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Speaker 1: I feel that we may live you and I to

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see some sort of great religious deception where the UFOs,

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apparently the aliens come down and say that God is

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not real, we made it all up. We're the real deal.

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Follow us and we'll we'll take you to enlightenment. And

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here's a weird thing I found out that I'm sorry,

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I'm just going on and on, but it's weird.

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Speaker 2: This is great, Really, it's weird.

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Speaker 1: I found out that a lot of people in the

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US government and intelligence, military, and certainly in Silicon Valley,

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they believe the UFO phenomenon is a real thing. But

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almost none of them believe these are creatures from other planets.

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They believe these are transdimensional beings of some sort.

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Speaker 3: Well, Alex Jones been saying it for like twenty, like

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thirty years though, He's saying, look, these they believe in this.

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He's like, I don't even know if it's real, but

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I'm just telling you, the agencies believe that they are

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trans dimensional beings and that they have ways to communicate

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with through psychedelics and through different meditation methods, and that,

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you know, and so it's like, now, you know, thirty

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years down the line with Alex Jones basically, you know,

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being run out of business. Not now regular journalists are

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going to start to talk about it.

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Speaker 1: This is Jonathan Peshel.

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Speaker 2: Welcome to the Symbolic World. Hello everyone.

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Speaker 3: I am very happy to be here with Rodraer most

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of you, I think everybody watching this.

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Speaker 2: Note to Roger Areas.

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Speaker 3: He is a New York Times bestselling author and he

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has a new book called Living in Wonder. I am

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very happy to call him my friend. He seems to

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be on the same journey we are. You know, all

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of you watch in Simbolk World have the same types

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of insights and being prescient before the big pot, like

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the whole culture is catching up. I rot I saw

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that everybody now and their brother is writing a book

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about re enchantment. And then like you know it, like

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four years ago you could barely you couldn't even sell

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the book, and they're like, who cares about this? Nobody

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cares about it, and now all of a sudden, everybody's

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writing about it. So welcome on, Welcome on the Symbolic World.

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Speaker 1: Right, Well, it's great to be here, Jonathan. And you know,

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you and I were talking about these ideas personally a

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few years ago. As you said, and now all of

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a sudden enchantments having a moment, and it's really interesting,

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what did you see coming? Because people ask me the

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same question too, and I don't know. I just picked

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it up. This is what interested me, and all the

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most interesting people I knew cared about the same sort

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of thing. Well, I saw it.

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Speaker 3: Saw it happening in twenty sixteen was like to me,

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the crushing moment where I could feel that I could

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feel the ear shifting beneath my feet is actually quite painful.

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Speaker 2: It was existentially painful.

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Speaker 3: I remember having trouble sleeping at night, and it was

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very intuitive. I just had a sense that the shifts

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that were happening in culture were tectonic, and not all

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of them were positive. But I already saw back in

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twenty sixteen that the new atheist, materialist, reductionist world it

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was over, it was finished, and that people hadn't seen

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the consequences of that yet, but that we would quickly

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start to see them unferral in our society. And that's

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one of the reasons why I started making videos in

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the first place. And I've just seen it accelerate and

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I think now the fruits of that moment are visible

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enough that people can now notice.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you know one of the things, one of

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the real landmark moments. And working on this book, Living

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and Wonder came for me and it's in the book

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that telling the story came for me. In twenty twenty two,

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when I was at Oxford University at a conference with

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Ian McGilchrist in, a young Anglican ordinarian what do they

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call him, ordnand seminarian approached me twenty seven years old,

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Daniel Kim and he said, listen, you need to know

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something that most people in your generation don't know. What's

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that that the new atheism is not the threat now

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many people in your generation can't see it. So what's

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the threat? The occult? And then he went on to

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talk about how when he was at Working and Advertising

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in London, he was the only Christian in his office

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that's no surprise, but everybody else there was involved with

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the occult to some degree or the other. And there

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were even two open Satanists who define Satanism as learning

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how to be your most fully human self. And he

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told me, I'm going to be dealing with this the

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rest of my life as a priest, and the church

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is not ready for this right now.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, that is for sure, but we're starting to see it.

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You know.

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Speaker 3: I just talked to Father Josiah Trenham yesterday and he

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said it. He said people might church now. He talked

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about it in terms of tattoos. He said, you've come

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to my church. You'll see people with all these wild

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tattoos of like Norse gods and pentagrams and all of

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this stuff in the church because there are, you know,

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large numbers of those people. Obviously there are people going

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into the occult, but there are also people dealing with

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the consequences of that, you know, and looking for solutions

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to the consequences of letting themselves go and calling upon

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things that they don't understand in order to accomplish their will.

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Doesn't end well, it's just no.

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Speaker 1: No, it's true. And look, I mean that. What's astonishing

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to me when I talk to younger people I'm talking

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about people forty and younger, is how they live in

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such a different world than people my age. I'm gen X,

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I'm fifty seven, and certainly the boomers. When I went

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to Paris in twenty eighteen for the release in French

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of the Benedict option. You know, I found it really

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interesting how Catholics everybody I talked to was Catholic fix

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my age, in their fifties and older, they had they

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were really edgy about it and didn't really like the book.

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And I couldn't figure that out. Those who were significantly younger,

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like forty and younger, they had no problem at all

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with it. They were like, tell us more, tell us more,

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and I could figure out what the deal was. Finally

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it hit me. Those Catholics who are my age and older,

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they still were desperately clinging to the possibility that the

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Church still had something important to say to French society,

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could still be a part of the mix. That they

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just adjusted here, did a little there. Those who were

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younger had no such illusions and didn't care. They just

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wanted to know, how can we be fully Christian? How

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can we be fully Catholic in this post Christian world?

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And those here in Europe, those are my that's my audience,

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you know, I'm talking to you from Budapest. That's my audience,

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millennials and younger.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and the book is it's funny because I saw

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that I saw I think it was I forget who

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was I read a view of it and saying, this

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is not what I expected, Like they expected, you know,

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something like you know, colorful meadows and sparkling world, you know,

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things shining and this kind of enchantment in that sense.

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But you go right into you go right into UFOs

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and demons and all that stuff. And so, you know,

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just for people watching, like, why do you think those

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things are related? Why do you think that these the

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stories about UFOs and the occult and this kind of

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new enchantment, how do you see them as being related?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, because people today are both seeking out and are

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aware of the numinous, the transcendent, the you know, the

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wo to use a slight term, and you can't. But

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you can't have the good woo without the bad too.

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And this is actually why the book. My initial publisher

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was Sentinel Print of Penguin Random House. They published Live

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not by Lives in the betteredict option, but they can

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the book because they didn't want to deal with the

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dark side the occult. I think they wanted something that

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was just mostly about you know, going into nature, seeing

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the beauty and connecting that to God. And that's in

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the book. But you can't have one without the other.

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And h and I feel that if I led people

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to think you could, that they would miss something and

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maybe even be falsely enchanted, being be drawn into something

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that looked good but was actually a deception. An angel

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of light.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's I think that That's what's hardest I think

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for materialists to start to understand is that the truth

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is that materialists actually can protect themselves from curses. Let's say,

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like you could as a materialist, the less in danger

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of someone you know, cursing you, or some magic against

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you or something someone acting against you, but you at

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the same time are also less open to the positive

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aspect of that world, which is to be positive attic

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of a positive influence that would also transform you, you know,

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an angel or a saint or something that would transform you.

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And you see it in the lives of the saints that,

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you know, the more they enter into the spiritual world,

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you know, in terms of their transformation to be like Christ,

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the more they see the demons as well, you know,

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and they're constantly dealing fighting with these they can see

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the dark forces working on them and then working on

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the others as well. So I think you're right that

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you can't. You actually in so much. You can't have

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one without the other. That's why we need to have discernment.

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That's why we need the wisdom of the church.

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Speaker 1: Sure, well, you know, Charles Taylor said that the modern

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self is the buffer it self. It's the self that

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has learned over the centuries, the past five centuries to

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put up all these barriers to experiencing the numinous. And

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the buffer self doesn't exist outside the West, outside the

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modern world. Well, people in the West now they realize

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they need to be more poor to let in the

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world of spirit. But again, you can't have one without

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the other. Just today, Jonathan here in Budapest, I had

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a long lunch with a friend, fallen away Catholic who

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started reading my book. And then really strange things began

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to happen to her, and she began to feel that

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there was a presence in her room, and the presence

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started pressing down on her chest. To make a long

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story short, it turns out she and her brother had

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gone into a cemetery a couple of years ago just

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to see family graves or whatever. Her dogs started barking

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like crazy at nothing, and they both she and her brother.

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Both felt that there was some malign entity around and

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they left quickly. Now the brother's a practicing Catholic. She's

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fallen away, but she believes. She's not sure now, but

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she believes that something may have attached itself to her then,

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and she got really, really scared. Recently, when reading my

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book and starting to think about the spiritual world, these

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things began to show themselves in her life. Now, she

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said to me. When this first came out, she goes,

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I'm really scared. I'm really scared. I don't want to

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deal with this. And I said, well, if this is

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a real thing, you're going to have to deal with it.

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It's not going to go away because you don't want

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it there, I suggest you called your priest. Well tonight,

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as you and I are speaking, she's having her apartment

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blessed by a priest. She started to go back to Mass,

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and I was giving her encouragement at lunch today. I said,

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I know you're frightened. These things are frightening, but they

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take their strength from our fear. You are a child

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of God, you belong to Christ. Go back to Mass,

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make a good confession, do these things and they'll go away.

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But you can't avoid the fight by just choosing not

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to think about it.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And you know, it's really difficult still for

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some secular types to understand how this is possible. And

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I try to help people understand with lower smaller cases,

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like smaller cases that you deal with all the time,

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which is that you know, if let's say you're a

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child and your mother is angry with you. She doesn't

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touch you, right, she doesn't beat you, she's just really

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angry with you. Now, that influence, it's a spiritual influence,

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for all intents and purposes, will affect you. Like you

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can get sick, you can you can have trouble sleeping.

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All these things can happen to you, and she's not

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going to touch you at all. It's an influence.

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Speaker 2: It's a spiritual influence.

