Philosophy, Spirituality, Esotericism & the Meaning Crisis |
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- Опубліковано 25 сер 2024
- Come join us for an ongoing conversation about modernity and the crisis of meaning with @TheEsotericaChannel & @SeekersofUnity
Link to first video in the series: • Philosophy, Spirituali...
Sorry for the delay at the beginning. Only lasts a few minutes.
Hey John. I sent you an email to your Toronto university address. Please, review it.
It's all good bro
Many thanks for hosting and for the wonderful conversation!
Very grateful scholars and gentleman 👍🙏
Wow! This video is awesome! A true perspective shift, and you walked my mind there with creativity and passion. My infinite gratitude for the three of you.
This video couldn't have come at a better time for me! I've been searching for answers to a specific topic, and your video provided me with the clarity I needed. Your ability to break down complex ideas into easily digestible bits is impressive. I appreciate how you supported your points with examples and practical advice. This video has been a game-changer for me, and I'm grateful to have stumbled upon it!
Wow. As a regular viewer of Justin's channel, this was an unexpected but mind-blowing experience. Thumbs up!
DREAM TEAM! 100 💯 SOLID GOLD 10/10 Best of the Best of the Internet
Love it. A sharp, poignant love, not dominating the visual field, though accompanied by seeing things.
I am loving these three joining together in conversation, thank you three so much🙏
These are rooms i delight being the idiot in. Thank you, really looking forward to the next conversation.
This! Syncretism indeed. On, Justin Zevi & John✨
Thank you all for sharing here 🙏🏼
Considering the aspirational cultivation of what is ...true, truth and more truthful.... leading into greater ...love, truth and wisdom.... and integrally greater ...truth, morality, and elegance....
God i love UA-cam.
Thank you guys. What good conversations between three giants ❤
This topic of conversation, coming at the meaning crisis as a “modern worship leader” (think rock band/songs at church) I think this is spot on. John, I appreciate your thoughtfulness about the Protestant west. I feel like I am part of a project to help “evangelicalism” find healthy, low traumatic, practical paths toward the sacred. This was excellent.
I am not much a a rock ensemble these days, liturgical call and response, communal ritual spoken, heard, tasted and felt, and smelled ; I’ve come to believe, are necessary.
@@christianbaxter_yt Thank for saying that!
Sola Scriptura is so different for a baptists than it is for an Anglo-Catholic/high church Lutheran… Luther’s sola scriptura was still wrapped in the Mass ecology of practices.
But as you are well aware and rightly and carefully state: American culture at large is Protestant in form and function. And the low church which explicitly repels “wrote religion” and is the teleological outcome of iconoclasm, robs the ecology of practice of visual saliancy for landscaping.
@@johnvervaeke in case you don’t get direct feedback, your work is tilting a needle of change. I believe the language you are constructing is and will help bridge conversations through confessions, without having to abandon the confessions.
@@christianbaxter_yt
Visual ...Sentience, Salience, and Sapience....
I'm still not through the whole conversation, but after listening for over an hour, I just wanted to thank you three for having this talk. And I especially liked the intro by Vervaeke, it was very stimulating and thought-provoking, but I also liked the questions that Dr. Sledge put forward. There are a lot of things I was interested in, and it was very helpful in further provoking new associations and thoughts of mine.
Also: I'm very happy to say that it helped my in further distinguishing, and mapping out where I stand, in contrast to other people! 😄
I thoroughly enjoyed the first episode, really really excited to watch this one as well!
I loved this conversation. Thanks for sharing it! I’m seeing a distinction between enlightenment qua rarified moral, relational, and personal development and enlightenment qua liberation. The conversation helped me see the critical importance of the former, no matter what we call it.
Thank you!
Fantastic conversation! Looking forward to the next!
Great talk ❤. Makes me think about the similarities between ritual and addiction and the ritual of consumerism and the gods and jeffs and musks that we are worshipping.
A collab we've all been waiting for!
Thanks guys!
Tremendous collab. Never would've thought to see these guys come together. Classic alert.
Great Conversation!... thank you for taking a look at these subtleties... appreciate this working out Process...
