The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 414. The Rebirth of the Sacred with John Vervaeke

Episode Date: January 15, 2024

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson sits down in person with Dr. John Vervaeke. They discuss the relationship between your calling and your conscience, the three dimensions of the sacred, how Descartes famous “I think therefore I am” conclusion might be restructured in modern day, what exactly Socrates’s Daemon was, and the bridging of morality and meaning. John Vervaeke is an Associate Professor in Cognitive Psychology and Cognitive Science at the University of Toronto. His work constructs a bridge between science and spirituality in order to understand the experience of meaningfulness and the cultivation of wisdom so as to afford awakening from the meaning crisis. This episode was recorded on January 8th, 2023  - Links - For Dr. John Vervaeke: Youtube Channel https://www.youtube.com/user/johnvervaeke After Socrates (Series) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOwjmZx12gk&list=PLND1JCRq8Vuj6q5NP_fXjBzUT1p_qYSCC The Vervaeke Foundation https://vervaekefoundation.org/ “Zombies in Western Culture: A Twenty-First Century Crisis” (book) https://www.amazon.com/Zombies-Western-Culture-Twenty-First-Century/dp/1783743298 "Mentoring the Machines: Orientation - Part One: Surviving the Deep Impact of the Artificially Intelligent Tomorrow" (Book) https://www.amazon.com/Mentoring-Machines-Orientation-Artificially-Intelligent/dp/1645010821/ref=sr_1_2?qid=1705353143&refinements=p_27%3AJohn+Vervaeke&s=books&sr=1-2&text=John+Vervaeke 

Hello, everybody. I have the pleasure today of talking with my colleague at the University of Toronto, Dr. John Verveiki. We've discussed much, many times, on my podcast and in public. And so it's a continuation of a conversation that's been going on for a very long time. We concluded today with the proposition that we're both working on the edge of what you might describe as the counter-enlightenment, which I suppose is the endeavor to place what would you say. Cognitive processes that have gone too astray into the abstract and representational back on their feet to rediscover the sacred, to rediscover what's deep and meaningful, to rectify the meaning crisis as a consequence of that rediscovery and new discovery and we delve farther into that today.

So welcome aboard. Hopefully it's useful practically and metaphysically. Happy new year, Dr. Ravanky. Happy new year, Joy. Good to see you. It's good to see you, Tanya, you're looking really good. Thank you, sir. Good to see you. It's good to see you too. You're looking really good. Thank you, sir. I've been worse.

Yeah, yeah. Well, lots of exciting things on the horizon for this year. That's for sure. It's going to be a crazy year. Yeah. Very busy for me, too. Good. What are you up to?

What are you working on intellectually? A whole bunch of book chapters and papers, presentations, and then also doing preparation. I go on sabbatical on the 25th and I'm going to film my next big series, like on, sorry, in January 2025, I meant to say, I'm going to go on sabbatical and I'm going to film my next big series. And so I'm doing lots of planning and prep for that too. So you go on sabbatical January 2025? Yes.

Uh-huh. And what are you hoping to accomplish on your sabbatical? Like I said, there's two main things I want to do. The main thing is I want to film my next big series. And this is going to tell me going on location. So it's called walking the philosophical Silk Road. And it's about trying to resurrect what the Silk Road was at one point, which was sort of a shared passageway and also a shared lingua philosophical so that people from

east and west could dialogue with each other in mutually transformative fashions, they'll sort of be starting in Europe and tracing out sort of the neopletonic tradition, So sort of starting in Europe and tracing out sort of the neoplatonic tradition and then starting in Japan and Kyoto and tracing out this end tradition and then getting this to these to sort of meet somewhere in some more canon, have a deep dialogue. It's kind of my quest to try and make myself as available as possible to what I think is happening right now, which is a new advent of the sacred as a response to the meeting crisis. New, okay, two things there, new advent of the sacred. We're going to talk about that for sure. How are you managing this, practically, this enterprise?

Well, I mean, I do have the time off for this about. Yeah, yeah. And the Verveiki Foundation is raising money for it. We've already lined up some people. I have people And the Verveki Foundation is raising money for it. We've already lined up some people. I have people in the Verveki Foundation that are working on it. Because music is going to pay a big role in animation. Yeah, yeah. I'm going to try and pick up one I'm calling the Geofilosophy. If I go to, let's say I'm doing Eckhart, you know, I go to Germany, try to pick up some

of the ambiance of his time. Yeah. And what's going on there. So the idea is provoked by sort of East and West, Telet's famous essay in the Courage to Be Where He Proposes That We Need To Somehow Make Way For What He Calls the God Beyond the God of Theosam. And then you have something similar from the Kyoto School represented in Robert Carter's introduction of the Kyoto School to the West, which is the nothingness beyond God.

And Zen and Neoplatanism are both doing this and what's interesting in this the possibility for them to interact with each other in a sort of mutually correcting fashion that could afford something coming to birth. No one will own the Silk Road and no one did. It will be a way in which people can travel between different homes. And so, like I said, the idea is to try and investigate thinkers from Europe, from Indonesia, and to do that on location, and to bring that to as wide an audience as possible.

Yeah, as much as it's safely possible. I mean, there's very places I'd love to go, like Syria, because I want to do, I want to do Dinesis, the area of apigate, but Syria, of course, is not a place I'm going to travel to right now. But so as many places as I can possibly go to. So what's the Verveki Foundation? Oh, so the Verveki Foundation is, well, it's a non-profit, for profit, set up in which all the money from Patreon, advertising, donations, books, it all funnels in there.

And then I get an honorarium, which is no more than like 25% of the income. And then the rest goes, we have somebody who works full-time, Christopher Master of Pietro, who's Executive Director. We have a chair, which is Ryan Barton. And Ryan Barton actually came to me.

He said, my work had a huge impact on him. And he wanted to reciprocate. And he is basically an entrepreneur that helps to set up other businesses, as a business organization. He is a godsend. We have Ted Arbaret, who works sort of 40% for us. He's in charge of all of the practices.

We have a platform called Awakened Demenium, where you can go. You can join a meditation session. You can learn how to do dialectic and to do logos. You can take a bunch of different courses on a bunch of different things. We have Ethan Say, he manages sort of partnerships. We have a whole bunch of volunteer people. Right now they're working on a Codex. What they're doing is they're going through all of my work

and they're creating and kind of like a wiki at many different levels of access of our academic level sort of first year university, high school level. If you try doing that with AI? We're gonna be using some AI with it. And I've also got somebody who did it previously for me for a couple of the courses I taught at U of T.

So you know the course you taught for Peterson Academy. So the man who's working on our large language model systems has taken the transcriptions of all those courses and you'll be able to ask the course a question. Right. And so the same could be done with all your work. Right. So you'll have a, so one of my Victor, again, he did this for me recently on the basis of this book that I've been writing. And now I can take everything I've written. So I've written a lot of commentary on biblical chapters. Now I can take a story or a narrative fragment that I haven't analyzed. And I can ask the AI to interpret it. And it'll

interpret it on the basis of the work that I've already done in the book. And I've been playing with it. We only put it together in the last two weeks. I've been playing with it in the last two weeks. And it's not rare for that system to be able to crack a verse that I didn't understand. So this is a very weird thing to play with, right? Because at least in principle, it's predicated on thoughts I've already had, although obviously it's predicated on the statistical relationship. That's coming out of the model. Yeah, yeah. And so it's really, well, it's anicated on the statistical relationship. That's coming to the end of the model. Yeah, yeah. And so it's really, well, it's an uncanny thing to interact with actually.

You know, it also brings up very interesting questions in relationship to plagiarism. So, you know, if you build an AI on your own thought, and then you use it to generate a new paragraph, do you have to cite that? Do you know the university is wrestling with this right now. Wow, yeah. By the time they're down wrestling with it, there'll be another problem that's so profound compared to it that it'll make it look trivial. Yeah, I have a popular book out called Mantering the Machine that's coming out in serial form. The first two are out in which I'm trying...

What's the title? Mentoring the machine. Mentoring the machine. Oh, yeah. I'm trying to deal with what's the scientific import, the philosophical import, the spiritual import of these machines, not so much making predictions, because many of the predictions have already been falsified both to doomers and the doomers.

But more about what are some of the thresholds that we'll be facing, decision points in which we'll have to decide if we want to make these machines more rational, more agentic in nature, etc. And hopefully get people's awareness into the big picture so we can confront these thresholds with sort of more rational thought and reflection. So is the Verveiki foundation a simpler alternative to grants? Yeah, I mean, I know that's really something for that to be true. It is. I mean, we do fund some experiment.

I mean, I do have the consciousness and wisdom studies lab running at UFTM. We've got several grant proposals in. So I'm doing both. I'm trying to get some grants for the more pure academic stuff. And then the Verveki Foundation funds some of the academic stuff. But it funds a lot of the, I don't know what to call it, all the public stuff. The other function it has. The more educational. The more educational, the more public facing, the more practice oriented, not just generating theory, things like that.

Right, right. So they go together well. I hope so. And I mean, the job, that's the outward facing job of the foundation. The inward facing job of the foundation is to try and keep me as virtuously oriented towards all of this as possible.

