Wow!! I have been following your work, John, since I serendiptiously discovered it at the start of the first lockdown. After watching what must be hundreds of hours of content on your channel, I rate this episode as being right up there as one of the most frame-breaking, consciousness-shifting, and soul-penetrating of them all. I had been following Iain Mcgilchrists' work for several years before discovering your work, and I remember about 8 episodes into 'Awakening from the Meaning Crisis' thinking to myself how surreal the convergence was between your work and Iains. Building upon his work in this episode was amazing to watch. So many things resonated on this one. Like you said, parts of the mind (extended mind) throughout the body by way of neurons in the gut, heart, and brain all being in synchronisation with each other really gets you thinking differently. The practice at the end is phenomenal, quite literally. Absolutely incredible. Thanks so much for offering the world such an amazing and timely gift. For anyone else who has also read Iain Mcgilchrist's 'The Matter with Things', it's impossible not to unsee what is going on and how it is a matter of urgency that way literally change the way we think. This work of John's only adds more support to this.
Nathan, Beautiful comment. You and I are on a very similar journey. The independent convergence between Mcgilchrist and Vervaeke has been a deep comfort for me. They had a beautiful and very deep conversation this past summer which I was a part of (just by helping Curt prepare) if you haven't yet heard you will enjoy the synergy. ua-cam.com/video/XzT4tcC-aag/v-deo.html Bless you on your way Matthew
@Our Blessed Tribe Thanks for your very warm and much appreciated comment, Matthew. Indeed, it seems we are on a very similar path (or way) in terms of the deep convergence between two of the top polymaths of out time. The depth and breath of their thinking is simply astonishing. Thanks for sharing, and yes, I have watched that particular episode twice already lol. No doubt I will revisit it again shortly. It is one of those organic conversations that bears new fruit each and every time. Kurt's 'Theories Of Everything' channel is the best on the internet, in my opinion. The exposure and the depths plumbed by Kurt from some of the most extraordinary thinkers in the world is remarkable. I have been encouraging everyone to subscribe to it. The only guest that hasn't made an appearance yet - who I think has a vast amount of insight and convergence to offer - is Rupert Sheldrake. I hope that happens before time no longer permits it. Have a great day.
@@nathancurry7944 that is great to hear. I fully agree. Curt actually did interview Sheldrake but it was quite a while ago, and Curt has vastly improved in both conversational skill and in wisdom since those days ua-cam.com/video/ocP6JSyicY0/v-deo.html
@@nathancurry7944 did you read the physical copy of "the matter with things"? Do you have advice for how I should approach it? I have 4 young kids and not much time for reading these years but plenty of time at work with headphones in, so I was planning to wait for the audio release. Iain says he is going to orate it himself
@Our Blessed Tribe yes I did indeed. As soon as I learned of its release date, I had to get it pre-odered. Make no mistake, it's a long haul, but the best way to describe it is that it is 'unputdownable' lol. It's truly extraordinary. I have enjoyed his series of discussions on his channel covering the book chapters, and you're right, he has said he's going to be recording the book for audio. I would imagine that will be around the same listening time as Tolstoy's 'War and Peace'. I highly recommend the book though, one way or the other.
This practice was honestly one of the strangest psychedelic, lucid and sane experiences I've had... there was whole instantly visualised, detailed landscapes with figures in it just perfectly happy to arrive in my imagination (with an imaginary actual sense of distance and space)... awesome. There are so many aspects!
I would humbly submit that the question "Who am I?" is not the best way to pose this challenge. Rather "To whom do I belong?" or "Whose am I?", IMHO, better frames the question, in that it expressly includes the others with whom you are in dialogue, with whom you're engaged in co-creating something new. It also avoids solipsism, and if you want to pick up the Socratic challenge, challenges the prevailing cultural emphasis on the autonomous individual, turning the focus then to the relationship, to mutual interdependence and personal growth rooted in that mutuality, in the dance between and with others. I appreciate the nuance in the term "opponent processing". Is there another term, another way to express the notion that in a loving relationship, your partner draws you towards something of which you were ignorant, or challenges you to open your eyes to your wilful blindness and/or incompetence, etc., but in a way that allows your fragility and your weaknesses a space to breath, so that you can put them down for a moment, before engaging in your life again? I don't have an answer to that question. Wish I did.
