Joseph Campbell on Stages of Realization
The quest to find the inward thing that you basically are is the story that I tried to render in that little book of mine written forty-odd years ago - “The Hero with a Thousand Faces.” The relationship of myths to cosmology and sociology has got to wait for man to become used to the new world that he is in. The world is different today from what it was fifty years ago. But the inward life of man is exactly the same. So if you put aside for a while the myth of the origin of the world - scientists will tell you what that is, anyway - and go back to the myth of what is the human quest, what are its stages of realization, what are the trials of the transition from childhood to maturity and what does maturity mean, the story is there, as it is in all of the religions.
The story of Jesus, for example - there’s a universally valid hero deed represented in the story of Jesus. First he goes to the edge of the consciousness of his time when he goes to John the Baptist to be baptized. Then he goes past the threshold into the desert for forty days. In the Jewish tradition the number forty is mythologically significant. The children of Israel spent forty years in the wilderness, Jesus spent forty days in the desert. In the desert, Jesus underwent three temptations. First there was the economic temptation, where the Devil comes to him and says, “You look hungry, young man! Why not change these stones to bread?” And Jesus replies, “Man lives not by bread alone, but by every word out of the mouth of God.”
And then next we have the political temptation. Jesus is taken to the top of a mountain and shown the nations of the world, and the Devil says to him, “You can control all these if you’ll bow down to me, “ which is a lesson, not well enough made known today, of what it takes to be a successful politician. Jesus refuses.
Finally, the devil says, “And so now, you’re so spiritual, let’s go up to the top of Herod’s Temple and let me see you cast yourself down. God will bear you up, and you won’t even be bruised.” This is what is known as spiritual inflation. I’m so spiritual, I’m above concerns of the flesh and this earth. But Jesus is incarnate, is he not? So he says, “You shall not tempt the Lord, your God.”
Those are the three temptations of Christ, and they are as relevant today as they were in the year A.D. 30.
The Buddha, too, goes into the forest and has conferences there with the leading gurus of his day. Then he goes past them and, after a season of trials and search, comes to the bodhi tree, the tree of illuminations, where he, likewise, undergoes three temptations.
The first is of lust, the second of fear, and the third of submission to public opinion, doing as told.
In the first temptation, the Lord of Lust displayed his three beautiful daughters before the Buddha. Their names were Desire, Fulfillment and Regrets - Future, Present and Past. But the Buddha, who had already disengaged himself from attachment to his sensual character, was not moved.
Then the Lord of Lust turned himself into the Lord of Death and flung at the Buddha all of the weapons of an army of monsters. But the Buddha had found in himself that still point within, which is of eternity, untouched by time. So again, he was not moved, and the weapons flung at him turned into flowers of worship.
Finally the Lord of Lust and Death, transformed himself into the Lord of Social Duty and argued, “Young man, haven’t you read the morning papers? Don’t you know what is to be done today?” The Buddha responded by simply touching the earth with the tips of the fingers of his right hand.
Then the voice of the goddess mother of the universe was heard, like thunder rolling on the horizon, saying, “This, my beloved son, has already so given of himself to the world that there is no one here to be ordered about. Give up this nonsense.” Whereupon the elephant on which the Lord of Social Duty was riding bowed in worship to the Buddha, and the entire company of the Antagonist dissolved like a dream.
That night, the Buddha achieved illumination, and for the next fifty years remained in the world as teacher of the way to the extinction of the bondages of egoism.
Now, those first two temptations - of desire and of fear - are the same that Adam and Eve are shown to have experienced in the extraordinary painting by Titian (now in the Prado), conceived when he was ninety-four years old.
The tree is, of course, the mythological world axis, at the point where time and eternity, movement and rest, are at one, and around which all things revolve. It is here represented only in its temporal aspect, as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, profit and loss, desire and fear. At the right is Eve, who sees the tempter in the form of a child, offering the apple, and she is moved by desire. Adam, however, from the opposite point of view, sees the serpent-legs of the ambiguous tempter and is touched with fear. Desire and fear: these are the two emotions by which all life in the world is governed. Desire is the bait, death is the hook.