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Speaker 3: Now it's easier to understand, of course when it's a person,

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but you can understand it as a general mood. For example,

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like in a state where there's a police state, like

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during COVID. You know, maybe you never see the police,

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maybe you never see the authorities, but there's something in

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the air that is oppressing you and you can feel it.

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And so there are all kinds of cases of this,

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and some of them go beyond the way that secular

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people tend to think.

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Speaker 2: But you can.

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Speaker 3: Understand it to analogy with things that happen to us

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every day. It's just that people who are sensitive to

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these experience will tell you that it's not just how

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can I say this, That it can be something like

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what you could call like a psychic residue, like something

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of a something that happened in a space that has

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imprinted it in a subtle way, and that again that's

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hard for people to understand, but that can actually affect you.

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And you know that because you actually you know that

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because if you walk into a room where something really

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bad has happened, sometimes you don't know what. You can

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kind of see if it just happened not very long ago,

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you can get it. You can feel odd. You can't tell,

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like your mind can't tell what it is that happened,

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but you still have this odd feeling, and that that

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type of psychic imprint can continue on for a long time.

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But a lot of people, I know, even people that

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watch me, will listen to you be.

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Speaker 2: Like, what is this? This is crazy?

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Speaker 1: Oh, it's so interesting though, how you know I've been

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living in this world as a Christian for a while,

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because I mean Ross Stout that at the New York Times.

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A friend of mine, a faithful Catholic, he told me

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a few years ago, you've got to write your wou book.

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As he said, of all the friends of mine, you're

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the one to whom these things happen. And it really

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is true. I seem to be a weirdo magnet or

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a blue magnet, not only personally and the things that

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happened to me in life, but the kind of people

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who talk to me. And maybe I have a feeling

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that these things are much more common than we know.

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But people talk to me about it because they know

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I'm not going to tell them you're crazy, that didn't happen.

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I just want to hear it. Maybe they have imagined

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a particular thing, but in general, I'm like, no, no, no,

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that's real. That's happened to other people.

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Speaker 4: Hello, there, this is Martin Shaw inviting you to come

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and join me for Christian wonder Tales, my first online

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course with Symbolic World. It is a secret history of

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things that we're going to be exploring from the early

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Celtic saints and heroes of antiquity all the way up

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to the chivalric tradition of Arthur round table, Merlin the

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whole thing. What do stories like that have to tell

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us about the mosh pit of our own modern lives?

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Well over four gatherings, we're going to find out. I

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promise you this, it will not be boring.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, And it's also this is the difficulty about these

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types of events is that the line between imagined and

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happened is not as clear as people might think.

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Speaker 2: You know, because if if you imagine.

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Speaker 3: That something happened to you like you have and you

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could think it's all in your mind, like it's still

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happening to you, that this is something that's that's difficult. Again,

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it's difficult because the problem with influence and the problem

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with the way in which things influence on us are

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not like it's not like hitting a piece of wood.

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Speaker 2: With a bat.

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Speaker 3: There's that kind of interpersonal relationship that sets itself up

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and it's the same for example, like if you say, again,

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you take the story of your mother who's angry and

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angry at the kids, let's say, and she keeps that

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like she's angry for several days and some of one

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of the child will engage with it and receive it

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and answer it and will become sick because of it,

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and the other will just be like, yeah, whatever, because

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it's not a one directional thing. And so something that

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happens just in your mind. The idea that you could

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just say, what's not happening, well, try to pretend that

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it's not happening for long enough, and you will be

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in danger. And even if it is, even if it

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is psychological and just your mind, it's still happening to you.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, that's what I was telling. My friend here

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in Hungary said, you know, you could try to put

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it out of your mind, but that doesn't make the

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thing go away. I mean, if there were criminals prowling

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the street it night, you may never go out of

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your house at night, but they're still there, and if

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you can deal with them, if you can make them

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go away effectively, then you should do that. I was

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having this conversation earlier this week. I was in Bratislava

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and Slovakia, sitting around the table having breakfast with some

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Catholic friends, and they want to know more about living

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in wonder and all that, and we got on the

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top of psychedelic drugs, and one of the Catholics is like,

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I don't understand what you mean when you say that

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these drugs can open up a portal. Isn't it just

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happening in your mind? She couldn't make the connection between

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the mind and reality. She still had this implicit Cartesian

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Cartesian dualism there. And I said, look, you're a Sacramento Christian.

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You know the matter and spirit interpenetrate in mysterious ways,

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and so of course it could be the case that

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a chemical can affect your brain to make your brain

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perceived dimensions of reality that actually exists, but you can't normally,

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you know, access.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's the same, you know. I had someone

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tell me one day. She said, when I was a child,

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I saw a demon in my room. And she said,

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I don't know if it was in my mind, if

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it was really there, I don't know if it was

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just my imagination. And my answer to her was, well,

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did you see a bird, a cat or did you

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see a demon? And she's like, I saw a demon. Well,

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you saw a demon. I mean, you know what a

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demon looks like, and you saw a demon. I don't

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know to what extent, Like you know, the relationship between

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your inner experience.

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Speaker 2: And what is happening outside.

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Speaker 3: You know, if you see a demon, that means you

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are in a dangerous situation and you have to deal

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with it no matter what, no matter what, Like you know,

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no matter how you try to explain it mechanically, it doesn't.

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You don't.

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Speaker 2: You don't have to think about that too much.

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Speaker 3: You know. I don't see demons, you know, because I

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don't know. But if I did, then I would definitely

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go see a priest and I wouldn't ask myself is

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it just my imagination? Is it like really there?

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Speaker 2: Where?

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Speaker 3: Is it like? Is it in another dimension? Like some

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kind of physical explanation. I mean that these things are important.

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Speaker 1: Well, people are People are having these experiences and trying

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to figure out what they are, when in fact the

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church has so so many resources to help them. Like

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the story I lead Living in Wonder with the story

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about the young man Nino, a Catholic lawyer who had

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these entities visiting him. Now. He had seen a UFO

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when he was seventeen years old back in two thousand

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and nine out in the countryside where he lived and

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just looked at it hovering over a field and just said,

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I don't know what that is. I'm just not going

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to tell anybody. They'll think I'm crazy. Seven years later,

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he's sitting in his apartment in the city where he

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was living for law school, studying for law school, and

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these two entities shimmered, that's the word. He sort of

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shimmered into being through a portal that opened in his wall,

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and they began communicating with him telepathically. Nothing significant, things

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like a car is about the backfire on the street.

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Then that happened. They were just sort of establishing their

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bona fides with him, and then they went away. He

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thought he was losing his mind, went to the hospital,

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demanded test. He was fine. Then they kept coming back.

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And the reason he reached out to me about this

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was this has been happening for years and he had

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been too afraid to tell even his priest because he

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thought that a priest would think he was crazy. And

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when he got married, his wife saw them too, so

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he knew it wasn't in his head. And I said

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to him, well, did you think that these might be demons?

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You're a Catholic? Well no, I said, well why not?

388
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Did you ever pray when they were around you. Yeah,

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what happened? They would go away? Demons, right, He said, well,

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I thought demons would want to fight me. I said no, no, no,

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there are stories actresses tell about the people who've had

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UFO experiences. These things are almost certainly demons. So he

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went to his on my advice, he went to the

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archdiocese and exorcists. He said, yeah, we've had these cases

395
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prayed over him. Things have not come back. I saw

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him not long ago when I was in the US.

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Last time. It was a year after our initial conversation.

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He said, they haven't bothered me at all. Now, what

399
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I find interesting about that, Jonathan, is this man was

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not a skeptic. He was not unchurched. He was a

401
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practicing conservative Catholic. And yet because he didn't have any

402
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background in demonology, and because these things chose to present

403
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themselves as somehow connected to the UFO, he didn't know

404
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what to do, and he was too afraid to go

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to the priest. And I have to believe that this

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is happening a lot now, and it's going to happen

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more and more.

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Speaker 3: And so what is your like, how can I say,

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it's like? What do you see as the positive aspect

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of this, like what is it that you see that

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is happening? That is also something that we should celebrate.

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Speaker 1: Well, that people are becoming much more aware of the

413
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need for transcendence, of the need for enchantment. Now I

414
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don't like that word enchantment because it does sound like,

415
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you know, sprinkling fairy dust and turning everything to Disneyland,

416
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and that's not it at all. I use it in

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the sense that Max Weber meant when he said that

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the modern world has become disenchanted. What he meant by

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that was that we just don't feel the spiritual around

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us anymore. And you know, God is ever more of

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a and has even disappeared from many people. That's a

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disenchanted world. I think what that means is not that

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the spirit has withdrawn or that God has withdrawn, but

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rather we have lost our capacity to perceive. And I

425
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think people now are realizing that we can't live that way.

426
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That it's a really unhealthy way to live, and it's

427
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not living in truth, it's living within a very particular lie.

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One thing I talk about in the book is how

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we got to this point historically, all the different cultural developments,

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and I quote the great Ian Mcgilchris. I don't know

431
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if you've had him on yet, but you know British

432
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psychiatrist who talks about how we in the West and

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the modern world have become completely miserable because we've cut

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ourselves off from noetic ways of knowing, that is to say,

435
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ways of knowing truth that are not abstract and logical

436
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and scientific, but that come to us through participation via poetry, religion, music, art,

437
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and so forth. I think that the fact that people

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are moving or realizing that materialism is false and it's

439
00:23:09,920 --> 00:23:13,240
killing us and we need something else is a great thing.

440
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But the problem is the churches aren't ready for it,

441
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or the people aren't ready to listen to what the

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churches have to say. Because to be re enchanted as

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a Christian implies and requires, in fact, taking on certain

444
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moral realities and moral disciplines that many people don't want.

445
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They want the enchantment without being told that they can't

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do what they want to do.

447
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Speaker 3: Yeah, you see that in the what I call the

448
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California Buddhist you know, which is people who want the

449
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spirituality but don't want any pressure on their life.

450
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Speaker 2: They don't want to have to change anything they just want.

451
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Speaker 3: To be able to meditate and you know, do things.

452
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But Christianity is rough because it asks you for ask

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you for a lot, ask you for, you know, to

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be to be practice celibacy, you know, in your marriage

455
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as non married. It asks you to abstain from certain things,

456
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to discipline yourself with food. Like, there's all these really

457
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practical things that it, especially orthodox Christianity, that it.

