The purpose is to identify
not with the body which is falling away, but with the consciousness of which it
is a vehicle. This is something I learned from my myths. Am I the bulb that
carries the light, or am I the light of which the bulb is the vehicle? If you
can identify with the consciousness, you can watch this thing go like an old
car. There goes the fender, etc. But it’s expected: and then gradually the
whole thing drops off and consciousness rejoins consciousness. I live with
these myths – and they tell me to do this, to identify with the Christ or the
Shiva in me. And that doesn’t die, it resurrects. It is an essential experience
of any mystical realization that you die to your flesh and are born to your
spirit. You identify with the consciousness in life – and that is the god.
--Joseph Campbell