So to keep me sort of an arms length from, I don't know what to call it, the influencer fame, the money, things like that, how people around me who are sort of helping me to not to vassulate between inflation and despair, that kind of thing, but pull up. Yeah, well, you're obviously in a position now where you should be surrounded by competent people who are ensuring that they can do what they can do, and you can be freed up to do

what you can do. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, that's a great opportunity if you have it. I do. And I've had people that, well, I currently do have people that are deeply trust. It's been challenging for me. I mean, I'm highly introverted by nature and I'm in academics, I'm used to having my control over even my minutia of what I'm doing and I've had to learn to step back and not feel exposed and to let people do things. But I've found a joy in that that I didn't expect

because unless you're a psychopath, right, it's wonderful to see something ruby on your grass. Right, definitely. It really is. And what I've been seeing people do with the foundation and the projects they've come up with, and I've just been continually impressed and very grateful. Yeah, well that's good evidence for the non-zero-sum nature of a what would you say well run and

deep enterprise. There's no shortage of things for people to do. It also highlights the incredible importance of personnel selection and also of stepping back, like you wanna hire the right people and they should be people who are, well certainly, they should be able to do things you can't do and they should be able to do them faster than you would do them and they should be freeing you up to do the things that only you can do.

But then the advantage to them is, they can have their own fiefdom that's real. The advantage to you in stepping away from the micro-management is, well, do you want a micro-manager? Do you want to go do some things that are interesting? Yeah, yeah. Right, right.

Yeah. Well, I can say on all those things, you just articulated. I'm very grateful that that's the case for me. All of that's happening for me. And so the foundation, like one of the things it does is it obviously helps fund the staff, but it funds a lot of these programs,

many are free, some are paid. Yeah. And but it's also raising fund, we do fundraising for specific things, like I'm gonna be doing fundraising for walking the philosophical so-called. Right, right. So how can people find out about the foundation?

How well we have a website, if we're a Vicki foundation, they can go there right away. It goes at a dot com site? Yeah, I believe so. Yeah. OK, OK. So hey, so speaking, let's turn a bit from the practical to the intellectual.

I've got an idea about the sacred, I want to run by you. Technically. Well, imagine that you have a hierarchy of thinkers such that this would exist over time, such that some thinkers have more thinkers dependent on them than other thinkers. Right. So they're more seminal. Right. You'd get a rough approximation of that with citation counts in the scientific endeavor. And citation counts are pretty good index of quality as well as quantity, at least compared to every other index that we have. So you can imagine a dependency structure among thinkers so that obviously a thinker like Milton

would be of primary depth and Shakespeare, the people who are part of the canon. And so rather than conceptualizing the canon as a consequence of the arbitrary decisions of arbiters of taste, let's say, you could say that the canon is the consequence of the cumulative impact of a thinker's thoughts moving forward and some thinkers are more key than others. My sense, for example, and there's historical reasons for this obviously that the Biblical Corpus stands at the bottom of the Western canon, and then there are thinkers who have their foot, feet placed firmly in that tradition, Dante, Milton, Shakespeare, etc., and then a branching structure above all that.

Okay. So it's a matter of dependency. And so how fundamental a given thought is is dependent on how many other thoughts are dependent on it for its validity. Okay, now this works out neuropsychologically too. So imagine that you have a Janoff Ballman who talked about trauma has a theory that's analogous to this. And I think it fits in well with the entropy control theories of fristed. So then imagine that your perceptions

and therefore your emotional regulation are dependent upon a nested sequence of assumptions. The, and a given phenomenon can violate an assumption and the degree of entropy that's produced by the assumption violation is proportionate to the depth of the assumption. Right, right. So Janoff Bohlman talks about, for example, her model of trauma is shattered assumption, the deeper the assumption. So for example, one way you can be traumatized in a marital relationship is through the discovery

of infidelity. Yeah, right. Your hyper-priors get destroyed. Yeah, so what do you call them? Hyper-priors. In the Bayesian brain work, in Fristens framework, the sort of priors that you use to make any of the Bayesian approximation. I actually don't like using the Bayesian math because you don't actually run the math. You run a dynamical system approximation, but that's how they talk about it in the literature. These are sort of your most,

these are the things that are applied in your predictive modeling in the most context in variant manner. So they apply. Yeah, context invariant, right? Well, that's another way of thinking about it too, is that something more fundamental applies across more situations and time spans. Right.

Okay. So here's a secondary consequence of that, I think. So then imagine that the degree to which you could handle entropy, emerging as a consequence of the violation of your assumptions is proportionate to your social status. Okay. And the reason for that is that the better your reputation and therefore the better your situation in the social environment happens to be, the more resources you can bring to bear on a problem if one emerges.

Okay, now imagine your serotonin system indexes that because we know serotonin is one of the systems that's implicated in the relationship between social status and emotional regulation. So now the serotonin system has inputs into the memory systems that have this hyperdependency structure. And they're a tuner and so that for, you imagine disruption would be characterized in terms of its estimated magnitude by the depth of the presumption that was being violated.

And then there's a control mechanism off to decide it out such that the more tenuous your grip on the social environment is, the higher the level of negative emotion that's produced in relationship to the violation of a given level of assumption. Right, okay, so that makes sense to you. That seems to be reasonable. So far, it's very clear, yes. Yeah, okay, okay, okay. Okay, good, okay. Well, so then I've been working, well, I'm writing, as I mentioned,

a book on, on, on, on, on the explication of biblical narrative. It's called We Who Rese with God. And I've been working on Israel. Yes, yes, right. Exactly, exactly. And I discovered that relationship when I did the lecture on lectures on Genesis in 2017. So I've

been trying to come up with a technical definition of the sacred, right? And this is relevant to research on awe too. So the deeper you go, the closer you get to the sacred. And I'm speaking as a matter of definition here. So as you move down your assumption hierarchy and you get to these, you called them hyper priors, the closer you get to the ultimate hyperprior, the more you're walking on sacred ground, and that's a technical definition. Now, if you encounter something that shifts you in a hyperpire and that's a positive encounter that's going to produce a corresponding sensation of awe, right?

And that I would say that's probably a dopaminergicly mediated revelation of possibility. Okay, so let me run something else by you and tell me what you think about this. Okay, so I've been conceptualizing the sacred as a process too. So there's a spirit in the Old Testament that's characterized as Yahwa and the theory in the corpus is that whatever this central spirit is makes itself manifest in a number of different dices. So for Noah, for example, God is the spirit that calls the wise to prepare when the flood is coming. And for Abraham, God is the call of the Spirit of adventure. And so you see these juxtapositions of narratives that shed a different light on this central spirit with each story. United by the claim that regardless of the surface differences of the manifestation

of this Spirit, it's reflecting an underlying unity. That's the monotheistic hypothesis, one God underneath all the gods. So a dependency structure that has a fundamental base or a pinnacle, depending on which set of metaphors that you use. So when I wrote maps of meaning, I had started to conceptualize the call of the sacred as something like spontaneous interest, right? Is that, well, so things will grip your attention and compel you in a certain direction. I realized later, after I wrote that book many years later, that that was equivalent to the more traditional notion of calling.

And so, and then I think I missed something in maps of meaning that's half of the divine, because I really concentrated on interest, and that was sort of under the influence of humanistic psychologists who were oriented towards, say, self-actualization, but there's a corresponding element of conscience. And so there are conceptualizations by Cardinal Newman, for example, of God as the internalized voice of conscience, right? Like the source of the superego, that's another way of thinking about it. But then you could think of Yahwa as sort of the dynamic relationship between calling and conscience. And to me, that maps nicely on the positive and negative emotion, because a calling is going to

entice you forward with dopaminergically mediated, what would you say, indications of treasure to come? And conscience is going to say, you deviated off the golden path into the domain of danger and there's something you should sort out. And then, while you see quite clearly in the Old Testament corpus, it also emerges in the New Testament that there's a dynamic relationship between conscience and calling and that looks to me like what's conceptualized as the Holy Spirit that dynamic relationship. So. Wow, that's a lot. Well, I've been working on this for months, you know, so yeah, so.

So interesting because I've been working on this sacred a lot too. interesting because I've been working on this sacred a lot too. Let me share my thoughts and I'll share where I think they intersect with yours but maybe they differ but I think in a fruitful way. First of all, they're sort of in the literature I've been reading, there's sort of three dimensions that are usually talked about with respect to the sacred. One is altimacy, which I think you're articulating. And the movie made, and this is a compliment to you, by the way, is the classic move of Neoplatanism, which is called asymmetric dependence. So what is everything asymmetrically dependent on? That's how you get your ultimate. What is that in terms of which everything else

is explained, you're understood. That's ultimacy. And then two other dimensions of the secret, which I think you're alluding to, one is axiological that you love this ultimate. It isn't just intellectual grasp for you. So that's the directionality? Yes, and there's a valuing, there's a loving. But it's at least why I want to say love rather than just value as love. Love doesn't carry with it necessarily the egocentrism of value, which can be very egocentrically oriented. So love is. So, so would that be, maybe that would be expressed in the Old Testament corpus as part of the covenantal relationship, because it's a personal relationship rather than what would you say, instrumental relationship.

Yeah, I still like that meat argues that and her covenantal is epistemology and loving to know and how there's this deep bond bond between knowing God and loving God that you can't separate them. Right. And so that's conceptualized metaphorically in the guys of a relationship, rather than as having something. Oh, yes, it's very much about being in relationship, but that's conceptualized metaphorically in the guise of a relationship, rather than as having something. Oh, yes, it's very much about being in relationship, and that's why I want to use the word love. You can have preferences or even values,

but you have to be in love. It's a commitment of the whole self. Right. And so, and the thing about love is, is it gets you on Plato's pivot point, and it involves the whole of the self without being self-involved. Right.

