Of all of the figures who can be said to have played seminal roles in the development of the concept of personal mythology, Joseph Campbell is probably the individual most commonly associated with this idea. Moreover, regarding the idea of personal mythology as pathway to the sacred, no one has done more than Campbell to convey the enormous power of adopting a personal approach to myth as a means of invigorating and enhancing spiritual or religious life. Commenting on the effect of this achievement, religious studies scholar and mythologist William G. Doty observes:
That ordinary lay persons could wrestle with gripping issues about the meaning of the universe, the nature of gods and goddesses, how to face death, where to turn to find a moral community, and how to pursue religious interests in a context free of denominational cant and privilege—we all have Campbell to thank for his impetus in this regard.
A particularly compelling quality of Campbell’s approach to the religious function of mythology stems from his blending of the mystical dimension of religion with contemporary psychological ideas regarding the nature of the unconscious. Indeed, Campbell recognized that the religious and the psychological domains of human life are inextricably interwoven into one complex and ever-evolving tapestry of which mythic consciousness is both weaver and loom.
The ultimate implication of the profound interconnectedness of the religious and the psychological is that, as Campbell expressed it, “All the gods are within us.” Indeed, this oft-quoted statement — a phrase that Campbell, in turn, borrowed from the work of his mentor Heinrich Zimmer, a renowned scholar of the Hindu and Buddhist traditions — encapsulates the core of what it means to speak of personal mythology as a religious pathway.
Throughout his long career, Campbell taught that direct experience of the power of myth creatively woven into a personally meaningful framework of narrative and image could serve as a viable alternative for those contemporary people who could no longer find the sacred through traditional religious means. This process of creative mythic encounter, he argued, not only bypasses traditional theological frames of reference, but more radically leads to “the secularization of the sacred,” a term which Campbell defined as an opening of the sense of religious awe to any sphere of human experience, or “more marvelously, to the wonder of this whole world and oneself within it.”
Considering the religious implications of Campbell’s personal and experiential approach to myth, the work of William James, the pioneering scholar of the psychology of religion, is deeply relevant. Especially pertinent is James’ now-famous distinction between “firsthand” and “secondhand” religion as described in his classic text, The Varieties of Religious Experience. In this seminal work, James offers critical insights into the nature of religious experience, seeds which would later blossom into the contemporary search for an experiential approach to religious life. Indeed, we could say that James laid the foundation not only of the Baby Boomer rebellion against religious authority, but also of the idea of being “spiritual, but not religious,” a demographic which is rapidly expanding in the United States, most especially among Millennials.
For James, firsthand religion is always based on direct, personal experience of the divine in one’s life. That form of religious expression, James writes, encompasses “the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine.” In contrast, secondhand religion, according to James, is based on a collective and traditional adherence to a canon of dogma and traditional theological teachings about the nature of the divine.
For James, as for many people living today, the firsthand variety of religion is the primary and essential form of religious experience. For one thing, firsthand religion is ultimately the source of all religion, which only becomes secondhand when the initial revelatory experience of the founder of a religious tradition bequeaths that revelation to his or her followers. From this point of view, as that initial revelation becomes more and more institutionalized and theologized, as it is transformed into a canonical and orthodox form of religious teaching, it also tends to become more and more distant from a flesh-and-blood experience of the sacred.
Campbell deeply recognized the failure of mainstream Western religion to provide experiences of personal religious meaning for many people. He also recognized that this failure ultimately deprived such individuals of a sustainable and resilient metaphysical framework for encountering life. At same time, Campbell understood the personal and collective dangers of attempting to return to a literalized and constricted religious fundamentalism.
As Campbell had so richly experienced for himself, personal encounters with the myths of the world’s many religions and wisdom traditions can provide fresh revelations of the sacred dimension of life, revelations which carry the weight and power of firsthand religious understanding. Equally, Campbell understood that revisioning our own life stories in mythic, archetypal, and symbolic terms can lead to the recognition that a sacred golden thread has always been woven deeply into the fabric of our lives.
Campbell understood that a personal encounter with mythic symbols and stories – an experience grounded equally in the psychology of the unconscious as in a universalist approach to metaphysics — can still draw individual seekers toward a whole range of experiences once considered the sole province of conventional religion. “Stripped of their literal and historical posturings,” writes religious scholar Lonnie Kliever, “the myths of humankind give expression and form to those two mysterious voids which come from life and to which it returns—the unconscious self and the unlimited universe.” Or as Campbell so brilliantly described this mystical dimension of the mythic perspective, through myth we may encounter the greatest mystery of all, “the inner reaches of outer space,” a realm in which cosmos and psyche are experienced as two dimensions of a single, continuous sacred reality.