#456: The Power of Myth — The Hero’s Adventure with Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers

Optimal minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question? No, it is. A cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal and the scale. No Hello, boys and girls, ladies and gyms, leemers and squirrels, this is Tim Ferris and welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris Show, where it is normally my job to interview and deconstruct world class performers of all different types.

This episode flips the script, but you get an absolutely masterful interview in the process. So I'm cheating, I suppose. It features the first program or chapter titled The Heroes Adventure of the six part series called The power which I recently digested. I'm gonna be listening to it again in full. The series is just incredible. I found it oddly and profoundly calming and I really wanted to share

the first program. with you. So I reached out to many different people and had to figure out rights and get it all sorted out and blah blah blah blah blah. End of the day was able to get this for you. Here's the short description and why I'm so excited about it. Forty years ago. Renowned scholar Joseph Campbell.

You might know that name because George Lucas consulted with Joseph Campbell on writing the original Star Wars. sat down with veteran journalist Bill Moyers for a series of interviews that became one of the most enduringly popular programs ever on PBS. In dialogues that adroitly span millennia of history and far flung geography, the two men discuss myths as metaphors for human experience and the path to transcendence. You can listen to the full series on Audible. Simply search for the Power of Myth and it will pop right up. It has an average of 4.7 stars out of five with nearly 4,000 ratings. It's outstanding. I highly recommend you check it out. You will not be disappointed. And in the meantime

Here's a taste test. Please enjoy the first program, The Heroes Adventure. And without further ado, here are Joseph Campbell and Bill. Wayers.

Program one The hero's adventure. Not even to risk the adventure alone. For the heroes of all time have gone before us.

The labyrinth is thoroughly known. We have only to follow the thread of the hero path. We had thought to find an abomination. We shall find a god. Where we had thought to slay another?

We shall slay ourselves. Where we had thought to travel outward. We should come to the standard of our own existence. Where we are thought to be alone. We shall be with all the world.

Joseph Campbell and the power of myth. With Bill Moyers. The hero's adventure. Joseph Campbell believed that everything begins with a story. So we begin this series with Joseph Campbell with one of his favorite.

He was in Japan for a conference on religion, and he overheard another American delegate, a social philosopher from New York, say to a Shinto priest, We've been now to a good many ceremonies and have seen quite a few of your shrines, but I don't get your ideology. I don't get your theology. The Japanese paused as though in deep thought and then slow his head. I think we don't have ideology, he said. We don't have theology.

We dance. Campbell could have said it of his own life. When he died in 1987 at the age of 83, he was considered one of the world's foremost authorities on mythology, the stories and legends told by human beings through the ages to explain the universe and their place in it. The 20 books he wrote or edited have influenced artists and performers, as well as scholars and students. When he died, he was working on a monumental historical atlas of world mythology, his effort to bring under one roof the spiritual and intellectual wisdom of a lifetime. Some of his books are classics.

The hero with a thousand faces, which established his fame 40 years ago, and his four-volume study of mythology, The Masks of God. Joseph Campbell was one of the most spiritual men I ever met, but he didn't have an ideology or a theology. Mythology was to him the song of the universe. Music so deeply embedded in our collective unconscious that we dance to it even when we can't name the tune. Over the last two summers of his life, we taped these conversations in California at Skywalker Ranch, the home of his friend George Lucas, whose movie trilogy Star Wars had been influenced by Campbell's work. We talked about the message and meaning of myth.

about the first storytellers, about love and marriage, gods and goddesses, religion, ritual, art, psychology. But we always came around to his favorite subject, the hero. With a thousand faces. Why the hero With a thousand faces. Well, because there is a certain

Typical. Hero. Sequence of actions Um which can be detected in stories from all over the world and from many, many

periods of history. And uh I think it's uh essentially you might say the one deed. Done by many, many Different. People.

Why are there so many stories of The hero or of heroes. in mythology. Well, because that's what's worth w writing about. I mean even in in uh

popular novel writing, you see these The main character is a hero or a heroine, that is to say Someone who has found or achieved or done something beyond the normal range of uh achievement and experience. A hero property is someone who has given his life to something bigger than himself.

Or other than himself. Cultures. Whatever the costume the hero might be wearing. Вот із дід.

Well there are two Types of deed. One is the physical deed. the hero who has performed uh A war act or a physical act of heroism saving a life. That's a hero act. Giving himself, sacrificing himself to another.

