The Power of Myth - Bill Moyers [104]
The next, or fourth, center is at the level of the heart; and this is of the opening to compassion. Here you move out of the field of animal action into a field that is properly human and spiritual.
And for each of these four centers there is envisioned a symbolic form. At the base, for example, the first one, the symbol is the lingam and yoni, the male and female organs in conjunction. And at the heart center, there is again the lingam and yoni, that is to say, male and female organs in conjunction, but here they are represented in gold as symbolic of the virgin birth, that is to say, it is the birth of spiritual man out of the animal man.
MOYERS: And it happens—
CAMPBELL: It happens when you awaken at the level of the heart to compassion, com-passion, shared suffering: experienced participation in the suffering of another person. That’s the beginning of humanity. And the meditations of religion properly are on that level, the heart level.
MOYERS: You say that’s the beginning of humanity. But in these stories, that’s the moment when gods are born. The virgin birth—it’s a god who emerges.
CAMPBELL: And do you know who that god is? It’s you. All of these symbols in mythology refer to you. You can get stuck out there, and think it’s all out there. So you’re thinking about Jesus with all the sentiments relevant to how he suffered—out there. But that suffering is what ought to be going on in you. Have you been spiritually reborn? Have you died to your animal nature and come to life as a human incarnation of compassion?
MOYERS: Why is it significant that this is of a virgin?
CAMPBELL: The begetter is of the spirit. This is a spiritual birth. The virgin conceived of the word through the ear.
MOYERS: The word came like a shaft of light.
CAMPBELL: Yes. And the Buddha, with the same meaning, is said to have been born from his mother’s side from the level of the heart chakra.
MOYERS: Heart Chakra meaning …?
CAMPBELL: Oh, the heart chakra is the symbolic center associated with the heart. The chakra means “circle” or “sphere.”
MOYERS: So the Buddha comes out—
CAMPBELL: —the Buddha is born from his mother’s side. That’s a symbolic birth. He wasn’t physically born from his mother’s side, but symbolically.
MOYERS: But the Christ came the way you and I did.
CAMPBELL: Yes, but of a virgin. And then, according to Roman Catholic doctrine, her virginity was restored. So nothing happened physically, you might say. What is symbolically referred to is not Jesus’ physical birth but his spiritual significance. That’s what the virgin birth represents. Heroes and demigods are born that way as beings motivated by compassion and not mastery, sexuality, or self-preservation.
This is the sense of the second birth, when you begin to live out of the heart center. The lower three centers are not to be refuted but transcended, when they become subject to and servant to the heart.
MOYERS: If we go back into antiquity, do we find images of the Madonna as the mother of the savior child?
CAMPBELL: The antique model for the Madonna, actually, is Isis with Horus at her breast.
MOYERS: Isis?
CAMPBELL: It’s a complicated story. Indeed all of these get to be pretty complicated. But Isis and her husband Osiris were twins, born of the Goddess Nut. And their younger relatives were Seth and Nephthys, who were also twins born from Nut. One night, Osiris slept with Nephthys, thinking she was Isis—a kind of inattention to details, you might say. From that night’s event, Anubis was born, Osiris’ oldest son, but by the wrong wife. Seth, her husband, took this badly and planned to kill his older brother, Osiris. Secretly he took