Oh oh oh! The section about angels (near the end) suddenly made more accessible to me a book that John had recommended to me, Jeffrey Raff's Ally Work. That book describes one's "spiritual" ally as having its own desire to unite with the seeker and work together. I think I was hung up on the very externalized (e.g. woo) version of the ally as I understood the book to present. But suddenly hearing this it was like my psyche was surrounded by a ring of artful light, and there was this insight that OF COURSE the ally would want to work together, as something not wholly separate from me. The experience caused me to (at least for now) become more fully embodied as well, as the angel/ally inhabits "through" me. 💮☀
Listening to this conversation, I was on the verge of weeping in gratitude. For you to have this conversation with someone coming out of the field of Religious Studies has been a desire from the first day, years ago now, when taking up your Awakening from the Meaning Crisis series. And to hear where your conversation was building out of and pointing to...to the heavens, thank you. Thank you Charles Steng for seeing the value of John's work within RS and how his work, I continue to believe, can further this invaluable field of study into a direction that actually provides meaning as opposed philosophical, performative tail chasing, that you are so correct in pointing out it having somewhat developed itself into. And as always, thank you, John, ...and thank you for John.
I totally agree. I love, love, love, that these two highly intelligent academic men are valuing the incredible truth that the grace of God allows poor, needy, hungry and thirsty souls to be changed, instantly into the person they were meant to be. I have been a fool for Christ for the last 50 years.
The idea of a sapiential notion of rationality that requires transformation and transcendence is something that is at the core of who I am and what I practice. I already crave for the continuation of this conversation.
Someone said that as we develop into higher levels, "We must include and transcend" This involves inclusion of past wisdom, as we step into the novel and nascent. What we learn in our pre-tragic consciousness must be included as we transcend and transform into the post tragic consciousness.
As this conversation flowed through me, I tried to grab and hold multiple frames as they were so Beautiful. Before halfway, I had to simply let go of all of it and it felt as if I was hearing the most wonderful symphony for the first time. I am so grateful, as always!
What a great talk! I really appreciated the description and explanation of the dialogic angelic function. Corbin's insistence that mystical experiences and this kind of mode as angels and not God allow for both a defense against inflation and over-identification with the divine principle and an opportunity for continuous transformation in self, other, and cosmos. I also appreciate that Charles' book is "our" not "the" divine double, placing it in this world rather than waiting for an elusive afterlife, convergent with Rick Repetti's view of rebirth as transformative rebirth in this life rather than elsewhere. In the spirit of Tanabe's philosophy of metanoetes, all I can say is "zange!". :)
Wow! What a cool connection. Charles taught the final course I took before receiving my degree from Harvard Extension School. It was called Gnostic Thought in Contemporary Film if I’m remembering right. Very fun course. We watched Sci Fi movies and analyzed their possible references to gnostic themes.
Wonderful and inspiring dialogos! Thank you both for sharing your inner light. John, I can’t help but feeling that the practices you do combined with your scientific work is allowing you to bridge the worlds of science, religion & philosophy. We need this so much. If education and religion could become more transcendent and therefore transformative, our society and the world could become so much more balanced and positive than at present. The talk about the imaginal & angels brings to my mind process philosophy & theology, which makes good sense to me. You two have inspired me to re-dedicate myself to my spiritual practices of Zen meditation, Christian lectio divina , Sufi music and dance and prayers of Grattittude. I wish I could study with Charles at Harvard, but will at least buy his book! Looking forward to more convos.
Just listened to this again and a deep thank you to you both. The explanation John gave on the Imaginal for the first time really landed like it hasn’t before, and Charles talking about the connections with Corbin and the Angel really helped map things.Thank you both 🙏
AMAZING dia-logos. This is the first time I heard someone mention (Charles) about a reality that we are not perceiving because I had an expontaneus altered state of consciousness were i was introduced to this reality. (I'm not talking about a metaphysical world). Thank you guys for giving meaning to something very important to my life.
This must be an early Christmas present for me. Just loving every minute. So long to see the wonders of the manifestation of God's love transforming His people taken seriously by scientific, academic minds after 50 years of derision.
