#456: The Power of Myth — The Hero’s Adventure with Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers

The Power of Myth — The Hero’s Adventure with Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers | Brought to you by How to Lead: Wisdom from the World's Greatest CEOs, Founders, and Game Changers https://www.amazon.com/How-Lead-Greatest-Founders-Changers/dp/1982132159/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ll1&tag=offsitoftimfe-20&linkId=182d6e09391b416b08288a7bae52dcea&language=en_US by David M. Rubenstein Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, http://tim.blog/podcast where it is normally my job to interview and deconstruct world-class performers of all different types. This episode flips the script, but you get a masterful interview in the process. and it features the first program or chapter—titled “The Hero's Adventure”—of the six-part series The Power of Myth. https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Power-of-Myth-Programs-1-6-Audiobook/B002V59WREThe series is simply incredible, and I found it oddly and profoundly calming. Here is a short description: “Forty years ago, renowned scholar Joseph Campbell sat down with veteran journalist Bill Moyers for a series of interviews that became one of the most enduringly popular programs ever on PBS. In dialogues that adroitly span millennia of history and far-flung geography, the two men discuss myths as metaphors for human experience and the path to transcendence.” You can listen to the full series on Audible https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Power-of-Myth-Programs-1-6-Audiobook/B002V59WRE. It has an average of 4.7 out of 5 stars with nearly 4,000 ratings. I highly recommend that you check it out. You won’t be disappointed. Please enjoy! This episode is brought to you by the book How to Lead https://www.amazon.com/How-Lead-Greatest-Founders-Changers/dp/1982132159/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ll1&tag=offsitoftimfe-20&linkId=182d6e09391b416b08288a7bae52dcea&language=en_USby David Rubenstein. David Rubenstein is one of the visionary founders of The Carlyle Group and host of The David Rubenstein Show, where he speaks to leaders from every walk of life about who they are, how they define "success," and what it means to lead. Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Phil Knight, Oprah — all of them and more — are featured in his new book, titled How to Lead https://www.amazon.com/How-Lead-Greatest-Founders-Changers/dp/1982132159/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ll1&tag=offsitoftimfe-20&linkId=182d6e09391b416b08288a7bae52dcea&language=en_US. This comprehensive leadership playbook illustrates the principles and guiding philosophies of the world’s greatest game-changers. In its pages, you can discover the experts’ secrets to being effective and innovative leaders. Past podcast guest Walter Isaacson had this to say: "Reading this invaluable trove of advice from the greatest leaders of our time is like sitting in an armchair and listening to the masters reveal their secrets.” Pick up a copy of How to Lead: Wisdom from the World’s Greatest CEOs, Founders, and Game Changers https://www.amazon.com/How-Lead-Greatest-Founders-Changers/dp/1982132159/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&linkCode=ll1&tag=offsitoftimfe-20&linkId=182d6e09391b416b08288a7bae52dcea&language=en_US by David Rubinstein in hardcover, ebook, or audio anywhere books are sold. *** If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-tim-ferriss-show/id863897795?mt=2/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. 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Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Can I ask you a personal question?

• 0:08Speaker 02

  Now is an inappropriate time.

• 0:12Speaker 01

  I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton.

• 0:24Tim Ferriss?

  Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs, lemurs and squirrels. This is Tim Ferriss and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is normally my job to interview and deconstruct world-class performers of all different types. This episode flips the script, but you get an absolutely masterful interview in the process. So I'm cheating, I suppose. It features the first program, or chapter, titled "The Hero's Adventure", of the six-part series "The Power of Myth", which I recently digested. I'm gonna be listening to it again in full. The series is just incredible. I found it oddly and profoundly calming, and I really wanted to share the first program with you.

• 1:06Tim Ferriss?

  So I reached out to many different people and had to figure out rights and get it all sorted out and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. End of the day, was able to get this for you. Here's the short description and why I'm so excited about it. Forty years ago, renowned scholar Joseph Campbell, you might know that name because George Lucas consulted with Joseph Campbell on writing the original Star Wars, sat down with veteran journalist Bill Moyers for a series of interviews that became one of the most enduringly popular programs ever on PBS. In dialogues that adroitly span millennia of history and far-flung geography, the two men discuss myths as metaphors for human experience and the path to transcendence. You can listen to the full series on Audible.

• 1:49Tim Ferriss?

  Simply search for "The Power of Myth" and it will pop right up. It has an average of 4.7 stars out of 5 with nearly 4,000 ratings. It's outstanding. I highly recommend you check it out. You will not be disappointed. And in the meantime, here's a taste test. Please enjoy the first program, "The Hero's Adventure", and without further ado, here are Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers.

• 2:16Speaker 04

  Program One: The Hero's Adventure.

• 2:59Speaker 05

  I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted. Every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the gold the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

• 3:22Speaker 02

  We have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heroes of all time have gone before us.

• 3:31Speaker 02

  The labyrinth is thoroughly known.

• 3:36Speaker 02

  We have only to follow the thread of the hero path.

• 3:41Speaker 02

  And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god.

• 3:48Speaker 02

  And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves.

• 3:53Speaker 02

  Where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence.

• 4:00Speaker 02

  And where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.

• 4:14Speaker 04

  Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth with Bill Moyers. The Hero's Adventure.

