Introduction: Campbell finds themes from history and literature that communicate many consistent messages and reveal much about the true nature and purpose of life. His writings are renown and very interesting.
Cautionary note on Campbell: When we trivialize revealed religion into the realm of myth, it loses much of its power. I do find importance in Campbell’s message which can help people in their progression, but want to make this cautionary note that there is so much more to religion than mystery and metaphor. Scripture can be literal, not just symbolic. Campbell rejects the idea of there being a true religion, and merely joins them all together, molding themes and generalities as he sees them. So precede with caution, and learn what Campbell has to offer while knowing there is so much more.
Campbell: The Message of Myth
From documentary series “The Power of Myth” with Bill Moyers – a Winstar Fire Video
Don’t be interested in things merely because they are said to be important, but get a proper introduction to them and you may find indeed that they are very important.
Myths can help give you guide signs along the way so you don’t have to figure out everything for yourself.
This life has to do with meaning. We can find that meaning out. What is the meaning of a flea? It’s just there. That’s it. Your own meaning also is that you are just there. There is a rapture associated with being alive.
God is a reference to a thing that transcends all other things.
In some religions in the near east, as in the bible, Christianity and Islam, is that there is nature, and you are corrupt if you are acting in spontaneity, for nature is corrupt, and you must fight such. This brings us to an entirely different society. The bible shows God is not nature. He is something separate, something higher.
Hinduism is a different place without the narrative of the Garden of Eden. They think natural impulses aren’t to be corrected but beautified.
When you enter an Indian home, you are a visiting deity and you feel that by the way they treat you.
There is a standard motif of ‘the one forbidden thing’ like the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. God knows man will eat that fruit, and with the eating of that fruit, man becomes the initiator of his own life, the person in charge of his venture.
The African legend of the Unumbatte is similar to the Genesis creation narrative.
Like how the God can extend life, the snake cuts it short by getting the man to take the forbidden fruit.
It’s a childish idea to think that life should not have been because of its pain, it’s essence and character.
This is our little eternity here and now: this is our current eternity. If you don’t get it here and now, you’ll never get it. This is it. Our participation here in this life, in this world, is how we will participate in eternity.
Note: Alma teachings a similar message, that the same character we have here will go with us into the next world, and that now is the time to straighten things out. End note.
Buddhists say “All life is sorrowful is the first reality of life”. One must embrace life the way it is. History is a nightmare from which one must awake. Don’t be frightened by it but embrace how it is. Pain is part of therapy. But these things don’t entail that we do nothing for good; we must participate in the game, the wonderful opera (except for that it hurts). This is not a private fight; anyone can get into it. The hero is the one who can participate in it decently without rancor. We can get in the army, or however we can see how to do good. We join in and do our part to make things better.
Note: It is a Judeo-Christian value that we must not just accept evil as part of life, but should always be dedicated to fighting evil, even if we lose the fight. It’s about our character more so than about the end result for society. Get a large enough group of people with good character, and society will be just fine. End note.
Mythology helps you see your life as a poem, and that you are participating in that poem.
Campbell claims that Christ’s ascension is symbolic, not real, that all seeming miracles are mere ideas, not realities. He teaches heaven, hell and all the gods are within us, as well as all the world’s. This is the Indian way of thinking, that they are magnified dreams, images and body being in conflict with each other. That myth is a symbolic manifestation of the dreams of the body, and the desires of the several organs of the body including the brain.
Note: Of course this is the secular view of religion, but many reject this purely symbolic interpretation and have encountered much greater truths of the reality of miracles, etc. Yes there are levels of truth on the symbolic and personal level, but there is so much more! End note.
In the Thomas gospel Christ says, “Who drinks from my mouth becomes as me.” This has similarities to the Buddha consciousness.
When a society loses its myths, it succumbs to disease and destruction; when there is no fixed star, no known horizon, things decay. That is why preachers are begging for old time religion.
If a person has no myth in his life, all he can do is read the newspaper.
Campbell says it’s ridiculous to go back to the old-time religion, seeing as there are other human values in our world today.
Note:This is true on some levels, but absolutely false on others. End note.
Is the machine, society, going to crush or help the humanity which is from the heart? Luke’s father, Vader, had been playing the role of the executive, the system. And under the mask of Vader is an undeveloped man, something of a worm.
