TrueLife - The Hero’s Path — Joseph Campbell on Transformation & Storytelling, Part 5

Episode Date: September 18, 2020

One on One Video Call W/George https://tidycal.com/georgepmonty/60-minute-meetingSupport the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_US🚨🚨Curious about the future of psychedelics? Imagine if Alan Watts started a secret society with Ram Dass and Hunter S. Thompson… now open the door. Use Promocode TRUELIFE for Get 25% off monthly or 30% off the annual plan For the first yearhttps://www.district216.com/Transcript:https://app.podscribe.ai/episode/52457379Speaker 0 (0s): Wow. Speaker 1 (22s): I love you guys. What better way to start off the day than with a positive, beautiful message. You know what that message is? What is your message? My message to you is that this is where you're supposed to be. I know sometimes it doesn't seem like it. I know sometimes you feel, or you think what the hell is going on. Why does this always happen to me? Well, it doesn't always happen. But if you asked a stupid question, where do you get? You know what you get, look, here's what you gotta know right now. You are probably influencing people that you don't even know right now. You could be making changes in the lives of people that could be eternally grateful for you. Maybe you're doing something right now. Maybe you're setting an example or your paving a road or your beginning of a project. Something that's going to inspire someone later down the line. What's important to understand is that your doing what your supposed to be doing? I know it's weird to think about. I know it's difficult to think about, however, understand that life has a plan for you understand. There's a bigger picture, understand that you are the way you know yourself now is not how the way you now know yourself is not the final form of you're being hi. Got it. It took me awhile to think about that. I got a little tongue tied there, so excuse my, my little bit of a rant. However, I just couldn't seem to figure out that little part, understand that who you are now is not the final form of who you will be. It's powerful. It's powerful. Welcome back, everybody. Welcome back to the true life philosophy podcast. I guess what? I got good news. I'm on the Amazon music. Now, if you're just searched true life, all capitals where you search my name, George Monte on Amazon music. Cow will be right there. And if you leave comments, then you'll be right there with me. And just so you know, you're always there with me. I keep you right here, right? Your next to my heart. Cause I love you. Alright. I know. What's your thinking. Hey, we take it easy. What? The mushy stuff, George, we got to get all mushy on me now. Right? All right. All right. All right. I'm with you. Let's talk more about life Journey and the hero's journey, your journey. I think we left off yesterday with the idea that all life is suffering. That's what the Buddha said. And so let us jump right back in with both feet and talk to our spiritual guide are our mythological narrator, mr. Joseph Campbell. So mr. Campbell, mr. Campbell, what can you tell us about the young person who says I didn't choose to be born? My mother and father made that choice for me. You can't pick your parents. Joseph Campbell Freud tells us to blame our parents' for all of the shortcomings of our life. And Mark's tells us to blame the upperclass of our society. But the only one to blame is oneself. That's the helpful thing about the Indian idea of karma is your life is the fruit of your own doing. You have no one to blame but yourself, but what about chance? A drunken driver turns the corner and hit you pal. That isn't your fault. You haven't done that to yourself. Joseph Campbell, from that point of view, is there anything in your life that did not occur as by a chance, there is a matter of being able to accept chance. The ultimate backing of life is chance. The chance that your parents met, for example, chance, or what might seem to be chance is the means through which life is realized. The problem is not to blame or explain, but to handle the life that arises. Another war has been declared somewhere and you were drafted into an army and there go five or six years of your life with a whole new set of chance events. The best advice is to take it all as if it had been your intention with that, you evoke the participation of your will in all these journeys with mythology, there's a place where everyone wishes to find out the Buddhists talk have Nirvana. And Jesus talks as a piece of the mansion with many rooms is that typical of the hero's journey, that there's a place to find Joseph Campbell, the place to find is within yourself. I learned a little about this in athletics. The athlete who is in top form has a quiet place with in himself. And it's around this somehow that is action occurs. If he's all out there and in the action field, he will not be performing properly. My wife as a dancer, and she tells me that this is true in dance as well. There's a center of quietness within which has to be known and held. If you lose that Centre, your intention and begin to fall apart. The Buddhist Nirvana is a center of peace. Have this kind of Buddhism is a psychological religion. It starts with the psychological problem of suffering. All life is sorrowful. There is however, an escape from sorrow. The escape is Nirvana, which is a state of mind or consciousness, not a place somewhere like heaven is right here in the midst of the turmoil of life. It is the state you find when you are no longer driven to live by compelling desires, fears, and social commitments. When you have found your center of freedom and can act by choice out of that voluntary action out of this center is the action of the Bodhisattva's joyful participation in the sorrow of the world. You were not grabbed because you have released yourself from the grabbers of fear, lust, and duties. These are the rulers of the world. There is an instructive Tibetan, Buddhist painting in which the so called wheel of becoming is represented in monasteries. This painting would not appear inside the cluster, but on the outer wall, what has shown is the mind's image of the world. When still cut in the grip of the fear of the Lord death, six realms of being are represented as spokes of the ever revolving wheel. One is of animal life, another of human life, another of the gods and heaven, and the fourth of the soul's being punished in hell of a fifth realm is have the belligerent demon's and tiger gods or Titan's. And the sixth finally is have the hungry ghosts, the souls of those in whose love for others, there was attachment clinging and expectation, the ghost, heavy normous, ravenous, Belize, and pinpoint mouths. However, in the midst of each of these realms, there is a Buddha signifying. The possibility of release and illumination in the hub of the wheel are three symbolic beasts, a pig, a caulk, and a serpent. These were the powers that keep the wheel revolving, ignorance, desire, and malice. And then finally the rim of the wheel represents the bounding horizon of anyone's consciousness, who was moved by the try out of powers, have the hub and held on the grip of the fear of death in the center surrounding the hub. And what are known as these three poisons are souls, descending in darkness and others ascending to illumination. What is the illumination? Joseph Campbell? The illumination is the recognition of the radiance of ...

