A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living (Collected Works of Joseph Campbell)

by Joseph Campbell

  …that lovely satellite has been out there circling our earth for some four billion years like a beautiful but lone-some woman trying to catch earth’s eye. She has now at last caught it, and has caught thereby ourselves. And as always happens when a temptation of that kind has been responded to, a new life has opened, richer, more exciting and fulfilling, for both of us than was known, or even thought of or imagined, before. There are youngsters among us, even now, who will be living on that moon; others who will visit Mars. And their sons? What voyages are to be theirs?164

  Follow your bliss.

  What is, or what is to be, the new mythology? Since myth is of the order of poetry, let us ask first a poet: Walt Whitman, for example, in his Leaves of Grass (1855):

  I have said that the soul is not more than the body,

  And I have said that the body is not more than the soul,

  And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one’s-self is,

  And whoever walks a furlong without sympathy walks to his own funeral, dressed in his shroud,

  And I or you pocketless of a dime may purchase the pick of the earth,

  And to glance with an eye or show a bean in its pod confounds the learning of all times,

  And there is no trade or employment but the young man following it may become a hero,

  And there is no object so soft but it makes a hub for the wheeled universe,

  And any man or woman shall stand cool and supercilious before a million universes.

  And I call to mankind, Be not curious about God,

  For I who am curious about each am not curious

  about God,

  No array of terms can say how much I am at peace about God and about death.

  I hear and behold God in every object, yet I understand God not in the least,

  Nor do I understand who there can be more wonderful than myself.

  Why should I wish to see God better than this day?

  I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then,

  In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass;

  I find letters from God dropped in the street, and every one is signed by God’s name,

  And I leave them where they are, for I know that others will punctually come forever and ever.165

  These lines of Whitman echo marvelously the sentiments of the earliest of the Upaniṣads, the “Great Forest Book” (Bṛhadāranyaka) of about the eighth century B.C.

  “This that people say, ‘Worship this god! Worship that god!’—one god after another! All this is his creation indeed! And he himself is all the gods.…He is entered in the universe even to our fingernail-tips, like a razor in a razor case, or fire in firewood. Him those people see not, for as seen he is incomplete. When breathing, he becomes ‘breath’ by name; when speaking, ‘voice’; when seeing, ‘the eye’; when hearing, ‘the ear’; when thinking, ‘mind’: these are but the names of his acts.…

  “One should worship with the thought that he is one’s self, for therein all these become one. This self is the footprint of that All, for by it one knows the All—just as, verily, by following a footprint one finds cattle that have been lost.… One should reverence the Self alone as dear. And he who reverences the Self alone as dear—what he holds dear, verily, will not perish.…

  So whosoever worships another divinity than his self, thinking, ‘He is one, I am another,’ knows not. He is like a sacrificial animal for the gods.…”166

  Indeed, do we not hear the same from Christ himself, as reported in the early Gnostic Gospel According to Thomas?

  “Whoever drinks from my mouth shall become as I am and I myself will become he, and the hidden things shall be revealed to him.…I am the All, the All came forth from me and the All attained to me. Cleave a piece of wood, I am there; lift up the stone and you will find me there.”167

  If you want the whole thing,

  the gods will give it to you.

  But you must be ready for it.

  There are now no more horizons. And with the dissolution of horizons we have experienced and are experiencing collisions, terrific collisions, not only of peoples but also of their mythologies. It is as when dividing panels are withdrawn from between chambers of very hot and very cold airs: there is a rush of these forces together.…That is just what we are experiencing; and we are riding it: riding it to a new age, a new birth, a totally new condition of mankind—to which no one anywhere alive today can say that he has the key, the answer, the prophecy, to its dawn. Nor is there anyone to condemn here…What is occurring is completely natural, as are its pains, confusions, and mistakes.168

  The goal is to live

  with godlike composure

  on the full rush of energy,

  like Dionysus riding the leopard,

  without being torn to pieces.

  Mythologies, in other words, mythologies and religions are great poems and, when recognized as such, point infallibly through things and events to the ubiquity of a “presence” or “eternity” that is whole and entire in each. In this function all mythologies, all great poetries, and all mystic traditions are in accord; and where any such inspiriting vision remains effective in a civilization, everything and every creature within its range is alive. The first condition, therefore, that any mythology must fulfill if it is to render life to modern lives is that of cleansing the doors of perception to the wonder, at once terrible and fascinating, of ourselves and of the universe of which we are the ears and eyes and the mind.169

  A bit of advice

  given to a young Native American

  at the time of his initiation:

  “As you go the way of life,

  you will see a great chasm.

  Jump.

  It is not as wide as you think.”

  And so, to return to our opening question: What is—or what is to be—the new mythology?

