Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
~Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken
I’ve been reminded of Robert Frost’s words over and over again as I’ve heard Douglas Rosestone’s story about the direction he took in his life forty years ago—at the juncture when the teachings of Joseph Campbell and J. Krishnamurti first entered his life. And, more recently how fortuitous the interplay of both teachers’ lessons have been on guiding the mythical theme for Secrets of the Rainbow Bridge (SOTRB), a book he is co-writing with his wife, Olivia and son, Jonah.
In 1966, at age 19, while Douglas was living on the Mediterranean island of Formentera, his older sister was studying with Joseph Campbell at Sarah Lawrence College. She sent him three books that had a profound affect on the direction of his life: Upanishads, the poetic backbone of Hinduism; Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces; and the I Ching, one of the oldest Chinese texts and sources for both Confucianist and Taoist philosophy.
“I remember the feeling of not being able to put down The Hero with a Thousand Faces.”
That same year Douglas met J. Krishnamurti who recommended that he travel to India to study Yoga with his teacher and visit schools based on his teachings.
“I had a private meeting with J. Krishnamurti on
the banks of the Ganges that was life changing,” says Douglas. “I was so sensitized that I couldn’t even step on the grasses along the trail after our encounter.”
Douglas continued to read Campbell’s books while he was in India.
“I had a similar experience, an inexplicable familiar sense of that’s how I feel about things, although I was far too uninformed to articulate it like they could.The sense of transcendence of thinking about local or tribal heroes from both men, and from two different angles, was most appealing to me.”
Referring to Campbell’s “Four Functions of Myth,” Douglas adds, “The fourth, the psychological, is now the pedagogical guiding us through the stages of life from birth to death. And, the universality in J. Krishnamurti teaching is to drop the local social identity, tribal, ethnic, religious and national for a truly Human disposition that doesn’t separate us from each other but brings us together.”
“This is the guiding ‘star” on both the impersonal and personal levels of my ‘mythic contribution’ to Secrets of the Rainbow Bridge. I could say much more but we don’t wish to give away the deeper secrets. After all it is SECRETS of the Rainbow Bridge.”
Readers of fantasy literature and students of Joseph Campbell and J. Krishnamurti will both delight in the upcoming book from the Rosestone’s.
Learn more about the book on SOTRB’s website and Facebook page.
Douglas Rosestone is the chief mythologist for Secrets of the Rainbow Bridge.