So I am a genuine seeker! I’ve been following your channel for a while John! And I come from a Christian background, went on a spiritual journey to try and find Christs true church. In that journey I found out about textual criticism of the Bible and ultimately fell away to make a super long story super short lol😂
But over the last few years I’ve just been lost. I don’t really come from a strong Christian background my mom was a Lutheran but didn’t practice. I found Christianity in high school a more charismatic one. But I just adore Christianity especially Orthodox and Catholicism. But I just have my issues with it. But i understand the importance of ritual and dialogues and I just can’t help but feel by adopting a religion will help fulfill that. Maybe I am totally missing what you guys are saying lol. Just trying to figure out where to land in terms of my journey
I am also all ears on anyone who wants to help lol😂 any wisdom would be much appreciated! I try to follow the zen Buddhist teaching of making the “void” home. But i desperately seek a spiritual home of some sort it just makes sense to me! Much love to all of you seekers and finders of truth and blessings 🙏❤️❤️❤️
Brilliant chapter 2. Looking forward for the 3rd one (and the others!)
I just love Zevi’s voice
John I was very surprised at your mention of tai chi - now I’ll have to search for anything you have specifically related to it. My first thought when you said we do ritual often whether we realize it or not was the 24 forms
Thanks for your work sir
Thoughts create action and reality of things, control the thougths, control the world
I'm curious Dr. Vervaeke. I've studied the works of Henry Corbin for years and have read nearly all of his translated works. Peter Kingsley has also made a strong point, having known Corbin's wife for some years--that Corbin had strong reservations towards James Hillman's appropriation of the term "imaginal", which he believed reduced its exclusively theophanic function and its existence as an actual mystical place, to something more akin to an engaged imaginal plane that creatives and artists encounter. So much of what you say is profound and wise but I can't shake this feeling that we are again appropriating something and broadly defining it and in that respect stripping it of its magical quality and actively seeking scientific ownership or technic excavation over things that should be reserved within a more delimited frame and context. When The Imaginal becomes a point that anyone can access then it will inevitably lead to ego inflation and desecration by well-intentioned people.
starts at 2:35
My boy Sledge is hella smart!
Lovely conversation. Thanks gentlemen. John, you're lagging behind on the "fine beard" criterion. 😛Sending love from the south 💚🌏
I’m 100% in agreement (sorry Rickster!) but McMindfulness is not better than nothing. Same goes for McYoga, McShamanism and McAnything. Take the nutrients out of the food, pump it full of “palate enhancement” rubbish, and rort people out of their hard-earned….
@@alexandrazachary.musician Thanks Alexandra! Hope you are well!
A huge problem is people attempting to evade the fact that secular religions are a thing. Independence day is a secular holy day with its own myths, rituals, and practices. Football is a religion in many places in the US. Soccer (the real football) is a real religion outside the US. People want "supernatural" to be the distinguishing line between religious and not, but its an artificial barrier.
I myself am a deeply religious person. I am also a supernatural non-cognitivist. And I am an anti- platonist. Being both anti- platonist and religious is really difficult because most religious practices in the west are corrupted by platonism.
In order to develop a practice I could use that I could use I had to approach the study as a technology and reverse engineer it. Figure out what each thing is doing, how its doing it, and why. Then modify it to be more in line with my values.
Another really big problem is that people have been taught to be afraid of modifying tradition, myth, and practice. We need to start telling people its okay to redact and edit texts. Doing so is absolutely valid. Writing reflexes of myths or even inventing new ones is perfectly valid. It was okay for Virgil because that was thousands of years ago but its not okay for us today? It was okay for Jews before the destruction of the temple but not okay after? It was okay for Christians before 600 CE but not after. I say bunk to that.
"We need to start telling people its okay to redact and edit texts." - No its NOT OK to do this. Write your own stuff if you want ego validating mythos for this singular cancerous living death machine divine comedic satanic hero's journey.
The purpose of these sacred texts was not for some "meaning crisis" of this living death machine yolo satanic hellish existence. It was for the supernatural transcendental collective remembrance of the entire World Soul of Sophianic Nous to remember in a platonic manner of the non-egoic spiritual state before this flesh imprisonment in this living death satanic existence.
