TrueLife - The Hero’s Journey: Joseph Campbell Part 1 — Myth, Transformation & the Human Story

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. Fearist through ruins maze lights my war cry born from the blade.

Starting point is 00:00:49 The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Kodak Serafini. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Welcome back, everybody. It's so nice to see you. At least it's nice to close my eyes and imagine that you guys are having a good day. I love you. Welcome back to the podcast.

Starting point is 00:01:26 You know what we're doing today? Do you guys know what we're doing today? We're moving back to an old classic, a little spotlight on philosophy. With Joseph Campbell. We're working on what it means to be a hero. We're working on the hero's journey, everybody. Are you on that journey?

Starting point is 00:01:54 If you're listening to this, you're probably on that journey. Let's face it, you're probably already a hero. I mean, if we're being honest with ourselves, you guys are probably thinking, you know what, George, you're a hero. This podcast is a hero. This guy sounds kind of creepy. I might have to turn this thing off. Don't do that. Don't turn it off. I'm done being crazy. At least for a minute or two. Truth is, we're going to get into some hero stuff right now. What is a hero? Well, here's a quote from Mr. Doctor.

Starting point is 00:02:44 Martin Luther King Jr. from 1963, a hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself. How about this idea of a hero? Otto Rank declares that everyone is a hero in birth, where he undergoes a tremendous transformation from the condition of a little water creature living in a realm of amniotic fluid into an air-breathing. mammal which ultimately will be standing. How about a woman that gives birth? Giving birth is definitely a heroic deed in that it is the giving over of oneself to the life of another. How about the old Prometheus. The fire theft is a universal mythic theme. Prometheus brings fire to mankind and consequently civilization. There's one of my favorite books. by Miguel Servantes.

Starting point is 00:03:55 Does anyone really think Miguel Servantes wrote Don Quixote in the 1200s? Have you guys read that book? It reads like it was written today. Something going on there. Donkey Hote rode out to encounter giants. But instead of giants, his environment produced windmills.

Starting point is 00:04:16 This mechanistic environment is no longer spiritually responsive to the hero. But Don Quixote was a hero, nonetheless. How about Daedalus and Icarus? People talk more about Icarus than about Daedalus, as though the wings themselves had been responsible for the young astronauts fall. But that is no case against industry and science.

Starting point is 00:04:41 Poor Icarus fell into the water, but Daedalus, who flew the middle way, succeeded in getting to the other shore. Moses ascends the mountain. He meets with Yahweh on the summit, and he comes back with rules for formation of a whole society. That is a typical hero act. Departure, fulfillment, return. How about the Buddha?

Starting point is 00:05:13 The Buddha follows a path very much like that of Christ. Only, of course, the Buddha lived 500 years earlier. You know, you can match these two savior figures right down the line, even to the role and characters of, their immediate disciples. Do you guys know that? What do you think so far? You got some heroes that you're thinking of? You got somebody in your life that's a hero? I think it was Plato who said the soul is a circle. I drew a horizontal line across the circle to represent the line of separation of the conscious and the unconscious. The dot in the center of the circle. Below the horizontal line

Starting point is 00:05:57 represents the center from which all our energy comes. Above the horizontal line is the ego represented as a square. That aspect of our consciousness that we identify as our center, but it's very off center. We think this is what is running the show, but it isn't. There is no escape. Don't make me destroy you. What about Darth Vader? What do you guys think? Is Darth Vader a hero? Or is Luke Skywalker the hero? Are they both heroes? What do you think? Okay my friends. Without any further ado, let's get into this

Starting point is 00:06:40 idea of the hero's journey, the hero's adventure with Joseph Campbell. So, Mr. Joseph Campbell, why are there so many stories of the hero in mythology? Joseph Campbell? Because that's what's worth writing about. Even in popular novels, the main character is a hero or heroine, who has found or done something beyond the normal range of achievement and experience. A hero is someone who has given his or her life to something bigger than oneself. So in all of these cultures, whatever the local costume the hero might be wearing, what is the deed? Joseph Campbell. Well, there are two types of deed. One is the physical deed in which the hero performs a courageous act in battle or saves a life. The other kind is the spiritual deed in which the hero learns to experience the supernormal

