Inner Life, Talks and Thoughts

A taste of Blake’s genius and what he might mean for us. Celebrating the release of "Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination" by Mark Vernon. The full countdown: 10.  I’ll sing to you to this soft lute, and shew you all alive The world, where every particle of dust breathes forth its joy. 9.  I give you the end of a golden string;  Only wind it into a ball,  It will lead yo...

Acknowledging that there are complementary modes of perception has become commonplace. But left-hemisphere analysis can diagnose the problem without offering much sense of how better to incorporate the right. Which is where William Blake comes in. He describes the narrowing of perception from the perspective of the wider involvement. The result is a guide to participation that is simultaneously a...

A live conversation with Mark Vernon, Katy Carr and Dexter Bentley from the Hello Goodbye Show. Who was William Blake? What might his music have sounded like? What did he say about the imagination? Why might he understand our predicament today? Mark Vernon and Katy Carr joined Dexter Bentley on Resonance FM to talk William Blake on Saturday 31st May 2025.  Katy played six songs - her settings of t...

Saint Francis was born into a world in a panic. The stabilities of the feudal world had collapsed with the rise of mercantilism. The gap between rich and poor was unsustainable and a new underclass was tearing apart the fabric of society. Then, there were the looming presence of the Mongols to the east and the transformative impact of the Islamic empire to the south - both conquerors plunging Chri...

The conviction that the natural world is obedient, adhering to laws, is a widespread assumption of modern science. But where did this idea originate and what beliefs does it imply?  In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues , Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon discuss the impact on science of the Elizabethan lawyer, Francis Bacon.  His New Instrument of Thought , or Novum Organum , published...

William Blake opens the third part of his epic poem, Jerusalem: the Emanation of the Giant Albion, with an astonishing remark. “He never can be a friend of the Human Race who is the Preacher of Natural Morality or Natural Religion.” The declaration is shocking because today, two hundred years since he first printed these lines, naturalistic explanations of morality and religion have become standar...

There is undoubtedly a new spirit of interest in Christianity abroad in the presumed secular world. Some increases in church-going are even showing up in the stats. But what can be made of the curiosity? Is it straightforwardly to be welcomed? Are there dark sides to newfound enthusiasms? Elizabeth Oldfield is the author of Fully Alive and host of The Sacred Podcast. She has been engaging with the...

Ibn ‘Arabi is arguably the greatest philosopher in the Islamic world, though controversial; Seal of the Mohammedan Saints, as he is known, alongside Shaykh al-Akbar, he is becoming more important again, especially against a backdrop of fundamentalism. Born into a noble family in Anadalusian, Moorish Spain, he adopted the Sufi way of life after a revelation. He was to leave Iberia and travel east a...

The extraordinary spread of Islam after 632 - from Central Asia to North Africa in a century - reached Europe from the eighth century, generating issues still energising to this day. Not ones of religion, though, but of technology. Within a few generations, the devices of the new civilisation hit the Iberian peninsula: vertical axis windmills, the clocks of Ibn Khalaf al-Muradi, astrolabes. Anxiet...

The first in a series of talks I’ll be posting in anticipation of my new book, Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination, out in June/Sept (UK/US). Do consider pre-ordering! (Thanks: it really helps early sales and so bookshop notice.) “The best overall study of Blake I have encountered in a very long time. A joy to read, well worthy of its extraordinary hero,’ says Rowan Williams.

Owen Barfield was the genius Inkling, said CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. But why does he so much matter today? They consider how Owen Barfield addresses the idea of secularism developed by Charles Taylor and why that might matter in a cultural moment that feels like a folk in the road.  They speak personally of how Barfield touched them and why his insights might matter to the psychedelic renaissance....

Much of the modern world has become uncoupled from the transcendent in a cultural experiment Nietzsche called the death of God. But might this spiritual crisis prove to be a time of rebirth?  In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, recorded live at an event organised by the Temenos Academy, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon discuss the evolution of wisdom traditions from west and east al...

