https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=5M69BNWFcXQ
What we realize in Christianity, what we have is instead of seeing multiplicity as Maya or ultimately as illusion, we rather see how its connection to the center and to the divine is what fills it with reality. But that filling of reality is real. It’s not an illusion. It’s not something that’s evanescent and which will disappear when we go up into heaven, but rather it is a kind of solidifying of the world in a good way, making it glorious. And that’s what the heavenly Jerusalem ultimately represents is the idea that no, all these things can participate if they’re properly aligned, can participate in the glory of God and will be full of glory and not in the way that it will dematerialize them, but rather in the manner in which it makes them more real. And you see that I think C.S. Lewis had great insight about that as well. He talks about the idea of the blades of grass in paradise being too sharp for us, something like that. Like they’re actually too real for us. And you see in the Church Fathers, they say, in the eschaton, St. Paul will be more St. Paul and St. Peter will be more St. Peter. As they enter into more and more of their theosis and becoming God more and more, they also become more of themselves. This is Jonathan Pajot. Welcome to the symbolic world. And then slowly, as I became Orthodox, I kind of moved away from Ginov, obviously, and then with more maturity, seeing some of the limits of his thought and some of his positions, let’s say. And so it’s wonderful to rediscover you at this moment. Well, likewise, I am very interested in the subject of sacred art. And in fact, I hope we’ll have a chance to talk a little bit about it today, because I think it’s very, very important. And it’s an area where I come from the Catholic world, where the Catholic world can learn important lessons from the Orthodox. I think the Orthodox have been far more successful in preserving sacred art than we in the West. And so I’m very eager to hear what you can tell us about that. Wonderful. So before we get started, I wanted to do a fairly extensive introduction this time around for people who might be joining us who aren’t familiar with all of these gentlemen. And it’s going to take a few minutes. So if you want to skip this part, you’ll be able to go to the timestamp and go right into the discussion. So as you can see, I have a distinguished panel here today to talk about how to bring meaning back into our broken world. And for those who are new to these thinkers, I have a fairly, as I said, comprehensive introduction. So Dr. Wolfgang Smith graduated in 1948 at the age of 18 from Cornell University with three degrees in philosophy, physics and mathematics. That always amazes me. And two years later, he obtained his master’s in physics from Purdue, followed by a Ph.D. in mathematics from Columbia. He worked as a physicist at the Bell Aircraft Corporation, researching aerodynamics and the problem of atmospheric reentry, and was a mathematics professor at MIT, UCLA and Oregon State University, doing research in the field of differential geometry. And he was widely published in academic journals, retiring from academic life in 1992. Dr. Smith is a member of the traditionalist School of Metaphysics, exploring the philosophical underpinnings of the scientific method and emphasizing the idea of bringing science back into the Aristotelian framework of traditional ontological realism and away from the bifurcationism and physical reductionism of scientism. And he’s a proponent of a new interpretation of quantum mechanics called vertical causation. In addition, he’s the author of many wonderful books, including Cosmos and Transcendence, The Vertical Ascent, Ancient Wisdom and Modern Misconceptions, along with many others. And his newest book, soon to be published, is Physics, a Science in Quest of an Ontology. Jonathan Pergeot graduated with distinction from the painting and drawing program at Concordia University in Montreal during the late 1990s. But quickly disillusioned with contemporary art, he discovered icons and traditional Christian images along his own spiritual journey. He then studied Orthodox theology and iconology at the University of Sherbrooke. His carvings have been commissioned by churches, bishops, priests and laypeople in the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia. Jonathan is also a writer and public speaker, giving workshops and conferences all around North America, as well as teaching icon carving with hexameron. Is that the right pronunciation? Hexameron. Hexameron. Through his YouTube channel and podcast, The Symbolic World, he also furthers the conversation on symbolism, meaning and patterns. Dr. Richard Smith did his undergraduate work at the University of California in Berkeley, his Ph.D. in system science and his dissertation on generalized information theory. In addition, he has studied complexity science, neural networks, genetic algorithms, dynamical systems and systems thinking. In addition to being an entrepreneur, helping people be better investors, he is also president of the Philosophia Institute Foundation, which represents the work of Dr. Wolfgang Smith. So, gentlemen, I welcome you. I’m eager to get started on this conversation. Since you gentlemen are meeting each other for the first time, I thought it might be helpful to start with Dr. Wolfgang Smith talking a bit about the icon that represents your concept of the tripartite cosmos. And then we can follow that by Jonathan talking a bit about an icon or icons that are important to him. So then I thought we could use this discussion of icons to get into a wider discussion of symbolism and modernity. Does that sound OK? Very good. Let’s get to it. So, Dr. Smith, Want me to share the icon? Yes, yes, for sure. So let me try to explain the idea of the icon. I should say that I’m basically a Platonist. And so this icon could be regarded as a Platonist icon. The ontological idea is this. Platonism, as well as I think the major metaphysical traditions of antiquity, have conceived of this integral cosmos as tripartite. This, I believe, is a very important idea, which has been largely lost even in academic circles and needs to be revived. So what are then these three basic components or levels of the cosmos? Well, starting at the lowest, what I call the corporeal world. This is the world as we normally experience it in our waking state. So it is a world subject to two conditions, two bounds, namely space and time. So the corporeal world is a spatial temporal world. Now, on the other end of the spectrum, namely the avid tunnel, you have a realm. I call it the avid tunnel, which is subject neither to space nor to time. So this is a state implicit in Platonist philosophy. And I think actually implicit in all the great philosophies of the world in one way or another. And between these two extremes, you have something called the intermediary world, which is subject to time, but not to space. Now, let me say that in certain parts of the world, these ideas have still been current in my day, but in the West, in the Western world, this is long forgotten. But I have focused upon this trichotomy and I have found that it is remarkably fruitful as a metaphysical principle. It sheds light on many things that otherwise we would not be able to grasp. And let me point out immediately that this tripartite division of the macrocosm is reflected in man himself and the anthropos, because the anthropos is likewise tripartite. In traditional terms, this is a tripartition into corpus, animus, spiritus, body, soul and spirit, intellect. So that this icon applies to the microcosm as well as to the macrocosm. We are tripartite beings in a tripartite universe. And so I’ve tried to revive this tripartite understanding of both man and cosmos and applied to various questions of interest, beginning with the philosophy of physics. The philosophy of physics is greatly or deeply impacted by this idea of the tripartite cosmos. To give just one example, in a sense the most striking of all, it can be rigorously affirmed that the mere existence of the intermediary domain, in other words, the existence of a domain subject to time but not to space, has profound implications for physics. And in fact, it enables one on a rigorous ontological basis to prove the impossibility of Einsteinian physics. And it’s very easy to see actually, because if you have an intermediary domain, you evidently have a globally defined concept of simultaneity. And as every physicist will understand, if in relativity theory you do not have a globally defined concept of simultaneity, so very clearly the tripartite cosmos invalidates Einsteinian physics. So I mentioned this as an example that ontology does have something to say