OF AN ERA THAT HAS COME AND GONE VOL. 2

Bill Moyers: You've said that the whole question of life revolves around being versus becoming.

Joseph Campbell: Yes. Becoming is always fractional. And being is total.

BM: What do you mean?

JC: Well, let's say you are going to become fully human. In the first few years you are a child, and that is only a fraction of the human being. In a few more years you are in adolescence, and that is certainly a fraction of the human being. In maturity you are still fractional-you are not a child, but you are not old yet. There is an image in the Upanishads of the original, concentrated energy which was the big bang of creation that set forth the world, consigning all things to the fragmentation of time. But to see through the fragments of time to the full power of original being-that is the function of art.

BM: Beauty is an expression of that rapture of being alive.

JC: Every moment should be such an experience.

BM: And what we are going to become tomorrow is not important as compared to this experience.

JC: This is the great moment, Bill. What we are trying to do in a certain way is to get the being of our subject rendered through the partial way we have of expressing it.

-Excerpt from "The Power of Myth"