foreign [Music] [Laughter] [Music] Genesis 1 in the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth the Earth was without form and void and darkness was upon the face of the deep oh [Music] this is the song of the world from a legend of the Pima Indians in the beginning there was only Darkness everywhere darkness and water the darkness scanned and thickened places crowding together and then separating crowding and separating spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters and God said let there be light [Applause] this is from the Hindu upanishads in the beginning there was only the great self reflected in the form of a person reflecting it found nothing but itself then its first word was this am I [Music] [Applause] thank you Joseph Campbell was nine years old when his father took him to the American Museum of Natural History here in New York City the totem poles and masks mesmerized him who made them he wondered and why what did they mean the little boy who began to read everything he could about Indians went on to become a foremost teacher and interpreter of Mythology he saw the power of myth infusing life everywhere he wrote the latest incarnation of Oedipus and the continued Romance of Beauty and the Beast stand this afternoon on the corner of 42nd Street and 5th Avenue waiting for the light to change but by the time of his death in 1987 just a few months before these interviews were aired he had acknowledged that many of the Great myths were losing their Timeless Aura modern science and technology now filled the intersection where the Soul Meets Society yet Joseph Campbell held to the conviction that myths could serve the human drive to understand our place in the world and the world's impact on us he once told his students at Sarah Lawrence College if you really want to help this world what you will have to teach is how to live in it myths were road maps for that Journey over the last two summers of his life in hours of conversation recorded in the library of lucasfilm in California we talked about how mythology can still awaken a sense of all gratitude and even rapture why myths why should we care about myths what do they have to do with my life well my first answer would be well John live your life it's a good life you don't need this uh I don't believe in being interested in subjects because they're said to be important and interesting I believe in being caught by it somehow or other uh but you may find that with a proper introduction this subject will will catch you and so what can it do for you when it does catch you these bits of information from ancient times which have to do with the themes that have supported man's life built civilizations informed religions over the Millennia have to do with deep inner problems inner Mysteries inner thresholds of Passage and if you don't know what the guide signs are along the way you have to work it out yourself but once this catches you there is always such a feeling from one or another of these traditions of information of a deep rich life vivifying thought that you you want to give it up so myths are stories of of the search by men and women Through the Ages for meaning for significance to make life signify to touch the eternal to understand the mysterious to find out who we are people say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life I don't think that's what we're really seeking I think what we're seeking is an experience of being alive so that the life experiences that we have on the purely physical plane will have resonances within that are those of our own innermost being and reality and so that we actually feel the Rapture of being alive that's what it's all finally about and that's what these Clues help us to find within ourselves myths or Clues myths are Clues to the spiritual potentialities of the human life what we're capable of knowing within yes and experiencing with it yeah I liked your def you changed the definition of a myth from the search for meaning to the experience of this meaning experience experience of Life the experience of Life the mind has to do with meaning in here what's the meaning of a flower that uh Zen story of the sermon of the Buddha when his whole company was gathered and he simply lifted a flower and there's only one man kashyapa who gave him the sign with his eye that he understood what was said what's the meaning of the universe what's the meaning of a flea the uh it's just there that's it and your own meaning is that you're there now we are so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget that the inner value the the Rapture that is associated with being alive is what it's all about now we want to think about God is a thought God is a name God is an idea but its reference is to something that transcends all thinking the ultimate mystery of being is beyond all categories of thought my friend Heinrich Zimmer of years ago used to say the best things can't be told because they transcend thought the second best that misunderstood because those are the thoughts that are supposed to refer to that which can't be thought about you know and one gets stuck with the thoughts the third best of what we talk about you see and a myth is that field of reference metaphors referring to what is absolutely Transcendent what can't be known what can't be or can't be named Yes except in our own feeble attempt to clothe that in language and the ultimate word in our language for that which is transcended is God do you remember what went through your mind the first time you saw Michelangelo's creation by the time I became aware of that my notion of divinity was not quite so personal you know the idea of God but he's a bearded old man of some kind with certain not very pleasant temperament that is I would say a sort of materialistic way of talking