Participation renewed. Discussing The Riddle of the Sphinx, new essays from Owen Barfield
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- Опубліковано 1 лип 2024
- I talk again with Landon Loftin and Max Leyf about the genius insight of Owen Barfield.
The Riddle of the Sphinx (Barfield Press) is a new collection of talks and essays about the great friend of CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien.
We discuss Barfield's take on analysis and analogy, Darwinian and other kinds of evolution, the significance of Rudolf Stein, and Barfield's notion of final participation.
Landon and Max are the authors of What Barfield Thought.
For more on my books, including A Secret History of Christianity, see www.markvernon.com
0:00 The new book of talks and essays
02:08 Plato, Aristotle and the evolution of analogy and analysis
13:31 Participation and the limits of modern science
23:30 Barfield's critique of Darwinian evolution
33:47 When the mind changes, the world changes
38:03 Evolution as a moving image of eternity
42:51 How can we participate in evolution?
52:18 Barfield and the significance of Rudolf Steiner
01:03:45 Grappling with the esoteric
01:10:14 On the way to final participation
01:17:16 Barfield on the meaning and revelation - Розваги
It would be extraordinary to hear a discussion on the resonances between Bohm and Barfield ❤️
Mark - it’s hard to express how deeply appreciative I am of your discussions with these two brilliant young men 👍👍👍👍
Thank you to all three of you. Both Barfield & Plato presented works as dialogues/discussions and the three of you talking I think gives a level of engagement and a richness of perspective that would not emerge from a monologue. Each of you have a shared fascination with Barfield's thought but also a difference of perspective, I am inclined to say disagreement, but that can give an impression that is mistaken in terms of tone as when each of you speaks the others (excepting through technical difficulties) are listening in an engaged fashion.
I actually haven't read any Barfield for a little while & have not got the new collection of essays, so this was nice refresher.
Just a note on the weirdness of Steiner, Mark I think had a good quote about Barfield having that same relationship to Steiner as he did to lyric poetry. I think one thing that puts people off is that Steiner started a movement "Anthroposophy" I have no desire to become part of that movement and I suspect that if Steiner's influence grows as I hope it does it will be independent of that. Steiner talks of vast time periods of "Saturn" he talks of "Atlantas" etc, but he also says to the effect that he is using these terms because there are not other words that better express them, that the correct approach is first off not to ask yourself if you believe what he is saying but to try to let an imaginative picture emerge. His books like "Occult Science" should be read but his foundational works and the ones that he generally acknowledged as more important are The Philosophy of Freedom & the two books on Goethe. Steiner reflects deeply on what thinking is and it very much encompasses rather than rejects modern manners of thought and that represents to me a direction that I think has a positive future.
Recently I read DBH saying that reading Philosophy/Theology should only at most take up 20% of your reading, I think it is vitally important culturally that we engage with the great world creative works, finding interest and joy in contemporary artists and back through time and across cultures.
Thanks once again.
ps. Sri Aurobindo reminds me somewhat of Steiner, kind of an eastern mirror image.
Keep up the brilliant work, Mark!!
Owen Barfield, oh lost Inkling,
Your work in meaning, still is lingering.
Your words still dance, within the page,
A message for the modern age.
Your thoughts on language, time and thought,
Have much to teach, have much to wrought.
Your work in meaning, still ignored,
Yet still so vital, to our world restored.
Your insights on the evolution of thought,
The power of language, so often sought.
Your influence on the Inklings grand,
But still too few, who understand.
Your words still ring, with truth and light,
Illuminating, the darkest night.
Your lost Inkling, a shining star,
Guiding us, from where you are.
Your legacy, still yet to be found,
In meaning's depths, you are profound.
Oh Owen Barfield, lost Inkling true,
We celebrate your work, we honor you.
As a Catholic, I can say, Saint Owen; pray for us!
“In the beginning was the Word. Why is that, Papa?” These were the words with which the film director Tarkovsky ended his film "The Sacrifice"
God spake You, through your answer your share the Mind of God.
'In the beginning' is a reference to opening a story.
The Myth's first function is a creation myth or backstory for the people (whichever people) not at all to explain but to hold the qualities of primary or archetypal experience.
