TrueLife - The Hero’s Journey: Joseph Campbell Part 2 — Myth, Transformation & the Human Story

Episode Date: September 16, 2020

The Heroes Journey Continues.... Explore Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey — the timeless blueprint of myth, transformation, and human storytelling that shapes every culture and consciousness.

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 blaze.

The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Seraphene. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. There's no escape. Don't make me destroy you. I'm holding on to a hero for the morning and night. What's up everybody? Coming right back at you with a nice.

at you with another session of Spotlight on Philosophy. I'm going to get into round two of Mr. Joseph Campbell, the hero's journey. We left off with a mention of one of Pindar's poems, Vanity, Vanity, All is Vanity. I'm going to bring you up to speed just by rereading the beautiful paragraph that ended the last podcast and then we'll continue to move forward. Joseph Campbell. You can't say life is useless because it ends in the grave. There is 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? 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, all is vanity. It is not all vanity. This moment itself is no vanity. It is a triumph, a delight. This accent on the culmination of perfection in our moments of triumph is very green. Thanks, Joseph. Don't many of the heroes in mythology die to the world? They suffer. They are crucified. Joseph Campbell. Many of them give their lives. But then the myth also says that out of the given life comes a new life. It may not be the hero's life, but it's a new life, a new way of being or becoming. These stories of the hero vary from culture to culture.

Is the hero from the east different from the hero in our culture? Joseph Campbell. It is the degree of the illumination or action that makes them different. There is a typical early culture hero who goes around slaying monsters. Now that is a form of adventure from the period of prehistory when man was was shaping his world out of a dangerous, unshaped wilderness. He goes about killing monsters. So the hero evolves over time. Like most other concepts and ideas, Joseph Campbell. He evolves as the culture evolves. Moses is a hero figure. For example, he ascends the mountain. He meets with Yahweh

on the summit of the mountain and he comes back with rules for the formation of a whole new society. That's a typical hero act. Departure, fulfillment, and return. Is the Buddha a hero figure? Joseph Campbell. The Buddha follows a path very much like that of Christ. Only, of course, the Buddha lived 500 years earlier. You can match those two savior figures right down the line,

even to the roles and characters of their immediate disciples or apostles. you can parallel for example ananda and st peter why did you call your book the hero with a thousand faces joseph campbell because there is a certain typical hero sequence of actions which can be detected in stories from all over the world and from many periods in history essentially it might even be said there is but one archetypal mythic hero whose life has been replicated in many lands by many, many people. A legendary hero is usually the founder of something, the founder of a new age, the founder of a new religion, the founder of a new city, the founder of a new way of life. In order to found, in order to found something new, one has to leave the old and go in quest

of the seed idea, a germinal idea, that will have the potentiality of bringing forth that new thing. The founders of all religions have gone on quests like that. The Buddha went into solitude and then sat beneath the beaotee. The tree of immortal knowledge where he received an illumination that has enlightened all of Asia for 2,500 years. After baptism by John the Baptist, Jesus went into the desert for 40 days, and it was out of that desert that he came with his message. Moses went to the top of a mountain and came down with the tables of the law. Then you have the one who founds a new city. Almost all the old Greek cities were founded by heroes who went off on quests and had surprising adventures, out of which each then founded a city.

You might also say that the founder of a life, your life or mine, if we live our own lives, instead of imitating everybody else's life, comes from a quest as well. Why are these stories so important to the human race? Joseph Campbell. It depends on what kind of story it is. If the story represents what might be called an archetypal adventure, the story of a child becoming a youth, or the awakening to the new world that opens up adolescence, it would help to provide a model for handling this development.

I see. You talk about how stories help us through crisis. When I read them as a child, they all had happy endings. It was a time before I learned that life is fraught with plotting, indulgent, and cruel realities. Sometimes I think we buy a ticket to Gilbert and Sullivan, and when we go into the theater, we find the plays by Harold Pinter.

Maybe fairy tales make us misfits to reality. Joseph Campbell. Fairy tales are told for entertainment. You've got to distinguish between the myths that have to do with the serious matter of living life in terms of the order of society and of nature and stories with some of those same motifs that are told for entertainment.

