Skip to content
Start free
Get App

Ep. 17 - Awakening from the Meaning Crisis - Gnosis and Existential Inertia

Vervaeke's Ep. 17 introduces gnosis as participatory knowing, approaching Gnosticism from lived experience before history, via Spinoza, Iris Murdoch and sensibility transcendence.

Key Takeaways

  • Gnosis is best understood first as lived, participatory transformation rather than as historical doctrine.
  • A worldview becomes a live option when it reshapes how one perceives self, agency and world, not just when it is believed.
  • Sensibility transcendence, following Murdoch, changes what one can attend to and become, enabling moral and existential growth.
  • Being stuck is a recognizable failure of agency that requires transformation of the agent-arena relationship to overcome.

What the video covers

  • Recaps the previous episode on Christianity's contributions to meaning and wisdom, including Jesus, John's agape and Paul's metanoia.
  • Argues Gnosticism is better understood as a style or way of thinking, like existentialism, than as a discrete community.
  • Proposes approaching Gnosis experientially first, before studying the historical Gnostics, who are often sensationalized in conspiracy culture.
  • Frames Gnosticism as the axial revolution taken to its rational culmination, shaping the Western undercurrent of spiritual history.
  • Defines a worldview as deeply integrated, bidirectional modeling of self, agency and world, with perspectival and participatory knowing.
  • Uses reading Spinoza as an example of moving from believing a worldview's propositions to having it become a live option (James).
  • Introduces Iris Murdoch's The Sovereignty of the Good and her mother-in-law example of sensibility transcendence, where attention transforms salience and agency.
  • Discusses how people get stuck in self-undermining patterns and why transformation requires changing both self and world.
  • Uses the personal example of a son living at home and recurring relationship struggles to illustrate stuckness.
  • Connects skilled practices such as drama, Jeep form, Tai Chi and the two-eyes metaphor to radically transforming experience.

Chapters

  1. 00:00Recap: Christianity, Agape and Paul's Metanoia
  2. 04:25Approaching Gnosis From the Inside
  3. 07:07Worldviews and Living Spinoza
  4. 10:29Iris Murdoch and Sensibility Transcendence
  5. 14:08Personal Example: Being Stuck in Patterns
  6. 24:24Transformation, Skill and Practices
  7. 34:20Anagoge, Tai Chi and the Two Eyes

Answers

Questions about this video

Why does Vervaeke delay discussing the historical Gnostics?

He wants viewers first to understand gnosis as an existential, participatory experience. He argues that without that understanding, the Gnostics are easily misread through conspiracy theories and popular fiction like Dan Brown.

What does Vervaeke mean by a worldview becoming a live option?

Drawing on William James, he means moving from merely believing a set of propositions to actually inhabiting them, so that the worldview shapes how you see yourself and the world. He illustrates this with reading Spinoza until one begins to see things Spinoza's way.

What is sensibility transcendence?

Based on Iris Murdoch, it is a transformation in which attention and salience change so that a person becomes capable of perceiving and doing what was previously impossible. Murdoch's example is a mother-in-law whose view of her daughter-in-law changes through attentive transformation.

Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown

00:00
Speaker A
[Music] you [Music] welcome back to awakening from the meaning crisis last time we tried something somewhat pretentious I hope it was still valuable we endeavored to discuss the contributions to the notions of meaning and wisdom that were made by
00:36
Speaker A
the advent of Christianity in particular we looked Jesus of Nazareth and the exemplification his right of this participatory knowing in God's a Gothic creativity this forgiving of personhood to others John's radical idea that God is in fact this agape that that is
01:02
Speaker A
actually what we've always been talking about when we didn't go talking about God and then Paul's radical personalization of this and how the metanoia of his own transformation is seen by him as a powerful instance of this gnosis agape but how that also
01:30
Speaker A
carried with it a potential darkside in which elements of our of his identity get projected onto cosmic history and the idea of inner conflict within history within God as being reflecting reflected of and reflected in his own inner conflict between the old Saul and
01:55
Speaker A
the new Paul and how much this gnosis participatory knowing is bound up with an exploration and an understanding of how our agency can be fractured how we can be at war at ourselves with ourselves how we can suffer and I want
02:17
Speaker A
to take this up because the notion of how we can suffer how we can become at war with ourselves how our agency could be undermined and how much cosmic forces may be aligned with our suffering becomes a central idea amongst a group of people
02:41
Speaker A
known or at least called by their enemies the Gnostics now a lot of controversy about whether or not this is a useful theoretical construct it's there there were there might have been some gnosis communities it's more it's more apt to think of Gnosticism as a
03:00
Speaker A
style and a way of thinking like existentialism or fundamentalism right it's it's you don't go to like a fundamentalist a church you belong to a branch of Christianity there might be fundamentalist right it's it's a way of orienting yourself that is not like
03:23
Speaker A
belonging to a particular community or a participant a particular political or socio-economic group nevertheless this sense right of inner conflict this sense of right losing agency the sense of the importance of gnosis in agape are all made central to this style this movement
04:00
Speaker A
now I for I talk about them in particular I want to reverse how I want to present this what I want to do is instead of trying to historically teach you about them first I want to try and
04:15
Speaker A
make clear to you from the inside so to speak what gnosis is and how you are probably at some point seeking it or will be seeking it or have sought it in your life and then once we get this
04:29
Speaker A
existential understanding of what gnosis is then through that lens I think it is more appropriate to try and understand the history Oracle figures the the Gnostics are sort of I don't know what to say sexy hot right now a lot of conspiracy theories
04:49
Speaker A
and Dan Brown kind of crap around all of this and I think that's the wrong way you don't really understand the Gnostics right as a movement unless you understand what gnosis is itself this is going to turn out to be important
05:08
Speaker A
because I think a way we can understand the Gnostics is they are the axial revolution within the axial revolution they are the attempt to take the axial revolution to its culmination to its rational culmination and they are going
05:25
Speaker A
to provide the undercurrent to Western cultures understanding of its spiritual history and direction so for a long time you won't hear me talk about the Gnostics because like I did when I was talking about the Buddha's enlightenment and we did a lot of cognitive science on
05:45
Speaker A
higher states of consciousness I want to try and do some significant cognitive science before we turn back to the history so let's let's get let's our work our way into what this is we've already got some sense of what this is
05:59
Speaker A
we've had a lot of discussion participatory knowing and perspectival knowing and gnosis has both of those elements in it of transformative experience we're gonna up try and draw this all together but let's work our way into this so we've talked about a world
06:15
Speaker A
view and a world view is when you have a way you have this deeply integrate a dynamically coupled way of seeing yourself your agency and seeing the world as an arena you have this bi-directional modeling it is simultaneously modeling the world to you
06:31
Speaker A
and modeling you to shape the world this mutual conformity this reciprocal revelation right so that's a worldview now this has happened to me and I hope something similar has happened to you perhaps when you're reading a book a
06:50
Speaker A
novel or all you as an example I'm reading the works of Appetit philosopher let's say it's Spinoza right and I'll be reading and I'll you know and Spinoza's are profound and deep thinker and you spend a lot of time and
07:06
Speaker A
you're reading the arguments and you're you're trying to understand and you can come to follow the arguments you can come to follow the inferences you can even come to believe some of Spinoza's conclusions and so you have a lot of
07:22
Speaker A
