Daniel Medvedov

MYTH
Mythic Reflections

Thoughts on Myth, The Self, and our Destiny

Four Hands Symphony: Joseph Campbell & Tom Collins, (USA)

Daniel Medvedov & Luis Casanova (Austria)
A Tandem Interview with Joseph Campbell, by Tom Collins and Daniel Medvedov by Luis Casanova Sorolla

Viena 2011 / Madrid 2015


One of the articles in The New Story (IC#12) Winter 1985/86, Page 52 Copyright
(c)1986, 1997 by Context Institute
Joseph Campbell is perhaps the world's foremost scholar of mythology.
Among his many books are The Hero with a Thousand Faces, The Masks Of God, Myths
To Live By, and his current multi-volume Historical Atlas Of World Mythology.
Interviewer Tom Collins is a Los Angeles based writer and editor whose works include
Steven Spielberg, Creator of E.T. (Dillon Press, 1983).

The other article was published in Latinos Magazin, Wien, 2010 (September)
Copyright Daniel Medvedov 2010
Daniel Medvedov is an Academic Tutor to more than one hundred graduate and
undergraduate thesis.
He was a Chair Professor in Symbology, Semiotics, Mythology and Philosophy of
Culture at the Universidad Central de Venezuela and other universities (Catholic
University Andres Bello , Caracas, UPEL, UNEY, etc.)
He is a Zen Master so recognized by many of his disciples.
Scholar and Artist of mythology, he wrote some hundreds of articles, books and studies
on Culture and Civilization.
Among his many books are ZOOGNOSIS, Secret Meaning of Animals in
Mythology, published in 1993 by the National Academy of History, Caracas, Venezuela,
Treatise of Navigation for Medieval Children, published by the Center of Symbology,
Caracas, 1981, now at the Alexandria Library and his site 1000Arepas (Elkenos Abe)
www.scribd.com/elkenosabe (1000Arepas)

Tom: What does myth do for us? Why is it so important?

Joseph: It puts you in touch with a plane of reference that goes past your mind and into
your very being, into your very gut. The ultimate mystery of being and nonbeing
transcends all categories of knowledge and thought. Yet that which transcends all talk is
the very essence of your own being, so you're resting on it and you know it.
The function of mythological symbols is to give you a sense of "Aha! Yes. I know what it
is, it's myself." This is what it's all about, and then you feel a kind of centering, centering,
centering all the time. And whatever you do can be discussed in relationship to this
ground of truth.
Though to talk about it as truth is a little bit deceptive because when we think of
truth we think of something that can be conceptualized. It goes past that.
Luis: What is myth?
Daniel: Myth? To answer that question lets have ready at hand a logical model. The
concept belongs to an Archetype, a principle, the universal principle called Truth.
And Truth is truly a non-tangible fact. In order to shine It has to spreads into a pair of
factors: Reality and Myth.
Then the definition of Myth goes to the following concepts: Every thing in the world has
a present figure called reality and simultaneously, a secret shape, called myth. What is a
thing?
It is a fact, an object or a being, a creature. Take from this tetra-enthymeme whichever
one you like.
In our case, so to say, Myth is a fact, a secret fact.
Tom: Heinrich Zimmer said "The best truths cannot be spoken. . . "
Joseph: "And the second best are misunderstood."
Tom: Then you added something to that.
Joseph: The third best is the usual conversation - science, history, sociology.

Tom: Why do people confuse these?

Joseph: Because the imagery that has to be used in order to tell what can't be told,
symbolic imagery, is then understood or interpreted not symbolically but factually,
empirically. It's a natural thing, but that's the whole problem with Western religion. All of
the symbols are interpreted as if they were historical references. They're not. And if they
are, then so what?
Luis: May you add something to Joseph Campbell words?
Daniel: A fourth best: Myth is like a thread passing through many beads (stories) in a
rosary, uniting them all, keeping them in a perfect operative and useful unity.
Tom: Let's go carefully here. What are you calling a symbol?
Joseph: I'm calling a symbol a sign that points past itself to a ground of meaning and
being that is one with the consciousness of the beholder. What you're learning in myth is
about yourself as part of the being of the world. If it talks not about you, finally, but
about something out there, then it's short. There's that wonderful phase I got from
Karlfried Graf Durkheim, "transparency to the transcendent." If a deity blocks off
transcendency, cuts you short of it by stopping at himself, he turns you into a worshipper
and a devotee, and he hasn't opened the mystery of your own being.
Tom: You once called that the pathology of theology.
Joseph: That's what I would call it.
Luis: What are you calling a symbol?
Daniel: A symbol is just a category.
It is a complementary figure that needs of its counterpart to be combined with and so to
reconstruct the original complete, whole figure.
Tom: Walter Huston Clark says the church is like a vaccination against the real thing.
Joseph: Jung says religion is a defense against the experience of god. I say our religions
are.
Tom: What do you do, then, if the experience is not to be found in religion?
Joseph: You find it in mysticism and get in touch with mystics who read these symbolic
forms symbolically. Mystics are people who are not theologians; theologians are people
who interpret the vocabulary of scripture as if it were referring to supernatural facts.

