Chapter Five

JOSEPH CAMPBELL AND THE NEW AGE

In the annuls of manipulators of the consciousness of mankind, one man deserves the lime light: Joseph Campbell. He orchestrated a carefully contrived plot to destroy the American Distinctive. Everyone else who participated was his flunky pure and simple. It took a long time, over twenty years, for this flunky to figure out exactly what I have been participating in. One thing is sure: it won't take me nearly as long to tell you about our new self-image.

Where are we? We live in what is collectively the most dangerous time ever experienced by our species. Since the end of World War Two, few people on this planet have been able to escape the terrible knowledge that we, the people, could be alive at the precise moment in history when our species was destroyed. Such awareness, no matter how deeply it is repressed in subconsciousness, has consequences that are unavoidable.

One sure consequence is a desire to escape such a terrible time. Those who believe in the factual validity of the Creator should not be surprised to learn that since the first explosion of the first atomic bomb many powerful people on this planet have been working diligently on an escape plan.

Everyone on this planet feels a need to escape. Few people, Christians included, have access to the solace offered by a belief in the Rapture of the Saints. Most people believe that if escape is to be found, people are going to have to find it.

But paradoxically, most people understand that if escape is possible it is going to be an escape by people from people. The hard knot at the core of human existence today is created by the knowledge that we live on the brink of catastrophe, not because we located ourselves on a volcanic island, but because man himself is a volcano--mysterious, inscrutable, liable to violent eruptions capable of destroying everything in its path.

Those who hold fast to the idea of the Creator must understand that they are not the only ones who feel the need for a Savior. The whole world, all mankind, today knows this same need. What those who hold fast to the idea of the Creator need to understand is that a Savior has been supplied to the people of this world, a Savior that has been accepted by those who have engineered the New American Revolution. And that Savior is not Jesus Christ, the Savior accepted by those creating the New American Revolution is Man Himself educated to understand that Man is God.

Many people who believe in the presence of the Creator, especially Christians, have long suspected that an escape plan was being offered to the world that was radically different from the plan being offered by those who believe in the Creator. But, for a variety of reasons, the specifics of that alternative escape plan were only dimly, if at all, understood by those who believe in the Creator. There was a mostly unspoken assumption that any alternative escape plan would have to be so self-evidently false that people would not be tempted to give it serious consideration.

This refusal to give the devil his due has today seriously endangered the species homo sapiens. No one, to my knowledge, has ever seriously considered what could be done if a person took the deepest and most powerful ideas contained in Holy Scripture, removed those ideas from the referents pointed to in Scripture, chose new referents, and then used precisely the same ideas to fashion a new theology on the face of the earth. For instance, what would happen if a very learned and highly respected authority figure took the ideas of the incarnation developed in Scripture that referred to Jesus of Nazareth and transposed those precise same ideas to refer to individuals alive on earth today? What would happen if that highly respectable authority figure approached individuals alive today and told them the ideas that in Scripture refer to Jesus of Nazareth actually refer to the individual being approached? How would that individual react if the individual understood that the highly respected authority figure was as serious as a man could be? Flattered? Overwhelmed? What if the person approached could believe they were the incarnated Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity, God of God? Would they have found an escape plan?

Now imagine with me what would happen if that same highly respected authority figure were able to approach millions of intelligent individuals, all of whom were avidly looking for an escape plan, with the same message. What would happen if that highly respected authority figure, an authority figure who understood clearly all the deepest and most profound ideas contained in Holy Scripture, took those ideas to millions of people and convinced them the ideas of the incarnation referred to them? Would you have the makings for Revolution?

Let us leave imagination behind and examine the facts.

From 1934 until his death in 1987, Joseph Campbell occupied a chair at Sarah Lawrence College, during which time he wrote several books which continue to be in print and available at your local Waldenbooks Store, or your local Dalton, or in the libraries of your local public high schools, colleges and universities. It is very possible that most of the people who owe their present self-image to Joseph Campbell have never understood his influence in their lives--I know I didn't--perhaps they have never even heard his name, but he, nonetheless orchestrated a plot that created a Revolution in the United States of America, a plot that has influenced virtually every citizen in this nation.

I'll let Campbell explain his unique calling for you. In his book, Masks of God: Primitive Mythology published in 1967, he tells us: "No one, as far as I know, has yet tried to compose into a single picture the new perspectives that have been opened in the fields of comparative symbolism, religion, mythology, and philosophy by the scholarship of recent years. The richly rewarded archaeological researches of the past few decades; astonishing clarifications, simplifications, and coordinations achieved by intensive studies in the spheres of philology, ethnology, philosophy, art history, folklore, and religion; fresh insights in psychological research; and the many priceless contributions to our science by the scholars, monks, and literary men of Asia, have combined to suggest a new image of the fundamental unity of the spiritual history of mankind. Without straining beyond the treasuries of evidence already on hand in these widely scattered departments of our subject, therefore, but simply gathering from them the membra disjuncta of a unitary mythological science, I attempt in the following pages the first sketch of a natural history of the gods and heroes, such as in its final form should include in its purview all divine beings--not regarding any as sacrosanct or beyond its scientific domain. For, as in the visible world of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, so also in the visionary world of the gods: there has been a history, an evolution, a series of mutations, governed by laws; and to show forth such laws is the proper aim of science."

