https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=xOTWGLmYtjE
Welcome everyone to Another Voices with Hraveki. I am here with Kazera Mirzai. Kazera is going to be part of this ongoing discussion we’re having on this channel with people who are practitioners and also researchers about IFS, internal family systems theory, and I’m very excited about this. I’ve met Kazera offline and we’ve had a really interesting conversation. I’m really looking forward to this one. Kazera, why don’t you introduce yourself, tell us a little bit more about your background, and then maybe we can talk about some of your work and how it weaves into what we’re doing here at the Hraveki Foundation, and then we’ll just take it from there. Yes, thank you very much, John. Thanks for having me. Oh, great pleasure. Yeah, so I’m a psychotherapist by training. I’m a practitioner, I’m a clinician, and I’m a researcher and teacher at the university in Hildesheim in Germany. What I focus on is like, there are a couple of things I focus on. My research is on emotional regulation and developmental psychopathology. I’m looking mostly on adolescent, on the adolescent age and the age group. What I’m doing there is I look at how psychotherapy has an impact on it. We know that psychotherapy works, but we don’t know why to a lot of degrees. I have a more of a dynamical systems theoretical view on it, and I look at affect dynamics and see how affect and emotion fluctuate and yeah, have their ups and downs and look at those, especially teenagers. But at the same time, I’m also more oriented to a more global view, more theoretical view, and I’m also deeply influenced by one of my doctoral supervisors, Werner Grewe. He’s a professor for developmental psychology, and he’s actually in this academic ancestral line of Balthus and Staudinger. You mentioned them in the mini-crisis. Werner Grewe, he did his PhD under Paul Balthus, so he has this lifespan perspective on development. I try to bring in those aspects, but also the theoretical aspects, and he’s also deeply into action theory and philosophical psychology. I also follow this trend to look more broadly onto meaning making, I would say. This is where IFS comes in, and as a practitioner of IFS and research, I also do research on it. I’m deeply interested also in the cog-sci of it and the cognitive science of it, and this whole machinery of meaning making. That’s where I come from. So what would you like to talk about first? I mean, we could pick up on a particular thread and give people a more specific example of what your work looks like and how it’s related to meaning and the meaning crisis, perhaps. That would be great. Yeah, I think that’s a good question, where to start. I think there are several paths that we could take. I know that your audience knows IFS by now, but maybe just to sum up. Oh, I think we could always talk more about it. The work with Seth Allison has been really, profound. I think having many voices articulate what it is could be very helpful to our listeners. Yes, and I really enjoyed those videos. I also wanted to extend that and tell you that I think you both have done a very wonderful job. It was actually really different to experience both of you. Seth did an excellent job. He has this wonderful personality and you also show different sides and aspects of yourself, John. So I really like that, too. Yeah, well, thank you for saying that. And I apologize to Seth. I think when I first mentioned him, I confused him with Seth Dillinger. I apologize about that. But Seth Allison, yes. We spoke before time and he proposed doing this. Yeah, I knew it would be challenging, but I thought people needed a concrete example in order to get a deeper sense of what was going on. I agree. I think sometimes we tend to be way too abstract and theoretical, so we need something to ground ourselves again. So yeah, maybe to connect to that. Just really, really briefly and shortly, what I think or my take on IFS is that it’s actually a model of a living and self-organizing psyche that is composed of, I would say, living things. And Dick Schwartz would say subpersonalities or we could call them parts. And yeah, those interact with each other in a certain, and again, this is my language, in a certain qualitative space and relationship that we would call the self. So you see again, this is my notion of it. It’s actually tainted there. I don’t assume a monadic self. I rather assume a relational, flexible, and the self is more as a process than a product. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so in that sense, IFS assumes the multiplicity of the psyche or a multiplicity of the psyche. And yeah, I would want to start maybe by linking it to the meaning crisis because I think this is so deeply important. And then we can come to my work and how my perspective is from, I also forgot to mention that I worked many years in psycho-oncology, in pediatric psycho-oncology. And I currently work at a residential, adolescent residential crisis center where I work with borderline personality disorders and very, very traumatized young people. And I’m so confronted with this whole absurdity and the meaning crisis that automatically you try to find ways and try to make sense out of it. And I see deep, deep connections there. And so I would say the short answer is that IFS helps both the cognitive as well as the existential and spiritual machinery of meaning making. So it’s- Well, that’s, yeah, that’s very powerful. Yeah. And I think via dialectic, it’s a dialectical approach. And I think we can add in more mythos. I mean, not only the logos, but also the mythos. And fundamentally, IFS, again, is a dialogical practice and a form, I would say a form of serious play to use one of your terms or to use your language. And the serious play, it helps to systematically modify salience in a sense. And obviously to switch and change perspectives. So this perspective taking is very, very important. And I think IFS is powerful in doing so. And it helps you forward and come into contact with your, yeah, with different aspects of your being and your identity. And in doing so, get a grasp on your inner conflict in a platonic sense and to resolve, hopefully resolve those inner conflicts. That was just, wow, that was just wonderful. So let me see, I want to make sure I get all these. So as you mentioned, salience and perspective taking, you mentioned people get sort of an enrichment of their self-awareness. They discover, uncover, realize different aspects of themselves. And then there’s also, you were talking a little bit. Well, let’s start with those three, first of all. And then we can pick up on any threads that are remaining. So I get that it alters salience because it gets people to pay attention to things they weren’t previously paying attention to within their psyche. Is that the main, that’s the salience? I know I might be oversimplifying. I’m just trying to get the initial idea. No, I think that’s totally fair. And I think there was again a machinery behind that. And I think this has deeply to do with, I think, dynamical system theory here can help us understand what we mean also by this idea of salience. So what I understand or what I mean when I talk about salience is that, and again, I would say this is deeply psychodynamic or depth psychological. That’s, IFS is really related to that. That you’re not the master in your own house. Something is driving you. Right? Yeah. And that’s the paconic theme you were bringing up earlier about. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Something is driving you. So those different forces and they have their own framing. They have their own sets of glasses that they put on, right? They see the world from their perspectives because they have their own agent arena relationship. Yeah. This is what I was bringing. And what I mean when I talk about dynamical systems theory is that I think those forces that drive us, they are a system in a sense that they are a complex system, biological system. That’s why I’m talking about living things, which means, and living things are memory systems. And I think this is an aspect of dynamical systems theory that is often overlooked, but they are deeply, so biological systems are memory systems. And this has to do with this technical notion of non-erudicity. And I don’t know if we should expand on this or not, but- Well, we could. I mean, it overlaps with some of the significant work Michael Levin’s doing and some of the conversations I’ve had with him. Can I ask you a question at this point? Yeah. So I get that this is wonderful. So let’s at least say there are sort of autopoietic systems right there. They’re seeing the world in a certain way and they have a certain function and they’re trying to maintain themselves and satisfy that function or functions. I don’t want to be simplistic. Is that okay so far? Absolutely. And I like this idea of they each have a different framing and agent arena relationship. And that means of course they can come into conflict in some significant way. And this is the platonic model you were alluding to earlier from the Republic, right? You’ve got this inner conflict. And then I’ve been wondering about this. So I have a question to