I'm motivated and inspired by this conversation even though you're not "motivational" or "inspirational" speakers. Thank you both. I can't wait to find out where this leads 😉
He’s great. Thank you for having him on. Look forward to the next segment. I’ll buy the book as soon as I get through the stack I have to finish for my philosophy degree. ❤
Must listen again - very much over my head but so inspiring! I cannot yet stop myself from thinking ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’ when I hear ‘future self’ or double. I’ll get there .. I love these conversations!
For more on soul, spirit, future self, divine double have you watched the "Elusive I" series with Gregg Henriques, John Vervaeke and Christopher Mastropietro? The whole series is valuable and builds the arguments, but episode 11 and 12 may interest you. ua-cam.com/play/PLND1JCRq8Vui6TIS24xcDk5dsxSaIeN7T.html
51:01 - From antiquity, "...some people believe this 'future self' is very real and in touch with them." Charles explains this is a flip from the way we think. There were a lot of great parts to this video, but to me this was the peak. JV talked about our need to envision our 'future self' as a dearly loved family member that we want to sacrifice and care for... that is powerful, but what is even more powerful is to realize that we can be pulled forward by our future self. We can imagine our "guardian angel" (or what could be called the the Divine Self) is calling us to be better than we are. In this way the religious see "God" as a partner in their efforts, and thus they trust "all things work together for good."
Spellbinding conversation John ! I emailed you last year about James Hillman's idea of the divine double or as he stated the "daimon". In a nutshell he states that every individual is born with this "defining image." Individuality resides in a formal cause to use the language of Aristotle. This image has an angelic intention ,as if it were a spark of consciousness;moreover holds our interest at heart because it chose us for its reason! Thank you again John for your scholarship and great videos.
Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes So much Yes! Speaks to all my investigations with psychedelics, with shamanism, with performing arts, with indigenous ceremonies and initiations, nimittas during meditation, visualization tantras etc, even into the guts of predictive processing, neuroscience of insight, and psychotherapeutic partswork. All the things! So much Yes! And yet another book to add to my "Vervaeke-Recommends" mountain! It's required a new bookshelf John!!!! ❤💚💜💥🌵🌿🍄🌏⚡🎊
As for having a child/becoming a parent as a transformational prosess. There is another important one that starts at conception and lasts for 9 months. "Somebody" goes through that one first...
Listening to this conversation made me think if we could conceptualize god as a collective future self and maybe we should care for it and help it, more than request care and help.
I once was watching an nitschean anime that in a hidden way dealt with the divine double. And this conversation illuminated some things about this anime. It dealt with two brothers(not in blood but in spirit). The first ones name was Simon(which means below in Japanese) and the second one Kamina(which means above in Japanese). One of the first things kamina tells Simon is "dont believe in yourself, believe in the me that believes in you". Which shows the deep connection we have with each other when it's about reality and how to evaluate each other. But the interesting part was the last thing kamina told Simon before his he died. "don't believe in the me that believes in you, believe in the you that believes in yourself". Now if we have the notion of the divine double it becomes very clear what the brother of above wants to tell the brother of below.
I'm sure this is going to be a wonderful listen, I just finished listening to your discussion with Donald Hoffman and Curt Jaimungal on the Theories of Everything podcast, and like you came around to really respecting and having a new perspective on Don's ideas (and I appreciate that in the Lex Fridman interview you alluded to the fact that you wanted to have a conversation with him to clarify the topic!). I would love to hear you talk to Daniel Ingram, as his work with the Emergent Phenomenology Research Consortium (EPRC) very directly ties into this notion of taking contemporary "woo" experiences seriously as data needing scientific study. Also, given that he claims to be an arahant and both of you have a deep background in insight and meditation, it could certainly lead to a conversation about personal experiences related to that, which I at least as a big fan of you both would find interesting :P Look forward to finishing this video now, take care!
It is a weird topic to try to scientificaly introduce the notion that "science isn't enough", I have highly logical friends and one compulsively obsessed with efficiency so when I bring about the fact that science is not able to take everything into account I uselly go as an "anti-science" dangerous guy, and I just couldn't make my arguments clear. But this way of saying that rationnality has in itself the will to become more rationnal and therefore lacking of it's own compound is so powerfull, compact and a deep way of saying out loud the problem I truelly love it ! Still an insane pleasure to dive into those forgotten aspects of life, needs to be taught at school imo 🤣 Thank you guys
Brilliant! I wish you fleshed out and stayed a bit longer with the imaginal capacity. Mind-bending stuff! Corbin's alone with the alone is on my bookshelf.
