Fundamental Eastern/Western Distinction

Og · 01-09-2007, 06:19 PM

This is an excerpt from a book of compiled lectures of joseph campbell titled "Myths of Light. Eastern Metaphors of the Eternal"

Quote:

I and Thou
Let me render a little myth for you. This is an old Bronze Age myth, which has come down in three separate ways through three different traditions. The first version I want to give you comes from the beginning of the Brhadaranyaka Upanisad, which dates from about ninth century B.C.

In the beginning... Of course, there was no beginning, because beginning is a time word. As soon as you start talking about mythology, you must not take the terms concretely; that's the mistake of the whole Judeo-Christian tradition. Read myths as newspaper reports by reporters who were there and it doesn't work. Reread them as poems and they become luminous.

So, in the beginning that was no beginning, there was nothing but the Self. And the Self at a moment that was no moment said, "I. Aham. Ego." And as soon as it thought, "I," it experienced fear. Then it reasoned, though it wasn't very complicated reasoning--this was the very first attempt at reasoning, after all--"Since there is nothing else in the world, what do I have to be afraid of?" That eliminated fear.

Of course, no sooner was the fear eliminated than it had desire: "I wish there were another." Well, in that state of being, a wish is as good as a fact. The self swelled and split in half, and viola--there were two. Each united with the other and produced something. And then she--the feminine one--said, "How can he unite with me who am of his own substance?" So she turned herself into a cow; he turned into a bull. She turned into a donkey, and he turned into a jackass. She turned into a mare, and he into a horse, and so on down to the ants. And then that which has originally said "I" looked around and said, "This world is I. I have poured forth." So, Aham poured forth this universe--story number one.

From about the same date comes the second chapter of Genesis. Here we find this little chap whom God had made to tend a garden. Well, that's a dreary job, and he was lonesome. So God fashioned a lot of animals and brought them to him for his naming. Well, he could name them--what else could he do with them? God finally thought of something else; He put this lonesome mooner to sleep and drew forth what Joyce has called "the cutlet-sized consort." Then Adam looked up and he said, "Well, at last!"

Look what happened here. We have the same story of the Self splitting in two. Only this time what has split is not the deity itself but the creature of the deity. God is outside of this little event, and the whole calamity of history goes on over on our side of the footlights with Him out there, observing.

One of the great things I experienced in going to the Orient was meeting with people who had never heard of the Fall. There is no guilt with respect to some creator up there who's saying, "You ought to be this way and, instead, you are that way." This is a wonderful heart-cleansing thing. I have told many of my friends, "Save the money on psychoanalysis and go to Japan."

Now we come to our third story. The Symposium by Plato documents a wonderful drunken party, the greatest the world has ever seen. These Greek philosophers are sitting around, talking about love, and Aristotle relates this little myth.

It seems the original human beings had four legs and two heads; each was as big as two human beings, only--the Greeks being what they were of course--they came in three varieties. The model on the Sun was made male-male, the one on the Earth was female-female, and the one on the moon was male-female, but at any rate each was twice what each of us now is. The gods were afraid of them and so Zeus decided to cut them in half, and then Apollo pulled together their raw flesh and tied it at what is now the navel and he turned the heads around so these newly divided creatures could look at each other. Of course, what immediately happened was that all the severed couples embraced each other and refused to move. So the gods said, "Well, we won't get anything done with this kind of thing going on," so they separated teh lovers far apart from each other, mixing up the different varieties and the different genders all over the place. Of course, that didn't stop our separated friends: their need to reunite with their opposites was as strong as ever. In their efforts to find each other again, they built cities and civilizations. This is really a basis for the Freudian view that all civilization is a sublimation of disappointed sex.

Here again we have the gods apart from the creatures. In this case, however, the god is not the creator of these creatures. In the Greek world a god is not our creator; rather, the gods are like big brothers, and you know how it is with big brothers: you've got to be careful with them; but they really don't have the right to order you around. Still, you'd better do what they tell you to do or else you'll get hurt. This is quite a different attitude from that of the biblical, Near Eastern tradition, where God created men to be His servants, and He gives the orders.

These then are three inflections of one old Bronze Age myth. I think this sets up very prettily the problem of these civilizations and the mythologies that we're dealing with.

He then goes on to talk about more distinctions and how these ideas can be seen running through the stories and practices of all the cultures involved. (This was his life's work as a professor of comparative mythology)

I can't believe that any rational human being could see the similarities of the stories and how the underlying ideas are similar and still grasp any one as literal fact. I can't believe that rational individuals can't see the diversity of cultures and behaviors around the world and even amongst the populations the diversities of perspectives and learning and communications styles in people and still think that they have THE truth that applies to everyone.

THIS is the essence of the decay of western society. It's the taking of the denotation of a myth which no longer applies to the situation our society is in. We are moving into an age were western culture is being driven by an intellectual group (scientists) who reject the literal interpretation of the stories as truth. They move forward without mythology and therefore without inspiration. Most of the times, their inspiration is to destroy the stories that the culture they're in grips to so hard.