ask. So Plato posits the idea that we have meta drives. We have two fundamental meta drives. One is a kind of inner justice, inner peace. However we try to satisfy our desires and reach our goals, we don’t want that to cause more internal conflict. We want it to bring resolution to that conflict and an inner binding, an inner religio. And then we have another important drive which is we want to be most in contact with what is most real. We don’t want whatever is satisfying our goals or satisfying our desires to be illusory, fraudulent, anything. And so the question is this. I’m not very happy with thinking about the self as some sort of thing. And you seem to be also like that. You described it as a space. And I’m wondering if it’s a functional space. What I mean by that is maybe perhaps the self is understood as that which is these two meta drives. The self is that which is driving for the resolution of inner conflict and bringing us into conflict, sorry, bringing us into contact with reality. What do you think about that as a proposal? That that is maybe how we could understand the fundamental functionality of the self. Given that you raised the platonic model, it seems like there’s a way of understanding the self in terms of that platonic model. That’s wonderful. Can you repeat that again? That’s so rich. I have to think about this again. Yeah. So Plato has this proposal, right? He doesn’t state it like it explicitly as a standalone proposition, but it very clearly comes out in many places in many dialogues, most prominently in the Republic, which is the one you were alluding to, that we have a desire for inner peace. But this is not just that’s why he also uses the word justice. It’s that optimal gripping. It’s the optimal gripping. It’s this harmonic interplay, right? Yes. Yes. And so we want we have this there’s a meta drive to bring about that harmonic interplay. So you can call it sort of this vertical optimal gripping, if I can allow that. And then we also have this meta drive of horizontal optimal gripping with the world and other people. And the self is those two functions. And what Plato talks about is it’s possible to actually coordinate the satisfaction of those two functions. And I would put it to you that it sounds to me like IFS is exactly a practice for coordinating them, because you’re trying to get the parts in this harmonious sense, so that you can get a better grip on reality. Thereby. Wonderful. That’s exactly what I’m what I’m thinking. There’s so many things there that I can I can follow up on maybe. So I absolutely think it’s about meta desires, because and I and I would bring also in the good, the true and the beautiful, especially I think that’s good. That’s implicit. Yeah, it’s these two axes, right? The good and the beautiful are going both ways. Yes. Because when you actually do parts work, and and they they get into this harmonic self organization, and self realization, is that now, at least it feels like they’re committed to something that they share. What parts share and it this transcends their individual desires and needs. So there are meta desires and meta needs. And I think that is to be deeply in contact with reality. That’s one aspect. And and for for this harmonic interplay to go on because it’s an iterative game, right? So I so so the the the efficient the resiliency is in his long term efficiency. So not only for the sake not only for the sake of self maintenance and in an auto poetic sense, and I think this makes it deeply human. And we should definitely talk about anthropology as well. And this connects to my work in in oncology, and also as in psychiatry, because I think it’s missing, we have a deeply dehumanized anthropology going on. But what I mean by by make us human is to not only care for ourselves, but also to care for others. I think that’s I think that’s wonderful. So this this. So Plato has a term, and you might have heard me talk about it, the anagogy. Right. And, and so I think you’re in agreement, the self is kind of the anagogic function. It’s these two meta desires, right, coordinated together to bring about the reciprocal opening of the human being, the flourishing with the world. And I think this connection is, I think, really, really powerful, because I think if we if we agree that what Plato is proposing is something that increases our inner peace, our connectedness to reality affords our capacity for self transcendent cultivation of wisdom, we’re not talking about something that can properly be called spiritual, without having to invoke any supernaturalism. And this, and this, I think, and as I’ve had discussions with people doing I have, many of them want to sort of bring out the fact that I have has this sort of spiritual dimension to it. And I think that lines up with your wanting to bring in the mythos and the imaginal. Exactly. And yes, yes, yes. Wow. Thank you, John. That’s you’re exactly saying what I’m what I was thinking. Thank you for watching this YouTube and podcast series is by the Verveki Foundation, which in addition to supporting my work, also offers courses, practices, workshops and other projects dedicated to responding to the meaning crisis. If you would like to support this work, please consider joining our Patreon. You can find the link in the show notes. I want to I want to propose something to you. And this is really something to do with your work. And I hope I get your work right. And you can now see if I get your work right. And if not, please correct me or add or compliment to it. Yeah, we’ll work we’ll work through it. We’ll work through anything that comes up together as friends. I want to compare you to Kant. Okay, so I want to see where both overlap. So the way I understand your work is, and where I see you both in agreement, so Kant and Verveki, is that you both understand that reality ultimately cannot be framed. Right. So where I see you both differ is that what reality ultimately is now, whereas Kant sees reality as this thing outside of our cognitive and rational faculties that uses frames and filters to make sense out of experiences, which leads Kant to the conclusion where that we cannot have this access to the thing in itself, this thing on the numena, and that we are ultimately trapped within our mind. I would propose John Verveki would say that although our frames prevent us of grasping the whole reality, we can still participate in it, right? We nonetheless participate in reality via these things like myth making, mythos, mythopoiesis, music, symbols, art, rituals, poetry, and all of that. So I want to go on if you just allow me, and this dance and the serious play between, so basically the imaginal, what I wanted to say. Yes. So basically the dance and serious play between the ultimate and the finite, or is a constant process of opening and closing. I would also say of homing and adventuring, right? So getting back to your home, to your basis, but also, leaving the safe haven and also going to exploration, this meta assimilation, accommodation that you talk about. And this leads me to following conclusion. And now let’s see if you agree. And because this brings again back in the idea of self and where I see IFS overlap, but at the same time also different where I also have problems with it, obviously. So I would say there is no soul beyond the body. That’s my first proposition. I said there is no soul beyond the body. So the self-organizing process of me being in the world, being in space and time, infuses in nature, physical, right? Is the soul. So the whole, the soul is that emergent thing out of the body, the interaction of the body, but at the same time that that emanates back, right? So the idea of emanation is important. So at this animating principle, the anima, the suke that we talk about. And the second proposal is there is no self beyond otherness. That’s what I would propose. So meaning the self is this emergent thing out of the interactions of those parts. And again, this is why I think dynamical systems theory is so important. Also from a scientific perspective, because it brings in this whole idea of mere ology, this parts whole relationship. Yes. Yeah. And, and what does it mean? Yeah, exactly. One of many, so the self that is that which homes otherness as spirituality at the same time, it’s, it’s the, you know, it’s, it’s the parts and the otherness that gives home to the self. So, I mean, Kierkegaard has this, has this, what’s the quote? The self is a relation that relates itself to itself. So what I mean by relationship and process, and that’s why I would agree it’s not a monadic thing is that the self is, is a constant process. And I love the idea that it’s, that it’s this two axis kind of thing that you mentioned, those two dimensions, the conflict, the resolution of in a conflict, as well as getting into contact with reality. Now, the third one, when I, what I want to propose is that there was no, no thing, not a thing, no thing beyond the spirit of intelligibility. So beyond, in other words, beyond this organizing principle, the God beyond, beyond gods that you’re talking about. And so, and I think this is what what Jung would call the anima mundi or the unus mundus. And I think this is similar to the idea of self. So