While listening I was wondering whether Hope is a symptom or a part of the puzzle of the divine double. Does our dialogos with our other selves produce the ability to Hope, or does Hope point to the non-propositional rationality that you two were trying to outline in the conversation. Hopefully both. Understanding these things as reciprocal systems is such a powerful idea and one of the many take-aways I got from Awakening from the meaning crisis. Thank you John
Thank you both so much! As ever, so interesting and helpful - and what a treat to have Charles join! I had three questions which I will pop in replies below (and forgive my presumptuousness in asking! Please take as given my general huge appreciation of your work and hypotheses). Once again, thank you. It has been a true joy to go through the AftMC course and a real turning point in my personal philosophical journey.
1) When reintroducing perspectival and participatory types of knowledge into our conception of reason, how do we protect against a new form of reason that could potentially reinvigorate claims made by various dogmas that see things like Womens and LGBT rights as an absurdity/aberation of nature etc? Knowing your work, and based on my own intuitions/readings, the answer might lie in laying foundational principles of perspectival knowing and existential modes (akin to testing via Kantian universalising the imperative combined a Rawlsian-esque veil of ignorance) wherein we begin with foundational virtues of agapic love, compassion etc and that these must serve as some sort of litmus test against which other claims can be tested. Thus, there might be a newly rational insight gained via mystical experience but if it leads to a conclusion of propositional knowledge that runs counter to our virtues established in the foundational forms of knowledge (such as compassion) then it fails that test. In any new system of ethics/philosophy I feel it is incumbent on those of us that are its proponents to consider its potential for abuse by those for whom relatively recently-gained freedoms present some sort of threat. Particularly so when we see some of the ways in which your colleague Jordan Peterson’s work is being co-opted by the far right on social media.
2) How can we best make these claims about transcendence seem reasonable on a propositional level when encouraging others? Why I ask - whilst discussing Agnes Callard and the idea that rationality development requires self-transcendence it struck me that the process of entering into rationality development is easiest if our justification for doing so works both bottom up (it phenomenologically feels right in some sense) and also top down (insofar as it can be justified at least up to a minimum satisfactory standard by our existing propositional knowledge and beliefs). This is in part because we know naturally that engaging in transformative practises would require us to change and thus lose our current ‘self’, which is scary and requires vulnerability and therefore trust. Nobody, after all, wants to succumb to madness or fall into a cult! Take meditation for example: I, like many people, have been skeptical of meditation as just a bit of a quack’s pursuit that is boils down to just staying calm, but by reading books about the science of how meditation works and the demonstrable impact it has I was encouraged to give it sustained effort for a few weeks, noticed huge differences, learned more, then practiced more and so on until I created a sort of mutually reinforcing loop of the sort you mention in other videos. In AftMC you discuss relevance realisation being part of our embodied and enacted consciousness, and I wonder whether we have a deep-set will to flourish that inspires the realisation that we require a sort of processing (herein called rationality) that ties together our will to have better mastery of experienced existence, which we intrinsically know requires skills, which in turn are based on affordances and ultimately together provide data that can be stored as propositions. To clarify what I mean: Actor X is fleeing Actor Y, and comes to a crossroads. On one side is a bike next to a winding slope and the other is a direct set of stairs. Actor X takes the stairs and we see that as irrational because it looks clearer that taking the bike down the slope would be quicker. But X hasn’t seen a bike before so for them it isn’t rational because the slope is long and winding. However, then lets say they ask a friend (in prison) about that funny two-wheeled metal frame and one day in the yard they ask to be taught how to ride a bike, in the *then rational* knowledge that having this skill will help them to make a rational decision in a similar future situation. Importantly, taking the bike was always the rational decision to an outside observer but not for the individual who wasn’t aware how bikes worked. It also wouldn’t be if they knew about bikes but not how to ride one. However, if they had been told about bikes before they decided to rob a bank in a city with strange crossroads and an affinity for bicycles then they might have been tempted to try to learn. The underlying rationality is the will to provide your relevance realising machinery with as many useful affordances as possible, which is trained at a deep level in our participatory and perspectival knowledge, however propositional knowledge can make otherwise invisible or unthinkable options more accessible and break down the initial barrier to starting the transformative process. We know that there is a computationally explosive set of affordances available but also that we do not have access to many simply because we do not yet have the skills to identify them - hence it is rational to pursue the maximum optimal set of skills and propositions that allow for the realisation of our perspectival needs to afford the ultimate participatory experience.
