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Speaker 1: And I think that's what's happened, right. People who are

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maybe to use your words, scientistically inclined or skeptically inclined

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in the pejorative sense of the term, who never would

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have considered any argument for the necessity or elegance or

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depth of a religious tradition, passed through the gate of

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a series of scientific terms and found on the far

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side of that gate something beautiful they had never thought

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to consider real. And it was actually the scientific bridge

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that made that possible for them, Rather than the science

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alienating them, it actually became an invitation.

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Speaker 2: This is Jonathan.

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Speaker 3: Preshel, Welcome to the Symbolic World. Hello everyone.

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Speaker 4: Everybody watching this will know who these people are with

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me today. Of course, John Raveaiki and Christopher mascro Pietro,

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they have been working together for several years, have already

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written a book together, and now they've taken the Awakening

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from the Meaning Crisis content and put it into a book.

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So really excited to see that. It's been such a

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huge help for so many people to be able to

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frame what's going on and to frame the concepts, to

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find words to talk about the things that we all

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have insight about. And so first of all, congratulations to

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both of you on the publishing of this.

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Speaker 2: Thank you so much.

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Speaker 4: And so I guess I do have a question about

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to start off, is I would like to know a

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little bit about how it is that you work together.

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You know, because you guys been working together for years,

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you have a great partnership, and I like to know

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a little bit how that comes together.

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Speaker 3: How do you work through.

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Speaker 4: The ideas and put them on paper as a team.

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Speaker 5: I guess I'll go first. So we have two ways

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Chris and I of working. One is I'll create I

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guess what you'd call the core theoretical argument, and it

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usually is either you know, philosophical or cognitive, scientific, or

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some combination thereof. And I'll either create that in like

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an oral form or a written form, and then Chris

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will take it, and he does a lot. He adds

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a voice to it, he makes the material more accessible,

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He often brings in insightful connections, he fleshes out the

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argument in powerful ways. That's one way we work, and

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that was what we basically did for Awakening from the

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Mean Crisis because the series existed first.

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Speaker 2: The YouTube series.

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Speaker 5: In other contexts, like with the Zombie book, Chris and

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I will get together, like literally in the same location

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and write together and then get a rough manuscript and

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pass it back and forth. So we have two different methods,

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and it depends on how the project is originally birthed.

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Was it originally something that was not textual and then

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we're going to process it into text or is it

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something we're writing de novo and then usually we write

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it as you know, collaborative co authors.

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Speaker 2: From the beginning.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, And the second method there's a lot of pacing.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, pacing.

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Speaker 1: The first one's much more straightforward. The second one might

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be more fun, though I don't know. It depends, like

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you said, it depends on what the project actually needs.

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They're very very different experiences though.

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Speaker 4: And so you know, the what's amazing that I've seen

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happen in the last few years is much of the

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language that you're using in Awakening from the meaning crisis,

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even the term meaning crisis has become pretty ubiquitous. We

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see it, we hear it everywhere. You see it in

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places that surprise me. I'm like, oh, why they're using

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John's terms, And I don't know if they even know

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that they got it from him, or if it's just

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already kind of fused into into culture. I think that's

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pretty it's a pretty astounding feat to have created a

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way of speaking about what's happening that has that has

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already kind of taken over people's thinking and have you know,

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has filled up those spaces. So first of all, I'll

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say congratulations of that. And I don't know if you've

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seen that. Have you even have you been surprised at

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places where you've seen people use the language?

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Speaker 2: Yeah? I have. It's interesting.

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Speaker 5: I get the same feedback from my students at the

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university that one of the primary things they get from

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me is a new vocabulary, a new uh you know,

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conceptual vocabulary, new theoretical grammar, and they say that's the

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most valuable to them. And I take that very happily.

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Providing people and a way to enhance their own philosophical

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and psychological agency is what I'm ultimately after. Of course,

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I am a scientist. I want my ideas taken up

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and examined and put into the arena. But the fact

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that that happens is very very meaningful to me now,

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of course. And it was funny. I had my last lecture,

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my last office hours on Monday, and the students from

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my cognitive science religion course came in and they were

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actually saying the same thing. And then they said, however,

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and this is also frequent. You know, the terminology gets

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to be a burdensome, it gets to be overwhelming. And

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so one of the things that my dear friend Christopher

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does is help me try to find the Aristotilian mean

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between those two things. And I'm not I mean, I

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listen and learn. I've tried to put a lot of

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it into a practice. When I went to LA recently

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promoting the book, I got some good feedback from the

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people that were interviewing me. But this has been something

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that I have been reliant upon Chris and Sarah too,

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relying upon Chris for a lot and learning a lot

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uh that way. But how do you get how do

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you I mean, no matter what you do, you're gonna

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you're gonna piss people off on the on the tail

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ends of the curve. But you know, I'm gonna get

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that that golden mean where we're enabling people but making it,

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you know, another accessible enough that they're willing to take

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up the challenge of taking on the vocabulary in the grammar.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, that It's funny that you mentioned that, because that

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was actually I was I was already preparing that that

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was gonnave you my next question exactly. That's there was

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because you know, I have to be totally honest with you,

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like the Awakening from the Meaning Crisis series kind of

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watch it, watch it, watch it, and then if I

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watched the later episodes, like towards the end.

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Speaker 3: It's too much like there's there's so much.

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Speaker 4: There are all these technical terms that you have to master,

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and in some ways, I think it's also because of

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the YouTube the casual because of the casual way that

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we listen to YouTube videos or podcasts, it makes that harder.

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Because if I was in your class, for example, you know,

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I would have you would probably give assignments and say,

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you know, like give me your definition of these, or

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you would have me playing in my own work on

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the on the term so that they kind of integrate.

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But if I'm just you know, doing the dishes and

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listening to John Bravaki on YouTube, by the time that

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I get to, like, you know, the episode thirty, I'm like,

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I don't know, I'm not even sure what being said.

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And so for a book, Christopher tell us. What is

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the key, Like, how do you find a way to

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mitigate these extremes? You know, how do you get people

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into the vocabulary because it's it's extremely useful, but don't

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get them lost in a kind of technical jargon.

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Speaker 1: You could say, Yeah, I'm still with the fact that

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I think John just called me an Aristotilian before. We'll

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have to talk about that later.

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Speaker 3: To go through that.

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Speaker 1: I wish I knew Jonathan, like, I don't know how

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consciously I do it. I think I've just been sitting

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with it for so long. And that's not to say

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John doesn't make new obviously, He's always pushing and contriving

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to overright himself and to create new theoretical to push

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the horizon of the theory. So it's not as though

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he stays in one place. He doesn't. But I've been

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sitting with it and with him and with his way

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of thinking and with his vocabulary for so long that

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I've just metabolized it. And I think, I don't know,

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I just feel intimate with it. And when you feel

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intimate with something, as with someone, it becomes easy to

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represent or recreate it in your own native tongue. I

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also have an ambivalent relationship to a lot of the

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technical vocabulary, because, like a lot of other people, I

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think what people find about the vocabulary becomes like this

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powerful tool that opens something. It opens into a conceptual

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space that maybe they didn't have access to before, and

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that can be a really helpful and powerful thing. I

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had the same experience myself years ago.

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Speaker 2: Though.

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Speaker 1: The thing is, though, that sometimes that becomes John was

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I think you were alluding to this before. John, It

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becomes like if you start to rely on it as

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your way of accessing the concept or the idea, then

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it actually, I think, begins to have the opposite effect.

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It then begins to close or resend your access to

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this conceptual space if it becomes always your way of

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moving through it. And so I think the ideal way

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is to somehow give the vocabulary, have them hold it,

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have them use it, open up whatever it needs to

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be open, and then take it away again. Yea is

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ultimately the most natural way of relating to the concept

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or the idea is going to be through their own

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native tongue, their own native language and way of thinking.

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So I think it's a double edged story.

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Speaker 4: When you're saying is so fascinating because in some ways

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it's actually what John would the thing that you talk about,

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which is the idea of something like optimal grip or

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some or an idea that if you, if you like,

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a technical term, would be exactly the right thing. What

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it does is it opens up. But if you hold

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on to it for too long you could say, or

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for too tight, then it does the opposite of what

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of what it's supposed to do.

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Speaker 3: And so you have to have.

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Speaker 4: This kind of this play between the two tendencies in

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order to make it the most optimal you know, tool possible.

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Speaker 3: And so I just find it fascinating.

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Speaker 4: That, like, even in the way that you treat the

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own terms that you're actually you know, implicating the concept

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that John is working with. One of the things that

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I found the most the most interesting, but also the

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most difficult is because of some of the terms like

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let's take it, terms like transjective for example, you know,

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it forces people to think in ways that they do

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not think.

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Speaker 3: You really need.

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Speaker 4: To create an almost change in worldview and the person

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before they're able to be to enter into those these

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types of these types of thoughts. And that's exactly the

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problem that you said, Christopher is that if you have

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a term that's technical and just becomes a definition that

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you apply because a word like transjective forces you to

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break your category to like open them up, then then

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it might it might become it might go against against.

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Speaker 3: Its own purpose, you know.

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Speaker 4: And so you know the thing with you, John, and

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this is what I'm curious how you do it in

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the book, is that with you one of the things.

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Speaker 3: You you do is that you do that you.

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Speaker 4: Have an aspect of you is a bit of like

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a zen Cohen master, where you you try to shatter

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people's thinking, right, you try to you try to open

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it up. And so it's easier to do that with

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someone in front of you or when you're you know,

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when you're playing with the with the language. So I'm

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curious about what you think how you can do.

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Speaker 3: That in a in a book for example.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, that's that's socratic task of drawing people in but

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also opening them up, getting them to that uh, that

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pivot point that Plato kept going on and on about

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how do you get people to make that turn reliably?

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And you're both right, the language can become idolatrist and

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actually be something that they possess rather than going through

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the actual maturation of their cognition.

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Speaker 2: Totally.

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Speaker 5: I get that it is easier to do in person

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because you can interrogate the person and you can also

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get a sense of their lived perspective because they're there

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present to you. So with the book you have to

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rely on And this goes back in fact to what

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I had to do in the lecture series, because there

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was nobody there in the room but the camera crew,

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and they were professionals, and they would not give me

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any feedback whatsoever, and so I had to engage. It

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was one of the first places where I really started

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thinking more concretely about the imaginal because I had to

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imagine students. There in a way facilitated me getting into

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that socratic mode. And I'm relying to a large degree

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on Chris to carry that imaginal And that's why being

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having this book done diologically is tremendously helpful, because Chris

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can to in some stances, he can stand for the

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other while also standing with me. He has this tremendous

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capacity to be liminal in that way, and so we

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have to, in the imaginal sense, try to imagine the

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author and how we're going to get the place where

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they recognize. I mean, this is what Vigotsky called the

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zone approximal development. You have to take people beyond their

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comfort zone, but you don't want to take them to

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the horizon of horror. You've got to get that right

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right where you just get them just right. And I

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don't have an algorithm or a method for that. All

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I can say is there seems to be a virtuosity

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around getting into the zone approximal development by appropriately imagining

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who your audience is going to be. But it's tremendously

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helpful to do that diologically. And Chris and I were

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also working with some other good people. We were working

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with Madeline, and we were working with an editor there

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named Leslie who was tremendously helpful at giving us that

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kind of feedback.

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Speaker 2: They what it was, They had.

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Speaker 1: A Sam, Yeah, they both they both gave us a

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significant leg up. Yes, Sam. There was an acronym standing

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for the remember what it meant, standing for the reader

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standing And it was an acronym that was something like,

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how to imagine the optimal reader? Who are we speaking to?

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To me? The thing that makes it easier? And I

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don't know, I think this to me, this is intuitive

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I don't know that it was conscious, but it's just

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you're telling a story. It's an argument, but it's a narrative.

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It's a narrative, especially this part, this first half of

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the argument. It's a genealogy. It's you're telling a myth

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and so and I you know, you know in this

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the sense in which I'm using that word, and that

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wasn't me. John already did that in the in the

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lecture series, right, He's telling a story. And there's this

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sense like it's a story that unfolds in episodes, and

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each episode teases a little bit about what's to come,

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and then the episode recaps a little bit about what

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just happened before, and there's this sense of like momentum

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and hopefully a propulsion and hopefully a tempo that makes

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someone feel as though they're actually on a journey of

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some kind. And to me, it's it's the telling of

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the story in its widest frame that makes sense of

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all the details in the terminology, because when the reader

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gets a sense of like, oh, this is the kind

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of story I'm being told, or listening to the lecture,

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this is the kind of story I'm being told, then

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the kind of story the sort of the score in

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the background, right, if I can analogize it to the

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musical score that when you're watching a movie, or like

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the quality of the lighting, or all of the secondary

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qualities that go into the telling of the story are

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actually doing. And I don't mean just in the book.

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I mean in the series too, are doing a lot

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of the legwork in helping to put the vocabulary in perspective.

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And I think it's there's a lot of things going

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on in the background that I think are helping to

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do the work, not just the actual literal explanations of

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the terms and whatnot, Because I think when a person understands,

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oh wait, this is the kind of story I'm being told,

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it's like the context semantic context of a sentence, right,

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you know what this word means because of the way

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that it falls in the entire sentence. I think that's

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a big.

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Speaker 2: Part of it.