Each kind of religion is like computer software. The infrastructure of a computer is like a hierarchy of angels working together to do something.
One legend has a god who sleeps and a lotus flower grows from out of his stomach; his dream is the universe. Each galaxy in outer space may be like a lotus growing from out of a “Brahma”.
Note: Like the Egyptian depiction of the lotus flower growing out from under the throne of Osiris, or the analogy of it coming from the throne of Abraham as Joseph Smith teaches. Abraham is a type of Jehovah, teaching the world what Jehovah is like.
Campbell speaks of a myth wherein the man is going to be a meditator for life, but finds out that it is better to go and have a family and live in the present.
Campbell: The First Storytellers
From documentary series “The Power of Myth” with Bill Moyers – a Winstar Fire Video
Myths are like messages in a bottle from one who has visited those shores before you, and now you are visiting those same shores.
When you go from one stage of life to another, like retirement etc., you need to create a new life for yourself. Focus on doing life in this life rather than on focusing on what you’ll do in the next life.
Note: But learning of the full nature of life including other worlds and phases of existence can inform us how to best life here. And yes, that is often practical, as Brigham Young would teach. End note.
Death is where myth originates from: there was something in a person, then that thing leaves them. Where did it go?
Early hunting people oft saw the animal as superior to them, and they oft take home the personality of the animal as we see with the American Indians. The animals played roles in the myths, and people with those traits. Oft killing an animal wasn’t slaughter, but a ritual act honoring how the animal was giving its life voluntarily to you; that the animal was meant for your well-being, that the animal’s spirit would go on existing despite being killed. This myth serves to wipe out the guilt of the killing.
Note: But it’s much more than that. It informs us of greater realities so we aren’t stopped by lesser realities. End note.
Indians called animals, trees, stones, as “thou” rather than “it”. Do that, and you’ll feel a change in psychology entirely. In the newspaper, people defame each other by making them ‘it’ rather than ‘thou.’
Note: The Judeo-Christian value is to focus on the value of people more so than the value of nature. That nature is for humans, that human life is superior to all other life. But it also includes a respect for nature, even if not a worship of it. Dennis Prager in Still the Best Hope treats this well .
The song of the bird is the expression of its soul; the web of the spider the expression of its beauty; the life of a human its expression.
Indians painted in caves, called them temple caves, a world of spiritual images.
Cathedrals are often seen as the mother womb of your spiritual life, where all the images are spiritual.
The Indian caves have animals depicted in them, but the picture is secondary in importance to the meanings of the images; it’s the place that’s like a womb, the place from which life comes. The world with the sun shining is secondary to the world compared to the womb of the earth where the life begins and originates. It was said that inside the earth was the womb land from which the animals, or the deities, came. There in the caves the boys would learn to be not boys but men. It was where the boys would go through the rites of initiation, where they became no longer the mother’s son, but the father’s son. These Indian rites continue today in places like Australia.
Ritual is participating in the enactment of myth.
The Indians would take the teeth out of a boy, etc., to try and make the boy go through a psychological change of becoming a new person, going from a boy to a man. Now the Catholic priest slaps the initiate and that’s it. As for the girl, she goes from a girl to a woman with her first menstruation. It happens by nature. Her initiation ceremony is usually to sit there and consider what has happened to her. When a girl becomes a woman, she becomes a vehicle of life, identical with the gods. The boy doesn’t get this by nature but must become a servant of something greater than himself, to society, while a woman is a servant to herself (meaning, she serves humanity by what she contributes with her body, generating life within herself.)
If you want a society without any rituals, read the New York Times. It has young men who don’t know how to behave. They behave like barbarians, belonging to nothing. Even in the catholic church, they have translated the language from the Latin, which takes you from your place, and into English where it’s homely and cozy. They’ve forgotten the function of a ritual: to pitch you out! Not to wrap you back in where you have been all the time!
Note: English liturgy can also propel a person outward toward greatness. End note.
James Joyce, “The Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man” shows what it’s like to grow up and become a man. Often the artists are the myth makers of our day.