about the Transcendence there's just the opposite of it found on an island in the harbor of Bombay from around the 8th century this is a wonderful cave you enter the cave from a bright Sky of course moving into the darkness your eyes are blacked out but if you just keep walking slowly gradually the eyes are just and this enormous thing it's about 19 feet high and 19 feet across the central head is the mask of Eternity this is the mask of God mask of Eternity that is the metaphor through which eternity is to be experienced as a Radiance and these other two figures wherever one moves out of the Transcendent one comes into a field of opposites these two pairs of opposites come forth as male and female from the two sides what has eaten of the tree of the knowledge not only of Good and Evil but of male and female of right and wrong of this and that enlightened dog everything in the field of time is dual past and future dead and alive all this being a non-beam is isn't and what's the significance of them being beside the mask of God the mask of Eternity what is this sculpture saying to us The Mask represents the middle and the two represent the two opposites and they always come in pairs and put your mind in the middle most of us put our minds on the side of the good against what we think of as evil it was heraclitus I think who said for God all things are good and right and just but for man some things are right and others are not that you're in the field of time when you're man and one of the problems of life is to live in the realization of both terms that's to say I know the center and I know that good and evil are simply temporal apparitions well are some myths more or less true than others true in different senses do you see here's a whole mythology based on the Insight that transcends duality ours is a mythology that's based on the inside of duality and so our religion tends to be ethical in its accent sin and atonement right and wrong started with a sin you see in other words moving out of the mythological Zone The Garden of paradise where there is no time and where men and women don't even know that they're different from each other the the two are just the creatures and the God and man are practically the same he walks in the cool of the evening in the garden Where We Are and then they eat the apple the knowledge of the pairs of opposites and man or woman then cover their shame they're different God than man they're different man in nature is against man I once heard a wonderful like to buy a dice that Suzuki remember this wonderful old zen philosopher who was over here he was in his 90s he started a lecture in Switzerland and I heard nastona he stood up with his hands on his side and he said God against man man against God man against nature nature against man nature against God God against nature very funny religion now in other mythologies one puts oneself in accord with the world if the world is a mixture of Good and Evil you do not put yourself in accord with it you identify with the good and you fight against the evil and this is a religious system which belongs to the near East following sarath District's time it's in the biblical tradition all the way in Christianity and is Islam as well this business of not being with nature and we speak with sort of derogation of the nature religions you see with that fall in the garden nature was regarded as corrupt there's a myth for you that corrupts the whole world for us and every spontaneous Act is sinful because nature is corrupt and has to be corrected must not be yielded to you get a totally different civilization a totally different way of living according to your myth as to whether nature is fallen or whether nature is itself a manifestation of divinity and the spirit being the revelation of the Divinity that's inherent in nature but don't you think that Americans modern Americans have rejected this idea this Indian idea this ancient idea of nature as revealing the Divinity because it would have kept us from achieving dominance over nature yeah but that's the biblical condemnation of nature that they inherited from their own religion and brought with them uh the God is not in nature God is separate from nature and nature is not God and this distinction between God and the world is not be found in in basic Hinduism or Buddhism either [Music] I'll never forget the experience I had when I was in Japan a place that never heard of the Fall In the Garden of Eden to be in a place where I can read in one of the Shinto texts the processes of nature cannot be evil when every impulse every natural impulse is uh had to be corrected but to be sublimated you know to be beautified and the Glorious interest in the in the beauty of Nature and cooperation with nature and coordination so that in some of those Gardens you don't know where nature begins and art ends this to me was a tremendous experience and it's another mythology speaking of different mythologies let's just have a little fun here I I'll I took these from your Atlas oh yes I'll read Genesis I'll read from Genesis and then you identify and read from the from the corresponding yes 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 now this is from a legend of the basari people of West Africa unumbote made a human being its name was man unumbote next made an antelope named Antelope who number 10 made a snake named snake Andrew numate said to them the Earth has not yet been pounded you must pound the ground smooth where you are sitting gave them seeds of all kinds and said go plant these and Genesis 1 and God saw everything that he had made and behold it was very good and from the upanishad then he realized I indeed damned this creation for I have poured it forth for 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 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 