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Speaker 5: That interweaving of narrative and argument, of course, was my

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attempt to imitate as best I could Plato. Plato is

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for me. So another aspect of answering your question is

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there's a standard I was measuring myself against, and the

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standard is what you see in the platonic dialogues where

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narrative d i'm a character, development and argument are seamlessly

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interwoven together.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, that seems you know, it's interesting because as we

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talk about in some ways a break through the Enlightenment,

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as we kind of come out of the Enlightenment mode,

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it seems like these types of this type of thinking

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will inevitably return.

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Speaker 6: You know.

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Speaker 4: David Bentley Heart's recent book is written in the form

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of a time you know, rather esoteric as he is,

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but you know, the idea that this is, this is

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something that will be probably part of new thinking that

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I've been thinking about it too, because you know, I'm

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thinking about writing a book. Obviously, I've had several people

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ask me if I if I would do it, and

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I'm wondering what it should what it should look like,

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you know, should there be even personal aspects in the book.

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I kind of don't like that idea, but it seems

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like when I read Dante, for example, I'm thinking, no,

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that seems to be the best way to the most

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fullest way to write is to have all the levels

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connected together. Now, one of the reasons I think Jordan's

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Twelve Rules Book did well is because of that is

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that he has personal anecdotes, he has a theoretical frame,

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but it's all very couched in kind of very everyday practical,

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practical stuff. And to find that find that reach where

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you kind of connect everything together. It seems also like

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in a meta fashion, what it is we're trying to

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get to in the in these questions of you know,

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wakening out of the meeting crisis. So yeah, definitely something

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to think about. I have looked through, I've read the

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book quickly, but I can't wait to also go back

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in and see how how you put all that together again.

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Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, perhaps this is a good point to

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mention the book is not just a transcription, it's not

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just a companion. This book helps me correct one of

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the mistakes of the video series, which is it was

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presented monologically, which has put me into some thing of

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a performative contradiction that became more apparent to me. Uh,

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somebody advocating for the importance of the diological self and

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diological reason over monologue. I mean, I don't want to.

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I don't want to play it the other way too strong.

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I mean, you know, in some ways this is still

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my core argument. But there was genuine. It was genuine

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dialogue and even at times DialogOS around the production of

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the book that wasn't in the production of the series.

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Speaker 2: The series was very much in my head.

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Speaker 5: The book was very much between Chris and I and

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the people at the publishing company. And that wasn't always

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a pleasant affair, but it was. It was. It was

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a very effective, uh, very effective diological rationality has all

364
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the difficulties associated and you get this in Plato too,

365
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all the difficulties with human beings and their foibles and

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their flaws, but it also has a tremendous power for

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self correction, that model logical thought thinking just in talking

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just to yourself, it doesn't have so Yeah, and I've

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been trying to move more and more towards everything I

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do is being done diologically.

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Speaker 1: So it The clarification is that the Sons of the

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book is written as a dialogue. No, No, I want

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to get that perspective. It's you're talking about the process,

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talk about the press of producing the book was a

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diological process, not that the book's presentation is dilogical, which

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is an important distinction.

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Speaker 4: No, but you did, like you said, you did take

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into account that you're presenting an argument in the narrative form,

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in the sense that here's the progression of things that

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have happened that have brought us to where we are,

381
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and you kind of have to understand it.

382
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Speaker 3: And it's a mix of argument and history in.

383
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Speaker 4: Some ways, or you know, so that it I help

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people understand why, why we are and where we are

385
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right now.

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Speaker 5: I think one of the things Chris did to my

387
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year is he strengthened the presence of the narrative in

388
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the book. As Chris said it, It's there in the series,

389
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but it becomes much more present in a very helpful way.

390
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I like the comparison to the atmospheric music in a

391
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movie and how that gets you to participate in the

392
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material of the movie in a much more profound fashion.

393
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And Chris did that. He pronounced the narrative in that way.

394
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And I think that Chris has a tremendous gift for

395
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the lyrical, as anybody who's spent any time with him knows.

396
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And the lyrical doesn't just mean flowery language. With the

397
00:21:36,640 --> 00:21:40,240
lyrics of a song, there's an adding there's an added

398
00:21:40,279 --> 00:21:43,720
dimension of meaning that is otherwise not available with that

399
00:21:43,799 --> 00:21:46,039
kind of lyricism.

400
00:21:46,079 --> 00:21:48,480
Speaker 7: Hello friends, this is Richard Rowland, and I am inviting

401
00:21:48,519 --> 00:21:52,440
you to join me for my new Symbolic World course,

402
00:21:53,039 --> 00:21:56,160
Tolkien and Universal History. In this course, we're going to

403
00:21:56,240 --> 00:21:59,359
go over the deep mythological and universal history roots of

404
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Tolkien's legend are you and see how Tolkien sort of

405
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shows us a blueprint for reclaiming a legendary mythical Christian

406
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framework for storytelling, and in fact, we're going to even

407
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do some storytelling of our own. This is a five

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week course. It starts on March the third.

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Speaker 2: We had to.

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Speaker 7: Postpont it a week, which means there's a little more

411
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time for you to sign up, and I hope to

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see you there.

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Speaker 3: What what are some of the things you know?

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Speaker 4: Because now the video series has been out for a

415
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few years now and five five years, isn't that that's wild?

416
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Speaker 3: That's wild?

417
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Speaker 4: And so what are some of the surprising effects that

418
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you've seen or people that have told you stories or

419
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that have you know, I'm curious to see some of

420
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the effects that you've seen it have things that you

421
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didn't expect?

422
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Speaker 5: Maybe so after I mean, I guess two one is

423
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more interior and introvert. I've become a little less, I

424
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don't wake up in the middle of the night with

425
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an extense of exposure and apprehension anxiety, and I literally

426
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used to do that on a regular basis. So and

427
00:23:12,160 --> 00:23:15,799
you know, and again Chris has been a big help

428
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in that. Chris and Sarah very big help in me

429
00:23:19,759 --> 00:23:27,839
accommodating to this role and helping to properly tutor me

430
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so that I can address my concerns about the vice

431
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that is available, but also the virtuosity that could be cultivated.

432
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So I'm tremendously grateful about that. I didn't foresee that

433
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before doing this series, and I am grateful for this process.

434
00:23:45,559 --> 00:23:51,279
But that was a surprise, more public facing. The amount

435
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of actual professional academic work that has been generated by

436
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awakening to the meaning crisis caught me totally by surprise.

437
00:24:00,640 --> 00:24:06,119
It is like five, you know, at least five times

438
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greater than before I did the series. The number of

439
00:24:08,960 --> 00:24:13,319
bonafide you know, relevant ex you know, experts in the

440
00:24:13,559 --> 00:24:17,599
academics who reach out to me and want to collaborate

441
00:24:17,680 --> 00:24:19,759
with me and work with me, that has just gone

442
00:24:19,839 --> 00:24:23,799
up in a way I did not foresee. Looking back retrospectively,

443
00:24:23,880 --> 00:24:28,519
it makes sense to me. I think the legacy academic

444
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pathway is undergoing the same kind of contraction that the

445
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legacy media is, and the universities are not really getting

446
00:24:36,720 --> 00:24:39,519
it yet. But it took me by It took me

447
00:24:39,640 --> 00:24:45,920
completely by surprise, and so that is something for which

448
00:24:46,640 --> 00:24:49,720
I'm just tremendously grateful the people I've met and the

449
00:24:49,759 --> 00:24:52,880
people have entered into relationship with the work that has

450
00:24:52,880 --> 00:24:57,920
been done. I am, even by you know, even by

451
00:24:58,039 --> 00:25:01,359
sort of cold academic professional standards, this is my most

452
00:25:01,440 --> 00:25:02,440
productive I've ever been.

453
00:25:03,079 --> 00:25:07,960
Speaker 3: M Wow, yeah, you would think that. Can I say this?

454
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Speaker 4: I know that some I've talked to some academics where

455
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I've asked them to come on my YouTube channel or

456
00:25:12,839 --> 00:25:15,799
to talk about this, and they're very nervous because they

457
00:25:16,160 --> 00:25:19,359
want everything to be couched in the in academia, and

458
00:25:19,400 --> 00:25:22,759
so they're they're worried that it will affect their credibility.

459
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So this is to all of you watching, you know,

460
00:25:25,039 --> 00:25:26,960
this is it's a new world. This is not that

461
00:25:27,359 --> 00:25:30,559
this world is changing. And so I'm really happy to

462
00:25:30,640 --> 00:25:33,279
hear that that it didn't diminish people's percific.

463
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Speaker 3: Because like, oh, it's YouTube videos, you know.

464
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Speaker 4: Rather saying okay, here is a new cojent way of

465
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seeing that we hadn't thought about, and you know, people

466
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listening to it in their spare time and realizing that

467
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there's something going on.

468
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Speaker 3: It's a it's a great testimony to the change.

469
00:25:48,319 --> 00:25:51,680
Speaker 5: Yeah, and what's happened is h I mean, we've retired

470
00:25:51,720 --> 00:25:54,799
it now for reasons that we made public, but when

471
00:25:54,839 --> 00:25:56,680
I was doing voices with for Vaki, and what is

472
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continuing on in the lectern is we have academic who

473
00:26:00,759 --> 00:26:04,119
have come and come to see that this is a

474
00:26:04,160 --> 00:26:07,240
proper place for them to articulate their ideas, like Charles

475
00:26:07,240 --> 00:26:12,359
Stang or James Filler. So that has also been something

476
00:26:12,440 --> 00:26:15,200
that I've been very pleased with. Initially when I did

477
00:26:16,200 --> 00:26:19,000
for exactly the same prejudice you just said. When I

478
00:26:19,039 --> 00:26:21,480
did this, I thought academics would never come on publicly

479
00:26:21,519 --> 00:26:24,680
and talk with me. But that has also changed and

480
00:26:24,799 --> 00:26:28,440
opened up. More and more academics want to engage in

481
00:26:28,519 --> 00:26:34,400
more public presentation of their idea, and I think it's

482
00:26:34,480 --> 00:26:37,400
reasonable to conclude that I've earned their trust that they

483
00:26:37,480 --> 00:26:39,960
know that they're going to be able to do something

484
00:26:40,000 --> 00:26:44,519
that is public facing. But nevertheless, you know, has academic

485
00:26:44,559 --> 00:26:46,160
integrity and rigor to it.

486
00:26:48,559 --> 00:26:49,000
Speaker 3: What do you think.

487
00:26:49,440 --> 00:26:54,000
Speaker 1: I think there's also something else that it was a

488
00:26:54,039 --> 00:26:58,200
new way. Like I kind of remember, you know, being

489
00:26:58,200 --> 00:27:01,599
at the University of Toronto back in like maybe circa

490
00:27:01,640 --> 00:27:05,079
twenty ten, eleven twelve, Like that period was the period

491
00:27:05,119 --> 00:27:07,880
that I was there and first met John and Peterson.

492
00:27:08,200 --> 00:27:10,759
Jordan Peterson was also there at the same time, and

493
00:27:11,200 --> 00:27:13,200
at the time, they were really the only two people.

494
00:27:14,920 --> 00:27:16,960
Not to say that there weren't other really good teachers

495
00:27:17,000 --> 00:27:19,039
at the university. In fact, I had some other really

496
00:27:19,039 --> 00:27:21,839
really good teachers at the university, people like Lloyd Grison

497
00:27:21,880 --> 00:27:26,480
come to mind and whatnot. But there was something There

498
00:27:26,559 --> 00:27:30,160
was not only the content, but there was form. The

499
00:27:30,279 --> 00:27:36,720
form was it was impassioned with vocation, and having a

500
00:27:36,759 --> 00:27:39,960
scholar being passioned with vocation is not something that a

501
00:27:39,960 --> 00:27:42,920
lot of people are used to seeing. In fact, I

502
00:27:43,039 --> 00:27:45,680
was surprised when I first entered the university to find

503
00:27:45,720 --> 00:27:50,279
how segregated a person's a scholar's personal life was from

504
00:27:50,319 --> 00:27:52,759
their academic life. I remember thinking, well, God, if you're

505
00:27:52,799 --> 00:27:55,480
going into philosophy, you must be going into this because

506
00:27:55,519 --> 00:27:58,759
you love it and couldn't possibly do anything else. Like

507
00:27:58,799 --> 00:28:01,359
this is the kind of thing that orients you to

508
00:28:01,720 --> 00:28:04,960
the horizon line. Why else would you go into philosophy.

509
00:28:05,000 --> 00:28:08,000
But of course, as we know, that's not true for

510
00:28:08,039 --> 00:28:11,079
a lot of people, and so you know, I think

511
00:28:11,079 --> 00:28:13,920
a lot of people who probably watched that series, they

512
00:28:13,920 --> 00:28:16,880
had the same reaction as the generations of students who

513
00:28:16,960 --> 00:28:19,480
just did that first in the classroom when they saw

514
00:28:19,559 --> 00:28:22,599
John or they saw Jordan, or they saw people like them,

515
00:28:22,640 --> 00:28:24,680
which is to say, they met someone who was not

516
00:28:24,720 --> 00:28:29,680
only presenting something novel in its content, in its ability

517
00:28:29,720 --> 00:28:33,359
to integrate disciplines and revivify and intuitive love what the

518
00:28:33,359 --> 00:28:37,000
philosophical project was in the first place, but they found

519
00:28:37,039 --> 00:28:39,440
someone who cared so deeply about this that they seemed

520
00:28:39,480 --> 00:28:44,440
to stake their life on it. And that does something

521
00:28:44,480 --> 00:28:47,200
to people when they see that, right, It does something

522
00:28:47,240 --> 00:28:50,119
from within. I think it makes it brings something back

523
00:28:50,160 --> 00:28:52,319
to life when they see an example of someone who

524
00:28:52,400 --> 00:28:55,799
is marrying those things together. I think that was probably

525
00:28:56,319 --> 00:28:59,119
maybe the single most vital thing. Put aside all the

526
00:28:59,160 --> 00:29:02,279
content specivics of the argument and whatnot, and all of

527
00:29:02,319 --> 00:29:08,039
its value, it's the formal presentation of imbuing it with

528
00:29:08,440 --> 00:29:10,480
a sense of greater purpose. I think that does a

529
00:29:10,480 --> 00:29:12,920
lot of the work. And people caught into that intuitively

530
00:29:12,960 --> 00:29:14,519
without ever having to explain it.