• 4:38Speaker 06

  Joseph Campbell believed that everything begins with a story. So we begin this series with Joseph Campbell with one of his favorites. He was in Japan for a conference on religion, and he overheard another American delegate, a social philosopher from New York, say to a Shinto priest, "We've been now to a good many ceremonies and have seen quite a few of your shrines, but I don't get your ideology. I don't get your theology." The Japanese paused as though in deep thought, and then slowly shook his head. "I think we don't have ideology," he said. "We don't have theology. We dance." Campbell could have said it of his own life. When he died in 1987 at the age of 83, he was considered one of the world's foremost authorities on mythology,

• 5:22Speaker 06

  the stories and legends told by human beings through the ages to explain the universe and their place in it. The 20 books he wrote or edited have influenced artists and performers, as well as scholars and students. When he died, he was working on a monumental historical atlas of world mythology, his effort to bring under one roof the spiritual and intellectual wisdom of a lifetime. Some of his books are classics: "The Hero with a Thousand Faces," which established his fame 40 years ago, and his four-volume study of mythology, "The Masks of God." Joseph Campbell was one of the most spiritual men I ever met, but he didn't have an ideology or a theology. Mythology was to him the song of the universe,

• 6:05Speaker 06

  music so deeply embedded in our collective unconscious that we dance to it even when we can't name the tune. Over the last two summers of his life, we taped these conversations in California at Skywalker Ranch, the home of his friend George Lucas, whose movie trilogy Star Wars had been influenced by Campbell's work. We talked about the message and meaning of myth, about the first storytellers, about love and marriage, gods and goddesses, religion, ritual, art, and psychology. But we always came around to his favorite subject, "The Hero with a Thousand Faces."

• 6:45Speaker 06

  Why the hero with a thousand faces?

• 6:50Speaker 02

  Well, because there is a certain typical hero sequence of actions, which can be detected in stories from all over the world and from many, many periods of history. And I think it's essentially, you might say, the one deed done by many, many different people.

• 7:16Speaker 06

  Why are there so many stories of the hero or of heroes in mythology?

• 7:23Speaker 02

  Well, because that's what's worth writing about. I mean, even in popular novel writing, you see, the main character is a hero or a heroine. That is to say, someone who has found or achieved or done something beyond the normal range of achievement and experience. A hero properly is someone who has given his life to something bigger than himself or other than himself.

• 7:54Speaker 06

  So in all of these cultures, whatever the costume the hero might be wearing, what is the deed?

• 8:01Speaker 02

  Well, there are two types of deed. One is the physical deed, the hero who has performed a war act or a physical act of heroism, saving a life. That's a hero act. Giving himself, sacrificing himself to another. And the other kind is the spiritual hero who has learned or found a mode of experiencing the supernormal range of human spiritual life and then come back and communicated it. It's a cycle. It's a going and a return that the hero cycle represents.

• 8:46Speaker 02

  But then, this can be seen also in the simple initiation ritual, where a child has to give up his childhood and become an adult, has to die, you might say, to his infantile personality and psyche and come back as a self-responsible adult.

• 9:06Speaker 02

  It's a fundamental experience that everyone has to undergo. We're in our childhood for at least fourteen years. And then to get out of that posture of dependency, psychological dependency, into one of psychological self-responsibility requires a death and resurrection. And that is the basic motif of the hero journey. Leaving one condition, finding the source of life to bring you forth in a richer or more mature or other condition.

• 9:43Speaker 06

  So that if we happen not to be heroes in the grand sense of redeeming society, we have to take that journey ourselves, spiritually, psychologically, inside us.

• 9:55Speaker 02

  That's right. And Otto Rahnk, in his wonderful, very short book called "The Myth of the Birth of the Hero", he says that everyone is a hero in his birth. He has undergone a tremendous transformation from a little, you might say, water creature living in a realm of the amniotic fluid and so forth, and then coming out, becoming an air-breathing mammal that ultimately will be self-standing and so forth. This enormous transformation, and it is a heroic act. It's a heroic act on the mother's part to bring it about. That's the primary hero, hero form, you might say.

• 10:37Speaker 06

  Still a journey to be taken after that.

• 10:39Speaker 02

  There's a big one to be taken.

• 10:41Speaker 06

  And that journey is not consciously undertaken. Do heroes go out on their own initiative?

• 10:47Speaker 02

  Well, they're both kinds. A very common one that appears in Celtic myths of someone who has followed the lure of a deer or animal that he has been following, and then carries him into a range of forest and landscape that he's never been in before. And then the... The animal will undergo a transformation, become the queen of the fairy hills, or something like that. That is one of not knowing what you're doing, you suddenly find yourself in full career of an adventure. There's another one where one sets out responsibly and intentionally to perform the deed. For instance, when Ulysses son, Telemachus, was called by Atheni, "Go find your father."

• 11:32Speaker 02

  That father quest is a major hero adventure for young people. That is the adventure of finding what your career is, what your nature is, what your source is. He undertakes that intentionally. Then there's one into which you are thrown and pitched. For instance, being drafted into the army. You didn't intend it, they're in. You're in another transformation. You've undergone a death and resurrection, you put on a uniform, you're another creature.

• 12:09Speaker 06

  So does the heroism have a moral objective?

• 12:13Speaker 02

  The moral objective is that of saving a people, or saving a person, or saving an idea. He is sacrificing himself for something, that's the morality of it.

• 12:25Speaker 02

  Now you, from another position, might say that something was something that should not have been realized, you know. That's judgment from another side. But it doesn't destroy the heroism of what was done, absolutely not.

• 12:38Speaker 06

  Well, that's a different angle on heroes than I got when I was reading, as a young boy, the story of Prometheus going after the fire and bringing it back and benefiting humanity and suffering for it.

• 12:52Speaker 02

  I mean Prometheus brings fire to mankind and consequently civilization. That's, by the way, a universal theme.

• 13:00Speaker 06

  What is?

