Product Description

After ten years of intensive study of Indian art and philosophy, Joseph Campbell, at 50, finally embarked on a journey to India. Searching for the transcendent (Brahman), he found instead stark realities: growing nationalism, religious rivalry, poverty, and a prevalent culture of what he called "baksheesh," or alms. This journal chronicles the disillusionment and revelation that would change the course of Campbell’s life and study, and his transition from professor to counterculture icon. Balancing Campbell’s astute explorations of mythology and history are his often amusing observations of a sometimes frustrating alien culture and his fellow Western travelers. This account also includes personal photographs, specially commissioned maps, and illustrations redrawn from Campbell’s own hand.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #547465 in Books
• Published on: 2002-08-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 400 pages

Amazon.com Review
Years before he became a mythology expert and household name, Joseph Campbell journeyed to India. He was nearly 50, at a career crossroads, and after 10 years studying Indian art and philosophy he was finally going to India seeking the transcendent (Brahman), the mysteries of India. Instead he found the stark realities of baksheesh culture. His journal of those six months is the closest Campbell ever came to an autobiography. It's a diary of his adventures, insights, and ponderings; it's a window into the India of 1954 and the Joseph Campbell of 1954--both are intriguing places to visit.

From Publishers Weekly
Campbell argued that each religion's myths were simply different versions of one archetypal myth residing in the collective unconscious of humankind. This collection of journals shows how he arrived at his conclusions. In the fall of 1954, when he was 50, Campbell traveled to India in hopes of experiencing firsthand all the elements of Indian religious practice that he had been studying for a decade. From the beginning, he struggles with ambivalence: "when you look at India from the outside it is a squalid mess and a haven of fakers; but when you look at it from the inside... it is an epiphany of the spirit." These journals chronicle Campbell's meetings with holy men, his management of his wife Jean's dance tour through the country, and his meeting with Nehru. The climax of his visit is his meeting with Sri Krishna Menon in Trivandrum. The guru confirms Campbell's understanding of the Indian scriptures that the goal of the Self is to become one with the Universal. In these journals, Campbell also lays out an ambitious research plan for a project in comparative mythology that would eventually become his four-volume The Masks of God. Although sometimes arrogant and condescending, Campbell interrogates his own prejudices, dismantles them and builds the foundations of what has become an influential way of thinking about the world's religions.15)
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"No one in our century - not Freud, not Thomas Mann, not Levi-Strauss - has so brought the mythical sense of the world and its eternal figures back into our everyday consciousness." - James Hillman

Customer Reviews

Campbell in India
Before I read Baksheesh and Bramhan, all I knew of Campbell was that he was an author of formidable intellect and also engaging wit (if the print version of Moyers series is to be believed)with a deep understanding of Oriental faiths. Campbells' account of his encounter with the land of these faiths - India - is at once insightful of the man and India in the 1950s. Confronted by the actual India - ancient, prudish, theieving, an emerging nation seeking a semblance of pride, low on self esteem, spiritual - Campbell is all at once the fastidous Westerner at odds with a culture he has admired from afar, charmed by its exoticism and occasionally getting bang on and incisively the actual reality of India. This book is an easy read and essential for anyone who has ever admired Campbell's work. Also a must read for anyone who wants to hold up a mirror to the new Indian nation and how far and how less that nation has travelled in the 50 odd years since. Campbelll's acerbism on fellow American travellers make for marvelous diversions.

One small observation and this must stem from being an Indian - that India is a hospitable nation is clear from this book. I am sure a lot of Indians would attribute it to Campbell being white, but there is something in here of hearts and houses being thrown open to a stranger.

Fascinating
This book comprises Joseph Campbell's private journals during his first visit to India. Before Campbell set off for India, he had already established a worldwide reputation in the field of Indian mythology through translating the works of Heinrich Zimmer. In 1954, he was awarded a fellowship to travel and conduct research in India for future publications on Indian mythology. In this book, which was not written for publication, but intended to be solely Campbell's private record of his journey, Campbell is confronted with the realities of India for the first time, and he is shaken to the core by how different India is from what he had been led to expect.

Campbell's stay in India lasted approximately 6 months, during which time he traveled extensively throughout the country. He started off the journey in the company of Swami Nikhilananda and several female devotees. Together with this troop, Campbell visited various Ramakrishna Missions and temples. Before long, however, he began to lose interest in this party, as he observed that the Ramakrishna Missions seemed to play a much smaller role in Indian society than he had ever imagined. He began to travel independently, visiting temples and talking to people he met along the way (mainly intellectuals, who were able to discuss philosophy in English). He also struggled to book a dance tour for his wife, Jean Erdman, a well-known artist of modern dance.

For the first three months of his journey, Campbell is so affected by culture shock that he is practically incapacitated. Although he had traveled widely in Europe, from the descriptions in these journals, he had no experience traveling in the Third World. He had a most un-adventurous palate, so he ate European food where it was available, and then complained mightily about its quality. His attitudes towards hotels and service were inflexible, and he seemed to lack the sense of humor and ability to let things slide that are essential for dealing with a culture that is completely alien to one's own. He is strongly patriotic and greatly dismayed by Indian criticisms of his own country.

The extent of his ignorance concerning Indian art is illuminated by his reactions to Indian dance. At the first Indian dance recital he attended, he was outraged by the fact that only he and another Westerner found the performance at all interesting. But instead of trying to understand why the Indians in the audience were not impressed, he was simply outraged that they didn't react the way he did. At the next recital that he attended, he noted that the Indian members of the audience seemed to have a separate set of values for judging the performance than his own. As he became more familiar with the classical dance forms by attending a few lectures, he gradually began to develop an appreciation for the art. When his wife arrived and began her Western modern dance tour, he seemed to expect Indians to approach this foreign dance form in the same way that New Yorkers or Parisians might, forgetting or being entirely ignorant of the role of dance in Indian society and the different set of aesthetic values associated with dance.

Nonetheless, the notes presented here are fascinating because in them, we can see Campbell coming to terms with Indian culture. Whereas before this trip, he imagined India as drawn for him by Krishnamurti, Nikhilananda, and Zimmer, he finally begins to build his own understanding of the culture during this journey. This understanding is colored not only by his visits to temples and conversations with philosophers, but also by the mundane struggles to book his wife's dance tour.

Campbell in India
Before I read Baksheesh and Bramhan, all I knew of Campbell was that he was an author of formidable intellect and also engaging wit (if the print version of Moyers series is to be believed)with a deep understanding of Oriental faiths. Campbells' account of his encounter with the land of these faiths - India - is at once insightful of the man and India in the 1950s. Confronted by the actual India - ancient, prudish, theieving, an emerging nation seeking a semblance of pride, low on self esteem, spiritual - Campbell is all at once the fastidous Westerner at odds with a culture he has admired from afar, charmed by its exoticism and occasionally getting bang on and incisively the actual reality of India. This book is an easy read and essential for anyone who has ever admired Campbell's work. Also a must read for anyone who wants to hold up a mirror to the new Indian nation and how far and how less that nation has travelled in the 50 odd years since. Campbelll's acerbism on fellow American travellers make for marvelous diversions.

One small observation and this must stem from being an Indian - that India is a hospitable nation is clear from this book. I am sure a lot of Indians would attribute it to Campbell being white, but there is something in here of hearts and houses being thrown open to a stranger.