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The Inner Reaches of Outer Space: Metaphor as Myth and As Religion
Developed from a memorable series of lectures delivered in San Francisco, which included a legendary symposium at the Palace of Fine Arts with astronaut Rusty Schweickart, Joseph Campbell’s last book explores the space age. Campbell posits that the newly discovered laws of outer space are actually at work within human beings as well and that a new mythology is implicit in this realization. He examines the new mythology and other questions in these essays which he described as "a broadly shared spiritual adventure."
In this work, beloved mythologist Joseph Campbell explores the Space Age. He posits that the laws of outer space are actually within us as well, and that a new mythology is implicit in that realization. But what is this new mythology? How can we recognize it? Campbell explores these questions in the concluding essay, "The Way of Art," in which he demonstrates that metaphor is the language of art and argues that within the psyches of today's artists are the seeds of tomorrow's mythologies.
Campbell writes in his introduction: "My desire and great pleasure in the preparation of this little volume has been as rendering a return gift to the Graces for the transforming insights of these recent years, which...we have been testing out in a broadly shared spiritual adventure."
In this work, beloved mythologist Joseph Campbell explores the Space Age. He posits that the laws of outer space are actually within us as well, and that a new mythology is implicit in that realization. But what is this new mythology? How can we recognize it? Campbell explores these questions in the concluding essay, "The Way of Art," in which he demonstrates that metaphor is the language of art and argues that within the psyches of today's artists are the seeds of tomorrow's mythologies.
Campbell writes in his introduction: "My desire and great pleasure in the preparation of this little volume has been as rendering a return gift to the Graces for the transforming insights of these recent years, which...we have been testing out in a broadly shared spiritual adventure."
219 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1986
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About the author
Joseph Campbell
418 books6,093 followersJoseph Campbell was an American author and teacher best known for his work in the field of comparative mythology. He was born in New York City in 1904, and from early childhood he became interested in mythology. He loved to read books about American Indian cultures, and frequently visited the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where he was fascinated by the museum's collection of totem poles.
Campbell was educated at Columbia University, where he specialized in medieval literature, and continued his studies at universities in Paris and Munich. While abroad he was influenced by the art of Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, the novels of James Joyce and Thomas Mann, and the psychological studies of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. These encounters led to Campbell's theory that all myths and epics are linked in the human psyche, and that they are cultural manifestations of the universal need to explain social, cosmological, and spiritual realities.
After a period in California, where he encountered John Steinbeck and the biologist Ed Ricketts, he taught at the Canterbury School, and then, in 1934, joined the literature department at Sarah Lawrence College, a post he retained for many years. During the 40s and '50s, he helped Swami Nikhilananda to translate the Upanishads and The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. He also edited works by the German scholar Heinrich Zimmer on Indian art, myths, and philosophy. In 1944, with Henry Morton Robinson, Campbell published A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake. His first original work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, came out in 1949 and was immediately well received; in time, it became acclaimed as a classic. In this study of the "myth of the hero," Campbell asserted that there is a single pattern of heroic journey and that all cultures share this essential pattern in their various heroic myths. In his book he also outlined the basic conditions, stages, and results of the archetypal hero's journey.
Throughout his life, he traveled extensively and wrote prolifically, authoring many books, including the four-volume series The Masks of God, Myths to Live By, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space and The Historical Atlas of World Mythology. Joseph Campbell died in 1987. In 1988, a series of television interviews with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth, introduced Campbell's views to millions of people.
Campbell was educated at Columbia University, where he specialized in medieval literature, and continued his studies at universities in Paris and Munich. While abroad he was influenced by the art of Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse, the novels of James Joyce and Thomas Mann, and the psychological studies of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. These encounters led to Campbell's theory that all myths and epics are linked in the human psyche, and that they are cultural manifestations of the universal need to explain social, cosmological, and spiritual realities.
After a period in California, where he encountered John Steinbeck and the biologist Ed Ricketts, he taught at the Canterbury School, and then, in 1934, joined the literature department at Sarah Lawrence College, a post he retained for many years. During the 40s and '50s, he helped Swami Nikhilananda to translate the Upanishads and The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. He also edited works by the German scholar Heinrich Zimmer on Indian art, myths, and philosophy. In 1944, with Henry Morton Robinson, Campbell published A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake. His first original work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces, came out in 1949 and was immediately well received; in time, it became acclaimed as a classic. In this study of the "myth of the hero," Campbell asserted that there is a single pattern of heroic journey and that all cultures share this essential pattern in their various heroic myths. In his book he also outlined the basic conditions, stages, and results of the archetypal hero's journey.
Throughout his life, he traveled extensively and wrote prolifically, authoring many books, including the four-volume series The Masks of God, Myths to Live By, The Inner Reaches of Outer Space and The Historical Atlas of World Mythology. Joseph Campbell died in 1987. In 1988, a series of television interviews with Bill Moyers, The Power of Myth, introduced Campbell's views to millions of people.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 76 reviews
August 11, 2008
I'm a huge Campbell fan (? follower ?), but this one just did not do it for me. Quite honestly, it almost came off as the ramblings of a lunatic-- some manifesto one of those guys who builds his own church out of hub caps would write. It isn't that there weren't the amazing observations and bringing together of the worlds mythology that makes Campbell's brilliance what it is, but it seemed put together so haphazardly, like some unedited stream of concsiounes novel (which is ironic, since he wraps the whole last chapter around James Joyce's views on art).
Basically, he lost me in the first chapter of the book, where he gets into the commonalities in the numerology of several religions. Most of the time, when Campell speaks of these common "magic" numbers, I'm completely with him, but he was really grasping at straws here: "This religion found significance in X. If you add up all the digits in Y, then divide it by two, and reverse it, it's an integer of X. So they're exactly the same!" Well, okay... no.
