Assorted reflections on matters mostly to do with inner life, including spirituality and psychotherapy, consciousness and the divine. For more on see www.markvernon.com
…
continue reading
1
Forms and the Reformation of Science. A conversation with Rupert Sheldrake
39:15
39:15
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
39:15
Forms are all around us: clouds, flowers, creatures, even systems of thought and logical relations. And yet the nature of forms is rarely part of the modern scientific conversation. In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon discuss the importance of forms and how they work. The need for form to account for …
…
continue reading
1
"Enemies of the Human Race." William Blake on how to know God
11:38
11:38
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
11:38
The new issue of VALA, the magazine of the Blake Society, is all about God. I've an article in it on Blake's mystical knowledge of God. "I am in you, you are in me, mutual in love divine." Blake could hardly have been stronger in his views that naturalistic explanations for religion, and what would now be called non-real theologies, are inadequate …
…
continue reading
1
The gospel, sexual desire and the abuse scandals in the church. What has the erotic to do with God?
31:37
31:37
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
31:37
The resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury has highlighted the horrendous nature of abuse in the church and also the church’s difficulties in dealing with these individuals. But is focusing on individuals enough or trying to address these matters through safeguarding and moral injunctions? Those elements are no doubt necessary. But I think als…
…
continue reading
1
The Turn of the Tide. Martin Shaw & Mark Vernon talk about discerning the New Christian moment
1:21:59
1:21:59
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
1:21:59
Martin Shaw and Mark Vernon return for a second conversation following Martin’s embrace of Orthodox Christianity. The first conversation, entitled The Mossy Face of Christ, can be found on my YouTube channel. They discuss what is happening with the apparent resurgence of interest in Christianity, not least in relation to Martin’s new course, The Sk…
…
continue reading
1
Purposes in nature and minds. A conversation with Rupert Sheldrake
30:06
30:06
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
30:06
One of the premises of modern science is that nature is devoid of purposes. Instead, purposeless explanations for phenomena are sought. And the strategy has proved hugely productive. Except that allusions to purpose never quite fade from the scientific imagination. In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon …
…
continue reading
1
Does the Consolation of Philosophy offered by Boethius, still work, 1500 years on?
34:30
34:30
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
34:30
The 1500th anniversary of the death of Boethius more than likely falls in 2024. He asks a key question: how to find true, lasting, reliable happiness? His answer, The Consolation of Philosophy, was a mediaeval bestseller, massively influencial, and is also very readable. So what do Boethius and, in particular, Lady Philosophy tell us?…
…
continue reading
1
All Things Are Full Of Gods by David Bentley Hart. A summary and discussion
29:33
29:33
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
29:33
All Things Are Full Of Gods is David Bentley Hart’s philosophical case for an idealist and theist understanding of consciousness, understood as an intertwining of mind, language and life. As he puts it: “Mind and life, and language too, are possibly only by way of a kind of “downward causation” that informs their “upward” evolution in particular be…
…
continue reading
1
How does memory work? A conversation with Rupert Sheldrake
39:32
39:32
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
39:32
No one knows. Repeated experiments have failed to locate where memories are stored in the brain, casting doubt on the conventional assumption that memories are stored as material traces. In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon discuss various kinds of memory, from episodic memory to habits. They consider …
…
continue reading
1
0:00 / 19:22 What did Socrates teach? Or why you only understand Plato if he is decolonised
19:22
19:22
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
19:22
What Socrates taught is, of course, the wrong question. For, if there is one thing that Plato is quite clear about, it is that Socrates taught nothing. Something else is going on when you encounter this figure. So what is it? In this talk I look first at common errors concerning Plato, such as that he pitched body against soul or thought poets were…
…
continue reading
1
To see a world in a grain of sand. Poetry & philosophy for a civilisation in distress. A conversation with Valentin Gerlier
49:50
49:50
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
49:50
