Gyroscopic Investing

One Day At A Time, asked me about my thoughts on Joseph Campbell and Christianity in this thread,Literary and Academic Snobbery.  So I thought I'd start a new thread dedicated to Joseph Campbell and hopefully get some other fans to pop out of the woodwork.  I am very new to his stuff, and barely understand it, but it really speaks to me.  Anyway here are my quick thoughts on Campbell and Christianity:

I was raised as an atheist, and didn’t become interested in religion until about a year ago.  This was right after I started the PermPort, so religion was my new topic of interest after I had solved the investing problem.

Let’s just say that it’s complicated between me and Christianity.  There was a two month period where I believed that the only way to Heaven was through believing that Jesus was Lord (during this period I was reading all of C.S. Lewis’s books on Christianity).  I felt very silly believing it at the time, but I thought I’d give it a shot.  However my rational mind took over (aka the “Devil”?) and snapped me out of it.  If you put a gun to my head I would now describe myself as a Gnostic Christian, although I’m not sure I have achieved Gnosis/Enlightenment or whatever that is (I always envision people walking around with a blank expression on their face and hugging everyone…creepy).

I then discovered Joseph Campbell from a Tim Freke interview, and watched The Power of Myth six hour series (twice).  After that I seemed to forgot about Campbell until someone mentioned him on this forum, which rekindled the fire.  I have since read The Power of Myth book, but it still feels like I only absorbed 10% of what he said.  I am really trying to poke holes in what Campbell has to say, since a lot of it scares the crap out of me…why can’t I just live my boring comfortable life?

As for Campbell and Christianity, I really like how he takes you past the symbols and shows you the wisdom and other comparative myths behind it.  Campbell is my Toto.

Although I would love to hear something negative about Campbell, since he currently has the hook deeply imbedded in my cheek.  The worst I have heard are mainly ad hominem attacks where he is accused of anti-Semitism, sexism, and even Satanism because of how well he aged.  These attacks mostly stem from his dislike of Yahweh (does that make someone an anti-Semite?) and the lack of female hero myths.  I can’t fault him for any of that.  Of course there are many academics that feel like he is butchering their precious myths to fit his idea of the universal myth.  They also accuse him of not identifying all the differences between the myths, but then again there is only so much time one has on the Earth.  I think simply discovering the similarities is plenty enough for one mans lifetime.

Campbell is most famous for the Hero's Journey.  This can be seen in many movies and TV shows, such as Star Wars, The Matrix, Lost, and many others.

I had a very brief encounter with Joseph Campbell when I worked as a gate guard at Esalen Institute in Big Sur. It must have been in 1974 or 1975 and he was giving some lectures and discussions with Stan Grof and Joan Halifax. He had a series of slides he was showing of drawings of yogis sitting in meditation showing the 7 chakras system (energy centers) in their bodies. He described in detail the state of consciousness of each chakra event and how it related to the yogi's evolutionary path. It was a fascinating talk that was being video taped. I wish I had the video of that talk to watch again. It was much more specific and seemed more in depth than any of the talks he did on PBS. At any rate, later in the evening I was working at the gate and he came up a little agitated, but friendly, and said he had somehow lost his key and asked me to let him in his room which, of course, I did. A wag who was watching all this snipped something about him not having his Zen together. Which was an unfair comment but gives an idea of some of the ego games being played at the time. 

hahah...first Alan Watts, and now Joseph Campbell!  Don't tell me you've met Jesus as well! 

I'm not sure that Campbell ever claimed to be Zen.  He has mentioned that he wants to simply experience the emotions, whether they are anger or joy.  For me, he seems to be more about experiencing life, both the ups and downs, which is what the human experience is all about.

Gosso wrote: hahah...first Alan Watts, and now Joseph Campbell!  Don't tell me you've met Jesus as well! 

I'm not sure that Campbell ever claimed to be Zen.  He has mentioned that he wants to simply experience the emotions, whether they are anger or joy.  For me, he seems to be more about experiencing life, both the ups and downs, which is what the human experience is all about.

No, I'm old but not that old and I don't remember that past life too well.

The "Zen" comment was an unkind remark from the peanut gallery that had nothing to do with Zen or Joe.