The Shamans were the equivalent to our modern-day poets; they had an immense psychological experience and hence live in the spiritual realm. They experience dying and coming back to life, and deep dreams, or mystical encounters in the woods. They are persons who go from the normal world into that of the gifted. A priest is a functionary of a social sort, to carry on the ritual about a deity who preexisted him. A shaman rather teaches of his experience not a social ordination and appoints himself rather than being appointed.
Note: The sort of chaotic nature of the eastern mystic can be contrasted with the more utilitarian and practical and intelligible function of the western prophet. But there are some similarities – having encounters with the supernatural and so forth. End note.
The woman is life, and the man the servant of life. With the indigenous tribes, the woman orchestrates the dance, and the men act out the dance.
The tribes also do meditations of out of body experiences to reach ‘the other mind’.
Note: Some religious mythical traditions are more inspired than others. But yes, things like fasting, studying holy scriptures, and other forms of self-sacrifice are themes of religious tradition everywhere. End note.
He recommends the Book “Black Alp Speaks.”
The shaman would be psychoanalysts to help the people going through hard things to retain connection with deity and give spiritual advice.
They say the central peak is everywhere, or the center of the universe, axis mundi, around which all revolve on the earth, where stillness is, where perhaps time is not. Jerusalem, Mexico City, Rome, etc., were symbolic of a center.
Each human is a manifestation of the mystery of God.
Campbell: Love & The Goddess
From documentary series “The Power of Myth” with Bill Moyers – a Winstar Fire Video
Love is perfect kindness. Love is seeing your soul’s counterpart in the other person.
Any idea of life bliss should be chosen with the idea that no one can frighten me away from this thing. Love sick is the kind the doctor cannot heal.
The heart, opening to another person, is what distinguishes mankind from animals.
Much insight into life comes from experiencing it for yourself, trusting your feelings, having your own experience rather than word of mouth.
Paul speaks of love enduring all things; love knows no pain.
Note: Campbell has many ideas I don’t agree with, not in accord with the Restored Gospel. End note.
The main message of Christianity is legitimate love for all people.
One can learn true religion from monks who felt no evil toward people who had committed mass murder on their people.
The most sophisticated interpretation of why Christ had to be crucified was for Atonement, at-one-ment, to make us one with God; the injured one becomes the Savior. It’s the suffering that evokes the compassion of the human heart. By contemplating this mystery you’re contemplating the true meaning of life.
Life is the burning point of love, since life is sorrowful, the more love, the more pain that it will bring.
There used to be an idea of the golden age of the goddess, where women were looked upon with great esteem, but ideas of men being more important choked that out, but it’s coming back perhaps.
Note: Today it seems we definitely are there, it’s often men who are discriminated against these days. End note.
Note: Campbell claims that all religions don’t claim a physical location of an extra-terrestrial heaven on some planet somewhere, but not so with the Latter-day Saints! They maintain this truth. End note.
In Egypt and other places, often it’s the goddess who is the dominant one.
The Hebrews call the Canaanite Goddess “an abomination”. Whereas with the Greeks, Zeus marries a lady.
Note: Certainly some goddesses are abominations. End note.
Note: Some things are too sacred perhaps to speak of. But we do have some information about Heavenly Mother, the Goddess in the restored gospel. We believe this perhaps more literally and fervently than any other people. We merely don’t like mockeries of Her – she is so sacred we speak of her seldom in the open. End note.
Note: Campbell demeans / discounts / disbelieves the virgin birth of Christ. End note.
Campbell says we think too much of Jesus dying, but we could spend more time thinking about how we should be going through something similar; something of being born again yourself.
Note: There’s lots of half truths at play here. Campbell is poking in the dark, sometimes hitting truth, other times missing it. The death of Christ does indeed inspire us to live lives of sacrifice. End note.
Paul speaks of the former mythologies of death and rising now being incarnate by our Savior; that which was only talked about is now reality!
The celebration of the rising of Christ happens in the (winter) solstice, when the days begin to be longer.
In the ying-yang sign there is a light spot on the dark one and a dark spot on the light, that is how they relate to each other.
Just because you die doesn’t mean your character changes.
Campbell: The Hero’s Adventure
From documentary series “The Power of Myth” with Bill Moyers – a Winstar Fire Video
Campbell wrote the book hero with 2000 faces, and there is a film on this in the BYU media library.
