There is No Such Thing as Absolute Love or Absolute Hate, as Distinguished from Each Other.

“Love and “Hate" are generally regarded as being things diametrically opposed to each other; entirely different; unreconcilable. 

But we apply the Principle of Polarity; we find that there is no such thing as Absolute Love or Absolute Hate, as distinguished from each other. 

The two are merely 

terms applied to 

the two poles 

of 

the same thing. 

Beginning at any point of the scale we find "more love," or "less hate," as we ascend the scale; and "more hate" or "less love" as we descend this being true no matter from what point, high or low, we may start. There are degrees of Love and Hate, and there is a middle point where "Like and Dislike" become so faint that it is difficult to distinguish between them. Courage and Fear come under the same rule. The Pairs of Opposites exist everywhere. Where you find one thing you find its opposite-the two poles.

And it is this fact that enables the Hermetist to transmute one mental state into another, along the lines of Polarization. Things belonging to different classes cannot be transmuted into each other, but things of the same class may be changed, that is, may have their polarity changed. Thus Love never becomes East or West, or Red or Violet-but it may and often does turn into Hate and likewise Hate may be transformed into Love, by changing its polarity. Courage may be transmuted into Fear, and the reverse. Hard things may be rendered Soft. Dull things become Sharp. Hot things become Cold. And so on, the transmutation always being between things of the same kind of different degrees. Take the case of a Fearful man. By raising his mental vibrations along the line of Fear- Courage, he can be filled with the highest degree of Courage and Fearlessness. And, likewise, the Slothful man may change himself into an Active, Energetic individual simply by polarizing along the lines of the desired quality.

The student who is familiar with the processes by which the various schools of Mental Science, etc., produce changes in the mental states of those following their teachings, may not readily understand the principle underlying many of these changes. When, however, the Principle of Polarity is once grasped, and it is seen that the mental changes are occasioned by a change of polarity-a sliding along the same scale-the hatter is readily understood. The change is not in the nature of a transmutation of one thing into another thing entirely different-but is merely a change of degree in the same things, a vastly important difference. For instance, borrowing an analogy from the Physical Plane, it is impossible to change Heat into Sharpness, Loudness, Highness, etc., but Heat may readily be transmuted into Cold, simply by lowering the vibrations. In the same way Hate and Love are mutually transmutable; so are Fear and Courage. But Fear cannot be transformed into Love, nor can Courage be transmuted into Hate. The mental states belong to innumerable classes, each class of which has its opposite poles, along which transmutation is possible.

The student will readily recognize that in the mental states, as well as in the phenomena of the Physical Plane, the two poles may be classified as Positive and Negative, respectively. Thus Love is Positive to Hate; Courage to Fear; Activity to Non-Activity, etc., etc. 

And it will also be noticed that even to those unfamiliar with the Principle of Vibration, the Positive pole seems to be of a higher degree than the Negative, and readily dominates it. The tendency of Nature is in the direction of the dominant activity of the Positive pole.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, that’s what it did do. Love was a divine visitation, and that’s why it was superior to Marriage. That was the troubadour idea. If God is Love, well, then, Love is God, okay.

BILL MOYERS: There’s that wonderful passage in Corinthians by Paul, where he says “Love beareth all things, endureth all things.”

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Well, that’s the same business. 

Love Knows No Pain.

BILL MOYERS: And yet, one of my favorite stories of mythology is out of Persia, where there is the idea that Lucifer was condemned to hell because he loved God so much.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Yeah, and that’s a basic Muslim idea, about Iblis, that’s the Muslim name for Satan, being God’s greatest lover. 

Why was Satan thrown into hell? 

Well, the standard Story is that when God created the angels, he told them to bow to none but himself. 

Then he created Man, whom he regarded as a Higher Form Than The Angels, and he asked The Angels then to serve man. 

And Satan would not bow to Man. 

Now, this is interpreted in the Christian Tradition, as I recall from my boyhood instruction, as being The Egotism of Satan, he would not bow to Man. 

But in this view, he could NOT bow to Man, because of his Love for God, he could bow ONLY to God. 

And then God says, “Get out of my sight.” 

Now, the worst of the pains of hell insofar as hell has been described is The Absence of The beloved, which is God. 

So how does Iblis sustain the situation in hell? By The MEMORY of The Echo of God’s Voice when God said, “Go to hell.” 

And I think that’s A Great Sign of Love, do you agree?

BILL MOYERS: Well, it’s certainly true in life that the greatest hell one can know is to be separated from the one you love.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Yeah.

BILL MOYERS: 

That’s why I’ve liked the Persian myth for so long. Satan as God’s lover.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Yeah. And he is separated from God, and that’s the real pain of Satan.