I think it’s, Jung is not talking about this. I mean, there are parts where talking about this monadic self, but I assume he, I think he assumes something different when he talks about self and you it becomes clear when he talks about the mandala, like this four dimensions. To me, there are similar to those four dimensions of meaning making the nomological, the normative and the narrative auto, as well as the connectedness. So yeah, not to intellectualize too much now, but what I was trying to refer to is that in IFS, you often talk about the self as the part that is not a part. And to me, this eludes a lot or this sounds very similar to the God that is not not a God or the God, God, religion that is not a religion. So there that it doesn’t have this thingness to it. Yeah. What do you think? Well, that was incredibly rich. Yeah. Okay. So I’ll try and trace through some of this. I think, yeah. What you said about my relationship to Kant is amazing. I take, of course, from Kant, the idea of framing and then I that’s what the relevance realization, but unlike Kant, I don’t think the mind is the author of framing. I think the mind participates with the world in in framing. So I would add that E, right? There’s in framing going on and relevance is a something co-created by the world and the mind. And that’s what makes me fundamentally different from Kant and makes me a Platonist because I believe in this sense of participation. So I think if that lands back with you, well, I think we understand each other very well. You understand me very well. I think that’s yes, I even think I understand why you think that that that is and I think it’s because of those bioeconomic constraints that we have. I mean, it has to be to make to so that we can give an account of evolution as well. Right. So we have to participate and be in contact somehow with reality. So either it wouldn’t make sense with evolutionary theory in in a deep sense. And it also means that we can get we can sidestep a lot of significant contradictions and can’t can’t denies because the mind does his view mind frames only in terms that are relevant relative to human experience. We can have no knowledge of God. But as other people pointed out almost immediately, that same argument applies completely to the thing in itself, which means Kant becomes a kind of Berkeleyan idealist. And he resisted that. And I don’t want to get into the technicalities, but I think you’re you’re you’re very much on with I’m you very much have caught the deep gist of what I’m saying. That’s important to me, John, because because I think in this way, I understand you better. I think if I if I speak your language, we can communicate better. So that’s why it was so important for me to to get to get your feedback on that. I appreciate that. Now, I want to thank you. It’s usually sorry, this may come off as arrogant. I don’t mean it to you. It’s just because of my particular education. It’s usually me trying to reach the language of the person I’m talking to. Yes, I get that. And so I really appreciate this. The idea that there I think there’s two ideas that you know, that I would your first two proposals about the soul. I put them together. Yeah, because I think they belong together in the claim that the self is not substantial. The self is not a substance. The self is not an independently existing thing. We give up that Aristotelian model that the self is a substance. And I think a standard model of the soul, not all models of the soul and all versions of Christianity by any means, or in Islam or anything like that, but many central models of the soul is that it is a substance. It is a standalone thing to which all properties and relations and actions belong. And I think that is fundamentally misplaced. I think it is to get things exactly the wrong way around. I think this goes to what you were saying about no-thingness and other things. I think the relationality, the intelligibility is primary and that relata emerge out of that relational field. And this maps very well to the bottom of our physics and the top of our physics. And so I’m not saying anything really, you know, bizarre or weird. And I won’t go into that argument, but I totally in agreement. And therefore, understanding the self as inherently dialogical as self and other bound together. And I think of it as there being a deep continuity. I think John Vervecki is a distributed cognition of the collective intelligence of parts of his brain all the way down into organs and systems and cells. And I think John Vervecki is right part of systems of distributed cognition and collective intelligence that make up various cultural environments and historical environments that he’s operating in. And I think there’s deep continuity down and up. And I think that means the self is inherently non-substantial. So it’s not a thing. If by thing, we mean a bounded, spatiotemporal, independently existing thing. And I think there is this deep continuity down into the depths of our body and up to the heights of our spirit, because that’s what we’re actually talking about here. And in that sense, it is a body double. And I agree with that. It’s bound to the body in this and our embodiment in a very powerful way. And then this idea that we, like the cosmos, are enmeshed in the issue of the one and the mini, the emergence and the emanation. I think that is correct. And I think that’s a profound example of participatory knowing. It’s not that we know the one and the mini. We are the one and the mini. We know it by participating in its very principle and processes. Of course, the content of your cognition and mine are different, but they share this same fundamental grammar and we share it together with reality. And I think that is a deep, deeply important thing. And so I like the final proposal. I’m coming to your final proposal that I’ll shut up, which is there’s something in us that is like the neoplatonic one. There is something in us that participates, but it is not a part because it is the very principle of participation itself. And there is something in reality that is no kind of thing, it is the very principle of thingness, of things emerging, of them being intelligible, of them entering into relationships with each other. And so I do think Proclus talked about this. There is the one within us that participates in the one without us, but of course they are ultimately just in some important and very hard to articulate sense one. And so I like that proposal. I like the proposal. Turning Young into more of a neoplatonist would be, I think, a wonderful thing to do. He’s very platonic. I often call him the Plato of the psyche. His notion of archetypes is just the notion of the forms of the psyche. And so I think all of this deeply resonates. I hope I’ve done it justice in my reply to all of your proposals. Thank you, John. That’s wonderful. And especially the last part that reminded me of we being the one that reminded me, I mean, that’s such a platonic idea. So I want to circle back to the meaning crisis with that. Yes, yes. I’m really grateful for for you bringing back also this Persian heritage into the meaning crisis. I’m Iranian. I’m Persian. And so first of all, thank you for that. Well, my partner, my partner, who is the the profound, beloved love of my life is Persian. I didn’t know that. Okay, that that hits my heart. She’s easily one of the best people I have met in my entire life. Yeah, I believe that. And what you said with the one we being the one this reminded me of a Persian myth by one of those Persian mystics and Sufis. Atar, he’s I think he’s one of the teachers of Rumi, if I’m not mistaken. The name is familiar to me. I’m learning a lot about the Sufi heritage right now. And there’s this Yeah, it’s so interesting. And there is this mythological being, it’s called Seymour. Seymour is actually the spirit of intelligibility. I didn’t know this. Say this again. How would I spell that? So S-I-M-O-R-G-H. Okay, and the spirit of intelligibility is actually the spirit of intelligibility. Okay, and and the spirit of intelligibility. That’s amazing. Yes. And Atar had this idea that it’s called I think it’s the Conference of the Birds, I think it’s called. If I’m not mistaken. Parliament of the Birds, I think I’ve heard. Yes, exactly. I’ve heard various ones. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. There are like thousands of thousands of birds that that that fly to to find Seymour. And they have to go through seven valleys. And it’s one is the valley of self deception, one is the valley of detachment, and all those things. And and ultimately, what happens is that out of those thousand birds, only 30 survive and they and they get there. But they don’t find Seymour. They don’t find this thing, this big bird, this mythological creature. They understand that they are Seymour. And you know what Seymour means in Persian is see means 30 and morg means bird. So 30 birds, they survive and they realize they are actually the one. Yes. Yes. So that reminded me totally of that. Oh, I got to get this. I’ve heard of this and I’ve never read it, but I’m going to order it once we’re done speaking because I’ve got to read this. This is wonderful mythos. So this brings us into that by which and this is where Kant struggles, in fact, and where I’m trying to be very much more influenced by Corban. Yes. Ibn Arabi, Corban, right, in some ways sort of already the imaginal as that which bridges between the one and the mini and the inner and the outer and is not the imaginary. We don’t look at these images. They are like icons. We look through them like the way I’m looking through my glasses. But it is also the way in which the world can reach back through them into us. It is not that way. It’s both ways. It is in a sense. Go ahead. Yeah. It’s so wonderful that you invoke this idea. And I think this is so important to understand that the imaginal is again, not a thing. And that’s why we think imaginary or imagination or imaginal is not something real, but it is deeply real because it has this power. It’s something like a catalyst. And I learned this also when you look at it. And that’s why I love coming from the place of children and adolescents as a psychotherapist for children and adolescents who are working and researching on them. You learn so many things. And again, this is also what I want to add to IFS and to this whole ecology of awakening to meaning and all of that, because you can learn so many things from them. I mean, Rogers, Carl Rogers, he was a school. I think it was a school counselor, guidance guide. And you learn this so well from developmental psychologists, like when you take Piaget or other developmental psychologists like Mahler or even Winnicott. When you have this kid, let’s say it’s two or three years old, right? And it has to learn this normative developmental task of separation, the mother-infant separation. In psychoanalytic theory, you will call what it needs to is it has to have this. How would they call this object like the doll? There’s the, it’s a transitional object. Transitional object. Exactly. They have the transitional objects. I only had the German name for it. And it’s serious play. It’s a catalyst. It’s this imaginal thing that they’re involved in so that they can understand. And I think this is where it comes together is that how can I have my mother’s love while at the same time be able to differentiate, right? So you bring in the spirit of the mother, of the caregiver into this liminal space. And I would say into the playground when we talk about this play. And Winnicott would too. Yes, exactly. And I would, and this is where I would want to add Vygotsky to, right? Yes. Yeah. I love what you’re doing here. You’re bringing Vygotsky and Winnicott together with the imaginal. Please go on. This is amazing. Yes. And I think this is so important because what it does is that the doll or the transitional object that I’m playing with, what I do is I immerse into into something that catches me, that is outside of my faculties. At the same time, it’s in me and it grips me. And I think where Vygotsky comes in is that it’s the zone of proximal development. I think where we really transform and develop is this imaginal space because it is between this overload and the under load. It’s between the infinite and the finite. And that’s why I think it’s in ta ese, right? So it’s my interest that guides me, that guides me into this imaginal liminal space where I can have the cake and eat it too. Right? So I have the spirit of the caregiver at the same time I have the spirit of individuation. And this only can happen when I have this catalyst, in the sense of transitional object or the serious play. And I think interest is such a wonderful marker. And what happens is that there’s so interesting research, I’m sure you know about private speech. Right? So when you and I think again, this is where IFS comes into play. It’s this dialogical practice. Now what developmental psychologists talk about when you talk about private speech or self-talk is that you can observe this behavior. A kid is exactly in this liminal or imaginal space or in the zone of proximal development when it starts to talk to itself, but not internally, they talk loudly to themselves. Yes, yes. Many adults continue that habit. Yes. Many adults talk aloud to themselves. Exactly. Exactly. And what I think what happens is that we complexify, we particularize, we individuate, sorry not individuate, but individuate in a sense, but you know differentiate in a sense. And what we do is then by this we learn how to internalize those voices, let’s say of the caregiver or the parent, and then we talk to ourselves. And I think this aspect of dialogical self is so important. And this is actually where development happens. And I think IFS, and I would say now two things about this. In one sense, IFS helps us through this inner dialogical self process. At the same time, I think IFS can still also learn from the practice of children and adolescents and enhance its own methodology. And that’s why I think it’s so important to bring in back those aspects of childhood and adolescence too. So yeah, I’m sorry, I shut up now. So what do you think? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, that was beautiful. First of all, I’m going to have to remember to cite you on this. This bridging between you made between the imaginal and then transitional object and Winnicott, and then integrating that with Vygotsky. And of course, when the child starts to talk to themselves, that’s how they develop metacognition is essential for essential for rationality. And I think that and for self-direction, long-term planning, all of that stuff, even sense of self is modified significantly. I think that’s right. I think the fact that I have a book, I haven’t read it yet, a person looking at self-talk, that’s another name for the private speech, right? And the fact that we devote so much time for it means it probably has some very powerful adaptive functionality, and yet we don’t investigate it. We treat it as noise or silliness or some bad habit. And this is because we’re bound up to the buffered self that Charles Taylor’s talked about. We’re bound to the monadic self. We don’t realize, no, no, talking to yourself is like, you will kind of go insane if you don’t do that. I imagine there might be some people who transcend to witness consciousness, but I think of Castaway and I think of Wilson and how powerful Wilson became. Exactly. And the profound grief, spoiler by the way, the profound grief that Tom Hanks’ character has when he loses Wilson. And I think all of that is just so pregnant with something that is deeply culturally relevant, significant, pertinent to addressing the meaning crisis. Because I’ll just make a quick proposal to you. I think part of what drives the meaning crisis is this notion of the monadic self, the single static substance self. And because that drives us into a kind of nominalism, it drives us into a radical self other adversarial kind of processing. It’s an important driver. And it makes us resistant to alternative states of consciousness because they are seen merely as deviants from the true self or something like that. And so I think I’m proposing to you that I think IFS and related practices, there’s empty chair therapy, there’s assault, there’s ally work, and I’m talking a lot with Barnaby about this. I think all of these things are attempts to both bottom up from practice, real transformer practice and top down from theory, provide us with a significant and rich alternative to the monadic self. I absolutely agree. I think this whole idea of monad is difficult because I think it’s also bound to this idea of having and being in the habit. Oh, yes. And I think this is very much about, yeah, it’s modal confusion all the way through. It’s modal confusion. And being trapped in the having mode, I think is one of the most important drivers of the meaning crisis. And again, now we can circle back to how I, in my own biography, saw how not only the bad place that we are in, but also how IFS played in into this. And again, I think there are two ways now where we can connect to the meaning crisis again. And one is via the mental health crisis in adolescence and the meaning crisis in adolescence. And we can talk about this in a second. And the other one is, again, this missing anthropology that I see in modern human science and to related fields like medicine, psychiatry, and psychotherapy, etc. And I think it’s devastatingly contributing to the meaning crisis. And I saw this. And again, I see this in practice and also in my research. And because we have these deep problems with the current notions and our theoretical notions of psychopathology, that’s one, but also as well with this evidence-based translation into treatment. And there are several reasons and we can have a whole podcast on this alone, but they’re like understanding illness as something as symptom aggregates, which is a deception or again, the ignorance of non-ergodicity, right? So assuming independent events, then committing ecological fallacies, right? The generalizability to individual problem. There are like deviation from protocols. If you deviate from the protocol, which is actually only a protocol for a randomized controlled trial, then it’s bad practice or pseudoscience. And there are plethora of problems, which again, I would say it’s a lack of non-propositional knowing. So