A Fire in the Mind: The Life of Joseph Campbell, by Stephen and Robin Larsen, Anchor Doubleday, NY, 1991, 1993 Edition, pgs. 287 – 290.


At the start of the US involvement in WWII Joseph Campbell was put in the position of having to defend culture and truth rather than go along with the crazed nationalism and outright invasion of so many public institutions through all manner of propaganda. He ended up being accused of being a Nazi by many who should have known better. The Bollingen Foundation was backed by Mellon family money and it sought to establish an integrative disciplinary approach including the mystical precepts of Mircae Eliade and Carl Jung. It was a truly good effort that still brings culture and Brotherhood values through the many books they published. Their efforts at Eranos deserve close attention for any scholar seeking to understand the positive side of the old-money families or elites. The speech that follows stands as true or truer today, than when he gave it to the ladies at Sarah Lawrence College, where he was a professor.


“Permanent Human Values
I have been asked to tell you what seem to me to be some of the important things—permanently human—which men are likely to forget during hours of a severe political crisis.


Permanent things, of course, do not have to be fought for—they are permanent. We are not their creators and defenders. Rather—it is our privilege (our privilege as individuals: our privilege as nations) to experience them. And it is our private loss if we neglect them. We may fight for our right to experience these values. But the fight must not be conducted on a public battlefield. This fight must be conducted in the individual mind. Public conquerors are frequently the losers in this secret struggle.


Permanent things, furthermore, are not possessed exclusively by the democracies; not exclusively even by the Western world.


My theme, therefore, forbids me to be partial to the war-cries of the day. I respect my theme, and I shall try to do it justice. I am not competent to speak of every permanent human value. I shall confine myself, therefore, to those which have been my special disciplinarians: those associated with the Way of Knowledge.


Which of these are likely to be forgotten during the hours of a severe political crisis? All of them, I should say. I think that everything which does not serve the most immediate economic and political ends is likely to be forgotten.


I think, in the first place, that the critical objectivity of the student of society is likely to be forgotten—either forgotten or suppressed. For example: The president of Columbia University has declared that the present conflict is a war ‘between beasts and human beings, between brutal force and kindly helpfulness,’ Yet Columbia professors laboriously taught, during the twenties and thirties something about the duties of objective intelligence in the face of sensational propaganda: and no educated gentleman can possibly believe that the British Empire or the French Empire or the American Empire was unselfishly founded in ‘kindly helpfulness.’ without gunpowder or without perfectly obscene brutality.


It is not surprising, of course, that there should be a strain of opportunism in those public gentlemen who are in a position to tell the multitude what to think; but that our universities—those institutions which have plumed themselves in their dignified objectivity—should begin now to fling about the gutter-slogans of our newspaper cartoons, seems to be a calamity of the first order.


Perhaps our students must prepare themselves to remember (without any support for our institutions of higher learning) that there are two sides to every argument, that every government since governments began, has claimed to represent the special blessings of the heavenly realm, that every man (even an enemy) is human, and that no empire (not even a merchant empire) is founded on ‘kindly helpfulness.’


When there was no crisis on the horizon, we were told that objectivity was a good. Now that something seems to threaten our markets—or to threaten perhaps even more than that—we are warned (and this by still another of our university presidents) that the real fifth-columnist in this country is the critical intellectual. What kind of leaders are these men, anyhow?—snorting through one nostril about the book-burnings in Germany, wheezing through the other at critical intelligences in our own Republic?


In the second place we are in danger of neglecting the apparently useless work of the disinterested scientist and historian. Yet if there is one jewel in the crown of Western Civilization which deserves to take a place beside the finest jewels of Asia, it is the jewel cut by these extraordinary men. Their images of the cosmos and of the course of earthly history are as majestic as the Oriental theories of involution and evolution. But these images are by no means the exclusive creation, or even property, of democracies. Many of the indispensable works which you must read, if you are to participate in the study of these images, have not even been translated into democratic tongues. Let me say, therefore, that any serious student of history or science who permits the passions of this hour to turn her away from German is a fool. Whatever may be the language for hemisphere defense, German, French and English are the languages of scholarship and science. (Biblio: At Sarah Lawrence, as at many schools and universities, German and Italian were being eliminated from the curriculum, as if somehow the boycott of the language would enforce some kind of sanction on the country or its political leaders. It was probably this practice Campbell was decrying.) German, French, Spanish, Dutch, Italian, Scandinavian, English, Irish, Polish, Russian, Swiss, Christian, Pagan, Atheist, and Jewish have been the workers in these spheres. Chauvinism has no place here. The work is international and human. Consequently, whenever there is a resurgence of the nationalisms and animalisms of war, scientist and scholar have to cork themselves tightly in. They are not anti-social parasites and slackers when they do this. It is with them that Western Culture, as opposed to Western Empire, will survive.


