Stephen Gerringer
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Oh Shaheda,
Thank you for sharing such sweet memories of our days in the JCMG (Joseph Campbell Mythology Group) on Yahoo – which, speaking of mentors, is where Robert Walter “found” me (you may recall that day when the JCMG was selected as the “Editor’s Pick” on Yahoo and BOOM! – the next day our membership ballooned, our intimate, informal salon-like setting inundated with a thousand new members walking through the door and getting into fights and flame wars with each other; that brought us to JCF’s attention, as Bob Walter and David Kudler wrestled over whether or not to shut us down for IP violations and riding Joe’s chi).
Seems your post also answers the first question I posed John: is it possible to be a mentor and not know it? I didn’t consciously think of myself as mentoring – I just loved that I had found friends who shared my enthusiasm for myth, dream, creativity, imagination, art, story, soul, and Joseph Campbell’s mythological perspective.
I really appreciate your kind words.
I also appreciate your memory of your Uncle, in response to Marianne’s question about stories of mentors and mentees who are opposites at first – and once again, whether myth or lore or one’s own life, I am reminded again there is such power in Story.
Marianne,
I thought I would touch bases on your post with questions on teaching and mentoring – not so much addressing specific questions as musing on my own experience.
I taught 12 and 13 year old students in junior high on the cusp of adolescence – right at that fuzzy divide between childhood and adulthood, where all sorts of calls and projections are in play. I conceive my role not as an authority figure or father substitute (despite plenty of hooks for such projections from the children), but as a guide helping these in-between beings navigate a particularly fraught passage . . . in part by pulling back the curtain, initiating them into the mysteries of what it is to be a human being.
Definitely a magical helper aspect to that, but the classroom experience is more a collective ritual, whereas mentoring I experience (whether serving or receiving) as a relationship between two individuals.
As to how that relationship emerges when teaching, the Call I hear isn’t something the student issues, or even initiates, at least consciously: rather, it’s more a quality, trait, or act that triggers a resonance – something I recognize (re-cognize) in that person. I’d feel a sense of flow working with the student; though I often invested far more time and energy professionally into students I wasn’t mentoring, whether those students were struggling or succeeding, there would be a more personal investment to my interactions with those who sparked that sense of recognition.
The shift from teacher to mentor is nevertheless subtle, and never really complete until after graduation (at least in my mind). The student moves out of my classroom and on to high school, to other subjects, other teachers who assign their homework, give their tests, and issue their grades, which breaks the bonds of our student-teacher relationship (at least in part – there more than a few adults on Facebook, with children older than they were when in my classroom, who, decades later, still address me as Mr. Gerringer – such is the power contained in the Teacher archetype).
But a few of the students who woke that sense of recognition stay in touch. That, for me, is when the mentoring really begins. Sometimes that’s related to my field (such as having coffee regularly with a former student while she was working on her first novel), to life stuff (relationships, drug problems, life’s work, children and such . . . ).
Not sure that answers any questions – just the shape the energy takes when flowing out of one alchemical vessel (teacher-student) and into another (mentor-mentee), from my perspective.
” . . . Actual user experience may vary . . . “
4. “History is just journalism, and you know how reliable that is.”
Though this does sound like something Joseph Campbell would say, it’s actually Deepak Chopra at Mythic Journeys in Atlanta, 2006.
Marianne,
The quote you share from A Joseph Campbell Companion on writer’s block (re “cutting off one’s head”) is key. Though I know Joe is talking about writing in general here, this really speaks to my experience when journaling.
At it’s best, journaling is more than just keeping a diary. It’s a dialog with the deeper Self – and “I” have to get out of the way for the words to flow . . .
I appreciate the kind words, John.
Something else that stands out for me from your post (and those of others) is how much the process of mentoring revolves around sharing stories (one of our mutual mentors, Bob Walter, has a gift for knowing, considering his wealth of life experience, the appropriate anecdote applicable in any given circumstance).
Authority figures provide directions and rules that must be followed; mentoring, on the other hand, seems most often fostered through the intimacy of story. Though we certainly borrow stories from a number of sources (from myth and folklore to movies and TV and everything in between), with each passing year the fund of stories accumulated from my own life experience expands at an exponential rate. Sharing one of those with a “mentee,” rather than just telling him or her what to do, carries so much more weight (especially accounts of failure or falling short).
