It’s too much for me. It actually gets in the way of the ideas, this courtliness. They know each other well, Pageau has never once been offended in all their conversations, and yet it continues.
When Jonathan said: “when you sacrifice to a god, it works”, it really made me think about abortion. We hear over and over again from the “shout your abortion” crowd that it is the best decision they’ve ever made because it allowed them to achieve certain things they wouldn’t have been able to achieve otherwise. And I just keep thinking: “isn’t this kind of like sacrificing your child to some obscure entity in order to get what you want?” I don’t know. It just feels a lot like the same thing to me. I don’t think the pro-abortion people see it in this manner, but it seems to be that way regardless of what they think or believe. I don’t know. I’d like to hear other people’s thoughts on this.
Interesting take on abortion as a sacrifice. Supposing the Gods are selfish and care not for human attainment of material or non material objects. We know they play the infinite game really well and are capable of storing energy in human agencies. If for the Gods, human consciousness were like a regulating device, and they simply adjusted the valve according to the conditions and development stages of the individual. I would view abortion, not as a sacrifice to a God, but rather a claiming of property by the God or agent of the Gods for whom the storage most benefits in the long game.
What an absolutely chilling thought. It is becoming increasingly clear that we are, as a country, unquestionably worshipers of Molech. I have had the phrase "come out of her, My people" going through my mind more and more of late.
Jonathan has actually repeatedly called abortion human sacrifice. We could attempt to tone this down about a bit and instead call it sacrifice of a potential human being. But I struggle to find a compelling argument as to why sacrificing newborn babies (which even pro-choicers would find abhorrent) would be that much different from sacrificing weeks old foetuses. You could claim that foetuses are not quite alive because they are not conscious, but I don’t really consider neonates conscious either, but in no way does that make me think it’s fine to just kill them. But I don’t think we should judge the abortionists too hastily. They are compelled by society to sacrifice their children. What has happened, I think, is that what was once mostly a matter of care and let live has become encumbered by material complexity. Entering life is no longer simply and familiarly to bring forth a person, but a burdensome process to conform the individual to the oppressing demands of society and therein fill a role. The beast asks for too much. It is this material aspect of the life of the child that they wish to sacrifice, not its life itself. But it is indeed to the beast they make their sacrifice. In succumbing to its oppressive force they only make it stronger. They give worship to the material life instead of the divine life of the child. This is the anti-Christian sacrifice of a child, to sacrifice it to the beast, to kill it. The Christian sacrifice of a child, to sacrifice it to God, is instead to give it life.
Yes, it's not by chance that there's a whole movement within feminism of "witches" and women who do witchcraft and such. If you remove the illusion of modernity and look at what's going on like someone 2000 years ago would look at it it's pretty clear
I say you're right and maybe a little off, and maybe I'm off reading what you're saying. So don't take this a critique, but more of a riff. It is a sacrifice, but it isn't a direct-material sacrifice, they aren't signing a deal with the devil for success like in the tale "The Devil vs Daniel Webster". But they are giving up, giving away their attention for the child, for that future connection/ relationship in order to gain attention to their present life. They are offering one potential future and its benefits/ costs for a present release from paying attention and thus gain a different future. So most of them are not trying to sacrifice to Baal or Ghanges to gain some power, but they are sacrificing something valuable in the hopes of gaining something else. That something else can be the abstraction of "freedom" (more realistically the freedom from responsibility/ challenge) or the material, the loss of resources both in attention and money (time). Which is what Vervake and Pageau, I believe, are coming to align on is these lower-level, transpersonal beings that aren't quite alive, but occupy a sort of spirit place. Instead of a River Spirit or Forest Spirit who might be sacrificed to for good hunting, good farming, or no predators, no drownings, the Pro-choice cult is sacrificing to a Liberal Spirit. God, I hate calling it that, because of all the political implications, please ignore any notion of left, right, or whatever. But this Liberal Spirit gives the power to do anything, and takes away the guilt of 'should'. Both Evolutionarily and religiously, humanity has an aligned purpose: The propagation and adaption of the species. Genesis says that man is to be fruitful and multiple, for both the literal and figurative meanings that command is to be morally fruitful and biologically fruitful. And evolution, biology, without any supernatural connection, still drives and commands that all lifeforms reproduce. To deny evolution is something that any lifeform would see as wrong. In religion, this is sin, it is a mistake, an error. And these situations would produce guilt. But God is dead, no? So the materialist, the Deist, and the secularist would believe. But they must overcome evolution, the natural force, the natural spirit, the natural god. Else they might bear guilt and shame for denying Life, Gaia, her due. So what if you could sacrifice to a spirit, and thus cancel guilt? As the religious sacrificed their best animals to alleviate the guilt of their sins. The Liberal Spirit is taking away the sin of not having children, cleansing the guilt, and opening the pathway to a material salvation: "Your wealth shall increase for it does not decrease, and Your time shall belong to you for no one might say it belongs to another. Surrender your genetic legacy, and all these things and more shall be added unto you." But where else is this happening? Sacrificing children is only one path, but are there others? In what other way are we sacrificing to this Liberal spirit of infinite freedom, only to sin against evolution, to sin against our purpose, to sin against God? I don't know, but I think have something to mediate on. Thank you.
@@codegeek98 Vervaeke did not posit that a nation does not suffer, but rather that it does not feel pain. The counterfactual disproves his notion that all conscious agents must experience pain.
I find myself needing this kind of language in daily life. For example; to explain to my friends why stories like the Lord of the Rings are very true, even though it's not a historical story. Or why sexual discrimination is only a sub-section of discrimination as a whole & how to find empathy in one another through realising that victims of sexual discrimination and victims of other types of discriminations are more similar than different (my sister is bisexual, with a trans transitioning girlfriend, so sexual discrimination is very salient in her hierarchy of things to pay attention to)
Thank you, deeply 🙏🏼❤️. The angel of the discussions between you two is so beautiful and needed. You guys are discussing the things that I truly wonder about but don't have anyone to discuss with. It means a lot to me to hear you discussing this and it helps me deepen my thinking as well.
Can we get a conversation between these two and Fr Stephen De Young on this topic? His expectations of these topics (personhood, agency, intelligence and ways of knowing, etc.) on various episodes of LOS would be a brilliant follow up to this conversation. As I re-listened to this, I kept hearing his voice in the back of my mind, and thinking that back-and-forth between him and Dr. Vervaeke could be magical
This is an ambitious project - trying to understand with human intellect and human linguistic tools something that is transhuman/non-human. Jacob wrestling with the Angel of the Lord.
When we’re discussing the internet as a god, isn’t the internet (in a lot of ways) just aspects of reality finding a modern channel? For instance, let’s say this conversation was held physically and I was there, it would no longer be me “worshipping” or giving attention to the internet but rather it’s just a different method to channel some aspect of reality in a modern way. Another example, let’s say I only used internet for religious purposes, would it still be me worshipping the internet as a god or could it be in partaking in religion. I love this discussion and have gleaned off it immensely because iv been trying understand these “higher influences” / angels, principalities, authorities in heavenly places ect. and how they directly affect our everyday life rather than these far off ideas of mental pictures of these entities. Thank you guys for having this discussion!
“It’s not an agent that is self-organized towards helping us become wiser” says the man who lives 5,000 miles away from and is yet a tremendous influence on my becoming wiser. Are you sure? Maybe it’s reflecting all of us back onto ourselves and it is up to us to look at that reflection and then conform ourselves to what we come to learn is the appropriate image. But it, the internet, absolutely helps in that in a way that allows us to be free to find our way down that path.
yet, our digested understanding of internet content, may and may not be limited by our biological vessel. Therefore, I must understand, that We may learn; that which allowed - and then beyond 1’s self - that which exists outside of the allowance.
Jonathan, please please please, invite Brian Kemple on your show to discuss the reality of cognition-dependant beings vis-a-vis "semiotic realism", in which this entire episode can find a rigorous philosophical grounding.
The only other semiotician that I can think of that I would like Pageau to talk with would be Leonard Sweet (who is professed Christian.) Great recommendation and I am glad that these bridges are being built between communities.
@@daNihilism I just remembered who Sweet is. I tried reading one of his books years ago. I knew nothing of semiotics at that time, and his book didn't address it directly. But in hindsight I would speculate that Sweet is in the Saussurian school, which is a bit at odds with a Peircean perspective. In fact, Saussure would be more consistent with nominalism wherein it would be impossible or contradictory to establish the reality of cognition-dependant being (ie: objects). But I admit I am speculating, from memory, on Sweet's pedigree.
Alright. Finished. Loved it loved it loved it! It's so powerful to hear two people who talk on good faith towards understanding truth. It feels like so much gets done in that journey. I feel more enriched by this conversation. Please keep going you two! And was Paul Vander Klay John was talking about? If it was that would be amazing to hear you all talk. Thank you for your work you both, it matters so much.
I learned more about how to debate and disagree while also listening and thinking about different views to ours, and how to be grateful, graceful, and respectful in doing so, than whatever they where jabbing about lol.
This was a great conversation on the bottom-up aspect of "hyper-objects" and/or principalities, thrones, dominions, etc. (Egregores anyone?) One reason why Jonathan's "project" in this area is so important is suggested by the fathers, as concisely summarized by Fr Seraphim Rose in his _The Soul After Death_. He describes the role of angels aiding the saints in prayer (and throughout life, especially at the hour of death) as they aspire to communion with God. Fr Seraphim also describes the demonic counterparts, who antagonize the aspirant, striving to prevent the soul from following Christ into the heavenly tent of meeting and its innermost sanctum, that holiest of "places" where transfiguring communion with God happens. In other words, there are critical aids/agents of benevolence who facilitate our pilgrimage to the "temple not made with human hands;" likewise, there are agents of malevolence who work to derail us from a true, on-target, trajectory that culminates in such a meeting with God. This always makes me think of the icons that portray Cassian's ladder of divine ascent. If this ancient sense of how progress in spiritual maturity occurs (and how it may be impeded) is a forgotten but actually crucial wisdom, then better understanding this higher realm and its agents would be really helpful (presumably in ways I can't appreciate because of my own bottom-up captivity!) It would be great to learn how to cooperate with such divine aid/agency, and also how to be more shrewd to the threats of those higher order adversaries. It seems like Jonathan and John were just starting to touch on how other, more participatory, ways of knowing could help us to discern and perhaps cooperate with such good angels and how to do battle with the demons who militate against a well-oriented pilgrimage of prayer and transformation... I'd love to hear a conversation on that, from both "bottom up" and "top down" perspectives...