BILL MOYERS: 

You once took the saying of Jesus. 

“Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your father who is in heaven, for he makes the sun to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust.” 

You once took that to be the highest, the noblest, the boldest of the Christian teachings. 

Do you still feel that way?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Well, I think the main teaching of Christianity is, 

“Love your enemies.”

BILL MOYERS: 

Hard to do.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

I know, well, that’s it — I mean, when Peter drew his sword and cut off the servant’s ear there, in the Gethsemane affair, and Jesus said, “Put up your sword, Peter,” and put the ear back on, 

Peter has been drawing his sword ever since. 

And one can speak about Petrine or Christian Christianity in that sense. 

And I would say that the main doctrine of Christianity is the doctrine of Agape, of true love for he who is yours, him who is your enemy.

BILL MOYERS: 

How does one love one’s enemy without condoning what the enemy does, accepting his aggression?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Well, I’ll tell you how to do that. “Do not pluck the mote from your enemy’s eye, but pluck the beam from your own,” do you know?

Now, I have a friend whom I met by chance, a young Buddhist monk from Tibet. You know, in 1959 the Communists crashed down and bombed the palace of the Dalai Lama, bombarded Lhasa, and people murdered and all that kind of thing. And he escaped, he escaped at the time of the Dalai Lama. And those monasteries, I mean, there were monasteries with 5,000 monks, 6,000 monks, all wiped out, tortured and everything else. I haven’t heard one word of incrimination of the Chinese from that young man. There is absolutely no condemnation of the Chinese here. And you hear this from the Dalai Lama himself. You will not hear a word of condemnation. This recognition of the way of life through which that vitality of the spirit is moving in its own way. I mean, these men are sufferers of terrific violence, and there’s no animosity. I learned religion from them.

BILL MOYERS: 

Do most of the stories of mythology, from whatever culture, say that suffering is intrinsically a part of life and that there’s no way around it?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

I think I’d be willing to say that they do. I can’t think of anything now that says if you’re going to live, you won’t suffer. 

It’ll tell you how to understand and bear and interpret suffering, that it will do. And when the Buddha says there is escape from suffering, the escape from sorrow is nirvana. Nirvana is a psychological position where you are untouched by desire and fear.

BILL MOYERS: 

But is that realistic? Does that happen?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Yes, certainly.

BILL MOYERS: 

And your life becomes what?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Harmonious, well-centered and affirmative of life.

BILL MOYERS: 

Even with suffering.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Exactly. There’s a passage in Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians, isn’t there? 

Be as Christ, for Christ did not think godhood something to be hung on to, to be clung to, but let go and came down and took life in the form of a servant, a servant even unto death. 

Let’s say, come in and accept the suffering, and affirm it.

BILL MOYERS: 

So you would agree with Abelard in the 12th century, who said that Jesus’ death on the cross was not as ransom paid, as a penalty applied, but it was an act of atonement, atonement at one with the race.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: That’s the most sophisticated interpretation of why Christ had to be crucified. Abelard’s idea was that this … oh, this is connected with The Grail King and everything else … that The Coming of Christ to be crucified and illustrating thus The Suffering of Life, removes Man’s Mind from commitment to the things of This World in compassion. It’s in compassion with Christ that we turn to Christ, and so the injured one becomes the savior. It is the suffering that evokes the humanity of the human heart.

BILL MOYERS: 

So you would agree with Abelard that mankind yearning for God and God yearning for mankind in compassion met at that cross.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Yes. And by contemplating the cross, you are contemplating the true mystery of life. And that love for this experience, no matter how horrific the experience, the love for it

BILL MOYERS: 

So there’s joy and pain in love.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Yeah, there is. Love, you might say, is the burning point of life, and since all life is sorrowful, so is love. And the stronger the love, the more that pain, but love bears all things. Love itself is a pain, you might say, but is the pain of being truly alive.

BILL MOYERS: 

As Joseph Campbell pursued his quest across Europe for the stories of love and chivalry, he paused often to visit the great cathedrals. 

They too reflected the glory of love, the love of Mary, mother of God. 

Reverence for the power of the female is another grand theme in ancient mythology. In the primitive planting cultures, woman contributed importantly to the economic life of the community by participating in the growing and reaping of crops. 

And as the mother and nourisher of life, she was thought to assist the earth symbolically in its fertility. 

In fact, some believe there was even a golden age of the goddess until she was driven from the imagination by the emergence of patriarchal authority.

Of late, however, scientists have resurrected the name of an ancient goddess, Gaia, to express the idea of Earth as a living body on which we depend for life. In the last half of this conversation with Joseph Campbell, he takes us back to the time when the love of God meant the love for mother goddess, and he unites these themes in one image, the virgin birth, which to him represents the birth of spirit from matter, the birth of compassion in The Heart.