But seems mentors also contrive to set up circumstances that allow the mentee to rise to the challenge. I think of Athena, in her guise as Mentor, urging Telemachus, son of long-absent Odysseus, to embark on a journey in search of his father – but then Athena heads downtown, so to speak, disguised as Telemachus, where she arranges a ship and hires a crew in his name, clearing away obstacles to the journey; similarly, as you note in your essay,
. . . Merlin constructs and crafts realities meant to attain a certain end. He arranges Arthur’s conception and birth and builds the framework on which the entire sword and the stone episode, as well as the Grail quest, hangs.”
My mentors have often done the same for me, pulling strings behind the scenes to create opportunities, which I did not fully realize until well after the fact.
One other observation re Mentor in Homer’s Odyssey: when acting in the way of a mentor, Mentor isn’t himself, but the goddess Athena wearing his form (which sets up a scenario where “Mentor” appears in two places at once). This reinforces the role inspiration plays in mentoring, at least in my experience.
Thank you for inspiring this whole conversation, John!
There is no doubt your contribution adds to the conversation, James. I fully agree with your point that, at least in Campbell’s world, there need be no conflict between science and spirituality. Now, does that hold true for someone who is an atheist? That’s a question worth exploring.
I expect Nandu is familiar with Campbell’s observations you shared (these clips are extracted from the Mythos video lecture series, and also appeared earlier in the troubled Transformations of Myth Through Time production). There are a number of scholars who would definitely agree with Nandu that such interpretations of Hinduism and Kundalini Yoga tell us more about the mindset of the individual doing the interpreting than they do about the actual practice – whereas I tend to think the “truth,” for lack of a better term, lies somewhere in between.
I really appreciate Nandu’s openness to sharing points of disagreement. If every post in a forum declares “the sky is always blue,” readers quickly lose interest in all the many ways there are to say of saying the same thing (or the sky is indigo, or azure, or . . . etc.). There’s just nothing to talk about.
But if someone comes along and says, “Well, for you the sky may always be blue, but for me, sometimes the sky is yellow and the sun is blue,” then suddenly folks perk up and take an interest, hopefully ask “what do yo mean by that?” and share their own thoughts. Ideally, the discussion doesn’t devolve into a debate where participants then lob proofs and counter-proofs designed to force those who disagree to admit they are mistaken, but evolves into an edifying, uplifting exchange where everyone involved learns a little bit about how and why things they know to be so can be perceived differently by someone else.
Thanks, James. That first clip of Campbell’s does seem a prime example of Nandu’s complaint – the tendency of Western scholars, starting with Schopenhauer, to take an image and extrapolate it out to Hinduism as a whole, declaring this is what Hinduism is, which seems at odds with Nandu’s actual experience as someone who grew up within Hinduism.
Well, Nandu, looks like at the next meeting of the Cult of Campbell there is going to be an excommunication as you are “cast into outer darkness, where there is much wailing and gnashing of teeth” (do forgive the biblical phrasing – not sure what the corresponding Hindu condemnation would be).
This, by the way, would be one of the few times when one of those laughing emoticons would come in handy, so anyone new stumbling across this thread who is new to the forums would realize I’m not being serious. Kidding aside, I think this post would be better titled “Where I Disagree with Joe Campbell,” rather than “Why I Disagree . . .,” as seems there remain at least a few areas of agreement.
Even though I am not from India, your criticism of Campbell’s depiction of Hinduism rings true to me, at least to a degree. There is a tendency for outsiders to view other cultures’ beliefs, whether that other culture is Hinduism, Islam, or Christianity, as monolithic in nature (e.g., “Hindus believe this,” or “Christians believe that,” etc.), ignoring the wide range of variations within those belief systems. Indeed, given hundreds of denominations, there are ever so many Christian sects that other Christian sects view as not exactly Christian (indeed, many evangelical churches consider Catholicism as paganism wearing a clerical collar, while the Catholic Church has quite a history of condemning, persecuting, torturing, immolating, or making war on other Christians – and then the majority of Protestants think the Mormon and Jehovah’s Witnesses churches aren’t Christian at all – but still, those of non-Christian faiths, as well as many scholars who do believe in Jesus, tend to refer to Christianity in general terms).