@@Tectenitarius "No its NOT OK to do this." Yes it is okay. Why? Because that is exactly how sacred texts are formed. The authors of the bible re-wrote and in some places straight out "plagiarized" other sacred texts. Noahs flood being the most in your face obvious example. But beginning to end the whole book is that way. Mathew re-wrote Mark, Luke rewrote Mathew and Luke, and John reimagined all three.
The purpose of the bible especially the old testament was political propaganda.
"It was for the gibberish therp collective remembrance of the entire World bloink of practical wisdom to remember in a platonic manner of the non-egoic blosh state before this flesh imprisonment in this living death adversarial existence."
Setting aside three quarters of what you said because I have absolutely no idea what 4 of those terms even mean. The false assumption is that Platonism is the only valid form of religious experience. Setting aside the fact that Plato was an idiot and a mad man who promoted machiavellianism before there was a Machiavelli, no.
The problem with you Platonists is that you want to cherry pick without admitting that is what you are doing. You want to rewrite Plato without admitting his entire framework is nonsense. You anachronistically impose modern frameworks without ever realizing that is what you are doing.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with adapting, modifying, or rewriting sacred texts. I would go so far as to say doing so is virtuous.
Epicurus was right and Plato was an idiot. Cicero was a fool. The fact that Platonism leads to people like you who hate existence says everything. I am sorry your life is miserable. I am sorry you are a miserable person. No joke, no hyperbole, get help, talk to a therapist.
@@Tectenitarius Yes it absolutely is okay to do this. Editing, redacting, and rewriting "sacred texts" is 1000% acceptable and should be encouraged. We (humans) have been doing it since before "sacred texts" were written down.
Deciphering your rambling
"The purpose of sacred texts was not for some "meaning crisis" of this living death machine yolo satanic hellish existence. It was for the supernatural transcendental collective remembrance of the entire World Soul of Sophianic Nous to remember in a platonic manner of the non-egoic spiritual state before this flesh imprisonment in this living death satanic existence."
The purpose of sacred texts was to create meaning. I have no idea what the phrase "this living death machine yolo satanic hellish existence" means. You seem to think stringing buzz words together conveys meaning. It does not. "It was for [unknown 1] [unknown 2] collective remembrance of the entire world [unknown 3] of practical wisdom to remember in a Platonic manner the non-egoic [unknown 4] state before this flesh imprisonment in this living death existence."
again while you have managed to string words together you have failed to do so in a way that actually conveys substance or meaning. But lets address the easy part. Your statement is obviously false given that such experience and practices predate platonic thought. Add to this that this cannot be true of eastern or southern practices and you are just demonstrably wrong.
The purpose of sacred texts is to create meaning, in particular shared meaning. It was for transmitting and participating in archetypal patterns for the purpose of achieving sage-hood. Emulation through play. Self destruction (non-egoic) is one assumed method of sage-hood but no the only one. It is also the evil method.
The purpose and function of sage-hood is to achieve the good life here in the material realm. A hatred and rejection of the material realm which we exist within can only lead to a hatred and rejection of life itself.
Platonism is demonstrably wrong in every way. His metaphysics was wrong, his physics was wrong, his wisdom was unwise, his philosophy was hateful. Epicurus was correct.
Considering cognitive ...static, kinetic, dynamic and ascentic.... realms with ...views, visions and visioneerings....
Dynamic Holographic Projectabilities (TM) in which all can ...add, change, eliminate and simulate.... their ideas in The Ultra Worldview of Visioneerings 🙏🏼 coming forth in proposals and going forward in projects.
On the notion of taking part in ritual ("secular seance") in an iterated fashion, first being uncomfortable about it and then just keep doing it and describing what you summon as electio Divino (as opposed to sapiential): I am off the imprission that this is exactly how Nazi Germany created a broad and willing following, bypassing any left-brained safeguards there may have been. And I don't bring this up to denigrate, I do think I threw out any impulse to ritual due to that. I'd be interested to hear, at what point and how to distinguish between the proposed revival of ritual and what would turn evil and how to setup that if eliminating doubts it's part of rural early on. After all there is a certain resurgence of extremism and one would not want that fuelled by ritual, I presume.
