The Power of Myth: Sacrifice and Bliss

The Life and Work of Joseph Campbell

Outline of Presentation: Sacrifice and Bliss

Background of Joseph Campbell Suffering vs happiness sacrifice & bliss What is myth? Why do we need myths? What are their types? The language of myths Campbells philosophy Four functions of myths Heros Journey Mono-myth Myths relevance - todays individual/world

Campbells Influences

American Indians Juddu Kristnamurti Columbia, Sorbonne & Universitt Mnchen James Joyce & Thomas Mann Avant Garde Artists Carl G Jung 5 Years Reading/Researching Bastian, Frobenius, Spengler Heinrich Zimmer His Female Students

The Experience of Suffering

to suffer"-sub plus ferre (Latin) "to bear or allow." Suffering is: an experience the fullness of lifes diversity a natural process of growth develops psychological and spiritual maturity
To strive for pleasure to the exclusion of pain is, in effect, to strive for the loss of consciousness." - Alan Watts Lifes goal is to increase consciousness; so, the temptation to avoid lifes legitimate pain must be resisted and embraced as a natural part of life.

Joseph Campbell on Suffering from Budhism

"All life is sorrowful; there is however an escape from sorrow; the escape is Nirvana which is a state of mind or consciousness, not a place somewhere, like heaven. It is right here, in the midst of the turmoil of life. It is the state you find when you are no longer driven to live by compelling desires, fears, and social commitments, when you have found your center of freedom and can act by choice out of that. Voluntary action out of this center is the action of the bodhisattvas joyful participation in the sorrows of the world. - Joseph Campbell

Joseph Campbell on Sorrow, Pain and Joy

We cannot cure the world of sorrows, but we can choose to live in joy. Find a place inside where theres joy, and the joy will burn out the pain. - Joseph Campbell

The Pursuit of Happiness

Our culture emphasizes happiness and pleasure; the natural tendency is to avoid suffering: happiness is a transient state - cannot be kept happiness never lasts.

Happiness is related to the Middle English word "hap," the root meaning of which implies that happiness is more due to luck -- happenstance -than effort. If lucky, we might be happy, at least, for a short time.

Joseph Campbell on Follow your Bliss

I have a firm belief in this now, not only in terms of my own experience but in knowing the experience of others. When you follow your bliss, and by bliss I mean the deep sense of being in it, and doing what the push is out of your own existence it may not be fun, but its your bliss and theres bliss behind pain too.
- Joseph Campbell

Joseph Campbell on Follow your Bliss

If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be and where there wouldnt have been a door for anybody else.
- Joseph Campbell

Joseph Campbell on Follow your Bliss

If your bliss is just your fun and your excitement, youre on the wrong track. You need instruction. Know where your bliss is. And that involves coming down to a deep place in yourself. If you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time.
- Joseph Campbell

Joseph Campbell on Follow your Bliss

Now I came to this idea because in Sanskrit, there are 3 terms that represent the jumpingoff place to the ocean of trancendance: The word Sat means being or existance
The word Chit means consiousness The word Ananda means rapture or bliss I dont know if my consiousness or being is proper, so let me hang on to rapture, and that will bring me both my consiousness & my being.
- Joseph Campbell

Major Themes for Tonight: Sacrifice and Bliss

What is the significance of the sacred place? How does geography shape ones culture and religion? What is the purpose of sacrifice? What is the mythic idea of self-sacrifice? How does a person find his or her bliss?

Myths versus other Stories

Legends & Sagas Folktales

May have an historical basis - Legend of Atlantis Fictional with local emphasis - Rip van Winkle Fictional with moral emphasis -Tortoise & the Hare

Fables & Fairytales

What is a Myth? Definition

1.

2. 3. 4.

a traditional or legendary story, usually concerning some being or hero or event, with or without a determinable basis of fact or a natural explanation, esp. one that is concerned with deities or demigods and explains some practice, rite, or phenomenon of nature. any invented story, idea, or concept. an imaginary or fictitious thing or person. an unproved or false collective belief that is used to justify a social institution.