• 13:01Speaker 02

  The hero, the fire theft theme with a, usually with a relay race after it. Often it's a blue jay, or a woodpecker, or something like this, that steals the fire and then passes it on to something else and something else, one animal after another. And they're burned by the fires as they're carrying it on, and that accounts for the different colorings of animals and so forth. It's a worldwideness, the fire theft.

• 13:30Speaker 06

  Do these stories of the hero vary from culture to culture?

• 13:35Speaker 02

  Well, it's the degree of the illumination that, or action, that makes him different. There is a typical early culture hero who goes around slaying monsters. Now, that is in the period of history when man is shaping his world out of a wild, savage, unshaped world. Well, it has another shape, but it's not the shape for man. He goes around killing monsters.

• 14:04Speaker 06

  So the hero evolves over time, like most other concepts and ideas and...

• 14:09Speaker 02

  Well, he evolves as the culture evolves. Now, Moses is a hero figure. In his ascent of the mountain, his meeting with Yahweh on the summit of the mountain, and coming back with the rules for the formation of a whole new society. That's the hero act: departure, fulfillment, return. And on the way, there are adventures that can be parallel also in other traditions. Now, the Buddha figure, it's like that of Christ. Of course, 500 years earlier, you could match those two traditions right down the line,

• 14:52Speaker 02

  even to the characters of their apostles or their monks. Christ, now there's a perfectly good hero deed formula represented there. And he undergoes three temptations. The economic temptation, where the devil says, "You look hungry, young man. Change the stones to bread." Jesus said, "Man lives not by bread alone, but every word from the mouth of God." Next, we have the political temptation. He's taken to the top of a mountain and shown the nations of the world. And says, "You can come into control of all these if you'll bow to me." And then, "Now, you're so spiritual.

• 15:36Speaker 02

  Let's go up to the top of Herod's temple and see you cast yourself down, and God will bear you up, and you won't even bruise your heels." So he says, "You shall not tempt the Lord your God." Those are the three temptations of Christ in the desert.

• 15:55Speaker 02

  The Buddha also goes into the forest, has conferences with the leading gurus of the day, and goes past them. Comes to the Bodhi tree, the tree of illumination, undergoes three temptations. They're not the same temptations, but they are three temptations. And one is that of lust, another is that of fear, and another is that of social duty, doing what you're told. And then both of these men come back, and they choose disciples who help them establish a new way of consciousness in terms of what they have discovered there.

• 16:38Speaker 02

  These are the same hero deeds. These are the spiritual hero deeds: Moses, the Buddha, Christ, Muhammad. Muhammad, literally, and we know this about him. He was a camel caravan master. But he would leave his home and go out into a little mountain cave that he found, and meditate, and meditate, and meditate, and meditate. And one day, a voice says, "Write", and we have the Quran, you know? It's an old story.

• 17:13Speaker 06

  Sometimes it seems to me that we ought to feel pity for the hero instead of admiration. So many of them have sacrificed their own needs.

• 17:23Speaker 02

  They all have.

• 17:24Speaker 06

  And very often, what they accomplish is shattered by the inability of the followers to see.

• 17:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. You come out of the forest with gold, and it turns to ashes. That's another motif, that a curse.

• 17:38Speaker 06

  In this culture of easy religion, cheaply achieved, it seems to me we've forgotten that all three of the great religions teach that the trials of the hero journey are a significant part of it, that there's no reward without renunciation and without a price. The Quran speaks, "Do you think that you shall enter the garden of bliss without such trials as come to those who passed before you?"

• 18:04Speaker 02

  Well, if you realize what the real problem is, and that is of losing, primarily thinking about yourself and your own self-protection, losing yourself, giving yourself to another. That's... That's a trial in itself, is it not? There's a big transformation of consciousness that's concerned. And what all the myths have to deal with is transformation of consciousness. That you're thinking in this way, and you have now to think in that way.

• 18:39Speaker 06

  Well, how is the consciousness transformed?

• 18:42Speaker 02

  By the trials.

• 18:44Speaker 06

  The tests that they hear on the go.

• 18:46Speaker 02

  Tests or certain illuminating revelations. Trials and revelations are what it's all about.

• 18:51Speaker 06

  Who in society today is making any heroic myth at all for us? Do movies do this? Do movies create heroic myths?

• 18:58Speaker 02

  I don't know. Now, my experience of movies, I mean, the significant experience I had of movies was when I was a boy, and they were all really movies. They weren't talkies, they were black and white movies. And I had a hero figure who meant something to me, and he served as a kind of model for myself in my physical character, and that was Douglas Fairbanks. I wanted to be a synthesis of Douglas Fairbanks and Leonardo da Vinci. That was my idea. But those were models, were roles, that came to me.

• 19:40Speaker 06

  Does a movie like Star Wars fill some of that need for the spiritual adventure, for the hero?

• 19:46Speaker 02

  Oh, it's perfect. It does the cycle perfectly. It's not simple morality play. It has to do with the powers of life and their inflection through the action of man. One of the wonderful things I think about this adventure into space is that the narrator, the artist, the one thinking up the story, is in a field that is not covered by our own knowledges, you know? Though it's... Much of the adventure in the old stories is where they go into regions that no one's been in before. Well, we've now conquered the planet, so there are no empty spaces

• 20:30Speaker 02

  for the imagination to go forth and fight its own war, you know, with the powers. And that was the first thing I felt there. There's a whole new realm for the imagination to open out and live its forms.

• 20:46Speaker 06

  Do you, when you look at something like Star Wars, recognize some of the themes of the hero-throughout mythology?

• 20:55Speaker 02

  Well, I think that George Lucas was using standard mythological figures.

• 21:03Speaker 02

  The old man as the advisor. Well, specifically, what he made me think of is the Japanese sword master.

• 21:13Speaker 07

  Remember, a Jedi can feel the Force flowing through him.