There are plenty of mystics in the Christian tradition, only we don't hear much about
them. But now and again you run into it. Meister Eckhart is such a person. Thomas
Merton had it. Dante had it. Dionysus the Areopagyte had it. John of the Cross breaks
through every now and again and then comes slopping back again. He flashes back and
forth.
I think Joyce is full of it. And Thomas Mann had it in his writing, though it isn't as far out
as Joyce. It's strange how after Mann's death it disappears and you don't get it any more.
Luis: Do you think that religion is worthy as a spiritual path?
Daniel: Religion is a necessary step. Many are quite happy and work well with their
religion ties. But free ones as we are, do not need religion in order to shine . . . We need
silence and this silence is a mystical food.
Tom: To quote your own words again, "A myth is the dynamic of life. You may or may
not know it, and the myth you may be respectfully worshipping on Sunday may not be the
one that's really working in your heart and the one that's out there in the view of your
religious instructors."
Joseph: Yes. I would say that's a proper statement, and I would say it again.
Tom: How do you unite those two dynamics?
Joseph: By placing the emphasis on your own inward dynamic and then filtering out of
the inheritance of traditions those aspects that support you in your own inward life. This
means not being tied to this, that, or another tradition, but letting the general comparison .
. . See, I'm very much for comparative studies of mythology. I think one of the problems
today is that society has moved into a multicultural relationship that renders archaic these
culture-bounded mythological systems - like the Christian, the Jewish, the Hindu.
By getting to know your own impulse system and its images and the things you really are
living for, and then to get support for - you might say - universalizing and grounding this
personal mythology, you can find support in the other mythologies of mankind.
Luis: Do you think that religion has a value for young generation today?
Daniel: Few young lads are not so interested in religion today.
Compare religion to soccer: much more are interested today in football than in
Sunday Church Ritual.

Tom: What are the purposes of myth?

Joseph: There are four of them. One's mystical. One's cosmological: the whole universe
as we now understand it becomes, as it were, a revelation of the mystery dimension. The
third is sociological, taking care of the society that exists. But we don't know what this
society is, it's changed so fast. Good God! In the past 40 years there have been such
transformations in mores that it's impossible to talk about them. Finally, there's the
pedagogical one of guiding an individual through the inevitables of a lifetime. But even
that's become impossible because we don't know what the inevitables of a lifetime are
any more. They change from moment to moment.
Formerly, there were only a limited number of careers open to a male, and for the female
it was normal to be a mother or a nun or something like that. Now, the panorama of
possibilities and possible lives and how they change from decade to decade has made it
impossible to mythologize. The individual is just going in raw. It's like open field running
in football - there are no rules. You have to watch everything all the way down the line.
All you can learn is what your own inward life is and try to stay loyal to that.
Luis: What are the purposes of myth?
Daniel: Myth has no purpose. It is only a presence, a brick. You have to pick many of
these bricks, transform them in stones, find a corner stone, a philosopher stone and a
keystone and then begin to construct your personal cathedral . . .
Tom: How do you learn that?
Joseph: I don't know. Some people learn it early; some never learn it.
Luis: How do we learn to change bricks in stones?
Daniel: To change bricks in stones? Well, first of all, you need to be an architect. Then,
you have to look for your team.
If no team is present, we may do our small model of a cathedral and consider it so real as
a real one . . .
Tom: What kind of a mythology do we have today? What kind should we have?
Joseph: I won't say what kind of mythology we have because I don't think we have a
generally functioning mythology. I would say that in terms of the sociological aspects of
mythology, and perhaps this is a sentimental impossibility, we should see the total,
global, society as the community of interest.

Luis: What kind of a mythology do we have today?

Daniel: Same kind of a mythology as thousand years before. Nothing was changing in its
meaning. Only the figures and shapes are different.
Tom: I thought myths were always tied to a specific group or place.
Joseph: That's right. But when you can fly from New York to Tokyo in a day, you can
no longer say that's an incredible span of consciousness to include as one unit. The total
globe is the society. And in fact, economically that is so.
Tom: I think it's interesting that some people have started to combine ancient wisdom
with modern insights - people like Jean Houston, Michael Harner, Joan Halifax, and
Elizabeth Cogburn.
Joseph: If it makes sense, what it would seem to me to suggest is that a harmonization of
our lives with the order of nature is what's required.
Tom: Many of these people are also interested in the creation of rituals. What role does
ritual play in mythology?
Joseph: A ritual is the enactment of a myth. And through the enactment it brings to mind
the implications of the life act that you are engaged in. Now, people ask me, what rituals
can we have today?
My answer is, what are you doing? What is important in your life? What is important,
they say, is having dinner with their friends. That is a ritual.
This is the sense of T.S. Eliot's The Cocktail Party. A cocktail party is a ritual. It is a
religious function in that way, and those people are engaged in a human relationship
thing.
This is the Chinese idea, the Confucian idea, that human relationships are the way you
experience the Tao. Realize what you're doing when you're giving a cocktail party. You
are performing a social ritual.You are conducting it when you sit down to eat a meal, you
are consuming a life.
When you're eating something, this is something quite special to do.
And you ought to have that thought when you eat a carrot as well as when you eat an
animal, it seems to me. But you don't know what you're doing unless you think about it.
That's what a ritual does. It gives you an occasion to realize what you're doing so that
you're participating in the inevitable energy of life in its exchanges. That's what rituals
are for; you do things with intention, and not just in the animal way, ravenously, without
knowing what you're doing.
7

This is true also of sex.