But even though there's a happy ending for most fairy tales, on the way to the happy ending, typical mythological motifs occur. For example, the motif of being in deep trouble and then hearing a voice or having somebody come to help you out. Fairy tales are for children. Very often they're about a little girl who doesn't want to grow up to be a woman. At the crisis of that threshold crossing, she's balking. So she goes to sleep until the pretext. Prince comes through all the barriers and gives her a reason to think it might be nice on the other side after all. Many of the grim tales represent the little girl who is stuck. All of these

dragon killings and threshold crossings have to do with getting past being stuck. The rituals of primitive initiation ceremonies are all mythologically grounded and have to do with killing the infantile ego and bringing forth an adult, whether it's the girl or the boy. It's harder for the boy than for the girl, because life overtakes the girl. She becomes a woman whether she intends it or not, but the little boy has to intend to be a man. At the first menstruation, the girl is a woman. The next thing she knows, she's pregnant. She's a mother. The boy first has to disengage himself from the mother. Get his energy into himself and then start forth. That's what the myth of young man, go find your father is all about.

In the Odyssey, Telemachus lives with his mother. When he's 20 years old, Athena comes and says, go find your father. That is the theme all through the stories. Sometimes it's a mystical father, but sometimes as here in the Odyssey, it's the physical father. A fairy tale is the child's myth. There are proper myths for proper times. of life. As you grow older, you need a sturdier mythology. Of course, the whole story of the crucifixion, which is a fundamental image in the Christian tradition, speaks of the coming of eternity into the field

of time and space where there is dismemberment. But it also speaks of the passage from the field of time and space into the field of eternal life. So we crucify our temporal and earthly bodies. Let them be torn, and through that dismemberment, enter the spiritual sphere which transcends all the pains of earth. There's a form of the crucifix known as Christ triumphant. There he is not with head bowed and blood pouring from him, but with head erect and eyes open, as though having come voluntarily to the crucifixion. St. Augustine has written somewhere that Jesus went to the cross as a bridegroom to his bride. So there are truths for older age and truths for children.

Joseph Campbell. Oh, yes, I remember the time Heinrich Zimmer was lecturing at Columbia on the Hindu idea that all life is as a dream or a bubble, that all is Maya illusion. After his lecture, a young woman. woman came up to him and said, Dr. Zimmer, that was a wonderful lecture on Indian philosophy. But Maya, I don't get it. It doesn't speak to me. Oh, he said, don't be impatient. That's not for you yet, darling. And so it is. When you get older and everyone you've known and originally lived for has

passed away and the world itself is passing, the Maya myth comes in. But for young people, the world is something yet to be met and dealt with and loved and learned from and fought with. And so another mythology. I'm going to pause there for a minute. I find it fascinating to think about where you are in your life. And if you want to do a fun exercise, think about some of the mythology you have read. Which myths currently speak to you? Where are you at in your spiritual journey? Have you thought, about the concept of not coming into this world but coming out of it? What are some of the myths that you live by? What are some of the myths that maybe you are showing to your kids right now?

What are some of the mythologies that you have inspired to be like? Do you have some of those? It's an interesting concept. If you just take a few minutes to think about myth and where you are in your life. Are you in the middle of your story? Are you coming to the end of your story? Are you about to begin a brand new adventure? Are you staring down the dragon right now?

Or are you preparing and gathering, preparing for your quest? Think about it. You don't got to answer right now. Let's jump back into the interview. The writer Thomas Berry says that it's all a question of story. The story is the plot we assigned to life and the universe, our basic assumptions and fundamental beliefs about how things work. He says, we are in trouble now because we are in between stories. The old story sustained us from a long time.

It shaped our emotional attitudes. It provided us with life's purpose. It energized our actions. It consecrated suffering. It guided education. We awoke in the morning and knew who we were. We could answer the questions of our children. Everything was taken care of because the story was there.

Now the old story is not functioning, and we have not yet learned anew. Joseph Campbell. I'm in partial agreement with that. Partial because there is an old story that is still good. And that is the story of the spiritual quest. The quest to find the inward thing that you basically are is the story that I tried to render in that

render in that little book of mine written 40-odd years ago, the hero with a thousand faces. The relationship of myths to cosmology and sociology has got to wait for man to become used to the new world that he is in. The world is different today from what it was 50 years ago, but the inward life of man is exactly the same. So if you put aside for a while the myth of the origin of the world, scientists will tell you what that is, anyway. And go back to the myth of what is the human quest?

