Inner Life, Talks and Thoughts

The Book of Job has been used to retell the Christian story, as with Carl Jung's Answer to Job. It can also be sought for what it says about suffering.The Hebrew tale inspired William Blake in a distinctive, brilliant way. It helped him to diagnose the modern predicament and its religious errors. Job's suffering and patience led Blake to a mature statement of his spiritual perception, found in his 21 illustrations.In this set of reflections, I ask what Blake shows us in each of his plates, and how Blake charts a path from a mistaken religiosity of rite and righteousness to one of awakening and participation in the human form divine.Creation is not about separation, Blake avers, but manifestation. Christianity is not about sin but sleep. Humanity does not enlarge God's consciousness. Rather, humanity can awaken to its being-in-God.0:00 Blake’s take on Job4:45 Critique of righteous religiosity9:44 Satan or selfhood unleashed12:58 The spectre in the world16:07 Job’s incomprehension18:29 The wastes of moral law21:53 Job’s inner undoing24:06 Self-righteousness fails27:12 Job bewails his alienated being28:50 The false god of rule and order31:07 Job embraces unknowing33:06 The darkness of transformation38:00 Youthful stirrings of a new age40:51 Job’s whirlwind ecstasy42:59 Reality revealed47: 33 The lesson of wonder49:45 Selfhood falls to truth51:55 The human divine54:13 Perception as guide55:51 The effects of awakening57:55 The realisation of abundance59:10 Eternal life

Baruch Spinoza is widely regarded as either a God-forsaking atheist or a God-intoxicated pantheist, but Clare Carlisle says that he was neither. In her latest book, Spinoza’s Religion, she reads his masterpiece, the Ethics, to show that being-in-God lies at the heart of his nondual perception of reality.  The book unfolds a powerful philosophical vision for the modern age—one which Carlisle argues overcomes "philosophical pathologies", from reductive materialism to nihilistic atheism, as well as putting crucial questions centre stage, such as how to live a joyful, fully human life.For more on Clare Carlisle - https://www.kcl.ac.uk/people/clare-carlisleFor more on Mark Vernon - https://www.markvernon.com

This is a talk I gave at the Weekend University.For more on Mark Vernon - https://www.markvernon.comFor more on my book about Jung - https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/19267016-carl-jung0:00 His distinctiveness10:02 Dreams16:34 Archetypes29:41 The Self and Collective Unconscious39:40 Synchronicities

A talk give at St Matthew's Church, Wimbledon, London on 12th July 2022.

A walk through the labyrinth at Penpont, with thanks to William Blake.

The Scientific and Medical Network organised a gathering on Friday 8th July to mark Rupert’s 80th birthday and reflect on his work. In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert and Mark Vernon discuss the day, recalling remarks made by speakers including Merlin Sheldrake, Jill Purce, David Lorimer and Pam Smart. They discuss a variety of themes seminal to Rupert’s work, from science as the calling to share in a living cosmos to the business of coping with sceptics, which is not without its amusing as well as tricky moments. The conversation celebrates the richness of an engaged and free approach to the study of the natural world, with its many mysteries, often active immediately around us everyday.

I was delighted to meet David Wengrow at the Idler Festival. His coauthor, David Graeber, was a great friend of the Idler.David Wengrow and I spoke about their revolutionary, fascinating and inspiring book, The Dawn of Everything. It challenges the concensus history and prehistory of humanity, as found in writers such as Steven Pinker and Noah Yuval Harari.As one questioner from the audience stressed, this is so important for freeing ourselves from their deterministic anticipations of the future.But I have critiques of the new story as well. David Wengrow's responses to them were illuminating, I felt, and I hope my thoughts were interesting to him.My fuller discussion of the book itself can also be found on this podcast.

Jerusalem by Jez Butterworth, starring Mark Rylance, is brilliant. But what can be made of its violence and passion, humour and hedonism, tragedy and emptiness?Returning to the source of the famous words after which the play is named provides a clue. William Blake is right to invoke. He has something to say...

0:00 Vedantic Christianity in the Bible, as the gospel7:58 The natural is already supernatural, our desire is for the infinite18:26 The Trinity and nondualism as the circle of glory23:07 Jesus and the Incarnation29:08 Salvation as theophany33:34 Paul and the Spirit of God within us36:58 Creation is in eternity, returning in time40:32 More on how we might know these things45:03 Worship as beauty, reverence, longing, delight47:43 Suffering and living in a violent world55:22 Eschatology as our eternal Yes to God57:58 The immanence of transcendence in Christian life1:05:57 Guarding against inflation and emergent notions of God in history1:16:05 Judgment, action and freedomA set of reflections liberally drawing on You Are Gods by David Bentley Hart (Notre Dame Press, 2022).Bentley Hart says that the book could equally have been subtitled, Studies in Vedantic Christianity, which I take as a lead. What might traditional Christian themes such as God and Jesus, Salvation and Spirit, Creation and Grace, Worship and Judgment look like within such a perspective?A summary might be that the gospel is the discovery and realisation that, as Jesus puts it, You are gods. And that the kingdom is not here or there, but within.As Bentley Hart puts it himself: “We are nothing but created gods coming to be, becoming God in God, able to become divine only because, in some sense, we are divine from the very first.”But what might that mean, what does that look like, how can we know?

0:00 Imagination and the Imaginal in the modern world7:20 Different kinds of power: agency, allure, contraries10:40 The revival of myth-telling but in the first person singular15:30 Martin’s rediscovery of Christianity21:40 The mossy face of Christ and what happened34:04 People’s reactions to Jesus: contraction and expansion39:04 Martin’s discovery of mystery in an Orthodox Church46:27 What does this rediscovery of Christianity mean to him?51:56 What does this mean for the “Christian curious”?54:50 The shamanistic presence of Malcolm Guite58:28 Mark’s journey in and around Christianity with Owen Barfield1:05:25 A turn to William Blake1:08:10 The transcendent possibility bubbling up again1:12:57 The diversity of traditions and the entry of spiritIt's often remarked that the age of New Atheism has passed. But what is emerging in its stead?In this wide-ranging conversation, Martin Shaw discusses, for the first time, his recent encounter with the figure of Jesus and steps towards a form of Christianity very different from his evangelical upbringing.Power and freedom, history and myths, the Inklings and the imagination are explored en route. And we ask what kind of Christianity might be evolving in our times.To find out more about Martin Shaw - https://drmartinshaw.comTo find out more about Mark Vernon - https://www.markvernon.comTo find out more about Malcolm Guite - https://malcolmguite.wordpress.comTo find out more about Owen Barfield - https://www.markvernon.com/consciousnessTo find out more about The Temenos Academy - https://www.temenosacademy.org