The fullness of life. A conversation with Rupert Sheldrake
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- Опубліковано 4 лис 2024
- At school, we learn that being alive is to possess certain functions, from respiration to reproduction. But what is life and why can the word “life” be used more widely than referring only to biological life?
In the latest episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon consider the meaning of saying that stars have a lifecycle, and that rocks and atoms can be ascribed a biography, in that they undergo processes of becoming.
They discuss A.N. Whitehead’s argument that so-called inanimate objects need to be considered as organisms and that life must also include the experience of being alive, which is to say consciousness and mentality.
The powers of nature and the connection of all life, not least in terms of the idea of Gaia, lead them to ask how God can be said to be the origin and sustainer of life. Asking what life is dramatically expands the notion of life and the awesome nature of being alive.
For more conversations with Mark and Rupert see www.sheldrake....
www.markvernon...
Listening to Mark Vernon and Rupert Sheldrake is always a cerebral joy for me.
Thanks guys :-)
The flight of the kestrel and Iris Murdoch…. So beautiful
The flight of the cranes against a darkened sky as seen by Ramakrishna and falling into samadhi….
Fabulous as ever - many thanks
It's interesting to see (11:27) Spinoza's philosophical concepts in use, about time.
I like Philip Goff’s characterization of what he calls pan-agentialism: "Particles are never compelled to do anything but are rather disposed, from the own nature, to respond rationally to their experiencing…the first flowerings of reason are found in the most primitive drives. To pursue what you are attracted or to avoid what you dislike are rational responses.”
Maybe it is pink elephants (life) all the way down.
Trying to find the right language is key, yes...
Great
Is it, then, possible to imagine a new Natural Philosophy, continually conscious that the natural object' produced by analysis and abstraction is not reality but only a view, and always correcting the abstraction? I hardly know what I am asking for. I hear rumours that Goethe's approach to nature deserves fuller consideration - that even Dr Steiner may have seen something that orthodox researchers have missed. The regenerate science which I have in mind would not do even to minerals and vegetables what modern science threatens to do to man himself. When it explained it would not explain away. When it spoke of the parts it would remember the whole. While studying the It it would not lose what Martin Buber calls the Thou-situation. The analogy between the Tao of Man and the instincts of an animal species would mean for it new light cast on the unknown thing. Instinct, by the only known reality of conscience and not a reduction of conscience to the category of Instinct. Its followers would not be free with the words only and merely. In a word, it would conquer Nature without being at the same time conquered by her and buy knowledge at a lower cost than that of life. Perhaps I am asking impossibilities. Perhaps, in the nature of things, analytical understanding must always be a basilisk which kills what it sees and only sees by kiUing. But if the scientists themselves cannot arrest this process before it reaches the common Reason and kills that too, then someone else must arrest it. What I most fear is the reply that I am only one more' obscurantist, that this barrier, like all previous barriers set up against the advance of science, can be safely passed. Such a reply springs from the fatal serialism of the modern imagination - the image of infinite uniUnear progression which so haunts our minds. Because we have to use numbers so much we tend to think of every process as if it must be like the numeral series, where every step, to all eternity, is the same kind of step as the one before. I implore you to remember the Irishman and his two stoves. There are progressions in which the last step is sui generis - incommensurable with the others - and in which to go the whole way is to undo all the labour of your previous journey. To reduce the Tao to a mere natural product is a step of that kind. Up to that point, the kind of explanation which explains things away may give us something, though at a heavy cost. But you cannot go on explaining away' for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on seeing through^ things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to see through' first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To 'see through' all things is the same as not to see.
The Abolition of Man CS Lewis. Concluding Paragraphs.
Life MUST be defined with reference to its FUNCTION: the capacity of an entity to perceive need, move from one location on the earth to another to find the INPUT to satisy that felt need and the ability to perceive when it is complete (satisfaction of the need).
This clearly excludes PLANTS. Only animals and humans MUST be counted as living beings, to clearly distinguish nonviolability of their integral body as functionally different from plants that serve to sustain life, but themselves nonsentient.