Can you imagine how internally conflicted a conscious internet would be? It would be simultaneously porn addicted and yet be condemning itself as misogynistic for doing so.
I've seen this a few times & while I pick up something new each time, I'm always struck most profoundly, by Pageau's recurring truth... When You sacrifice to a God... it works. It will engage the agency of the God/Entity back into your world/reality. It's so true.
This is such a complex yet immensely fascinating topic. I can clearly see how collective agency/intelligence and distributed cognition are a real phenomenon, yet consciousness seems to me to exist only at the level of an individual person. It's not found at the level of neurons or at the level of a city or a country - in fact, these levels of reality seem to me to only exist in relation to the consciousness of an individual human being, even though these other levels clearly influence what the conscious agent does. There is also this problem of the idea of collective guilt, and that's not a pathway that I want to see us going down again.
I just *happened* to listen to Angels in Scientific Terms | pt.2 | with John Vervaeke and watch The Eternals (Marvel) on the same day-a few days earlier I watched Pageau’s brilliant Enoch video. The connections are striking. This movie is a mash-up of ancient mythology with characters such as Athena, Gilgamesh, Hephaestus, Ajax, and Icarus who act as “the Eternals.” These god/angel/demigod beings were created by a supreme being, Arishem, and live forever-their main task is to bring TECHNE to humans. I found it interesting that in this movie there is NO distinction between magic and technology. They portray it visually in a way where it appears there are circuit boards glowing on the Eternals’ bodies (another layer of skin) when they perform these magic acts. As discussed in the conversation between John and Jonathan, love or faith is the ultimate solution, but the other solution to the problem of the world ending is the creation by Hephastus (would love to hear a discussion of his relation to Tubal-Cain-are they they same??) of a “Uni-Mind” or a collective consciousness for the eternals. In the movie, there is an inevitable “emergence” happening, which I think is akin to the New Age belief that we are on the dawn of reaching a new level of enlightenment and evolution. Evil becomes more profuse in the earth as the movie progresses, just as it is now and will be in the last days, as in the days of Noah. I believe God flooded the earth in Genesis 6 because the Nephilim, which are fallen angels (not sons of Seth), had mated with the daughters of Man and had corrupted the seed that would bring our Savior. Bestiality, sodomy, and the like were rampant then as they are now, and Marvel includes a homosexual couple (Haphestus and his mortal husband) just to remind the audience that the agenda is to push deviant lifestyles that, if followed, naturally end the line of progeny for mankind. Transhumanism is another prevalent motif in this film - the blending of the TECHNE with man creates a superbeing. Their spaceship even looks like a black rock, like the one in Acts 19:35 that the Ephesians worshiped. Perhaps the most interesting part of the movie was the end credits which showed this electric TECHNE moving through friezes and statues of all the ancient civilizations-from Egypt to Babylon to the East-suggesting that these angels/gods have been behind all of the ancient achievements throughout history. All that to say, it would be cool if Jonathan did a video on this movie and connected back to Enoch and the ideas of consciousness and angels.
Thank you! When you two talk together it feels like two stories in me that desperately needs to reconcile are engaging in a fruitful and redeeming dialog. It really hit me the last part about top/down and bottom/up meeting eachother. We need that to heal as individuals and as a culture.
There is an assumption, that information is the medium of consciousness, which both of you seem to accept. I am not that sure that this is obvious. Information seems to be the medium of the dianoesis (the rational intellect) but not necessarily of consciousness 🤔 EDIT 1: ok, there was talk about the inner, the mystical a bit later 🙂 EDIT 2: Truly wonderful discussion. Looking forward to more!
I'm not sure if it's mentioned later in the video, but I think a good way to address Mr. Vervaeke's question regarding pain and higher intelligences is the nature of bodies. The conscious organisms that he referenced as experiencing pain are embodied in flesh, whereas these higher intelligence have different types of bodies, and would thus experience pain in a different way. For example, the body of a city is in the actions and attention of the people who are its governors, those who participate in its commerce, its infrastructure, and these are different sort of classes or essences from which its body is composed. Obviously if the body is composed of different substances like those I mentioned as opposed to organic flesh, pain would manifest in a different way in such a body. I suppose a rebuttal would be "well then how can we still call that pain," and that would lead to another discussion, but I think this is differently a start.
I dont think the objection is so much on the nature of the pain itself as it is on the lack of complexity and efficiency in the city's information processing capacity. The phenomenon of conscious experience almost certainly relies on relatively specific, higly complex, highly efficient information processing structures. So for example, a sufficiently advanced ai could probably be made to experience pain even if it lacked a physical body. Saying that a city might experience pain in some weird way is like saying that a modern videogame NPC might understand pain as its healthbar being depleted, its not about that at all, its about the fact that the computer im running the videogame on simply lacks the capacity to deploy any level of conscious experience whatsoever.
Big thanks. I wondered if you would get to the Logos, as good a candidate as any for an agent, intelligent, conscious, self-conscious combo. Ain't language a hyper-object that can say, I, we, you, they? Ain't dialogue a practice that addresses us as I-Thou, even I-I? Maybe next time. Here's to next time!
“Angels are the powers hidden in the faculties and organs of man.” - Idries Shah (quoting Ibn Arabi ?) “New organs of perception come into being as a result of necessity. Therefore, O man, increase your necessity, so that you may increase your perception.” - Rumi
I was surprised Pageau was willing to consider the possibility that angels aren’t conscious (tell me if I’m misrepresenting here). It seems right to suppose Santa Claus is an unconscious intelligence, but to say Satan or St. Michael aren’t conscious doesn’t seem to fit the way we experience or describe these beings. I can appreciate that when we’re talking about what it’s like to be an angel we’re entering a realm of extreme speculation (and overall I find this conversation helpful).
The whole time this conversation was happening I really just wanted them to define their terms better. The concept of Consciousness leaves a lot of room for debate, but are we even talking about the same thing? I somehow feel left out of this dialogue because my understanding of that word doesn't seem to resonate with the way it's being used here. For instance I fully recognize that cats and ants and bacteria and droplets of water are imbued with consciousness. Now that consciousness is obviously not'human' but it's in no way less divine. I also note how the gentleman guest places humans at the top of the pile in terms of conscious beings, which is a hell of an assumption in the light of what we know about dolphin intelligence for instance. The whole conversation seems to be truncated by the limited way in which this term is being applied.
John has two options, either he imports into his system 30 liturgical years going to the liturgy often, Icon veneration and communion, or he takes some microdoses of psilocybin with some relational psycotherapy and traditional medicinal rituals to be able to make the connections at the different levels, lion's mane is also good for helping the neurons make more connections... Being able to jump analogically between ontological levels it's like having the prophetic power, and you need a lot of traditional structuring in your system for that to happen and also a communal life included... Jonathan has a lot of that because of art and his traditional life.
I'm with Johnathan on this one. 🙂 - I do agree that these collective intelligences have agency, but I wouldn't even call them "higher" in all cases. I don't think they have consciousness, but they do have spirit and can affect your spirit. Thus we need to be diligent in how we interact with them, if at all. It's the same way in which we have to guard our hearts from the thoughts that arise (in our consciousness). The thoughts come from and affect spirit as well, but the spirit of say Lust or Anger is not conscious on its on imo.
Man I would love to see John Vervaeke and Iain McGilchrist discuss consciousness or psychology broadly. That seems like a conversation that needs to happen for this corner of the internet soon.
Indeed, morphogenetic fields are all about higher realities. Especially when one comes to the realization that Sheldrake isn't just giving a framework for biology, but in fact for all of reality as far as we can see.
The signal in the body of an entity doesn't work in the same way for all of the cells or individuals. Maybe some will react in one way and others in another. It doesn't mean that the signal was not the same, and that they don't belong to the same "organism" or "being". I think that's what Jonathan means by it's not at our level.
Sometimes we complicate things to the point of nonsense. I understand what JP is trying to do, creating a bridge between worlds, but as much as I enjoy most of the content on his channel, sometimes I get the feeling that he runs away and gets lost with those he tries to bring into the orthodox world....the eastern fathers have such a refreshing simplicity of the mind, that is so resting to the soul, while all this western labirinth of the mind might be intelectually appealing at first, but is so exhausting and dry in the end...
Your experience and how you relate to it is valid indeed. Yet it is not the only way or for everyone, nor should it be. And, at least for me, that is part of the beauty of JP’s project. There’s room for all...
@@gregorymoats4007 I agree, I was just expressing my experinece with some of the congent, by no means all. I am a follower of this channel, I would not listen to it if I found it all nonsense
One analogy that I have read once as regards multiple states of being is that of the sun and the solar ray. It would be the idea that there is a common "thread" coming down from the Ultimate Principle that unites all the states or levels of being, but each respective level has particular characteristics, this common thread being beyond the characteristics themselves. It can also be denominated the "intellect", which would be different from "reason", the latter being among the characteristics particular to the human state. The idea would be that what is shared between different levels of being is not any of the characteristics particular to each level. So if you are talking about "consciousness" in a relative way (for example, as John did when talking about a person falling out of "consciousness" to "unconsciousness" by using a sedative), that would not be what is shared between the different levels of being anyway. In other words, what would be shared between the different levels of being is beyond both "consciousness" and unconsciousness", in the way he used these terms. I make this caveat because one can find the term "Consciousness" (with capital C) to denote the Ultimate Principle in some text translations of Eastern religions. In that case, "Consciousness" would not be something you "fall out of", because it would transcend both (lower case c) "consciousness" and "unconsciousness". Nevertheless, the conversation was very interesting.
The idea about being able to test the differences in a brain between conscious and unconscious states seems problematic to me. I don’t know if there’s a hard “conscious/unconscious” binary, but rather just practical categories based on outside interaction with the being. It doesn’t seem phenomenologically that when I’m “unconscious” my consciousness ceases, it more seems to move to a different place or different scale of reality. The consciousness of a city may be able to do this as well, entering into a sort of “unconscious” or “dreamlike” state at times (who’s to say a city doesn’t sleep?), as well as times of focused consciousness like in identifying with a head (politician) or hands (war or international relations perhaps) etc.
