https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=UWhHbgmg_3E
Oh man, and there’s John. Hi John. Hello, how are you? We are well. Let’s see, what do I want? I want, yeah there we go. Okay, you know, welcome. We were just chatting a bit. Well that’s good. I’m glad. So what do we, what do, yeah tell me about yourself John. I just know the little bit that I saw online. Well, I don’t know how much what you saw online. I saw that you wrote a book on zombies and that the students love you. Yeah, for which both, both of which I commend you. So I think how Jared came in contact with me was through the video series I’ve done too. Okay. The awakening from the meaning crisis. How I came to that is I am an associate professor of cognitive psychology and cognitive science at the University of Toronto. Okay. I’m also a long-term practitioner and teacher of Vipassana, Tai Chi, Pichuang related practices. So I study a lot about the nature of intelligence, insight, mindfulness, wisdom, meaning in life and then that connects up to that I’m also in the cognitive science program. I think I’m the teacher that’s been, that had the longest history at the University of Toronto in cognitive science right now. And the work I do there has to do with connecting those things I just spoke to you about, especially meaning and intelligence to a lot of the emerging work coming out of machine learning and artificial intelligence, a thing I call relevance realization and then how we can use that to understand that sense of deep connection and coupled, to ourselves, each other in the world that I think is actually the core process we’re metaphorically referring to when we use this notion of meaning in life. We’re trying to point to that sense of connectedness and I think the emerging empirical research shows that that’s ultimately is these factors of connectedness that really contribute to people’s sense of meaning in life. But I think you can also understand those in terms of really a central processes for our cognitive agency, fitting us to the world in an appropriate and deep way for affording our cognitive agency and the development of it. And so that then leads me into stuff where I overlap with your work. The way in which people deeply, I don’t know if you’ve seen any of the talks I’ve given on this, but the way people deeply use symbols. I don’t use symbols in an ornamental sense. I use it in a sense that I think is very resonant with Corbin’s sense of the imaginal as I understand it. And that people are making use of symbols to activate and access this profound connectedness that has a phenomenological experiential aspect to it, but also a functional aspect to it that I call religio. And again, I see that resonant with a lot of what I’m reading in Corbin and in your work. And I think that’s all important to the central project of awakening from the meaning crisis, because I see Corbin along with people like Heidegger, of course had a huge influence on Corbin, Jung, Barfield and Tillich as sort of the crisis of meaning that we’ve entered into. And I’m interested in talking to you because I think it’s episodes 47 and 48 or 48 and 49. I talk about- Jared mentioned that. Yeah. And I haven’t gotten around to it yet. They’re all busy. Yeah, that’s all suffering from time famine. I get that. I’m just trying to answer your question of who I am and how it is I came to contact with your work. You should know I do recommend your work quite highly. Thanks. You might get in contact with people precisely because they see me talk about you on the video series. Okay, sweet. That’s great. I’m delighted. Yeah, that’s cool. Wow. You cover a lot of bases. That’s pretty- I mean, you’re in an odd position being in cognitive science. Yeah. In cognitive science, in psychology, but I also have an explicit educational training in philosophy, three degrees in philosophy as well. And then the part of philosophy that is most connective between the philosophy and the work I do in cognitive psychology and even in cognitive sciences is ancient philosophy. So I have a deep education in sort of Plato, the Platonic schools, Plotinus, Stoicism. So you can also see there why I’m resonating with Corbin so deeply. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. So I mean, I’m in kind of an odd place right now because I think I’m actually starting to be able to walk the talk as it were. So I’m teaching online to a small group of people who follow me around. And so what I struggle with is the same sort of thing that- I’m looking for really good ways to wake people up. Boy, it’s hard. It’s kind of hard to talk about this stuff without using language that has the wrong connotations, or at least that seemed wrong to me. But there’s got to be better ways than I have yet managed to develop, to bring people around to something which is- I mean, it’s not really very intellectual. It can be, you know, but if you’re a head person like me, that’s more trouble than it’s worth in a lot of ways. You can’t think your way into meaning. I mean, actually you kind of can. Well, that’s actually interesting because that’s one of the key arguments I consider in the couple episodes where I talk about Corbin. I make use of some work by L.A. Paul and Agnes Callard, L.A. Paul’s book on transformative experience and Callard’s excellent book on aspiration. And they basically have arguments that this kind of move, you know, some kind of self-transcendence for lack of a better term, if you want to pay waking up, that’s fine, waking up experience. I’m not really going to slow us down with the metaphors is what I’m saying. We’re extending towards some developmental change here. And the argument that they both make when they talk about transformative experience and aspiration is it’s not something you can infer your way through. They actually have some deep arguments as to why you can’t infer your way through it. But Agnes Callard in particular makes a very good point about this. She says, look, if this process is not ultimately inferential in nature, and we conclude that because it’s not inferential, it’s also not rational, then we’re going to get into a weird place because, as she rightly points out, the aspiration to rationality is a clear case of aspiration. And if we say, well, aspiration is not a rational process because it’s not an inferential process, then we get into a weird performative self-contradiction, which is a really kind of cool move. This actually leads me to some ideas that are really interesting to me in Corbin, which is the idea that, well, how do we do it then? How do? And this is where I think the symbolic relationship to the future self