even on a scientific basis. So these are the ideas I’ve been developing and they have implications, as you might expect, not only to physics but to many domains of primary interest. So let’s just suffice for an introduction. Thank you, Dr. Smith. So Jonathan, would you like to share a screen and show something? Well, I might have a question just about the icon. So in the image that was shown, so the centre would be the spiritual, the line would be the intermediary, and the periphery would be the corporeal. Is that the right understanding? Exactly, Jonathan. That’s exactly right. Okay, and so do you project this icon into three-dimensional space in the sense of a mountain, let’s say, or a pyramid with the point at the summit representing a connection of some kind, to see it like this if you flipped it? Have you thought about it that way in any manner? I think it would weaken the iconographic effect. All right. So, okay, so do you want me to… So I might want to bring up one other thing that Dr. Smith didn’t mention here, if I’m not presuming too much, Wolfgang. In your book, Physics and Vertical Causation, you talk about the straight edge in the compass and how the construction enters the picture and bestows a dynamic aspect in addition to its static form. A circle thus becomes something more than a closed circular arc. It comes to be perceived as a circular arc swept out by a compass, which, as you mentioned later on in the book, it performs the unlikely feat of a circular arc. So, in the book, it performs the unlikely feat of bringing time into the picture because as the compass sweeps out the arc, it’s actually bringing time into the picture. Would you like to comment on that, Wolfgang? Well, let me just say that I was thinking especially of the Platonist School. The Platonists seemed to have been very, very fascinated with geometry, which they regarded as actually a tool in the comprehension of metaphysics. And they thought of geometry as concerned with geometric construction. In other words, they were not interested in regarding a geometric figure or diagram simply as that. They regarded it as something to be constructed with the two geometric instruments, the straight edge and the compass. And I don’t want to say too much about that because it actually leads into very difficult questions. It’s not an easy subject, but I sense that these meditations, if you will, these Platonist meditations on geometry as they understood it, were deeply meaningful in a metaphysical sense. And in particular, the understanding of time was related to the figure of the compass. For example, when Plato says time is a moving image of eternity, I think to make this somehow graspable, the Platonist here is thinking of actually a compass sweeping out the circle. And incidentally, in this regard, let me say that the traditional Platonist view of time is circular. So let this be all for a first introduction to these Platonist ideas. They are difficult, but in my opinion, tremendously meaningful for an understanding of metaphysics. And I might add, my experience of this icon is that before really understanding this icon, I was stuck in the outer shell of this reality. And so all my work in academia, in science, in artificial intelligence, in technology, et cetera, was an attempt to try to understand the whole of reality by only being able to examine the outer edge of reality. Right? And actually, science isn’t even dealing with the outer edge of this icon here. It’s dealing with kind of the quantitative attributes of the outer edge of this icon. And so to have that aha, right, to learn about Wolfgang’s work and then realize kind of how we got to this point of only considering the quantitative attributes of this outer edge of this icon as being kind of the parts from which we are to then recreate the whole, that was a very big reveal to me. Right? And so then once you kind of acknowledge that, if you do agree with that and you say, whoa, that sounds right, you know, then you do have to say, well, what is the real structure of the whole? And so this icon comes out of traditional wisdom traditions throughout mankind and speaks of these three parts, right? The kind of outer edge, the eva tunnel or the spiritus and then kind of this middle world of soul, I think, and psyche. And it’s just a wonderful way to begin to re-approach our understanding and try to make sense of things. Yes. Jonathan? No, I think I understand the icon. I think the reason why I was pointing to the possibility of flipping it is mostly if we want, I think that if we want to use your image as a key, let’s say to sometimes to understanding sacred art, there are some moments where we would need to do that. You know, you know, in the symbolism of the cross, he traces this, he kind of does that where he creates the notion that the center of the circle can also be seen as an axis and that the periphery of the circle can be seen as a coil. And that would account for the relationship between the different microcosms and microcosms and how they kind of embed each other, embed themselves into each other. And so if I don’t know if maybe this could be an interesting possibility of showing maybe some traditional or some images from the Christian tradition and try to see how they can connect to this image. Would that make sense? One example, actually, of a three dimensional version of this would be a church itself. And so the Orthodox Church would have a dome with Christ at the top of the dome and then the circle moving down into a square. And so you would have the dome coming down being held by four pendentives. And the image that would be represented on those four pendentives would be the corners, which would be an extreme actually version of that circle or even a more embodied version of that circle down in the four manifestations of the one. And you’ll see that represented as the four evangelists or as the four beasts in Ezekiel. And so if you project that image into space, there are ways to account for other traditional forms like architecture, like some of the icons that exist in the church and also the iconographic programs that are in the church will have that form. So a good example, another example would be the dome itself. In traditional Byzantine churches, the dome represents the ascension itself. And so the earliest domes would have Christ up at the access point in the middle of the dome. And then around the periphery of the dome, you would have the mother of God, Mary, which would be directly under him. And then you would have the 12 disciples, which would be circling the dome. And so you have that relationship between the principle and its manifestation from Christ as the divine man into the 12 that has a cosmic aspect, but also has the notion of the body of the church itself. And so you can kind of see that manifested that way. So that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to see if you had thought about how you can project it that way, because I think that the icon or the image of the center and the periphery is obviously the most basic image to understand reality. And I use it in different guises all the time. So I don’t know much about science. And so it’s hard for me to know, like, let’s say why it invalidates Einsteinian physics, but I definitely see how that structure is. You can use the center and periphery as a structure to explain everything. You can basically explain the entire cosmos with that basic structure. I guess I’ve been accustomed to differentiate iconography from sacred art and sacred architecture at large. I certainly agree completely with what you say about sacred architecture, but I always regarded iconography as a little part of that. I always regarded icons as two dimensional. Am I wrong there? You know more about this than I do. Well, I think so. I think it depends on if you understand that icons are not divorced from the sacred space. That is, icons were developed as iconographic programs. The idea of the panel icon, there’s nothing wrong with the panel icon, but in the Byzantine and in the Romanesque period or in the Byzantine period, the icon would have been first and foremost an experience as spatial relationships in the church. So certain images would appear in certain places within the church. So the Eastern apse would have an image in the Byzantine tradition, for example, the Eastern apse would have an image of the Mother of God with pre-incarnate Christ in her center. And then on the western side of the church, you would have, for example, the falling asleep of the Virgin, where now Christ is holding the soul of the Mother of God in her hands. Now, if you look at the image of the death of the Mother of God or the falling asleep and you see Christ holding the soul of the Virgin in his hands, it’s very confusing if you don’t