Starting point is 00:07:43 range of human spiritual life. And then comes back with a message. The usual hero adventure begins with someone from whom something has been taken or who feels there's something lacking in the normal experiences available or permitted to the members of his society. This person then takes off on a series of adventures beyond the ordinary, either to recover what has been lost or to discover some life-giving elixir. It's usually a cycle, a going and a returning. But the structure and something of the spiritual sense of this adventure can be seen already anticipated in the puberty or initiation rituals of early tribal societies. Through which a child is compelled to give up its childhood and become an adult. To die, you might say, to its infantile personality and psyche and come back as a responsible adult.

Starting point is 00:08:51 This is a fundamental psychological transformation that everyone must undergo. We are in childhood in a condition of dependency under someone's protection and supervision for some 14 to 21 years. And if you're going on for your PhD, this may continue to perhaps 35. You are in no way a self-responsible free agent, but an obedient, dependent, expecting, and receiving punishments and rewards. To evolve out of this position of psychological immaturity to the courage of self-responsibility and assurance requires a death and a resurrection. That is the basic motif of the universal hero's journey, leaving one condition and finding the source of life to bring you forth into a richer or mature condition. So, even if we happen not to be heroes in the grand sense of redeeming society, we still have to take that journey inside ourselves, spiritually and psychologically? Joseph Campbell.

Starting point is 00:10:03 That's right. Otto Rink, in his important little book, The Myth of the Birth of the Hero, declares that everyone is a hero in birth, where he undergoes a tremendous psychological. as well as physical transformation from the condition of a little water creature living in the realm of amniotic fluid into an air-breathing mammal which ultimately will be standing and controlling his own life. That's an enormous transformation. And had it been consciously undertaken, it would have been indeed a heroic act. And there was a heroic act on the mother's part as well who had brought this child into the world. then you're saying

Starting point is 00:10:51 heroes are not all men Joseph Campbell oh no not even close the male usually has the more conspicuous role just because of the conditions of life he is out there in the world and the woman is in the home

Starting point is 00:11:09 but among the Aztecs for example who had a number of heavens to which people's souls would be assigned according to the conditions of their death the heaven for war years killed in battle was the same for mothers who died in childbirth. Giving birth is definitely a heroic deed in that it is the giving over of oneself to the life of another. Don't you think we've lost that truth in this society of ours where it's deemed more heroic to go out and into the

Starting point is 00:11:40 world and make a lot of money than it is to raise children? Joseph Campbell. Making money gets more advertisement. You know the old saying, if a dog bites a man, that's not a story. But if a man bites a dog, you've got a story there. So the thing that happens and happens and happens, no matter how heroic it may be, is not news. Motherhood has lost its novelty, you might say. That's a wonderful image, though, the mother as a hero, Joseph Campbell. It has always seemed to me, That's something I learned from reading these myths. It's a journey then. You have to move out of the known conventional safety of your life to undertake this.

Starting point is 00:12:34 Would you say that's accurate, Joseph? Joseph Campbell. Yes, you have to be transformed from a maiden to a mother. That's a big change involving many dangers. And when you come back from your journey with the child, you've brought something for the world Joseph Campbell not only have you brought something for the world

Starting point is 00:12:56 you've got a life job ahead of you auto rank makes the point that there is a world of people who think that their heroic act in being born qualifies them for the respect and support of their whole community but there's still a journey to be taken after that

Starting point is 00:13:13 Joseph Campbell there's a large journey to be taken of many trials What is the significance of the trials and tests and ordeals of the hero? Joseph Campbell If you want to put it in terms of intentions, the trials are designed to see to it that the intending hero should be really a hero. Is he really a match for this task? Can he overcome the dangers?