ha! this talk seriously challenges notions of mental health, and not only what ought to be considered normal, but what kind of mental states we ought to be striving for! So interesting the convergence between the practice you describe here, and that in indigenous traditions across the globe
John, thank you so much. I love you. Either my brains have spilled out and I'm going to have to collect it later or you've revealed the structure of reality to me. If everything below I say is true or close to being true, then reality is so incredibly beautiful. A worldview is slowly coalescing for me and it consists of the following: Heraclitus being right, everything is in flux. A rock appears static but at the quantum it's dynamic. Yin and Yang. As within, so without; as above, so below. The structure of our minds could reflect the structure of reality (thanks John). The substrate of reality could be mental (analytical idealism). Synchronicities are a way to connect to the logos, which is the process of complexification, dynamic process of creation, the order that is travelling through "time". The necessity of awareness/attention and how it gets one closer to free will. With contemplative training, one can enter into the gap between stimulus and reaction and choose how one actually wants to react. A Buddhist monk being still as a statue during self-immolation is an extreme example (hm, thought just occurred, wondered if the specific monk had a gene defect for pain lol). This is a wedge one can use to create themselves. The process of complexification being seemingly necessary for the creation of everything - "A system is more complex to the degree that it is simultaneously differentiated and integrated together into a functional whole." -At the lower levels, complexification occurs at the edge of order and chaos. Too orderly, it cannot change. Too chaotic, it cannot form. At the higher levels, systems enter the edge by opponent processing, the interactions of opposing yet complementary (for creation) systems. Analytical Idealism is currently filling my gap of how to make sense of paranormal activities such as kids remembering past lives, apparently studies on paranormal phenomena are statistically significant(?), people who've contributed to science that were very spiritual some of which claim to have received their intuitive insights from something supernatural (Ramunajan), etc. In a nutshell, I believe with our current scientific understanding and enough contemplative training, one can realize that everything is interconnected in both a physical sense (all of physical reality has the same origin, big bang) and a mental sense (reality is fundamentally mental, we are all different expressions of the mental) - warning, my head is about to go fully up my ass - and that by applying one's contemplative skills + the embodiment of our interconnectedness, one becomes aligned with the process of complexification, the logos. As an individual, one now has the ability to sever the chains of causes from one's past (instincts, trauma, conditioning, culture) and act in a way that's actually free (there are always exception). Basically one gains the ability to delete most if not all the spyware and bloatware that came pre-installed and one can install their own software and anti-virus - can't change the firmware though so... Collectively, we could become the force of creation, but then how should infinity be constrained? By the process of evolution, variation and selection. Or put differently, E(volve), C(haos), and O(rder). ECO, like ecosystems. Feedback loops make up ecosystems. So a general answer to how should infinity be constrained is to respond to the feedback loops appropriately. There is no final form. Context change, constraints change. Reality is evolving and so is cognition, but sometimes the constraints of our culture are too powerful and smothers cognition's evolving capacity. Synchronicities have become more and more, and unbelievably, frequent since I've begun to embody this worldview just a week ago. Weird... Be guided by meaning and synchronicities, follow the path of increasing integration of differentiated parts working as a functional whole, the path of creation. Only love can integrate. Follow your highest excitation to the best of your abilities with no insistence on the outcome, and interpret the results in a positive perspective (integration). If following your highest excitation and synchronicities are a real guiding principle for consciousness like humans to follow, or maybe that's how other animals live their lives too, could we look at it as a manifestation of the principle of least action? Could this be the same principle but for conscious beings? Sorry for the vomit. It's all fresh to me. Thank you for your time.
Another great episode. Thanks, John. I hope you will consider putting out an audio podcast version of this. I listened to AFTMC several times through (really) while running marathons. A great way to focus attention!
I’ve been thinking along these lines for several years, more specifically the IS/OUGHT problem. I’ve concluded that linearism is the main reason we can’t move into die-logos thinking more. Maybe that’s where your leading to. Great series.
If scholars took a supernatural view of the world like the ancients did, this scholar would be able to explain this much more coherently with more ancient primary data!!
Yay! Perfect timing thank you John! I am watching this for the second time now and I have heard and seen or sensed an understanding much deeper than before, which was only 24 hours ago. I am glad I watched this again, I paid more attention and different things came to the foreground revealing themselves to me like golden threads to follow, I just need to find which one would take me through. The throughline is like golden thread that can be used to weave and create and integrate reality , I even am envisioning drawing with line, just flowing with the way the energy surges towards developmental transformation and then placing the pen down when needing to phase out. Im going to try the exercise whist drawing as well. The who am I practise goes pretty deep into nothingness and then its almost as if some sort of inner travelling takes place which within appropriate timing takes you into a new light where you see with a new vision, inner vision though that seems to be quite important to let go and not take it and force it to move, it is like you get to see a glance of a complex vison but you are not the owner or it is not for you to have , it is just that glimpse and then knowing not to try take control there because then I feel that can be a place than one can become stuck in. It is not to solve, it is to see. It is not to have, but for a moment to hold. It is not everything and neither are you. You feel a part of the nothingness but yet you are not the nothingness and therefore don't feel in the right place. Gratitude flows when gravity seems to ground you again and you become reintroduced to a neutral reality that you know how to navigate well, and it is mostly there where you dwell, as well as transcend and you can feel okay knowing you are not nothing but you are something that can have some sort communion with the nothingness because between is a communication that has not got much articulation to it- alas one can try to gleam something from the insight developed and hopefully create something with some sort of resemblance but not replacement , a mere token of gratitude and memory almost like a music composition. When ready is important.
Another great episode and delivery, JV & crew! I can't wait for the rest of the argument to unfold and try to put all the pieces together. There's a lot to unpack and think about here.
He's trying to grapple with an immense project: The human brain and mind, which, at its level of organization, is far more complex than our growing world culture. Wow!
I don’t really care what any particular person BELIEVES. You may believe that there is an old man with a white beard perched in the clouds, that the Ultimate Reality is a young blackish-blue Indian guy, that the universe is eternal, that Mother Mary was a certifiable virgin, or that gross physical matter is the foundation of existence. The ONLY thing that really matters is your meta-ethics, not your meta-physics. Do you consider any form of non-monarchical governance (such as democracy or socialism) to be beneficial? Do you unnecessarily destroy the lives of poor, innocent animals and gorge on their bloody carcasses? Do you believe homosexuality and transvestism is moral? Do you consider feminist ideology to be righteous? If so, then you are objectively immoral and your so-called “enlightened/awakened” state is immaterial, since it does not benefit society in any way.
@@TheVeganVicar Why would any of that stuff be considered moral or immoral? Especially vegetarianism? If you believe our deep sense of morality and our emotional responses are essentially biological, then you must agree that killing animals and eating them is highly moral for us omnivore humans. If our ancestors didn't do so, we wouldn't be here to debate anything.
David Eagleman, neuroscientist is producing a wrist band which, through the stimuli it provides enables blind people to see. You can find his work online.