beliefs and they're not they don't even have to be inchoate they can be sort of systematically related together but then something else happens sometimes not always but it's happened to me multiple occasions and it's often what I'm trying
07:39
Speaker A
to convey above beyond what I'm saying what I'm teaching other people I'm reading Spinoza and there's it's like there's this change I go from seeing what Spinoza is saying to seeing things the way Spinoza says that's a like right
08:03
Speaker A
but knows it goes from something I'm you know I believe but Spinoza is saying that and they're and they're they're about the world and about right about what it is to be human being I go from that to actually seeing the world spin
08:18
Speaker A
as istic Lee it's because you know Spinoza is now to use a metaphor of use it's now the lens by which I'm both seeing the world and myself I I'm now living the world like as if as if
08:36
Speaker A
Spinoza was an adverb I'm living the world spin assist achill II I might I have the perspective of what it is like to see the world the way Spinoza did and what it is like to participate in that
08:52
Speaker A
worldview you get this advent of the viability the livability of a worldview James talks about that he talks about the difference between James the great psychologist and philosopher he talks about the difference between believing things and it actually being a live option to
09:10
Speaker A
you so what happens there is at least for some period of time right the agent arena relationship the perspectival and the participatory knowing are now right conformed to at least it seems to me to be that way to what Spinoza had not just what right
09:35
Speaker A
Spinoza said what what what who and what Spinoza was and what his world was to him has become available to me now that's important because that that viability that ability to enter into a particular agent arena configuration will help me to take the next step
10:00
Speaker A
forward all right so John Wright talks a lot about sensibility transcendence and he talks about it and it this is based on the really important work of Iris Murdoch and just an absolute gem of a book called the sovereignty of the good if
10:29
Speaker A
you read ten books in your life one of them should be the sovereignty of the good your life will be less if you have not read it so Murdoch was trying to get beyond sort of the rules and reasons for
10:48
Speaker A
morality to something much more important she was trying to get to that viability of morality the way in which we pay attention in such a way that our salience landscape and the agent arena relationship is transformed such that we
11:04
Speaker A
do the good but let's use Murdock's particular example there's a mother-in-law she has a she has a son the son is married to a woman and she doesn't like this woman the mother-in-law doesn't like the woman it's obviously the mother-in-law to the
11:38
Speaker A
daughter-in-law she doesn't like this woman because she finds her course finds are loud and finds her kind of uncouth therefore beneath the sort of elegance and dignity of her son and then and it think about agape and forgiving here
12:08
Speaker A
think about it got be unforgiving but what happens here at some point Murdock says and it happens like an insight it happens like when you come out of the nine dot problem the mother now realizes something now and Murdock is clear about
12:26
Speaker A
this it's not a it's not a normal insight like in a normal insight we refrain how we're looking at something i reframe how i look at the nine dots but what's actually happening is the mother-in-law is having a bi-directional
12:42
Speaker A
insight she's not only reframing how she sees the world she's reframing how she sees herself and these are happening in a completely interfused manner this is a participatory change the agent are both the agent and the arena side of the
13:00
Speaker A
relationship are being coach Ange together so it's not a reframing of this or that I often use this term it's a trans framing it's not a reframing of a particular problem it's a transformation of the whole framing process both ends
13:22
Speaker A
because what's happening is the mother-in-law is seeing the daughter-in-law not as course but as Fontaine not as uncouth but sincere not as lacking in elegance but as possessing authenticity and then she's simultaneously in Akko determining fashion realizing that the way that she
13:46
Speaker A
the mother-in-law has framed things habitually has been wrong she's having what we've talked about before that systemic insight not just an insight here and here but there's a whole system of errors that she's transformation that she's transforming she's going through
14:03
Speaker A
that kind of developmental transformation that we've talked about right calls this sensibility transcendence because what's happening simultaneously is right the daughter-in-law can be something that she couldn't be before and the mother-in-law is becoming somebody she couldn't become before she couldn't be
14:27
Speaker A
before these two things are happening together her sensibility her whole way of participating in a worldview that agent arena relationship is being transformed and so both things are going through transcendence do you see this here's her self and here's right the
14:48
Speaker A
