SUKHAVATI - Joseph Campbell
[Transcript modified by George Hartley (including insertion of subheadings and movie time markers) from
version posted at http://www.scribd.com/doc/48576460/Sukhavati-v2]
The Gods and You (Dreams, Myths, Consciousness)
I am yesterday today and tomorrow; I have the power to be born a second time; I am the source and creator of
all the gods.
1:23 — The peace of nirvana in the womb; The bliss of the relationship to the mother goddess.
1:56 — And man was not breathed into the earth; man came out of the earth.
2:13 — Dreams are self-luminous. They shine of themselves, as gods do; myths are public dreams, dreams are
private myths; by finding your own dream and following it through, it will lead you to the myth world in which
you live.
2:45 — The passage from dream to vision, to the gods, and they are you; All the gods, all the hells, all the
heavens, are within you; the god is in you.
It is not something that happened a long time ago, it is in you. This is the truth of truths, this is what the gods and
myths are all about. So find them in yourself, and take them into yourself and you will be awakened in your
mythology and in your life.
3:33 — In deep dreamless sleep, consciousness is still there, but it is covered over by darkness. But suppose you
could find that consciousness. Suppose you could go into deep sleep awake. To go awake into that sphere where
there is consciousness, but consciousness of no specific thing.
4:22 — Waking consciousness deals only with what has happened. Deep sleep holds all that is future because
the future can come from nowhere else but the energies of the psyche.
The Basic Mythology East & West: sun, moon, mother, serpent, nature
4:51 — In the Bronze Age mythology, which is the basic mythology of antiquity, the lion is associated with the
solar image. Now, the moon dies into the sun every month and is born from it again—so the sun is the mother of
the moon.
5:22 — The animal associated with the sun primarily is the lion, whose wonderful solar face, and his roar
scatters the animals of the grazing plain as the rising sun scatters the stars of night. The lion is the great image of
the power of consciousness and energy. The solar lion, the womb of woman, and the sacrificial fire are the same
fire. They are the transforming fire. So all is within the mother. She IS time, space, causality.
6:28 — This is from 1500 BC in Crete a little image that is in the chapel at the royal palace at Knossos. She is the
giver of life and she is the giver of nourishment.
6:45 — The serpent, the goddess associated with the serpent, the Garden of Eden, Eve and the serpent. The
serpent sheds its skin to be born again, as the moon sheds its shadow to be born again.
The moon and the serpent represent the power of life to throw off death and come to new birth. The animal
associated with the moon as the lion is associated with the sun typically is the bull, whose beautiful horns
resemble or suggest the horns of the crescent moon. And as the moon dies to be resurrected, so in rituals the
bull is killed to be resurrected.
7:40— This is the energy of consciousness of life engaged in the field of time; Where there is time, there is
inevitably birth and death; where there is time there is inevitably sorrow—the loss of what was valued. And it is
always in pairs of opposites.
In the field of time everything is experienced in terms of opposites. But then the knowledge beyond and beneath
that, of the transcendent—that which transcends duality—Adam and Eve were thrown out of the Garden of
unity when they knew of the pair of opposites.
8:36— The sun does not carry a shadow in itself. When the sun sets the light sets with the sun. It is not the sun
Sukhavati Transcript / 2
that is in darkness but we who are. And so the sun represents the light and energy of life and consciousness—
not engaged in the field of time, disengaged absolute.
In Buddhism the light is called the mother light, the light of consciousness, the undifferentiated light of
consciousness the mother light.
Or, you can read it the other way around, as in India, Kali, whose name means the black and also means time, the
black source out of which all comes and back into which it goes.
9:26 — In the East, the whole universe, the sphere of the universe is the womb of the goddess and the deities in
all names and forms are within her bounds.
The gods are her children. This is a primary mythology. This is the mythology from which all our mythologies
come. This is the mythology of the goddess.
The goddess and woman as the initiator opening the eye of inner vision, the vision that goes past the veil that is
spread before us by the vision of the two eyes, opening the ears to the music of the spheres, opening
consciousness to a transpersonal realm of experience. The opening of the wisdom body, to the voice of the
wisdom of nature, and the world round about.