Starting point is 00:13:43 Does he have the courage, the knowledge, the capacity to enable him to serve? In today's culture of easy religion, cheaply achieved, it seems to me we have forgotten that all three of the great religions teach that the trials of the hero journey are a significant part of life, that there's no reward without renunciation, without paying the price. The Quran says, do you think that you shall enter the Garden of Bliss without such trials as came to those who passed before you? and Jesus said in the gospel of Matthew Great is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth to life And few there be who find it And the heroes of the Jewish tradition undergo great tests Before they arrive at their redemption

Starting point is 00:14:38 Joseph Campbell If you realize what the real problem is Losing yourself Giving yourself to some higher end or to another you realize that this itself is the ultimate trial. When we quit thinking primarily about ourselves and our own self-preservation, we undergo a truly heroic transformation of consciousness. And what all the myths have to deal with is transformations of consciousness,

Starting point is 00:15:09 of one kind or another. You have been thinking one way. You now have to think a different way. How is consciousness transformed? Joseph Campbell, either by the trials themselves or by illuminating revelations. Trials and revelations are what life is all about. Isn't there a moment of redemption in all of these stories? The woman is saved from the dragon.

Starting point is 00:15:38 The city is spared from obliteration. The hero is snatched from danger in the nick of time. Joseph Campbell. Well, yes, there would be no hero deed unless there were, achievement we can have the hero who fails but he's usually represented as a kind of clown someone pretending to more than he can achieve how is a hero different from a leader that is a problem tolstoy dealt with in war and peace here you have napoleon ravaging europe and now about to invade russia and tolstoy raises the question is the leader really really a

Starting point is 00:16:19 a leader or is he simply the one out in front on a wave? In psychological terms, the leader might be analyzed as the one who perceived what could be achieved and did it. It has been said that a leader is someone who discerned the inevitable, got in front of it. Napoleon was a leader, but he wasn't a hero in the sense that what he accomplished was grand for humanity's sake. It was for France. It was for the glory of France. Joseph Campbell. Then he is a French hero, is he not? This is the problem for today. Is the hero of a given state or people what we need today? When the whole planet should be our field of concern, Napoleon is the 19th century counterpart of Hitler in the 20th. Napoleon's ravaging of Europe was horrific. So you could be a local god and fail the test

Starting point is 00:17:19 on a larger cosmic level? Joseph Campbell. Yes. Or you could be a local god, but for the people whom that local god conquered, you would be the enemy. Whether you call someone a hero or a monster is all relative to where the focus of your consciousness may be.

Starting point is 00:17:41 So we have to be careful not to call a deed heroic when, in a larger mythological sense, it simply doesn't work that way. Joseph Campbell. Well, I don't know. The deed could be absolutely a heroic deed, a person giving his life for his own people, for example. Oh, I see. The German soldier who dies?

Starting point is 00:18:05 Joseph Campbell. Yes, the German soldier who dies is as much a hero as the American who was sent over there to kill him. So does heroism have a moral objective? Joseph Campbell. The moral objective is that of saving a people or saving. saving a person or supporting an idea. The hero sacrifices himself for something. That's the morality of it. Now, from another position, of course, you might say that the idea for which he sacrificed himself was something that should not have been respected. That's a judgment from the other side, but it doesn't

Starting point is 00:18:46 destroy the intrinsic heroism of the deed performed. That's a different angle on heroes from what I God as a young man. When I read the story of Prometheus going after fire and bringing it back, benefiting humanity and suffering for it, Joseph Campbell, yes, Prometheus brings fire to mankind and consequently civilization. The fire theft, by the way, is a universal mythic theme. Often it's a trickster animal or bird that steals the fire and then passes it along to a relay a team of birds or animals who run with it. Sometimes the animals are burned by the flames as they pass the fire along. And this is said to account for the different colorings. The fire theft is a very popular, worldwide story. The people in each culture are trying to explain where fire came from.

Starting point is 00:19:43 Joseph Campbell. The story isn't really trying to explain it. It has to do more with the value of fire. The fire theft sets man apart from the animals. When you're in the woods at night, you light a fire. And that keeps the animals away. You can see their eyes shining, but they're outside the fire range. Oh, I see. So they're not telling the story just to inspire others or to make a moral point? Joseph Campbell.