And the other kind is the uh the spiritual hero who has uh Learned or found. a uh a mode of um experiencing the uh super normal range of human uh spiritual life. And then come back and communicated it.

It's a cycle. It's a going and a return. that the hero cycle represents. But then this can be seen also in the simple initiation ritual. Where a child has to give up his childhood and become an adult.

has to die, you might say, to its infantiles. personality and psyche. And come back as a self responsible adult. It's a fundamental experience that everyone has to undergo.

We're in our childhood for at least fourteen years. And then to get out of that posture of dependency, psychological dependency into one of psychological self responsibility requires a death and resurrection. And that is the basic motif of the hero journey. Leaving one condition

Finding the source of life to bring you forth. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Richer or more mature or other conditions. So that if

We happen not to be heroes in the grand sense of redeeming society. We have to take that journey ourselves spiritually, psychologically. Yeah. Inside us.

And uh Otto Rank in his wonderful sh very short book. Uh called The Myth of the Birth of the Hero. He says that everyone is uh a hero in his birth. He has undergone a tremendous transformation from a little uh you might say water creature living in a realm of the amniotic fluid and so forth, then coming out becoming an air breathing

Mammal. that ultimately will be selfstanding and so forth. This is an enormous transformation and it is a heroic act. It's a heroic act on the mother's part to bring it about. That's the primary hero. Still a journey to be taken after that. There's a big one to be taken. And that journey is not consciously undertaken, uh Do heroes go out on their own initiative. a very common one that appears in Celtic myths of someone who has followed the lure of a deer or animal that uh he has been following and then carries him into a range of forests

And landscape that he's never been in before. And then the the animal will undergo a transformation and become the queen of the fairy hills or something like that. That is one of not knowing what you're doing. You suddenly find yourself In full career of an adventure. There's another one where one sets out responsibly and uh intentionally to perform the deed. Форст when Ulysses son Telemachus was called by Athene, go find your father.

That Father Quest is a major hero. uh adventure for young people. That is uh the adventure of finding what your career is, what your nature is, what your s source is. Um he undertakes that intentionally. Then there's one into which you are thrown and pitched.

For instance, being drafted into the army. You didn't intend it, but you're in. You're in another transformation. You've undergone a death and resurrection. You put on a uniform.

So does the heroism have a moral objective? The moral objective is that of saving a people or saving a person or saving an idea. He is sacrificing himself for something. That's the morality of it. Now you from another position might say that something was something that should not have been realized, you know.

That's judgment from another side. But it doesn't destroy the heroism of what was done. Absolutely not. Well that's a different uh Angle on heroes than I got when I was reading as a as a young boy the story of Prometheus. Going after the fire and bringing it back and benefiting humanity and suffering.

Yeah. For it. I mean Prometheus brings fire to mankind and consequently civilization. That's by the way a a universal thing. What is it? The the fire fire theft.

theme with a usually with a relay race after it. Often it's uh Blue jay or uh woodpecker or something like this that uh steals the fire and then passes it on to something else and something else, one animal after another. And they're burned by the fires as they're carrying it on. That accounts for the different colorings of animals and so forth. Um it's a it's a uh A worldwide myth. Do these stories of the hero

Uh vary from culture to culture. Well, it's the degree of the illumination that uh or action that uh makes him different. There is a typical early culture hero who goes around slaying monsters. Now that is uh in the period of history when man is shaping his world out of a wild savage Unshaped world. Well it has another shape, but it's not the shape for man. He goes around killing monsters.

So the hero evolves over time like most other concepts and ideas and Well, he he evolves as the culture evolves. Uh Now uh Moses is is a is a hero figure. In his uh ascent of the mountain is

Meeting with Yahweh. on the summit of the mountain and coming back with the rules for the formation of a whole new society. That's the hero act. Departure. Fulfillment.

Return. And uh on the way there are adventures that uh can be paralleled also in other traditions. Now. The Buddha figure it's like that of the Christ. Course, 500 years earlier, you could match those two traditions right down the line, even to the characters of their apostles or their monks.

Price uh now there's a a perfectly Good hero deed formula represented there. And he undergoes three temptations. The economic temptation where the devil says you look hungry, young man, change the stones to bread. Jesus said, Man lives not by bread alone, but every word.