11:00 — That serpent in the garden, he knew where he was. He was an old, old deity who was the consort of the
goddess and Eve was that consort. The serpent and Eve make a better pair than Eve and Adam. The serpent and
Eve were at the tree of bliss; Adam and Eve are out there having a tough time.
This is a terrible tradition, a degradation and denial of nature, and the serpent cursed and woman along with it.
They eat the fruit of the tree of good and evil and god thinks—I mean it says so; I'm not making this up—God
thinks, “Now that they've eaten of this fruit, lest they should eat the fruit of the other tree in the garden, the tree
of immortal life and become as we are”—Elohim is a plural noun. Therefore God kicks them out of the garden.
Biblical Approach: Symbols Interpreted as Facts
12:12 — In our religious system of the west, which is based on an idea of a fallen nature, a good nature, into
which a negative power has infused evil, we have the idea of a conflict between good and evil. And so we are
invited to stand for the good against the evil, and we don't have a religion like everyone else in the world putting
yourself in accord with nature.
13:05 — I think what happens in our mythology is that the symbols, the mythological archetypal symbols,
became interpreted as facts. I think it starts with the Old Testament. I think with the Old Testament God is a fact,
not a symbol, and the Holy Land is that place and no other, and man is superior to beasts and nature is fallen.
With the fall of the Garden of Eden, nature is corrupt. So we do not give ourselves to nature; we will correct
nature. There is good and evil in nature, and we are supposed to be on the side of the good, so there is a tension.
You don't yield to nature. These are nature worshipers—well what else have you got to worship? Some figment
of your imagination that you've put up in the clouds?
14:10 — And so we've lost the symbols. Meanwhile we need the symbols, and they come up in disturbed dreams
and nightmares and so forth, which are dealt with by the psychiatrists. It was with Freud and Jung and Adler that
it was realized, and particularly through Jung, that the figures of dreams are really figures of personal
mythologizing. You are creating your own imagery related to the archetypes. But this culture has rejected them.
The culture has gone into an economic and political phase, where the spiritual principles are completely
disregarded. The religious life is ethical—it not mystical. That is gone and the society is disintegrating
consequently. It is.
The question is, will there ever be a recovery of the mythological and mystical realization of the miracle of life, of
which our society is a manifestation and all of us brothers and sisters in the spirit of this all informing mythos?
Mysticism & Science
15:47 — There's no conflict between mysticism and science, but there is a conflict between the science of 2000
BC and the science of 2000 AD, and that's the mess in our religion. We got stuck with an image of the universe
that is about as simple and childish as you could imagine, the three level universe and all that of the Bible. It's of
no use to us. We have to have poets. We have to have seers who will render to us the experience of the
transcendence through the world in which we are living.
Sukhavati Transcript / 3
16:43 — I heard from an astronaut a fabulous statement. He was in one of the modules, on one of these trips,
and he was to go out of the module and he's going through space at 18,000 miles an hour and there was no wind
and there was no sound, and over there was the sun, and over here was the earth and there was the moon, and
this beautiful man said, “I asked myself what had I ever done to deserve this experience?” Now there all bearings
are shattered. This is what is known as the sublime.
Hinduism
17:43 — And the amusing thing to me is that the mythology that really fits what's being discovered now is
Hinduism. The earth is the energy of which God is a personification and in which matter is a concretization—
and the eons and eons of time.
Vishnu sleeps on the cosmic serpent, that cosmic serpent floats on the cosmic sea, and Vishnu in that sleep
dreams the dream that is the universe. The lotus of a universe rises. On the lotus sits a Brahma, and every time a
Brahma opens his eyes, a world age comes into being, governed by an Indra. He closes his eyes, he opens his
eyes, another world age, he closes his eyes. This goes on for 360 divine years, eyes opening and closing and then
the lotus dissolves, it goes back. Another lotus another Brahma, opening, closing, and then he says consider the
galaxies in the infinitudes of space, each with its lotus, each with its Brahma, eyes opening, eyes closing.
