The two hemispheres hypothesis, championed by Iain McGilchrist, has become well-known. But what light does it cast on modern society and our direction of travel? The nature of overweening bureaucracy, technologies of control, and the narrowing of freedom are explored in this conversation between Iain and Mark Vernon. They discuss issues from the legacy of the Covid pandemic to the story that modern humanity has come to tell itself about who we are. It turns out that now is a moment to be concern...
Apr 15, 2022•1 hr 12 min
Each week, on Thursdays, we meet for Idler Drinks online, at which I give a short talk. We're not meeting over Easter, so this is an extra, reflecting on the Isenheim Altarpiece and the extraordinarily moving experience of Marian Partington, to ask how pain might be born when so much of it surrounds us. A written version of the reflection is online here - https://www.idler.co.uk/article/mark-vernons-thought-of-the-week/.
Apr 11, 2022•8 min
Is the resurrection a miracle? Are the events of Golgotha a mystery? And what of the resurrection of the body and attempts to prove what happened as an historical fact? William Blake argued passionately that treating Easter as a miracle or a mystery entirely misses its significance, which is visionary - a moment when perceptions are cleansed and eternal life becomes manifest. In this talk, I examine his images of the resurrection and crucifixion to see how he saw them as one moment of transforma...
Apr 10, 2022•35 min
This conversation is part of the Living Mirrors podcast, hosted by neuroscientist James Cooke, exploring topics like consciousness, science, spirituality, meditation and the renaissance in psychedelic research.
Mar 30, 2022•56 min
A discussion of two new books on human evolution by leading evolutionary biologists, Robin Dunbar and Simon Conway Morris. Dunbar offers a revisionary account of the emergence of religion in Homo sapiens. Conway Morris considers widespread myths in Darwinian evolution, of which he is a leading researcher and advocate. Put together, the books suggest a fascinating glimpse into not only the religious past of humans but the religious future. The trance and mystical states which so captivated our an...
Mar 16, 2022•25 min
I turned to William Blake seeking hope and found a remarkably accurate account of our times and his, lived during the Napoleonic Wars. Albion despairs, but Blake does not. He sees a pathway, denying nothing, towards renewed inspiration.
Mar 12, 2022•34 min
The second part of my conversation with Jonas Atlas, host of Revisioning Religion about spiritual development. Mark Vernon's latest book takes a deep dive into Dante's Divine Comedy, a classic masterpiece, which, after many centuries, still provides many helpful insights for those who find themselves on a spiritual journey. We place Dante's work in a longer lineage that can be traced to the philosophers of Ancient Greece. Often, those philosophers are presented as purely 'rational' thinkers who'...
Mar 11, 2022•4 min
A conversation with Jonas Atlas, host of Revisioning Religion about spiritual development. Mark Vernon's latest book takes a deep dive into Dante's Divine Comedy, a classic masterpiece, which, after many centuries, still provides many helpful insights for those who find themselves on a spiritual journey. We place Dante's work in a longer lineage that can be traced to the philosophers of Ancient Greece. Often, those philosophers are presented as purely 'rational' thinkers who's thinking was repre...
Mar 10, 2022•1 hr 20 min
Witnessing so many Ukrainians responding courageously to the Russian invasion is moving and impressive. There is violence and suffering and death. And yet, in the midst of the undoubted tragedy, there can be detected the distinct presence of hope. Points of light outshine the darkness. What is the source of this faith and powerful resilience? I think it must be the deepest type of liberty, to align yourself with what is good, beautiful and true - a freedom that cannot be taken away from you. It ...
Mar 04, 2022•10 min
The recent work of the psychiatrist and philosopher, Iain McGilchrist, allows us to bring the role of dualities in spiritual perception right up to date. He has shown how brain lateralisation facilitates two types of perception. They are asymmetric, both required in right relation for the fullest awareness of the world, which is so often lacking in our times. In this session we will weave in insights on relationally and suffering, limits and embodiment, panentheism and trinitarianism, as well as...
