Living In Accord With Nature

What do you think Our Souls owe 

to Ancient Myths?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Well, The Ancient Myths were designed 

to put the minds, 

the mental system, 

into accord with this body system, 

with this inheritance of The Body.

BILL MOYERS: A harmony?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: To harmonize. The mind can ramble off in strange ways, and want things that the body does not want. And the myths and rites were means to put the mind in accord with the body, and the way of life in accord with the way that nature dictates.

BILL MOYERS: So in a way these old stories live in us.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: They do indeed, and the stages of a human development are the same today as they were in the ancient times. And the problem of a child brought up in a world of discipline, of obedience, and of his dependency on others, has to be transcended when one comes to maturity so that you are living now not in dependency but with self-responsible authority. And the problem of the transition from childhood to maturity, and then from maturity and full capacity to losing those powers and acquiescing in the natural course of, you might say, the autumn-time of life and the passage away, myths are there to help us go with it, accept nature’s way and not hold to something else.

BILL MOYERS: The stories are sort of to me like messages in a bottle from shores someone else has visited first.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: Yes, and you’re visiting those shores now.

BILL MOYERS: 

And these myths tell me how others have made the passage, and how I can make the passage.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

And also what The Beauties are of The Way. 

I feel this now, moving into my own last years, you know, the myths help me to go with it.

BILL MOYERS: 

What kind of myth? Give me one that has actually helped you.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Well, the tradition in India, for instance, 

of actually changing your whole way of dress, 

even changing your name, 

as you pass from one stage to another. 

When I retired from Teaching, 

I knew that I had to create a new life, a new way of life, and I changed my manner of thinking about my life just in terms of that notion, moving out of the sphere of achievement into the sphere of enjoyment and appreciation and relaxing into the wonder of it all.

BILL MOYERS: 

And then there is that final passage through the dark gate?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Well, that’s no problem at all. 

The Problem in Middle Life, 

when The Body has reached its climax of power and begins to lose it, is to identify yourself, not with The Body, which is falling away, but with the consciousness of which it is a vehicle. 

And when you can do that, and this is something learned from my myths, What am I? Am I the bulb that carries the light, or am I the light of which the bulb is a vehicle? And this body is a vehicle of consciousness, and if you can identify with the consciousness, you can watch this thing go, like an old car there goes the fender, there goes this. But it’s expectable, you know, and then gradually the whole thing drops off and consciousness rejoins consciousness. I mean, that’s it’s no longer in this particular environment.

BILL MOYERS: 

And the myths, the stories have brought this consciousness to ours.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Well, I live with these myths and they tell me to do this all the time. And this is the problem which can be then metaphorically understood as identifying with the Christ in you, and the Christ in you doesn’t die. The Christ in you survives death and resurrects. Or it can be with Shiva. Shiva hung, I am Shiva. And this is the great meditation of the yogis in the Himalayas. And one doesn’t have even to have a metaphorical image like that, if one has a mind that’s willing to just relax and identify itself with that which moves it.