daughter the object of her attention and this is going through self transcendence but so is this and that's happening in a completely conjoined way the mother right the mother-in-law is becoming what she couldn't be because of how she is
15:10
Speaker A
right opening up what the daughter-in-law can be and precisely because she's coming - right see have a radical insight into what the daughter-in-law could be right opening up that she's opening up what she can be it's again this process of
15:27
Speaker A
participatory knowing reciprocal revelation right and and it's you know this mutually accelerating disclosure there's knowing by loving it's a sensibility transcendence so notice what's happening here there's a way right you can see that I can I can go through a process like this and enter
15:50
Speaker A
into a world view and of course that's what Christianity was offering right it was offering people that metanoia of how they can go through this radical transformation in this way opening up the world opening up themselves etc now
16:08
Speaker A
why is that important because now I want you to think of the opposite your inability to enter into or make viable to yourself a new way of being now in order to get to that let me bring up
16:27
Speaker A
again somebody we've spoken before Harry Frankfort remember he's the person who talked about Frankfort also talks about how the wonderful book reasons for love and the importance of what we care about how much our reasoning depends on what we
16:46
Speaker A
love what we care about how we're bound into an agent arena relationship now Frankfort brings up an important notion he brings up a notion he calls I don't quite like this word but to be fair to him I can't think of a better word he
17:03
Speaker A
calls the unthinkable so let me give you an example of this so the way to think of the unthinkable is although you can make thoughts images propositions run inferences you can't actually make it viable you can't go through the senseability transcendence
17:28
Speaker A
that would bring you into living that worldview so here's my example my my oldest son currently lives with me and this has been such a blessing for me I get to live with him and spend time with him as right as he's building his career
17:47
Speaker A
right now I can think this thought it would be great if I kicked Jason out I can run this thought through my head because if I did then the apartment would be clean I'd have more money I can
18:00
Speaker A
draw I can imagine what it would look like I can run the thought right I can draw drive all the inferences but what I can't do is actually make this a viable alternative for me it's in that way the
18:16
Speaker A
thought it's unthinkable to me my love for my son doesn't mean I can't run these thoughts imagine these scenes draw these inferences I can do all of that what I can't do is bring myself to live in that world
18:33
Speaker A
it's unthinkable to me perhaps a better way of thinking about it is it's it's not viable to me it's unlivable for me now that's a good thing right so do you see how I have a way right a sensibility
18:52
Speaker A
transcendence with my son that means there's no effort on my part to treat him morally and I'm not trying to be self congratulatory what I'm trying to say is right doing that thing of kicking him out which I think would ultimately
19:09
Speaker A
be an immoral act is not viable to me so right now this all sounds this is all really great but there's a way in which this can be twisted now I want you to now think of the negative of it
19:24
Speaker A
all right what is you're stuck you're stuck in a world view you don't want to be in you want to go over there to that world view but you can't you can't go through the senseability transcendence that will make that worldview viable to
19:53
Speaker A
you because you can run inferences in your head you can run imagine scenes you can state things to yourself you could make all kinds of affirmations won't catch you there you're stuck you can't go through that change you experience a
20:22
Speaker A
kind of existential inertia people often enter therapy for exactly this reason they they can state who they want to be and what kind of world they want to be in they can imagine it they can make inferences of what it would be right
20:47
Speaker A
like if they were there they can deeply want to be there but they don't they don't get there they stay stuck I want to stop getting in these horrible romantic relationships I want to be in a relationship that is deep and profound
21:15
Speaker A
it would be so good I can imagine myself there I can see myself but I can't get there every time I try to get there I end up here again every time somehow and I don't understand how I don't
21:37
Speaker A
understand how the way I'm caring about things the way I'm participating in myself in my world is preventing me from making that way of life a viable option to me I want to be there think about Paul and the old man in the new man I
21:57
Speaker A
want to be there I want to be that person living there but all my efforts to get there circle me back to here I just can't get out of this existential inertia I don't know how to bring about
22:19
Speaker A
the sensibility transcendence that's going to make that way that person and that world viable to me how do I get there how do I get there how do I stop suffering so one thing that can happen to people
22:43
Speaker A