19:19 — There was a flood, the whole world was drowned in a flood. And here is the goddess Earth who is down
in the abyss of the waters. And Vishnu turns himself into a bore, a gigantic boar which plunges them into the
bottom of the water and takes the goddess and carries her back to life. And as he's carrying her back he says,
“Every time I carry you this way.” That means every 90 billion years this thing happens. And the wonderful thing
is this expansion of the notion of time, which diminishes are notion of the importance of the present moment
and makes it possible for us to see it as but a flash on the surface of the waters of eternity.
21:24 — Just at the time of Akhnaton, let's say 1377 to 1358 or so, the Indo-Europeans are invading India. They
are nomads, warrior people with their priest magicians. And wherever they went, the priests would build a
symbolic alters in the symbolic form of the cosmos, light the fire and that would be the god Agni, the god of fire
who would be as it were the mouth of the Gods.
They chant then hymns which invoke the Gods, these hymns are the work of poets. But they are not invented
hymns they are heard hymns. The Vedas are called Sruti, that which has been heard. The ear has been opened to
the song of the universe. An unquenchable fire, the God, Agni and the offering that is poured in is also divine.
This is a God named Soma. Just as the Greeks poured libations of wine, so the soma juice is poured into the fire.
But the word Soma refers to a deity who is identical in a way to the moon.
You could see the moon filling every month with ambrosia, amrita, the elixir of immortality, and then it declines
as though it were emptying with the dew—the dew is symbolic of this ambrosia which refreshes the world of
vegetation after the burning fierce fire of the tropical sun which dessicates.
When you take food to your mouth and eat it, the fire in your body consumes the food. This is equivalent to the
sacrifice at the fire, so the energy is within you. And so why put all your thoughts and mind on the Brahmins and
their sacrifices? Why not seek to know the power that is within yourself.
24:04 — This is the doctrine of what are known as the forest books, the Upanishads, sitting close in to a teacher
who teaches you close in doctrine, and it is—you are it: Tat Tvam Asi. The Yogi says “Shiva H'am,” I am Shiva, I
am it, I am that power, and you are. People are caught in Samsara, in the vortex of birth, death, sorrow, and so
forth. We are to renounce those actions in life which engage us in this vortex, move into the forest, disengage
ourselves, engage in meditation, and achieve the raptured condition of Nirvanic harmony.
Hinayana & Mahayana Buddhism
25:46 — There was an early form of Buddhism where this escape from life was taken seriously.
The Buddhism of the doctrine of the ancients. It's also know as the Hinayana Buddhism, the little ferry boat
Buddhism, because in order to follow this Buddhism, you must give up the world and step into the little monk
ferry boat that will carry you to the yonder shore.
During the 1st century AD, that's 500 years after the Buddha's time, a new order of Buddhism comes into form,
in northwest India. It is the Buddhism of the Mahayana, the big or great ferry boat Buddhism. Now to explain the
difference between the two, I am going to use a little anecdote that my friend of long ago, Heinrich Zimmer, once
proposed: The Bay area, with San Francisco on this side and over there across the bay, Berkeley, with all the
Sukhavati Transcript / 4
wise men there. So you are fed up with San Francisco, you are absolutely in disgust of life, and you've heard
about Berkeley, you've heard about Nirvana, and you've heard what a peaceful, wonderful place it is and what
spiritual life there is over there. So you go down to the shore and you look day after day over at Berkeley, this is
the desire for the experience, you know, of Nirvana? One fine day a ferry boat sets out from the yonder shore,
comes right to your feet and in the ferry boat is a man who says, “Anyone for Berkeley?” and you say, “I.”
And he says, 'Get aboard, but there is a consideration, namely, this is a one way trip.' Now the texts say, unless
you are as eager for Nirvanic bliss as a man whose hair is on fire would be for a pond in which to dive, don't
start. It's too tough. So you get into the boat, and the boat starts out, and you have a pang, you think mother or
something like that, but, it's too late now, you are out in the water. And now its ship ahoy, the splash of the
waves on the hull of the boat, you thought it was going to be a short trip, may take six incarnations, you’re now a
monk. And its such a real relief and pleasure, counting the beads in this hand, then over here putting flowers on
alters and so forth, life has been reduced to such simplicities, there's really no problems at all. The last thing you
want now is to get ashore, on the other shore, where something else might happen.