From the mouth of God. Next we have the He's taken to the top of a mountain. And shown the nations of the world and says you can come into control of all these if you'll bow to me.

And then you're so spiritual. Let's go up to the top of Herod's temple and see you cast yourself down and the God will bear you up and you won't even bruise your heels. So he says you shall not tempt the Lord, your God. Uh those are the three temptations of Of Christ. Uh

In the desert. Mm. The Buddha also. goes into the forest. has conferences with the leading gurus of the day.

Goes past them. Bow tree, the tree of illumination. undergoes three temptations. They're not the same temptations, but they are three temptations. And one is that of Lust.

Another is that of fear. And another is that of social duty, doing what you're told. And then both of these men come back. And Okay.

Choose disciples. Who helped them. Establish. A new way. of consciousness in terms of what they have discovered there.

The these are the same. hero deeds. These are the spiritual hero deeds. Moses. But that?

Christ. Muhammad Muhammad literally and we know this about him. He was a camel caravan master, but he would leave his uh home and go out into a little mountain c cave that he found and meditate and meditate and meditate and meditate. And one day a voice says

Right. And We have the Quran, you know? It's an old story. Sometimes it seems to me that

That we ought to feel pity. For the hero instead of admiration. So many of them have sacrificed their own needs. They are. What they accomplish is

Shattered by the Inability of the followers to see. Yeah. You come out of the forest with gold and it turns to ashes. That's another motif that occurs. In this

Culture of easy religion chiply Achieved it seems to me we've forgotten that all three of the great Religions. Teach that the trials of

The hero journey. or a significant part of it that there's no reward without Renunciation and without a price. The Quran speaks. Do you think that you shall enter the garden of bliss without such trials as come to those who passed before you're not going to be able to do it? Um Primary th

primarily thinking about your self and your own self protection, losing yourself, giving yourself to Another. That's That's w a a trial in itself, is it not? There's a big transformation of consciousness that's concerned. And what all the myths have to deal with is Transformation of consciousness.

But uh you're thinking in this way. And you have now to think in the That way. Well how is the consciousness Transformed.

By the trials. The test that the hero echoes. Or certain illuminating revelations. Trials and revelations are what it's all about. Well who in society today is making any heroic myth at all for us. Do movies do this? The movies create humanism.

Uh now my experience of movies, I mean the significant experience I had of movies was when I was a boy and they were all Really movies. There weren't talkies, there were black and white movies. And uh I had a a hero figure. who uh meant something to me and he served as a kind of model for myself. in my uh in my physical character and that was Douglas Fairbanks. I wanted to be a synthesis of Douglas Fairbanks and Leonardo Da Vinci. That was my idea. But those were models, were roles.

That came to me. Does a movie like Star Wars fill some of that need for the spiritual adventure for the hero? Oh, it's perfect. It does the the cycle perfectly. It's not simple morality. Way.

It has to do with the powers of life and their inflection through the action of man. One of the wonderful things I think about uh this uh adventure into space. is that the narrator, the uh artist, the one thinking up the story.

is in a field. That is not covered by our own knowledges. You know. There was much of the adventure in the old stories is where they go into regions that no one's been in before. Well, we've now conquered the planet, so there are no empty spaces for the imagination to go forth and fight its own.

uh war. You know, with The powers. And uh that was the first thing I I felt, uh there's a a whole new realm for the imagination to open out and live its forms. Do you when you look at something like Star Wars recognize some of the Themes of the hero throughout.

Mythology? Well, I think that George uh Lucas was using standard mythological figures. Mm. The old man as the advisor. Well specifically what he made me think of

is the uh Japanese swordmaster. Remember, a Jedi can feel the force flowing through him. I've known some of those people and um this man has a bit their their character. Well there's something mythological too, isn't there, in the sense that the hero is helped by this stranger who shows up and gives him some instrument, a sword or a sheaf of life. He gives him not only a a physical instrument, but a psychological commitment and a psychological center. L'inscious self.

An act on instinct. Well he had him exercising with that strange weapon and then pulled the c mask over. That's real Japanese stuff. Myself. When I took our two sons to see it

They did the same thing the audience did at that moment when The voice of Ben Kenobi. Says to Luke Skywalker in the climactic moment. Use the force, Luke. Let go,

The audience. Broke out into elation into a play. It is in a language that is talking to young people today. And that's that's marvelous. So the hero goes for something, he doesn't just go along for the ride, he's not A mere adventurer.

