JOSEPH CAMPBELL
THE POWER OF
MYTH
with Bill Moyers
I
MYTH AND THE MODERN WORLD
People say what we're all seeking is a meaning of life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.
MOYERS: Why myth? Why should we care about myths? What do they have to do with my life?
CAMPBELL: My first response would be, "Go on, live your life, it's a good life -- you don't need mythology." I don't believe in being interested in a subject just because it's said to be important. I believe in being caught by it somehow or other. But you may find that, with a proper introduction, mythology will catch you. And so, what can it do for you if it does catch you?
One of our problems today is that we are not well acquainted with the literature of the spirit. We're interested in the news of the day and the problems of the hour.
When you get older, and the concerns of the day have all been attended to, and you turn to the inner life.
Greek and Latin and biblical literature used to be part of everyone's education. Now, when
these were dropped, a whole tradition of Occidental mythological information was lost. It used to be that these stories were in the mind of people. When the story is in your mind, then you see its relevance to something happening in your own life. It gives you perspective on what's happening to you. With the loss of that, we've really lost something because we don't have a comparable literature to take its place. These bits of information from ancient times, which have to do with the themes that have supported human life, built civilizations, and informed religions over the millennia, have to do with deep inner problems, inner mysteries, inner thresholds of passage, and if you don't know what the guide-signs are along the way, you have to work it out yourself. But once this subject catches you, there is such a feeling, from one or another of these traditions, of information of a deep, rich, life-vivifying sort that you don't want to give it up.
MOYERS: I came to understand from reading your books-- The Masks of God or The Hero with a Thousand Faces, for example-- that what human beings have in common is revealed in myths. Myths are stories of our search through the ages for truth, for meaning, for significance. We all need to tell our story and to understand our story. We all need to understand death and to cope with death, and we all need help in our passages from birth to life and then to death. We need for life to signify, to touch the eternal, to understand the mysterious, to find out who we are.
MOYERS: If marriage is this reunion of the self with the self, with the male or female grounding of ourselves, why is it that marriage is so precarious in our modern society?
CAMPBELL: People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. That's what it's all finally about, and that's what these clues help us to find within ourselves.
MOYERS: Myths are clues?
CAMPBELL: Myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of the human life.
MOYERS: What we're capable of knowing and experiencing within?
CAMPBELL: Yes.
MOYERS: You changed the definition of a myth from the search for meaning to the experience of meaning.
CAMPBELL: Experience of life. The mind has to do with meaning. What's the meaning of a flower? There's a Zen story about a sermon of the Buddha in which he simply lifted a flower. There was only one man who gave him a sign with his eyes that he understood what was said.
There's no meaning. What's the meaning of the universe? What's the meaning of a flea? It's just there. That's it. And your own meaning is that you're there. We're so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget that the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it's all about.
MOYERS: How do you get that experience?
CAMPBELL: Read myths. They teach you that you can turn inward, and you begin to get the message of the symbols. Read other people's myths, not those of your own religion, because you tend to interpret your own religion in terms of facts -- but if you read the other ones, you begin to get the message. Myth helps you to put your mind in touch with this experience of being alive. It tells you what the experience is. Marriage, for example. What is marriage? The myth tells you what it is. It's the reunion of the separated duad. Originally you were one. You are now two in the world, but the recognition of the spiritual identity is what marriage is. It's different from a love affair. It has nothing to do with that. It's another mythological plane of experience. When people get married because they think it's a long-time love affair, they'll be divorced very soon, because all love affairs end in disappointment. But marriage is recognition of a spiritual identity. If we live a proper life, if our minds are on the right qualities in regarding the person of opposite sex. we will find our proper male or female counterpart. But if we are distracted by certain sensuous interests, we'll marry the wrong person. By marrying the right person, we reconstruct the image of the incarnate God, and that's what marriage is.
MOYERS: You're saying that marriage is not just a social arrangement, it's a spiritual exercise.