Talking to my Soul. That's not Freud's dissection of the human psyche. Such a fine distinction Descartes tried to mechanize and Siggy made it autonomos will. Thank You. Dr. V.
Daimonion in the way that Socrates is driven/following his dreams, etc - has a fascinating overlap with concepts of synchronicity, specifically the theory of Dr. Kirby Surprise (many videos of his theory can be found on UA-cam). "Tracking" and "seeing signs" can be how people assign meaning to coincidental (synchronistic) events, and even thoughts or interior "voices" talking to you can align with exterior synchronistic occurrences (if this goes off the rails, psychosis or schizophrenia can be an issue). Dr. Surprise's theory is that people can influence events to occur "3-5% above chance" -- but only if MEANING and ATTENTION are given to the outcome. 🤔🔥
That's a really interesting explanation of daimonion, and could perhaps explain how certain "inspired" or "revealed" texts come about - but I still prefer the naiveintepretation that Socrates was talking to an actual daimon 😉
Referenced Books: 1. Phaedo 2. A companion to Socrates 3. Bloomsbury Companion to Socrates 4. Models of the Self 5. Your Brain Is (Almost) Perfect 6. The Master and His Emissary 7. The Eureka Factor 8. The Enigma of Reason
Noise, disruption. Could it be that deconstruction is the disruption that leaves no choice but to reassess and reassemble the problem frame? It would seem that there would be a fear of the unknown which would incline one to attempt a reconstruction which produces an identical framing as before but reality has shifted and this futile tendency leads to a maladaptive sort of fatal error loop. The premise(s) which is/are informing the fear must be examined but they are often held as implicit axioms. It's like being forced to let go of an increasingly waterlogged bit of driftwood while at sea facing the very real possibility of drowning and what has sustained you is becoming less able to continue doing so.
(Please forgive my crude phrasing) At times I feel like I am addicted to insights. I will try to force them as if they were a recreation. With motivational/self-help content people are bombarded with what Ive heard referred to as “insight porn.” If insights are leading me toward the goal state of “optimal functioning”, I.e “the good”, an insight signals movement toward the goal. Each insight is a dopamine hit. Not only that but it’s an opiate because it temporarily relieves the pain of anxiety, chaos and confusion. Forced insights are Similar to masterbation; it’s not the real thing, but it still feels alright. It’s cheap and I feel hollow, but I do it anyway. Listening to you I get the sense that insights without aporia are not complete. I’m grateful for the way you’ve challenged me. Before I found you, my self deceptive blur of motives and values were carefully hidden from my attention. Going into my late 20s I’m getting small glimpses of the tricks my mind plays in order to justify gratifying and insecure behaviors. When you say “the child is to the adult what the adult is to the Sage” I get a deeply felt sensation of my immaturity. I feel like a child. These episodes are progressing so well. I’m excited to watch this series blossom. Thank you so much John.
Good and bad are RELATIVE. 😉 I don’t really care what any particular person BELIEVES. You may believe that there is an old man with a white beard perched in the clouds, that the Ultimate Reality is a young blackish-blue Indian guy, that the universe is eternal, that Mother Mary was a certifiable virgin, or that gross physical matter is the foundation of existence. The ONLY thing that really matters is your meta-ethics, not your meta-physics. Do you consider any form of non-monarchical governance (such as democracy or socialism) to be beneficial? Do you unnecessarily destroy the lives of poor, innocent animals and gorge on their bloody carcasses? Do you believe homosexuality and transvestism is moral? Do you consider feminist ideology to be righteous? If so, then you are objectively immoral and your so-called “enlightened/awakened” state is immaterial, since it does not benefit society in any way.
@@Ac-ip5hd I like what you’ve said. A few questions come up for me. These questions are not meant to be leading, so please don’t take them as such. Should we place normative judgements on these levels? Is it good or bad to be a child,adult,sage etc? Is it bad if we do not become saints? If not, then how do we know which level is appropriate for us? Nothing ever comes down from heaven to tell us we gaged our role appropriately. Is it bad if I feel left hanging on these questions? I feel obligated to find an answer. Is this obligation a sign of a pathological need for certainty? Where does the power lie to go up and down the levels; is it in myself, or forces more powerful than I? This is a false dichotomy, yet I cant find the balance for when it’s both or neither. I’m left with the question of hubris. Who am I to think my will can control every aspect of my human nature? On the other hand, if I throw up my hands in surrender I might be copping out of my responsibility toward God and it’s wishes for me. What then do I do about this? I guess it depends on what I value and where I place my attention. That’s pretty ambiguous though. Worldly things constantly fracture my attention and make these questions even more difficult. My family, my job, my bodily needs. I’m looking for a sign to know how, and to what degree, I can become more like the saint. It always feels harder the further you are away.