531
00:29:15,039 --> 00:29:17,839
Speaker 4: One of the things you're saying, I think that you

532
00:29:17,920 --> 00:29:20,240
mentioned that the rings a bell to me that I've

533
00:29:20,279 --> 00:29:23,960
noticed and I think has been wonderful too, is I

534
00:29:24,000 --> 00:29:28,799
remember I remember coming out of school and being interested

535
00:29:28,799 --> 00:29:32,240
in medieval art, and you know, reading papers and reading

536
00:29:32,279 --> 00:29:36,119
different studies on relieval art and realizing that there's medieval

537
00:29:36,279 --> 00:29:40,359
art historians and there are Renaissance art historians, and those

538
00:29:40,519 --> 00:29:43,480
historians do not speak to each other, no, and it's

539
00:29:43,519 --> 00:29:46,359
like they're both art historians, but they actually do not

540
00:29:46,559 --> 00:29:48,799
in any way. They don't go to each other's conferences,

541
00:29:49,000 --> 00:29:52,160
they don't read each other's papers. They just completely ignore

542
00:29:52,160 --> 00:29:55,279
each other. And I remember thinking how insane that was,

543
00:29:55,319 --> 00:29:57,359
you know, back when I was like in my early twenties.

544
00:29:57,759 --> 00:29:59,480
And one of the things that I've seen John in

545
00:29:59,519 --> 00:30:04,599
your work that to me has been astounding is a complete,

546
00:30:05,359 --> 00:30:10,960
a bold, cross disciplinary approach which is unapologetic about that,

547
00:30:11,319 --> 00:30:16,119
you know, just crashes through psychology, through philosophy, through history

548
00:30:16,720 --> 00:30:20,359
and doesn't seem to care that everything has segregated into

549
00:30:20,400 --> 00:30:22,599
all these like little micro worlds that.

550
00:30:22,720 --> 00:30:24,319
Speaker 3: Don't even speak to each other.

551
00:30:24,519 --> 00:30:27,359
Speaker 4: And so I'm curious to see to hear about how

552
00:30:27,480 --> 00:30:30,680
people are reacting to that, you know, in academia and

553
00:30:31,599 --> 00:30:33,440
around that, like, are you getting pushed back for that

554
00:30:33,519 --> 00:30:35,920
kind of approach because you know, we're all postmoderns.

555
00:30:35,960 --> 00:30:36,960
Speaker 3: There's no grand narrative.

556
00:30:37,000 --> 00:30:39,839
Speaker 4: You can't you can't you know, you can't join things together,

557
00:30:40,039 --> 00:30:41,240
just everything has to separate.

558
00:30:42,599 --> 00:30:45,359
Speaker 5: So this is a this is a very interesting thing,

559
00:30:46,160 --> 00:30:48,920
and as you rightly divined, I've sort of been in

560
00:30:48,960 --> 00:30:55,960
the thick of it, not by design, but so yeah,

561
00:30:56,119 --> 00:30:59,759
the university there is the sort of postmodern you know,

562
00:31:00,079 --> 00:31:03,680
no grand narrative, but there's also this tremendous recognition that

563
00:31:03,759 --> 00:31:07,079
interdisciplinary study is really where the science needs to go.

564
00:31:07,480 --> 00:31:09,440
And the fact that those two are in dramatic tension

565
00:31:09,759 --> 00:31:12,960
is not I think registering at the level of the

566
00:31:13,039 --> 00:31:16,960
university organization. I think there's a performative contradiction looming within

567
00:31:17,000 --> 00:31:20,160
the university that it doesn't quite get. But that's part

568
00:31:20,200 --> 00:31:23,559
of this longer performative contradiction about right, we're trying to

569
00:31:23,680 --> 00:31:30,400
figure out how we can properly integrate together while we're

570
00:31:30,440 --> 00:31:33,119
trying to also say there is nothing that could possibly

571
00:31:33,160 --> 00:31:37,880
integrate us together, which is I think very problematic. My

572
00:31:37,960 --> 00:31:41,480
training in cognitive science, and therefore I express deep gratitude

573
00:31:41,839 --> 00:31:45,400
to all the people that taught me. Showed me that

574
00:31:46,039 --> 00:31:49,839
if we don't do that integration, we're going to be

575
00:31:51,799 --> 00:31:54,759
Our understanding of mind is going to be equivocal, fragmented,

576
00:31:55,160 --> 00:31:57,400
and that's not going to just be something propositional that's

577
00:31:57,400 --> 00:32:00,920
going to ramify back into our understanding of ourselves, understanding

578
00:32:00,960 --> 00:32:04,200
of our world. You're not doing good science all of that,

579
00:32:04,240 --> 00:32:07,279
and I've made those arguments repeatedly. So what has happened

580
00:32:07,319 --> 00:32:10,359
is for the very long, very long time, the university

581
00:32:10,400 --> 00:32:14,400
looked at me as something they did not understand and

582
00:32:14,440 --> 00:32:16,880
therefore were kind of.

583
00:32:18,160 --> 00:32:18,640
Speaker 2: Tolerant.

584
00:32:18,640 --> 00:32:22,559
Speaker 5: But we're looking for a reason to possibly get rid

585
00:32:22,559 --> 00:32:26,839
of me. And when two thousand and eight struck, that

586
00:32:26,920 --> 00:32:29,880
opportunity was taken and they tried to get rid of me,

587
00:32:32,079 --> 00:32:36,680
even though the cognitive science program was the fastest growing

588
00:32:36,839 --> 00:32:39,160
program at the college. I won't go into all the

589
00:32:39,319 --> 00:32:42,039
details because it'll start to raise my affect in a

590
00:32:42,039 --> 00:32:45,079
way that I don't want. Now, what happened is the

591
00:32:45,119 --> 00:32:49,599
faculty and the students did a lot of protests about that.

592
00:32:49,640 --> 00:32:53,680
They defended the value of the program, and I really

593
00:32:53,720 --> 00:32:55,480
honor the academics who did that.

594
00:32:56,079 --> 00:32:58,160
Speaker 3: They're trying to get rid of the whole the program.

595
00:32:58,240 --> 00:32:59,200
Speaker 2: The whole program.

596
00:32:59,319 --> 00:33:05,680
Speaker 5: Wow, it has to do with inept administrative arguments. Well,

597
00:33:05,839 --> 00:33:08,480
we don't have dedicated budget lines for the cognitive science program,

598
00:33:08,559 --> 00:33:11,359
so therefore we can we should remove it, right, which

599
00:33:11,400 --> 00:33:17,799
is like because of one mistake, you're doing another mistake. Anyways,

600
00:33:17,880 --> 00:33:22,240
what happened is, and I honor people like Joe Heath

601
00:33:22,440 --> 00:33:26,720
and Donald Ainsley and other people, and Jay Pratt at

602
00:33:27,160 --> 00:33:30,039
and the psychology he was chaired at the psychology department.

603
00:33:30,079 --> 00:33:33,559
They went to bat for me, especially the psychology department.

604
00:33:34,319 --> 00:33:37,200
So this is why I feel a tremendous loyalty to

605
00:33:37,240 --> 00:33:45,640
the psychology department, unlike my famous colleague. And so, but

606
00:33:46,160 --> 00:33:49,920
then what happened is they the university also had a

607
00:33:49,960 --> 00:33:52,359
sea change. They realized that they were starting to suffer

608
00:33:52,400 --> 00:33:56,079
because they have a bad reputation for teaching quality, great

609
00:33:56,119 --> 00:33:59,440
research university, but bad and so they made this huge

610
00:33:59,480 --> 00:34:04,680
move towards creating a second stream professors who were being

611
00:34:04,680 --> 00:34:07,759
promoted because of their teaching, not just their research. And

612
00:34:07,839 --> 00:34:13,440
so I slipped into that stream. And then the program

613
00:34:13,559 --> 00:34:19,000
was started to become something that that was properly budgeted,

614
00:34:19,480 --> 00:34:21,559
and then the university did the thing it always does

615
00:34:21,599 --> 00:34:23,800
and got behind it instead, We've always loved this and

616
00:34:23,840 --> 00:34:26,039
this is a gem for something that way we should

617
00:34:26,039 --> 00:34:26,760
always be doing.

618
00:34:27,480 --> 00:34:29,559
Speaker 2: And then and then they were.

619
00:34:29,519 --> 00:34:33,519
Speaker 5: Still looking at me, uh and they were still like, yeah,

620
00:34:33,559 --> 00:34:36,039
you're getting good student evaluations and your students go on

621
00:34:36,079 --> 00:34:39,400
to grad school. But you know, you and Jordan and

622
00:34:39,440 --> 00:34:42,480
a couple other professors and like, we had so much

623
00:34:42,519 --> 00:34:44,400
trouble with Jordan, and we had so much trouble with

624
00:34:44,480 --> 00:34:47,320
you know, Dan and right, and there was.

625
00:34:47,320 --> 00:34:49,480
Speaker 2: All of that you don't fit in the boxes.

626
00:34:49,840 --> 00:34:51,880
Speaker 5: And literally I had I had meetings when I was

627
00:34:51,880 --> 00:34:55,920
applying for my permanent status, my tenure where they were

628
00:34:56,000 --> 00:34:58,480
they were basically saying that they were they would do

629
00:34:58,519 --> 00:35:01,239
it sort of politely with smile well, saying you know,

630
00:35:01,599 --> 00:35:04,480
we've got our eye on you. And then when it

631
00:35:04,519 --> 00:35:07,679
became clear that the YouTube series was not going to

632
00:35:07,719 --> 00:35:10,800
be detrimental to them, but that I continually and reliably

633
00:35:10,840 --> 00:35:15,559
honored the University of Toronto, especially the psychology department and

634
00:35:15,599 --> 00:35:19,639
the cognitive science program, they came around and it was

635
00:35:20,599 --> 00:35:24,199
last This tells you how long things sake. It was little,

636
00:35:24,719 --> 00:35:27,800
just my previous We do a thing called the PTR

637
00:35:27,840 --> 00:35:32,000
which we evaluate our yearly evaluation for how we're doing right.

638
00:35:32,039 --> 00:35:34,719
And it was the first time they officially acknowledged my

639
00:35:34,760 --> 00:35:38,920
public presence having a value, having an academic value. And

640
00:35:39,000 --> 00:35:41,519
I give them credit. I mean, institutions are by nature

641
00:35:41,599 --> 00:35:45,239
very conservative. So now what it is is we don't

642
00:35:45,280 --> 00:35:47,280
know what John is. He doesn't fit into any of

643
00:35:47,320 --> 00:35:51,840
your boxes. But he's our MAVC. He's our weirdo and

644
00:35:51,880 --> 00:35:54,079
we're going to keep him and we like him. That's

645
00:35:54,079 --> 00:35:58,280
what it's sort of come down to. And I appreciate that.

646
00:36:01,039 --> 00:36:04,920
Speaker 4: What do you think about crashing through crashing through, like

647
00:36:04,960 --> 00:36:06,840
crashing through the discipline? But I don't think it's crashing

648
00:36:06,840 --> 00:36:07,840
through in some ways.

649
00:36:08,119 --> 00:36:08,639
Speaker 3: I think that.

650
00:36:09,119 --> 00:36:10,920
Speaker 4: I mean, to me, it's a surprise because you know,

651
00:36:11,000 --> 00:36:14,039
if you had asked me when I was younger, you know,

652
00:36:14,679 --> 00:36:19,079
is cognitive science going to be a place where we

653
00:36:19,119 --> 00:36:24,800
can kind of join ideas about religion and philosophy and history, uh,

654
00:36:24,880 --> 00:36:27,639
you know, and then also more mystical ideas of attention.

655
00:36:27,679 --> 00:36:29,840
Speaker 3: All of these things. I'll be like, what, No, I

656
00:36:29,880 --> 00:36:30,800
don't even know what that is?

657
00:36:30,800 --> 00:36:33,800
Speaker 4: Like, what how would how would a science be able

658
00:36:33,800 --> 00:36:36,000
to do that especially my cynicism against kind of like

659
00:36:36,360 --> 00:36:39,760
science as you know, scientism. You could say, uh, you know,

660
00:36:39,880 --> 00:36:42,360
and so so Chris, or I'd like to hear what

661
00:36:42,480 --> 00:36:44,840
you think about this moment, like how all this is

662
00:36:44,880 --> 00:36:45,480
coming together?

663
00:36:45,760 --> 00:36:48,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, me answering this question is ironic too, because

664
00:36:48,480 --> 00:36:50,760
I'm not, like, I'm not a scientist. I'm not. That's

665
00:36:50,800 --> 00:36:53,960
not my background either, and that's not my domain of comfort.