It seems to be another dimension of this calling. The sacred doesn't just call your aesthetic interest or your ethical interest or your intellect, it calls you as a complete person. This is one of the things that Tillic emphasized. Speaks to the image of God within. Yes, and the Christian tradition of the transmutation of the image into the likeness.

And so I think that's the axiological dimension. And then there's the sociological dimension that this loving relationship to what is ultimate is transformative, it's healing, it's redemptive, it's liberating. And so the reason why this is important is of course, is this allows the sacred to be found in things that are in non-theistic traditions, like Buddhism, the Tao, the things like that. So the first part of what you were talking about, like I said, and again, I think this speaks well of it,

is in lines with the classic Neoplatonic proposal of that what we're trying to get in touch with what is most real, we have to get to the ground of intelligibility through looking at asymmetric dependence, this is the notion of the ultimate, the one. A-Symmetrical dependence, is that the terminology that's used in the game? Yeah, Kevin Corrigan uses that when he tries to talk about

how platyneus makes his argument for the one, the ultimate reality within the neoplatonic system, which gets taken up. Well, one of the ways of sorting through that, as far as I'm concerned, is to note that there's either a unity or there's a plurality, and then to note what the consequences of those are. If there's a plurality, there's inbuilt contradictions in the structure of being and becoming itself, and there's divisiveness that can't be overcome.

If there's an ultimate unity, it might be mysterious and ineffable, but it does indicate that all things can be brought together in some sort of harmonious relationship, and that's relevant to human motivation, because if there's a plurality, there's going to be confusion and anxiety, because confusion and anxiety mark a plurality. So... Well, yeah, this is Kirkga Gard's purity of heart is to will one thing. because confusion and anxiety mark a plurality. So. Well, yeah, this is Kirkga Gard's purity of hardest to will one thing. Right, right. And so, but this again is a neoplatonic argument.

The idea is whenever we're understanding something, what we're doing is taking two things and finding a unifying principle. And then if you were to bring you understanding to its depths, you'd get something that technically speaking can't be understood because it is the principle by which I'll understand it. Everything is understood. Right, right, right. So what you get is you'll be...

So it grounds out in effortability. It grounds out in effortability. And if you look at like Nicholas of Couser, where it grounds out is, it grounds out in sort of the paradoxical realization that what we consider ultimate, ultimate polarities are actually somehow stereoscopically transcended. So for example, even though the term is the one, it is understood as being beyond singularity and plural plurality.

It is either singular nor plural, because it is the basis for that particular kind of intelligibility. It is transcendentic. God is an intelligible spirit who centers of intelligibility. It is transcentric. God is an intelligible sphere who centers everywhere in his circumference in no way. Is that Nicholas of Cusa? Well, it was taken up by Nicholas and others, but it was actually... That's a great line.

Yeah, and then, well, Nicholas has one that goes with it, that God is within everything but not enclosed and beyond everything but not excluded. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, right. And so that's ultimately, and then the idea is, this comes from Yadam's work and some of my own work, when people come into relationship to that which they consider more real, they're really real, they take on this loving relationship and that they seek to transform their identities and their lives.

Is that a marker for the validity of the encounter. Like if you stumble across something that entices you into a relationship of love, is that actually a reliable ontological marker, let's say? Well, I think if two things line up, yes, I think the answer is yes, I think that's an excellent question. I think if you get the reciprocal opening that's found in love.

For example, I have a wonderful partner and I've come to understand that there's something about her that will always be beyond my grasp and I open up to that and she opens up to that in me and we're specifically open and Aaron, that's how you fall in love with her. So I think, from the first person perspective, it's yes. But I think Yehden and other people have done work that when people have this sense of being called and they have this noetic experience of the really real, they do make their lives better by many objective measures. Their relationships get better. Well, you mentioned healing.

Yeah. So I've been wrestling about that physiologically. Well, partly because I've been writing about the Gospels and about a quarter to a third of the Gospel account is miracles of healing, right? Which is a difficult, that's difficult ground to tread on if you're an empirical materialist, let's say if you're a scientist. Well, it's the naturalist. Exactly, exactly.

But there's another frame of interpretation which doesn't necessarily exclude the miraculous, but at least sidesteps it for the moment, possibly, or brings them together to suggest that, well, if the pattern of being that Christ represents is a divine ideal, there's every reason to assume that it would be allied with the kind of healing that you were describing, which, so imagine that you could embody a spirit, a set of practices, a set of perceptions and emotions that would optimize your function in relationship to the transcendent.

There's every reason to assume that what would accompany that would be an optimization of psychophysiological function. That's no different than claiming that you're going to have a much higher risk for mortality if you're depressed, which is well known. So there are certainly links between attitude and underlining thriving that are well-established. And it's not unreasonable to point out that the archetypal ideal would, that manifestation of the archetypal ideal, or even contact with the archetypal ideal, would be something the archetypal ideal or even contact with the archetypal ideal would be something that would tap you hard in a healing direction.

I think so. I mean, so I, I, I, one of the arguments I've been working on is, well, you know, I mean, you know this better than I do. I mean, one of Piage's great insights, the thing that made him brilliant scientists, right, is he was looking for systematicity in the error being produced in the psychometric measures of intelligence. Just that move alone is brilliant. Everybody else treats the errors as noise. He says, well, what if there's patterns in the error?

And if the patterns, if there's systematicity, that points to intrinsic constraints and developmental arc and all that's, and that alone is brilliant. And then I've sort of been reflecting on that and connecting with some of the literature in insight, which is to think, well, if there's systematicity of error, there's also the possibility of systematicity of insight, which is not an insight into this particular problem,

but an insight into a family or network of problems, such that it would be lead to a systematic transformation of one's orientation and grip on the world, and it would also be systemic. It would tend to percolate through the entire psyche. That's what a baptism is. Well, I mean, it can be. Well, right, right. That's the transformation that a baptism is designed to bring about if it's possible.

Yeah, and I mean I think the Shamanic death and rebirth. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I think the great doubt in Sausanne is doing it. Yeah. And you know. Well that's what happened to Descartes too. How so, how do you think? Well, he decided that he was going to doubt everything, right?

And to take a journey down to what, to to what would you say the land of the fundamental presumption, something like that. And my sense with Descartes, I mean, his realization is often translated as, I think, therefore I am, but I don't really think that that's how he would have conceptualized it, how to be alive now. I think it's something more like, I'm conscious, therefore, I am, or I can't doubt the fundamental reality of my own being. Well, I'll put it back to you in a way, way I see it. And let's say we're, so before the scientific revolution and Descartes, we have a contact

to epistemology. We have the epistemology that when you know something, the form of that, not the shape, the form of it, the principle of intelligibility in it is identical in your mind and the thing, they conform together. So this is a contact epistemology, to mutual participation. And of course, when we get this, because of Copernicus and Kepler, we get this separation in the divorce. I talk about this a lot in a way, coming from a meaning crisis.

And what Descartes does is he tries to find where there's still that contact and where he finds it remaining is in self-consciousness. The mind's contact with itself is where that knowing by being is still to be found. And he withdraws. The problem we have faced since that is you can't get contact with the world from that contact of the mind with itself. You can't get contact with the world from that contact of the mind with itself. And so this is what a lot of the work I'm engaged in is about trying to overcome. What's interesting is that Descartes, I'm the notes from a lot of people, of course, Dave Carte puts a lot of emphasis on logic. But Descartes also puts quite a bit of emphasis on insight. That moment of insight, when you get the flash,

and so all of the promises of the argument hang together, that's crucial. Do you? Well, okay. I wanna go a couple of directions from all of that. I've been thinking about thought itself as a form of secularized prayer. Okay, so let me lay out what I've been thinking

and tell me what you've been thinking and what you think about this. So the first The first issue is this is that We say we think things up, but we have no idea what that means because the phenomenology This is something by the way that young Carl Jung caught me on to do some degree. He said that We come across our own thoughts, like we come across the furniture in a room. It's like they're laid out before us.

And so, and that always struck me because being struck by a thought, or having a thought appear in your internal landscape is, well, I think it's a revelation. I don't think it's any different than a revelation. So here's the steps as far as I can tell, I've thought. The first step is something like a confession. And the confession is, whatever I think about this is insufficient, which is equivalent in part to thinking, I'm insufficient, right? So it's a humble step. I have to not know something,

and that not knowing has to be of motivational significance. And then that has to be allied with wanting to know. And that has to be allied with faith that knowing would be better than ignorance. And that's a presumption, man, especially because lots of times when you get a revelatory thought, you're going to pay a price for your knowledge, which might be the catastrophic disillusion of some of your previous assumptions. Right? So you have to have this axiomatic presumption that more knowledge is good in the ways that

would be desirable to you and even more generally. And I think that's something like faith in the essential goodness of being and its intelligibility itself. And I think that's partly why the scientific endeavor is embedded in that assumption of the goodness of being and the goodness of knowledge. Anyways. Now I agree with that. Okay, okay, okay. So with regards to... I want to talk to you about that at some point. Okay, we'll get back to that. So with regard to revelation. So the first is admission of insufficiency. And then there's the positing of a question. And that seems to me to be a

lie with this gospel insistence that if you knock the door will open and if you ask you'll receive and if you seek you'll find all that all depends on actually asking actually wanting to know actually seeking it can't be a game. You got to want to know, you know, one of the things I've noticed in my own life is, for example, if I'm having a problem communicating with my wife or I'm having a scrap with a family member and there's a certain amount of pain in it, that if I sit down and I say, probably I'm contributing to something to this, I'd like to know what it is, which is not a fun thing to do.