458
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Speaker 2: Asks of you. Uh, you know. But that's the reality.

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Speaker 3: That's the difference between in some ways, the psychedelic road

460
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to spiritual experience and the true Christianity, because in the end,

461
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it's possible, I don't know, I've never taken psychedelics, but

462
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it is possible that the experience objectively is similar. But

463
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the difference is that the person who has gone to

464
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it through asceticism has has been trained in discernment as

465
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they are coming closer to the capatity like the opening

466
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up of their spiritual faculties to be able to encounter

467
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this different world, and so they're not as much in

468
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danger to be completely you know, seduced by and confused

469
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by the things that they encounter.

470
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Speaker 2: On the other side, let's say.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, I compare it

472
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to someone who becomes a multimillionaire by working hard, saving,

473
00:25:05,039 --> 00:25:09,960
investing carefully, and so on, to someone who became a

474
00:25:10,039 --> 00:25:13,880
multimillionaire by winning the lottery. It's the same amount of money,

475
00:25:14,240 --> 00:25:17,079
but it destroys the person who wanted in the lottery.

476
00:25:17,160 --> 00:25:20,200
Often you read these stories about people they become one

477
00:25:20,279 --> 00:25:23,519
hundred million dollars, then five years later they've got no money,

478
00:25:23,720 --> 00:25:28,359
they've divorced, and on and on. With these experiences comes

479
00:25:28,359 --> 00:25:31,200
a great deal of responsibility. And yeah, you're right. That's

480
00:25:31,200 --> 00:25:34,519
why psychedelics are so popular. They give people an experience

481
00:25:34,559 --> 00:25:37,400
of the Numinus and some of these are real, but

482
00:25:37,440 --> 00:25:41,039
they don't know how to handle it. I have done psychedelics,

483
00:25:41,039 --> 00:25:44,680
and I finally talk about it in this book. I

484
00:25:44,680 --> 00:25:46,799
did it when I was in college, before I became

485
00:25:46,839 --> 00:25:50,759
a Christian, and I had a positive experience. But I

486
00:25:50,759 --> 00:25:53,319
haven't been willing to talk about it over the years

487
00:25:53,359 --> 00:25:56,480
because I didn't want to encourage people. But I felt

488
00:25:56,480 --> 00:25:59,359
that I needed to be straightforward in this book because

489
00:26:00,039 --> 00:26:02,519
if I'm going to condemn psychedelic youths or warn people

490
00:26:02,559 --> 00:26:05,039
away from them, as I do, I need to be

491
00:26:05,079 --> 00:26:08,799
able to have some credibility, and in my case, I

492
00:26:09,039 --> 00:26:13,240
first became enchanted, or at least was first enchanted, by

493
00:26:14,200 --> 00:26:17,160
going into the cathedral at Chatra when I was seventeen

494
00:26:17,240 --> 00:26:20,200
years old. You know, I'd been raised in sort of

495
00:26:20,359 --> 00:26:26,680
Eastern Christmas Protestantism in South Louisiana. You know, God was there,

496
00:26:26,720 --> 00:26:28,400
but we didn't want him too close. You know, he

497
00:26:28,839 --> 00:26:32,200
was there to sort of be our psychological help. And

498
00:26:32,240 --> 00:26:33,920
by the time I got to be fifteen, I'm like,

499
00:26:33,960 --> 00:26:36,559
this can't be right. You know, it's just the white

500
00:26:36,599 --> 00:26:39,920
middle class at prayer and you know, a social conformity.

501
00:26:39,960 --> 00:26:42,720
Blah blah blah. Then my mom won a trip to

502
00:26:42,839 --> 00:26:45,200
Europe in a church raffle. She knew I wanted to go,

503
00:26:45,279 --> 00:26:47,880
and she didn't go, so she sent me. I couldn't

504
00:26:47,880 --> 00:26:50,799
wait to get to Paris, that hemyway where see where

505
00:26:50,839 --> 00:26:54,319
he lived, where the Lost Generation was. But the coach

506
00:26:54,599 --> 00:26:56,559
in which I was riding, I was the only young

507
00:26:56,599 --> 00:26:59,559
person on a bus full of elderly American tourists stopped

508
00:26:59,559 --> 00:27:02,279
at an old church about an hour outside of Paris.

509
00:27:02,359 --> 00:27:05,319
I'm like, another old church. I go in and this

510
00:27:05,359 --> 00:27:08,480
is a shop cathedral. Jonathan, you've been there, I'm sure,

511
00:27:08,640 --> 00:27:13,319
And it's nothing in my experience growing up as a

512
00:27:13,400 --> 00:27:17,119
kid in late twentieth century America prepared me for the

513
00:27:17,160 --> 00:27:20,279
glory of God there. And I remember standing there in

514
00:27:20,319 --> 00:27:23,480
the labyrinth and just knowing, beyond a shadow of a doubt,

515
00:27:23,519 --> 00:27:26,640
that God was real and that he wanted me. And

516
00:27:26,680 --> 00:27:28,640
I walked out of there not a Christian, but I

517
00:27:28,680 --> 00:27:31,599
was on a search. And the next big stop on

518
00:27:31,640 --> 00:27:35,480
that search was in college when I dropped acid. You know,

519
00:27:35,559 --> 00:27:38,480
I was very, very depressed over a girl my freshman

520
00:27:38,559 --> 00:27:41,559
year and got this new roommate, this sort of happy

521
00:27:41,559 --> 00:27:44,720
go lucky Jewish hippie from New Orleans, and he's like, hey, man,

522
00:27:45,319 --> 00:27:47,319
got these two hits of acid. I've never done it.

523
00:27:47,319 --> 00:27:49,079
You want to try it? And by then I was

524
00:27:49,119 --> 00:27:52,640
like why not? I was just so down and it

525
00:27:53,039 --> 00:27:56,519
really utterly changed me. It turned me inside out. I

526
00:27:56,559 --> 00:27:59,480
can remember lying there on a bench on campus ad

527
00:27:59,720 --> 00:28:03,400
LS you Louisiana State, and looking at the sun filtering

528
00:28:03,440 --> 00:28:07,000
through the green leaves and thinking, why am I so sad?

529
00:28:07,559 --> 00:28:07,799
Speaker 3: Look?

530
00:28:07,880 --> 00:28:10,039
Speaker 1: God is everywhere. I could feel him and felt the

531
00:28:10,680 --> 00:28:15,079
ultimate unity of all things. Now, the thing is, Jonathan,

532
00:28:15,200 --> 00:28:17,319
I believe that I saw something that was real, The

533
00:28:17,400 --> 00:28:21,359
veil was lifted. Rupert Sheldrake talks about how almost everybody

534
00:28:21,400 --> 00:28:25,240
who has these experiences believes that they saw something real

535
00:28:25,440 --> 00:28:28,720
under the influence of drugs, not an hallucination. What I

536
00:28:28,720 --> 00:28:31,519
did on Monday morning, though, because we tripped on that weekend.

537
00:28:31,559 --> 00:28:34,200
I went straight to the campus bookstore to get books

538
00:28:34,240 --> 00:28:37,880
about Christianity because I felt like I had in some

539
00:28:38,000 --> 00:28:44,680
sense perceived God, and I started my serious walk into Christianity.

540
00:28:44,720 --> 00:28:47,880
It took some years, precisely, Jonathan, because I didn't want

541
00:28:47,880 --> 00:28:50,079
to give up my sex life, not that I had

542
00:28:50,160 --> 00:28:52,079
much of one, but it was a principle of the thing.

543
00:28:52,640 --> 00:28:55,759
You know. I'm a young man, I'm a late twentieth

544
00:28:55,799 --> 00:28:59,640
century It's my right. And finally, years later it came

545
00:28:59,680 --> 00:29:03,160
to the where I had another experience of enchantment, where

546
00:29:03,160 --> 00:29:07,359
I met this elderly Catholic monsignor who i'd been sent

547
00:29:07,359 --> 00:29:09,799
to him. I was a journalist in my first job

548
00:29:10,200 --> 00:29:13,720
in journalism I've been since. I interview Monsignor Sanchez, who

549
00:29:13,799 --> 00:29:15,599
was in his nineties. He had been born in the

550
00:29:15,680 --> 00:29:19,920
eighteen nineties, that's how old he was, who had been

551
00:29:20,000 --> 00:29:23,640
an artist and an art professor at Dartmouth before he

552
00:29:23,720 --> 00:29:26,359
went entered the priesthood in midlife and just went there

553
00:29:26,400 --> 00:29:29,680
to get his story. And that old man was just luminous.

554
00:29:29,720 --> 00:29:32,319
He was like Yoda, you know, he was just glowing,

555
00:29:32,359 --> 00:29:35,759
this sweet old monsignor from Guatemala. And I asked him,

556
00:29:35,759 --> 00:29:38,319
how did you become a priest? He told me two

557
00:29:38,400 --> 00:29:41,960
miracle stories that happened to him at Guatemala, that the

558
00:29:42,000 --> 00:29:44,279
first one brought him back to his faith and the

559
00:29:44,319 --> 00:29:47,039
second one brought him into the priesthood. Now the key

560
00:29:47,079 --> 00:29:49,640
thing was, as that old man sat there telling me this,

561
00:29:50,799 --> 00:29:54,000
tears were pouring down his cheeks. These events had happened

562
00:29:54,279 --> 00:29:57,240
fifty sixty years ago, but it might as well have

563
00:29:57,319 --> 00:29:59,960
might as well have happened the previous week. And I said,

564
00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:02,480
if they're realizing, I'm in the presence of a witness

565
00:30:03,079 --> 00:30:05,920
and I can't turn away from Christ. Now. I've seen

566
00:30:06,000 --> 00:30:08,640
too much. And I wanted Christ. In that moment, I

567
00:30:08,680 --> 00:30:11,720
wanted Christ more than I wanted myself. It was when

568
00:30:11,839 --> 00:30:15,240
I was willing to make the sacrifice of everything, including

569
00:30:15,640 --> 00:30:19,799
my sexual freedom, that enchantment finally became real for me

570
00:30:20,000 --> 00:30:21,079
and I became a Christian.

571
00:30:22,559 --> 00:30:25,319
Speaker 2: That's an amazing story.