So Joseph Campbell intended to show us a "new image of the fundament unity of the spiritual history of mankind." What does he mean? Logically, his words must be understood to mean he intends for us to see a "new image" of ourselves: a new self-image. And where was this "new image" to be drawn from? "...The richly rewarded archaeological researches of the past few decades; astonishing clarifications, simplifications, and coordinations achieved by intensive studies in the spheres of philology, ethnology, philosophy, art history, folklore, and religion; fresh insights in psychological research; and the many priceless contributions to our science by the scholars, monks, and literary men of Asia..." And what is his subject? "I attempt in the following pages the first sketch of a natural history of the gods and heroes, such as in its final form should include in its purview all divine beings--not regarding any as sacrosanct or beyond its scientific domain."

Campbell is committed to being the first person in the history of mankind to develop a science of god. Joseph Campbell understood that he was doing what no man had ever attempted: Create a new religion of science, by science, for scientists. It would be exceedingly difficult, especially for those who understand the power of scientific fact to control the mind of man, to deny that Joseph Campbell was mustering some of the most powerful forces on this planet in his plan to construct a new self-image for the people of earth.

Based on his own evaluation of his work, Joseph Campbell was self-consciously constructing a new theology, a new theology that he believed already controlled the modern world. Listen closely to what he wrote in 1968: "In the earlier volumes of this survey of the historical transformations of those imagined forms that I am calling the "masks" of God, through which men everywhere have sought to relate themselves to the wonder of existence, the myths and rites of the Primitive, Oriental, and Early Occidental worlds could be discussed in terms of grandiose unitary stages. For in the history of our still youthful species, a profound respect for inherited forms has generally suppressed innovation. Millenniums have rolled by with only minor variations played on themes derived from God-knows-when. Not so, however, in our recent West, where, since the middle of the twelfth century, an accelerating disintegration has been undoing the formidable orthodox tradition that came to flower in that century, and with its fall, the released creative powers of a great company of towering individuals have broken forth: so that not one, or even two or three, but a galaxy of mythologies--as many, one might say, as the multitude of its geniuses--must be taken into account in any study of the spectacle of our own titanic age. Even in the formerly dominant, but now distinctly subordinate, sphere of theology (italics mine) there has arisen...a manifold beyond reckoning of variant readings of the Christian revelation; while in the fields of literature, secular philosophy, and the arts, a totally new type of non-theological revelation, of great scope, great depth, and infinite variety, has become the actual spiritual guide and structuring force of the civilization (italics mine).

One of the more novel ideas presented by the New Age movement is the notion that an individual can become a "channel" through whom the spirits of dead people can communicate to others still alive. Joseph Campbell actually was a channel, an authentic channel, but he was not used as a communication device for disembodied spirits, he channeled words written down by both dead and living people. And the words he wrote were intended, based on his owns words, to provide us with access to a "...totally new type of non-theological revelation..."

Anyone with insight into the history of theology understands that few concepts are more central to the point of theology than the concept of revelation. Revelation is understood in theology to refer to the process through which God reveals Himself to mankind. Historically, theology has identified two types of revelation: general and special. General revelation occurs when individuals look at creation and see there an orderliness, a purposefulness, that convinces them of the presence of a Creator: special revelation refers to words written in books that claim to be words God utters through human agents, words "breathed" by God. Now, in light of the historical significance of the concept of revelation, for Campbell to talk about a "new type of non-theological revelation" proves he had some big plans indeed.

Here's how big: his influence created what you know as the New Age Movement, his influence created the New American Revolution and his influence may well be decisive in the New World Order presently being constructed. Anyone who wants to understand the world as it approaches the third millennium would do well to pay close attention to Joseph Campbell. Millions of the most influential people on this planet have already done so.

In fact, so many people have been influenced by the ideas of Joseph Campbell, ideas obtained either directly through his books or through the influence of Campbell's disciples, that his explanation of reality now forms the self-image of the consensus presently ruling the United States of America. For this reason, Campbell's books will either someday be understood to be the most influential books written in the twentieth century, or will vanish as dead letters from a confused and anguished time in history.