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.

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. I love you guys. What better way to start off the day than with a positive, beautiful message. You know what that message is? What's your message? my message to you is that this is where you're supposed to be.

I know sometimes it doesn't seem like it. I know sometimes you feel or you think, what the hell is going on? Why does this always happen to me? Well, it doesn't always happen to you. But if you ask a stupid question, what do you get? You know what you get. Look, here's what you got to know.

Right now, you're probably influencing people that you don't even know. Right now, you could be making changes in the lives of people that could be eternally grateful for you. Maybe you're doing something right now. Maybe you're setting an example or you're paving a road

or you're beginning a project, something that's going to inspire someone later down the line. What's important to understand is that you're doing what you're supposed to be doing. I know it's weird. to think about. I know it's difficult to think about. However, understand that life has a plan for you.

Understand there's a bigger picture. Understand that you, the way you know yourself now is not how the way you now know yourself. is not the final form of your being. Ha ha, got it. It took me a while to think about that. I got a little tongue tied there. So excuse my little bit of a rant. However, I just couldn't seem to figure out that little part. Understand that who you are now is not the final form of who you will be.

It's powerful. It's powerful. Welcome back, everybody. Welcome back to the True Life Philosophy Podcast. Guess what? I got good news. I'm on Amazon Music now. If you just search True Life, All Capitals, or you search my name, George Monty on Amazon Music,

pow! We'll be right there. And if you leave some comments, then you'll be right there with me. And just so you know, you're always there with me. I keep you right here, right here next to my heart. because I love you. All right.

I know what you're thinking. Hey, take it easy with the mushy stuff, George. I got to get all mushy on me. All right, all right, all right. I'm with you. Let's talk more about life's journey and the hero's journey, your journey. I think we left off yesterday with the idea that all life is suffering. That's what the Buddha said.

And so let us jump right back in with both feet and talk to our spiritual guide, our mythological narrator, Mr. Joseph Campbell. So, Mr. Campbell, Mr. Campbell, what can you tell us about the young person who says, I didn't choose to be born? My mother and father made that choice for me. You can't pick your parents. Joseph Campbell. Freud tells us to blame our parents for all the shortcomings of our life. And Marx tells us to blame the upper class of our society. But the only one to blame is oneself.