by reducing, again, I’m not saying or advocating that evidence-based is wrong or bad. I want to be clear about this. I think evidence- Yeah, I get that. I think we have to go beyond this notion of non-propositional and bring back all those other piece you talk about into this. And this is where I really see this landscape that it’s missing. And it’s deeply problematic because we have this dehumanized anthropology. And it’s so interesting. Rolo May talks about this in The Discovery of Being. He actually, he points to the behavior modification therapies. And by training, I am a behavioral therapist. So I have deep sympathy for that. I think there was a lot of wisdom in it because it’s embodied. You do things, you experience things. But what he wonderfully points out is that, especially in those types, we have this missing anthropology. We actually don’t have a conception of men, of human beings. And I think this is deeply, deeply difficult. And now, I don’t know if you know this, John, but what happens right now in the field of bioethics is that there is a return to phenomenology, actually. Oh, that’s good news. That’s really, really interesting. There is this philosopher. He’s called Fredrik Sveneus. He’s Swedish. And he has this book even. It’s called Phenomenological Bioethics. And it’s so interesting because there are several scholars and people in this academic field that argue now for even a definition of illness being defined as a meaning crisis, as a crisis of meaning. Oh, wow. Yes. And that’s so interesting. It’s even called illness as, and now listen to the language, as an un-home-like being in the world. DSCs, like going back to the etymology of the original word. Right. So fortunately, this happens. But I think all those technological advancements, and we know this, you talk about this all the time, that they, the technological changes happen before the meaning crisis and et cetera. So there is this whole disenchantment that runs through this modernity, also runs through medicine and psychotherapy, et cetera. So I think this is what I’m really concerned about. And again, meaning is so what we can, the lesson that we can get out of is that meaning is not an epiphenomenon. It’s not easily dispensed with. It’s crucial. It’s necessary, even from a bioethical standpoint. Right. And again, because we’re more than just a sum of cogs and gear wheels and this mechanistic reductionist thing. And now there’s Thomas Fuchs. He’s actually a professor of phenomenological psychiatry. He has this Cal Yaspas. He’s a professor of Cal Yaspas in Heidelberg, I think. He makes this- Oh, I love- Yeah. He makes this wonderful point that medicine is actually relational. Medicine is relational. It’s a relational, I don’t know, I don’t want to call it science, but practice. It’s a relational practice. So- Wow. Who is that second person? Does he have a book or- Thomas Fuchs. He has lots of books. Oh, I think he even has one in English. He publishes a lot in German, but there was one, I will forward it to you or I can look it up in a second. Thomas Fuchs, really interesting. I had the privilege to talk to him once in a conference. So yeah, it’s, I mean, it is there, but it’s still concerning. And so to me, it was by again, by gravity to link my work to the meaning crisis into IFS is that to me, it was clear from the get go, from the beginning, that we’re not only in a finitary predicament, but also in the spiritual one. And yeah, obviously due to our affinity to it and it’s related to that, but there is this deep spiritual deprivation that we have. And you see this when you work. I mean, I worked in oncology. Meaning is really, really important. And even the evidence-based practice, we have meaning centered psychotherapy that is actually, you have efficacy right there. So it’s actually Victor Frankl’s logotherapy, revisited and done for oncology. It’s done by Breitbart. It’s a wonderful researcher and it’s getting there. And again, working with adolescents, and especially those borderline types and in this crisis center that I’m working with is that it’s so salient, it’s so present, and it’s so obvious that we are lacking this, how we need a person. And IFS helps me there to, again, to meet and not to reduce it to some, I mean, obviously a model is always prone to reductionism and I can reduce you to your protectors or managers or exiles too. But it helps me if done correctly, and I think it helps me to connect to the human being again. And this is where I see IFS helping because John, ultimately what I think, and let’s see what do you think about this? I’m sorry if I’m talking that much. No, no, no, no, no, no, you’re great. Keep going. Ultimately, what I see, what is happening is that this momentum of healing in especially experience in IFS, but I think it goes beyond IFS. I think IFS is just the proxy, it’s a placeholder for what is happening is there. What happens is that agape heals. I see it as a deep agopic love that happens. And I see this in therapy, interpersonally, right? This horizontal axis you’re talking about, but I also see it within the model itself in those technical steps you do, especially for example, you talk about the Socratic shift, right? And I want to propose that before we do the Socratic shift, we need the process of validation. I can’t get you to change into the state of aporia. I mean, I could, but maybe it’s not long lasting. I get back into this attractive state after a while, but if I really am with a part, I am with a part, it’s like being with a part, right? It’s like I validate you. Validating means that you are valid, your whole reason, your raison d’etre, the reason of being, it’s valid. You have a reason to be there. You’re functioning, you’re framing, whatever you do. It’s so important that you get acknowledged because what I think, I want to propose to you, John, that we do the Socratic shift a little bit later. So before we do the Socratic shift, we validate because if we don’t do this, we get into again, the having mode. And then it’s again, the court, not the courtyard, but the courtroom of debate. It’s not the courtyard of dialogue, but it’s the courtroom of debate. Because if I just spill this over you and I, and I, and I, and it’s, it’s, well, let me reply because, yes, yes, yes, please. Okay. So first of all, to your point, a couple minutes past that, you know, propositional tyranny has infected medicine, and we’ve lost, we’ve lost touch with the non propositional knowing. And that’s where a lot of the meaning participation occurs. And the meaning participation is a fundamental being together, being with. And that’s part of what participatory knowing is, knowing by being with. Exactly. And so all of that, I think, I think that tracks very well. It goes to the work I’m doing with Terry Dunstry about trying to open up what we mean by health and medicine. And so I’m completely consonant with that. I think the thing you’re saying right now, I take, I mean, it is exemplary constructive criticism. I think you’re right. I, and this goes to what Seth Allison was talking about, where, where you talk about agape, he talks about integrating attachment theory and IFS, and you actually have attachment relationships with your parts and you have to bring in sort of EFT, emotion focused therapy kind of techniques to get into proper relation. And then I said to him, once you’re doing that, what I’ve done though, is I’ve also brought, and maybe this is the bridging, I sort of bring some of the Socratic into my interaction with my parts, because I try to get them to recognize their function. I try to recognize, get them to, I try to enhance their own self-awareness and their own therefore responsibility to themselves. So they go from just enacting their functionality to reflecting on it, which also opens up spaces of possibility for them, which I think is, but I totally- And that’s great. I learned that actually from you and I actually, now I’m trying to incorporate it more into my practice. I love this Socratic move and shift. Actually, when you, when you said that in, I think it was episode eight in, after Socrates, it’s like, whoa, yeah, I’ve never done this, you know, due to Socratic shift on the part. It’s like, wow. Yeah. But I think that you and Seth are correct that it’s premature to do that unless the attachment issues and the reciprocal recognition has taken place. The being with has to be in place, right, in order to shift you out of the having mode, in order to open you up for the real possibility of genuine Socratic practice, as opposed to just using or having a Socratic technique. That’s how I would put it. And I think you are exactly right about that. And I’ve been trying to incorporate that into my practice and we are going to try and see how we can feed this in. We see the problem that the Vervecki Foundation faces is we, one of our steadfast principles is we are not offering therapy because we are not properly vetted or certified to do that. We have, we have affiliate relationships with therapists who can come in if people hit crisis or distress, but we, our practices are not therapy. And trying to figure out how to get that, what you just said, which I agree. Do you see the problem we’re struggling