Inner Life, Talks and Thoughts

Susanne Sklar and Mark Vernon explore William Blake's late, great poem, "Jerusalem the Emanation of the Giant Albion" "Of the Sleep of Ulro! and of the passage through Eternal Death! and of the awakening to Eternal Life," Blake tells us the epic is about. Albion features, as does the heroine Jersualem, as well as Jesus. So how did Blake weave together these figures? How ca...

Many people report apparitions of their loved ones after death, and even of loved dogs and cats. But how do these after-death communications align with the Christian teaching of the resurrection of the body?  In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon explore the evidence for the post-mortem appearances of humans and non-humans, and ask how it fits with the...

For the 100th episode of The Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon considered the role of harmony, wholeness and hope in the modern world. The event was held in-person as well as streamed online. The evening took as its inspiration the work of King Charles, who can be called a philosopher king. It follows the February 6 release on Amazon Prime of the documentary “Finding Har...

Christianity doesn’t do well with erotic love. The unease stems, in part, from the fact that the word “eros” doesn’t appear in the New Testament. The lacuna means that points of reference for discussions about sex are typically inadequate and thin. Command stands in for clear thinking. Then, there is Saint Paul’s remark: “marry if you must” (1 Cor 7:8-9). His ambivalence has resulted in sexual rel...

Saints, bodhisattvas and genii locorum, or spirits of place, are the names in various wisdom traditions given to guardian beings who protect, assist and inspire. So what does it mean to call on these sacred beings?  In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon discuss the role of patron saints who are associated with churches and shrines, days and names.  Wha...

In this conversation, psychotherapist and writer Dr Mark Vernon is joined by philosopher Dr Robert Rowland Smith to explore the imaginative world of J.R.R. Tolkien and the often-overlooked influence of Owen Barfield - friend of C.S. Lewis and another Inkling.

What is the meaning of religious experience? What do spiritual questers from the West find in India? Just what happened to Ramana Maharshi and others who are said to have awakened? And how does this fit with Christian teaching and belief? I talk with Clare Carlisle who has recently published a book the mixes the personal and the philosophical. Transcendence for Beginners raises many questions that...

How can we understand what is happening today from the perspective of what is sometimes called salvation history? What might be struggling to be born in our times? Why is a spiritual analysis - an unfolding of consciousness - key? The talk was delivered at The School of Myth, “Wild Christ”, weekend with Martin Shaw, Rowan Williams, Heather Pollington and others. I use the insights of Owen Barfield...

The mood has shifted. Subjects that were once taboo - like God - are now discussed openly. So if a new theism is abroad, what might it bring?  In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon ask why individuals engaged in pursuits from cultural critique to theoretical biology are now actively interested in traditions such as Christianity and Platonism.  What is...

An interview with Mark Vernon at the Harvard Divinity School with Adam Walker. Mark Vernon's book is "Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination". Adam Walker’s YouTube channel is Close Reading Poetry.

The Romantic movement is a tragic movement. In response to the Enlightenment, poets and painters sought a return of feeling but failed in one crucial aspect: to ground the vision, to make clear how it is a means of truth. The result is that, alongside the wonderful, powerful presence of reason in the modern world, runs a desire to intensify feeling is if that can bring back the meaning otherwise l...

A psychotherapist, philosopher and writer drawn to the wellsprings of both ancient and modern philosophy and the illumination of the inner life. His work moves between the timeless and the modern, exploring friendship and belief, wellbeing and wonder, and the quiet art of living with depth in a restless age. His recent books trace paths through the visionary landscapes of William Blake, the awaken...

At a time of renewed interest in the spiritual, what could challenge the uninspiring notion of ‘cultural Christianity’? One answer is by embracing the esoteric.  William Blake, the painter and poet, has become a model for a new kind of rebellious spirituality. Though he spent his life in poverty and obscurity, Blake’s radical vision of the divine is now a cornerstone of modern mysticism.  Psychoth...

“Man has no Body distinct from his Soul,” declared William Blake. “Nature is imagination itself!” The human face is the “countenance divine”. Inspiring, yes. But what can we make of his sayings? Mark Vernon sat down with poet Malcolm Guite to discuss how Blake’s ideas about the imagination challenge modern ways of perceiving the world.  They stress that dismissing Blake’s converse with angels dism...

Note: This upload is a correction to the previous file uploaded under this title! The imagination is often regarded as a valuable but fanciful capacity. But what if imagination were not an optional extra, or even the possession of human beings alone, but a fundamental feature of reality? In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon draw on the ideas of Willia...

Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination is now available worldwide. To celebrate, Mark Vernon and Robert Rowland Smith discuss all things Blake from angels and images, to poetry and prophecy. For more on the book see https://www.markvernon.com/books/awake-william-blake-and-the-power-of-the-imagination

I very much enjoyed speaking with Jason Whittaker, a profound lover of Blake, because we have our differences about how Blake speaks to us and, I hope, that is illuminating. We discussed Blake the visionary and mystic, and resisting forcing Blake through the sieve of more recent psychology. We thought about how Blake speaks to us now, as a poet and analyst of the modern spirit. We examined the sig...

Why is the mechanical view of reality so strong? Why does billiard-ball atomism remain the default popular metaphysics?  William James was horrified by such “nothing buttery” and the way it substituted bare concepts for rich phenomena. A.N. Whitehead famously – or perhaps not famously enough – described the problem as the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness”. William Blake is another critic. “Gener...

Mark Vernon provides a fresh route into Blake, taking him at his word. Exploring his writings, artwork and life, Vernon illuminates Blake’s vivid worldview and shows how his thinking is still relevant for us today. Please note that the ideas expressed in this lecture do not necessarily represent the views of L’Abri Fellowship.

You may agree that the so-called hard problem of consciousness exposes the deep inadequacies of a materialist worldview.  But the alternatives - various forms of panpsychism, panentheism and idealism - raise rich and fascinating questions, too.  In this episode of The Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon explore the leading edge of consciousness research, with Rupert just b...

In my book, I want to draw out two facets of William Blake, which I think get routinely sidelined now. My conversation with Jane Clark and Nikos Yiangou enabled us to explore these dimensions. One is that Blake was a very sharp thinker. He had a very accurate and clear critique of the ideas that were beginning to bed down in his time and have really shaped our times in the modern Christian West. ...

James Harpur’s new book, "Dazzling Darkness: The Lives and Afterlives of the Christian Mystics", begins with an account of a mystical experience that happened to him - “an implosion of light”, as he describes it. That led to his book, Dazzling Darkness, in pursuit of the path that leads to ultimate reality: God. Mark Vernon’s new book, "Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imag...

Iain McGilchrist calls William Blake “the least cosy of poets and one of the most insightful that ever lived.” Blake is cited more often than most figures in Iain’s great book, "The Matter With Things". So what did Blake express that might much matter now? How did he understand key features of our humanity such as the imagination and inspiration, as well as the character of our day? In t...

A conversation from History with Chris Harding. In Mark Vernon's new book "Awake!", he argues that we’re missing something from our view of the great visionary artist William Blake. It’s that word - ‘visionary.’ Mark argues that Blake’s extraordinary art reveals an expanded experience of the world that Blake lived with every day: angels, fairies, realms beyond our own. Blake wasn’t,...

Recorded in St James’s Piccadilly, the church in which William Blake was baptised, with his life mask also present. Thoughts on Blake’s great call to us today from the launch of my new book, “Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination”.