That's the helpful thing about the Indian idea of karma. Your life is the fruit of your own doing. You have no one to blame but yourself. But what about chance? A drunken driver turns the corner and hits you. Pow! That isn't your fault. You haven't done that to yourself.

Joseph Campbell. From that point of view, is there anything in your life that did not occur as by chance? This is a matter of being able to accept chance. The ultimate backing of life is chance. The chance that your parents met, for example? Chance, or what might seem to be chance is the means through which life is realized.

The problem is not to blame or explain, but to handle the life that arises. Another war has been declared somewhere, and you are drafted into an army, and there go five or six years of your life with a whole new set of chance events. The best advice is to take it all as if it had been your intention.

With that, you evoke the participation, of your will. In all these journeys of mythology, there's a place everyone wishes to find. The Buddhists talk of Nirvana and Jesus talks of peace of the mansion with many rooms. Is that typical of the hero's journey that there's a place to find? Joseph Campbell. The place to find is within yourself. I learned a little about this in athletics. The athlete who is, is in top form, has a quiet place within himself. And it's around this somehow that his action occurs. If he's all out there in the action field, he will not be performing properly. My wife is a dancer.

And she tells me that this is true in dance as well. There's a center of quietness within, which has to be known and held. If you lose that center, your intention and begin to follow. apart. The Buddhist Nirvana is a center of peace of this kind. Buddhism is a psychological religion. It starts with the psychological problem of suffering. All life is sorrowful. There is, however, an escape from sorrow. The escape is nirvana, which is a state of mind or consciousness, not a place somewhere like heaven. It is right here in the midst of the turmoil of life. It is the state you find when you are no longer driven to live by compelling desires, fears, and social commitments. When you have found your center of freedom and can act by choice out of that,

voluntary action out of this center is the action of the bodhisattvas. Joyful participation in the sorrow of the world. You are not grabbed because you have released yourself from the grabbers of fear, lust, and duties. These are the rulers of the world. There is an instructive Tibetan Buddhist painting in which the so-called wheel of becoming is represented. In monasteries, this painting would not appear inside the cloister, but on the outer wall. What is shown is the mind's image of the world when still caught. in the grip of the fear of the Lord death.

Six realms of being are represented as spokes of the ever-revolving wheel. One is of animal life. Another of human life. Another of the gods in heaven. And a fourth of the souls being punished in hell. A fifth realm is of the belligerent demons, anti-gods or titans. And the sixth. finally is of the hungry ghosts the souls of those in whose love for others there was attachment clinging and expectation

the hungry ghosts have enormous ravenous bellies and pinpoint mouths however in the midst of each of these realms there is a Buddha, signifying the possibility of release and illumination. In the hub of the wheel are three symbolic beasts, a pig, a cock, and a serpent. These are the powers that keep the wheel revolving, ignorance, desire, and malice. And then finally, the rim of the wheel represents the bounding horizon of anyone's consciousness, who is moved by the triad of powers of the hub and held in the grip of the fear of death in the center surrounding the hub

and what are known as the three poisons are souls descending in darkness and others ascending to illumination what is illumination Joseph Campbell the illumination is the recognition of the radiance of one eternity through all things. Whether in the vision of time,

these things are judged as good or as evil. To come to this, you must release yourself completely from desiring the goods of this world and fearing their loss. Judge not that you be not judged, we read in the words of Jesus. If the doors of perception were cleansed, wrote Blake, man would see everything as it is infinite it's a heavy trip is this really just for saints and monks

Joseph Campbell no no I don't think so I think it's also for artists the real artist is the one who has learned to recognize and to render what Joyce has called the radiance of all things as an epiphany or showing forth of their truth. But doesn't this leave all the rest of us ordinary mortals back on shore? Joseph Campbell. I don't think there is any such thing as an ordinary mortal. Everybody has his own possibility of rapture in the experience of life. All he has to do is recognize it and then cultivate it and get going with it. I always feel. I always feel uncomfortable when people speak about ordinary mortals because I have never met an ordinary man, woman, or child. But is art the only way one can achieve this illumination?