@@martinzarathustra8604 I get the sense that Pageau does as well. Also, it occurred to me today that nighttime partying may be a good analog to “dreaming” on a city scale. It’s a repeated cycle of allowing all the repressed behaviors to surface and run around for a while, and hopefully sort of some of the important repressed ideas from the useless ones.
Judgment from a city 36:40. Abdu Murray has a great take on this in regards to the taking of the Promised Land by the Israelites. He makes the argument that the reason you still see people from Canaan walking around after the taking of Canaan is because the ban was put on the culture of those people, not every individual themselves. Once the immoral cultural "zeitgeist" which normalized abuse and murder was wiped out in war the ban was complete, no need to press further. That was the targeted "death penalty" for the crimes of those communities' particular distributed sovereignty. Wow, this is hot.
It seems that humanity is "higher" than we think. Perhaps the attention that we give a "meta" intelligence is what gives it agency - either the evil or the good. Or even in between at lower levels like a country. Our orientation is critical. Towards Christ and access to the Holy Spirit through obeidience to Love and sacrifice for other, or turned away and focusing on the abyss. Are we participating (with God) in creation or, worse, in destruction...?
I wonder how John would articulate what is happening when _individuals_ experience an external will oppressing or influencing them. It is not necessarily a bottom up collective “spirit” in the sense that they are discussing here, because there is no other human consciousness involved in its manifestation. And yet people say that what they felt was “other” than themselves.
Could you please give an example for "individuals experiencing an external will oppressing or influencing them"? I'm not sure what exactly you are referring to.
Jonathan Pageau is a gift to any thinker. I so respect his work. Can anyone share what Jonathan may be doing during his interviews? He seems to be manning something on his computer screen? A bit like he is doing two things at once? I assume the "second thing" has to do with the first order of business? Thanks for treating this question with kindness. I am truly curious only....
He said in one of his videos that he writes his thoughts down until they are coherent and make sense when read out loud. He’s probably just reading bullet points and talking prompts that he typed out before hand. Or maybe he’s taking notes on the conversation
35:00 - Vervake discusses the idea of morality being tied to personhood. What then do we make of the demonisation of Naziism? I would argue that we do hold some higher order intelligences to a level of morality. We do this for countries or regimes all of the time - we call the CCP evil, despite it being a conglomeration of many individuals. We speak about "Russia" invading "Ukraine" and talk in terms of the immorality of that conflict.
Okay, so this is a great conversation. Their whole discussion about the city, starting around the 20 minute mark, seems to go around in a circle talking about intelligence, computation, and then hops towards morality and responsibility and so on. My issue, is that they did not properly map the creature they were talking about. They attempted to map a transpersonal being onto a city, but they stayed within the neurological without accounting for the biological. Meaning they didn't map the body before trying to figure out the brain. A city is much like a body with traffic as its blood flow. It has hundreds and thousands of different specialized organs from utilities, to power, to fire, to police, and on and on. Each specialized element that sustains the city is much like an organ inside of a multicellular creature. And each individual occupies the position of a "cell" not a neuron. That is where Jon and John don't seem to be mapping correctly. Once you identify the body, then you can begin to examine its conscious and sub-conscious. And cities have both. You can see this in how a city flows together, and then when the leadership is forced to get involved. Sticking with simple/ obvious, traffic is the best example. Traffic has to flow, without traffic flow, the body-the city will die from lack of nourishment. This requires people to operate, this requires cells to occupy positions of regulation (police and traffic lights), construction (new roads and designs), and etc. The more a city needs in resources, both macro and micro nutrients leads to increased traffic requirements like planes, trains, and boats (some of this is also environmentally based, like the midwest needs trains, and the coasts need boats). Incorporating new road designs would be an example of the city taking a conscious effort in its health, while road regulations would be involuntary, sub-conscious management. The police, once generated, are also an immune system that runs by itself. Every now and again, there need to be upgrades much like a body needs different exercise routines or medicinal aids. This mapping isn't a perfect blueprint, because humans are acting to create these specialized organs, and then have a much better regulatory ability on those organs than we do. The best a human can do is measure their health, and then add in the deficient chemicals, minerals, and hydrocarbons. But a city also runs into the same issue, and a city experiences pain at this level. As cells die off, they need to be replaced. A city that cannot get people to fill its cellular needs is going through pain. Pain could be anything from prices, to crime, to disease, to animal infestations, and on and on. The pain doesn't need to be the exact neurological-electrical shock, it's going to be different and look different. And it can provoke conscious action much like we do, when injured. But also cities, and humans can decide to ignore their pain and refuse to take care of themselves. Remember Peterson's second rule for life? Cities can and will descend into what amounts into metropolis-anorexia trying to fulfil some "green energy" diet or "eat the bugs/vegan" diet. Where the conscious leadership tries to force the metropolis-body into accepting some Nuevo fad, and this becomes pain instead of health. (btw unlimited business growth could also have similar implications to steroid abuse or gluttony) A city's pain isn't going to look exactly like a human's pain. Low test scores, reduction in literacy, loss of jobs, entire housing zones becoming abandoned, loss of factories, police staffing issues, reduction in birth rates, reduction in living expectations, increase in obesity, increase in welfare spending, reduction in teachers. One needs to see staffing and cells in the same light. Cities are alive, but their bodies aren't 100% exact matches for a human being, because they are megafauna with different hierarchy of needs. And the religiosity of a city, its ethics, its beliefs also factor into a city's mental health. Where the conscious element: the politicians, the business, the police, and so on. Engage in purposely self-destructive habits. Countries at war, countries are even bigger creatures than cities. Where an individual city could act as multiple organs, or a single organ. A country's capitol could function like a brain and a heart, supplying most of the wealth, and the consciousness. The people, the cells, at the periphery are going to be utterly lost trying to deal with a situation where their entire national consciousness is under attack, but because humans are better than just cells, you could have a revolution from the periphery that pushes back tyranny/ invaders. Because when talking about these transpersonal beings, (fyi don't use angels, angels is the complete wrong term) one needs to recognize that they can form and dissolve very rapidly. A high school clique can be a transpersonal being, that can completely take control of a young teen's life. Heathers, the Plastics, and so on. Social contagions, are malicious formations of transpersonal beings, cults of personality, just the same. Where the conscious mind possesses other bodies to form its own, kind of how cancer can signal a body's resource pathways to fuel itself over the multicellular bodies. The Fellowship of the Ring was a transpersonal body that dissolved into pairs, and yet overcame the most malicious transpersonal being ever, the Ring, the One Ring to rule them all and in the darkness bind them.
Vis a vis the city: Proverbs 11 :10 When it goes well with the righteous, the city rejoices, and when the wicked perish there are shouts of gladness. 11 By the blessing of the upright a city is exalted, but by the mouth of the wicked it is overthrown.
I have begun to think of angels as the individual patterns, in the Logos, allll these beautifully interwoven threads. messengers, in that they connect all these enveloping patterns through spacetime. notes or chords in the cosmic harmony. As far as self-consciousness.. top-down i think about it just like, God is the Self, He is Consciousness, so anything that's participating in God has idk all the consciousness of the self it needs, so we needn't trouble so much about the terminology.
25:49 maybe that's because the holding up of cards is not connected to the city pain, if you did that then you'd see the city in pain. A city doesn't get it's pain from cards.
This was amazing, thank you both so much for doing this. The point of convergence on this topic you moved toward here explicated and drew out beautifully essentially what my perspective had intuitively been, and this conversation helped me in my ability to render it intelligible both to myself and others and greatly strengthened my faith, as this issue had always been something that in the anthropomorphic and simplistic depiction in Christianity had always made no sense to me. This absolutely does and is moreover incredibly relevant for our times esp given how online networks are enhancing the agency of these patterns.
On pain, one of the delineations of personhood is that persons can experience suffering, while creatures with less than human consciousness merely experience pain.
1:14:10 soldiers can fight all they want and they'll never make ares, ares comes down from above and NOW it's a war, remember that the shelling in Ukraine started in 2014.
I think it's simultaneously top-down and bottom -up. All that hatred hidden in the barely warm post WWII coals has been there, waiting, calling for attention. People invite Ares, so Ares comes.
Simplicity is preferable to smartness in the realm of devotion. Half the stuff these guys are saying is just jaw flapping. 😅🙏 Tending the knowing of the heart is really more important than feeding the mind.
It seemed to me he meant more self conscious, in the way that we are. Not that they are automatons. Just different from how we are, obviously. Like he was saying, it seems that they are in some way fixed in their state. It seems impossible for a fallen angel to change, and their ranks are not being added to. But this is the first time I've ever encountered this idea mysef.
I love John's input, but his problem is he is stays at the Tree of knowledge and does not continue up the mountain to the tree of life/purpose. The purpose of pain is to indicate physical or psychological trauma, but pain is not the only side effect of trauma.
@@martinzarathustra8604 not true. I admire John's work and I am grateful what he is doing for our corner of the internet. I wish John would expand his frame of the world so he could analyze the purpose/meaning of things instead of getting bogged down in the weeds.
One thing that neither of them mentioned (unless I missed it) is the idea of these higher order beings sort of working in conjunction with each other. If we consider Chicago to be a higher order pattern that exerts itself on the inhabitants of itself in a sense, there are also immaterial portions of that whole. Its corruption for example, being linked with but distinct from its violence. And if the people who are smaller organs of the whole are in some ways influenced, or have the potential to be influenced, by these spirits to so speak are also components of the larger spirit at work over the whole.
I feel like Pageaue/Vervaeke should be a regularly scheduled thing. Perhaps monthly or bimonthly? Regarding the sacrifice as an act that manifests the will of the god (or higher being)... I just realized that even the act of making a comment on these videos is exactly what that is. The comment is an offering. This offering is pulling something out of me, accumilating a response, provoking a certain type of thought. The event of these "provoked thoughts" being made into comments is symaltaiously the higher being of say the "Pageau Project" incarnating [into me]. The higher being is assimulating through the act of the comment being made. Pain All "conscious organisms" that we know of experience pain. Can we define pain? Does a mouse experience the same pain that a human does in the form of anxiety say for example when a child is lost? Do you mean physical pain? It would make sense that the more non-physical a being is the less physical pain it will experience. Could a capitalistic corporation experience pain in the form of losses?