No. No, but you'll get an answer. Okay, so that's the next step. So you've got your humble confession. Then you've got your revelation, which is the appearance of a solution to that. Now, people say when they describe that, that they thought that up, but to me, that's an empty explanatory framework because, yeah, if you could think it up,

why didn't you know it to begin with? And what exactly did you do to think it up? And didn't you know it to begin with? And what exactly did you do to think it up? And the answer is, well, I asked a question and a thought arose. It's something like that. And you can infer all sorts of unconscious mechanisms. But phenomenologically, the revelation appears and it strikes you, you know, but that's not enough. That's not enough because you still then have the problem of potentially delusional or self-deceptive revelation. Of course. But then there's an insistence, a Judeo-Christian insistence in the case that I'm referring to, that you have to test the spirits to see if they're of God. So you have

your confession and your openness to revelation. You have the receipt of the revelation, but then the next step is, well, you better put that thought to the test and, you know, attack it from this side to attack it from this side, test it out and see if it's got solidity and weight and to understand its implications. And it seems to me that, well, first of all, it seems to me that that's a variation of the practice of, it's a seconderization of the practice of prayer. That's how it looks.

I mean, that makes sense historically as well. But, okay, so what do you, what do you think about that? Well, first of all, I mean, notice that you were provoked in my mentioning of insight and the possibility of systemic insight. Yeah, because a deep revelation would be a systemic insight. I think so. And there's a lot of work here. Part of what I'm doing on Symbaticos also going

through all the the most last five years of the insight literature. Trying to keep a rest of that. But yeah. So interesting, both in the Neoplatonic tradition and then Zen tradition, you'll get, like I do a practice every day where I'll say, who is asking the question?

Oh yeah. And then there's a good question. Yeah, and then who's listening to the answer? And okay, when you get an answer to that, do you get a vision like, no, no. Are you asking about like a form of possession? So to speak, like what set of motivations are positing this question and what set of motivations

are offering the answer? No, see, that's, that's the thing. I mean, I could, if I was doing sort of a phenomenological analysis for scientific reasons, and I do do that, but in this practice, what I'm trying to do is to get at a poria, to get at genuinely not knowing. What Nicholas of Kuzak called Learned Ignorance, which is what Socrates started with, he said, my wisdom consists in knowing what I do not know. I call it an aporetic aperture. What happens is you get a sense of, actually, I don't know who's listening. What'll happen is images will come up. Yeah, that's what I was wondering.

Right, and then when you go is yes, and those are helpful images, but that is, I can just as easily ask what generated the image. Yeah. And what you get is, right, you get this falling away, and you get a very profound and frequently

disturbing sense of actually deeply not knowing. But it's not a not knowing in the sense that you're disconnected from the depths, if I can use that language, it's a not knowing that precisely connects you deeper and deeper to the depths. Okay, so do you think by doing that, that you're, are you attempting to circumvent what might be regarded as narrowly self-serving biases in questioning? Yes, yes. And you're doing that by attempting to establish your relationship with what's

ineffable at the base instead of stalling out, let's say, partly down. Yes, but, but it's nothing I can have. It's only something I can participate in. It's only something I can be. I can't have it. I can't ever, it's like James' distinction between the eye and the me, which you're familiar with. I can never have the eye. I can be eye because I can only be aware of, I can only have the me. It's the same kind of thing. There's no thingness to it. But even saying no thing that sounds like you're putting a name on an entity, what happens instead is a falling away of representational reification of any attempt to reify things by representing them. And what you get is you get in a completely non-inflationary way, I'm talking to you, I'm talking to you, you get in a completely non-inflationary way, I'm talking to you, I'm talking to you,

you get that nothing is excluded, but nothing is enclosed within and without, and there is no within and without, you get to this right now. So what's been the practical consequences of that practice for you? The practical consequences of that is a biting sense The practical consequences of that is a biting sense that becomes more and more capable of intervening in my everyday consciousness and cognition of that epistemic and moral,

at least that's what I believe is happening with people are telling me humility. Yeah, well, you, when I saw you today and started talking to you, I thought three things. I thought you look more resigned, you look more hopeful and you look more humble. Well, well you when I when I saw you today and started talking to you I thought three things I thought you look more resigned you look more hopeful and you look more humble. Well, thank you. Yeah, well, I don't know what it is exactly. Well, your expression maybe and your voice tone like said and I mean, it's not a dramatic shift from the last time I saw you but but it's a shift in the direction that you just described and And the resignation is interesting, because I think that's a sign of faith and a sign of humility.

You know, it's not people often think of resignation as pessimistic, but it doesn't like... I think of resolution. I use it because of the double senses of the word of coming properly into view, like when you resolve an image, but also I am resolved. I am being called to this pilgrimage on walking the philosophical Silk Road. This is my pilgrimage to the God beyond God. I am making myself as available as I possibly can.

I am making myself as available as I possibly can. To that. To that. So, okay, okay. So I've been. Go ahead. Well, I mean, we mentioned baptism a little earlier. And I was writing about the descent of the Holy Ghost in the Gospels. So that's when Christ's ministry starts.

So it's an opening of the sort that you described. It's an opening to possession by this ultimate ineffability. And there's a consequence of that, and that's the descent of the Holy Spirit. And so that descent, we talked earlier about, and you helped me characterize too, in different language, what that ineffable spirit, how it might make itself manifest. I talked about the interplay between conscious and calling and you talked about love and you talked about the axiological and there was one other dimension.

A photological that has part of the human. Okay, so imagine now you open yourself up to that. Okay, so that's when Christ's ministry starts, but here's something very interesting and weird and I'm interested in your take on this As soon as the baptism ends Christ goes into the desert. Yes, okay, so now the what that indicates is a radical transformation of personality So what was there before? has I wouldn't say

It's been supplanted, but that leaves a desert emptiness. That's a good way of thinking about it now So Christ goes out into the desert. It's like the Israelites leaving the 40 days security. Yeah, okay, so now he's in the desert not parallels the is israelite desert and then He goes to the bottom of things so can imagine this is a colloquy with conscience. That's a good way of thinking about it So imagine that you did something wrong So you can imagine this is a colloquy with conscience. That's a good way of thinking about it. So imagine that you did something wrong and you decided that you were going to delve into the depths to understand exactly why it was that you set yourself up for that and that you were willing to go wherever the Spirit called you to delve into the under structure

of that error. So I think that's what happens. I think that's what's being presented in the sequence of temptations that arises in the desert. So you imagine you go into the landscape of the soul and then you go down the dependency hierarchy to the point from which evil emerges. That's a good way of thinking about it. It parallels the notion in Dante's Inferno, right? Because Dante's Inferno was a set of concepts. I'm reading the Inferno. What's that? I'm reading the Inferno, right? Because Dante's Inferno was a set of consensus circles. I'm reading you. What's that? I'm reading you. Oh, yeah, okay. Okay. So it's a journey. So my sense with the Inferno is you could take any given proximal and trivial sin and delve

into it and end up at the bottom. And what Dante presents is that the metasin, the sin upon which all others emerges, is something like betrayal, right? Because it violates trust. Yeah, I mean, for me it's betrayal of the ultimate that is also idolatry. Because all of the sins are versions of idolatry about loving something in the place of loving God. That's a tower of babble problems. Yes, yes. And so, and this is Tillix notion. Tillix notion is what we're trying to do is we're trying to bring an ultimate concern

and have it properly conform to what is most ultimate. And this is the quest for the God beyond the God of theism. But I see that tunneling down. I mean that I do other practices. I do a spiritual alchemy practice in which you you try to recall moments of profound hurt and humiliation, because those are the moments where you get the falsification of the pretentious projections that you make, the pretensions to know and to control both within and without. And in those moments of hurt and humiliation,

you... So, profound indications of error and presumptions? Yes, yes, exactly, exactly. So they remove the give you... Now, what you try to do is you try to bring a gophe to bear on them, neither pride nor guilt, so that you can, you can, you can turn away from the super salience of the pain and get the revelation. Right. And get the revelation, though, of, a bot, look, there's an aperture of her, there's a glimpse of how things are outside of the pre-tats and the presumption.

And then what you're trying to do is smelt that and bring it. See, I think that's the same thing as the father who's trapped in the outside of the pretext and the presumption. And then what you're trying to do is smelt that and bring it. See, I think that's the same thing as the father who's trapped in the belly of the beast. I think so. And- This happens to Jonah, you know, when Jonah descends into the depths. And the consequence of that is his radical revaluation of his ethical stance and his re-emergence as a prophet, right? But he goes all the way down

to the bottom of things. He does that interestingly enough because he tries to escape both his calling and his conscience, right? Because God, well, God tells him to do something stupidly impossible and dangerous, and he basically says, yeah, I don't think so. I've always been fascinated by that story. Of course Melville makes a lot of it and hopefully, and Movedec. There's a moment in that story that I find particularly compelling. And one of the things I like about the Bible is that it'll have these little moments of very powerful humanity in the midst of resting with the new menace. If you remember the story, they come to Jonah, the sailors and say, what's going on? And he says, well, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, God's punishing me. And they don't

immediately throw me for work. They go back and they try to save them. They try to save them. Yeah. And I thought, yeah, what's going on there? That's such a powerful moment. And for me, they only throw them overboard when there's nothing left to do.