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 I mean we're looking for some Accord with the mystery that informs all things that what you call that vast ground of Silence which we all share yes but not only to to find it but to find it actually in our in our environment in our world to recognize it to have some kind of instruction that will enable us to see the divine presence in the world and in us and in India this wonderful Anjali this greeting you know what that means 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 um 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 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 I thought these the questions that these creation stories are trying to address 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 or 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 a chord again Harmony again wonderful thing yeah let me ask you some questions about these common features in these stories the significance of the forbidden fruit well there's this standard folk tale Motif called the the one forbidden thing remember in Bluebeard don't open that closet you know and then one always does it and in the Old Testament story God gives the one forbidden thing and he knows very well I now I'm now I'm interpreting God he knows very well that man's going to uh eat the forbidden fruit but it's by doing that that man becomes the initiator of his own life life really begins with that I also find in some of these early stories uh the human tendency to find someone to blame uh let me read let me read Genesis 1 then I'll ask you to read one from the vasara Legend right Genesis 1 and God said have you eaten from the tree which I commanded you that you should not eat then the man said the woman whom you gave to be with me she gave me of the tree and I ate and the Lord God said to the woman what is this you've done and the woman said the serpent deceived me and I ate I mean you talk about book passing it starts very early that's right and then there's the basara it's been tough on serpents too one day snake said we too should eat these fruits why must we go hungry Antelope said but we don't know anything about this fruit then man and his wife took some of the fruit and ate it unumate came down from the sky and asked who ate the fruit they answered we did the number they asked who told you that you could eat that fruit they replied snake did it's the same sorry what do you make of this that in all of these stories the principal actors are pointing to someone else as the initiator of the Fall yeah but it turns out to be a snake and and and snake in both of these stories is the symbol of Life throwing off the past and uh continuing to live why the power of life because the snake sheds its skin just as the moon sheds its shadow the snake in most cultists is positive even the most poisonous ain't in India the Cobra is the sacred animal and the serpent the Naga the serpent King the nagaraja is the next thing to the Buddha because the serpent represents the power of life in the field of time to throw off death and the Buddha represents the power of life in the field of Eternity to be eternally alive I saw a fantastic thing of a Burmese Priestess a snake Priestess who had to bring rain to her people by calling a king cobra from his den and kissing him three times on the nose there was the Cobra The Giver of Life The Giver of rain which is his life as a Divine positive not negative figure the Christian story has turned it around because the serpent was the Seducer well what what that amounts to is a refusal to affirm life life is evil in this View every every natural impulse is sinful unless you've been baptized or circumcised in this tradition that we've inherited for heaven's sakes by um having been the temptor women have paid a great price because in mythology some of this mythology they are the ones who led to the downfall of course they did I mean they represent life man doesn't end their life except by a woman and so it is woman who brings us into the world of polarities and a pair of opposites and suffering and all but I think it's a really childish attitude to say no to life with all its pain you know to say this is something that should not have been schopenhauer in one of his marvelous chapters I think is in the world's World idea says life is something that should not have been it is in its very essence uh and and character a terrible thing to consider this business of living by killing and eating I mean it's in sin in terms of all ethical judgments all the time as Zorba says uh you know trouble life is trouble that's it only death is no trouble and when people say to me you know do you have optimism about the world you know how terrible it is I said yes just say it's great just the way it is but doesn't that lead to a rather passive attitude in the face of evil at the face participate in it whatever you do is evil for somebody but explain that for the audience I mean you say yes to that which you well when I was in India it was a man whose name was SRI Krishna Menon and his uh mystical name was Aunt mananda and he was in trivandrum and I went to trivandrum and uh I had the wonderful privilege of sitting face to face with him as I'm sitting here with you and the first question the first thing he said to me is do you have a question and because the teacher there always answers questions he doesn't tell you what anything he answers and um I said yes I have a question I said since in Hindu thinking all the universe is divine is a manifestation of divinity itself how can we say no to anything in the world how can we say no to brutality to stupidity to vulgarity to uh thoughtlessness and he said for you and me you must say yes well I had learned from my friends who were students of his that