Starting point is 00:20:12 No, it's to evaluate the fire. It's important to us. And to say something about what has set man. apart from the beasts. Does your study of mythology lead you to conclude that a single human quest, a standard pattern of human aspiration and thought, constitutes for all mankind something that we have in common, whether we lived a million years ago or will live a thousand years from now, Joseph Campbell. There's a certain type of myth, which one might call the vision quest. Going in quest of a boon, a vision, which has the same form in every mythology.

Starting point is 00:20:58 That is the thing that I tried to present in the first book I wrote, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. All these different mythologies give us the same essential quest. You leave the world that you're in and go into a depth or into a distance or up to a height. There you come to what was missing in your consciousness in the world. you formerly inhabited. Then comes the problem, either of staying with that and letting the world drop off or returning with that boon and trying to hold on to it

Starting point is 00:21:31 as you move back into your social world again. It's not an easy thing to do. So the hero goes for something. He doesn't just go along for the ride. He's not simply an adventurer. Joseph Campbell. There are both kinds of heroes, some that choose to unlawful.

Starting point is 00:21:50 undertake the journey and some that don't. In one kind of adventure, the hero sets out responsibly and intentionally to perform the deed. For instance, Odysseus, his son Telemachus was told by Athena, go find your father. That father quest is a major hero adventure for young people. That is the adventure of finding what your career is, what your nature is, what your source is. You undertake that intentionally. Or there is the legend of the Sumerian sky goddess, Ainana, who descended into the underworld and underwent death to bring her beloved back to life. Then there are the adventures into which you are thrown, for example, being drafted into the army. You didn't intend that, but you're in now. You've undergone a death and resurrection. You've put on a uniform and you are another creature.

Starting point is 00:22:47 One kind of hero that often appears in Celtic myths is the princely hunter who has followed the lure of a deer into a range of forest that he has never been in before. The animal there undergoes a transformation, becoming the queen of the fairy hills or something of that kind. This is a type of adventure in which the hero has no idea what he is doing but suddenly finds himself in a transformed realm. Is the adventurer who takes that kind of trip a hero in the mythological sense? Joseph Campbell. Yes, because he is always ready for it. In these stories, the adventure that the hero is ready for is the one he gets. The adventure is symbolically a manifestation of his character.

Starting point is 00:23:37 Even the landscape and the conditions of the environment match his readiness. In the movie Star Wars, Solo begins as a mercenary and ends up as a, a hero coming in at the last second to save Luke Skywalker. Joseph Campbell. Yes. There, Han Solo has done the hero act of sacrificing himself for another. Do you think that a hero is created out of guilt? Was Han Solo guilty because he had abandoned Luke Skywalker? Joseph Campbell. It depends on what system of ideas you want to apply. Solo was a very practical guy, at least as he thought of himself, a materialist, but he was a compassionate human being at the same time, and he didn't know it. The adventure evoked a quality of his character that he hadn't known he possessed. So perhaps

Starting point is 00:24:35 the hero lurks in each one of us when we don't know it. Joseph Campbell, our life evokes our character. You find out more about yourself as you go on. That's why it's good to be able to put yourself in situations that will evoke your higher nature rather than your lower. Lead us not into temptation. Ortega I Gasset talks about the environment and the hero in his meditations on Don Quixote. Don Quixote was the last hero of the Middle Ages. He rode out to encounter giants. but instead of giants, his environment produced windmills. Ortega points out that this story takes place about the time that a mechanistic interpretation of the world came in

Starting point is 00:25:26 so that the environment was no longer spiritually responsive to the hero. The hero is today running up against a hard world that is in no way responsive to his spiritual need. Let me pause there for a second. Don't you kind of think that's what's happening now? Much like Don Quixote was the last hero, and he rode out to encounter giants only to find windmills. When you look at some of the kids on their journeys, on their heroic journeys, or maybe you in your life, as you go out into the world, there's not a whole lot of giants. Not a whole lot of giants of nature.