(interviewing) The Lord’s Prayer begins, “Our Father which art in heaven.”

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Yes.

BILL MOYERS: 

Could it have begun, “Our Mother”?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: This is a metaphorical image, this is a symbolic image, and to make the point that it’s not your father, your physical father, we have “Our Father who art in heaven.” But heaven again is a symbolic idea, where would it, heaven, be? It is no place. All of the references of religious and mythological images are to planes of consciousness or fields of experience potential in the human spirit, and these are to evoke attitudes and experiences that are appropriate to a meditation on the mystery of the source of your own being, I would say. So there have been systems of religion where the mother is the prime parent, the source, and she’s really a more immediate parent than the father, because one is born from the mother, and then the first experience of any infant is the mother, so that the image of woman is the image of The World. You might say that mythology is simply a translation of The World into a mother image. We talk of Mother Earth and so forth.

BILL MOYERS: 

But what happened along the way, Joe, to this reverence that in primitive societies was directed toward the goddess figure, the great goddess, the Mother Earth? 

What happened to that?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

That comes in primarily with agriculture and the agricultural societies.

BILL MOYERS: 

Fertility and all of that?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

It has to do with the earth, the human woman does give birth as the earth gives birth to the plants. She gives nourishment as the plants do. So woman magic and earth magic are the same, they are related. And the personification, then, of this energy which gives birth to forms and nourishes forms is properly female. And so it is in the agricultural world of ancient Mesopotamia, the Egyptian Nile, but also in the earlier planting culture systems, that the goddess is the mythic form that is dominant.

BILL MOYERS: 

Because of this obvious perception of creation issue, fertility.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: That’s right, and when you have a goddess as the creator, it’s her own very body that is the universe. She is identical with the universe. And in Egypt, you have the mother heavens, Nut, the goddess Nut, who is represented as the whole heavenly sphere.

BILL MOYERS: So it would be natural for people trying to explain the wonders of the universe to look to the female figure as the explanation for what they saw in their own lives.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Not only that, but then when you move to a philosophical point of view, the female represents what in Kantian terminology we call the forms of sensibility. The female represents time and space itself. She is time and space, and the mystery beyond her is beyond pairs of opposites, so it isn’t male and it isn’t female. It neither is nor isn’t, but everything is within her, so that the gods are her children. Everything you can think of, everything you can see, is the production of the goddess.

Oh, this is a wonderful story. The Vedic gods are together and they see a strange son of amorphous thing down the way, like a kind of smoky fog. And they say, “What’s that?” They don’t know what it is. And Agni, the god of fire, says, “I’ll go find out who that is.” So he goes up to this smoky thing and he says, “Who are you?” And from the smoky thing the voice says, “Who are you?” And he says, “I’m Agni, I’m the lord of fire, I can burn anything.” And out of the fog there comes a piece of straw, it falls on the ground, it says, “Let’s see you burn that” He can’t burn it. He goes back, he says, “This is strange.”

Well, Vayu, the lord of winds, says, ”I’ll try.” So he goes and the same thing, “I can blow anything around.” Throws it down, “Now, let’s see you blow that” Well, he can’t. He goes back. Then a woman arrives, a beautiful, mysterious, mystic woman. And she instructs the gods and tells them who that is. “That is the ultimate mystery of being, from which you boys have received your strength. And he can turn it on or off for you,” you know. And there she comes as the one who illuminates the gods themselves concerning the ultimate ground of their own being.

BILL MOYERS: 

It’s the female wisdom.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

It’s the female as the giver of forms. 

She is the one who gave the forms and she knows where they came from.

BILL MOYERS: 

I wonder what it would have meant to us if somewhere along the way, we had begun the prayer “Our Mother,” instead of “Our Father.” 

What psychological difference would it have made?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Well, it makes a psychological difference in the character of the cultures. You have the basic birth of civilization in the Near East with the great river valleys then as the main source areas, the Nile, the Tigris-Euphrates, and then over in India, the Indus valley and later the Ganges. This is The World of the goddess; all these rivers have goddess names finally.

Then there come the invasions. These fighting people are herding people. The Semites are herders of goats and sheep, and the Indo-Europeans of cattle. They were formerly the hunters. They translate a hunting mythology into a herding mythology, but it’s animal oriented. And when you have hunters you have killers, and when you have herders, you have killers, because they’re always in movement, nomadic, coming into conflict with other people and they have to conquer the area they move into. This comes into the Near East, and this brings in the warrior gods, like Zeus, like Yahweh.

BILL MOYERS: The sword and death, instead of fertility.