Adam and Eve were moved; the Buddha was not. Eve and Adam brought forth life and were cursed of God; the Buddha taught release from life’s fear.
Text is from "The Power of Myth", exceprt from Chapter V, The Hero's Adventure
The story of Jesus, for example - there’s a universally valid hero deed represented in the story of Jesus. First he goes to the edge of the consciousness of his time when he goes to John the Baptist to be baptized. Then he goes past the threshold into the desert for forty days. In the Jewish tradition the number forty is mythologically significant. The children of Israel spent forty years in the wilderness, Jesus spent forty days in the desert. In the desert, Jesus underwent three temptations. First there was the economic temptation, where the Devil comes to him and says, “You look hungry, young man! Why not change these stones to bread?” And Jesus replies, “Man lives not by bread alone, but by every word out of the mouth of God.”
And then next we have the political temptation. Jesus is taken to the top of a mountain and shown the nations of the world, and the Devil says to him, “You can control all these if you’ll bow down to me, “ which is a lesson, not well enough made known today, of what it takes to be a successful politician. Jesus refuses.
Finally, the devil says, “And so now, you’re so spiritual, let’s go up to the top of Herod’s Temple and let me see you cast yourself down. God will bear you up, and you won’t even be bruised.” This is what is known as spiritual inflation. I’m so spiritual, I’m above concerns of the flesh and this earth. But Jesus is incarnate, is he not? So he says, “You shall not tempt the Lord, your God.”
Those are the three temptations of Christ, and they are as relevant today as they were in the year A.D. 30.
The Buddha, too, goes into the forest and has conferences there with the leading gurus of his day. Then he goes past them and, after a season of trials and search, comes to the bodhi tree, the tree of illuminations, where he, likewise, undergoes three temptations.
The first is of lust, the second of fear, and the third of submission to public opinion, doing as told.
In the first temptation, the Lord of Lust displayed his three beautiful daughters before the Buddha. Their names were Desire, Fulfillment and Regrets - Future, Present and Past. But the Buddha, who had already disengaged himself from attachment to his sensual character, was not moved.
Then the Lord of Lust turned himself into the Lord of Death and flung at the Buddha all of the weapons of an army of monsters. But the Buddha had found in himself that still point within, which is of eternity, untouched by time. So again, he was not moved, and the weapons flung at him turned into flowers of worship.
Finally the Lord of Lust and Death, transformed himself into the Lord of Social Duty and argued, “Young man, haven’t you read the morning papers? Don’t you know what is to be done today?” The Buddha responded by simply touching the earth with the tips of the fingers of his right hand.
Then the voice of the goddess mother of the universe was heard, like thunder rolling on the horizon, saying, “This, my beloved son, has already so given of himself to the world that there is no one here to be ordered about. Give up this nonsense.” Whereupon the elephant on which the Lord of Social Duty was riding bowed in worship to the Buddha, and the entire company of the Antagonist dissolved like a dream.
That night, the Buddha achieved illumination, and for the next fifty years remained in the world as teacher of the way to the extinction of the bondages of egoism.
Now, those first two temptations - of desire and of fear - are the same that Adam and Eve are shown to have experienced in the extraordinary painting by Titian (now in the Prado), conceived when he was ninety-four years old.
The tree is, of course, the mythological world axis, at the point where time and eternity, movement and rest, are at one, and around which all things revolve. It is here represented only in its temporal aspect, as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, profit and loss, desire and fear. At the right is Eve, who sees the tempter in the form of a child, offering the apple, and she is moved by desire. Adam, however, from the opposite point of view, sees the serpent-legs of the ambiguous tempter and is touched with fear. Desire and fear: these are the two emotions by which all life in the world is governed. Desire is the bait, death is the hook.
Adam and Eve were moved; the Buddha was not. Eve and Adam brought forth life and were cursed of God; the Buddha taught release from life’s fear.
Text is from "The Power of Myth", exceprt from Chapter V, The Hero's Adventure