666
00:36:54,360 --> 00:36:57,840
I mean, I you know, and and I understand it

667
00:36:57,920 --> 00:37:01,360
well enough too. I supposed to end the writer's craft

668
00:37:01,480 --> 00:37:05,400
and to lend it a certain articulation in certain contexts,

669
00:37:06,000 --> 00:37:08,800
but like that's about as far as that goes for me,

670
00:37:09,000 --> 00:37:13,679
you know, so I think, yeah, what to say about that.

671
00:37:15,360 --> 00:37:18,440
My relationship with it is that goes back to what

672
00:37:18,519 --> 00:37:21,519
we were talking about before, which is, you know, conceptual

673
00:37:21,719 --> 00:37:28,119
vocabulary and tools to pry open esoteric ideas. And sometimes

674
00:37:28,199 --> 00:37:30,440
you know, John has a gift with his you know,

675
00:37:30,960 --> 00:37:34,119
there's a way of expressing things poetically for example. Now

676
00:37:34,159 --> 00:37:37,559
that to me, that's where my I feel more at home.

677
00:37:38,760 --> 00:37:45,360
And yet there's a kind of specificity, there's a technical geometry,

678
00:37:45,440 --> 00:37:47,840
and there is something very very helpful about some of

679
00:37:47,960 --> 00:37:54,079
the scientific conceptual apparatus because it helps to it basically

680
00:37:54,159 --> 00:37:57,119
becomes like a to me, it becomes like a transliteration device.

681
00:37:57,599 --> 00:38:00,480
It becomes a way of bridging in to things that

682
00:38:00,519 --> 00:38:03,880
are very difficult to understand, that often are only in

683
00:38:03,960 --> 00:38:07,239
the traditions that we read in Revere, expressed poetically or

684
00:38:07,320 --> 00:38:10,320
expressed in such a way that that you have to

685
00:38:10,400 --> 00:38:12,880
develop a deep kind of intimacy, and you have to

686
00:38:13,000 --> 00:38:16,320
surpass the constraints of the language that you use with

687
00:38:16,519 --> 00:38:18,719
the language that you use in order to access them.

688
00:38:19,079 --> 00:38:21,800
And there's something about bringing all of that and expressing

689
00:38:21,840 --> 00:38:25,960
it within a scientific domain, aside from giving it credibility

690
00:38:26,039 --> 00:38:31,320
and plausibility, and aside from the people that need that

691
00:38:31,679 --> 00:38:34,360
in order to be credulous or to even give it

692
00:38:34,760 --> 00:38:37,559
a fair hearing, I mean, there's all of that, but

693
00:38:37,639 --> 00:38:39,599
I think in addition to that, there's just a kind

694
00:38:39,639 --> 00:38:43,239
of there's a tidiness to the form of presentation that

695
00:38:43,400 --> 00:38:46,519
makes very things that are very very difficult to understand

696
00:38:46,559 --> 00:38:51,840
and have esoteric histories suddenly within striking distance of the

697
00:38:51,920 --> 00:38:56,119
average person. And I think that the great advantage that

698
00:38:56,239 --> 00:39:00,719
has been given this is really more of aesthetic point

699
00:39:00,800 --> 00:39:03,480
than a theoretical point. But I think it's important, and

700
00:39:03,559 --> 00:39:06,840
to me it's the thing that's most important, which is

701
00:39:06,920 --> 00:39:08,840
to say that there's a way in which people can

702
00:39:08,960 --> 00:39:12,599
touch down on things that they otherwise would never touch

703
00:39:12,719 --> 00:39:15,599
down on. And I think that's what's happened, right. People

704
00:39:15,639 --> 00:39:19,159
who are maybe to use your words, scientistically inclined or

705
00:39:19,480 --> 00:39:22,360
you know, skeptically inclined in the pejorative sense of the term,

706
00:39:23,119 --> 00:39:27,320
who never would have considered any argument for the necessity

707
00:39:27,800 --> 00:39:33,880
or elegance or depth of a religious tradition, passed through

708
00:39:33,920 --> 00:39:37,599
the gate of a series of scientific terms and found

709
00:39:37,639 --> 00:39:41,039
on the far side of that gate something beautiful they

710
00:39:41,119 --> 00:39:44,159
had never thought to consider real. And it was actually

711
00:39:44,400 --> 00:39:48,440
the scientific bridge that made that possible for them, rather

712
00:39:48,559 --> 00:39:52,599
than the science alienating them. It actually became an invitation,

713
00:39:53,000 --> 00:39:54,800
and it became a kind just as they say that

714
00:39:54,880 --> 00:39:58,599
John is. You know, there's a lot of talk about

715
00:39:58,639 --> 00:40:03,880
gateway drugs space right now, but that was a kind

716
00:40:03,920 --> 00:40:07,000
of gameway drug for people. And I think that's an

717
00:40:07,039 --> 00:40:10,679
incredible advantage that cognitive science has been able to have

718
00:40:11,559 --> 00:40:14,920
as this transliteration device. Basically, that's my sense.

719
00:40:15,679 --> 00:40:22,639
Speaker 5: So I've acquired a reputation that now has become attractive

720
00:40:22,679 --> 00:40:25,360
to students. I get students coming to me and I

721
00:40:25,440 --> 00:40:28,440
guess this, I've earned a bit of trust around this

722
00:40:29,280 --> 00:40:31,280
as someone who goes into areas that have could be

723
00:40:31,400 --> 00:40:37,800
considered wo yeah and illegitimate and make them intellectually respectable

724
00:40:37,920 --> 00:40:42,519
and worthy of theoretical debate and empirical investigation. And that

725
00:40:42,719 --> 00:40:45,159
is one of the things for which I'm most I hope,

726
00:40:45,199 --> 00:40:48,800
in the virtuous sense, proud that I have been able

727
00:40:48,880 --> 00:40:49,239
to do that.

728
00:40:50,000 --> 00:40:52,199
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean to me, that's been you know, And

729
00:40:52,280 --> 00:40:54,400
that's one of the things that if you remember, like

730
00:40:54,679 --> 00:40:57,559
you and I were criticized together, you know, trying to

731
00:40:57,599 --> 00:41:01,599
talk about transpersonal agency and trying like at least I

732
00:41:01,760 --> 00:41:04,599
was pushing to connect it to the ancient world because

733
00:41:04,639 --> 00:41:06,719
in some ways we you know, I think that's one

734
00:41:06,760 --> 00:41:11,079
of the interesting things about cognitive science is that whether

735
00:41:11,360 --> 00:41:16,480
something is quantifiably measurable and let's say, in the way

736
00:41:16,599 --> 00:41:18,880
that a kind of nineteenth century materialists would want it

737
00:41:18,920 --> 00:41:21,440
to be in the question of cognitive science and some

738
00:41:21,519 --> 00:41:24,639
ways becomes irrelevant in the sense that because someone asked me,

739
00:41:24,719 --> 00:41:26,920
like a good example would be someone that's asked me recently,

740
00:41:28,360 --> 00:41:31,000
we talked to people I was talking about like actually

741
00:41:31,079 --> 00:41:32,719
UFO and kind of people.

742
00:41:32,760 --> 00:41:35,039
Speaker 3: Seeing aliens or seeing demons and stuff.

743
00:41:35,199 --> 00:41:38,239
Speaker 4: People ask me like, how do you distinguish a real

744
00:41:38,639 --> 00:41:42,159
experience from a delusion? And my reaction to that is

745
00:41:42,199 --> 00:41:46,639
that if you have a delusion about seeing demons, you

746
00:41:46,800 --> 00:41:49,679
need to deal with that, Like I don't care what Like,

747
00:41:49,760 --> 00:41:51,880
I don't care if it's physically there or not, or

748
00:41:51,880 --> 00:41:53,400
if it's when someone says it's.

749
00:41:53,440 --> 00:41:55,760
Speaker 3: Just in your mind, it's like, if something is just

750
00:41:55,880 --> 00:41:56,679
in your mind.

751
00:41:56,519 --> 00:41:56,760
Speaker 2: Does it?

752
00:41:57,119 --> 00:41:59,920
Speaker 4: It's if it's something like that where it's actually incounter

753
00:42:00,039 --> 00:42:03,880
dring some kind of destructive force that is affecting you mentally.

754
00:42:04,000 --> 00:42:05,000
Speaker 3: You can't ignore it.

755
00:42:05,239 --> 00:42:07,360
Speaker 4: You have to deal with it. And some of the

756
00:42:07,480 --> 00:42:09,360
you know, so you would say, well, is it a

757
00:42:09,480 --> 00:42:12,159
chemical thing? Like you need to take certain chemicals in

758
00:42:12,280 --> 00:42:14,679
order to help yourself? And it's like probably maybe an

759
00:42:14,760 --> 00:42:17,119
aspect of it, but there's other aspects of it that

760
00:42:17,320 --> 00:42:19,599
can be helpful, and those are couch in the in

761
00:42:19,719 --> 00:42:23,239
the tradition, like you know, encountering a sage, encountering someone

762
00:42:23,320 --> 00:42:26,159
who can speak with authority to your experience. All of

763
00:42:26,239 --> 00:42:28,599
these types of things would definitely have an effect on

764
00:42:29,079 --> 00:42:32,320
on these experiences. And so I think that That's what's

765
00:42:32,559 --> 00:42:35,960
fascinating is that, you know, like the question of for example,

766
00:42:36,000 --> 00:42:38,599
like seeing a monster, for example, it's like every culture

767
00:42:38,639 --> 00:42:40,400
in the world knows what seeing a monster is, Like

768
00:42:40,480 --> 00:42:41,039
we just know what.

769
00:42:41,119 --> 00:42:43,639
Speaker 3: That is because it's just universally described and you just

770
00:42:43,920 --> 00:42:44,159
you just.

771
00:42:44,199 --> 00:42:44,599
Speaker 5: Know what it is.

772
00:42:44,679 --> 00:42:46,840
Speaker 4: And so if someone asks you, is the experience of

773
00:42:46,920 --> 00:42:49,559
seeing a monster real? And I'm like, what, it's real?

774
00:42:50,079 --> 00:42:52,559
It has to be real to some extent. Doesn't mean

775
00:42:52,639 --> 00:42:56,360
that you can that you can give the monster a

776
00:42:56,840 --> 00:42:59,320
you know, like a species that you could that you

777
00:42:59,360 --> 00:43:01,079
could cut it out, put on the table and like

778
00:43:01,159 --> 00:43:04,239
analyze its DNA. But that experience has to be something

779
00:43:04,320 --> 00:43:07,119
that we have to that we can deal with, you know.

780
00:43:07,679 --> 00:43:07,760
Speaker 6: Uh.

781
00:43:07,880 --> 00:43:09,480
Speaker 4: And so I think that the lenk like I saw you,

782
00:43:09,599 --> 00:43:12,079
for example, John Doing, you did a conference that it

783
00:43:12,199 --> 00:43:14,920
was like on subtle Bodies, and I thought, man, he

784
00:43:15,039 --> 00:43:18,000
is not afraid to like go into this kind of stuff.

785
00:43:18,320 --> 00:43:20,800
Speaker 3: Yea, And so it's been amazing to watch it happen.

786
00:43:20,880 --> 00:43:23,519
Speaker 2: I have to say, we have a paper JN.

787
00:43:23,599 --> 00:43:25,559
Speaker 5: Soun Kim and I we have a paper in submission

788
00:43:25,599 --> 00:43:28,159
to a bonafide academic journal about all of this.

789
00:43:29,960 --> 00:43:33,000
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that that that.

790
00:43:35,360 --> 00:43:40,519
Speaker 5: Has been really important to me, and Chris has been

791
00:43:40,559 --> 00:43:47,800
a tremendous help in that, I think welcoming back into

792
00:43:48,639 --> 00:43:51,519
you know, intellectual fellowship. A lot of the things that

793
00:43:51,639 --> 00:43:57,239
we orphaned that were proper domains of human experience, especially

794
00:43:57,320 --> 00:44:01,679
transformative experience. UH place is where they cultivate a sense

795
00:44:01,719 --> 00:44:06,079
of the sacred, a capacity for self transcendence. That has

796
00:44:06,159 --> 00:44:11,159
been a way in which my work has contributed to

797
00:44:11,239 --> 00:44:14,199
sort of the re enchantment of the world, making the

798
00:44:14,280 --> 00:44:18,320
world that turning it back from a universe one thing

799
00:44:18,400 --> 00:44:22,400
we can say about it universe to a cosmos. And

800
00:44:24,960 --> 00:44:28,239
I didn't realize I was doing that except in the

801
00:44:28,320 --> 00:44:32,360
intuitive sense that I just liked to go because of

802
00:44:32,519 --> 00:44:35,360
what happened in what happens in my practice into places

803
00:44:35,440 --> 00:44:39,239
that people typically didn't want to go and see if

804
00:44:39,239 --> 00:44:42,199
there's any scientific merit there. That's that's a Socratic impulse

805
00:44:42,320 --> 00:44:45,119
in me. I want to know if this thing that

806
00:44:45,199 --> 00:44:47,760
seems so catchy has any truth behind it. That's like

807
00:44:47,920 --> 00:44:49,679
I like to go and see if things that have

808
00:44:49,719 --> 00:44:53,239
a lot of truth have any transformative potential left in them.

