Where is the Hero’s Journey?

Introduction to Archetypes

Archetypes are large patterns that exist in the collective container of universal formations. This common container is the ‘subconscious’ in Sri Aurobindo’s terminology, the ‘collective unconscious’ in Jungian depth psychology. These are formations that have existed since the beginning of human consciousness and have taken on independent existence. They surface in the conscious sphere when they are ready to manifest and have a human channel to manifest them. This channel could be an individual who is open to express the formation. Or the archetype could show up in a collective, such as the archetypes of war and discord have so often done.

Archetypes can be person archetypes, such as the inner child, the wise old man, the king, queen, jester, etc. An archetype can be a structural formation as symbolised by a tower, a lake, a ship… or it can be an event, like a festival, a wedding, a journey. A journey is classified variously as hero’s journey, heroine’s journey, lover’s journey, pilgrim’s journey. The Tarot cards give us a good idea of the archetypes. They are used in oracular practices to read characters and predict the future. A lot of work has gone into studies of archetypes, how they affect our lives, how they can help us grow and so on, in many dimensions.

The Hero’s Journey Archetype

What has been observed in all cultures is the repetition of one of these archetypes, from the ancient dawns to the current age. This archetype is the hero’s journey. The psychologist, Joseph Campbell has collected evidence for this in his work, The Hero with a Thousand Faces. He says, “Follow your bliss and doors will open where there were no doors before ¹.” The hero’s journey follows the trajectory of a person who is a non-hero to begin with. He is encouraged to take on his greatest fear, “for here he will reap the greatest ².” He meets allies and enemies, tackles challenges, suffers setbacks, wins over obstacles. Then the hero has to engage in the final battle, from where he emerges triumphant. He bags the reward and returns home a hero. The journey can be an inner journey and need not have any outer expression to start with. An outer journey will definitely transform the traveller in some way. But the inner journey will rearrange circumstances in the outer life of the hero and everybody around him decisively.

Let us now see if this theme has captured the imagination, if it is intrinsically part of being human. One observes examples in folk culture, such as rites of passages, competitions to prove one has come of age, vision quests of the native Americans, subduing the bull, living alone in nature, hunting the biggest game, catching the trophy fish and many more. Let us look at some folk tales as example. In The Arabian Nights, Aladdin, tired of being chased around for his petty thefts, chooses the princess as his goal. He faces grave dangers from the minister, Jaffar, who is his competitor and a wizard. Luckily, he finds a magic lamp and a genie who becomes his ally. After many switchbacks of success and failure, he conquers the evil sorcerer and wins the princess’ hand. He rises to the status of king at the end of the story. Similarly, we have the European story of Snow White, who starts off as a housemaid, finds allies in the dwarves and rebels; and fights her stepmother, the witch. At the end she returns home to her palace and is crowned queen. Each region in India has innumerable stories where the underlying theme is the hero’s journey.

Why are there so many stories that deal with this archetype? Is it because there is a deep-seated yearning in all humans to achieve something heroic? Or is the archetype alive to whoever wants to invite it in themselves? I think both are true. So, are there people who are inviting the energy in them now? The outer hero’s act does not seem to be required in most communities now. We are not any more in a world torn by freedom struggles from colonial powers, nor are our rulers, tyrants. Yet there is a need to be a hero — if not to prove to others, to prove to oneself. Otherwise, it is hard to have self-respect and self-confidence. That’s why when searching for a role model one is looking for a hero.

