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 realized, 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, one of these stories 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 recognize 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.