@@iamlovingawareness2284 Sure, I wouldn't worry too much about the normative, I was mainly attacking Vervaeke's highjacking of St. Paul to use sages as replacement saints. I wouldn't worry about not becoming a saint. The saints understand most people can't become them and the church exists as a body. Even the desert fathers and saints speak of losing some of the holy spirit when they have to go do work as a Bishop in the realm of men, or translate a work. It's a hierarchy with layers of feedback. There are regular monks, there are clergy who can marry as well in the Orthodox church. So you get specialists to carry the burden and guide and mentor you, and you live your life and explore this stuff at the rate you best can struggle. They will also help you not only learn the saints, but help you pick a patron saint that relates to your life. Rather than internalize, you internalize their examples to create a relationship to them. You see the struggles they went through and feel contrition, and strive to be a little more like them. They are also full of sophisticated philosophy that has been carefully discerned and we have philosophers and psychologists. The personal prayer is noetic prayer (prayer of the heart) and that is meditative prayer. All the disciplines learned here can be put into that and you gain religious discernment to keep out the pagan and demonic, or religious delusion. Also, the church is a liturgical and mystical space. You can explore different aspects of that, the different saints and icons for your whole life. And the family stuff ties into it because they will help you with that and you bring the family with you, the kids meet other kids , you help the others when they need it and they help you. So it's reciprocal. The two things you have to do are go to the church, and secondly to read the saints. The Lives of the Saints is a good place to start, St. Herman and Saint Aleut are really interesting American monks, Anthony the Great and ST. Silouan who was told by God to keep his mind in hell and do not despair are examples of those who withstood demonic assault, there's whole lists of female saints, St. Nektarios is a great moral struggle and has a movie called Man of God, St. Athenasius is amazing, St. Basil and Gregory the Theologian lay out the church beliefs, St. Sophrony was a former zen practicioner who has great books on prayer, blessed Seraphim Rose was a perrenialist who studied under Alan Watts before living in China and is not a saint (yet, probably will be) and he became sanctified, he has great writings on modernity, sermons, and religious discernment in modernity. So I would start by just picking one to read. God bless.
My guess is that ch'i/qi is more like pneuma. For a Daoist equivalent of daimonion, maybe those practices where you commune with the souls of your different organs etc.?
I hope there's an episode about psychedelics. This is a great argument in favor of their safe, well-intended use. What is one called that follows the way of the religion that's not a religion? An Alatheist! Bada pshhhh 🤣
So if I’m that 5% of the population who didn’t do the Bouba Kiki thing as the large-scale generative modeling would have anticipated is that why cilantro tastes like soap? Is that where the other 5% is allocated?
Fallacy of composition and fallacy of division - links to overfitting and need to bring in noise. Allows to explore and find more info Order disorder new better order. Like cave. You want to play to break framing Are you saying when you aspire you dialogue with a future you, but then take another perspective to correct it? Practice: Curiosity - knowledge gap wonder - calling world being into question (can become awe then horror so want to find optimal grip here) Quest - see what not seen to transform you Koan destroys curiosity answer to help put you in wonder/transform framework. Jesus - parables flip the narratives and open you up (Sufi stories breaking narrative mode)
having the models is efficient, allows for less brain energy/metabolism - balance between not communicating energy and communcating all energy finding to co-ordinate. update models of each other by coming together occasionally partos the brain model part of the brain (and they can be wrong). not an angry person and then shout when pushed
Christians: Don’t eat the Zeus meat. It’s seasoned with Gnosticism. The Saints are to the sage as the sage is to the child, and already integrated the sages in a manner for right worship with an ecology of practices that don’t trap you in Jungian Gnosticism to replace God with sages for an ecology and man centered emergentism. #AwakeningToTheGnosticismCrisis
Correct me if I am wrong but Socrates also believed in the Greek gods and participated in pagan rituals. Things that Christians and modern atheists probably just ignore. You seem to not be fond of dismissing things just because they don't fit our worldview. So, what do we do with Socrates' belief system?
I've been articulating the same thing to Jonathan on this channel. I've stated in a video that I respect his efforts and his project, but the translation into practice is missing precisely what you say.
Like any mythos, you treat it as functional knowledge: you act as if certain gods exist and follow certain practices, and you get certain results. On a more mundane level, expecting an ancient Greek to disbelieve in the gods would be like expecting a modern person to disbelieve in atoms. That said, assuming the views ascribed to Socrates by Plato are correct, he had a very different view of gods than the average Greek of his time.
Gosh, like I’ve commented before on a prior video, I love the content but the production really detracts from the listening experience. About the only way I can enjoy the content is to play it at three-quarter speed and just listen without watching the video. John is not in sync with the multiple camera angles which is a distraction. Seems to be just me because I have not read any other comments on this topic.
Powerful stuff. It's an amazing time to be alive where this is offered for free to the world.
Well said
The density of this work is astonishing. Every 3~5 minutes, there are great points that enough equivalent to many self-help books.
Bout to pop this on for a hike! Love and Peace.
this is bringin tears watchin this. phew... beautiful, meaningful. thanks John, incredible what you've coagulated
Wow!! I have been following your work, John, since I serendiptiously discovered it at the start of the first lockdown. After watching what must be hundreds of hours of content on your channel, I rate this episode as being right up there as one of the most frame-breaking, consciousness-shifting, and soul-penetrating of them all.
I had been following Iain Mcgilchrists' work for several years before discovering your work, and I remember about 8 episodes into 'Awakening from the Meaning Crisis' thinking to myself how surreal the convergence was between your work and Iains. Building upon his work in this episode was amazing to watch. So many things resonated on this one. Like you said, parts of the mind (extended mind) throughout the body by way of neurons in the gut, heart, and brain all being in synchronisation with each other really gets you thinking differently.
The practice at the end is phenomenal, quite literally. Absolutely incredible. Thanks so much for offering the world such an amazing and timely gift.
For anyone else who has also read Iain Mcgilchrist's 'The Matter with Things', it's impossible not to unsee what is going on and how it is a matter of urgency that way literally change the way we think. This work of John's only adds more support to this.
Nathan,
Beautiful comment.
You and I are on a very similar journey.
The independent convergence between Mcgilchrist and Vervaeke has been a deep comfort for me.
They had a beautiful and very deep conversation this past summer which I was a part of (just by helping Curt prepare) if you haven't yet heard you will enjoy the synergy.
ua-cam.com/video/XzT4tcC-aag/v-deo.html
Bless you on your way
Matthew
@Our Blessed Tribe Thanks for your very warm and much appreciated comment, Matthew.
Indeed, it seems we are on a very similar path (or way) in terms of the deep convergence between two of the top polymaths of out time. The depth and breath of their thinking is simply astonishing.