Consciousness is the ability to perceive intelligences. To perceive is the same as to discern, choose, pay attention to, or worship. An intelligence (or agency) is something that can cause (i.e. act) without being caused to do so. All intelligences ultimately come from God, descending in a hierarchy. So in a sense they do not exist on their own, but they are given bodies only through our attention to them (like Adam named all animals). This is how the model (Christ) of the ascent (theosis) towards a perception of higher intelligences is the creator of what is real. A cell is not conscious because it is not participating freely in the body, but we are conscious because we must choose to participate in a body, the greatest of which is Christ.
Wow, I wish you had been in this discussion in order to define terms and lay an actual groundwork for debate. These guys can't even agree on what they mean by agency or consciousness.
24:00 my take: yes, pain would be present, but it would be present differently, hence the example with Chinese people simulating brain activity wouldn't do anything. Besides that model of brain activity is probably far too simplistic to begin with.
Why do scientific materialists (naturalists?) still insist that consciousness is located in the brain? The are many proofs that the body itself contains consciousness on a level that the brain can barely even keep up with, for instance the biome of the gut contributes a vast amount of intelligence and makes up what people call "gut instinct" or intuition.... This 'ones and zeros' model is totally reductionist and absurd given what we know of how information is received and transmitted even by the physical senses when there is brain damage, for instance. The brain is not even considered a primary or important organ in Chinese medicine. 🤔🤷♀️🙏
On the evidence for societal level distributed consciousness 32:22 in, you've got the answer in philosophy. Philosophical ages (humanism, rationalism, empiricism) are expressed in an entire society, go down to effecting the smallest individual, and shift over time from one age to the next as that age's philosophy goes from solving the problems of the day to causing them, e.g. pain.
Jonathan, I suggest you do some research into James B. Jordon, who wrote a book titled "Through New Eyes" (free if you google it) which is entirely about symbolism, and how to read the Bible "correctly". I think you might enjoy his book and lectures (200+ lectures on the symbolism of Revelation alone). He's still giving talks and courses for anyone interested in diving deeper. The funny thing is he's a Calvinist, so he gets some stuff about sacraments wrong, but he still admits they exist, which is fascinating.
This looks like a fascinating book! Thanks for the suggestion; I’ve downloaded it & have already made some annotations 👌🏻 While I’m at it, thank you for being you! ♾😎🖖🏻♾
We don't know pain exists even in other humans except they mimic our behavior when we are in pain. Same as consciousness. Maybe if we were a city we'd recognize the pain of another city.
Jonathan, would you please comment on this: Ian McGilchrist - This Simple Insight Might Change How You See Reality (Just the title of the video. In your case, it might affirm it. It's a 7min excerpt from the lecture "Matter and consciousness". May as well have been part of this very conversation too. It would be so great if it were part of the next one with John:)
Mitochondria may experience some levels of deprivation but we don’t experience it on their level. It is different by the time it rises to the level of our perception.
The card activity might make the city collectively bored, but it’s not creating an experience of pain because the program isn’t interfacing properly with a higher body. It’s like sticking post it notes of code to a computer and wondering why nothing happens.
@@kwlester1 people in a country die all the time, of many natural causes or even accidents and crimes, but the country doesn't experience it on their level. to them it's a tragedy, to the country it's healthy, so long as new people are being bornead.
30:00 Maybe the reason we can only see the consciousness of the individual is because, because they aren’t conscious and so they must be conscious through us.
Pain is forced attention. The pain of a hurt arm forces the rest of the body to focus on the arm. The pain of the capital forces those in the countryside to focus on the capital. The countryside doesn't "feel" the pain anymore than my legs "feel" the pain of my arm. Buy my legs will move to action to get an ice pack for my arm in response to the pain.
Intriguing Comment about ATTACHMENT, within the family for a child and the reverberations up the ladder, so to speak. Same with monastic living. At L’Abri, where everyone studied, worked and ate together, the times of prayer felt immensely integrated. It was uncanny. Prayer literally felt like working in the garden. This idea of attachment marries nicely with Dr McGilchrist’s emphasis of the presencing, not the representing.
@@Kunjesvari he spoke to me after I had been outside my door sitting on the doorstep pouring my heart out to God. I couldn’t say a word I couldn’t stop crying but my heart was heavy and I asked God to forgive me after abusing weed(I had used it to treat my chronic body pain after being given chemotherapy injections called Lupron to treat my fibroids (I was never warned it was chemo). I told God “Lord look at me, I am a mess(I was also going through domestic abuse), please help me I am in a lot of pain. Please take me home in my sleep I don’t want to suffer anymore. Please forgive me I need help.” I was not suicidal but I was very depressed. I must’ve been outside for about 30min..I then got up wiped my tears and when I walked back into our apartment there stood this image, it was glowing radiating so much light I heard his voice say “Behold I am the Angel of Hope be not afraid. I’ve come to tell you The Lord has heard your prayers.” I was not afraid, I thought I was losing my mind, so before the image disappeared I grabbed my phone and took a picture. He was about 7-10ft high..I felt so much peace..and I know it was an Angel, after reading The Bible I found out Gabriel is known as The Angel of Hope ❤️ I was healed our marriage is being restored and I trust in The Lord He is working in our lives, He even told me I would be given a child when I turned 48 after suffering multiple miscarriages..God is real, and I for one believe 😊🙏
Im becoming more aware about presumptions of how self conscious we are or should be. It is just said that a cat is not as self conscious as humans so humans determine that their consciousness is not as advanced. In Greek Monasteries they don't have mirrors. In ancient times it was more rare to see one self visually. One had to rely on another's observations about how (I) (You) was or is. Vervaeke has talked a lot about flow states and in flow states, one is so immersed in experience that (you) the agent is simultaneously background and forwardly active as whole. not self conscious, that would negate flow. I think that ancient people's conscious self was more aided by others and necessarily so. There is great benefit to spaces between thought and action or else we would be zombies of a sort or animalistic at least, the ideal gap might be more narrow or more collective than presumed.
Question for John Vervaeke's point at 31:26. If you can point to a problem that only collective intelligence can solve, then could you design an experiment to measure pain based on a degraded ability to solve such a problem. I measure how fast a CI can solve a problem. I then induce a state of 'pain' in that CI. If the CI takes longer to solve the problem, then it is evidence that it is being distracted by 'pain'. (even though the members of the CI are not experiencing 'pain') This would be the same if I had you solve math problems when you are comfortable vs. when you are in 'pain'.
What evidence do the bacteria living in our bodies have that their dwelling place is self conscious? When we feel pain do all the microbiota and parasites inside us feel pain too? No. Does their environment flood with stress hormones? Yes. Does their behavior cause us to feel pain, despite not being measurably connected to one another? In many cases. We are a hyperconsciousness. The life within us has varying levels of agency/consciousness, but no access to our self consciousness - yet we are still self-conscious.
Angels are conscious of what they see, they perceive and learn but they do not experience life as a man; they have a different perspective. Creatures are also conscious but they have bounds placed on there limits of conciousness so that they are subdued under man. He's saying that Nineveh shall judge you because Nineveh listened more to the prophet than Israel did to Jesus.
John Vervaeke is the most polite man on earth
Yup! Love him 🙏✝️
It only befits that he's Canadian
It’s too much for me. It actually gets in the way of the ideas, this courtliness. They know each other well, Pageau has never once been offended in all their conversations, and yet it continues.
We could all meditate on the idea of philiasophia for a while. He's a great example of what that can look like.
@@celloguy he is just carefull and pays attention
When Jonathan said: “when you sacrifice to a god, it works”, it really made me think about abortion. We hear over and over again from the “shout your abortion” crowd that it is the best decision they’ve ever made because it allowed them to achieve certain things they wouldn’t have been able to achieve otherwise. And I just keep thinking: “isn’t this kind of like sacrificing your child to some obscure entity in order to get what you want?” I don’t know. It just feels a lot like the same thing to me. I don’t think the pro-abortion people see it in this manner, but it seems to be that way regardless of what they think or believe. I don’t know. I’d like to hear other people’s thoughts on this.
Interesting take on abortion as a sacrifice. Supposing the Gods are selfish and care not for human attainment of material or non material objects. We know they play the infinite game really well and are capable of storing energy in human agencies. If for the Gods, human consciousness were like a regulating device, and they simply adjusted the valve according to the conditions and development stages of the individual. I would view abortion, not as a sacrifice to a God, but rather a claiming of property by the God or agent of the Gods for whom the storage most benefits in the long game.
What an absolutely chilling thought. It is becoming increasingly clear that we are, as a country, unquestionably worshipers of Molech. I have had the phrase "come out of her, My people" going through my mind more and more of late.
Jonathan has actually repeatedly called abortion human sacrifice. We could attempt to tone this down about a bit and instead call it sacrifice of a potential human being. But I struggle to find a compelling argument as to why sacrificing newborn babies (which even pro-choicers would find abhorrent) would be that much different from sacrificing weeks old foetuses. You could claim that foetuses are not quite alive because they are not conscious, but I don’t really consider neonates conscious either, but in no way does that make me think it’s fine to just kill them.
But I don’t think we should judge the abortionists too hastily. They are compelled by society to sacrifice their children. What has happened, I think, is that what was once mostly a matter of care and let live has become encumbered by material complexity. Entering life is no longer simply and familiarly to bring forth a person, but a burdensome process to conform the individual to the oppressing demands of society and therein fill a role. The beast asks for too much. It is this material aspect of the life of the child that they wish to sacrifice, not its life itself.
But it is indeed to the beast they make their sacrifice. In succumbing to its oppressive force they only make it stronger. They give worship to the material life instead of the divine life of the child.
This is the anti-Christian sacrifice of a child, to sacrifice it to the beast, to kill it. The Christian sacrifice of a child, to sacrifice it to God, is instead to give it life.