What is a Myth? Campbell

Stories of our search through the ages for truth, for meaning, for significance

What is a Myth? Campbell

Clues to the spiritual potentialities of the human life experience of lifes meaning

Why Myths?

Provides a worldview and a set of values

a way of understanding the world a way of relating
to to to to to

being alive nature animals others self

Why Myths?

Can convey important truths in a way that science or history fail to do

Types of Myths

Creation, Cosmgeny, Foundation Paradise Lost, Flood Virgin Births Hero Myths Love & Sacrifice Afterlife / Death & Resurection Dieties / Supernatural Entities good & evil End of the World

Quotes from Joseph Campbell

Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth--penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words. Beyond images. Mythology pitches the mind to what can be known but not told. Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth

The Language of Myths:

Metaphors Symbols Images Archetypes Rituals

The Language of Myths: Metaphors

Compares two dissimilar things - implied Unifies these two things Creates Image suggesting something else Connotes rather than denotes Expresses what otherwise is inexpressable

The best things cant be told; The second best are misunderstood
Heinrich Zimmer (1890-1943)

Joseph Campbell on Metaphors

Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies. Joseph Campbell, Thou Art That:

Transforming Religious Metaphor

The Language of Myths: Images

Sacred image - religious statue or painting From a dream or the imagination Considering the metaphor implied by image Pondering mythic stories

The Language of Myths: Symbols

Communication element intended to represent or stand for a person, object, 40 group, process, or idea 666

The Language of Myths: Archetypes

1.

2.

the original pattern or model from which all things of the same kind are copied or on which they are based; a model or first form; prototype. (in Jungian psychology) a collectively inherited unconscious idea, pattern of thought, image, etc., universally present in individual psyches.

The Language of Myths: Archetypes

The whole of mythology could be take as a sort of projection of the collective unconsciousness.
In the individual, archetypes appear as involuntary manifestations of unconcious processes. - Carl Jung

The Language of Myths: Archetypes

Herald - signal change & invite an answer to call Threshold Guardian - ensure readiness/worthiness Hero - not bravery or nobility, but self-sacrifice Mentor - helpers
wise old man: advice & info good mother: nurturing & intuition

Shadow - negative side: helps/opposes Shapeshifter - change character: dazzle, confuse Animals - positive/negative: owl, dragon Trickster - sidekick/troublemaker: catalysts, ego

The Enactment of Myths: Rituals

Ceremonial practices often accompany major myths and allow participants to enter into a personal experience of the story through

dramatic re-enactment

The Enactment of Myths: Rituals

The power of an alive ritual can be tremendous

Campbells Fundamental Assumptions about Myths

As a metaphor, all myths are true Myths remain meaningful throughout time & place Myths are relevant today and to us Myths spring from a common source All religions have a basis in myths
Texts underlying the worlds major religions are mythical stories rather than logical essays When the myths of religions are analyzed and interpreted logically and literally

only part of the whole truth is conveyed misunderstandings will most likely occur

Myths Relationship with Metaphors

It is not something said from the brain, rather experienced by the heart, from recognitions of identities behind or within the appearance of nature
The life of a mythology derives from the vitality of its symbols as metaphors delivering, not simply the idea, but a sense of actual participation of transcendence

Campbells Philosphy 1

All spirituality is a search for the same basic, unknown force from which everything came, currently exists, and into which will return. Ultimately unknowable Cannot be expressed in words - rituals & myths refer to the force using metaphors stories, deities, and objects of spirituality

Campbells Philosphy 2

World religions are culturally influenced masks of the same fundamental, transcendent truths All religions can bring one to an elevated awareness above and beyond a dualistic conception of reality, or pairs of opposites These basic, universal truths are expressed in different manifestations across different cultures
Bastian: Elementargedanken vs. Volkgedanken

Truth is one, the sages speak of it by many names

- Rig Vedic

Major Mythogical Periods

.

Campbell proposed a staged model of cultural development:

1 Shamanistic hunter-gatherers - start of symbolic thinking 2 Planters - rituals of birth, death, & rebirth 3 High civilizations - goddesses, heroes, & priestly orders 4 Current era - illumination comprehended as an internal state.