Thanks for sharing, and yes, I have watched that particular episode twice already lol. No doubt I will revisit it again shortly. It is one of those organic conversations that bears new fruit each and every time.
Kurt's 'Theories Of Everything' channel is the best on the internet, in my opinion. The exposure and the depths plumbed by Kurt from some of the most extraordinary thinkers in the world is remarkable. I have been encouraging everyone to subscribe to it.
The only guest that hasn't made an appearance yet - who I think has a vast amount of insight and convergence to offer - is Rupert Sheldrake. I hope that happens before time no longer permits it.
Have a great day.
@@nathancurry7944 that is great to hear. I fully agree.
Curt actually did interview Sheldrake but it was quite a while ago, and Curt has vastly improved in both conversational skill and in wisdom since those days
ua-cam.com/video/ocP6JSyicY0/v-deo.html
@@nathancurry7944 did you read the physical copy of "the matter with things"?
Do you have advice for how I should approach it?
I have 4 young kids and not much time for reading these years but plenty of time at work with headphones in, so I was planning to wait for the audio release. Iain says he is going to orate it himself
@Our Blessed Tribe yes I did indeed. As soon as I learned of its release date, I had to get it pre-odered. Make no mistake, it's a long haul, but the best way to describe it is that it is 'unputdownable' lol. It's truly extraordinary. I have enjoyed his series of discussions on his channel covering the book chapters, and you're right, he has said he's going to be recording the book for audio. I would imagine that will be around the same listening time as Tolstoy's 'War and Peace'.
I highly recommend the book though, one way or the other.
Seven episodes in and your argument, delivery and depth of knowledge is truly breathtaking. Thank you so much John 🙏
This practice was honestly one of the strangest psychedelic, lucid and sane experiences I've had... there was whole instantly visualised, detailed landscapes with figures in it just perfectly happy to arrive in my imagination (with an imaginary actual sense of distance and space)... awesome. There are so many aspects!
I would humbly submit that the question "Who am I?" is not the best way to pose this challenge. Rather "To whom do I belong?" or "Whose am I?", IMHO, better frames the question, in that it expressly includes the others with whom you are in dialogue, with whom you're engaged in co-creating something new. It also avoids solipsism, and if you want to pick up the Socratic challenge, challenges the prevailing cultural emphasis on the autonomous individual, turning the focus then to the relationship, to mutual interdependence and personal growth rooted in that mutuality, in the dance between and with others.
I appreciate the nuance in the term "opponent processing". Is there another term, another way to express the notion that in a loving relationship, your partner draws you towards something of which you were ignorant, or challenges you to open your eyes to your wilful blindness and/or incompetence, etc., but in a way that allows your fragility and your weaknesses a space to breath, so that you can put them down for a moment, before engaging in your life again? I don't have an answer to that question. Wish I did.
Daimonion is my favourite kind of onion, and I'm still slicing and peeling off layers.
The broadness of your psychological explanations is impressive John. Very detailed work.
ha! this talk seriously challenges notions of mental health, and not only what ought to be considered normal, but what kind of mental states we ought to be striving for! So interesting the convergence between the practice you describe here, and that in indigenous traditions across the globe
John, thank you so much. I love you. Either my brains have spilled out and I'm going to have to collect it later or you've revealed the structure of reality to me.
If everything below I say is true or close to being true, then reality is so incredibly beautiful.
A worldview is slowly coalescing for me and it consists of the following:
Heraclitus being right, everything is in flux. A rock appears static but at the quantum it's dynamic. Yin and Yang. As within, so without; as above, so below. The structure of our minds could reflect the structure of reality (thanks John). The substrate of reality could be mental (analytical idealism). Synchronicities are a way to connect to the logos, which is the process of complexification, dynamic process of creation, the order that is travelling through "time".
The necessity of awareness/attention and how it gets one closer to free will. With contemplative training, one can enter into the gap between stimulus and reaction and choose how one actually wants to react. A Buddhist monk being still as a statue during self-immolation is an extreme example (hm, thought just occurred, wondered if the specific monk had a gene defect for pain lol). This is a wedge one can use to create themselves.
The process of complexification being seemingly necessary for the creation of everything - "A system is more complex to the degree that it is simultaneously differentiated and integrated together into a functional whole."
-At the lower levels, complexification occurs at the edge of order and chaos. Too orderly, it cannot change. Too chaotic, it cannot form. At the higher levels, systems enter the edge by opponent processing, the interactions of opposing yet complementary (for creation) systems.
Analytical Idealism is currently filling my gap of how to make sense of paranormal activities such as kids remembering past lives, apparently studies on paranormal phenomena are statistically significant(?), people who've contributed to science that were very spiritual some of which claim to have received their intuitive insights from something supernatural (Ramunajan), etc.
In a nutshell, I believe with our current scientific understanding and enough contemplative training, one can realize that everything is interconnected in both a physical sense (all of physical reality has the same origin, big bang) and a mental sense (reality is fundamentally mental, we are all different expressions of the mental) - warning, my head is about to go fully up my ass - and that by applying one's contemplative skills + the embodiment of our interconnectedness, one becomes aligned with the process of complexification, the logos.
As an individual, one now has the ability to sever the chains of causes from one's past (instincts, trauma, conditioning, culture) and act in a way that's actually free (there are always exception). Basically one gains the ability to delete most if not all the spyware and bloatware that came pre-installed and one can install their own software and anti-virus - can't change the firmware though so... Collectively, we could become the force of creation, but then how should infinity be constrained? By the process of evolution, variation and selection. Or put differently, E(volve), C(haos), and O(rder). ECO, like ecosystems. Feedback loops make up ecosystems. So a general answer to how should infinity be constrained is to respond to the feedback loops appropriately. There is no final form. Context change, constraints change. Reality is evolving and so is cognition, but sometimes the constraints of our culture are too powerful and smothers cognition's evolving capacity.
