I just watched The Pilot [of A Brave New World] and noticed a running image of your work : The Human Centipede.
GM: (laughing) You know I haven’t seen Human Centipede. I can’t watch horror movies.
Well my guess is that those forms of one long continuous being, which looks like A Centipede, is your visual description of A Self, moving through Time, which you said you learned in Kathmandu in 1994 as How Things Actually Are. How does this experience still interact with Your Life?
GM: We can’t see any direction in Time.
We can’t see Back, and
We can’t see Forward.
We can Remember Back
and Imagine Forward,
but that’s it.
We’re trained to feel like ‘Individuals’ so we don’t actually see ourselves as the extended processes that we are, shapeshifters who transform through decades from small, plump baby things to large and horny muscular teenagers, to hard-working, middle age adults, and finally desiccated seniors dying on beds.
If we sped that up and showed one human life over ten minutes, it would be a body horror werewolf transformation more outrageous and horrifying than any seen onscreen.
But to me it’s like the color of the sky, it’s so self-evident that to see a bird fly past the window is to imagine its skipping solid trail through the medium of time. In Time, We are all Connected, there’s just no denying that. There’s nothing mystical about any of this. I’m talking about stuff that is Simply Real.
Imagination can give you the ability to look backwards and forward. So, when you run it backwards, think how your grown-up mature body was once smaller, less massive, less capable of interacting with the environment – that’s real. Run it back to the beginnings of life on earth ad it’s clear that we all are one thing. A Singular organism made of many parts, just like a human body with its billions of individual skin cells – which die and fall from the body every day.
So, what does that mean? If people learned this in school, if we understood and accepted, we were all the same fucking thing(!) it might help prevent The Collapse into mad Division that’s occurring, just now. It’s just a Matter of Perspective that could change everything.
But The Organism We’re Part of might be sick, who knows?
When cells in A Body turn against one another and The System that supports them starts breaking down, it’s cancer…
You had the gnostic experience. To just hear it or read it is one thing but when you have the experience that seems to be the most convincing thing.
GM : Well, it seems to become self-evident. It’s really like someone turns your head around in Plato’s Cave and you realize that there’s A Light and someone’s doing Shadow Figures with their fingers. Once you’ve seen it, you’ve seen it.
And it’s ‘Oh, of course’! Of course! There’s no denying it.
But I guess to have that experience is its own confirmation. It’s like living by the sea all your life, then having to explain that to someone living inland who’s never seen The Ocean and doesn’t believe an ocean could exist because they’ve never seen one.
To me it can be confirmed intellectually by just Thinking about Time and how You are Embedded in Time --
You Know You Had to be Six Years Old to be here.
So, Where The Hell is ‘Being Six’?
A.) In The Village.
A.) It's be-hiiiiiind YOOOU...!!
A.) Behind The Walls.
A.) Some where --
Beyond The Sea.
Well, 'Being Six' exists,
in a Time Direction
that You Can’t See
or Point to,
but it’s still there.
To misunderstand that is equivalent to Flying from Los Angeles to London, then, after touching down at Heathrow, insisting that Los Angeles no longer exists!
And once You’re Truly Aware of Time
as The Medium
through which We Transmit Our Physical Signal,
then there is no denying
that Your Personal Track winds its way,
Back into Your Mum
and She goes back to Her Mum
and it all goes back to
That single Dividing Cell 3 1/2 Billion Years ago.
To me, that’s just basic mechanical shit. That’s not Mysticism.
I’m not interested in ghosts and spirit worlds.
If I’m going to have Transcendence, I want to be able to Touch it.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL:
What is the meaning of The Virgin Birth?
In India, there is This System of The Kundalini,
as it’s called, the idea of The Centres,
Psychological Centres up The Spine.
And they represent the psychological planes
of concern and consciousness and action.
The first is at the rectum,
and this is that of alimentation.
The Serpent represents this,
you know, a travelling oesophagus
going along just eating, eating, eating, eating.
And all of us are — we wouldn’t be here
if we weren’t eating.
And then the second,
The Second Centre
is at The Sex Organ Centre,
and that’s The Urge to Procreation.
The Third Centre's called,
is at The Navel, and this is where
You Eat and Want to Consume.
And it’s not the alimentary eating, it’s
The Mastering and Smashing
and Trashing of Others, do you see?
This is the aggressive mood.
Now, The First is an Animal Instinct,
The Second is an Animal Instinct,
The Third is an Animal Instinct,
and these three centres are located
in the pelvic base, do you see.
The next one is at the level of The Heart,
and this is The Opening of Compassion.
And there you move out of
The Field of Animal Action
into a field that is
properly human and spiritual.
Now, in each of these centers there is a symbolic form.
At the base, the first one, there is the form of the lingam and yeni, the male and female organs in conjunction.
At The Heart Chakra, there is again The Male and Female organs in conjunction, but in Gold.
This is The Virgin Birth.
It’s the birth of spiritual man out of the animal man.
Do you understand?
BILL MOYERS:
And it happens?
JOSEPH CAMPBELL:
When you are awakened at the level of The Heart to Compassion and to
suffering with the other person.
That’s the beginning of Humanity.
And the meditations of religion properly are on that level,
the heart level.
BILL MOYERS:
You say it’s the beginning of Humanity, but in these Stories, that’s the moment when gods are born,
The Virgin Birth, it’s a god
who emerges from that chemistry.
JOSEPH CAMPBELL:
Yeah, and you know who that god is? It’s you.
All of these symbols in mythology refer to you.
You can get stuck out there and think it’s all out there, and so you’re thinking of Jesus and all the sentiments about how he suffered and all;
what that suffering is, is what ought to be going on in you.
Have you been reborn?
Have you died to your animal nature and come to life as a human incarnation?
BILL MOYERS:
Why is it significant that this is of a virgin?
JOSEPH CAMPBELL:
Well, it is that the begetter is The Spirit.
It is a spiritual birth.
The Virgin conceived of The Word, through The Ear.