understand that it was originally understood in space as an answer to the Eastern apse and the Mother of God with Christ in her center. So it’s like a reflection of east and west, sunrise, sunset, right? This kind of inversion that happens at the beginning and at the end. So I think that in order to really understand icons, we have to remember that they were mostly spatially experienced inside iconographic programs. And this from the time of Constantine, right? Right at the outset, the earliest churches that were created in the Constantinian period were used this apocalyptic imagery in the church architecture and then also integrating gospel stories and different images. So although, yes, the image itself, if you look at it, it is in some ways a vertical, right? It’s a vertical relationship. There isn’t much going on in the spatial. They are meant to inhabit a 3D space. I see. Yeah. Jonathan, one of the things that I was talking with Wolfgang about before you joined us was the difference between traditional art and then art after the Renaissance, when more and more perspective came in, more emphasis on form, more emphasis on depth in the image. And I was just guessing because I’m no expert on iconography, but I was guessing that if we go back to his icon of the eternal being a place with no time and space and then the intermediary being a place with only time, it seems to me that iconography fits into the intermediary in the sense that it’s mostly two-dimensional, so there’s not a sense of space within the work itself, but there is a sense of time because some of your icons show all of time at one time. But in a two-dimensional image. And I don’t know if that’s at all interesting idea. Yeah, well, for sure, icons, one of the advantages of icons is the possibility of showing simultaneity, you know, and it’s the difference between a story and an image. A story will string events in a pattern, right, in a line, whereas in an icon you can experience the entire story in a simultaneous image and then the spatial relationships of the elements will be meaningful rather than how they fit in sequence of time. So it is a play between space and time because obviously an image is a fully spatial image. I mean, it’s a spatial experience because you’re experiencing it, but you’re also it’s a window into simultaneity because you get the possibility. Maybe I can show the images. I did make a few images last year, maybe some of them two years ago, which were trying to encompass. I call them images of everything or cosmic images would try to encompass all of this narrative into one single image. Do you need to give me? Can I share? Do you think? Yes, please do. OK, let’s see. I haven’t carved these yet. They’re just designs. And so these are two efforts that I made to create images or cosmic images, which would try to encompass, let’s say, entire narratives into single images. So on the left, you have this image of the cosmic mountain, the mountain of paradise. And it’s also a commentary in some ways on St. Ephraim’s hymns of paradise and also St. Gregory of Nice’s life of Moses. All of these these types of structures coming in at the same time. So if you look at the image, you will see, of course, this different characters appear several times in the same image. You have Adam and Eve appearing at the tree and then Adam and Eve covering themselves with the fig leaves and then Adam and Eve covered with the garments of skin. And then you also have an increase of division from the singularity of the cross into a splitting in half until you have Adam and Eve completely separated. And then the thorns, which have multiplicity, let’s say, multiplicity itself as the thorns. And then you have, of course, Adam and Eve transformed ultimately into the Mother of God and St. John up at the tree of life, which is shown as the cross. And so these these types of image. So you also have so St. Ephraim talks about how the rivers of these four rivers talked about this idea of the dome and how the dome moves into four into a square, how the circle moves into a square. And you see that in in the image of paradise itself. So if you if you can represent it, you get a sense of this this dome, which becomes a square with the wall of paradise. So it’s also a church and you have these four currents which come down and which are mitigated as they get further and further away from the from the source, let’s say. And so these are these are a few you see it. So in now the other one is, of course, the image of the flood. And so you have this, let’s say, microcosm of this. So this image here of paradise is now inserted in the background as the just the tree and the mountain, the wall and the four rivers. And the flood comes right up to the to the the wall of paradise. So basically all of this here in the first image is now what’s represented here. So it’s also a way to kind of show how these microcosms fit into each other. And then the arc, of course, becomes a microcosm as well of the hierarchy, which we see in the different images. And so, you know, with the birds, the birds above and then the animals below and then death, of course, at the bottom and residues of civilization, residues of religion, residues of animality, all these residues which are in the mouth of Haiti, which is this is down here below. These are all pulled out of, of course, traditional images. This is it’s a condensation of traditional images, but all of the elements are taken from different iconographic strains. So let’s say the mouth of hell or the mouth of death is a very ancient image that we find in iconography. Same with the Leviathan. This is, of course, the Leviathan, but it’s also Jonah’s monster. There are different elements to to to look at how I tried to pull it all into one into into very condensed images. So what do you hope people what what impact do you hope this will have on people who? Well, these particular images, I think what they do for people is they first of all surprise them because they they at first get a sense that there’s a coherence, but they can’t access it rationally right away. And then slowly, if they know their Bible, this is of course it’s mostly useful for people that know their Bible. If they know their Bible, then things will start to appear and start to kind of take form and and make sense. And then they’ll start to realize that, for example, you know, the crown of thorns, which is around the the paradise here is also lifted up by Christ as being this ultimate, you know, apophatic image above. And then people start to notice how the image comes together and to realize the deep coherence of the biblical story, the deep coherence of these images. And so, yes, that is what I’m hoping to accomplish with these images. Just a kind of personal story as I have or experience as I’ve gone deeper into Christianity myself and I look at just the symbolism of the cross. Right. It’s amazing how much has opened to me from just contemplating that icon. Whereas before before I was open to a religious life, I guess I had dismissed that icon entirely. Right. Even though I had been raised nominally Christian. But to me, that’s what is really kind of the burning question, right, is if this approach that we have to, you know, knowledge and understanding today, this kind of science physics based in time sequential cause and effect versus really engaging with symbols and and the reality of the symbols themselves. Right. As I go deeper into that, it’s just opening up a whole new world of new worlds of understanding that were kind of, you know, excluded before, because these were just regarded as mythological and something from an earlier time and not really of value to the modern man. Yeah. Yeah. Let me let me just here. Maybe I can show this image and show how it connects to Dr Smith is circle and periphery. This is of course this is now it’s a carving that I’ve done of Christ pulling St. Peter from the waters. And I think that in this image we see a very, very beautiful version of what Wolfgang is talking about in terms of the relationship between center periphery and something we could call memory. There are different ways to represent the intermediary world. Memory is definitely one of them. We have, of course, Christ, who represents in this in this image represents the center. And then Peter, who is falling into the periphery. He’s falling into the periphery because he forgets his connection to Christ. And and he he thinks that it’s on his own. He thinks that he can do it all by himself, that he can walk on the waters without being connected to the incarnation. And because of that, that’s why he falls. And in and in calling out to Christ, right, in remembering God, remembering Christ, remembering the heart, all these images we find in traditional parlance. Then he is able