What are its stages of realization? What are the trials of the transition from childhood to maturity? And what does maturity mean? The story is there, as it is in all the religions. The story of Jesus, for example. There's a universally valid hero deed represented in the story of Jesus. First, he goes to the edge of the consciousness of his time when he goes to John the Baptist to be baptized.

Then he goes past the threshold into the desert for 40 days. In the Jewish tradition, the number 40 is mythologically significant. The children of Israel spent 40 years in the wilderness. Jesus spent 40 days in the desert. Jesus underwent three temptations. First, there was the economic temptation, where the devil comes to him and says, you look hungry, young man.

Why not change these stones to bread? And Jesus replies, man lives not by bread alone, but by every word out of the mouth of God. And then next we have the political temptation. Jesus is taken to the top of the mountain and shown the nations of the world. And the devil says to him, you can control all these if you'll bow down to me. Which is a lesson.

Not well enough made known today of what it takes to be a successful politician. pause for a minute think about that that's such a clear and great line what if all of our politicians knew today what jesus knew back then which is not to be overcome with temptation the devil said to you can control all of these if you'll bow down to me how many of our politicians today would not be swayed by that particular type of temptation I guess in today's climate, you could make the claim that the lobbyists are in fact the temptation weighing down on the politicians. And how many of them give into it?

How many of them sign agreements with other countries? How many of them sign agreements to become lobbyists after they so-called serve the public? It's a great point from Mr. Joseph Campbell. Let's dig back in. Finally, the devil says, And so now you are so spiritual. Let's go up to the top of Herod's temple. And let me see you cast yourself down.

God will bear you up and you won't even be bruised. This is what's known as spiritual inflation. I'm so spiritual. I'm above concerns of the flesh and this earth. But Jesus is incarnate. Is he not? So he says, You shall not tempt the Lord.

your God. Those are the three temptations of Christ, and they are as relevant today as they were in the year, AD 30. The Buddha, too, goes into the forest and has conferences there with the leading gurus of his day. Then he goes past them, and after a season of trials and surge comes to the bow tree, the tree of illumination, where he likewise undergoes three temptations. The first is of lust, the second of fear and the third of submission to public opinion doing is told in the first temptation

the Lord of Lust displays his three beautiful daughters before the Buddha their names were desire fulfillment and regrets future present and past but the Buddha who had already

disengaged himself from attachment to his sensual character was not moved then the Lord of Lust turned himself into the Lord of death and flung at the Buddha all the weapons of an army of monsters. But the Buddha had found in himself that still point within, which is of eternity, untouched by time. So again, he was not moved. And the weapons flung at him turned into flowers of worship. Finally, the Lord of Lust and Death transformed himself into the Lord of Social Duty and argued. Young man, haven't you read the Lord of Lust and Death?

morning papers, don't you know there is to be done today? Don't you know what there is to be done today? The Buddha responded by simply touching the earth with the tips of his fingers of his right hand. Then the voice of the goddess

mother of the universe was heard like rolling thunder on the horizon saying, this, my beloved son, has already so given of himself to the world that there is no one here to be ordered about. Give up this nonsense. Whereupon the elephant on which the Lord of social duty was writing bowed in worship of the Buddha and the entire company of the antagonist dissolved like a dream. That night, the Buddha achieved illumination and for the next 50 years

remained in the world as teacher of the way to the extinction of the bondages of egoism. Now, those first two temptations of desire and of fear are the same that Adam and Eve are shown to have experienced in the extraordinary painting by Titan. Conceived when he was 94 years old. The tree is, of course, the mythological world access at the point where the time and eternity, movement and rest, are at one. And around which all things revolve. It is here represented only in a moment. its temporal aspect as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, profit and loss, desire, and fear. At the right is Eve, who sees the tempter in the form of a child offering the apple,

and she is moved by desire. Adam, however, from the opposite point of view, sees the serpent legs of the ambiguous tempter and is touched with fear, desire and fear. These are the two emotions by which all life in the world is governed. Desire is the bait, death is the hook. Adam and Eve were moved. The Buddha was not. Eve and Adam brought forth life and were cursed of God.

