[Drew Gerald]

Hello,

I was introduced to Campbell similar to many folks, through his “hero’s journey” motif and “follow your bliss quote”. I was interested in more, so I listened to the complete collection of Joseph Campbell’s audio lessons. This took me a couple of years to go through, finishing about 3 years ago,

Wow.

The depth of wisdom and story and richness he offered the world was completely different than the surface-level contributions that we hear about. I was blown away and transformed deeply through everything he shared in his lectures. The work the foundation has done to get these audios up is a blessing; I know how much work that takes.

Those who take the time to simply listen and read what he shares will benefit from incredible riches as I have. Him, along with Watts, have been cornerstones to my spiritual growth.

A little about me: I am the director at the “Center for Cinesomatic Development” – where we use video and movement to see the archetypes and mythologies of a person play out through the body. Understanding the role and power of myth from what I’ve learned through JC’s work, I have been able to expand this therapeutic process. It’s been breathtaking to see the stories Joseph talked about, play through a person’s body and movement, and how that’s running their lives from the unconscious.

I have also quoted Campbell many times in my book and writing. He has been a great influence on my work.

It’s wonderful to have a space for us to talk about this work, thank you for creating it! I’m looking forward to hearing how others have been influenced by this work.

[Stephen Gerringer]

Happy Day, Drew!

Welcome to Conversations of a Higher Order, where you clearly bring so much to the table! I enjoyed poking around your website, and appreciate the blend of modalities you use – and especially the recognition that myth is written in our bodies.

Myth and the body. Myth and nature. Our mind makes myth not from its own rational programs, but in response to suggestions from the body as to what’s needed.

Joseph Campbell, in Myth & the Body: A Colloquy with Joseph Campbell, by Stanley Keleman

More audio lectures have been added over the last three years, by the way. Joe left behind roughly a thousand hours of lectures, many on cassette tapes from the seventies and eighties, many on reel-to-reel tapes from the the late 1950s and 1960s, and even some wire spool recordings from earlier. Can’t just feed those into a computer; heck, for hundreds of hours of lectures the equipment to play them is difficult to find, much less digitize them – along with the difficulty of finding audio wizards with the skills to know how to use that equipment.

Most of those have been digitized now, which proved an expensive and time-consuming process; though only a small quantity (maybe a touch over 10%) have good enough quality for commercial release (and even those have to carefully mixed), the rest  are available, states and hisses and all, in the Joseph Campbell Collection at the Opus Archives and Research Center on the campus of the Pacifica Graduate Institute.  If you’ve listened to all the audio lectures that were up on Spotify or Pandora, you do indeed have a pretty comprehensive grasp of the depth and breadth of Campbell’s mythological perspective.  (Over the last three years I believe lectures in Series II, Volume 6  and Series III Volume I have been released).

I’m so glad you are here. Feel free to jump into any ongoing conversation, or start a topic of your own. The FAQ, which opens with an overview of how to navigate the forums, is pinned to the top of each forum category (along with forum guidelines) for easy reference.

Namaste!

[Drew Gerald]

Hi Stephen,

Thank you for the lovely response. And, thank you for taking a look at the site and the work we’re doing; glad you enjoyed. That quote is great, I haven’t read it before.

I fully understand the audio work involved. My late mentor had hundreds of tapes of video we were ingesting from the 80s and 90s, and the process of going from video and digitizing was immense. So I appreciate and empathize with all the work that has been put into it! We had to find old cameras on eBay and legacy hardware and figure out how to use modern software, then get all that video uploaded.

I had no idea there’s 90% more audios that won’t be released, that’s incredible. Is the only way to listen by going to the campus?

Thanks again for the warm welcome.

[Author]

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