809
00:44:53,639 --> 00:44:55,599
That's the Socratic inspiration running through me.

810
00:44:56,920 --> 00:44:59,960
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's a there's I was gonna say when you

811
00:45:00,039 --> 00:45:02,039
brought up that that that I saw that video of

812
00:45:02,039 --> 00:45:04,880
yours Jonathan, or you had that discussion about the demon

813
00:45:04,960 --> 00:45:07,719
and the demonic and encounters with it brought me back

814
00:45:07,760 --> 00:45:13,159
to experience as a sleep paralysis and it but one

815
00:45:13,159 --> 00:45:16,920
of the really helpful things about that. And you do it.

816
00:45:17,039 --> 00:45:18,920
You do it too, Jonathan. You both do it, but

817
00:45:19,000 --> 00:45:21,079
you do it in their different domains, which is, you'll

818
00:45:21,159 --> 00:45:26,920
take you'll talk about something let's say that has overtones

819
00:45:26,960 --> 00:45:31,000
of the mystical or overtones of the metaphysical, or you

820
00:45:31,079 --> 00:45:34,599
know whatnot. And what you'll do is you'll take the

821
00:45:34,719 --> 00:45:37,559
same pattern, but you'll talk about how the pattern is

822
00:45:37,559 --> 00:45:41,800
actually manifest on let's say a lower scale of experience,

823
00:45:41,920 --> 00:45:45,000
a more everyday quotidian scale of experience. Right, you both

824
00:45:45,079 --> 00:45:48,800
do this in your respective ways and with different vocabulary,

825
00:45:48,840 --> 00:45:50,199
but I think you both do this very well. This

826
00:45:50,320 --> 00:45:51,880
is one of the ways I think you guys have

827
00:45:52,280 --> 00:45:55,119
your work has an affinity, which is that you like

828
00:45:55,239 --> 00:45:57,960
to detect patterns, and you like to take a pattern,

829
00:45:58,039 --> 00:46:00,559
you like to show how it's replicated at different scales

830
00:46:00,599 --> 00:46:03,960
and how actually the thing that makes the higher order

831
00:46:04,079 --> 00:46:08,920
version of that pattern most plausible is the acknowledgment that

832
00:46:09,039 --> 00:46:12,480
it is already affecting us at a lower order scale

833
00:46:12,679 --> 00:46:16,880
of reality, and how we take the sort of in miniature,

834
00:46:17,400 --> 00:46:19,800
the rituals that are present at that scale of reality

835
00:46:19,880 --> 00:46:22,400
to be intrinsically real by the way that we interact

836
00:46:22,440 --> 00:46:24,719
with them in the first place. And so that all

837
00:46:24,800 --> 00:46:27,000
we're doing when we talk about these higher orders is

838
00:46:27,079 --> 00:46:30,039
we're just expanding and scaling the pattern. And it might

839
00:46:30,119 --> 00:46:33,360
be beyond our comprehension to immediately perceive, but the pattern

840
00:46:33,440 --> 00:46:36,920
is no less real because we already have an intuitive

841
00:46:36,960 --> 00:46:39,000
relationship with it. And so I think one of the

842
00:46:39,079 --> 00:46:40,920
things that I think both of you guys do is

843
00:46:41,960 --> 00:46:44,840
it's very platonic. This is the anemesis. You show people

844
00:46:44,880 --> 00:46:49,320
that they already understand this. It's just that they don't

845
00:46:49,400 --> 00:46:53,679
relate their understanding to the scale of pattern that they

846
00:46:53,800 --> 00:46:58,000
feel alienated by because they're not understanding the correspondence. They

847
00:46:58,039 --> 00:47:00,679
think this has nothing to do with them. It has

848
00:47:00,719 --> 00:47:03,239
everything to do with them, and they already know that.

849
00:47:04,199 --> 00:47:06,039
But what you do is you remind them that they

850
00:47:06,079 --> 00:47:08,880
already know that. That's the very powerful thing. That's what

851
00:47:08,960 --> 00:47:09,599
a teacher does.

852
00:47:09,840 --> 00:47:12,239
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, that's I mean, that's exactly what I'm trying

853
00:47:12,280 --> 00:47:15,920
to do one hundred percent. And the hardest thing to communicate,

854
00:47:16,119 --> 00:47:19,559
and this is the one that's sometimes more difficult, is

855
00:47:19,639 --> 00:47:24,199
that sometimes the higher order pattern, how can I say this?

856
00:47:25,039 --> 00:47:28,800
It's real, not only but it's real to the extent

857
00:47:28,920 --> 00:47:32,400
that it joins the lower versions together. And so it's like,

858
00:47:32,800 --> 00:47:35,000
for example, like the image a good example, a demon

859
00:47:35,199 --> 00:47:37,159
thing is a good example. Like let's say the image

860
00:47:37,159 --> 00:47:39,760
of the demon in the Fresco, where it's an actual

861
00:47:39,800 --> 00:47:41,199
like hybrid monster and everything.

862
00:47:41,320 --> 00:47:43,920
Speaker 3: It's like, you're probably never going.

863
00:47:43,760 --> 00:47:45,760
Speaker 4: To see that, You're never going to have an experience

864
00:47:45,800 --> 00:47:47,519
of that, maybe not even in a dream, maybe not

865
00:47:47,639 --> 00:47:51,280
even in a thing, but that image everybody recognizes it

866
00:47:51,480 --> 00:47:53,599
as being what it is, even if they haven't had

867
00:47:53,719 --> 00:47:54,800
a personal experience of it.

868
00:47:55,119 --> 00:47:57,199
Speaker 3: Because it joins together there.

869
00:47:57,719 --> 00:48:00,360
Speaker 4: It joins together the dark thing that moves in the

870
00:48:00,400 --> 00:48:03,599
corner of your attention, like and the you know, the

871
00:48:03,719 --> 00:48:06,679
moment that you've had where you're in like utter confusion

872
00:48:06,760 --> 00:48:09,079
and nothing makes sense and everything falls together. When you

873
00:48:09,199 --> 00:48:11,760
see an image of it, like a myth mythologized image

874
00:48:11,800 --> 00:48:15,480
of it, it it joins that, it joins your experience

875
00:48:15,599 --> 00:48:17,920
of seeing something move in the corner, you know, of

876
00:48:18,039 --> 00:48:21,679
your your attention with everybody else's, and so we're.

877
00:48:21,519 --> 00:48:23,559
Speaker 3: Like, oh, yeah, that, but I don't even know why.

878
00:48:23,880 --> 00:48:26,960
It's like, why is it that that is? I get attention?

879
00:48:27,480 --> 00:48:29,559
Speaker 4: My attention is drawn to that, and I think that

880
00:48:29,639 --> 00:48:31,760
a lot of a lot of these higher order versions

881
00:48:31,800 --> 00:48:33,960
that's that's what they are, and that's why we no

882
00:48:34,119 --> 00:48:36,119
matter how much because I know, John, you've said things

883
00:48:36,159 --> 00:48:38,559
like I don't believe in the supernatural, and it's funny

884
00:48:38,559 --> 00:48:41,039
because it's like, I think I probably also don't believe

885
00:48:41,039 --> 00:48:43,079
in the supernatural and the way that a lot of

886
00:48:43,159 --> 00:48:47,119
people think of supernatural. But but I I believe in

887
00:48:47,199 --> 00:48:50,199
top down causality. I think that that it emerges into

888
00:48:50,280 --> 00:48:53,920
these images, but it also constrained from above. And it's like, yeah,

889
00:48:54,000 --> 00:48:57,840
that image of a let's say, a winged person, that's

890
00:48:57,880 --> 00:49:02,360
the right image for what it describing. Like there's no better,

891
00:49:02,559 --> 00:49:05,159
Like there might be alternatives, but there are very few

892
00:49:05,239 --> 00:49:08,159
other versions of it that are good, and they're universal.

893
00:49:08,280 --> 00:49:10,639
Every culture has the image of a wing something to

894
00:49:10,760 --> 00:49:11,960
represent a spirit.

895
00:49:12,159 --> 00:49:14,519
Speaker 3: Like it's so obvious when you think about.

896
00:49:14,320 --> 00:49:17,199
Speaker 2: It, but you know what's the thing?

897
00:49:18,480 --> 00:49:20,800
Speaker 1: Sorry, John, go ahead, that's the thing that.

898
00:49:21,719 --> 00:49:24,039
Speaker 5: First of all, I think I've got to you know,

899
00:49:24,159 --> 00:49:26,239
all things are filled with God, and that's David Bentley

900
00:49:26,280 --> 00:49:29,559
Hart basically also doing what you just said.

901
00:49:29,599 --> 00:49:30,800
Speaker 2: And I'm interested to read that.

902
00:49:32,559 --> 00:49:34,119
Speaker 5: But the thing you put your finger on is the

903
00:49:34,199 --> 00:49:37,400
thing which is I don't want to derail the conversation,

904
00:49:37,480 --> 00:49:39,679
but that is the thing that has fascinated me on

905
00:49:39,760 --> 00:49:44,039
both ends. The thing that the work of art that

906
00:49:44,280 --> 00:49:47,800
really externalized this and it gave me the space so

907
00:49:47,880 --> 00:49:51,760
it could reflect on it was Equus, which I consider

908
00:49:51,840 --> 00:49:55,199
a masterpiece. I identify very strongly with dice Art. The

909
00:49:55,360 --> 00:49:58,679
last lines of that play always reverberate for me.

910
00:49:58,800 --> 00:49:59,039
Speaker 2: And what.

911
00:50:00,880 --> 00:50:04,280
Speaker 5: Diceartain he knows he has to interact with these trans personal,

912
00:50:04,360 --> 00:50:08,559
transjective realities in his profession, but he can't. But he

913
00:50:09,079 --> 00:50:11,840
can't account for them. He can't account for what is

914
00:50:11,960 --> 00:50:13,400
the magnetic force.

915
00:50:13,519 --> 00:50:14,719
Speaker 2: That did what you just said?

916
00:50:14,800 --> 00:50:14,840
Speaker 5: Like?

917
00:50:15,000 --> 00:50:15,400
Speaker 1: Why that?

918
00:50:15,960 --> 00:50:16,639
Speaker 2: Why the Like?

919
00:50:16,840 --> 00:50:19,760
Speaker 5: I know, logically, because I do work on relevance realization,

920
00:50:19,920 --> 00:50:23,079
all the possible things that could be, you know, drawn

921
00:50:23,159 --> 00:50:25,400
together that don't happen, Why that?

922
00:50:26,000 --> 00:50:26,360
Speaker 2: Why that?

923
00:50:26,880 --> 00:50:30,039
Speaker 5: And I think Young doesn't give an explanation. Young just

924
00:50:30,199 --> 00:50:33,440
points at it. The archetype is not an explanation. There's

925
00:50:33,480 --> 00:50:37,639
no theoretical explanation. There there's no mechanism, right in a

926
00:50:37,719 --> 00:50:41,360
scientific sense, not in the mechanical sense, right right, And

927
00:50:41,599 --> 00:50:44,199
that's what's fascinating to me. And that fascinates me from

928
00:50:44,239 --> 00:50:48,400
the scientific end of relevance realization to the depths of

929
00:50:48,559 --> 00:50:51,159
my which I did on you know, the course I

930
00:50:51,199 --> 00:50:53,400
did on your channel, the cognitive science of ritual, the

931
00:50:53,880 --> 00:50:58,280
encounter with the sacred, and that I call it the

932
00:50:58,360 --> 00:51:01,000
equis engine because just for the litter that whatever it

933
00:51:01,079 --> 00:51:04,920
is that you know, is doing that and way. And

934
00:51:05,079 --> 00:51:08,840
what's so weird about it is it's simultaneously very bizarre

935
00:51:09,000 --> 00:51:11,519
when you think about it, like with you know, with

936
00:51:11,760 --> 00:51:17,000
reflective distance, and yet like you said, it's like anemnesis

937
00:51:17,079 --> 00:51:19,559
it seems so familiar and so right when you see it.

938
00:51:19,639 --> 00:51:22,039
Speaker 2: It's like, of course it has that of course to it.

939
00:51:22,320 --> 00:51:26,000
Speaker 5: But if you ask theoretically, you say, okay, theoretically, why

940
00:51:26,159 --> 00:51:28,320
of course the person goes, I don't know.

941
00:51:29,039 --> 00:51:29,880
Speaker 2: And that's the play.

942
00:51:30,000 --> 00:51:33,840
Speaker 5: That's equois and it's it fascinates me and like disart,

943
00:51:34,480 --> 00:51:38,000
like I want to, like I've given up the project

944
00:51:38,239 --> 00:51:41,800
of being able to you know, get get an account

945
00:51:41,840 --> 00:51:43,599
that's going to satisfy me, because I realize I'm going

946
00:51:43,679 --> 00:51:47,960
to die unsatisfied about this, but about trying to get

947
00:51:48,079 --> 00:51:52,280
more and more properly oriented to it and have an

948
00:51:52,440 --> 00:51:56,039
articulated apprehension of it so that we can do a

949
00:51:56,159 --> 00:51:59,159
more profound appreciation of it. I think I've made some

950
00:51:59,320 --> 00:52:03,599
progress on that, and that's you know that really that

951
00:52:03,719 --> 00:52:05,559
has come to mean so much more to me, to

952
00:52:05,599 --> 00:52:07,800
me realize that's what I'm doing and that's what I

953
00:52:07,920 --> 00:52:10,519
want to be doing. And I just I know I'm

954
00:52:10,760 --> 00:52:13,440
doing a bit of a tangent here, but that that

955
00:52:14,320 --> 00:52:19,199
that to me, and you know, I felt it when

956
00:52:19,360 --> 00:52:21,119
I felt that when we were at the gospel seminars,

957
00:52:21,159 --> 00:52:23,280
I felt something like that happened between all of us

958
00:52:24,079 --> 00:52:28,360
and it was profound and it was deeply meaningful to me.