is they can lose their agency remember that's what suffering means because they are they're there they're there they're stuck like this they're losing any sense of how to get to that other world view that other self they're experiencing
23:08
Speaker A
radical existential inertia Jung used to often Carl Jung used to talk about the primary thing that people would have to get to and have to express and why they would come into therapy was precisely because they felt stuck it might not
23:29
Speaker A
even be that there is particular concrete problems in their life might be that everything is actually going kind of well but they're stuck they're stuck there thwarted they they're there is there's a sense of they're not moving and they should be and although they can
23:48
Speaker A
talk and draw images and make inferences about how they should move and where they should move to they don't have the participatory perspective of knowing they don't know how to get there they don't know how to engage in the
24:04
Speaker A
senseability transcendence they don't know how to bring about the transforming and often they enter into therapy and therapy has an a gapek element into it the therapist is affording an agape transformation but in addition to being stalked because of existential inertia
24:25
Speaker A
there's another problem people face when they are seeking when they need significant transformation and this goes to the heart of one of the best books I've already mentioned it before in this series and I think philosophy in the
24:46
Speaker A
last 20 years this is la Paul's work a transformative experience the what la Paul's work points to is a way in which these transformative experiences render us the possibility of such transformative experiences render us kind of stupefied because what they
25:13
Speaker A
have us do is confront a deep kind of existential ignorance that is endemic to these transformative experiences and it has to do again with this very prospective allanne participatory knowing that I'm talking about okay so she gives the example but she first
25:34
Speaker A
starts with a very trivial example just to to warm you up to the thinking she she says somebody offers you to taste this fruit that you've never tasted before and the problem is people have a very bimodal reaction they either things
25:52
Speaker A
Wow this fruit is so unlike any food I've ever tasted it's so wonderful I love it or they say this fruit is so unlike any food I've ever tasted I hate it it tastes like vomit and the thing is you don't know which reaction
26:09
Speaker A
you're gonna have until you bite the fruit and she says well do you bite the fruit and you may say well I don't know the point is right you bite the fruit or not you'll typically say well what does
26:28
Speaker A
it matter it's not there's nothing significantly at risk if I have the fruit that's true but what the fruit example points to is the following there's a kind of knowing that is dependent on your state of being this is
26:45
Speaker A
your perspective on knowing you don't know what it is like coz that's the core of who you don't know what your salience landscape will be like when you eat this fruit until you have eaten the fruit there's no way of knowing that ahead of
27:00
Speaker A
time you have to go through the experience to know what it is like to have the experience you say okay I can sort of get that so right this is kind of what she calls an epistemic transformation but she says
27:16
Speaker A
some of the times what we're confronting is something deeper where we're confronting personal transformation right this is where what's what's happening again is knowing not just by having a particular perspective this is knowing by having the agent arena
27:36
Speaker A
relationship radically transformed you don't know what it's like to be that person in that world because you have to actually be changed and the world has to be changed in order for you to have that participatory knowing so she talks about
27:52
Speaker A
the fact that what she means by like a transformative experience is one in which you're going to undergo that change in perspective of knowing in that change in participatory note so she gives a good Donkin experiment to bring
28:09
Speaker A
that out first a thought experiment she says imagine the following right she said your friends come to you and they revealed a secret they give you just in like indubitable evidence that they can do the following they convince you that
28:28
Speaker A
they can absolutely do the following they can turn you into a vampire do you do it do you do you become a vampire now before you put this off as silly the point of a philosophical thought experience that is to play with
28:46
Speaker A
something free from your own life so you can get clear about it what it means after we've played with it we will go back to our lives but here's the issue you can't make any inferences about this because you don't know what it's going
29:04
Speaker A
to be like to be a vampire and you don't know who you're going to be when your vampire because your preferences your character everything is going to change and your salience landscape is going to radically change you don't
29:21
Speaker A
know what it's going to be like so here's what you face I don't know what I'm gonna lose if I become a vampire I don't know what I'm going to lose once I go through this change I will have lost
29:35
Speaker A
a way of being it will become unthinkable to me I can't get back to it but I don't know what I'm gonna lose until I go through it so oh well then I shouldn't do it ah but if I don't do it