PS: You brought that up for next time right at the end and it's right that I am distracted to ritual also due to that, but maybe at my detriment
This one compelled me to acquaint myself with spinoza. It seems like something gross reached out and touched him with its fingertip, not knowing that doing so would reveal the entity in its entirety to him in his imagination. Can you look at the gross actions of the entity that revealed itself to be a net good action as it generated its own illumination and capture? Like a snake predating the antivenom, or garden.
Oh, this is cool. Forgot you all knew each other from the Neoplatonist videos you all did as a series together (or was seekers of unity part of it, I don't remember). Anyways, thanks for the video John and everyone else, should be a good listen while I work today 🎉
They also publicized another conversation not so long ago on Esoterica It's mind-bending I really recomennd it. Cheers
You have to bring religion into the consideration, instead of casting the question on which it lays aside
So, I just became curious if there were witchcraft communities, whatever form that may be, in the Roman Empire or the European fringes pre- and post-Christianization of the Empire and what rituals they may have done. Most of the examples we see of magic-craft in the Empire are commercial and individualized. A home pays a magician for a service and they do it, like a doctor or a plumber. Also, a political leader might have a magician on staff. As far as ritual, I don't know much about what the people did as small community groups for worship. I think much of it was not written down or purged by the Catholic/Orthodox church. Did they meet in community groups on a regular basis with a Pagan clergy who would perform and announce omens and prescribe rituals to make things better in the community? I don't know if the Gnostics or Neo-Platonists met in community worship groups or what they did for rituals either. It's very much a point of debate and ignorance. What we do know is the cities or towns had regular ceremonies and festivals for sacrifices to the gods 1-4 times a month, which may be what they had inside the Empire. I think, on the fringes of Europe, less is known. When it comes to what we would think of as folk witch communities, I'm not sure we even know if that was a thing. I can see it becoming a secret kind of thing for community worship to avoid the persecution of unorthodoxy under the authority of of the pre- or post-Christian Roman government.
1:02:16 Maybe connecting with an archtype like the sage snaps one into place in such a way where their vibration matches the washing machine and you can grab onto it without there being discordance.
You need Dr. David Shoemaker in on a conversation like this
I think you can reduce much of what you said By simply asserting that distributed cogmission makes an individual aware of consensus. Consensus generally is a good indicator of trustworthiness of information. Thus an individual with access to consensus is able to analyze things better than an individual that is isolated.
In the broader sense, I,'d say, every human-being is a philosopher, aspiring knowledge via “remembrance“ (of what is naturally given) and “learning“ (by doing thought-work, manual labor and so forth). What seems to be aleanated/trunkated “academic (analytic) philosophy“ is i.m.o. mainly the result of still ever increasung specialization/differentiation inside (post)modern “white-hot glowing societies (C. Levi-Strauss) - and therby a deeply cultural-societal phenomenon and integral part of the being of the (ideal-)type of he “homo sociologicus“ (R. Dahrendorf).
I have to interject on Buddhsim's behalf. True you cant stop syncretism. And all faiths evolve over time. However Buddhism is a lot moreopen to being exploited and misinterpreted.
I like to use the saying that people treat Buddhism like a buffet. Only taking the sweet things and avoiding the healthy. John mentions mindfullness practice. But honestly from speaking to a lot of western Buddhists they don't even do that all the way.
I think for many folks Buddhism represents a minimum viable religion. They don't want to be in a godless world where chaos reigns and there is no reason or purpose to anything. They read of Siddhartha Gautama and his witnessing of old age suffering and death. Which is a profound story still. But they leave it there. They don't take the 4 noble truths to heart. As John says they do not honor the eightfold path. Personally I do not find these people offensive though. A lot of people are low intensity believers in other faiths. But they at least went through an initiatory time in childhood where they had to know the 10 commandments or recite a catechism.
However I reserve my rebuke for Secular Buddhism. The people I've encountered who subscribe to this "faithless faith" all seem to be very well read and know a lot about what the Tathagata said. But they insist on a Buddhism devoid of reincarnation, nibana, metta, and dhamma. Thats not Buddhism, that is a new thing which ought to have it's own name. If they don't follow the teachings of Lord Buddha, only some philosophy and practices of the school he founded, they ought to just go ahead and schism into a new thing. After all they don't need to worry about the effect a schism would have on their incarnations do they?
