Dr. John Vervaeke

What happens when the founder of Internal Family Systems and a cognitive scientist of meaning sit down to compare notes on parts, Self, and the guides that show up when the inner world quiets? In this Lectern dialogue, psychotherapist Seth Allison takes the host chair so John Vervaeke can talk peer to peer with Dick Schwartz, the creator of Internal Family Systems (IFS). Dick tells the origin stor...

What if becoming wiser requires a relationship with a "divine double" within you? In episode three of the series, John and Harvard's Charles Stang move on from Plato, Xenophon, and Aristophanes to Apuleius' 2nd-century text On the God of Socrates , which imagines philosophy as a kind of daimonology that begins and ends with two daimons: the daimon that is your soul and the daimon that is your doub...

What was Socrates actually hearing when his daimon spoke, and why might the space in-between, neither purely inside us nor fully outside us, be the key to discerning spirits today? In part two of the Lectern series on the daimon, Charles Stang and John Vervaeke move from Plato to Socrates' other witnesses, Xenophon and Aristophanes. Charles shows that the indictment against Socrates charged him wi...

How do you make deep philosophical and transformative work accessible to more people without sacrificing the precision, rigor, and depth that make it meaningful in the first place? John Vervaeke, with Ethan Hsieh and Taylor Barratt, discusses recurring feedback that his work is meaningful but hard to share, and the ethical tension between precision and epistemic responsibility on one side and maki...

What if the problem isn't that religions disagree, but that we invented the idea that you can only belong to one? In this Silk Road Seminar, John Vervaeke sits down with theologian John J. Thatamanil, author of Circling the Elephant: A Comparative Theology of Religious Diversity . Thatamanil traces his path from the ancient Mar Thoma Christian tradition of South India to comparative theology, and...

Could the "divine double" be a hidden guide within us, and what happens when we begin to recognize it? Harvard Divinity School professor Charles Stang, author of Our Divine Double, joins Ethan to introduce his Lectern course Daemons in Divinity and the ancient Greek idea of the daimon. Stang traces Socrates' daimonion, the guiding sign that shaped his life, through Plato and later thinkers who saw...

What if religion was never really about belief, but about how we make meaning? Trust in institutions like religion, law, science, and journalism is collapsing, yet some of the most demanding traditions, like Eastern Orthodoxy and the traditional Latin Mass, are growing as people seek ritual, discipline, and transformation. In this talk, John Vervaeke argues it is increasingly difficult to study hu...

Can we find freedom in a world of endless choice—or is deeper liberation found in the people we refuse to leave? In the first of a three-part Lectern Dialogues series, John Vervaeke is joined by Elizabeth Oldfield and her husband, Christopher Oldfield, for a conversation on intentional communal living as a spiritual practice within a Christian orientation. Elizabeth and Christopher share life with...

What if God isn't a finished substance standing outside the world, but a living process we participate in? In this Silk Road Seminar, John Vervaeke is joined by process philosophers Andrew M. Davis and Matt Segall. John opens with the core moves of Seeing God Again for the First Time and the Philosophical Silk Road: dissolving modernity's dichotomies, renewing our sense of the sacred, and moving b...

What if the very thing we fear most—nonbeing—is also what gives life its deepest meaning? John Vervaeke welcomes philosopher Corey Anton to discuss his book, How Nonbeing Haunts Being: On Possibilities, Morality, and Death Acceptance . They explore how absence, limitation, possibility, mortality, and death are not merely negations of life, but central to how meaning, identity, and moral responsibi...

What if nihilism is not the end of meaning, but an opening into a deeper way of seeing? John Vervaeke is joined by Ethan Hsieh to introduce Notes on No-Thing , a course on the Kyoto School of Philosophy and its response to nihilism, nothingness, and the advent of the sacred. They explore why modern people often oscillate between nihilism and narcissism, why meaning must be shareable, and how the K...

Why are we losing our taste for what is real—and what practices can help us recover it? John Vervaeke is joined by Guy Sengstock and Kyle Koch for a conversation on connection as something constitutive of who we are: our relationship to nature, one another, story, personhood, and the sacred. Together, they explore the practices behind the Reconnecting to the Real retreat in Whistler, British Colum...