Campbell's never been a particularly easy read for me, but most of the time the ends justify the extra concentration it takes me to cut through his genius ramblings, but this one was a bit too heavy on the ramblings for me.
Basically, he lost me in the first chapter of the book, where he gets into the commonalities in the numerology of several religions. Most of the time, when Campell speaks of these common "magic" numbers, I'm completely with him, but he was really grasping at straws here: "This religion found significance in X. If you add up all the digits in Y, then divide it by two, and reverse it, it's an integer of X. So they're exactly the same!" Well, okay... no.
Campbell's never been a particularly easy read for me, but most of the time the ends justify the extra concentration it takes me to cut through his genius ramblings, but this one was a bit too heavy on the ramblings for me.
February 17, 2011
Those who dismiss religion outright, or who understand their religion literally and historically, should, Joseph Campbell would say, consider mythic and religious imagery as the interface between the knowable and the unknowable, as universal truths dressed in local costumes. This book was more difficult, more obtuse, than the other Campbell books I’ve read. Nevertheless, his words left me amazed as they always do. His words, as Campbell says of the true artist, “…break windows through the walls of culture to eternity.”
August 6, 2016
I still remember when José pulled this off his mythology shelf back in '95 and turned straight to the weird numerology section at the front of the book, where Campbell finds wonderful numerical correlations between the various systems of world mythology and the then-contemporary scientific understandings of the universe. At that point I knew I had to read this book, which meant that, true to form, I bought it almost immediately and promptly waited seventeen years to read it.
In this collection of reworked lectures, and his final book (I think), Campbell provides a fascinating take on the perennial philosophy and presents it as a means of bridging the divide between the languages and worldviews of religion and science. According to Campbell, the problem is that neither side understands the metaphorical aspects of mythical language and symbolism and so mistakenly take literally that which is intended to point to a lived experience of the sacred and not to express a fact about history, biology, etc.
Here are some of the things Campbell had to say that really blew me away:
In this collection of reworked lectures, and his final book (I think), Campbell provides a fascinating take on the perennial philosophy and presents it as a means of bridging the divide between the languages and worldviews of religion and science. According to Campbell, the problem is that neither side understands the metaphorical aspects of mythical language and symbolism and so mistakenly take literally that which is intended to point to a lived experience of the sacred and not to express a fact about history, biology, etc.
Here are some of the things Campbell had to say that really blew me away:
One cannot predict the next mythology any more than one can predict tonight's dream; for a mythology is not an ideology. It is not something projected from the brain, but something experienced from the heart, from recognitions of identities behind or within the appearances of nature, perceiving with love a "thou" where there would have been otherwise only an "it." (p.17)
[A] true prophet ... knew the difference between his ethnic ideas and the elementary ideas that they enclose, between a metaphor and its connotation, between a tribal myth and its metaphysical import. For when the inner eye is awakened and a revelation arises from inner space to meet impressions brought by the senses from outer space to the mind, the significance of the conjunction is lost unless the outward image opens to receive and embody the elementary idea: this being the whole sense of the transformation of nature in art. Otherwise, nothing has happened; an external event has been merely documented and a cultic, ethnic centricity given as the last word of religion, with naturalism the end and beginning of art. (34)
The first step to mystical realization is the leaving of such a defined god for an experience of transcendence, disengaging the ethnic from the elementary idea, for any god who is not transparent to transcendence is an idol, and its worship is idolatry. Also, the first step to participation in the destiny of humankind today, which is neither of this folk not of that, but of the whole population of this globe, is to recognize every such local image of a god as but one of many thousands, millions, even perhaps billions, of locally useful symbolizations of that same mystery beyond sight or thought which our teachers have taught us to seek in their god alone. (44)
[M]ythic figurations are the "ancestral forms," the insubstantial archetypes, of all that is beheld by the eye as physically substantial, material things being understood as ephemeral concretions out of the energies of these noumena. Traditional forms of tools, dwellings, and weapons have their justification in such everlasting models. Rituals are direct expositions of their life-sustaining patterns. Temples and the narratives of myth are hermetic fields within which those apparitions known as gods and goddesses, demons, angels, demigods, incarnations, and the like, typify in the guise of charismatic personalities the locally recognized vortices of consciousness out of which all aspects of the local theatre of life derive their being. The figurations of myth are expressive, therefore, as those of dream normally are not, of range of universal, as distinguished from specifically individual, concerns. (56)
[E]ternity being by definition outside or beyond temporality, transcendent of all categories, whether of virtue or of reason (being and nonbeing, unity and multiplicity, love and justice, forgiveness and wrath), the term and concept "God" is itself but a metaphor of the unknowing mind, connatative, not only beyond itself, but beyond thought. So that all can be said of it, whether as touching time or eternity, has to be in the way of an "as if" (als ob): philosophically and theologically ... through the analogy of a rationally inferred First Cause, and mythologically ... in the way of a psychologically affective image transparent to transcendence. (57)
One cannot but ask: What can ... tribal literalism possibly contribute but agony to such a world of intercultural, global prospects as that of our present century? It call comes of misreading metaphors, taking denotation for connotation, the messenger for the message; overloading the carrier, consequently, with sentimentalized significance and throwing both life and thought thereby off balance. To which the only generally recognized correction as yet proposed has been the no less wrongheaded one of dismissing the metaphors as lies (which indeed they are, when so construed), thus scrapping the whole dictionary of the language of the soul (this is a metaphor) by which mankind has been elevated to interests beyond procreation, economics, and "the greatest good of the greatest number." (58)