If one has enough security and wealth, one’s material needs are taken care of, one’s parents are not struggling with jobs, then life is easy. There is no scope to be the hero. But the pressure exists to prove it to oneself. Modernity has provided substitute fields of action that could pass off as hero’s journeys, such as exams, matches, competitions, video games. Sometimes one fulfils the dream vicariously through watching thrillers. These are all watered-down versions of the outer hero’s journeys, and they don’t satisfy us anymore. To all those who are tired of the current state of affairs and are seeking something new, the Mother sends her invitation:

“I told you just now, there is a moment when life such as it is, the human consciousness such as it is, seems something absolutely impossible to bear, it creates a kind of disgust, repugnance; one says, ‘No, it is not that, it is not that; it can’t be that, it can’t continue.’ Well, when one comes to this, there is only to throw in one’s all — all one’s effort, all one’s strength, all one’s life, all one’s being — into this chance, if you like, or this exceptional opportunity that is given to cross over to the other side. What a relief to set foot on the new path, that which will lead you elsewhere! This is worth the trouble of casting behind much luggage, of getting rid of many things in order to be able to take that leap. That’s how I see the problem.

In fact it is the sublimest of adventures, and if one has in him in the slightest the true spirit of adventure, it is worth risking all for all ³.”

When The Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education was started by the Mother, the prayer she gave the students was for them to aspire to be heroes:“Make of us the hero warriors we aspire to become. May we fight successfully the great battle of the future that is to be born, against the past that seeks to endure; so that the new things may manifest and we may be ready to receive them ⁴.”

Who is a Hero?

The English word ‘virtue’ is related to the Sanskrit word, Arya and as my philological understanding says, so is ‘hero.’. When Sri Aurobindo started a journal in Pondicherry to write about his spiritual vision, he called it Arya. And to explain the creed of the Aryan, He stated:

“’We fight to win sublime Wisdom, therefore men call us warriors.’ For Wisdom implies the choice as well as the knowledge of that which is best, noblest, most luminous, most divine. Certainly, it means also the knowledge of all things and charity and reverence for all things, even the most apparently mean, ugly or dark, for the sake of the universal Deity who chooses to dwell equally in all. But, also, the law of right action is a choice, the preference of that which expresses the godhead to that which conceals it. And the choice entails a battle, a struggle. It is not easily made, it is not easily enforced.

“Whoever makes that choice, whoever seeks to climb from level to level up the hill of the divine, fearing nothing, deterred by no retardation or defeat, shrinking from no vastness because it is too vast for his intelligence, no height because it is too high for his spirit, no greatness because it is too great for his force and courage, he is the Aryan, the divine fighter and victor, the noble man, aristos, best, the śressttha of the Gita ⁵.” The Current State of the Hero

A lot of people feel a general sense of discontent with the current state of the world, in terms of environment for one, the level of dishonesty in public affairs for another, and both of these are indicators of how humanity has deviated from Truth. The reason behind all this has been explained in many ways: greed, laziness, egotism and other human behaviour. At the main, it points to an individual’s lack of alignment with the supreme core of his being. It can be seen as a lack of true purpose, the missing North Pole of the inner compass. In other words, what ails the modern age is the lack of the hero’s journey.

Heroism is stifled under some banality, because the machine-dependent lifestyle of the post-war era does not require a hero. Wherever the heroic spark is kindled into a fire, the smoke and noise quickly cover it up. The mediocre majority is scared of the rebellious individuals who could upend the order of society. This has always been the case in peace time, which is why philosophers like Nietzsche have praised war — it draws the hero out of the person ⁶.

Sri Aurobindo has also lamented this tamasic state of society in his essay, ‘On Original Thinking (7)’ . George Bernard Shaw has put it cheekily:

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man ⁸.”

Heroes in Works of Art in the Current Age

Whatever the state of society, our literature, cinema, art have always extolled the hero, reminded and inspired us to become the hero. The physical man of muscles is not the hero, but the one with the stronger character, the wise man of sharp intellect and sound habits. One will remember the iconic scene from Kurosawa’s Yojimbo when the samurai and his conventional weapon is pitted against the miracle of technology. The bully with the gun is outsmarted by the swordsman. It is not the weapon but the wielder of the weapon that wins. The stronger man is the one who is independent of his tool or circumstances, least attached to wealth or people or place or status. The Star Wars creator, George Lucas was inspired by Joseph Campbell’s analysis of the hero’s journey to create the popular hero of the silver screen — Luke Skywalker.

