That's interesting. I wonder how many people would understand that he meant that by bliss if he hadn't explained it.
dictionary.com definitions of bliss include:
1. Extreme happiness; ecstasy.
2. The ecstasy of salvation; spiritual joy.
blithesomeness; gladness; now, the highest degree of happiness; blessedness; exalted felicity; heavenly joy.
a state of extreme happiness
Thesarus equivalents include:
beatitude, blessedness, euphoria, felicity, gladness, happiness, heaven, joy, paradise, rapture
None of these seem what Campbell meant. But using his definition, even noting your caution, it still seems totally self-centered. If what gets down into your gut and you feel is your life involves concern for other people and society, that's fine. But if it is sybartic, focussed on one's own pleasure or acquitiveness at the expense of anybody else's, it hardly seems to be an admirable trait to promote. Knowing Campbell's work, I expect that he would tell such people to go deeper, that they hadn't reached the center where true bliss resides yet, but what if they have no deeper, but that is indeed their deepest point? |