that happened to have been the first question he asked his Guru and we had a wonderful talk for about an hour there on this this theme of the affirmation of the world and it confirmed me in a feeling I had had that who are we to judge and it seems to me that this is one of the great teachings of Jesus well I I see now what you mean in one respect in in some classic Christian doctrine the world is to be despised life is to be redeemed in the Hereafter it is heaven where our rewards come and if you affirm that which you deplore as you say you're affirming the world which is our our eternity of the moment that's what I would say eternity isn't some later Time Eternity isn't a Long Time Eternity has nothing to do with Time Eternity is that dimension of here and now which thinking in time cuts out this is it this is this this is mine if you don't get it here you won't get it anywhere and the experience of Eternity right here and now is the function of life there's a wonderful formula that the Buddhists have for the bodhisattva the bodhisattva the one who's being satva is illumination body who realizes his identity with eternity and at the same time his participation in time and the attitude is not to withdraw from the world when you realize how horrible it is but to realize that this horror is simply the foreground of of a Wonder and come back and participate in it all life is sorrowful as the first Buddhist saying and it is it wouldn't be life if there were not temporality involved which is sorrow loss loss loss that's a pessimistic note well I mean you're going to say yes to it and say it's great this way I mean it's the way God intended it the um you don't really believe that but this the way it is and I don't believe anybody intended it but this is the way it is and Joyce is a wonderful line you know history is a nightmare from which I'm trying to awake and the way to awake from it is not to be afraid and to recognize as I was did in my conversation with that Hindu Guru or teacher that I told you of that all of this as it is is as it has to be and it is a manifestation of the Eternal presence in the world uh the end of things always is painful pain is part of their being a world at all but if one accepted that isn't the ultimate conclusion to say well I I won't try to before many laws or fight any battles or I didn't say that isn't illogical couldn't one draw that though the philosophy of nilism well that's not the necessary thing to to draw you could say I will participate in this row and I will join the Army and I will go to war I'll do the best I can I I will participate in the game it's a wonderful wonderful Opera except that it hurts and that wonderful Irish saying you know is this a private fight or can anybody get into it the uh this is the way uh life is and the the hero is the one who can participate in it decently in the way of nature not in the way of personal Rancor revenge or anything of the kind let me tell you one story here of a samurai warrior a Japanese warrior who had the duty to avenge the murder of his Overlord and he actually after some time found and cornered the man who had murdered his Overlord and he was about to deal with him with his samurai sword when this man in the corner in a passion of Terror spat in his face and the samurai sheet The Sword and walked away why did he do that why because he was made angry and if he had killed that man then it would have been a personal Act as another kind of act that's what what he had come to do let me tell you what happens to me when I read these stories no matter the culture of their origin I feel first this sense of wonder at the spectacle of the human imagination simply groping to try to understand this existence does that ever happen to you I tell you mythology I think of as the homeland of the muses the inspires of art the inspires of poetry and to see Life as a poem and you're self-participating in a poem is what the myth does for you what do you mean a poem I mean a vocabulary in the form not of words but of Acts and Adventures which is uh can with connotative which connotes something Transcendent of the action here and which yet informs the whole thing so to always feel in accord with the universal being well the interesting thing to me is that far from undermining my faith your work in mythology has has liberated my faith from the cultural prisons to which it had been sentenced it liberated my own I know it's going to do it with everybody who really gets the message every mythology every religion is true in this sense it is true as metaphorical of the human and Cosmic mystery but when it gets stuck to the metaphor then you're in trouble the matter for being well Jesus ascended to heaven the story as he ascended bodily to heaven which story is that his mother are still alive asleep ascended to heaven so this is metaphorical of something you don't have to throw it away all you have to find is what it's saying what do you think it is saying what it's saying is he didn't go out there he went in here it was just where you must go too and uh and Ascend to Heaven through the inward space to that Source from which you and all life came that's the sense of that but aren't you undermining one of the great Cardinal doctrines of the tradition the classic Christian faith the death of the burial and the resurrection of Jesus prefiguring our own and overcoming the body with a higher physical truth well that would that would be what I would call the mistaken reading of the symbol that's reading it in terms of prose instead of in Terms of poetry that's reading it and that's reading a metaphor in terms of the denotation instead of in Terms of the connotation if you understand that it's purely literary problem the Poetry gets to the unseen reality that which is beyond even the concept of reality