Synchronicities have become more and more, and unbelievably, frequent since I've begun to embody this worldview just a week ago. Weird...
Be guided by meaning and synchronicities, follow the path of increasing integration of differentiated parts working as a functional whole, the path of creation. Only love can integrate.
Follow your highest excitation to the best of your abilities with no insistence on the outcome, and interpret the results in a positive perspective (integration).
If following your highest excitation and synchronicities are a real guiding principle for consciousness like humans to follow, or maybe that's how other animals live their lives too, could we look at it as a manifestation of the principle of least action? Could this be the same principle but for conscious beings?
Sorry for the vomit. It's all fresh to me. Thank you for your time.
If this resonates with you deeply, anyone, please let's get in contact!
Relishing this series. First time I’m getting numerous ads (3 in 19 minutes). Hope this is not the new norm.
Brilliant. Thank you John 🙏
Oppomemt processing is dia-logos. Every time you sample the infinite for relevance realisation you are touching "god"
Haikus are easy
But sometimes they don’t make sense
Refrigerator
Thanks John ❤️🙏🏽
Wonderfilled dimensional portals as deep calls unto deep ~~~~~~~~ Thank you John!!!! ~~~~~~~
Another great episode. Thanks, John. I hope you will consider putting out an audio podcast version of this. I listened to AFTMC several times through (really) while running marathons. A great way to focus attention!
Great and lowly are RELATIVE. 😉
@@TheVeganVicar duh?
@@kipling1957, Good Girl! 👌
Incidentally, Slave, are you VEGAN? 🌱
@@TheVeganVicar duh? duh?
I’ve been thinking along these lines for several years, more specifically the IS/OUGHT problem. I’ve concluded that linearism is the main reason we can’t move into die-logos thinking more.
Maybe that’s where your leading to. Great series.
McGilchrist often talks about the problematic nature of straight line thinking.
Starting to really enjoy these now. It took me a few episodes to get into it. But now I'm hooked! Thanks again for everything John:)
If scholars took a supernatural view of the world like the ancients did, this scholar would be able to explain this much more coherently with more ancient primary data!!
I appreciate YOUR time JV ❤🍄
🎉thank you ❤
Yay! Perfect timing thank you John! I am watching this for the second time now and I have heard and seen or sensed an understanding much deeper than before, which was only 24 hours ago. I am glad I watched this again, I paid more attention and different things came to the foreground revealing themselves to me like golden threads to follow, I just need to find which one would take me through. The throughline is like golden thread that can be used to weave and create and integrate reality , I even am envisioning drawing with line, just flowing with the way the energy surges towards developmental transformation and then placing the pen down when needing to phase out. Im going to try the exercise whist drawing as well. The who am I practise goes pretty deep into nothingness and then its almost as if some sort of inner travelling takes place which within appropriate timing takes you into a new light where you see with a new vision, inner vision though that seems to be quite important to let go and not take it and force it to move, it is like you get to see a glance of a complex vison but you are not the owner or it is not for you to have , it is just that glimpse and then knowing not to try take control there because then I feel that can be a place than one can become stuck in. It is not to solve, it is to see. It is not to have, but for a moment to hold. It is not everything and neither are you. You feel a part of the nothingness but yet you are not the nothingness and therefore don't feel in the right place. Gratitude flows when gravity seems to ground you again and you become reintroduced to a neutral reality that you know how to navigate well, and it is mostly there where you dwell, as well as transcend and you can feel okay knowing you are not nothing but you are something that can have some sort communion with the nothingness because between is a communication that has not got much articulation to it- alas one can try to gleam something from the insight developed and hopefully create something with some sort of resemblance but not replacement , a mere token of gratitude and memory almost like a music composition. When ready is important.
Missed you fellow soul - we are catching up on your content. Thank you for keep up the keeping on ❤
Another great episode and delivery, JV & crew!
I can't wait for the rest of the argument to unfold and try to put all the pieces together. There's a lot to unpack and think about here.
Thank you
Thanks John!
He's trying to grapple with an immense project: The human brain and mind, which, at its level of organization, is far more complex than our growing world culture. Wow!
I don’t really care what any particular person BELIEVES. You may believe that there is an old man with a white beard perched in the clouds, that the Ultimate Reality is a young blackish-blue Indian guy, that the universe is eternal, that Mother Mary was a certifiable virgin, or that gross physical matter is the foundation of existence.
The ONLY thing that really matters is your meta-ethics, not your meta-physics. Do you consider any form of non-monarchical governance (such as democracy or socialism) to be beneficial? Do you unnecessarily destroy the lives of poor, innocent animals and gorge on their bloody carcasses? Do you believe homosexuality and transvestism is moral? Do you consider feminist ideology to be righteous? If so, then you are objectively immoral and your so-called “enlightened/awakened” state is immaterial, since it does not benefit society in any way.
@@TheVeganVicar Why would any of that stuff be considered moral or immoral? Especially vegetarianism? If you believe our deep sense of morality and our emotional responses are essentially biological, then you must agree that killing animals and eating them is highly moral for us omnivore humans. If our ancestors didn't do so, we wouldn't be here to debate anything.
@@thephilosophicalagnostic2177, watch and LEARN:
Milton Mills, MD: Are Humans Designed to Eat Meat?
ua-cam.com/video/sXj76A9hI-o/v-deo.html
55:30 - A way for me to explain what is Dialogos to other people
Very understandable, thanks.