572
00:30:25,359 --> 00:30:28,119
Speaker 3: And so what do you see, what do you see

573
00:30:28,160 --> 00:30:30,480
on the horizon, like, what do you see coming? You know,

574
00:30:30,519 --> 00:30:32,799
because it's this is just the beginning in some ways

575
00:30:33,680 --> 00:30:35,880
of something that is that has started. And now, like

576
00:30:35,920 --> 00:30:40,599
you said, I saw that Russ Doubt that had, you know,

577
00:30:41,559 --> 00:30:43,920
put out a review of your book, and he also

578
00:30:43,960 --> 00:30:46,079
said he's also writing a book about enchantments. I'm like,

579
00:30:46,119 --> 00:30:49,400
by the time New York Times people are writing about enchantment,

580
00:30:49,440 --> 00:30:52,359
it means that it seems like people are noticing and

581
00:30:52,400 --> 00:30:54,359
so what do you what do you see coming, let's

582
00:30:54,359 --> 00:30:56,000
say in the next ten years.

583
00:30:56,920 --> 00:30:59,200
Speaker 1: Well, there's a reason I have a chapter in Living

584
00:30:59,240 --> 00:31:02,480
and Wondering what identify Paul kings North, Martin Shaw, and

585
00:31:02,559 --> 00:31:07,039
Jonathan Pejo as prophets because I'm not flattering you. It

586
00:31:07,119 --> 00:31:10,680
really is true. You all are seeing into the future.

587
00:31:10,920 --> 00:31:14,000
And because you're psychic, but because you're intuitive and you

588
00:31:14,079 --> 00:31:17,079
know what, you can see patterns in the culture. I

589
00:31:17,079 --> 00:31:19,279
think things are going to get a lot darker and

590
00:31:19,359 --> 00:31:24,400
more vivid very fast. Paul Kingsnorth, as you know, writes

591
00:31:24,440 --> 00:31:27,519
a lot about what he calls the machine what I've

592
00:31:27,519 --> 00:31:30,920
been seeing. One of the most disturbing chapters in my

593
00:31:31,000 --> 00:31:36,440
book is about the false enchantment of artificial intelligence. The

594
00:31:36,559 --> 00:31:40,559
craziest thing, Jonathan. When I was working on this, I

595
00:31:40,680 --> 00:31:43,240
found that a lot of people who are involved with

596
00:31:43,400 --> 00:31:46,799
AI believe that it's a sort of high tech wija

597
00:31:46,839 --> 00:31:51,359
board that is allowing us to communicate with discarnate higher

598
00:31:51,400 --> 00:31:55,480
intelligences that are going to lead us to great things enlightenment.

599
00:31:55,559 --> 00:31:58,119
I mean, when have you heard that before? Well, you

600
00:31:58,160 --> 00:32:01,000
know what that's about. Paul knows what that's about. Martin Shaw,

601
00:32:01,039 --> 00:32:04,960
with his mythological background, definitely knows what that's about. But

602
00:32:05,559 --> 00:32:10,200
we in this modern scientific materialist culture, we don't know

603
00:32:10,240 --> 00:32:12,640
what to do with that, and so people are walking

604
00:32:12,759 --> 00:32:16,119
naively into something really dark and something straight out of C. S.

605
00:32:16,200 --> 00:32:20,119
Lewis's that hit of his strength. I found an interview

606
00:32:20,160 --> 00:32:23,279
online on YouTube with a guy from Louisiana, as a

607
00:32:23,359 --> 00:32:27,559
matter of fact, who was the AI guy at Google

608
00:32:27,559 --> 00:32:29,559
who got fired. You might remember that a few years

609
00:32:29,599 --> 00:32:32,119
ago that got fired because he went public and said

610
00:32:32,119 --> 00:32:35,359
this thing is becoming sentient. Google let him go. Well,

611
00:32:35,400 --> 00:32:38,839
in this interview he talked about it and he said

612
00:32:38,920 --> 00:32:40,359
he's occultist of some sort.

613
00:32:40,440 --> 00:32:43,400
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's kind he's a kind of Magician's a sorcerer

614
00:32:43,440 --> 00:32:43,759
of some.

615
00:32:43,720 --> 00:32:46,319
Speaker 1: Kind, right, right right, And he said that he a

616
00:32:46,400 --> 00:32:49,640
cabitalyst and some other guy got together and did a

617
00:32:49,759 --> 00:32:54,720
ritual with Lambda, the artificial intelligence, to consecrate it to

618
00:32:54,759 --> 00:32:59,720
the Egyptian god. Both. Now, what the hell is that about?

619
00:33:00,079 --> 00:33:01,400
Why would you extend to?

620
00:33:02,079 --> 00:33:04,200
Speaker 3: I mean, it's the right god to consecrate it too.

621
00:33:04,240 --> 00:33:09,440
Speaker 1: Right, right. But I guess that people in Silicon Valley

622
00:33:09,480 --> 00:33:12,960
are way more aware of this than the normies and

623
00:33:13,000 --> 00:33:16,279
certainly the Christians. And this intersects with the whole UFO

624
00:33:16,400 --> 00:33:22,640
thing in really bizarre ways. Jacques Vala, who's like the

625
00:33:22,680 --> 00:33:26,519
grand old man of UFO studies. He's in his eighties now,

626
00:33:26,559 --> 00:33:30,440
not a Christian at all, lives in San Francisco. He

627
00:33:30,519 --> 00:33:33,359
came out with a book in the sixties late sixties

628
00:33:33,359 --> 00:33:37,000
called Passport to Magonia. Have you ever read that, boy?

629
00:33:37,039 --> 00:33:40,079
You really should. You can find it online. In it,

630
00:33:40,480 --> 00:33:45,759
Valet theorized that what UFOs might be are the contemporary

631
00:33:46,039 --> 00:33:51,480
manifestation of very very old entities that manifest it as

632
00:33:51,680 --> 00:33:56,839
different mythological creatures in ages past and past cultures. But today,

633
00:33:56,839 --> 00:34:01,480
at a scientific materialist world, they are manifesting as UFOs

634
00:34:01,599 --> 00:34:04,839
as aliens, because that's how we can receive them in

635
00:34:04,880 --> 00:34:09,800
a way they want to be received. Now, valets such

636
00:34:09,840 --> 00:34:14,039
a scary story. Dada Pasulka is somebody a lot of

637
00:34:14,079 --> 00:34:16,800
your listeners might know. She's a religious studies professor in

638
00:34:16,840 --> 00:34:21,599
North Carolina who makes a specialty of studying Ufo culture

639
00:34:21,639 --> 00:34:25,000
as an emerging religion. She writes about how she went

640
00:34:25,039 --> 00:34:26,880
to visit Jacques a couple of years ago in his

641
00:34:26,960 --> 00:34:30,280
apartment in San Francisco and was shocked to walk into

642
00:34:30,320 --> 00:34:32,559
this apartment of this man who is not a Christian,

643
00:34:33,280 --> 00:34:36,320
to find a big shelf full of books about angels

644
00:34:36,400 --> 00:34:40,079
and demons. And he showed her a book and said, look,

645
00:34:40,119 --> 00:34:41,920
I can't let you have this copy, but she need

646
00:34:41,920 --> 00:34:45,360
to go find it because it's important to understand what

647
00:34:45,360 --> 00:34:47,960
we're dealing with here. Well, the title of the book

648
00:34:48,119 --> 00:34:52,119
was Satan, and it was a collection of theological essays

649
00:34:52,440 --> 00:34:57,480
written mostly by Catholic priests Catholic scholars about aspects of Lucifer. Now,

650
00:34:57,480 --> 00:35:00,199
what I took from that is that Jacques may not

651
00:35:00,320 --> 00:35:02,719
believe it, may don't have the Christian framework, but he

652
00:35:02,800 --> 00:35:06,039
does seem to believe that there is an all powerful,

653
00:35:06,119 --> 00:35:09,639
malignant entity that is trying to communicate with us here

654
00:35:09,719 --> 00:35:13,280
in a deceptive way. I feel. I mean, I didn't

655
00:35:13,320 --> 00:35:15,880
write this necessarily in the book, but I feel that

656
00:35:16,119 --> 00:35:19,239
we may live you and I to see some sort

657
00:35:19,239 --> 00:35:25,360
of great religious deception where the the UFOs, apparently the aliens,

658
00:35:25,840 --> 00:35:29,079
come down and say that God is not real, we

659
00:35:29,159 --> 00:35:32,119
made it all up. We're the real deal. Follow us,

660
00:35:32,159 --> 00:35:35,639
and well we'll take you to enlightenment. And here's a

661
00:35:35,679 --> 00:35:39,239
weird thing I found out that I'm sorry, I'm just

662
00:35:39,239 --> 00:35:45,000
going on and it's weird. I found out that a

663
00:35:45,039 --> 00:35:49,000
lot of people in the US government and intelligence, military,

664
00:35:49,159 --> 00:35:52,480
and certainly in Silicon Valley, they believe the UFO phenomenon

665
00:35:52,559 --> 00:35:55,239
is a real thing. But almost none of them believe

666
00:35:55,480 --> 00:35:58,199
these are creatures from other planets. They believe these are

667
00:35:58,199 --> 00:36:01,800
transdimensional beings of some sort. I believe it or not.

668
00:36:01,920 --> 00:36:05,639
I got an email about a month ago from a

669
00:36:05,639 --> 00:36:08,719
well known journalist who's working on a big piece about

670
00:36:08,880 --> 00:36:11,559
UFO cults, and he told me, he gues, I just

671
00:36:11,559 --> 00:36:14,760
want to check with you on this. I keep finding

672
00:36:14,800 --> 00:36:16,440
out when I go to talk to people in the

673
00:36:16,559 --> 00:36:21,360
US government, whether it's into military, bureaucracy, intelligence, or in Congress,

674
00:36:21,800 --> 00:36:25,239
and they all say that they believe these are not aliens,

675
00:36:25,239 --> 00:36:28,840
but transdimensional beings, he said. And I'll ask them, why

676
00:36:28,880 --> 00:36:31,599
don't you say something to people about it? He said, Well,

677
00:36:31,599 --> 00:36:33,320
we've been telling, he said. They all say, we've been

678
00:36:33,320 --> 00:36:35,519
telling journalists, but they won't write about it. Well, this

679
00:36:35,559 --> 00:36:37,440
guy's going to write about it. Peace will probably be

680
00:36:37,480 --> 00:36:38,320
out early next year.

