel, and everybody feels. Well, there is this notion of Armageddon coming, you know?

Starting point is 00:34:49 I want to pause there for just a moment. This particular passage, I think, is something that everyone should take to heart. I'm going to read this one part again just so you can see. I don't know what's coming any more than Yeats new. But when you come to the end of one time and the beginning of a new one, it's a period of tremendous pain and turmoil. Doesn't that kind of seem exactly where we're at right now? You can draw a lot of parallels.

Starting point is 00:35:26 And this is one of the reasons why I want to do this spotlight on mythology right now. That's why we looked at Terrence McKinnett as hard as we did. Because I believe that the answers to the future are buried in the past. and if we can look back to some of the great mythologies of our time, we may not find the exact answer, but we may find a similar solution. Moderator. I have become death, the destroyer of worlds.

Starting point is 00:36:00 That's what Oppenheimer said when he saw the first atomic bomb explode. But you don't think that will be our end, do you? Joseph Campbell. It won't be the end. Maybe it will be the end of life on this planet, but that is not the end of the universe. It is just a bungled explosion in terms of all the explosions that are going on

Starting point is 00:36:24 in all the suns of the universe. The universe is a bunch of exploding atomic furnaces like our sun. So this is just a little imitation of the whole big job. Moderator. Can you imagine that somewhere else, other creatures can be sitting, investing their transient journey with the kind of significance

Starting point is 00:36:46 that our myths and great stories do, Joseph Campbell. No, when you realize that if the temperature goes up 50 degrees and stays there, life will not exist on this earth. And that if it drops, let's say, another 100 degrees and stays there, life will not be on this earth. When you realize how very delicate this balance is, how the quantity of water is so important. Well, when you think of all the accidents of the environment that have fostered life, how can you think that the life we know would exist on any other particle of the universe, no matter how many of these satellites around stars there may be? Moderator, this fragile life always exists in the crucible of terror,

Starting point is 00:37:38 and the possible extinction. Do you see some new metaphors emerging in a modern medium for the old universal truths? Joseph Campbell. I see the possibility of new metaphors, but I don't see that they have become mythological yet. Moderator. What do you think will be the myths that will incorporate the machine into the new world? Joseph Campbell. Well, automobiles have gotten into mythology, they have gotten into dreams, and airplanes are very much in the service of the imagination.

Starting point is 00:38:17 The flight of the airplane, for example, is in the imagination as the release from Earth. This is the same thing that birds symbolize. In a certain way, the bird is symbolic of the release of the spirit from bondage to the earth, just as the serpent is symbolic of the bondage to the earth. The airplane plays that role now. Moderator. Any others? Joseph Campbell. Weapons, of course.

Starting point is 00:38:46 Every movie that I have ever seen on the airplane as I traveled back and forth between California and Hawaii shows people with revolvers. There is the Lord Death carrying his weapon. Different instruments take over the roles that earlier instruments now no longer serve. But I don't see. any more than that. Moderator. So the new myths will serve the old stories. When I saw Star Wars, I remembered the phrase from the Apostle Paul.

Starting point is 00:39:17 I wrestle against principalities and powers. That was 2,000 years ago. And in the caves of the early stone age hunter, there are scenes of wrestling against principalities and powers. Here in our modern technological myths, we are still wrestling. Joseph Campbell Man should not submit

Starting point is 00:39:39 to the powers from outside but command them how to do it is the problem moderator after our youngest son had seen Star Wars for the 12th or 13th time I said why do you go so often he said for the same

Starting point is 00:39:57 reason you have been reading the Old Testament all of your life he was in a new world of myth Joseph Campbell Certainly, Star Wars has a valid mythological perspective. It shows the state as a machine and asks, is the machine going to crush humanity or serve humanity? Humanity comes not from the machine, but from the heart.

Starting point is 00:40:22 What I see in Star Wars is the same problem that Faust gives. Methistopheles, the machine man, can provide us with all the means and is thus likely to determine the aims of life as well. But of course, the characteristic of Faust, which makes him eligible to be saved, is that he seeks aims that are not those of the machine. Now, when Luke Skywalker unmasks his father, he is taking off the machine role that the father has played. The father was the uniform. That is power. The state role.

Starting point is 00:41:04 Moderator. Machines help us to fulfill the idea that we want the world to be made in our image, and we want it to be what we think it ought to be. Joseph Campbell. Yes, but then there comes a time when the machine begins to dictate to you. For example, I have bought this wonderful machine, a computer. Now, I am rather an authority on gods, so I identified the machine. It seems to me to be an Old Testament God with a lot of rules and no mercy. Moderator, there is a fetching story about President Eisenhower and his first computer, Joseph Campbell. Yes, indeed, Eisenhower went into a room full of computers, and he put the question to these machines,

Starting point is 00:41:57 is there a God? And they all starred up, all the lights begin to flash. The wheels are turning. There's beeps and chimes. And after a while, a voice says, now there is. Moderator. But isn't it possible to develop toward your computer

Starting point is 00:42:21 the same attitude of the chieftain who said that all things speak of God? If it isn't a special privileged revelation, God is everywhere in his work, including the computer. Joseph Campbell. Indeed so. It's a miracle what happens on that screen.