Well a serendipitous adventure can take place also. Um You know w what the word serendipity comes from? Comes from the Sanskrit. Sarendripa. The aisle.

of silk which was a fur former the formerly the name of Cylon. And it's a story about a family that's just rambling on its way to Ceylon and all these adventures take place. Uh so you can have the serendipitous adventure as well. is the adventurer who takes that kind of uh trip. A hero in the mythological. He is ready for it. This is a a uh very interesting thing about these uh mythological themes.

the the achievement of the hero is one that he is ready for and it's really a manifestation of his character. And it's amusing the way in which the landscape and the conditions of the environment match the readiness of the hero. The adventure that he's ready for is the one that he gets. Look, I ain't in this for your revolution, man. I'm not in it for you, princess. I expect to be well paid. I'm in. The mercenary, solo.

begins as uh As a mercenary. And ends up as a hero. He was a a very practical guy. A uh uh materialist in his character, at least as he thought of himself.

But he was a a compassionate human being at the same time and didn't know it. The adventure evoked a quality of his character. That uh he hadn't known He possessed.

I love you. Yeah. He thinks he's an egoist, he really isn't. And uh That's a very lovable kind of human being, I think, and there are lots of them functioning beautifully in the world.

They think they're working for themselves, very practical and all, but no, there's something else pushing them. What did you think about the scene in the bar? That's my favorite, not only in this piece, but of many, many pieces I've ever seen. Well

Where you are is on the the edge. You're about to embark into the outlying spaces. And uh real adventure of it. And there is where you meet people who've been out there and they run the machines that go out there and you haven't been there. Reminds me a little bit

In um Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. the atmosphere before you start off the adventure. You're in the sea port and there's s old salt seamen who've been on the sea and they that's their world and th these are the space people also. Bad feeling about this. Yeah.

I don't know. The wall! Don't just stand there and try and brace it with something! But my favorite scene was when they were in the Garbage compactor. And the walls were closing in and I thought that's like the belly of the whale that Joey. What's the mythological significance of the belly? It's the The sent into the dark.

Jonah and the whale. I mean that's that's a standard motif of going into the whale's belly and coming out again. Why must the hero do that? The whale represents The uh personification, you might say, of all that is in the unconscious.

Water is the unconscious. The creature in The water. would be the dynamism of the unconscious.

Which is is dangerous and powerful. And has to be uh controlled by consciousness. The first stage in the uh hero adventure, when he starts off on adventure is leaving the realm of light, which he controls and knows about. And moving toward the uh the threshold. And it's at the threshold that the monster of the wis

And then there are two or three results. One The hero is cut to pieces and descends into the abys. In fragments to be resurrected.

Or He may kill the Dragon power. As Siegfried does when he kills the dragon. But then he takes the dragon blood. That's say he has to assimilate.

That power. And when? Siegfried has killed the dragon and tasted the blood. He has the song of nature. He has transcended his humanity.

You know, and uh re uh uh associated himself with the powers of Nature. Which are the powers of our of our life, from which our mind removes us. You see, this thing up here, this consciousness thinks it's running the shop, it's a secondary organ.

It's a secondary organ of a of a total human being. And it must not put itself In Control.

It must submit and serve the humanity of the body. Join me, and I will complete your training. When it does put itself in control, you get this father, the man who's gone over. to the intellectual side. I'll never join you! If you only knew the power of the dark side.

He isn't thinking in uh living in terms of uh humanity, he's living in terms of a system. And this is the threat to our lives. We all face it. We all operate. In our society. In relation to a system.

Now is the system gonna eat up? And r uh relieve you of your humanity? Or Are you going to be able to use The system to human purposes. Would the hero with a thousand faces help us to answer that question?

About how to change the system so that we I don't think it would help you to change the system. But it would help you to live in the system as a human being. By doing what?

Well, like Luke Skywalker. Not going over, but Resisting it's it's uh Impersonal claims. But I can hear someone out there in the audience saying, Well, that's all well and good for the imagination of a George Lucas or for the scholarship of a Joseph Campbell, but that doesn't isn't what happens in my life. You bet it does. If the person doesn't listen to the demands of his own spiritual and and heart life and uh insists on a certain program, you're gonna have a schizophrenic crack up.