There is a Hindu tantric saying, nāvedo devam arcayet, "by none but a god shall a god be worshipped". The deity of one's worship is a function of one's own state of mind. But it also is a product of one's culture. Catholic nuns do not have visions of the Buddha, nor do Buddhist nuns have visions of Christ. Ineluctably, the image of any God beheld ... will be of a local ethnic idea historically conditioned, a metaphor, therefore, and thus to be recognized as transparent to transcendence. Remaining fixed to its name and form, whether with simple faith or in saintly vision, is therefore to remain in mind historically bounded and attached to an appearance. (67)
The first task of any systematic comparison of the myths and religions of mankind should therefore be ... to identify [the] universals (or, as C.G. Jung termed them, archetypes of the unconscious) and as far as possible to interpret them; and the second task then should be to recognize and interpret the various locally and historically conditions transformations of the metaphorical images through which these universals have been rendered. (99)
The universally distinguishing characteristic of mythological thought and communication is an implicit connotation through all its metaphorical imagery of a sense of identity of some kind, transcendent of appearances, which unites behind the scenes the opposed actors on the world stage. (110)
The metaphors of any mythology may be defined as affect signs derived from intuitions of just this play of the Self through all the forms of a local manner of life, made manifest through ritualized representations, pedagogical narratives, prayers, meditations, annual festivals, and the like, in such a way that all members of the relevant community may be held, both in mind and in sentiment, to its knowledge and thus moved to live in accord. (113)
[I]t is the function of the priest to represent the claims of life in the world, ethics against metaphysics, the art of living in the knowledge of transcendence without dissolving into it in a rapture of self-indulgence.... Like the priest, the artist is a master of metaphorical language. The priest, however, is vocationally committed to a vocabulary already coined, of which he is the representative. He is a performing artist executing scripts already perfectly wrought, and his art is in the execution. (121)
September 11, 2022
I am sure Campbell offered some great reflection prompts and analysis points, but these were lost to me among the rambling pages that concealed their supposed message and purpose. I drowned in the sea of unrelated myths, intermingling in a mysterious net of phylosophical and religious memoirs.
Certainly, between the numerous parentheses and the scattered writing he held some valid arguments, sadly I couldn't find the,m, his ongoing sentences being too cryptic for me to follow.
Certainly, between the numerous parentheses and the scattered writing he held some valid arguments, sadly I couldn't find the,m, his ongoing sentences being too cryptic for me to follow.
December 25, 2015
Gift from my uncle. | Oh, boy. Start elsewhere if you're new to Campbell. This made me believe his theories LESS than I did before starting the book. | This is a bit awkward for me, because I received the book in the mail in July 2008 with a note from my uncle "Just because. This is one of my most important books few 'get it' I know you will." I started reading it then, but even the introduction seemed so rambling and without point or purpose that I set it aside and forgot I had it. There's some fascinating stuff in here, some ideas and connections which deserve attention. Unfortunately they're mired in exceptionally scattered writing, some actual poor scholarship--shocking since Campbell was good at what he did, a 'preaching to the choir' voice, and what in a few cases came across as ravings. He almost lost me completely near the beginning with the ridiculous number section. I mean, I was due to be born on the 9th of the month (ooh, a 9!), but was actually born the 18th (wow, 9 x 2 = 18, even though who knows where that 2 came from, plus 1 + 8 = 9!), met my sweetheart on the 18th of a month, if you add together the digits of the years we were each born you get 45, and 4+5=9, and since 9 "relates traditionally to the Great Goddess of Many Names, as matrix of the cosmic process, whether in the macrocosm or in a microcosmic field of manifestation", clearly he and I have special meaning in the universe. Or, you know, maybe we could acknowledge that this is how number games work, and by careful selection we can make anything fit. One random phys ed textbook told Campbell that a male in good physical shape will have a resting heart rate of about 60 bpm or less and he bases the idea of man being "in accord at once with his own nature and with the rhythm of the universe" on using that number with complicated math?!
Speaking of careful selection...my reference to poor scholarship is examples such as the Egyptian weighing of the heart. Campbell goes into detail connecting the shape of the scale, with seven nodules, to the chakras of yogic tradition. Except that the image he gives of the scales is literally the only one I've ever seen in which the scales are not smooth. Sometimes there are stars or dots on the scales, but it is nearly always a smooth-sided center rod. How does that tie Egypt to the Lotus Centers? Or discussion of how the "God" referenced on US money could not be the Judeo-Christian God, because the deists of Jefferson's studies would not have referenced that god...except that phrase wasn't on any US money until the Civil War, partly to demonstrate that a very particular god was on the side of the Union, and wasn't on the paper money Campbell is describing the symbolism of until the anti-Communism days of the 20th century!
Enough. The more I write this review, the less respect I have for the book. I'm going back to Frazer's The Golden Bough, which does a far better job at demonstrating connections between world myths/religions/practices, does it more clearly, and does it with a more coherent purpose.
Speaking of careful selection...my reference to poor scholarship is examples such as the Egyptian weighing of the heart. Campbell goes into detail connecting the shape of the scale, with seven nodules, to the chakras of yogic tradition. Except that the image he gives of the scales is literally the only one I've ever seen in which the scales are not smooth. Sometimes there are stars or dots on the scales, but it is nearly always a smooth-sided center rod. How does that tie Egypt to the Lotus Centers? Or discussion of how the "God" referenced on US money could not be the Judeo-Christian God, because the deists of Jefferson's studies would not have referenced that god...except that phrase wasn't on any US money until the Civil War, partly to demonstrate that a very particular god was on the side of the Union, and wasn't on the paper money Campbell is describing the symbolism of until the anti-Communism days of the 20th century!
Enough. The more I write this review, the less respect I have for the book. I'm going back to Frazer's The Golden Bough, which does a far better job at demonstrating connections between world myths/religions/practices, does it more clearly, and does it with a more coherent purpose.