People who just engage in sex as a fun game, as something exciting like that, don't realize
what they're doing.
Then you don't have the sacramentalization.
And the whole reason marriage is a sacrament is that it lets you know what the hell is
correct and what isn't, and what's going on here.
A male and female coming together with the possibility of another life coming out of it that's a big act.
Luis: What role does ritual play in mythology?
Daniel: Ritual is practice. We need practice, and feeling, and theory.
Words need movement. Then TAI CHI practice, or Zen Meditation, or Yoga, or
whatever dynamic Christian or Islamic version of meditation is a good practice for a
mythological contemporary ritual. Whatever you do in everyday life has to be a ritual,
and the place you are using for it, become a sacred space, even in the bathroom.
Tom: What does the term "transcendent" mean, in von Durckheim's phrase, "transparent
to the transcendent"?
Joseph: The simple meaning of the term is that which goes beyond all concepts and
conceptualization, or that which lies beyond all conceptualization.
Luis: What does the term "transcendent" mean?
Daniel: Transcendent is the translation of a classical Greek term METAPHORA
transport (so to say Metaphoric). Today, in Athens, we may call by phone to the
Ministry of METPHORA (Ministry of Transports and Communications) if it happened to
leave our documents in a taxicab.
Then, let us transport our Self from visible to visinvisible. Let us consider that
every fact, every object and every being have their mythical charge, their secrets, their
myths.
Tom: Where does this experience come from?

Joseph: Your life is your experience of transcendent energies because you don't know
where your life comes from, but you can experience them. We're experiencing them right
here, just by sitting on them and having them bubble up.
Tom: Are you using "transcendent" as another term for God?
Joseph: If you want to personify it. Brahman is the Sanskrit way of talking about it.
Manitou is the Algonquin way, Orinda is the Iroquois, Owacan is the Sioux.
Tom: Jahweh?
Joseph: Jahweh is personified. He is it.
Tom: We can't speak the name, though, because he is beyond ....
Joseph: Well, it ought to be, but we know all about him, or he's told us all about himself
and how we ought to behave. The basic mythological concept is transcendent of
personification. Personification is a concession to human consciousness so that you can
talk about these things.
Tom: Do you mean that if the infinite reveals itself to you, your little mind responds by
saying "God spoke to me" because it can only grasp what happened in its limited terms?
Joseph: That's right.
Tom: I gather you're not terribly fond of the Bible.
Joseph: Not at all! It's the most over-advertised book in the world. It's very pretentious to
claim it to be the word of God, or accept it as such and perpetuate this tribal mythology,
justifying all kinds of violence to people who are not members of the tribe.
The thing I see about the Bible that's unfortunate is that it's a tribally circumscribed
mythology. It deals with a certain people at a certain time.
The Christians magnified it to include them. It then turns this society against all others,
whereas the condition of the world today is that this particular society that's presented in
the Bible isn't even the most important. This thing is like a dead weight. It's pulling us
back because it belongs to an earlier period. We can't break loose and move into a
modern theology.
One of the great promises of mythology is, with what social group do you identify? How
about the planet? To say that the members of this particular social group are the elite of
God's world is a good way to keep that group together, but look at the consequences!

I think that what might be called the sanctified chauvinism of the Bible is one of the
curses of the planet today.
Tom: There's a lot of interesting material in the Old Testament, isn't there? For instance,
it says that God created everything except the water.
Joseph: You've put your finger on it. The water I is the goddess. You see, what happens
in the Old Testament is that the masculine principle remains personified and the female
principle is reduced to an element. The first verse says when God created, the breath of
God brooded over the waters. And the water is the goddess.
Luis: Do you have your personal sight of what is called God?
Daniel: In my view, Dios, the Spanish word for God I a good a truly well found as any
other name of the Sublime. But I have actually my proper name for the Sublime.
Luis:What is that name?
Daniel: Trios: The triple unity of Light, Sound and Substance.
Tom: I assume you don't believe in an actual, literal seven days of creation.
Joseph: Of course not. That has nothing to do with the actual evolutionary story as we
now get it.
Tom: How do you reconcile these two accounts?
Joseph: Why should one bother to, any more than you would try to reconcile the Navajo
story?
Tom: I remember hearing a wonderful lecture by the late Louis Leakey in which he
insisted that there was no conflict between the Genesis account of creation and what he
had discovered.
Joseph: Well, it is in conflict because he didn't read it carefully enough. There are two
Biblical accounts, one in the first chapter and one in the second, and they're quite
contrary to each other.
It's about time we stopped feeling that we have to believe in the Bible. I'd just as soon try
to work out the Navajo thing, where they come up through four worlds.
One is red, one yellow . . .

