Fantafrica by Pete Martin

Author:Pete Martin [Martin, Pete]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Monkey Mayhem Books
Published: 2017-10-14T23:00:00+00:00

Day 9

Salé to Marrakech

The call to prayer wakes me just after five o’clock. I can’t get back to sleep because it’s so cold. After meditating the time away, at half past six I take an early breakfast. The woman from yesterday is back and she insists on walking me to the end of the road to get a taxi. I have an hour to waste at Gare Salé Ville. I just need to be out of the riad as it was so cold; always warmer outside than inside. It’s 190 dirhams (£14) for my four and half hours first class journey to Marrakech. It compensates for paying 150 dirhams (£11) for last night’s food.

Waiting on the platform I am perplexed by the fact that trains run on the left side but the cars drive on the right. There is no peace and quiet for me today as all six seats in my first class compartment are taken. I finish reading “The Power of Now” and enjoy the last piece of advice: “How will I know when I have surrendered? When you no longer need to ask the question.”

Joseph Campbell’s “The Power of Myth” immediately takes up where “The Power of Now” left off, or perhaps it works the other way around as “The Power of Now” actually builds on the themes described in “The Power of Myth”. Whilst published around the same time, “The Power of Myth” is based on conversations between Campbell, a year before his death, and the interviewer, Bill Moyers; it revolves around his philosophy from his previously published books. The language of the two books is incredibly similar. For example, Campbell tells the Zen story of the Buddha lifting a flower. Only one student understands that there is no meaning to this and so Campbell asks what’s the meaning of the universe or of a flea and concludes: “It’s just there. That’s it. We’re so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget that the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it’s all about.”

Campbell and Moyers also discuss consciousness being a matter of what we think about. We have important thoughts about money and family, yet it is the myths (substitute the “Now”) that will bring us to a level of consciousness that is spiritual. Moreover, later in the book, when Moyers asks about the hero’s journey, Campbell responds that “the place to find is within yourself.” The myth of the first of Buddha’s three temptations also resonates. The Lord of Lust presents his three daughters, Desire, Fulfilment and Regrets, which are metaphorical names for Future, Present and Past, which has congruency with Tolle’s thinking.

Yet I am more fascinated with Campbell’s comments that all our names for God are just masks and so the myths are masks too: metaphors for what actually lies behind the visible words. Campbell also purports that the world over myths tell us that heaven and hell are within us and that all the Gods are within us.

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