August 26, 2024
*En este libro se explora la relación entre la conciencia humana y el cosmos. La obra aborda cómo la percepción del espacio exterior influye en nuestro mundo interior, y cómo las ideas y mitologías han moldeado nuestra comprensión del universo. Campbell analiza cómo las culturas han interpretado el espacio y el cosmos, conectando estas interpretaciones con la psicología y la espiritualidad humanas. Es un análisis profundo de cómo el espacio exterior no solo es un lugar físico, sino también un reflejo de nuestro mundo interno y espiritual.
July 20, 2024
Joseph Campbel wears his bias on his sleeve; all his starry-eyed calls for "non-dual" thinking, world "citizenship," or a cosmic anthropological vision, are represented almost exclusively using references from the Vedantist tradition. You have one guess as to who represents the opposite, antiquated, "tribal" way of thinking... the "cult of Yahweh" of course! Joseph builds a straw man using what he finds useful from the Judeo-Christian tradition to prop up his lazy "world without borders" philosophy.
Noteworthy on this side of 2020: Campbell's announcement that the world is now in need of a New Myth sounds eerily similar to Google Co-Founder Larry Page's reported statement that, using A.I., silicon valley is indeed building us a god.
At his best, Joseph Campbell introduces a beautiful array of mythic and religious traditions to a broad audience. At his worst, he cherry-picks and gives us a sham version of the world.
Noteworthy on this side of 2020: Campbell's announcement that the world is now in need of a New Myth sounds eerily similar to Google Co-Founder Larry Page's reported statement that, using A.I., silicon valley is indeed building us a god.
At his best, Joseph Campbell introduces a beautiful array of mythic and religious traditions to a broad audience. At his worst, he cherry-picks and gives us a sham version of the world.
May 11, 2013
This was not my favorite Campbell book regarding Mythology and its role in "current" society. Except for the last chapter, "The Way of Art", which I would give four stars. Overall the book felt like a repeat of his other works. I would say that if you read "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" and "The Mythic Dimension" you would not necessarily gain anything from this book. Also, I believe that the interviews with Bill Moyers do a better job of taking Campbell's work into the present.
January 19, 2010
This book I pick up from time to time, slowly working through it a couple pages at a time, giving Joseph Campbell's words a chance to sink in and meld with the writings of other authors like Richard L. Rubenstein and Chris Hedges. Eventually it will be completed and I'll move on to his other works.
April 27, 2013
Joseph Campbell is dependable for his comparative, thoughtful analysis of mythology. A bit heavy going at times, these mature reflections are worth the effort. Read more at: Sects and Violence in the Ancient World.
May 24, 2021
Ex un libro muy interesante sobre el origen psicofísico de los mitos de la humanidad, los cuáles son compartidos por todas las culturas y todos los tiempos. Joseph Campbell hace un análisis muy interesante al respecto poniendo varios ejemplos, desde el cristianismo, el budismo, el tantra y yoga, hasta los mitos griegos y de los amerindios. Otro de los puntos interesantes es su comparativa del universo interno con el externo y esa fascinación que nos ha causado el espacio incluso desde nuestras primeras épocas donde existían los cultos a las estrellas. Por último, Joseph Campbell nos ofrece el papel que debería tomar el artista como catalizador y creador de nuevos mitos en esta era carente de ellos, haciendo eco a Bataille y los surrealistas décadas atrás
November 8, 2022
Pensavo molto di più.
Meglio Frazer, più esplicativo, meno filosofia.
Meglio Frazer, più esplicativo, meno filosofia.
March 6, 2014
«La creación del mito es la creación del mundo, y durante los últimos años de su vida, creó el mundo de nuevo.»
Marina Tsvietáieva
En Las extensiones interiores del espacio exterior, el mitólogo, profesor y escritor estadounidense Joseph Campbell nos presenta tres de las conferencias que impartió en San Francisco entre 1981 y 1984. En ellas reflexiona sobre la metáfora a través del mito, la religión, la belleza y los arquetipos, así como de la cosmología y la imaginación. Para ello, Campbell señala y expone diversas referencias extraídas de las religiones y tradiciones de todas las partes del mundo, así como de varios autores literarios y artísticos.
En la primera conferencia, La cosmología y la imaginación mítica, Campbell discute la importancia que tiene para nosotros la mitología en base al conocimiento actual que tenemos de esta. El autor nos muestra cómo el espacio exterior (el universo, la física) se coordina a la vez con nuestro interior, al hacer uso de las diversas leyes que gobiernan a ambos. Así, enseña cómo la historia de las religiones va añadiendo metáforas continuas y presentes entre lo que sucede externa e internamente en torno a nuestra percepción. Nos habla del alma como la esencia en la que se asienta el mundo exterior y el mundo interior. También sobre los mitos tribales de las sociedades aborígenes, ya que cuando despertamos nuestro ojo interior a la revelación que sucede, en forma de insight, se produce la creación de estos mitos. Campbell estudia las antiguas (y no tan antiguas) religiones, las expone y compara. De ellas extrae diversas referencias, ya sean numerológicas, artísticas o físicas, para llevarnos a entender cómo estas han influenciado al hombre.
Más adelante, nos sumerge en La metáfora como mito y como religión. A través de esta se suceden los sueños, que al igual que los mitos, son productos de la imaginación humana. El mito, de manera intencional o no, se hace símbolo psicológico, pues con sus imágenes y narrativa no trata de manera literal, sino metafórica. Los mitos nos hablan de los orígenes, del mundo de las artes, las leyes y las costumbres sociales de cada religión. De tal manera que el poder que detentan los convierte en un hallazgo importante para plantear una liberación mental como la de especificar las connotaciones psicológicas y metafísicas que hallamos a través de ellos.