28:57 — One fine incarnation or another, the boat scrapes ashore, this is that moment of rapture, you know. But
you can't live in that. We're there! So you get ashore. It's a new life a new breeze and all that sort of thing. And
then you think, I wonder how San Francisco looks from here?
Now we're going to move into the other type of Buddhism. This has been Hinayana Buddhism, only those willing
to give up everything, monks, nuns, and so forth and to play the little game of rosaries and flowers, can get onto
this trip. “I wonder what San Francisco looks like from here?”—forgetting you are in the realm beyond pairs of
opposites, hmmm? You turn around: there is no San Francisco, there is no bay between, there is no ferry boat,
there is no Buddha, this is it! This is known as the Mahayana. We're all there. And who’s there? Well, the first
doctrine of Buddhism is Anatman, all things are without a self, so who’s on the boat anyhow? Didn't you realize
that? We are all simply illusions of a consciousness that is the real ground. This is the illusion that comes with
the rippling water of pond, broken images, that come and go. We've identified ourselves with one of those that
comes and goes. That is when we were in San Francisco.
Now we've identified ourselves with the Buddha consciousness which informs all things and we are at peace. We
can open our eyes and return to the world; we are in San Francisco. You see what we get?
So this is known as the Buddhism of the great delight, Mahasukha. All is sorrowful and in perfect rapture.
31:46 — And that night the Buddha comes to illumination, facing the East, and the new rising sun beholds him as
a Buddha.
He sat there so stunned with what he had experienced that he did not move for seven days. While he sat there,
there was a terrific storm of the universe that threatened him. And the serpent king Muchalinda, who supports
the universe from beneath, and was right beneath that immovable spot himself—the serpent supporting the
world—he came up and wrapped the Buddha with his body and his serpent hoods over the Buddha's head so he
was protected from the storm.
And what it shows is that the savior, who represents the culmination of consciousness, is in accord with the
serpent power of the universe. The tempter came to the Buddha in two forms, one in the form of Karma, desire,
the other, the form of Mara, the fear, the terror of death.
The gods come down and they say, “For the good of mankind and the Gods and the universe, please teach.” And
the Buddha says, “I will.”
But what he teaches is not Buddhism, it is the way to Buddhism, so Buddhism is called a yana, a vehicle, a ferry
boat. And it’s a ferry boat which carries you from this shore of pain and pleasure, birth and death, pairs of
opposites across the water, of the vortexes of life, to the yonder shore beyond duality.
33:57 — The ego desires and fears. Transcendence of these is the passage through the gate to the temple. You
have to pass through fear and desire to get to the Buddha, whose hand says, “Don't be afraid of those two chaps,
come on.”
Eleusinian Mysteries
34:58 — The mysteries of Eleusis, this wonderful shrine just outside of Athens, which was the sacred spot for
the Athenian population, has a background way into the Bronze age. And it survived then in the classical world,
Sukhavati Transcript / 5
through Roman times until the conversion of the Roman Empire into a Christian Empire. Christianity was
declared to be the only permitted religion in the Roman Empire, and so a system of violent persecution and
vandalism begins, the destruction of shrines, and the more sacred the shrine, the more violent the destruction.
Meanwhile however, in the Hellenistic period, many of the earlier mystery cults had come back into
manifestation. Something in the way of a revelation was actually experienced there. And it's my belief that the
great insight that St. Paul had on the road to Damascus was that the death of Christ, of Jesus on the cross, could
be interpreted in terms of the classical mystery religions, of the death and resurrection of the savior, the death to
one's purely material animal existence and the birth, then, of the spiritual life.
36:57 — And here are the two great Goddesses. This is Demeter and here is her daughter Persephone, who is the
one who dies and is resurrected, and this is the sacred cave out of which Hades came or Pluto to abduct
Persephone. So this is an old, old story.
37:38 — In the Greek the demon is that unconscious impulse that is the dynamic of your life and which comes to
you in vision and dream. But in the Christian interpretation it’s a devil. All that a devil is, is a repressed demon,
one who has not been recognized, one who has not been given his due, has not been allowed to play in your life,
so becomes a violent threat.