The new hero’s journey

We are at an opportune moment when heroism is called for urgently. So, instead of falling for counterfeit hero’s journeys, we could consider taking the real one — the inner journey. This hero’s journey is available as always, but it has been the road less taken. Yet the current age is pushing us towards it. Spiritual masters have urged us to take it as the only legitimate journey, for as in all movements the inner precedes the outer. An inner victory won by an individual will have a vibrational effect on the universal collective consciousness, as the Mother says:

“If through an effort of inner consciousness and knowledge, you can truly overcome in yourself a desire, that is to say, dissolve and abolish it, and if through inner goodwill, through consciousness, light, knowledge, you are able to dissolve the desire, you will be, first of all in yourself personally, a hundred times happier than if you had satisfied this desire, and then it will have a marvellous effect. It will have a repercussion in the world of which you have no idea. It will spread forth. For the vibrations you have created will continue to spread. These things grow larger like the snowball. The victory you win in your character, however small it be, is one which can be gained in the whole world. […]

If you really want to do something good, the best thing you can do is to win your small victories in all sincerity, one after another, and thus you will do for the world the maximum you are able to ⁹.”

The inner journey could have an outer expression, such as repairing the environment, reducing poverty, resolving conflict, fighting for equality and a hundred more things. The hero will be pitted against time and the forces of human nature. The journey will be full of adventure and only strong characters would be able undertake these huge projects that will impact a lot of the planet. If these hero’s’ journeys were pursued earlier and energies were channelised in positive directions, we may not have found ourselves in the situation we do today. The Mother’s guidance given fifty years ago is even more urgent now:

“But something has happened in the world’s history which allows us to hope that a selected few in humanity, a small number of beings, perhaps, are ready to be transformed into pure gold and that they will be able to manifest strength without violence, heroism without destruction and courage without catastrophe.

[…]

This courage, this heroism which the Divine wants of us, why not use it to fight against one’s own difficulties, one’s own imperfections, one’s own obscurities? Why not heroically face the furnace of inner purification so that it does not become necessary to pass once more through one of those terrible, gigantic destructions which plunge an entire civilisation into darkness ¹⁰?”

We have tried to fix outer problems of life with not any spectacular success. Maybe it is because we did not fully understand the hero’s journey and rushed into it. The inner work has to precede the outer action. And this inner journey is the one fraught with uncertainties. Mother beckons to those who can take this leap of faith:

“There are people who love adventure. It is these I call, and I tell them this: “I invite you to the great adventure.

“It is not a question of repeating spiritually what others have done before us, for our adventure begins beyond that. It is a question of a new creation, entirely new, with all the unforeseen events, the risks, the hazards it entails — a real adventure, whose goal is certain victory, but the road to which is unknown and must be traced out step by step in the unexplored. Something that has never been in this present universe and that will never be again in the same way. If that interests you… well, let us embark. What will happen to you tomorrow — I have no idea.

“One must put aside all that has been foreseen, all that has been devised, all that has been constructed, and then… set off walking into the unknown. And—come what may! There ¹¹.”

“For centuries and centuries humanity has waited for this time. It has come. But it is difficult.

“I don’t simply tell you we are here upon earth to rest and enjoy ourselves, now is not the time for that. We are here… to prepare the way for the new creation.

“[…] we are here to work — rest and enjoyment will come afterwards. Let us do our work here.

“It is the hour to be heroic.

“Heroism is not what it is said to be: it is to become wholly unified — and the Divine help will always be with those who have resolved to be heroic in full sincerity. There ¹²!”

And how should the hero of the inner journey be prepared if he wants to work for the Divine? Sri Aurobindo answers in his Savitri:

“Only were safe who kept God in their hearts:

Courage their armour, faith their sword, they must walk,