with? Absolutely. Right. It’s like what you said, I think is deeply right, but we will not offer therapy for principled reasons, right? I think then genuine bioethical reasons, we will not do that. And so there’s a struggle here. And maybe, you know, off camera, you know, you and Chris and Taylor and I could talk about maybe a way of doing this, that could, could pick up on, I think the very legitimate point you just made while still respecting our ethical requirements of not engaging in therapy. And, can I add to that? I want to compliment you for that. I think it is actually even from, from the ethos, it’s the right, or the telos, it’s the right move. I think, and this is again, the problem that I have and that I was trying to allude to when I, when I talk about evidence-based practices in psychotherapy, I think it’s, it’s, it’s fatal mistaken again, contributing to the meaning crisis. If we pathologize everything, not everything has to be a psychotherapeutic modality, an intervention or technique. Now, obviously it can inform our practices, but I, but for it to be pedagogical, I think it’s way more important. So I think therapy can help there, the techniques and to be fair, the Socratic move that I’m proposing, IFS accounts for it. Now, this is when you do the integration, what you do when you talk to the exile, for example, and then you have this unburdening and now we don’t have to go into the details right now, but you invite back the protector and now you do the Socratic move. Now you hopefully do the apporian and you say, now, how can you contribute to the, to the state after the alleviation of pain and suffering after the unburdening? Now, again, I still think that you’re right. And I think, and I, and I love that you’re doing the pedagogical work because again, I think it’s, I’m actually really afraid of the fact that we, that we are pathologizing everything, especially when it comes to adolescence. And, you know, we talked about the archetype of the adolescent and we should talk about this maybe another time, but it’s the idiosyncrasies of, of adolescents are so important and crucial. And we tend to, I mean, not only with regards to adolescents, we tend to apotheologize a lot of things. So I’m deeply grateful for the work of, of the Viveki Foundation, but not just, you know, being cyclot, or therapeutical, but it’s more pedagogical. I think it’s a wonderful and noble thing to do, John. Thank you. But, and you, of course, are coming back because I do want to talk about the archetype of the adolescent and how it I can talk about everything for like, or anything for like hours with you. Honestly, I think talking with you and having other people hear what you have to say, I think is extremely valuable. Yeah, I mean, so I just, yeah, I do want to pick your brain and your colleagues about that particular problem. I, we don’t, I’m not asking us to solve it here, and this is not the right place to try and solve it. But I do think, you know, there’s a way of, I want to recognize, I want to recognize and be responsible to the truth you’ve articulated, while still, still being governed by the principle, the ethical principle that I’ve articulated. And that’s a tricky thing to do. And trying to figure out how to do that is something I’d like to talk to you. Yeah, it’s a dance. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it’s, it’s a very careful dance. I want to, I want to bring back a little bit about because you’ve said it a few times, and it’s deeply, deeply impactful to me. And we had to talk about other things. I wasn’t able to pick it up, but I want to pick it up now. Yes. So you’ve often invoked, you know, and I think the self is mataku. This is the ancient Greek word for between. I think the self, well, I should be careful. This is Highland’s interpretation of what the central argument of Plato was, which is we are the relationship between finitude and ultimacy, between finitude and transcendence. And if we, if we try to identify with either one of the poles, and if we lose the polarity and try to identify with either one of the poles, we either fall into into servile despair or we go through inflationary hubris and spirituality. In the proper sense, in the, or at least sorry, that was inappropriate. Spirituality in the platonic sense that would be proper to Plato’s framework is that we enable, we induce and educate, we draw out and we also transform people so that they are capable of holding that tonos, that creative tension between like a profound opponent processing that gives them the most profound optimal grip on their fundamental orientation reality is you have to get this opponent processing between your finitude and your transcendence, right? Between right how you are as a, as a single being and the relationship you have to ultimacy, but that you are that tonos, you’re like the tension of the bow as Heraclitus talks about the logos of the psyche, right? And that, and that that is kind of the deepest, most profound opponent processing and that is the source of our deepest, most profound optimal gripping, our most profound orientation. And I want, I want to know it, because you’ve invoked the, that those, that pair multiple times in our conversation, how does that proposal land to you that that’s a deep thing? I’m about to teach a course for the Viveki Foundation on literature and the meaning crisis and wrestling with these books in which you see human beings wrestling with the meaning crisis and it’s precisely the way the meaning crisis throws this tonos into whack and either drives people into despair or drives them into an inflation. The Heart of Darkness is a classic example or Moby Dick, right? Do you think, sorry, this was a long preamble, but I hope it’s landing. Do you think that IFS, especially because it’s doing the imaginal, it’s getting us related to the transitional object, it’s moving us out of the metarctic self, getting us to inhabit and be a mataksu, a pure, a purely relational being in deep relation to relationality, which is ultimate. Do you think IFS therefore can help us with this fundamental commitment to our true humanity, which is the tonos, the creative tension, the opponent processing between finitude and transcendence? Do you think that is that just too far afield or is it a good situating? Because to me, it seems that a big part of the meaning crisis is the way we lose the polarity and we get attracted to either one of these poles in either nihilism or narcissism. And they’re not opposites. They are two sides of the same coin. Yes. Wow. What a question. I hope I can be fair to this question because obviously I’m not, I cannot speak for the whole IFS community, but only from my perspective of it. But I think IFS has the potential to do so. Now, again, with the monad, I think, or the having mode, I don’t think it’s the panacea. You said it yourself. It cannot be a panacea. It has to be embedded in an ecology. Right. And no matter what method, technique, paradigm, whatever you want to use, there are ways to do it, you know, good or, you know, better and worse. Right. So I think it has the potential to do so. And I think if IFS is done properly with this whole sapiential framework around it, then I think it’s so powerful. But I’ve also seen people, again, being trapped in the having mode at the same time using IFS and do the spiritual bypassing. So I think it’s a matter of, it’s the how-ness, how we do things that matters more than the what-ness. Right. Well, you know, that’s a standard definition, or at least a distinction between knowledge, which is understanding what and wisdom is the how, you know. And yeah. Yeah. So again, to be, yeah, I think if done properly, it has, because I think of this essentially agapic element to it. And I really think, and this is what I see happening in therapy, John, there is this magical moment happening if you, and I’m, in this time, I’m really proud to be part of it, to participate in it. When you, when, and I think I’m privileged to witness healing at times. Now, and this is so interesting, I don’t consider myself as the one that heals, I only participate in it. And it’s so interesting because Plato has this critique of Therapeia Theon, and he thinks, because it relates to this, to God, right, to Theon. And, but Therapeia Theon, I think if you properly do it, what Therapeia means, or Theon means, or Therapeia means in this case is that in its deep sense, etymologically, is it’s, you’re a servant of God. Now, I think what happens in those moments in the therapy room is when you witness healing is that you are part of something bigger, what you’re relating to. And it’s a beautiful thing that happens. And that’s why you can invoke the aesthesis, right, the perception, the aesthetics. And that’s why I think that beauty is, as the primary thing, is absolutely correct. It has this beautiful, elegant thing to it. And what IFS brings here is this moment of, not only of logos, where the good, the true, and the beautiful, I think where they are one is actually the logos. I think meaning is where the good, the true, and the beautiful are actually, you cannot, they’re not the same thing, but at the same time, you cannot, you know, they’re not separated, right? And this wonderful, you