This story that Campbell relates expresses the distinction between the 2 modern spiritualities of east and west and illustrates why our only hope for world unity is a joining of western science with eastern spirituality and for those people who are gripping so hard to western literal tradition to realize that their stories were speaking to certain people at a certain time and that the way they speak to people today causes strife.

They need not discard their stories. They need only interpret them as fingers pointing at the transcendent experience, not the experience itself. If there's one thing that science is doing, it is that it is demonstrating more and more how we are indistinguishable from nature. And that is what eastern spirituality has done all along.

Namaste

As a side note: Campbell's life conclusion was "Follow your Bliss." and that's all.

Bfpri · 01-09-2007, 06:33 PM

Can you enlighten me a little? So are you saying you think the Genesis story comes from a bronze age myth?

Og · 01-09-2007, 07:10 PM

I'm saying it's clear that this story speaks fundamentally to the human condition. I'm saying that solidifying it into a belief structure in a literal interpretation of the story misses the point of the story entirely.

Campbell, a professor of comparative mythology for nearly 40 years at Sarah Lawrence University in the states, and who wrote the book on modern hero myth stories linked to persistence of that story throughout humanity, and who worked with George Lucas to create "The Force" and such, illustrates the different perspectives of the different societies says.

It's Campbell who says:

Quote:

This is an old Bronze Age myth, which has come down in three separate ways through three different traditions.

He says that in the first line of the quote above. I was not saying that I think anything about the source of the myths. Campbell, on the other hand, has decades of scholarly work on the topic. While I'm not suggesting you accept his word as dogma, I merely state that he probably has some pretty solid reasons for making this claim. He is not invested in any mythology and he had no ideology or theology. His work is well respected in both popular and professional/academic fields.

I continue to read his work and will convey the exact sources of his claim here if I come across them.

But the stories are clearly similar in their construction and yet all seem to have cultural intonations as their only differences. That was my point.

What I was saying was that given the clear illustration of a similar thread throughout humanity that it should give people pause before they accept one "version" of the story as passed down through a certain culture as some sort of literal fact.

The connotation of the myth is so much more beautiful. Even the garden of eden story.

**The An-Jel** · 01-17-2007, 02:48 PM

I have a fun theory about God fighting the Angels if you like stories. I have one about Jesus too.

Doesn't the fall of Lucifer remind you of the battle between the Titans and the Gods of the Greeks? Except God wins instead of the Gods winning. God thrusts the Titans into Tarterus and God throws Lucifer in Hell and calls him Santa... I mean Satan.

Now we have Socrates, a true and real brilliant man, he drank hemlock and killed himself for his values. He was accused of corrupting the youth. Jesus in all his grandeur, would not bend to the will of the Jews so they gave him up to the Romans. Jesus sacrificed himself just as Socrates did and essentially for the same type of crime. But instead of the youth add the poor for Jesus.

Both people, Socrates being real and Jesus being Very Very suspect but possibly real, sacrificing themselves for their values.

Interesting coincidence in stories I have always thought. My Catholic friend agreed with me... degrees in Psychology and Philosophy and a masters in Literature. He laughed and said Yeah!

mister_lister · 02-11-2007, 06:32 PM

The real question, it would appear, is why do people take some stories literally?

I can tell you why I took the Bible literally for years. I was taught to take the stories of the bible literally, because those stories are so pivotal. If there was no Adam and Eve, there was no fall, if there was no fall, there is no need for redemption, if there is no need for redemption, there is no need for a saviour. It is as if you take one peice out, the house of cards falls, leaving everything in question. So as a Fundementalist Christian, I held on to each aspect of the story as if it were the keystone, rejecting anything that opposed what I considered pivotal truth. If science said "we evolved from lower species" I rejected it out of hand because if that was so, the Adam and Eve story was fiction and if it was fiction.... You get the picture!

All through out my Christian experience I was constantly taught about the "decline of western civilization". I was shocked to see it articulated earlier. I guess it is a matter of perspective. If you hold on to things that are traditional and conservative, I guess you would see it as a decline. If you are progressive and liberal like me, you do not see a decline, but rather an incline.

Democratic societies (which 'Western Society' is) is an evolving thing. There is inherient in democracies a clash between tradition and progression, between conservative and liberal. Right now religion and science are truely at odds and I see religion being the primary element that needs to "evolve". Spirituality has evolved over the centuries, from simple myth into complex world power, for it to be sucessful and stay with us I think it needs to simplify and adapt. Of course as long as their is ignorance, religion will flourish. Our society is changing so rapidly, ignorance is hard to maintain (even innocence!). I do not see a decline. We will always have stories to impart wisdom, it is human nature, it is just that those stories will become more sophisticated and reliable.

lauraclay · 04-06-2007, 12:03 PM

This is the main reason I am agnostic. I can't understand putting one religion above another, especially when they are all so similar. I wonder how many Christians would question their faith if they realized that their stories are not unique?

jimdene · 10-23-2007, 08:59 PM

There is no if, there are no buts, about it. There was no Adam, there was no Eve taken from Adam's rib, there was no Eden.
There just was nothing until micro organisms evolved, get it, evolved not created.
In any case Adam and Eve would no doubt have been eaten by dinosaurs, but of course there were no dinosaurs before human beings