38:14 — This is the beautiful Olympian Apollo, who represents protection and represents the consciousness and
light. The radiance, the vis of the Apollonian mind moves everywhere the muse is.
39:33 — This is Dionysus, divine wine, drunkenness, who represents the dynamic of the unconscious. From
below consciousness he comes singing forth. And the wonderful thing in the Greek world is they are in accord;
Dionysus is admitted to Olympus.
Though the Dionysian shatters, Dionysus is the energy that shatters in order to bring forth. Anything that is
going to be created involves the shattering of what was there before it. It’s what the Christ came down into the
world for—for the shattering, the shattering, the shattering.
This beautiful Maenad, snakes in her hair, going to tear a leopard apart, with the thyrsus here symbolic of sap,
the vegetable flow of life, uncontrolled by reason, just the dynamic of nature.
Here is an Orpheus torn apart, as Jesus was torn apart in the scourging and crucifixion.
Eternity is in love with the forms of time,i but to come into those forms it has to be dismembered, and then you
as a separate entity in the form of time, in order to lose your commitment to this little instance, you must be
dismembered and open to the transcendent.
41:34 — Orpheus, Bacchus crucified and he goes to the cross like a bridegroom to the bride, and you have the
death and resurrection motif of the moon—all you have to do is a spend a little while with these things and they
sing to you.
42:41
I'll never forget the experience of going to Dephi in Greece. The temples have all been deliberately smashed by
the vandalism of the Christians, but they are still there and you can see what the Greek idea of corporeal beauty
was.
43:12 — There is then the Oracle, where the Pythoness, prophetess, received the inspiration from the fumes, the
smoke coming up from the abyss, and prophesied and gave statements of destiny.
43:50 — And then you have up on another level, the beautiful theater with the whole wonderful valley and
landscape as its backdrop, and that accord with nature, that accord with nature, and the bringing of nature to its
high fulfillment in human nature: this is Greek. It's this idea of the individual and the individual quest, and of
course, the great symbolic moment in the Greek's own understanding of this matter was the great battle of
Marathon. Where the Persian slave civilization, you might say, they had covered everything in Asia from the
Ionian isles to the Indus river, including all the world of the ancients, Mesopotamia, Egypt and all, and the Greeks
stopped them. A few years later Alexander the Great goes smashing through the whole Persian Empire, a young
man in his early twenty's. With the idea of a self-directed, not overmastered, field of action.
Sukhavati Transcript / 6
Native European Tradition: Celtic and Germanic Tribes
45:17 — But here we have the two traditions in Europe, one, you might say the heroic one, which is the native
one of Europe, going back to the old Germanic, Celtic spirit, and then the applied Christian one which is brought
in from the near East.
By the 11th and 12th century Europe is beginning to assimilate this material and the Grail story, the Arthurian
romances, represent this assimilation. The theme of the Grail is the bringing of life into what is know as the
wasteland. The wasteland is the preliminary theme to which the Grail is the answer. What is the sense of the
wasteland? It's the world of people living inauthentic lives. If there is a path, it is someone else's path and you
are not on the adventure. Each entered the forest at a point that he himself had chosen, where it was darkest and
there was no path.
Now who can see and enter the castle of the Grail? Not everybody, only those with a spiritual readiness for the
experience. The sword represents the virtue; the sword represents the energy it has come to Arthur from the
abyss. This is the world of the unconscious, the world of the Gods, the Goddess who informs all things. Arthur or
Arthehe was revered as a God. He is originally a Celtic God. And the name Artus, Arthur, is related to Artemis,
Arcturus: all of these are related to the deity the bear. And the bear is the oldest worshiped deity in the world.
We have bear shrines going back to Neanderthal times, in just this part of the world, from perhaps 100,000 BC.
48:09 — The fantastic tradition and the levels and levels of culture that have piled up in Europe, which is not the
youngest but the oldest culture in the world.
The Celts come into Europe in the 1st millennium BC. They come from Bavaria across France, Switzerland, and
into the British Isles. Now the people who had been in Europe before were pre-Celtic, pre-Indo-European, and
their tradition may go all the way back to the caves. But the great period of their flowering is that of Stonehenge.
