This is Why Clowns Are Good

Q : What did you think of Manson when that thing happened?

A : "I don't know what I thought when it happened. 

I just think a lot of the things he says are True, that he is a Child of The State, made by Us, and he took their children in when nobody else would, is what he did. 

Of course he's cracked, all right."

-John Lennon, (December 1970)

What about the eyewitness report of the suspect being a man in a clown mask?

Well, it makes total sense to me.

What kind of a coward would do something that cold-blooded ?

Someone who hides behind a mask.

Someone who is envious of those

more fortunate than themselves, yet they're too scared to show their own face.

And until all those kind of people change for the better....

Those of us who've made something of our lives, will always look at those who haven't as nothing but clowns.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

This is why clowns are good.

BILL MOYERS: 

Clowns?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Clown religions, because they show that the image is not a fact, but it’s a reflex of some kind.

BILL MOYERS: 

So does this help explain the trickster gods that show up at times?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

They’re very much that, yes. 

Some of the best trickster stories are associated with our American Indian tales. 

Now, these figures are clownlike figures, and yet they are the creator god at the same time, very often. 

And this makes the point, I am not the ultimate image. 

I am transparent to something. 

Through me, through my funny form, and mocking it, and turning it into a grotesque action, you really get the sense which, if I had been a big sober presence, you get stuck with the image.

BILL MOYERS: 

There’s a wonderful story in some African tradition of the god who’s walking down the road, and the god has on a hat that is colored red on one side and blue on the other side. 

So when the people, the farmers in the field go into the village in the evening, they said, 

“Did you see that fellow, that god with the blue hat?” 

And the others said, 

“No, no, he had a red hat on,” 

and they get into a fight.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Yes. He even makes it worse by first walking along this direction, and then turning around and turning his hat around, so that again, it’ll be red and black or whatever and then when these two chaps fight and are brought before the king or chief for judgment, this fellow appears and he says,

“It’s my fault, I did it. 

Spreading strife is my greatest joy.”

BILL MOYERS: 

And there’s a truth in that…

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

There sure is, yes.

BILL MOYERS: 

Which is?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

No matter what system of thought you have, it can’t possibly include boundless life. 

And when you think everything is just that way, the trickster comes in and it all blows, and you get the becoming thing again. 

Now, Jung has a wonderful saying somewhere that, 

“Religion is a defense against a religious experience.”

BILL MOYERS: 

Well, you have to explain that.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Well, that means it has reduced the whole thing to concepts and ideas, and having the concept and idea short-circuits the transcendent experience. 

The experience of deep mystery is what one has to regard as the ultimate religious experience.

BILL MOYERS: 

Well, there are many Christians who believe that to find out who Jesus is, you have to go past the Christian faith, past the Christian doctrine, past the Christian church. 

And I know that’s heresy to a lot of people, but…

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Well, you have to go past the image of Jesus. 

The image of God becomes the final obstruction. 

Your God is your ultimate barrier. 

This is basic Hinduism, 

basic Buddhism. 

You know, the idea of the ascent of the spirit through the centers, the chakras, as they call them, or lotuses, the different centers of experience. 

The animal experiences of hunger and greed or just the zeal of reproduction or the physical mastery of one kind or another, these are all stages of power. 

But then when the center of the heart is reached, and the sense of compassion on another person, mercy and participation, and I and you are in some sense of the same being this is what marriage is based on there’s a whole new stage of life experience opens up with the opening of the heart.

And this is what’s called the virgin birth, actually, the birth of a spiritual life in what formerly was simply a human animal, living for the animal aims of health, progeny, wealth and a little fun. 

But now you come to something else: to participate in this sense of accord with another, or accord with some principle that has lodged in your mind as a good to be identified with, then a whole new life comes. 

And this is in Oriental thinking, the awakening of the religious experience.

And then this can go on even to the quest for the experience of the ultimate mystery, that is, the ultimate mystery can be experienced in two senses, one without form and the other with form. 

And in this Oriental thinking, you experience God with form here, this is heaven, that’s the identification with your own being, because that which God refers to is the ultimate mystery of being, which is the mystery of your being as well as of the world, so it’s…this is it.