said that IFS is platonic and Jungian, I would also say it’s Augustinian in the sense that it’s agapic, right? This moment of love that’s happening is what transcends both. And this is what Jung also referred to is that when it’s, or Rogers too, in a sense that when good, when you meet a soul, there is this potential transformation for both of them. And I often have this feeling that when I go out, you know, when I have my session, when they’re done, I am changed myself. Yeah, yeah. So I hope I was fair to your question. You’re more than fair. You brought, I really, really enjoy talking with you. This is really just catching fire. Thank you. So I thought what you said was great. We’re coming to a close. I’d like to bring up one question and then I want to, but first I want to propose what we could talk about next time. First of all, I think I want to give you space and time to talk about the archetype of the adolescent. I think that’s important. Yeah, that will be, and I think that I think it’s also essential. Yeah, necessary, especially for the mental health crisis, especially for the meaning crisis. I think you’re bang on about that. The second thing I want to talk to you about now that we broached, you invoked Agape, you invoked the possibility of something bigger and God, the logos. I mean, this has to do, and there’s also Jung and, you know, the red book and he has Philemon and he has these, you know what I’m talking about and there’s no good name for them. I mean, Ralph calls them allies. And of course I’ve had this experience and I’ve been doing ally work and I’d like to hear, I’m not expecting you to be an expert on this or anything. I just want your reflections from an IFS. I’ve been asking Seth Allison about this and other people about this. And so if we could talk about those two things, we’ll talk about the, well, that we got a triple A here, the archetype of the adolescent and the ally. If we could talk about that next time, I would appreciate that. That would be great. Okay. And so thank you for that. Thank you. And what I’d like to talk to you about right now is our final point. And it’s a Socratic point, which means I hope it comes off as constructive. So I think all of this is very, very well said. And then a Socratic concern would be, and this is one of the critiques I’ve had of romanticism, right? Which is how do we look for, notice and ameliorate self-deception that might arise in all of this work? Because pretending that there’s no self-deception at play in this, I think is foolish. And I seriously doubt that you would engage in that pretense. So here’s the concern. Within therapy, I understand you are beholding to the goal of healing, and that is important. But given a lot of things we’ve said, and given that we’re trying to make connections outside of therapy to pedagogy, and where there are deeper goals of right relationship to reality and the true, the good, and the beautiful, the virtue, then this issue around self-deception, I think comes up. And I would like to know, and if you want to bleed into our next conversation to address this more, that’s fine. But maybe just an initial concern. How do, and I mean it in the platonic sense, how is rationality as the concern for self-deception, which can often mask as self-transcendence, right? How is that concern properly met? How can we be responsible to that within an IFS practice? Is that a fair question? That’s a very important question. I really have to think about it more deeply to give an appropriate answer. But I would say the initial response would be, and this goes back to the question you had before, and I forgot to mention it because I also have critique for IFS. And I think now this comes together. I think what IFS still can do better is to enhance the notion of something like evil. And I think the ally work that you’re alluding to and the archetypal work, the Hillman work, I think that is still missing. Now, to be fair, IFS is not one thing. This community has very diverse thinkers, and there are beautiful people that bring different aspects to it. But I would say to answer your question is to address the self-deception is that I think it needs to be embedded within a system of systems. And I think what we need to do in order to overcome self-deception is that we cannot overlook the body. And I think this is very, very important. And there is this brand of IFS, which is called Somatic IFS. Susan McConnell, she’s wonderful. She’s actually one of those that close friends to Dick Schwartz, who actually made the whole curriculum for the training of IFS. So she’s a brilliant mind. And she has this book, Somatic Experience. I don’t know if you know this. I have it. Oh, awesome. I have her stuff. She writes really poetically and beautifully. I think so. The bodywork is needed. And this is, I think something you know, as a practitioner of Tai Chi Chuan and Kelly, and we need to bring back the body. But we also need feedback systems and people can be feedback systems. Right. So if I do this work alone, so I have to have a community to do so. And this witnessing of healing is, again, it’s tenfold if you witness it in a community of healing. And I was privileged or I’m privileged to experience that over and over again, is that what happens when a collective comes together. Now, I think there is also a danger. Right. And this is also what Jung talks about when he talks about being one and not a zero. It’s like, okay, well, that you have this, or need to when he talks about the masses going into one direction, the ideological thing. So I really have to think about it. Well, I mean, you’ve it links what. So let’s just say that that’s your initial foray and we’ll come back to it next time. But what you said does connect with what you said before about I.F.S. needs to be situated within a sapiential framework and ecology of practices. But I like your invocation of, you know, Rafe Kelly’s work, the stuff on embodiment. I think that is deeply appropriate. This is Marla Ponte, that the body is really fundamental to keeping us anchored to the world in a way that if we train the mind to properly listen, can act as a significant counterbalance to spiritual bypassing and hubristic self-deception and other things. So let’s pick that up then. We’ll pick up that in addition to the archetype of the adolescent and ally work. We can talk a little bit more about bringing ratio, logos in the rationality and the Socratic Platonic sense into conversation with I.F.S. So I really look forward to this. I love my guests. This was first of all, just wow, really catching fire. Love this. Love this. You have a brilliant and scintillating mind. And yet it is clear that it is connected to your heart. And I just just enjoyed that. I talk about how certain people taste, right? Like the way a work of art, you know, you taste really wonderfully. So that I really appreciate that. But I’d like to give my guests the last word. Thank you, John. It’s deeply appreciated. I don’t know what to say. I’m grateful to be able to be talking to you. It’s something that I’ve wanted now for years. And I think now the time is right. And also with regards to your viewers and followers, I really think it’s a kairos. I think we are at a pivotal point where things now come together. And I want to thank you for everything you’ve done and you do. And I consider you a really close friend. I mean, we haven’t met personally yet. We can become that. Yes, I hope so too. And we are tens of thousands of kilometers apart. But I don’t know if you know this, but you are your voice and your spirit is, you know, fills my home and life and work every day. So in a sense, you’re, you know, very close to me on a daily basis. And to be able to participate in this whole endeavor is I’m really, really grateful for. And I want to thank you for also allowing and giving the platform to come together. So thank you for that, John. So we will speak again very soon. I would like that. I would love that actually. Thank you. Hello, everyone. I’d like to announce a new course I’m going to be teaching at Halkian Academy. It’s called Ultimate Reality God and Beyond. I’ll talk in a minute about that very provocative title. First important things, it’s going to be starting April 5th. It will be eight weeks, not eight consecutive weeks, because I’m attending conferences, but it’s all scheduled out. The link to the home page for the course will be put in the notes to this promo. And each session will be two hours. There’ll be one hour of me doing a lecture and then one hour of Q&A. Now there are options you can purchase where you can attend the lecture live and participate in the live Q&A. Or you can also go through this course asynchronously and you can purchase it at that level if that works better with your schedule and or your finances. I’ve done one of these courses before, Beyond Nihilism, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I consider it by all the feedback a success and I very much wanted to follow it up. Which gets me to the title. The Beyond was a way of pointing to some continuity with the previous course, Beyond Nihilism. Which is also available asynchronously on Halcyon if you wish to take a look at that. I’m not assuming that people