  It is—and will forever be, as long as our human race exists—the old, everlasting, perennial mythology, in its “subjective sense,” poetically renewed in terms neither of a remembered past nor of a projected future, but of now: addressed, that is to say, not to the flattery of “peoples,” but to the waking of individuals in the knowledge of themselves, not simply as egos fighting for place on the surface of this beautiful planet, but equally as centers of Mind at Large—each in his own way at one with all…170

  [Discuss]

  About the Collected Works of Joseph Campbell

  At his death in 1987, Joseph Campbell left a significant body of published work that explored his lifelong passion, the complex of universal myths and symbols that he called “Mankind’s one great story.” He also left, however, a large volume of unreleased work: uncollected articles, notes, letters, and diaries, as well as audio- and videotape-recorded lectures.

  The Joseph Campbell Foundation (JCF)—founded in 1990 to preserve, protect, and perpetuate Campbell's work—has undertaken to create a digital archive of his papers and recordings and to publish The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell.

  Robert Walter, Executive Editor

  David Kudler, Managing Editor

  THE COLLECTED WORKS OF JOSEPH CAMPBELL

  The JCF has undertaken to make Mr. Campbell's unreleased and no-longer-available work—uncollected essays, journals, interviews, lectures, article fragments, etc—available through this thought-provoking series. The works in the on-going series are:

  Print:

  Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor—An exploration of the myths and symbols of the Judeo-Christian tradition

  The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Myth As Metaphor and As Religion—The last book that Campbell completed in his lifetime explores the nascent mythology of the modern age.

  The Flight of the Wild Gander: Explorations in the Mythological Dimension—A collection of some of Campbell's most far-reaching essays

  Baksheesh and Brahman: Asian Journals—India—The thoughtful diary of Campbell's life-changing trip to India

/>   Sake and Satori: Asian Journals—Japan—The continuation of Campbell's 1955 trip, including his eye-opening experiences in Japan

  Myths of Light: Eastern Metaphors of the Eternal—An exploration of the central myths and symbols of the great Asian religions

  The Hero's Journey: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work—A wonderful series of conversations between Campbell and many of his associates and friends

  Mythic Worlds, Modern Words: Joseph Campbell on the Art of James Joyce—An exploration of the mythic impact of the twentieth century's greatest novelist

  A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake—co-written with Henry Morton Robinson and newly edited by Joyce scholar Edmond Epstein, this remains the seminal analysis of Joyce's masterpiece

  Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation—In this work, Campbell explores myth as it pertains to the individual

  The Mythic Dimension: Selected Essays 1959-1987—A new volume of Campbell's far-ranging, thought-provoking essays

  The Hero with a Thousand Faces—A new edition of Campbell's classic exploration of the universal monomyth of the Hero Journey, and of its cosmic mirror, the Cosmogonic Cycle

  Myths to Live By (ebook)—A newly illustrated and annotated electronic edition of this classic exploration of the philosophical, social and psychological affects of living myth

  A Joseph Campbell Companion (ebook)—A new digital edition of one of Joseph Campbell's most popular and most quotable works

  Video:

  The Hero's Journey: A Biographical Portrait—This film, made shortly before his death in 1987, follows Campbell's personal quest—a pathless journey of questioning, discovery, and ultimately of delight and joy in a life to which he said, "Yes"

  Sukhavati: A Mythic Journey—This hypnotic and mesmerizing film is a deeply personal, almost spiritual, portrait of Campbell

  Mythos—This series is made up of talks that Campbell himself believed summed up his views on "the one great story of mankind"

  Audio:

  The Joseph Campbell Audio Collection, Series I—A newly digitized and remastered release of these classic recordings, covering Campbell's early years as a public speaker and including some of his most inspiring and beloved talks.

  The Joseph Campbell Audio Collection, Series II

  The Joseph Campbell Audio Collection, Series III—The JCF is preparing for the orderly release of sixty previously unavailable recordings of Campbell at his finest, exploring myth, religion, history, literature and personal growth as only he could.

  About Joseph Campbell

  OVER ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO, on March 26th in 1904, Joseph John Campbell was born in White Plains, NY. Joe, as he came to be known, was the first child of a middle-class, Roman Catholic couple, Charles and Josephine Campbell.

  Joe's earliest years were largely unremarkable; but then, when he was seven years old, his father took him and his younger brother, Charlie, to see Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. The evening was a high-point in Joe's life; for, although the cowboys were clearly the show's stars, as Joe would later write, he "became fascinated, seized, obsessed, by the figure of a naked American Indian with his ear to the ground, a bow and arrow in his hand, and a look of special knowledge in his eyes.”

  It was Arthur Schopenhauer, the philosopher whose writings would later greatly influence Campbell, who observed that

  …the experiences and illuminations of childhood and early youth become in later life the types, standards and patterns of all subsequent knowledge and experience, or as it were, the categories according to which all later things are classified—not always consciously, however. And so it is that in our childhood years the foundation is laid of our later view of the world, and there with as well of its superficiality or depth: it will be in later years unfolded and fulfilled, not essentially changed.