Joseph Campbell. Art and religion are the two recommended ways. I don't think you get it through sheer academic philosophy, which gets all tangled up in concepts, but just living with one's heart open to others and compassion is a way wide open to all. Oh. So the experience of illumination is available to anyone, not just saints or artists, but if it is potentially in every one of us, deep in that unlocked memory box, how do you unlock it? Well, you unlock it by getting somebody to help you unlock it. Do you have a dear friend? friend or a good teacher, it may come from an actual human being or from an experience like an automobile accident or from an illuminating book in my life. Mostly it comes from books, though I have

had a long series of magnificent teachers. When I read your work, I think, what mythology has done for us is to place you on a branch of a very ancient tree. You're part of a society of the living and dead that came long before you. We're here and we'll be here long after you are gone. It nourished you, protected you. And you have to nourish it and protect it in return. Well, it's been a wonderful support for life, I can tell you. It's been tremendous.

What this kind of resource pouring into my life has done. Some people ask, Isn't myth a lie? Joseph Campbell. No. Mythology is not a lie. Mythology is poetry. It is metaphorical.

It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth. Penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words, beyond images, beyond the bounding rim of the Buddhist wheel of becoming. Mythology pitches the mind. beyond that rim to what can be known, but not told. So this is the penultimate truth. It's important to live life with the experience and therefore the knowledge of its mystery and of your own mystery.

This gives life a new radiance, a new harmony, a new splendor. Thinking in mythological terms helps to put you in accord with the inevitables of this veil of tears. You learn to recognize the positive values in what appear to be the negative moments and aspects of your life. The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to the adventure. The adventure of the hero? Joseph Campbell. Yes. The adventure of the hero.

The adventure of being alive. How does one have a profound experience? Joseph Campbell by having a profound sense of mystery. But if God is the God we have only imagined, how can we stand in awe of our own creation? Joseph Campbell, how can we be terrified by a dream? You have to break past your image of God to get through to the connoted illumination.

The psychologist Young has a relevant, saying, religion is a defense against the experience of God. The mystery has been reduced to a set of concepts and ideas, and emphasizing these concepts and ideas can short circuit the transcendent, connoted experience. An intense experience of mystery is what one has to regard as the ultimate religious experience. That's a beautiful, heartwarming definition. Let's listen to that again. Religion is a defense against the experience of God.

The mystery has been reduced to a set of concepts and ideas and emphasizing these concepts and ideas can short circuit the transcendent connoted experience. An intense experience of mystery is what one has to regard as the ultimate religious experience. There are many Christians who believe that to find out who Jesus is. You have to go past the Christian faith, past the Christian doctrine, past the Christian church, Joseph Campbell. You have to go past the imagined image of Jesus. Such an image of one's God becomes a final obstruction. One's ultimate barrier. You hold on to your own ideology, your own little manner of thinking. And when a larger experience of God approaches, an experience greater than you are prepared to receive,

you take flight from it by clinging to the image in your mind. This is known as preserving your faith. You know the idea of the ascent of the spirit through the different centers of archetypal stages of experience. One begins with the elementary animal experiences of hunger and greed, and then of sexual zeal, and on to physical mastery of one kind or another. These are all empowering stages of experience, but then, when the center of the heart is touched, and a sense of compassion awakened with another person or creature, and you realize that you and that other are in some sense creatures of the one life in being,

a whole new stage of life in the spirit opens out this opening of the heart to the world is what is symbolized mythologically as the virgin birth it signifies the birth of a spiritual life in what was formerly an elementary human animal living for the merely physical aims of health progeny power and a little fun but now we come to something else for two Experience this sense of compassion, accord, or even identity with another, or with some ego transcending principle that has become lodged in your mind as a good to be revered and served. It is the beginning once and for all of the properly religious way of life and experience. And this may then lead to a life-consuming quest for a full experience. of that one being of beings of which all temporal forms are the reflections.

