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3.5 � rounded up

Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth--penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words. Beyond images... Mythology pitches the mind ... to what can be known but not told.

More than 30 years ago, PBS broadcasted "The Power of Myth," which was a series of interviews between journalist Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell, a scholar of comparative mythology. Although he had died shortly after the production of those shows, the interviews cemented Campbell's legacy outside of academia.

The Power of Myth reads like a transcript of those episodes. I would have preferred though a more traditional lecture format. I also recommend reading an illustrated edition as mine didn't have any and I was left hanging at times. FYI, the audiobook version contained only 6 programs (versus the book's 8 chapters) and had arranged them in a sequence different than in the printed book editions.

Campbell had looked for the commonality of themes in the world's mythologies. There is tremendous overlap, despite differences in time and space, as many cultures have their own versions of stories about creation, virgin birth, and the hero's quest. The similarities arise because our human bodies have remained the same for more than 100,000 years; and with humans having the same bodily experiences, we respond to the same images and metaphors. As to the motivation for all of these mythologies...

People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.

Myths are clues to the spiritual potentialities of the human life.

During the interviews, Campbell also discussed the hero's journey, love and marriage, the transition from a female to male deity in Western thinking, and transcendence.

We're so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it is all about.

It’s important to live life with the experience, and therefore the knowledge, of its mystery and of your own mystery. This gives life a new radiance, a new harmony, a new splendor.

Clearly Campbell wasn't a proponent of the meaning of life. But he pointed out that the commonality of themes across the world reflected the human psyche's need to be centered within deep principles. His advice to his college students about how to achieve this was succinct. Despite never having viewed the PBS series, even I recalled that Campbell's advice to "follow your bliss" had entered the cultural consciousness. Although this advice had initially seemed New Age-y and incredibly self-indulgent, the complete context of Campbell's perspective dispelled those impressions.

I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.

Read myths. They teach you that you can turn inward, and you begin to get the message of the symbols. Read other people’s myths, not those of your own religion, because you tend to interpret your own religion in terms of facts—but if you read the other ones, you begin to get the message. Myth helps you to put your mind in touch with this experience of being alive. It tells you what the experience is.

Although raised in the Roman Catholic tradition, Campbell seemed more aligned with Buddhism than with the Church. Interestingly, Moyers said his Christian faith had been strengthened instead of weakened as a result of their conversations. I would say that my religious position has not been affected after reading this. Of course, some of that may be attributable to my occasional bouts of frustration when Campbell described ephemeral concepts. It was like trying to grab ahold of smoke.

It is from that which is beyond being and nonbeing. It both is and is not. It neither is nor is not. It is beyond all categories of thought and the mind.

This seemingly contradictory qualifier was more to my liking.

He who thinks he knows, doesn’t know. He who knows that he doesn’t know, knows. For in this context, to know is not to know. And not to know is to know.