Joseph Cambell's - Happiness

Joseph John Campbell (March 26, 1904 – October 30, 1987) was an American mythologist, writer and lecturer, best known for his work in comparative mythology and comparative religion. His work covers many aspects of the human experience. His philosophy is often summarized by his phrase: "Follow your bliss."

Joseph Campbell was born in White Plains, New York, the son of Josephine (Lynch) and Charles William Campbell. He was from an upper-middle-class Irish Catholic family. During his childhood, he moved with his family to nearby New Rochelle, New York. In 1919 a fire destroyed the family home in New Rochelle, killing his grandmother.

In 1921 Campbell graduated from the Canterbury School in New Milford, Connecticut.

While at Dartmouth College he studied biology and mathematics, but decided that he preferred the humanities. He transferred to Columbia University, where he received a BA in English literature in 1925 and an MA in Medieval literature in 1927. At Dartmouth he had joined Delta Tau Delta. An accomplished athlete, he received awards in track and field events, and, for a time, was among the fastest half-mile runners in the world.

In 1924 Campbell traveled to Europe with his family. On the ship during his return trip he encountered Jiddu Krishnamurti; they discussed Asian philosophy, sparking in Campbell an interest in Hindu and Indian thought. In 1927 Campbell received a fellowship from Columbia University to study in Europe. Campbell studied Old French, Provencal and Sanskrit at the University of Paris in France and the University of Munich in Germany. He learned to read and speak French and German.

On his return to Columbia University in 1929, Campbell expressed a desire to pursue the study of Sanskrit and Modern Art in addition to medieval literature. Lacking faculty approval, Campbell withdrew from graduate studies. Later in life he said while laughing but not in jest that it is a sign of incompetence to have a PhD in the liberal arts, the discipline covering his work.

With the arrival of the Great Depression a few weeks later, Campbell spent the next five years (1929–34) living in a rented shack on some land in Woodstock, New York. There, he contemplated the next course of his life while engaged in intensive and rigorous independent study. He later said that he "would divide the day into four four-hour periods, of which I would be reading in three of the four-hour periods, and free one of them... I would get nine hours of sheer reading done a day. And this went on for five years straight.

Campbell traveled to California for a year (1931–32), continuing his independent studies and becoming close friends with the budding writer John Steinbeck and his wife Carol. On the Monterey Peninsula, Campbell, like Steinbeck, fell under the spell of marine biologist Ed Ricketts (the model for "Doc" in Steinbeck's novel Cannery Row as well as central characters in several other novels). Campbell lived for a while next door to Ricketts, participated in professional and social activities at his neighbor's, and accompanied him, along with Xenia and Sasha Kashevaroff, on a 1932 journey to Juneau, Alaska on the Grampus. Campbell began writing a novel centered on Ricketts as hero but, unlike Steinbeck, did not complete his book.

Bruce Robison writes that "Campbell would refer to those days as a time when everything in his life was taking shape.... Campbell, the great chronicler of the 'hero's journey' inmythology, recognized patterns that paralleled his own thinking in one of Ricketts's unpublished philosophical essays. Echoes of Carl Jung, Robinson Jeffers and James Joyce can be found in the work of Steinbeck and Ricketts as well as Campbell."

Campbell continued his independent reading while teaching for a year in 1933 at the Canterbury School, during which time he also attempted to publish works of fiction.

In 1934 Campbell accepted a position as professor at Sarah Lawrence College.

In 1938 Campbell married one of his former students, dancer-choreographer Jean Erdman. For most of their 49 years of marriage they shared a two-room apartment in Greenwich Village in New York City. In the 1980s they also purchased an apartment in Honolulu and divided their time between the two cities. They did not have any children.

Early in World War II, Campbell attended a lecture by Indologist Heinrich Zimmer; the two men became good friends. After Zimmer's death, Campbell was given the task of editing and posthumously publishing Zimmer's papers, which he would do over the following decade.

In 1955–56, as the last volume of Zimmer's posthuma (The Art of Indian Asia, its Mythology and Transformations) was finally about to be published, Campbell took a sabbatical from Sarah Lawrence College and traveled, for the first time, to Asia. He spent six months in southern Asia (mostly India) and another six in East Asia (mostly Japan).

This year had a profound influence on his thinking about Asian religion and myth, and also on the necessity for teaching comparative mythology to a larger, non-academic audience.

In 1972 Campbell retired from Sarah Lawrence College, after having taught there for 38 years.

He would go on to speak publicly on world myth at colleges, churches and lecture halls and on radio and television stations. He would continue to do so for the rest of his life. Campbell was asked by Steven Aizenstat the founder of Pacifica Graduate Institute in Carpinteria California if Campbell would honor Pacifica with Campbell's distinguished support. Aizenstat with the help of Aizenstat's friend Jame Hillman (a prolific writer in his own right) asked the elder Joseph Campbell if he would grant his significant library to Pacifica. That way, Aizenstat explained scholars from around the world would have access to Campbell's extensive collection of first edition manuscripts, memorabilia. Manuscripts that Campbell felt of as 'friends' and were dear to Campbell's heart as Aizenstat would later claim to a room full of potential Pacifica Graduate Institute students. Campbell agreed under one condition. The school would be not for profit and there were to be no charge to visit Campbell's library.

Campbell died at his home in Honolulu, Hawaii, on 30 October 1987, from complications of esophageal cancer. Before his death he had completed filming the series of interviews with Bill Moyers that aired the following spring as The Power of Myth.