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Slaying One's Father
Bill Moyers conducted an interesting interview with George Lucas entitled "The Mythology Of Star Wars" that is now available on Youtube. In episode two of the interview at the 3:19 mark, Bill Moyers said "I disagree with our friend Joseph Campbell who said, 'The young man must slay his father to become an adult.'" Bill Moyers then offered the opinion that "the young man must learn he is his father to become an adult." George didn't have much of a response and the issue was left hanging in the interview.
The following are some thoughts on the topic. The central mystical issue is never the young man becoming an adult but, rather, the young man's journey home (the "hero's journey", as Joseph Campbell famously put it). The outer form of all great myths start with the young man in his homeland. He is then reluctantly sent to a mysterious and dangerous foreign land where he forgets his royal heritage, is reminded of his quest by a heavenly messenger, goes into a cave, slays a monster, and finally returns home in glory. What does it all mean and where does one's father fit into this mythic archetype?
I previously gave a few thoughts on what it all means here. In short, the hero's journey is an inner spiritual journey. The foreign land is our material world here on earth. The hero's home and ultimate destination is the spiritual world from which we all came. The hero's journey home requires him to first learn that his material self is an illusion. That his true self, his spiritual self, dwells within. However, a monster stands in the way of the hero's attainment of this enlightenment. The monster is the ego that also lurks inside each of us. We must enter the cave (the dark inner recesses of our own being) and slay the ego, which is the meaning behind all true mythic monster slayings. What happens if the hero fails to slay the dragon (i.e., the ego)? Well, he doesn't get to go home. Instead, he is given a ticket back to the material world to start the journey all over again as a new born child. In this case, the hero becomes trapped in a repetitive cycle ala Prometheus (eagles pecks his liver out each day and it grows back each night to start the process over again) or Sisyphus (rolls a bolder up a hill and each time he gets it just about over the top, the bolder rolls back down to the bottom and he must start anew from the beginning).
Which brings us to the relationship with our earthly father. The earthly father, by definition, is ignorant of the royal mission given to the hero. No one who enters through the straight gate and walks the spiritual path toward our spiritual home has children.1/ It is a completely celibate quest. The goal is to break all attachments to the material world and children / family are completely incompatible with this arduous task. In this sense, our earthly father and mother are a hindrance to the spiritual quest. Our earthly parents try to teach us how to be successful in this world, not escape from it. Their goal is to raise us up to have our own children and perpetuate the cycle (i.e., become Prometheus and Sisyphus, and train our children to do the same). This is a harsh concept that I struggled with for quite some time before coming to terms with it. Having been raised Catholic, I'm most comfortable grappling with these subjects through the prism of Christianity. In this regard, the Gospel of Thomas (part of the Nag Hammadi library) is my primary source scripture. Saying 56 reads thusly,
Jesus said, "Whoever does not hate his father and his mother cannot become a disciple to me. And whoever does not hate his brothers and sisters and take up his cross in my way will not be worthy of me."
I see no other way to make sense of this saying of Jesus other than by placing it in context of the hero's journey home (or as Jesus put it, the return of the prodigal son). 2/
Continuing with the Christian imagery of Jesus' parable of the prodigal son, the hero's father resides in heaven. Jesus often spoke of his father in heaven. I suggest each of us has two fathers, in a sense. There is an earthly father who helped bring into being our earthly body which houses (imprisons) our spiritual being. Also, we each have a father in heaven. That heavenly father is one in the same for every human being (i.e., there is only one father, one source for all life on earth). The goal is to return home to our heavenly father. But this cannot be achieved without attaining the knowledge (gnosis) that each of us and the father are one. Jesus said, "I and the Father are one." John 10:30. Each of us are one with the father, we just don't fully understand it and that is why we are trapped on earth.
So, in my view, Mr. Moyers' statement is correct. The hero must come to realize that he is his father ... his heavenly father. To do that, the hero must destroy all earthly attachments including to his earthly father and mother. Slaying the dragon is never easy.
JJR
10-5-2011
1/ Saying "No one who enters through the straight gate ... has children" is, like most absolutisms, not entirely true. There are celebate monks / priests (or priestesses) of various religions who became parents at a younger age then later "passed from death to life". John 5:24.
2/ Compare NT: "Jesus said, 'Truly I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or farms, for My sake and for the gospel's sake, but that he will receive a hundred times as much now in the present age.'" Mark 10:29-30.
Compare further Philo's description of the Therapeutae: The Therapeutae "abandon their property without being influenced by any predominant attraction, they flee without even turning their heads back again, deserting their brethren, their children, their wives, their parents, their numerous families, their affectionate bands of companions, their native lands ... [a]nd they depart, not to another city, ... but they take up their abode outside of walls, or gardens, or solitary lands, seeking for a desert place, not because any ill-natured misanthropy to which they have learnt to devote themselves, but because of the associations with people of wholly dissimilar dispositions to which they would otherwise be compelled, and which they know to be unprofitable and mischievous." Philo, On The Contemplative Life § 20, emphasis added.
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