959
00:52:28,880 --> 00:52:32,559
Speaker 2: Sorry, I know this isn't directly about the book, but it's.

960
00:52:32,360 --> 00:52:34,079
Speaker 3: Just watch this.

961
00:52:34,320 --> 00:52:34,480
Speaker 5: You know.

962
00:52:35,400 --> 00:52:37,840
Speaker 3: They watched this for the insight in the conversation. That's

963
00:52:37,840 --> 00:52:38,559
what they care about it.

964
00:52:39,480 --> 00:52:41,920
Speaker 1: I'm actually curious now that you brought I've heard about

965
00:52:41,960 --> 00:52:44,519
what that experience is like from John's perspective, Jonathan, but

966
00:52:44,559 --> 00:52:46,440
I'm kind of curious now that he's brought it up.

967
00:52:46,440 --> 00:52:47,679
What that was like from your person?

968
00:52:47,760 --> 00:52:50,320
Speaker 4: Oh, the Gospel seminary, Yeah, I mean, this is a

969
00:52:50,360 --> 00:52:52,679
good opportunity because it's just coming out now, you know.

970
00:52:52,840 --> 00:52:54,239
I think it started coming out at the beginning of

971
00:52:54,280 --> 00:52:54,800
the week.

972
00:52:54,920 --> 00:52:56,280
Speaker 2: September first, my birthday.

973
00:52:56,480 --> 00:52:59,280
Speaker 3: They came out Happy Birthday, by the way, they didn't

974
00:52:59,320 --> 00:53:02,960
know I really I was really.

975
00:53:03,000 --> 00:53:07,559
Speaker 4: Nervous about it, you know, because talking about Exodus is

976
00:53:07,639 --> 00:53:10,760
something because Exodus, you know, I mean, it's relevant to

977
00:53:10,880 --> 00:53:14,800
Christians and obviously very relevant to Jews, but it's it's

978
00:53:14,920 --> 00:53:17,840
it's not something that people fight over that much.

979
00:53:17,840 --> 00:53:20,039
Speaker 3: You know, they don't have all this conflict around it.

980
00:53:20,079 --> 00:53:24,480
Speaker 4: But the Gospel, my goodness, the Gospels, the most explosive

981
00:53:24,559 --> 00:53:27,760
thing you can do is obviously talk about about Christ

982
00:53:27,840 --> 00:53:30,360
and about and about his message and also about the

983
00:53:30,400 --> 00:53:31,639
implications and everything.

984
00:53:31,880 --> 00:53:32,000
Speaker 7: You know.

985
00:53:32,079 --> 00:53:34,400
Speaker 3: That's why we had actually had like wars about this.

986
00:53:34,599 --> 00:53:36,719
So I was very nervous.

987
00:53:36,920 --> 00:53:40,239
Speaker 4: And also because Jordan, you know, Jordan, in his amazing self,

988
00:53:40,400 --> 00:53:42,639
just as like, hey, why don't you come to the gospel. See,

989
00:53:42,679 --> 00:53:45,199
he's just like inviting anybody to come. It's like anybody

990
00:53:45,239 --> 00:53:47,119
he meets that he finds interesting, Like, hey, you should go.

991
00:53:47,280 --> 00:53:48,639
He was like, Russell brand you should come to the

992
00:53:48,639 --> 00:53:50,840
gospel seminar. He's like Tucker Carlson, you should go to

993
00:53:50,880 --> 00:53:53,039
the gospel like anybody. He's just like, just come to

994
00:53:53,119 --> 00:53:55,320
the gospel seminar. And I was thinking Jordan like, I

995
00:53:55,440 --> 00:53:57,440
was like, ah, we're inviting all these people. You know,

996
00:53:57,559 --> 00:54:01,519
we had uh it was uh, we had what's his

997
00:54:01,679 --> 00:54:04,519
name from the from uh trigonometry.

998
00:54:05,320 --> 00:54:08,039
Speaker 3: Constantin Kissen was there, which I was like constant Kissen.

999
00:54:08,119 --> 00:54:10,400
Speaker 4: I like Constantin Kissen, But why would he come to

1000
00:54:10,440 --> 00:54:11,159
a gospel seminar?

1001
00:54:11,920 --> 00:54:15,519
Speaker 3: And so so I was like nervous. But then exactly

1002
00:54:15,599 --> 00:54:16,119
what you said.

1003
00:54:16,159 --> 00:54:20,679
Speaker 4: There's something about the just I think, the the integrity

1004
00:54:20,719 --> 00:54:23,280
of the people, and I think that's maybe what Jordan gets.

1005
00:54:23,440 --> 00:54:25,920
Jordan is like, I meet someone who has integrity, and

1006
00:54:26,039 --> 00:54:28,280
I sent their integrity and that's the reason why I

1007
00:54:28,320 --> 00:54:30,559
want to invite them, because He's like, the integrity will

1008
00:54:30,599 --> 00:54:34,239
go more than any of the scholarship or the knowledge.

1009
00:54:34,480 --> 00:54:36,679
And we did have scholars there, but I would say

1010
00:54:36,960 --> 00:54:40,360
there was mostly this real honest desire to go through

1011
00:54:40,400 --> 00:54:43,320
the text, to discuss it openly, to not have hidget

1012
00:54:43,400 --> 00:54:47,039
hidden agendas, and that really came out. I was surprised because,

1013
00:54:47,880 --> 00:54:50,920
you know, there are some things that I, for some reason,

1014
00:54:51,039 --> 00:54:55,119
had massive insights about during the discussion. You know, there

1015
00:54:55,159 --> 00:54:58,480
were some some of the some of Christ's parables that

1016
00:54:58,519 --> 00:55:00,280
I didn't understand, and all of a sudden, as we're

1017
00:55:00,280 --> 00:55:03,119
talking about it, we're exchanging and we're just you know,

1018
00:55:03,719 --> 00:55:04,599
ruminating over this.

1019
00:55:05,159 --> 00:55:06,000
Speaker 3: You know, it just hit me.

1020
00:55:06,079 --> 00:55:08,519
Speaker 4: It was It was really crazy, and I really enjoyed

1021
00:55:08,679 --> 00:55:12,719
also watching you John, uh, you know, you know, because

1022
00:55:12,719 --> 00:55:13,920
I was one of the things one of the reason

1023
00:55:13,920 --> 00:55:15,519
why I liked that you were there. I wanted you

1024
00:55:15,599 --> 00:55:19,000
to be there is because there's something that I haven't

1025
00:55:19,000 --> 00:55:20,840
been able to mabecommunicate to you as much as I

1026
00:55:20,960 --> 00:55:23,679
as I could, is that I really think that the

1027
00:55:23,800 --> 00:55:26,559
Gospel and many of the things that Jesus says and

1028
00:55:26,679 --> 00:55:29,719
many of the things that Jesus does, is exactly about

1029
00:55:30,239 --> 00:55:33,880
the relationship between bottom up, you know, emergence and then

1030
00:55:33,920 --> 00:55:36,199
top down emanation. The way you talk about that, he's

1031
00:55:36,239 --> 00:55:38,480
exactly about the joining of heaven and earth, and you

1032
00:55:38,599 --> 00:55:41,119
see it happening in the in his miracles and the

1033
00:55:41,199 --> 00:55:43,679
story and everything. So I was like, I'm hope, like

1034
00:55:43,760 --> 00:55:45,960
I just I'm hoping we could tap John there. For

1035
00:55:46,079 --> 00:55:48,440
like days going through it, I kept looking at you

1036
00:55:48,519 --> 00:55:50,239
and I'm like, you know, and I could see that

1037
00:55:50,320 --> 00:55:51,599
you were seeing it right away.

1038
00:55:51,880 --> 00:55:52,840
Speaker 2: So to me, that was it was.

1039
00:55:53,119 --> 00:55:54,760
Speaker 3: It was really exciting. I really enjoyed it.

1040
00:55:56,360 --> 00:55:59,519
Speaker 2: Thank you, Jonathan. It was. Yeah. I mean I.

1041
00:56:01,280 --> 00:56:05,280
Speaker 5: For me, what I call the logos showed up and everybody,

1042
00:56:05,360 --> 00:56:07,400
I think that was everybody. Everybody got to a place

1043
00:56:07,480 --> 00:56:10,440
they couldn't have got to on their own. And and

1044
00:56:10,599 --> 00:56:13,519
it was there was there was this field, uh you know,

1045
00:56:13,840 --> 00:56:17,559
vibrancy between us that was just you know, impregnating everybody

1046
00:56:17,599 --> 00:56:22,079
with insight and self reflection that I found much more

1047
00:56:22,360 --> 00:56:27,159
actually communicative of the Gospels than perhaps the particular propositions

1048
00:56:27,199 --> 00:56:30,079
we were uttering. I had that experience. You remember at

1049
00:56:30,079 --> 00:56:33,239
the end they said, you know, I was talking about

1050
00:56:33,400 --> 00:56:36,920
how that and and my sense of devotion to it

1051
00:56:37,159 --> 00:56:42,360
and and so I like you, I just I was

1052
00:56:42,480 --> 00:56:43,519
very grateful to be there.

1053
00:56:44,400 --> 00:56:47,159
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's cool. Have you had a chance to see

1054
00:56:47,159 --> 00:56:50,599
some of it, Christopher or except for the few little

1055
00:56:50,800 --> 00:56:55,440
clips that I mean, yeah, so so I will. I

1056
00:56:55,519 --> 00:56:57,400
will be very interested to see it. And it's for

1057
00:56:57,559 --> 00:57:00,719
length though. When I can, I in it. I like

1058
00:57:00,840 --> 00:57:01,119
what you.

1059
00:57:03,239 --> 00:57:03,280
Speaker 4: This.

1060
00:57:03,840 --> 00:57:06,239
Speaker 1: I can understand the nerves, like I can understand the

1061
00:57:06,400 --> 00:57:09,239
stakes or the feeling of the stakes. It strikes me

1062
00:57:09,400 --> 00:57:11,639
actually as and I don't say this, I don't say

1063
00:57:11,679 --> 00:57:13,559
this to compliment you guys for the sake of it,

1064
00:57:13,639 --> 00:57:16,280
but I mean it. It's like, requires a certain amount

1065
00:57:16,320 --> 00:57:20,559
of courage to be in a position like that, especially

1066
00:57:20,599 --> 00:57:24,199
when you're talking about a source and a text that's

1067
00:57:24,199 --> 00:57:26,840
so foundational and that we all have a relationship to

1068
00:57:27,119 --> 00:57:29,920
and it could not possibly be it could not possibly

1069
00:57:30,000 --> 00:57:33,360
have more gravity that is personal and that is universal,

1070
00:57:34,360 --> 00:57:38,800
and you're submitting yourselves to be thinking in real time,

1071
00:57:39,440 --> 00:57:43,920
and there's a vulnerability to doing that. That is, you

1072
00:57:44,000 --> 00:57:46,599
know that the stakes, I imagine, could feel very high.

1073
00:57:46,960 --> 00:57:51,199
And so it's the idea that you found yourself having

1074
00:57:51,280 --> 00:57:53,719
insights you had never had, or relating to it in

1075
00:57:53,760 --> 00:57:55,400
a way that you'd never related to it at least

1076
00:57:55,400 --> 00:57:57,440
to some degree, is a really fascinating thing for me.

1077
00:57:57,519 --> 00:57:59,119
I'm kind of hungry to hear. I don't know. I'm

1078
00:57:59,119 --> 00:58:01,159
not to put you on the spot. I'm hungry to

1079
00:58:01,199 --> 00:58:04,880
know if there's a particular instance or example that comes

1080
00:58:04,920 --> 00:58:07,559
to mind. Let's say you mentioned one or two of

1081
00:58:07,639 --> 00:58:10,960
the parables struck you in ways that they hadn't before.

1082
00:58:11,119 --> 00:58:13,760
I'm just curious if there is any if you can

1083
00:58:13,840 --> 00:58:16,639
be more spial asking me. You're asking John you first

1084
00:58:16,760 --> 00:58:19,880
and me, Yeah, that.

1085
00:58:22,320 --> 00:58:22,800
Speaker 7: There was.

1086
00:58:23,119 --> 00:58:26,400
Speaker 4: I even it's funny because I don't I don't remember

1087
00:58:26,519 --> 00:58:30,079
right now. There was one particular There was one particular

1088
00:58:30,440 --> 00:58:36,760
parable that I forget which parable it is. It's horrible

1089
00:58:36,840 --> 00:58:40,119
because it's like I had massive insights about it. I'm sorry,

1090
00:58:40,119 --> 00:58:43,679
I can't come up with it right now. One of

1091
00:58:43,760 --> 00:58:47,320
the things that that really, I would say, surprised me

1092
00:58:47,360 --> 00:58:49,360
and touch me, and it's actually going to go part

1093
00:58:49,400 --> 00:58:51,880
of the controversy in some ways of doing the gospel

1094
00:58:51,960 --> 00:58:54,679
theories was at someboy, you know, Dennis Brager was there,

1095
00:58:54,719 --> 00:58:57,719
which like, really kudos to him for coming and also

1096
00:58:57,800 --> 00:59:00,719
being so gracious and generous, you know, ask the right questions,

1097
00:59:00,760 --> 00:59:03,280
but also you know, not you know, really kind of going.