to be pulled back out of the chaos and stand firmly on the. On the multiplicity that is the world. And in this image, I wanted to show how Christ, the way that he engages with multiplicity is he transforms it into glory. And so when his foot touches, when his foot touches the waters, it actually sends golden spirals out from the place where he touches the the periphery, we could say. Let me just interject, Jonathan, that these carvings are perfectly beautiful. They’re amazing. Thank you. And I’ve never seen this style of carving. It’s is is that unique to you? Well, it’s based on I mean, it’s based on Byzantine style. But of course, it you know, we how can I say this? We we’re not idiosyncratic. We’re I mean, we’re not nostalgic for the past. I’m not trying to make pastiche images of ancient art. I’m trying to create images that both connect with the past and with the ancient forms, but also have enough element of of surprise to make you to not make you ignore it. Let’s say or to not make you walk by and think that it’s. Let me show you. Here’s an image of Jonah, which is I chose these images because they’re related to the question of the of the icon. And so here again, we have a similar image as the image of St. Peter, which is that Jonah is being eaten by the monster. He’s being eaten by this Leviathan here that’s in the water by the sea monster. And then he says from the belly of death, I cry, I cried and you heard my voice. And so from the belly of this this chaos and multiplicity, he remembers God and therefore is brought out of the waters into the city. Beautiful. So we can see the the multiplicity with the corporeal world and the Christ or God with the eternal world here. From Wolfgang’s icon. Yes, well, it’s to me the way that I see the icon, I see it really as a as a fractal structure. And so it represents itself relatively at different levels. And so, for example, let’s say you can let’s say if you have. Let’s say you have a group, a team or a nation or something, then you can see how that structure will represent itself. And there’ll be stand ins. Let’s say a stand in for the center would be the king. Of course, the king is not spiritual. The king is an embodied person. But because it manifests itself fractally, then you can understand that there are images which are more appropriate to to see it in its highest form. And so, of course, in this image, you don’t see the center. It’s up here, right? It’s up in what he’s looking at. It’s up where he’s looking at up here. Sometimes it’s represented as a. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen this, which is the which is the divine glory. It’s a divine darkness, actually. And so usually you’ll have a dark, a dark semicircle at the top of many images and that it moves from darkness into light. So it really is this kind of apophatic image of the transcendent. So here’s a here’s a hostile version of the of this question. Where where now it is in some ways. This this connection here between the center and the periphery, which is held by the intermediary being. And is, of course, the source of it is the transcendent. The transcendent up here is now more of a hostile image. It’s more of a pushing down or preventing it from devouring the devouring the world. So there obviously there are different ways to represent that. Sometimes it’s a beneficial relationship. Sometimes it can be a hostile relationship, depending on the different the things you want to emphasize. So, Jonathan, is that St. Michael? Yes. Yeah, it’s a Michael killing the Leviathan. Yeah, you see that in Revelation, it says St. Michael, the great the great dragon was was pushed down by St. Michael and the Leviathan. Well, I wanted to ask a clarifying question of Dr. Wolfgang Smith. In order to ask the question, I’m going to read a quote of yours from another one of your books, Dr. Smith. Do you want me to stop the share? Maybe you’ll be good. No, you can leave it on there. It’s beautiful to look at. The eternal realm is inherently the cosmos in its integrality before it is fragmented into innumerable bits and pieces through the imposition of temporal and spatial bounds. Yet despite this partition into spatial temporal fragments, every corporeal entity X remains undivided in its very being. This gets at identity, gets at multiplicity. But it also made me wonder about the eternal realm. Is there anything above the eternal realm or is the eternal realm the the aboveness? That’s a wonderful question. The answer that I would give is this. I am presupposing a categorical distinction between God and the creation. My ontology is a cosmic ontology. In other words, I do not engage in any kind of theology. I engage in straight cosmic ontology. So the cosmos is one thing and God is infinitely above the cosmos. But I don’t write about God. I write about the cosmos. So your icon is the cosmos, but God is infinitely other. God is infinitely other. He’s not part of the…the icon refers to the cosmos, not to God. So, Jonathan, maybe that answers your question about why it’s flat rather than a mountain. Because God is at the top of the mountain. God is above the top of the mountain. Let’s put it that way. So, yeah, now we can stop screen sharing here and maybe we could go on to talk about this issue of the symbolism of the cross, because I found this quote from Jean Barella quite fascinating. Jonathan, are you familiar with Jean Barella? Yeah. OK, so in his book Symbolism and Reality, he’s talking about what he learned from René Guénon. And he’s and Barella says, to the basic cosmological question, what is the reality of the physically real? Materialism is incapable of providing the least response by wanting to reduce the historical physically real to its space time conditioning and material substantiality. Far from saving it or issuing its consistency or rooting it in being and guaranteeing its objective existence, they positively destroy it since they subject it to fragmentation, to the indefinite divisibility of space, time and matter. If the cross of Christ is only made of two pieces of wood, then it vanishes in the scattering and inconstancy of an electron mist. So I wondered if the three of you would discuss the symbolism of the cross. If it’s not just particles, if it’s not just wood, what are all the aspects of the symbolism of the cross? I mean, I think what just what I what really stood out to me about that Barella quote is in the first sentence, right? About that the can you read that first sentence over again? Sure. To the basic cosmological question, what is the reality of the physically real? Yes. Materialism is incapable of providing the least response. Exactly. And therein lies the rub, right? That’s kind of where we’re stuck because we’re trying to use materialism to interrogate everything when, meanwhile, it can’t even answer the question of its own existence. And so we have to look beyond that, which is why I think we’re all here. And I think I think that the cross, just in terms of geometry, it is the place where the identity of something and its multiple elements meet. That’s the that’s the best way to understand it, where the vertical and horizontal meet. That is that place of communion, that place of love, where the multiple can become one without annulling its multiplicity. And that’s the mystery, I think, that people are faced with now is that we perceive and we we can identify unity at different levels and different objects. But we can simultaneously realize that those unities are made up of multiplicities. This is true. You know, it happens at every level all the way down and it seems to go all the way up. And this is, of course, the problem that a lot of fields are trying to account for, deal with today. They come up with terms like emergence, which I love how David Bentley Hart said that emergence just means magic. It’s like magic happens here. And then all of a sudden we have one just because you have a word doesn’t mean you understand the process. And so this is, of course, the mystery, which I do believe that more traditional visions of of ontological hierarchies answers and the mystery of the cross in terms of Christianity. And it’s something which I find which is difficult to fully pierce is that it seems with Christ is showing to us is that what’s at the center is something like sacrifice and it’s something like self sacrifice. If that seems to be what happens at the middle. So that’s what I can propose at the outset. I very much like what you just said, Jonathan, about the cross that the most salient point is this point of intersection, the idea that the vertical, which in a way represents God and the horizontal, which represents the creation, that they can intersect. And there are many ways I think of interpreting that. But beginning with the idea that the incarnation