In the third place, the work of the literary man and the artist is in danger. We need not worry about the popular entertainer: he will be more in demand than ever. But we may worry about the artists of social satire: theirs will be a plight very like the plight of the objective social scientist. And we may worry about the creative writers, painters, sculptors, and musicians devoted to the disciplines of pure art. The philistine (that is to say the man without hunger for poetry and art) will never understand the importance of these enthusiasts. But those of you whose way of personal discipline and discovery is the way of the arts will understand that if you are to keep in touch with your own centers of energy, you must not allow yourself to be tricked into believing that social criticism is proper art, or that sensational entertainment is proper art, or that journalistic realism is proper art. You must not give up your self-exploration in your own terms. The politicians are such a blatant crew and their causes are so obvious that it is exceedingly difficult to remember, when they surround you, anything but the surfaces of life….


The artist—in so far as he is an artist—looks at the world dispassionately: without thought of defending his ego or his friends; without thought of undoing any enemy; troubled neither with desire or loathing. He is as dispassionate as the scientist, but he is looking not for the causes of effects, he is simply looking—sinking his eye into the object. To his eye this object permanently reveals the fascination of a hidden name or essential form…
Now this perfectly well-known crisis, which transports a beholder beyond desire and loathing, is the first step not only to art, but to humanity. And it is the artist who is its hero. It cannot be said, therefore, that the artist is finally anti-social, even though from an economic point of view his work may be superfluous; even though he may seem to be sitting pretty much alone.


In the fourth place, the preaching of religion is in danger. God is the first fortress that a warlike nation must capture, and the ministers of religion are always, always, always ready to deliver God into the hands of their king or their president. We hear of it already—this arm-in-arm blood brotherhood of democracy and Christianity…


And how quick the ministers of religion are to judge the soul of the enemy; when the founder of their faith is reputed to have said: ‘Judge not, that you may never be judged.’ How quick they are to point at the splinter in the enemy eye, before they have looked for the plank that sticks in their own! ‘Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s,’ is not the phrase for a political emergency. ‘Love your neighbor as yourself,’ is not the phrase for a political emergency… And perhaps it would be well to remember that even the inhabitants of the democracies were born with original sin on their souls: and that not even the President of the United States has any objective assurance that he is the vicar of Christ on earth.


We are all groping in this valley of tears, and if a Mr. Hitler collides with a Mr. Churchill, we are not in conscience bound to believe that a devil had collided with a saint (Biblio: This phrase was quoted out of context, with a predictably horrifying impact on modern sensibilities, in the New York Times article of 1989 on Campbell’s alleged bigotry.)—Keep those transcendent terms out of your political thinking—do not donate the things of God to Caesar—and you will go a long way toward keeping a sane head.


I believe, finally, that education is going to suffer during the next few years, as it did during the last war. You will be tempted to forget that you are educating yourselves to be women: you will imagine that you are educating yourselves to be patriots. Primarily you are human beings; secondarily you are members of a certain social class. Primarily you are human beings; secondarily you are daughters of the present century. If you devote yourselves exclusively, or even primarily, to peculiarities of the local scene and the present moment, you will wonder, fifteen years from now, what you did with your education…


I would not say that the Way of Knowledge is the only way to human fulfillment: but it is a majestic way; it is a way represented by the innumerable sciences, arts, philosophical and theological systems of mankind. The final danger is not (let me repeat this emphatically in closing), the final danger is not that mankind may lose these things (for, if Europe and America were to be blown away entirely, there would remain millions and millions of subtly disciplined human beings—who might even feel relieved to see us go!). The great danger is that you—unique you—may be tricked into missing your education.� (1)


I am such a fan of Mr. Campbell and there are so many things of his which I quote in different books that some think I am nuts about him. The facts he presents have been added to in the archaeological and linguistic or anthropological, so I really end up quoting more of his pure spiritual ecumenicism thoughts. But when a potential editor from my alma mater who had 14 years post secondary education and had been a professor commented about Campbell being a Nazi sympathizer – I lost interest in him. He also was stupid enough to suggest the Pyramids had nothing unknown to academia – RIGHT!!