The person has put himself off center. He has aligned himself with a programmatic life. And it's not the one the body's uh interested in Oh. What the world's full of.

People who have uh who have stopped listening to themselves. In my own life, I've had many opportunities to commit myself to a system. And to go with it.

And to obey its uh Requirements. My life has been that of a Maverick. Uh I I would not submit.

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You really believe that the creative spirit ranges on its own out there beyond the boundaries. Yeah, I do. something of the hero in it. I don't mean to suggest that you see yourself as a hero. So perhaps the hero lurks in each one of us when we don't know it. Well, yes, I mean our life evokes our character and you find out more about yourself as you go on.

And it's very nice to be able to put yourself in situations that will evoke your higher nature rather than your lower. Give me an example. Don't give you a story. I'm dealing with an a uh Iroquois story right now. There's a motif that comes in American Indian uh stories very often.

What I call the refusal of suitors. A girl with her mother lived in a Way woman. On the edge of the village. She was a very handsome girl, but extremely proud.

and uh would not accept any of the boys. They uh proposed to her through the mother. And the mother was terribly annoyed with it. Well one day they're out collecting wood and they have gone a long way from the village.

And while they are collecting the wood, a terrific Darkness comes over them. No, this wasn't the darkness of night descending. When you have a darkness like that, there's some magician at work somewhere. Yeah.

So uh the mother says, uh well, let's uh gather some bark and make a little wig bomb, a bark wig bomb for ourselves. And uh collect wood for a fire and we'd uh spend the night here. So They do that. And the mother falls asleep.

And the girl looks and there's this magnificent guy standing there with a wampum sash, glorious and feathers and all this kind of black feathers. He says, I've come to marry you and I'll await your reply. She accepts the guy and the mother accepts the man. And he gives the mother the wampum belt too. proof that uh he's serious about all this. So

He goes away with the girl. She has Acquiesce. Mere human beings weren't good enough for her, but here's something that really Uh.

So she's in another domain. Now the adventure is marvelous. She goes uh with him to his village. And they enter a His uh lodge.

The people in there greet her and she feels very comfortable about it and all And then the next day he says, I'm going off to hunt. So

And the door is closed with a flap. There's a flap. When he closes the flap, she hears a strange sound. So the there's the whole day and she's just in the H And as evening comes, she hears that strange sound again. And the door flap is flung off.

And in comes this prodigious serpent with his tongue darting, and he puts his head in her lap. and says, Now you must search my head for lice and things like that. And she finds all kinds of horrible things there and kills them all. And then he withdraws. And in a moment. After the gate door has been closed, it opens again and then he comes

Just the same beautiful young man again and said uh Were you afraid of me when I They came in just now. No, she said she wasn't at all afraid. Next day he goes off to hunt.

And then she leaves the lodge To gather wood. And the first thing she sees is an enormous serpent basking on the rocks. And then another. And then another.

Then she begins to feel very badly, very h home sick and Scourge. Then the evening the serpent and then the man again. The third day. When he leaves.

She decides she's gonna try to get out of this place. So she goes out and she's standing in the woods thinking and a voice speaks to her and she turns and there's a l little old man there. And he says, darling, you are in trouble. The man that you've married is one of seven brothers.

They are great magicians. And uh like many people of this kind, their hearts are not in their bodies. There's like Collection of seven hearts in a bag. That is hidden under the bed.

of the eldest to whom you are married. Must go get that. And then we'll deal with the next part of the adventure. She goes in and finds a bag of hearts and is running out and a voice calls after her Stop Stop It's the voice of the petition And she continues to run. He says, You may think you can get away from me, but you never can. And just at that point she hears the the voice of the old man.

He says, I'll help you dear. And he's pulling her out of the water. She didn't even know that she was in water. Yeah. What does that say to you?

That's to say you have moved out of the hard land. the solid earth and uh in the field of the unconscious. And she had Uh transcendent realm and got it.

caught in the negative powers of the abyss. And she's being rescued now by the Upper powers. What you have done has been to elevate yourself out of the local field and put yourself in a field of Higher power.

Higher danger. And uh Are you going to be able to handle it? If you are not eligible for this place into which you put yourself, it's gonna be A demon.

Marriage. gonna be a real mess. Uh if you are oh. It can be a glory that will uh give you a life that is is yours in your own way. So these stories of mythology.

are simply trying to express A truth that can't be It's the edge, the interface between what can be known and what is never to be discovered because it is a mystery transcendent of all human research. The source of life.

