Myths to Live By, IV

So I have started reading Joseph Campbell's "Myths to Live By" again. Read "The Separation of East and West". Profoundly insightful. No wonder it was highly recommended to me by M who seems to be very wise.

The main theme of this short article is that, the East tradition is to eliminate individuality (it is not even a concept) while the West tradition is to emphasis individuality. Campbell divides the world into four cultures: Orient--India and the Far East (China and Japan); Occident--the Levant (Near East) and Europe. In the very beginning of Orient society, "no such thing as an individual life, but only one great cosmic law by which all things are governed in their places". The law was known as Maat in Egyptian, Me in Sumerian, Tao in Chinese, Dharma in Sanskrit.

The modern European values the individuation--a term Jung used to designate the psychological process of achieving individual wholeness.

"To become individuated, to live as a released individual, one has to know how and when to put on and to put off the masks of one's various life roles. But this is not easy, since some of the masks cut deep. They include judgment and moral values. They include one's pride, ambition, and achievement. They include one's infatuations. It is a common thing to be overly impressed by and attached to masks, either some mask of one's own or the mana-masks of others.... Every life is the realization of a whole, that is, of a self, for which reason this realization can be called 'individuation'. All life is bound to individual carriers who realize it. Every carrier is charged with an individual destiny and destination, and the realization of this alone makes sense of life."

For the Oriental, "The universe from which we are to strive thus for realize is to be known as an ever-appearing-and-disappearing dreamlike delusion, rising and falling in recurrent cycles." I was just reading Tao Te Ching and came upon this passage (50) that I translated as:

I don't know its name / so I call it Tao / or better yet, Infinity
Infinity can also multiply / and grows into infinitesimal / and back to Infinity

So this is what's behind the ever expanding and shrinking universe theory. No wonder I say that science is merely a reflection of the Truth, or the Universe.

Section 3 of the article is rather interesting when Campbell compares the mythology about the Deluge. (1) In India the number of years of a Day of Brahma is 4,320,000,000, and then a Night of Brahma when all lies dissolved in the cosmic sea for another 4,320,000,000 years, so the sum total of years of an entire cosmic rounding is 8,640,000,000. (2) In the Icelandic eddas, there are 540 doors and through each of these there will go at the end of the world 800 battle-ready warriors to join combat with the anti-gods, and 800x540 = 432,000. (3) Each day we have 60 seconds x 60 minutes x 24 hours = 86,400 seconds, so in the course of this day, night follows light, dawn follows darkness; therefore a cosmic days and nights. (4) In Babylonian mythology, there elapse 432,000 years between the crowning of the first Sumerian king and the coming of the Deluge. (5) In the Bible, between the creation of Adam and the coming of Noah's flood there elapse 1656 years, or 86,400 seven-day weeks.... Interesting coincident!

Section 4 is the most insightful. Campbell talks about "three versions of a single ancient myths", which illustrates "the contrast of the general Oriental and the two differing Occidental views of the character and highest virtue of the individual". (1) India. In the beginning there is nothing but "the Self" in the form of a man. The Self became aware of "It is I", and went on splitting into two--male and female--to be delighted. Human race arose. She thought, "How can he unite with me, who am of his own substance?" and she hides. She becomes a cow and he a bull to unite with her; cattle arose. It went on like this until all animals arose. The he realized, "I am Creation, for I have poured forth all this" and the concept of creation arose. "Anyone understanding this becomes, truly, himself a creator in this creation."

(2) Levantine. Genesis. Adam was created by his maker, and woman was taken from one of his ribs. Here it was not the god who was split in two, but his created servant. So God remained apart of a different substance from man. "In the Orient the guiding ideal is that each should realize that he himself and all others are of the one substance of that universal Being of beings which is, in fact, the same Self at all". This is what I have felt when I was "one with Being". "Hence the typical aim of an Oriental religion is that one should experience and realize in life one's *identity* with that Being; whereas in the West, the ideal is to become engaged in a *relationship* with the absolutely other Person who is one's Maker, apart and out there, in no sense one's innermost Self".

(3) Greek. The race of man already in existence, one entirely male who reside in the sun; one female on earth; one males and females joined, on moon. The gods being fearful of their strength, Zeus and Apollo cut them in two. Those divided parts, came together and embraced. So, "human nature was originally one and we were a whole, and the desire and pursuit of the whole is called love.... and if we are friends of God and reconciled to him we shall find our own true loves". In this version, the being split in two is not the ultimate divinity, so the problem is the *relationship* between man and God. But the Greek gods were not the *creators* of the human race, but more like man's elder and strong brothers. "The Greeks are on man's side, both in sympathy and in loyalty; the Hebrews, on God's".

Very interesting!!