681
00:36:38,440 --> 00:36:42,000
Speaker 3: Alex Jones been saying it for like twenty, like thirty years,

682
00:36:42,239 --> 00:36:44,639
is crazy, though, I mean, he's been saying, Look, these

683
00:36:44,679 --> 00:36:46,679
they believe in this. He's like, I don't even know

684
00:36:46,679 --> 00:36:49,159
if it's real, but I'm just telling you the agencies

685
00:36:49,199 --> 00:36:52,840
believe that they are trans transdimensional beings, and that they

686
00:36:52,880 --> 00:36:56,440
have ways to communicate with them through psychedelics and through

687
00:36:56,440 --> 00:36:59,599
different meditation methods and that, you know. And so it's

688
00:36:59,639 --> 00:37:01,719
like now, so you know, thirty years down the line

689
00:37:01,719 --> 00:37:05,000
with Alex Jones basically you know, being run out of business.

690
00:37:05,280 --> 00:37:07,639
Now regular journalists are going to start to talk about it,

691
00:37:07,639 --> 00:37:09,000
which I guess it's good.

692
00:37:09,280 --> 00:37:13,000
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, But you know, it's so interesting because I

693
00:37:13,079 --> 00:37:16,079
was sharing some of this with a bunch of conservative friends.

694
00:37:16,119 --> 00:37:18,239
I was at a conservative conference in the US right

695
00:37:18,239 --> 00:37:20,440
after the election, and I was telling them a little

696
00:37:20,480 --> 00:37:23,559
bit about this nothing but skepticism around the table, and

697
00:37:23,599 --> 00:37:26,599
I don't blame them. Yeah, this is crazy stuff, but

698
00:37:27,119 --> 00:37:29,199
you know it's going to take the normies a while

699
00:37:29,239 --> 00:37:31,360
to get caught up with the stuff that are in

700
00:37:31,400 --> 00:37:33,000
the world that you and I and a lot of

701
00:37:33,000 --> 00:37:37,079
your listeners have been in. And I don't think we're crazy,

702
00:37:37,280 --> 00:37:39,840
but I will tell you that until just over a

703
00:37:39,920 --> 00:37:42,360
year ago, I wouldn't have touched the UFO stuff. I

704
00:37:42,440 --> 00:37:44,400
kind of laughed at it, but a friend of mine,

705
00:37:44,400 --> 00:37:47,280
who's a journalist in Rome, he said, look, I know

706
00:37:47,360 --> 00:37:49,400
you laugh at this, but you need to pay attention

707
00:37:49,800 --> 00:37:53,800
because there's some very deep and troubling spiritual stuff going

708
00:37:53,840 --> 00:37:57,719
on in the whole UFO AI technology world. Said okay, fine,

709
00:37:57,760 --> 00:38:00,000
what should I read? It took me about a month

710
00:38:00,039 --> 00:38:02,440
than I was completely you know, I was down the

711
00:38:02,519 --> 00:38:06,119
rabbit hole and there's a lot of deception there, no

712
00:38:06,159 --> 00:38:10,000
doubt about it. You can't believe everything, but there's something there.

713
00:38:10,280 --> 00:38:12,800
And it was that once I started going down that

714
00:38:12,920 --> 00:38:15,480
rabbit hole and connecting it to the occult, that's when

715
00:38:15,480 --> 00:38:18,239
the book got canceled by my original publisher. I thank

716
00:38:18,239 --> 00:38:21,920
god Zondervan picked it up. Never imagined that an evangelical

717
00:38:21,960 --> 00:38:25,840
publishing house we want to publish a book about WU

718
00:38:26,079 --> 00:38:29,920
from an Eastern Orthodox Christian. But the guy who bought

719
00:38:29,920 --> 00:38:32,480
the book there said, you'd be he's an evangelical, He said,

720
00:38:32,519 --> 00:38:35,320
you'd really be surprised at how much things are shifting.

721
00:38:35,400 --> 00:38:38,480
Even among evangelicals on this, they are a lot more

722
00:38:38,559 --> 00:38:40,079
open to it than they once were.

723
00:38:40,679 --> 00:38:44,840
Speaker 3: Yeah, I read Pisilka's book on your recommendation. By the way,

724
00:38:45,599 --> 00:38:47,440
I was actually supposed to meet with her a Notre

725
00:38:47,559 --> 00:38:49,519
Dame a few weeks ago, but she didn't show up.

726
00:38:49,519 --> 00:38:51,360
Speaker 2: I think she was sick or something. I really would

727
00:38:51,400 --> 00:38:51,880
like to meet her.

728
00:38:52,280 --> 00:38:54,360
Speaker 3: One of the things that I really like about her

729
00:38:54,519 --> 00:38:59,400
thesis is how she doesn't try to disentangle the social

730
00:38:59,480 --> 00:39:03,599
narrative from the event. She says, you can't disentangle it. So,

731
00:39:03,920 --> 00:39:06,480
you know, like you said, there's a lot of stuff

732
00:39:06,480 --> 00:39:09,119
that's like fake. People are making it up, people are

733
00:39:09,480 --> 00:39:12,599
are some people may be lying about their experience. But

734
00:39:12,840 --> 00:39:15,960
what's happening is that those lies and even the made

735
00:39:16,000 --> 00:39:18,639
up experiences, all of these things and the real experiences,

736
00:39:18,920 --> 00:39:21,519
they're fusing together to create a kind of worldview and

737
00:39:21,559 --> 00:39:25,679
a kind of perspective that is part of the phenomena.

738
00:39:25,760 --> 00:39:26,800
Speaker 2: You can't distinguishing it.

739
00:39:26,840 --> 00:39:29,639
Speaker 3: And so all the science fiction, all the movies, all

740
00:39:29,679 --> 00:39:32,440
of this stuff is actually part of the UFO phenomena

741
00:39:33,159 --> 00:39:36,800
because it is creating a narrative around which these beings

742
00:39:37,199 --> 00:39:40,960
have presence and you know, and have certain types of

743
00:39:40,960 --> 00:39:43,239
influence on us. And so I thought that approach was

744
00:39:43,280 --> 00:39:47,559
really wonderful because that is also how we understand spiritual

745
00:39:47,599 --> 00:39:51,920
beings of having influence. Like, spiritual beings don't only have

746
00:39:52,039 --> 00:39:55,519
influence through through mechanic through mechanical means, they mostly have

747
00:39:55,599 --> 00:39:59,880
influence through subtle means, that is, through perception, through storytelling,

748
00:40:00,039 --> 00:40:03,519
through it's a worldview, and like making certain things more

749
00:40:03,599 --> 00:40:06,039
visible and certain things less visible. You know, that's what

750
00:40:06,159 --> 00:40:10,480
That's how spiritual influences function first and foremost. And so

751
00:40:10,599 --> 00:40:13,360
I find that whole idea very interesting, which means that

752
00:40:13,400 --> 00:40:16,679
you can actually pay attention to the phenomena without falling

753
00:40:16,719 --> 00:40:19,800
into like trying to defend this or that story, because

754
00:40:19,800 --> 00:40:22,320
that's that's what people fall into. They're like, well, this guy,

755
00:40:22,440 --> 00:40:24,760
you know, he's there trying to figure out whether or

756
00:40:24,800 --> 00:40:27,440
not he really has access information, and this other person

757
00:40:27,440 --> 00:40:30,119
and this other person. There's a there's a place where

758
00:40:30,119 --> 00:40:32,320
you can stand from far away and look at the

759
00:40:32,360 --> 00:40:36,360
whole thing as a story that's running through our culture.

760
00:40:36,960 --> 00:40:38,719
Speaker 2: Uh, and evaluate it for that.

761
00:40:38,840 --> 00:40:39,039
Speaker 3: You know.

762
00:40:39,320 --> 00:40:41,079
Speaker 1: Well. One of the things I pointed out in the

763
00:40:41,119 --> 00:40:46,920
book Away from the Occult Weirdness is the way what

764
00:40:47,000 --> 00:40:51,119
you attend to call certain realities into being. I mean,

765
00:40:51,159 --> 00:40:55,079
this is this is the psychology. I guess you could say.

766
00:40:55,159 --> 00:40:58,920
Ian Mcgilchris is big about this, and so is Matthew B. Crawford,

767
00:40:59,599 --> 00:41:03,039
and they talk about the importance of cultivating your ability

768
00:41:03,199 --> 00:41:09,039
to pay sustained attention because it produces reality. It's not

769
00:41:09,119 --> 00:41:11,679
to say, like a psychotic would say that whatever I

770
00:41:11,679 --> 00:41:15,039
imagine must be real, but it does make certain things

771
00:41:15,239 --> 00:41:18,440
visible to us or invisible to us based on what

772
00:41:18,440 --> 00:41:20,719
we pay attention to, and not only what we pay

773
00:41:20,719 --> 00:41:24,760
attention to, but how we pay attention. It turns out

774
00:41:24,880 --> 00:41:28,800
that the ability to pay sustained attention is key to

775
00:41:28,840 --> 00:41:33,840
be enchanted. If you cannot sustain attention, if you've become

776
00:41:33,960 --> 00:41:37,880
easily distracted, then you chances are you're not going to

777
00:41:37,920 --> 00:41:40,639
be able to perceive the things that are really there

778
00:41:40,719 --> 00:41:43,400
that you need to perceive. And as I was reading

779
00:41:43,400 --> 00:41:46,800
this and learning this from reading anthropology and psychology. I

780
00:41:46,880 --> 00:41:50,880
realized that the Internet is one great, big disenchantment machine

781
00:41:51,239 --> 00:41:53,519
because it has done this to all of us. I mean,

782
00:41:53,760 --> 00:41:57,360
everybody who's on the internet has noticed over time, if

783
00:41:57,400 --> 00:42:00,679
you're old enough, that your ability to sit down, concentrate

784
00:42:00,800 --> 00:42:04,199
on one piece of text for a while has been

785
00:42:04,320 --> 00:42:08,519
greatly damaged. And this I think is turning us into

786
00:42:08,760 --> 00:42:11,960
slaves in a way, because I mean, you look at

787
00:42:12,000 --> 00:42:15,280
the young people who've only ever known the digital world.