What? What is it? No one knows. Why are stories important for getting at that? Well, I think it's it's important to live life with a knowledge of

It's mystery, and of your own mystery. And it gives life a a new zest a new balance a new harmony to do this mean therapy and psychological therapy when people find out what it is that's ticking in them, they get straightened out. And uh what is it that life is?

I find thinking in mythological terms uh has helped people And visibly you can see it happen. How? What does it do? It it uh erases anxieties. Yeah.

puts them in accord with The inevitables of their life. Uh and and they can see The uh the positive Values of what?

Uh The negative aspects of what is positive. It's uh It's it's whether you're going to say no to the serpent or yes to the serpent. As easy as that. No to the adventure.

Yeah. The adventure of being alive, of living. Well when I was growing up, Tales of King Arthur Tales of the medieval knights.

Tales of the Dragon Slayer. Strong. In my world. Dragons represent greed, really. The European Dragon.

Guards things in his cave. And what he got are heaps. and virgins. And he can't Make use of either of them.

But he just Cive. There's no Vitality of experience either of the value of the gold. or of the female whom he's guarding there.

Cyclogic. The dragon is one's own binding of oneself to one's ego. And you're captured in your own dragon cage. And uh the power of the psychiatrist is to Break that drag and open him up.

So that you can Field of uh relationships. Jung had a patient come to him.

Who felt Alone And she drew a picture of herself. As uh caught in the rocks. From the waist down she was bound in rocks.

And this was on a windy shore, and the wind blowing and her hair blowing, and all the gold. Which is the sign of the vitality of life was locked. In the rocks. And the next picture that he had her draw had followed something he had said to her.

Suddenly. a a lightning flash. Hit the rocks. And the gold came pouring out. And then she found reflected on rocks roundabout.

The gold. There was no more gold in the rocks. It was all available on the top. And then they're Conferences that followed. Those Patches of gold.

We're Identified. They were her friends. She wasn't alone. But she had locked herself in her own little room and life.

But she had friends. Do you see what I mean? This is killing the dragon. And uh You have fears.

and things. Uh this is the dragon. That's exactly what that's all about. At least The European dragon. Chinese dragon is different. What is it? It represents the vitality of the swamps and the dragon comes out beating his

Belly is saying ha ha ha ha ha You know that's another kind of dragon and uh he's the one that yields the bounty and the waters and all that kind of thing. He's the great glorious thing, but this is the negative one that Cuts yeah. So what you're saying is if they're not dragons out there. And there may not be a real dragon is in you. What is that real drive?

That's your ego holding you in. What's my ego? What I want What I believe. What I can do. What I uh think I love and all that.

what I regard as the aim of my life and so forth, it might be too small. It might be that which pins you down. And if it's simply that of doing what the environment tells you to do, it certainly is hitting you down. And so the environment is your dragon as Yeah. Reflect.

Within yourself. How do I slay? How do you slay that dragon in me? What's the journey I have to make, you have to make, each of us has to make. You talk about something called a soul tie adventure. My general formula for my students is

Follow your bliss. I mean find where it is and don't be afraid to To follow it. Can my bliss be my life's love or my life's work? Is it my work or my life? Well, if the work that you're doing is the work that you chose to do because you were enjoying it, that's it. But if you think oh gee, I couldn't do that.

You know. That's your dragon. It's locking you in. Oh no, I couldn't be a writer. Oh no, I couldn't.

So and so is doing. Unlike the classical heroes. We're not going on our journey to save the world, but to save ourselves. And in doing that you save the world. I mean you do. The influence of a vital person

Vitalizes, there's no doubt about it. The world is a waste land. People have the notion of saving the world by uh shifting it around and changing the rules and so forth. Uh No, any world is a living world if it's alive. And the thing is to bring it to life. And the way to bring it to life is to find in your own case where your life is and be alive yourself, it seems to me. Well it happens.

That's one of the I mean when you Not teaching in order to have an easy job, but because you you Really have something to teach and you love young people and you want to give what you've got.

found to them. And to see them come alive is is the reward of teaching. You say I have to take that journey and go down there and slay those dragons. Do I have to go alone? If you have someone who can help you, that's fine too.