Nature has intertwined our survival with that of animals. Hence we would disintegrate as a race through violence among ourselves so long as we fail to recognize the rightful function of animals as influencers of internal functions of the earth by selectively eating from plants ~ to design their food instead of eating them.
It is interesting how the Human social conditioned Ego is so ?
Sentient
To a Taoist, Life is Eternal, in whatever form of awareness that appears to one to be: or 'the middle way,' which is the 'path between dark & light,' & it's 'yellow,' as the middle chakra, of our 'light body'... :)
☯️
[... &, in Taoism, the 'mind,' relates to awareness in '5D,' or the 5 silent things that can be counted on one hand as 'the flower of consciousness' : 1) Sincerity,
2) Truthfulness, 3) Benevolence, 4) Equality, &
5) Courtesy. 🌸 ]
In all the calculation of life a zero is placed forwards or backwards or middle ground. The ways of doing that is probably more than one can comprehend before it becomes a photon. So does light return to itself. Does it go back to the inventor. Is it a personal possession. Is it a nemesis of darkness. Is it a soul mate of darkness. Numbers talk to each other and poke at something called imagination
@@brendawilliams8062 : very poetic ms. williams, it's nice, & i understand what you are saying. However, human souls are not necessarily the same as a photon... 'Physics,' is a 'phenomenon & a proposition,' toward the mind, but not 'the mind,' of 'the all,' ITSELF, so to speak / say... :) i often hear people who confuse the truly ethereal non-materiality of 'soul-mind,' with material Physics, or Biology, et al. These are deep questions one can search for, & perhaps find 'answers for,' in the old Master's of such questions. The small but fully astute book 'Minding Mind,' is actually amazing on that subject: transl. Cleary. :)
@@lotusalivelight24 I’m interested in math. No one forbid one to count lighten up
@@lotusalivelight24 you don’t have to study triangles to write poetry. The divine endowed us with many talents
@@brendawilliams8062What are you talking about ?
Now lets talk about death or what it is to be dead, at what point does an inanimate object such as snow flake or crystal become dead? Is it simply a change of state and at what point is that change of state defined as death?
Good point. Wisdom traditions would suggest that death is a part of life, and not merely in the sense of death being the end of life, but a transformation.
When You cut your nails, You Know what is alive, and what is dead.
Day-Consciousness Never sleep, it just goes in Circuits, Day/Night,
and Larger. Our physical Body-Structure is a Organ-Circuit.
Life is the Eternal Existing Something, there Is, X0
Basic analyse is X1, X2 X3,
The Living Being, Consciousness, and Stuff-side.
Life is a Life-Unit, all Life-Unit's is Rainbows,
in Basic, Whole-Sexe by Nature.
No one Created Life, Life is Creator,
all creations is of temporary nature.
Consciousness is 100% Electric.
My God...
Anima
maybe Nature just prefers males and there is nothing her daughter can do about it. if so, there is not hope for me.
If Sheldrake doesn't believe that Jesus of Nazareth was there at the beginning of time, he doesn't understand the incredible mystery of the incarnation. That God became man and dwelled among us is the key to Christianity. It sounds crazy and impossible but that's the whole point. don't know who "the cosmic Christ" is but I do know that Jesus is God and that's our hope. If he can't believe the doctrine, should stop calling himself a Christian.
I don't think you disagree. Jesus of Nazareth was a temporal, is in "in time", image of eternity.
@@PlatosPodcasts Except he transcended the temporal by rising from the dead and being bodily ascended into heaven, so he can't be considered "in time" like other people.
Being the judge of who can identify as a Christian, could cause me to question your Christianity. When I judge you I judge myself. Interesting. Thanks for sharing. :)
@Creative-os3hx then if I advocate for child marriage I can say I'm a Christian. Without definitions words have no meaning. If you don't follow the creed you aren't a Christian.
@@bakhop And how do you KNOW you interpret everything correctly? Seeing as the Bible is not to be taken literally and is internally inconsistent anyway.