The Monomyth II

"...the adventure of the hero normally follows the pattern of the nuclear unit above described: a separation from the world, a penetration to some source of power, and a life enhancing return....Everywhere, no matter what the sphere of interest (whether religious, political or personal), the really creative acts are represented as those deriving from some sort of dying to the world; and what happens in the interval of the hero's nonentity, so that he comes back as one reborn, made great and filled with creative power, mankind is also unanimous in declaring.  We shall have only to follow, therefore, a multitude of heroic figures through the classic stages of the universal adventure to see again what has always been revealed."

Joseph Campbell
The Hero with a Thousand Faces

The Monomyth

"The standard path of the mythological adventure of the hero is a magnification of the formula represented in the rites of passage: separation - initiation - return: which might be named the nuclear unit of the monomyth.

A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man."

Joseph Campbell
The Hero With a Thousand Faces

A Non-Theist's experience with God - III

Related to this is my constant compulsion to reconsider things - originally, authentically, from the beginning - that is, in an unmediated dialogue with this god of mine; I refuse to simplify matters by referring to some respected, more material authority, even if it were the holy writ itself.  (I accept the Gospel of Jesus as a challenge to go my own way.)  When it gets right down to it, I am a child of the age of conceptual, rather than mystical, thought and therefore my god as well - if I am compelled to speak of him (which I do very unwillingly) - must appear as something terribly abstract, vague and unattractive (all the more so since my relationship to him is so difficult to pin down).  But it appears so only to someone I try to tell about him - the experience itself is quite vivid, immediate and particular, perhaps (thanks to its constantly astonishing diversity) more lively than for someone whose "normal" God is provided with all the appropriate attributes (which oddly enough can alienate more often than drawing one closer).  And something else that is typical of my god: he is a master of waiting, and in doing so he frequently unnerves me.  It is as thought he set up various possibilities around me and then waited silently to see what I would do.  If I fail, he punishes me, and of course he uses me as the agent of my own punishment (pangs of conscience, for example); if I don't fail, he rewards me (through my own relief and joy) - and frequently, he leaves me in uncertainty.  (By the way, when my conscience bothers me, why does it bother me?  And when I rejoice, why do I rejoice?  Is it not again because of him?)  His last judgment is taking place now, continuously, always - and yet is always the last: nothing that has happened can ever un-happen, everything remains in the "memory of Being" - and I too remain there - condemned to be with myself till the end of time - just as I am and just as I make myself.
    
But I began with something quite different: with the question of whether it all had a meaning.  That I can only find the final answer within myself does not mean, of course, that I'm not interested in what the "external world" thinks of it, or that this external world does not interest me.  After all, I live in it, it shapes my possibilities, my own alternatives in life are structured from its materials and it is only through the world that I relate to that "higher" horizon.

Vaclav Havel
Letters to Olga

I find his account of his personal relationship to the divine not so very different from mine - a useful data point to extrapolate from.  His final point brings to mind D&C 84:46.  What does the phrase "through the world" mean?

A Non-Theist's experience with God - II

What, in fact, is man responsible to?  What does he relate to?  What is the final horizon of his actions, the absolute vanishing point of everything he does, the undeceivable "memory of being," the conscience of the world and the final "court of appeal"?  What is the decisive standard of measurement, and the background or the field of each of his existential experiences?  And likewise, what is the most important witness or that secret sharer in his daily conversations within himself, the thing that - regardless of what situation he is thrown into - he incessantly inquires after, depends upon and toward which his actions are directed, the thing that, in its omniscience and its incorruptibility, both haunts and saves him, the only thing he can trust in and strive for?
     Ever since childhood, I have felt that I would not be myself - a human being - if I did not live in a permanent and manifold tension with this "horizon" of mine, the source of meaning and hope - and ever since my youth, I've never been certain that this is an "experience of God" or not.  Whatever it is, I'm certainly not a proper Christian and Catholic (as so many of my good friends are) and there are many reasons for this.  For instance, I do not worship this god of mine and I don't see why I should.  What he is - a horizon without which nothing would have meaning and without which I would not, in fact, exist - he is by virtue of his essence, and not thanks to some strong-arm tactics that command respect.  By worshipping him in some model fashion, I don't think I could improve either the world or myself, and it seems quite absurd to me that this "intimate-universal" partner of mine - who is sometimes my conscience, sometimes my hope, sometimes my freedom and sometimes the mystery of the world - might demand to be worshiped or might even judge me according to the degree to which I worship him.

