“I don’t think the meaning of life is what we’re seeking. I think it’s an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have residences within our own innermost being in reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.” — Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth
The meaning of life isn’t what we’re seeking?
Isn’t meaning what makes life worthwhile, at least, or especially, from the perspective of a depth-psychological-mythologist?
In this episode, I take up these questions and Campbell’s claim with the aid some stories found in his book Myths To Live By.
Transcript of Churning the Cosmic sea: Joseph Campbell, meaning, and the rapture of being alive
Hello, and welcome to Myth Matters, storytelling and conversation about mythology and what myth can offer us today. I’m your host and personal mythologist Dr. Catherine Svehla. Wherever you may be in this wide, beautiful, crazy world of ours, you are part of this story circle.
Joseph Campbell is an important influence and resource for me, working as a mythologist in the way that I do, telling stories, exploring the power of myth with thoughtful folks in a variety of ways, and considering our collective enterprise from a mythic perspective. Campbell’s scholarship and investigation of myths and his ideas about mythology, the four functions of myth, for example, are invaluable. His project, his interest–to aid us in living a mythic life today— resonates with my interest and mission.
And the example of his life, Campbell’s approach and enthusiasm, become more and more useful to me as I get older. I don’t agree with him in every instance and yet the fact that Campbell provokes me to think is essential to his example. Becoming a responsible, sovereign individual is a life project and process. Campbell has helped me in my own process because every now and then I come across a statement by Campbell that I need to ponder.
For example, in the Power of Myth interviews Campbell says,” I don’t think the meaning of life is what we’re seeking. I think it’s an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have residences within our own innermost being in reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.”
When I first heard this, wow, the rapture of being alive. Gorgeous, heady, inspiring words. Over the years, I came across this quote a number of times and thought about it, you know, and I was surprised at the juxtaposition between the meaning of life and the rapture of being alive. In this time, many of us are conversant in the philosophies and psychologies of meaning. Being handed meaning, finding meaning, fixing meaning, making meaning, and the challenge of meaninglessness. We often talk about life being worth living because it is meaningful, right? Part of the process of coming to terms with hardship and loss is the ability to find meaning in it eventually. As for the moments that we treasure, aren’t these precious to us because they hold meaning?
Seems like meaning would be essential to that rapture of being alive. What is Campbell getting at? And is it true for me? Is it true for you?
I recently spent a great deal of time with his book Myths to Live By, writing the skeleton key study guide for the Joseph Campbell Foundation. This led me back to my meditation on the quest for meaning and aliveness, and how they might be different. Campbell touches on this topic time and again in Myths to Live By. I’d like to share a few of the moments that I like best from that book, to contemplate this question of the relationship between meaning and aliveness.
Now, Campbell often ends a chapter in the book by sharing a short story, or in one instance, an excerpt from a poem by Robinson Jeffers. This decision on his part tells us something interesting about the topic that I’m putting before you. I will just leave my observation about the form of his book for you to ponder if you like.
So, one of these stories… at the end of the first chapter, titled “The Impact of Science on Myths,’ Campbell concludes with a fragment of a myth from the Vedas, the ancient Hindu scriptures.
In this story, called the Samudra Manthana, the devas or gods and their primary enemies, the asuras or demons, are engaged in one of their eternal wars. They decide to call a truce and temporarily suspend their hostilities in order to churn the milky ocean, a task that will require all of their efforts. At this time, even the divine beings were not immortal. They needed to churn the universal sea to produce the butter of immortality.
The gods and the demons used a piece of Mount Meru, the Cosmic Mountain and axis of the world, as a churning stick. For the twirling cord, they used the Cosmic Serpent. The gods pulled at the head and the demons pulled at the tail end, and they caused the cosmic mountain to whirl and churn up the sea.
Now, they had been churning for thousands and thousands of years when this huge black cloud of poisonous smoke came up out of the water. They had to stop. They had unleashed a previously unknown power, and it came with some very negative, even lethal effects. If they were going to continue, someone was going to have to swallow the cloud and all of that poison.
The only one who could do it was the god Shiva. Shiva, who embodies the powers of life and death, the paradoxical unity, the transformer. Shiva put the poison cloud in a bowl and drank it down in one gulp. He held the poison at the level of his throat which turned blue. You see this in some images of Shiva.
Now that the cloud was gone the gods and demons went back to their churning. They churned and churned after a great, great, great long while a number of wonderful benefits began coming up out of the cosmic sea, like the moon, the sun, stars, medicines, and finally the butter of immortality.
Now in this instance, Campbell tells us that he offers this parable as an exhortation to press on with the long and difficult cultural work of reconciling scientific facts with myth or religious understanding even though it’s going to be quite complex. Sometimes I, speaking for myself here, look around and wonder how long we might be churning and whether that poisonous cloud has appeared.
You notice that in telling this myth, Campbell offers a story and images through which we might imagine and contemplate this cultural moment. He doesn’t make predictions or draw clear parallels. He doesn’t say “this side is the gods and this side is the demons.” You’re left with the feeling of connection between the Hindu myth of gods and demons cooperating and the long history and current arguments between perspectives today, and something, something potent.