At the same time, whether or not Hinduism was created “after the fact” to carry the water for the Vedic religion, are you suggesting no one whom we think of as Hindus either now, or centuries or millennia in the past, has ever actually believed in a “philosophy of self-realization leading to identification with the Brahman, the ground of all being”? That doesn’t quite ring true to me.
Along that line, I am curious whether you are suggesting many of the core myths we think of as belonging to Hinduism were later creations formed all at once by Vedic practitioners and projected backwards in time? That, too, doesn’t seem compatible with the way mythologies emerge and shift shape over time. I have no doubt many of these myths were co-opted and stitched together, sometimes consciously, sometimes not, by adherents to the Vedic religion, in the same way Christianity has emerged out of and “borrowed” from multiple pre-Christian traditions, but that doesn’t mean the origins of these myths aren’t genuine. Similarly, Arthurian lore consists primarily of tales of gods and heroes in the Celtic tradition updated and given a make-over compatible with the dominant Christian belief system – sometimes consciously, but often note (indeed, some versions present more-or-less subversive disruptions of Christian dogma).
Those caveats notwithstanding, your disagreement with Campbell on this point does strike a chord – and I’m not certain that Joe would completely disagree with your criticism. Indeed, in 1954 while visiting India, Campbell certainly bumped up against the difference between idealized interpretations of Hinduism presented by Schopenhauer, Zimmer, and even himself, versus the reality of how it is actually practiced (which really comes through in his personal observations of his trip, recorded in his Asian Journals – specifically, Baksheesh & Brahman; Campbell at times seems at least a bit peeved at the difference between theory and his actual experience).
Time is a bit of a constraint at the moment, so a little bit later I’ll play a bit with your thoughts about Campbell and mysticism (of course he and Jung are mystics, though I wouldn’t exactly say atheism and mysticism – and certainly not science and mysticism – are mutually exclusive).
And at some point I will contribute a post or two about areas where I disagree with Campbell.
Thanks, Nandu, for pioneering this topic. That’s what the current iteration of Conversations of a Higher Order has been missing – controversy and conflict!
Namaste (whether you like it or not)
Nandu,
A wonderful review!
I tend to think of Joseph Campbell’s books as either “written Campbell” (books like The Hero with a Thousand Faces or the four volumes of the Masks of God tetralogy), or “spoken Campbell” (The Power of Myth, and many of his posthumous works drawn from lectures, like Pathways to Bliss or Goddesses: Mysteries of the Feminine Divine). There is a different rhythm to the conversational works, which seem more accessible to a broader audience of readers.
A Joseph Campbell Companion is definitely “spoken Campbell” – easy to read and, as you point out, a good introduction.
But what stands out for me in your review is the following:
. . . of late, I have been disturbed – because I found myself more and more in disagreement with Joe, and I didn’t like it at all! But deep down, I felt that this disagreement was somehow essential to our relationship.”
This is indeed essential, Nandu, and I thank you for raising it. Indeed, I believe Joseph Campbell would appreciate your honest disagreement. The following excerpt, from a presentation by Campbell’s friend and colleague, David Miller, Ph.D., titled “The Fire Is In the Mind,” should affirm that point:
In fact, my experience of him [Joseph Campbell] with other scholars in the 60’s, when he was being scholarly, for example, at the meetings of the Society of the Arts, Religion and Culture three times a year in New York City, is that he delighted in catching these leaks and drips. He changed his view of the source of myths in spontaneous parallel development in relation to historical diffusion. He corrected his mistakes about neolithic dating in the 1969 edition of Primitive Mythology. And one day, while he was working on Creative Mythology, he seemed to take delight in telling me that he had been wrong about the Arthurian Grail material. With this insight he was able to go forward and finish the book.
It is odd to say, but to the extent a scholar is bold enough to be wrong, to that degree other scholars love (and, of course, also hate) their colleague, and this happens in the very moment they are showing him or her to have faulty plumbing. If others claim that a scholar’s work is “right” or “true,” it simply means that those others, though no less intellectual, are not scholars. If a scholar claims “truth” for his or her idea, it just means that that person is not for the moment being scholarly. Academic, perhaps; but not scholarly.
