Inner Life, Talks and Thoughts

Rupert Spira and I met for a second conversation, beginning with one of William Blake's great exclamations of nondual awareness:“Awake! awake O sleeper of the land of shadows, wake! expand!I am in you and you in me, mutual in love divineI am not a God afar off, I am a brother and friend;Within your bosoms I reside, and you reside in me:Lo! we are One”We discussed the meanings of suffering and death that feel so needed and neglected in our times; different possibilities for the experience of time and the value of disagreement, similarly overlooked; the role of the erotic, play and the imagination on this path; and the reality of angels and the guidance of myths.1:39 The presence of nondualism today3:30 The meaning of suffering16:59 The true nature of death23:39 A different experience of time: Chronos, Kairos, Eternity36:06 The drivers of consumption and desiring heaven on earth42:29 The value of disagreement45:59 The erotic, play and standing in love53:43 The expansive value of the imagination1:02:54 Messages, angels and hierarchies1:14:36 Myths and crafts as guidesFor more about Rupert Spira see - https://rupertspira.comFor more about Mark Vernon see - https://www.markvernon.comOur first conversation is online here - https://youtu.be/x0SfOFPCPgk

Delve into William Blake's provocative critique of Christmas, where he challenges the gentle, sentimental image of Jesus. Through his vivid illustrations, he warns of the dangers of institutionalized religion and the loss of divine vision. Explore themes of repressed passions and the confinement of spiritual imagination. Discover how Blake envisions Jesus not as a meek child, but as a powerful force urging humanity to awaken to a deeper understanding of love and connection. It's a thought-provoking meditation on faith and creativity.

Our times are marked by divides that will remain, possibly deepen. Has the Divine Comedy anything meaningful to offer a riven state?For more thoughts on Dante, and a guide to the Divine Comedy, have a dig around my YouTube channel or website - https://www.markvernon.com

Some talk about God too much. Others are said to be too embarrassed ever to do so. I think much of the pickle around God-talk arises from a fundamental, modern mistake. God is not an object to be proven, evidenced or possessed. God is the subjectivity of existence itself - beyond talk, though talk we must do, because talk too is already in God.I muse on what that might mean, not least when it comes to talking about God.01:11 Why the religiously wary seem religiously alive02:40 The mistake of trying to prove God’s existence05:00 The mistake of going by religious success06:12 The mistake of presuming a gap between God and humanity07:11 The mistake of treating religions as complete08:36 The mistake of separating grace and nature11:17 Beyond peak experiences to the existence itself13:15 Beyond praying to God and God as an object in religious settings16:11 Beyond human and divine relationality17:59 On the lovely limits of talking about God23:00 On reason as a guide, reflection as discernment24:34 On divine union and the fundamentals of existence28:30 On the meaning of love30:06 How to talk of God in God and the greatest question33:49 Why we don’t need anything though there’s everything to know35:35 The nature of true apologetics36:36 The nature of “religio”39:25 Teacherly authority and sages42:20 Direct presence and the spiritual senses44:15 Spotting when God becomes an object again46:54 There are many revelations not one true product49:17 Christianity beyond Christianity and sensing a future55:12 The good news and the question not of if but how

I'm talking about an essay that can be found online at the Perspectiva website - https://systems-souls-society.com/spiritual-intelligence-what-it-is-why-its-needed-how-it-might-return/

I much enjoyed the conversation with Hetta Howes, Matthew Sweet and Francesca Stavrakopoulou on God: An Anatomy. It was broadcast on BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking (https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00114py).We had a good conversation over profound differences, which I develop further here. I think they matter, not just as an academic spat, in this case about God, embodiment and Plato. But because understanding the Athenian right offers a path back to a participative, life-giving relationship with the cosmos.Put it like this. “The cosmic body is the most beautiful and perfect,” Plato wrote at the end of the Timaeus. So why is it that so many academics presume he despised physicality, in favour of a dry world of abstractions, and what did he actually say?01:05: Challenging the atheist agenda01:53 How projections reveal reality and deities04:33 Critiquing academic assumptions Plato05:40 Why there are no such things as "Platonic abstractions”09:34 Why Plato didn’t think the spiritual was immaterial15:16 Why Plato didn't separate divine and mortal life17:13 Christianity’s problem with erotic energy23:38 Who’s to blame for distorting Plato

