NIRVANA

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.

I Was an ARTIST, Stupid...!!

BILL MOYERS: 

So the courage to love became the courage to affirm against tradition, whatever knowledge stands confirmed in one’s own experience.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Yeah.

BILL MOYERS: 

Why was that important in the evolution of the West?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Well, it was important in that it gives the West this accent, as I’ve been saying, on the individual, that he should have faith in his experience, and not simply mouth terms that have come to him from other mouths. I think that’s the great thing in the West. The validity of the individual’s experience of what humanity is, what life is, what values are, against the monolithic system.

BILL MOYERS:

Was there some of this in the legend of the Holy Grail?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL:

 Yes. Wolfram has a very interesting statement about the origin of the Grail. 

He says the Grail was brought from heaven by the neutral angels. 

There was the war in heaven between God and Lucifer, and the angelic hosts that sided one group with Lucifer, and the other with God. Pair of opposites, good and evil, God and Satan. 

The Grail was brought down through the middle, the way of the middle, by the neutral angels.

BILL MOYERS: 

What is the Grail representing, then?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Well, the Grail becomes the, what we call it, that which is attained and realized by people who have lived their own lives. So the story very briefly is of this — I’m giving it now as Wolfram gives it — but this is just one version. The Grail King was a lovely young man, but he had not earned that position. And the Grail represents the fulfillment of the highest spiritual potentialities of the human consciousness. And he was a lovely young man, and he rode forth from his castle with the war cry, “Amor!” And as he’s riding forth, a Moslem, a pagan warrior, a Mohammedan warrior, comes out of the woods, a knight. And they both level their lances at each other, they drive at each other, and the lance of the grail king kills the Mohammedan, but the Mohammedan lance castrates the Grail King.

What that means is that the Christian separation of matter and spirit, of the dynamism of life and the spiritual, natural grace and supernatural grace, has really castrated nature. And the European mind, the European life, has been as it were, emasculated by this; true spirituality, which would have come from this, has been killed. And then what did the pagan represent? He was a person from the suburbs of Eden. He was regarded as a nature man, and on the head of his lance was written the word, “Grail.” 

That is to say, nature intends the grail. Spiritual life is the bouquet of natural life, not a supernatural thing imposed upon it. 

And so the impulses of nature are what give authenticity to life, not obeying rules come from a supernatural authority, that’s the sense of the Grail.

BILL MOYERS: 

And the Grail that these romantic legends were searching for is the union once again of what had been divided? 

The peace that comes from joining?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

The grail becomes symbolic of an authentic life that has lived in terms of its own volition, in terms of its own impulse system, which carries it between the pairs of opposites, of good and evil, light and dark. Wolfram starts his epic with a short poem saying, “Every act has both good and evil results.” Every act in life yields pairs of opposites in its results. The best we can do is lean toward the light, that is to say, intend the light, and what the light is, is that of the harmonious relationships that come from compassion, with suffering, understanding of the other person. This is what the Grail is about.

BILL MOYERS: 

When we say God is love, does that have anything to do with romantic love? Does mythology ever link romantic love and God?

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 mole 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.

Venus and Adonis

MAURICE: 

You won't be able to do it if you can't relax and let people look at you.

It's the human form, as it is, naked, 

in all of its weakness and beauty.

JESSIE: 
Oh, yeah?

MAURICE: 

What would your mother say?

JESSIE: 

She says if I weren't born, 
She'd be better off.

JESSIE: 

Is this it?

MAURICE: 

This is it.

There.

You see?

JESSIE: 

Is her name Venus?

MAURICE: 

No.

Venus is a Goddess.

Accompanied by Eros,

She creates Love and Desire in us mortals,

leading often to Foolishness and Despair.

The Usual Shit.

For most men, a woman's body is 

The Most Beautiful Thing They Will Ever See.

JESSIE: 

What's The Most Beautiful Thing

a Girl Sees?

Do you know?

MAURICE: 

Her First Child.

Are you all right?

JESSIE: 

I'm not doing any more

of that modeling, I can tell you that.