• 21:17Speaker 02

  I've known some of those people, and this man has a bit of their character.

• 21:22Speaker 06

  Well, there's something mythological too, isn't there? In the sense that the hero is helped by this stranger who shows up and gives him some instrument, a sword or a sheaf of blood, shaft of blood.

• 21:31Speaker 02

  He gives him not only a physical instrument, but a psychological commitment and a psychological center.

• 21:38Speaker 07

  This time, let go of your conscious self.

• 21:43Speaker 07

  And act on instinct.

• 21:45Speaker 02

  Well, he had him exercising with that strange weapon. And then pulled the mask over. That's real Japanese stuff.

• 21:59Speaker 06

  When I took our two sons to see it, they did the same thing the audience did at that moment when the voice of Ben Kenobi says to Luke Skywalker in the climactic moment. Use the Force, Luke.

• 22:17Speaker 06

  Let go, Luke. The audience broke out into...

• 22:21Speaker 02

  They did.

• 22:22Speaker 06

  ...elation and to applaud.

• 22:23Speaker 02

  Well, you see, this thing communicates. It is in a language that is talking to young people today. And that's marvelous.

• 22:37Speaker 06

  So the hero goes for something. He doesn't just go along for the ride. He's not a mere adventurer.

• 22:43Speaker 02

  Well, a serendipitous adventure can take place also.

• 22:49Speaker 02

  You know what the word serendipity comes from? Comes from the Sanskrit, serendipah, the aisle of silk, which was formerly the name of Cilan. And it's a story about a family that's just rambling on its way to Cilan, and all these adventures take place. So you can have the serendipitous adventure as well.

• 23:12Speaker 06

  Is the adventurer who takes that kind of trip a hero in the mythological?

• 23:17Speaker 02

  He is ready for it. This is a very interesting thing about these mythological themes. The achievement of the hero is one that he is ready for, and it's really a manifestation of his character. And it's amusing the way in which the landscape and the conditions of the environment match the readiness of the hero. The adventure that he's ready for is the one that he gets.

• 23:44Speaker 08

  Look, I ain't in this for your revolution, and I'm not in it for you, princess. I expect to be well-paid.

• 23:49Speaker 06

  The mercenary, Solo, begins as a mercenary and ends up as a hero.

• 23:56Speaker 02

  He was a very practical guy, a materialist in his character, at least as he thought of himself. But he was a compassionate human being at the same time, and didn't know it.

• 24:12Speaker 02

  The adventure evoked a quality of his character that he hadn't known he possessed.

• 24:19Speaker 09

  I love you.

• 24:23Speaker 02

  He thinks he's an egoist. He really isn't. And that's a very lovable kind of human being, I think. And there are lots of them functioning beautifully in the world. They think they're working for themselves, very practical and all, but no, there's something else pushing them.

• 24:46Speaker 06

  What did you think about the scene in the bar?

• 24:48Speaker 02

  That's my favorite, not only in this piece, but of many, many pieces I've ever seen. Well, where you are is on the edge. You're about to embark into the outlying spaces.

• 25:02Speaker 06

  The real adventure up there.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  A real adventure. This is the jumping off place. And there is where you meet people who've been out there. And they run the machines that go out there, and you haven't been there. It reminds me a little bit in Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island. The atmosphere before you start off the adventure. You're in a seaport, and there's old salt seamen who've been on the sea. And that's their world. And these are the space people also.

• 25:35Speaker 06

  I got a bad feeling about this.

• 25:43Speaker 09

  The walls! Don't just stand there, try and brace it with something!

• 25:46Speaker 06

  But my favorite scene was when they were in the garbage compactor. And the walls were closing in, and I thought, "That's like the belly of the whale that Joe..."

• 25:54Speaker 02

  That's what it is, yeah, that's where they were. They were down in the belly of the whale.

• 25:59Speaker 06

  What's the mythological significance of the belly?

• 26:01Speaker 02

  It's the descent into the dark. Jonah in the whale, I mean, that's a standard motif of going into the whale's belly and coming out again.

• 26:11Speaker 06

  Why must the hero do that?

• 26:13Speaker 02

  The whale represents the personification, you might say, of all that is in the unconscious.

• 26:22Speaker 02

  It's like, in reading these things psychologically, water is the unconscious. The creature in the water would be the dynamism of the unconscious, which is dangerous and powerful, and has to be controlled by consciousness. The first stage in the hero adventure, when he starts off on adventure, is leaving the realm of light, which he controls and knows about, and moving toward the threshold. And it's at the threshold that the monster of the abyss comes to meet him. And then there are two or three results. One, the hero is cut to pieces and descends into the abyss.

• 27:08Speaker 02

  In fragments to be resurrected, or he may kill the dragon power, as Siegfried does when he kills the dragon. But then he tastes the dragon blood. That's say he has to assimilate that power. And when Siegfried has killed the dragon and tasted the blood, he hears the song of nature. He has transcended his humanity, you know, and re-associated himself with the powers of nature, which are the powers of our of our life, from which our mind removes us. You see, this thing up here, this consciousness thinks it's running the shop. It's a secondary organ.

• 27:50Speaker 02

  It's a secondary organ of a of a total human being, and it must not put itself in control. It must submit and serve the humanity of the body.

• 28:03Speaker 10

  Join me, and I will complete your training.

• 28:07Speaker 02

  When it does put itself in control, you get this fodder, the man who's going over, to the intellectual side.

• 28:15Speaker 10

  I'll never join you, if you only knew the power of the dark side.

• 28:22Speaker 02

  He isn't thinking in our living in terms of humanity. He's living in terms of a system. And this is the threat to our lives. We all face it. We all operate in our society in relation to a system.