Our intention at JCF, and here in Conversations of a Higher Order, is not to foster a “cult of Campbell,” but to provide a platform for discussing his mythological perspective. Authentic discussion includes raising honest disagreements and criticism, rather than just echoing hero worship (pun intended).
I would love to hear more about where you disagree with Joe – not to persuade you otherwise, but to add depth and dimension to the conversations here (and, I hope, encourage others to do the same). When you have the time and the inclination, feel free to start a topic on either specific areas where you find Campbell in error (or where you have moved beyond his viewpoint), or on Campbell criticism in general. You could do that in The Conversation with a Thousand Faces forum , or, if focused on a specific work of his, right here in this forum.
In the meantime, glad to hear you have rediscovered the joy of Joseph Campbell.
Namaste!
Hi Toby
I started to sign in and crow that I’d had Joe himself for my ‘mentor’ and wise old man. But thought that would just be boasting.”
Maybe so, but I doubt it would be taken that way. John would likely appreciate hearing from someone who had a direct Campbell connection (indeed, in our conversation I referenced “The Tiger King,” and he noted the personal mentor he was referring to is Bob Walter, who was similarly mentored by Campbell).
Plus there’s the other end of the spectrum – I imagine you’ve had the opportunity to mentor others yourself over the years, and might want to share a little about that. Seems to me one of the ways we pay back mentors is by sharing the lessons we’ve learned with others, and you definitely do that (reminds me of something a wise man said that I read just moments ago: “And we’re all Merlins with powers to make the world better.”)
Loving the conversation so far!
A couple things come to mind about mentoring. One observation is crystallized by your comments above, John, about the difference between a teacher and a mentor, despite some overlap:
The differentiation between a mentor and a teacher can easily become another issue of semantics. However, I would offer a few thoughts to consider. In many ways, I believe being a mentor is more about who you are in someone’s life than what you do for them. There was a process in different historical moments where a “master” would sit before a “class” with his (unfortunately for history, it was usually a “he”) back to the class and paint or sculpt a creative work. The apprentices or students would sit behind the master and create the exact same work, mimicking the master’s actions.
When I read your MythBlast essay, I found myself wondering about parallels to the mentoring relationship in contemporary society – hence my query about teachers, which admittedly was a leading question. As a junior high teacher, though there is no doubt I have influenced the lives of many students, mine was a professional and a formal role imposed by society, focused on training essential to a specific field – conjugate verbs, solve quadratic equations, understand the scientific method, and so on. I believe what success I’ve enjoyed owed less to my command of those fields than to my own sense that the real mission was to help transform these children on the cusp of adolescence into human beings (which is why, though my degree is in history, I taught literature, which is all about the human experience – and that meant I also needed to teach English, so students would have the skills to understand and discuss the stories we explored).
Teaching is a collective process (very rarely do you have just one student), but for me that involved developing a relationship with each individual student. Still, definitely distinct differences between teaching and mentoring.
Then I wondered about apprenticeship, which until recently had for centuries been the primary means of preparing an individual for a profession, especially in the craft guilds (printer, wainwright, carpenter, etc.) and the arts.
Your example, cited above, dispels that notion. Indeed, the master craftsman often exerted total control over the apprentice, who was essentially little more than an indentured servant of sorts (Benjamin Franklin’s experience comes to mind: as a youth he was apprenticed to his older brother James, a printer, which over time he found onerous; Franklin carefully planned his escape, fleeing not just Boston, but Massachusetts, escaping to Pennsylvania, a completely different colony, so the local authorities would not drag him back to his brother’s shop).
Today there are a number of formal mentorship programs, both in education and the professions, which do wonderful work – I’ve been involved with a few, both as a mentor and a mentee (assuming that’s a real word) – but for the most part, such “mentors” could best be described as tutors or coaches
True mentorship, it seems to me, is something less formal and more personal.
I think back to a moment from The West Wing that illustrates this dynamic (no surprise I turn to a modern myth). For those unfamiliar with that television series, in this episode Josh, a White House aide, is suffering from PTSD, which is affecting his relationships and his work. In a meltdown moment the White House chief of staff, Leo, calls him on it – but instead of firing or even reprimanding him, he recognizes Josh is suffering and gets him the help he needs.