itself represents an intersection of these two dimensions. And incidentally, let me just remark on this, that you mentioned Rene Guénon, and you said I’m a perennialist. Let me say that this is something that the perennials don’t do do not understand. They do not understand this intersection. Because the perennials are essentially inspired by the Vedic tradition, which is the oldest in the world and the very venerable tradition indeed. But it is very, very different from the Christian. The two are not the same. And I think it is very, very important for the Christians to understand the uniqueness of the Christian vision of the Christian revelation. And it lies in this intersection. This intersection is nowhere represented in the Vedic. It is not there. This is also why the idea of salvation is nowhere in the Vedic tradition. The Nirvana is a blowing out. It is a union with God, undoubtedly, but it is a union in which the human is incinerated. And the uniqueness of Christianity is something that the Vedic people don’t understand. Rene Guénon never understood it. Chuan never understood it. And it is true that I was sort of impressed by the perennialist school. I read a lot of the works and I was inspired by it. But eventually I realized that the Christian tradition transcends that in a completely fundamental way. And that the Christian eschaton of salvation is incomprehensible, in fact, in the Vedic tradition. If you try to explain that to the most educated sadhus in India, they will not understand what you’re saying. I think your insight, I mean, I think the insight you’ve had is the same that I had at some point and also came to love Christianity and realized that, you know, a lot of people have said that you just didn’t understand Christianity. Maybe he also didn’t have the right sources. He didn’t know or he had bad, he had obviously had bad experiences also with the Catholic Church at the time of his own, in his own experience. But I think you’re right that what we realize in Christianity, what we have is instead of seeing multiplicity as Maya or ultimately as illusion, we rather see how its connection to the center and to the divine is what fills it with reality. That feeling of reality is real. It’s not an illusion. It’s not something that’s evanescent and which will disappear when we go up into heaven, but rather it is a kind of solidifying of the world in a good way, making it glorious. And that’s what the heavenly Jerusalem ultimately represents is the idea that no, all these things can participate, if they’re properly aligned, can participate in the glory of God and will be full of glory and not in the way that it will dematerialize them, but rather in the manner in which it makes them more real. And you see that I think C.S. Lewis had great insight about that as well. He talks about, you know, the idea of the blades of grass in paradise being too sharp for us, something like that. Like they’re actually too real for us. And you see in the Church Fathers, they say in the eschaton, St. Paul will be more St. Paul and St. Peter will be more St. Peter as they enter into more and more of their theosis and becoming God more and more. They also become more of themselves. Very well put. And this is something that is completely uncomprehended in the perennialist worldview. They have no comprehension of it at all. And in fact, they look upon Christianity through Vedantic eyes. And through Vedantic eyes, you will never see Christianity. It’s invisible once you put these spectacles on. And so this is, I think, a very important point, which needs to be explained to interested people, because there’s a tremendous confusion about this in the world today. Most of the so-called intellectuals the world over are, in a sense, perennialists today. And this is very unfortunate. Yeah. And I think Christianity ultimately is in some ways a better solution to the problem of or the question of non-duality. It actually presents a fuller solution to that problem, right? Which is that we do not deny the infinite transcendence of God, but in that infinite transcendence, all of reality can participate. I don’t see how you can find a better solution to the problem of duality. Rather than wanting to extinguish manifestation and see it as some kind of delusion or illusion or evanescent, some kind of mist that will be scattered once things return to God. It’s like, well, then what are those then? What is their purpose? What purpose do they serve? We literally could say, you know, Christ saves the world. That’s right. Exactly. And he saves it through love. It’s salvation itself, right? And you can see that love. And as somebody who’s been through the science and the Western education, right, and the materialism, which can’t explain itself and ends up being empty and nothing. And then the Hindu traditions and kind of all of the Eastern traditions that basically pursue that kind of Maya extinction path to actual salvation, right? That Christ saves the world, literally restores substance, meaning to the world. And I would add not just through sacrifice, but through love. Yeah. Yeah. Love becomes the binding element for love. And where else do you learn about love? In the same way that you do from Christianity, right? And so to go back to Karen’s original question about the symbolism of the cross, right? It is the symbol of love and that love is what makes things real. Yeah, that’s not me. Some people think that’s just a sappy statement, but I think it’s the deepest metaphysical statement you can make because love is the coexistence of unity and multiplicity. That’s what love is because if you love something, you don’t want it to vanish. You don’t want it to disappear. You want it to exist as different from you and then be bound to it at the same time. And so it’s actually it’s one of the most beautiful ways to understand how all the creation can coexist with God and within God. So you said love is the unity of? Love is the coexistence of multiplicity and unity. Yes, I’d like to jump in here just a minute because before I forget what you said, Jonathan, you said that the connection to the divine is what fills it with reality, solidifying the world in a good way. And I just love that language because I’ve been meditating for a long time on that verse. Faith is the substance of things hoped for because my belief is that Bible is truer than true. It’s so deeply true that it’s not a scientific book, but when you when you read the scripture, it says, though deep scientific truths were buried in there for us to find when we when we matured enough to find them. And to me, faith is the substance of things hoped for is exactly what you said. The divine fills fills it with reality. So this thing hoped for is the thing that is is posited or is is the vision that you have for something. And then faith fills that with reality. It fills it with substance. It it fleshes it out, so to speak. So a while back, I did a video on the quality of the sacrifice, thinking about sacrifice, not just as how we think of like dying on the cross or giving up your time for others or some. Well, yeah, OK. But the idea of opportunity costs that every everything that you do means a whole lot of other things that you don’t do. Right. So the quality of that sacrifice determines the nature of what comes into being as a result of that sacrifice. Right. That made me ask the question. So what exactly is it that we are measuring when we measure? Because I’ve been stuck on this measurement problem in physics for a long time. And I really think that the measurement problem is deeply tied to sacrifice. And I haven’t haven’t thought my way all the way through that. But I would love to have a physicist’s point of view on that. So Wolfgang, if you could, you don’t have to answer right now. But if you could just give that some thought, because you talk quite a bit in your book about how we are meeting out, we are measuring out time, we are measuring out all these things in in in everything that we do. So I think measurement and sacrifice and somehow this idea that Jonathan said about our connection to the divine is what fills the world with reality. I think it is very necessary, very important to represent Christianity in this current debate, because it seems to me the perennials and they are represented by very, very brilliant people like Guénon and the They have been, as it were, winning the argument and no one has stood up to represent the Christian side. And I am completely convinced that in the conception of the triune God, we have the representation of the divine. And I think that in the conception of the triune God, we have the resolution of this dichotomy of Atma Maya. If you if you read what the perennials have to say on this subject, you find that they cannot get beyond this