3) Finally, I also wonder what the role is of directly observing the impact on how others manifest virtues through their individual conceptions of their divine double? For example, I see in my mother the most incredible reserves of patience, non-judgement and agapic love and can’t help but see that as a manifestation of her Christianity. Even more pertinently to my own practises, I observed for many years my paternal grandmother as having depths of calm , equanimity and non-propositional wisdom that simply astounded me and was a catalyst for my wanting to follow her footsteps in Buddhism. Both have ‘internalised the sage’ to use John’s language, and have over the past years inspired in me, the nontheistic grandchild, a reason and rationale to reconnect with spiritual practises and rituals that allow me to be guided by the clear successes in self transcendence they have achieved (although I suspect they’d both doubt this of themselves, as we each continue to climb our own unending mountain)
this is beautiful, bless you both. John, I think you would really benefit from learning art and or both art and design, as in principles, basics, how to etc so that you are able to create and document and edit and flow etc to then use for interpretation to add more of what you seek to know in order to open up comms , you can take it up like you do tai chi and I think that the combination would strengthen your journey
Hi John, thank you for this brilliant conversation! Are you aware of the work by Bradford and Hillary Keeney? They are ecstatic mystics AND scholars. A conversation of you with them could be AMAZING! Warm regards Jose Luis
So interesting, thank you. I'd love to understand better though the anti-propositional attitude (pardon the pun): I understand that knowledge is not all propositional, but is it not allowed to be possible that propositional account is to be given of what one knows non-propositionally... in giving account by the same token of what one is? And wouldn't that make room for a rationality that can engage with questions of self-transformation, because it is the rationality of one that 'knows themself'?
"What are the capacities that are revealing themselves, that are disclosing themselves, and how can we responsibly and rigorously sit with, sift those capacities, those experiences, and then how can we think about reality and our place in it with those?" The answer to "what" is fairly simple, though complex to implement. Nicola Tesla said to "... think in terms of frequency, energy, and vibration." Everything in the universe is what it is because of the information provided by the frequency associated with it. This is supported by the work Michael Levin has done showing that electric fields direct the development of embryos in cooperation with genetic material. At levels nearing the complexity of humans, lifeforms gain the ability to be in partial resonance with other forms, likely activated through mirror neurons, which may operate through what I'll call "situational Quantum entanglement". This is initially a survival mechanism that complexifies into a means of harmonization. At the human level it becomes the ability to alter vibrations and "bend" reality in a sense. I'll leave you two to figure out the social/moral implications of having "the power of the Gods without the wisdom of the Gods".
Why random human rituals suddenly appearing as excuse to dogmaticism and irrational convention in science? Because someone believes that he is pursuing the truth doing science? As if science is active process like theurgy in creationism?
one of the many problems with current organized religion is that the ritual offers no access to the transcendent. for your average church, unless there is singing, it's mostly just very dry toast rote repetition and mind numbing nothingness. how dumb is that?
Oh oh oh! The section about angels (near the end) suddenly made more accessible to me a book that John had recommended to me, Jeffrey Raff's Ally Work. That book describes one's "spiritual" ally as having its own desire to unite with the seeker and work together. I think I was hung up on the very externalized (e.g. woo) version of the ally as I understood the book to present. But suddenly hearing this it was like my psyche was surrounded by a ring of artful light, and there was this insight that OF COURSE the ally would want to work together, as something not wholly separate from me. The experience caused me to (at least for now) become more fully embodied as well, as the angel/ally inhabits "through" me. 💮☀
Listening to this conversation, I was on the verge of weeping in gratitude. For you to have this conversation with someone coming out of the field of Religious Studies has been a desire from the first day, years ago now, when taking up your Awakening from the Meaning Crisis series. And to hear where your conversation was building out of and pointing to...to the heavens, thank you. Thank you Charles Steng for seeing the value of John's work within RS and how his work, I continue to believe, can further this invaluable field of study into a direction that actually provides meaning as opposed philosophical, performative tail chasing, that you are so correct in pointing out it having somewhat developed itself into. And as always, thank you, John, ...and thank you for John.
