Lecture I.1.5 - The Vitality of Myth

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jonsjourney
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Post by jonsjourney »

Well stated, as usual, Clemsy.

The harder we try to grasp at "truth", the more liquid it becomes...slipping through our fingers.
Another demographic gives us lost souls looking for another model. Enter the rise of Eastern philosophies, yoga, meditation, Wicca and others which serve the impulse nicely, and a whole slew of charlatans cashing in on the market, which also serves the impulse regardless of the charlatan's chicanery or lunacy.
I do not have much first hand experience with the "Eastern Mystic" type, but I can see why that brand of chicanery would appeal to the wandering Westerner. We are 'graspers', for the most part, here. Many need to identify with a person, or specific image, so therein lies the danger. I always have found it interesting that a person would not be able to see the contradictions between what is taught by a 'guru' and the philosophy behind the teachings. I wonder how many of these charlatans would have given the same warnings that the Buddha did about identifying with the person, let alone the words. Very few, I guess.

Maybe we like to be bitten by the snake.

This seems to go a long way toward explaining why people join cults. A cult offers a physical manifestation of divinity on Earth.

The work of releasing the desire to touch "truth" with our senses seems to require the ultimate manifestation of faith: Faith in oneself.
"He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot." -Douglas Adams

Neoplato
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Post by Neoplato »

Hey JJ
This seems to go a long way toward explaining why people join cults. A cult offers a physical manifestation of divinity on Earth.
This gives me a GREAT idea! :idea: I'm going to start my own sect and call it the "Church of Neo-Platonic Souls" or

CONS

for short. :D :wink:
Infinite moment, grants freedom of winter death, allows life to dawn.

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Post by Clemsy »

Hi Jon,
I do not have much first hand experience with the "Eastern Mystic" type, but I can see why that brand of chicanery would appeal to the wandering Westerner.
I don't know that your use of 'chicanery' is meant to apply to all 'Eastern Mysticism', JJ. However, just for the sake of discussion, much about the Eastern Impact, to coin a phrase, is quite legitimate. They're religious practices, some of them replete with good examples of bad ways to do religion.

Many of the Eastern gurus who got the ball rolling in the U.S. were pretty cool. Paramahansa Yogananda was one of the first (I think he was the first) and very influential. His Autobiography of a Yogi is a fascinating read that I highly recommend. It provides an excellent window into an Indian worldview.

Mahareshi Mahesh Yogi was turned into something of a caricature by the media as a result of his connection with the Beatles and the 'scandal' that split them apart. However, his contribution, through Transcendental Meditation, is quite significant.

My older brother was a casual follower of Swami Satchidenanda when I was a teenager. He was a cool guy, very gentle.

A good example, I believe, of the chicanery side of the market is Scientology. L. Ron Hubbard may have been a genius, but he was also a kook. But that doesn't mean that those who practice Scientology don't gain from it. (I discuss this topic in more detail in this scrambled thread.) On the extreme end there's Jim Jones and such.

It is interesting, when you think about it, that this is such a good example of nature abhorring a vacuum. So much stuff swept in to fill the gap the old myth left behind in so many people.
Give me stories before I go mad! ~Andreas

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Post by jonsjourney »

This gives me a GREAT idea! I'm going to start my own sect and call it the "Church of Neo-Platonic Souls" or CONS for short. -Neo
:lol: Fantastic!
I don't know that your use of 'chicanery' is meant to apply to all 'Eastern Mysticism', JJ. However, just for the sake of discussion, much about the Eastern Impact, to coin a phrase, is quite legitimate. They're religious practices, some of them replete with good examples of bad ways to do religion. -Clemsy
I was referring to the guys who took advantage of the trend and preyed upon young persons who were disillusioned with their traditional systems for selfish reasons. You know...$50 for the answer to life, the universe and everything, and all that. Obviously, at least I hope it is obvious, I have tremendous respect for the Eastern view and if I had to choose a system to identify with, it would certainly be coming from the East!

