More from Joseph Campbell on the power of Myth , Metaphor , man's beliefs man's consciousness, individual and collective ...
(Or what I want to call today :"Illusion and Delusion , Epiphanys and Diatribes or what is known and unknown under the circle~circus of life's Big~Top" )
mustardseed.net
The Power of Myth, by Joseph Campell with Bill Moyers
A book review by Douglas Groothuis
from the Christian Research Journal, Fall, 1989, page 28. The Editor-in-Chief of the Christian Research Journal is Elliot Miller.
A Summary Critique
One of the surprise best sellers of the late 1980s has been The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell (1904-1987). The book takes the shape of a warm, wide-ranging, engaging dialogue with veteran journalist Bill Moyers and is richly illustrated with examples from world mythology and religion.
The Power of Myth is drawn from a series of interviews done in 1985 and 1986 and first shown on public television in 1988, about six months after Campbell's death. The work serves as a summation of Campbell's thought as a long-time literature professor at Sarah Lawrence College and a prolific writer on mythology and literature. The eight chapters range over such subjects as the role of mythology in the modern world, the journey inward, the hero's adventure, and tales of love and marriage.
Campbell's appeal lies in an encyclopedic grasp of world mythology and religion, winningly presented with a masterful storytelling ability. He was one who, in his own words, "followed his bliss" -- and his enthusiasm for the subject can be infectious.
THE POWER OF MYTH
For Campbell, the "power of myth" is the power of metaphor and poetry to capture the imaginations of individuals and societies. Myth supplies a sense of meaning and direction that transcends mundane existence while giving it significance. It has four functions (p. 31): The mystical function discloses the world of mystery and awe, making the universe "a holy picture." The cosmological function concerns science and the constitution of the universe. The sociological function "supports and validates a certain social order." Everyone must try to relate to the pedagogic function which tells us "how to live a human lifetime under any circumstances." America, Campbell believes, has lost its collective ethos and must return to a mythic understanding of life "to bring us into a level of consciousness that is spiritual" (p. 14).
Campbell defends the benefits of myths as literally false but metaphorically true for the broad range of human experience. But certain myths are (at least in part) to be rejected as "out of date," particularly the personal lawgiver God of Jews and Christians. Biblical cosmology, he thinks, does not "accord with our concept of either the universe or of the dignity of man. It belongs entirely somewhere else" (p. 31).
Campbell's own mythic commitment is to the "transtheological" notion of an "undefinable, inconceivable mystery, thought of as a power, that is the source and end and supporting ground of all life and being" (Ibid.). He rejects the term "pantheism" because it may retain a residue of the personal God of theism. Campbell repeatedly hammers home this notion of an inefq fable ground of reality: "God is beyond names and forms. Meister Eckhart said that the ultimate and highest leave-taking is leaving God for God, leaving your notion of God for an experience of that which transcends all notions" (p. 49).
Despite such an epistemological veto on our ability to conceive of anything transcendent, Campbell draws on Carl Jung's theory of a collective unconscious to help explain the common ideas ("archetypes") that recur in the mythologies of divergent cultures worldwide. "All over the world and at different times of human history, these archetypes, or elementary ideas, have appeared in different costumes. The differences in the costumes are the results of environment and historical conditions" (pp. 51-52).
But not all archetypes are created equal. Campbell singles out the notion of sin as especially pernicious because it stifles human potential. If you confess your sins you make yourself a sinner; if you confess your greatness you make yourself great. The "idea of sin puts you in a servile position throughout your life" (p. 56). He later redefines sin as a lack of knowledge, not as an ethical transgression: "Sin is simply a limiting factor that limits your consciousness and fixes it in an inappropriate condition" (p. 57).
It seems, to steal a phrase from Swami Vivekananda, that the only sin is to call someone a sinner. Campbell believes our challenge is to say, "I know the center, and I know that good and evil are simply temporal aberrations and that, in God's view, there is no difference" (p. 66). In fact, "in God's view," you are "God, not in your ego, but in your deepest being, where you are at one with the nondual transcendent" (p. 211).
The thematic richness of this work could occupy several reviews. This review will consider some of the philosophical, religious, and societal issues it raises.
TRANSCENDENTAL MYSTERY
A salient feature of Campbell's world view is a pronounced inconsistency, which -- unless flushed out -- may remain under the wraps of his winsomeness.
According to Campbell, myth opens us to the realm of transcendental mystery where awe and inspiration energize and permeate our beings. But given Campbell's epistemological veto of any knowledge of the transcendent, we can say nothing concrete of it. It is beyond concepts, names, and thought. It is metaphysically mute. Campbell wants to vindicate myths by saying they are not to be taken concretely, but metaphorically. Yet even metaphors are incorrigibly conceptual; poetry says something. Propositions are pesky things. They are difficult to fumigate. The Hindu myth of a blood-soaked, skull-adorned Mother Kali destroying the world carries the nonmetaphorical meaning that God is as much Destroyer as Creator. That's the theology of it, even when taken as myth and not history.
Campbell himself enthusiastically disregards his epistemological veto by issuing many conceptual statements about that which (supposedly) transcends concepts entirely. He affirms that the ground of all forms is impersonal, not personal. This assumes definite knowledge of the ontology (i.e., mode of being) of divinity. He sees this impersonal source of all being as beyond ethical categories, so we must say Yes to all of life, no matter how degraded. Yet this too assumes definite knowledge of the character of the transcendent as amoral, not moral. The transcendent is also "nondual" as opposed to dual or triune. All myths, he affirms, point to an invisible world beyond the world of visible form. Further, "we are all manifestations of Buddha consciousness, or Christ consciousness, only we don't know it" (p. 57). (We are, then, not conscious of our divine consciousness.) Again, specific propositions are affirmed, and in quite nonmetaphorical language. Campbell's "transcendental silence" has a habit of speaking out. The explicit epistemological veto is overridden by an implicit theology that welcomes pantheism and filters out theism. Despite his statement that "the person who thinks he has found the ultimate truth is wrong" (p. 55), Campbell repeatedly and dogmatically asserts the ultimate truth of an impersonal and amoral divinity.
Campbell also rejects the idea of God as "Absolutely Other" because, he says, we can have no relationship with that in which we do not participate. Yet, how we -- as personal and morally responsible beings -- can conceptualize or experience a religious relationship with an impersonal and amoral ground of the universe is less than clear.
cont'd.... |