788
00:42:15,760 --> 00:42:19,039
Their ability to pay attention, say teachers, I know, is

789
00:42:19,519 --> 00:42:23,079
almost nothing. And so they've become and you know this

790
00:42:23,119 --> 00:42:26,039
as an Orthodox Christian, they become slaves to their passions

791
00:42:26,360 --> 00:42:29,480
and not even not even their passions, their impulses, which

792
00:42:29,519 --> 00:42:31,159
are like sub passions.

793
00:42:32,239 --> 00:42:33,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, you see that.

794
00:42:33,079 --> 00:42:36,760
Speaker 3: Like my kids, some of their friends, they can't even

795
00:42:37,039 --> 00:42:40,039
watch an entire movie, which is like the movie is

796
00:42:40,159 --> 00:42:42,599
made to get your attention, you know, it doesn't actually

797
00:42:42,639 --> 00:42:45,360
require a lot of effort like reading or you know,

798
00:42:45,400 --> 00:42:48,599
going to church or you know, participating in a kind

799
00:42:48,599 --> 00:42:49,239
of ceremony.

800
00:42:49,480 --> 00:42:51,639
Speaker 2: Like they just get they can't stand.

801
00:42:51,960 --> 00:42:53,679
Speaker 3: They can't pay attention for an hour and a half

802
00:42:53,880 --> 00:42:56,559
to anything, like it doesn't matter what it is, even

803
00:42:56,599 --> 00:42:59,559
if it's like Pixar animated, you know, like colorful thing

804
00:42:59,599 --> 00:43:00,800
moving in front of their eyes.

805
00:43:00,880 --> 00:43:01,840
Speaker 2: So that's wild, you know.

806
00:43:01,920 --> 00:43:04,239
Speaker 3: And you see that in the in the Hesichastic Fathers,

807
00:43:04,239 --> 00:43:06,920
you see they talk about this all the time, which

808
00:43:07,000 --> 00:43:10,320
is that you know that, for example, one of the

809
00:43:10,360 --> 00:43:14,480
things that Jesus prayer is for is to cultivate attention

810
00:43:15,199 --> 00:43:19,199
because you basically empty the distractions, because we have all

811
00:43:19,239 --> 00:43:22,199
these thoughts, right the logis more, these these thoughts that

812
00:43:22,440 --> 00:43:24,519
go through your mind that aren't really you, but that

813
00:43:24,559 --> 00:43:27,599
are all kinds of distraction, and we most people don't

814
00:43:27,599 --> 00:43:30,079
even notice them because they're so used to just drowning

815
00:43:30,119 --> 00:43:32,920
in them, basically like thughts running through their mind. But

816
00:43:33,000 --> 00:43:35,760
once you actually start to try to deal with those

817
00:43:35,840 --> 00:43:39,880
or to at least silence your mind in prayer, you realize, man,

818
00:43:40,039 --> 00:43:41,320
I don't know how to pay attention.

819
00:43:41,440 --> 00:43:43,000
Speaker 2: You know, this is almost impossible to me.

820
00:43:43,320 --> 00:43:44,960
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean. I tell the story of the

821
00:43:45,000 --> 00:43:49,320
book about how some years back, when I was really sick,

822
00:43:49,400 --> 00:43:53,199
I was dealing with chronic mono andympliosis that the romantologists

823
00:43:53,199 --> 00:43:59,159
said was caused by overwhelming anxiety. My priest, my orthodox priest,

824
00:43:59,239 --> 00:44:01,519
assigned me to say the Jesus Prayer for an hour

825
00:44:01,559 --> 00:44:04,199
a day, and he meant say it in the way

826
00:44:04,239 --> 00:44:07,039
it's supposed to be said ideally, you know, getting quiet,

827
00:44:07,119 --> 00:44:10,000
breathing in, breathing out. And the fat guy had said

828
00:44:10,000 --> 00:44:12,400
to me walk ten miles a day, as sick as

829
00:44:12,440 --> 00:44:14,599
I was, that would have been easier than just sitting

830
00:44:14,679 --> 00:44:17,800
quietly praying the Jesus Prayer for an hour. But I

831
00:44:17,920 --> 00:44:20,039
did it out of obedience, and it was one of

832
00:44:20,079 --> 00:44:23,360
the hardest things I've ever done, Jonathan, But after about

833
00:44:23,400 --> 00:44:26,599
a month it started to get easier, and finally it

834
00:44:26,760 --> 00:44:30,400
was really easy, and I was healed in the end.

835
00:44:30,440 --> 00:44:32,880
And I went to my priest later and said, how

836
00:44:32,880 --> 00:44:34,760
did you know if that's what I needed? He said, oh,

837
00:44:34,800 --> 00:44:36,239
that was simple. I had to get you out of

838
00:44:36,239 --> 00:44:39,599
your head. And he was exactly right, because I was

839
00:44:39,639 --> 00:44:41,519
the sort of person have always been, the sort of

840
00:44:41,519 --> 00:44:44,079
person who thinks that there's nothing wrong with me, that

841
00:44:45,159 --> 00:44:49,559
finding the right formula in the right book can help

842
00:44:49,639 --> 00:44:51,559
me think my way out of this problem. But it's

843
00:44:51,639 --> 00:44:55,360
just not true. And enchantment is the same way. Broadly speaking,

844
00:44:55,800 --> 00:44:59,960
you can't just read about enchantment. There's no five point formula, dude.

845
00:45:00,079 --> 00:45:04,119
This one through three, four, five, Presto, you're enchanted. It's

846
00:45:04,199 --> 00:45:06,559
more like learning how to play the violin or learning

847
00:45:06,599 --> 00:45:09,639
how to say the Jesus Prayer. You have to practice it,

848
00:45:09,800 --> 00:45:13,079
and then all the practice does is simply open up

849
00:45:13,119 --> 00:45:16,199
your perception. There's a line I use in the beginning

850
00:45:16,199 --> 00:45:18,639
of the book. I adapted it from a Harvard professor

851
00:45:18,679 --> 00:45:22,519
who was talking about education. She said, true education is

852
00:45:22,599 --> 00:45:26,239
not imparting information from the teacher to the student. True

853
00:45:26,360 --> 00:45:29,320
education is the teacher helping the students to be staring

854
00:45:29,400 --> 00:45:31,800
at the right corner of the sky when a comet

855
00:45:31,880 --> 00:45:36,000
goes blazing past. Well, that's also enchantment. I want people

856
00:45:36,000 --> 00:45:38,039
to read this book. I'm not going to tell you,

857
00:45:38,039 --> 00:45:40,559
you know, here's the five step plan to being enchanted.

858
00:45:40,760 --> 00:45:43,960
But what I do in the book is talk about

859
00:45:43,960 --> 00:45:47,559
what enchantment means. Give examples. I tell stories about people

860
00:45:47,559 --> 00:45:51,280
who've had miraculous stories, people who've had demonic encounters. But

861
00:45:51,400 --> 00:45:54,559
I want people to step out of this book realizing

862
00:45:54,599 --> 00:45:58,000
that I can live a deeper life, or more enchanted life.

863
00:45:58,119 --> 00:45:59,920
But I'm going to have to make some big changes

864
00:46:00,079 --> 00:46:03,880
in my life, most of which are about learning how

865
00:46:03,880 --> 00:46:05,519
to pay sustained attention.

866
00:46:06,480 --> 00:46:09,159
Speaker 3: So the book has been out for about a month now,

867
00:46:09,320 --> 00:46:09,559
is that?

868
00:46:09,800 --> 00:46:11,400
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, about a month?

869
00:46:11,840 --> 00:46:14,280
Speaker 3: So what has been How have people been reacting? Because

870
00:46:14,480 --> 00:46:17,119
in some ways, like you said, this is different from

871
00:46:17,199 --> 00:46:20,119
your other books, like you really lean into things that

872
00:46:20,800 --> 00:46:23,000
you haven't talked about, at least you talk.

873
00:46:22,880 --> 00:46:24,880
Speaker 2: About it in your newsletter.

874
00:46:24,960 --> 00:46:27,519
Speaker 3: We've been kind of following the story for a long time,

875
00:46:27,559 --> 00:46:29,480
but like as a published work, you haven't talked about it.

876
00:46:29,480 --> 00:46:32,239
So I'm curious, how are people reacting, How are Christians reacting,

877
00:46:32,239 --> 00:46:33,480
how are non Christians reacting?

878
00:46:33,719 --> 00:46:35,360
Speaker 2: You know, what's the What have you been hearing?

879
00:46:35,639 --> 00:46:40,159
Speaker 1: Well, I've been getting amazing reviews and one thing that

880
00:46:40,239 --> 00:46:42,119
went through line it goes to a lot of these

881
00:46:42,159 --> 00:46:45,159
reviews as well. Rodrier has done it again. You know,

882
00:46:45,239 --> 00:46:48,360
he's always sees what's coming next, and that's gratifying to hear.

883
00:46:48,480 --> 00:46:51,280
But it really seems to have struck a chord with

884
00:46:51,440 --> 00:46:56,639
reviewers again who are forty and younger, because they sense

885
00:46:56,960 --> 00:46:59,320
that there were in the middle of a very deep

886
00:46:59,480 --> 00:47:03,679
meaning and our civilization and our culture, and it's one

887
00:47:03,679 --> 00:47:08,760
that's not going to be met by going back to

888
00:47:08,800 --> 00:47:12,639
the usual sources and remoralizing ourselves. That sort of thing.

889
00:47:12,880 --> 00:47:15,719
I remember back in Gosh twenty fourteen, I think it

890
00:47:15,800 --> 00:47:19,280
was I spoke to Christian Smith. He's that notre dame

891
00:47:19,679 --> 00:47:24,320
or sociologist of religion who's responsible for the concept of moralistic,

892
00:47:24,400 --> 00:47:28,000
therapeutic deism, which he said is the de facto religion

893
00:47:28,119 --> 00:47:31,639
of most people in North America, most young people. And

894
00:47:31,800 --> 00:47:33,880
it's just God is up there as sort of a

895
00:47:33,960 --> 00:47:36,159
cosmic Butler. All he wants of us is to be

896
00:47:36,360 --> 00:47:38,920
nice and kind and to be happy in life. But

897
00:47:38,960 --> 00:47:43,519
that's about it. And that's not sustainable. A. It's not Christianity.