29:48
Speaker A
I don't know what I'm missing I don't know what I'm missing there could be a way of being here that is amazing and wonderful I don't know what I miss it and I'm caught I equally don't know what
30:00
Speaker A
I'm going to lose and I don't know what I'm going what I'm missing and I can't do any calculations I don't know what my values are going to are my values now the right set of values are my values
30:12
Speaker A
then the right set of values is the kinds of experience I'm having now or the like there is no place above I can make the comparison I can't reason my way through it and now unlike the fruit example everything is
30:29
Speaker A
at risk both the agent and the arena are at risk and you go okay so what I get it who cares I'm never gonna be a vampire that's not the point the point is once you acknowledge the logic of the problem
30:47
Speaker A
this is what she now gets you to realize you confront these in your life at multiple times here's an example so relevant to everything we've been talking about with agape should you have a kid should you have a child do you see
31:11
Speaker A
how it's exactly the same you don't know what you're missing if you don't have a child because you are going to we talked about it you're going to become a different person with a different salience landscape and until you have a
31:25
Speaker A
child you know what it's like so you don't know what you're missing you also don't know what you're going to lose all people will tell you but until you go through it you don't know your existentially ignorant here's
31:42
Speaker A
another one should I enter into a romantic relationship with that person you don't know you don't know who you're going to be because if it's a real romantic relationship it's gonna change you you don't know who you're gonna be
31:55
Speaker A
you don't know what you're sailing it's dusk it's gonna be until you're on the other side you don't know what you're missing by not getting into the relation but you don't know what you're gonna lose until when you get into it so
32:09
Speaker A
should you do it or not we face irreversible change and yet we can't there's no way to reason our way through it because on both sides of the transformation we are confronted by radical ignorance we don't know what
32:41
Speaker A
we're missing and we don't know what we'll be losing we don't know if we should stay here we don't know if we should go there now I've had the pleasure to talk to to LA Paul Lawrie about some of this and
33:01
Speaker A
present a case to her which I think there's some agreement about this and I look forward to we have some future work we're doing together as I pointed out to Laurie that when whenever we're going through any significant developmental
33:21
Speaker A
change like to use Paul's example point from a child to an adult the child doesn't know what they're going to lose when they lose their childhood innocence when they become an adult they don't know but it has an adult right but if
33:42
Speaker A
the child also doesn't know what it's gonna miss what it's missing if it doesn't become an adult and you think oh that's ridiculous no it's not do you know how much people face difficulties precisely because they get transfixed by
33:58
Speaker A
this they write if I grow up I'm gonna I might lose stuff but if I don't grow up I don't know what I'm missing huh what should i do what should i do what should I do like if I choose this career I lose all
34:22
Speaker A
these wonderful potentialities but should I just keep all my possibilities open look at all my possibilities but but if I choose this I'll lose and I and some of those possibilities I don't even know but if I don't ever choose what am
34:38
Speaker A
I missing I'll never know because I've never actually gotten into any particular career so we can be stupefied as we face the need for radical transformation so people are not they go into therapy not only because they're stuck they don't
35:04
Speaker A
know how to transform they're also stupefied they don't know if they should but should because I'm like oh what am i what right and and and this is bound up with the aspect disguise that people get into when they're stuck and it shows
35:24
Speaker A
this stupid vacation and the stuckness working together look somebody comes in they're doing therapeutic work with you right why are you here I'm stuck how are you stuck oh well I'm so stubborn it's like I'm stubborn I original and I
35:38
Speaker A
went on I need to get I need to be more okay and then you talk to them and let's talk about other stuff come back and what do you like most about yourself oh I'm persistent I don't give up and
35:51
Speaker A
you see the very thing they're trying to change it's the very thing about themselves that they don't want to let go of that they're most identified with I'm stubborn and I won't change my mind what do you like about yourself I'm
36:06
Speaker A
persistent I don't give up I don't change my mind they talk about the same thing one under a negative aspect and one under a positive aspect and they don't realize it they're stuck and they're stupefied and when we're stuck and were stupefied
36:26
Speaker A
when we're stuck we can't imagine how to make an opponent of worldview significant how to make it viable when we're stupefied we can't imagine the alternative we can't figure out how to rationally make the choice so we get