Vaclav Havel
Letters to Olga

A Non-Theist's experience with God - I

In the early 1980's Vaclav Havel was in Hermanice prison under a communist warden who was a "self-professed admirer of Hitler."  Some members of the dissident movement had given up hope, some actually turned and collaborated with the totalitarian state, while others fled Czechoslovakia for the West.  At this point Havel found himself wondering about the value of his stand for freedom and human dignity.  "Once you are here," he admitted in a letter from prison to his wife, "whether you want to or not, you have to ask the question: does all of this have a meaning, and if so, what?  The more I think about it, the more I realize that the final and decisive answer is not to be found in external factors that rely on so-called information, for no mere information can give me the answer to that question.  Ultimately, I can only find an answer - a positive answer - in my general faith in the meaning of things, in my hope."  With these words he launches into a description of his own theology, so to speak, his relationship with the transcendent.  Over the next few days we'll listen to him describe his faith from his prison cell.

quote from
Vaclav Havel
Letters to Olga

The Dark Night of the Soul

"...like all who have elected to follow, not the safely marked general highways of the day, but the adventure of the special, dimly audible call that comes to those whose ears are open within as well as without, she has had to make here way alone, through difficulties not commonly encountered....She has known the dark night of the soul, Dante's 'dark wood, midway in the journey of our life'..."

Joseph Campbell
The Hero with a Thousand Faces

A European "take" on the "Greatest Generation"

    "At that time West Germany was swarming with starved, frightened, suspicious, stupefied hordes of people who did not know where to turn and who were driven from town to town, from camp to camp, from barracks to barracks by young American boys, equally stupefied and equally shocked at what they had found in Europe.  These boys had come like the crusaders to conquer and convert the European continent, and after they had finally settled in the occupation zones, they proceeded with dead seriousness to teach the distrustful, obstinate German bourgeoisie the democratic game of baseball and to instill in them the principles of profit-making by exchanging cigarettes, chewing gum, contraceptives and chocolate bars for cameras, gold teeth, watches and women.

     Brought up worshiping success, a success to be achieved only by the daring use of one's wits, believing in equal opportunities for everyone, accustomed to judging a man's worth by the size of his income and a woman's beauty by the length of her legs, these strong, athletic, cheerful men, full of the joy of living and the expectation of great opportunities lying around the corner, these sincere, direct men with minds as clean and fresh as their uniforms, as rational as their lives, as honest as their uncomplicated world, felt an instinctive contempt for the people who had failed to hold on to their wealth, who had lost their businesses and their jobs and dropped to the very bottom of society.  But their attitude towards the courteous German bourgeoisie who had managed to preserve their culture and their fortunes, and towards the pretty, cheerful German girls, as kind and gentle as their sisters, was one of understanding and friendly admiration.  They had no interest in politics (that part of their lives was taken care of by the American Intelligence and the German press).  They felt they had done their duty, and now they wanted to go home - partly because they felt homesick, partly because they were bored, and partly for fear of losing their jobs and missing out on their opportunities."

Tadeusz Borowski
This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen

An interesting look at the GI's from the point of view of a Pole who survived Auschwitz.  Both the strengths and the weaknesses of the generation appear in this description, allowing for distortion created by the specificness of the point of view.  It can be usefully paralleled to Hugh Nibley's description of his generation during the occupation of Europe.