Notes on Campbell's Myths to Live By.

VI The inspiration of Oriental Art (1958)

What the glorious spectacle of Oriental art mainly offers are repetitions, over and over, of certain tried and true themes and motifs.

The individual is expected not to innovate or invent, but to perfect himself in the knowledge and rendition of norms.

The basic thesis of the so-called Kundalini yoga system is that there are 7 psychological centers distributed up the body, known as "lotuses," padmas, or as chakras, "wheels,".

1. spiritual torpor / his world is the world of unexhilarated waking consciousness; yet he clings with avidity to this uninspired existence, unwilling to let go, just hanging on. element: earth.

2. genitals / anyone whose energies have mounted to this stage is of a psychology perfectly Freudian. element: water.

3. navel / the governing interest is in consuming, conquering, turning all into his own substance, or forcing all to conform to his way of thought; his psychology, ruled by an insatiable will to power, is of an Adlerian type. element: fire.

4. heart / "the sound that is not made by any two things striking together." element: air

OM (AUM Silence). the holy syllable contains in itself the seed sounds of all words and thus the names of all things and relationships.

(I think J will like this, a syllable containing the sounds of all words.)

A - waking consciousness / mechanistic science, positivistic reasoning / chakras 1, 2, 3
U - dream consciousness / nature of divinities
M - deep dreamless sleep / latent, potential consciousness, undifferentiated, covered with darkness / the universe between cycles.
Silence - even such words as "silence" or "void" can be understood only with reference to sound or to things; this Silence that is no silence but to be heard resounding through all things, whether of waking, dream, or dreamless night....

Things no longer hide their truth, but the marvel is experience that Blake envisioned when he wrote, "If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, infinite."

5. purification / leaving art, religion, philosophy, and even thought behind. element: ether, space.

6. mystic inward eye fully opens, and the mystic inward ear. one is here in Heaven, and the soul beholds its perfect object, God. element: mind.

7. ultimate aim is not the bliss of this sixth but the absolute, nondual state beyond all categories, visions, sentiments, thoughts, and feelings whatsoever.

....we leave behind the world of normal human experience to enter one of earth-inhabiting gnomes, but we also leave behind our normal sense of reality and find these forms to be more true, more real, more intimately our own, somehow, than the accustomed revelations of our light-world lives.

Far East:

The natural tendency of the Far Eastern mind is much more earthly than the Indian, more matter-of-fact and concerned with the optical, temporal, and practical aspects of existence.

Tao: the Way, the Way of Nature. the way in which all things come into being out of darkness into light, then pass out of light back into darkness, the two principles--light and dark--being in perpetual interaction and, in variously modulated combinations, constituting this whole world of "ten thousand things."

Yang is of the sunny side, light, warmth, heat of the sun is dry; Yin is the shady side, cool, earth, moist. There is no moral verdict intended; neither principle is "better" than the other, neither "stronger" than the other. They are the two equally potent grounding principles on which all the world rests, and in their interaction they inform, constitute, and decompose all things.

Six principles of classical painter's art: rhythm, organic form, trueness to nature, color, the placement of the object in the field, style.

(I am thinking, this can be applied to music, to writing, to the art of life as well. How? Can be an interesting project.)

In order to experience what is before him, the artist has mainly to look; and looking is an unaggressive activity. One looks, looks long, and the world comes in. There's an important Chinese term, "wu-wei "not doing," the meaning is not "doing nothing", but "not forcing". Things will open up of themselves, according to their nature.

(It is all interesting to re-educate myself from western point of view of the eastern philosophy and Way of life.)

There are two contrasting Chinese words for law, "li" "tse". Li refers originally to the natural markings on a piece of jade, the veins in the jade, and, by extension, the natural grain of life; Tse, the markings made on a caldron by a stylus, markings made by man, social laws, decreed and contrived, as against natural. The function of art is to know and to make known the laws and patterns of nature and the way nature moves.

This principle of doing through not forcing informs every discipline of the Far East having to do with effective action.

Do best not to ready himself in any specific direction. The only protection is to be in a perpetual state of centeredness in undirected alertness. One is fully conscious all the time, and since life is an expression of consciousness, life is then lived, as it were, of itself.

Dr. A. K. Coomaraswamy, the curator of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts: The artist, in the ancient world, was not a special kind of man, but every man a special kind of artist.

The life that is found on the mountaintop lives within the heart of man when in society too.

For J: Ducunt volentem fata, nolentem trahunt.

The basic approach to life is not of work but of play. Life itself as the art of a game: a wonderfully joyous, invigorating approach to the mixed blessing of existence.

(This is my revelation too: the world is a big playground for me.)

Play hard, accomplish the complicated, even dangerous tasks.

Bhagavad Gita: abandon absolutely all concern for the fruits of action, whether in this world or in the next.

Life as an art and art as a game. Action for its own sake, without thought of gain or of loss, praise or blame.

(Well, this chapter again confirms with me things I have recently learned on my own. Later I should apply, or "project", my learning to a few specific aspects of life--music composition, writing, for example, and perhaps even scientific inquires.)