I totally agree. I love, love, love, that these two highly intelligent academic men are valuing the incredible truth that the grace of God allows poor, needy, hungry and thirsty souls to be changed, instantly into the person they were meant to be. I have been a fool for Christ for the last 50 years.
I loved this dialogue. Thank you both.
What a beautiful convergence of work. Really hope we get a part 2!
The idea of a sapiential notion of rationality that requires transformation and transcendence is something that is at the core of who I am and what I practice. I already crave for the continuation of this conversation.
Someone said that as we develop into higher levels, "We must include and transcend" This involves inclusion of past wisdom, as we step into the novel and nascent. What we learn in our pre-tragic consciousness must be included as we transcend and transform into the post tragic consciousness.
This is very interesting. Thank you both. pvk
Bravo! More please with Dr. Stang. That dialogos was exceptional. One of the best Voices with Verbaeke yet.
Thank you for sharing
This discussion was absolutely mind-blowing.
So many thanks John and Charles. I'll be here next time with my angel . . .
This was wonderful. A very rich addition to my consciousness.
As this conversation flowed through me, I tried to grab and hold multiple frames as they were so Beautiful. Before halfway, I had to simply let go of all of it and it felt as if I was hearing the most wonderful symphony for the first time.
I am so grateful, as always!
Wonderful, just wonderful gentleman. Thank you both. 🙏
What a great talk! I really appreciated the description and explanation of the dialogic angelic function. Corbin's insistence that mystical experiences and this kind of mode as angels and not God allow for both a defense against inflation and over-identification with the divine principle and an opportunity for continuous transformation in self, other, and cosmos. I also appreciate that Charles' book is "our" not "the" divine double, placing it in this world rather than waiting for an elusive afterlife, convergent with Rick Repetti's view of rebirth as transformative rebirth in this life rather than elsewhere.
In the spirit of Tanabe's philosophy of metanoetes, all I can say is "zange!". :)
Are you a THEIST? 🤔
If so, what are the reasons for your BELIEF in God? 🤓
Wow! What a cool connection. Charles taught the final course I took before receiving my degree from Harvard Extension School. It was called Gnostic Thought in Contemporary Film if I’m remembering right. Very fun course. We watched Sci Fi movies and analyzed their possible references to gnostic themes.
Amazing! Can't wait to hear where this goes!
So glad to see this conversation.
Wonderful and inspiring dialogos! Thank you both for sharing your inner light. John, I can’t help but feeling that the practices you do combined with your scientific work is allowing you to bridge the worlds of science, religion & philosophy. We need this so much. If education and religion could become more transcendent and therefore transformative, our society and the world could become so much more balanced and positive than at present.
The talk about the imaginal & angels brings to my mind process philosophy & theology, which makes good sense to me.
You two have inspired me to re-dedicate myself to my spiritual practices of Zen meditation, Christian lectio divina , Sufi music and dance and prayers of Grattittude.
I wish I could study with Charles at Harvard, but will at least buy his book!
Looking forward to more convos.
Just listened to this again and a deep thank you to you both. The explanation John gave on the Imaginal for the first time really landed like it hasn’t before, and Charles talking about the connections with Corbin and the Angel really helped map things.Thank you both 🙏
Excellent dialogue - looking forward to what's next!
AMAZING dia-logos. This is the first time I heard someone mention (Charles) about a reality that we are not perceiving because I had an expontaneus altered state of consciousness were i was introduced to this reality. (I'm not talking about a metaphysical world). Thank you guys for giving meaning to something very important to my life.
This must be an early Christmas present for me. Just loving every minute. So long to see the wonders of the manifestation of God's love transforming His people taken seriously by scientific, academic minds after 50 years of derision.
I'm motivated and inspired by this conversation even though you're not "motivational" or "inspirational" speakers. Thank you both. I can't wait to find out where this leads 😉
Thank you both for sharing this wonderful conversation!
He’s great. Thank you for having him on. Look forward to the next segment. I’ll buy the book as soon as I get through the stack I have to finish for my philosophy degree. ❤
Must listen again - very much over my head but so inspiring! I cannot yet stop myself from thinking ‘soul’ or ‘spirit’ when I hear ‘future self’ or double. I’ll get there ..
I love these conversations!