Cuando reconocemos la metáfora y nos identificamos con ella sucede una transformación personal. Esta puede verse en el budismo, a través de la meditación sobre los diferentes chakras y la transformación que llevan a cabo con el despertar de la kundalini -una especie de energía invisible e inmedible. También se puede ver y comparar esta apertura de la percepción con la simbología de la ascensión de Jesucristo en la cruz, pues la última y suprema liberación del hombre es dejar a Dios para ascender a Dios. A través de las religiones hallamos diversos símbolos, como el Sol o la Luna, que nos ponen en conocimiento de la vida corporal así como de la vida eterna, como puede ser la simbología del eterno retorno en el ouroboros, que puede verse tanto en el budismo como en algunas tradiciones indias americanas. Así, nos transformamos cuando tomamos conciencia de la metáfora externa a través de nosotros.
En la tercera conferencia, La vía del arte, Campbell señala cómo la vía del místico y la del artista se parecen, pues ambos, absortos en su vida interior, traducen los conocimientos que sobre Dios y lo misterioso obtienen y tratan de hacer aflorar a la conciencia las verdades más íntimas y profundas. Así, ambos se convierten en maestros del lenguaje metafórico. Para Campbell, también para Nietzsche, el arte es la tarea propia de la vida, su ejercicio metafísico. Por tanto, el arte es más meritorio que la verdad. El autor nos muestra cómo el arte ha hecho uso de la metáfora y cómo la metáfora ha hecho uso del arte, pues ambas se entrelazan entre sí y a una le es imposible existir sin la otra. Cabe señalar la importancia que se le ha dado a la imagen como un ente propio, personal pero a la vez universal, pues este puede ser interpretado por todos y a través de todos. El arte parte de la naturaleza, así como también el universo. Por ende, los dos son aspectos de una misma realidad.
A través de esta serie de conferencias que la editorial Atalanta ha reunido en el presente libro, encontramos respuestas sobre lo que podemos hallar en las diferentes tradiciones, mitologías y en el mismo arte. Con su invitación a explorar tan vasto territorio, Campbell nos ayuda a dilucidar y arrojar un poco de luz sobre la metáfora, lo exterior y lo interior en todos sus diversos aspectos y formas.
Publicado en Détour
Marina Tsvietáieva
En Las extensiones interiores del espacio exterior, el mitólogo, profesor y escritor estadounidense Joseph Campbell nos presenta tres de las conferencias que impartió en San Francisco entre 1981 y 1984. En ellas reflexiona sobre la metáfora a través del mito, la religión, la belleza y los arquetipos, así como de la cosmología y la imaginación. Para ello, Campbell señala y expone diversas referencias extraídas de las religiones y tradiciones de todas las partes del mundo, así como de varios autores literarios y artísticos.
En la primera conferencia, La cosmología y la imaginación mítica, Campbell discute la importancia que tiene para nosotros la mitología en base al conocimiento actual que tenemos de esta. El autor nos muestra cómo el espacio exterior (el universo, la física) se coordina a la vez con nuestro interior, al hacer uso de las diversas leyes que gobiernan a ambos. Así, enseña cómo la historia de las religiones va añadiendo metáforas continuas y presentes entre lo que sucede externa e internamente en torno a nuestra percepción. Nos habla del alma como la esencia en la que se asienta el mundo exterior y el mundo interior. También sobre los mitos tribales de las sociedades aborígenes, ya que cuando despertamos nuestro ojo interior a la revelación que sucede, en forma de insight, se produce la creación de estos mitos. Campbell estudia las antiguas (y no tan antiguas) religiones, las expone y compara. De ellas extrae diversas referencias, ya sean numerológicas, artísticas o físicas, para llevarnos a entender cómo estas han influenciado al hombre.
Más adelante, nos sumerge en La metáfora como mito y como religión. A través de esta se suceden los sueños, que al igual que los mitos, son productos de la imaginación humana. El mito, de manera intencional o no, se hace símbolo psicológico, pues con sus imágenes y narrativa no trata de manera literal, sino metafórica. Los mitos nos hablan de los orígenes, del mundo de las artes, las leyes y las costumbres sociales de cada religión. De tal manera que el poder que detentan los convierte en un hallazgo importante para plantear una liberación mental como la de especificar las connotaciones psicológicas y metafísicas que hallamos a través de ellos.
Cuando reconocemos la metáfora y nos identificamos con ella sucede una transformación personal. Esta puede verse en el budismo, a través de la meditación sobre los diferentes chakras y la transformación que llevan a cabo con el despertar de la kundalini -una especie de energía invisible e inmedible. También se puede ver y comparar esta apertura de la percepción con la simbología de la ascensión de Jesucristo en la cruz, pues la última y suprema liberación del hombre es dejar a Dios para ascender a Dios. A través de las religiones hallamos diversos símbolos, como el Sol o la Luna, que nos ponen en conocimiento de la vida corporal así como de la vida eterna, como puede ser la simbología del eterno retorno en el ouroboros, que puede verse tanto en el budismo como en algunas tradiciones indias americanas. Así, nos transformamos cuando tomamos conciencia de la metáfora externa a través de nosotros.