The hero must go through a death and a resurrection; he must be born again and start a new life. The young man must go through a rite of initiation, where he leaves childhood and goes to manhood, etc.
Like joining the military, you put on a uniform, your old self is dead, you are a new creature.
The heroes sacrifice themselves for a reality, for a better cause.
As people learn to write, they put their society in pictures, they develop heroes.
Moses is hero in his book, he ascends to a mountain and returns.
The Chinese characters have analogies to Christ, you could match them with the Apostles.
Christ has 3 major temptations; economical, being offered bread. Then political, Satan saying you can rule all if you obey me. Then the spiritual one where He is tempted to throw Himself down, showing He is divine, but instead says, “Don’t tempt thy God.” The Chinese go through 3 similar trials; lust, fear, and doing what they are told. They are in the wilderness for a time as well.
All the myths have to do with transformation of consciousness.
In Star Wars, George Lucas uses classical mythological roles. When Luke must pull his eyes closed and use his consciousness to defend himself, that’s real Japanese stuff.
Star Wars heroes in the garbage chute are like Jonah in the belly of the whale, which represents the personification of all that is in the unconscious. Water is the unconscious; the person in the water is the dynism (energy source) in the unconsciousness, which is powerful and dangerous.
The hero moves from his comfortable life into danger, and he at that point is attacked, where he succeeds or is defeated.
The brain is to be subject to the heart, or else you go over to the intellectual side, the dark side, like Darth Vader. The brain is a secondary organ that is to be used for HUMAN purposes, rather than serving a system. Resist like Luke Skywalker, the impersonal claims of the intellectual side. If a person does not listen to his own heart, he gets off center and becomes schizophrenic. That’s not the life a body is interested in at all. There are many people who have stopped listening to themselves. We commit ourselves to a system and its requirements on our own. Our lives are to be like a maverick, not being willing to submit to things contrary to his personal creed.
Note: Ironically, Vader’s path to the Dark Side, to the mechanical anti-human system, was based on an idea that it would help someone. He ignored warning signals that he was being deceived, his humanity was being played. Then he became part of the deception, part of the anti-human. End note.
Being in the water is like being in the subconscious, where we give ourselves to the dark power or the powers of above. This is common Indian lore.
It’s psychology, when they find out what’s ticking in them, they get straightened out. This is a similar role of mythology and helps them see what the cores are of their life, and the negative aspects of what’s positive; all these things in their place.
Dragons represent caves where there are heaps of gold and virgins. Psychologically you’re captured in your own dragon cage. The psychologist wakes that dragon, so you can have a larger field of vision. The Chinese dragon represents nature. The real dragon is the one that is in you; your ego, what you love, what you think you can do, what you think you can’t, your aims in life; it may be too small. We deal with it by falling in our place in life. Your work is it. If you enjoy your work, or if you are afraid to do what you love, that’s your dragon, locking you in when you say things like ‘oh I could never do that’.
Note: Again, there could be real as well as symbolic dragons. Usually we make symbols out of things we experience, or that people used to experience, in reality. End note.
Any world is a living world if it’s alive; you can bring to life what you will. Others can help you, but ultimately the ultimate trick must be done by you.
Chinese speak of nirvana, Jesus speaks of peace. It’s a place in yourself of rest. The athlete has in himself a quiet place, and from there comes his action.
Note: Jesus’ teachings and power bring a level of peace not offered by the world. Religion in general is a step in the right direction, and Christ is the way to a fullness of it. End note.
In dance there is a center that must be held and known. Unless you find this center, you’re torn apart, tension comes. Nirvana isn’t a place like heaven. It’s a psychological state of mind in our present location which comes when you’re not compelled by desire or fear or social commitments, but you hold your center and act from there. It’s the way, but it’s your way too. The Buddha can’t tell you how to do it. The teacher can merely give you a clue of the direction, and the student must find what works for himself.
Note: Get yourself a group of people in Nirvana and boom! You’ve got a real place called heaven. Also, nirvana can’t be found by just focusing inward. You have to build community. End note.
The palm tree has a consciousness; it follows the sun in the day sky. The vegetable world etc., the whole world in conscious. Scientists are openly speaking of the Gaia principle, the whole planet as a living organism. We are the consciousness of the earth, our eyes are its eyes, our voice its voice.
