The Structure of Mythic/Religious Experience
(paraphrase, interpretation of J. Campbel's thesis to "Masks of God")

Part of what the mythic (and religious) function is all about is that you attach yourself to an object which represents God - the highest Self, the supreme formless form which has no form, beyond all conception and has no tangibility other than you have this notion of it - because God is unknowable within the limits of your senses, because God has no earthly attributes.

Thus, you attach to this inferior, substitute God-object as a stand in for God, to give God attributes, some form. You willingly pretend that this earthly object (or person) stands for God, or an aspect of God, and you pretend it is God, and you worship it as if it were God. Finally, if you are to experience God, this inferior object must be destroyed, so you will suffer properly and experience the emotional punch necessary to experience God on a visceral, emotional level.

What evokes this mythic experience of God is the mixture and collision of these two psychic levels: one, the consciousness with which you intentionally pretend that this object which you know is not God to actually be God (willing suspension of disbelief), and the other is the giving into emotionally during the destruction of this God surrogate to actually believe that God (and your self attachment to God) is being destroyed.