Few have explored the nature of being human more directly than Charles Foster. He writes about his experiences in the wild in his books, Being A Beast and, most recently, Being A Human, raising profound questions about our awareness of the natural world in the past, present and future.The evolving nature of our perceptions of ourselves and the cosmos is also close to the work of Mark Vernon, both as a psychotherapist and writer. Are we Homo sapiens, narrans, scientificus, ignorans, noeticus - or simply loquens, never sure what we are talking about?In this conversation, Mark and Charles explore what the Palaeolithic might inspire in us today, how big histories of humanity get so much wrong, and the consciousness that could be needed for the future.For more on Charles' work see - https://www.charlesfoster.co.ukFor more on Mark's work see - https://www.markvernon.com

The British historian, Arnold Toynbee, is currently out of fashion. The British poet and artist, William Blake, is not, though he is rarely well understood. So what might they have to say to our times?Toynbee strove to understand the inner as well as outer processes of history, developing a theory he called etherialisation. Blake appreciated the destructive power of the dark, Satanic mills, with their loss of divine imagination.Bring them together, and the two perspectives are remarkably illuminating in terms of both understanding and responding to now.0:32 Toynbee and the inner life of history1:52 Roman roads and the emergence of Christianity4:35 Dante as an example of the exile who renews6:28 The axial figures and civilisational change8:24 Today and the allure of technological fixes9:50 Beyond western Christianity and materialist philosophy12:27 The guidance of Dante and William Blake14:41 Golgonooza, Los and facing the Furnaces of affliction17:01 Destruction and the renewal of inner vision18:57 History, virtue and relating again to nature20:47 Mistakes and forgiveness: rebuilding inner wisdom

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow does a great job at debunking the big histories of figures like Noah Yuval Harari and Stephen Pinker, but at a cost that ultimately undermines their argument.In this discussion and critique of a wonderfully disruptive book, I outline their case and some of the evidence, argue that they are implicitly advocating a state of nature myth, based on reason not Eden or violence, and suggest that this, unwittingly, recolonises the past with modern secular reason.But it’s a book very much worth engaging with!0:44 Why they are right about retelling our back story.4:50 Why they are right about emerging evidence for its endless complexity.10:44 Tasters of the alternative Homo sapiens prehistory they tell.18:20 And yet, what is crucially missing in their retelling.28:22 How it recolonises the past with notions of secular reason, freedom and will.33:19 The first cities as ritual sites and what that says about consciousness.37:33 Why a demythologised past isn’t enough for our future.

Our carbon consuming culture has completely internalised the belief "that the world is made up of dead stuff plus active minds and acquisitive wills,” wrote Rowan Williams in This Is Not A Drill: An Extinction Rebellion Handbook. We have forgotten the spiritual intelligence that knows how to align with the natural intelligence embodied in the living world. To escape the toxicity of this mindset, Williams continues, will require radical change at the level of lifestyle and industry, yes. But more profoundly, it will demand that we ask again what is it to be human.In this reflection, I consider 5 principles that can be practices and which might, in time, rediscover an older consciousness made new.1. How comedy embraces tragedy, in the sense that there is a good that will not let us go, discovered through love.2. How simplicity embraces complexity, not by being simplistic, but by seeing sub specie aeternitatis.3. How ecology is wider than the machine, bringing back awareness of the all that's beyond us all.4. How life is fundamentally abundant and generous, not scarce and priced.5. How sacred myths can see beyond scientific explanations, rebalancing the celestial and terrestrial.