Note: We are like the microbes of the Earth. If Earth were shrunk to the size of a whale, humans would be the size of microbes. End note.
How can we discover the consciousness? Meditation, choosing to direct our efforts. Thinking of money is a level of meditation, which is important. But it can’t communicate spiritual consciousness to our loved ones, which we must do.
When you walk into a cathedral or temple, you leave the economic world and enter the spiritual one. Your consciousness is brought to another level. You leave the temple, and can you keep what you felt in there? You memorize prayers, etc., which help you live in the spiritual realm while in the economic one; you learn that the economic realm is the lower manifestation of the real spiritual one.
Note: But also, all things are spiritual. Even temporal things have a spiritual element. And there exists good and evil in the economic world, not just win or lose. End note.
In one era, they built the gothic cathedral tallest, then in later times the political centers were the tallest. Now in our day, the business buildings are the tallest. You see this in Salt Lake City, Utah. The temple was first built there as tallest, then the city buildings got larger. Now the business buildings are largest. (We see a shift in values.)
Note: When I’ve told this to some people, they say it’s fine that we now have very tall financial centers, dwarfing our churches and temples. Perhaps. But we must ask what our focus is. Why don’t we build a large temple to tower over these trade centers where everyone can flock to for renewal of the spirit? Surely we could employ such a building full time if we highly valued the soul. End note.
Myths and dreams come from the same place, you can’t tell what they are going to be.
Campbell teaches people that if you really want to help people in this world, what you must teach them is how to live in it.
Campbell: Sacrifice and Bliss
From documentary series “The Power of Myth” with Bill Moyers – a Winstar Fire Video
Indians teach that the rivers are our brothers, that the air is precious to them and shares its spirit with the rest. The earth doesn’t belong to man but vice versa. What man does to the web he lives in, he does to himself. They love the earth as a mother loves her newborn.
Note: But a Judeo-Christian value is that man is superior to nature. Killing a tree isn’t as bad as killing a child. End note.
To have a sacred place is absolutely necessary for everyone. Where we have a room or an hour where we don’t think of news, friends, or debts, but consider bringing forth what you are or might be. A place of creation. Use this place and something will happen. For the Indians the whole earth was such a place.
As you get older, life can get so busy that you hardly know where you are. You’re always doing this and that, so you stop knowing where you are. Put on music you like or read the book you want to read.
To one only used to the forest, being on a mountaintop seeing a horizon is frightening. And the animals look as small as ants, since you have no sense of depth.
The aborigines become a part of their world. Today we are stripping the world of the revelation the earth can give us.
One myth tells of man killing a bird and it leading to his death since he killed his environment.
Jesus uses a similar analogy, saying, “I am the vine and you are the branches”. This connection with each other.
Note: But Jesus was speaking of people, not birds. The Judeo-Christian worldview is that all the world and its creatures were made for man. End note.
Seeing similar tales across cultures may be because humanity has a similar organ, has similar brains. The hero dying for life to appear again.
Note: God reveals truth everywhere it is allowed, and in whatever way it’ll be received, to whatever level it’ll be received. If you want to blame it on the brain, let me say, God is the author of the brain, and influences the brain regularly. End note.
Some aborigines have people killed, then they get eaten. Also, the Catholics have the sacrament they eat believing it’s the flesh and blood of the deity.
Note: Many understand this symbolically.
Jesus on a cross is the fruit on the second tree; the first tree is bringing death; He is bringing life. The first tree is the tree of exit, where separation occurs. The tree of Jesus is the tree of life, of bringing things back together.
See also the Buddha Sitting Under the Wisdom Tree.
Death and life are 2 aspects of the same thing: Being and Becoming. The life is being, the death is how we become, namely transformation. This is in every myth; they all acknowledge death.
Jesuits had a boy to be sacrificed. They would sing on the way to the sacrifice, including the sacrificial victim. The killers were the priests.
Note: If this is true, it is not in keeping with Christian values, which the Jesuits were originally made to uphold. End note.
Jesus sang a hymn before the crucifixion, we see recorded in the bible.
You need death to have life and birth.
In some tribes the young man must kill someone to qualify for marriage.
Note: Yikes. What a distortion of morality and truth! End note.