MAURICE: 

The model for Venus was a Real Woman, 

just like you, that's what caused all The Fuss.

JESSIE: 

Do a bit, then.

MAURICE: 

Now?

JESSIE: 

If you're so good at it.

MAURICE: 

"Is this a dagger which I see before me,

The handle toward my hand?

Come, let me clutch thee:

I have thee not, and yet I see thee still."

Now, tell me, who wrote that?

JESSIE:

I don't know.

MAURICE: 

Really?

JESSIE:

All right then, smart-arse, what about this?

"I should be so lucky,

lucky, lucky, lucky.

I should be so lucky."

Well? Who wrote it?

MAURICE: 

Not a clue.

JESSIE: 
Well, there you are then.

Hey, it's like A Beach down there.

MAURICE:

I Iived by The Sea when I was a child.

It always calms me.

Shall we go to The Seaside, Venus?

JESSIE: 

I'd rather go to Topshop.

MAURICE: 

(CHUCKLING)

I'll take you to Lunch.

JESSIE: 

Take me somewhere posh.

MAURICE: 

Posh?

JESSIE: 

I want to meet someone really famous, not just you.

Who are these bastards?

MAURICE: 

Some of these arseholes were very well-known.

JESSIE:

For what?

MAURICE: 

You cheer me up, you know.

JESSIE: 

You have a laugh at me, don't you?

MAURICE: 

Just a little.

JESSIE: 

I'll get you back.

MAURICE: 

You will.

Don't you worry.

BILL MOYERS: 

And what does it mean, do you think, to young boys today. 
That we are absent these myths?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL:

There was no problem in these old days. 

The boy came out with a different body, and he’d gone through something.

BILL MOYERS: 

What about the female? 

I mean, most of the figures in the temple caves arc male. 

Was this a kind of secret society for males only?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

It wasn’t a secret society, 

it was that the boys had to go through it. 

Now, we don’t know exactly what happens with the female in this period, because we have very little evidence to tell us. 

In primary cultures today, the girl becomes a woman with her first menstruation. 

It happens to her; I mean, nature does it to her. 

And so she has undergone the transformation, and what is her initiation? 

Typically it is to sit in a little hut for a certain number of days, and realise what she is.

BILL MOYERS: 

How does she do that?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

She sits there. She’s now a woman. 

And what is a woman? 

A woman is a vehicle of life, and life has overtaken her. 

She is a vehicle now of life. 

A woman’s what it’s all about; 

the giving of birth and the giving of nourishment. 

She’s identical with the earth goddess in her powers, and she’s got to realize that about herself. 

The boy does not have a happening of that kind. 

He has to be turned into a man, and voluntarily become a servant of something greater than himself.

The woman becomes the vehicle of nature; the man becomes the vehicle of the society, the social order and the social purpose.

BILL MOYERS: 

So what happens when a society no longer embraces powerful mythology?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

What we’ve got on our hands. 

As I say, if you want to find what it means not to have a society without any rituals, read The New York Times.

BILL MOYERS: 

And you’d find?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Well, the news of the day.

BILL MOYERS: 

Wars…

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Young people who don’t know how to behave in a civilized society. 

Half the…I imagine that 50% of the crime is by young people in their 20s and early 30s that just behave like barbarians.

BILL MOYERS: 

Society has provided them no rituals by which they become members.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

None. There’s been a reduction, a reduction, a reduction of ritual. 

Even in the Roman Catholic Church, my God, they’ve translated the Mass out of the ritual language into a language that has a lot of domestic associations. 

So that, I mean, every time now that I read tile Latin of the Mass, I get that pitch again that it’s supposed to give, a language that throws you out of the field of your domesticity, you know. 

The altar is turned so that the priest, his back is to you, and with him you address yourself outward like that. 

Now they’ve turned the altar around, looks like Julia Child giving a demonstration, and it’s all homey and cozy.

BILL MOYERS: 

And they play a guitar.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

They play a guitar. 