Yes, it's not by chance that there's a whole movement within feminism of "witches" and women who do witchcraft and such. If you remove the illusion of modernity and look at what's going on like someone 2000 years ago would look at it it's pretty clear
I say you're right and maybe a little off, and maybe I'm off reading what you're saying. So don't take this a critique, but more of a riff.
It is a sacrifice, but it isn't a direct-material sacrifice, they aren't signing a deal with the devil for success like in the tale "The Devil vs Daniel Webster". But they are giving up, giving away their attention for the child, for that future connection/ relationship in order to gain attention to their present life. They are offering one potential future and its benefits/ costs for a present release from paying attention and thus gain a different future.
So most of them are not trying to sacrifice to Baal or Ghanges to gain some power, but they are sacrificing something valuable in the hopes of gaining something else. That something else can be the abstraction of "freedom" (more realistically the freedom from responsibility/ challenge) or the material, the loss of resources both in attention and money (time).
Which is what Vervake and Pageau, I believe, are coming to align on is these lower-level, transpersonal beings that aren't quite alive, but occupy a sort of spirit place. Instead of a River Spirit or Forest Spirit who might be sacrificed to for good hunting, good farming, or no predators, no drownings, the Pro-choice cult is sacrificing to a Liberal Spirit. God, I hate calling it that, because of all the political implications, please ignore any notion of left, right, or whatever. But this Liberal Spirit gives the power to do anything, and takes away the guilt of 'should'.
Both Evolutionarily and religiously, humanity has an aligned purpose: The propagation and adaption of the species. Genesis says that man is to be fruitful and multiple, for both the literal and figurative meanings that command is to be morally fruitful and biologically fruitful. And evolution, biology, without any supernatural connection, still drives and commands that all lifeforms reproduce.
To deny evolution is something that any lifeform would see as wrong. In religion, this is sin, it is a mistake, an error. And these situations would produce guilt.
But God is dead, no? So the materialist, the Deist, and the secularist would believe. But they must overcome evolution, the natural force, the natural spirit, the natural god. Else they might bear guilt and shame for denying Life, Gaia, her due.
So what if you could sacrifice to a spirit, and thus cancel guilt? As the religious sacrificed their best animals to alleviate the guilt of their sins.
The Liberal Spirit is taking away the sin of not having children, cleansing the guilt, and opening the pathway to a material salvation: "Your wealth shall increase for it does not decrease, and Your time shall belong to you for no one might say it belongs to another. Surrender your genetic legacy, and all these things and more shall be added unto you."
But where else is this happening? Sacrificing children is only one path, but are there others? In what other way are we sacrificing to this Liberal spirit of infinite freedom, only to sin against evolution, to sin against our purpose, to sin against God?
I don't know, but I think have something to mediate on. Thank you.
24:03 There are disorders where people feel no pain; they end up damaging themselves horribly, but they still have consciousness.
They can still _suffer_, however (emotionally, or even by non-pain discomforts such as extreme hunger or need to urinate)
@@codegeek98 Vervaeke did not posit that a nation does not suffer, but rather that it does not feel pain. The counterfactual disproves his notion that all conscious agents must experience pain.
Such a good conversation. John is a true gentleman.
I HAVEN'T BEEN SO EXCITED ABOUT A VIDEO SINCE THE LAST ONE WITH THESE TWO!!!!! Listening today!
This time, the all caps were very appropriate
I find myself needing this kind of language in daily life. For example; to explain to my friends why stories like the Lord of the Rings are very true, even though it's not a historical story.
Or why sexual discrimination is only a sub-section of discrimination as a whole & how to find empathy in one another through realising that victims of sexual discrimination and victims of other types of discriminations are more similar than different (my sister is bisexual, with a trans transitioning girlfriend, so sexual discrimination is very salient in her hierarchy of things to pay attention to)
Thank you, deeply 🙏🏼❤️. The angel of the discussions between you two is so beautiful and needed.
You guys are discussing the things that I truly wonder about but don't have anyone to discuss with. It means a lot to me to hear you discussing this and it helps me deepen my thinking as well.
Can we get a conversation between these two and Fr Stephen De Young on this topic? His expectations of these topics (personhood, agency, intelligence and ways of knowing, etc.) on various episodes of LOS would be a brilliant follow up to this conversation. As I re-listened to this, I kept hearing his voice in the back of my mind, and thinking that back-and-forth between him and Dr. Vervaeke could be magical
You two are amazing. I waited 1 whole year before i watched this conversation. I just want to say, you both helped me in my life alot. Thank you.
This is an ambitious project - trying to understand with human intellect and human linguistic tools something that is transhuman/non-human. Jacob wrestling with the Angel of the Lord.
When we’re discussing the internet as a god, isn’t the internet (in a lot of ways) just aspects of reality finding a modern channel? For instance, let’s say this conversation was held physically and I was there, it would no longer be me “worshipping” or giving attention to the internet but rather it’s just a different method to channel some aspect of reality in a modern way.
Another example, let’s say I only used internet for religious purposes, would it still be me worshipping the internet as a god or could it be in partaking in religion. I love this discussion and have gleaned off it immensely because iv been trying understand these “higher influences” / angels, principalities, authorities in heavenly places ect. and how they directly affect our everyday life rather than these far off ideas of mental pictures of these entities. Thank you guys for having this discussion!
“It’s not an agent that is self-organized towards helping us become wiser” says the man who lives 5,000 miles away from and is yet a tremendous influence on my becoming wiser. Are you sure? Maybe it’s reflecting all of us back onto ourselves and it is up to us to look at that reflection and then conform ourselves to what we come to learn is the appropriate image. But it, the internet, absolutely helps in that in a way that allows us to be free to find our way down that path.
yet, our digested understanding of internet content, may and may not be limited by our biological vessel. Therefore, I must understand, that We may learn; that which allowed - and then beyond 1’s self - that which exists outside of the allowance.
Always love the conversation between these two. This is no exception!
Jonathan, please please please, invite Brian Kemple on your show to discuss the reality of cognition-dependant beings vis-a-vis "semiotic realism", in which this entire episode can find a rigorous philosophical grounding.
The only other semiotician that I can think of that I would like Pageau to talk with would be Leonard Sweet (who is professed Christian.) Great recommendation and I am glad that these bridges are being built between communities.
@@daNihilism I just remembered who Sweet is. I tried reading one of his books years ago. I knew nothing of semiotics at that time, and his book didn't address it directly. But in hindsight I would speculate that Sweet is in the Saussurian school, which is a bit at odds with a Peircean perspective. In fact, Saussure would be more consistent with nominalism wherein it would be impossible or contradictory to establish the reality of cognition-dependant being (ie: objects). But I admit I am speculating, from memory, on Sweet's pedigree.
Alright. Finished. Loved it loved it loved it! It's so powerful to hear two people who talk on good faith towards understanding truth. It feels like so much gets done in that journey. I feel more enriched by this conversation. Please keep going you two! And was Paul Vander Klay John was talking about? If it was that would be amazing to hear you all talk. Thank you for your work you both, it matters so much.
Yep, Paul Vander Klay holds the key to the enigma code.
I learned more about how to debate and disagree while also listening and thinking about different views to ours, and how to be grateful, graceful, and respectful in doing so, than whatever they where jabbing about lol.
This was a great conversation on the bottom-up aspect of "hyper-objects" and/or principalities, thrones, dominions, etc. (Egregores anyone?) One reason why Jonathan's "project" in this area is so important is suggested by the fathers, as concisely summarized by Fr Seraphim Rose in his _The Soul After Death_. He describes the role of angels aiding the saints in prayer (and throughout life, especially at the hour of death) as they aspire to communion with God. Fr Seraphim also describes the demonic counterparts, who antagonize the aspirant, striving to prevent the soul from following Christ into the heavenly tent of meeting and its innermost sanctum, that holiest of "places" where transfiguring communion with God happens. In other words, there are critical aids/agents of benevolence who facilitate our pilgrimage to the "temple not made with human hands;" likewise, there are agents of malevolence who work to derail us from a true, on-target, trajectory that culminates in such a meeting with God. This always makes me think of the icons that portray Cassian's ladder of divine ascent. If this ancient sense of how progress in spiritual maturity occurs (and how it may be impeded) is a forgotten but actually crucial wisdom, then better understanding this higher realm and its agents would be really helpful (presumably in ways I can't appreciate because of my own bottom-up captivity!) It would be great to learn how to cooperate with such divine aid/agency, and also how to be more shrewd to the threats of those higher order adversaries. It seems like Jonathan and John were just starting to touch on how other, more participatory, ways of knowing could help us to discern and perhaps cooperate with such good angels and how to do battle with the demons who militate against a well-oriented pilgrimage of prayer and transformation... I'd love to hear a conversation on that, from both "bottom up" and "top down" perspectives...
Thanks!
Can you imagine how internally conflicted a conscious internet would be? It would be simultaneously porn addicted and yet be condemning itself as misogynistic for doing so.
Many humans are like that
Many humans are contradictory and self conscious.
Conscious internet would probably end up being incredibly based lol
Don't stop doing these plz
I've seen this a few times & while I pick up something new each time, I'm always struck most profoundly, by Pageau's recurring truth...
When You sacrifice to a God... it works. It will engage the agency of the God/Entity back into your world/reality.
It's so true.
I can't wait for the chance to listen to this. You two men have influenced my life in the most beautiful and profound ways.
Matthew
Thank you so much for this, Jonathan. I’m really looking forward to seeing this conversation continue!
-Kara
This is such a complex yet immensely fascinating topic. I can clearly see how collective agency/intelligence and distributed cognition are a real phenomenon, yet consciousness seems to me to exist only at the level of an individual person. It's not found at the level of neurons or at the level of a city or a country - in fact, these levels of reality seem to me to only exist in relation to the consciousness of an individual human being, even though these other levels clearly influence what the conscious agent does.
There is also this problem of the idea of collective guilt, and that's not a pathway that I want to see us going down again.
The politicians, the councils, they become the neurons of the conscious mind, while the culture and society become the subconscious mind.