Now Merlin, he's associated with Druid mysteries. The Druids were the priests and spiritual guardians of the
Celts.
There are certain places geographically when you go to them you can see why these have magic mystery
traditions associated with them. There is something in the land. 49:57 — So the tradition of Glastonbury, which
is associated with the Grail castle, is associated also way way back with this 1500 BC period. This is a magical
place.
50:33 — Here you have a statement right on earth that illustrates and allows you to experience the relationship
of lunar cycles to solar cycles, so it becomes a sacred place. And every sacred place is the place where eternity
shines through time. The whole mystery of mythology, which is that of seeing through the forms of time the
radiance of eternity in your own life and in the forms around you, the whole mystery is that you might say of the
metaphor.
Sukhavati
51:21 — “Very deep is the well of the past; should we not call it bottomless?”ii
And as one who has tried himself to go back to the origins of mythic forms, I can see this: it is bottomless. The
mythological themes don't have a beginning, they have the archetypes, the elementary ideas, and so where is
Paradise? Where do they come from? They come from die Seele, the soul. The origin is the soul of man.
52:15 — It is though the whole universe were a dream, dreamed by a single dreamer, in which all the dream
characters dream to. And so all these dreams interlock. Well this is an idea that comes up in India in what is
known as the net of Indra. The universe is, as it were, a net of gems in which all of the junctures of the net, at
each of these there is a jewel, and each of the jewels reflects all the others. That's this idea of we are all particles
of this great cycling dream.
And one of the great Hindu images of the 'world dream' is of Vishnu dreaming the universe; we are all parts of
Vishnu's dream. Now in the Indian pictures we see the world dream coming from Vishnu in the form of a lotus
growing from his navel, the lotus sprig. The lotus is Padma, a goddess, Lakshmi Padma, the Goddess, lotus and
good fortune.
Sukhavati Transcript / 7
53:51 — That recitation from Tibet, “Om Mani Padme Hung.” Mani, the jewel of illumination. Padme is in the
lotus. It’s right in the lotus of the world that illumination resides. The illumination means you are letting go of
ego. “Gone, gone, gone to the yonder shore, landed on the yonder shore, illumination, hallelujah.”
Prajnaparamita, the wisdom of the yonder shore. But what she's doing is bringing the two hands together, the
hand of earthly experience, the hand of spiritual rapture—she's at that point.
54:48 — And that's the wisdom of the yonder shore, beyond pairs of opposites. The one who is trying to get
away from life to Nirvana is still caught in pairs of opposites, but when you get there you realize, this is it . . .
right now.
55:04 — This is the favorite Buddha of the East. This is Amita (Sanskrit, Amitabha: Amita means immeasurable,
Bha is radiance, the Buddha of immeasurable radiance). Now there is a legend associated with his name: When
he was on the very threshold of illumination he made a vow. He said, “I will not accept illumination for myself,
unless, through my illumination I can bring to illumination and release all beings.” And so, when he achieved
illumination there broke out before him a great lake, and it was a lake of bliss, and on this lake were lotuses and
anyone who during his lifetime paid devotion to Amita would not be committed to another lifetime, but would
be reborn on a lotus in Amita's lotus pond, called Sukhavati, the place of bliss. If the person was not even nearly
illuminated his lotus would be closed, he'd be in a closed lotus. And he'd be floating on this lake, which would be
a water of the five colors of the five elements. As the waters rippled, he would hear, “All is impermanent; all is
without a self,” “All is impermanent; all is without a self.” Around the lake would be these jeweled trees with
jeweled birds singing, and they would be singing, “All is impermanent; all is without a self.” Musical instruments
in the air would be playing, “All is impermanent; all is without a self.” Presently he'd get the message.
Meanwhile, the radiance of the Buddha himself like a setting sun on the western horizon would be penetrating
the petals and they would open, and there he would be sitting as a Buddha in mediation floating on the lotus
pond, and presently in his meditation he would dissolve into rapture and transcendence.