The Buddha taught release from life's fear. And yet with child, with life, come danger, fear and suffering? Joseph Campbell. Here I am now in my 80s, and I'm writing a work that is to be of several volumes. I want very much to live until I finish this work. I want that child. So that puts me in fear of death. If I had no desire to complete that book, I wouldn't mind dying.

Now, both the Buddha and Christ found salvation beyond death and return from the wilderness to choose and instruct disciples who then brought their message to the world. The messages of the great teachers, Moses, the Buddha, Christ, Muhammad, they differ greatly. However, their visionary journeys are much the same. At the time of his election, Muhammad was an illiterate camel caravan master. But every day he would leave his home in Mecca and go out to a mountain cave and meditate. One day, a voice called to him, write and he listened and we have the koran it's an old old story in each case receivers of the boon have done some rather grotesque things with their interpretations of the hero's message joseph campbell

there are some teachers who decide they won't teach at all because of what society will do with what they have found what if the hero returns from his ordeal and the world doesn't want what he brings back. Joseph Campbell. That, of course, is a normal experience. It isn't always so much that the world doesn't want the gift, but that it doesn't know how to receive it and how to institutionalize it. Hmm. How to keep it and how to renew it. Joseph Campbell, yes, how to help keep it going. I've always liked that image of life being breathed back. I've always liked that image of life being breathed back into the dry bones, back into the ruins and the relics, Joseph Campbell. There is a kind of secondary hero to revitalize the tradition.

This hero reinterprets the tradition and makes it valid as a living experience. Today, instead of a lot of outdated cliches, this has to be done with all traditions. So many of the religions began with their own hero stories. The whole of the Orient has been blessed with the teaching of the good law brought back by Buddha, and the Occident has been blessed by the laws Moses brought back from Sinai. The tribal or local heroes perform their deeds for a single folk, and universal heroes like Muhammad, Jesus, and Buddha bring the message from afar. These heroes of religion came back with the wonder of God, not with a blueprint,

of God. Joseph Campbell. Well, you find an awful lot of laws in the Old Testament. But that's the transformation of religion to theology. Religion begins with the sense of wonder and awe and the attempt to tell stories that will connect us to God. Then it becomes a set of theological works in which everything is reduced to a code, to a creed, Joseph Campbell. That is the reduction of mythology. That is the reduction of mythology to theology. Mythology is very fluid. Most of the myths are self-contradictory. You may even find four or five myths in a given culture,

all giving different versions of the same mystery. Then theology comes along and says, it has got to be just this way. Mythology is poetry, and the poetic language is very flexible. Religion turns poetry into prose. God is literally up there and this is literally what he thinks and this is the way you've got to behave to get into proper relationship with that God up there.

You don't have to believe that there was a King Arthur to get the significance of those stories. But Christians say we have to believe there was a Christ or the miracles don't make sense. Joseph Campbell. They are the same miracles that Elijah performed. There's a whole body of miracles that float. like particles in the air and a man of a certain type of achievement comes along,

and all these things cluster around him. These stories of miracles let us know simply that the remarkable man preached of a spiritual order that is not to be identified with the merely physical order. So he could perform spiritual magic. It doesn't follow that he actually did any of these things. Although, of course, it's possible. Three or four times I've seen what appear to be magical effects occur.

men and women of power can do things that you wouldn't think possible. We don't really know what the limits of the possible might be, but the miracles of legend need not necessarily have been facts. The Buddha walked on water, as did Jesus. The Buddha ascended to heaven and returned. I remember a lecture in which you drew a circle, and you said, that's your soul. Joseph Campbell.

well that was simply a pedagogical stunt plato has said somewhere that the soul is a circle i took this idea to suggest on the blackboard the whole sphere of the psyche then i drew a horizontal line across the circle to represent the line of separation of the conscious and unconscious the center from which all our energy comes I represented as a dot in the center of the circle below the horizontal line. An infant has no intention that doesn't come from its own little body requirements. That's the way life begins. An infant is mostly the impulse of life. Then the mind comes along and has to figure out what it's all about.