Now, this ultimate ground of all being can be experienced in two senses. One as with form and the other as without and beyond form. When you experience your God as with form, there is your envisioning mind and there is the God. there is a subject and there is an object but the ultimate mystical goal is to be united with one's god with that duality is transcended and forms disappear there is nobody there no god no you your mind going past all concepts has dissolved in identification with the ground of your own being because that to which the metaphorical image of your god refers to the is the ultimate mystery of your own being,

which is the mystery of the being of the world as well. And so this is it. Of course, the heart of the Christian faith is that God was in Christ, that these elemental forces you're talking about embodied themselves in a human being who reconciled mankind to God, Joseph Campbell. Yes.

And the basic Gnostic, and Buddhist idea is that that is true of you and me as well. Jesus was a historical person who realized in himself that he and what he called the father were one and he lived out of that knowledge of the Christhood of his nature. I remember I was once giving a lecture in which I spoke about living out of the sense of Christ in you and a priest in the audience as I. I was later told, turned to the woman beside him and whispered, that's blasphemy. What did you mean by Christ in you, Joseph Campbell? What I meant was that you must live not in terms of your own

ecosystem, your own desires, but in terms of what you might call the sense of mankind, the Christ in you. There is a Hindu saying, none but a God can work. worship a God. You have to identify yourself in some measure with whatever spiritual principle your God represents to you in order to worship him properly and live according to His Word. In discussing the God within, the Christ within, the illumination or the awakening that comes within, isn't there a danger of becoming narcissistic of an obsession with self that leads to a distorted view of oneself? and the world? Joseph Campbell.

That can't happen, of course. That's a kind of short-circuiting of the current. But the whole aim is to go past oneself, past one's concept of oneself, to that of which one is but an imperfect manifestation. When you come out of a meditation, for example, you are supposed to end by yielding all the benefits, whatever there may be to the world,

to all living things, not holding them to yourself. You see, there are two ways of thinking. I am God. If you think I hear in my physical presence and in my temporal character am God, then you are mad and have short circuit of the experience. You are God, not in your ego, but in your deepest being, where you are at one with the non-dual transcendent. Somewhere, you see.

say that we can become savior figures to those in our circle, our children, our loved ones, our neighbors, but never the Savior. You say we can't be mother and father, but never the mother and the father. That's a recognition, that's a recognition of limitation, isn't it? Yes, yes it is. What do you think about the Savior Jesus? Well, we just don't know very much about it. Jesus, all we know are the contradictory texts that purport to tell us what he said and did. Yes, and they were written many years after he lived. Is that true? Joseph Campbell, yes. But in spite of this, I think we may know approximately what Jesus said. I think the sayings of Jesus are probably pretty close to the originals. The main teaching of Christ, for example, is love your enemies.

but how do you how do you love your enemy without condoning what the enemy does without accepting his aggression i will tell you how to do that do not pluck the moat from your enemy's eye but pluck the beam from your own no one is in a position to disqualify his enemy's way of life do you think jesus today would be a christian joseph campbell no, not the kind of Christian we know. Perhaps some of the monks and nuns who are really in touch with high spiritual mysteries would be the sort that Jesus was.

So you're saying that Jesus might not have belonged to the church militant? Joseph Campbell. There's nothing militant about Jesus. I don't read anything like that in any of the gospels. Peter drew his sword and cut off the servant's ear and Jesus said,

put back thy sword, Peter. But Peter has had his sword out and at work ever since. I've lived through the 20th century and I know what I was told as a boy about a people who weren't yet and never had been our enemies.

In order to represent them as potential enemies and to justify our attack upon them, a campaign of hatred, misrepresentation, and denigration was launched, of which the echoes ring to this day. And yet we're told God is love. You once took the saying of Jesus, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecate you so that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven.

For he makes the son to rise on the evil and the good, and sins rain on. the just and the unjust. You once took this to be the highest, the noblest, the boldest of the Christian teachings. Do you still feel that way? Joseph Campbell, I think of compassion as the fundamental religious experience, and unless that is there, you have nothing. I'll tell you what the most gripping scripture in the Christian New Testament is for me. I believe help thou my unbelief.