57:53 — Now the quality of this Buddha is mercy, compassion. This is the Buddha whose lieutenant is
Avalokitesvara and whose incarnation on earth then is in the Dalai Lama, and he is the Bodhisattva of infinite
compassion. The Bodhisattva willingly comes back to the world, joyful participation in the sorrows of the
world. And his accent always in his talk about Buddhism is on the force of compassion and mercy and love.
59:01 — There was preserved in Tibet the Buddhist forms of the highest, most sophisticated Tantric
development. Now the mythology of death and birth is of reincarnation, between the moment of death and the
moment of reconception forty-nine days pass, seven times seven days. And during the course of this, one has
gone through all the worlds of the Chakras.
The notion is that the moment of death you experience the great light. Can you stand it? Have you prepared
yourself to dissolve?
You may speak of it as the void, you may speak of it as the abyss, you may speak of it as mother light: it is that
which transcends all cogitations, there are no words for it. 1:00:24 — So at the moment of death, the Lama will
say, “You are now experiencing the mother light, between your consciousness and universal consciousness no
obstruction.” And the Lama will say, “Do not be afraid. These powers that are tearing you apart and all that
they're just figments of your own, imagination. They are in the field of time, figments. There's nothing to lose,
there's nothing to do, hold the still point, the still point without moving.” You've lost it, and when you've lost it,
great cliffs close behind you and the upper regions are lost to you.
And the Lama will be telling you where you are on the way down and what to hold to and to try to do it and here
you are disintegrating, trying to have this realization which will release you from another birth.
Now are you going to identify with the body, the vehicle, or are you going to identify with the light?
1:01:46 — The ultimate source is undifferentiated, undifferentiated consciousness. An individual life represents
a knot of delusions. There are a lot of things that you think are important and that's what you are living for and if
you die before you've learned that they are not important, you are going to be born again. And its the
dissolution, the breaking of that know that is intended. Anatmanda, there is no soul. But there IS a soul as long as
you are living—you understand what I mean? The goal is to get rid of that thing, to dissolve like the dew drop
into the sea.
The Goddess and Time
Sukhavati Transcript / 8
1:02:52 — When we come to the Indian mythology which carries right into the present the implications of the
old Bronze age, we find that a cycle of time endures for 432,000 years. This is the yuga. Then you get up to the
Mahayuga, the great yuga or cycle within which the other cycles proceed, and you get 4,320,000. If you add
them, then you get nine. This is the great number of the Goddess. She is time; she is the womb. Nine is the grain,
you might say, of her movement.
1:03:53 — Here she is as black time, and here is her prime altar, the battlefield, sacrifice. Kali dancing at burning
ground. In her hand is the head of Brahma. That's the creator, the creator of the world. We are going past that
and all its values. She cuts off her own head to release you from her bondage. That's the burning ground and she
releasing us all.
1:04:46 — So we have the big cycles of time, and the Biblical traditions and all right out of this Bronze age, which
has to have been based on actual observation.
1:05:05 — It is the rhythm of our own heart beat; its the rhythm of the universe; we are in accord with the
universal rhythm. I want to move to southeast Europe, 7000 to 3500 BC. This is very, very early stuff. And it’s a
period when the mother Goddess is dominant. She is bird goddess, spiritual goddess. Associated with her is the
boar. Here is a pink goddess, and the labyrinth, ceramic serpent all of the same order: here's the whole
mythology in a cluster, in front of us here.
This little Venus of Lozelle is holding in her hand, her right hand elevated, a bison horn with 13 vertical strokes.
That's the number of nights between the first crescent and the full moon. The other hand is on the belly. What is
suggested is a recognition of the equivalence of the menstrual and the lunar cycles. This would be the first
inkling we have of a recognition of counter parts between the celestial and earthly rhythms of life.
Just as in the woman's body the womb is celebrated, the caves in which we are, have been wandering is the
womb of the mother Goddess. I tell you, when you go into those caves, a very interesting psychological
transformation takes place automatically. This is the place. The world of the light above is quite secondary, and
these animals that you see are the animal germs, you might say, the Platonic ideas of the herds that are being
invoked. This is where they come from—in this germinating ground.