Starting point is 00:26:09 I mean, I guess you have multinational corporations and corruption. However, those are not the same types of beasts that a hero could fight, at least in the mythological sense. And I think that leaves a hole for a lot of our young men and women. There's no real hero for them to look up to. It's unfortunate that the heroes of today have become like basketball players or football players or. you know these particular types of athletic performers who excel only at feats of strength but not usually of mental strength or not usually of moral character instead it's more of I have worked my whole life to be able to jump high I can throw this ball really fast you know it's the degradation of our society the degradation of our character.

Starting point is 00:27:15 I think it's up to people like you and I to lead by example and try to become the mythical heroes of the past. Let's jump back into the interview. A windmill? Joseph Campbell, yes, but Don Quixote saved the adventure for himself by inventing a magician who had just transformed the giants

Starting point is 00:27:40 he had gone forth to encounter into windmills. You can do that too. if you have a poetic imagination. Earlier, though, it was not a mechanistic world in which the hero moved, but a world alive and responsive to a spiritual readiness. Now it has become, to such an extent, a sheerly mechanistic world as interpreted through our physical sciences, Marxist sociology and behavioralistic psychology,

Starting point is 00:28:08 that we are nothing but a predictable pattern of wires responding to stimuli. This 19th century interpretation has squeezed the freedom of the human will out of modern life. In the political sense, is there a danger that these myths of heroes teach us to look at the deeds of others as if we were in an amphitheater or coliseum or a movie, watching others perform great deeds while consoling ourselves to impotence? Joseph Campbell I think this is something that has overtaken us only recently in this culture. The one who watches athletic games instead of participating in athletics is involved in a surrogate achievement.

Starting point is 00:28:55 But when you think about what people are actually undergoing in our civilization, you realize it's a very grim thing to be a modern human being. The drudgery of the lives of the most of the people who have to support families. Well, it's a life-extinguishing affair. But I think I would take that to the plagues of the 12th century and the 14th century, Joseph Campbell. Their mode of life was much more active than ours. We sit in offices. It's significant that in our civilization, the problem of the middle-aged is conspicuous. You're beginning to get personal, Joseph Campbell.

Starting point is 00:29:40 I'm beyond middle-aged, so I know a little bit about. about this. Something that's characteristic of our sedentary lives is that there is so, there is, there is or may be intellectual excitement, but the body is not in it very much. So you have to engage intentionally in mechanical exercises, the daily dozen and so forth. I find it very difficult to enjoy such things, but there it is. Otherwise your whole body says to you, look, you've forgotten me entirely. I'm becoming just a clog stream. Still, it's feasible to me that these stories of heroes could become sort of a tranquilizer, invoking in us the benign passivity of watching instead of acting.

Starting point is 00:30:26 And the other side of it is that our world seems drained of spiritual values. People feel impotent. To me, that's the curse of modern society, the impotence, the NUI that people feel, the alienation of people from the world around them. maybe we need some hero who will give voice to our deeper longing, Joseph Campbell. This is exactly T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland that you are describing a sociological stagnation of inauthentic lives and living that has settled upon us and that evokes nothing of our spiritual life, our potentialities or even our physical courage, until, of course,

Starting point is 00:31:13 it gets us into one of its inhuman wars. You are not against technology, are you? Joseph Campbell. Not at all. When Daedalus, who can be thought of as the master technician of most ancient Greece, put the wings he had made on his son Icarus so that he might fly out of the escape from the Cretan labyrinth, which he himself had invented.