What has poetry to do with philosophy? Why might poetry particularly matter now? How did figures from Plato to Einstein value the poetic voice? Valentin Gerlier and Mark Vernon return for another conversation about the manner in which we humans are gifted with symbolic as well as cognitive imaginations. They ask why we keep returning to poets such …
…
continue reading
1
Hallam v the State, and free speech. The Just Stop Oil desecrations are calling to our humanity
26:52
26:52
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
26:52
Just Stop Oil and the imprisonment of Roger Hallam and others has provoked an outcry, on both sides of the dispute. And the heightened emotions have made me think. What's going on here? What is at stake? I suspect that what’s being missed is something fundamental to human society and how we participate in a wider environment, and that can be discer…
…
continue reading
1
Chance and accidents, indeterminism and prayer. A conversation with Rupert Sheldrake
38:19
38:19
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
38:19
Randomness and luck, fate and providence. How do these facets of life relate to one another? Or is everything, actually, mechanically determined with synchronicities, say, being no more than coincidences? In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon discuss the ways in which philosophers and scientists, ancien…
…
continue reading
1
Cultural Christianity kills. Taking Blake's Christianity seriously. William on Jesus
51:06
51:06
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
51:06
At one level, Blake is clearly Christian. It’s even trivial to say so. And yet, his identification with Jesus is often sidelined, even written out, of accounts of the poet's work today. There are many reasons for this neglect: an understandable disillusionment with Christianity; the replacement of participative Christianity with cultural Christiani…
…
continue reading
1
Trans activism, transhumanising, economic transition. Proxies for vision & the lost soul of politics
17:40
17:40
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
17:40
Three “trans” issues seem to be proxies for vision in contemporary politics, feeding the sense of despair and disillusion. Trans activism, which is not the same as trans pathology. Transhumanising, the techno-utopian dream of tomorrow. Transitioning the economy, moving from extractive consumption. All three are about qualities of relationship: - to…
…
continue reading
1
Cut off in the literal age. Owen Barfield & Carl Jung on alienation and political disillusionment
18:47
18:47
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
18:47
There is a link between rising levels of mental-ill health and political disillusionment. Feeling cut off is not just an economic and psychological problem, but is a symptom of a wider alienation arising from modern consciousness. Owen Barfield argued that contemporary political problems are fundamentally due to estrangement not only from others bu…
…
continue reading
1
To Generalise is to be an Idiot. William Blake on politics, disillusionment and abstraction
13:25
13:25
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
13:25
William Blake lived during the period in which the modern world was born. A prophet, he detected the tendencies that now powerfully shape our age. The love of abstraction was high on his list of troubles. Such generalisations profoundly shape politics today. Politicians sell themselves on whether they will boost the economy, drive up growth, fight …
…
continue reading
1
God, sexuality & the psyche. CS Lewis and Sigmund Freud tabletalk. Thoughts on Freud’s Last Session
22:49
22:49
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
22:49
The new movie Freud’s Last Session is well worth a watch, particularly if either man is of interest. The issues you might expect are aired between them, not least belief in God. But also the more shadowy sides to their lives - Lewis’s relationship with Janie Moore, Freud’s with his daughter Anna. I enjoyed it, though also wondered if they might hav…
…
continue reading
1
The fullness of life. A conversation with Rupert Sheldrake
34:29
34:29
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
34:29
At school, we learn that being alive is to possess certain functions, from respiration to reproduction. But what is life and why can the word “life” be used more widely than referring only to biological life? In the latest episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon consider the meaning of saying that stars have a li…
…
continue reading
1
Rendering to Caesar. Jesus on politics and the kingdom that is within
13:31
13:31
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
13:31
I've been thinking about politics and disillusionment that seems most characteristic of now, in the West at least, and thinking about the prepolitcal - what politics needs to work well. I've thought about Plato on beauty and Aristotle on ethics in previous posts. Now a third guide, Jesus on... which isn't immediately easy to say. And that's the poi…