10

Tom: But if you throw out the Bible as history, don't you also throw it out as a moral
imperative?
Joseph: Yes. I don't think the Bible is anybody's moral imperative, unless you want to be
a traditional Jew. That's what the Bible tells you.
Tom: Doesn't it tell you how to be a good person?
Joseph: No.
Tom: Lots of people think so.
Joseph: Just read the thing. Maybe it gives you a few hints, but the Bible also tells you to
kill everyone in Canaan, right down to the mice.
Tom: What was the passage you quoted to justify their exclusivity ideas?
Joseph: "There is no God in all the world but in Israel." That leaves everybody out
except the Jews. This is one of the most chauvinistic views of morality.
One of the great texts is in Exodus, when the Jews are told to kill the lambs and put the
blood on their doorsteps so the angel of death won't kill any of their children, but will kill
the first children of the Egyptians. And the night before they leave, they're to invite their
Egyptian friends to lend them their jewels and so on. Then the next night, they run off
with the jewels, and the text says, so they fleeced the Egyptians. No, so they despoiled
the Egyptians. You call this good ethics?
Tom: What's the background of something like Cain and Abel?
Joseph: There's a very amusing Sumerian dialogue that appeared about 1500 years
earlier than the Cain and Abel story. It's about a herder and an agriculturalist competing
for the favor of the goddess. The goddess chooses to prefer the agriculturalist and his
offering. Well, the Jews come into this area, and they're not agriculturalists, they're
herders. And they don't have a goddess, they have a god. So they turn the whole thing
upside down, and make God favor the herder against the agriculturalist.
The interesting thing is that throughout the Old Testament, it's the younger brother who
overturns the older brother in God's favor. It happens time and time again. This is simply
a function of the fact that the Jews come in as younger brothers. They come in as barbaric
Bedouins from the desert, into highly sophisticated agricultural areas, and they're
declaring that although the others are the elders - as Cain was, the founder of cities and
all that - they are God's favorite. It's just another form of sanctified chauvinism. You
understand the view of exclusive religion, don't you - "You worship God in your way, I'll
worship God in his."

11

Luis: What's the background of the story of Cain and Abel?

Daniel: The story of Cain & Abel has something to do with language: Cain is the herald
of the consonants when Abel represents vowels.
Luis: This goes in line with the other story of the Tower of Babel?
Daniel: Certainly so. Babel is our world, a space plenty of different tongues, a place
where every newborn human being finds a labyrinth of so many different phonetic and
phonemic shapes used for the same concepts and categories.
The jawbone Cain used to kill Abel is our mandible, a bone that is moving sounds in
order to compose consonants, when vowels are produced without the movement of our
jawbone.
Tom: I gather there were a number of East-West conflicts in the early church. I find
Pellagius a fascinating figure, for example.
Joseph: Pellagius in the fourth century was either a Welshman or an Irishman, I think.
He upheld the individualistic Western tradition against what I would call the tribalism of
the East, and was considered a heretic.
He stated the main points against the doctrines of which St. Augustine, his contemporary,
was the champion. One was the doctrine of original sin. Pellagius said, you cannot inherit
another's sin. Therefore, Adam's sin is not inherited by anybody.
Tom: The sins of the father are not visited upon the son?
Joseph: That is all Eastern philosophy, not European. Another thing Pellagius said is that
you cannot be saved by another's act. That takes care of Jesus on the cross and knocks the
whole thing out. Of course that was rejected. Pellagius was defending a doctrine of
individual responsibility.
I don't know where it comes from, but certainly it was typical, I would say, of European
as opposed to Eastern points of view. You were an individual, not merely the member of
a group.
Tom: That sounds like the line in the King Arthur legend . . .
Joseph: "Each knight entered the forest at a point he had chosen, where it was darkest
and there was no way or path." That's from The Quest of the San Gral, 1215 or so in
France.
Tom: How do they expect to find their way then?

12

Joseph: By questing.
Luis: How do we expect to find our way then?
Daniel:By means of a quest.By searching and finding. I know people who are content
with research only. They do not seem to be interested enough to find what they are
searching for, in fear that everything shall be then finished.
Tom: And that's what we all do in life?
Joseph: Yes. Otherwise, you'dfollow someone else's path, follow the well-tried ways. No
one in the world was ever you before, with your particular gifts and abilities and
possibilities. It's a shame to waste those by doing what someone else has done.
Luis: What we all do in life?
Daniel: We all do nothing. Nothing is done in our entire life. We are the chessboards not
the pieces in that game.
Tom: You once said that no human society has been found where mythological motifs are
not to be found and celebrated - "magnified in song and ecstatically experienced in light
and power and vision." What about ours?
Joseph: What has happened in ours is that on the official level the accent is on
economics and practical politics, and there has been a systematic elimination of the
spiritual dimension. But it exists in our poets and our arts. It does. You can find it here.
It's in a recessive condition, but otherwise people wouldn't have any spiritual life at all.
Tom: Isn't it alive in some phases of the ecology movement as well?
Joseph: Yes. And this interest now in the American Indian lore, isn't this interesting?
The brutalized, rejected people - they've got the message that this country is waiting for.
There's an awful saying of Spengler that I ran into in a book of his, Jahre der
Entscheidung, Year of Decision, which is the years we live in now. He said, "As for
America, it's a congeries of dollar trappers, no past, no future." When I read that back in
the 30s I took it badly. I thought it was an insult. But what is anybody interested in? And
then Lenin says, "When we get ready to hang the capitalists, they'll compete to sell us the
rope." And that's what we're doing. Nobody's thinking of what their culture represents.
They're wondering whether the farmer in the Midwest will vote for you because you sold
their wheat to the Russians, or what not. It's a terrible lack of anything but economic
concerns that we're facing. That is old age and death; that is the end. That's as I see it. I
have nothing but negative judgments in respect to that.