They try everything they can. They exhaust their human capacity of this stranger. Yeah. And it's guilty strangers by his own admission. Right. And it would be so easy to be self-righteous. Yeah. And just while he's a fun. Yeah. And throw overboard and witness the miracle. And they put all of that aside for this. And like, and it's often for me, I mean, I, I am often like everyone else, I mean, especially coming through the Christmases and I am impressed by the impressive moments of the Bible.

But even that, I mean, you think about Elijah right after he defeats the prophets of Ball on Mount Carmel and the fire from heaven and then he flees into the desert. And then God, you know, says, come on, I'm gonna show you something, there's the big fire and God's not in the fire and the big wind and God's in the air state. That's conscience there, right? So the still small voice within.

Or, or sometimes even trees. It's also can be translated as a sheer silence. It's like, it can be translated that way, also in the Hebrew. And so it's almost like what we were talking about before that, that I love this idea of the sheer silence because it's the ineffable but not as negativity but as superlative as that which is calling you because what does he do? He covers his face. He looks, he beholds himself. So you think there's any difference between the valid voice of conscience and the voice

of the ineffable? I mean, if the ineffable is the foundation, and if conscience is a sign of transgression against it, then those things should be related. Well, see, here's the problem. And this is a problem that goes back that I have with Descartes. Descartes, I mean, and this is a standard philosophical trope so I'm not claiming any originality here But day card seems to get bunched up on the difference between a psychological and logical Indubitability, right?

He gets the things that he can't doubt and he then concludes that they're ontologically certain and of course Our inability to doubt can be driven by many things other than metaphysical necessity. They can be driven by all kinds of psychological issues, self-deception issues, families. Even to various sorts. Yeah, yes. And so, and of course, everybody made a continual philosophical, hey, out of that. And I worry also, because this comes up in Plato's

private problem about what actually turns people towards the good because of the problem of El-Sovieties. And I don't trust any, let me try to differ in word. I don't idolize any one of my faculties. I think my conscience can also be something that was driven into me, perhaps, by aspects of my culture, my parents, the guys. That's the pathological super ego problem. And I suffer from a sadistic super ego in a lot of ways. And so, in Pinocchio, the puppet has to establish a relationship with the conscience and it transforms as well.

Yes. Right? So it's not an unhearing divine voice from outset. It's something like a generic approximation that can air and a tyrannical, great father within would be an example of that. Right. And I think part of the Socratic project and how it's unfolded for me, often in a psychologically startling way, is to try and enter into a dialogical relationship with my conscience, with my

consciousness, with my character. And that for me is one of the great benefits of the Socratic way of life. When they came to Antistinism. Is that part of testing the spirits? I think so. So Socrates had a demonium that he had his divine sign. And he said he always listened to, right? Right. He relied on that in his trial in the apology and said that that was the thing that made him different than other men. Now it's interesting and many people have said about this about it, especially in what's called third-way scholarship, Platonic scholarship. Socrates both trusted and always comes up with an argument around it. He never does one or the other. And while we when I was, when I've been in this journey

and I was in the midst of doing IFS, I had a very powerful, I talk about this in my after-socrates experience. I had, I had, I don't know how familiar you are with IFS, internal family system, where you do parts work. So what's going on right now is this huge convergence within the psychotherapeutic domain of biological models of the self-diological practices. And I was in the middle of doing parts where I was working with a part.

What would that mean practically? What were you doing exactly? So what happens is when you notice that you're sort of possessed by something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you try and step back. Your mother, your father, ancestral spirit, right? Yeah, yeah, and you try and step back into, um, well, it's what's called it, the, the seat of the self, but I don't think that's quite right. But what you'd write is you try and step back into that more sage-like awareness.

Right, right. So you're going deeper or higher? Yeah. Yeah. And then what you do is you try to, and you don't demonize this part, you try and enter into a dialogue, you realize that it is guarding something. It has some adaptive functionality. Now this is my take, not necessarily his, but I think what you do is you bring sort of

a mirror of agency or self-reflectiveness to this part. You act like a mindfulness mirror to it. You dialogue, you get it, you get to say, well, oh, well, you try to get it to explicated normative. What's actually governing and guiding it, and then you get to, and then you get, you can help it develop that. Yes, and you call it, and then you become

socratic with it, you call it to, but how much part are you following the normativity that you're enforcing on me? Yeah. And what will happen frequently is it will relax and open it. Because it's being listened to. It's being listened to, and it's also realized

that there's an opportunity here for growth. Of course, this overlaps with a lot of people. You don't recommend naming those things. Oh, you do. You name them. But something happened and you'll probably see a very union thing in this. Like I said, this is difficult for me to talk about, but I did talk about it already publicly in After Socrates. And I found the thing for an introvert to do.

Yes. So I was in the middle of one of these sessions. And an archetypal presence came in. I pushed aside all the parts and said, no, you're going to listen to me. And who are you? I'm Hermes. Oh yeah. The God of interpretation, the God of meaning making this. You have a little winged slippers on and that's it? Well, no, he was, he, uh, messenger, winged messenger of the God. Yeah, he appeared, he very much had a presence of, of like a cycle of pomp. Mm-hmm.

And, um, and when you mean it, when you say appeared, what was the phenomenology? What was happening? The phenomenology is like the phenomenology of, the presence of a mind. a mind like I have a sense of I have a mind sight into your Whereness now what's interesting about these things and this is again my take not the IFS people although I've talked to Mark Lewis that linked about this and he thinks it's a good take I think of these entities as neither subjective nor objective. I think of them transjective and I think this is in the domain of relevance and relevance as neither objective nor objective, but what binds them together.

He's binding the inner and the outer, the upper and the lower and all of that together. And so it's the sense of a presence, but it's like what Charles Stang talks about, the divine double, it's both sense of a presence, but it's like what Charles Stang talks about the divine double it's both you and not you kind of like the way conscience is, but it has a it had it right I mean, and so I have an ongoing dialogue with Remy's it's very much Is this a presence that you visualize? How do you know of its appearance? I've had only one sort of vision What was the vision like a division was very much well, I've had only one sort of vision. What was the vision like?

The vision was very much, well, I've had, the vision was very much what I'd later, very much like sort of Micah L, the Archangel, which is very interesting. And then I've had one of sort of thoth from Egypt and Hanuman from the Vedic tradition, as well as Hermes, from the Greek tradition. And in the ancient literature they're often seen as corresponding to each other in some fashion. You understand, I'm fairly honest, very... Okay, so what was the consequence of the appearance of this superordinate spirit, arguably superordinate spirit, in the presence

of this domain of chaos. Well, I mean, it made it very clear to me that it, I don't want to say it anymore, he wanted to make it very clear that there was a dialogical relationship that needed to be developed and cultivated. And it would be a relationship by which I would cultivate something analogous to Socrates' demonium. That was the promise that was given to the people. Oh, that's a good deal. I think so. Yeah, well, it's dangerous, but so is everything else.

Yeah, excellent things are rare. We wouldn't pursue them as Spinoza said. Or we would all pursue them as Spinoza said. So I found Raps work on ally work. And I've talked to a bunch of people that, you know, the kind of practices you can do to enter into this, Anderson taught a friend of mine, very helpful around this. And so, what became very apparent was that as Anderson taught a friend of mine, very helpful around this. And so what became very apparent was that that this

demonium and the way I've internalized Socrates as a sage were very ally to each other because Socrates also portrayed himself as being metaxiope, being between the human and the divine. And then to get to the deep answer to this, this all started to psycho dynamically integrate with the intellectual philosophical realization of the platonic proposal, that human beings are supposed to always hold in tonus, creative tension, Nicholas of Kuzah, Heraclitus, our finitude and our transcendence. If we only hold on to our finitude, we fall prey to servitude and despair. If we only hold on to our transcendence, we fall prey to hubris and inflation, but if we can hold the two together, if we are the Mataksu, between the beast and the God, right, we can properly realize our humanity.

And this is what Socrates sees himself. This is how he portrays eras. This is how he portrays the task of philosophy. And so for me, that's the chronic spirit and hermys as a psychological, biological presence have become integrated together. So that's the answer. Well, that's part of the trip. Well, I mean... That's very much like... It's very much the conscious equivalent of a dream. It's like a dream, but what's intriguing is the platonic, secratic possibility of it being filled as much with logos as it is with mythos, that there is also as much, because

when I dialogue, I write out dialogues with Rumi's. Yeah. It's very much, at times, it's very much like encountering an archetype of figure. Have you read the red book? I've read parts of it. Because what you're talking about is quite reminiscent of what of the sorts of exercises that you'll overt undertook. Well, what you find out is this is also deeply reminiscent of a lot of the theurgic practices that we're going on in the Neoplatonic tradition as I've come to discuss. And then it can take it up into Eastern Orthodox Christianity by Dionysus. And Gregory Shaw has done some excellent scholarship showing that. So let, okay, let me. Well, I just want to just want to make clear that there is a lot of rationality in this discourse where

I don't mean sort of Cartesian logicality. I mean the calling to the full person recognition and responsibility towards the ongoing proclivity to self-deception and trying to comprehensively address it and seek. It's a deep hole and and and to and it's not there's something mysterious about it in Marcel's sense. If you ever think you've got a full phenomenological grasp on the engine of self-deception within you, you of course have fallen prey to one of the deepest forms of self-deception. So whenever you think you frame it, you have to not idolize, this is telek again, if they're not idolize that frame, you have to constantly, it has to be constantly open to self-correction.