have gone through Beyond Nihilism. The course, Ultimate Reality, God and Beyond, is a standalone course, but I’m also structuring it so those people who have taken Beyond Nihilism will find connection and continuity. That’s a bit of a tricky thing to do as a teacher, but I do have quite a bit of experience with doing that kind of thing from my many years of teaching at the university. That’s one reason for the title. The other title is God and Beyond. What could possibly be Beyond God? What could that mean? That’s just a silly contradiction, isn’t it? Well, that’s the issue that the course is going to wrestle with. When we come into or try to enter into a philosophically reflective and deep relationship with what we consider to be ultimate reality, is that relationship best captured by what we think of when we think of God? Now, what many of you will say to me is, but there’s many different possible meanings. That’s exactly what this course will explore. The idea that there is a somewhat standard notion, Abrahamic notion perhaps, of God is one we’ll be making use of and whether or not that actually is the best way of understanding ultimate reality. In order to do that, we’ll be taking a look at a bunch of thinkers. The one is Robert Carter in his amazing book, The Nothingness Beyond God. You can see the title of that book resonating with the title of the course, in which he explores the work of Nishida from the Kyoto School, which is somebody deeply influenced by both Heidegger and Zen. Of course, Heidegger famously, in his famous critique of ontotheology, criticized that our standard notion of God as a supreme being fundamentally misrepresents being itself, because being itself is no kind of individual thing or being. That’s the no-thingness beyond God. If God is some kind of super thing, then ultimate reality is a no-thing beyond that. That was explored, of course, by Nishida making use of both Heidegger and Zen. We want to enter into discussion about this. Please understand that this is a very exploratory thing. This course is helping me do some deep thinking in dialogue with others who are coming in good faith and want to engage in deep reflection and discussion in preparation for the next series I’m doing on the Philosophical Silk Road. Being part of the course is a way of participating in the contribution of that project. We’ll also be taking a look at the work of the Canadian atheist, Schellingberg, especially in his book, Evolutionary Religion, but we’ll also be taking a look at, at least bringing in his book, Religion After Science, and also talking about the hiddenness argument. He is famous for being the author of the hiddenness argument, which is considered a sort of new argument against the existence of a personal God. Now, you may say, oh, an atheist. Be very careful. Schellingberg is not typical atheist. Schellingberg is somebody who wants us to look at, take very seriously the possibility of ultimate reality and very seriously what he calls a triple transcendence. That ultimate reality is transcendent in being most real and also it’s also in some sense most valuable, you know, beyond the true, the good and the beautiful, and also most transformative. And he thinks this proposal that human beings, that there is such an ultimate reality, that human beings can enter into a relationship with it and be transformed by it, is one that we should take very seriously, but within a particular frame. He says, he points to deep time, how science has discovered deep time, billions of years in the past, billions of years in the future. A species has existed for 200,000 years. We seem to be spiritually oriented from about 40,000 BCE. So we have all of this going on and yet we also have this deep future ahead of us. And he poses this question. He says, given the depth of the questions we’re asking about ultimate reality, is it likely that we are mature enough as a species that we have got complete answers to this, when of course we don’t have complete answers about the nature of the atom, or that we don’t have complete answers about how disease works, or how the mind works, or how the body works. Isn’t it presumptuous to think that we have finished complete answers about ultimate reality? So he wants us to engage in the, reflect upon the proposal that we might be as a species, not individual, spiritually immature. And then he asks, what do we need to do in order to mature ourselves across time and across generations such that we could come into the kind of work that would give us a plausible claim on getting an answer to that question of whether or not ultimate reality has that triple transcendence for us. And I think this is a very profound idea because I think the deep time aspect of our reflections upon ultimate reality within standard Axial Age religion and philosophy has not been properly understood or taken into account. And so this is very provocative. It opens us up and it of course allows science at the table. Now of course he also criticizes, and this is what makes him so interesting, he also criticizes the atheists who think they can come to a complete conclusion about ultimate reality from a framework that is very plausibly one of spiritual immaturity. So we will be taking a look at that and we’ll be looking at what happens if we adopt deep humility with respect to the question of ultimate reality, God and beyond. What happens? What do we open ourselves up to? And what becomes really important for him is the role, the aspirational role of imagination, especially in the imaginal sense. We’ll then be taking a look at the astonishing work of James Filler, who I will actually be meeting in person in April. Unfortunately his book is quite expensive, so instead we’ll be reading three papers where he makes the argument that the Neoplatonic tradition made an argument, which is that ultimate reality is pure relationality rather than a substance. Now when he uses substance he’s ultimately meaning it in not just a Cartesian sense but in Aristotelian. Substances are individual things that are considered to be able to exist independently and are the subjects of properties. They’re the owner of properties and they enter into relations with other things. And so there are things from which relations emerge. And Filler’s arguments go to show that that seems to have things exactly the wrong way around. It looks like relationality is ultimate and the things emerge out of it. And so of course this relationality is a no thing because that is what things emerge from. And this meshes of course with some of the fundamental arguments of Neoplatonism. And I think moving off of that thing-based substance ontology is a fundamental shift, a new way of thinking profoundly and relating to ultimate reality that takes us into that space of God and beyond. The final person is Bracken whose book, The Divine Matrix, is written from a Whiteheadian perspective, which I think is very important because Whitehead in some ways integrates that pure relationality with the dynamic view of the world given to us by science. But what he does is he takes a look, Bracken, at the Western traditions, reflections on ultimate reality and Eastern reflections, Taoism, Vedanta, Buddhism. And he is trying to propose what we can see being held in common. And this of course is very much like a through line, like the philosophical Silk Road. And he comes to some very interesting conclusions from this argument about what ultimate reality is and how we could come to a shared understanding. It doesn’t mean we all will become Hindus or we’ll all become Buddhists or we’ll all even become Whiteheadians or that we will all become Christians or Jews. What he says is this gives us a shareable relationship to ultimate reality between people who talk about that ultimate reality as a God and people like Taoists with the Tao or the Vedantists with Brahman or the Buddhists with Shunyata who do not talk about ultimate reality as God but nevertheless consider it to be triply transcendent. And so this is all in service of an observation that I have been sharing with a lot of the people that I enter in deep discussion with, which is in response to the meaning crisis, there seems to be an advent of the sacred taking place in many different parts of the world, different communities, different philosophical currents. And I’ve just pointed to you a bunch. There’s many, many more that converge on this. People are fundamentally reframing our relationship to ultimate reality. And I think this is a way of trying to give us a new way of living in relationship to the sacred, which will offer people a living response to the problem of the meaning crisis. Now this is all something I am proposing and I am proposing that we discuss it together. And you help me as much as I try to teach you that we discuss it together as we try to wrestle with this question about ultimate reality, God and beyond. So I look forward to seeing you in the course. As I said, the notes for both the date, which starts on April the 5th, and the link and how you can register will be found in the in, will contain the information in the notes to this promo. So thank you very much and I look forward to seeing you in ultimate reality, God and beyond.