Listen, they’ve forgotten what the function of a ritual is, is to pitch you out, not to wrap you back in where you have been all the time.

BILL MOYERS: 

So ritual that once conveyed an inner reality is now merely form, and that’s true in the rituals of society, and the personal rituals of marriage and religion.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Well, with respect to ritual, it must be kept alive. And so much of our ritual is dead.

Fortress of Solitude

What does it mean, to have a sacred place?

 

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

This is a term I like to use now as an absolute necessity for anybody today. 

 

You must have a room, or a certain hour a day or so –

 

Where you do not know what was in the newspapers that morning

 

You don’t know who your friends are,

 

You don’t know what you owe to anybody, 

 

You don’t know what anybody owes to you, 

 

But a place where you can simply experience

and bring forth What You Are

and

What You Might Be. 

 

This is the place of Creative Incubation. 

 

And first you may find that nothing’s happening there, but if you have a sacred place and use it, and take advantage of it, something will happen.

 

BILL MOYERS: 

This place does for you what the plains did for The Hunter…

 

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

For them the whole thing was a sacred place, do you see? 

 

But most of our action is economically or socially determined, and does not come out of our life. 

 

I don’t know whether you’ve had the experience I’ve had, but as you get older, the claims of the environment upon you are so great that you hardly know where the hell you are. 

 

What is it you intended? 

 

You’re always doing something that is required of you this minute, that minute, another minute. 

 

Where is your bliss station, you know? 

Try to find it. 

 

Get a phonograph and put on the records,

the music, that you really love. 

 

Even if it’s corny music that nobody else respects,

I mean, the one that you like or the book you want to read,

get it done and have a place in which to do it. 

 

There you get the “thou” feeling of Life. 

 

These people had it for the whole world that they were living in.

 

Switch :

How is this here? 

This Cave? 

 

LEGION:

I made it.

 

http://spikethenews.blogspot.com/2019/11/profiles-in-mentorship-legion-and-switch.html

I Could Not Have Let That Young Man Go

“Say, for instance… most of us here are mostly pretty counter-culture types – y’know, we like our drugs, we like this and that; we like breaking a few rules. 

But we don’t like The Police, in general. 

Who here loves The Police? Hands up.

Nice one! Coz I’m gonna teach you to LOVE The Police.....”

“ARE WE DOING TOO MUCH OR TOO LITTLE?” 

Wonder Woman asked, cradling a dying bird in a dust-bowl landscape. 

“WHEN DOES INTERVENTION BECOME DOMINATION?”

“I CAN ONLY TELL YOU WHAT I BELIEVE, DIANA,” 

Superman replied. 

“HUMANKIND HAS TO BE ALLOWED TO CLIMB TO ITS OWN DESTINY. 

WE CAN’T CARRY THEM THERE.”

Then the Flash countered with: 

“BUT THAT’S WHAT SHE’S SAYING. 

WHAT’S THE POINT? 

WHY SHOULD THEY NEED US AT ALL?”

“TO CATCH THEM IF THEY FALL,” 

said Superman, gazing nobly at the sky. 

Issue no. 1 of the relaunched Justice League of America in 1987 had depicted its characters from an overhead perspective, giving the reader an elevated position that allowed us to look down on a newly humanized and relatable group of individuals.

At my request, Howard Porter drew our first cover shot of the JLA from below, endowing them with the majesty of towering statues on Mount Olympus, putting readers at the level of children gazing up at adults. JLA was a superhero title kids could read to feel grown-up and adults could read to feel young again.”

“Just beyond the railing that keeps cars from rolling over, a Young Man actually clearly about to jump and preparing himself to jump. 

The Police car stopped. 

The Policeman on the right jumps out to grab The Boy, and grabs him just as he jumped and was himself being pulled over, and would have gone over if The Second Cop hadn’t gotten around, grabbed him and pull the two of them back. 

And The Policeman was asked, 

“Why didn’t you let go? 

I mean, you would have lost your life?” 

And you see what had happened to that man, 

this is what’s known as one pointed meditation 

Everything Else in His Life dropped off. 

