Finding What Brings Joy *
* From THE POWER OF MYTH by Joseph Campbell, & Bill Moyers, copyright © 1988 by
Apostrophe S Productions, Inc. and Bill Moyers and Alfred Van der Marck Editions, Inc. for
itself and the estate of Joseph Campbell. Used by permission of Doubleday, a division of
Random House, Inc.
The mythologist Joseph Campbell helped people become sensitive to symbol and myth, which he
loved deeply. He followed his path only because it gave him so much joy. The study of mythology
became his life’s work. Here he describes why.
If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while,
waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you
are—if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all
the time….
Now, I came to this idea of bliss because in Sanskrit, which is the great spiritual language of the
world, there are three terms that represent the brink, the jumping-off place to the ocean of
transcendence: sat-chit-ananda. The word “Sat” means being. “Chit” means consciousness.
“Ananda” means bliss or rapture. I thought, “I don’t know whether my consciousness is proper
consciousness or not; I don’t know whether what I know of my being is my proper being or not;
but I do know where my rapture is. So let me hang on to rapture, and that will bring me both my
consciousness and my being.” I think it worked. 18
Test Yourself
1. Religions manifest eight possible elements: belief system, community, central myths, ritual,
ethics, characteristic emotional experiences, material expression, and ___________
1. science 2. sacredness 3. dualism 4. deconstruction
2. The belief that all is divine is called _____________
1. atheism 2. monotheism 3. pantheism 4. agnosticism
3. ____________ argues that the existence of God cannot be proven.
1. Agnosticism 2. Pantheism 3. Monotheism 4. Nontheism
4. Anthropologist _______________ believed that religion was rooted in spirit worship.
1. James Frazer 2. E. B. Tylor 3. Sigmund Freud 4. Carl Gustav Jung
5. ____________ theorized that belief in a God or gods arises from the long-lasting
impressions made on adults by their childhood experiences.
1. James Frazer 2. E. B. Tylor 3. Sigmund Freud 4. Carl Gustav Jung
6. Rudolf Otto argued that religions emerge when people experience that aspect of reality
which is essentially mysterious; while ____________ believed that religion was a noble
human response to the complexity and depth of reality.
1. James Frazer
2. E. B. Tylor 3. Sigmund Freud 4. Carl Gustav Jung
7. Religions express truth ________________ For example, water can represent spiritual
cleansing; the sun, health; a mountain, strength; and a circle, eternity.
1. symbolically 2. prophetically 3. mystically 4. structurally
8. In early religions, the most significant female deity was particularly associated with
_____________ and motherhood and has been known by many names, such as Asherah,
Aphrodite, and Freia.
1. strength 2. wisdom 3. the arts 4. fertility
9. When we look at the world’s dominant religions, we see three basic orientations in their
conceptions and location of the sacred: sacramental, prophetic, and _____________
1. mystical 2. spiritual 3. immanent 4. animistic
10. As an academic discipline, the field of religious studies is now more than _____________
years old.
1. 10 2. 25 3. 200 4. 2,000
11. Based on what you have read in this chapter, what are some benefits of finding patterns
among different religions? What are some possible risks?
12. In this chapter we see attempts by numerous thinkers to answer the question, Why does
religion exist? Whose idea do you think presents the most interesting insight into religious
experience? Why?