WHERE DOES IT COME FROM?

When a student asked him what she should do with her life, Joseph Campbell, the mythologist, writer and lecturer, told her “follow your bliss.”  

He borrowed the expression, he said, from Vedanta’s sat-chit-ananda, where sat is full being, chit is full consciousness, and ananda is full bliss, rapture.

Campbell confessed that he did not know what full being and full consciousness were exactly, but he definitely knew what full bliss was.  So by “follow your bliss” Campbell meant follow your passion, follow what inspires you the most.

But now where does this passion come from?

Campbell said simply that it is with you, like tracks guiding you.  Bill Moyers, in one of his interviews with Campbell for The Power of Myth television series used the expression “invisible hands.”

Did Campbell feel such unseen guidance?   Yes, indeed, Campbell replied, he felt it his entire life.  This was the bliss he followed.