e importance of the overall functions of myths and the way in which myths work together to create a sort of Gestalt whole that is greater than merely the sum of its quarters:
People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive (Campbell 5).
That rapture - that sense that life is good the way is but might at any time become even better - is developed and sustained through the four major ways in which myths function.
Campbell, whose work on myths remains central to this subject, even as other scholars have presented views that are in many ways more refined and more informed by modern scholarly trends such as postmodernism and poststructuralism, argued that regardless of either specific culture or specific story, all myths perform four functions. The first of these functions is what Campbell calls the "mystical function". This correlates to the sense that each one of us has as children - and some of us have as adults - that the universe is a wondrous place.
...