His Duty to His Family

His Duty to His Job

His Duty to His Own Career

All of his Wishes and Hopes for Life, 

just disappeared and he was about to go. 

And his answer was, 

“I couldn’t let go.

If I had let that Young Man go, 

I could not have lived another Day of My Life.”

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

The God of Death is The Lord of Sex at the same time.

BILL MOYERS: 

What do you mean?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

It’s a marvelous thing. 

One after another, you can see these gods Ghede, The Death God of the Haitian voodoo, is also The Sex God. 

Wotan had one eye covered and the other uncovered, do you see, and at the same time was The Lord of Life.

Osiris, The Lord of Death and The Lord of The Generation of Life. 

It’s a basic theme: That Which Dies is Born. 

You have to have Death in order to have Life.

Now, this is the origin thought really of the head hunt, in Southeast Asia and particularly in the Indonesian zone. 

The head hunt, right up to now, has been a sacred act, 

it’s a sacred killing: 

Unless there is Death, there cannot be Birth, and a Young Man, before he can be permitted to Marry and Become a Father, must have gone forth and had his kill.

BILL MOYERS: 

What does that say to you?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Well, that every generation has to die in order that the next generation should come. 

As soon as you beget or give birth to a child, you are the dead one; the child is the new life and you are simply the protector of that new life.

BILL MOYERS: 

Your time has come and you know it.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Yeah, well, that’s why there is this deep psychological association of begetting and dying.

BILL MOYERS: 

Isn’t there some relationship between what you’re saying and this fact, 

that a father will give his life for his son, 

a mother will give her life for her child?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

There’s a wonderful paper. 

I don’t whether you knew it that I would love to talk to this point there’s a wonderful paper by Schopenhauer, who’s one of my three favorite philosophers, called 

“The Foundation of Morality.”

There he asks exactly the question that you’ve asked. 

How is it that a human being can so participate in the peril or pain of another, that without thought, spontaneously, he sacrifices his own life to the other? 

How can this happen? 

That what we normally think of as the first law of nature, namely self-preservation, is suddenly dissolved, there’s a breakthrough.

In Hawaii, some four or five years ago, there was an extraordinary adventure that represents this problem. 

There’s a place there called the Pali, where the winds from the north, the trade winds from the north, come breaking through a great ridge of rocks and of mountain, and they come through with a great blast of wind. 

The people like to go up there to get their hair blown around and so forth, or to commit suicide, you know, like jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge. 

Well, a police car was on its way up early, a little road that used to go up there, and they saw just beyond the railing that keeps cars from rolling over, a young man actually clearly about to jump and prepare himself to jump. 

The police car stopped. 

The policeman on the right jumps out to grab the boy, and grabs him just as he jumped and was himself being pulled over, and would have gone over if the second cop hadn’t gotten around, grabbed him and pull the two of them back. 

There was a long description of this, it was a marvelous thing, in the newspapers at that time.

And the policeman was asked, “Why didn’t you let go? I mean, you would have lost your life?” 

And you see what had happened to that man, this is what’s known as one pointed meditation everything else in his life dropped off. His duty to his family, his duty to his job, his duty to his own career, all of his wishes and hopes for life, just disappeared and he was about to go. And his answer was, “I couldn’t let go. If I had,” and I’m quoting almost word for word, “if I’d let that young man go, I could not have lived another day of my life.”

How come? 

Schopenhauer’s answer is, this is the breakthrough of a metaphysical realization that you and the other are one. 

And that the separateness is only an effect of the temporal forms of sensibility of time and space. 

And a true reality is in that unity with all life. 

It is a metaphysical truth that becomes spontaneously realized, because it’s the real truth of your life. 

Now, you might say the hero is the one who has given his physical life, you might say, to some order of realization of that truth. 

It may appear that I’m one with my tribe, or I’m one with people of a certain kind, or I’m one with life. 

This is not a concept; this is a realization, do you see what I mean?