…
continue reading
1
Beauty and the failure of politics. An election dispatch from ancient Athens
11:40
11:40
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
11:40
Disillusionment with politics is probably the most obvious feature of the current mood. This is, in part, because politics has collapsed onto anxiety about material improvement and lost sight of much more. In a secular society in which this facet of wellbeing is increasingly hard to deliver, politics appears therefore to be failing. So now is a goo…
…
continue reading
1
Ethics and the failure of politics, or why ethics is part of the problem. A dispatch from Athens
12:57
12:57
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
12:57
Disillusionment with politics is probably the most obvious feature of the current mood. This is, in part, because politics has collapsed onto anxiety about material improvement and lost sight of much more. In a secular society in which this facet of wellbeing is increasingly hard to deliver, politics appears therefore to be failing. So now is a goo…
…
continue reading
1
Force Fields. Behind the fog of maths. A conversation with Rupert Sheldrake
37:38
37:38
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
37:38
Einstein remarked that there was physics before Maxwell and physics after Maxwell, the difference being the introduction of field theory. So what difference did fields make and, more to the point, what are they? In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon explore how electromagnetic, gravitational and quantum…
…
continue reading
To read the essay, go to Aeon magazine's website, or https://aeon.co/essays/in-the-beginning-there-was-love-we-can-move-with-its-powerKirjoittanut Mark Vernon
…
continue reading
1
Matter is frozen light. A conversation with Rupert Sheldrake & Mark Vernon
40:07
40:07
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
40:07
The everyday stuff called matter turns out to be both more fascinating and stranger than we usually assume. In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon ask just matter is, beginning with contemporary ideas from quantum physics, in which matter is frozen light, as the physicist David Bohm put it. They consider…
…
continue reading
1
Whose revival? Which Christianity? CS Lewis & Owen Barfield on the renewed interest of belief in God
41:05
41:05
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
41:05
There is much talk of a revival of Christianity amongst secular intellectuals, at least in my cultural bubble. That may or may not be sociological significant and church attendence figures stay in marked decline. But what interests me is not so much the numbers as the spirit of the renewed interest. What is the feel of the Christianity being discus…
…
continue reading
1
Strangeness is the new real. Martin Shaw & Mark Vernon in conversation
1:14:26
1:14:26
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
1:14:26
A couple of years back, Martin Shaw had a visionary experience that led him to Christianity. We talked about it as the Mossy face of Christ - https://youtu.be/8luN8bDDRBs?si=c7jHUt-Ih5xKlVWq So it was great to talk again about what's been happening. Which is much. The conversation ranges over what might be happening now with Christianity, Martin's …
…
continue reading
1
Christspiracy. The documentary's claims about Jesus & Christianity put to the test, w Kameron Waters
1:34:11
1:34:11
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
1:34:11
The makers of Seaspiracy and Cowspiracy are back. Christspiracy is another profoundly disturbing film detailing the industrial abuse of our animal kin. Expect more horrific carelessness and exploitation on a mass scale. Only this time, Kip Andersen and Kameron Waters not only go global but look back in time. “This is plausibly the most significant …
…
continue reading
1
The Nature of Energy. A conversation with Rupert Sheldrake & Mark Vernon
36:31
36:31
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
36:31
Energy is a key organising principle in modern science, the conversation of energy being a grounding and universal law. But what is energy? In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon examine the history of the idea and the word. In science, energy is a relatively recently notion, emerging in its current form…
…
continue reading
1
Participation renewed. Discussing The Riddle of the Sphinx, new essays from Owen Barfield
1:20:51
1:20:51
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
1:20:51
I talk again with Landon Loftin and Max Leyf about the genius insight of Owen Barfield. The Riddle of the Sphinx (Barfield Press) is a new collection of talks and essays about the great friend of CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. We discuss Barfield's take on analysis and analogy, Darwinian and other kinds of evolution, the significance of Rudolf Stein, an…
…
continue reading
1
Apocalypse? It's now! Good news & secular salvation, climate crisis & time. With Gunnar Gjermundsen
