To Be a Jedi
to this, for some time in Europe and certainly in America, the ideal has been not to snuff out individual experience and expression, but rather to allow them to flourish. To be sure, this hasn't always been the case in reality, yet it has become nothing short of a basic assumption that the best life is the one individually lived. In our own Judeo-Christian traditions which have informed so much of our viewpoints, there is little talk of illusion or losing one's ego. Creation is not a game to be played but rather holds an ultimate reality - at least in the case of the individual souls held within it, each either won to salvation or lost in sin.
Even in the modern circles of psychology, individuality is still strongly recognized. In fact, the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, who would greatly influence Campbell, believed in what he called "individuation." This process established that the only way to achieve wholeness in the psyche is to fulfill one's individual potential. Campbell himself accepted this view, and was a solid individualist all his life.
It is easy to see that all of this is being woven together in the vast tapestry that is the Star Wars galaxy. The Western point of view is certainly given fine form in the original trilogy, as the individual heroes of the Rebel Alliance fight against the faceless automatons of the Empire. Of course, the East is in there too with strong resemblances between the Jedi Knights and the Japanese samurai. And it is worth noting that the East's prevailing view of oneness has nothing in common with the artificial system of stormtroopers and Death Stars that the Imperial regime imposes on the galaxy. On the contrary, the Force has strong roots in such ideas of oneness, a universal ground of energy we all share.
The question therefore becomes how to manage the balancing act of walking in these two twin avenues of reality. Perhaps something of an answer can be found among the Jedi themselves. For instance, it is quite telling that on the DVD commentary of The Phantom Menace, George Lucas admits that Master Qui-Gon Jinn knew all along that Padme was really Queen Amidala despite her handmaiden disguise, and is playing her the whole time on Tatooine. Campbell wrote in his Zen essay that that particular philosophy was to "let life come and not name it" - and I would
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