• 28:38Speaker 02

  Now, is the system going to eat you up and relieve you of your humanity? Or are you going to be able to use the system to human purposes?

• 28:51Speaker 06

  Would the hero with a thousand faces help us to answer that question about how to change the system so that we are not serving it?

• 29:00Speaker 02

  I don't think it would help you to change the system, but it would help you to live in the system as a human being.

• 29:08Speaker 06

  By doing what?

• 29:09Speaker 02

  Well, like Luke Skywalker, not going over, but resisting its its impersonal claims.

• 29:19Speaker 06

  But I can hear someone out there in the audience saying, "Well, that's all well and good for the imagination of a George Lucas or for the scholarship of a Joseph Campbell, but that doesn't, isn't what happens in my life."

• 29:29Speaker 02

  You bet it does.

• 29:32Speaker 02

  If the person doesn't listen to the demands of his own spiritual and heart life and insists on a certain program, you're going to have a schizophrenic crack up. The person has put himself off-center. He has aligned himself with a programmatic life and it's not the one the body's interested in at all. And the world's full of people who have stopped listening to themselves. In my own life, I've had many opportunities to commit myself to a system and to go with it and to obey its requirements.

• 30:15Speaker 02

  My life has been that of a maverick. I would not submit.

• 30:23Tim Ferriss?

  Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors and we'll be right back to the show. This episode is brought to you by the book How to Lead by David Rubenstein. David Rubenstein is one of the visionary founders of the Carlyle Group and host of the David Rubenstein Show where he speaks to leaders from every walk of life about who they are, how they define success and what it means to lead. Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Phil Knight, Oprah, all of them and more are featured in his new book titled How to Lead. This comprehensive leadership playbook illustrates the principles and guiding philosophies of the world's greatest game changers. In this book's pages, you can discover the expert secrets to being effective and innovative leaders. Past podcast guest Walter Isaacson

• 31:06Tim Ferriss?

  has this to say, quote, "Reading this invaluable trove of advice from the greatest leaders of our time is like sitting in an armchair and listening to the masters reveal their secrets." Pick up a copy of How to Lead, subtitle Wisdom from the World's Greatest CEOs, Founders, and Game Changers by David Rubenstein in hardcover, ebook, or audio, anywhere books are sold.

• 31:28Speaker 06

  You really believe that the creative spirit ranges on its own out there beyond the boundaries?

• 31:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I do.

• 31:35Speaker 06

  Something of a hero in that. I don't mean to suggest that you see yourself as a hero.

• 31:39Speaker 02

  No, I don't, but I see myself as a maverick.

• 31:43Speaker 06

  So perhaps the hero lurks in each one of us when we don't know it.

• 31:46Speaker 02

  Well, yes. I mean, our life evokes our character, and you find out more about yourself as you go on. And it's very nice to be able to put yourself in situations that will evoke your higher nature rather than your lower.

• 31:59Speaker 06

  Give me an example.

• 32:01Speaker 02

  I can give you a story. I'm dealing with an Iroquois story right now. There's a motif that comes in American Indian stories very often. What I call "The Refusal of Suitors."

• 32:17Speaker 02

  A girl with her mother lived in a wigwam on the edge of the village. She was a very handsome girl, but extremely proud, and would not accept any of the boys. They proposed to her through the mother, and the mother was terribly annoyed with them. Well, one day, they're out collecting wood, and they have gone a long way from the village. And while they are collecting the wood, a terrific darkness comes over them. Now, this wasn't the darkness of night descending. When you have a darkness like that, there's some magician at work somewhere.

• 32:55Speaker 02

  So the mother says, "Well, let's gather some bark and make a little wigwam, a bark wigwam for ourselves, and collect wood for a fire, and we'll just spend the night here." So they do that, and the mother falls asleep. And the girl looks, and there's this magnificent guy standing there with a wampum sash glorious and feathers and all this kind of black feathers. He says, "I've come to marry you, and I'll await your reply." She accepts the guy, and the mother accepts the man. And he gives the mother the wampum belt to prove that he's serious about all this.

• 33:38Speaker 02

  So he goes away with the girl. She has acquiesced.

• 33:44Speaker 02

  "Mere human beings weren't good enough for her, but here's something that really... Ah!" So she's in another domain.

• 33:52Speaker 02

  Now the adventure is marvelous. She goes with him to his village. And they enter his lodge. The people in there greet her and she feels very comfortable about it and all. And then the next day, he says, "I'm going off to hunt." So he leaves the lodge and the door is closed with a flap. There's a flap. When he closes the flap, she hears a strange sound. So there's the whole day and she's just in the hut. And this evening comes, she hears that strange sound again. And the door flap is flung off. And in comes this prodigious serpent with his tongue darting.

• 34:35Speaker 02

  And he puts his head in her lap and says, "Now you must search my head for lice," and things like that. She finds all kinds of horrible things there, kills them all. And then he withdraws. And in a moment, after the gate door has been closed, it opens again. And in he comes, the same beautiful young man again. And said, "Were you afraid of me when I came in just now?" Look, she says, she wasn't at all afraid. Next day, he goes off to hunt. And then she leaves the lodge to gather wood. And the first thing she sees is an enormous serpent basking on the rocks.

• 35:18Speaker 02

  And then another, and then another. Then she begins to feel very badly, very homesick and discouraged. Then the evening, the serpent, and then the man again. The third day, when he leaves, she decides she's going to try to get out of this place. So she goes out and she's standing in the woods thinking. And a voice speaks to her. And she turns and there's a little old man there. And he says, "Darling, you are in trouble. The man that you've married is one of seven brothers. They are great magicians. And like many people of this kind, their hearts are not in their bodies.

