Was going through my open browser and discovered I hadn't logged out from my last visit. Don't come here much except to see if a few of the old regulars are posting, and because I am not to well liked. I have been told my post attack ones mind in the form of "tendency to give moral advice in a tedious or self-righteous way - preachy. But that's okay for we all have our prejudices. Rambling too much, forgive me, I will get to my post.
The question has been in my mind since I first became aware Joseph Campbell stated "God is a myth," whether this was a slap in the face of organized religion? To some Campbell is a storyteller keeping ancient myth alive in today's societies. But what is the deepest message Campbell seemed to be attempting to convey to the secular, religious, and academic minds?
Posted this on a Campbell site and two days ago, and received 33 positive response. Does anyone here care to reply?
Never give power to anything a person believes is their source of strength - jufa
What is Joseph Campbell's deeper message?
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Pam Seeback
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Re: What is Joseph Campbell's deeper message?
To me, the deeper message that Campbell is trying to convey in stating that "God is a myth" is that because the human intellect cannot know its cause, out of ignorance, it forms myths about its cause. An ignorance that is further deepened in that it does not realize its causal God of words and images is a myth.
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Santiago Odo
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Re: What is Joseph Campbell's deeper message?
Esteemed Jufa:
The modern intellect, unlike (perhaps) the Medieval intelligence, is abstracted from its world. It is a mind that has been disconnected. It disconnected itself through a peculiar process. I guess one would say that this process was *inevitable*, insofar as it is our fate as well, and we will have to deal with it, now or later, but in respect to Campbell it seems to me that this mind, this intellect, has inklings of connectedness, something like a memory of distant connectedness, and this mind tries to help other disconnected minds to recover what has been lost.
Jung is sort of like that, don't you think? The ultra-modern man who is woken by strange tappings in the walls; who hears voices from springs; and communes with a knotted tree. But yet he exists in and sees from out of the eyes of a modern physician, and can only explain his world using the tools of this world: a peculiar form of logos.
I am not so sure Campbell would have said that God is a myth, but he did seem to say that man avails himself of myth, which is in a sense a reference to poetry really. God is a poem is oddly fitting. Or it takes a poet's mind to *allude* to God. A poet and a mystic have a good deal in common, I think you might agree.
I agree completely that 'man cannot know his cause'. That is, really, a Thomist sort of idea. If we focus just a bit on the *fact of existence* (and perception) it quickly overwhelms us with sheer and absolute mystery. We have no way and no means to describe *where we are* nor any of this.
True, Campbell (and Jung) were in most ways completely and utterly outside of the structures of religion, but Jung certainly had a profound sense of the importance of 1000 years of Christian culture. Yet he was, really, a total heretic by any standard. He was then Northern Europe's rebuttal of the Roman conquest and the Greco-Jewish monolith. But his rebellion had glorious, creative features.
My understanding of Campbell is that he represents both a certain sort of mind, and a certain type of modern mind which has left, or perhaps one should say been exiled from, a genuine felt belief in God and a world in which God is real for man.The question has been in my mind since I first became aware Joseph Campbell stated "God is a myth," whether this was a slap in the face of organized religion? To some Campbell is a storyteller keeping ancient myth alive in today's societies. But what is the deepest message Campbell seemed to be attempting to convey to the secular, religious, and academic minds?
The modern intellect, unlike (perhaps) the Medieval intelligence, is abstracted from its world. It is a mind that has been disconnected. It disconnected itself through a peculiar process. I guess one would say that this process was *inevitable*, insofar as it is our fate as well, and we will have to deal with it, now or later, but in respect to Campbell it seems to me that this mind, this intellect, has inklings of connectedness, something like a memory of distant connectedness, and this mind tries to help other disconnected minds to recover what has been lost.
Jung is sort of like that, don't you think? The ultra-modern man who is woken by strange tappings in the walls; who hears voices from springs; and communes with a knotted tree. But yet he exists in and sees from out of the eyes of a modern physician, and can only explain his world using the tools of this world: a peculiar form of logos.
I am not so sure Campbell would have said that God is a myth, but he did seem to say that man avails himself of myth, which is in a sense a reference to poetry really. God is a poem is oddly fitting. Or it takes a poet's mind to *allude* to God. A poet and a mystic have a good deal in common, I think you might agree.
I agree completely that 'man cannot know his cause'. That is, really, a Thomist sort of idea. If we focus just a bit on the *fact of existence* (and perception) it quickly overwhelms us with sheer and absolute mystery. We have no way and no means to describe *where we are* nor any of this.
True, Campbell (and Jung) were in most ways completely and utterly outside of the structures of religion, but Jung certainly had a profound sense of the importance of 1000 years of Christian culture. Yet he was, really, a total heretic by any standard. He was then Northern Europe's rebuttal of the Roman conquest and the Greco-Jewish monolith. But his rebellion had glorious, creative features.
You I'll never leave
Re: What is Joseph Campbell's deeper message?
Santiago Odo, thank you for your greeting, but jufa is all that is necessary.
To me, from looking at the deeper meaning of his work, Campbell realized the metaphysics of man is where most stay. The mysticism of man are the vision catchers. But the mystic overrides both, for the mystic has stepped out of him self in time into Conscience Awareness. ("Let your Conscience by your guide").
Metaphysics and mysticism, to me, in agreement with the following quote by someone on another forum:
A mystic sees the illusion of both being of the world. The mystic, in stepping out of time see they are a mirage seeming different, but their reality, as all reality is of the unconditioned Mind. Campbell stepped out of him self repeatedly and in those seconds, came one second in time where he was The Mystic painting on the canvass of words the picture of the merging of metaphysics and mysticism into his unconditioned Mind for all to see a path to follow their bliss if they were sincere.
Never give power to anything a person believes is their source of strength - jufa
To me, from looking at the deeper meaning of his work, Campbell realized the metaphysics of man is where most stay. The mysticism of man are the vision catchers. But the mystic overrides both, for the mystic has stepped out of him self in time into Conscience Awareness. ("Let your Conscience by your guide").
Metaphysics and mysticism, to me, in agreement with the following quote by someone on another forum:
'The seat of the soul is there where the inner and the outer worlds meet
A mystic sees the illusion of both being of the world. The mystic, in stepping out of time see they are a mirage seeming different, but their reality, as all reality is of the unconditioned Mind. Campbell stepped out of him self repeatedly and in those seconds, came one second in time where he was The Mystic painting on the canvass of words the picture of the merging of metaphysics and mysticism into his unconditioned Mind for all to see a path to follow their bliss if they were sincere.
Never give power to anything a person believes is their source of strength - jufa