What is The Grail representing, then?

 

BILL MOYERS: 

What is The Grail representing, then?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Well, The Grail becomes the, what we call it, 

That Which is Attained and Realised 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.

Anjali

BILL MOYERS: 

Genesis 1: 

So God created Man in his own image, in the image of God He created Him, male and female he created them. 

Then God blessed them 

and God said to them, 

‘Be fruitful and multiply.’

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

And now this is from a legend of 

the Bassari people of West Africa.  

“Unumbotte made a human being, 

its name was Man. 

Unumbotte next made all antelope, 

named Antelope. 

Unumbotte made a snake, 

named Snake. 

And Unumbotte said to them, 

‘The Earth has not yet been pounded. 

You must pound the ground smooth 

where you are sitting.’

 Unumbone gave them seeds 

of all kinds and said, 

‘Go plant these.'”

BILL MOYERS: 

And Genesis 1: 

“And God saw everything that he had made, 

and behold, it was very good.”

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

And from the Upanishad: 

“Then he realised, I indeed am this creation, 

for I have poured it forth from myself. 

In that way he became this creation, 

and verily he who knows this becomes 

in this creation a creator.” 

That’s the clincher there. When you know this, then you’ve identified with the creative principle  yourself, which is the God-power in the world, which means in you. It’s beautiful.

BILL MOYERS: 

What do you think we’re looking for, 

when we subscribe to one of 

these theories of creation, 

What are we looking for?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Well, I think what we’re looking for is a way of experiencing The World 

in which we are living, 

that will open to us 

the transcendence 

that informs it, and at 

the same time informs 

ourselves within it. 

That’s what people want, that’s 

what The Soul asks for.

BILL MOYERS: 

You mean we’re looking for some accord with the mystery that informs all things, what you call that vast ground of silence which we all share?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Yes, but not only to find it, but to find it actually in our environment, in our world, to recognise it, to have some kind of instruction that will enable us to see the divine presence.

BILL MOYERS: 

In The World and in Us.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

In India, this wonderful Anjali, this greeting :

You know what that means?

BILL MOYERS: 

No.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

That’s the greeting of prayer, isn’t it? 

That’s what we use for prayer. 

They greet you with that, that’s greeting the god that’s in you as you come in. 

These people are aware of the divine presence.

When you enter an Indian home as a guest, you are a visiting deity, and you feel it, by God, the way they treat you. 

It’s something in the way of a hospitality that you don’t get where you have simply one person and another person. 

It’s a recognition of the identity.

BILL MOYERS: 

But weren’t people who told these stories and believed them and acted on them asking far more simple questions, you know, who made the world, how was the world made, why was the world made? 

Aren’t these  the questions that these creation stories are trying to address?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

No. It’s through that answer that they see that the creator is present in the whole world. 

Do you see what I mean? 

This story that we’ve just read, 

“I see that I am this creation,” 

says the god. 

When you see that God says he is the creation 

and then you are a creature, well, the god is within you and the man you’re talking to, also. 

And so there’s that realization, 

two aspects of the one divinity.

BILL MOYERS: 

Accord again, harmony again.

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Wonderful thing.

MASKS

Dr. Ray Stantz, 

The Heart of The Ghostbusters :

….it’s A Girl.

Dr. Egon Spengler :

It’s Gozer.

Winston :

I Thought “Gozer” was A Man --

Dr. Egon Spengler :

It’s Whatever it Wants to Be….

Venkman :

Well, whatever it is, 

it’s got to 

Get By Us --

Go Get Her, Ray!

Gozer The Gozarian…?

Good Evening….

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

We Want to Think about God. 

God is a Thought, God is an Idea, but its reference is to 

something that transcends

all Thinking. 

I mean, He’s Beyond Being, Beyond the category of 

Being or Nonbeing. 

Is He or is He not? Neither 

Is nor Is Not.

Every God, every mythology, every religion, is True 

in this sense : It is True 

as metaphorical of 

The Human and 

Cosmic Mystery.

He Who Thinks He Knows,

Doesn’t Know. 

He Who Knows that 

He Doesn’t Know, knows.

There is an old story 

that is still good — 

The Story of The Quest, 

The Spiritual Quest, 

that is to say, to find 

the inward thing that 

You basically are. 

All of these symbols in mythology refer to you — 

Have you been reborn? 

Have you died to your animal nature and come to life as a human incarnation? 

You are God in your deepest identity. 

You are one with the transcendent.

BILL MOYERS: 

The images of God are many. 

Joseph Campbell called them 

“The Masks of Eternity,” and said 

they both cover and reveal 

the face of glory. 