Yeah, well, the opposite of self-deception is probably something like the constant openness to self-correction, rather than a stance per se. I was deceived. Now, I have the truth. It's like, no, there's a process by which you continually discover the truth and Allegiance to that is the opposite of self-discipline. So that's what my I would call my faith my faith is a faithfulness to a process of Self-correction not to anyone faculty as the voice of the divine I think the capacity for the self-correction to take on a life of its own and a life on its own that plugs into trans-personal and transjective aspects of my being. For me, that is better. I'm very impressed that you managed to bring all of that back to the point where it started, by the way.

So I would say in relationship to that that first of all that I agree that that in fact the eye that's at the top of the pyramid, let's say the eye of Horace, that's at the pinnacle of the pyramid, is a representation as far as I'm concerned of the aware attention that allows for continual self-correction. And part of the implication of the ancient Egyptian theology is that nothing should be put higher up in the pyramid of value than the thing that's gold at the top that's associated with the open eye. It's right watch and attend. And in that spirit of you said guilt-free, there was two criteria you had, free of guilt and free of pride. Yes, just apprehension of what's there in front of your.

This is Christ says something like this too. This is in the Gospel of Thomas though. He says the kingdom of God is spread upon the earth But men either do not or will not see it. The will not being the more interesting one as far as I'm concerned and Part of that organization of the psychological hierarchy to put the the eye not the letter I, but the eye on top is to prioritize that new Neutral isn't exactly right. No, it's an attention that's oriented towards the highest ineffable good to put that above everything else Now I would say that I Wasn't trying to reduce that to conscience and calling. I didn't think you were. Okay, okay. I was thinking about those as what would you call? They're part of the dynamic process of attention

that allows the attention per se to rise to the top. So because I could pay attention, careful attention, to how it is that I'm calling myself out, let's say, in a socratic manner. Because you also are granted the right to the presumption of innocence, right? So even if you're accusing yourself, it's perfectly reasonable to set up a defense, but there's a starting point with the prodding of conscience. If conscience prides you, two questions come up.

One is, I'm falling prey to an internal tyranny, and the other is, I'm wrong. Well, you need to figure out which of those two is right. You can do that dialogically. You can do that in conversation with someone as well. And calling is the same thing, I would say, is that a calling can emerge as a consequence of your possession by a particular ideological spirit or it can be a manifestation of the real thing.

And like it's up to you to tread very carefully to make sure you get those right. And then the dynamic interplay of those two things is even more reliable, probably, especially if you share it with other people. There's a, I've been thinking about the exodus story of the Burning Bush in terms of calling. And I think it maps very nicely

onto our discussion of depth, because you tell me what you think about this. So, when Moses encounters the burning bush, things are actually not going so bad for him. Now, he's escaped from Egypt, so he's freed himself from tyranny, and now he's got himself two young wives, and he's doing pretty well with his father-in-law, who he gets along with, and he's a shepherd, and so it's not like he's no longer an Egyptian aristocrat, but you know, all things considered, he has a perfectly stable and productive ordinary life. Now he's wandering around, and it's near Mount Sinai, by the way, which is the place where the divine and the proximal meet, and this thing glimmers and catches his attention. It's like a manifestation of Hermes.

And so he decides to step off the beaten track as a consequence of this calling an invitation. And he moves closer and closer to this manifestation of the sublime. And as he moves closer, he starts to understand that he's on sacred ground. And I don't think there's anything different than that than noting what it is that calls to you and then pursuing it and going down into the depths as a consequence. And eventually what happens to Moses because he continues his pursuit is that the voice of being itself speaks to him. And that's when he's also transformed into the kind of leader who can fight tyranny and slavery.

So that's excellent. That's why it's Moses and Elijah, by the way, I think, that end up at the transfiguration, because you have Elijah as the... Well, they're also both the... they're both encounter the fight with God. They're both... but they're interesting parallels, because it's Elijah, who's the first proponent of the notion that God is not an external phenomena associated with the natural world, associated with Baal, but this internal voice and its conscience for Elijah, and then for Moses, the God that he encounters seems to be the God of calling.

And so, and they're like on what would you say, one on each side of Christ, which is a mind-boggling narrative representation. There's a lot I want to talk to you, but let me try one thing because there's isn't, I want to circle back to the question of sacred and God and the God beyond God. So one of the things that I find interesting in the fire, of course, is the burns, but it does not burn up. Right. This goes towards a neoplatonic model too. And of course Plato is the son, the image of the son, but it's the same thing, the file that burns and is not burnt up, at least in Greek mythology.

And Heraclitus said that the cosmos was that too. What am I getting at? I'm getting at this notion, and all those associations, because I'm associating the longstanding association of file and logos, by the way, their association together. So the sacred also seems to, we've been talking a lot about the sort of logical and the axiological and the ultimate, but I want to return to something that

I think binds them together, which is the neoplatonic notion of the sacred as an inexhaustible fount of intelligibility. So... The well that never runs dry. The towel. Yes. The towel, right? Yes, absolutely. And let me give you a concrete experience of that.

I'm going to assume, given what you've said, that this is the case for you at Nagaspals, I have a different relationship with the Bible. We can perhaps talk about that. But for me, the Republic does this for me. Plato's Republic. I will read the Republic, and it's inevitably transformative. There's a reciprocal opening. I see something in the text I haven't seen.

It opens me up. I go into my life. My life opens up. I'm transformed. I come back after a bit, and come back after a bit and it opens itself up again to me. And it's inexhaustible, there's this inexhaustible fount. And so there's some sacredness in there.

I think this is the present, the opportunity to enter into a conformity with the good, with the one. And so for me, there's a positive in this, in the experience of the sacred. And the reason I want to do that is I want to compliment, and I use that word exactly, compliment, you know, the call and the conscience, with also this notion of being fed, of being nourished. I'm reading a book on Lexi O'DDivina by which is named the latter of the

monks and he talks about when you're reading the text and you're actually being nourished by it. Of course there's the matter from heaven and all that stuff. And of course you can't grasp it because you're trying to grasp it in a story, you'll lose it and all that sort of blakian stuff that's there. And so I want to, this idea also of an inexhaustible fount of intelligibility. And if neo-platonism is right, and I think philosophy, at least some philosophy, and a lot of philosophy of physics and of biology is pointing towards to, which is that there is a non-logical oneness between intelligibility and being.

The way we get at what's most real is we trace out the asymmetric dependence relationships of intelligibility. That's based on a faith in permittities proposed of it, somehow thinking and being are what? They're not identical, but they're one in some, because if they're fundamentally not conformable, we are bound into...

So, the Richard Dawkins said, an adapted organism is by necessity of microcosm of its environment. Yes, and first of all, we don't have models, we are models. And I've made a similar argument based on the stunning work of Catherine, Pickstock, and others for extended naturalism, but we can perhaps come back to that in a sec. So let me, because I've been thinking about this, and there's a concern for idolatry here, and I think you're in many ways maybe the perfect person to talk to about this.

So I'm gonna say something and then give me a moment around it. Yeah. So I'm gonna say something and then give me a moment around it. Yeah. I find Plato's Republic and I find, let's say my relationship to my beloved partner. We've made a lifetime commitment to each other, right? There's something sacred there in that I continue, I've come to realize I will never sound her depths completely. And, right, and there's a way in which.

That's a good deal. Yeah, it is a good deal. And I've made a lot of horrible mistakes to get there. And I appreciate it for those herbs. And for the people that actually hurt me in some ways. Because that hurting was a sensitivity that allowed me to see her. First person, I fell in love with their soul before I fell in love with their physical beauty. That's a good order.

I'm not responsible for it. I just have to tell it. But you can be responsible for being grateful for it. I am. I am continually grateful. Yeah, well that's a good deal too. So, why am I bringing this up? I think these things are properly sacred, but I don't think while they are symbols in the union-telician sense,

they are not themselves the one, they are not the ultimate. Mm-hmm. And so, I'm just talking about a practice I've adopted, so I'm not advocating for this as a metaphysical proposal. But I've been using the term the one or God for when we experience altimacy as sacred, not just something pointing to the altimacy as sacred, but altimacy itself. And that we...

Great. So that's a very restricted usage and careful. It is, it's careful because you, again, the concern is the concern... Defense against idolatry too. Idolatry, yes, yes. The concern is the concern for idolatry. But it's also the Zen concern of ultimately not being bound to your representations, but realize they have an ongoing asymmetric

asymptoting towards reality. The co-in is the commitment to no matter what I'll do, I thought will have representation, but I'm always trying to push towards not which low of representation, but I'm always trying to push towards that which low as below representation. All my work on relevant realization helps me because that's much lower than the level of representation, much more professional. Right, right, right. So I wanted to put those two things together

in a push-on. That's meaning as the ultimate instinct. Yeah, what is what, if what we mean by meaning is religion, if we mean to be connected to something that has a reality and a value beyond my existence. That's that nourishing aspect. That's the nourishing aspect, but it's interesting because what happens is once we are,

at least what seems to be happening for me and what I read in the text I'm reading, is once we get a certain degree of nourishment, we are more and more capable of, because we're primate mammals, of turning the arrow of relevance outward, agopically. Right? Not how are things relevant to me, but ultimately how I can be relevant to them. The meaning in life literature, this is how you find out if people have meaning in life.