1:23:09
1:23:09
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
1:23:09
How can Christianity address the climate crisis? Isn’t the objectifying of nature and the drive to improve our lot a secular legacy of Christendom? And isn’t individual conversion more or less irrelevant in a time of systemic crisis? I was delighted to be sent an essay by Gunnar Gjermundsen that asks these questions and more. His insights are wide-…
…
continue reading
Western liturgies are obsessed with sin. "There is no health in us", or words to that effect, begin and end most services, particularly in Lent. Jesus's wilderness experience was actually about something else - practicing paradise, to use to the phrase of Douglas Christie. It's a time to reorientate attention, not wallow in guilt and re-embed shame…
…
continue reading
1
The Speed of Gravity. A conversation with Rupert Sheldrake
32:23
32:23
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
32:23
Isaac Newton is best known for his theory of gravity. And yet, the great scientist also insisted: "ye cause of gravity is what I do not pretend to know.” In other words, notions like gravity, and force in general, are deeply mysterious phenomena. In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon ask just what gravi…
…
continue reading
1
How rituals of love can aid death and dying. A conversation with Madeleine Pennington
42:24
42:24
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
42:24
The rituals around death and dying are changing in the UK and across the developed world. Medical care advances, which is for the good, though can mean to a loss of other kinds of wisdom about this facet of life. People’s beliefs and convictions about death are also in a state of flux. The think tank, Theos, has extensively researched this changing…
…
continue reading
1
Nondualism & enchantment, acting & UFOs (Rupert Spira & Meister Eckhart too). Talk with Jamie Robson
1:04:16
1:04:16
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
1:04:16
A conversation with actor, Jamie Robson, whom I met through the work of Rupert Spira. 00:00 Meeting through Rupert Spira 03:26 Nondualism and Christian mysticism 06:02 Nondualism and acting 15:00 Being and doing 19:40 Detachment and Meister Eckhart 26:48 Two modes of perception in Iain McGilchrist and others 32:43 Double vision and a re-enchanted w…
…
continue reading
1
Love at the meeting of cultures. A conversation with Chine McDonald
23:05
23:05
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
23:05
Born in Nigeria and raised in the UK since the age of 4, Chine McDonald is well placed to explore love in different cultural contexts, and what happens when differences meet. We talked about how differences show up particularly in relation to the practicalities of loving, from house design to how people talk at funerals, as well as wider questions …
…
continue reading
1
Humanity’s role in nature. Are we more than just a problem? A conversation with Rupert Sheldrake
35:47
35:47
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
35:47
Environmental degradation caused by technological progress is in the news almost everyday. So can any sense be made of an ancient intuition that human beings are not just part of nature but have a distinctive and positive role to play in nature? In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon discuss issues from …
…
continue reading
1
On the Incarnation or the real meaning of Christmas. Conversation with Russell Jefford & Mark Vernon
57:13
57:13
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
57:13
Christmas risks losing its meaning not only because of the commercial frenzy but because of the way it is talked about in churches. In this conversation, Russell Jefford talks about his discovery of the understanding of the incarnation conveyed in the writings of the early church fathers. They were unknown to him as an evangelical Christian and hav…
…
continue reading
1
Loving and knowing in indigenous ways of life. A conversation with Melissa Nelson
42:45
42:45
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
42:45
“A worldview that understands indigeneity is a paradigm of regeneration, a worldview rooted in enduring values in what we call our original instructions, common themes of reciprocity, of gratitude, of responsibility, of generosity, of forgiveness, of humility, of courage, of sacrifice, and of course love. But these values are not just words, we nee…
…
continue reading
1
What can love look like in an era of crisis and fear? With Clare Martin, St Ethelburga's Centre, London
49:56
49:56
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
49:56
Clare Martin is co-director of the St Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation and Peace, located in the heart of the City of London. In this conversation, we spoke about what love can look like in the public square, particularly in contexts of crisis and conflict, and how encounters between peoples can be designed so as to foster love as a resource …