For more on soul, spirit, future self, divine double have you watched the "Elusive I" series with Gregg Henriques, John Vervaeke and Christopher Mastropietro? The whole series is valuable and builds the arguments, but episode 11 and 12 may interest you.
ua-cam.com/play/PLND1JCRq8Vui6TIS24xcDk5dsxSaIeN7T.html
@@orsonwajih thank you! I’ve watched the earliest episodes but not beyond. Grateful for your help! I’ll begin tonight.
51:01 - From antiquity, "...some people believe this 'future self' is very real and in touch with them." Charles explains this is a flip from the way we think.
There were a lot of great parts to this video, but to me this was the peak. JV talked about our need to envision our 'future self' as a dearly loved family member that we want to sacrifice and care for... that is powerful, but what is even more powerful is to realize that we can be pulled forward by our future self. We can imagine our "guardian angel" (or what could be called the the Divine Self) is calling us to be better than we are. In this way the religious see "God" as a partner in their efforts, and thus they trust "all things work together for good."
Spellbinding conversation John ! I emailed you last year about James Hillman's idea of the divine double or as he stated the "daimon". In a nutshell he states that every individual is born with this "defining image." Individuality resides in a formal cause to use the language of Aristotle. This image has an angelic intention ,as if it were a spark of consciousness;moreover holds our interest at heart because it chose us for its reason!
Thank you again John for your scholarship and great videos.
Fantastic John and Charles
This is a fantastic conversation. Thank you for sharing it with us.
I think he could have a good conversation with Jonathan Pageau
Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
So much Yes!
Speaks to all my investigations with psychedelics, with shamanism, with performing arts, with indigenous ceremonies and initiations, nimittas during meditation, visualization tantras etc, even into the guts of predictive processing, neuroscience of insight, and psychotherapeutic partswork. All the things! So much Yes! And yet another book to add to my "Vervaeke-Recommends" mountain! It's required a new bookshelf John!!!!
❤💚💜💥🌵🌿🍄🌏⚡🎊
As for having a child/becoming a parent as a transformational prosess. There is another important one that starts at conception and lasts for 9 months. "Somebody" goes through that one first...
Listening to this conversation made me think if we could conceptualize god as a collective future self and maybe we should care for it and help it, more than request care and help.
Thanks Charles and John!
Thanks Lee
Love you John
I once was watching an nitschean anime that in a hidden way dealt with the divine double. And this conversation illuminated some things about this anime. It dealt with two brothers(not in blood but in spirit). The first ones name was Simon(which means below in Japanese) and the second one Kamina(which means above in Japanese). One of the first things kamina tells Simon is "dont believe in yourself, believe in the me that believes in you". Which shows the deep connection we have with each other when it's about reality and how to evaluate each other. But the interesting part was the last thing kamina told Simon before his he died. "don't believe in the me that believes in you, believe in the you that believes in yourself". Now if we have the notion of the divine double it becomes very clear what the brother of above wants to tell the brother of below.
A month late but Gurren Lagann? Never seen it myself but those quotes are famous. Enjoyed this comment.
@@crakhaed yes
Awesome stuff, guys 🙏❤️
I'm sure this is going to be a wonderful listen, I just finished listening to your discussion with Donald Hoffman and Curt Jaimungal on the Theories of Everything podcast, and like you came around to really respecting and having a new perspective on Don's ideas (and I appreciate that in the Lex Fridman interview you alluded to the fact that you wanted to have a conversation with him to clarify the topic!).
I would love to hear you talk to Daniel Ingram, as his work with the Emergent Phenomenology Research Consortium (EPRC) very directly ties into this notion of taking contemporary "woo" experiences seriously as data needing scientific study. Also, given that he claims to be an arahant and both of you have a deep background in insight and meditation, it could certainly lead to a conversation about personal experiences related to that, which I at least as a big fan of you both would find interesting :P
Look forward to finishing this video now, take care!
Thank you charles
It is a weird topic to try to scientificaly introduce the notion that "science isn't enough", I have highly logical friends and one compulsively obsessed with efficiency so when I bring about the fact that science is not able to take everything into account I uselly go as an "anti-science" dangerous guy, and I just couldn't make my arguments clear.
But this way of saying that rationnality has in itself the will to become more rationnal and therefore lacking of it's own compound is so powerfull, compact and a deep way of saying out loud the problem I truelly love it !