These two radically different outcomes are possible because self-image is never a static reality; it changes: that is one constant in human nature. The growth process causes these changes in self-image. As toddlers we see ourselves differently than as adults, as octogenarians we view ourselves differently than at middle age. To resist changes in self-image is to go against nature, to arrest development. As we review the ideas presented by Joseph Campbell to our generation, you will see, as I did, many that influenced your present self-image. It is my purpose to expose these ideas for what they are: false myths contrived to create a Revolution that destroys the American Distinctive. How well I do the job will inevitably affect your self-image and, further, may well determine how Joe Campbell is viewed in history.

The last national public appearance made by Joseph Campbell was in a series of programs aired on PBS in 1987 and 88 hosted by Bill Moyers. In the series Campbell summarized the ideas he had published in the mid-sixties and had reiterated and expanded in various volumes published subsequent to his death in 1987. Rarely has a more polished, more erudite, more genteel, more socially acceptable figure been seen on national television. As Moyer's questions led Campbell to walk us through the history of his work and influence on the thinkers in this nation, it became impossible to doubt that here was a man history will have to reckon with. As he spoke to us from the perspective given him by his eighty years of life on Earth, it was obvious that Joseph Campbell was ready to leave this Earth as a satisfied man. He had intended to create a New World Order by leading the people of earth to believe in a New God. And he knew he had accomplished his purpose. Let's examine how he did it.

First he sets the stage: "The geographical divide between the Oriental (Eastern) and Occidental (Western) ranges of myth and ritual is the tableland of Iran. Eastward are the two spiritual provinces of India and the Far East; westward, Europe and the Levant (the land at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea, extending east to the Euphrates River and through the Nile Valley, and including Greece and Egypt.)

Campbell continues, "Throughout the Orient the idea prevails that the ultimate ground of being transcends thought, imaging, and definition. It cannot be qualified. Hence, to argue that God, Man, or Nature is good, just, merciful, or benign, is to fall short of the question. One could as appropriately--or inappropriately--have argued, evil, unjust, merciless, or malignant. All such anthropomorphic predications screen or mask the actual enigma, which is absolutely beyond rational consideration; and yet, according to this view, precisely that enigma is the ultimate ground of being of each and every one of us--and of all things.

"The supreme aim of Oriental mythology, consequently, is not to establish as substantial any of its divinities or associated rites, but to render by means of these an experience that goes beyond: of identity with that Being of beings which is both immanent and transcendent; yet neither is nor is not. Prayers and chants, images, temples, gods, sages, definitions, and cosmologies are but ferries to a shore of experience beyond the categories of thought, to be abandoned on arrival...'Thou are that,' declares the Vedic sage; and the Japanese: 'It is your true self.'"

"In the Western ranges of mythological thought and imagery, on the other hand, whether in Europe or in the Levant, the ground of being is normally personified as a Creator, of whom Man is the creature, and the two are not the same; so that here the function of myth and ritual cannot be to catalyze an experience of ineffable identity. Man alone, turned inward, according to this view can experience only his creaturely soul, which may or may not be properly related to its Creator. The high function of Occidental (Western) myth and ritual, consequently, is to establish a means of relationship--of God to Man and Man to God. Such means are furnished, furthermore, by institutions, the rules of which cannot be learned through any scrutiny of nature, whether inward or without. Supernaturally revealed, these have come from God himself, as the myth of each institution tells; and they are administered by his clergy, in the spirit of the myth....

"Much of the complexity and vitality of the Occidental heritage must be attributed to the conflicting claims--both of which are accepted--on the one hand, of the advocates of what is offered as the Word of God, and, on the other hand, of the rational individual. Nothing quite of the kind has ever seriously troubled the mentality of the Orient east of Iran, where the old hieratic Bronze Age cosmology of the ever-circling eons--static yet turning ever, in a round of mathematical impersonality, from everlasting to everlasting--endures to this day as the last word on the universe and the place of man within it. All, according to this vision, though in apparent tumult, is harmony at root, as a manifestation of the all-supporting, all-suffusing mystery of being, which transcends thought, imaging, and definition; that is to say, transcends the search of science. Like a jewel, ever turning facets to the light, apparently in change but actually unchanging, the Bronze Age image of the cosmos, still intact in the Orient, renders a fixed world of fixed duties, roles, and possibilities: not a process, but a state; and the individual, whether man or god, is but a flash among the facets. There is no concept, or even sense, of either will or mind as a creative force. And when the Westerner exhibits these, the sage Oriental simply gazes, baffled, yet with the consoling sense of watching only a devil at work whose time will surely be short, and of himself, meanwhile, as securely rooted in all that is eternally true in man, society, the universe, and the ultimate secret of being. All of which he knows, or at least he believes he knows, out of the old, old store of wisdom that both he and we inherit from the Age of Bronze."

