Reply To: The Inner Reaches of Outer Space is Within Reach,” with Dennis Slattery, Ph.D”
Hi Lee! Welcome to Conversations of a Higher Order (COHO)!
No evidence Joseph Campbell ever heard “Imagine” – he tended to be oblivious to popular culture (he never heard of Star Wars until he met George Lucas after the first three films – Episodes IV – VI – had all been released), though he did know of John Lennon and the Beatles, per the following exchange with Bill Moyers:
MOYERS: What did you think of the outpouring over John Lennon’s death? Was he a hero?
CAMPBELL: Oh, he definitely was a hero.
MOYERS: Explain that in the mythological sense.
CAMPBELL: In the mythological sense, he was an innovator. The Beatles brought forth an art form for which there was a readiness. Somehow, they were in perfect tune with their time. Had they turned up thirty years before, their music would have fizzled out. The public hero is sensitive to the needs of his time. The Beatles brought a new spiritual depth into popular music which started the fad, let’s call it, for meditation and Oriental music. Oriental music had been over here for years, as a curiosity, but now, after the Beatles, our young people seem to know what it’s about. We are hearing more and more of it, and it’s being used in terms of its original intention as a support for meditations. That’s what the Beatles started.”
Joseph Campbell and the Power of Myth (with Bill Moyers)
As to where best to post, takes a little bit getting used to navigating these forums. This would be a better fit in our “catch all” forum near the bottom of COHO’s main page called The Conversation with a Thousand Faces (no worries though – happy to answer your question).
Feel free to poke around the various forum categories and jump into any conversations that interest you (even those that seem to be relatively quiet – COHO doesn’t move at the frenetic pace of social media), or start a topic of your own.