The Power of Myth

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by Joseph Campbell


  MOYERS: And yet we all have lived a life that had a purpose. Do you believe that?

  CAMPBELL: I don’t believe life has a purpose. Life is a lot of protoplasm with an urge to reproduce and continue in being.

  MOYERS: Not true—not true.

  CAMPBELL: Wait a minute. Just sheer life cannot be said to have a purpose, because look at all the different purposes it has all over the place. But each incarnation, you might say, has a potentiality, and the mission of life is to live that potentiality. How do you do it? My answer is, “Follow your bliss.” There’s something inside you that knows when you’re in the center, that knows when you’re on the beam or off the beam. And if you get off the beam to earn money, you’ve lost your life. And if you stay in the center and don’t get any money, you still have your bliss.

  MOYERS: I like the idea that it is not the destination that counts, it’s the journey.

  CAMPBELL: Yes. As Karlfried Graf Dürckheim says, “When you’re on a journey, and the end keeps getting further and further away, then you realize that the real end is the journey.”

  The Navaho have that wonderful image of what they call the pollen path. Pollen is the life source. The pollen path is the path to the center. The Navaho say, “Oh, beauty before me, beauty behind me, beauty to the right of me, beauty to the left of me, beauty above me, beauty below me, I’m on the pollen path.”

  MOYERS: Eden was not. Eden will be.

  CAMPBELL: Eden is. “The kingdom of the Father is spread upon the earth, and men do not see it.”

  MOYERS: Eden is—in this world of pain and suffering and death and violence?

  CAMPBELL: That is the way it feels, but this is it, this is Eden. When you see the kingdom spread upon the earth, the old way of living in the world is annihilated. That is the end of the world. The end of the world is not an event to come, it is an event of psychological transformation, of visionary transformation. You see not the world of solid things but a world of radiance.

  MOYERS: I interpreted that powerful and mysterious statement, “The word was made flesh,” as this eternal principle finding itself in the human journey, in our experience.

  CAMPBELL: And you can find the word in yourself, too.

  MOYERS: Where do you find it if you don’t find it in yourself?

  CAMPBELL: It’s been said that poetry consists of letting the word be heard beyond words. And Goethe says, “All things are metaphors.” Everything that’s transitory is but a metaphorical reference. That’s what we all are.

  MOYERS: But how does one worship a metaphor, love a metaphor, die for a metaphor?

  CAMPBELL: That’s what people are doing all over the place—dying for metaphors. But when you really realize the sound, “AUM,” the sound of the mystery of the word everywhere, then you don’t have to go out and die for anything because it’s right there all around. Just sit still and see it and experience it and know it. That’s a peak experience.

  MOYERS: Explain AUM.

  CAMPBELL: “AUM” is a word that represents to our ears that sound of the energy of the universe of which all things are manifestations. You start in the back of the mouth “ahh,” and then “oo,” you fill the mouth, and “mm” closes the mouth. When you pronounce this properly, all vowel sounds are included in the pronunciation. AUM. Consonants are here regarded simply as interruptions of the essential vowel sound. All words are thus fragments of AUM, just as all images are fragments of the Form of forms. AUM is a symbolic sound that puts you in touch with that resounding being that is the universe. If you heard some of the recordings of Tibetan monks chanting AUM, you would know what the word means, all right. That’s the AUM of being in the world. To be in touch with that and to get the sense of that is the peak experience of all.

  A-U-M. The birth, the coming into being, and the dissolution that cycles back. AUM is called the “four-element syllable.” A-U-M—and what is the fourth element? The silence out of which AUM arises, and back into which it goes, and which underlies it. My life is the A-U-M, but there is a silence underlying it, too. That is what we would call the immortal. This is the mortal and that’s the immortal, and there wouldn’t be the mortal if there weren’t the immortal. One must discriminate between the mortal aspect and the immortal aspect of one’s own existence. In the experience of my mother and father who are gone, of whom I was born, I have come to understand that there is more than what was our temporal relationship. Of course there were certain moments in that relationship when an emphatic demonstration of what the relationship was would be brought to my realization. I clearly remember some of those. They stand out as moments of epiphany, of revelation, of the radiance.

  MOYERS: The meaning is essentially wordless.

  CAMPBELL: Yes. Words are always qualifications and limitations.

  MOYERS: And yet, Joe, all we puny human beings are left with is this miserable language, beautiful though it is, that falls short of trying to describe—

  CAMPBELL: That’s right, and that’s why it is a peak experience to break past all that, every now and then, and to realize, “Oh … ah.…”

  Bill Moyers would like to thank the following people for making the television series possible:

  EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Joan Konner, Alvin H. Perlmutter

  SERIES PRODUCER: Catherine Targe

  ASSOCIATE PRODUCER: Vera Aronow

  SERIES CONSULTANT: Betty Sue Flowers

  RESEARCHERS: Lynn Novick, Elizabeth Fischer, Ilisa Barbash

  PRODUCTION ASSISTANTS: John Farinet, John Moyers

  PRODUCTION EXECUTIVE: Douglas P. Sinsel

  VIDEOTAPE EDITORS: Leonard Feinstein, Girish Bhargava

  Taped at the Library of Lucasfilm Ltd., Skywalker Ranch, San Rafael, California, and The American Museum of Natural History, New York City.

  Produced with the cooperation of Alfred van der Marck Editions.

  A production of

  Apostrophe S Productions, Inc., in association with

  Alvin H. Perlmutter, Inc., and

  Public Affairs Television, Inc.

  The broadcasts of Moyers: Joseph CAMPBELL and the Power of Myth were made possible by grants from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, public television stations, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

  JOSEPH CAMPBELL (1904–87) began his career in 1934 as an instructor at Sarah Lawrence College, where he taught for almost forty years, and where the Joseph Campbell Chair in Comparative Mythology was established in his honor. He is the author of numerous books, including the bestselling The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

  BILL MOYERS is an acclaimed journalist, widely respected for his work both at CBS News and at PBS. One of his primary efforts has been to bring to television outstanding thinkers of our time, most recently in the immensely popular and highly celebrated PBS series and bestselling book A World of Ideas. His conversations with Joseph Campbell were one of the highlights of television programming in the 1980s.

  BETTY SUE FLOWERS teaches poetry and myth at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author and coauthor of several books, including Browning and the Modern Tradition, Four Shields of Power, and Daughters and Fathers.

  “… AMERICAN TELEVISION AT ITS BEST …”

  John J. O’Connor, New York Times

  Joseph Campbell

  THE

  POWER

  OF

  MYTH

  with Bill Moyers

  NOW AVAILABLE ON VIDEOCASSETTES

  PARABOLA: The Magazine of Myth and Tradition, in association with Mystic Fire Video, is pleased to announce the availability of the Joseph Campbell/Bill Moyers 6-part television series on videocassettes.

  Nationally acclaimed as a series of exceptional quality and interest, these six one-hour cassettes, available in both VHS and Beta formats, are produced to exacting artistic standards.

  For further information, write:

  Mystic Fire Video, P.O. Box 30969, Dept. DL, New York, NY 10011 or call 1-800-727-8433

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  Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

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