Note the species trauma or human Separation trauma of all mythic tradition. There is historical experience that is blocked by the uniformitarian gradualism of an emergent Liberalism countering and undermining the Aristocratic claim to Authority and power derived from Bible & Kings, by the weaponisation of 'thescience' claiming to offer a modern rational replacement for a demonised & emasculated 'religion'.
The liability of a magical or false solution is that it sells the idea of immunity or escape from a demonic or superstitious past into a much more subtle variant of the same pattern, in which vested identity precludes questioning the basis of its thought, perceptions and conditioned emotional response. Lead us not into such, but deliver us from all evil, is addressed to our integral Creator. We are tempted or phished by our own image and thought but we are only invested there by accepting substitution of emotion-backed reactions for the true desire of the heart.
Thanks for your attentive reading and insightful discussion. Well done to all.
Participance in God's Mind is not optional!
Consciousness of integral inherence is - or rather can be framed and masked over - by a shared focus in accepted definitions of meaning as significance. Such is a symbol or image of the Word going forth, which is one with its fruits be-lived.
The Word of God is Creation - but not in the sense of our own object-thinking of self set over and apart from it fruits.
To have (knowing as being) give all to all - can be also pointed to in the phrase 'judge not'.
The lines of an alloyed human framework of mis-creation are through imaged idea constructs as the lens through which we think to know, to live under the terms & conditions of a split mind that knows not what it does, as a means to 'become' in its own image. This operates a counterpoint for developing consciousness in bounded & bonded terms, as if the meanings we gave are locked down and lockstepping as a masking reality that 'wont come off - nor can be escaped from within its own predicates.
The developing consciousness has a segregative movement as a 'self-will' operating blind ("I Want It Thus!") to the re integrative movement of healing, undoing and releasing as acceptance & appreciation for being.
True resonance is to breathe as one with and within the breath that moves over the waters enlivening all that is. We behold it is very Good! as revealing love of which we are uniquely 'signatured' as all that we are, given & received as one.
The Prodigal does not receive punishment for the mis-taking of a false inheritance, but its own conflicts serve the re-Cognition of Father as a basis for living service without terms and conditions of assumed 'entitlement'. So as to be repurposed from the ego of a driven self-image to a willingness of receiving wholeness into conscious awareness such as to serve the re-integrative inclusion of a segregative 'lost sheep' that can not but follow a mind set of masking defences raised against fear of pain of loss, to make a world set over and against reliving Separation trauma by casting out to Get Rid of - rather than to sow & reap.
Girard identified the sacrificial nature of a masking social order predicated upon attack on God (& thus His Son). A Course in Miracles identifies this can only occur in concept or symbol acted out on the mind's use of bodies (image & form) as substitute for real or indeed holy relationships.
To become lost in or phished by our own image is Narcissus. Are we by default consenting to becoming an in-silico 'flower' as the logical outcome of ancient hates set in overriding defences against 'loss of a self' set by grievance?
If unconsciousness needs war to maintain conflicts by which to boost defences can it ever deliver more than a temporary illusion of escape in solutions that compound the problem in terms that cannot then be addressed where it is - in our heart?
What is the noise in the background? Are those guys broadcasting from a bitcoin mining operation?
1:02 ish - This is what David Bohm calls proprioception and he sought to uncover of give welcome to a proprioception of thought. Note Mars is a blind god of war, and our currently era's 'self' is no less predicated on war just because it masks in civilised forms of subjugation and sacrifice.
I see the Holy Spirit (Discernment integral to wholeness) as the undoing of the past in the presence that opens our potential from both past and future. Growing willingness for this is the yielding of the 'control mind' to the Father's will (the Holy Spirit of recognition in Christ) - the words here are not essential, any more than a word for hand was needed to coordinate our grasp.
1.11.11 Spot on! When words come alive from a page to live we are are communioned with the author and sharing the field of intention - regardless who seems learner or teacher. Anything in our mind or world can offer agency to Spiritual awakening, as long as we don't 'get in the way'. That's the practical nub of it - our self-consciousness gets in the way until we release to unselfconscious joy in being - while washing dishes, tapping keyboards, receiving a call for help in another's reflection of our own unhealed conflict.
ἔσχατος λόγος εὐχαριστία 🩸✝💧