  And so it was with young Joseph Campbell. Even as he actively practiced (until well into his twenties) the faith of his forbears, he became consumed with Native American culture; and his worldview was arguably shaped by the dynamic tension between these two mythological perspectives. On the one hand, he was immersed in the rituals, symbols, and rich traditions of his Irish Catholic heritage; on the other, he was obsessed with primitive (or, as he later preferred, "primal") people's direct experience of what he came to describe as "the continuously created dynamic display of an absolutely transcendent, yet universally immanent, mysterium tremendum et fascinans, which is the ground at once of the whole spectacle and of oneself." (Historical Atlas of World Mythology, I.1, p. 8)

  By the age of ten, Joe had read every book on American Indians in the children's section of his local library and was admitted to the adult stacks, where he eventually read the entire multi-volume Reports of the Bureau of American Ethnology. He worked on wampum belts, started his own "tribe" (named the "Lenni-Lenape" after the Delaware tribe who had originally inhabited the New York metropolitan area), and frequented the American Museum of Natural History, where he became fascinated with totem poles and masks, thus beginning a lifelong exploration of that museum's vast collection.

  After spending much of his thirteenth year recuperating from a respiratory illness, Joe briefly attended Iona, a private school in Westchester NY, before his mother enrolled him at Canterbury, a Catholic residential school in New Milford CT. His high school years were rich and rewarding, though marked by a major tragedy: in 1919, the Campbell home was consumed by a fire that killed his grandmother and destroyed all of the family's possessions.

  Joe graduated from Canterbury in 1921, and the following September, entered Dartmouth College; but he was soon disillusioned with the social scene and disappointed by a lack of academic rigor, so he transferred to Columbia University, where he excelled: while specializing in medieval literature, he played in a jazz band, and became a star runner. In 1924, while on a steamship journey to Europe with his family, Joe met and befriended Jiddu Krishnamurti, the young messiah-elect of the Theosophical Society, thus beginning a friendship that would be renewed intermittently over the next five years.

  After earning a B.A. from Columbia (1925), and receiving an M.A. (1927) for his work in Arthurian Studies, Joe was awarded a Proudfit Traveling Fellowship to continue his studies at the University of Paris (1927-28). Then, after he had received and rejected an offer to teach at his high school alma mater, his Fellowship was renewed, and he traveled to Germany to resume his studies at the University of Munich (1928-29).

  It was during this period in Europe that Joe was first exposed to those modernist masters—notably, the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle, Pablo Picasso and Paul Klee, James Joyce and Thomas Mann, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung—whose art and insights would greatly influence his own work. These encounters would eventually lead him to theorize that all myths are the creative products of the human psyche, that artists are a culture's mythmakers, and that mythologies are creative manifestations of humankind's universal need to explain psychological, social, cosmological, and spiritual realities.

  When Joe returned from Europe late in August of 1929, he was at a crossroad, unable to decide what to do with his life. With the onset of the Great Depression, he found himself with no hope of obtaining a teaching job; and so he spent most of the next two years reconnecting with his family, reading, renewing old acquaintances, and writing copious entries in his journal. Then, late in 1931, after exploring and rejecting the possibility of a doctoral program or teaching job at Columbia, he decided, like countless young men before and since, to "hit the road," to undertake a cross-country journey in which he hoped to experience "the soul of America" and, in the process, perhaps discover the purpose of his life. In January of 1932, when he was leaving Los Angeles, where he had been studying Russian in order to read War and Peace in the vernacular, he pondered his future in this journal entry:

  I begin to think that I have a genius for working like an ox over totally irrelevant subjects. … I am filled with an excruciating sense of never having gotten anywhere—but when I sit down and try to disc
over where it is I want to get, I'm at a loss. … The thought of growing into a professor gives me the creeps. A lifetime to be spent trying to kid myself and my pupils into believing that the thing that we are looking for is in books! I don't know where it is—but I feel just now pretty sure that it isn't in books. — It isn't in travel. — It isn't in California. — It isn't in New York. … Where is it? And what is it, after all?

  Thus one real result of my Los Angeles stay was the elimination of Anthropology from the running. I suddenly realized that all of my primitive and American Indian excitement might easily be incorporated in a literary career. — I am convinced now that no field but that of English literature would have permitted me the almost unlimited roaming about from this to that which I have been enjoying. A science would buckle me down—and would probably yield no more important fruit than literature may yield me! — If I want to justify my existence, and continue to be obsessed with the notion that I've got to do something for humanity — well, teaching ought to quell that obsession — and if I can ever get around to an intelligent view of matters, intelligent criticism of contemporary values ought to be useful to the world. This gets back again to Krishna's dictum: “ The best way to help mankind is through the perfection of yourself.”