When the new child is born in the family, your whole duty is to be caregiver for that new life, that new generation.
Schopenhauer’s philosophy speaks of how one can love another so much to sacrifice himself for the other. The theory of self-preservation vanishes in it. It’s that you and the other person are one. Unity in all life as the fount of all truth.
A guy in the office every day doesn’t get real life experience, but when he rescues someone, or feels some pain, he finds out he is alive, and it hurts. But it’s good to know you are alive.
Marriage is primarily about becoming one spiritually, rather than physically. Though such is a part of it. The physical is the elementary stage, but there is a deeper stage of unity than even that.
Note: The physical is a symbol of the spiritual. If the spiritual is not there, it is not time for the physical. Marriage is God’s order to enthrone unity. God restricts physical intimacy to marriage so that it can represent and create and bless in all the ways it was meant to, rather than becoming something trivial and animalistic. End note.
At times people divorce after their child is raised, not understanding that marriage isn’t just about children; it’s about each other, becoming one together, a transcendent unit creating together continuously.
Your heart tells you who to marry, that’s the mystery. Something within you knows this is the one.
The body dies as it gets to where there is more mass than energy.
You, as you know yourself, aren’t the final term of your being. You must die to that one way or another. You must become yourself.
Note: We each chose if we will rise to the higher capacities and therefore higher felicities of our natures, or if we will remain small. Either way, the choice is ours. End note.
It doesn’t matter if you have accomplishments in life; if you’ve never done anything you want to do in life, it’s all for nothing.
Note: That can be all the more meaningful if we school our desires. For example, do we desire marriage? Children? Knowledge? Skill? To build something meaningful? Or do we have trivial childish bucketlists? End note.
The wheel of fortune has a person either on the top or the bottom. But the person at the hub of the wheel is the one who never moves. That’s how marriage is to be; you love them in sickness or in health. You love them because of them. They are your joy no matter what stage they’re at in in the wheel of fortune.
A poet is one who has made a lifestyle of being in touch with these type of things. Most people get involved with other things such as economic or political life.
Note: A mixture of the two is proper. End note.
As a teacher, Campbell interviewed each student for 30 minutes every other day about the things they should be reading and the several class topics.
When you find joy, grab it. You must learn to recognize your own depths. You can be helped by hidden times as you find this track that has been waiting for you, and you begin to live it. You begin to see people who are in the field of your bliss as helpful to you.
The waters of eternal bliss are where you are following your heart.
Campbell: Masks of Eternity
From documentary series “The Power of Myth” with Bill Moyers – a Winstar Fire Video
The reference to God is to something that transcends all.
Note: The secular world, as we see from Campbell, see God as neither being nor existing. And that none can understand God. That is apostate doctrine that has been around ever since the people killed Jesus and his Apostles. The secular world has a form of godliness, but denies the power thereof. Denies the physical reality thereof. We need not stay in the mode of the deists who think God, if he exists, has nothing to do with us, not that God is merely an idea of aspiring to one’s best. There is so much more! End note.
We emphasize how each individual must be their own reincarnation. You are God in your deepest identity, one with the transcendent.
He calls different views as different masks people wear. (That beneath the masks we are the same.)
He calls divinity “the realization of wonder and tremendous power,” like as we see with nature, something much bigger than humans.
In the west we consider God as the source of energy. In the east and perhaps antiquity, they see God as the vehicle of energy, the manifestation of energy. The source of the energy, he says, is a total mystery.
Note: Another way of saying God. But God desires to reveal the mystery. End note.
In the east the Gods are less human and more like the powers of nature, representing an energy system, being the vehicle of the energy, not its source, as in the west.
The word “religion” is from the word religio, the linking back to a familiar source.
The center is an image is in all religion – it’s the center from which you come, and the center to which you will return.
Note: We aren’t just going to God, we are returning to Him. And when you find out how much that has to do with family, the mystery is solved! When tracing our genealogy, Luke 3 says Adam was the son of God. The New Testament is the revelation that man is the offspring of God, and that Christ is God’s special messenger. End note.
Indians speak of an eagle’s nest as a circle. Plato speaks of the soul being a circle. The temporal aspect of the circle is that you start in a place and go back to that place. It’s like God being the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. The circle is seen often, like going out for a hunt then returning to camp; or the watch or calendar; we celebrate holidays time and again.
