The Power of Myth

by Joseph Campbell

Understanding the relationship of mortality to something in you that is transcendent of mortality is a difficult task.

Well, that’s what art reflects—what artists think of God, what people experience of God. But the ultimate, unqualified mystery is beyond human experience.

Schopenhauer suggests that just as your dreams are composed by an aspect of yourself of which your consciousness is unaware, so, too, your whole life is composed by the will within you. And just as people whom you will have met apparently by mere chance became leading agents in the structuring of your life, so, too, will you have served unknowingly as an agent, giving meaning to the lives of others.

My answer is, “Follow your bliss.” There’s something inside you that knows when you’re in the center, that knows when you’re on the beam or off the beam. And

“The word was made flesh,” as this eternal principle finding itself in the human journey, in our experience. CAMPBELL: And you can find the word in yourself, too.