In the case of other chapters, Campbell doesn’t offer even a brief explanation of his purpose in sharing the story. At the moment that you expect him to offer a grand summation that neatly ties his many, many threads together, he returns to the question and the mystery that inspired his discussion. He opens the door to what is unsaid. To what can’t be said. To what can’t be known.
One of my favorites among these concluding, or shall we say “openings,” at the end of a chapter is a story that appears at the end of the chapter on Zen. This is one that often comes to my mind. It’s another Indian story, one that Campbell says Ramakrishna used to like to tell. The story concerns a young man with high spiritual aspirations.
The young man is studying with a guru, and his guru has just helped him identify the god within. The god within and without, one power that supports the universe. He’s profoundly moved by this realization. He leaves his teacher and walks away, absorbed by this revelation. He passes through the village and out on to the road.
He walks along marveling, and sees a huge elephant with a driver riding on high on the back of the head as they do, coming towards him. The young man continues to meditate on this notion: “I am God, all things are God.” So, when he sees the elephant he thinks, “The elephant is God, and the driver is God, and I am God.”
The elephant continues to approach. The driver sees the young man walking in the road and begins shouting “Get out of the way! Get out of the way! Get out of the way, you idiot!” Well, the young man thought, “I am God, the elephant is God, and should God be afraid of God? Should God get out of the way of God?” He continued walking towards this gigantic elephant, holding tight to his transcendental insight, as Campbell says. At the very last minute, the elephant wrapped its trunk around him and tossed him off of the road, out of the way.
Now, the young man is not physically hurt but he is certainly shocked and stunned at this result. He gets up in a state of great disarray and immediately returns to his guru to demand an explanation. “You told me that I was God.” And the guru says “Yes, you are God.” “You told me that all things are God.” “Yes,” the guru said, “all things are God.” “Then that elephant was God.” “Yes, it was,” says the guru, “the elephant was God. But why didn’t you listen to the voice of God, shouting from the elephant’s head to get out of the way?!”
Why didn’t you listen to the elephant? In the same chapter, Campbell speaks to the difference between meaning and aliveness. He writes,
“A number of schools of Occidental, [that is, European-derived,] psychological therapy, hold that what we all most need and are seeking is meaning for our lives. For some, this may be a help; but all it helps is the intellect, and when the intellect sets to work on life with its names and categories, recognitions of relationship and definitions of meaning, what is inwardmost is readily lost.”
Your concepts can get between you and the present moment. Your ideas about life can keep you from living. We want to find our myth and this very effort can be an obstacle, if we see our mythic life as something we’ll find in a book or make through our intellect and research. You might get trampled by an elephant.
I have a poem for you that feels consonant with this themes. First, welcome to new email subscribers: Gemma, Michael, Roger, Tara, Stephen, Mark, Sergio, Dorian, Janie, Gersdid, Fred, Darcy, Ulla, and Abbas. Welcome!
If you’d like join the email list to receive links to new Myth Matters episodes in your inbox, visit the Mythic Mojo website. You’ll also find a transcript of this episode, information about Story Oracle readings, and my mentoring services and other offerings.
Thank you to listeners who participated in the drawing for the free e-book of the Myths to Live By Skeleton Key Study Guide. I received interesting answers to the question: where do you see the influence of myth today? I really appreciate the exchange, my friends, it enriches my thinking. The winner of the drawing is Gustavo in Peru. Congratulations Gustavo and I hope you enjoy the study guide.
The webinar about the Myths to Live By Skeleton Key Study Guide, hosted by the Joseph Campbell Foundation, was last Saturday. The recording is available on youtube and I’ll post that link with the transcript of this episode. It was super fun.
The next guide in the series, Pathways to Bliss: A Skeleton Key Study Guide is now available. I love this book. It’s probably my favorite of the volumes assembled by the JCF in Campbell’s Collected Works, and the author of the study guide, Dr. Bradley Olson, is brilliant and insightful and funny. I’m very excited about this new resource and the author webinar with Brad. The webinar will take place on Saturday, September 2, at 10:00 am Pacific time and I encourage you to attend.
I’ll post the link to the skeleton key study guide series and registration for the next webinar with this transcript. Oh, and Brad Olson is the host of the Pathways with Joseph Campbell podcast produced by the Joseph Campbell Foundation. Brad shares and unpacks clips from Campbell’s audio lectures and I highly recommend it as a source for great Campbell and myth material.
In closing, a poem by William Stafford titled “Security.”
“Security”
Tomorrow will have an island. Before night
I always find it. Then on to the next island.
These places hidden in the day separate
and come forward if you beckon.
But you have to know they are there before they exist.
Some time there will be a tomorrow without any island.
So far, I haven’t let that happen, but after
I’m gone others may become faithless and careless.
Before them will tumble the wide unbroken sea,
and without any hope they will stare at the horizon.
So to you, Friend, I confide my secret:
to be a discoverer you hold close whatever
you find, and after a while you decide
what it is. Then, secure in where you have been,
you turn to the open sea and let go.
–William Stafford
If we have a better understanding of our need for myth, and all that our old stories offer, we can live more satisfying lives. We can inhabit a better story and create a more beautiful, just and sustainable world.
And that’s it for me, Catherine Svehla and Myth Matters. Thank you so much for listening. Take good care of yourself and until next time, keep the mystery in your life alive.
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