is not an imaginary relationship, but an imaginal one in some important way. I’m really interested in, because Callard talks about you get into this weird paradox. Your current self is causing that future self, but the future self has the normative authority and the ultimate justification for the whole project. And so you get into this very weird non-logical identity. And I think that’s really interesting. Yeah, that’s phenomenal. I’ve been going through Tom’s book recently preparing for this. And I actually picked up right on that sort of niche here in the chapter on the visionary recital, page 81. There’s this quote, this very aspiration, this longing and nostalgia constitute and bring into being an intermediary universe, a world of archetypal personal figures, the world of the imagination. I thought that was an amazing version there. That’s exactly what I was seeing. Oh, before I forget Tom, how do I pronounce your last name? Cheetham. Yeah, if we were in England, it would be Cheetham. But we’ve always used Cheetham, so I go with either one. When I’m in England, it’s Cheetham. I think I’ve been mispronouncing it, so I’ll correct it from there on in. So please forgive me. The more difficult one is your last name. Vervecky. Okay. Got it. So Jared points out to a quote, and there’s other passages like that in your books, where I see this language coming out of the core of analytic philosophy in one hand, and yet you’re talking in a way that’s deeply resonant with it. And I see Corbin as like affording that kind of connection, which is very interesting to me. Well, for, yeah, well, we, yeah, this is always, yeah, I’m kind of in this, I’m writing two or three essays right now, and then I’m teaching. And so, so I’m in this, but I’m in a place that is partly pertinent and partly not, but it is pertinent, because look, for Corbin, I think it’s fair to say that any kind of, I want to say this, the archetypal example of knowledge is interpersonal dialogue. One of the central places in all of, one of the central moments in all of his work is in creative imagination, where he talks about the prayer of man and the prayer of God, and says that prayer is the supreme form and the highest act of creative imagination. And the first time you’d come to that, he uses language in such a way that it seems obvious that he’s talking about making up your own God. And yet you know that he doesn’t mean that. Yes, I do. And, and, and so that’s the archetype of knowledge for him. It’s always personal. And one of the students said the other day, well, is the angel you or is it not you? And I wish I knew a little more about contemporary, you know, Levinas and people like that, because I think what Corbin is suggesting is has a lot of resonance with, with Levinas. You know, you are the other and the other is you and you can’t possibly, so that there’s this. But the other isn’t just other people, it’s also other aspects of you, right, in time, too. Oh, yeah. You’re indelibly a historical being as well, right? Ah, well, for Corbin, history, yeah. I can get you get Corbin’s about, you know, escaping the bonds of history. But I don’t think Corbin wants to deny that you’re in that. He’s not trying to deny the Heideggerian idea that we’re also right. No, but what’s important for him? Where does the, for Corbin, the, I almost had a good word for this, the substance of things, the volume of things, the space of things, the imagination of things, the resonance of things, the soul of things, none of that comes from history. No, no, I understand that. I mean, I get it that he’s trying to break out of sort of the narrative of horizontal history. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And so there’s sort of, if you’ll allow me a metaphor, I get it that, you know, the ontological is sort of vertical for him. What I meant was, though, that, like, like, I’m just trying to bring, let’s go back to the way I phrased it. Is the other not only other people, but there’s a sense of which I’m other to myself. That’s what I was trying to point to. Yeah, yeah. To when I invoked history. If history is the wrong word, I’ll take it back. Okay, that’s fine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, because, yeah, because that, that, you know, it tends to get misread. Yeah, that’s fine. And so again, I think, yeah, I see, I mean, I see that obviously in Levinas, you see it in, you see it in the objective, you know, the triple o ontologies of harmony, like that. Okay. Well, you see, the point is, they say that’s the case for every object that we encounter, every object, right, is both shining towards us in a way, but always withdrawing in a profound way. So we’re always in count. And I was using this when I was doing the talk about trying to say, there’s a sense, because I think it’s clear in Corban, but that, that, that, that, that divine double, while I use things, we’ll come back to that in a second. Yeah. Divine double, right, isn’t just with other persons, it’s with other aspects of ourselves, and even, even with what we typically call objects. Oh, no, absolutely. No, no, no, no, no, precisely that that that that archetype is, stands for every kind of relationship. That’s what that’s why it’s perfectly legitimate, I think, to call Corban an animist. Everything is animated. I mean, he, he, you know, he’s, he’s playing off the Zoroastrians. So he’s a little careful about what he says, but he at least says that every being of light has an angel. I’m perfectly happy to say that every being has an angel. He’s got to say, well, you know, it’s only the beings of light, there’s some beings of darkness, but we don’t need to talk about those. So, so, so that the, so that you’re always in an intimate, quasi personal relationship with every object. Otherwise, there is no experience at all. You know, I mean, I think, I think that’s, I think that’s what, not just me making up what Corban is saying, I think that’s what he’s saying. He says, what would a world without a look, without a face actually be? It would be nothing. So, so, so that every relationship, you know, we denigrate it by calling it personification. And, you know, this, this pencil isn’t very much like a person. But in order to engage with it in any way at all, you have to personify it. It’s kind of like a penis, it’s kind of like a rocket. Hillman puts it this way, that the anima mundi is the availability of the world to the imagination. And that sort of puts it on the psychological side. And Corban says, well, yeah, sure, that’s right. But that’s because, because everything has an angel. So, so, so there’s, yeah, there are no objects. There’s a, you know, he