13

And look at what people are reading in the papers. You get into the subways and people
are all reading the same thing - this murder, that murder.
This rape, this divorce. What topics to be mentating on! This journalistic accent in our
lives is murder. Murder.
Tom: You don't see the struggle ending? There's no kind of world order that could bring
that about?
Joseph: It would have to be a world order, but then there would be struggle within it, just
as there is struggle within our United States order. No revolution has ever taken me in.
I've known too many revolutionaries.
Tom: If the only myths that exist then are the ones that everyone believes in Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism - can't people create a new one that would
meet today's needs?
Joseph: No, because myths don't come into being like that. You have to wait for them to
appear. But I don't believe anything of that kind will happen because there are too many
points of view floating around the world. All myths so far have been within bounded
horizons, and people have to be in accord with their life dynamics, their life experiences.
Tom: The ancient Greeks were surrounded by the presence of gods and statues and
reminders of gods.
Joseph: But that doesn't work any more. Christianity isn't moving people's lives
today.What's moving people's lives is the stock market and the baseball scores. What are
people excited about?
It's a totally materialistic level that has taken over the world. There isn't even an ideal that
anybody's fighting for.
Tom: My turn. I'd like to add my comments to those of Joseph Campbell with regard to
the Bible.
My intention in including his comments was not to disparage the traditions based
on the Bible relative to other major traditions, such as Hinduism or Buddhism.
From my point of view, the sacred literature of all these traditions is written in the
language of the Empire Era, and is deeply entangled with warlord consciousness.
If we are to move forward, we need to look at these texts with clear eyes, able to see
tribal chauvinism, male chauvinism, militarism, etc., for what they are. Only then will we
be able to translate the wisdom they do have into a fresh language appropriate to the
Planetary Era.
Luis: Have you anything to say on the planetary turning point of the Maya December
2012?

14

Daniel: It is obviously a new World, a beginning. And it comes slowly, little by little. So
we become mature even if we do not realize that: at last, we are a mature generation, we
would become mature human beings, one day . . .
Vienna, 2011

Cuando joven, iba viajando Joseph Campbell hacia Pars, en un barco. En la cubierta
haba otro joven, Jiddu Khrishnamurti, que iba a ser reconocido como Maestro del
Mundo por una comunidad de miles de fieles y adoradores en Suiza, montado todo por
Annie Bessant y la Sociedad Teosfica de la India. Luego de conversar con Campbell,
Krishnamurti - al llegar a Suiza, y alcanzado ya el trmino de la designacin, frente a la
multitud, renuncia a todo privilegio y declara pblicmente que l no es Aqul, y que
nadie debera aceptar esa categora.
He aqu una entrevista a Campbell sobre la felicidad, seguida por un escrito de D.
Medvedov.
(Traducido por Tarsila Murgua desde:
http://www.brainpickings.org/2015/04/09/find-your-bliss-joseph-campbellpower-of-myth/?mc_cid=9dbc27a359&mc_eid=51badce8e3
(Vdeo de Gina Rodriguez)
http://presenciaconsciente.tumblr.com/post/116491175022/como-encontrar-tu-felicidadjoseph-campbell-en

15

CMO ENCONTRAR TU FELICIDAD: JOSEPH CAMPBELL EN QU SE

NECESITA PARA TENER UNA VIDA PLENA?
- Maria Popova
En 1985, el mitlogo y escritor Joseph John Campbell (Marzo 26, 1904 Octubre
30, 1987) se sent con el legendario entrevistador y lder de opinin Bill Moyers
para llevar a cabo una larga conversacin en el Rancho Skywalker de George
Lucas en California, misma que continu al ao siguiente en el Museo Americano
de Historia Natural de Nueva York. Las 24 horas de imgenes en bruto
resultantes se editaron en seis episodios de una hora cada uno y se transmitieron
a travs de la cadena PBS en 1988, un poco despus de la muerte de Campbell, lo
que se convirti en una de las series ms populares en la historia de la televisin
pblica.
Pero Moyers y el equipo de PBS sintieron que la conversacin sin editar, tres
cuartas partes que no se incluyeron en la produccin televisiva, era tan rica en
sustancia que mereci preservacin y atencin pblica. Poco despus de su
transmisin, la transcripcin completa fue publicada con el ttulo The Power of
Mith - una discusin dimensional acerca de los puntos de vista de Campbell con
respecto a la espiritualidad, los arquetipos psicolgicos, los mitos culturales y la
mitologa del ser. El libro es una escritura secular - un tesoro de la sabidura de la
experiencia humana en el canon de esas raras obras maestras como los diarios de
Thoreau, los cuadernos de Simone Weil, Las Cartas para un Joven Poeta de Rilke,
y Un Peregrino en Tinker Creek de Annie Dillard.