All our names and images for God are masks, Campbell said, 

they signify that ultimate reality, which by definition transcends language and art.

A Myth is a Mask of God, too, a metaphor for what lies behind the visible world. 

As teacher, scholar and writer, Joseph Campbell spent his life in the study of comparative religion. He wanted to know what it means that God assumes such different masks in different cultures. We go east of Suez and see people dancing before a bewildering array of fantastic gods. When those people come here, well, Campbell told the story of the young Hindu who called on him in New York and said, “When I visit a foreign country, I like to acquaint myself with its religion. So I bought myself a Bible and for some months now have been reading it from the beginning. 

But, you know, I can’t 

find any religion in it.”

BILL MOYERS: 

But Joe, can Westerners grasp this kind of mystical trance 

theological experience? 

It does transcend theology, it leaves theology behind. I mean, if you’re locked to the image of God in a culture where science determines your perceptions of reality, how can you experience this ultimate ground that the shamans talk about?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

The best example I know in our literature is that beautiful book by John Neihardt called Black Elk Speaks.

BILL MOYERS: 

Black Elk was?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Black Elk was a young Sioux or Dakota, as they are often called, boy around nine years old, before the American cavalry had encountered the Sioux. 

They were the great people of the plains. 

And this boy became sick, psychologically sick. His family…I’m telling the typical shaman story. The child begins to tremble, and is immobilized, and the family’s terribly concerned about it. And they send for a shaman who had had the experience in his own youth, to come as a psychoanalyst, you might say, and pull the youngster out of it. But instead of relieving him of the deities, he is adapting him to the deities, and the deities to himself, you might say. It’s a different problem from that of psychoanalysis. I think it was Nietzsche who said, “Be careful, lest in casting out your devil, you cast out the best thing that’s in you.” Here, the deities who have been encountered the powers, let’s call them are retained. The connection is retained, it’s not broken. And these men then become the spiritual advisers and gift-givers of their people.

Well, what happened with this young boy, he was about nine years old, was he had a vision, and the vision is described, and it’s a vision prophetic of the terrible future that his tribe was to have. But it also spoke of the possible positive aspects of it. It was a vision of what he called the hoop of his nation, realizing that it was one of many hoops which is something that we haven’t all learned well enough yet and the cooperation of all the hoops and all the nations and grand processions and so forth. But more than that, it was an experience of himself as going through the realms of spiritual imagery that were of his culture, and assimilating their import. 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.

There is a Shining Point Where All Lines Intersect

BILL MOYERS: 

But Joe, can Westerners grasp this kind of 

mystical trance theological experience? 

It does transcend Theology, 

it leaves theology behind. 

I mean, if you’re locked to 

the image of God in a culture 

where Science determines 

your perceptions of reality, 

how can you experience 

this ultimate ground that 

the shamans talk about?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

The best example I know in our literature is 

that beautiful book by John Neihardt called 

Black Elk Speaks.

BILL MOYERS: 

Black Elk was?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Black Elk was a young Sioux or Dakota, 

as they are often called, boy around nine years old, 

before the American cavalry had encountered the Sioux. 

They were the great people of the plains. 

And this boy became sick, psychologically sick. 

His Family…I’m telling the typical shaman story. 

The child begins to tremble, and is immobilized, 

and the family’s terribly concerned about it. 

And they send for a shaman who had had the experience in his own youth, to come as a psychoanalyst, you might say, and pull the youngster out of it. 

But instead of relieving him of the deities, 

he is adapting him to the deities, 

and the deities to himself, you might say. 

It’s a different problem from that of psychoanalysis. 

I think it was Nietzsche who said, 

“Be careful, lest in casting out your devil, 

you cast out the best thing that’s in you.” 

Here, the deities who have been encountered 

the powers, let’s call them are retained. 

The connection is retained, it’s not broken. 

And these men then become the spiritual advisers and gift-givers 

of Their People.

Well, what happened with this young boy, he was about nine years old, was he had a vision, and the vision is described, and it’s a vision prophetic of the terrible future that his tribe was to have. 

But it also spoke of the possible positive aspects of it. 

It was a vision of what he called the hoop of his nation, realizing that it was one of many hoops which is something that we haven’t all learned well enough yet and the cooperation of all the hoops and all the nations and grand processions and so forth. 

But more than that, it was an experience of himself as going through the realms of spiritual imagery that were of his culture, and assimilating their import. 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, 

realising the relationship of the temporal moment 

to the eternal not-moment, 

but forever - is the Sense of Life. 

Realising 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.

MASKS

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

We want to think about God. 

God is a Thought, God is an Idea, 

but its reference is to 

something that transcends

all Thinking. 

I mean, He’s Beyond Being, Beyond the category of 

Being or Nonbeing. 