Campbells Four Functions of Myths

Mystical relating to the mystery of life Cosmological relating to the world around Socialogical relating to society and others Pedagogical relating individuals psychologically

Relating to the mystery of life

Myth awakens and supports a sense of awe before the mystery of being. It reconciles consciousness to the preconditions of its own existence. Myth induces a realization that behind the surface phenomenology of the world, there is a transcendent mystery source. Through this vitalizing mystical function, the universe becomes a holy picture. - Joseph Campbell

Mystical Function

Relating to the world around

This function shows the shape of the universe, but in such a way that the mystery still comes through. The cosmology should correspond to the actual experience, knowledge, and mentality of the culture. This interpretive function changes radically over time. It presents a map or picture of the order of the cosmos and our relationship to it. - Joseph Campbell

Cosmological Function

Relating to the society and others

Myth supports and validates the specific moral order of the society out of which it arose. Particular life-customs of this social dimension - ethical laws and social roles, evolve dramatically. This function, and the rites by which it is rendered, establishes in members of the group a system of sentiments that can be depended upon to link that person spontaneously to its ends. - Joseph Campbell

Socialogical Function

Relating to individuals psychologically

The myths show how to live a human
lifetime under any circumstances. It is this function that carries the individual through the various stages and crises of life, from childhood dependency, to the responsibilities of maturity, to the reflection of old age, and finally, to death. It helps people grasp the unfolding of life with integrity. It initiates individuals into the order of realities in their own psyches, guiding them toward enrichment & realization. - Joseph Campbell

Pedagogical Function

Heros Journey Myth

Separation

Call Refusal Departure Struggle Trials Transformation Master of two Worlds Communicate Boon

Initiation

Return to Origin

Modern Society needs Myths

Great civilizations have been built on mythologies Their loss of meaning leads to decline A society lacking an active mythology has
a sense of meaninglessness estrangement rootlessness cold life devoid of reverence and awe

What are the Modern Myths/ Personal Myths?

Myths are public dreams; dreams are private myths. By finding your own dream and following it through, it will lead you to the myth-world in which you life. But just as in dream, the subject and object, though they seem to be separate, are really the same. - Joseph Campbell

Joseph Campbell on Seeking a Meaning for Life

People say that what were all seeking is a meaning for life. I dont think thats what were really seeking. I think that what were seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive. We're so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it is all about. Joseph Campbell

Books Authored/edited by Joseph Campbell

More info? www.jcf.org

Further Programs About Joseph Campbell?

1: The Hero's Adventure 2: The Message of the Myth 3: The First Storytellers 4: Sacrifice and Bliss 5: Love and the Goddess 6: The Masks of Eternity

Questions?, Comments?

Ancient Myths Live in our Culture Today

Pandora's box, Oedipus complex, nymph, & olympian. Words derived from mythology include:
chronology (from Kronos) discipline (from Disciplina) discord (from Discordia) eros (from Eros) fate (from Fate) fauna (from Faunus) fidelity (from Fides) flora (from Flora) fortune (from Fortuna) fraud (from Fraus) Hades (from Hades) Hell (from Hel)

hygiene (from Hygieia) jovial (from Jove) liberty (from Libertas) lunar (from Luna) morphine (from Morpheus) mortality (from Mors) mute (from Muta) narcissism (from Narcissus) nemesis (from Nemesis) ocean (from Oceanus) planets, and some of the months

Campbells Four Function of Myths

to foster the centering and unfolding of the individual in integrity, in accord with himself, his culture, the universe, and that awesome ultimate mystery which is both beyond and within himself and all things. In the human heart and in the human mind--no matter what the race, the culture, the language, the tradition--there is at least the sense of a mystery, and an awesome and a very terrifying mystery inhabiting the whole universe: the very mystery of being itself. Myths are public dreams; dreams are private myths. By finding your own dream and following it through, it will lead you to the myth-world in which you life. But just as in dream, the subject and object, though they seem to be separate, are really the same. But according to the scientific view, nobody knows what is out there, or if there is any "out there" at all. There is just a display of things that our senses bring to us. What lies beyond is a mystery so great that it is going to be inexhaustible in its revelations, and Man has to be great enough to receive it.