• 36:03Speaker 02

  There is a collection of seven hearts in a bag that is hidden under the bed of the eldest to whom you are married. You must go get that and then we'll deal with the next part of the adventure." She goes in and finds a bag of hearts and is running out and a voice calls after her, "Stop, stop!" It's the voice of the magician. And she continues to run. He says, "You may think you can get away from me, but you never can." And just at that point, she hears the voice of the old man. He says, "I'll help you, dear." And he's pulling her out of the water. She didn't even know that she was in water.

• 36:43Speaker 06

  What does that say to you?

• 36:45Speaker 02

  That's to say, you have moved out of the hard land, the solid earth, and are in the field of the unconscious. And she had pulled herself into the transcendent realm and got caught in the negative powers of the abyss. And she's being rescued now by the upper powers. What you have done has been to elevate yourself out of the local field and put yourself in a field of higher power, higher danger. And are you going to be able to handle it? If you are not eligible for this place into which you put yourself, it's going to be a demon marriage. It's going to be a real mess.

• 37:29Speaker 02

  If you are eligible, it can be a glory that will give you a life that is yours in your own way.

• 37:38Speaker 06

  So these stories of mythology are simply trying to express a truth that can't be grasped any other way?

• 37:47Speaker 02

  It's the edge, the interface between what can be known and what is never to be discovered because it is a mystery transcendent of all human research. The source of life. What is it? No one knows.

• 38:04Speaker 06

  Why are stories important for getting at that?

• 38:06Speaker 02

  Well, I think it's important to live life with a knowledge of its mystery and of your own mystery. And it gives life a new...

• 38:18Speaker 02

  zest, a new balance, a new harmony to do this. I mean, therapy and psychological therapy, when people find out what it is that's ticking in them, they get straightened out. And what is it that life is? I find thinking in mythological terms has helped people.

• 38:42Speaker 02

  Visibly, you can see it happen.

• 38:44Speaker 06

  How? What does it do?

• 38:46Speaker 02

  It erases anxieties. It puts them in accord with the inevitables of their life.

• 38:58Speaker 02

  And they can see the positive values of what are the negative aspects of what is positive.

• 39:10Speaker 02

  It's whether you're going to say no to the serpent or yes to the serpent, as easy as that.

• 39:17Speaker 06

  No to the adventure?

• 39:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, the adventure of being alive, of living.

• 39:24Speaker 06

  When I was growing up, tales of King Arthur, tales of the medieval knights, tales of the dragon slayers were very strong in my world.

• 39:33Speaker 02

  Dragons represent greed, really.

• 39:38Speaker 02

  The European dragon guards things in his cave, and what he guards are heaps of gold and virgins. And he can't make use of either of them, but he just guards. There's no vitality of experience, either of the value of the gold or of the female whom he's guarding there.

• 40:02Speaker 02

  Psychologically, the dragon is one's own binding of oneself to one's ego, and you're captured in your own dragon cage. And the problem with the psychiatrist is to...

• 40:16Speaker 02

  Break that dragon, open him up, so that you can have a larger field of relationships. Jung had a patient come to him who felt alone. And she drew a picture of herself as caught in the rocks. From the waist down, she was bound in rocks. And this was on a windy shore, and the wind blowing and her hair blowing. And all the gold, which is the sign of the vitality of life, was locked in the rocks. And the next picture that he had her draw had followed something he had said to her.

• 40:58Speaker 02

  Suddenly, a lightning flash hit the rocks, and the gold came pouring out. And then she found reflected on rocks round about the gold. And there was no more gold in the rocks. It was all available on the top. And in the conferences that followed, those patches of gold were identified.

• 41:25Speaker 02

  They were her friends. She wasn't alone. But she had locked herself in her own little room and life. But she had friends. Do you see what I'm meaning? This is killing a dragon. And you have fears and things. This is the dragon. That's exactly what that's all about. At least, the European dragon. Chinese dragon is different.

• 41:51Speaker 06

  What is it?

• 41:52Speaker 02

  It represents the vitality of the swamps. And the dragon comes out beating his belly and saying, "Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha." You know? That's another kind of dragon. And he's the one that yields the bounty and the waters and all that kind of thing. He's the great glorious thing. But this is the negative one that cuts you off.

• 42:13Speaker 06

  So what you're saying is if there are not dragons out there, and there may not be at any point in the world...

• 42:17Speaker 02

  The real dragon is in you.

• 42:19Speaker 06

  And what is that real dragon?

• 42:20Speaker 02

  That's your ego holding you in.

• 42:23Speaker 06

  What's my ego?

• 42:25Speaker 02

  What I want, what I believe, what I can do, what I think I love, and all that. What I regard as the aim of my life and so forth. It might be too small. It might be that which pins you down. And if it's simply that of doing what the environment tells you to do, it certainly is pinning you down. And so the environment is your dragon, as it reflects within yourself.

• 42:56Speaker 06

  How do I slay?

• 42:57Speaker 02

  How do you?

• 42:58Speaker 06

  Slay that dragon in me? What's the journey I have to make, you have to make, each of us has to make? You talk about something called the soul's high adventure.

• 43:06Speaker 02

  My general formula for my students is, follow your bliss, I mean find where it is, and don't be afraid to follow it.

• 43:16Speaker 06

  Can my bliss be my life's love or my life's work? Is it my work or my life?

• 43:21Speaker 02

  Well, if the work that you're doing is the work that you chose to do because you were enjoying it, that's it. But if you think, "Oh gee, I couldn't do that," you know, that's your dragon that's locking you in. "Oh no, I couldn't be a writer." "Oh no, I couldn't do what so-and-so is doing."