Is civilization making us smarter while disconnecting us from what matters most? In this episode, John Vervaeke speaks with Kyle Koch, a deep nature connection practitioner and new father living in an intentional community in northern British Columbia, about applying Vervaeke's work to raise children with belonging and connectedness. Together they explore cognition as a dynamical developmental pro...

What does it mean to "see God again" after modernity has taught us to look for the sacred in all the wrong ways? In this special Lectern conversation, John Vervaeke is joined by Guy Sengstock for a deep reflection on John's three-part course trilogy, Seeing God Again for the First Time . John invited Guy to watch the courses and respond not only to their arguments, but to the way the courses enact...

What is applied metatheory - and why might it matter for ordinary people trying to make sense of reality, meaning, spirituality, and complexity? In this live Q&A from The Lectern, Ethan Hsieh speaks with Brendan Graham Dempsey about metatheory, meaning-making, complexity, and the spiritual task of learning to feel at home in the universe. Brendan introduces his work as Director of Research at the...

What happens when wonder is reduced to curiosity, and curiosity becomes a drive to master everything? In this second conversation with William Desmond, John Vervaeke returns to the question of astonishment: not as a passing emotional state, but as a deeper opening of the mind to reality. Desmond frames scientism as a philosophical interpretation of science that tries to make all essential question...

What happens when a society possesses extraordinary technological power but lacks a shared sense of what that power is for? John Vervaeke, Jordan Hall, Guy Sengstock, and Christopher Mastropietro reunite for a sustained inquiry into normativity: the structures by which human beings perceive direction, value, responsibility, and the difference between better and worse action. The question becomes u...

What if pilgrimage is not primarily about reaching a destination, but about learning how to be addressed by reality again? In this episode of Lectern Dialogues, John Vervaeke speaks with Ish Peregrino, a practitioner, facilitator, and pilgrim whose very chosen name carries the meaning of pilgrimage. John met Ish during his own pilgrimage in Spain, and their conversation returns to the question of...

Can transcendence still make philosophical sense after modernity? John Vervaeke speaks with philosopher William Desmond about Platonism as a living tradition, the meaning of strong transcendence, and Desmond's philosophy of the metaxu: the between. The conversation builds from John's proposal that relevance realization and transjectivity are philosophically grounded in Desmond's ontological accoun...

Why is the modern world making us lose our "taste for the real," and can ancient practices like animal tracking and Socratic dialogue actually save our personhood from the "virtual matrix" of AI? John Vervaeke, Guy Sengstock, and Kyle Koch announce their second "Reconnecting to the Real" retreat and outline what each will teach: Kyle offers nature-connection practices such as tracking and bird lan...

What if the question is not simply whether life has meaning, but how our capacity for meaning develops? In this Lectern conversation, Ethan Hsieh speaks with Brendan Graham Dempsey about his upcoming course,  Matters Over Time: How the Sacred and Significant Evolve in Self and Society . Brendan introduces the course through his own experience of a meaning crisis, which led him to ask how meaning-m...

What if flow, insight, and mystical experience are different scales of the same underlying process? In this standalone Lectern episode, John Vervaeke speaks with Hüseyin and Daniel about their recently published paper on the cognitive continuum: a framework that moves from fluency to insight, flow, mystical experience, and transformation. The discussion develops Vervaeke's earlier work on relevanc...

What does it mean to say the world is fundamentally open for play - and why does it take something to even have to say it at all? In this episode - the third and final in a live-recorded three-part series with Ethan Hsieh, Taylor Barratt, and John Vervaeke - the conversation centers on Ethan as he unpacks the distinction between teaching and facilitation, the purpose of TIAMAT, and the deep person...

Thank you for joining us for this Silk Road Seminar from The Lectern. John Vervaeke is joined by Edward Slingerland for a live, unscripted dialogue exploring wisdom, cognition, spontaneity, ritual, and the relationship between ancient traditions and modern scientific understanding. Edward Slingerland is a professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia and a leading scholar of early...

What does it mean for practice to become "really real" - and how does theory help keep that experience honest? In this episode - the second in a live-recorded three-part series with Taylor Barratt, Ethan Hsieh, and John Vervaeke - the conversation centers on Taylor as he reflects on the movement between practice and theory. Taylor describes how different vocabularies can converge around a shared s...