Wow! I would love a reference for that magnetic belt study, that is super fascinating
David Eagleman, neuroscientist is producing a wrist band which, through the stimuli it provides enables blind people to see. You can find his work online.
@@minnjony wow thank you for the heads up!
Talking to my Soul. That's not Freud's dissection of the human psyche. Such a fine distinction Descartes tried to mechanize and Siggy made it autonomos will. Thank You. Dr. V.
Mr. Martin, what is this “SOUL” of which you speak? 🤔
Let’s Goooooooo!!!!🎉
Daimonion in the way that Socrates is driven/following his dreams, etc - has a fascinating overlap with concepts of synchronicity, specifically the theory of Dr. Kirby Surprise (many videos of his theory can be found on UA-cam). "Tracking" and "seeing signs" can be how people assign meaning to coincidental (synchronistic) events, and even thoughts or interior "voices" talking to you can align with exterior synchronistic occurrences (if this goes off the rails, psychosis or schizophrenia can be an issue). Dr. Surprise's theory is that people can influence events to occur "3-5% above chance" -- but only if MEANING and ATTENTION are given to the outcome. 🤔🔥
That's a really interesting explanation of daimonion, and could perhaps explain how certain "inspired" or "revealed" texts come about - but I still prefer the naiveintepretation that Socrates was talking to an actual daimon 😉
Referenced Books:
1. Phaedo
2. A companion to Socrates
3. Bloomsbury Companion to Socrates
4. Models of the Self
5. Your Brain Is (Almost) Perfect
6. The Master and His Emissary
7. The Eureka Factor
8. The Enigma of Reason
“Aardvark, porcupine, South Africa, sperm whale”
-a great unknown poet
46:30 amen amen amen
Q: about the practice.
What's the difference between the heart and the hara? What are you all doing differently during those two?
Noise, disruption. Could it be that deconstruction is the disruption that leaves no choice but to reassess and reassemble the problem frame? It would seem that there would be a fear of the unknown which would incline one to attempt a reconstruction which produces an identical framing as before but reality has shifted and this futile tendency leads to a maladaptive sort of fatal error loop. The premise(s) which is/are informing the fear must be examined but they are often held as implicit axioms. It's like being forced to let go of an increasingly waterlogged bit of driftwood while at sea facing the very real possibility of drowning and what has sustained you is becoming less able to continue doing so.
(Please forgive my crude phrasing) At times I feel like I am addicted to insights. I will try to force them as if they were a recreation. With motivational/self-help content people are bombarded with what Ive heard referred to as “insight porn.” If insights are leading me toward the goal state of “optimal functioning”, I.e “the good”, an insight signals movement toward the goal. Each insight is a dopamine hit. Not only that but it’s an opiate because it temporarily relieves the pain of anxiety, chaos and confusion.
Forced insights are Similar to masterbation; it’s not the real thing, but it still feels alright. It’s cheap and I feel hollow, but I do it anyway. Listening to you I get the sense that insights without aporia are not complete. I’m grateful for the way you’ve challenged me. Before I found you, my self deceptive blur of motives and values were carefully hidden from my attention.
Going into my late 20s I’m getting small glimpses of the tricks my mind plays in order to justify gratifying and insecure behaviors.
When you say “the child is to the adult what the adult is to the Sage” I get a deeply felt sensation of my immaturity. I feel like a child.
These episodes are progressing so well. I’m excited to watch this series blossom. Thank you so much John.
Good and bad are RELATIVE. 😉
I don’t really care what any particular person BELIEVES. You may believe that there is an old man with a white beard perched in the clouds, that the Ultimate Reality is a young blackish-blue Indian guy, that the universe is eternal, that Mother Mary was a certifiable virgin, or that gross physical matter is the foundation of existence.
The ONLY thing that really matters is your meta-ethics, not your meta-physics. Do you consider any form of non-monarchical governance (such as democracy or socialism) to be beneficial? Do you unnecessarily destroy the lives of poor, innocent animals and gorge on their bloody carcasses? Do you believe homosexuality and transvestism is moral? Do you consider feminist ideology to be righteous? If so, then you are objectively immoral and your so-called “enlightened/awakened” state is immaterial, since it does not benefit society in any way.
As the sage is to the child, the Saint is to the sage. As the Saint is to the child, God is to the Saint.
@@Ac-ip5hd, Good Girl! 👌
Incidentally, Slave, are you VEGAN? 🌱
@@Ac-ip5hd I like what you’ve said. A few questions come up for me. These questions are not meant to be leading, so please don’t take them as such.
Should we place normative judgements on these levels? Is it good or bad to be a child,adult,sage etc? Is it bad if we do not become saints? If not, then how do we know which level is appropriate for us? Nothing ever comes down from heaven to tell us we gaged our role appropriately. Is it bad if I feel left hanging on these questions?
I feel obligated to find an answer. Is this obligation a sign of a pathological need for certainty?
Where does the power lie to go up and down the levels; is it in myself, or forces more powerful than I? This is a false dichotomy, yet I cant find the balance for when it’s both or neither. I’m left with the question of hubris. Who am I to think my will can control every aspect of my human nature?
On the other hand, if I throw up my hands in surrender I might be copping out of my responsibility toward God and it’s wishes for me.
What then do I do about this? I guess it depends on what I value and where I place my attention. That’s pretty ambiguous though. Worldly things constantly fracture my attention and make these questions even more difficult. My family, my job, my bodily needs. I’m looking for a sign to know how, and to what degree, I can become more like the saint. It always feels harder the further you are away.
@@iamlovingawareness2284 Sure, I wouldn't worry too much about the normative, I was mainly attacking Vervaeke's highjacking of St. Paul to use sages as replacement saints.
