Exploring Mythic and Imaginal Language for Understanding Reality and Consciousness

Dr. John Vervaeke and Gregg Henriques once again welcome Brendan Graham Dempsey to engage in profound explorations of transcendent naturalism, wisdom traditions, and the crucial significance of adaptive insight within our current existential landscape. Through discussions on religious reconstruction, animism, hyper-agents, and the role of wisdom in technology, the episode explores the connections between the sacred and the modern world. Dr. Vervaeke emphasizes collective intelligence and agency, while Brendan Graham Dempsey passionately speaks on the unfolding process of the sacred. Gregg Henriques proposes concepts like "wise NAGI" and reflects on collective awakening. Together, they inspire listeners to rethink the integration of religion, science, and reality, emphasizing the need for understanding and harmony.

Resources:

Brendan Graham Dempsey

Unified Theory of Knowledge

Publications:

Relevance, Meaning and the Cognitive Science of Wisdom - John Vervaeke and Leonardo Ferraro 

Approaching awe, a moral, spiritual, and aesthetic emotion. - Dacher Keltner, Jonathan Haidt 

Videos:

 Ep 67 | UTOKing with Howard Bloom | The Blooming Universe

Neuroenlightenment: John Vervaeke at TEDxUofT

John Vervaeke: Artificial Intelligence, The Meaning Crisis, & The Future of Humanity.

John Vervaeke and Paul Vanderklay Dialogue about the Quest for a Spiritual Home

Books:

Mentoring the Machines: Orientation - Part One: Surviving the Deep Impact of the Artificially Intelligent Tomorrow - John Vervaeke, Shawn Coyne 

The Romance of Reality: How the Universe Organizes Itself to Create Life, Consciousness, and Cosmic Complexity - Bobby Azarian 

Quotes:

"I think the key here is to appreciate the roles that individuals can play when culture has reached its limits, and that is something that we have to take up the task of individually, of saying, alright, how do I explore this domain of the sacred, what are my intuitions, what are my sensitivities to the transcendent, and begin to give voice to those, to write them down, to externalize them, to objectify them, to put them back into culture so that we can collectively bring these new symbolizations together, ideally in a new networked way that allows for new collective representations of the sacred of the God concept of the divine." - Brendan Graham Dempsey

"There's a reconceptualization of the sacred, not as the perfect or complete, but as an inexhaustible fount of intelligibility that simultaneously always shines in and always withdraws from our grasp because relevance realization is incompletable and the world contains radical uncertainty, not just unfound or uncalculated risk." - Dr. John Vervaeke

Timecodes:

[00:00:20] Dr. John Vervaeke introduces Brendan Graham Dempsey's work on merging Vervaeke and Gregg Henriques's work related to transcendent naturalism.

[00:06:38] Dempsey discusses the Religious Reconstruction Project and the learning process, confronting the limits of world models.

​​[00:11:40] Gregg Henriques reflects on the idea of finding meaning at the edge of what we know.

[00:13:55] Dr. Vervaeke introduces the concept of the sacred as an always-beyond intelligibility, challenging traditional views.

[00:21:03] Delving into schemas, animism, and the risk of misunderstanding reality.

[00:28:03] Brendan Graham Dempsey introduces the concept of a new God, an iconic representation of the infinitely receding and illuminating element of reality, suggesting this could help us better understand our world. 

[00:32:00] Gregg Henriques introduces the concept of the "fifth joint point" and the need for collective awakening and understanding of the underlying structure.

[00:35:00] Vervaeke mentions his upcoming book, suggesting that the proposals that prepare us for the future should have authority, and mentions the internet as a potential common ground for dealing with the advent of AGI.

[00:38:37] Speaking on the transformative power of encountering the "really real" and how it's woven into everything else suggests that this profound understanding of reality has a sense of authority.

[00:45:20] Dr. Vervaeke and Dempsey discuss logos and multi-layered symbolic articulation underscoring the importance of language in expressing this multi-layered form.

[00:49:18] Emphasizing intermediary models in learning complex concepts.

[00:52:19] Brendan Graham Dempsey discusses the idea of humans as a way for the cosmos to know itself, and how this perspective gives meaning to his life. He emphasizes the need for these truths to work at an embodied, lived reality.

[00:59:15] Stressing the need for alignment between religious conceptions and reality.

[01:02:02] Gregg Henriques shares his perspective on the enlightenment gap and the inadequacy of science in grounding our fundamental relevance realization across all modes of being.

[01:04:22] Proposing a trans-subjective epistemology, recognizing interplay over time.

[01:05:44] Discussing naturalism's role in framing the context for science.