Starting point is 00:42:38 Have you ever looked inside of one of those things? Moderator, no, and I don't intend to. Joseph Campbell. You can't believe it. It's a whole hierarchy of angels, all on slats. And those little tubes, those are miracles. I have had a revelation from my computer about mythology. You buy a certain software, and there is a whole set of signals that lead to the achievement

Starting point is 00:43:07 of your aim. If you begin fooling around with signals that belong to another system or software, they just don't work. Similarly in mythology, if you have a mythology in which the metaphor for the mystery is the father, you're going to have a different set of signals from what you would have if the metaphor for the wisdom and mystery of the world were the mother. And they are two perfectly good metaphors. Neither one is fact. These are metaphors. It is as though the universe were my father. It is though the universe were my mother. Jesus says, no one gets to the father but by me. The father that he was talking about was the biblical father. It might be that you can get to the father only by way of Jesus. On the other hand, suppose you are going by way of the mother.

Starting point is 00:44:04 There you might prefer collie and the hymns to the goddess and so forth. That is simply another way to get to the mystery of your life. You must understand that each religion is a kind of software that has its own set of signals and will work. If a person is really involved in a religion and really building his life on it, he better stay with the software that he has. But a chap like myself who likes to play with the software, I can run around, but I probably will never have an experience comparable to that of a saint. Moderator.

Starting point is 00:44:44 But haven't some of the greatest saints borrowed from anywhere they could, they have taken from this and from that and constructed a new software, Joseph Campbell. That is what is called the development of religion. You can see it in the Bible. In the beginning, God was simply the most powerful God among many. He is just a local tribal god, and then in the 6th century, when the Jews were in Babylon, the notion of a world's savior came in, and the biblical divinity moved into a new dimension.

Starting point is 00:45:18 You can keep an old tradition going only by renewing it in terms of current circumstances. In the period of the Old Testament, the world was a little three-layer cake, consisting of a few hundred miles around the near eastern centers. No one had ever heard of the Aztecs or even of the Chinese. When the world changes, then the religion has to be transformed. Moderator, but it seems to me that is in fact what we are doing, Joseph Campbell. That is in fact what we had better do, but my notion of the real horror today is what you see in Beirut. There you have the three great Western religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Starting point is 00:46:07 And because the three of them have three different names for the same biblical God, they can't get on together. They are stuck with their metaphor and don't realize its reference. They haven't allowed the circle that surrounds them to open. It is a closed circle. Each group says we are the chosen group and we have God. Look at Ireland. a group of Protestants was moved to Ireland in the 17th century by Cromwell, and it never has opened up to the Catholic majority there. The Catholics and the Protestants represent two totally different social systems, two different ideals.

Starting point is 00:46:47 Moderator, each needs a new myth, Joseph Campbell, each needs its own myth. All the way, love thine enemy, open up, don't judge. All things are Buddha things. It is there in the myth. It is already there. Moderator. You tell a story about a local jungle native who once said to a missionary, your God keeps himself shut up in a house as if he were old and infirm.

Starting point is 00:47:18 Ours is in the forest and in the fields and on the mountains when the rain comes. And I think that is probably true. Joseph Campbell. Yes. You see. problem you'd get in the book of kings and in Samuel. The various Hebrew kings were sacrificing on the mountaintops, and they did wrong in the sight of Yahweh. The Yahweh cult was a specific movement in the Hebrew community, which finally won. This was a pushing through of a certain temple-bound God against the

Starting point is 00:47:52 nature cult, which was celebrated all over the place. And this imperialistic thrust of a certain in-group culture is continued in the West, but it has got to open to the nature of things now. If it can open, all the possibilities are there. Moderator, of course. We moderns are stripping the world of its natural revelations of nature itself. I think of that pygmy legend of the little boy who finds the bird with the beautiful song in the forest and brings it home. Joseph Campbell.

Starting point is 00:48:26 He asks his father to bring food for the bird, and the father doesn't want to feed a mere bird so he kills it and the legend says the man killed the bird and with the bird he killed the song and with the song himself he dropped dead completely dead and was dead forever moderator isn't that a story about what happens

Starting point is 00:48:50 when human beings destroy their environment destroy their world destroy nature and the revelations of nature Joseph Campbell. They destroy their own nature, too. They kill the song. Moderator. And isn't mythology the story of the song?

Starting point is 00:49:10 Joseph Campbell. Mythology is the song. It is the song of the imagination, inspired by the energies of the body. Once a Zen master stood up before his students and was about to deliver a sermon, and just as he was a bit, about to open his mouth a bird saying and he said the sermon has been delivered moderator i was about to say

Starting point is 00:49:36 that we are creating new myths but you say no every myth we tell today has some point of origin in our past experience joseph campbell the main motives of the myths are the same and they have always been the same If you want to find your own mythology, the key is with what society do you associate? Every mythology has grown up in a certain society, in a bounded field. Then they came into a collision and relationship, and they amalgamate. And you get a more complex mythology. But today there are no boundaries. The only mythology that is valid today is the mythology.

Starting point is 00:50:23 of the planet. And we don't have such a mythology. The closest thing I know to a planetary mythology is Buddhism, which sees all beings as Buddha beings. The only problem is to come to the recognition of that. There is nothing to do. The task is only to know what is, and then to act in relation to the brotherhood of all of these beings. All right, my friends, I think I'm going to leave part one right there and just leave you with, you know, people say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're really seeking is an experience of being alive so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality so that we

Starting point is 00:51:20 actually feel the rapture of being alive. That's it for today, guys. I love you. Aloha.

TrueLife - Myth, Behavior & Conflict: Joseph Campbell Part 4 — Archetypes in Action

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