Damanhur as a name shows the grail or chalice people are still at work endeavoring to join man and 'the dam' or Dame and Damsel. Don't tell Ben Hur though.

http://www.damanhur.org/tentyris/html/philosophy.htm

From Author Will Hart


Dear Robert:

Agreed. The answers to our problems are not unknown, they are well known. But we lack the collective will to apply the knowledge. That is a difficult problem. Individual and small groups have done it...but we have failed on the level of civilizations. Consumerism is form of spiritual cancer, it has no sense of limits and it will kill its host over time...anyway, keep up the good work.

Will

When we see the corruption that hierarchy and the Platonist or Neo-Platonists including ‘radical aristocrats’ like Nietzsche give philosophical support to, we often also find some special segment like Rhodes identified as a ‘superior’ class who go along with the corruption to be more powerful themselves. It is so nice to see really good people like Joseph Campbell have a good life. But he clearly saw this corruption for what it is. Through co-operative approaches like McKnight and Illich define or demonstrate for us by enabling all human resources including every person on earth, so much more can be achieved.


Bucky Fuller showed all people on earth could be millionaires and there would be no need for anymore iron or steel manufacture and the pollution of the environment. That was in the late 60s when being a millionaire meant a lot more. He built a community near Calgary to demonstrate the benefits of recycling. When I tell people earth could have ten billion millionaires and even more billionaires than at present they think I am totally insane even when I give them solid evidence that guaranteed minimum incomes require less taxation and through technological distribution and implementation people can produce more in less man hours. I only have the likes of John Kenneth Galbreath and the Club of Rome to provide whereas they have their fear-based Malthusian One Pie or Toilet Philosophy ideology with all its backers galore.


These fears or ‘sins and demons’ we are told exist are perpetrated upon our souls by ‘experts’ who do not believe in the soul. Thus I will provide some more of the philosophy of Joseph Campbell who as we have shown in this book was labeled a Nazi for pointing out war was only beneficial to Empire builders.


Thankfully the Gospel of Thomas was hidden by the Gnostic priesthood and survived the 1600 or more years that the hegemony sought to destroy it. These Gnostics who probably were just as muddled and subject to the effects of myth-making in their following did contribute to the Corpus Hermeticum and were part of the 'source' that Jesus studied. Now we must endeavour to carry out a plan that Jesus would encourage and I believe that is the freeing of the minds and souls of everyone on earth. This is the nature of goodness and anything less is fraught with the 'thought' that Krishnamurti speaks to and serves the rationale and ego of those who need easy answers.


The Eranos Conferences at Lake Maggiore included people I would have to say were true scholars in search of answers that are seldom easy and often uncertain. The following story from the life of Joseph Campbell and his biography indicates fact that I am not the originator of the cell theory of cultural diffusion in man's stages of advancing awareness. On page 444 from 'A Fire in the Mind' it says something I have already included in this book but which deserves repetition:


"It was Najagneg, another primitive shaman from the northern rim of the Arctic, whom Campbell would later quote again and again: 'All we know is that the voice (of Sila) is gentle, like a woman's: a voice so fine and gentle that even children cannot become afraid. And what it says is: Be not afraid of the universe!'


The remarkable thing about his presentation of this material at Eranos was that once again Campbell had differed with orthodox Jungian thought in his portrayal of the cultural origins of archetypal forms, educating the archetypalists about the anthropological principle of cultural diffusion."


Joseph Campbell's life story is chuck full of knowledge. It is one of the few books I have read every word of more than once, in the last five years. The part I am quoting is the end of his Yamabushi Firewalker experience and includes the reaction of Aldous Huxley another hermeticist/seeker of TRUTH. He felt the 'coldness' of fire, under the psychic direction of a master shaman. It HEALED HIS ANKLE and left more than the 'three cute little fire holes in his suit' to remind him of the AWESOME BEAUTY OF THE SOUL!! The soul that the Sphinx, before the heinous face of a despot was foisted upon her, represented so well!


"The courteous gentleman was greatly pleased that I had participated and invited us all to come back someday. We gathered our things, and presently strolled away.


Two days later Joseph wrote to Jean about the event: ‘When you come to Tokyo I'll show you three cute little fire holes in the suit, which I shall wear henceforth with secret knowledge.--The next day (22nd) I walked some eight or ten miles at Nara and Horinji--and the ankle is still good.'


Shortly after Jean had received her letter, she got a phone call from Aldous Huxley, who wanted to speak to Joseph. Jean, still full of the excitement of the account, told Huxley the whole story, how Joe was in Japan and had just firewalked. Huxley became excited and told his friend Gerald Heard, also interested in magic and the paranormal, who later contacted Campbell to get his firsthand account of the experience.