En la tercera conferencia, La vía del arte, Campbell señala cómo la vía del místico y la del artista se parecen, pues ambos, absortos en su vida interior, traducen los conocimientos que sobre Dios y lo misterioso obtienen y tratan de hacer aflorar a la conciencia las verdades más íntimas y profundas. Así, ambos se convierten en maestros del lenguaje metafórico. Para Campbell, también para Nietzsche, el arte es la tarea propia de la vida, su ejercicio metafísico. Por tanto, el arte es más meritorio que la verdad. El autor nos muestra cómo el arte ha hecho uso de la metáfora y cómo la metáfora ha hecho uso del arte, pues ambas se entrelazan entre sí y a una le es imposible existir sin la otra. Cabe señalar la importancia que se le ha dado a la imagen como un ente propio, personal pero a la vez universal, pues este puede ser interpretado por todos y a través de todos. El arte parte de la naturaleza, así como también el universo. Por ende, los dos son aspectos de una misma realidad.
A través de esta serie de conferencias que la editorial Atalanta ha reunido en el presente libro, encontramos respuestas sobre lo que podemos hallar en las diferentes tradiciones, mitologías y en el mismo arte. Con su invitación a explorar tan vasto territorio, Campbell nos ayuda a dilucidar y arrojar un poco de luz sobre la metáfora, lo exterior y lo interior en todos sus diversos aspectos y formas.
Publicado en Détour
November 22, 2017
This is one of Joseph Campbell's finest works. It was published in 1986, a year before his death. When compared with The Hero with a Thousand Faces (1949), one can really see the evolution of his thoughts, but still recognize the same sophisticated and mercurial mind of Campbell. His central idea in this work is based upon viewing religious and mythological stories as metaphorical rather than historical facts. Anyone familiar with his other works will be accustomed to how eloquently Campbell shows the similarities between a variety of traditions, both eastern and western. He convincingly argues myths and stories, especially those of religious figures like Buddha and Christ, should not be taken literally. When taken as literal truths and historical facts by their followers, mythologies and religions often become abrasive and divisive forces. Campbell argues that when these seemingly disparate traditions are viewed for their metaphorical implications, with an emphasis on their similarities, they become a powerful unifying force in a globalizing world. This book takes a deep dive into the metaphysical, philosophical, and psychological aspects of humanity. It may take some effort to get through, but will hopefully make the reader pause and reflect on the broad themes of commonality and compassion for all people.
November 9, 2014
[Closer to 2.5 stars]
This was my first foray in Joseph Campbell's work, and it was a pretty uneven read overall. There were some things in here I honestly liked a lot though, focusing on attempting to rebuild myths deconstructed by modern science and multiculturalism by grounding ourselves in timeless yet inarticulable truths, and creating myth as a way of wrapping transcendent experience in something comprehensible. The way he argued for it though was... less than convincing. We had a lot of honestly interesting journeys into Navajo, Indian, Buddhist, and even Gnostic myth as a way of trying to get at a central idea or set of ideas which these traditions attempted to bring back down to earth, but despite a lot of examples and analysis, I never did quite feel like I had a good grasp on where he was going. And then there's the frankly cringeworthy segments where he goes into numerology, seemingly at face value, and in several examples tried to show similarities between cultures with similar important numbers, relying much too heavily on a decimal numbering system with place value, which if you're a fraction the student of history Campbell was, you may recognize as decidedly not a universal among the ancient world's cultures.
I want to let this one percolate for a while then read it again (at 148 pages it's not a humongous investment), but on the whole I was disappointed by his execution of what is a truly interesting and important premise.
This was my first foray in Joseph Campbell's work, and it was a pretty uneven read overall. There were some things in here I honestly liked a lot though, focusing on attempting to rebuild myths deconstructed by modern science and multiculturalism by grounding ourselves in timeless yet inarticulable truths, and creating myth as a way of wrapping transcendent experience in something comprehensible. The way he argued for it though was... less than convincing. We had a lot of honestly interesting journeys into Navajo, Indian, Buddhist, and even Gnostic myth as a way of trying to get at a central idea or set of ideas which these traditions attempted to bring back down to earth, but despite a lot of examples and analysis, I never did quite feel like I had a good grasp on where he was going. And then there's the frankly cringeworthy segments where he goes into numerology, seemingly at face value, and in several examples tried to show similarities between cultures with similar important numbers, relying much too heavily on a decimal numbering system with place value, which if you're a fraction the student of history Campbell was, you may recognize as decidedly not a universal among the ancient world's cultures.
I want to let this one percolate for a while then read it again (at 148 pages it's not a humongous investment), but on the whole I was disappointed by his execution of what is a truly interesting and important premise.
November 2, 2017
Really enjoyed the final chapter: The Way of Art. That chapter is the primary reason I wanted to read the book and I'd give that 5 stars. The rest, however, didn't feel well put together and was difficult to get through because of that.
June 7, 2019
There’s a lot here that seems like eager, uncritical perrenialism. The point made of reading mythology as metaphor has merit and I agree that the metaphorical lens is much more valid than a literalist one. But I disagree that the metaphorical ‘similarities’ Campbell finds between various traditions are evidence of some kind of greater interwoven spiritual quest of humanity that ends in the unification of all people into a common humanity (which seems to be his goal/vision in writing this). I’d like to have seen a more nuanced discussion of wether the metaphors of myth are reflective of the culture and society they’re crafted in BEFORE taking the leap to say that they bear similarities to other traditions. The truth is: a sort of perennialist generalization of mythical traditions is nothing more than an interpretation - a mythology of its own from our current place in time and our current culture. The desire itself to connect is its own mythos - which is fine and to find commonalities in our human experience throughout space and time is a noble pursuit but when it’s done at the expense of acknowledging meaningful cultural nuances it functions as a historical erasure, becomes dull and even dangerous.