Feb 28, 2022•1 hr 18 min
Perception is cleansed in the struggles of life, William Blake realised, as his own life was lived between heaven and hell, innocence and experience, vision and labour. Opposites are the energy that bring the power to see through surfaces to Eternity. Blake offers maps that chart the transformation from the narrow sight of Ulro to the full embrace of divine vision. In this talk I consider Blake's use of verse and imagery to awaken our consciousness; the critique he developed of the mechanical ph...
Feb 28, 2022•1 hr 13 min
Much is now known about Stonehenge. Wonderful artefacts have been recovered, a welter on display at the British Museum's gobsmacking 2022 show. But much mystery remains. How to interpret the past? Why do stone circles still draw us? What did our ancestors know? They participated in life differently. They weren't waiting to be us, though we yearn to hear from them, via the sciences of archeology and the brilliance of exhibitions. And the insights of the rites, rituals, trances and treasures that ...
Feb 20, 2022•19 min
A talk as part of the Dualities series with the Pari Centre, running through February 2022. For more information see - https://paricenter.com/event/dualities/2022-02-06/ In this talk, I discuss dualities in Plato. The ancient Greek is often accused of dualism, though the word itself didn’t exist at the time, which points to a subtler and crucial reassessment of what the philosopher was driving at. He recognised that experience is often shaped by seeming dualities, through which we can become mor...
Feb 10, 2022•58 min
What might Christianity have for us today? How might it stories still speak? Where to find what’s right in the tradition? I was delighted to speak with Paul Kingsnorth, whose substack and other writings since his conversion to Christianity, are helping to galvanise a new debate about religion in our society. We explore the need for more than cultural Christianity and its moral imperatives, to ask about its almost lost mystical side, and where and how that might be found. That matters not only fo...
Feb 08, 2022•1 hr 16 min
he hard problem of consciousness. Imagination as an "overheated brain". A future in the Cloud or Metaverse. William Blake was a thinker as well as poet and artist. His prophetic punch comes from seeing through the mode of living he saw developing in his times, that so powerfully shape our own. In this talk, I use five of his great sayings, as well as the insights of contemporary philosopher, David Bentley Hart, to reflect on the mental fight increasingly required to stay in touch with our person...
Feb 05, 2022•38 min
How can we find a way through conflicts in and around science? What about experts and simplifications, uncertainties and advice, control and its consequences? Tensions are only going to get worse as the fallout and impact of Covid becomes clearer. In this talk, I consider two notions of power, as explored in the New Testament: dunamis, which might be thought of grace and space power or the power of love; and exousia, which is the power exercised by authorities and might be thought of as command ...
Jan 30, 2022•20 min
William Blake died in the apartment he shared with Catherine Blake on Sunday 12 August 1827. A contemporary letter reports: "He died ... in a most glorious manner. He said He was going to that Country he had all His life wished to see & expressed Himself Happy, hoping for Salvation through Jesus Christ – Just before he died His Countenance became fair. His eyes Brighten'd and he burst out Singing of the things he saw in Heaven." 3 Fountain Court is now part of the Savoy complex, which I visi...
Jan 28, 2022•14 min
Rupert Spira and I met for a second conversation, beginning with one of William Blake's great exclamations of nondual awareness: “Awake! awake O sleeper of the land of shadows, wake! expand! I am in you and you in me, mutual in love divine I am not a God afar off, I am a brother and friend; Within your bosoms I reside, and you reside in me: Lo! we are One” We discussed the meanings of suffering and death that feel so needed and neglected in our times; different possibilities for the experience o...
Dec 14, 2021•1 hr 25 min
William Blake used his infernal methods subtly to critique Christmas via his illustrations to Milton's ode, On the Morning of Christ’s Nativity. He sought to reveal how its message of eternity is distorted by worldly vision. Blake objected to the gentle Jesus, meek and mild, of the stable. He pushed against the humble child, pointing out that Jesus disobeyed and dismayed his parents, not in rebellion, but because his vision was divine. Blake writes in The Everlasting Gospel: "If Moral Virtue was...
Dec 09, 2021•35 min
Our times are marked by divides that will remain, possibly deepen. Has the Divine Comedy anything meaningful to offer a riven state? For more thoughts on Dante, and a guide to the Divine Comedy, have a dig around my YouTube channel or website - https://www.markvernon.com...
