TRANSCEND

I have been revisiting Joseph Campbell, (1904 - 1987). Imagine a guy who spends a lifetime creating a Lincoln Log/Lego model of Chicago, built to scale, nothing left out? What Campbell did was the equivalent except his pieces and parts came from myth and mythology, from the abstract, mysterious, incomprehensible experience of (BEING). This transcendent reality cannot be captured directly in words or images. It can only be experienced and it changes over time as culture and civilization evolve. Transcend or transcendence: a mouthful, difficult for simple people like me to understand or come to terms with. A change is necessary but the change itself has to surpass the earlier meaning set. If one’s performance today transcends yesterday’s it must be better, faster, bigger, etc. than it was before. A transcendent (all inclusive) reality would have to be greater than it had ever been.

At 82, a year before he died, Campbell made the clear distinction: God is a metaphor for a mysterious experience that cannot be understood but transcends (elevates) one’s reality. He goes on; It depends on what you think. If that mysterious experience transcends your reality then the metaphor becomes real rather than a coded word for the incomprehensible and the person is a Theist (believer in a real God, not a metaphor). On the other hand, if your mysterious experience does not transcend (elevate) your reality then God is just another myth, metaphor to describe the indescribable. Nothing has been elevated and Atheist is the label for nonbelievers. 

J.C., the one who died and stayed dead (was not transformed) was not a god and we don’t need a metaphor to comprehend a parallel reality. He was just a man of extremely keen insight and long term curiosity, a researcher and writer. My little dip into his accumulated knowledge vault is nothing more than that. I came here out of my own need as I’ve always maintained, I write as much to understand as to be understood. I have a long way to transcend before I can carry on a credible conversation on myth, mythology, human nature, god metaphors, etc. But I’m working on it.