This is a conversation between Joseph Campbell and Bill Moyers that extended the 1980s PPS presentation of Campbell's thoughts about myth. There's something frustrating about this book that is hard to nail down.

The conversation moves across a wide swath of contemporary and historical human expression, which Campbell stamps as myth or as relevant to myth. In the introduction, Campbell talks about the country's focus on Kennedy's assassination in November 1963 as the nation's "compensatory rite to reestablish the sense of solidarity" and suggests that driving the country's preoccupation was the need for solidarity, as opposed, for example, to the understandable and less convoluted mourning over the loss of a charismatic leader and, perhaps, archetypal father figure. Were the tears back then really about establishing a sense of solidarity? As a primary function, marriage is not as Moyers asks, "perpetuating ourselves in our children," but is for Campbell "the sacrifice of ego to a relationship in which two have become one," around "a purely mythological image signifying the sacrifice of the visible entity for a transcendent good." As to why the ego might be sacrificed and why two should become one, and why all of this is myth is not clear. Campbell also divides love into Eros (biological urge, "the zeal of the organs for each other") and Agape ("love thy neighbor as thyself - spiritual love") and Amor ("where "the heart is the organ of opening up to somebody else. That's the human quality as opposed to animal qualities.") This latter version is symbolized by the troubadours in the 12th century who were the first in the West Campbell says to manifest a connection not with a woman but with the love for a particular woman who was a spiritual partner. Given adolescent crushes and mutual yearning between adults outside of marriage, it's not so clear how this type of attraction is anything more than the explicit, refined lust of "organs for each other" (in other words, Eros), and why that feeling did not exist before the 12 century.

"Love" is only one topic where Campbell sees and interprets human phenomena in mythological terms and throughout this book there is a sense that Campbell may over interpret what he sees. There's a sense that he is a romantic who, if it's not that unfair to say, favors an interpretation of the world in idealized terms about what he wants it to be. As to what best summarizes that perspective, it may be Campbell's advice to "follow our bliss." This is his interpretation of one strain of Buddhist thought to activate the potential that lies within ourselves and, in so doing, become one with the universe and all life within it and experience the eternal "right here and now." The relationship of people expresses "the radiance of the spirit" and activates "the divinity in the other." Reason is distinguished from thinking and involves finding the "ground of being" and "the fundamental structuring of order in the universe." The hero figure for Campbell is really not so much the external figure, such as Jesus and Martin Luther King, Jr., but what we can experience within ourselves. It is the divine activated in ourselves. This is all good, inspiring stuff and a reason why his thought was likely attractive to many, including, obviously, Moyers who throughout this conversation seems bent on reinterpreting Christian theology into more contemporary and acceptable mythological symbolism.

Yet one wonders if Campbell goes complicated when a simpler explanation for mythological experience might do just fine. Is marriage a spiritual union or is it an evolutionary contract of sex for protection and sustenance? Is the hero figure ourselves yearning to be someone or something that we may or may not be, or is it literally the hero who protects us or saves us? Is the mother figure a symbol of mythological union or the figure who nourishes and sustains us? Is the (Western) mythological dragon figure our "ego clamping you down" or the archetypal demon figure out to get us? Campbell interprets Jesus' ascension into heaven metaphorically to mean "not into outer space" but into inward space. Campbell may interpret heaven this way, but that's not how most do or would interpret heaven. So what is exactly the myth here? Is it Campbell's interpretation of what he wants heaven to mean?

In other parts of this conversation, though, Campbell makes more sense. He says that the "imagination is grounded in the energy of the organs of the body, and these are the same in all human beings" and, accordingly, they produce common themes. Campbell in this way removes some of the mystery from Jungian archetypes so that it is possible to argue that these archetypes can be rooted in evolutionary theory. As to the question of where one's life comes from, Campbell states that the life may in fact come from the impersonal energy of the universe. That suggests an alliance with Schopenhauer's Will, which might be interpreted as impersonal evolutionary energy that becomes embodied in life that tries to perpetuate itself. As Campbell states it, this impersonal energy is "moved by the one will to life which is the universal will in nature." Campbell indicates his comfort with drawing a blissful identification with this impersonal energy. Although he comments that life has no purpose, he states that "Life is a lot of protoplasm with an urge to reproduce and continue in being" and that the mission of each incarnation of life is to fulfill its potentiality by following one's bliss. That suggests ample purpose. However, that's not the purpose Moyers has in mind and he in fact protests Campbell's take on the lack of purpose by saying, "Not true - not true," hinting that something lies beyond death and oblivion. When Moyers asks why people have a yearning to live forever, Campbell responds by saying that this is something he doesn't understand. Eternity for him is not life everlasting, but living in the timeless moment. While that may be fine for Campbell, Moyers' question more accurately reflects the concerns of most who are motivated by the need for life to last forever. Here again, Campbell seems to interpret symbols to fit his worldview. Admirable as that view might be, it may not be consistent with the metaphorical meaning held by most. In the end, this leads to confusion in this conversation about the degree to which the history of myth is a history of what Campbell wants it to be.