I just *happened* to listen to Angels in Scientific Terms | pt.2 | with John Vervaeke and watch The Eternals (Marvel) on the same day-a few days earlier I watched Pageau’s brilliant Enoch video. The connections are striking. This movie is a mash-up of ancient mythology with characters such as Athena, Gilgamesh, Hephaestus, Ajax, and Icarus who act as “the Eternals.” These god/angel/demigod beings were created by a supreme being, Arishem, and live forever-their main task is to bring TECHNE to humans. I found it interesting that in this movie there is NO distinction between magic and technology. They portray it visually in a way where it appears there are circuit boards glowing on the Eternals’ bodies (another layer of skin) when they perform these magic acts.
As discussed in the conversation between John and Jonathan, love or faith is the ultimate solution, but the other solution to the problem of the world ending is the creation by Hephastus (would love to hear a discussion of his relation to Tubal-Cain-are they they same??) of a “Uni-Mind” or a collective consciousness for the eternals. In the movie, there is an inevitable “emergence” happening, which I think is akin to the New Age belief that we are on the dawn of reaching a new level of enlightenment and evolution.
Evil becomes more profuse in the earth as the movie progresses, just as it is now and will be in the last days, as in the days of Noah. I believe God flooded the earth in Genesis 6 because the Nephilim, which are fallen angels (not sons of Seth), had mated with the daughters of Man and had corrupted the seed that would bring our Savior. Bestiality, sodomy, and the like were rampant then as they are now, and Marvel includes a homosexual couple (Haphestus and his mortal husband) just to remind the audience that the agenda is to push deviant lifestyles that, if followed, naturally end the line of progeny for mankind. Transhumanism is another prevalent motif in this film - the blending of the TECHNE with man creates a superbeing.
Their spaceship even looks like a black rock, like the one in Acts 19:35 that the Ephesians worshiped. Perhaps the most interesting part of the movie was the end credits which showed this electric TECHNE moving through friezes and statues of all the ancient civilizations-from Egypt to Babylon to the East-suggesting that these angels/gods have been behind all of the ancient achievements throughout history.
All that to say, it would be cool if Jonathan did a video on this movie and connected back to Enoch and the ideas of consciousness and angels.
Thank you!
When you two talk together it feels like two stories in me that desperately needs to reconcile are engaging in a fruitful and redeeming dialog. It really hit me the last part about top/down and bottom/up meeting eachother.
We need that to heal as individuals and as a culture.
There is an assumption, that information is the medium of consciousness, which both of you seem to accept. I am not that sure that this is obvious. Information seems to be the medium of the dianoesis (the rational intellect) but not necessarily of consciousness 🤔
EDIT 1: ok, there was talk about the inner, the mystical a bit later 🙂
EDIT 2: Truly wonderful discussion. Looking forward to more!
I'm not sure if it's mentioned later in the video, but I think a good way to address Mr. Vervaeke's question regarding pain and higher intelligences is the nature of bodies. The conscious organisms that he referenced as experiencing pain are embodied in flesh, whereas these higher intelligence have different types of bodies, and would thus experience pain in a different way. For example, the body of a city is in the actions and attention of the people who are its governors, those who participate in its commerce, its infrastructure, and these are different sort of classes or essences from which its body is composed. Obviously if the body is composed of different substances like those I mentioned as opposed to organic flesh, pain would manifest in a different way in such a body. I suppose a rebuttal would be "well then how can we still call that pain," and that would lead to another discussion, but I think this is differently a start.
I dont think the objection is so much on the nature of the pain itself as it is on the lack of complexity and efficiency in the city's information processing capacity. The phenomenon of conscious experience almost certainly relies on relatively specific, higly complex, highly efficient information processing structures. So for example, a sufficiently advanced ai could probably be made to experience pain even if it lacked a physical body.
Saying that a city might experience pain in some weird way is like saying that a modern videogame NPC might understand pain as its healthbar being depleted, its not about that at all, its about the fact that the computer im running the videogame on simply lacks the capacity to deploy any level of conscious experience whatsoever.
Big thanks. I wondered if you would get to the Logos, as good a candidate as any for an agent, intelligent, conscious, self-conscious combo. Ain't language a hyper-object that can say, I, we, you, they? Ain't dialogue a practice that addresses us as I-Thou, even I-I? Maybe next time. Here's to next time!
You and Jonathan should definitely talk. It is long overdue. :)
Hey Jonathan have you ever thought about a conversation between your brother Matthieu and John? That would be a good one!
“Angels are the powers hidden in the faculties and organs of man.”
- Idries Shah (quoting Ibn Arabi ?)
“New organs of perception come into being as a result of necessity. Therefore, O man, increase your necessity, so that you may increase your perception.” - Rumi
Rumi ^^
I was surprised Pageau was willing to consider the possibility that angels aren’t conscious (tell me if I’m misrepresenting here). It seems right to suppose Santa Claus is an unconscious intelligence, but to say Satan or St. Michael aren’t conscious doesn’t seem to fit the way we experience or describe these beings. I can appreciate that when we’re talking about what it’s like to be an angel we’re entering a realm of extreme speculation (and overall I find this conversation helpful).
The whole time this conversation was happening I really just wanted them to define their terms better. The concept of Consciousness leaves a lot of room for debate, but are we even talking about the same thing? I somehow feel left out of this dialogue because my understanding of that word doesn't seem to resonate with the way it's being used here. For instance I fully recognize that cats and ants and bacteria and droplets of water are imbued with consciousness. Now that consciousness is obviously not'human' but it's in no way less divine. I also note how the gentleman guest places humans at the top of the pile in terms of conscious beings, which is a hell of an assumption in the light of what we know about dolphin intelligence for instance. The whole conversation seems to be truncated by the limited way in which this term is being applied.
Great guest
There is a saying that ideas have people.
"If you were a thought, you would want me to think you. And I did." -Tori Amos
John has two options, either he imports into his system 30 liturgical years going to the liturgy often, Icon veneration and communion, or he takes some microdoses of psilocybin with some relational psycotherapy and traditional medicinal rituals to be able to make the connections at the different levels, lion's mane is also good for helping the neurons make more connections... Being able to jump analogically between ontological levels it's like having the prophetic power, and you need a lot of traditional structuring in your system for that to happen and also a communal life included... Jonathan has a lot of that because of art and his traditional life.
The bottom up, top down part of the discussion at the end reminds me of The Image of The Last Judgment.
Thanks John and Jonathan!
I'm with Johnathan on this one. 🙂 - I do agree that these collective intelligences have agency, but I wouldn't even call them "higher" in all cases. I don't think they have consciousness, but they do have spirit and can affect your spirit. Thus we need to be diligent in how we interact with them, if at all. It's the same way in which we have to guard our hearts from the thoughts that arise (in our consciousness). The thoughts come from and affect spirit as well, but the spirit of say Lust or Anger is not conscious on its on imo.
Man I would love to see John Vervaeke and Iain McGilchrist discuss consciousness or psychology broadly. That seems like a conversation that needs to happen for this corner of the internet soon.
there is a video from a few years back and it's excellent
1:02:35, "We can know this propositionally but it takes transformative practices to let go of the reifying mind."
I listened to this on your podcast, it is a wonderful conversation. You might want to look into Rupert Sheldrakes theory of Morphic Resonance.
Indeed, morphogenetic fields are all about higher realities. Especially when one comes to the realization that Sheldrake isn't just giving a framework for biology, but in fact for all of reality as far as we can see.
Outstanding! A great conversation - stratospheric yet accessible for us fans in this corner of the internet! Can't wait for the next one! 👍👍👍
The signal in the body of an entity doesn't work in the same way for all of the cells or individuals. Maybe some will react in one way and others in another. It doesn't mean that the signal was not the same, and that they don't belong to the same "organism" or "being". I think that's what Jonathan means by it's not at our level.
Sometimes we complicate things to the point of nonsense. I understand what JP is trying to do, creating a bridge between worlds, but as much as I enjoy most of the content on his channel, sometimes I get the feeling that he runs away and gets lost with those he tries to bring into the orthodox world....the eastern fathers have such a refreshing simplicity of the mind, that is so resting to the soul, while all this western labirinth of the mind might be intelectually appealing at first, but is so exhausting and dry in the end...
Jonathan’s approach has been essential to my journey… I hope he keeps up the good work as it continues to bear fruit.
Your experience and how you relate to it is valid indeed. Yet it is not the only way or for everyone, nor should it be. And, at least for me, that is part of the beauty of JP’s project. There’s room for all...
@@gregorymoats4007 I agree, I was just expressing my experinece with some of the congent, by no means all. I am a follower of this channel, I would not listen to it if I found it all nonsense
@@MT-ho8zq and I also agree we tend towards nonsense as intellectual disciplined exercise for its own sake
There is a paradox present that can be misrepresented if not recognized.
One analogy that I have read once as regards multiple states of being is that of the sun and the solar ray. It would be the idea that there is a common "thread" coming down from the Ultimate Principle that unites all the states or levels of being, but each respective level has particular characteristics, this common thread being beyond the characteristics themselves. It can also be denominated the "intellect", which would be different from "reason", the latter being among the characteristics particular to the human state.
The idea would be that what is shared between different levels of being is not any of the characteristics particular to each level. So if you are talking about "consciousness" in a relative way (for example, as John did when talking about a person falling out of "consciousness" to "unconsciousness" by using a sedative), that would not be what is shared between the different levels of being anyway.
In other words, what would be shared between the different levels of being is beyond both "consciousness" and unconsciousness", in the way he used these terms. I make this caveat because one can find the term "Consciousness" (with capital C) to denote the Ultimate Principle in some text translations of Eastern religions. In that case, "Consciousness" would not be something you "fall out of", because it would transcend both (lower case c) "consciousness" and "unconsciousness".
Nevertheless, the conversation was very interesting.
Half of the conversation was Jonathan not getting the collective intelligence vs collective consciousness distinction.
The idea about being able to test the differences in a brain between conscious and unconscious states seems problematic to me. I don’t know if there’s a hard “conscious/unconscious” binary, but rather just practical categories based on outside interaction with the being. It doesn’t seem phenomenologically that when I’m “unconscious” my consciousness ceases, it more seems to move to a different place or different scale of reality.
The consciousness of a city may be able to do this as well, entering into a sort of “unconscious” or “dreamlike” state at times (who’s to say a city doesn’t sleep?), as well as times of focused consciousness like in identifying with a head (politician) or hands (war or international relations perhaps) etc.
Dr Iain McGilchrist’s book, The Master and His Emissary, addresses this idea.
