The Power of Myth - Bill Moyers [98]
CAMPBELL: The illumination is the recognition of the radiance of one eternity through all things, whether in the vision of time these things are judged as good or as evil. To come to this, you must release yourself completely from desiring the goods of this world and fearing their loss. “Judge not that you be not judged,” we read in the words of Jesus. “If the doors of perception were cleansed,” wrote Blake, “man would see everything as it is, infinite.”
MOYERS: That’s a tough trip.
CAMPBELL: That’s a heavenly trip.
MOYERS: But is this really just for saints and monks?
CAMPBELL: No, I think it’s also for artists. The real artist is the one who has learned to recognize and to render what Joyce has called the “radiance” of all things, as an epiphany or showing forth of their truth.
MOYERS: But doesn’t this leave all the rest of us ordinary mortals back on shore?
CAMPBELL: I don’t think there is any such thing as an ordinary mortal. Everybody has his own possibility of rapture in the experience of life. All he has to do is recognize it and then cultivate it and get going with it. I always feel uncomfortable when people speak about ordinary mortals because I’ve never met an ordinary man, woman, or child.
MOYERS: But is art the only way one can achieve this illumination?
CAMPBELL: Art and religion are the two recommended ways. I don’t think you get it through sheer academic philosophy, which gets all tangled up in concepts. But just living with one’s heart open to others in compassion is a way wide open to all.
MOYERS: So the experience of illumination is available to anyone, not just saints or artists. But if it is potentially in every one of us, deep in that unlocked memory box, how do you unlock it?
CAMPBELL: You unlock it by getting somebody to help you unlock it. Do you have a dear friend or good teacher? It may come from an actual human being, or from an experience like an automobile accident, or from an illuminating book. In my own life, mostly it comes from books, though I have had a long series of magnificent teachers.
MOYERS: When I read your work, I think, “Moyers, what mythology has done for you is to place you on a branch of a very ancient tree. You’re part of a society of the living and dead that came long before you were here and will be here long after you are gone. It nourished you and protected you, and you have to nourish it and protect it in return.”
CAMPBELL: Well, it’s been a wonderful support for life, I can tell you. It’s been tremendous what this kind of resource pouring into my life has done.
MOYERS: But people ask, isn’t a myth a lie?
CAMPBELL: No, 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, beyond that bounding rim of the Buddhist Wheel of Becoming. Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told. So this is the penultimate truth.
It’s important to live life with the experience, and therefore the knowledge, of its mystery and of your own mystery. This gives life a new radiance, a new harmony, a new splendor. Thinking in mythological terms helps to put you in accord with the inevitables of this vale of tears. You learn to recognize the positive values in what appear to be the negative moments and aspects of your life. The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure.
MOYERS: The adventure of the hero?
CAMPBELL: Yes, the adventure of the hero—the adventure of being alive.
VI
THE GIFT OF
THE GODDESS
Myths of the Great Goddess teach compassion for all living beings. There you come to appreciate the real sanctity of the earth itself, because it is the body of the Goddess.
MOYERS: The Lord’s Prayer begins, “Our Father which art in Heaven …” Could it have begun “Our Mother”?
CAMPBELL: This is a symbolic image. All of the references of religious and mythological images are to planes of consciousness, or