…
continue reading
1
Jesus the Imagination. Taking William Blake’s Christianity seriously. Essay at blakesociety.org
8:49
VALA can be downloaded as a pdf here - https://blakesociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/VALA-04.pdf My essay is at p60 For more on Mark - www.markvernon.comKirjoittanut Mark Vernon
…
continue reading
1
Love, power and public life. A conversation with Claire Gilbert & Mark Vernon
41:49
41:49
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
41:49
What is the role of love in public life? Can it have a place given the scrutiny faced by leaders and the processes of bureaucracies? Or is love what we need to face the huge challenges of today, from distrust of public institutions to the environmental crisis? Claire Gilbert is the author of several books, a fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, has …
…
continue reading
1
Principles of love and the wisdom of constellations. With Robert Rowland Smith & Mark Vernon
39:42
39:42
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
39:42
Constellations, also called family systems, is a way of visualising the dynamics of love that operate in any group that has to do with creativity or life. A constellation workshop brings people together to look at predicaments with which people are wrestling, be they personal or organisational. The goal is to find a design that releases and acknowl…
…
continue reading
1
The extension of mind through space and the sense of being stared at. Conversation with Rupert Sheldrake
42:37
42:37
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
42:37
Do our minds reside solely inside our heads, or perhaps bodies? Or do they extend into the wider world, perhaps even reaching to the stars? In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon discuss the extended mind theory, taking a lead from recent work of Rupert’s on the sense of being stared at, and also the pro…
…
continue reading
1
How to make friendship work. A conversation with Robin Dunbar
1:14:03
1:14:03
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
1:14:03
Robin Dunbar is an Oxford evolutionary psychologist who has written extensively about friendship, amongst other things, not least in relation to “Dunbar’s Number”. We talked about what friendship is, and how it differs from other loves. We explored the varieties of friendship that people experience, and why metaphors such as “circles of friends” ar…
…
continue reading
Bishop Barron is another figure I think worth listening to, who spoke at ARC in London, alongside Jordan Peterson. Like Peterson, he simultaneously leaves me as wary as enthused. I’ve explained where that took me with Peterson in another short talk. Here’s where I’ve ended up in response to Barron, which interesting is also, in my view, with a rich…
…
continue reading
All in all, there is much to consider in Jordan Peterson’s latest passionate suggestions. I think he is right to present a vision of the human good coming from the future, thereby calling us and shaping a meaningful life now. The human self needs a sense of itself that exceeds an otherwise atomised, lonely individualism. However, in may view, Peter…
…
continue reading
1
Loving AIs. Reducing risk & building intelligence. Mark Vernon talks with Eve Poole
45:25
45:25
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
45:25
Thinking carefully, not just apocalyptically, about AIs requires a combination of skills - technological, sociological, psychological, philosophical, organisational. So I was delighted to talk with Eve Poole, who is a rare individual capable of bringing all these elements into her work. Our central question was how to build AIs so as to design out …
…
continue reading
1
Can we do without organised religion? A conversation with Rupert Sheldrake
37:59
37:59
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
37:59
Churches are in decline, certainly in the western world. People tend not to think to turn to a priest for spiritual insight or advice. But is a lived relationship with the sacred and wisdom traditions denuded as organised religion disappears? In this Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogue, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon talk about religious institutions for g…
…
continue reading
At the beginning of Idler Drinks (see www.idler.co.uk), I offer a thought. Here's the one from this week.Kirjoittanut Mark Vernon
…
continue reading
1
Christ consciousness and final participation. Max Leyf, Landon Loftin & Mark Vernon. #OwenBarfield
1:08:20
1:08:20
Toista myöhemmin
Toista myöhemmin
Listat
Tykkää
Tykätty
1:08:20
Owen Barfield talked of an evolution of consciousness towards final participation. But what is that state or quality awareness? How does it relate to the life of Christ? How was it described by Rudolf Steiner? Can we see and know intimations of it now? In this second discussion with Landon Loftin and Max Leyf, we explore the ideas of freedom and in…
…
continue reading