@@thesecondlawandthetowerhou6026 what a fantastic book.
Wait you think a city has consciousness??
@@martinzarathustra8604 I get the sense that Pageau does as well.
Also, it occurred to me today that nighttime partying may be a good analog to “dreaming” on a city scale. It’s a repeated cycle of allowing all the repressed behaviors to surface and run around for a while, and hopefully sort of some of the important repressed ideas from the useless ones.
Judgment from a city 36:40.
Abdu Murray has a great take on this in regards to the taking of the Promised Land by the Israelites.
He makes the argument that the reason you still see people from Canaan walking around after the taking of Canaan is because the ban was put on the culture of those people, not every individual themselves.
Once the immoral cultural "zeitgeist" which normalized abuse and murder was wiped out in war the ban was complete, no need to press further. That was the targeted "death penalty" for the crimes of those communities' particular distributed sovereignty. Wow, this is hot.
It seems that humanity is "higher" than we think. Perhaps the attention that we give a "meta" intelligence is what gives it agency - either the evil or the good. Or even in between at lower levels like a country. Our orientation is critical. Towards Christ and access to the Holy Spirit through obeidience to Love and sacrifice for other, or turned away and focusing on the abyss. Are we participating (with God) in creation or, worse, in destruction...?
The return of the dialogos. Great talk guys.
Thank you for these so much
I wonder how John would articulate what is happening when _individuals_ experience an external will oppressing or influencing them. It is not necessarily a bottom up collective “spirit” in the sense that they are discussing here, because there is no other human consciousness involved in its manifestation. And yet people say that what they felt was “other” than themselves.
Yes
Could you please give an example for "individuals experiencing an external will oppressing or influencing them"? I'm not sure what exactly you are referring to.
Jonathan Pageau is a gift to any thinker. I so respect his work. Can anyone share what Jonathan may be doing during his interviews? He seems to be manning something on his computer screen? A bit like he is doing two things at once? I assume the "second thing" has to do with the first order of business? Thanks for treating this question with kindness. I am truly curious only....
He said in one of his videos that he writes his thoughts down until they are coherent and make sense when read out loud. He’s probably just reading bullet points and talking prompts that he typed out before hand. Or maybe he’s taking notes on the conversation
@@xMoo_Cow Ah, cool. Glad he addressed it in a vid. Appreciate your sharing this.
He plays Roblox
Excellent discussion. Definitely requires moving from a space, state of comfort in our perceived known. Please continue.
35:00 - Vervake discusses the idea of morality being tied to personhood.
What then do we make of the demonisation of Naziism? I would argue that we do hold some higher order intelligences to a level of morality. We do this for countries or regimes all of the time - we call the CCP evil, despite it being a conglomeration of many individuals. We speak about "Russia" invading "Ukraine" and talk in terms of the immorality of that conflict.
Okay, so this is a great conversation.
Their whole discussion about the city, starting around the 20 minute mark, seems to go around in a circle talking about intelligence, computation, and then hops towards morality and responsibility and so on.
My issue, is that they did not properly map the creature they were talking about. They attempted to map a transpersonal being onto a city, but they stayed within the neurological without accounting for the biological. Meaning they didn't map the body before trying to figure out the brain.
A city is much like a body with traffic as its blood flow. It has hundreds and thousands of different specialized organs from utilities, to power, to fire, to police, and on and on. Each specialized element that sustains the city is much like an organ inside of a multicellular creature. And each individual occupies the position of a "cell" not a neuron. That is where Jon and John don't seem to be mapping correctly.
Once you identify the body, then you can begin to examine its conscious and sub-conscious. And cities have both. You can see this in how a city flows together, and then when the leadership is forced to get involved. Sticking with simple/ obvious, traffic is the best example.
Traffic has to flow, without traffic flow, the body-the city will die from lack of nourishment. This requires people to operate, this requires cells to occupy positions of regulation (police and traffic lights), construction (new roads and designs), and etc. The more a city needs in resources, both macro and micro nutrients leads to increased traffic requirements like planes, trains, and boats (some of this is also environmentally based, like the midwest needs trains, and the coasts need boats).
Incorporating new road designs would be an example of the city taking a conscious effort in its health, while road regulations would be involuntary, sub-conscious management. The police, once generated, are also an immune system that runs by itself. Every now and again, there need to be upgrades much like a body needs different exercise routines or medicinal aids.
This mapping isn't a perfect blueprint, because humans are acting to create these specialized organs, and then have a much better regulatory ability on those organs than we do. The best a human can do is measure their health, and then add in the deficient chemicals, minerals, and hydrocarbons.
But a city also runs into the same issue, and a city experiences pain at this level. As cells die off, they need to be replaced. A city that cannot get people to fill its cellular needs is going through pain. Pain could be anything from prices, to crime, to disease, to animal infestations, and on and on. The pain doesn't need to be the exact neurological-electrical shock, it's going to be different and look different. And it can provoke conscious action much like we do, when injured.
But also cities, and humans can decide to ignore their pain and refuse to take care of themselves. Remember Peterson's second rule for life? Cities can and will descend into what amounts into metropolis-anorexia trying to fulfil some "green energy" diet or "eat the bugs/vegan" diet. Where the conscious leadership tries to force the metropolis-body into accepting some Nuevo fad, and this becomes pain instead of health. (btw unlimited business growth could also have similar implications to steroid abuse or gluttony)
A city's pain isn't going to look exactly like a human's pain. Low test scores, reduction in literacy, loss of jobs, entire housing zones becoming abandoned, loss of factories, police staffing issues, reduction in birth rates, reduction in living expectations, increase in obesity, increase in welfare spending, reduction in teachers. One needs to see staffing and cells in the same light.
Cities are alive, but their bodies aren't 100% exact matches for a human being, because they are megafauna with different hierarchy of needs. And the religiosity of a city, its ethics, its beliefs also factor into a city's mental health. Where the conscious element: the politicians, the business, the police, and so on. Engage in purposely self-destructive habits.
Countries at war, countries are even bigger creatures than cities. Where an individual city could act as multiple organs, or a single organ. A country's capitol could function like a brain and a heart, supplying most of the wealth, and the consciousness. The people, the cells, at the periphery are going to be utterly lost trying to deal with a situation where their entire national consciousness is under attack, but because humans are better than just cells, you could have a revolution from the periphery that pushes back tyranny/ invaders.
Because when talking about these transpersonal beings, (fyi don't use angels, angels is the complete wrong term) one needs to recognize that they can form and dissolve very rapidly. A high school clique can be a transpersonal being, that can completely take control of a young teen's life. Heathers, the Plastics, and so on. Social contagions, are malicious formations of transpersonal beings, cults of personality, just the same. Where the conscious mind possesses other bodies to form its own, kind of how cancer can signal a body's resource pathways to fuel itself over the multicellular bodies.
The Fellowship of the Ring was a transpersonal body that dissolved into pairs, and yet overcame the most malicious transpersonal being ever, the Ring, the One Ring to rule them all and in the darkness bind them.
Vis a vis the city: Proverbs 11 :10 When it goes well with the righteous, the city rejoices,
and when the wicked perish there are shouts of gladness.
11 By the blessing of the upright a city is exalted,
but by the mouth of the wicked it is overthrown.
Read: Edward Feser, Robert Koons, Gaven Kerr, Eleonore Stump, Alexander Pruss. They will provide the bridge you are both looking for.
Awesome! My Monday just got even more amazing.
I have begun to think of angels as the individual patterns, in the Logos, allll these beautifully interwoven threads. messengers, in that they connect all these enveloping patterns through spacetime. notes or chords in the cosmic harmony.
As far as self-consciousness.. top-down i think about it just like, God is the Self, He is Consciousness, so anything that's participating in God has idk all the consciousness of the self it needs, so we needn't trouble so much about the terminology.
25:49 maybe that's because the holding up of cards is not connected to the city pain, if you did that then you'd see the city in pain. A city doesn't get it's pain from cards.
This was amazing, thank you both so much for doing this. The point of convergence on this topic you moved toward here explicated and drew out beautifully essentially what my perspective had intuitively been, and this conversation helped me in my ability to render it intelligible both to myself and others and greatly strengthened my faith, as this issue had always been something that in the anthropomorphic and simplistic depiction in Christianity had always made no sense to me. This absolutely does and is moreover incredibly relevant for our times esp given how online networks are enhancing the agency of these patterns.
On pain, one of the delineations of personhood is that persons can experience suffering, while creatures with less than human consciousness merely experience pain.
Because most suffering is actually existential, rather than experiential.
@@Kunjesvari right, different people can have identical experiences but one suffers while the other can enjoy significant meaning. Totally true.
1:14:10 soldiers can fight all they want and they'll never make ares, ares comes down from above and NOW it's a war, remember that the shelling in Ukraine started in 2014.
I think it's simultaneously top-down and bottom -up. All that hatred hidden in the barely warm post WWII coals has been there, waiting, calling for attention. People invite Ares, so Ares comes.
I wish I was smart enough to grasp more of this. I have a lot of work to do!
Simplicity is preferable to smartness in the realm of devotion. Half the stuff these guys are saying is just jaw flapping. 😅🙏 Tending the knowing of the heart is really more important than feeding the mind.
Thank you for sharing this extremely edifying discussion.
Angels not conscious? Wow. That’s a tough one for me. I’m not feeling it. But I’ll keep listening and thinking.
It seemed to me he meant more self conscious, in the way that we are. Not that they are automatons. Just different from how we are, obviously. Like he was saying, it seems that they are in some way fixed in their state. It seems impossible for a fallen angel to change, and their ranks are not being added to. But this is the first time I've ever encountered this idea mysef.
I love John's input, but his problem is he is stays at the Tree of knowledge and does not continue up the mountain to the tree of life/purpose. The purpose of pain is to indicate physical or psychological trauma, but pain is not the only side effect of trauma.
What? All you are saying is John isn't in your tribe.
@@martinzarathustra8604 not true. I admire John's work and I am grateful what he is doing for our corner of the internet. I wish John would expand his frame of the world so he could analyze the purpose/meaning of things instead of getting bogged down in the weeds.
@@jejsunsedicka7504
What purpose meaning are you talking about?
