Inner Life, Talks and Thoughts

The rituals around death and dying are changing in the UK and across the developed world. Medical care advances, which is for the good, though can mean to a loss of other kinds of wisdom about this facet of life. People’s beliefs and convictions about death are also in a state of flux. The think tank, Theos, has extensively researched this changing landscape, so I was very glad to speak with Madel...

A conversation with actor, Jamie Robson, whom I met through the work of Rupert Spira. 00:00 Meeting through Rupert Spira 03:26 Nondualism and Christian mysticism 06:02 Nondualism and acting 15:00 Being and doing 19:40 Detachment and Meister Eckhart 26:48 Two modes of perception in Iain McGilchrist and others 32:43 Double vision and a re-enchanted world 37:30 UFOs and levitation as cases 49:45 Ever...

Born in Nigeria and raised in the UK since the age of 4, Chine McDonald is well placed to explore love in different cultural contexts, and what happens when differences meet. We talked about how differences show up particularly in relation to the practicalities of loving, from house design to how people talk at funerals, as well as wider questions such as images of God and the critiquing and ideal...

Environmental degradation caused by technological progress is in the news almost everyday. So can any sense be made of an ancient intuition that human beings are not just part of nature but have a distinctive and positive role to play in nature?  In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon discuss issues from the significance of consciousness to cosmic emerg...

Christmas risks losing its meaning not only because of the commercial frenzy but because of the way it is talked about in churches. In this conversation, Russell Jefford talks about his discovery of the understanding of the incarnation conveyed in the writings of the early church fathers. They were unknown to him as an evangelical Christian and have refreshed his love of Christianity now. Together...

“A worldview that understands indigeneity is a paradigm of regeneration, a worldview rooted in enduring values in what we call our original instructions, common themes of reciprocity, of gratitude, of responsibility, of generosity, of forgiveness, of humility, of courage, of sacrifice, and of course love. But these values are not just words, we need to live them.” Melissa Nelson In this conversati...

Clare Martin is co-director of the St Ethelburga’s Centre for Reconciliation and Peace, located in the heart of the City of London. In this conversation, we spoke about what love can look like in the public square, particularly in contexts of crisis and conflict, and how encounters between peoples can be designed so as to foster love as a resource and active dynamic.  The conversation ranged over...

VALA can be downloaded as a pdf here - https://blakesociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/VALA-04.pdf My essay is at p60 For more on Mark - www.markvernon.com

What is the role of love in public life? Can it have a place given the scrutiny faced by leaders and the processes of bureaucracies? Or is love what we need to face the huge challenges of today, from distrust of public institutions to the environmental crisis? Claire Gilbert is the author of several books, a fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, has served on several public and advisory bodies, and...

Constellations, also called family systems, is a way of visualising the dynamics of love that operate in any group that has to do with creativity or life.  A constellation workshop brings people together to look at predicaments with which people are wrestling, be they personal or organisational. The goal is to find a design that releases and acknowledges the love that yearns to find a way forward,...

Do our minds reside solely inside our heads, or perhaps bodies? Or do they extend into the wider world, perhaps even reaching to the stars?  In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon discuss the extended mind theory, taking a lead from recent work of Rupert’s on the sense of being stared at, and also the problems that contemporary science has with understa...

Robin Dunbar is an Oxford evolutionary psychologist who has written extensively about friendship, amongst other things, not least in relation to “Dunbar’s Number”. We talked about what friendship is, and how it differs from other loves. We explored the varieties of friendship that people experience, and why metaphors such as “circles of friends” are so significant. Numbers are illuminating when it...

Bishop Barron is another figure I think worth listening to, who spoke at ARC in London, alongside Jordan Peterson. Like Peterson, he simultaneously leaves me as wary as enthused.  I’ve explained where that took me with Peterson in another short talk. Here’s where I’ve ended up in response to Barron, which interesting is also, in my view, with a richer, fuller sense of Christianity untamed, unleash...

All in all, there is much to consider in Jordan Peterson’s latest passionate suggestions. I think he is right to present a vision of the human good coming from the future, thereby calling us and shaping a meaningful life now. The human self needs a sense of itself that exceeds an otherwise atomised, lonely individualism. However, in may view, Peterson celebrates faith and responsibility at the ris...

Thinking carefully, not just apocalyptically, about AIs requires a combination of skills - technological, sociological, psychological, philosophical, organisational. So I was delighted to talk with Eve Poole, who is a rare individual capable of bringing all these elements into her work.  Our central question was how to build AIs so as to design out risk and design in love. It turns out that the tw...

Churches are in decline, certainly in the western world. People tend not to think to turn to a priest for spiritual insight or advice. But is a lived relationship with the sacred and wisdom traditions denuded as organised religion disappears?  In this Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogue, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon talk about religious institutions for good and ill. Rupert picks up on a new book by Ali...

At the beginning of Idler Drinks (see www.idler.co.uk), I offer a thought. Here's the one from this week.

Owen Barfield talked of an evolution of consciousness towards final participation. But what is that state or quality awareness? How does it relate to the life of Christ? How was it described by Rudolf Steiner? Can we see and know intimations of it now? In this second discussion with Landon Loftin and Max Leyf, we explore the ideas of freedom and individuality, modernity and language, kenosis and r...

Why do we love? Is love inevitably a foolhardy endeavour? Or does it lead to a knowledge of reality beyond reason? In this discussion, Robert Rowland Smith and Mark Vernon discuss the ideas of Freud and Lacan, Bowlby and Winnicott, who had differing ideas about the nature of love and where it leads. Is love the idealisation of another, which inevitably leads to frustration and loss? Is love the re...

What golden thread might link these writers across the centuries? Why might each matter now? Taking a lead from Valentin’s book, Shakespeare and the Grace of Words, we explore how the finite and infinite meet in dialogue, analogy, play and contrary, arguing that Plato, Nicholas of Cusa, Shakespeare and William Blake directly address our times of crisis and separation. For more on Valentin’s book s...

What is meant by the unconscious? Is it even a "thing"? Why does it seemingly originate with Freud? How useful is the concept? How can it be worked with? In this discussion, Robert Rowland Smith and Mark Vernon explore the history of this central notion in psychoanalysis. They look at the different articulations of it, particularly in Freud and Jung, and ask how it links to other ideas s...

Prayer, alongside meditation, is an integral part of religious traditions. God can be prayed to but also saints and angels.  In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert and Mark ask whether and why prayer is not widely discussed, how prayer can be practiced, and what prayer might be.  They share personal practices of prayer and explore the agency of angels and saints. They ask about...

Robert Rowland Smith and Mark Vernon discuss these two dynamics of projection. Transference and countertransference have become core to psychoanalysis, though Freud and others were initially very wary of them. So what are the limits to using the feelings that fill a therapy room?  How can the set-up of the room itself affect such things? How can transference and countertransference be unethically...

AI can be understood by the many, not just the few. We don’t need to respond to technologist and media hype via fear and the call for another lockdown, this time on AI development. I hope ten points are illuminating. 1. The Turing test has been passed, but it never was a very good test to start with. 2. The AI industry thrives on the promise of tomorrow and is often led by those confusing themselv...

What exactly is narcissism? Why is it so debilitating and troubling? Must everyone face narcissistic impulses and needs?    In this discussion, Robert Rowland Smith and Mark Vernon explore the origins of narcissism in ancient myth and contemporary psychoanalysis. They explore the variety of pathological narcissisms, how it can be treated and whether a society increasingly online is at risk of beco...