1098
00:59:03,159 --> 00:59:05,920
Speaker 3: Along with the story. At some point he's like he's like,

1099
00:59:06,000 --> 00:59:07,360
you know, we've been here for several days.

1100
00:59:07,360 --> 00:59:09,760
Speaker 4: We've been talking about this, and he's like, no one

1101
00:59:10,000 --> 00:59:12,800
yet has Basically he's basically saying, no one yet has

1102
00:59:13,000 --> 00:59:15,199
told me, Like the usual thing that I hear, which

1103
00:59:15,280 --> 00:59:16,880
is how to get saved?

1104
00:59:17,480 --> 00:59:20,480
Speaker 6: Right, And it was so funny because we all kind

1105
00:59:20,480 --> 00:59:22,840
of looked at each other and we're like, you know,

1106
00:59:23,480 --> 00:59:28,480
oh yeah, but also that's not what this text is about.

1107
00:59:29,079 --> 00:59:31,679
Speaker 4: I don't know what to say, Like Jesus rarely talks

1108
00:59:31,719 --> 00:59:35,360
about that. He actually talks about all these things. And

1109
00:59:35,440 --> 00:59:37,440
if you're trying to find for like the things the

1110
00:59:37,599 --> 00:59:40,440
boldly that like will get you saved, you're really actually

1111
00:59:40,480 --> 00:59:42,519
going to struggle to find that. And the way that

1112
00:59:42,760 --> 00:59:46,280
modern kind of you know, maybe more superficial Christians would think, like,

1113
00:59:46,360 --> 00:59:48,440
you're really struggling, going to struggle to find it.

1114
00:59:48,559 --> 00:59:50,800
Speaker 3: You know, he's teaching a way, he's teaching a way

1115
00:59:50,840 --> 00:59:52,440
of being, a way of living.

1116
00:59:52,840 --> 00:59:54,679
Speaker 4: And I and I thought, and the fact that we

1117
00:59:54,880 --> 00:59:57,960
all in the room, we're completely fine with that, and

1118
00:59:58,199 --> 01:00:00,639
we're like, no, we're actually talking about text, you know,

1119
01:00:00,840 --> 01:00:02,840
like puts in the text. That was a moment that

1120
01:00:02,960 --> 01:00:06,719
I found particularly touching, Like that exemplifies the spirit in

1121
01:00:06,800 --> 01:00:07,079
the room.

1122
01:00:07,159 --> 01:00:11,159
Speaker 1: You could say, yeah, something like that, that's cool, how

1123
01:00:11,199 --> 01:00:11,800
about you, John.

1124
01:00:15,880 --> 01:00:20,719
Speaker 5: There was lots of moments. The moments that meant the

1125
01:00:20,880 --> 01:00:26,599
most to me, sort of egocentrically, were moments of unexpected recognition.

1126
01:00:28,760 --> 01:00:31,719
When we were talking about in the beginning was the logos,

1127
01:00:31,760 --> 01:00:34,280
and I was making the argument for the four l's

1128
01:00:35,360 --> 01:00:41,239
identity claims, light, life, love, and logos, and for relationality

1129
01:00:41,320 --> 01:00:47,239
as being primary in our understanding of ultimacy. I expected

1130
01:00:48,239 --> 01:00:50,760
I expected one of two reactions, either you know what

1131
01:00:51,000 --> 01:00:55,079
the heck this is ourcane and obscure or no, no, no,

1132
01:00:55,280 --> 01:00:57,360
that's not how we think about God. And instead what

1133
01:00:57,519 --> 01:01:00,480
happened was people took it up, and then there was

1134
01:01:00,519 --> 01:01:03,039
a moment where Bishop Baron intervened and he said, I

1135
01:01:03,119 --> 01:01:06,559
think that's the right intuition. And it set me back,

1136
01:01:07,719 --> 01:01:09,840
and credit to him, I'm trying to give credit to him.

1137
01:01:09,960 --> 01:01:14,280
It set me back. I totally did not expect that response.

1138
01:01:14,840 --> 01:01:16,960
I was, I mean, we weren't there to debate, and

1139
01:01:16,960 --> 01:01:19,320
I wasn't prepared to debate, but I was prepared to argue,

1140
01:01:20,119 --> 01:01:22,840
if you'll allow me to make that distinction, I was

1141
01:01:22,880 --> 01:01:25,719
prepared to argue. And instead it was welcomed and it

1142
01:01:25,840 --> 01:01:28,360
was taken back in and then Jonathan picked it up

1143
01:01:28,400 --> 01:01:31,320
and you did an amazing amplification on it, and it

1144
01:01:31,440 --> 01:01:33,320
just sort of went bleashed in a way that I

1145
01:01:33,440 --> 01:01:35,280
had not expected.

1146
01:01:37,480 --> 01:01:40,360
Speaker 2: And I said this.

1147
01:01:40,559 --> 01:01:42,400
Speaker 5: I don't know if it'll make it onto the camera,

1148
01:01:42,519 --> 01:01:44,360
might get edited out, but I said this at the time,

1149
01:01:47,840 --> 01:01:54,039
I felt a welcoming into a deep fellowship discussion DialogOS

1150
01:01:54,079 --> 01:01:56,400
about Jesus that I had thought I would never have,

1151
01:01:57,280 --> 01:02:00,800
ever have. And it was very healing for me. It

1152
01:02:00,960 --> 01:02:05,280
was tremendously healing for me because of my past. And

1153
01:02:05,440 --> 01:02:08,320
so that was a that you know, Hegel talks about that,

1154
01:02:08,360 --> 01:02:14,119
that those moments of genuine recognition and trust that are

1155
01:02:14,239 --> 01:02:20,239
profoundly capable of addressing, you know, otherwise unaccessible parts of

1156
01:02:20,320 --> 01:02:23,559
the human psyche. And that when when Bishop and I

1157
01:02:23,679 --> 01:02:25,800
was very grateful to him about that, I know he

1158
01:02:25,880 --> 01:02:29,559
looked at me as like, what is John? And he

1159
01:02:29,639 --> 01:02:32,400
did it lovingly And I'm used to I already said

1160
01:02:32,400 --> 01:02:34,599
the university has done that. That's that's been my life.

1161
01:02:34,840 --> 01:02:38,239
My family even talked to me that way, what are

1162
01:02:38,280 --> 01:02:39,800
you so?

1163
01:02:40,320 --> 01:02:40,440
Speaker 6: Uh?

1164
01:02:41,119 --> 01:02:43,239
Speaker 1: But they said that to Jesus too.

1165
01:02:44,440 --> 01:02:46,280
Speaker 2: Well, that's not fair comparison.

1166
01:02:46,360 --> 01:02:51,679
Speaker 5: But but yeah, but that moment, and there was nothing,

1167
01:02:51,800 --> 01:02:54,400
there was nothing flattering, There was nothing like ProForma.

1168
01:02:54,880 --> 01:02:56,519
Speaker 2: There was nothing like, well we should do this to

1169
01:02:56,559 --> 01:02:57,639
be polite. It was genuine.

1170
01:02:57,679 --> 01:03:01,159
Speaker 5: It was cecere and people were caught up in like

1171
01:03:01,519 --> 01:03:04,840
the logos of the of the proposal in a way

1172
01:03:04,920 --> 01:03:11,199
that I found tremendously powerful and to which I immediately

1173
01:03:11,320 --> 01:03:14,000
fat started to feel a tremendous loyalty to the group.

1174
01:03:14,599 --> 01:03:19,360
Speaker 1: H Yeah, that's interesting, these these two.

1175
01:03:19,920 --> 01:03:20,119
Speaker 4: Yeah.

1176
01:03:20,320 --> 01:03:23,039
Speaker 1: The way that your experiences are different you speak to

1177
01:03:23,119 --> 01:03:25,800
one another is interesting to be. I'll say that as

1178
01:03:25,840 --> 01:03:30,000
a as a as simply a a audience member, the

1179
01:03:30,119 --> 01:03:32,559
thing that I would hope that the ambition that I

1180
01:03:32,599 --> 01:03:37,760
would have, but a series like that without having seen it,

1181
01:03:37,920 --> 01:03:40,000
so I don't know to what degree this will be fulfilled,

1182
01:03:40,280 --> 01:03:45,960
but will be too to help the person watching it

1183
01:03:46,159 --> 01:03:52,079
understand that whatever they think they understand about what it

1184
01:03:52,320 --> 01:03:54,480
is to be a Christian in the way of the

1185
01:03:54,559 --> 01:04:01,119
Gospels is probably not exactly on mark, which is to

1186
01:04:01,199 --> 01:04:04,199
say that the strangeness you you kind of alluded to

1187
01:04:04,280 --> 01:04:09,559
it already, John, But the strangeness, the uncanniness you know,

1188
01:04:09,679 --> 01:04:12,360
I've been I've been going through uh you taught you

1189
01:04:12,519 --> 01:04:14,880
brought up David Bentley Hart, Jonathan. I've been going through

1190
01:04:14,960 --> 01:04:19,639
his New Testament translation, which I don't find all that

1191
01:04:19,960 --> 01:04:22,760
all that different and novel but it's helpful just to

1192
01:04:22,800 --> 01:04:25,639
go through it again in any case. And one of

1193
01:04:25,679 --> 01:04:27,920
the things that he points out and as introduction and

1194
01:04:28,039 --> 01:04:30,400
as a as a as a as a curec guard guy,

1195
01:04:30,480 --> 01:04:34,280
that speaks to me a lot is that the what

1196
01:04:34,519 --> 01:04:40,159
is required, like the robustness of what is required for

1197
01:04:40,320 --> 01:04:43,000
he who calls himself a follower in the way of Christ,

1198
01:04:43,280 --> 01:04:51,280
is significantly more demanding than most Christians would believe. And

1199
01:04:51,760 --> 01:04:54,159
there is a little bit of a shock to the system,

1200
01:04:54,400 --> 01:04:59,280
I think when when that dilute the sort of the

1201
01:04:59,360 --> 01:05:03,000
deluded vers of Christianity, that Christianity has turned into a

1202
01:05:03,119 --> 01:05:06,920
kind of social problem, or something soft and fuzzy and

1203
01:05:07,000 --> 01:05:12,119
cuddly makes contact with that's the strangeness of it again,

1204
01:05:12,199 --> 01:05:18,440
the uncanny nose, that feature of it that is genuinely

1205
01:05:18,679 --> 01:05:22,239
very shocking and that we should all be shocked by.

1206
01:05:23,039 --> 01:05:26,320
And I'm curious to note to what degree. I don't

1207
01:05:26,360 --> 01:05:28,960
want to get you to recapitulate the whole Gospel seminar,

1208
01:05:29,039 --> 01:05:31,039
but like, to what degree did you feel like that

1209
01:05:31,320 --> 01:05:34,719
was present, the appreciation for the uncanny, the appreciation for

1210
01:05:34,800 --> 01:05:39,039
the numinosity of Christ, but also the numinosity for the

1211
01:05:39,079 --> 01:05:42,360
whole tradition and the novelty of the fact that like

1212
01:05:42,519 --> 01:05:44,440
this is actually something if we take it in its

1213
01:05:44,480 --> 01:05:49,239
proper register, that places a demand on us even to

1214
01:05:49,440 --> 01:05:52,800
contemplate it. That is more than most Christians could most

1215
01:05:52,880 --> 01:05:55,400
Christians could ever appreciate and would ever be willing to

1216
01:05:55,599 --> 01:05:59,079
entertain for fear of being scandalized by its.

1217
01:05:59,519 --> 01:06:01,960
Speaker 3: I think that that was exactly what you're describing.

1218
01:06:02,039 --> 01:06:04,840
Speaker 4: I felt like that was exactly the spirit that animated

1219
01:06:04,920 --> 01:06:07,920
the group was in some ways, you know, because when

1220
01:06:08,039 --> 01:06:10,840
the last time that you I don't think I know

1221
01:06:11,000 --> 01:06:12,800
of a time in my life where I've gone through

1222
01:06:12,800 --> 01:06:16,280
the entire Gospel story in like basically in a few

1223
01:06:16,360 --> 01:06:19,039
cities where we we taught for four hours a day,

1224
01:06:19,400 --> 01:06:21,880
like we went through it four hours a day over

1225
01:06:22,000 --> 01:06:23,480
I think it was like seven or eight days.

1226
01:06:24,039 --> 01:06:26,880
Speaker 3: Uh. And you think that's never happened.

1227
01:06:26,920 --> 01:06:31,559
Speaker 4: And so I think that that sense of of strangeness

1228
01:06:31,679 --> 01:06:35,920
and surprise, you know, And and this exactly, this vision

1229
01:06:35,960 --> 01:06:38,440
of the challenge that Jesus offers to us and to

1230
01:06:38,599 --> 01:06:41,159
our to our world, I think came out quite quite

1231
01:06:41,159 --> 01:06:41,400
a bit.

1232
01:06:43,559 --> 01:06:43,719
Speaker 2: You know.

