Monday, September 7, 2009

Deep, Deeper and Deepest: Buber, Rumi, Campbell

Deep: Martin Buber
Real faith does not mean professing what we hold true
in a ready-made formula. It means holding ourselves
open to the unconditional mystery which we encounter
in every sphere of our life and which cannot be
comprised in any formula. It means that, from the
very roots of our being, we should always be prepared
to live with this mystery as one being lives with
another. Real faith means the ability to endure life
in the face of this mystery.

Deeper: Rumi 
To speak the same language is to share the same blood, to be related
To live with strangers is the life of captivity
Many are Hindus and Turks who share the same language
Many are Turks who may be alien to one another
The language of companionship is a unique one
To reach someone through the heart is other than reaching them through words.
Besides words, allusions and arguments
The heart knows a hundred thousand ways to speak.

Deepest: Joseph Campbell
Reading again, Joseph Campbell’s The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology, I have found the following thoughts worth pondering  (if you are disposed to think about such things). I recommend his remarkable study, as it explores the common foundation/purpose of myths, and takes us way down into the "deep, deep well of the past," not only to our cultural/geographic roots, but also to biological, psychological and even pre-historic origins, thus providing some insight into ourselves and the world--past, present and future.
        In the Foreword and Prologue of The Masks of God, Campbell considers his twelve year research in comparative mythology as confirmation, “of the unity of the race of man, not only in its biology, but also in its spiritual history, which has everywhere unfolded in the manner of a single symphony."  Her found worldwide common themes of  "fire theft, deluge, land of the dead, virgin birth, and resurrected hero....appearing everywhere in new combinations."
        Commenting further on this phenomenon, he notes, “No human society has yet been found in which such mythological motifs have not been rehearsed in liturgies; interpreted by seers, poets, theologians, or philosophers; presented in art; magnified in song; and ecstatically experienced in life empowering visions….Every people has received its own seal and sign of supernatural designation, communicated to its heroes [and prophets] and daily proved in the lives and experience of its folk."
        Campell reminds us that these stories and “revelations” have inspired many “who bow with closed eyes in the sanctuaries of their own tradition, [yet] rationally scrutinize and disqualify the sacraments of others...." when "an honest comparison immediately reveals that all have been built from one fund of mythological motifs—variously selected, organized, interpreted and ritualized according to local need…” He confirmed that humans,"have chosen not the facts in which the world abounds, but the myths of an immemorial imagination—preferring even to make a hell for themselves and their neighbors, in the name of some violent god, instead of accepting gracefully the bounty the world affords."
        Campbell asks, “Are modern civilizations to remain spiritually locked from each other in their local notions…” and traditions of these myths/stories/religions, which essentially drive us “diametrically apart?” While the above affirms what we already know: that mythologies can be destructive, or at least divisive, we also realize through Campbell's study that mythology is the mother of all arts and reveal a unity rather than a division. Speaking of the best of human creation, its subtleties, its ambiguity and mystery therein, he quotes from James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake: "utterly impossible as are all these events they are probably as like those which may have taken place as any others which never took person at all are ever likely to be."
        At this stage, however, in humanity’s development, Campbell calls for a new understanding and imagination of a “broader, deeper kind than anything envisioned anywhere in the past" something, “far more fluid, more sophisticated than the separate visions of the local traditions, wherein those mythologies themselves will be known to be but the masks of a larger….'timeless schema' that is not schema."
        First, humanity's development would have to be such that it could understand our individual, communal expressions of local myth/story/traditions (e.g., exclusive fundamentalist approach to religions) as part of a larger reality? It does not seem that humanity's develpment has progressed to that point.  Still, Campbell asks us to imagine what a common vision would look like, especially if we have fully digested what his research has revealed--that we are united in common history and story.
     It may be that most people are not interested or concerned with how myth or the unity Campbell has found and reveaved communal could affect our lives, and the lives of others and the world. Many into the forseeable future will continue to cling to their exclusive world views, making, "a hell for themselves and neighbors... instead of accepting gracefully the bounty the world affords."
           May the future generations open to an cosmic, ecumenical perspective to live and to enjoy what unifies, rather than what divides us.

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