BILL MOYERS: 

No, explain it.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

And the concepts of love your neighbor and all are to put you in tune with that fact, but whether you love your neighbor or not, bing, the thing grabs you and you do this thing. 

You don’t even know who it is. 

That policeman didn’t know who that young man was. 

And Schopenhauer says in small ways you can see this happening every day all the time. 

This is a theme that can be seen moving life in the world, people doing nice things for each other.

BILL MOYERS: 

What do you think has happened to this mythic idea of the hero in our culture today?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

It comes up in an experience. 

I think, I remember during the Vietnam war, seeing on the television the young men in helicopters going out to rescue one of their companions at great risk to themselves. 

They didn’t have to rescue that young man; that’s the same thing working. 

It puts them in touch with the experience of being alive. 

Going to the office every day, you don’t get that experience, but suddenly you’re ripped out into being alive. 

And life is pain and life is suffering and life is horror, but by God, you’re alive and it’s spectacular. And this is a case of being alive, rescuing that young man.

BILL MOYERS: 

But I also know a man who said once, after years of standing on the platform of the subway, 

“I die a little bit down there every day, but I know I’m doing so for my family.” 

There are small acts of heroism that occur without regard to the nobility or the notoriety that you attract for it.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

That’s right, that’s right.

BILL MOYERS: 

And the mother does it by the isolation she endures in behalf of the family, of raising…

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Motherhood is a sacrifice. 

On our veranda in Hawaii, there are little birds that come that Jean likes to feed. 

And each year there have been one or two mothers, mother birds. 

And if you’ve ever seen a mother bird plagued by her progeny for food, that the mother should regurgitate their meal to them, and the two of them, or five of them in one case, flopping all over this poor little mother, they bigger than she in some cases, you just think, well, this is the symbol of motherhood. 

This is just giving of your substance, every thing, to this progeny.

There should be it in marriage. 

A marriage is a relationship. 

When you make a sacrifice in marriage, you’re not sacrificing to The Other, you’re sacrificing to The Eelationship. 

And this is symbolised, for example, in that Chinese image of the tai chi, the tao, you know, with the dark and the light interacting, it’s a well-known sign. 

That is the relationship of yang and yin, male and female, which is what a marriage is. 

And that’s what you are, you’re no longer This, 

you’re The Relationship. 

And so marriage, I would say, 

is not a love affair, it’s An Ordeal.

BILL MOYERS: 

An ordeal?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

The ordeal is sacrifice of ego to the relationship, of a two-ness which now becomes the one.

BILL MOYERS: 

One not only biologically but spiritually, 

and primarily spiritually.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Primarily spiritually.

BILL MOYERS: 

But the necessary function of marriage, in order to create our own images and perpetuate ourselves in children, but it’s not the primary one, as you say.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

No, that’s really just the elementary aspect of marriage. 

There are two completely different stages of marriage. 

First is the youthful marriage, following the wonderful impulse, you know, that nature has given us, in the interplay of the sexes biologically. 

And in the reproduction of children. 

But there comes a time when the child graduates from the family, and the family is left. 

I’ve been amazed at the number of my friends who in their forties or fifties go apart, who have had a perfectly decent life together with the child, but they interpreted their union in terms of relationship through the child. 

They did not interpret it in terms of their own personal relationship to each other.

BILL MOYERS: 

Utterly incompatible with the idea of 'Doing One’s Own Thing'?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

It’s not one’s own thing, you see. 

It is in a sense one’s own thing, 

but the one isn’t just you, it’s the two together. 

And that’s a purely mythological image, of the sacrifice of the visible entity for a transcendent unit, cracking eggs to make an omelet, you know? 

And by marrying The Right Person, 

we reconstruct the image of the incarnate god, 

and that’s what marriage is.

BILL MOYERS: 

The right person. How does one choose the right person?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Your heart tells you; it ought to.

BILL MOYERS: 

Your inner being.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

That’s the mystery.

BILL MOYERS: 

You recognize your other self.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Well, I don’t know, but there’s a flash that comes and something in you knows that this is the one.