But uh Ultimately th the last trick has to be done by you. In all of these Journeys of mythology, there's a place everyone wishes to find. What is it?

The Buddhist talk of Nirvana. Jesus talks of peace. There's a place Of rest. And reposed.

Is that typical of the heroes? Journey. That there's a place to find That's a place in yourself. Of rest.

Now this I I know a little bit. About from athletics. The athlete who is uh in championship form has a quiet place in himself. And uh It's out of that that his action comes.

If he's all in the action field. Uh he's not Performing properly. There's a center out of which you Right.

And Jean, my wife, a dancer, tells me that in dance this is true too. There's the center that has to be known and held. Yeah. There it's quite physically recognized. By that person. But uh unless this center has been found.

You're torn apart. Tension comes. No. The Buddha's word is Nirvana. Nirvana is a psychological state of mind.

It's not a place like heaven. It's not something that's not here. It is here in the middle of They Turmoil.

What's called Sangsara, the whirlpool of life conditions. Uh that Nirvana is what? Is the condition that comes when you are not compelled By desire. Or by fear.

Or by social Uh Commitments. When you hold your center. And act out of there.

And like all heroes, the Buddha doesn't show you the truth. The illumination. He shows you the way to But it's gotta be your way too. I mean, how should I get rid of fear? The Buddha can't tell me how I'm going to do it. There are exercises that uh

different teachers will give you, but they may not work for you. Um and uh All a teacher can do is give you a clue the direction. He's like a lighthouse that says there are rocks over here and they're clear. You talk a lot about consciousness.

Yes. Most people hear that term in Like me have only a veiled understanding of it. What is it? Gene and I are are are living in Hawaii and uh

We're living right by the ocean. And we have a little lanai, a little porch. And uh there's a coconut tree that grows up Sure that. Porch.

And it goes on and up. And uh th there's a uh kind of vine plant. a big power thing with leaves like this that has grown up The coconut tree. Now that plant sends forth

Little uh feelers to go out and and clutch the plant. And it it knows where the plant is and what to do and where the tree is, and it it grows up like this and it opens A leaf and that a leaf immediately turns to where the sun is. Now you can't tell me that leaf doesn't know where the sun is going to be. All of the leaves go

Just like that, what's called heliotropism, turning toward where the sun is. That's a form of consciousness. There is a a plant consciousness. There is a Animal consciousness.

We share all of these things. You eat certain foods and the bile knows whether there's something there for it to go to work on. I mean the whole thing is consciousness. I begin to feel more and more That the whole world is conscious. Uh certainly the vegetable world is conscious. And when you live in the woods as I did as a kid, you can see all these uh

different consciousnesses relating to themselves. Now it is a part of the sort of um Cartesian. uh mode to think of consciousness as being something peculiar to the head, that this is the organ originating consciousness. It isn't.

It's an organ that inflects consciousness to a certain direction, a certain set of purposes. But there's the whole consciousness here. In the body. And uh The whole thing

living world is informed by consciousness. I have a feeling that uh consciousness and energy are the same thing somehow. Where you really see energy, there is consciousness. Scientists are beginning to talk quite openly about the Gaia principle. Yeah, you want the whole planet as an organism. Mother Earth. And you see

If you will think of ourselves as coming out of the earth. rather than as being thrown in here from somewhere else, you know. Throwing out of there. We are the earth. We are the consciousness of the earth.

These are the eyes of the earth. And this is the voice of the earth. Why else? How to We raise our consciousness.

Well, that's a matter of what you are disposed to think about. And uh That's what meditations are for. And all of life is a meditation. Most of it unintentional.

A lot of people s spend most of it in meditating on where their money's coming from and where it's going to go. But that's a level of meditation. Oh if you have a family to bring up your Uh these are all perfectly uh imp very important concerns, but they have to do with with physical conditions mostly and spiritual conditions of the children, of course. But how are you gonna communicate spiritual consciousness to the ch children if you don't have it yourself, so how do you get that?

Then you think about it The myths. What the myths are for. is to bring us into a uh a level of consciousness that is spiritual. Just for example.

I walk off fifty second street and fifth avenue. Into St. Patrick's Cathedral. I've left a very busy city. and uh the one of the most uh fiercely economically inspired cities on the planet. I walk into that cathedral.

And everything around me speaks of spiritual mystery. The mystery of the cross, what's that all about there? the stained glass windows which bring another atmosphere in. My consciousness has been brought up onto another level altogether. And I am on a different platform.