A discussion with Jason Baxter, Nicholas Colloff and Mark Vernon. The Abolition of Man is a series of three lectures given by C.S. Lewis in defence of objective value, arguing that modernity has undermined our humanity by uncoupling intellect from instinct. With hearts divorced from minds, first the world empties of presence, then life empties of meaning and people become “men without chests”. Tha...

Darwinian evolution shapes modern biology, but the notion of evolution has a wider history, too.  In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon explore linear and cyclical conceptions of human and cosmic evolution and ask what they can mean in the modern world, where innovation and evolution appear to be escalating.  They consider the significance of two main...

Francis Lucille is teaching of Advaita Vedanta who brings together nonduality with science, amongst other subjects, his past having been in physics. Here, he talks with Mark Vernon about the universality of consciousness and how that fits with modern physics, theories of consciousness and the inspiration of wisdom traditions. For more on Francis see - https://francislucille.com For more on Mark se...

Mysticism is a modern word, as Simon Critchley discusses in his tremendous new book, On Mysticism. And its novelty is not a happy intervention in the history of mystics and their significance, Fundamental aspects of the insights pursued by figures such as Mother Julian and Meister Eckhart are obscured by the focus on peak or exceptional experiences. Our discussion seeks to gain a sense of recovery...

Nick Cave and Tom Holland discussed Christianity in an event organised by Unherd entitled In Search of Wild Gods on Thursday 9th January 2025. Chaired by Freddie Sayers, the conversation revolved around whether and why there is renewed interest in Christianity.  Tom Holland’s book Dominion has become a staple of learned comment, with its thesis that pretty much all the values that shape our societ...

Sermon One (in Walshe, Complete Mystical Works) has become known as capturing the essence of Meister Eckhart’s thought. “Here, in time, we are celebrating the eternal birth which God the Father bore and bears unceasingly in eternity, because this same birth is now born in time, in human nature.” And why does this lofty thought matter? “What does it avail me that this birth is happening, if it does...

Forms are all around us: clouds, flowers, creatures, even systems of thought and logical relations. And yet the nature of forms is rarely part of the modern scientific conversation.  In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon discuss the importance of forms and how they work. The need for form to account for life as we know it has been eclipsed by the mecha...

The new issue of VALA, the magazine of the Blake Society, is all about God. I've an article in it on Blake's mystical knowledge of God. "I am in you, you are in me, mutual in love divine." Blake could hardly have been stronger in his views that naturalistic explanations for religion, and what would now be called non-real theologies, are inadequate - and, indeed, insufficient in...

The resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury has highlighted the horrendous nature of abuse in the church and also the church’s difficulties in dealing with these individuals. But is focusing on individuals enough or trying to address these matters through safeguarding and moral injunctions? Those elements are no doubt necessary. But I think also not sufficient.  Recent events have reminded me...

Martin Shaw and Mark Vernon return for a second conversation following Martin’s embrace of Orthodox Christianity. The first conversation, entitled The Mossy Face of Christ, can be found on my YouTube channel. They discuss what is happening with the apparent resurgence of interest in Christianity, not least in relation to Martin’s new course, The Skin-Boat and the Star. How can we discern the times...

One of the premises of modern science is that nature is devoid of purposes. Instead, purposeless explanations for phenomena are sought. And the strategy has proved hugely productive. Except that allusions to purpose never quite fade from the scientific imagination.  In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon explore the ways in which the natural world is in...

The 1500th anniversary of the death of Boethius more than likely falls in 2024. He asks a key question: how to find true, lasting, reliable happiness? His answer, The Consolation of Philosophy, was a mediaeval bestseller, massively influencial, and is also very readable. So what do Boethius and, in particular, Lady Philosophy tell us?

All Things Are Full Of Gods is David Bentley Hart’s philosophical case for an idealist and theist understanding of consciousness, understood as an intertwining of mind, language and life. As he puts it: “Mind and life, and language too, are possibly only by way of a kind of “downward causation” that informs their “upward” evolution in particular beings.” The book is also a careful debunking of mat...