Still an insane pleasure to dive into those forgotten aspects of life, needs to be taught at school imo 🤣
Thank you guys
Brilliant! I wish you fleshed out and stayed a bit longer with the imaginal capacity. Mind-bending stuff! Corbin's alone with the alone is on my bookshelf.
Please have another conversation with Charles
I am struck with how nicely the visualisation ritual meditation practices within Tibetan Buddhism map to the idea/ideal of play and the double..
While listening I was wondering whether Hope is a symptom or a part of the puzzle of the divine double. Does our dialogos with our other selves produce the ability to Hope, or does Hope point to the non-propositional rationality that you two were trying to outline in the conversation. Hopefully both. Understanding these things as reciprocal systems is such a powerful idea and one of the many take-aways I got from Awakening from the meaning crisis. Thank you John
Thank you both so much! As ever, so interesting and helpful - and what a treat to have Charles join!
I had three questions which I will pop in replies below (and forgive my presumptuousness in asking! Please take as given my general huge appreciation of your work and hypotheses).
Once again, thank you. It has been a true joy to go through the AftMC course and a real turning point in my personal philosophical journey.
1) When reintroducing perspectival and participatory types of knowledge into our conception of reason, how do we protect against a new form of reason that could potentially reinvigorate claims made by various dogmas that see things like Womens and LGBT rights as an absurdity/aberation of nature etc?
Knowing your work, and based on my own intuitions/readings, the answer might lie in laying foundational principles of perspectival knowing and existential modes (akin to testing via Kantian universalising the imperative combined a Rawlsian-esque veil of ignorance) wherein we begin with foundational virtues of agapic love, compassion etc and that these must serve as some sort of litmus test against which other claims can be tested. Thus, there might be a newly rational insight gained via mystical experience but if it leads to a conclusion of propositional knowledge that runs counter to our virtues established in the foundational forms of knowledge (such as compassion) then it fails that test. In any new system of ethics/philosophy I feel it is incumbent on those of us that are its proponents to consider its potential for abuse by those for whom relatively recently-gained freedoms present some sort of threat. Particularly so when we see some of the ways in which your colleague Jordan Peterson’s work is being co-opted by the far right on social media.
2) How can we best make these claims about transcendence seem reasonable on a propositional level when encouraging others?
Why I ask - whilst discussing Agnes Callard and the idea that rationality development requires self-transcendence it struck me that the process of entering into rationality development is easiest if our justification for doing so works both bottom up (it phenomenologically feels right in some sense) and also top down (insofar as it can be justified at least up to a minimum satisfactory standard by our existing propositional knowledge and beliefs). This is in part because we know naturally that engaging in transformative practises would require us to change and thus lose our current ‘self’, which is scary and requires vulnerability and therefore trust. Nobody, after all, wants to succumb to madness or fall into a cult! Take meditation for example: I, like many people, have been skeptical of meditation as just a bit of a quack’s pursuit that is boils down to just staying calm, but by reading books about the science of how meditation works and the demonstrable impact it has I was encouraged to give it sustained effort for a few weeks, noticed huge differences, learned more, then practiced more and so on until I created a sort of mutually reinforcing loop of the sort you mention in other videos.
In AftMC you discuss relevance realisation being part of our embodied and enacted consciousness, and I wonder whether we have a deep-set will to flourish that inspires the realisation that we require a sort of processing (herein called rationality) that ties together our will to have better mastery of experienced existence, which we intrinsically know requires skills, which in turn are based on affordances and ultimately together provide data that can be stored as propositions.
To clarify what I mean: Actor X is fleeing Actor Y, and comes to a crossroads. On one side is a bike next to a winding slope and the other is a direct set of stairs. Actor X takes the stairs and we see that as irrational because it looks clearer that taking the bike down the slope would be quicker. But X hasn’t seen a bike before so for them it isn’t rational because the slope is long and winding. However, then lets say they ask a friend (in prison) about that funny two-wheeled metal frame and one day in the yard they ask to be taught how to ride a bike, in the *then rational* knowledge that having this skill will help them to make a rational decision in a similar future situation.