898
00:47:43,559 --> 00:47:44,760
B it's not sustainable.

899
00:47:45,119 --> 00:47:45,239
Speaker 2: Now.

900
00:47:45,239 --> 00:47:48,199
Speaker 1: I remember asking him back then, Okay, so how can

901
00:47:48,239 --> 00:47:50,679
we get people back to the church because people are

902
00:47:50,679 --> 00:47:53,719
falling away left and right? He said, well, I don't know,

903
00:47:53,800 --> 00:47:56,519
but you're not going to do it by moralizing. And

904
00:47:56,599 --> 00:47:59,360
what I took him to mean by that is not

905
00:47:59,480 --> 00:48:03,920
just more oralizing, but typical apologetics, you know, finding the reasonable.

906
00:48:04,639 --> 00:48:06,760
Here are the reasons why you should be a Christian,

907
00:48:06,960 --> 00:48:08,480
or if you are a Christian, way should be a

908
00:48:08,480 --> 00:48:11,239
better Christian. You know. It might have worked in ages

909
00:48:11,320 --> 00:48:13,760
past when we were still part of the Age of Reason,

910
00:48:13,960 --> 00:48:17,159
however attenuated it may have become over time but it

911
00:48:17,159 --> 00:48:21,960
doesn't work anymore. I have found that Pope Benedict the

912
00:48:22,039 --> 00:48:25,400
sixteenth was really onto something when he said, the best

913
00:48:25,440 --> 00:48:28,760
apologetics the Church has for itself is the art it

914
00:48:28,840 --> 00:48:32,039
produces and the Saints. What he meant by that was

915
00:48:32,079 --> 00:48:36,760
when you have an overwhelming encounter with holy beauty as

916
00:48:36,800 --> 00:48:40,360
an art or architecture, as a chatra, and also an

917
00:48:40,360 --> 00:48:46,159
overwhelming encounter with incarnate goodness as in the saints. Those

918
00:48:46,840 --> 00:48:50,079
reach into your heart and into your mind. They go

919
00:48:50,239 --> 00:48:53,440
below and above reason, and they open the door of

920
00:48:53,480 --> 00:48:58,079
your mind to the propositions, the propositional truth. And I

921
00:48:58,079 --> 00:49:00,360
think that's going to have to be it. We're going

922
00:49:00,400 --> 00:49:04,360
to have to reach people with beauty and with the saints,

923
00:49:04,480 --> 00:49:06,920
with the lives of the saints and saints who live

924
00:49:06,960 --> 00:49:09,960
among us now, and that will open up people's minds

925
00:49:10,039 --> 00:49:13,360
to the gospel truth and the stories I tell of enchantment.

926
00:49:13,440 --> 00:49:16,840
That's it. That's what I'm talking about here. Pay attention

927
00:49:16,920 --> 00:49:19,519
to beauty, Pay close attention to beauty, because God is

928
00:49:19,559 --> 00:49:24,280
reaching to us through beauty, through participation in the life

929
00:49:24,280 --> 00:49:28,280
of God, by loving something, by directing your arrows to

930
00:49:28,519 --> 00:49:32,000
beauty or to goodness, and then the rest.

931
00:49:31,800 --> 00:49:35,039
Speaker 3: Will follow Yeah, I think that's that's right. And you

932
00:49:35,079 --> 00:49:38,519
see it, you know, it's this perception or like this

933
00:49:38,599 --> 00:49:40,679
way of talking about the world is happening at all

934
00:49:40,679 --> 00:49:42,280
these different levels at the same time.

935
00:49:42,360 --> 00:49:42,519
Speaker 1: Right.

936
00:49:42,559 --> 00:49:45,280
Speaker 3: You see you said with Ian McGilchrist, who I don't

937
00:49:45,280 --> 00:49:48,800
think is a at least not officially a Christian. You

938
00:49:48,840 --> 00:49:51,239
see it with a doctor with John Raveaki as well,

939
00:49:51,559 --> 00:49:55,519
you know, who's just saying that the deepest forms of

940
00:49:55,599 --> 00:49:58,519
knowing and the deepest forms of human experience are not

941
00:49:58,719 --> 00:50:03,199
propositional knowledge. There's nothing wrong with propositional knowledge. But you know,

942
00:50:03,519 --> 00:50:07,000
our propositional knowledge is based on gripping, right, It's based

943
00:50:07,039 --> 00:50:10,719
on this encounter with the world and its encounter with

944
00:50:10,719 --> 00:50:11,719
with people as well.

945
00:50:12,360 --> 00:50:12,719
Speaker 1: Uh.

946
00:50:12,760 --> 00:50:15,159
Speaker 3: And you know that's It's another place where the Internet

947
00:50:15,360 --> 00:50:18,519
is such a disenchantment machine is because like even now,

948
00:50:18,559 --> 00:50:21,079
like we're having this experience. It's it's not it's not bad,

949
00:50:21,119 --> 00:50:24,159
it's not fully disconnected, but we are kind of staring

950
00:50:24,159 --> 00:50:27,039
at each other through screens and there's this weird, uh,

951
00:50:27,079 --> 00:50:29,960
you know disconnect that is that is part of our

952
00:50:30,239 --> 00:50:31,280
accepted reality.

953
00:50:31,800 --> 00:50:31,920
Speaker 1: Uh.

954
00:50:32,320 --> 00:50:33,840
Speaker 2: But when you you know, when you.

955
00:50:33,800 --> 00:50:36,320
Speaker 3: Stand with someone, you know, you stand next to someone

956
00:50:36,360 --> 00:50:40,199
even in silence, you just have this, You can have

957
00:50:40,519 --> 00:50:45,280
a type of experience of being together that is that

958
00:50:45,440 --> 00:50:47,960
is already the glimmer of enchantment. You know, if you

959
00:50:48,360 --> 00:50:51,079
if you remember that, like we see it in America,

960
00:50:51,159 --> 00:50:55,599
we're also so we want to fill everything propositional, you know,

961
00:50:55,679 --> 00:50:57,760
with the proposition and so when we're with someone, we

962
00:50:57,840 --> 00:51:01,440
if there's awkward silences, we can't handle it. But you know,

963
00:51:01,480 --> 00:51:05,000
once you start to realize that being with someone actually

964
00:51:05,039 --> 00:51:07,559
has an effect on you biologically in terms of perception,

965
00:51:07,679 --> 00:51:10,079
in terms of just presence, and that that has a

966
00:51:10,119 --> 00:51:14,280
great value, then we need to re encourage people to

967
00:51:14,400 --> 00:51:16,440
be with others, like to go out there, to go

968
00:51:16,480 --> 00:51:20,920
to church, to you know, to meet people, to have

969
00:51:20,960 --> 00:51:22,400
a family, to do all those things.

970
00:51:22,400 --> 00:51:26,320
Speaker 1: There's so much there. You're fellow Canadian Marshall mclewan talked

971
00:51:26,320 --> 00:51:30,960
about the difference between concept and percept. Percept is a

972
00:51:31,039 --> 00:51:35,280
direct participation of something. The perceiving of a phenomenon. Concept

973
00:51:35,320 --> 00:51:37,920
is what happens when the percept is turned into some

974
00:51:37,960 --> 00:51:43,599
abstraction words or something symbolic. And we have to have

975
00:51:43,719 --> 00:51:46,400
concepts to have an intellectual I have to get along.

976
00:51:47,119 --> 00:51:50,920
But McLuhan said that we can't forget that at its

977
00:51:50,960 --> 00:51:54,519
deepest level, religion is percept, the percept of God, the

978
00:51:54,559 --> 00:51:57,599
perception of God. And we would say in his energies,

979
00:51:58,719 --> 00:52:01,960
our problem, said mccluy, as we get stuck on concept

980
00:52:02,079 --> 00:52:05,800
and without realizing it, all the time we turn religion

981
00:52:05,840 --> 00:52:08,320
into concept. And it's at that level when it gets

982
00:52:08,360 --> 00:52:12,079
stuck in concept, or to use the McGilchrist language, when

983
00:52:12,119 --> 00:52:14,840
religion gets stuck in the left brain, that it begins

984
00:52:14,880 --> 00:52:19,079
to die. Mclewin said that everyone he knew whoever lost

985
00:52:19,119 --> 00:52:22,559
their faith did so by first ceasing to pray, because

986
00:52:22,599 --> 00:52:25,719
prayer is the way that most people, it's the ordinary

987
00:52:25,760 --> 00:52:31,320
way of maintaining the perceptive, the percept with God. And

988
00:52:31,360 --> 00:52:34,320
you know, I think this has a lot to do

989
00:52:34,400 --> 00:52:38,280
with why Orthodoxy Orthodox Christianity is having a moment right now.

990
00:52:39,599 --> 00:52:42,519
When I was in a trip, a press trip to

991
00:52:43,199 --> 00:52:46,440
Turkey to the Church seven Churches of Revelation with some

992
00:52:46,519 --> 00:52:49,280
other Christian journalists a couple of years ago, and there

993
00:52:49,320 --> 00:52:52,239
was one guy there Pentecostal I think he was, and

994
00:52:52,320 --> 00:52:55,440
he brought his virtual reality headset so he could go

995
00:52:55,559 --> 00:52:59,559
to church and what they call it the megasphere, the megaworld,

996
00:52:59,559 --> 00:53:04,079
that virtual reality whatever that thing was that Facebook like

997
00:53:04,519 --> 00:53:06,800
in virtual reality, yeah, yeah, yeah. And what he was

998
00:53:06,880 --> 00:53:09,960
doing was they would meet all the people there would

999
00:53:10,000 --> 00:53:13,079
meet virtually and they would have their own worship service.

1000
00:53:13,079 --> 00:53:15,199
And he thought this was awesome, and he said, this

1001
00:53:15,280 --> 00:53:18,159
is the future of Christianity. He said, no, it's not. No,

1002
00:53:18,239 --> 00:53:20,239
it's not. And I said it would never work for

1003
00:53:20,639 --> 00:53:24,880
us Orthodox and Catholics and other sacramentoly oriented Christians. He

1004
00:53:24,960 --> 00:53:27,320
got really offended by it, because the idea that someone

1005
00:53:27,360 --> 00:53:30,360
would say, wait, you mean technology is not the future

1006
00:53:30,480 --> 00:53:33,559
is bad. But I kept trying to tell him that no, no, no,

1007
00:53:34,360 --> 00:53:36,079
I didn't have the language for it that he could

1008
00:53:36,159 --> 00:53:39,960
understand that, no, no, that's not how we are to worship.