A Mandela is a Chinese picture with a god in the middle, the power source, and manifestations of that around it.
Note: This is also seen in The Pearl of Great Price which showcases an Egyptian hierocephalus.)
Note: Campbell doesn’t believe in a personal god, lest that god reveal himself to you; this is at odds with Latter-day Saint theology, but it expresses the idea that this life is a test, and that it takes effort to reach God. I remember hearing about young college students complaining about how they had not yet seen the face of God, and religion professors consoling them by telling them that they weren’t really expected to see the face of God. Of course such consolation is contrary to scripture, which repeatedly enjoins us to seek the face of God, and assures us of that eventuality. What these young pups should have been told is that they weren’t there yet, that their journey was not yet complete, that they yet had a long way to go before reaching that pinnacle. But in today’s culture of pumping self-esteem, our young people are often legitimately confused about how they could possibly be any better than they already are. Feeding them lies about their supposed pre-mature greatness is only damning their progress. We should rather preach true religion, and that is the way best calculated to launch their soul toward God, that they may find Him. End note.
There are motifs you find in all of religion and mythology all around the world, such as a spiritual power source, a Savior, a virgin birth, a creation narrative, etc.
God is the archetype of man. We are created in His image.
Clowns in religion show that the form is just a trick, that the image does not matter. It’s to say, I’m not the ultimate image, I’m transparent to something. Through my funny form I’m mocking that.
Note: trying to be an idea rather than merely a face. End note.
Humor is one way of expressing how we people don’t have everything correct.
A whole new stage of human life opens when one opens the heart. It’s like becoming a human rather than an animal, not merely living for the occasional pleasure.
You can experience this ultimate mystery either with or without form. (Note: Don’t know what he means by that. But ultimately, a truth lost to the world is that both spirit and body are important. Perhaps he is saying that there are more than one way to experience the spiritual world. To me that point is less important than the point that we should treasure up what is known on the subject rather than seeking some new unique way to find God. Learn the teachings of the prophets, and you’ll find God alot faster than by poking around with random people’s ideas. End note.)
Wanting to own an object is pornography.
Note: In the sense of bringing something with high potential down to a crass level, and wanting to take something that doesn’t belong to you. Owning things is fine, if they belong to you legitimately. But one must always be accountable to God beyond accountability to man. For example, you might buy some food with your own money. But the pious soul will consider that he should not take more than he needs, that God gives to all according to our needs, and that one’s excess should be shared with the poor. This pleases God, and brings pleasure beyond base-pleasure to the soul. If we get caught up in desering things, in coveting, in heaping upon one’s self that which is not right, we find ourselves in a doomed situation, trading a birthright for a mess of porriage. Pornography is a perfect parallel analogy for this – fleeting joy in exchange for the eternal joy one might have had. End note.
The god who wants your mind open, if your mind is shut, can appear terrifying. But if your mind is open, you can see this god as benevolent.
Poetry doesn’t shut you off, it opens you. Then you get an epiphany which is a showing through of the essence of God or eternity.
Schopenhauer says when you look back on your life, it seems to have had an order, to have had been orchestrated, that the things that you thought were random occurrences, those turn out to be the main elements of a plot. He considers God orchestrating such, about all influencing the structure of everything else, like a big symphony; it’s like life is a dream of a man dreaming, and all characters in his dream are dreaming. In India it’s shown as a net of gems which all reflect each other.
Note: Campbell says some stupid things like, “There is no purpose to life.” What a strange thing for someone studying myth to say. It seems this idea is infected with the post-modern secular idea that we each make our own way, that no one path is superior to another. The truth is that there is a way of lasting joy, and many ways of lasting sorrow. The purpose of life is to have joy! End note.
Campbell says, “Follow your dream, that if you just focus on earning money, you’ve lost your life.”
Note: If you say money is your dream, you need to look deeper. Look for something more lasting. Look for life. End note.
When you’re journeying, and you see your journey is getting longer and longer, you learn that your journey is the destination.
Why cut the grass over and over? It’s for the coming into being.
‘The word was made flesh’ is about how the eternity has a mortal experience.