CAMPBELL: Because it's not regarded as a marrigae. I would say that if the marriage isn't a first priority in your life, you're not married. If the marriage isn't a first priority in your life, you're not married. The marriage means the two that are one, the two become one flesh. If the marriage lasts long enough, and if you are acquiescing constantly to it instead of to individual personal whim, you come to realize that that is true -- the two really are one.
MOYERS: One not only biologically but spiritually.
MYTH AND THE MODERN WORLD 7
CAMPBELL: It's primarily a spiritual exercise, and the society is supposed to help us have the realization. Man should not be in the service of society, society should be in the service of man. When man is in the service of society, you have a monster state, and that's what is threatening the world at this minute.
MYTH AND THE MODERN WORLD 41
CAMPBELL: Chief Seattle was one of the last spokesmen of the Paleolithic moral order. In about
42 THE POWER OF MYTH
1852, the United States Government inquired about buying the bribal lands for the arriving people of the United States, and Chief Seattle wrote a marvelous letter in reply. His letter expresses the moral, really, of our whole discussion.
CHIEF SEATTLE SPEAKS:
THIS EARTH IS PRECIOUS "The President in Washington sends word
that he wishes to buy our land. But how can you buy or sell the sky? The land?
The idea is strange to us. If we do not
own the freshness of the air and sparkle of the water, how can you buy
them?
ALL SACRED
"Every part of this
earth is sacred to my people.
Every shining pine needle, every sandy shore,
every mist in the dark woods, every meadows, every humming insect. All are holy in the
memory and experience of my people.
"We know the sap which courses through the trees
as we know the blood that courses through our veins. We are part of the earth and it is part of
us.The perfumed flowers are our sisters. The bear, the deer,
the great eagle, these are our brothers. The rocky crests, the juices in the meadow, the
body heat of the pony, and man, all belong to the same family.
NOT EASY
"This shining water that moves in the streams
and rivers is not just water, but the blood of our ancestors. If we sell you our land, you must remember that it is
sacred. Each ghostly
reflection in the clear waters of the lakes tells of events and memories in the
life of my people.The water's murmur is the voice of my father's
father.
KINDNESS
"The rivers are our
brothers. They quench our thirst. They carry our canoes, and feed our
children. So you must give to the
rivers the kindness you would give any brother.
"If we sell you our land, remember
that the air is precious to us, that the air shares its spirit with all the life
it supports. The wind that gave our grandfather his first breath also receives
his last sigh.The wind also gives our children the spirit of life. So if we sell you our land, you must keep it
apart and sacred, as a place where even the white man can go to taste the wind
that is sweetened by the meadow's flowers.
ONE CONDITION
"Will you teach your children what we have taught our children? That the earth is our mother? What befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth.
"This we know: The earth does not belong to man; man
belongs to the earth. This we know. All things are connected like the blood which
unites one family. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the earth befalls the sons of the
earth. Man did not weave the web of life: he is merely a
strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to
himself."
"One thing we know: our god is also your god. The earth is precious to Him and to harm the
earth is to heap contempt on its creator.
"Your destiny is a mystery to us. What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered?
The wild horses tamed? What will happen when the
secret corners of the forest are heavy
with scent of many men and the view of the
ripe hills is blotted by talking wires? Where will
the thicket be? Gone! Where will the eagle be? Gone! And What is it to say goodbye to the
swift pony and the hunt? The end of living and the beginning of survival.
"When the last Red Man has vanished with his wilderness and his memory is only the shadow of a cloud moving across the prairie, will these shores and forests still be here? Will there be any of the spirit of my people left?
"We love this earth as a newborn loves its mother's heartbeat. So, if we sell you our land, love it as we have loved it. Care for it as we have cared for it. Hold in your mind the memory of the land as it is when you receive it. Preserve the land for all children and love it, as God loves us all.
"As we are part of the land, you too are part of the land. This earth is precious to us. It is also precious to you. One thing we know: there is only one God. No man, be he Red Man or White Man, can be apart. We are brothers after all."