Importantly, taking the bike was always the rational decision to an outside observer but not for the individual who wasn’t aware how bikes worked. It also wouldn’t be if they knew about bikes but not how to ride one. However, if they had been told about bikes before they decided to rob a bank in a city with strange crossroads and an affinity for bicycles then they might have been tempted to try to learn. The underlying rationality is the will to provide your relevance realising machinery with as many useful affordances as possible, which is trained at a deep level in our participatory and perspectival knowledge, however propositional knowledge can make otherwise invisible or unthinkable options more accessible and break down the initial barrier to starting the transformative process. We know that there is a computationally explosive set of affordances available but also that we do not have access to many simply because we do not yet have the skills to identify them - hence it is rational to pursue the maximum optimal set of skills and propositions that allow for the realisation of our perspectival needs to afford the ultimate participatory experience.
3) Finally, I also wonder what the role is of directly observing the impact on how others manifest virtues through their individual conceptions of their divine double?
For example, I see in my mother the most incredible reserves of patience, non-judgement and agapic love and can’t help but see that as a manifestation of her Christianity.
Even more pertinently to my own practises, I observed for many years my paternal grandmother as having depths of calm , equanimity and non-propositional wisdom that simply astounded me and was a catalyst for my wanting to follow her footsteps in Buddhism.
Both have ‘internalised the sage’ to use John’s language, and have over the past years inspired in me, the nontheistic grandchild, a reason and rationale to reconnect with spiritual practises and rituals that allow me to be guided by the clear successes in self transcendence they have achieved (although I suspect they’d both doubt this of themselves, as we each continue to climb our own unending mountain)
The winter of modernity continues to thaw...
But thar be Zeus Meat in them freezers.
We oughta activate the angelic function in people !
this is beautiful, bless you both. John, I think you would really benefit from learning art and or both art and design, as in principles, basics, how to etc so that you are able to create and document and edit and flow etc to then use for interpretation to add more of what you seek to know in order to open up comms , you can take it up like you do tai chi and I think that the combination would strengthen your journey
Hi John, thank you for this brilliant conversation!
Are you aware of the work by Bradford and Hillary Keeney? They are ecstatic mystics AND scholars.
A conversation of you with them could be AMAZING!
Warm regards
Jose Luis
yes very good - more! :D
How do we get John's papers on the mars rover and imagination?
They are available online. Just search Dan Chiappe and John Vervaeke.
So interesting, thank you.
I'd love to understand better though the anti-propositional attitude (pardon the pun): I understand that knowledge is not all propositional, but is it not allowed to be possible that propositional account is to be given of what one knows non-propositionally... in giving account by the same token of what one is?
And wouldn't that make room for a rationality that can engage with questions of self-transformation, because it is the rationality of one that 'knows themself'?
"What are the capacities that are revealing themselves, that are disclosing themselves, and how can we responsibly and rigorously sit with, sift those capacities, those experiences, and then how can we think about reality and our place in it with those?"
The answer to "what" is fairly simple, though complex to implement. Nicola Tesla said to "... think in terms of frequency, energy, and vibration." Everything in the universe is what it is because of the information provided by the frequency associated with it. This is supported by the work Michael Levin has done showing that electric fields direct the development of embryos in cooperation with genetic material. At levels nearing the complexity of humans, lifeforms gain the ability to be in partial resonance with other forms, likely activated through mirror neurons, which may operate through what I'll call "situational Quantum entanglement". This is initially a survival mechanism that complexifies into a means of harmonization. At the human level it becomes the ability to alter vibrations and "bend" reality in a sense. I'll leave you two to figure out the social/moral implications of having "the power of the Gods without the wisdom of the Gods".
the imaginal is the imaginary conjoined with the adjacent possible, directed towards the open future, if I'm not mistaken
Very interesting. Need to think about that.
Yup. Well stated. In that way, it's an extraordinary existence.
Interesting. Somehow I assumed this link between the imaginary and the imaginal.
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I think Iain McGilchrist would resonate with this.
When Jeff goldblum remembers to take his meds. Or forgets? Don’t know!
42:10
Mirror image
Why random human rituals suddenly appearing as excuse to dogmaticism and irrational convention in science? Because someone believes that he is pursuing the truth doing science? As if science is active process like theurgy in creationism?
i dont know what John is talking about
John looks like the 240p version of Charles
Haha most of us abhor fundamentalism, but we have become scientific fundamentalists
one of the many problems with current organized religion is that the ritual offers no access to the transcendent. for your average church, unless there is singing, it's mostly just very dry toast rote repetition and mind numbing nothingness. how dumb is that?