Dec 01, 2021•8 min
Some talk about God too much. Others are said to be too embarrassed ever to do so. I think much of the pickle around God-talk arises from a fundamental, modern mistake. God is not an object to be proven, evidenced or possessed. God is the subjectivity of existence itself - beyond talk, though talk we must do, because talk too is already in God. I muse on what that might mean, not least when it comes to talking about God. 01:11 Why the religiously wary seem religiously alive 02:40 The mistake of ...
Nov 21, 2021•58 min
I'm talking about an essay that can be found online at the Perspectiva website - https://systems-souls-society.com/spiritual-intelligence-what-it-is-why-its-needed-how-it-might-return/
Nov 11, 2021•5 min
I much enjoyed the conversation with Hetta Howes, Matthew Sweet and Francesca Stavrakopoulou on God: An Anatomy. It was broadcast on BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m00114py ). We had a good conversation over profound differences, which I develop further here. I think they matter, not just as an academic spat, in this case about God, embodiment and Plato. But because understanding the Athenian right offers a path back to a participative, life-giving relationship w...
Nov 06, 2021•29 min
Few have explored the nature of being human more directly than Charles Foster. He writes about his experiences in the wild in his books, Being A Beast and, most recently, Being A Human, raising profound questions about our awareness of the natural world in the past, present and future. The evolving nature of our perceptions of ourselves and the cosmos is also close to the work of Mark Vernon, both as a psychotherapist and writer. Are we Homo sapiens, narrans, scientificus, ignorans, noeticus - o...
Nov 01, 2021•50 min
The British historian, Arnold Toynbee, is currently out of fashion. The British poet and artist, William Blake, is not, though he is rarely well understood. So what might they have to say to our times? Toynbee strove to understand the inner as well as outer processes of history, developing a theory he called etherialisation. Blake appreciated the destructive power of the dark, Satanic mills, with their loss of divine imagination. Bring them together, and the two perspectives are remarkably illum...
Oct 31, 2021•23 min
The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow does a great job at debunking the big histories of figures like Noah Yuval Harari and Stephen Pinker, but at a cost that ultimately undermines their argument. In this discussion and critique of a wonderfully disruptive book, I outline their case and some of the evidence, argue that they are implicitly advocating a state of nature myth, based on reason not Eden or violence, and suggest that this, unwittingly, rec...
Oct 25, 2021•42 min
Our carbon consuming culture has completely internalised the belief "that the world is made up of dead stuff plus active minds and acquisitive wills,” wrote Rowan Williams in This Is Not A Drill: An Extinction Rebellion Handbook. We have forgotten the spiritual intelligence that knows how to align with the natural intelligence embodied in the living world. To escape the toxicity of this mindset, Williams continues, will require radical change at the level of lifestyle and industry, yes. But more...
Oct 17, 2021•28 min
The label “gnostic” is used to recommend and condemn. So what is, and what was, Gnosticism? This episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, with Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon, takes a lead from a series of fascinating essays exploring the ancient movement and its modern forms by the philosopher, David Bentley Hart. Gnosticism was originally a set of cosmologies which shared the sense that the created order was blocked from the celestial spheres by angelic and demonic powers. It was remarkably...
Oct 06, 2021•30 min
What is the direct path of Advaita Vedanta and why is it significant for so many now? How is it found across traditions, including within Christianity? Why might it matter to us today, collectively as well as individually? What are its links to psychotherapy, individuality, freedom, God? Mark Vernon talks with Rupert Spira about these questions and more. 0:34 What is the direct path and why is it of significance now? 13:59 If awareness of awareness is the start, what happens next? 17:20 Why migh...
Sep 21, 2021•1 hr 31 min
Meditation, yoga, vegetarianism. Eastern practices have become a feature of western life. But what do we learn from them? This episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, with Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon, is prompted by a sense that the western way of life is being challenged, if not facing a full-on crisis. As Rowan Williams puts it in his new book, Looking East In Winter, climate change and environmental degradation are leading to a sense of needing not a programme or an ideology but an ep...
Aug 18, 2021•37 min
