Inner Life, Talks and Thoughts

Spiritual Intelligence In Seven Steps is my new book, released December 2022.This is a short thought on step one, which concerns the big history that we tell ourselves about ourselves. In short, the dominant big story is driven by a crude Darwinism that writes out spiritual intelligence, though there is good reason from the science to conclude that's wrong.For more on the book see - https://www.markvernon.com/books/spiritual-intelligence-in-seven-steps

Spiritual Intelligence in Seven Steps is my contribution to aiding the recovery of the full range of human capabilities and consciousness. Artificial, rational, even emotional intelligence are not enough to ground us, valuable though they be. We need not just know-how, but know-that our lives are grounded in a spiritual commons.The steps I outline here, and explore fully in my book, are to do with story, freedom, simplicity, soul, death, virtue and time.For more on the book see - https://www.markvernon.com/books/spiritual-intelligence-in-seven-steps.

The secular historian, Tom Holland, has made the case that atheistic humanism is, at heart, an off-shoot of Christianity. In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon ask how that can be so. After all, contemporary humanists are inclined to blame Christianity for all ills, not thank Christianity for seeding values they share. Rupert and Mark agree that there is much in what Holland argues. For example, the tendency to evangelise for western values, as well as fall into dispute over what they might be, mirrors Protestant Christianity. But Mark is also wary of Holland’s theory, both as history and also because it risks presenting Christianity is a moral creed, not a revelation of the relationship between the human and divine. (A recent speech that Holland gave outlining his ideas can be found at Unherd.com and the website of the think tank, Theos.)For more in our longstanding series of dialogues see https://www.sheldrake.org/audios/sheldrake-vernon-dialogues andhttps://www.markvernon.com/talks

Peter Owen Jones is a writer, broadcaster and priest. His new book is Conversations With Nature.We discuss falling in love with the natural world once again, what difference this might make to the climate crisis, how Christianity has failed to respond in any significant way to environmental collapse, though also has an answer, if we are prepared to give no thought for the morrow, value the falling sparrow, and follow the way.William Blake's sense of participation, imagination and divine return are also in the mix.For more on Peter's book, Conversations With Nature, see https://www.clairviewbooks.com/viewbook.php?isbn_in=9781912992416For more on Mark Vernon, see www.markvernon.com

The Last Judgement, William Blake argued, is not a terrifying forthcoming rapture but an awakening present moment, “Whenever any Individual Rejects Error & Embraces Truth".For more on William Blake, Dante and other things see www.markvernon.com

For more on John-Paul Flintoff - https://flintoff.org. And his latest book - https://spckpublishing.co.uk/london-psalms.For more on Mark Vernon & Owen Barfield - https://www.markvernon.com/consciousness.

We live in an age of emergency, exacerbated by a collapse of meaning. Writer and psychotherapist, Mark Vernon, examines the type of intelligence that, whilst often dismissed and overlooked, is crucial to understand and cultivate if we are to survive and thrive in our times. Spiritual intelligence is the foundation of who we are and our particular type of consciousness. It is the perception identified across wisdom and religious traditions, and known by many names, which can be summarised as the awareness of awareness, and so of being itself. It is the foundation of peace, even in the face of death, as well as purpose and solidarity. The challenge today is to recover and live according to that knowledge.Examining themes from the nature of consciousness to the experience of time, the emergence of our species and the teaching of spiritual adepts, the book is an antidote to rampant AI and a complement to emotional intelligence. It is written without presuming religious commitments in readers and draws on a mix of sources, from the writings of mystics to the films of Pixar, the work of scholars including Iain McGilchrist and Robin Dunbar, and experience gained from the author's own practices, particularly psychotherapy. It advocates pilgrimage and improvisation, virtues over morality, and big histories that do not turn the story of our species into a bleak struggle for survival.The seven steps will help readers identify spiritual intelligence within themselves, unpack why it matters, and suggest how a wider trust in it may be revived. Each chapter ends with a short practice or question."In Spiritual Intelligence in Seven Steps, Mark Vernon draws on the understanding of numerous individuals and cultures, weaving them into a text that leads the reader on a journey into the very heart of their self and, at the same time, to the reality that lies behind and is expressed as the world. Each chapter guides us more and more deeply into the perennial understanding that lies at the foundation of our civilisation." Rupert SpiraISBN 978-1-80341-032-6Published by Iff BooksFor more on Mark - www.markvernon.com

Rishi Sunak is Britain’s first Hindu leader. His success is a conspicuous manifestation of the deep links that exist between Indian and English culture.It reaches back William Blake, an early reader of the Bhagavad Gita after it was translated into English. His angel-morphic figures and Vedantic impulses would have been developed with his reading, helping him to restore the unitive sense of reality to English Christianity, much lost after the Reformation. As Jesus tells Albion in Blake’s epic poem, Jerusalem: “I am in you and you in me, mutual in divine love."For more on King Charles and Kathleen Raine see - https://www.markvernon.com/awakening-in-a-caroline-age-king-charles-william-blake-kathleen-raine

A number of public figures, in literature and ideas, have recently been talking about discovering Christianity, or perhaps it'd be better to say, being discovered by Christianity.So what's going on with this renewed interest? Why now? How can this be talked about? What kind of Christianity are they being draw to and captured by? And what does their experience say about the inadequacies of much Christianity in modern culture?These questions are asked by Elizabeth Oldfield, host of The Sacred podcast and former director of Theos. Mark Vernon, who often writes and talks about Christian things, is intrigued by and feels something of their lively reality.For more on Elizabeth - https://www.elizabetholdfield.comMark more on Mark - https://www.markvernon.com

C.S Lewis is not the apologist and writer you might assume, if Jason Baxter is right. Plato, Boethius and Dante mattered immensely to a man who felt more at home in the medieval world, and longed to inspire the modern world with a half-forgotten theophany.His friend, Owen Barfield, also anticipated a transfigured today, one in which participation with divine life was known by ourselves and within the inside of the whole world.Christianity itself would recover its experiential, mystical core, the friends hoped, and be less  eclipsed by credal and moral formulations.In this conversation, Jason Baxter and Mark Vernon explore matters from Christian Platonism and the Incarnation, to the Eschaton and the strangeness of miracles. What might Lewis and Barfield have talked about in private? How closely are the soulmates' visions entwined? Why does Christianity need to recover its oddness and surprise, drawing on the past and being drawn by a renewed future?Jason Baxter's book's include The Medieval Mind of C.S. Lewis, full details here - https://www.ivpress.com/the-medieval-mind-of-c-s-lewis.Mark Vernon's books include A Secret History of Christianity on Owen Barfield, full details - here https://www.markvernon.com/books/a-secret-history-of-christianity