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 of much Christianity in modern culture? These questions are asked by Elizabeth Oldfield, host of The Sacred po...
Oct 25, 2022•50 min
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 the inside of the whole world. Christianity itself would recover its experiential, mystical core, t...
Oct 21, 2022•55 min
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 what has been called the “rewilding” of Christianity and whether traditional apologetics has run out of ...
Oct 07, 2022•39 min
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 of “full strength Christianity” is a regular concern of my thoughts on Dante, William Blake, Owen B...
Oct 03, 2022•9 min
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 laws of physics, as well as space and time, are the same in all times and places. I also raise the tho...
Sep 27, 2022•1 hr 47 min
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 published in Resurgence magazine. In this talk, I unpack what the new king said and ask why it matters....
Sep 09, 2022•7 min
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 phenomenologically rather than just physically. Here, I offer a different conception again, that I think is useful now - ...
Aug 25, 2022•26 min
I enjoyed Jordan Peele's movie, Nope. But what is it saying? NOTE: This comment is full of spoilers!
Aug 22, 2022•9 min
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, politics and humanity sits uncomfortably alongside the received wisdom of today, in both secular and Christian domains...
Aug 21, 2022•38 min
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, found in his 21 illustrations. In this set of reflections, I ask what Blake shows us in each of his plates, and...
Aug 02, 2022•1 hr 2 min
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 argues overcomes "philosophical pathologies", from reductive materialism to nihilistic atheism, as well as ...
Jul 27, 2022•52 min
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
Jul 22, 2022•44 min
A talk give at St Matthew's Church, Wimbledon, London on 12th July 2022.
Jul 16, 2022•1 hr 17 min
A walk through the labyrinth at Penpont, with thanks to William Blake.
Jul 16, 2022•21 min
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 as the calling to share in a living cosmos to the business of coping with sceptics, which is not with...
Jul 14, 2022•39 min
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 stressed, this is so important for freeing ourselves from their deterministic anticipations of the futu...
Jul 10, 2022•7 min
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...
Jun 28, 2022•12 min
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 beauty, reverence, longing, delight 47:43 Suffering and living in a violent world 55:22 Eschatology a...
Jun 19, 2022•1 hr 25 min
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 does this rediscovery of Christianity mean to him? 51:56 What does this mean for the “Christian cur...
Jun 14, 2022•1 hr 17 min
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 contexts and across time, looking at Christian, Sufi, Platonic and other insights. The aim will be to ...
Jun 02, 2022•1 hr 39 min
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
Jun 01, 2022•3 min
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 acute in times of crisis, though times of crisis also offer moments to understand love move fully. ...
May 25, 2022•1 hr 13 min
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 cultural. Here, I discuss facets of his insight that suggest seven elements in which the psychedelic experience ove...
May 24, 2022•30 min
" More! More! is the cry of a mistaken soul, less than All cannot satisfy Man," wrote William Blake. How we might participate in the All, without consuming more and more, can serve as a summary of Blake's vision and vocation. All he did was, in a way, an increasingly extended, expansive reflection on how to live in the presence of infinity. The mistakes we make, when confusing this eternity with mere accumulation, offer an analysis of the modern predicament. Blake realised that there is no point...
May 21, 2022•36 min
The reality TV star, Tyler Henry, became famous with his celebrity readings. His new Netflix series, Life After Death, is a chance to consider what he does in a different light. My sense is he is one of the relatively rare highly gifted clairvoyants, who have impressed investigators like William James. I'm also struck by how his way of working resonates with psychotherapeutic phenomena like countertransference, as well as the testimony of Dante in the Divine Comedy. Tyler Henry challenges worldv...
May 16, 2022•20 min
The land commons are the shared material resources that nobody in particular might own, and everyone might have, though they are routinely taken from us. Land and forests, water and minerals. The spiritual commons are the being of life itself that nobody owns and everyone has. And arguably, they are being taken from us even more carelessly and callously.... For more on Idler Drinks see - https://www.idler.co.uk For more on Nick Hayes see - https://www.foghornhayes.com For more on Mark Vernon see...
May 07, 2022•8 min
A conversation on wrestling with Christianity - or perhaps more accurately, the Christianities that swirl around the figure of Jesus - at the Medicine Path podcast, #87, with Brian James. For more on Brian - http://medicinepathpodcast.com, http://brianjames.ca For more on Owen Barfield and his take on Christianity - https://www.markvernon.com/consciousness
May 04, 2022•1 hr 7 min
Modern Stoicism is more diverse than I knew, I learnt when I spoke with Simon Drew, Kai Whiting and Sharon Lebell. In particular, the divine element in ancient Stoicism, which was central, has not been discarded by everyone involved in the recent Stoic revival. In this conversation, we talk about Stoicism, the Logos, the cosmos, Christianity, and the spiritual path of Dante’s Divine Comedy. I hope it's enjoyable. For more on The Walled Garden - https://thewalledgarden.com...
Apr 28, 2022•1 hr 20 min
Politics and religion is a question of our times. The role of the church and Christianity is contested in both Russia and the liberal West. William Blake was aware of the failure of politics in his time, recognising it wasn't ultimately a failure of leadership or practical solutions but of vision. What politics is for? What role do religious institutions play in it? What has been lost in the Babylon materialism of today? Blake applied his deepest perceptions and devised a dynamic fourfold schema...
Apr 25, 2022•43 min
The scientific study of religion has produced numerous accounts for the evolutionary origins of a sense of the numinous in Homo sapiens. Robin Dunbar, Professor of Evolutionary Psychology at Oxford, is in the vanguard of plausible theories, not least as explored in his new book, How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures. In this interview, for the Church Times podcast, we explore his ideas and their ramifications: - how the religiosity of Homo sapiens exceeds others Homo species - how mystical exp...
Apr 21, 2022•40 min