1233
01:06:43,880 --> 01:06:46,719
Speaker 3: It's it's like, how can I say this?

1234
01:06:47,239 --> 01:06:49,039
Speaker 4: And it was it was fun because in sometimes you

1235
01:06:49,119 --> 01:06:51,079
had people like Bishop Baron are people that know the

1236
01:06:51,239 --> 01:06:54,079
text very well, but they nonetheless were able to enter

1237
01:06:54,159 --> 01:06:57,679
into that sense of surprise as well, because we're also

1238
01:06:57,880 --> 01:07:01,079
not coming at it theologically where the story, so we're

1239
01:07:01,960 --> 01:07:05,159
there are there were theological comments obviously along the way,

1240
01:07:05,199 --> 01:07:08,000
but it wasn't coming from the theology into the story.

1241
01:07:08,000 --> 01:07:11,559
It was actually coming from the story into the insight

1242
01:07:11,679 --> 01:07:14,480
that the story is bringing to us. So I did

1243
01:07:14,599 --> 01:07:17,800
feel definitely feel that yeah, and I hope that people

1244
01:07:17,840 --> 01:07:21,280
watching it will also feel that wonder at the story again.

1245
01:07:21,199 --> 01:07:21,519
Speaker 2: I hope.

1246
01:07:21,559 --> 01:07:29,239
Speaker 5: So I set myself and my proper allegiance throughout was

1247
01:07:29,280 --> 01:07:31,639
to exactly what you were talking about, Chris. I mean,

1248
01:07:33,320 --> 01:07:37,639
my approach to this was in that sense like socratic,

1249
01:07:38,159 --> 01:07:40,280
in the Kirkergardian sense that you were talking about there.

1250
01:07:40,320 --> 01:07:43,760
I wanted to always, especially when when in the Perils

1251
01:07:43,800 --> 01:07:45,920
I was trying to make a case that the closest

1252
01:07:45,960 --> 01:07:51,159
analogies is then Cohen, not an allegory. I felt that's

1253
01:07:51,199 --> 01:07:55,440
what my role. I don't want to diminish what Jonathan

1254
01:07:55,559 --> 01:07:57,480
just said. Everybody took that up, but I went in

1255
01:07:57,639 --> 01:08:01,000
setting myself to take that role and to be responsible

1256
01:08:01,039 --> 01:08:01,199
to it.

1257
01:08:01,320 --> 01:08:01,639
Speaker 2: Throughout.

1258
01:08:04,440 --> 01:08:07,159
Speaker 4: I love how this discussion has changed from me interviewing

1259
01:08:07,199 --> 01:08:09,119
both of you to Christopher interviewing us like.

1260
01:08:09,159 --> 01:08:09,920
Speaker 2: That, Yeah, he does that.

1261
01:08:13,000 --> 01:08:15,079
Speaker 3: So I think, I think, I think we you know, I.

1262
01:08:15,079 --> 01:08:17,399
Speaker 4: Think we've said, we said quite a bit, and uh,

1263
01:08:18,199 --> 01:08:20,800
I will maybe last question I have for both of

1264
01:08:20,880 --> 01:08:23,960
you is, you know, what's that?

1265
01:08:24,119 --> 01:08:26,000
Speaker 3: What's the next step?

1266
01:08:26,119 --> 01:08:26,159
Speaker 1: Like?

1267
01:08:26,199 --> 01:08:28,640
Speaker 3: What are you hoping the book will do? What it

1268
01:08:29,239 --> 01:08:31,520
will open? And and how do you see this whole

1269
01:08:31,600 --> 01:08:32,960
project moving forward?

1270
01:08:34,560 --> 01:08:38,079
Speaker 5: So I mean, I'm hoping that the book. I mean,

1271
01:08:38,119 --> 01:08:40,119
obviously part two is coming, and Part two is going

1272
01:08:40,159 --> 01:08:43,279
to go through more revisions than part one because Part

1273
01:08:43,319 --> 01:08:45,840
two is more scientifically based and science has a faster

1274
01:08:46,000 --> 01:08:49,560
turnover rate, and so it's gonna it's gonna be a

1275
01:08:49,640 --> 01:08:52,319
harder task. But I can't think of anybody I would

1276
01:08:52,359 --> 01:08:55,880
welcome more to join me in that than Chris. So

1277
01:08:56,199 --> 01:08:59,680
that's obviously sort of prosaically what's coming. I would hope

1278
01:08:59,720 --> 01:09:02,319
also so that I am trying to get people to

1279
01:09:02,479 --> 01:09:05,399
pair these two things in mind, the meaning crisis and

1280
01:09:05,439 --> 01:09:09,359
the advent of the sacred, And so the philosophical silk road,

1281
01:09:09,399 --> 01:09:09,960
which I've talked to.

1282
01:09:09,960 --> 01:09:18,600
Speaker 2: You about, is what's next in the most. I don't know.

1283
01:09:20,359 --> 01:09:24,439
Speaker 5: Comprehensive fashion, I can think, but it has things along

1284
01:09:24,479 --> 01:09:26,279
the way. One of the things i'm doing right now,

1285
01:09:26,479 --> 01:09:30,960
and I'm working with a student of mind and then

1286
01:09:31,359 --> 01:09:34,960
I'm going to involve Chris and other people down the road,

1287
01:09:35,760 --> 01:09:39,880
is I've become increasingly dissatisfied with the psychological construct meaning

1288
01:09:39,920 --> 01:09:42,960
in life. I used to just adopt it, and I

1289
01:09:43,119 --> 01:09:48,199
think it is in many ways very inadequate for what

1290
01:09:49,520 --> 01:09:50,800
a lot of us have been trying to put our

1291
01:09:50,840 --> 01:09:55,359
fingers on when we're talking about when we're talking about

1292
01:09:55,359 --> 01:09:58,199
the meaning crisis, there are many dimensions that are missing.

1293
01:09:58,399 --> 01:10:01,119
I've done this with other constructs. I've done this with wisdom,

1294
01:10:01,159 --> 01:10:04,159
I've done it with I've done it with attention, I've

1295
01:10:04,199 --> 01:10:06,760
done it with mindfulness. And I need to I feel

1296
01:10:07,039 --> 01:10:11,159
very strongly that I now need to address this. Just

1297
01:10:11,279 --> 01:10:17,479
to give one taste of the problem, the standard meaning

1298
01:10:17,560 --> 01:10:26,479
in life metric is too local and too individualistic. So

1299
01:10:27,359 --> 01:10:31,760
you know, if people have friends and loved ones and

1300
01:10:31,920 --> 01:10:34,079
projects they're working on, they're going to find their lives

1301
01:10:34,239 --> 01:10:37,319
according to this metric meaningful. But when I talk to

1302
01:10:37,399 --> 01:10:41,119
these people, they'll say that's all true, and but and

1303
01:10:41,239 --> 01:10:44,880
that's the part where the meaning crisis actually lands. They

1304
01:10:44,920 --> 01:10:47,920
don't find So it's almost like, in addition to meaning

1305
01:10:48,079 --> 01:10:49,920
in life, we need meaning in world.

1306
01:10:50,119 --> 01:10:53,039
Speaker 2: How meaningful is your world? Is it ordered?

1307
01:10:53,600 --> 01:10:56,239
Speaker 5: Does it afford you self transcendence? Does it give you

1308
01:10:56,680 --> 01:11:00,199
proper education and overcoming self deception? Does it allow to

1309
01:11:00,239 --> 01:11:03,800
find fellowship with others? Does it help you feel oriented

1310
01:11:03,880 --> 01:11:07,279
towards a deeper future? And when you ask people those

1311
01:11:07,359 --> 01:11:10,520
kinds of questions, you don't get Yeah, Yeah, it's going

1312
01:11:10,600 --> 01:11:13,640
really well. They've become very critical because they feel their

1313
01:11:13,720 --> 01:11:17,760
lives are filled with burgeoning bullshit and burnout. They feel

1314
01:11:17,800 --> 01:11:22,920
that they're starving for flow and for fellowship. And so

1315
01:11:24,079 --> 01:11:27,800
part of what I want to do is by having

1316
01:11:28,159 --> 01:11:31,039
the Advent of the Sacred and the meaning Crisis talk

1317
01:11:31,119 --> 01:11:34,439
to each other, I want to try and articulate much

1318
01:11:34,520 --> 01:11:39,239
better what is actually going on when we're talking about

1319
01:11:39,319 --> 01:11:45,319
this meaning that's at issue. Yeah, I wish I could

1320
01:11:45,359 --> 01:11:49,880
have even changed what we're talking about here, because it's

1321
01:11:49,960 --> 01:11:53,520
more like we're now moving to a stage where we're

1322
01:11:53,960 --> 01:11:58,000
coming to a decision like a chiros about how are

1323
01:11:58,119 --> 01:12:02,800
we going to try and achieve meaning? Are we going

1324
01:12:02,880 --> 01:12:06,399
to concuone and withdraw into a little private sphere that

1325
01:12:06,600 --> 01:12:09,960
we clutch onto and that's where we find our meaning

1326
01:12:10,039 --> 01:12:14,159
in life. And COVID showed, ah, that's very dangerous. Or

1327
01:12:14,359 --> 01:12:17,800
are we going to try and do what religions used

1328
01:12:17,840 --> 01:12:20,479
to do for us? Is to open us and to

1329
01:12:20,600 --> 01:12:26,399
consider right a much more encompassing and transformative understanding of

1330
01:12:26,520 --> 01:12:29,760
what it is to seek meaning in one's life. And

1331
01:12:29,960 --> 01:12:33,720
it is inseparable from helping the world to become a

1332
01:12:33,880 --> 01:12:39,319
more meaningful, meaningful place for others and in itself. And sorry,

1333
01:12:40,000 --> 01:12:42,880
that's just a very gist and it's inadequate because there's

1334
01:12:42,920 --> 01:12:44,880
so much more going on. But for me, that's one

1335
01:12:44,920 --> 01:12:47,479
of the next The two big things are the philosophical

1336
01:12:47,520 --> 01:12:56,199
soak road and this scientific project of articulating a reformulation

1337
01:12:56,479 --> 01:12:58,560
of what we mean when we're talking about meaning in life.

1338
01:12:58,920 --> 01:13:03,680
And then thirdly, I'm working on a project with two

1339
01:13:03,720 --> 01:13:06,359
good friends of mine, who's Seen and Daniel, and they're

1340
01:13:06,399 --> 01:13:11,039
both graduate students. Daniel just successfully defended his PhD. And

1341
01:13:11,159 --> 01:13:15,199
we're going to create an academic article laying out the

1342
01:13:15,279 --> 01:13:17,960
four pi's of knowing to get it, like really really

1343
01:13:18,039 --> 01:13:21,840
crystal clear and on a scientific footing. So those are

1344
01:13:21,880 --> 01:13:27,359
the things that are what's next for me, right you, Christopher.

1345
01:13:27,159 --> 01:13:28,159
Speaker 1: I'm just hanging out.

1346
01:13:30,479 --> 01:13:34,000
Speaker 3: All right.

1347
01:13:34,119 --> 01:13:37,680
Speaker 4: Then, well, look the book is it is out now,

1348
01:13:37,840 --> 01:13:40,560
like it's available at it so there it is right

1349
01:13:40,640 --> 01:13:44,920
there behind John. So get the book. You know, brings

1350
01:13:44,960 --> 01:13:47,439
it together and you know, spread it around.

1351
01:13:47,600 --> 01:13:48,119
Speaker 3: It's easy.

1352
01:13:48,399 --> 01:13:50,239
Speaker 4: It's easy to lend it to people to kind of

1353
01:13:50,640 --> 01:13:52,880
help them understand their world and the world they live

1354
01:13:52,960 --> 01:13:55,479
in and the issues, you know, the kind of issues

1355
01:13:55,479 --> 01:13:58,279
that face us. And so I wish both of you

1356
01:13:58,439 --> 01:14:00,920
really good luck with the book and also good luck with.

1357
01:14:00,960 --> 01:14:04,000
Speaker 3: All these projects that are coming on. So thanks, thanks

1358
01:14:04,039 --> 01:14:04,640
for talking.

1359
01:14:04,439 --> 01:14:08,560
Speaker 1: To Thank you, thanks for just being so supportive. Jonathan. Yeah, really,

1360
01:14:08,760 --> 01:14:09,920
I really really appreciate it.

1361
01:14:10,199 --> 01:14:13,199
Speaker 5: Thank you guys, A joy, really appreciate your friendship, really

1362
01:14:13,239 --> 01:14:17,880
appreciate your support. I know we'll be involved in projects forthcoming.

1363
01:14:17,960 --> 01:14:19,039
I look forward to it for.

1364
01:14:19,079 --> 01:14:20,880
Speaker 3: Sure, for sure. Thanks everyone.

1365
01:14:21,199 --> 01:14:24,039
Speaker 4: If you enjoy these videos and podcasts, please go to

1366
01:14:24,079 --> 01:14:26,760
the Symbolic World dot com website and see how you

1367
01:14:26,840 --> 01:14:27,960
can support what we're doing.

1368
01:14:28,319 --> 01:14:30,560
Speaker 3: There are multiple subscriber tiers with perks.

1369
01:14:30,800 --> 01:14:33,239
Speaker 4: There are apparel and books to purchase, So go to

1370
01:14:33,319 --> 01:14:35,760
the Symbolic World dot com and thank you for your

1371
01:14:35,800 --> 01:14:36,159
support