What is it I want? And how do I get it? Now, above the horizontal line, there is the ego, which I represent as a square, that aspect of our consciousness that we identify as our center. But you see, it's very much off center. We think that this is what's running the show, but it isn't. What's running the show? Joseph Campbell. What's running the show is what's coming up from way down below. The period when one begins to realize that one isn't running the show is adolescence. When a whole new system of requirements begins announcing itself from the body,

the adolescent hasn't the slightest idea how to handle all this, and cannot but wonder what it is that's pushing him or even more mysteriously pushing her. It seems fairly evident that we arrive here as infants with some kind of memory box down there, Joseph Campbell. Well, it's surprising how much memory there is down there. The infant, The infant knows what to do when a nipple's in its mouth. There is a whole system of built-in action, which when we see it in animals, we call instinct. That is the biological ground. But then certain things can happen that make it repulsive or difficult or frightening or sinful

to do some of the things that one is impelled to do. And that is when we begin to have our most troublesome psychological problems. primarily are for fundamental instruction in these matters. Our society today is not giving us adequate mythic instruction of this kind. And so young people are finding it difficult to get their act together. I have a theory that if you can find out where a person is blocked, it should be possible to find a mythological counterpart for that particular threshold problem. I'm going to pause there for a minute.

What an amazing insight. Look at the psychological issues people are having today. I think you can draw the parallel that the vanishing laws of mythology, the abstract ideas, the abstract ways of life, or the lack of discipline that can be provided. from a rich history of myth is what's causing these psychological problems in people. It's causing the breakdown of society. This, I think there's another counterpart as well.

I think that this rapid diversity and this rapid amalgamation of all these cultures coming together, as this, as our world has become more global, as we are being just cattle, into this, hey, we're all the exact same, man, we're not different. You're not different. Everybody's the same and you can be a woman or you can be a man. You can be 12 feet tall or you can be like three feet tall and it's all the same. You see, I think that the this governing body or this whatever it is that's trying to force the issue of globalization, they have destroyed the myths. They have destroyed the blueprint for us to move forward in life when we have psychological issues.

Because with the breakdown of culture, the problem with saying that everybody's the same is that you defile the heroes of that culture's past. And by doing that, you defile that culture. future. You can't take away the foundation of a culture or just redefine it as barbaric. These people are barbarians. You can't do that. It irreversibly undermines the credibility of the people trying to govern in the best case

scenario. And the worst case scenario, it seems to me that when you pull that foundation out, what you're going to have is a return to barbarism. You're going to have a return to the more animal instinct. And I think you can argue that's exactly what's happening today. It's fascinating. I love reading about it and I love thinking about it. All right, let us jump back in here. We hear people say, get in touch with yourself. What do you take that to mean? Joseph Campbell. it's quite possible to be so influenced by the ideals and commands of your neighborhood that you don't know what you really want and could be. I think that anyone brought up in an extremely strict, authoritative social situation is unlikely ever to come to the knowledge of himself.

Because you're told what to do? Joseph Campbell, you're told exactly what to do every bit of the time. You're in the army now. So this is what we do here. As a child in school, you're always doing what you're told to do. And so you count the days to your holidays, since that's when you're going to be yourself. What does mythology tell us about how to get in touch with that other self, that real self? Joseph Campbell.

The first instruction would be to follow the hints of the myth itself and of your, your guru, your teacher, who should know? It's like an athlete going to a coach. The coach tells him how to bring his own energies into play. A good coach doesn't tell a runner exactly how to hold his arms or anything like that. He watches him run and then helps him to correct his own natural mode. A good teacher is there to watch the young person and recognize what the possibilities are. Then to give advice, not commands.

The command would be, this is the way I do it, so you must do it this way, too. Some artists teach their students that way, but the teacher in any case has to talk it out. So give some general clues. If you don't have someone to do that for you, you've got to work it all out from scratch, like reinventing the wheel.

A good way to learn is to find a book that seems to be dealing with the problem that you're now dealing with. That will certainly give you some clues. in my own life, I took my instruction from reading Thomas Mann and James Joyce, both of whom had applied basic mythological themes to the interpretation of problems, questions, realizations, and concerns of young men growing up in the modern world. You can discover your own guiding myth motifs through the works of a good novelist who himself understands these things. That's what intrigues me. If we are fortunate, if the gods and muses are smiling,

about every generation someone comes along to inspire the imagination for the journey each of us takes. In your day, it was Joyce and man. In our day, it often seems to be movies. Do movies create a hero? Do you think, for example, that a movie like Star Wars fills some of that need for a model of the hero? Joseph Campbell. I've heard youngsters use some of George Lucas' turn. the force and the dark side,

so it must be hitting somewhere. It's a good sound teaching, I would say. I think that explains, in part, the success of Star Wars. It wasn't just the production value that made such an exciting film to watch. It was that it came along at a time when people needed to see a recognizable images, the clash of good and evil.