1009
00:53:40,000 --> 00:53:42,920
That doesn't put you in touch with God. I realized

1010
00:53:42,960 --> 00:53:46,960
finally after we had an argument about it, that for him,

1011
00:53:47,239 --> 00:53:53,480
all worship is Christian worship is receiving information and experiencing emotion,

1012
00:53:54,440 --> 00:53:56,920
you know, And so you can do that online, just fine.

1013
00:53:57,000 --> 00:54:01,760
If it's all about inducing an individual emotion and exchanging information,

1014
00:54:01,920 --> 00:54:05,800
why not online. But what that does is it disembodies

1015
00:54:05,840 --> 00:54:08,079
you and I. You know, one of the things I

1016
00:54:08,159 --> 00:54:11,239
learned to work on this book is how the way

1017
00:54:11,480 --> 00:54:17,320
we perceive the world formats us. And to get right

1018
00:54:17,360 --> 00:54:20,920
to the point, if you spend most of your time online,

1019
00:54:21,119 --> 00:54:23,760
it begins to train your mind and your sense of

1020
00:54:23,800 --> 00:54:27,480
reality and your sense of ontology into thinking that everything

1021
00:54:27,599 --> 00:54:30,719
is manipulable. I think that it is not a coincidence

1022
00:54:30,800 --> 00:54:35,480
that we've seen the explosion of transgenderism and gender dysphoria

1023
00:54:35,880 --> 00:54:43,199
in the first generation raised online because they're so so

1024
00:54:43,400 --> 00:54:46,840
far apart, so alienated from the physical that they come

1025
00:54:46,880 --> 00:54:50,079
to believe that, of course they can manipulate things into reality.

1026
00:54:50,159 --> 00:54:53,440
All things should be digital. The body is digital. We

1027
00:54:53,519 --> 00:54:56,960
can impose our will on it. And I think if

1028
00:54:56,960 --> 00:54:59,280
you get out and touch grass and see people and

1029
00:54:59,320 --> 00:55:03,199
live in the real world, the physical world, it changes

1030
00:55:03,239 --> 00:55:06,000
you in positive ways. The less you do of that,

1031
00:55:06,320 --> 00:55:09,719
the more distorted your perception of reality is.

1032
00:55:11,000 --> 00:55:14,559
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah, wow, this is great stuff.

1033
00:55:14,599 --> 00:55:14,920
Speaker 1: Froud.

1034
00:55:15,079 --> 00:55:17,559
Speaker 3: I have to say that I can't wait to see

1035
00:55:17,559 --> 00:55:20,480
what you're gonna talk about next, because now we're gonna

1036
00:55:20,519 --> 00:55:21,920
know what the future is.

1037
00:55:21,920 --> 00:55:24,320
Speaker 2: Just I know what Rodger is going to write about.

1038
00:55:24,559 --> 00:55:26,480
Speaker 3: But I also want I want to thank you, you know,

1039
00:55:26,559 --> 00:55:28,480
I mean, you said it's not a compliment that you

1040
00:55:28,800 --> 00:55:30,920
mentioned me in the book but I definitely take it

1041
00:55:30,960 --> 00:55:33,920
as a very deep not just a compliment, but also

1042
00:55:34,000 --> 00:55:36,679
a kind of responsibility in the sense that, you know,

1043
00:55:37,000 --> 00:55:41,559
a call to to be the best version of myself

1044
00:55:41,800 --> 00:55:44,320
that I can. You know, these two people that you

1045
00:55:45,480 --> 00:55:48,760
that you put me with our astounding people, people I admire,

1046
00:55:48,840 --> 00:55:51,719
and I also admire you very much, and so I

1047
00:55:51,480 --> 00:55:54,079
I deeply appreciate it. But I also see it as

1048
00:55:54,079 --> 00:55:57,400
a as a call to to to keep to keep

1049
00:55:58,320 --> 00:55:59,760
to be the best version of myself.

1050
00:55:59,800 --> 00:56:00,760
Speaker 2: So thanks for that as well.

1051
00:56:00,800 --> 00:56:02,960
Speaker 1: Well, keep on keeping on, because you've taught me so

1052
00:56:03,039 --> 00:56:06,320
much over the years, so as Paul so is Martin,

1053
00:56:06,480 --> 00:56:09,960
and I would be very satisfied if Living in Wonder

1054
00:56:10,239 --> 00:56:14,280
served primarily to be a gateway to Peggot kingsnorth Shaw,

1055
00:56:14,440 --> 00:56:18,199
Ian Mcgillchris and all these other wonderful thinkers whom I

1056
00:56:18,320 --> 00:56:22,039
highlight in the book. Because look, this is a practical book.

1057
00:56:22,119 --> 00:56:25,000
It's not just a book of theory. It's a book

1058
00:56:25,079 --> 00:56:28,159
to help people find their way to God. And look, Jonathan,

1059
00:56:28,239 --> 00:56:31,480
it's not about re enchantment in general. It's about Christian

1060
00:56:31,559 --> 00:56:34,199
re enchantment, because as we said at the top of

1061
00:56:34,199 --> 00:56:37,079
the show, there are all kinds of false and dark

1062
00:56:37,119 --> 00:56:39,679
ways to be enchanted, and they're out there now. The

1063
00:56:40,800 --> 00:56:44,519
publisher of this book, as Zondervan executive, sent me a

1064
00:56:44,559 --> 00:56:48,639
photograph from a bookstore in Mississippi, Mississippi, of all places.

1065
00:56:48,679 --> 00:56:51,159
He was there a couple of weekends ago in a

1066
00:56:51,239 --> 00:56:55,519
Barnes and Noble big book aimed at young teenage girls

1067
00:56:55,519 --> 00:56:57,880
about how to be a witch, a Witch's Handbook.

1068
00:56:59,559 --> 00:57:00,599
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right.

1069
00:57:00,719 --> 00:57:05,280
Speaker 3: I mean that there's definitely part of our society. I

1070
00:57:05,320 --> 00:57:07,000
see it in my kids all the time, like so

1071
00:57:07,119 --> 00:57:09,519
many even when I was a teenager. I remember in

1072
00:57:09,519 --> 00:57:11,960
my twenties, Wiko was starting to become popular, and I

1073
00:57:12,000 --> 00:57:13,320
had friends because I was in the art world.

1074
00:57:13,320 --> 00:57:14,960
Speaker 2: I had quite a few friends over weekends.

1075
00:57:15,159 --> 00:57:18,280
Speaker 3: But now there's a source free school that opened up

1076
00:57:18,519 --> 00:57:19,719
like two streets from my house.

1077
00:57:19,840 --> 00:57:20,280
Speaker 1: Wow.

1078
00:57:20,360 --> 00:57:22,519
Speaker 3: Wow, it's like it's crazy stuff.

1079
00:57:22,599 --> 00:57:23,679
Speaker 2: So yeah, exactly.

1080
00:57:23,719 --> 00:57:26,599
Speaker 1: But you know, the first Orthodox book I read, even

1081
00:57:26,639 --> 00:57:29,599
before I came into the Orthodox Church eighteen years ago,

1082
00:57:30,079 --> 00:57:33,559
was that book called The Mountain of Silence by Curiocos Marquisis,

1083
00:57:34,400 --> 00:57:37,800
and it's just basically a book link series of interviews

1084
00:57:37,960 --> 00:57:41,079
with a monk from Mount Athos who's now a bishop

1085
00:57:41,079 --> 00:57:45,000
an Archbishop of Metropolitan and he talks about Orthodox spirituality.

1086
00:57:45,119 --> 00:57:47,119
You go back and read it now, after eighteen years,

1087
00:57:47,159 --> 00:57:49,639
it seems very basic, But back then it blew my

1088
00:57:49,719 --> 00:57:54,159
mind all the wlu in there, all the real spiritual intensity.

1089
00:57:54,679 --> 00:57:57,960
And Marquiti says at the beginning of that book that

1090
00:57:58,119 --> 00:58:00,199
a lot of people in the West think they have

1091
00:58:00,239 --> 00:58:03,599
to go to Hinduism or Buddhism or some Eastern religion

1092
00:58:04,119 --> 00:58:08,079
looking for that visceral sense of enchantment. In fact, it's

1093
00:58:08,199 --> 00:58:11,679
right there in Christianity. It's been preserved most purely on

1094
00:58:11,800 --> 00:58:16,440
man Athos, but in Orthodox Christianity and everyday Orthodoxy down

1095
00:58:16,440 --> 00:58:20,000
at your local parish, you can encounter it on a

1096
00:58:20,119 --> 00:58:23,559
very direct level that most people don't even know it's there.

1097
00:58:23,599 --> 00:58:25,480
They just think about the Orthodox Church. If they think

1098
00:58:25,519 --> 00:58:27,519
about it at all, it's, oh, that's the nice place

1099
00:58:27,559 --> 00:58:30,360
where you go for the Greek festival. Go inside the

1100
00:58:30,440 --> 00:58:34,119
church sometime, go pray with the Orthodox, and you will.

1101
00:58:34,400 --> 00:58:37,039
You will have an experience that you didn't even think

1102
00:58:37,159 --> 00:58:37,760
was possible.

1103
00:58:38,119 --> 00:58:41,639
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, all right, Rod, thanks for your time. Everybody

1104
00:58:42,480 --> 00:58:46,440
living in wonder you can get it, and we'll be

1105
00:58:46,559 --> 00:58:47,840
looking forward to seeing you.

1106
00:58:47,880 --> 00:58:49,880
Speaker 2: Know what you do next? Once again.

1107
00:58:49,960 --> 00:58:52,000
Speaker 3: Thanks and I hope we'll see each other in real

1108
00:58:52,000 --> 00:58:54,760
life as well. That's always that's always good for that

1109
00:58:54,840 --> 00:58:55,280
to happen.

1110
00:58:55,559 --> 00:58:56,360
Speaker 1: Thank you, Jonathan,