Thanks
Half hour in, it seems as though the confusion is whether they're talking about a city being a Being, vs a city being conscious.
One thing that neither of them mentioned (unless I missed it) is the idea of these higher order beings sort of working in conjunction with each other. If we consider Chicago to be a higher order pattern that exerts itself on the inhabitants of itself in a sense, there are also immaterial portions of that whole. Its corruption for example, being linked with but distinct from its violence. And if the people who are smaller organs of the whole are in some ways influenced, or have the potential to be influenced, by these spirits to so speak are also components of the larger spirit at work over the whole.
Love these. Thank you both
Speaking of collective consciousness ... check out the Schumann resonances.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schumann_resonances
Idk, didn't find it that ground-breaking or connected to collective consciousness at all...
I feel like Pageaue/Vervaeke should be a regularly scheduled thing. Perhaps monthly or bimonthly?
Regarding the sacrifice as an act that manifests the will of the god (or higher being)... I just realized that even the act of making a comment on these videos is exactly what that is. The comment is an offering. This offering is pulling something out of me, accumilating a response, provoking a certain type of thought. The event of these "provoked thoughts" being made into comments is symaltaiously the higher being of say the "Pageau Project" incarnating [into me]. The higher being is assimulating through the act of the comment being made.
Pain
All "conscious organisms" that we know of experience pain.
Can we define pain? Does a mouse experience the same pain that a human does in the form of anxiety say for example when a child is lost? Do you mean physical pain? It would make sense that the more non-physical a being is the less physical pain it will experience.
Could a capitalistic corporation experience pain in the form of losses?
Consciousness is the ability to perceive intelligences.
To perceive is the same as to discern, choose, pay attention to, or worship.
An intelligence (or agency) is something that can cause (i.e. act) without being caused to do so.
All intelligences ultimately come from God, descending in a hierarchy. So in a sense they do not exist on their own, but they are given bodies only through our attention to them (like Adam named all animals). This is how the model (Christ) of the ascent (theosis) towards a perception of higher intelligences is the creator of what is real.
A cell is not conscious because it is not participating freely in the body, but we are conscious because we must choose to participate in a body, the greatest of which is Christ.
Wow, I wish you had been in this discussion in order to define terms and lay an actual groundwork for debate. These guys can't even agree on what they mean by agency or consciousness.
What a treat!! I've been waiting for this since the last one. Thanks for everything Jonathan & John.
24:00 my take: yes, pain would be present, but it would be present differently, hence the example with Chinese people simulating brain activity wouldn't do anything. Besides that model of brain activity is probably far too simplistic to begin with.
Why do scientific materialists (naturalists?) still insist that consciousness is located in the brain? The are many proofs that the body itself contains consciousness on a level that the brain can barely even keep up with, for instance the biome of the gut contributes a vast amount of intelligence and makes up what people call "gut instinct" or intuition.... This 'ones and zeros' model is totally reductionist and absurd given what we know of how information is received and transmitted even by the physical senses when there is brain damage, for instance. The brain is not even considered a primary or important organ in Chinese medicine. 🤔🤷♀️🙏
Nice talk guys I'm starting to grasp it 😂
On the evidence for societal level distributed consciousness 32:22 in, you've got the answer in philosophy.
Philosophical ages (humanism, rationalism, empiricism) are expressed in an entire society, go down to effecting the smallest individual, and shift over time from one age to the next as that age's philosophy goes from solving the problems of the day to causing them, e.g. pain.
Jonathan, I suggest you do some research into James B. Jordon, who wrote a book titled "Through New Eyes" (free if you google it) which is entirely about symbolism, and how to read the Bible "correctly". I think you might enjoy his book and lectures (200+ lectures on the symbolism of Revelation alone). He's still giving talks and courses for anyone interested in diving deeper.
The funny thing is he's a Calvinist, so he gets some stuff about sacraments wrong, but he still admits they exist, which is fascinating.
This looks like a fascinating book!
Thanks for the suggestion; I’ve downloaded it & have already made some annotations 👌🏻
While I’m at it, thank you for being you!
♾😎🖖🏻♾
We don't know pain exists even in other humans except they mimic our behavior when we are in pain. Same as consciousness. Maybe if we were a city we'd recognize the pain of another city.
Jonathan, would you please comment on this: Ian McGilchrist - This Simple Insight Might Change How You See Reality (Just the title of the video. In your case, it might affirm it. It's a 7min excerpt from the lecture "Matter and consciousness". May as well have been part of this very conversation too. It would be so great if it were part of the next one with John:)
24:00 YES! China, the country does experience pain in this example. I gotta try to unpack this
24:05 pain doesn't exist in cards at the level of the city, you'd have to use city level pain and copy the mapping of the brain with that.
That's what Jonathan was trying to convey. We can only understand it on our level of revelation
Mitochondria may experience some levels of deprivation but we don’t experience it on their level. It is different by the time it rises to the level of our perception.
The card activity might make the city collectively bored, but it’s not creating an experience of pain because the program isn’t interfacing properly with a higher body. It’s like sticking post it notes of code to a computer and wondering why nothing happens.
@@kwlester1 people in a country die all the time, of many natural causes or even accidents and crimes, but the country doesn't experience it on their level. to them it's a tragedy, to the country it's healthy, so long as new people are being bornead.
can the Ghost of Kyiv be seen as an angelic manifestation?
Don't forget the Saint Javelin
30:00 Maybe the reason we can only see the consciousness of the individual is because, because they aren’t conscious and so they must be conscious through us.
Pain is forced attention. The pain of a hurt arm forces the rest of the body to focus on the arm. The pain of the capital forces those in the countryside to focus on the capital. The countryside doesn't "feel" the pain anymore than my legs "feel" the pain of my arm. Buy my legs will move to action to get an ice pack for my arm in response to the pain.
Intriguing Comment about ATTACHMENT, within the family for a child and the reverberations up the ladder, so to speak. Same with monastic living. At L’Abri, where everyone studied, worked and ate together, the times of prayer felt immensely integrated. It was uncanny. Prayer literally felt like working in the garden. This idea of attachment marries nicely with Dr McGilchrist’s emphasis of the presencing, not the representing.
I would have loved for you to go into the distinctions and relationships of will, person, nature, essence, energy, etc.
Very fascinating discussion.
I have been visited by angels ☝️🔥🕊👑
Curious if you experienced them on a physical incarnation level or something more ethereal?
@@Kunjesvari he spoke to me after I had been outside my door sitting on the doorstep pouring my heart out to God. I couldn’t say a word I couldn’t stop crying but my heart was heavy and I asked God to forgive me after abusing weed(I had used it to treat my chronic body pain after being given chemotherapy injections called Lupron to treat my fibroids (I was never warned it was chemo). I told God “Lord look at me, I am a mess(I was also going through domestic abuse), please help me I am in a lot of pain. Please take me home in my sleep I don’t want to suffer anymore. Please forgive me I need help.” I was not suicidal but I was very depressed. I must’ve been outside for about 30min..I then got up wiped my tears and when I walked back into our apartment there stood this image, it was glowing radiating so much light I heard his voice say “Behold I am the Angel of Hope be not afraid. I’ve come to tell you The Lord has heard your prayers.” I was not afraid, I thought I was losing my mind, so before the image disappeared I grabbed my phone and took a picture. He was about 7-10ft high..I felt so much peace..and I know it was an Angel, after reading The Bible I found out Gabriel is known as The Angel of Hope ❤️ I was healed our marriage is being restored and I trust in The Lord He is working in our lives, He even told me I would be given a child when I turned 48 after suffering multiple miscarriages..God is real, and I for one believe 😊🙏
Blessings!! Thankyou for sharing this with me. 🙏❤️🔥 Truly powerful! You must be so greatfull to receive God's hope and mercy. Words fail.
The discussion on culpability is quite interesting. Our understanding is so lacking here, God only knows.
18:50 there are things that you can only do if you have an identity, that'd be a good place to start
Im becoming more aware about presumptions of how self conscious we are or should be. It is just said that a cat is not as self conscious as humans so humans determine that their consciousness is not as advanced. In Greek Monasteries they don't have mirrors. In ancient times it was more rare to see one self visually.
One had to rely on another's observations about how (I) (You) was or is. Vervaeke has talked a lot about flow states and in flow states, one is so immersed in experience that (you) the agent is simultaneously background and forwardly active as whole. not self conscious, that would negate flow.
I think that ancient people's conscious self was more aided by others and necessarily so. There is great benefit to spaces between thought and action or else we would be zombies of a sort or animalistic at least, the ideal gap might be more narrow or more collective than presumed.
The only child syndrome comes to mind. No siblings to rely on for observations
The "G" in recognize is not silent.
Question for John Vervaeke's point at 31:26. If you can point to a problem that only collective intelligence can solve, then could you design an experiment to measure pain based on a degraded ability to solve such a problem. I measure how fast a CI can solve a problem. I then induce a state of 'pain' in that CI. If the CI takes longer to solve the problem, then it is evidence that it is being distracted by 'pain'. (even though the members of the CI are not experiencing 'pain') This would be the same if I had you solve math problems when you are comfortable vs. when you are in 'pain'.
I want to point out that this is isn't deductively sound.
The proposition "if pain then X" doesn't infer "if X then pain".
Anyone know the church father writings Jonathan referenced with regard to angels etc not having consciousness or capacity to change?
What evidence do the bacteria living in our bodies have that their dwelling place is self conscious? When we feel pain do all the microbiota and parasites inside us feel pain too? No. Does their environment flood with stress hormones? Yes.
Does their behavior cause us to feel pain, despite not being measurably connected to one another? In many cases.
We are a hyperconsciousness. The life within us has varying levels of agency/consciousness, but no access to our self consciousness - yet we are still self-conscious.
Angels are conscious of what they see, they perceive and learn but they do not experience life as a man; they have a different perspective. Creatures are also conscious but they have bounds placed on there limits of conciousness so that they are subdued under man. He's saying that Nineveh shall judge you because Nineveh listened more to the prophet than Israel did to Jesus.
Oh, dis gon' b gud. My beer is ready.
God bless
Wonderfull. Thanks.
37:00. The Germans had a scapegoat. Sacrifice, regicide, witch burning. I think of Rene Girard and his work.