And it comes to one great statement, which for me is a key statement of the understanding of myth and symbols. He says. “I saw myself on The Central Mountain of The World, the highest place. And I had a vision, because I was seeing in a sacred manner, of the world.” And the sacred central mountain was Harney Peak in South Dakota.
And then he says,
“But the central mountain is everywhere.”
That is a real mythological realization.
BILL MOYERS:
Why?
JOSEPH CAMPBELL:
It distinguishes between the local cult image, Harney Peak, and its connotation, the center of the world.
The center of the world is the hub of the universe, axis mundi, do you know, the central point, the pole star around which all revolves. The central point of the world is the point where stillness and movement are together. Movement is time, stillness is eternity, realizing the relationship of the temporal moment to the eternal not moment, but forever -is the sense of life. Realizing how this moment in your life is actually a moment of eternity, and the experience of the eternal aspect of what you’re doing in the temporal experience is the mythological experience, and he had it. So is the central mountain of the world Jerusalem, Rome, Banaras. Lhasa, Mexico City, you know? Mexico City, Jerusalem, is symbolic of a spiritual principle as the center of the world.
BILL MOYERS:
So this little Indian was saying, there is a shining point where all lines intersect?
JOSEPH CAMPBELL:
That’s exactly what he said.
BILL MOYERS:
He was saying God has no circumference.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL:
God is an intelligible sphere, let’s say a sphere known to the mind, not to the senses, whose center is everywhere and circumference nowhere. And the center, Bill, is right where you’re sitting, and the other one is right where I’m sitting. And each of us is a manifestation of that mystery.
No comments:
Post a Comment