says, and right, right at the dead beginning, he says, there are no objects, everything’s a person. And he gets that from Zoroaster. And so at least he claims to, you know, Well, you might be interested then to some work I’m doing currently, where you show where you see this coming out in people who are literally rocket scientists. So these are people moving the rovers around on Mars. Right. And in order to move the rovers around, they’re looking for people getting the ability to be on Mars. Yeah. So and that’s really difficult because because of the time lag, there’s no control, right. So they have to rely on their imagination. Imaginal way. And so what they do is they, they, and for Tessie, in her book on seeing like the rover, they both she uses is neat, they have the loop, they both personify the rover, but they also technomorphize themselves because they’ll, they’ll try and act the rover. They’ll say, like, here’s the cameras and they’ll say, ah, and they’ll say, I, I need to do this. Or And they practice to get this loop going, they couple themselves in an imaginal sense. Yeah. Over and that kind of I call that participatory knowing that For Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. Gives them the ability to have the prospect of annoying knowing what it’s like to be on Mars and then and only then can they do this do the skills and then only after doing the skills, do they get to the level of the propositions and the beliefs. That’s fantastic. On top of all of that. Doesn’t that sound like him. Like a lot of Home anyway. No, that’s right. He hated. He hated. But it’s perfect. That’s that’s really great. Yeah, that’s fantastic. You want to be interested that they get into this. And you have to be careful here, right. They’re not just being humorous. They’ll say things like, you know, I was gardening and my right hand kept getting stuck in the garden. And then when I went to the lab, the rovers right wheel was stuck and they sort of like, oh, Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that as a cognitive scientist, I’m interested in what’s going on there cognitively, obviously, but I want to connect that via things like Corbin participatory knowing the imaginal to right. These issues about meaning because notice what’s happening here. They’re getting a sense of extended identity. It’s obviously not a logical extension of identity. And they’re doing this thing we’re just talking about the otherness of the rover is somehow being they’re entering into this coupling with it. Really, like they it becomes deeply meaningful to them. They, they get they get deeply And they get deeply worried about. Yeah, yeah. Fantastic. I mean, yeah, that’s Yeah, that’s a really good story. I’ll try to use it in class. I’m going to be talking about that. I’m going to be talking about that. On February the 1st, we’re at the cognitive science conference at the University of Toronto, I’m going to be talking about exactly that and how it exemplifies all the kinds of knowing that are underneath the propositional knowing and how much they’re about this connectedness. Well, one of the things that’s perfect because one of the things I’m folk I’ve been interested in for a long time is the kinesthetics, the embodied nature of all of us. So when you say participatory knowing, of course, the obvious point is that there is no non participatory knowing. I think there’s a relationship of dependence. In fact, I think the propositional depends on the procedural for sort of Vick and Strinian reasons. Okay. Yeah, I think the procedural depends on the perspectival for things to come out of like Marlowe-Ponty. And then I think for sort of Heideggerian reasons and the deeper aspects of Wittgenstein, the perspectival ultimately depends on the participatory. I’ve made sort of arguments to that. Okay, okay. Add this to that. What are the things that interests me in the history, it shows up now and then in the stuff that I’ve written. My exemplar of this is Yvonne Illich, just for historical reasons. And I know there’s millions of people now who are working on these sorts of things, but I’m not, I’m finite, so I’m not familiar with their work. But Illich pointed out a long time ago that, for instance, in the medieval world, people saw and saw the whole history of sensation business. And so one of the things that interests me is ways of getting an economic system that’s not just about the experiential access to the fluidity of sensation. Yeah, yeah, I think that’s deeply right. That’s what’s one of the things poetry and art is about. Oh, I agree. And that’s why I follow Corbin up in the series by talking about Barfield. Yeah. That’s one of the things. That’s great. So one of the points I was going to make about how this is relevant to the whole issue about the meaning crisis is, and then I also want to bring up something, a connection to Illich that I think you do talk about in one of your books. But first, the connection to the meaning crisis is, I think that all that sub propositional stuff is where most of the connectedness of meaning is being made. And I think that psychology and the cognitive science is supporting that. And as our culture has become in grip, we’ve lost, I mean, obviously we still implicitly depend, as you’ve said, on all those other kinds of knowing for a cognitive agency, but we culturally cannot validate it or celebrate it or access it or educate it in any sort of systematic way. And I think that’s a significant contributory. You mean because we try to do it from the top down? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. All right. Yeah. And we’re very locked into a kind of propositional tyranny in a lot of ways. Okay, super. You must know David Abrams first book, The Spell of the Sensuous. No, I don’t know that. Oh, read it. Like right now. Because it connects to all of this, and I’ve been jealous of him for a million years. He makes an argument that sounds a little peculiar on the face of it, but it’s very persuasive. This all started with the technology of the alphabet. Yeah, I talked about that in the series. Okay, okay. Abram was the first time I heard about that because he’s the one that introduced me to Ong and Perry and Ilyich makes this argument too. He does it very neatly in a couple of places, one in the book on Hugh of St. Victor, the linear of the text. That’s what I was going to refer to. I was going to refer to that. Extraordinary. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So Abram makes a pretty interesting and I think persuasive argument that the alphabetic technology in particular, not just writing, but the alphabet was profoundly disruptive and drove us all into our heads. Yeah. I have a colleague at the University of Toronto, David Olsen, who’s done extensive work on the effects of literacy on cognition, and I’m going to be also talking soon on rebel wisdom within McGillchrist. Yeah, people keep trying to get me to read McGillchrist’s books and I just haven’t done it yet, but yeah, I gather he says the same kind of stuff, so that’s great. And what’s valuable to me as a scientist is the fact that a lot of people independently are converging on this kind of argument and this kind of analysis. And you should pay attention to that. I mean, science ultimately depends on judgments of plausibility because we can’t consider everything, we can’t infer everything, etc. Right. We’re finite beings, as you said. And so, before, during and after our scientific experimentation, we’re dependent on our plausibility judgments. One of the things that makes things more plausible to us is when you get a lot of independent convergence. So I find that the fact that so many people are converging around these points. For me, it suggests what Tillich calls a chaos. Okay, yeah. That we’re getting to a potential, you know, an event of timing, not just of time, where the course of things could potentially be altered. That’s really interesting to hear. That’s great, because that confirms, you know, as I haven’t been in academia for 25 years or so. And so what I do is I go about my own way and do my own things. And then every decade or so I drop back in and look around to see what people are doing. And I’ve had that sense that, oh, they’re doing the same thing over here and over here. And isn’t that nice? Because I think I said that a long time ago. And what’s interesting… I think you did. I think you did. I told people that. I think you did. Well, I think it… I mean, I’m kind of stunned at Corban, at the relevance of some of the things that are really central to his vision, that are really pertinent here. I mean, sometimes you have to kind of squint to read him in the way that I want to read him. But there’s so much that’s right about the way that he was trying to lead us. And that I… yeah. So that’s interesting. That’s great. Well, I guess what I’m bringing to the table here is to get you to see in your dropping back in, perhaps you’re dropping back in right now, academia, that things that you might not have expected to be converging with Corban’s work are now converging with it. Like what’s called foree cognitive science, which I’m an example. Part of what I do, I just gave you some examples of, you know, the connections between sort of, you know, very tough nuts and bolts analytic philosophy, cognitive science, and this kind of stuff. And it’s not a flimsy, vague kind of connection. Yeah. Very, very tight kind of connection. Yeah. I would argue with it. I try to argue it explicitly that it is. Okay, all right. So I’ll have to pay attention to your stuff, won’t I? Damn. No, really. No, no, no, no, no, but it’s just, yeah, because there are so many connections, you know, and life is finite and I’m getting old. I mean, back when I was 30 and 40 years old, and it was teaching eight courses a year, it was pretty easy to sort of, you know, make connections right left. And now it’s just harder. Because I’m really interested. I mean, I’m seriously interested in some of the cognitive science work that I’ve, that I’ve vaguely gotten, you know, connected to recently because it’s so, it’s so obviously pertinent. Oh, and then the other thing which you immediately recognize is personally transformative. I’ve just recently discovered Qigong and bodywork, which, you know, it’s just, oh, how could I mean, and it’s obvious about you because the thing you would say is, how could I have been so stupid? Well, I know exactly how I was so stupid. I’ve been telling myself and writing about the necessity of, you know, connections with the physical world and everything. And in the last several months or whatever it’s been, I’ve actually been enacting it because I did meditation for years and years. You have to do a moving practice. You have to do a movement practice. And as soon as you do, I mean, the first thing I realized was, oh, right. If you breathe, all of this actually makes better sense. It’s really transformative. I was lucky because when I took up the practice is way back in 91. So that’s what 29 years ago. I was lucky. The people that taught me taught me a meditative practice, Vipassana, a contemplative practice, Metta, and Tai Chi Chuan, a moving practice, and they got them together as an ecology. And so that has been a lesson I’ve very, very deeply learned that you need all three of those like you need an inward and an outward and then a moving. Well, but here’s the here’s the meat. Let me just put a footnote on that. I mean, I’ve been a carpenter and a gardener and I can build buildings and I can swing a hammer and I can do things with stone. But that was always too distinct. I mean, I could do I could do my intellectual work and then I could go out and build a building and they were too far apart. And I and so I would always tell myself, oh, I am really connected to the earth. You know, I really am. You know, I’m not just an academic, which was true, but I didn’t have the middle ground. Yeah, yeah. In the series, I talk about the Taoist stuff and playing Tai Chi because you play it, you don’t do it. Perfect. I talk about serious play. Yeah, yeah. I give Tai Chi Chuan as an example of enacted imaginal because you’re Yes. Yeah, yeah. As soon as I started doing it, and that’s a long story, but that was I thought, oh, well, this is the enacted imaginal. Because I always I had since since the 70s, I had known, you know, Tom, you really ought to dance more because I had a girlfriend, a girlfriend who was a dancer and I never did it. And there’s all sorts of psychic reasons why not. This is that. And without something which is an analog of dance, I, you know, I don’t write. So it’s perfect. It’s interesting because I had one of those ahas, you know, that isn’t just an intellectual insight, but it’s an existential insight. And when you talk about those, they often seem trivial. Yeah, yeah. The impact on me because I’ve been doing so I was already in grad school and everything and I was having success and in what you could call it the intellectual domain. Right. And then for reasons that have to do again with my idiosyncratic autobiography, I’ve taken up these practices, especially the Tai Chi. And I was practicing very religiously and, you know, and other and I noticed that I was picking up skills and I was picking up sort of self-defense. Yeah, yeah. But