I believe in this ultimate reality that I can and do experience it, but I don't have answers to my questions. I believe in the question, is there a God? Joseph Campbell. A couple of years ago, I had a very amusing experience. I was in the New York Athletic Club swimming pool, where I was introduced to a priest who was a professor at one of our Catholic universities. So after I had had my swim, I came and sat in a lounging chair in what we call the horizontal athlete position.

And the priest, who was beside me, asked, Now, Mr. Campbell, are you a priest? I answered, no, father. He asked, are you a Catholic? I answered, I was, father. then he asked and I think it interesting that he phrased the question

in this way do you believe in a personal God no father I said and he replied well I suppose there is no way to prove by logic and existence

of a personal God if there were father said I what then would be the value of faith. Well, Mr. Campbell, said the priest quickly, it's nice to have met you, and he was off. I felt I had executed a jujitsu throw. But that was an illuminating conversation to me, the fact that a Catholic father had asked, do you believe in a personal God? meant to me that he also recognized the

possibility of an impersonal God, namely a transcendent ground or energy in itself. The idea of Buddha consciousness is of an imminent luminous consciousness that informs all things and all lives. We unthinkingly live by fragments of that consciousness, fragments of that energy, but the religious way of life is to live not in terms of the self-interested intentions of this particular body at this particular time, but in terms of the insight of that larger consciousness. There is an important passage in the recently discovered Gnostic Gospel according to St. Thomas. When will the kingdom come? Christ's disciples ask. In Mark 13.1, I think it is we read that the end of the world is about to come. That is to say, a mythological image, that of the

end of the world? Is there taken as predicting an actual physical historical fact to be? But in Thomas' version, Jesus replies, The kingdom of the Father will not come by expectation. The kingdom of the Father is spread upon the earth, and men do not see it. So I look at you now in that sense. And the radiance of the presence of the divine is known to me through you. through me? Yes, you, sure. When Jesus says, he who drinks from my mouth will become as I am, and I shall be he, he's talking from the point of view of that being of beings, which we call the Christ,

who is the being of all of us. Anyone who lives in relation to that is as Christ. Anyone who brings into his life, the message of the world is equivalent to Jesus. that's the sense of that so that's what you mean when you say I am radiating God to you yes I do sense that there is divinity in the other and not only that

but what you represent in this conversation and what you're trying to bring up out is a realization of these spiritual principles so you are the vehicle you are radiant of the spirit it is true for everyone who has reached in his life or her life the level of the heart

do you really believe there is a geography of the psyche Joseph Campbell this is metaphorical language but you can say that some people are living on the level of the sex organs and that's all they're living for that's the meaning of life this is Freud's philosophy, is it not? Then you come to the Adlerian philosophy of the will to power that all of life is centered on obstructions and overcoming the obstructions. Well, sure, that's a perfectly good life. And those are forms of divinity also. But they are on the animal level. Then there comes another kind of life which involves giving oneself to others one way. or another. This is the one that's symbolized in the opening of the heart. What is the source of that life?

Joseph Campbell. It must be a recognition of your life in the other. Of the one life in the two of us. God is an image for that one life. We ask ourselves where this one life comes from and people who think everything has to have been made by somebody will think, well, God made it. So God's the source of all things. Well, then what is religion then? Joseph Campbell. The word religion means religio, linking back. If we say it is the one life in both of us. Then my separate life has been linked to the one life, religio, linked back. This has been. symbolized in the images of religion, which represent that connecting link. I see.