They needed to be reminded of idealism, to see a romance based upon selflessness, rather than selfishness, Joseph Campbell. The fact that the evil power is not identified with any specific nation on this earth means you've got an abstract power, which represents a principle, not a specific historical situation. The story has to do with an operation of principles, not of this nation against that. The monster masks that are put on people in Star Wars. represent the real monster force in the modern world.

When the mask of Darth Vader is removed, you see an unformed man, one who has not developed as a human individual. What you see is a strange and pitiful sort of indifferentiated face. What is the significance of that? Darth Vader has not developed his own humanity. He's a robot. He's a bureaucrat.

living not in terms of himself, but in terms of an imposed system. This is the threat to our lives that we all face today. Is the system going to flatten you out and deny you your humanity? Or are you going to be able to make use of the system to the attainment of human purposes? How do you relate to the system so that you are not compulsively serving it? it doesn't help to try to change it to accord with your system of thought the momentum of history behind it is too great for anything really significant to evolve from that kind of action the thing to do is learn to live in your period of history as a human being that's something else and it can be done by doing what joseph campbell by holding to your own ideals for yourself and like Luke Skywalker, rejecting the system's

impersonal claims upon you. When I took our two sons to see Star Wars, they did the same thing the audience did at the moment when the voice of Ben Kenobi says to Skywalker in the climactic moment of their last fight, turn off your computer,

turn off your machine, and do it yourself, follow your feelings, trust your feelings. And when he did, he achieved success. And the audience broke out into applause. Joseph Campbell. Well, you see, that movie communicates.

It is in a language that talks to young people. And that's what counts. It asks, are you going to be a person of heart and humanity? Because that's where life is from the heart. Or are you going to do whatever seems to be required of you by what might be called intentional power? when Ben Kenobi says May the force be with you He's speaking of the power and energy of life

Not of program political intentions I was intrigued by the definition of the force Ben Kenobi says The force is an energy field Created by all living things It surrounds us it penetrates us It binds the galaxy together And I've read in the hero with a thousand faces

similar descriptions of the world naval, of the sacred place, of the power that is at the moment of creation, Joseph Campbell. Yes, of course, the force moves from within, but the force of the empire is based on an intention to overcome the master. Star Wars is not simply a play on morality. It has to do with the powers of life as they are either fulfilled or broken. and suppressed through the action of man. The first time I saw Star Wars, I thought, this is a very old story in a very new costume. The story of a young man called to adventure,

the hero going out, facing the trials and ordeals and coming back after his victory with a boon for the community. Joseph Campbell. Certainly, Lucas was using standard mythological figures. The old man as the advisor made me think of a Japanese swordmaster. I've known some of those people, and Ben Kenobi has a bit of their character. What does the swordmaster do? Joseph Campbell.

He is a total expert in swordsmanship. The oriental cultivation of the martial arts goes beyond anything I've ever encountered in American gymnasiums. There is a psychological as well as a physiological technique that go together there. This character in Star Wars has that quality. there's something mythological too in that the hero is helped by a stranger who shows up and gives him some instrument joseph campbell he gives him not only a physical instrument but a psychological commitment and a psychological center the commitment goes past your mere intention system you are one with the event my favorite scene was when they were in the garbage compactor and the walls were closing in and I thought, that's like the belly of the whale

that swallowed Jonah. Joseph Campbell, that's where they were, down in the belly of the whale. What is the mythological significance of the belly? Joseph Campbell. The belly is the dark place where digestion takes place and new energy is created. The story of Jonah in the whale is an example of a mythical theme that is practically universal of the hero. going into a fish's belly and ultimately coming out again transformed. Why must the hero do that? Joseph Campbell. It's a descent into the dark.