What do you want to exist even if you don't? And how much of a difference do you make to it now? You have a good answer to both of those. You've got to say them again. What do you want to exist even if you don't? Yeah. And how much of a difference do you make to it now? Yeah.

And that's not. Got those down. Yeah. So I think the only. Do you have an answer to those? Yes. Would you share them? So for me, my religio to

the sacred realization of altimacy is that that gives me those, the answers answers and so all of the projects That I'm engaged in that help people for themselves not for me, but for themselves either individually and collectively Realize that that gives me a sense of meaning in life. And what are you doing about that? Would you say? Those are the proximal actions that are imbued with meaning by that transcendent goal. Yes. So, I mean, a big part of it is all the work I'm doing with and for the Vervecju Foundation.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. New series. But also the academic work I'm doing, all of my academic scientific work about intelligence and rationality. I've just recently been integrated the relevance realization and the predictive processing framework in a way that a lot of people are finding very valuable. All of that has, I think it's fair to say because other people are saying it to me, it has scientific merit. I'm happy about that, but it's all oriented towards this, what I've pointed.

what I've pointed. Because for me, it's not just the call away from self-deception, call of conscience. It's the calling to a fullness, which isn't a completion. It's that sense of religio, that meaning in life, that, and I feel that I have experiences of what is ultimate as as sacredness experiences, experiences of sacredness, things that are calling the whole of me to the commitment.

Right, and that's the genuine answer to the problem of relevance realization and the meaning crisis. I'll find out what's actually meaningful. So, let me offer you something in relation. Okay, so I talked to Sam Harris recently again. And one of the places that Sam and I find firm mutual ground is in a concern, metaphysical concern with evil. So, Sam was really struck to the soul, I would say, by the reality of evil. Associated in his case, particularly with what happened in Auschwitz and places like that. So Sam is metaphysically convinced of the existence of evil. And that's been an orienting point for him. And part of the reason that he wanted to ground

his ethical metaphysics in wanted to ground his ethical metaphysics in objective science was because he didn't feel that there was a better way of demonstrating the reality of good in relationship to evil unless that grounding was possible. Now I've been thinking about that as I've been writing what I'm writing, but I took a different tack, I would say, to some degree, than Sam, even though maybe the net end goal is the same as it was by the way for Piaget, because that was his project, right, right from the beginning. So because Piaget wanted to reconcile materialism with metaphysics. And so in any case, I've been thinking a fair bit about what's real in terms of meaning.

And, one of the... people have very little doubt that pain is real. They certainly act as if it's real. It's very difficult not to act as if pain is real. And, one of the consequences of that realization is that you can therefore very rapidly claim that whatever rectifies pain most effectively is even more real. And then you might ask what rectifies pain most effectively. And so here's a couple of, here's something not to do. Thinking about yourself a lot, your proximal immediate demands and needs. So you know that relationship between narrow self-consciousness and suffering is so high that they load on the same factor

in fact, the fact of analytic studies of negative emotion. So if you're self-conscious, that narrow self, you are miserable. This is what I meant, just one small intervention, that you know that you're going to see. This is what I meant about this is Plato's pivot problem. How do you involve all of the psyche when they'll become self-involved?

That narrow, that narrow pain, you know, self-inflicting suffering, loss of agency on one. This is Plato's thing about how to, because we need to involve all of you. This is to like, dude, that's his definition of spirit. That which involves the whole of the psyche. But how do you get all of that involved

while resisting them? Well, maybe it's also partly by realizing which involves the whole of the psyche. But how do you get out of that involved with resisting the malignity of the physical? Well, maybe it's also partly by realizing that it's not only all of the psyche. It's all of the psyche embedded in the whole structure of being simultaneously, right? This is part of the reason that our current conceptualizations of mental health suffer from such a positive content, of conceptualization, because we view mental health as something

like harmony in the subjective world. But that's like you're talking about the mysteries of your relationship. I mean, it's obvious from talking to you that part of the reason that you're as sane as you are and as happy as you are is not not because immediately, because you're well-constituted as a subjective creature, but because you've established a harmony of existence in relationship, at least to one other person, you want that more broadly, and that means that you have to be called to service

for something that's certainly not localized to the like narrowness of you now. Yes, because okay because Your phenomenological markers subjective well-being don't track meaning in life. They come apart. They can move They can move Opposite to each other right. This is what happens when you have what happens to Job Well, but there's also what happens when if you have a child and you and you right right I love your measures of subjective well being collapsed.

Right. Right. And if you ask people why they do it and they're giving you like a healthy answer, not they fell into it or they're responsible, but they've chosen to parenthood. Yeah. And and and and and they're going through what other

poke calls a transformative experience, something you can't understand until you go through it. Yeah. Yeah. Very much. Right. This this act of faithfulness. right? What happens is, why they do this because they say it makes their life more meaningful, right? Because they're connected

to something that has a reality beyond it. Beyond the immediate. Yes. And some subjective self-report. Right. And then, and it's an entity they want to exist even if they don't infect their willing to suck by their life for it. And they feel that they make a difference to it. This is the agape constraint. Their love is person, not morally person. I mean cognitive person.

It's creative of, I mean, when you bring a child home, they're obviously a moral person. I'm not talking moral. But they're not a cognitive home. They're obviously a moral person. I'm not talking moral. But they're not a cognitive person. We get to partake in this miracle. We shine a gope on them, which isn't Eros, which isn't Philea. It's not your friend. It's not something you want to be one with. In fact, the project is the opposite. You're trying to make it a ton of it. It's a major sacrifice. Yes, it's a gope.e and it's an astonishing thing. It's like magic. So, one of the things I figured out by going through the book of Job is allied with what you

just described. So, there's a moral proposition in Job that has to do with this segregation between immediate, subjective well-being, let's say, and long-term meaning. So, Job's proposition is, so, he's, things fall apart very badly for Job, right? Yes. And we know he's a good man because that's stated right at the beginning, right? That's axiomatic. Okay, but his friend's attribute blamed him and he basically says, well, yeah, I'm sinful, but no better than that, no worse than the typical good man. And so you can't just dump all this at my feet.

I'm not going to take myself apart in the face of my misery and decimate my soul in addition to my suffering. And then his wife says, well, shake your fist at God and die. And Job says, well, I have some reason to do that, given the tragedies that have befallen me, but at minimum I'm going to suspend judgment and better than that. I'm going to retain my faith in the essential goodness of existence regardless of the proximal evidence. And then there's a deeper consideration in Job, which is you're called upon to do that, no matter what. And that is definitely a place where measures of say subjective well-being and ultimate meaning are going to separate because the moral impetus in the book of Job is that you're called to maintain your allegiance with what is highest no matter what proximal price you currently might be paying. And then you can even think about that practically, which I think is a useful thing to do. It's like if you're stricken with a terminal and painful

disease, let's say, and maybe coincidentally a series of financial catastrophes just to make it a little bit worse. And maybe your family's also dumping heaps of coal on your head. You have every reason to descend into a kind of nihilistic bitterness. But then you might say, well, to what end? Now you have your illness, you have your financial catastrophe, you have your moral culpability, and you have your bitter nihilism to contend with. One thing you do have, if you're fortunate, and I would say also, God willing, that it is in the face of multiple dimensions of simultaneous catastrophe, the refusal to take the path of nihilistic bitterness and to shake your fist at the world.

And that's not nothing. Maybe that wouldn't be enough to rescue you from the dire states that you're in, but it might be enough to stop you from descending to the ultimate possible hell. I really love talking with you. I want to respond because I want to talk about my take on Job. And how, when I finally got Job was I was actually watching

a Tom Hanks movie called Job versus the Volcano, which is a very silly movie, it's a first. But it's a guy who discovers he's only got a year to live, and he goes on the proverbial last great journey. And of course, it becomes a quest and he doesn't realize it. And there's a scene where he's shipwrecked, and he's on a raft made of luggage, and there's a girl that he's taken care of,

and she's unconscious, and he's giving her the last remaining water. So he's starting to suffer from exposure. And so he's, by all measures of your objective well being, he's at the worst. He's literally lost. He's a drift. He's caved away. He's suffering physically. The one person he's with is unconscious and he's caring for them and they're not capable of reciprocating at all. It's a very powerful image. I don't know how this seemed like in this movie. I think the staff writers went on lunch break and gave the intern a moment to write a thing. And then what happens is, and it's astonishing, well done.

There's a moon rise, and it's the moon illusion, and the music swells, and he, oh, calm ocean, and he struggles and he rises to his feet, and he opens his arms, and he struggles and he rises to his feet and he opens his arms and he says, oh God whose name I do not know. Thank you for my life. I had forgotten how and he struggles and it's not the right word but he just spits it out how big. Thank you for my life. None of his problems have been solved. And what I took from that is what happens at the end of Job when God appears and he starts showing Job all these astonishing things.