is that that which transcends all thought it's putting you there all the time and in some way giving you a line to connect with that mystery which you are and the myths do it by gosh they do it now according to the normal way of thinking about the uh the Christian religion we cannot identify with Jesus we have to imitate Jesus but to say I am God as Jesus said is for us to blasphemy however in the Thomas gospel Jesus says he who drinks from my mouth will become as I am and I shall be he wow that's Buddhism we are all manifestations of Buddha Consciousness only don't know it and the Buddha the word means the one who waked up buds to wake woke up to the fact that he was Buddha Consciousness and we are all to do that to wake up to our Jesus within us this is blasphemy in the normal way of thinking in Christianity but it's the very essence of gnosticism and of the Thomas gospel and Heaven that desired goal of most people is is within us heaven and hell are within us and all the gods are within us this is the great realization of the upanishads of India already in the ninth Millennium 9th century BC all the gods All The Heavens all the worlds are within us they are a magnified dreams and what dreams are are manifestations an image form of the energies of the body and conflict with each other and that's all myth is myth is a a manifestation in symbolic images metaphorical images of the energies within us moved by the organs of the body in conflict with each other this organ wants this this organization the brain is one of the organ so when we dream are we fishing in some vast ocean of Mythology that goes down and down and down and you can get all mixed up with complexes you know things like that but you're standing on the uh the uh Lord of the Abyss really there's a Polynesian saying that really comes to my mind standing on a whale fishing for minnows um we are standing on a whale the ground of being is the ground of our being and the outward turned we see all these little problems here but inward we are the source of them all that's the big mystical teaching you've seen what's happened to primitive societies that are unsettled by white man civilization they go to Pieces they disintegrate they succumb device and disease and isn't that the same thing that's been happening to us since our myths began to disappear absolutely it is isn't that why conservative religious folk today are calling for a return to the old-time religion that's right I understand they're yearning in my youth I had fixed Stars they comforted me with their permanence they gave me a known Horizon and they told me that there's a loving kind and just father out there looking down on me ready to receive me thinking of my concerns all the time now science medicine has made it this a house cleaning of belief and I wonder what happens to children who don't have that fixed star that known Horizon those myths to sustain them all they have to do is read the newspaper it's a mess but what the myth has to provide I mean just on this immediate level of Life instruction the pedagogical aspect admit it has to give life models and the models have to be appropriate to the possibilities of the time in which you're living and our time has changed and changed and changed and continues to change so fast that what was proper 50 years ago is not proper today so the virtues of the past are the vices of today and the uh many of what were thought to be the vices of the past are the necessities of today and the the moral order has to catch up with the moral necessities of actual life in time here and now and that's what it's not doing and that's why it's ridiculous to go back to the old time religion a friend of mine composed a song based on the old-time religion give me the old-time religion give me let us worship zarathustra just the way we used to on the zarathustra booster he's good enough for me let us worship God for deity she's beautiful but flighty she doesn't wear a nightie but she's good enough for me and when you go back to the old-time religion you're doing something like that it belongs to another age another people another set of human values Another Universe so the old period the Old Testament no one had any idea the world was a little three-layer cake and then the world consisted of something a few hundred miles around the near Eastern centers there no one ever heard of the Aztecs you know or if the Chinese even and so those whole peoples were were not considered even as part of the problem to be dealt with the world changes then the religion has to be transformed but it seems to that is what we are in fact doing that's in fact what we better do but the notion of what the real horror today is what you see in Beirut where you have the three Great Western religions Judaism Christianity and Islam and because the three of them have three different names for the same biblical God they can't get on together they're stuck with their metaphor and don't realize its reference so each needs a new myth it needs its own myth all the way love thy enemy you know open up don't judge given what you know about human beings is it conceivable to you that there is a port of wisdom beyond the conflicts of of Truth and Illusion by which Our Lives can be put back together again that we should develop new models it's in the religions all religions are true for their time if you can find what the truth is and separate it from the temporal inflection just bring your same old religion into a new set of metaphors and you've got it do you see some new metaphors emerging in the modern medium for the old Universal truths that you've talked about the old story well uh I think that the the Star Wars is is a is a valid mythological perspective and the problem of is the machine and the state is a machine is the machine going to crush