16

Como seala Moyers en la introduccin, Campbell vio como la mayor

transgresin humana el pecado del descuido, de no estar alerta, de no estar
despierto. Esto, quizs, es por lo que la parte ms gratificante de la conversacin
se ocupa de la mxima que ha llegado a encapsular la filosofa de Campbell sobre
la vida: Sigue tu felicidad. Dcadas antes de que la increpante tirana del
equilibrio entre el trabajo y la vida alcanzara su crescendo moderno, Campbell
presta un comprensivo odo al grito del alma e identifica con enorme elegancia y
precisin la raz de nuestra insatisfaccin existencial. Le dice a Moyers:
Si seguimos nuestra felicidad, nos ponemos en una especie de va que ha estado
ah todo el tiempo, esperndonos, y la vida que deberamos estar viviendo ser
justamente la que estamos viviendo. Estemos donde estemos, si estamos
siguiendo nuestra felicidad, estaremos disfrutando de pura frescura, de esa vida
dentro de nosotros mismos, todo el tiempo.
Para identificar nuestra felicidad, Campbell sostiene que es necesario contar con
lo que l llama espacio sagrado - un espacio de ininterrumpida reflexin y
trabajo creativo sin prisa. Lejos de ser una idea mstica, es algo que muchos
artistas y escritores han puesto en prctica a travs de sus peculiares rituales en
torno a su espacio de trabajo, as como algo que la ciencia cognitiva ha iluminado
al explorar la psicologa de la rutina diaria perfecta. Pero Campbell va ms all de
los rituales prcticos de la creatividad llegando hasta los ms profundos
impulsores psquicos y espirituales - hasta la profunda necesidad de una
estacin de felicidad donde podamos establecernos:
[El espacio sagrado] es una necesidad absoluta para cualquiera hoy en da.
Debemos contar con una habitacin, o con una hora ms o menos al da, en la
que no sepamos qu hay en los peridicos de esta maana, quines son nuestros
amigos, a quin le debemos algo o quin nos debe algo. Este es un lugar en el
que podemos simplemente experimentar y reconocer lo que somos y lo que
podramos llegar a ser. Se trata de un lugar de incubacin creativa. Al principio
es posible que sintamos que no pasa nada ah. Pero si disponemos de un lugar
sagrado, y hacemos uso de l, algo finalmente suceder.
[]
Nuestra vida se ha vuelto tan econmica y prctica en cuanto a su orientacin
que, a medida que envejecemos, las demandas del momento sobre nosotros son
tan grandes, que difcilmente sabemos dnde diablos estamos, o qu es lo que
pretendemos. Siempre estamos haciendo algo que necesita ser hecho por
nosotros. Dnde est nuestra estacin de felicidad? Tenemos que tratar de
encontrarla.

17

Dos siglos despus de que Kierkegaard nos advirtiera acerca de la cobarda de la

multitud, Campbell sostiene que a menudo perdemos nuestro camino hacia la
estacin de nuestra felicidad conforme las ideas limitantes de la sociedad nos
presionan como masa hacia objetivos faltos de creatividad y a prueba de fallas:
Es caracterstico de la democracia que la regla para la mayora es tratar de
ser eficaz no slo en la poltica, sino en cuanto al pensamiento tambin. En el
pensamiento, por supuesto, la mayora siempre est equivocada.
[]
La funcin de la mayora en relacin con el espritu es tratar de escuchar y
abrirse a quien ha tenido una experiencia ms all de lo referente a la comida,
un lugar donde vivir, la descendencia y la riqueza.
Abrirnos a las dimensiones ms significativas de felicidad, insiste Campbell, es
simplemente una cuestin de permitir que nuestra vida hable:
Estamos teniendo experiencias todo el tiempo y en ocasiones podemos percibir
un cierto sentido de esto, una sutil intuicin acerca de dnde est nuestra
felicidad. Tmala. Nadie puede decirte de qu se trata. T tienes que aprender a
reconocer tu propio camino.
En un sentimiento que trae a la mente la hermosa meditacin de Mark Strand
acerca de la tarea del poeta de dar testimonio del universo, Campbell seala que
los poetas son quienes ms atentamente escuchan el lenguaje de la felicidad:
Los poetas son simplemente aquellos que han convertido el hecho de estar en
contacto con su felicidad en una profesin y un estilo de vida. La mayora de la
gente se preocupa de otras cosas. Se involucra en actividades econmicas y
polticas, o se embarca en una guerra que no es la que le interesa, y le resulta
sumamente difcil mantener este cordn umbilical bajo otras circunstancias.
Esta es una tcnica que cada quien tiene que trabajar por s mismo de alguna
manera. Pero la mayora de la gente que vive en el reino de lo que podra ser
llamado preocupaciones ocasionales tiene la capacidad - que est en espera de
ser despertada - de moverse hacia este otro campo. Lo s, lo he observado en
estudiantes.
Viendo en retrospectiva cmo lleg a esta idea de la bsqueda de nuestra propia
felicidad, Campbell aborda la diferencia crucial entre la fe religiosa y la
espiritualidad laica:
Llegu hasta esta idea de la felicidad porque en snscrito, que es el principal
lenguaje espiritual en el mundo, existen tres trminos que representan el
umbral, el punto de partida hacia el ocano de la trascendencia: Sat, Chit,
Ananda. La palabra Sat significa ser. Chit significa consciencia.

18

Ananda significa felicidad o xtasis. Pens: "No s si mi consciencia es la

adecuada o no; no s si lo que s acerca de mi ser sea lo correcto o no; lo que s
s es dnde encuentro mi xtasis. As que me aferrar a mi xtasis, y eso me
traer tanto mi consciencia como mi ser. Creo que funcion.
[]
Las personas religiosas nos dicen que no llegaremos a experimentar la
felicidad hasta que muramos y lleguemos al cielo. Sin embargo, yo creo que vale
la pena vivir lo ms que se pueda esta experiencia mientras estemos vivos.
[]
Si seguimos nuestra felicidad, nos ponemos en una especie de va que ha estado
ah todo el tiempo, esperndonos, y la vida que deberamos estar viviendo ser
justamente la que estamos viviendo. Cuando somos capaces de ver esto,
comenzamos a relacionarnos con la gente que est en el campo de nuestra
felicidad abrindonos las puertas. Yo digo, sigue tu felicidad y no tengas miedo,
y las puertas se abrirn donde nunca imaginaste que pudieran estar.