Campbell later learned that Fu-do Myo-o, the name of the patron deity of the temple where he had seen the ceremony, means 'very still, even in fire.’� This is taken from 'A Fire in the Mind' which I hope anyone interested in humanity will read.

carl jung:


there are many who i learn from; and the things i learn are never more important than what the spirit teaches. to find people like jung who explain the mind and spirit is a rare treat. he eschewed the reductivist urge (‘nichts als’) to make all things seem black and white and certain.


carl gustav jung was more than freud and all freud’s fears. yet society wished to promote freud and his purely mechanical or materialistic view of dreams. after all we couldn't allow the 'people' to return to spirituality and the kind of thing that was happening after religions were no longer able to inquisite or destroy knowledge and people.


but through the fads and cycles of psychoanalysis - jung stands above them all. genetics now confirms there is a history book in our genes. i ask you to read this little excerpt from jung and perhaps someday check his forward to the tibetan book of the dead which along with the iliad were his bedside companions for decades.


i know visions are real and jung once was naïve enough to think his were signs of a failing mind before confirmation of his visions in the form of the first war to end all war came along.


“the dream is a little hidden door in the innermost and most secret recesses of the psyche, opening into that cosmic night which was psyche long before there was any ego-consciousness, and which will remain psyche no matter how far our ego-consciousness may extend ... all consciousness separates; but in dreams we put on the likeness of that more universal, truer, more eternal man dwelling in the darkness of primordial night. there he is still the whole, and the whole is in him, indistinguishable from nature and bare of all egohood. out of these all-uniting depths arises the dream, be it never so childish, grotesque and immoral." - jung in civilization in transition.


jung was not a nazi sympathizer!


another eranos conference luminary of integrative science and spirituality is carl jung. the charges made by freud and his supporters have served the hegelian dialectic very well indeed. the truth is neither black nor white and the world psyche has yet to be honest or address the causes of racism. here is a simon fraser university psychologist saying many things i agree with from a larger article i recommend.


“’i am absolutely not an opponent of the jews, even though i am an opponent of freud's. i criticize him because of his materialistic and intellectualistic - last but not least - irreligious attitude and not because he is jewish’ (jung, 1934b, as cited in gallard, 1994, p. 218).


to this day, the two schools of thought are opposed to each other. this opposition probably resides in the typological differences alluded to by jung. the freudian outlook is much closer to the extroverted orientation of our natural sciences while jung's approach is of a more subjective nature (franz, 1975). whether one is satisfied that he was an opponent of freud because of professional and not religious differences, jung was also accused of writing, throughout the 1930's, what some consider to be anti-semitic statements about jews in general.


jung and jewish psychology


in the very first issue of the zentralblatt fur psychotherapie, with jung as editor, he wrote that the universal aspect of the psyche should not be allowed to hide the particular characteristics that are evident from belonging to any given cultural or religious group. in fact, jung touched on this topic - differences between jewish and germanic psychology - on many occasions which highlights his "concern to give voice to those viewpoints which report on the 'imponderable differences' between men, and by exposing them, to reach a synthesis" (gallard, 1994, p. 209). such may be the case, but jung's emphasis on religious and cultural differences of the psyche was a serious breach of ethics in consideration of the time in history (gallard, 1994). to accentuate such differences between jewish psychology and other schools of thought fed into nazi propaganda.


furthermore, jung continually failed to explain exactly what he meant by his oftentimes paradoxical writing, thus leaving him open to criticism. in light of this, the accusations of ant-semitism seem hardly surprising. as an example of paradoxical writing, jung, at one point, likened jewish psychology to chinese psychology. at that time in history however, the chinese culture was not well known; they were a remote people, not valued by others, and were of an entirely different cultural realm (gallard, 1994). it is not surprising that such an idea could be taken as a further attack on jews. yet unknown to most, jung had spent years immersing himself in far eastern culture and found somewhat of an authentication of his ideas. his great respect for the chinese culture implies that he was complimenting jewish psychology. in fact, at one point, he stated that jews were more vastly conscious than the barbaric germanic people and had a higher degree of civilization and adaptability (mcguire, & hull, 1977).


in relation to such differences that jung so eagerly emphasized, it was his belief that the cultural specificities were the universal heritage of humankind which can be found in all people (gallard, 1994). however, an effort must first be made to recognize these particulars which usually show themselves as differences. this notion would explain why jung was so intent on highlighting differences between jewish and germanic psychology: he simply wished to initiate discussion on, what many considered, sensitive matters (sherry, 1986). though some would later suggest that through addressing jewish psychological differences, he was really unconsciously addressing freud, it is clear that he failed to understand the possibility of misinterpretation and the dangerous misuse of what he wrote. if jung could be accused of anything, it would be his poor timing in light of the events unfolding around him in pre-war europe.


