Inner Life, Talks and Thoughts

We live in an age of emergency, exacerbated by a collapse of meaning. Writer and psychotherapist, Mark Vernon, examines the type of intelligence that, whilst often dismissed and overlooked, is crucial to understand and cultivate if we are to survive and thrive in our times.  Spiritual intelligence is the foundation of who we are and our particular type of consciousness. It is the perception identi...

Rishi Sunak is Britain’s first Hindu leader. His success is a conspicuous manifestation of the deep links that exist between Indian and English culture. It reaches back William Blake, an early reader of the Bhagavad Gita after it was translated into English. His angel-morphic figures and Vedantic impulses would have been developed with his reading, helping him to restore the unitive sense of reali...

A number of public figures, in literature and ideas, have recently been talking about discovering Christianity, or perhaps it'd be better to say, being discovered by Christianity. So what's going on with this renewed interest? Why now? How can this be talked about? What kind of Christianity are they being draw to and captured by? And what does their experience say about the inadequacies...

C.S Lewis is not the apologist and writer you might assume, if Jason Baxter is right. Plato, Boethius and Dante mattered immensely to a man who felt more at home in the medieval world, and longed to inspire the modern world with a half-forgotten theophany. His friend, Owen Barfield, also anticipated a transfigured today, one in which participation with divine life was known by ourselves and within...

A renewed interest in Christianity? Old traditions of myth and place revived?  In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon consider the significance of recent conversions, as confessed by figures such as Paul Kingsnorth and Martin Shaw, as well as the prominence given to Christianity by writers such as Marilynne Robinson and Jordan Peterson.  They explore wh...

Elizabeth Oldfield’s podcast, The Sacred, can be found on podcast feeds. Her conversation with Paul Kingsnorth, along with many others, is a rewarding listen. I discuss this take on the parables and Jesus’s wit more fully in my book, A Secret History of Christianity: Jesus, the Last Inkling and the Evolution of Consciousness (John Hunt Publishing). I owe the expression to Elizabeth, but the nature...

Bernard Carr is Emeritus Professor of Mathematics and Astronomy at Queen Mary, University of London. He has worked on black holes with Stephen Hawking, alongside other aspects of cosmology, and has also been president of the Society for Psychical Research.   I begin this conversation by asking about Owen Barfield’s questioning the principle of uniformitarianism in science, the assumption that the...

A little known, astonishingly personal article by King Charles provides a remarkable window onto his soul.  In it, he speaks of an extraordinary power and hope that might not only steady a moment of constitutional transition, but even calm a period of widespread and deepening social anxiety. The article was a tribute he wrote to the poet and William Blake scholar, Kathleen Raine, subsequently publ...

Sam Harris raised the question of the location of heaven, not least in the space age, when "up there" is not straightforwardly a good answer. Jonathan Pageau responded eloquently, noting that up is, of course, an analogy that might guide us towards the way in which earth and heaven are different dimensions of participation in divine reality. The ancients knew earth and heaven phenomenolo...

I enjoyed Jordan Peele's movie, Nope. But what is it saying? NOTE: This comment is full of spoilers!

William Blake saw himself as a prophet, which means that his writings challenge, even repulse, on occasion.  However, Blake's harding sayings are the moments when his greatest vision stands before us. They are worth wrestling with, if he is to become more than a poet with a compelling line that we might grab as a proof quote. In this talk, I consider how Blake's vision of nature, politic...

The Book of Job has been used to retell the Christian story, as with Carl Jung's Answer to Job. It can also be sought for what it says about suffering. The Hebrew tale inspired William Blake in a distinctive, brilliant way. It helped him to diagnose the modern predicament and its religious errors. Job's suffering and patience led Blake to a mature statement of his spiritual perception, f...

Baruch Spinoza is widely regarded as either a God-forsaking atheist or a God-intoxicated pantheist, but Clare Carlisle says that he was neither.  In her latest book, Spinoza’s Religion, she reads his masterpiece, the Ethics, to show that being-in-God lies at the heart of his nondual perception of reality.   The book unfolds a powerful philosophical vision for the modern age—one which Carlisle argu...

This is a talk I gave at the Weekend University. For more on Mark Vernon - https://www.markvernon.com For more on my book about Jung - https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/19267016-carl-jung 0:00 His distinctiveness 10:02 Dreams 16:34 Archetypes 29:41 The Self and Collective Unconscious 39:40 Synchronicities

A walk through the labyrinth at Penpont, with thanks to William Blake.

A talk give at St Matthew's Church, Wimbledon, London on 12th July 2022.

The Scientific and Medical Network organised a gathering on Friday 8th July to mark Rupert’s 80th birthday and reflect on his work.  In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert and Mark Vernon discuss the day, recalling remarks made by speakers including Merlin Sheldrake, Jill Purce, David Lorimer and Pam Smart.  They discuss a variety of themes seminal to Rupert’s work, from science...

I was delighted to meet David Wengrow at the Idler Festival. His coauthor, David Graeber, was a great friend of the Idler. David Wengrow and I spoke about their revolutionary, fascinating and inspiring book, The Dawn of Everything. It challenges the concensus history and prehistory of humanity, as found in writers such as Steven Pinker and Noah Yuval Harari. As one questioner from the audience str...

Jerusalem by Jez Butterworth, starring Mark Rylance, is brilliant. But what can be made of its violence and passion, humour and hedonism, tragedy and emptiness? Returning to the source of the famous words after which the play is named provides a clue. William Blake is right to invoke. He has something to say...

0:00 Vedantic Christianity in the Bible, as the gospel 7:58 The natural is already supernatural, our desire is for the infinite 18:26 The Trinity and nondualism as the circle of glory 23:07 Jesus and the Incarnation 29:08 Salvation as theophany 33:34 Paul and the Spirit of God within us 36:58 Creation is in eternity, returning in time 40:32 More on how we might know these things 45:03 Worship as b...

0:00 Imagination and the Imaginal in the modern world 7:20 Different kinds of power: agency, allure, contraries 10:40 The revival of myth-telling but in the first person singular 15:30 Martin’s rediscovery of Christianity 21:40 The mossy face of Christ and what happened 34:04 People’s reactions to Jesus: contraction and expansion 39:04 Martin’s discovery of mystery in an Orthodox Church 46:27 What...

It is often noted that the ancient Greeks had an advantage in possessing several words for love. Eros, philia, agape and others allowed them to be nuanced about love and navigate its differences. So is there benefit in considering how love has been understood in different wisdom traditions, too?  This conversation, hosted by the Pari Center, explores how love has been understood in various faith c...

A quick thought on the deep, inner, even esoteric history and significance of the Platinum Jubilee in the UK. The full story of monarchs and the birth of individual consciousness is part of the story told in A Secret History of Christianity: Jesus, the Last Inkling and the Evolution of Consciousness - https://www.markvernon.com/books/a-secret-history-of-christianity

There is a kind of love which brings consolation in crises. But there is also another kind of love which appears in times of crisis; indeed, can only be known through crises. This is worth considering because love is often use in nebulous or ill-defined ways, which means that its nuanced perceptions and mature forms can be hard to grasp. The need for a deeper awareness of love because particularly...

William Blake is famous for his phrase "cleansing the doors of perception". But he has much, much more to offer the renewed interest in psychedelics underway in our times. He responds to the need for a social and spiritual setting, widely recognised by those investigating psychedelics now, so that personal experiences can be not only beneficial for individuals but transformative in cultu...