The Power of Myth - Bill Moyers [120]
MOYERS: Well, it’s certainly true in life that the greatest hell one can know is to be separated from the one you love. That’s why I’ve liked the Persian myth. Satan is God’s lover—
CAMPBELL: —and he is separated from God, and that’s the real pain of Satan.
MOYERS: There’s another story from Persia about the first two parents.
CAMPBELL: That’s a great one, yes. They were really one in the beginning and grew as a kind of plant. But then they separated and became two, and begat children. And they loved the children so much that they ate them up. God thought, “Well, this can’t go on.” So he reduced parental love by something like ninety-nine and nine-tenths percent, so parents wouldn’t eat up their children.
MOYERS: What was that myth—
CAMPBELL: I’ve heard people say, “This is such a delicious little thing, I could eat it up.”
MOYERS: The power of love?
CAMPBELL: The power of love.
MOYERS: So intense it had to be reduced.
CAMPBELL: Yes. I saw a picture once of a mouth wide open swallowing more, and a heart was in it. That’s the kind of love that eats you up. That’s the kind of love that mothers have to learn to reduce.
MOYERS: Lord, teach me when to let go.
CAMPBELL: Yes. There were in India little rituals to help mothers let go, particularly of their sons. The guru, the chaplain of the family, would come and ask the mother to give him that which she most prized. And it might be some very valuable jewel or something. And then there were these exercises, where the mother would be learning to give up that which she most prized. And then, finally, she would have to give up her son.
MOYERS: So joy and pain are in love.
CAMPBELL: Yes. Love is the burning point of life, and since all life is sorrowful, so is love. The stronger the love, the more the pain.
MOYERS: But love bears all things.
CAMPBELL: Love itself is a pain, you might say—the pain of being truly alive.
VIII
MASKS
OF ETERNITY
The images of myth are reflections of the spiritual potentialities of every one of us. Through contemplating these, we evoke their powers in our own lives.
MOYERS: As you’ve moved among various world views, dipping in and out of cultures, civilizations, and religions, have you found something in common in every culture that creates the need for God?
CAMPBELL: Anyone who has had an experience of mystery knows that there is a dimension of the universe that is not that which is available to his senses. There is a pertinent saying in one of the Upanishads: “When before the beauty of a sunset or of a mountain you pause and exclaim, ‘Ah,’ you are participating in divinity.” Such a moment of participation involves a realization of the wonder and sheer beauty of existence. People living in the world of nature experience such moments every day. They live in the recognition of something there that is much greater than the human dimension. Man’s tendency, however, is to personify such experiences, to anthropomorphize natural forces.
Our way of thinking in the West sees God as the final source or cause of the energies and wonder of the universe. But in most Oriental thinking, and in primal thinking, also, the gods are rather manifestations and purveyors of an energy that is finally impersonal. They are not its source. The god is the vehicle of its energy. And the force or quality of the energy that is involved or represented determines the character and function of the god. There are gods of violence, there are gods of compassion, there are gods that unite the two worlds of the unseen and the seen, and there are gods that are simply the protectors of kings or nations in their war campaigns. These are all personifications of the energies in play. But the ultimate source of the energies remains a mystery.
MOYERS: Doesn’t this make fate a kind of anarchy, a continuing war among principalities?
CAMPBELL: Yes, as it is in life itself. Even in our minds—when it comes to making a decision, there will be a war. In acting in relationship to other people, for example, there may be four or five possibilities.