I'm not only critical of western Buddhists. We have people like Supreme Master Ching Hai with her Buddhism for fashionistas out there.
I am supporter for Dr.Vervaeke and his works, it would be great experiences, but I have deleted some replies by something worried about. Dr.Vervaeke helped many people with care, it is what I can honor and respect his spirituaility teachings.
Something in still finding it hard to get my head around is the relationship (if there was s one) between "imaginal" in the semse John is using here when he talks about the cgild playomg Superman, and in the sense it used to translate Ibn Arabi's "`ālam al-Mithāl".
@@RobinTurner I think there is. However I read Ibn Arabi through Corbin and Corbin through Cheetham. Enacting through an image is how the vertical of the intellective and sensual are connected. That vertical dimension is what I am discussing I. The kinds of knowing going from the participatory up through the perspectival and procedural to the propositional. The imaginal is also transjective between the inner and the out worlds (Cheetham talks about the world being turned inside out) and that is clear in the case of the child pretending to be superman. That is the horizontal dimension of the imaginal. These are the two dimension of Platonic participation. I hope this helps.
@@johnvervaeke Thanks for the clarification (though of course nothing about Ibn Arabi is ever really clear!). I suppose the "hard problem" here is whether the currently dominant view that the imaginal is an epiphenomenon of the material, or Plato's view that the material is merely a shadow of a real world that we perceive via the imagination, is correct. As far as I can understand, Ibn Arabi seems to regard both as equally real - if everything is God, and god is the Real (al Haqq) then in something sense, everything has to be real.
@@RobinTurner That is insightfully helpful. Thank you.
@@johnvervaeke Thank _you_! BTW, I imagine you've already checked out Filip Holm's new video on the Fusus al-Hikam, but if you haven't, you're in for a treat. I confess I haven't read that book yet (still working my way slowly through the Tarjuman al-Ashwaq) but Filip's introduction makes it seem less intimidating!
"We are liquid crystals playing quantum jazz."
Mae-Wan Ho
"The aspiration to be rational?" Do you mean our 'species' instinctive aspiration to 'understand,' John? Imagine our species infancy as we began to adapt our innate imagination by a process of imitation and auto-suggestion power of memory's capacity to impose the conditioned expectations of 'mind-sight' onto the innate perception capacity of eye-sight? Like Genesis account of the Creation of Consensus-Reality & why it inevitably led to the Religious Revolution started by the Ascension Philosopher from Nazareth.
Pretty tough to watch you just talk at these two guys who came on to have a conversation with you.
Much respect for Mr. Vervaeke and his enthusiasm for such a complex topic, but it would have improved this episode if he could have stepped back a bit to give the other guests more time to speak, as I value their input too. I felt Mr. Slavin's perspective especially lacking this time. Really looking forward to the third installment where he will be in the driver's seat and there can be more of a balanced conversation.
@@Ziggy-i3h Yours is by far the more respectful and gentle way of putting it. Well said.
Sad that such intelligent, perceptive people feel they need to resort to ritual, especially those from outdated traditions, to achieve altered states.
There's universality in every particular, you midwhit.
Well, yeah, sort of. There's a fractal relation. But there are variables in the fractal equations that are different for each particular.
But that wasn't my point. If you are still relying on rituals and methods, like breathwork parlor tricks, to attain any given experiential state then you haven't figured it out yet.
I have a lot of respect for Vervaeke. But when he says that doing the practices outside of a traditional framework is dangerous it raises questions about dogma.
Rituals are for the masses, to show them that more of reality exists. To continue with the rituals is truncating growth.
Philosophy, spirituality, esotericism and the crisis of meaning is 4-fold. Two see this is 8-fold. Once the third i/eye is attained you experience 12-fold. If you start to foursee then you realize it's hindsight. One says f-ive leading to si x. Looking up to seven. One has ate, nine to that, command 10. Let us be 1 1. What about 1 2? That's the spirit.
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You lads are attempting to understand that philosophy stuff through the intellect.. And you cant know the direction to aquire philonikeya i think its called.
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Can you explain the emojis
That raises a good question that they touch on later, after the "would you become a vampire" thought experiment).
@@RobinTurner I am a vampire my name is Al Ucard
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Sometimes i get so bored