Starting point is 00:31:40 He said to him, fly the middle way. Don't fly too high or the sun will melt the wax on your wings, and you will fall. Don't fly too low, or the tides of the sea will catch you. Dettelis himself flew the middle way, but he watched his son become ecstatic and fly too high. The wax melted, and the boy fell into the sea. For some reason, people talk more about Icarus than Dettelus, as though the wings themselves had been responsible for the young astronauts fall. But that is no case against industry and science. Poor Icarus fell into the water, but Daedalus, who flew the middle way, succeeded in getting to the

Starting point is 00:32:26 other shore. I'm going to pause again there. What a beautiful metaphor for your life. Quite often, so many of us see people or we envision people that have so much more. And a lot of times we ourselves aspire to have more, which may or may not be a symptom of the virus known as consumerism. But when you spend all your energy flying close to the sun, you get ecstatic. The wax melts. You fall into the sea. You fly too low if you don't have any aspirations. you succumb to the waves of the sea. I think it's just yet another beautiful image in a way that these myths can continue to teach us and our children in the future

Starting point is 00:33:27 that the middle road is the best. You must have balance. Yeah, I get it. You want to have all these beautiful things that are advertised to you, especially in today's world. And you don't want to be a homeless guy in the streets. but the middle road is where you can find the balance and everyone has to find their own balance

Starting point is 00:33:50 but I hope you can take a little bit from this particular excerpt in your life and I hope it allows you to maybe not be so hard on yourself back to the interview a Hindu text a dangerous path is this like the edge of a razor this is a motif that occurs in medieval literature

Starting point is 00:34:13 also when Lancelot goes to rescue Genevieve from captivity, he has to cross a stream on a sword's edge with his bare hands and feet, a torrent flowing underneath. When you are doing something that is a brand new adventure, breaking new ground, whether it is something like a technological breakthrough or simply a way of living that is not what the community can help you with, there's always the danger of too much in three. of neglecting certain mechanical details. Then you fall off. A dangerous path is this. When you follow the path of your desire and enthusiasm and emotion, keep your mind in control and don't let it pull you compulsively into disaster.

Starting point is 00:35:10 One of the intriguing points of your scholarship is that you do not believe science and mythology conflict. Joseph Campbell. No, they do not conflict. Science is breaking through now into the mystery dimensions. It's pushed itself into the sphere. The myth is talking about. It's come to the edge. The edge, the interface between what can be known and what is never to be discovered because it is a mystery that transcends all human research. The source of life? What is it? Nobody knows. We don't even know what an atom is, whether it is a wave or a particle. Or is it both? It is both. We don't have any idea of what these things are. That's the reason we speak of the divine.

Starting point is 00:36:06 There's a transcendent energy source. When the physicist observes subatomic particles, he's seeing a trace on a screen. These traces come and go. come and go, and we come and go. And all of life comes and goes. That energy is the informing energy of all things. Mythic worship is addressed to that. Do you have a favorite mythic hero?

Starting point is 00:36:36 Joseph Campbell. When I was a boy, I had two heroes. One was Douglas Fairbanks. The other was Leonardo da Vinci. I wanted to be a synthesis of the two. Today, I don't have a single hero at all. Is that, as I pause here,

Starting point is 00:36:57 let me ask you listening to this. Do you have a hero? Do you remember who your hero was when you were young? Does your child have a hero? Have you asked them? Who would you want to be their hero? Could you be a hero? I hope you answer yes to all, or some of those questions at least.

Starting point is 00:37:23 Back to the interview. Does our society have heroes? Joseph Campbell. It did. It did have. It had the Christ. And then America had men like Washington and Jefferson and later men like Daniel Boone. But life today is so complex and it is changing so fast that there is no time for anything to

Starting point is 00:37:47 Constellate itself before it's thrown over again. We seem to worship celebrities today, not heroes. Joseph Campbell, yeah, that's a problem. That's too bad. A questionnaire was once sent around, one of the high schools in Brooklyn, which asked, What would you like to be? Two-thirds of the students responded, a celebrity. They had no notion of having to give of themselves in order to achieve something.

Starting point is 00:38:21 just to be known to have fame name and fame it's too bad but does our society need heroes Joseph Campbell yes I think so why Joseph Campbell because it has to have constellating images to pull together all the tendencies of separation to pull them together into some intention to follow some path the nation has to have an intention somehow to operate as a single power. What did you think of the outpouring over John Lennon's death? Was he a hero? Joseph Campbell. Oh yes, he definitely was a hero.