my friends started coming to me and they started saying, what’s happening? And I said, what do you mean? And they said, you’re arguing differently. You’re writing differently. And I went, oh, and that’s where I got my first deep inkling of that level below the propositional. And that’s the level where the deep transformation and where the deep meaning making. Isn’t it wonderful? Wonderful. And here’s another example, at least I think of the disjunction that I was experiencing that is now getting smaller. So I had a kind of break a few years ago and then I wrote a book of poems that got published. And that’s wonderful and I loved it. And then they stopped coming. And then I was back again to, you know, what do I do? Because when I was writing the poems, I thought this is it. I mean, this is what I should be doing. But then they stopped. You know, it just became it became a rote performance. And I had and I didn’t have a middle ground. You know, yeah. And because it’s a little too simplistic, but not maybe not. I didn’t have a movement practice to connect the two sides. That’s all. And that I mean, there’s deep aspects about that again. And you can connect it to the cognitive science because the cerebellum, right? We used to think it was just about physical balance, but we’re discovering the cerebellum as connections to the frontal cortex. And what it’s doing is it’s right. The cerebellum cortex loop has a lot to do with your capacity to bridge. So you’re the cerebellum doesn’t just care about sort of contingencies in the world. It cares about contingencies within your brain. And so like if you don’t get that cerebellum cortex loop running really well, you’re just never going to see. Yeah, that’s fantastic. That’s just fantastic. Yeah, I did. I’ve done a couple of little lectures stealing from the entropic brain hypothesis. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so the autobiographical thing is that I happened to cross Michael Pollan’s book, which I think is true of a lot of people. And it brought me right back to 1990 when I was just about to either do Virola and Machirana and their sort of quasi, you know, their cognitive science stuff. And that was when I discovered Hillman and Corbin. So I had this really difficult decision to make whether to do the sort of quasi Heideggerian, Machirana and Virola, cognitive science stuff, which was just fascinating to me, or to go over and do Hillman and Corbin. So 25 years later, Pollan publishes his book and I’m right back reading The Embodied Mind, which I actually sold in 1992 just to get it out of my office. I am friends and colleagues with Evan Thompson. And so here’s an interesting synchronicity. Evan was supposed to teach the course at the University of Toronto called Buddhism and Cognitive Science. He couldn’t teach it. And then he recommended me. And that’s where I developed the original argument that became my video series, Awaken. Fabulous. Yeah, that’s really great. Oh, man. Yes. I mean, again, not to be self-promotional, but if you want, it’s not, I was going to say quick and easy, but it’s like there’s 50 videos and they’re an hour long. But if you want, you know, a somewhat fast access to those connections, it might be a good place for you to take a look. Well, somewhat fast is not 50 hours. Well, I think I think Jared had said number 47 and 48 or something. 48 and 49 are particularly about Corbin. But yeah, but again, there’s references to early episodes. Again, I don’t want to trespass on your time. No, no, no, but no, no, it’s yeah. Well, yeah, right. If you want to go back and see if at points you want to go back and say, well, what can I get back to the 1990 and reconnect to that? Oh, yeah. There’s parts in the series where I’m actually trying to actually do that, argue for how to do that. OK, OK. Yeah, because I do want to I do want to see that. Have you got any have you got any manuscripts or anything written about this stuff? Well, I do and I have bits and places and we’re right now turning the whole of the series into a book. Oh, OK. OK. I wonder if it will be done. OK. This year. Sweet. All right. And there’s another book coming out that I’m doing with Daniel Gray called The Cognitive Continuum from Insight to Enlightenment that tries to at least track out all the cognitive science from everyday insight into full awakening experiences, enlightenment experiences. Oh, wow. Trying to give a unified and integrated explanation for that and why they have such an impact on people’s sense of meaning and how that relates to because we’ve kept these things all separate, but how that relates rationality, insight and wisdom together, puts them back together into an integrated framework. Well, see, that’s that’s that’s I will I will I will I will flag your stuff for my current students. I’ve got about 12 of them and we’re doing a little online course on Corban’s influence on on poets in the United States. So we’re making the transition from Corban’s idea of Tawheel to the uses made by native it and other bits of his cosmology by Robert, by Charles Olson and Robert Duncan. And then there’s a whole flood of poets who were either explicitly or or well, who were explicitly influenced by Corban. So so the issues for us at the moment, at least in that class are entirely embodied because of Charles Olson’s emphasis on projective verse and the breath and his idea of proprioceptive cognition, which is just what the sort of thing that we’re talking about here. And so I’m trying to I’m trying to ground my students in, you know, immediate reality. And the other the other thing that’s crucial for me is that, you know, I was a teacher of biology. I’m an invertebrate zoologist. And the reason and the reason for that is that I looked at an insect once at the age at the age of 30 when I thought I was going to be a physicist. I discovered the chrysomelid insects and and it just, you know, it sounds silly at the time, like you were saying, but that was a transformative moment. Yeah. And so one of the one of the reasons to do poetry and to and to do art and dance and movement is quite simply to animate the world. I mean, not it’s not that it’s coming from you. It’s the part of the dialogue. And I don’t it’s interesting that you’re talking in terms of meaning and and because, you know, and I’m thinking about that while you were talking that whole time. I don’t care about meaning because it’s you know, I mean, in the sense that it’s not it’s it’s never been it’s like I said to the Jungians once that I didn’t care about God and they didn’t like that at all. Because, you know, I don’t I don’t care about God at all because I’m much more