Is He or is He not? Neither 

Is nor Is Not.

Every god, every mythology, every religion, is True in this sense : It is True 

as metaphorical of the human and cosmic mystery.

He who thinks he knows,

doesn’t know. 

He who knows that 

he doesn’t know, knows.

There is an old story that is still good — the story of The Quest, the spiritual quest, that is to say, to find the inward thing that you basically are. 

All of these symbols in mythology refer to You — 

Have you been reborn? 

Have you died to your animal nature 

and come to Life as a Human incarnation? 

You are God in 

Your Deepest Identity. 

You are One with 

The Transcendent.

BILL MOYERS: 

The images of God are many. 

Joseph Campbell called them 

“The Masks of Eternity,” and said 

they both cover and reveal 

the face of glory. 

All our names and images for God are masks, Campbell said, 

they signify that ultimate reality, which by definition transcends language and art.

A Myth is a Mask of God, too, a metaphor for what lies behind the visible world. 

As teacher, scholar and writer, Joseph Campbell spent his life in the study of comparative religion. He wanted to know what it means that God assumes such different masks in different cultures. We go east of Suez and see people dancing before a bewildering array of fantastic gods. When those people come here, well, Campbell told the story of the young Hindu who called on him in New York and said, “When I visit a foreign country, I like to acquaint myself with its religion. So I bought myself a Bible and for some months now have been reading it from the beginning. But, you know, I can’t find any religion in it.”

BILL MOYERS: 

But Joe, can Westerners grasp this kind of mystical trance theological experience? 

It does transcend theology, it leaves theology behind. I mean, if you’re locked to the image of God in a culture where science determines your perceptions of reality, how can you experience this ultimate ground that the shamans talk about?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

The best example I know in our literature is that beautiful book by John Neihardt called Black Elk Speaks.

BILL MOYERS: 

Black Elk was?

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Black Elk was a young Sioux or Dakota, as they are often called, boy around nine years old, before the American cavalry had encountered the Sioux. 

They were the great people of the plains. 

And this boy became sick, psychologically sick. His family…I’m telling the typical shaman story. The child begins to tremble, and is immobilized, and the family’s terribly concerned about it. And they send for a shaman who had had the experience in his own youth, to come as a psychoanalyst, you might say, and pull the youngster out of it. But instead of relieving him of the deities, he is adapting him to the deities, and the deities to himself, you might say. It’s a different problem from that of psychoanalysis. I think it was Nietzsche who said, “Be careful, lest in casting out your devil, you cast out the best thing that’s in you.” Here, the deities who have been encountered the powers, let’s call them are retained. The connection is retained, it’s not broken. And these men then become the spiritual advisers and gift-givers of their people.

Well, what happened with this young boy, he was about nine years old, was he had a vision, and the vision is described, and it’s a vision prophetic of the terrible future that his tribe was to have. But it also spoke of the possible positive aspects of it. It was a vision of what he called the hoop of his nation, realizing that it was one of many hoops which is something that we haven’t all learned well enough yet and the cooperation of all the hoops and all the nations and grand processions and so forth. But more than that, it was an experience of himself as going through the realms of spiritual imagery that were of his culture, and assimilating their import. 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.

The Day of Complex Emotions

BILL MOYERS : 

The mesmerizing character for me — 

is Darth Maul.

When I saw him, I thought of 

Satan and Lucifer in “Paradise Lost.” 

I thought of the Devil in “Dante’s Inferno.” 

I mean, you’ve really — have brought from — 

it seems to me — from way down in our unconsciousness 

this image of — of — of Evil, of The Other.

GEORGE LUCAS: 

Well, yeah. We were trying to find somebody who could compete with Darth Vader, 

who’s one of the most, you know, 

famous evil characters now. 

And so we went back into 

representations of Evil.

Not only, the Christian, but also 

Hindu and Greek mythology 

and other religious icons and, 

obviously, then designed our own — 

our own character out of that.

BILL MOYERS: 

What did you find when you went back there in — in all of these representations? There’s something …

GEORGE LUCAS: 

A lot of — a lot of evil characters have horns. 

It’s very interesting. 

I mean, you’re trying to build An Icon of Evil, 

and you sort of wonder why the same images 

evoke the same emotions.

It Is Not Going to Be Looked After Terribly Well....

BILL MOYERS: 

When I was growing up, Tales of King Arthur, 

Tales of the medieval knights, 

Tales of the dragon slayers were very strong in My World.

 

JOSEPH CAMPBELL: 

Dragons represent GREED, really. 

 

The European Dragon guards things 

in His Cave, and What He Guards are

Heaps of Gold 

and 

Virgins. 