Psychologically, the whale represents the power of life locked in the unconsciousness. Metaphorically, water is the unconsciousness. And the creature in the water is the life or energy of the unconscious. Which has overwhelmed the conscious personality and must be disempowered, overcome, and controlled. In the first stage of this kind of adventure, the hero leaves the realm of the familiar,

over which he has some measure of control and comes to a threshold, let us say the edge of a lake or sea, where a monster of the abyss comes to meet him. There are then two possibilities. In a story of the jonotype, the hero was swallowed and taken into the abyss to be later resurrected, a variant of the death and resurrection, direction theme. The conscious personality here has come in touch with a charge of unconscious energy,

which it is unable to handle and must now suffer all the trials and revelations of a terrifying night sea journey while learning how to come to terms with this power of the dark and emerge, at last to a new way of life. The other possibility is that the hero on encountering the power of the dark may overcome and kill it, as did Siegfried and St. George when they killed the dragon. But as Sigfried learned, he must then taste the dragon blood. In order to take to himself something of that dragon power, when Sigfried has killed the dragon and tasted the blood, he hears the song of nature. He has transcended his humanity and reassociated himself with the powers of nature, which are the powers of our life and from which our minds remove us.

you see consciousness thinks it's running the shop but it's a secondary organ of a total human being and it must not put itself in control it must submit and serve the humanity of the body when it does put itself in control you get a man like darts vater and star wars the man who goes over to the consciously intentional side ah the dark figure joseph campbell yes that's the figure in Goethe's Foss is represented by Mephistopheles. But I can hear someone saying, well, that's all well and good for the imagination of

George Lucas or for the scholarship of Joseph Campbell. But that isn't what happens in my life. Joseph Campbell, you bet it is. And if he doesn't recognize it, it may turn him into Darth Vader. If the person insists on a certain program and doesn't listen to the D. demands of his own heart, he's going to risk a schizophrenic crackup. Such a person has put himself

off center. He has aligned himself with a program for life and it's not the one the body's interested in at all. The world is full of people who have stopped listening to themselves or have listened only to their neighbors to learn what they ought to do, how they ought to behave and what the values are that they should be living for. I think I'm going to shut it down right there for right now, guys. That was a beautiful last paragraph. Let me just go through that piece again. Consciousness thinks it's running the shop,

but it's a secondary organ of a total human being, and it must not put itself in control. It must submit and serve the humanity of the body. When it does put itself in control, you get a man like Darth Vader in Star Wars. the man who goes over to the consciously intentional side. The dark figure. Some people say, well, that's all well and good for the imagination or for the scholarship of some people.

But that isn't what happens in my life, Joseph Campbell. Yes, it is. You bet it is. And if you don't recognize it, it may turn you into Darth Vader. If the person insists on a certain program and does not listen, to the demands of his own heart, he's going to risk a schizophrenic crackup. Such a person has put himself off center. He has aligned himself with a program for life, and it's not the one the body's interested in at all. The world is full of people who have stopped listening to themselves,

or have listened only to their neighbors to learn what they ought to do, how they ought to behave, and what the values are that they should be living for. I think that is such a beautiful summary of the things that are happening today. I believe that what you see today are symptoms of the sickness. And that sickness is us not following our heart. That sickness is not us doing what we know we need to do. Sometimes we get so caught up in the struggle. We get so caught up in the just trying to survive,

just trying to make enough money to do. to pay the bills, to provide for our kids and buy this new technological thing that comes out. We get so stuck in this routine that part of us dies. It's like part of your soul is dying when you have to go and put your shoulder to the wheel for the man every day. It takes a lot of courage. It takes a hero. It takes a hero to stop and just recognize what's happening in your life.

and I don't think you have to fundamentally wake up one morning and change everything about you and just rebel. I think that just slowly becoming conscious of why it is you're doing the things you're doing, becoming conscious of this routine

that may not be the best thing for you. I think that that is what can save you. right slowly you're going to start following your heart and if you do that you're going to make changes if you start following what you know is the right thing to do when you begin to understand that the only thing you can really do and that the probably the most heroic deed you can do is to try to make everyone around you try to make their life a little bit better and if you do that I think you'll find life will be better.

I think you'll find that people around you will start trying to make your life better. You start seeing your life different. So that's what I got for today, you guys. I love you. And I hope that when you are alone and thinking about your life, that you allow your inner hero

to come out and unmask Darth Vader. I love you guys. Aloha.