I mean, he’s not interesting. I mean, the angels are interesting, but God is totally uninteresting. And so is meaning. I mean, who gives a shit about meaning? I want to look at insects and plants and and and other people. And the meaning is sort of that’s that’s like you said, that’s what I forget how you what your terminology is. But that’s that’s a that’s a propositional issue. And I don’t give a damn about propositional issues. I want to get at the balls of reality, you know, and then the propositions follow afterwards. I think well, I think they do largely, although they can help to structure our access back down. I don’t think theory is irrelevant either. No, no. And you never argue that in the books that I read. No, no, no, I don’t. Because because because that’s the other thing that yeah, that that’s the other thing that I’m really curious about. And you would know something about this is that ideas that look abstract actually change your perceptions. They can very much. And it has to do with there’s a there’s a guy out there. First of all, let’s come back. I’ll come back to the guy in a sec. I wanted to say when I’m using the word meaning, as I said, I’m using I put it as a metaphor for we’re using something about language that is in some way analogous to the sense of connectedness, which is what you’re talking about when you want to get it. Sure. That’s right. So I’m using that term. I’m pointing to that. Yeah. Yeah. No, no, I understand. Yeah. So the guy I wanted to talk about is Michael Anderson. And he’s got a book called after chronology and a bunch of papers on what he calls the massive redeployment hypothesis. This will give me a give me a second on this. And the idea is we used to think, you know, this function is located here in the brain and blah, blah, blah. And that’s why he calls it after phrenology. We’re now getting the same area. The brain gets actually used. You’re a biologist. You know something about like acceptation, right? Yeah. One function can be. Yeah. So I can use the tongue for speech, although it evolved for something else. Yeah. So the idea is the brain does something deeply analogous to that. It’s a great area for controlling right handedness and can use that for manipulating sound in speech. Right. And it’s adapted. And so I think in a lot of ways what you can see is you can see stuff being exacted upwards out of the participatory. And then and we can get in it. But there’s also feedback back down. Right. It’s sort of a bottom up and top down thing at the same time. Actually, John Kennedy and I published work on this a long time ago in the 90s. We were talking about Lake often Johnson’s work on body metaphor. Yeah, we were we we didn’t we weren’t arguing against the phenomena of pervade the pervasiveness of metaphor. But we thought that their model was a little too simplistic to bottom up. Not enough. I think Michael Anderson’s work points out. Yes, stuff does come up. Also, it gets new functionality. OK, yeah, I’d like to take a look at that because because people, you know, ever since I was, I don’t know, pretty pretty young, people would say, but this isn’t interesting what you’re talking about. It’s all just abstract. And then I would always excuse me. No, no, it’s not abstract. It’s not abstract at all. It changes your life. It does. And it’s it’s not. So it’s they do that. It’s kind of there’s two ways in which people are dismissive when they do that. Right. But it’s not paying attention. I mean, I just think might not be important to you. But within cognitive psychology, the work on reasoning and rationality, there’s a there’s Kahneman and Tversky. They’re the ones that came up with this idea of sort of S1 process. OK, Barbara Tversky has a new book out called Mind in Motion, right? How a lot of our abstract formal logical abilities, I would say, are exacted out of our spatial navigation. Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, by increasing empirical experimental evidence. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I keep I keep. Yes, I keep running into that. I have to I haul in things for the students and saying, by the way, now the scientists are actually giving us data for these things that people are just saying before. Yeah, that’s pretty. But I think, for example, the cerebellum clearly has been exacted out of physical balance. Yeah, I was going to say to justice, like in all kinds of more abstract things. But that’s why. But I think, for example, a clear example of the imaginal is our relationship to justice. We can only we have to we have to activate all of that balance machinery through the through these the imaginal symbols in order to talk about this abstract ideal of justice. I think, as Corbyn says, without that intermediary, right, we can’t co activate what we need, the balance machinery and get it talking to the abstract ideal language of justice. You can’t you can’t do without that center. Yeah, of course. Yeah. What there’s a phrase that he uses that I love. He only does says it once, but he says Aristotle’s abstract categories are nothing but the dead bodies of angels. That’s a great line. Yeah, yeah, it is. Oh, there’s oh, there’s too many things. We should get together sometime in the flesh. I should. Yeah, that would be. Yeah. Who? I would like that. I mean, it’d be nice to, you know, have another conversation to at some point because I think that I mean, you’ve had a deep influence on my work, as you now see. Right. Yeah. And but I think that there’s a lot of connections that I’m making that I think you would find valuable and useful. I am. I am. Yes. And now I’m screwed because I’m going to have to watch a whole bunch of those videos. And Jared, could you send could you resend me the links to those? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, just make sure I make sure I have them. And the other the other thing is I’m just going to get overloaded with exciting things. And that’s fine. I mean, it comes and it comes and goes. I go through periods where I where I where I gather things and then periods where I throw out the ones. It’s just that I’m not sure what my criteria for for discard are right now. Yeah, yeah. And I’m out of sabbaticals. So I’m facing exactly that issue. Yeah. You could just read everything and do everything and talk to everyone. And now I have to. Well, I just I just had my 68th birthday. And so, you know, and I’ve been so finitude is is is approaching. And so I’m trying to figure out. I mean, yeah, from the top down, I’m not trying to figure out from the top down. I’m trying to figure out where the energy wants to be, you know, for the stuff that I’m most interested in doing next. And it almost it has to it has to it has to relate to teaching and it has to relate to, you know, a reanimation of the world for people at this at this primary level. So I’m thinking poetry and theater and dance and bodywork. But I love I love to be a scientist by training. So I love to be able to bring in the neuroscience, you know, because because that’s tremendously because that allows you like I’m going down to Brunswick, Maine. And one of the to do the thing for the Brunswick Jungians on Saturday. And one of the primary guys there is an engineer. And so you always have you always have the engineer in the audience who’s who’s sitting there and is incredibly schizoid about his day job, which is engineering. And then he’s had his union breakdown and he’s got all these imagination things in there and he don’t know how to deal with it. And if you can show a picture of the Sarah Belm firing, then you can suck them in too. So, oh man, this is really good. So, I mean, I’m I’m in a similar thing where I’m in conversation with a lot of people. For example, I’m in conversation with Ray Kelly and he’s putting together like he’s been putting a community of practices. So what he does is he’s created a college practices. I have some videos out there where he’s basically teaching people how to do parkour in nature. I mean, it’s sort of martial arts stuff. Also, some mindfulness practice and also sitting around a campfire and circling doing a circling practice and integrating them all together. And he’s been and he and I’ve been talking because he’s he’s using some of the ideas from cognitive science that I’ve been presenting. And he’s using that to try and sharpen and develop and refine this ecology of practices and the community that is supporting. And so that kind of dialogue is it’s not just what I’m saying, Tom. It’s not just abstract theory. I’m taking it and using it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s precisely what I’m interested in doing. And I’m not I don’t have the I don’t have the psyche or the resources to do it out of myself. I got to participate with people who have different backgrounds because I my default mode is to think, you know, and the other things I can do, but I don’t do them naturally in groups. Right. Right. Because I’m too I’m too defensive. You know, and so I recognize that. And so, so, boy, can you point me to something that I could read about what he and or you are doing is great. So, if Rafe has written anything, he’s done a couple of videos where he and I are talking about these connections. I think there’s three or four in total. I don’t know if Jared’s familiar with them, but they’re out there. They’re on my channel. Oh, OK. All right. I’ll find them. You can see that in practice. What’s interesting and there’s also videos I think that I’ve linked to where he’s he’s actually in the literally in the field in a field. Yeah. Students about how to take these ideas and how they how they are mediated into and then how they are enriched by these embodied practices and the engagement. And it’s all about I once said to him, I said, what you’re doing with all these practices, maybe this aligns with what you’re saying, Tom, because you’re trying to get people to fall in love with being again. Yeah, that’s it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I used to do that in the context of biology courses. You know, you go out and you collect insects. You look at the flowers, you learn the trees, you learn the stars, you know. I mean, but we call that science. When in fact, that’s not really what was going on. You know, it’s falling in love with the world. That’s precisely and I want to find ways that don’t look like bio. I mean, I think it’s a good way of putting it because I I I could I can do that. You know, I mean, I have a handful of students who became entomologists because I dragged them out with a with a bug net, you know, and that’s it. It’s it’s it’s like poetry is humanity’s lab. And, you know, yeah, you know, I was just talking to a guy the other day, said, oh, that’s what poetry is. It’s humanity’s lab. He’s an English teacher. And yeah, so that’s yeah, that is perfect. That really that’s what I that’s what I’m interested in doing. Yeah, definitely. I think what I’ve loved about both of your work is just how much it integrates and connects like all these different domains. I mean, both of you having scientific backgrounds, but also these deeply philosophical and spiritual backgrounds. And you’re able to draw and combine all these different things. Well, it’s so it’s so nice to see that there’s people who are transdisciplinary. Right. Because, yeah, yeah, that is really sweet. I don’t have too much more time right now, but I would love to either do this again or whatever you want to do, John. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think there’s definite resonance between us. I think there’s a lot we can explore together. Like that’s, you know, maybe take a look at one or two of the episodes where I talk about Corbin. Yeah, yeah, well, you’d have something sort of specific we could come back and talk about. OK, yeah, let’s let’s do that. And I before I’ve read two of your books and I’m into the third. So I’ve got familiarity with your work. OK, OK, sweet. That’s that’s great. I appreciate that. Look at your stuff, too. And let me just say, I don’t know what state it’s in now, but in twenty twenty one, there’s going to be a Ari Corbin conference at McGill in in in it is cosponsored by the Harvard Divinity School and Charles Stein. Oh, Stang is going to be there. Yeah. I mean, he’s going to be there. He’s going to be there. Yeah. You know, I think I’m going to be there. I mean, I’m going to be there. I’m going to be there. That’s amazing, 역시. They Wouad I do remember you being there at the meeting and countries were setting up about Stan’s work, our divine double had a huge impact on me. Then email him and tell him that I sent you. I will do that, Tom. I would like to be in communication with him as well. Yeah, because that would be a place where we could get together and chat. If you can make it to Montreal, so can I. Montreal, I think, it’s pretty close for me, right? It’s only like six, seven hours away. Which is about what it is for me. So that’s not bad. Yeah, sometime in 2021, but I don’t know when yet. Right. Well, yes, definitely up for that. Okay, Jared, yeah, you can stay, keep us in communication. Sounds good. I’m going to spread the word about your stuff, John, to my students too, who I know will be interested. Spreading the word about your stuff to my students. Okay, sweet. That’s