What you have just read is the introductory remarks of a teacher who offers his students a world view. At the very root of Joseph Campbell's intellectual authority was his ability to overcome one of the greatest defects in the modern educational process of western civilization: its narrowmindedness. For thousands of years education in western civilization has been just that: at best, knowledge of western civilization. Most scholars and teachers led their students to see a world view that was actually only one-half a world view--the western half. Joseph Campbell introduced himself as a scientist who explained reality with the whole picture in view. Anyone who cannot see how such an approach would have instant validity in the mind of a modern student raised in the era of mass global communications media, simply will be unable to understand anything I am trying to point out. But for those who sense the importance of Campbell's global explanation of reality, the rest of the puzzle will be easy to see.

Campbell proposed to explain the world to us by examining the myths of the world. In his examination, he intended to reveal to us the laws of myth that were to be regarded as scientific fact. Remember how he summarized his goal? "For, as in the visible world of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, so also in the visionary world of the gods: there has been a history, an evolution, a series of mutations, governed by laws; and to show forth such laws is the proper aim of science." From an examination of these myths, Campbell intended to lead us to a unified World View that stood on the authority of Science, a unified World View in which the idea of the Creator would no longer exist.

Why did Campbell want to destroy the myth of the Creator? He tells us, "The community today is the planet, not the bounded nation; hence the patterns of projected aggression which formerly served to co-ordinate the in-group now can only break it into factions. The national idea, with the flag as totem, is today an aggrandizer of the nursery ego, not the annihilator of an infantile situation...And the numerous saints of this anticult--namely the patriots whose ubiquitous photographs, draped with flags, serve as official icons--are precisely the local threshold guardians (our demon Sticky-hair) whom it is the problem of the hero to pass...Nor can the great world religions, as at present understood, meet the requirement. For they have become associated with the causes of the factions, as instruments of propaganda and self-congratulation...The universal triumph of the secular state has thrown all religious organizations into such a definitely secondary, and finally ineffectual, position that religious pantomime is hardly more today than a sanctimonious exercise for Sunday morning, whereas business ethics and patriotism stand for the remainder of the week. Such a monkey-holiness is not what the functioning world requires; rather, a transmutation of the whole social order is necessary, so that through every detail and act of secular life the vitalizing image of the universal god-man who is actually immanent and effective in all of us may be somehow made known to consciousness."

"And this is not a work that consciousness itself can achieve. Consciousness can no more invent, or even predict, an effective symbol than foretell or control tonight's dream. The whole thing is being worked out on another level, through what is bound to be a long and very frightening process, not only in the depths of every living psyche in the modern world, but also on the titanic battlefields into which the whole planet has lately been converted."

The above words were written in 1949 and published in a Second Edition in 1968. As we read those words today, all we see is a man with an agenda, but what many people coming to age in the late sixties saw was a prophet whose prescience was self-evident. In his book, Hero With a Thousand Faces, Campbell had proven he was a man in touch with the temper of the times, a man who had not shut his eyes to the fundamental contradiction of the Second World War: out of victory over the greatest evil of all time, an instrument of destruction was created by the victors that might prove itself to be in fact the last evil of all time. Campbell, in his search for "unity", represented something different from the Bolshevik search or the "manifest destiny" of the American search. Within a generation who had lost contact with the myths that had provided the ruling consensus in American society since 1776, the time was ripe for the development of a New Myth. A New Age had come.

I'll let the man who is the founder, the heart, mind, and soul of the "New Age" movement tell you about it. Written in 1968, his words echo loud even today. "...our view is no confined no longer to a spot of space on the surface of the earth. It surveys the whole of the planet. And this fact, this lack of horizon is something new...Now it has been--as I have already said--chiefly to the scientific method of research that this release of mankind has been due, and along with mankind as a whole, every developed individual has been freed from the once protective but now dissolved horizons of the local land, local moral code, local modes of group thought and sentiment, local heritages of signs. But this scientific method was itself a product of minds of already self-reliant individuals courageous enough to be free. Moreover, not only in the sciences but in every department of life the will and courage to credit one's own senses and to honor one's own decisions, to name one's own virtues and to claim one's own vision of truth, have been the generative forces of the new age, (italics mine) the enzymes of the fermentation of the wine of this great modern harvest--which is a wine, however, that can be safely drunk only by those with a courage of their own...For this age is one of unbridled, headlong adventure, not only for those addressed to the outward world, but also for those turned inward, released from the guidance of tradition...(Campbell tells us what he believes to be the purpose of modern art.) "The master of these works, then, are the prophets of the present dawn of the new age of our species, identifying that aspect of the wonder of the world most appropriate to our contemplation: a pantheon not of beasts or of superhuman celestials, not even of ideal human beings transfigured beyond themselves, but of actual individuals beheld by the eye that penetrates to the presences actually there..."