Post by Reefs on Nov 9, 2022 9:50:42 GMT -5
Fascinating series of interviews with Joseph Campbell about the spiritual message of myths and how myths are actually some sort of user manual for life:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE8ciMkayVM&list=PLiYnNom7SVRMjsi2WSpIGBlo1UDhlXyvz
I'll post some highlights...
the intellect = the dark side
Ha!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE8ciMkayVM&list=PLiYnNom7SVRMjsi2WSpIGBlo1UDhlXyvz
I'll post some highlights...
Ep. 1: 'The Hero’s Adventure'
The Dark Side
BM: My favorite[Star Wars] scene was when they were in the garbage compacter, and the walls were closing in, and I thought, that’s like the belly of the whale that Jonah came out of.
JC: That’s what it is, yes, that’s where they were, down in the belly of the whale.
BM: What’s the mythological significance of the belly?
JC: It’s the descent into the dark. Jonah in the whale, I mean, that’s a standard motif of going into the whale’s belly and coming out again.
BM: Why must the hero do that?
JC: The whale represents the personification, you might say, of all that is in the unconscious. In reading these things psychologically, water is the unconscious. The creature in the water would be the dynamism of the unconscious, which is dangerous and powerful and has to be controlled by consciousness.
The first stage in the hero adventure, when he starts off on adventure, is leaving the realm of light, which he controls and knows about and moving toward the threshold. And it’s at the threshold that the monster of the abyss comes to meet him. And then there are two or three results: one, the hero is cut to pieces and descends into the abyss in fragments, to be resurrected; or he may kill the dragon power, as Siegfried does when he kills the dragon. But then he tastes the dragon blood, that is to say, he has to assimilate that power. And when Siegfried has killed the dragon and tasted the blood, he hears the song of nature; he has transcended his humanity, you know, and reassociated himself with the powers of nature, which are the powers of our life, from which our mind removes us.
You see, this thing up here, this consciousness, thinks it’s running the shop. It’s a secondary organ; 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 this Vader, the man who’s gone over to the intellectual side. He isn’t thinking, or living in terms of humanity, he’s living in terms of a system. And this is the threat to our lives; we all face it, we all operate in our society in relation to a system. Now, is the system going to eat you up and relieve you of your humanity, or are you going to be able to use the system to human purposes?
BM: Would the hero with a thousand faces help us to answer that question, about how to change the system so that we are not serving it?
JC: I don’t think it would help you to change the system, but it would help you to live in the system as a human being.
BM: By doing what?
JC: Well, like Luke Skywalker, not going over, but resisting its impersonal claims.
BM: But I can hear someone out there in the audience saying, “Well, that’s all well and good for the imagination of a George Lucas or for the scholarship of a Joseph Campbell, but that isn’t what happens in my life.”
JC: You bet it does. If the person doesn’t listen to the demands of his own spiritual and heart life, and insists on a certain program, you’re going to have a schizophrenic crack-up. The person has put himself off-center; he has aligned himself with a programmatic life, and it’s not the one the body’s interested in at all. And the world’s full of people who have stopped listening to themselves. In my own life, I’ve had many opportunities to commit myself to a system and to go with it, and to obey its requirements. My life has been that of a maverick; I would not submit.
BM: You really believe that the creative spirit ranges on its own out there, beyond the boundaries?
JC: Yes, I do.
BM: Something of the hero in that, I don’t mean to suggest that you see yourself as a hero.
JC: No, I don’t, but I see myself as a maverick.
BM: So perhaps the hero lurks in each one of us, when we don’t know it
JC: Well, yes, I mean, our life evokes our character, and you find out more about yourself as you go on. And it’s very nice to be able to put yourself in situations that will evoke your higher nature, rather than your lower.
The Dark Side
BM: My favorite[Star Wars] scene was when they were in the garbage compacter, and the walls were closing in, and I thought, that’s like the belly of the whale that Jonah came out of.
JC: That’s what it is, yes, that’s where they were, down in the belly of the whale.
BM: What’s the mythological significance of the belly?
JC: It’s the descent into the dark. Jonah in the whale, I mean, that’s a standard motif of going into the whale’s belly and coming out again.
BM: Why must the hero do that?
JC: The whale represents the personification, you might say, of all that is in the unconscious. In reading these things psychologically, water is the unconscious. The creature in the water would be the dynamism of the unconscious, which is dangerous and powerful and has to be controlled by consciousness.
The first stage in the hero adventure, when he starts off on adventure, is leaving the realm of light, which he controls and knows about and moving toward the threshold. And it’s at the threshold that the monster of the abyss comes to meet him. And then there are two or three results: one, the hero is cut to pieces and descends into the abyss in fragments, to be resurrected; or he may kill the dragon power, as Siegfried does when he kills the dragon. But then he tastes the dragon blood, that is to say, he has to assimilate that power. And when Siegfried has killed the dragon and tasted the blood, he hears the song of nature; he has transcended his humanity, you know, and reassociated himself with the powers of nature, which are the powers of our life, from which our mind removes us.
You see, this thing up here, this consciousness, thinks it’s running the shop. It’s a secondary organ; 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 this Vader, the man who’s gone over to the intellectual side. He isn’t thinking, or living in terms of humanity, he’s living in terms of a system. And this is the threat to our lives; we all face it, we all operate in our society in relation to a system. Now, is the system going to eat you up and relieve you of your humanity, or are you going to be able to use the system to human purposes?
BM: Would the hero with a thousand faces help us to answer that question, about how to change the system so that we are not serving it?
JC: I don’t think it would help you to change the system, but it would help you to live in the system as a human being.
BM: By doing what?
JC: Well, like Luke Skywalker, not going over, but resisting its impersonal claims.
BM: But I can hear someone out there in the audience saying, “Well, that’s all well and good for the imagination of a George Lucas or for the scholarship of a Joseph Campbell, but that isn’t what happens in my life.”
JC: You bet it does. If the person doesn’t listen to the demands of his own spiritual and heart life, and insists on a certain program, you’re going to have a schizophrenic crack-up. The person has put himself off-center; he has aligned himself with a programmatic life, and it’s not the one the body’s interested in at all. And the world’s full of people who have stopped listening to themselves. In my own life, I’ve had many opportunities to commit myself to a system and to go with it, and to obey its requirements. My life has been that of a maverick; I would not submit.
BM: You really believe that the creative spirit ranges on its own out there, beyond the boundaries?
JC: Yes, I do.
BM: Something of the hero in that, I don’t mean to suggest that you see yourself as a hero.
JC: No, I don’t, but I see myself as a maverick.
BM: So perhaps the hero lurks in each one of us, when we don’t know it
JC: Well, yes, I mean, our life evokes our character, and you find out more about yourself as you go on. And it’s very nice to be able to put yourself in situations that will evoke your higher nature, rather than your lower.
the intellect = the dark side
Ha!