Young, the famous psychologist, says that one of the most powerful religious symbols is the circle. He says that the circle is one of the great primordial images of mankind, and that in considering the symbol of the circle, we are analyzing the self. What do you make of that? Joseph Campbell. The whole world is a circle. All of these circular images reflect the psyche. So there may be some relationship between these architectural designs and the actual structuring,

the actual structuring of our spiritual functions. When a magician wants to work magic, he puts a circle around himself. And it is within this bounded circle, this hermetically sealed off area. that powers can be brought into play that are lost outside the circle. I remember reading about an Indian chief who said, when we pitch camp, we pitch a camp in a circle. When the eagle builds its nest,

the nest is in a circle. When we look at the horizon, the horizon is in a circle. Circles were very important to some Indians, weren't they? Joseph Campbell, yes. But they are also in much that we've inherited from Sumerian mythology. We have inherited the circle with the four cardinal points and 360 degrees. The official Sumerian year was 360 days with five holy days that don't count,

which are outside of time and in which they had ceremonies relating their society to the heavens. Now we're losing this sense of the circle in relation to time because we have digital time where you just have time buzzing by. Out of the digital, you get the sense of the flow of time. At Penn Station in New York, there's a clock with the hours, the minutes, the seconds, the tenths of seconds and the hundreds of seconds.

When you see the hundreds of a second buzzing by, you realize how time is running. through you. The circle, on the other hand, represents totality. Everything within the circle is one thing, which is encircled, inframed. That would be the spatial aspect. But the temporal aspect of the circle is that you leave, you go somewhere, and always come back. God is the alpha and the omega, the source and the end. The circle suggests immediately a completed totality. Whether in time or in space. No beginning, no end.

Round and round and round and round. Take the year, for example, when November rolls around, we have Thanksgiving again. Then December comes and we have Christmas again. Not only does the month roll around again, but also the moon cycle, the day cycle. We are reminded of this when we look at our watches and see the cycle of time. It's the same hour, but another day. You're right. You know, China used to call itself the kingdom of the center,

and the Aztecs had a similar saying about their own culture. I suppose every culture using the circle as the cosmological order puts itself at the center. Why do you suppose the circle became so universally symbolic, Joseph Campbell? Because it's experienced all the time in the day, in the year, in leaving home to go on your adventure, hunting, or whatever it may be, and coming back home. Then there is a deeper experience, too. The mystery of the womb and the tomb, when people are buried, it's for rebirth. That's the origin of the burial idea.

You put someone back into the womb of the mother earth for rebirth. Very early images of the goddess show her as a mother receiving the soul back again. When I read your works, the masks of God, or the way of the animal powers, or the mystic, mythic image, I often come across images of the circle, whether it's in magical designs or in architecture, both ancient and modern. Whether it's in the dome-shaped temples of India, or the Paleolithic rock engravings of Rhodesia, or the calendar stones of the Aztecs, or the ancient Chinese bronze, shields or the visions of the Old Testament prophet Ezekiel who talks about the wheel in the sky. I keep coming across this image and this ring, my wedding ring, is a circle too. What does that all symbolize? Joseph Campbell.

That depends on how you understand. Marriage. The word symbol itself means two things put together. one person has one half the other the other half and then they come together recognition comes from putting the ring together the completed circle this is my marriage this is the merging of my individual life in a larger life that is of two where the two are one the ring indicates that we are in one circle together Well, well, well, what do you think, my friends? Isn't it beautiful?

I think it's amazing that sometimes when we get stuck, the answers are in our past. Sometimes in order to move forward, we need to look at the past. Do you think that you're the only person to face the demons, to face the world, to face the obstacles in front of you? you think no one's faced them before? That's what the hero's journey is about.

When you feel alone, you can go back and read the words of people that have come before you. There's a mythological roadmap that can show you a way around any obstacle. There's none too high, there's none too low. The road to redemption, the road to enlightenment is a pathway that's been trout.

before. And in fact, it's probably a circle. It's probably a circle. By the time you get back to where you're going, I once heard it say that, I once heard someone say that once one has achieved enlightenment, the only thing left to do is laugh. And it seems to me, it seems to me, you're going to end up right where you started. And that, is probably what enlightenment is. It's probably that very understanding. We're walking in circles. And it's a beautiful thing.

Okay, my friends, I love you. Super stoked you're here with me. I hope you have an amazing day. I hope, more importantly, you get out of these lessons what I'm getting. And I hope you inspire other people. Aloha.