June 12, 2013
Joseph Campbell is extraordinary. This particular work was pretty complex, and I skipped the last chapter on art, but the parts about the principle of Kundalini from yoga and the reinterpretation of some elements of the bible were fascinating. You're never going to look at the serpent in the garden of Eden the same way again. I was absolutely amazed by the comparative study of world religions presented here. Campbell shows that most religions, even when geographically isolated and separated by hundreds and thousands of years, contain eerily similar elements--specifically the idea of Kundalini that is reiterated in truly diverse cultural and social contexts as an aspect of spirituality. The result is a mind bending argument that suggests a universal experience of human spirituality that has worked its way into multiple systems of spiritual thought. The specifics vary culturally but the core idea remains too similar to be discounted as pure coincidence.
September 9, 2016
His last book before he passed away, this book comes full circle with the inner universe of mythology to the outer reaches of man's final frontier. Joseph is the world's master at comparative mythology and sadly he left us too soon to continue his work on the Encyclopedia of World Mythology. Luckily the Joseph Campbell Foundation is putting together his notes and finishing his life long works. Joseph's work is written with a style and prose of a professor, yet his magical ability to illustrate, condense, simplify, and articulate the hidden knowledge of symbols, metaphors, poetry, etc...well...he was in my opinion the best. His Power of Myth and Mythos series are incredible videos and his Masks of God books which are essentially a huge essay/thesis of his lifelong journey are priceless.
November 30, 2013
Joseph Campbell rocks!!! Love him. Felt this book was a little too anthropologically wordy but once I got past trying to figure out each historical reference upon reference, I admired the macrocosm of his sentiments: We are all one. And there are many historical, mythological, cultural, religious, 'political' & universal mediums which illustrates the root of this truth. And within (without) that, everything is metaphor. I also appreciated the Zoroastrian, East Indian Hindu, and Native American references amidst philosophers such as Nietzsche and Aristotle and the interweaving of similar thoughts, ideas, and truths. Too cool...
March 7, 2017
This collection of essays and lectures by Jospeh Campbell has been on my "To Read" shelf for quite some time, but Mortimer Adler took such exception to it in his "Truth in Religion" I had to see what all the fuss was about. Turns out Adler was upset with about one page of the 148 that make up "The Inner Reaches of Outer Space." I don't disagree with the views Campbell expressed on that page and the rest of the book is a heady melange of psychology, mythology, religion, art, and literature. Certainly not Campbell's most accessible work, but worth reading.
August 6, 2019
Generally, I enjoy the works of Joseph Campbell. I find Campbell to have interesting insights about society and how we are linked together through myth. I enjoyed Hero With a Thousand Faces.
This book seemed very muddled in places. Ideas from paragraph to paragraph did not flow and ideas weren't fully fleshed out. Campbell brings up a very confusing numerology sequence but then abandons it in the next page.
This isn't his best work and if you aren't familiar with Campbell, I feel your time is best spent elsewhere.
This book seemed very muddled in places. Ideas from paragraph to paragraph did not flow and ideas weren't fully fleshed out. Campbell brings up a very confusing numerology sequence but then abandons it in the next page.
This isn't his best work and if you aren't familiar with Campbell, I feel your time is best spent elsewhere.
December 11, 2010
I first read this book, finally, in 1997, a mere eleven years after it was published. I only wish that I had stumbled upon this book the year it was published; how different my life would be if that had occurred. But alas, I have had to read it again and I really love this book. It is now published as a hardcover and it is Joseph's last "little book.' A marvelous work. --From A Reader's Journal, by d r melbie.
July 4, 2009
I still have one chapter left... but enjoyed the text! New image Campbell introduced me to: "'Christ Triumphant,' where the figure of the Savior is shown not broken, bleeding, naked, and with head dropped to the side, but with head erect, eyes open, body clothed, and arms outstretched as though willingly 'thus come'" (43). Love it.
Great discussions on gods, humanity, and myth.
Great discussions on gods, humanity, and myth.
March 28, 2010
I absolutely love this book. I also like hero of a thousand faces and the Myth series from PBS but every book I have by him always seems to disappear. Do you have it?
One of top books along with:
Stranger in A strange Land
Mist of Avalon
World According to Garp
Yes, it proves I am a loon:P
One of top books along with:
Stranger in A strange Land
Mist of Avalon
World According to Garp
Yes, it proves I am a loon:P
December 29, 2007
I've had this book for many years and finally plowed through the whole thing. It's amazing. Joseph Campell is brilliant, and he weaves an incredible tapestry of human history through mythology and subconscious drivers shared by human tribes around the globe.
January 25, 2014
Campbell seems always to have had an instinct for the universal appeal of myth. His thought-processes are endlessly fascinating. I was particularly interested in his many references to "Black Elk Speaks", which I read some time ago and found very engaging.
August 28, 2020
While Joseph Campbell is celebrated for his work, I found it horribly reductionist and some of the worst colonization of mythology. One example is stating that Dionysus and Shiva were practically interchangeable. Not worthwhile reading.
March 16, 2017
Particularly brilliant on kundalini, even showing depictions of it in early Christian iconography in Ireland.
