Pathways to Bliss

In the foreword, editor David Kudler makes a nice observation: when Campbell gathered twenty years of lectures in 1972, it became clear that they all said essentially the same thing — «that was my myth». Kudler had the same impression assembling lectures from 1962–1983: the core idea never changed. Myths offer a framework for personal growth, and understanding how they work on the mind is a way to live in accord with one's own nature — a path to «bliss».

The introduction opens with a conversation at the Esalen Institute in California. A mostly female audience asks whether classical mythology offers any models for modern women working as soldiers or executives. Campbell answers honestly: it doesn't. Out of this comes the book's central idea: myth is not history, it changes with time, but today's world changes so fast that no new mythology has time to form. «A rolling stone gathers no moss. Myth is the moss.» So each of us has to find our own way.

Campbell offers two guides: model yourself on someone who struck you as noble in your youth, and «follow your bliss». The idea is explained through Upanishadic teaching Campbell encountered in India: the self is wrapped in five «sheaths» — food, breath, mind, wisdom and, deepest of all, bliss (ananda). The mind asks whether life is worth living; grass being mown does not. The comparison of Tutankhamun's nested coffins to these five sheaths is one of the book's most memorable images.

Campbell also talks about the author's own life. Returning from Germany and Paris in 1929, just before the Wall Street crash, Campbell was unemployed for five years, sat in Woodstock reading Spengler, Jung, Schopenhauer and Joyce, and only later understood this had been following one's bliss. The advice to students comes from this: when choosing a career, don't follow forecasts of where the money will be next year, follow what makes you feel alive, because the world changes so fast that any calculated choice will soon be out of date.

Chapter I lists the functions of mythology. The first is to reconcile consciousness with the terrible fact that «life lives on life». Campbell reports never finding a negative word about the world in early myths; world-weariness, Campbell argues, came later, in prosperous societies. Campbell then contrasts three great mythological stances: affirming the world, rejecting it (Jainism, early Buddhism), and trying to «correct» it (Zoroastrianism and the traditions it shaped). The second function is to provide an image of the cosmos, and here Campbell turns sharp: as the Apollo astronauts circled the Moon they read verses from Genesis describing a flat, three-tiered world, and that evening the gap between religious tradition and physical reality struck Campbell hard.

The weakness is structure. The editor admits that «The Hero's Journey» in particular comes from a free-form 1983 seminar that was «extremely discursive». Campbell jumps from one idea to the next, jokes, and at times passes harsh, hasty judgements on modern religions. Some claims — such as the supposed absence of world-negation in early myths — are contested by contemporary anthropology.

• Vast erudition that weaves Indian, Egyptian, Greek, Christian and Native American myths together
• A lively, witty lecturer's voice
• Candid examples from the author's own life