We need myth because, by definition, the ineffable cannot be adequately described in words.
Māyā prevents us experiencing Brahman directly. So we only have pointers to that ineffable reality: words are metaphors for the things we sense perceive, believing that to be reality. But these words are just rhythms, not the thing itself. They are pointers. Images are also pointers. We see a picture of an apple and we think "apple" not "picture of an apple." Myth is a combination of such auditory & visual rhythms which are specifically used to point behind the veil. To not speak of "myth" is to deny the existence of one of the best tools we have to explore the veil and the reality behind.
myth—Noun
A traditional story which embodies a belief regarding some fact or phenomenon of experience, and in which often the forces of nature and of the soul are personified; a sacred narrative regarding a god, a hero, the origin of the world or of a people, etc.
—Wiktionary
Ideas of the world which are built into the very nature of the language we use, and of our ideas of logic, and of what makes sense altogether.
And these basic ideas I call myth, not using the word ‘myth’ to mean simply something untrue, but to use the word ‘myth’ in a more powerful sense. A myth is an image in terms of which we try to make sense of the world. Now, for example, a myth in a way is a metaphor. If you want to explain electricity to someone who doesn’t know anything about electricity, you say, well, you talk about an electric current. Now, the word ‘current’ is borrowed from rivers. It’s borrowed from hydraulics, and so you explain electricity in terms of water. Now, electricity is not water, it behaves actually in a different way, but there are some ways in which the behavior of water is like the behavior of electricity, and so you explain it in terms of water.
—Alan Watts, Nature of Consciousness Part 1
He goes on to describe how the West has gone from the ceramic myth—man & the world as fashioned out of clay by the Divine—to the fully-automated myth—man & the world as machines either programmed by the Divine or set into motion by random chance.
Myth basically serves four functions. The first is the mystical function… realizing what a wonder the universe is, and what a wonder you are, and experiencing awe before this mystery… The second is a cosmological dimension, the dimension with which science is concerned—showing you what shape the universe is, but showing it in such a way that the mystery again comes through… The third function is the sociological one, supporting and validating a certain social order… But there is a fourth function of myth, and this is the one that I think everyone must try today to relate to, and that is the pedagogical function of how to live a human lifetime under any circumstances.
—Joseph Campbell, The Function of Mythology
We should use this as an opportunity to educate what the word "myth" actually means (veracity judgement only being a recent predilection) and how myths are useful