July 15, 2018
"There, I would say, was a true prophet, who knew the difference between his ethnic ideas and the elementary ideas that they enclose, between a metaphor and its connotation, between a tribal myth and its metaphysical import." p.08
"The Indian pictorial metaphor is of a wrathful deity in demonic form, wearing necklaces of severed heads, kilts of severed arms and legs, flourishing weapons and trampling down human shapes underfoot. This demon is a manifestation of one's own impulse to aggression turned on oneself, the vanquished shapes underfoot representing attachment to physical desires and the fear of physical death." p 38-34
"a fully aspiring mystic will be making every effort to pass through and beyond that moonlike reflecting image to extinction in the full light of the sun. "In that state," said Ramakrishna, "reasoning stops altogether and man becomes mute... A salt doll once went to measure the depth of the ocean... No sooner did it get into the ocean than it melted. Now ho was there to report the ocean's depth?" p. 41
"association of the messenger of salvation with the idea of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, who according to this way of inverting the orthodox interpretation, had been the first to attempt to release mankind from bondage to an unknowing god who had identified himself with the Absolute and thus blocked the way to the tree of eternal life." p. 49
"The nose of Osiris's monstrous watchdog, the Swallower (a mixture of crocodile, hippopotamus, and lion, who is to swallow the soul if the heart is heavier than the feather), cuts directly across the pole between its third and fourth nodules. -- In terms of the kundalini the message could hardly be clearer; namely, if the aims of the deceased in life were no higher than those of cakra 3, the Swallower claims the soul; whereas, if the "sound not made by any two things striking together" had been heard and heeded in the lifetime, Thoth will conduct the blessed soul (light as a feather) to Osiris;s throne by the Waters of Eternal Life." p. 55
"The very dialectic of the sacred," Eliade declares, "tends to repeat a series of archetypes, so that a hierophany realized at a certain historical moment is structurally equivalent to a hierophany a thousand years earlier or later. Hierophanies have the peculiarity of seeking to reveal the sacred in its totality, even if the human beings in whose consciousness the sacred 'shows itself' fasten upon only one aspect or one small part of it. In the most elementary hierophany everything is declared. The manifestation of the sacred in a stone or a tree is neither less mysterious nor less noble than its manifestation as a 'god.' The process of sacralizing reality is the same; the forms taken by the process in man's religious consciousness differ." p.69
"The whole context of world history, in fact, is of destinies unfolding through time as a vast net of reciprocal influences of this kind, which not only are of people upon people, but involve also the natural world with its creatures and accidents of all kinds. Invoking the analogy of dream, the philosopher reminds his reader that in dream the unanticipated occurrences, which appear to be accidental and occasionally, as in nightmare, terrifying, are actually of a context composed and controlled according to an unsuspected intention which is of none other than one's own will." p.81
"The word "catharsis" (Greek katharsis; from kathairein, "to cleanse"), which in Aristotle's usage denotes the effect of tragedy as "effecting through pity and terror a katharsis of these emotions," was a term which referred in the Greek religious vocabulary to a spiritual transformation brought by the participation in a rite. The mind, "cleansed" of attachments to merely secular aims, desires, and fears, is released to spiritual rapture. Plato writes of katharsis, for example, as a "defeat of the sensations of pleasure." The ultimate effect, that is to say, is not to be of beauty (which "when seen pleases"), but of the sublime ("outreaching human comprehension")." p. 103
"The Indian pictorial metaphor is of a wrathful deity in demonic form, wearing necklaces of severed heads, kilts of severed arms and legs, flourishing weapons and trampling down human shapes underfoot. This demon is a manifestation of one's own impulse to aggression turned on oneself, the vanquished shapes underfoot representing attachment to physical desires and the fear of physical death." p 38-34
"a fully aspiring mystic will be making every effort to pass through and beyond that moonlike reflecting image to extinction in the full light of the sun. "In that state," said Ramakrishna, "reasoning stops altogether and man becomes mute... A salt doll once went to measure the depth of the ocean... No sooner did it get into the ocean than it melted. Now ho was there to report the ocean's depth?" p. 41
"association of the messenger of salvation with the idea of the serpent in the Garden of Eden, who according to this way of inverting the orthodox interpretation, had been the first to attempt to release mankind from bondage to an unknowing god who had identified himself with the Absolute and thus blocked the way to the tree of eternal life." p. 49
"The nose of Osiris's monstrous watchdog, the Swallower (a mixture of crocodile, hippopotamus, and lion, who is to swallow the soul if the heart is heavier than the feather), cuts directly across the pole between its third and fourth nodules. -- In terms of the kundalini the message could hardly be clearer; namely, if the aims of the deceased in life were no higher than those of cakra 3, the Swallower claims the soul; whereas, if the "sound not made by any two things striking together" had been heard and heeded in the lifetime, Thoth will conduct the blessed soul (light as a feather) to Osiris;s throne by the Waters of Eternal Life." p. 55
"The very dialectic of the sacred," Eliade declares, "tends to repeat a series of archetypes, so that a hierophany realized at a certain historical moment is structurally equivalent to a hierophany a thousand years earlier or later. Hierophanies have the peculiarity of seeking to reveal the sacred in its totality, even if the human beings in whose consciousness the sacred 'shows itself' fasten upon only one aspect or one small part of it. In the most elementary hierophany everything is declared. The manifestation of the sacred in a stone or a tree is neither less mysterious nor less noble than its manifestation as a 'god.' The process of sacralizing reality is the same; the forms taken by the process in man's religious consciousness differ." p.69
"The whole context of world history, in fact, is of destinies unfolding through time as a vast net of reciprocal influences of this kind, which not only are of people upon people, but involve also the natural world with its creatures and accidents of all kinds. Invoking the analogy of dream, the philosopher reminds his reader that in dream the unanticipated occurrences, which appear to be accidental and occasionally, as in nightmare, terrifying, are actually of a context composed and controlled according to an unsuspected intention which is of none other than one's own will." p.81
"The word "catharsis" (Greek katharsis; from kathairein, "to cleanse"), which in Aristotle's usage denotes the effect of tragedy as "effecting through pity and terror a katharsis of these emotions," was a term which referred in the Greek religious vocabulary to a spiritual transformation brought by the participation in a rite. The mind, "cleansed" of attachments to merely secular aims, desires, and fears, is released to spiritual rapture. Plato writes of katharsis, for example, as a "defeat of the sensations of pleasure." The ultimate effect, that is to say, is not to be of beauty (which "when seen pleases"), but of the sublime ("outreaching human comprehension")." p. 103
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
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