 

And he can’t make use of either of them,

but he just guards. 

 

There’s no Vitality of Experience,

either of The Value of The Gold 

or of The Female whom he’s guarding there.

“Tonto wheeled the double stretcher down the aisles of body racks, looking for Jimmy Jitterman's body. 

He'd already found Rimmer's; it lay on the stretcher goo-eyed and tongue lolling; but he couldn't find Jimmy's. Thirty minutes passed, and he still couldn't find it. It wasn't here.

He opened the small sound-proofed box, and Jimmy and Rimmer bounced out.

'Your body's not here, Jimmy. They must have auctioned it already.'

'I'll take that one, instead.'

'That's my body,' said Rimmer, firmly.

'Was.'

'Now wait a minute. Me and that body go back years. It has great sentimental value. You can't just take my body.'

'Get him another one.'

'I don't want another one.'

'OK. Don't a get him another one.'

'OK, get me another one.'

The soundwaves bounced back into the box. Tonto unhooked the nearest body to him and slammed it on to the stretcher alongside Rimmer's.

***

When Rimmer opened his eyes, he found himself standing in front of himself, before he remembered Jimmy was in his body, now, and he had a new one.

Rimmer wasn't quite sure how he felt. Pretty peculiar was about the best label he could find.

Seeing Jimmy in his body, standing in a way he would never have stood, his lips twisting his features into an expression he'd never seen before, made him feel an emotion he'd never experienced.

Jealousy was part of it. Anger was there. Frustration, certainly. A large scoop of nostalgia. And the same feeling he'd once had when he lent his mountain bike to his brother Howard, knowing, without evidence, it wasn't going to be looked after terribly well. And strangest of all, a weird kind of 'glowy' feeling at the bottom of his stomach.

'OK, let's get out of here,' Jimmy was saying with Rimmer's voice from inside Rimmer's body. Then Jimmy did something that made Rimmer feel even more peculiar. He was one of those men, macho-bred, who like to stand with their legs apart, one hand over the groin of their trousers, quite openly cupping their testicles.

He felt very odd indeed, watching helplessly as another man idly juggled his own genitalia. Or rather, his ex-genitalia.

Before he could cry out: 'Hey - keep your filthy hands off my goodies,' the swing doors at the far end of the Transfer Suite slammed open, and six armed officers came in, firing.

Rimmer didn't know who to be scared for most: himself or his ex-self.

Jimmy, in Rimmer's body, was standing, almost contemptuous of the guards' barrage, in the middle of one of the aisles, firing off two handguns, stolen from Tonto's victims. He was laughing, too. He was actually laughing. Using Rimmer's vocal cords and Rimmer's laugh. The high-pitched giggle which Rimmer usually reserved for moments of high humour. Hardly appropriate in a pitched battle to the death.

'Out the back!' Tonto was yelling.

'You go,' Jimmy laughed in Rimmer's body. 'I got me some goons to kill!'

'Leave it - you don't stand a chance.'

'Who cares?'

He flicked his guns, Cagney-style, as if the wrist-snapping motion would give the bullets extra speed, and howled hysterically as small explosions of red burst out of the chests of three of the six guards, killing two and earning the third a permanent desk job.

Rimmer cowered, half-dazed in his new body as this fresh horror unfolded in slow motion before him.

Here was the body of Arnold J. Rimmer, gunning down security guards like ducks at an arcade and plainly enjoying it, in full view of three police witnesses.

Now how was that going to look in court?

He wasn't in it, but his body was a cop killer.

This seemingly untoppable horror was then topped by an even more untoppable horror, moments later, and this second untoppable horror was then topped itself by a third, even more untoppable horror less than ten seconds after that.

Something that belonged inside Rimmer's body hit the wall wetly, and Jimmy screeched and spun round, clutching Rimmer's shoulder.

'I've been hit!' he giggled. Then his elbow exploded into a cloud of red mist, spinning him around again. 'Twice!' He snorted laughter-spittle, as Tonto laid down some covering fire and edged towards him.

'Come on, we can still get out.' Tonto grabbed Jimmy and hauled him through the doorway, still firing.

Rimmer stumbled after them.

They dashed down a corridor. Tonto and Jimmy effortlessly accelerated away. Rimmer couldn't keep up. For some reason, running was incredibly painful. But the pain wasn't in his legs, it was in his chest. Just what was this body he'd wound up in? A cardiac victim? A chronic smoker? Then he realized it was because he wasn't wearing a bra, and his large breasts were bouncing madly up and down in front of him.

'Oh my God,' he screamed in a husky female voice, 'I'm a woman!' 

And he was. He was Trixie LaBouch.