• 43:42Speaker 06

  Unlike the classical heroes, we're not going on our journey to save the world, but to save ourselves.

• 43:48Speaker 02

  And in doing that, you save the world. I mean, you do. The influence of a vital person vitalizes. There's no doubt about it. The world is a wasteland. People have the notion of saving the world by shifting it around and changing the rules and so forth. And no, any world is a living world if it's alive. And the thing is to bring it to life. And the way to bring it to life is to find in your own case where your life is and be alive yourself, it seems to me.

• 44:18Speaker 06

  That's the power of the teacher, isn't it? To bring vitality to others, to make others see the vitality in them.

• 44:23Speaker 02

  Well, it happens.

• 44:26Speaker 02

  That's one of the delights of teaching. I mean, when you're not teaching in order to have an easy job, but because you really have something to teach and you love young people and you want to give what you've got, found, to them. And to see them come alive is the reward of teaching.

• 44:45Speaker 06

  You say, "I have to take that journey and go down there and slay those dragons. Do I have to go alone?"

• 44:51Speaker 02

  If you have someone who can help you, that's fine too. But ultimately, the last trick has to be done by you.

• 45:01Speaker 06

  In all of these journeys of mythology, there's a place everyone wishes to find. What is it? The Buddhist talk of nirvana. Jesus talks of peace. There's a place of rest and repose. Is that typical of a hero's journey? That there's a place to find?

• 45:22Speaker 02

  That's a place in yourself of rest. Now, this I know a little bit about from athletics. The athlete, who is in championship form, has a quiet place in himself. And it's out of that that his action comes. If he's all in the action field, he's not performing properly. There's a center out of which you act. And Jean, my wife, a dancer, tells me that in dance, this is true too. There's the center that has to be known and held. There, it's quite physically recognized by the person.

• 46:07Speaker 02

  But unless this center has been found, you're torn apart. Tension comes.

• 46:17Speaker 02

  The Buddha's word is nirvana. Nirvana is a psychological state of mind. It's not a place like heaven. It's not something that's not here. It is here, in the middle of the turmoil, what's called samsara, the whirlpool of life conditions. That nirvana is what? It is the condition that comes when you are not compelled by desire or by fear or by social commitments. When you hold your center and act out of there.

• 46:57Speaker 06

  And like all heroes, the Buddha doesn't show you the truth, the illumination. He shows you the way too.

• 47:03Speaker 02

  The way, but it's gotta be your way too. I mean, how should I get rid of fear? The Buddha can't tell me how I'm going to do it. There are exercises that different teachers will give you, but they may not work for you. And all a teacher can do is give you a clue of the direction. He's like a lighthouse that says, "There are rocks over here, and stay clear."

• 47:30Speaker 06

  You talk a lot about consciousness.

• 47:32Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 47:32Speaker 06

  Most people hear that term and, like me, have only a veiled understanding of it. What is it?

• 47:39Speaker 02

  Jean and I are living in Hawaii, and we're living right by the ocean. And we have a little lanai, a little porch. And there's a coconut tree that grows up through that porch, and it goes on up. And there's a kind of vine plant, a big powerful thing with leaves like this, that has grown up the coconut tree. Now that plant sends forth little feles to go out and clutch the plant. And it knows where the plant is and what to do, and where the tree is. And it grows up like this, and it opens a leaf.

• 48:21Speaker 02

  And that leaf immediately turns to where the sun is. Now you can't tell me that leaf doesn't know where the sun is going to be. All of the leaves go just like that, what's called heliotropism, turning toward where the sun is. That's a fall of consciousness. There is a plant consciousness. There is an animal consciousness. And we share all of these things. You eat certain foods, and the bile knows whether there's something there for it to go to work on. I mean, this whole thing is consciousness. I begin to feel more and more that the whole world is conscious. Certainly, the vegetal world is conscious. And when you live in the woods, as I did as a kid,

• 49:05Speaker 02

  you can see all these different consciousnesses relating to themselves. Now, it is a part of the sort of Cartesian mode to think of consciousness as being something peculiar to the head, that this is the organ originating consciousness. It isn't. It's an organ that inflects consciousness to a certain direction, a certain set of purposes. But there's a whole consciousness here, in the body. And the whole living world is informed by consciousness. I have a feeling that consciousness and energy are the same thing somehow.

• 49:48Speaker 02

  Where you really see energy, there is consciousness.

• 49:51Speaker 06

  Scientists are beginning to talk quite openly about the Gaia principle.

• 49:57Speaker 02

  There you are, the whole planet as an organism.

• 50:00Speaker 06

  Mother Earth.

• 50:01Speaker 02

  And you see, if you will think of ourselves as coming out of the Earth, rather than as being thrown in here from somewhere else, you know, thrown out of the Earth, we are the Earth. We are the consciousness of the Earth. These are the eyes of the Earth. And this is the voice of the earth. What else?

• 50:23Speaker 06

  How do we raise our consciousness?

• 50:27Speaker 02

  Well, that's a matter of what you are disposed to think about. And that's what meditations are for. And all of life is a meditation. Most of it unintentional. A lot of people spend most of it in meditating on where their money's coming from and where it's going to go, but that's a level of meditation. Or if you have a family to bring up, you're concerned for the family. These are all perfectly, very important concerns, but they have to do with physical conditions mostly, and spiritual conditions of the children, of course. But how are you gonna communicate spiritual consciousness to the children if you don't have it yourself? So how do you get that? Then you think about the myths.

• 51:13Speaker 02

  What the myths are for is to bring us into a level of consciousness that is spiritual.

• 51:21Speaker 02

  Just for example, I walk off 52nd Street and 5th Avenue into St. Patrick's Cathedral. I've left a very busy city, and one of the most fiercely economically-inspired cities on the planet. I walk into that cathedral.