(Ilustracin: Jean Pierre Weill)

La parte ms incmoda, pero esencial de la bsqueda de tu felicidad, sostiene

Campbell, es el elemento de la incertidumbre - la disposicin de, en las
intemporales palabras de Rilke: Vivir las preguntas, ms que andar buscando
respuestas prefabricadas:

19

La aventura es su propia recompensa - pero es necesariamente peligrosa

porque incluye posibilidades tanto positivas como negativas, todas ellas fuera
de control. Estamos siguiendo nuestro propio camino, no el camino de mam o
pap La vida podra marchitarse si no emprendes tu propia aventura.
[]
Hay algo dentro de ti que sabe cundo ests en el centro, que sabe cundo ests
en el rumbo adecuado. Y si te desvas de ese rumbo para ganar dinero, habrs
perdido la vida. Y si te mantienes en el centro y no ganas ningn dinero, an
tendrs tu felicidad.

Daniel Medvedov sobre la felicidad:

.
Daniel Medvedov
Algo sobre la no-existencia de la felicidad
Madrid 2013

La felicidad es un deseo exacerbado de un placer continuado y aparece en la cabeza

de los humanos como un virus: no les basta con un poco de placer desean continuarlo
ad infinitum. Si nos ponemos a analizar seriamente este concepto descubrimos que la
cantidad temporal de la duracion es irrelevante. Lo que importa es al menos un segundo
de placer. Y si tal placer es maximo, mucho mejor. Pero de alli, a tenerlo siempre,
continuamente, eternamente, es ya demasiado! Tal pretension roza con lo absurdo, pues
todo dulce empalaga. Bastaria con estar un poco contentos, pues una pizca de placer es
suficiente para saber que es eso que llaman dolor. En el medio del placer y del dolor
se encuentra el sufrimiento, la metafora que une estos dos polos del iman de la salud de
los pensamientos, de los sentimientos y de los movimientos. No busques el placer, que
acto seguido encontraras la punta del dolor. Los griegos llamaban a la felicidad
EUDAIMONIA o sea el demoniaco bien.
Me han preguntado:
Usted es uno de los semiologos contemporaneos que ha pretendido dar, en sus clases y
en sus escritos, la informacion de que la felicidad es un virus. Como huir de ello?
La felicidad es como la epilepsia: puede ser un mal menor o uno mayor.

20

La felicidad no significa nada, pues no es computada por el lenguaje como un

concepto que pueda estar al lado de los principios universales. Es una palabra que usa
la gente de a pie, como decian los caballeros, o sea los profanos, los que estan un
poco antes de la luz. Es una mera palabra de la lengua usada en el diario convivir, sin
valor profundo y de escaso eco trascendental.
La felicidad ni siquiera es una
idea es solo un termino inocente que emboba a los usuarios del habla.
Tampoco existe el odio, ni el pecado, ni la mentira, ni la fealdad. La gente
comun se volveria loca si no existieran esas palabras-virus del habla popular. El amor
esta amenazado por un supuesto estado contrario que la mayoria llama odio y lo
mismoocurre con el virus del mal: se la pasan el dia entero diciendo que esto esta
mal . . .
El amor no necesita ser reinventado pues seria
un tiempo perdido, tal como si alguien pretendiera re- inventar el Sol.
El Amor no
necesita ser defendido ni buscado: ese principio universal surge como una fuente desde
los corazones humanos. Defenderlo? De quien? No tiene opuesto, no tiene contrario,
no tiene complemento, ni estado complementario alguno. Es unico. Quien se va a poner
a salar la sal que se ha puesto sosa?
*
(fragmento del dialogo con el semiologo Daniel Medvedov, profesor de Simbologia de la
Universidad Central de Venezuela y de Semiotica de la Universidad Catolica Andres
Bello de Caracas. Enteremonos, todos: la felicidad ni siquiera es una idea y menos
entonces, una realidad que buscar . . .

21


<3
Que es FELICIDAD?

<3
Definicion de felicidad: bienestar sin mezcla, calmado y duradero. La felicidad es el
bienestar que parece completo, y el que se anuncia como permanente. En el mismo
regazo de la felicidad, los humanos son tan ingratos que desean algo de mas, si es
posible. La felicidad es un personaje inesperado que entra en escena sin previo anuncio,
pero el que no espera lo inesperado - me lo dijo Heraclito - jamas lo alcanzara, pues es
inasible e inalcanzable.
En el griego de hoy la llaman - EUTYKHIA pero los antiguos la llamaban
EUDAIMONIA - o sea buen genio, pues demonio en griego clasico es equivalente a
genio.
[felicidad es un sustantivo] La definen como un estado de animo, cuando en realidad
es un estado del Ser, pero la persona puede que, a ratos, mas no a menudo, se
sienta plenamente satisfecha por gozar de los logros realizados, pues tal vez, lo que ha
deseado se ha materializado, y acaso disfruta de ese algo que ha deseado. Pero
Heraclito, el que ha entendido muchas de estas cosas de los humanos, declara algo
aterrador: no es mejor para los humanos que se les cumpla cuanto desean. Es su
Fragmnto 110. En griego suena asi: Anthropois gignesthai okosa theloisin ouk
ameinon.