having considered these accusations - of being a nazi sympathizer and anti-semite - it is worth considering often overlooked public statements expressed by jung as the war approached.


jung's own words


as early as 1918, jung knew something unfavorable was arising within germany. his words of the ‘blond beast stirring in its subterranean prison...threatening us with an outbreak that will have devastating consequences’ (jung, 1947, as cited in welsh, hannah, & briner, 1947) serve as an early warning of what was to come. just ten years later, he wrote on how each person is unconsciously worse when acting within a crowd rather than individually. jung warned the world that the larger an organization becomes, the more the people are prone to immorality and blind ignorance (jung, 1947, as cited in welsh, hannah, & briner, 1947).


in 1933, in a lecture given in cologne, germany (at the same period in history when others accused him of nazi-sympathy), jung leveled a full blown warning about people as a collective suffocating the individual, leaving those in the crowd anonymous, irresponsible, and dangerous. jung implied that hitler (and nazism) was the inevitable cause of such collectiveness. four years later, in 1937, jung spoke at yale university in the united states, relaying his belief that the movement seen in germany was explained by a fear of neighboring countries supposedly possessed by devilish leaders. in stating that no one can recognize their own unconscious underpinnings, the possibility that germany was projecting their own condition upon their international neighbors was evident (jung, 1947, as cited in welsh, hannah, & briner, 1947). this fear leads to the nationalistic duty to have the biggest guns and the strongest army.


in 1940, most of these words were published in german but were quickly suppressed. as a result of jung's views about germany and particularly adolf hitler, he ended up on the nazi "blacklist" (jung, 1947, as cited in welsh, hannah, & briner, 1947). when france was later invaded, the gestapo destroyed jung's french translations as well. in no uncertain terms, jung's writings and lectures served as a warning for the conflict to come. as well, jung's own words opposed the accusations of nazi sympathy and anti-semitism. it would seem then, in light of the above, that the answer to the question of nazi sympathy and anti-semitism is fairly clear.� (4)

This is the Introduction of my book - I Was a Hippie

Helping people achieve great things is worthwhile to your SELF.
If you do not know your SELF you will hurt those you try to make do what you want them to. This macho control mechanism built into materialistic society is exemplified by professionals and experts who are giving drugs to manage 'money-trees' (students and Ritalin or old people and ECT especially) and managing bureaucracies or saying they are 'just' as they lead us to in-'just'-ice:

1. War
2. Religion and divisive ethnic ideologies - rather than ecumenical spiritual goals
3. Hate for others and putting women in a second class status
4. Insisting on education to make others BE like them
5. Pursuit of power rather than LOVE and creativity
It is summed up in the words of the noted journal The Economist in their millennium issue - they call what we have 'an inhumane bureaucracy' as they enumerate the outcome of the Napoleonic War's institution of 'standing armies'.
Wholism is spiritual = ass-'holes' are not.
Holism is not Wholism!


This is a response to a person who wanted the nuts and bolts of what I said in a detailed expose of Wholistic approaches that are in variance to the way of many social programs and our overall bureaucracy. It is probably part of the kind of thought that the Beat Generation, Hippies and Goths or other drop-outs that ‘turn-on’ to new paradigms and alternatives, have been seeing since the dawn of civilization.


The flower children and groupies are not often willing to do the work that many business types and academics have done. I have found what I think of as independent thinkers (Which is the main characteristic of a Hippie, I think.) in all social groups or walks of life. Michel Foucault and his students at the Sorbonne or Pierre Trudeau and Jean-Paul Sartre and his beau are established thinkers of the genre. This book and the work required of any forum seeking change will try to explore why they are so unable to get a larger audience to actually take the ethics they speak about and apply them in real world changes.


I will have to get past the Hegelian Being-ness and other confused Neo-Platonic rhetoric to the nuts and bolts of Gothic ideas and historical agendas again. I guess the cultivation of positive emotions can assist in a therapeutic manner which will enable people. But wishful-thinking alone will not solve much of the ethical issues borne through constant power-mongering or people needing to fight each other for more of that elusive and fictional One Pie. Let us strive to reduce any cherished illusions of our history if they do not stand the test of common sense for the good of all people.


It may turn out to be an exploration of the sublime inter-connectiveness and I hope I will be fair in seeing the positives that Machiavelli and the likes of Carlyle can offer real thinkers in the present as well.