I am trying hard to avoid global statements. Easier said than done!
"He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot." -Douglas Adams

Neoplato
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Post by Neoplato »

You know...$50 for the answer to life, the universe and everything, and all that.
Yep. And that's what I tried to address on "The Marketing of Spirituality" thread some time back. Maybe I can charge a $75 one tine "registration fee" for people who want to join CONS? Hey JJ, do you remember this "P.A.G.A.N".?
Infinite moment, grants freedom of winter death, allows life to dawn.

jonsjourney
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Post by jonsjourney »

Hey JJ, do you remember this "P.A.G.A.N -Neo
Not right now...my mind is swirling with French verb conjugations and masculine/feminine noun/pronoun rules! I am knocking out my foreign language hours this year...

So....refresh my memory! Please!!
"He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot." -Douglas Adams

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Post by Clemsy »

In honor of the moon landing 40 years ago, I offer the following tidbit from the lecture:
Mythology asks for absurd tasks—think of the Egyptian pyramids. I mean the economic interpretation of history just doesn’t confront the pyramids, and that was the beginning. In fact the economic concern is ego concern with survival and all that which is the non-mythological concern, and it has never built a civilization, it has never built a cathedral.

What builds the civilization and the cathedral is a mad aspiration of some kind. And as long as that lasts, people are pulling together. And if you don’t have an aspiration, then the only other thing that will pull people together so they will do something is fear. Either aspiration or fear, and then people will work together. But let them not be scared, and not have something crazy pushing them, then just their thinking of survival, security and you know what else.
Give me stories before I go mad! ~Andreas

jonsjourney
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Post by jonsjourney »

People were far more happier some 40 years ago
because they could dream about space travel and all other developments in
scientific/technological fields. That's somewhat different today or maybe I'm
wrong ? -Ercan
Let us not forget that this same time period was witness to some of the most significant social unrest in the history of the Western world. Young people were waking up to the other kind of myth...the not-so-good kind... that is used to evoke patriotism for causes that fly in the face of the foundational tenets the United States was supposedly based upon.

Walter Cronkite was in one evening telling America that man walked upon the moon. On another evening, he told America that the military action in Vietnam was a mistake. The psyche and the shadow were in conflict and this young nation was finding that the illusory superiority that it enjoyed in the 1950's and early 1960's was exactly how it was portrayed in "Leave It To Beaver"...total fantasy. The hangover we are experiencing now is in no small part still easily traceable to that period when the monied interests realized that the myth of perpetual prosperity was unsustainable and the crumbs that had been tossed to the masses were going to have to be slowly, but meticulously, swept up. That process has been ongoing ever since.

I tend to think that the image that Joe spoke about at the end of his life, this image of Earth from the moon, has been lost in the debris of progress. Kennedy's call to action died with him in Dallas. We still got to the moon, but once that was done there was no real pause to reflect on where the nation had come from and where it was going. Instead, the nation launched into the hedonistic debauchery of the 70's and the drugs of choice, primarily "speed" buzzes, set the pace for what was to come...a society moving at an unprecedented pace toward absolutely nothing.

Even our market economies have reflected this contemporary grasping of air. We trade in commodities, but do not have to take responsibility for owning them. They just simply pass through our hands and we feel entitled to profit from the process, not the success of the product. Worse, we expect to be shielded from the consequences of bad decisions in the same arena. Nobody should lose, whether it is on the playground or in the pits of Wall St. The same folks who would tell you to pull yourself up by your bootstraps were first in line with their hand out when their decisions pulled the rug out from under the entire Western economic system.