Humanity or serve humanity and Humanity comes not from the machine but from the heart [Music] look help me take this mask off but you'll die I think it was in The Return of the Jedi when Skywalker unmasks his father the father had been playing one of these machine roles a state role he was the uniform you know and the removal of that mask was an undeveloped man that it was kind of a worm by being executive of a system one is not developing one's Humanity I think that George Lucas really really did a beautiful thing there the idea of the machine is the idea that we want the world to be made in our image and what we think the world ought to be well the first time anybody made a tool I mean taking a stone and chipping it so you can handle it that's the beginning of a machine it's turning out of nature into your service but then there comes a time when it it begins to dictate to you I'm having a bit less trouble with my computer as a computer I've just bought one a couple of months ago and uh I I can't help thinking of it as having a personality there because it talks back and it behaves in a Whimsical way and uh all of that so I'm I'm personifying that that machine to me that machine is uh almost alive I could mythologize that darn thing there was a wonderful story about I think President Eisenhower when the computer was first being built you remember that story I'm her uh went into a room full of computers and um he puts the question to the these machines is there a God and they all start up and that all those lights flashing and wheels turning and things like that and after about 10 minutes of that kind of thing a voice comes forth and the voice says now there is well I um bought this wonderful machine IBM machine and it's there and I'm rather an authority on God so I identified the God and it teached me an Old Testament god with a lot of rules and no mercy you uh catch you picking up sticks on Saturday and you're out that's all but isn't it possible to develop toward the computer the computer you're wrestling with at this very moment uh isn't it possible to develop the same kind of attitude of the Pawnee Chieftain who said that in the Legends of his people all things speak of Tarawa all things speak of God it wasn't a special privileged revelation God is everywhere in his Works including the computers well indeed so I'm in the miracle of what happens on that screen you know with have you ever looked inside one of those things no you can't believe it it's a it's a whole hierarchy of angels all all on slats and uh those little tubes those are Miracles those are Miracles they are one can feel a sense of all well I've had a revelation for my computer about mythology though you buy a certain software and there's a whole set of signals that lead to the achievement of your aim you know and once you've set it for let's say dw3 uh if you begin fooling around with signals that belong to another system they just won't work that's all you you have a system there a code a determined code that requires you to use certain terms now similarly in mythology each religion is a kind of software that has its own set of signals and will work they it'll work but suppose you've chosen this one now if a person is really involved in a religion and really building his life on it he better stay with the software that you've got a chap like myself who likes to play with the various software I can run around but I probably will never have an experience comparable to that of a saint but do you think that the machine is inventing new myths for us or that we with the machine are inventing new myths is the machine becoming no the myth has to be patient the machine just as the Ole Miss Incorporated the tools that people used the uh the forms of the tools and so forth are associated with uh with Power Systems that are involved in the culture we have not a mythology that incorporates these the new powers are being so to say surprisingly announced To Us by what the machines can do we can't have a mythology for a long long time to come things are changing too fast the environment in which we're living is changing too fast for it to become mythologized you must realize how do we live without myths in well we're doing it the individual has to find the aspect of myth that has to do with the conduct of his life there are a number of services that myths serve the the basic one is opening the world to the dimension of mystery if you lose that you've you don't have a mythology to realize the mystery that underlies all forms but then there comes the cosmological aspect of myth seeing that mystery is Manifest through all things so the universe becomes as it were a holy picture you were always addressed to the Transcendent mystery through that then there's another function and that's a sociological one of validating and maintaining a certain society that is the side of the thing that has taken over in our world what do you mean ethical laws the laws of life in the society all of yahweh's pages and pages and pages of what kind of clothes to wear how to behave to each other and all that you see in terms of the values of this particular society but then there's a thought function of myth and this is the one that I think today everyone must try to relate to that's the pedagogical function how to live a human lifetime under any circumstances myth can tell you that there's a wonderful story in in one of the upanishads the Brahma vivita upanishad of Indra this uh John who is the counterpart really of Yahweh he is the god patron of a certain people and of historical life and time with all kinds of rules for people to live by and that sort of thing and there was a time when a great monster named ritra had then closed all the Waters of the earth and so there was a drought a terrible drought and the world was in