• 51:40Speaker 02

  And everything around me speaks of spiritual mystery. The mystery of the cross, what's that all about there? The stained glass windows is bringing another atmosphere in. My consciousness has been brought up onto another level altogether. And I am on a different platform. And then I walk out, and I'm back in this one again. Now, can I hold something from that? Well, certain prayers or meditations that are associated with the whole context there.

• 52:17Speaker 02

  These are what are called mantras in India. Little meditation themes that hold your consciousness on that level instead of letting it drop down here all the way. And then what you can finally do is to recognize that this is simply a lower level of that.

• 52:36Speaker 06

  The Cathedral at Chartres, which you love so much, also expresses a relationship of the human to the cosmos, doesn't it?

• 52:44Speaker 02

  Well, I think everyone who has spent any time at Chartres has felt something very special about this cathedral. I've been there about eight times.

• 52:57Speaker 02

  When I was a student in Paris, I went down there about five times and spent one whole weekend and I identified and looked at every single figure in that cathedral.

• 53:12Speaker 02

  I was there so much that the concierge, this little old fellow who took care of the cathedral, he came to me one noon time and he said, "Would you like to go up with me and ring the bells?" I said, "I sure would." So we climbed the fêche, the tower, up to where the great bell was, the great enormous bronze bell. And there was a little, like a seesaw. And he stood on one end of the seesaw and I stood on the other end of the seesaw. And there was a little bar there for us to hold on to. He gave the thing a push and then he was on it and I was on it.

• 53:56Speaker 02

  We started going up and down and the wind blowing through our hair, up there in the cathedral. And then it began underneath, bong, you know, bong, bong. I tell you, it was one of the most thrilling adventures in my life. And when it was all over, he brought me down. He said, "I want to show you where my room is." Well, in a cathedral, you have the nave and then the transept and then the apse. And around the apse is the choir screen. Now, the choir screen in Chartres is about that wide. And he took me in a little door into the middle of the choir screen

• 54:41Speaker 02

  and there was his little bed and a little table with a lamp on it. And when I looked out, there was the Black Madonna, the vitrine, the window of the Black Madonna. And that was where he lived. Now, there was a man living in a meditation. A constant meditation. I mean, that was a very moving, beautiful thing. Well, I've been there time and time again since. What do you find when you go there? What does it say about all that we've been discussing? Well, the first thing it says is it takes me back to a time when these principles informed the society. I mean, you can tell what's informing the society by the size of the...

• 55:24Speaker 02

  what the building is, that's the tallest building in the place. When you approach a medieval town, the cathedral's the tallest thing in the place. When you approach a 17th-century city, it's the political palace that's the tallest thing in the place. And when you approach a modern city, it's office buildings and dwellings that are the tallest things in the place. And if you go to Salt Lake City, you'll see the whole thing illustrated right in front of your face. First, the temple was built. The temple was built right in the center of the city. Yeah, I mean, this was a proper organization. That's the spiritual center from which all flows in all directions. And then, the capital was built right beside the temple. And it's bigger than the temple.

• 56:09Speaker 02

  And now, the biggest thing is the office building that takes care of the affairs of both the temple and the political building. That's the history of Western civilization, from the Gothic through the princely periods of the 16th, 17th, 18th centuries to this economic world that we're in now. In New York now, the debate is over who can build the tallest building, not to praise, but to build the tallest building. Yeah, and they are magnificent. I mean, some of the things that are going up in New York now really are. And this is a kind of architectural triumph. And what it is, is the statement of the city.

• 56:49Speaker 02

  We are a financial power center, and look what we can do. It's a kind of virtuosic, acrobatic stunt. Will new myths come from there? Well, something might. You can't predict what a myth is going to be any more than you can predict what you're going to dream tonight. Myths and dreams come from the same place. They come from realizations of some kind that have then to find expression in symbolic form. And the myth, the only myth that's going to be worth thinking about...

• 57:26Speaker 02

  In the immediate future is one that's talking about the planet. Not this city, not these people, but the planet and everybody on it. That's my main thought for what the future myth is gonna be. And what we'll have to deal with will be exactly what all of us have dealt with. The maturation of the individual, the gradual, the pedagogical way to follow from dependency through adulthood to maturity and then to the exit. And how to do it. And then, how to relate to this society. And how to relate this society to the world of nature and the cosmos.

• 58:11Speaker 02

  That's what the myths have all talked about. That's what this one's gotta talk about. But the society that it's gotta talk about is the society of the planet. And until that gets going, you don't have anything.

• 58:23Speaker 06

  There's that wonderful photograph you have of the Earth, seen from space. And it's very small, and at the same time, it's very grand.

• 58:36Speaker 02

  You don't see any divisions there of nations or states or anything of the kind. This might be the symbol, really, for the new mythology to come. That is the country that we are going to be celebrating. And those are the people that we are one with.

• 59:05Tim Ferriss?

  Hey guys, this is Tim again. Just a few more things before you take off. Number one, this is Five Bullet Friday. Do you want to get a short email from me? Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little morsel of fun before the weekend? And Five Bullet Friday is a very short email where I share the coolest things I've found or that I've been pondering over the week. That could include favorite new albums that I've discovered. It could include gizmos and gadgets and all sorts of weird shit. That I've somehow dug up in the world of the esoteric as I do. It could include favorite articles that I've read and that I've shared with my close friends, for instance. And it's very short.

• 59:48Tim Ferriss?

  It's just a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend. So if you want to receive that, check it out. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com. That's fourhourworkweek.com all spelled out and just drop in your email and you'll get the very next one. And if you sign up, that's a big win.