I wouldn't worry about not becoming a saint. The saints understand most people can't become them and the church exists as a body. Even the desert fathers and saints speak of losing some of the holy spirit when they have to go do work as a Bishop in the realm of men, or translate a work. It's a hierarchy with layers of feedback. There are regular monks, there are clergy who can marry as well in the Orthodox church. So you get specialists to carry the burden and guide and mentor you, and you live your life and explore this stuff at the rate you best can struggle. They will also help you not only learn the saints, but help you pick a patron saint that relates to your life.
Rather than internalize, you internalize their examples to create a relationship to them. You see the struggles they went through and feel contrition, and strive to be a little more like them. They are also full of sophisticated philosophy that has been carefully discerned and we have philosophers and psychologists. The personal prayer is noetic prayer (prayer of the heart) and that is meditative prayer. All the disciplines learned here can be put into that and you gain religious discernment to keep out the pagan and demonic, or religious delusion. Also, the church is a liturgical and mystical space. You can explore different aspects of that, the different saints and icons for your whole life. And the family stuff ties into it because they will help you with that and you bring the family with you, the kids meet other kids , you help the others when they need it and they help you. So it's reciprocal.
The two things you have to do are go to the church, and secondly to read the saints. The Lives of the Saints is a good place to start, St. Herman and Saint Aleut are really interesting American monks, Anthony the Great and ST. Silouan who was told by God to keep his mind in hell and do not despair are examples of those who withstood demonic assault, there's whole lists of female saints, St. Nektarios is a great moral struggle and has a movie called Man of God, St. Athenasius is amazing, St. Basil and Gregory the Theologian lay out the church beliefs, St. Sophrony was a former zen practicioner who has great books on prayer, blessed Seraphim Rose was a perrenialist who studied under Alan Watts before living in China and is not a saint (yet, probably will be) and he became sanctified, he has great writings on modernity, sermons, and religious discernment in modernity. So I would start by just picking one to read. God bless.
I have just done the practice and .... taking me to places I have never been before. Similar effects for anyone else?
53:51 sorry for nitpicking, but doesn’t John mean “could be a square” or “you got a rectangle”?
Almost 80k John 🤙
Is there are connection between absorption and the ability to internalise?
❤
About left brain/right brain coordination. Ask Schmachtenberger how he does both at the same time. Challenge your notion of constant switching.
What is the intro composition please
it may not be a good poem but none the less highly enjoyable
Is there a link between Chi and Daimonion?
My guess is that ch'i/qi is more like pneuma. For a Daoist equivalent of daimonion, maybe those practices where you commune with the souls of your different organs etc.?
🙏
love the talks but why so many adds ?
i assume because its free, and some small amount of monetization is well earned.
Of course, but at beginning perhaps or snappy adds. Can't get into flow of conversation with so many adds.
I hope there's an episode about psychedelics. This is a great argument in favor of their safe, well-intended use. What is one called that follows the way of the religion that's not a religion? An Alatheist! Bada pshhhh 🤣
So if I’m that 5% of the population who didn’t do the Bouba Kiki thing as the large-scale generative modeling would have anticipated is that why cilantro tastes like soap? Is that where the other 5% is allocated?
Me too! They certainly got Buba and Kiki wrong! And it does taste like soap or some kind of detergent!
Fallacy of composition and fallacy of division - links to overfitting and need to bring in noise. Allows to explore and find more info
Order disorder new better order. Like cave. You want to play to break framing
Are you saying when you aspire you dialogue with a future you, but then take another perspective to correct it?
Practice:
Curiosity - knowledge gap
wonder - calling world being into question (can become awe then horror so want to find optimal grip here)
Quest - see what not seen to transform you
Koan destroys curiosity answer to help put you in wonder/transform framework.
Jesus - parables flip the narratives and open you up (Sufi stories breaking narrative mode)
polyphasic, polyepistemic, not monadic self
I attention, me past and you future
having the models is efficient, allows for less brain energy/metabolism - balance between not communicating energy and communcating all energy finding to co-ordinate. update models of each other by coming together occasionally
partos the brain model part of the brain (and they can be wrong). not an angry person and then shout when pushed
Christians: Don’t eat the Zeus meat. It’s seasoned with Gnosticism. The Saints are to the sage as the sage is to the child, and already integrated the sages in a manner for right worship with an ecology of practices that don’t trap you in Jungian Gnosticism to replace God with sages for an ecology and man centered emergentism. #AwakeningToTheGnosticismCrisis
no money to buy books, so i'll stick with your explanations.
So this noise you throw in to break the incorrect frame... isn' that in a sense what ADHD brains do by default?
Definitely too many ads.
Correct me if I am wrong but Socrates also believed in the Greek gods and participated in pagan rituals. Things that Christians and modern atheists probably just ignore. You seem to not be fond of dismissing things just because they don't fit our worldview. So, what do we do with Socrates' belief system?
I've been articulating the same thing to Jonathan on this channel. I've stated in a video that I respect his efforts and his project, but the translation into practice is missing precisely what you say.
Like any mythos, you treat it as functional knowledge: you act as if certain gods exist and follow certain practices, and you get certain results. On a more mundane level, expecting an ancient Greek to disbelieve in the gods would be like expecting a modern person to disbelieve in atoms. That said, assuming the views ascribed to Socrates by Plato are correct, he had a very different view of gods than the average Greek of his time.
Logos-deniers gnashing teeth
Gosh, like I’ve commented before on a prior video, I love the content but the production really detracts from the listening experience. About the only way I can enjoy the content is to play it at three-quarter speed and just listen without watching the video. John is not in sync with the multiple camera angles which is a distraction. Seems to be just me because I have not read any other comments on this topic.
Thanks John!
❤