Later in the episode, in a private moment between the two, Josh realizes Leo isn’t acting just as his boss, but taking a personal interest in his welfare. Leo, an alcoholic, then shares the following story:
This guy’s walking down the street when he falls in a hole. The walls are so steep he can’t get out. A doctor passes by and the guy shouts up, ‘Hey you. Can you help me out?’ The doctor writes a prescription, throws it down in the hole and moves on. Then a priest comes along and the guy shouts up, ‘Father, I’m down in this hole – can you help me out?’ The priest writes out a prayer, throws it down in the hole and moves on. Then a friend walks by, ‘Hey, Joe, it’s me, can you help me out?’ And the friend jumps in the hole.
Our guy says, ‘Are you stupid? Now we’re both down here.’ The friend says, ‘Yeah, but I’ve been down here before and I know the way out.’ “
That, for me, captures the essence of mentoring – sharing the accumulated wisdom of one’s life experience not out of duty, but love.
Hello John (and all),
Tracy’s question is one that was bouncing around the back of my brain as well this morning – what does mentoring in myths and/or folktales look like from the female perspective?
I also thought those participating in this thread might appreciate a link to your MythBlast essay earlier this summer on The Tiger King, which highlights the critical role a mentor plays, both in the favorite Joseph Campbell tale you share, and in your own life. That essay inspired its own discussion in Conversations of a Higher Order.
Toby,
In case you are interested, Toby, John Bucher, who penned the MythBlast essay that inspired this thread on “the Tiger King,” just published a new MythBlast essay called Merlin, Mythic Master of Warrior Princes, and the Lost Art of Mentorship (which is related to that story of the older tiger and little one learning how to be a tiger). We have just started a dedicated discussion thread with him on that essay, which you’ll find here. Feel free to jump in and share your thoughts if you are so inclined . . .
(“Zero in,” by the way, is an American idiom for “focus one’s attention”; “nullifying the datum” is an intriguing spin, but if you think that’s what someone means if they say this in conversation, there will be major misunderstandings).
Your example of perceiving time as moving in one direction definitely speaks to this question – indeed, seems a blind spot common to most humans, apart from those experiencing altered states of consciousness. That strikes me as more a result of biological limitations than cultural conditioning, but certainly is something we don’t see – though we can imagine it.
3. “When you follow your bliss, the universe will open door where there were only walls.”
To the best of our knowledge, though Joseph Campbell would certainly agree with this point, he didn’t say exactly this anywhere that we can find. This specific statement comes from Rebecca Armstrong, who had known Campbell, a good friend of her parents, from her childhood on; Rebecca may well have been paraphrasing, rather than using a direct quote.
Rebecca is accurately conveying Campbell’s sense of the phrase; JCF just can’t guarantee it’s an exact quote. Better to use one of the many other verified versions:
“If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living.”
Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, with Bill Moyers
“Follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.”
Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, with Bill Moyers
“But each incarnation, you might say, has a potentiality, and the mission of life is to live that potentiality. How do you do it? My answer is, “Follow your bliss.” There’s something inside you that knows when you’re in the center, that knows when you’re on the beam or off the beam. And if you get off the beam to earn money, you’ve lost your life. And if you stay in the center and don’t get any money, you still have your bliss.”
Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth, with Bill Moyers
“How do you find the divine power in yourself? The word enthusiasm means ‘filled with a god.’ So what makes you enthusiastic? Follow it.
That’s been my advice to young people who ask me, ‘What shall I do?’ I taught once in a boys’ prep school. That’s the moment for young boys (or it used to be; I don’t know what’s going on now) when they had to decide their life courses. You know, where are they going? And they’re caught with excitement. This one wants to study art, this one poetry, this one anthropology. But Dad says study law; that’s where the money is. Okay, that’s the decision. And you know what my answer would be—where your enthusiasm is. So I have a little word: ‘Follow your bliss.’ The bliss is the message of God to yourself. That’s where your life is.
From Understanding Mythology: an interview of Joseph Campbell by Jeffrey Mishlove.”