La felicidad es cosa- es EUDAIMONIA. Es circunstancia, evento, o suceso que
produce un estado de beatitud, o borrachera de los sentidos. Muchos declaran que "no
pueden imaginar una felicidad tan grande al conseguirlo. Se usa la misma palabra para
congraciar a alguien por una cosa agradable que le haya ocurrido, en una fecha
especifica, o digamos, con motivo de un acontecimiento especial. Para muchos, lo que
llman felicidad es su objetivo y meta en la vida y rematan en la descripcion de ese
estado con lo maximo y ultimo de lo que el ser humano es llamado a alcanzar: la riqueza
- vale decir la libre y privada propiedad, que se vuelve individual y absoluta, su principal
fin. Hay unas islas - dicen los griegos - donde ello se alcanza - las Islas de los
Bienaventurados - antiguo nombre de las Islas Canarias, llamadas tambien
Ningunaria. Pero la vida consiste no en tener buenas cartas sino en jugar bien las que
uno tiene, o sea lo que se le ha repartido. Salud y entendimiento son las dos bendiciones
de esta vida, - dice Menandro. Tal como los esquimales usan refrigeradores para que no
se les congelen los alimentos, o sea para que no se les enfrie la comida, asi nosotros, en
climas mas benignos, usamos el fuego para que no se nos caliente el cerebro.
Es imprescindible inspeccionar las colmenas durante las heladas fuertes - como ese mes
de diciembre - cuando no entra ni un centimo en el bolsillo de los pobres - y entonces
taparemos los agujeros y hendiduras que puedan haberse formado, excepto el de la
entrada [la boca] y salida [como se dice, que me escapa?] - y se distribuira miel en
ellas, si se han agotado las provisiones de las abejas . . .

22

La Abeja Maya puede que ostente el titulo de "la abeja mas conocida de todos los
tiempos", companera de educacion infancia de los infantes de una generacion: 33 anos.
Desde el momento de su nacer tiene ella el mas grande de los logros de una abeja
convertirse en la reina de la colmena y tirarse a todos los zanganos, latinos, o
peregrinos.
La Abeja Maya vuela contenta y es atrevida, vive sus aventuras y descubre en el bosque
su entero universo de labor y disfrute de la inteligencia apicola. Encuentra en este lugar
su realizacion como insecto.

<3

<3 Conversaciones graciosas entre Palo Escoba y Daniel Medvedov

PE
Dani! Maestro! Que son los peces?
DM
deseos son
PE
Los deseos "nadan sin mojarse x los sentimientos"?
DM
a veces se mojan, como los delfines y las ballenas, - mamiferos, o sea sentimientos",
pero a la vez marinos y acuaticos, o sea casi peces"
PE
Y son los ojos saltones, los ojos hacia afuera, un rasgo en los humanos q los asemejan a
los peces?
DM
ese mismo y uno mas: carecen de cuello
PE
DANI maestro! Para q sirven los deseos? Como se utilizan de manera correcta?

23

 DM
los deseos vienen de fuera y hay que ignorarlo con desprecio elegante, pues no queremos
ser esclavizados por unas golosinas: hacemos lo que queremos, no lo que deseamos.
Es mejor querer algo en vez de, simplemente y vulgarmente desearlo. Lo quiero y
basta, no necesito "desearlo"
PE
Es entonces Odiseo un pez ? Es la historia del ser de los peces? La historia del ser
de los deseos? Por eso las sirenas no pueden con el?
No pueden las sirenas con los pez? Hay muchos musicos q son peces? En las
peliculas de Odiseo, los actores tienen cara de pez? Es Odiseo la tragedia del deseo?
DM
Odiseo es la aventura del Ser Humano Por los mares del Deseo
PE
Eres un gran maestro x q tienes mas pedagogia q sapiencia. Es asombroso como me
ensenas.
Si ya tienes listo el libro de las 10 espadas, y me das autorizacion ire a llevarselo a uno q
sabe de vender
DM
terminare ese libro y te lo enviare <3
PE
Se llama guillermo caruso vivio en espania y se junto con los gitanos alla, vendio libros
con ellos, estuvo con sus mujeres fue aceptado.
Volvio aca y siguio vendiendo libros era algo q hacia antes de marcharse, es licenciado
en historia y periodismo, pero siempre le gusto mas el libro, con el vendi libros es ferias
y abrimos una libreria juntos, y me ensenio la logica gitana, me cuido y me quiso como a
un hijo. Nos peleamos x la c., su mujer lo dejo, y tomo demasiaado. se tomo la libreria.
Luego se recupero. Trabaja en la mejor libreria de r. y tiene un negocio propio de venta
de libros a europa. Yo necesito verlo para q sepa de mis progresos siempre el intento
ayudarme con mi historia familiar. Seria algo bueno llevarle tu libro de las 10 espadas y
presentarte.

<3

DM
Roger <3 it

24

25