The Power of Myth - Bill Moyers [45]
MOYERS: And these myths tell me how others have made the passage, and how I can make the passage?
CAMPBELL: Yes, and also what are the beauties of the way. I feel this now, moving into my own last years, you know—the myths help me to go with it.
MOYERS: What kind of myths? Give me one that has actually helped you.
CAMPBELL: The tradition in India, for instance, of actually changing your whole way of dress, even changing your name, as you pass from one stage to another. When I retired from teaching, I knew that I had to create a new way of life, and I changed my manner of thinking about my life, just in terms of that notion—moving out of the sphere of achievement into the sphere of enjoyment and appreciation and relaxing to the wonder of it all.
MOYERS: And then there is that final passage through the dark gate?
CAMPBELL: Well, that is no problem at all. The problem in middle life, when the body has reached its climax of power and begins to decline, is to identify yourself not with the body, which is falling away, but with the consciousness of which it is a vehicle. This is something I learned from myths. What am I? Am I the bulb that carries the light, or am I the light of which the bulb is a vehicle?
One of the psychological problems in growing old is the fear of death. People resist the door of death. But this body is a vehicle of consciousness, and if you can identify with the consciousness, you can watch this body go like an old car. There goes the fender, there goes the tire, one thing after another—but it’s predictable. And then, gradually, the whole thing drops off, and consciousness rejoins consciousness. It is no longer in this particular environment.
MOYERS: So these myths have something to say about growing old. I asked that because so many of the myths are of these beautiful youth.
CAMPBELL: The Greek myths are. When we think about mythology, we usually think either of the Greek mythology or of the biblical mythology. There is a kind of humanization of the myth material in both of these cultures. There is a very strong accent on the human, and in the Greek myths, especially, on the humanity and glory of the beautiful youth.
But they appreciate age as well. You have the wise old man and the sage as respected characters in the Greek world.
MOYERS: And the other cultures?
CAMPBELL: They don’t stress the beauty of youth to that extent.
MOYERS: You say that the image of death is the beginning of mythology. What do you mean?
CAMPBELL: The earliest evidence of anything like mythological thinking is associated with graves.
MOYERS: And they suggest that men and women saw life, and then they didn’t see it, so they wondered about it?
CAMPBELL: It must have been something like that. You only have to imagine what your own experience would be. The grave burials with their weapons and sacrifices to ensure a continued life—these certainly suggest that there was a person who was alive and warm before you who is now lying there, cold, and beginning to rot. Something was there that isn’t there. Where is it now?
MOYERS: When do you think humans first discovered death?
CAMPBELL: They first discovered death when they were first humans, because they died. Now, animals have the experience of watching their companions dying. But, as far as we know, they have no further thoughts about it. And there is no evidence that humans thought about death in a significant way until the Neanderthal period, when weapons and animal sacrifices occur with burials.
MOYERS: What did these sacrifices represent?
CAMPBELL: That I wouldn’t know.
MOYERS: Only a guess.
CAMPBELL: I try not to guess. You know, we have a tremendous amount of information about this subject, but there is a place where the information stops. And until you have writing, you don’t know what people were thinking. All you have are significant remains of one kind or another. You can extrapolate backward, but that is dangerous. However, we do know that burials always involve the idea of the continued life beyond the visible