fantastic. This is fun. This is great. This is some serious play. Yes, it is some serious play. Thank you for connecting things. Yeah, I knew there would be a lot here. I’ll be done. Yeah, very, very much so, Jared. We’ve recorded this. I would like it uploaded to YouTube somewhere. Sure, yeah, if you do, let me know. Yeah, that would be great. So who is hosting this? I’m the host right now. Yeah, I got the recording all here. I could send you the file directly. If you send me the file directly, I’ll upload it onto my channel. And then you’ll have, you know, sort of an established audience to at least see it. Okay, sweet. Yeah, yeah, that’s fantastic. And you know, and we’re both sort of committing to doing, well, I want to, I’m committing, I’ll definitely talk with you again, Tom. Yeah. Yeah. So let’s, you know, if people know that something to look forward to, that’s also good. And I’ll definitely, I’ll definitely email Charles Stang and start getting my antenna out for these conferences. Yeah, yeah. Because that person would be great. That would be terrific. Okay, well, we’ll talk again soon after I’ve looked at some of your stuff. And I, but my inclination is to say I’m really interested in the practical application. Yeah. Take a look, then, not just at the video series, then take a look at some of the conversations I have with Rafe Kelly. That’s where that connection is really being made. How does he spell the first name? Rafe and Kelly, K-E-L-L-E-Y. And like I said, you just go to my YouTube channel, you’ll find that there. Okay. John Breveckian conversation, other people comment. There’s there’s there and you can find all those videos there. Sweet. Great. Okay. Thank you both. Yeah. Thank you both. Thank you very much. Okay. I’ll hang on for a bit so I can talk to Jared. Okay. Okay, great. Yeah. That’s fantastic, thanks. It was really fun. Really great meeting you. Hello. Hello. Hey. So thanks so much for putting this up. Yeah. Your your sense that was there’d be connection between us was very prescient. Yeah, very clear. Yeah. I think though we I think we’re going to have a lot of. Good conversations. And I think they would be very, very good at talk and talk, but I think you could get with the, you know, And I think they would be valuable to other people. So yeah, just send me the file once you’re ready. And then I’ll upload it onto my channel. And there we go. Sure. Sure. And I’ll tweet about it, post on LinkedIn, post on Facebook. So we’ll get, you know, to 10,000 people or so will have sort of an initial interest in it. And hopefully that’ll get it going. I mean, the fact that I’ve talked about Tom’s work so much, both in my courses and on a lot of my videos, it’s really nice that a lot of people will be able to see him in person. My gosh, he’s a charming guy. Yeah. Oh, he’s so charismatically charming. It’s just sort of like, whoa. Definitely. That was really, really impressive. What a sweet guy. My gosh. Yeah. I really enjoyed tuning into his podcast for the past year or so. It’s always such a pleasure. So yeah, it was great. The dynamic that just sort of arose. So fun. Yes. Wow. I thought so too. So again, a very big thanks to you on this. Yeah, no, thank you. You know, and having you there, I think, as a moderator in the future is probably a good idea, at least for a bit. You know? It was your sense of the connections that helped to, you know, to ferment the discussion. So I thought that’s very useful. Yeah, wonderful. Yeah, I had some other sort of specific ideas in mind for where the conversation could go that I could bring up, but it just went there already. So yeah, I’m glad. Where are you, Jared? Where are you? Yeah, I’m in Madison, Wisconsin right now. Right, right. Okay. That’s cool. Delightful, delightful town. So I have so many options here for me for graduate studies right now in religious studies, which is where I hope to head. So somewhere down the line, probably. But in the meantime, I can get involved with a lot of cool independent stuff like you and Tom are doing and not get too narrowed in to specialization. You have to resist that as long as you can. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Okay, well, I should go too then. So thank you very much for that. That was a lot of fun. It’s always great to meet people that you read and teach, right? Yeah. And it’s encouraging to me because it sounds like my interpretation of Tom’s work is one that he’s very resonant with. Yeah, definitely. That’s always encouraging. Okay, so like I said, send me an email when you know, or I don’t know how you’ll send me the file. Are you going to Dropbox it or what? Yeah, probably Google Drive if that works for you. Yeah, Google Drive. Yeah, Google Drive it. I’ll send you an email with the link to the Google Drive and then I’ll upload it and then I’ll like I said, I’ll promote it and I’ll send you an email back letting you know that all of that’s occurred. I’d be happy to do a little graphic design for the thumbnail if that would be useful. Please, please. That’d be excellent. That’s well within my wheelhouse. Okay, well then please do that. That would be excellent. All right. Wonderful. And sometime in the future, I’d really love to talk to you about Nishitani if that would be possible. Yes. So the next series is after Socrates. Yeah. But the series after that is The God Beyond God and Nishitani is going to figure very largely in that. Yeah. I’ve written in nothingness is one of the absolute great books. Truly. It’s one of the top five books I’ve read in my life. Yeah. Yeah, I remember you mentioned that in the lecture series and yeah, I just got this group of friends together and all of the people who were able to stay on with the book were super impacted by it and people from all different. Yeah, it’s a tough read. It’s not an easy read. Yeah, it was so beneficial to do it in community. Yeah, yeah. I read it initially on my own and then I read it with somebody else. So that second reading with somebody else was extremely valuable. Yeah, yeah. Now we’re looking at trying to put together a sort of reading guide drawing on our expertise for the text. So that’s in the works for me right now, just starting out with that. That could be really cool to be out there and available for people who want to approach this text. Sure, let me know when you do that because that’d be something I’d be interested in promoting. Sure, yeah, definitely so. Okay, Jared. Yeah, wonderful to meet you. Thank you again. Wonderful meeting you. Thank you again for all of this. Yes. We’ll be in touch again. Sounds good. Thank you very much. Take care. Bye-bye. Have a good day. Bye. Bye.