Inner Life, Talks and Thoughts

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.

The label “gnostic” is used to recommend and condemn. So what is, and what was, Gnosticism? This episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, with Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon, takes a lead from a series of fascinating essays exploring the ancient movement and its modern forms by the philosopher, David Bentley Hart. Gnosticism was originally a set of cosmologies which shared the sense that the created order was blocked from the celestial spheres by angelic and demonic powers. It was remarkably widespread amongst early Christians of all kinds. They turned to Christ, in the hope of redemption or escape. Nowadays, it is used in different ways, often to express a sense of yearning or hope. As Rupert and Mark discuss, gnosticism may offer the promise of a re-enchanted cosmos, freed from the Archons of the machine and mammon. Properly understood, it might offer a key for our times.Two of the essays written by David Bentley Hart are available without subscribing to Substack.https://davidbentleyhart.substack.com/p/the-gnostic-turnhttps://davidbentleyhart.substack.com/p/imprisonedFor more dialogues see:https://www.sheldrake.org/audios/sheldrake-vernon-dialogueshttps://www.markvernon.com/talks

What is the direct path of Advaita Vedanta and why is it significant for so many now? How is it found across traditions, including within Christianity? Why might it matter to us today, collectively as well as individually? What are its links to psychotherapy, individuality, freedom, God?Mark Vernon talks with Rupert Spira about these questions and more.0:34 What is the direct path and why is it of significance now?13:59 If awareness of awareness is the start, what happens next?17:20 Why might this matter socially as well as individually?23:27 What is the relationship between the direct path and psychotherapy?30:35 How does nondual show up in Christianty? What does the death and resurrection of Jesus mean?41:55 How might the Trinity express nondual life?50:47 How does this renew our experience of individuality?53:45 Nondualism and a positive engagement with creation and the world.1:10:38 Lessons from Dante’s journey into Paradise as a model of nondual expansion.1:20:34 Growth after the recognition of our true being.1:22:30 Goals after the recognition of true being.1:25:08 The spontaneity of teaching.1:27:47 Wrapping and further information.For more about Rupert - https://rupertspira.comFor more about Mark - https://rupertspira.com

Meditation, yoga, vegetarianism. Eastern practices have become a feature of western life. But what do we learn from them? This episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, with Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon, is prompted by a sense that the western way of life is being challenged, if not facing a full-on crisis. As Rowan Williams puts it in his new book, Looking East In Winter, climate change and environmental degradation are leading to a sense of needing not a programme or an ideology but an epiphany, which might renew our perception of reality. They discuss how eastern Christianity, as well as traditions in India, are based on participating with life and emphasise the cultivation of consciousness. They ask how this relates to insights such as the Christian Trinity and movements such as romanticism, as well as the effects of mechanistic science, which itself grew out of western religious perceptions.For more conversations between Rupert and Mark see:https://www.markvernon.com/talkshttps://www.sheldrake.org/audios/sheldrake-vernon-dialogues

Rowan Williams has written another hugely significant book, one ripe with meaning for now. In this talk, I unpack its themes of non-dualism and Trinitarian life, eros and kenosis, politics and justice, seeing truthfully and destroying the world.0:39 Addressing the Anthropocene1:28 The need for an epiphany2:52 What is our key problem?4:32 Nondual non-identity7:12 Trinitarian life9:05 The erotic life of the divine13:30 True kenosis and ecstasy17:42 The truth of ourselves20:49 Watchfulness, angelic awareness, mindfulness23:39 Apatheia and anger25:19 Being in the world, not of the world28:20 The artist and philosopher29:43 The gift of wisdom and remedying ignorance30:27 Rationality and relating31:55 Being natural33:11 A new solidarity and Maria Skobtsova34:32 A new apologetics35:25 A new politics and sense of justice38:48 Hospitality as a way of life39:10 Freedom and fulfilment40:39 Divinization and the futureFor more on Mark Vernon, see www.markvernon.com