very bad condition well it took this God Indra quite a while to realize that he had a box of thunderbolts there and all he had to do was drop a thunderbolt in drip too and then blow him up and when he did that of course he blew it up and the waters flowed and the world was refreshed and he said what a great boy am I so thinking what a great boy am I he goes up to the cosmic Mountain which is the central mountain of the world and so he decided he would build a new World up there a new city and particularly his Palace was going to be a palace worthy of such as heat so he calls vishvakama on the main Carpenter of the Gods and gives him the assignment to build this Palace so Mr Tomlin goes to work on a very quick order he gets the palace into pretty good condition and the Indra comes but every time hinder arrived he had bigger ideas about how big and grandiose the power should be and then finally Bishop Thomas said my gosh she said we're both Immortal and he's not there's no end to his desires I'm caught for life so he decided to go to Brahma known as The Creator and and complain well now Brahma sits on a Lotus this is the symbol of divine energy and divine grace and the Lotus grows from the naval of Vishnu who is the sleeping God whose dream is the universe so here's Brahma on his Lotus and this common comes to the edge of the great Lotus Pond of the universe and down he tells his story you go home he said I'll fix this up so next morning at the Gate of the palace that's being built there appears a beautiful blue black boy uh with a lot of children around him just in admiration of his Beauty so in comes the boy and Indra on his throne is the king God he says the young man welcome and what brings you to my Palace well says the boy with a voice like thunder rolling on the horizon I've been told that you're building such a palace as no Indra before you ever built and he said I've surveyed the grounds and put things over it seems this is quite true no Ender before you has ever built such a palace well indoor says interest before me young man uh what are you talking about the boy says interest before you he says I have seen them come and go come and go he said just think Vishnu sleeps in the cosmic ocean the Lotus of a universe grows from his navel on there sits Brahma the Creator Brahma opens his eyes a world comes into being governed by an Indra closes his eyes the world goes out of being opens his eyes the world comes into being closes his eyes and the life of abrahima is 432 000 years and he dies the Lotus goes back another Lotus another Brahma then think of the galaxies beyond galaxies in Infinite Space each allowed us with the Brahma City on it opening his eyes closing his eyes with interest there may be wise men in your court who would volunteer to count the drops of water in the oceans of the world or the grains of sand on the beaches but no one would count those brahmas let alone those indras while he's talking that comes in parade across the floor of the palace an army of ants in perfect range and the boy laughs when he sees them and Indus hair goes up in these things he says to the boy why do you laugh and the boy says don't ask unless you are willing to be hurt and Indra says I ask teach the boy says former indra's all through many lifetimes they rise from the lowest conditions spiritually to highest illumination and then they dropped their Thunderbolt in vitra and they think what a good boy am I and down they go again and then interest it's there on the throne and he he's completely disillusioned completely shot and he thinks so let's quit the ability of this Palace in Cosby should come on says you're dismissed you don't have to so fish for come on got his intention he's dismissed from the job and there's no more house building going on and Inter decides I'm going out and be a yogi and just meditate on the Lotus feet of Vishnu but he has a beautiful queen named hindrani and when indrani is this she goes to the priest the chaplain of the Gods and she says now he's got this idea in his head he's going out to become a yogi [Music] come in with me darling and we'll sit down and I'll fix this up so he talks to Indra they come in they sit down before the King's throne and he tells him now I wrote a book for you some years ago on the art of politics you are in the position of the king you are the position of the king of Gods you are manifestation of the mystery of Brahman in the field of time this is a high privilege appreciated honor it and deal with life as though you were what you really are and with this set of instructions Indra gives up his idea of Joy up and coming in a yogi and finds that in life he can represent the Eternal in the way of a symbol you might say of the Brahman and the the ultimate truth so each of us is in a way the Indra of his own life and you can make a choice either to go out and in the forest and meditate and throw it all off or stay in the world and in the life either of your job which is the kingly job of the politics and achievement and as well in the love life with your wife and family you are realizing the truth now this is a very nice myth it seems to me do we ever know the truth do we ever find it well each person can have his own depth experience and some conviction of being in touch with his own son Ananda his own being through Consciousness and true Bliss but the religious people tell us we really won't experience it till we go to heaven you know till you die I believe in having as much as you can of this experience while you're alive my Bliss is now and I think in heaven you'll be having such a marvelous time looking at God that you won't get your own experience at all that's not the place to have it here's the place to have the experience Here and Now Here and Now [Music] thank you foreign [Music] foreign [Music]