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 is vast, covering many aspects of the human experience. His philosophy is often summarized by his phrase: "Follow your bliss."
Read more :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Campbell
"Follow your bliss" One of Campbell's most identifiable, most quoted and arguably most misunderstood sayings was his admonition to "follow your bliss." He derived this idea from the Upanishads: 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.[48] He saw this not merely as a mantra, but as a helpful guide to the individual along the hero journey that each of us walks through life: If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been here 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.[49] Campbell began sharing this idea with students during his lectures in the 1970s. By the time that The Power of Myth was aired in 1988, six months following Campbell's death, "Follow your bliss" was a philosophy that resonated deeply with the American public—both religious and secular.[50] During his later years, when some students took him to be encouraging hedonism, Campbell is reported to have grumbled, "I should have said, 'Follow your blisters.'" - Wiki
"...a mythology is a control system, on the one hand framing its community to accord with an intuited order of nature and, on the other hand, by means of its symbolic pedagogic rites, conducting individuals through the ineluctable psychophysiological stages of transformation of a human lifetime - birth, childhood and adolescence, age, old age, and the release of death - in unbroken accord simultaneously with the requirements of this world and the rapture of participation in a manner of being beyond time." - Joseph Campbell http://www.mythosandlogos.com/Campbell.html
A lesser known fact : The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna (1942) By Mahendranath Guptha (M) Translation from Bengali by Swami Nikhilananda; Joseph Campbell and Margaret Woodrow Wilson Foreword by Aldous Huxley
^^ WOW
A must read is 'The Masks of God' all the four volumes.
Campbell was influenced by Jiddu Krishnamurthy whose lecture I attended about thirty years back at Calcutta. It was a very long lecture and I have the impression that JK essentially had the same message - "Follow your bliss".