And uh then I walk out. I'm back in this one again. Now can I hold something from that? Well Certain. prayers or meditations that are associated with the whole context there.

uh these are what I call mantras in India, uh little meditation themes that hold your consciousness on that level instead of letting it drop down here all the way. Then what you can finally do is recognize that this is simply a lower level of that. The Cathedral at Shark which you love so much. Also expresses a relationship of the human to the cosmos, doesn't it?

Well I think everyone who has spent any time At shot. has felt something very special about this cathedral. I've been there about eight times. When I was a student in Paris I went down there about five times and spent one whole weekend and I identified and uh looked at

Every single figure in that cathedral. I was there so much. The the concierge, this little old fellow who took care of the cathedral.

He came to me one noontime and he said, uh would you like to go up with me and ring the bells. I said, I sure would. So we climbed the flesh, the the tower up to where the great g belt was, the great Normally.

Bronze Bell. And uh There was a little Like a seesaw. And he stood on one end of the seesaw.

And I stood on the other end of the seesaw. And there was a little bar there for us to Hold on to. He gave the thing a push and then he was on it and I was on it. We started going up And the wind blowing through our hair up there in the cathedral. And then it began underneath. Bong you know, bong bong. I tell you it was one of the most thrilling adventures in my life. And uh when it was all over.

He brought me down. He said I wanna show you where my My room is. Well In a cathedral you you have the nave. And then they transcept.

And then the apps. And around the apps. Is the choir screen. The choir screen and shock It's about

That wide. And he took me in a little d uh door. Into the middle of the choir screen and there was his little bed

and a little table with a lamp on it. And when I looked Out. There was the Black Madonna, the the tree in the window of the Black Madonna and uh that was where he lived. Now there was a man living in a meditation.

A constant meditation. I mean that That is a very moving, beautiful thing. Well I've been there time and time again since. What do you find when you go there? What does it say about all that we've been discussing? Well The first thing it it uh says is it takes me back to a time when these principles the society. I mean they You can tell what's informed the society by the size of the what the building is that's the tallest building in the place.

When you approach a medieval town, the cathedral's the tallest thing in the place. When you h approach a seventeenth century city, it's the political palace that's the tallest thing in the place. And when you approach a modern city, it's uh office buildings and dwellings that are the tallest things in the place. And if you go to Salt Lake City, you'll see the whole thing illustrated right in front of your face. First, the temple was built. The temple was built right in the center of the city. Yeah, I mean this was the proper organization. That's the spiritual center from which all flows in all direction. And then the capital was built right beside the temple. It's bigger than the temple. And now the biggest thing is the office building that takes care of the affairs of both the temple and the political building. That's the history of Western civilization, from the Gothic through the princely periods of the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth centuries to this economic world that we're in now.

In New York now. The debate is over who can build the tallest building, not But to build the tallest building. Yeah, and they are magnificent.

I mean the th some of the things that are going up in New York now really are and this is a kind of architectural triumph. And but it is is the statement of of the city. Uh we are uh Financial. our center and uh look what we can do. It's a kind of uh virtuosic acrobatic stunt. Will new myths come from there? Well, something might.

You can't predict what a myth is gonna be any more than you can predict what you're gonna dream tonight. Myths and dreams come from the same place. They come from uh realizations of some kind uh that have then to uh find expression in symbolic form. And uh the myth the only myth that's gonna be worth thinking about Uh in the immediate future is one that

Talking about the planet. Not the city, not these people. But the planet. and everybody on it. That's my main Thought.

for uh what the future myth is gonna be. And what it will have to deal with will be exactly what all myths have deal with have dealt with. The maturation of the individual, the graduate Uh the pedagogical way to follow from dependency through adulthood.

to maturity. And then to the exit. And uh how to do it. And then how to relate to this society. and how to relate this society to the world of nature and the cosmos.

That's what the myths have all talked about. That's what what this one's gotta talk about. But the society that it's got to talk about is the society of the planet. And until that gets going, you don't have anything. There's that wonderful photograph you have of the earth. seen from space. And

It's very small. At the same time it's Very grand. You don't see any divisions there of nations. Or states or anything of the kind.

This might be the symbol, really, for Uh new. Mythology to come. That is the country. that we are going to be celebrating. And those are the people.

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