The A-U-M chant of the monks is a cycle of your mouth representing birth being and completion at the closing of the mouth with the M.
On Myth & Civilization
The best things cannot be taught. They transcend. Metaphor is a field of reference.
Indians teach that in the beginning was only darkness and water. (Note: Similar to the Bible creation. End note.)
Myth creates a deeper awareness of the act of living. To make a difference in this world you must teach how to live in it.
Don’t just be interested in something because people say it is important, be interested in things which catch you.
Myths have built civilizations.
Myths are the guideposts along the way and if you don’t know them, you must work it out yourself. Myths make life richer.
We don’t want meaning in life. We want an experience of being alive. We want to feel the rapture of being alive and mythical clues help us find that. Myths are guideposts to the spiritual potentialities of human life. They show us what we are capable of knowing and experiencing within.
The inner rapture associated with being alive is what it’s all about. The fact that we are here, we are alive. That is amazing.
God is a reference to someone who transcends all.
The best things cannot be taught because they transcend thought. And the next best things are misunderstood because they’re about the highest.
There are two very different views: One is that nature is the signature of the Divine, which also lives in us. The other view is that nature is all fallen and everything to do with nature is corrupt, including our natural desires.
Note: These two ideas aren’t so far apart actually. God created nature, so it is good, beautiful, and meant to help us. And yes, a spark of the divine is in us, as we are the offspring of God. Next, there was a fall, and mankind and nature did fall, and we do have base desires which need schooling. The Judeo-Christian teaching is that man is not naturally good, but must become such. Children are innocent and wonderful, but they have not yet learned to conquer evil. For this purpose they are here, and to have joy in the journey, and for others to enjoy their wonder. So it is true one some level that there are two differing views, one worships nature, one worships God, but ultimately, the positive points in both camps can be meshed together beautifully. End note.
The motif of the one forbidden thing. This is where life begins where man becomes his own initiator.
It’s absurd to think that Eden was paradise without opposites. It’s absurd to think that ignorance would be better than life.
Note: Yes! The restored gospel brings back this truth. Mortality is an important part of God’s plan for us. The Fall was a good thing, and so will be overcoming the fall. End note.
It’s absurd to think that all of life before baptism is vanity.
Note: Jesus said children are the kingdom of God. Children show us how happy and wonderful heaven will be. The restored gospel teaches that little children need no baptism because, even though they aren’t yet highly skilled in fighting evil, even though they have not tamed every whim of the flesh, they are without sin, without guile, without criminal intent, and are saved in the kingdom of God, without baptism. End note.
Eternity is now. If you don’t get it here, you won’t get it anywhere. Eternity is the transcendent element.
The gospel of Thomas says whoever partakes of Christ’s word is Christ. This is similar to Buddhist thinking that we awaken the Buddha within us. We find God and become God. We join that program.
Note: We take upon us the name of Christ. We join that program. We leave behind our foolishness, and embrace something much better. We are born again! End note.
Note: Campbell mistakenly interprets the resurrection as merely symbolic. End note.
We need models of what is appropriate for our current time.
Note: Yes, we need modern prophets, and of course this can extend to beyond formal leaders. We need heroes. We need people who show us how it’s done in our circumstances. Joseph Smith was one of those great heroes. To reject God’s messengers are to reject God. Often we think of God in a certain way, inapplicable to our times. Then a messenger of God comes in our time and some of his ways shock us, as they should. God’s ways are higher than our ways. Any encounter with God, be that with his messengers, or more directly with Him in prayer, is to be a culture shock compared to what we experience in the world. End note.
Star Wars is a myth which teaches us about the state versus humanity. The state is the machine that could crush us.
Luke takes off Vader’s mask. Vader is the machine. He is the state. He is the uniform. And underneath the mask is an underdeveloped man, sort of a worm.
Myth opens the dimension of mystery.
The computer is a miracle. Look inside it. There’s a whole hierarchy of angels and miracles. He says each religion is like a different computer program, each working in its own way.
Note: And some programs/religions are better designed than others! End note.
You can go out in the wilderness and ignore the world, or you can be a part of life and manifest the divine.
Life is meant to be the way it is with the challenges, etc. And we can enjoy being a part of the battle without becoming overwhelmed by the inherent sadness of life.
