Pathways to Bliss: Mythology and Personal Transformation

By Joseph Campbell

Explore myth as a tool for personal growth and transformation

Joseph Campbell famously defined myth as “other people's religion.” But he also said that one of the basic functions of myth is to help each individual through the journey of life, providing a sort of travel guide or map to reach fulfillment — or, as he called it, bliss. For Campbell, many of the world's most powerful myths support the individual's heroic path toward bliss.
In Pathways to Bliss, Campbell examines this personal, psychological side of myth. Like his classic best-selling books Myths to Live By and The Power of Myth, Pathways to Bliss draws from Campbell's popular lectures and dialogues, which highlight his remarkable storytelling and ability to apply the larger themes of world mythology to personal growth and the quest for transformation. Here he anchors mythology's symbolic wisdom to the individual, applying the most poetic mythical metaphors to the challenges of our daily lives.
Campbell dwells on life's important questions. Combining cross-cultural stories with the teachings of modern psychology, he examines the ways in which our myths shape and enrich our lives and shows how myth can help each of us truly identify and follow our bliss.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joseph Campbell Foundation
• Release date: Feb 1, 2020
• ISBN: 9781611780291

Joseph Campbell

Dr. Joseph Campbell has a doctor of ministry degree in Christian Leadership from the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary in Springfield, Missouri. He is the senior pastor of Cross Creek Church in Lebanon, Missouri, and the executive vice president of Intercessory Prayer Ministry International (IPMI). His ministry focuses on equipping, empowering, and releasing people to fulfill their purpose and destiny in God. He and his wife, Caroline, a pediatrician, are the proud parents of two children.

Reviews for Pathways to Bliss

[Nandakishore Mridula · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"Follow your bliss."

This must be the most quoted (and misinterpreted) statement of Joseph Campbell. What did the famous mythologist mean by this? Many people take it to mean "do whatever you want to - the world can go hang!" - the ultimate libertarian wet dream. But it's not that - not by a long chalk.

You don't choose bliss - bliss chooses you. Leaving his palace and family and becoming a mendicant was Gautama Buddha's bliss. Dying on the cross was Jesus Christ's bliss. Bliss does not mean unalloyed pleasure in Campbell's lexicon. It's what you are destined to do. It's beyond pain and pleasure. It is "the still centre of existence", where there is nary a breath of wind - "no-wind", nirvana.

And how do you follow your bliss? Well, that's what myths are for.

***

Campbell says that myths originally had four functions: (1) to evoke in the individual a sense of grateful, affirmative awe before the monstrous mystery that is existence; (2) to present an image of the cosmos that will maintain your sense of mystical awe and explain everything that you come into contact with in the universe around you; (3) to validate and maintain a certain sociological system; and (4) to carry the individual through the stages of his life, from birth through maturity through senility to death. Now, the second function is taken over by science and the third, by the secular state. The fourth function has become pedagogical, carried out on the psychiatrist's couch. So the individual is left with this huge disconnect as far as the essential first function is concerned.

Myth is no longer live in society, and religion preserves it as a fossil, treating metaphors as historical facts, and mythical symbols as sacred objects. The individual can no longer live the myth, resulting in neurosis and psychosis. Campbell, living in America in an age when science reigned supreme and humankind seemed to be on the brink of jumping into a new paradigm of existence, was seriously aware of the dangers of a society without a mythical underpinning - and the present turmoil in the world seems to justify him! But that's a whole new topic.

So what is to be done by one in the current world? Travel inward into one's own psyche. All the archetypal images who appear in the myths are there. Recognise them, deal with them. Create your own private myth. Integrate your public "persona" with your anima/ animus (the opposite sex part of your self) and your shadow (your buried, rejected nature), so that your self becomes whole again. This is the method proposed by Carl Gustav Jung, called the process of "individuation".

Campbell, a Jungian, calls it the "Hero's Journey". This is the famous monomyth, which he popularised in The Hero With a Thousand Faces - the common story of the heroic quest which has variants in almost all world mythologies, and in a number of fairy tales. This is a quest which each individual has to take. At the end of the quest, once you traverse the deep forest and kill the dragons and monsters, is the holy grail, the princess, the treasure... which you bring back to the world.

This is your bliss.

(Interestingly, Campbell sees this as an essentially Western problem, because the Eastern mythologies all stress upon the total dissolution of the ego, and the journey of the individual is essentially aimed at losing one's identity. I think this view has become a bit outdated and needs further debate.)

***

This book, which comprises Campbell's lectures which have been collected and edited by my friend David Kudler, is a very good primer to the world of Joe Campbell, and the hero's journey. Unlike his scholarly tomes, here the voice is conversational and breezy. It's a very accessible portal to a very rich intellectual universe.

[dace-84 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book is classic Campbell, and more approachable than his officially authored books. “Pathways” is part of The Joseph Campbell Collection, a series of books edited together from various lectures, manuscripts, and articles over the course of two decades. It carries the engaging tones and rhythms of his lectures and is a fun and easy read.I first picked up this book in hopes of finding a guide to practical guide to applying Campbell’s ideas. While the book offers very little of this, there are one or two short sections which offer a taste of just that. That, in addition to the insight that Campbell offers to understanding psychology, society, and the symbols of the soul, makes this and incredibly satisfying read.

[bibliophilistinekate · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Hate the title; love the book.