Shamanism
1:07:52 — In the beginning the animal and human forms are mixed, just as they were in the early dancer at Trois
Frères. Now the stag loses his antlers annually and brings them back again and so, as it were, is an incarnation of
the forest spirit. And the shaman is the one who can evoke the animals.
1:09:21 — Mythology is a production of the wisdom body, not of the intellect—it is not. The white man has
ideas; the Indian has visions; and visions come from a deeper more mysterious center.
This wonderful Sioux medicine man, Black Elk, who was the keeper of the sacred pipe and so forth, had an
incredibly beautiful vision when he was a boy of nine, the shamanic vision that converted him, you might say,
into a many of mystery and power. Well, he said, in the course of that vision he saw himself on the central
mountain of the universe, the highest mountain of them all, and the highest mountain was Harney Peak in South
Dakota. And immediately after that he said the central mountain is everywhere.
Chief Seattle: “Will you teach your children what we've taught our children, that the earth is our mother. What
befalls the earth befalls all the sons of the earth. This we know: the earth does not belong to man; man belongs to
the earth. All things are connected like the blood that unites us all. Man did not weave the web of life—he is
merely a strand in it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself.
“One thing we know, our God is also your God. The earth is precious to him, and to harm the earth is to heap
contempt on its creator. Your destiny is a mystery to us.
What will happen when the buffalo are all slaughtered, the wild horses tamed? What will happen when the
secret corners of the forest are heavy with the scent of many men and the view of the ripe hills is blotted by
talking wires? Where will the thicket be? Gone. Where will the eagle be? Gone. And what is it to say goodbye to
the swift pony and the hunt, the end of living and the beginning of survival?”
Life is Dangerous and therefore Rapturous
1:12:09 — It's natural to life that life should be dangerous, and now it’s dangerous for the planet. Formerly it
was dangerous for this society, that society, or another. Just think of when the Spaniards arrived and wiped out
Sukhavati Transcript / 9
all of the people in the Caribbean Sea—within two generations there were no more natives there. Then they
wipe out two civilizations; five-hundred men wipe out two civilizations.
The world has been experiencing absolute disaster. We've been so protected we that don't realize it, and now
the fear of something blowing up—you see what I mean? Indras, Indras, Indras, Brahma's eyes opening and
closing. And ok, I heard one man say there is no neccessity that the human race should survive.
Chief Seattle in another of his words said, “Why should I lament the disappearance of my people? All things die.
The white race will find this out, too.” So yield to what is coming. We're in a free fall into future. We don't know
where we are going. Things are changing so fast and always when you are going through a long tunnel anxiety
comes along. And all you have to do to transform your hell into a paradise is to turn your fall into a voluntary act.
It's a very interesting shift in perspective, and that's all it is. Joyful participation in the sorrows, and everything
changes.
Life throws up around us these temptations, these distractions, and the problem is to find the immovable center
and you can survive anything, and the myths will help you to do that. And this is the quest for the inner life that
will enable you to float down the stream like a human being instead of just like some Babbitt or robot in the
hands of a political institution. And that's what I am interested in, and bringing forward here and I may not be
changing the world, but I am changing people, and that's what's necessary and that's what's gotta be done.
1:15:09 — Finally, after this stage of experiences, which we have all had, the person has gone past his personal
life into the life of transpersonal experiences, one comes to suddenly a stage of understanding it all. You can't
talk about it—it's just the rapture of seeing and knowing what it's all about and that it's good and that it's great,
and for all the pains and all that nevertheless it is as it is and it is a marvel. And the pains and the pleasures are
not the ends we live for, but just the rapture of this beholding.
And finally there's one stage further beyond this symbolic rapture, it's that of a kind of a metaphysical sense that
you have struck the ground and you have found the root of being.
1:16:39 — [credits]
QUESTIONS:
How does the Biblical notion of the relationship between humans and nature differ from most other cultural
mythologies?
What does Campbell explain about the serpent and Eve?
How are Christ and Dionysus related? What do they have in common?
What does “Sukhavati” mean? Why did Campbell think it was important?
What is Campbell’s point when he says that life is dangerous and therefore rapturous?
i
ii
See William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
Thomas Mann, Joseph and His Brothers.