dichotomy, Atma Maya. And so, for example, in practices means that if you want to actually attain to reality, attain to the supreme wisdom, you have to, of course, give up Maya. And the Christian way is much more subtle than that, because the Christian ontology is based not upon two, but upon three. And this is where salvation comes into play. The Christian conception of the triune God somehow saves you from this Vedantic dichotomy. And this is something that needs to be communicated to the intellectual world today, because as I see it, they are fascinated by the perennialist message, which is a In a sense, it’s a denial of the Christic revelation in favor of the Vedic. Yeah, when we if we understand the story of Christ, we’ll see that one of the things that Christ is doing pretty much all the time in his story is he’s constantly transforming death into glory. That’s the best way to understand it. And so he’s filling the aspects. It’s a narrative that Crown of Thorns is the best version of that, because the Crown of Thorns is, of course, the consequence of the falls. It is multiplicity itself, or it’s like hostile multiplicity. We could say all these spiky things that pierce us. And then Christ is able to transform that into a crown. And then you realize that that’s what Christ is actually doing all the time, which is why he goes to the margin all the time. Why he engages with the Samaritan woman, for example. Here’s a woman who’s had several husbands to the extent that now she’s living in an illegitimate relationship with a man. And so she’s a whore for all intents and purposes and narrative constructs. And Christ is saying, I will marry you. I will be your seventh husband and I will give you water that will flow into eternity. And so he takes her low state and brings it up. And he does that constantly, whether it’s the woman with the issue of blood, whether it’s resurrection itself. That’s what resurrection is. It is the transformation of death into glory. So the whole story of Christ, not just as an abstract image of the incarnation, but in the story, we see how Christ is constantly showing us how the world, even death itself, can be full and transformed into light. So, yeah. Bravo, Jonathan. I love it. Beautiful. So, Karen, I wanted to understand your question just a little better about sacrifice. I’m sorry. I got so flustered looking at all of you because your brains are all so much bigger than mine. But Karen, I have an insight in your question. If you want to, maybe I can see. It’s that without an identity, you can’t measure anything. You don’t measure things without identity. Identity is pre-measurement presupposes identity. We presuppose telos and then presupposes a bound, something that binds it. And those are the two sacrifices, right? They’re the sacrifices of Yom Kippur. There’s a sacrifice up towards identity, towards that, the source of identity. And then there’s a scapegoat sacrifice of cutting off that which doesn’t belong within the identity. And so without those two sacrifices, without giving up all your best up towards the identity and without cutting off that which doesn’t belong, you can’t measure. There’s no possibility of measuring. And so measurement is that it has to be bound up in the notion of sacrifice. That is so fascinating because, I mean, one of the reasons I came to the conclusion I came to is because of my work as an artist and in creativity, thinking about the elements and principles of design and how boundary is so important in the way that you establish. Well, first of all, boundaries are so important in the way that you establish your work. You have to have limitations and constraints before you can even get started because there’s just too many choices otherwise. So the boundary sets a place within which creativity can exist. And then one of the things that we always discovered when we’re working is that sometimes you’re painting and you realize there’s this one beautiful little spot over here in this corner and you don’t want to lose that spot. But you need to you need to repaint. So you need to give up that precious thing in order to get to get to the next step, to get to the next level. And this is like what you’re talking about, the down, cutting off the scapegoat, you know, getting rid of that scapegoat thing in order to go up towards the identity. You have to cut off the other part. And I think also that really resonates with me, Jonathan, in the whole area of addiction, because as I’ve talked about many times on my channel, I have a problem with just giving in all the time. Oh, just a little bite of this won’t hurt a little bit. But it actually does hurt. And so because part of what it does is it it leaves this way out so that you don’t have to look up. But so I’ve understood that part. But what you’re saying here about the down, I think that’s the part that I haven’t gotten a handle on, the cutting off. So could you could you say that again about the up towards the identity and the down is? Well, it’s really the Yom Kippur sacrifice. That’s really the you could say there are two goats. There’s one pure goat, which is offered up to God and then becomes the meal that we eat. So right. So we give up and then we get a blessing. But we also get cohesion because we eat the meal together. So we eat the goat and we become we share the same body because we sacrifice up. But then there’s also an aspect of the Yom Kippur sacrifice, which is putting your sins on the goat and chasing it out of the of the city. And so that is the cutting off of that which doesn’t belong within an identity. Right. So I’ve said it. I joke about it all the time. But you can’t make an automobile out of gerbils. Right. That is a scapegoat aspect. There’s some things that you have to eliminate that it almost happens naturally that are eliminated depending on the telos that you’re aiming at. Now, of course, in the case of Christ, it’s important to understand that Christ is both goats. Christ is both at the same time. Right. That’s one of the things that makes it so hard to understand his story. Christ is both the sacrifice of good odor, which goes up and the goat, which is sacrificed outside of Jerusalem, the one that is cast out. He does both. He joins those two sacrifices into one and a transcendent sacrifice. I’d just like to make a quick connection between one of the things you said, Jonathan, and Wolfgang’s work, which is you can’t have measurement without identity. Right. Yeah. And that is, in essence, how Wolfgang resolves the measurement problem from quantum physics. Right. Like measurement by itself as an abstract standalone. What entity substance doesn’t exist. Right. And so to just try to answer these questions that can’t be answered by measurement with measurement. Right. And then to use the hand waving terms of emergence and consciousness, et cetera, to say, you know, well, if you just get enough of them together, you know, if our computers get fast enough and our data collection gets vast enough, we’re going to see it. You know, it’s going to pop out. But no measurement can’t happen without identity. I like to say of Wolfgang’s work, my one sentence summary is the measure cannot be measured. And that is, you know, really what turned me from finally going, OK, thank you. I no longer have to seek all the answers in this domain, which is not capable of giving them to me. Time to go look somewhere else. And it’s crazy how people some it’s so difficult because you say that. But there are thousands and thousands of people which will hear you say that and not know what you’re talking about. Yeah, I keep telling people identities are given. Identities are a gift from heaven. They come down from above. Obviously, I do it on purpose to really push that. It’s like you cannot get to identities from below. It is not possible. It is absolutely impossible. They they they’re a revelation of God. There’s no other way to encounter them. They come down from heaven and bound phenomena together into into unities. There’s no way around it. There was just a little this week. There was a big or in the past couple of weeks, there was a big story out about self-driving cars. Right. And there was about how here we are 10 years later and they can’t make left turns. Right. So because we have this other dimension of our experience, Wolfgang might call it irreducible wholeness. You’re calling it identity. We’re able to do things that this strictly, you know, in time and space modeling can’t do. Right. The simplest things like turn left. Yeah. And then you see this video of Elon Musk saying literally for the past seven years, we’re going to have fully self-driving cars next year. By next year, you know, you guys 90 percent of your time, you’re not going to have your hands on the wheel. Right. And what’s interesting about