Oh yeah, that's right. And you say and God and God don't forget about the wonder of the world. And also the new menace. Yeah, the new menace, right? And that's interesting. Right. And the new menace and what the new menace says even in the even in his monstrous forms. Yes, even in the Speak of transcendence and God is saying I am that presence that goes to the very depth of the new Menace both the happy forms and the next and this is supposed to be the thing that is the answer. Right. Right. And And God Joe does reattain his fortune in the aftermath of that encounter. And what happens with Joe is he gets gratitude for his life. And they steal that. I put it in my book.

Well, and then he'll attribute you. Well, thank you. Now, what that speaks to me is that there are these three things, and this I think has to do with the trends and the adults, the true and the good and beautiful. They're all convertible, but they're also not reducible. They're not logically identical to each other. And I think one, and these three Leo Farron, I talked about this in the article we wrote on wisdom. One is kind of sensory motor mastery.

If you don't have sort of sensory motor mastery over your environment, if you're not solving the Fristonian problems of relevance realization and anticipation, you're just bereft with anxiety or life's going for it. Okay, so there's that. But then there's the excellent work by Susan Wolfen others. And this really is something that our society is not well set up to reflect upon right now. Each that meaning in life and morality, you can't reduce one to the other.

Okay. Okay. So she gives the, she gives many examples of, well, you know, double dissociation means you can't make an identity claim, right? Is it possible for somebody to leave a very highly moral existence? And yet have a life that it's not going to be absolutely lacking in meaning because that's impossible for human existence, But it's a very life that's not very meaningful by many measures. And she says, yes, consider the very real possibility of somebody who is leading a very moral life, but is very lonely. Their lives, there's nothing that they're doing that's especially more, maybe they're very honest. Could happen to a good person in the totalitarian state. There's nothing that they're doing that's especially more, maybe they're very honest, maybe they're good.

Could happen to a good person in the totalitarian state. There are many things, yes. And their lives could be very bereft. Right, so there can be a dissociation. And you can think of the other. Can we think of people who maybe had very powerful meaning in life and yet were leading highly immoral existences? Of course we could.

I mean, they're thoroughly possessed, those people. Yes. So what you can see is just like subjective well-being and meaning in life come apart, morality and meaning, and what that does. Well, it shows you at least to some degree that morality isn't reducible to emotional state. Well, it also shows that meaning in life can't be satisfied

also just by being a highly moral person. So that connectedness that we need, it has sort of three dimensions to it. One is the dimension of sensory motor mastery. One is the production, promotion, protection of personhood. That's what I take morality to be. And the other is the connection. What do you mean? I'm confused a bit about that.

There's part of me that's objecting in the background here. Let's go down. Let's listen. Okay. Well, just it's just that I'm not sure exactly what you mean by moral. You know, let me give you an example, something that came to mind. So so Jeanette and Tarks and in the Goulai Gourk apple and I bring that up one one's per podcast about these intellectuals who are in a camp being worked to death and they had a seminar that they would conduct once a week and they would all meet and they would talk about their specialty and they were men committed to their scientific endeavor

who'd been imprisoned because of, for ideological reasons and they took the opportunity to share what they loved, and every week one or more of them would disappear because they were dying. Now, what they were engaged in was a moral endeavor. You could say that the meaning of their life was pretty bitter at that point. They were all starving to death or freezing to death or both being beaten at the low end of the totem pole in the Goulai hierarchy, watching the people around them die. But they were doing something profoundly ethical

and hearing to something they saw as a positive good, acting morally, and there would be a meaning in that. Like, the surround is pretty damned ismo, but... But they're getting together and do the seminars. The seminars aren't a moral endeavor. The seminars are a meaning endeavor. What do you love? What do you connect it to?

What do you want to exist even if you don't? I don't know how to separate them. the fact of the action oriented towards that good and morality per se. I get your argument, look, I can certainly see the utility in dissociating emotional state, especially proximal emotional state from meaning as such or purpose. The delay of gratification is that, fundamentally. But I'm still struggling with that. Oh, no, but perhaps I'll let me suggest something back.

So, I'm using morality the way I think Wolf is using it, the way that you've been used sort of post-enlightenment, post-cont, which is your commitment to a sense of duty, born from something like the categorical imperative. Okay, okay, okay. I see. You're talking about, I think, a platonic notion of sex.

Yes, yes, right? Right? Well, you're talking about human flourishing. Now, interestingly enough, Kant goes on to argue that if you do something out of life, then it is expressly not a moral act, because if you're doing it for anything other than the sense of duty. Right, well, he's hyper conscientious. Well, so do you think that that's the morality that

Christ is pointing to in the Gospels where he states that unless your ethical striving exceeds that, characterizing the Pharisees, the hypocrites, the scribes, the academics, the lawyers, the legalistic types, that it's not a true ethic at all, and that the morality that you're describing that would be dissociable from meaning is more the hypocritical or academic or legalistic type. I think totally. Okay. That resolves the problem that I was having. I think Paul wrestles with this, and I think there's ways and critical of it when he's talking about law and love.

There's two different things. And so what I think happens in Job, and what I think happens in Job versus a volcano, is Job, or Job, perhaps Job too, Job recovers a gratitude for his life, not because any of his moral in this other sense. There is no proof that the world is just. All that's been happened is he has been opened to a connection, a contact with what's newmenous and that is sufficient. I think that's what was also happening at the end.

So these are my bring this up, because my lab we're doing a lot of work on post-traumatic stress disorder and how it looks like a violation of the hyper-prior of a just world hypothesis. Right. And what we're pursuing, one of the things we're doing is we're seeing of meaning in life generating that semantic meaning,

like the dialectic and theologous practices that I have said. Like if they can restore people's sense of religio connectedness, meaning in life, that helps heal them from the trauma without trying to argue them into that this is ultimately a just world. See, that's... Right that's, this is what I'm hoping for. I'm hoping that these are. That's an experiential replacement for a logical argument in some ways. And I think it's more real than, well, one of the things

that I always did with my clients in therapy, sometimes for post-traumatic stress reasons, was this is where it's not cognitive. It's like the first thing I would do often was a differential diagnosis, let's say, for people who are depressed. Okay, so there's two parts, there's more than two, but there's two possibilities. Okay, one is that you're depressed. The other is that you have a terrible life. Okay, so let's take those apart. You have a partner, do you have friends, do you have family, do you have a job, do you have educational resources at hand.

You know, are you embedded in a structure of meaning, a multi-dimensional structure of meaning where you find purchase? And if I answered all those questions, is no, and sometimes that is the answer, then you're not depressed. Like, you might be sad and guilt-stricken and lonely and anxious and show all the symptoms of depression, but your fundamental problem is that, well, you have nothing.

Now, you can take someone who's completely different in that, you can, and you find people like this, they're doing fine and all those evaluations, dimensions of evaluation, And they're depressed. I found, by the way, that those were often people who responded well to an antidepressant. Right. Because their depression wasn't a consequence of the failure of these embedded structures that you described.

Now, if you're dealing with someone who has a terrible life, that's when you do, that's when you revert to the level of behavior. It's like, okay, well, why don't we see if we can make you a friend? And then we can evaluate the consequences of that. We've got 50 things here to work on. We can work on one of them and see if that produces a concrete difference. It has very little to do with cognitive restructuring, except in so far as the person might have to restructure their cognitions, terrible cliche, written phrase, to allow themselves to risk attempting to make a friend.

But I see the same thing working quite well in the treatment of something like post-traumatic stress disorders. Like, well, you don't want to retool your explicit representation of the world necessarily. But you might want to see if you can expand the discovery of true intrinsic meaning within your life. The other thing that's often recommended by behavioral therapists is that, say, if you're having someone track their moods if they're depressed across a week, they do that every two hours, and then you see variability, even

though they may say they're depressed all the time. It's usually variability. Well, one of the things you find out is, okay, what were you doing when you were worse and what were you doing when you were better? And could we have you do a little less of what you were doing when you were worse and little more of what you were doing when you were worse and little more of what you were doing? That's an empirical, collaborative empiricism, essentially, is how that's described.

It's very powerful. I found those behavioral techniques generally much more powerful than any mere cognitive re-evaluation. It's not always, but often. Well, yeah, I mean, I would say that that's because ultimately 40 con size right cognition to embody embedded and acted Extend right and the propositional knowing is sitting on top of the procedural the prospectival and the participatory And you have to bring oh, you know, that's actually one of the primary things I wanted to talk to you about today Maybe we'll do that on the daily wire side because we have another half an hour. Okay, let's do that. So for those of you who are

watching and listening, you can join us on the daily wire side. We're going to continue this conversation, but in a pretty targeted direction. I want to talk to John about the embedding of explicit knowledge, the kind of knowledge you can communicate verbally, let's say, in other systems of representation and memory, because it sounds like we're dovetailing with regards to the way we're theorizing about this. So if you want to join us, I also want to talk to John about the academic reception of his work and his sense of his impact in the broader public sphere. So we'll do that on the daily wire plus side.

I think we came to a good ending point. Otherwise, for this discussion, even though I just soon keep talking to you like for the next week, but we'll do it again in the not too distant future. I like that, I love it. So yeah, yeah. And so for everybody watching and listening, thank you very much for your time and attention

and to the daily wire people for making this possible. That's much appreciated in the film crew here. And John, happy new year to you. Happy new year to you. Yeah, really good to see you, man. Yeah, so join us on the daily wire plus side if you're inclined.