Starting point is 00:39:11 Can you explain that in the mythological sense? Joseph Campbell. In the mythological sense, he was an innovator. The Beatles brought forth an art form for which there was a readiness. Somehow they were in perfect tune with their time. had they turned up 30 years before their music would have fizzled out the public hero is sensitive to the needs of his time the beetles brought a new spiritual depth into popular music which started as a fad let's call it for meditation and oriental music oriental music had been over here for years as a curiosity but now after the beetles our young people seem to know what it's about we are hearing more and more and more of it, and it's being used in terms of its original intention as a support for meditations.

Starting point is 00:40:03 That's what the Beatles started. Sometimes it seems to me that we ought to feel pity for the hero instead of admiration. So many of them have sacrificed their own needs for others, Joseph Campbell. They all have. Very often, what they accomplish is shattered by the inability of the followers to see. Joseph Campbell, yes, you come out of the forest with gold and it turns to ashes. That is a well-known fairy tale motif. There is that haunting incident in the story of Odysseus, when the ship tears apart and the members of his crew are thrown overboard and the waves toss Odysseus over.

Starting point is 00:40:50 He clings to a mast and finally lands on shore and the text says, alone at last, alone at last. Joseph Campbell. Well, the adventure of Odysseus is a little complicated to try to talk about very briefly. But that particular adventure where the ship is wrecked is at the island of the sun. That's the island of highest illumination. If the ship had not been wrecked, Odysseus might have remained on the island and become, you might say, the sort of yogi who, on achieving, full enlightenment remains there in bliss and never returns. But the Greek idea of making the values known

Starting point is 00:41:36 and enacted in life brings him back. Now, there was a taboo on the island of the sun, namely, that one should not kill and eat any of the oxen of the sun. Odysseus' men, however, were hungry, so they slaughtered the cattle of the sun, which is what brought about their shipwreck. The lower consciousness was still functioning while they were up there in the sphere of the highest spiritual light. When you are in the presence of such an illumination, you are not to think. Gee, I'm hungry. Give me a roast beef sandwich. Odysseus's men were not ready or eligible for the experience which had been given to them.

Starting point is 00:42:22 That's a model story for the earthly heroes attaining to the highest illuminate. nation, but then not coming back. What are we to make of what you wrote of the bittersweet story of Odysseus when you said, The tragic sense of that work lies precisely in its deep joy in life's beauty and excellence, the noble loveliness of fair women, the real worth of manly men, yet the end of the tale is ashes? Joseph Campbell You cannot say life is useless Because it ends in the grave

Starting point is 00:43:06 There's an inspiring line in one of Pindar's poems Where he is celebrating a young man Who has just won a wrestling championship At the Pithian Games Pindar writes Creatures of a day What is anyone? What is he not?

Starting point is 00:43:25 Man is but a dream of a shadow yet when there comes as a gift of heaven a gleam of sunshine there rests upon men a radiant light and i a gentle life that dismal saying vanity vanity vanity all is vanity it is not all vanity this moment itself is no vanity it is triumph a delight the accent on the culmination of perfection in our moments of triumph is very Greek It is not all vanity. This moment itself is no vanity. It is a triumph, a delight.

Starting point is 00:44:11 This accent on culmination of perfection in our moments of triumph. Well, my friends, I think I'm going to leave you right there for a little while. Some pretty deep stuff in there. You may have to go back and re-listen to a little bit. I'm hopeful that this particular interview inspires you to go back and reread some of your favorite myths, apply them to your life, or maybe begin picking up some mythological literature to read to your kids and get them inspired on what a hero is.

Starting point is 00:44:49 I hope that you continue to be a hero to your day. And I hope that you continue to see your day as the last page in a beautiful novel. But most importantly, I hope you know I love you, and I hope to see you back here soon. Aloha.

TrueLife - The Hero’s Journey: Joseph Campbell Part 1 — Myth, Transformation & the Human Story

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.