it can happen. What’s fascinating about the A.I. This has been really fascinating to me to notice is that what they’re doing, they’re inverting the relationship. Right. And so what they’re actually doing, inverting the matrix, it’s an upside down matrix. What they’re doing is they’re farming, they’re farming for intelligence. So the way they train the A.I. actually is is human selecting. Yes. They have all these humans selecting. And that is what provides intelligence to the A.I. And so whatever intelligence the A.I. has will always come from human selection, telling them that’s the good one. That’s the bad one. That’s the good behavior. That’s the bad behavior because the machine can never get there on its own. They’re modeling intelligence. And the intelligence comes from humans. And all the algorithms are run by human selection. And I don’t want to get us off track, but just I think it’s also interesting how that paradigm, you know, that view of the world allows a very few people to kind of be the authorities that tells everybody else, you know, how things work and what’s going to happen. Yeah. So Elon Musk can say for seven years now, trust me, we’re going to have self-driving cars next year. Right. And more money is raised, more capital is raised, more power is accumulated. And and it’s just not true. That does bring up an interesting point about how in modernity, there is this idea that we can impose identity on something. We can choose a new identity or impose identity on something. And as Jonathan said, identity is a gift. I mean, John, you and John for Vicky talk a lot about the cup, the cup or Wolfgang talks about the apple. The apple has all this multiplicity. I mean, if you started taking an apple apart, it would be endless number of particles that are involved in an apple. And not just the physical particles, but all the things that you could imagine that an apple could do or be or the way that it gets taken up into our bodies. It’s just completely combinatorial explosive. And yet and yet there is an apple and yet it is red and yet it has a taste and a fragrance. And and we crave them. So there’s also an aspect of identity that I wondered if you guys could talk about a little bit, which is coherence over time. Because one of the theories I’ve gotten extremely interested in recently, not because I think it’s true, but because I think there are a lot of metaphysical concepts that can be thought about inside this theory. And that is Stephen Wolfram’s theory of a new fundamental physics, which I don’t need to go into here. But but in there, he does talk about this idea of coherence over time and how identities persist. And so I wondered if you guys could talk about that a little bit. I mean, my arm can move through space and it’s the same arm, whether it’s whether the particles are in this configuration or this configuration or they’re over here or it’s moving through time or my body is moving through time. Why is it that that I consist? What is the name of the person who whom you’re referring to now? Stephen Wolfram. If you’re interested, Wolfgang, I can send you a lot of material. It’s a beautiful theory because I’ll just give you a very simple basic idea that space rather than just being a container, space is actually made of particles. Each particle is a node. Each node is connected to the other particles through an edge. So everything is in relationship. And time is the updating of the changing of the confirmation of this. So I’ll have to send you some graphics of it. But the first icon that he shows for his very quickly draw it out. Here’s the first icon that he shows. So this is the beginning. There’s a rule. The rule executes and creates this. And then when the rule executes the next time, it’ll take this edge and reproduce this thing. And then it’ll take an edge from that new one and reproduce it. And when you start reproducing this rule over and over and over again, you begin to get structures that look very much like structures, very complex, fascinating, beautiful structures that look very much like structures in the world. Now, he’s thinking computationally, but not computationally like the computations of a computer, but computationally as in choices over time. Executing a rule consists of choices over time. In the same way that you talked Wolfgang earlier about Mozart getting the idea of the world, he’s thinking of the world as a whole. And then in the same way that you talked Wolfgang earlier about Mozart getting a symphony all at once in his head. But then over time, he begins to take that apart and lay out the different parts for the various instruments and then get all the music written. Then the music is basically like a set of symbols that the musicians read and they reconstitute the symphony. So they’re computationally reconstituting that symphony. So when Stephen Wolfram is talking about a computational universe, that’s the way I picture it. It’s more like this rule is executing a symphonic structure. And the thing that I have been playing around a little bit is what if the one rule is love? What if love is the one rule that’s always recalibrating when we mess up and screw things up and start going the wrong direction? Love just institutes another recalibration and always making a path for us. Not fixing things, but maybe putting obstacles in our path that will allow us to learn what we need to learn in order to move to the next step. I got fascinated with Jordan Peterson’s chapter on anomaly in Maps of Meaning. Jonathan, that’s where I started thinking about obstacles and how important they are in terms of growth, whether at our level or at the level of a cell or anyplace else, obstacles are like obstacles are the gift. Well, for sure, in the in the biblical story, you see something like that, which is you can see a manner in which let’s say love covers all faults, something like that. It may be the best way to understand it, where you you have a sense in which the breaking the breaking is a scandal. You have the fall, for example, but then what happens is God is constantly covering over and transforming the fall into into more, let’s say. And so let’s say a good example that I’ve used before is that you have the fall, you have Cain kills his brother because he kills his brother. Then he found civilization. Civilization brings war, brings chaos, brings the end of the world, basically. But then God uses the very tropes of building and of civilizations to build the Ark. And so the Ark becomes a manner in which all of this breaking down and multiplicity gets re brought brought back together into a microcosm, which then you know, traverses the chaos. And you see then that repeated in the image of the tabernacle and then the temple where the very tools of Cain read the very tools of civilizations are kind of recaptured and then brought in a manner that they manifest now a deeper love. And the final image, of course, is the heavenly Jerusalem, which saves Cain basically. Right. It’s like it’s it really is this beautiful loop right from the outset of the fall where Cain found the first city. And then we end with this image of the city which surrounds the garden. So you have the garden, you have Abel and Cain, you have the garden and the city. And this is the totality of what the process led to. And so the multiplicity appears as kind of can appear as a scandal. But then there’s a manner in which God is constantly filling that scandal with love and then and then compensating for it. Very, very interesting. Let me ask you this, Jonathan. My understanding of the art in the in the Orthodox tradition is that iconography, to be an iconographer is almost like being a deacon. I mean, it involves a certain spiritual connection. It’s not what you do just as an individual by yourself. You do it as a member of the church and there’s a spiritual side to it. And there are also certain rules that you need to obey. Is this still the way things are today? Which should be. Sadly, of course, we do live in the modern world where things are chaotic and people, let’s say, do whatever they want. But I would say that ideally, in my case, for example, I definitely ask for the blessing of my bishop. And he gave his blessing by giving me my first commission. It’s actually my bishop who gave me my first commission. There’s a manner in which, you know, even if it’s not done in official ways, like it’s not a sacrament, right, there’s no there’s no ritual to to decide who an iconographer will be. But there is a more organic manner in which iconographers and their work will be accepted into the church by receiving commissions, by by being asked to decorate churches, for example, which is usually the those are the shining examples of iconography in the church. And then the rules, there’s a language. It’s the best