the hero is among us

C G Jung, whose work on archetypes has shaped much of modern day thinking on heroes believes that our myths conceal a valuable treasure in their structures and teachings. He believed that all human souls are tied together by an invisible thread which he calls the “collective unconscious”. This thread helps stitch a tapestry of images that reflect common desires, aspirations, fears and expectations.

Our hero myths draw on this collective unconscious to reveal a structure that is universal and laden with familiar motifs and symbols. We see the collective unconscious at work everywhere. This is also what draws our heroes into Campbell’s exhaustive list of stages that a hero must live his or her life through.

For instance every hero has a miraculous birth -- the birth of Ram and Krishna and Odysseus and Perseus are all miraculous conceptions.

All heroes are beckoned by the call of adventure -- whether it is Ram and his conquest of Lanka or Gilgamesh and his battle with Humbaba (the demon of the forests of Lebanon), or Perseus’ trials with Medusa – the stories demonstrate a common pattern.

Campbell tells us, in the context of the hero myth: “the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero path. And where we had thought to find an abomination we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the centre of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.”

There is no disputing this at all. What Campbell and Jung were doing in their own ways was creating a frame within which all of humanity could find its place. For Jung, who was a student of Freud, the objective was to study myths with the tools of psychology and for Campbell, it was to establish the purpose of myth which, he believed was to convey a simple and effective message that was global in reach, content and outlook.

For many today, the concerns are different. There is a growing feeling that there are no more heroes to be had – they just don’t make them any more.

Perhaps it would help our search if we looked at the mythical hero as more than a global symbol. His life is important not only because it holds up a model for all of mankind to follow but also because it is a repository of the literary and storytelling traditions, cultural concerns and social norms of the time.

For example even though Ram and Krishna answer the call to adventure, Ram’s guide is Viswamitra in the first phase of his journey while Krishna is his own guide. That is why even though Arjun and Perseus are out to slay the demons of injustice, the evils they fight are very different and so are their lives and loves.

Yet their lives would fit into the frame of both Campbell and Jung. And that is what makes myths so fascinating – they dip into the same universe of values and life stories but they create their own distinct worlds within that universe.

If, for a moment, we do focus on the differences in cultures and traditions that are reflected by our hero myths, we may find it easier to build our modern day hero. He may not be very far from the ancient ones but the narrative cloak and the moral codes that we create for him would be drawn from all that is around us.