It is, for such folks, a no lose situation. Reap all of the reward, without the least amount of responsibility. Welcome to the new playground, same as the old playground. So to come back to the primary question of happiness, I would ask, have we ever been happy? Or was that just the buzzed euphoria of perceived power and dominance clouding our vision? Social beergoggles, if you will. :lol:
"He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot." -Douglas Adams

Ercan2121
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Post by Ercan2121 »

Silence is golden
Last edited by Ercan2121 on Tue Jul 26, 2011 3:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Cindy B.
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Post by Cindy B. »

For what it's worth Ercan, and with the exception of Clemsy's comments about Scientology that some might take issue with, I found nothing offensive about Clemsy's remarks. Actually, he voiced support of the three Easterners mentioned. :)

Cindy
If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s. --Jung

Ercan2121
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Post by Ercan2121 »

Cindy B. wrote:For what it's worth Ercan, and with the exception of Clemsy's comments about Scientology that some might take issue with, I found nothing offensive about Clemsy's remarks. Actually, he voiced support of the three Easterners mentioned. :)

Cindy
What a nice blue on that mandala, Cindy.
For me, that's an habit to think twice on what I post
and maybe expecting too much from others, too.
Here, I'm editing what I wrote yesterday and go! :)

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Post by Cindy B. »

Oh, my, Ercan, I never intended that my comment would lead to your deleting those posts. :cry:

Cindy
If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s. --Jung

Ercan2121
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Post by Ercan2121 »

Cindy B. wrote:Oh, my, Ercan, I never intended that my comment would lead to your deleting those posts. :cry:

Cindy
Cindy,
100 innocent people were killed last weekend in Oslo, Norway.
In time, one learns that certain things are far more valuable than my
reckless freedom of speech.
One can find enough material for speculation in any book of Campbell
Yet noone here sofar attempted to make a fuss over religion or right to
believe. I call this common sense.
Noone can be priviledged in a democratic environment. Principles before
personalities. And talk without work is worthless. That’s what I believe.

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Post by Evinnra »

Ercan2121 wrote:Very well said, 'absurd tasks'. People were far more happier some 40 years ago
because they could dream about space travel and all other developments in
scientific/technological fields. That's somewhat different today or maybe I'm
wrong ?
No, you are not wrong, as far as I recon. If memory serves me well, fourty years ago we lived in a far more balanced world. Let's hope it is just our trasitional 'angst'.
'A fish popped out of the water only to be recaptured again. It is as I, a slave to all yet free of everything.'
http://evinnra-evinnra.blogspot.com

Ercan2121
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Post by Ercan2121 »

Clemsy wrote:Hi Jon,
I do not have much first hand experience with the "Eastern Mystic" type, but I can see why that brand of chicanery would appeal to the wandering Westerner.
I don't know that your use of 'chicanery' is meant to apply to all 'Eastern Mysticism', JJ. However, just for the sake of discussion, much about the Eastern Impact, to coin a phrase, is quite legitimate. They're religious practices, some of them replete with good examples of bad ways to do religion.

Many of the Eastern gurus who got the ball rolling in the U.S. were pretty cool. Paramahansa Yogananda was one of the first (I think he was the first) and very influential. His Autobiography of a Yogi is a fascinating read that I highly recommend. It provides an excellent window into an Indian worldview.

Mahareshi Mahesh Yogi was turned into something of a caricature by the media as a result of his connection with the Beatles and the 'scandal' that split them apart. However, his contribution, through Transcendental Meditation, is quite significant.

My older brother was a casual follower of Swami Satchidenanda when I was a teenager. He was a cool guy, very gentle.

A good example, I believe, of the chicanery side of the market is Scientology. L. Ron Hubbard may have been a genius, but he was also a kook. But that doesn't mean that those who practice Scientology don't gain from it. (I discuss this topic in more detail in this scrambled thread.) On the extreme end there's Jim Jones and such.

It is interesting, when you think about it, that this is such a good example of nature abhorring a vacuum. So much stuff swept in to fill the gap the old myth left behind in so many people.
Someone's talking here about things he doesn't know enough.
Again, there's an effort to 'steal' energy from Eastern Gurus
by Wiki-links - an example of worst kind of chicanery :lol:

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