way to understand it. There’s a there’s an internal language like any poetic language or any musical language. There’s a there’s an internal language and it’s flexible. So, you know, you can you can make it consonant. If you make it too consonant, then it’s boring. Right. And if you if you make it too dissonant, then people don’t recognize it and don’t want to integrate it into the community. And so you find that balance of play between a kind of consonants with the that which has been given to you, but also a breath, let’s say of of freshness, which is related to you being a person and embodied person that’s living out your life. And so you you’ll see iconographers that tend more towards a kind of rigor ism. And then you’ll see iconographers which go wildly into experimentation. And you hope that ultimately, as the big ship of the church goes down, the goes down the river, that these things balance themselves out, let’s say. But the most extreme iconographers usually at some point will will will be ignored by the church or will will just be kind of set aside. Very interesting. I think this is an area in which the Orthodox Church has done better than the Catholic, because in the Catholic world, as I see it, iconography in the strict sense of the term has been lost more or less at the time of the Renaissance, when it was decided that geniuses like Michelangelo should be given free hands to decorate our churches. Trouble began because I strongly believe that if you look at Michelangelo’s paintings. Yeah, the creation. It’s a horrible image. It’s a horrible image. I mean, it is it is more like Greek mythology than Christianity. I mean, what you’re seeing is not Christ. You’re seeing Apollo. Yeah. And I think from who are the naked teenagers next to God in the creation? Like, who are these naked teenagers? Why? Why is this happening? Why do we look at this image? Kind of connected back. And in a sense, we have lost sacred art. Our art is no longer sacred. And this is a bad thing because in religion, everything should be sacred, even the ground you walk upon. So this has been a problem. And in this regard, we have a lot to learn from the Orthodox churches which have preserved these traditions, which are very important. There are some interesting places, traditions, cultures that have remained in their folk tradition seem to actually have been better at preserving the more iconographic aspect of Christian art. And so you go to a church in Mexico, for example, like a folk church in Mexico, which you’ll find in the church, although they have no contact with the medieval tradition or with with Orthodox iconography. You’ll find something which is much closer to the sensibilities and the theological care that you would find in the in Orthodox icons. So it’s an interesting it has to do with a very deep, deep problem, a deep shift in consciousness, which I think appeared in the West, of course, during during that same time. Well, I think that when they introduced perspective in sacred art, they destroyed sacred art, because the whole point of sacred art is that it deals with the spiritual world instead of the material world. And perspective belongs to the material world. It does not belong to the spiritual world, where there is no distance at all. So it seems to me that this is an important aspect of our decline in losing sacred art. We lost something that is absolutely essential. You can’t really do without it. And we’re paying the price. And I would tie that back to Karen’s question about coherence over time, right, that coherence over time comes from the spiritual world. Yes, to try to find it in the material world. And also, you can’t find it, right. And that’s why Wolfgang is a Platonist, in essence, right. I hope so. Well, you can see that the worship of the individual genius, the worship of innovation, all of these things which started to burgeon at the time of the Renaissance, you know, has led to a breakdown of Catholic sacred art. You know, the churches, it got just worse and worse until Vatican II. And now it’s a dismal, dismal state. Although I would say that because of how dismal it became in the 1970s, like 60s, 70s, maybe even before that, starting in the 40s, it became so dismal that right now there is in some ways a reviving of the traditional language. Because there’s nothing left to do. All those ugly churches, no one, everybody hates them. No one wants them. And so we can see them as these faded, you know, very dated innovations that no one cares about anymore. And so the only place to go at this point is a rediscovery of the traditional language, hopefully not doing it in a way that is too much of a pastiche or just a nostalgia for the past, but rather entering into the language like any musical or poetic language and learning the rhymes, learning the form so that you can now create something which is both new but also in tune with the ancient patterns. Unfortunately, it’s much easier to destroy something than to build it up. Well, so Wolfgang, this is one of the reasons I wanted you to meet Jonathan because I know that you’ve been concerned about the future of the world, about the future of the faith. And I wanted you to meet Jonathan because he’s this entirely new generation and he’s bringing along with him a lot of other young men and women who are catching the same vision. And so I wanted you to meet somebody who’s in this little corner of the Internet, having an impact with these deep and ancient truths. I hope it is encouraging to you. It is very encouraging. In fact, I couldn’t be more encouraged. We need that. There has been a disorientation, which is very, very difficult to repair. And I think we have a lot to learn from the Orthodox tradition. Thank God that it’s still functional, it’s alive and well. That is very encouraging. It’s been wonderful to learn about your work, Jonathan. I too am really encouraged. I think it’s also just to kind of bring the two together. I think what Wolfgang’s work does is kind of from a very credible scientist, right, shows the reductio ad absurdum that science has created, the impasse that we’re all at today, and then opens people to a reconsideration of, okay, well, if I can’t understand the world this way, how can I understand the world? And then that opens us back up to conversations about the role of religion, the legitimate role of religion, and the differences between different religions. And I really enjoyed our conversation today and getting into some of the nuances about Christianity, which I really hope people and we as a culture will reconsider and revisit because I think we need it. And I think that Wolfgang, your work in some ways when you were publishing was so out of tune with academia, was so countercultural, was just smashing into the system in ways that was also difficult for people to ignore because of your credentials and your credibility in terms of academic capacity and intellectual capacity. And I hope that we see the fruits of all those years of effort now that we can start to notice that even people who are coming at it through different means or coming at it through different roads are coming to the conclusions that you came at decades ago. And that in some ways it’s going to be seen in retrospect as really pioneering for what is coming in the future because there’s no other way to go beside the way that you set for us. So thank you for all your work. Well, I do believe that we are heading to a point where something new will have to come into play. And I’m of course hopeful. Actually, what I represent is nothing new. I am just a Christian Platonist doing his best not to mess up and misconstrue things, but to present them as they are. And down the road, I think our civilization perhaps will be receptive to reconsider these basic problems. I do believe that things are breaking down. For example, physics is in a complete chaos. The non-specialist doesn’t know much about it. But for example, particle physics is almost a joke. I mean, it’s a reductio at absurdum, which no sane person can take seriously anymore. And so something will have to give sooner or later. And I don’t think I will live to see it, but I don’t think it’s that far away from us. And I can’t tell you, Jonathan, how thrilled I am to hear what you had to say and to see real wisdom and real tradition flowering and expressing itself in a contemporary way. That’s wonderful. Thank you. It’s been a delight. It’s been a delight to spend the morning with you all. And next week, I’m going to have Wolfgang on again with John Pervaike again. They’ve talked once and they’re going to be talking again. So I’m very excited for that. Thank you all for giving me so much time. And maybe we can do this again sometime. In the meantime, have a wonderful day. Thanks, everybody. Thank you. Bye bye.