Inner Life, Talks and Thoughts

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

A renewed interest in Christianity? Old traditions of myth and place revived? In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon consider the significance of recent conversions, as confessed by figures such as Paul Kingsnorth and Martin Shaw, as well as the prominence given to Christianity by writers such as Marilynne Robinson and Jordan Peterson. They explore what has been called the “rewilding” of Christianity and whether traditional apologetics has run out of steam. Are surprisingly common religious encounters with divine and supernatural presences becoming more acceptable? What of the challenge to mainstream forms of Christianity coming from the pens of Radical Orthodoxy and, unexpectedly, C.S. Lewis? And what might full strength Christianity invite and promise? This ripple of fresh encounters with Christianity won’t stop the general decline of church-going in the West. But maybe that very decline is making space for reinvigorated spiritualities.For more on Rupert, including other dialogues with Mark, see - https://www.sheldrake.orgFor more on Mark, including other dialogues with Rupert, see - https://www.markvernon.com

Elizabeth Oldfield’s podcast, The Sacred, can be found on podcast feeds. Her conversation with Paul Kingsnorth, along with many others, is a rewarding listen.I discuss this take on the parables and Jesus’s wit more fully in my book, A Secret History of Christianity: Jesus, the Last Inkling and the Evolution of Consciousness (John Hunt Publishing).I owe the expression to Elizabeth, but the nature of “full strength Christianity” is a regular concern of my thoughts on Dante, William Blake, Owen Barfield and, indeed, Jesus.

Bernard Carr is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy at Queen Mary, University of London. He has worked on black holes with Stephen Hawking, alongside other aspects of cosmology, and has also been president of the Society for Psychical Research.  I begin this conversation by asking about Owen Barfield’s questioning the principle of uniformitarianism in science, the assumption that the laws of physics, as well as space and time, are the same in all times and places. I also raise the thought of another physicist, John Wheeler: “We are in this sense, participators in bringing about something of the universe in the distant past” Bernard carefully unpacks the various ways to address these matters. The conversation ranges from how physics might be extended to link materiality and mind, the significance of different experiences of time, whether Dante’s experience can inspire physical insight, and how language and everyday experience offers clues to the nature of reality which any theory of everything must embrace. 0:00 Did Stephen Hawking enjoy The Theory of Everything movie?3:30 Why the theory of everything in physics really isnt’6:15 What do we see looking back across space and time?10:30 What relativity tells us about the relationship between observer and observed?14:40 Awe and wonder, the beauty of the universe15:17 The relationship between the outside world and our experience of it18:31 To what extent do observations change reality itself?21:08 Is the universe fuzzy before observers?25:30 The link between consciousness and cosmological constants29:35 The two slit and delayed choice experiments31:48 John Wheeler and the choice of light from quasars40:08 The pyramid of complexity and the fine-tuning41:35 Is consciousness excreted by the brain?42:39 Consciousness as fundamental46:52 Evidence for the brain as a filter of consciousness48:54 Dante’s experience of dimensions of consciousness unfolding52:01 The essence of mystical experience53:03 The hierarchy of consciousness and the specious present57:31 The significance of self-consciousness and navigating scales of consciousness1:00:53 Why am I me and not you?1:05:40 Unity and separation in ordinary experiences of time1:07:34 Hints of connection, telepathy and non-locality1:10:37 Beauty and the experience of cosmic union1:12:30 The history of physics and the demolition of common sense1:15:44 Four-dimensional reality and the end of “out there”1:21:00 Extra dimensions after Einstein1:24:40 The significance of branes and bulks and the ubiquity of space1:29:15 The heart of Bernard’s approach: phenomenal dimensions and higher dimensions1:33:34 A flash of perception in early life1:34:55 Barfield and the evolution of human perception1:38:19 Meaning, connection and spiritual experience in science1:40:27 Hints from language and the origins of language1:44:05 Physics must expand to accommodate mind

A little known, astonishingly personal article by King Charles provides a remarkable window onto his soul. In it, he speaks of an extraordinary power and hope that might not only steady a moment of constitutional transition, but even calm a period of widespread and deepening social anxiety.The article was a tribute he wrote to the poet and William Blake scholar, Kathleen Raine, subsequently published in Resurgence magazine. In this talk, I unpack what the new king said and ask why it matters.

Sam Harris raised the question of the location of heaven, not least in the space age, when "up there" is not straightforwardly a good answer.Jonathan Pageau responded eloquently, noting that up is, of course, an analogy that might guide us towards the way in which earth and heaven are different dimensions of participation in divine reality. The ancients knew earth and heaven phenomenologically rather than just physically.Here, I offer a different conception again, that I think is useful now - taking a lead from Jesus's remarks that the kingdom is within, that praying is best done in secret, and that withdrawal and reflection are key to discerning the divine, heavenly presence.I consider how the Platonic notion of ascent, from The Symposium, is actually an mistaken gloss on what Diotima actually explains to Socrates. Love's path to Beauty is, in fact, one of subtly, awakening and understanding.And then I consider Dante's journey through the planetary spheres in Paradiso. Again, whilst metaphors of movement are present, the dynamic that Dante tracks is one of perception: the more he understands of the divine light within himself, the more he understands and knows how he is closer to heaven than he ever suspected.

I enjoyed Jordan Peele's movie, Nope. But what is it saying?NOTE: This comment is full of spoilers!

William Blake saw himself as a prophet, which means that his writings challenge, even repulse, on occasion. However, Blake's harding sayings are the moments when his greatest vision stands before us. They are worth wrestling with, if he is to become more than a poet with a compelling line that we might grab as a proof quote.In this talk, I consider how Blake's vision of nature, politics and humanity sits uncomfortably alongside the received wisdom of today, in both secular and Christian domains.“Without man, nature is barren,” he writes in the Proverbs of Hell.Golgonooza “continually building & continually decaying desolate,” he writes in Jerusalem.“They were as Adam before me, united as One Man,” he also sees in Jerusalem.In the light of the infinite, that Blake longs to awaken in us, they speak of the higher dimensions of the cosmos that are to be discovered; of a politics of expectancy not utopia that awaits; and how the divine might be an imaginative intimation within us.We will also need the freedom of forgiveness, Blake insists, as well as a new science, built on the capacity to see how  how all is animate, intelligent, alive. But that can stir the perception of God's activity as the true nature of our act activities, and so lead to an overcoming of the threatened self, to yield to the one life which is the truth of all life.

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