36:50
Speaker A
this right inertia and indecision were stuck and were stupefied and then we're trapped we're existentially trapped and then you can think about how that could mix we mixed up with the stuff we talked about with the Buddha the parasitic process
37:13
Speaker A
setting the parasitic processing the modal confusion but we get stuck how do you get out what do you do in therapy this therapy works what do you do how do you like how do you get people out of
37:34
Speaker A
being existentially trapped well let's go back to it let's try and work our way through it so what do some people do when they're considering whether or not they want to have a child well some people just throw
37:55
Speaker A
themselves into the darwinian flow and just right but some people like oh should we have a child or not right what do some people do well I've noticed many people doing this and it's very interesting they get a pet they get a
38:12
Speaker A
dog typically and then they do is kind of bizarre behaviour with the dog they have pictures taken with the dog and they give the dog a bed and some toys and write and write insecure oh right and what they're doing right is they're
38:27
Speaker A
doing something that's right kinda like having a child should I enter into a romantic relationship with this person this is advice was actually given to me when I was dating and I see people do go on a trip with them go on a trip with
38:49
Speaker A
them live with them for seven days it's kinda like living with them it's kind of like being in a relationship with them people say well well yeah I sort of get that but even the things like the being
39:12
Speaker A
event how do people do that well they play role-playing games and you say that's just fantasy okay well pay attention to the way this is evolving in our culture so role-playing games have moved into live-action versions where you act out the role-playing and then
39:29
Speaker A
this has evolved into a Norwegian that's like not Norwegian it's Scandinavian style which is called Jeep form and a Jeep form what you're doing is you're given a scenario to act out and the person that plays the role of like the
39:46
Speaker A
jund and master is like a movie director they will tell you to cut scenes or switch roles and here's the whole point of Jeep form you you're trying to enact emotionally difficult situations why would you want to do that
40:00
Speaker A
what what people are seeking in Jeep form is they're seeking a phenomenon called bleed I want I'm gonna do this role-playing and I'm getting this person oh here's a director and they're doing stuff to mess up with Mike my trans
40:14
Speaker A
framing and my role-playing because what I'm trying to do is get so that the line between my real life and what I'm doing in this psycho drama bleeds so that the line between the game and reality bleed into each other
40:35
Speaker A
blurs and looking for bleed so that I can play seriously play with the possibilities do you see what's happening here people engage and we have to learn how to take this word seriously again they engage in play the whole
40:59
Speaker A
point about play right the whole point about play is it puts you in between here's the world you're in and here's the world you want to be in and then there's this liminal zone where we can play it's no coincidence that as
41:19
Speaker A
organisms become more intelligent more need needed more in need of right developmental transformations they also become much more playful they need more and more play and play is not a frivolous thing what are the disasters of our culture is we think of play as
41:39
Speaker A
only about fun we've trivialized it now play can be fun I don't think fun is what people are after in Jeep form so I'm really fun that people are out after when they adopt a dog and treat it like a child
42:00
Speaker A
see the word play doesn't have to be about fun because you can play music and it could be heartbreaking music it could be Mahler that you're playing in Tai Chi you don't do Tai Chi you play Tai Chi
42:13
Speaker A
and it's about having fun it's about a deep engagement with processes of transformation so the way to think about this is what are people doing in all these instances they're they're confronting the possibility of a transformative experience and so what
42:29
Speaker A
they do is they have an inactive analogy this isn't an analogy of word or thought because that's not going to work because this is about perspectival and participatory change this is an analogy you enact you go through the actions now
42:51
Speaker A
this takes a lot of skill to create an inactive analogy it creates a lot of skill I got to get it right all right if I'm doing the Jeep form I got to get it right and that's what the director is
43:07
Speaker A
there to help might make do role reversal suddenly give me an object I got to use right the therapist will suddenly get you to talk to that pretend that that empty chair that your mother's there and start talking right and you
43:22
Speaker A
got to get it right because the inactive analogy has to be similar enough to the world and the person you're trying to become in that world it has to be similar enough that you can feel it you can start to get the perspectival and
43:39
Speaker A
participatory knowing but it's still similar enough to this world that you can pull out if you need to and you got to get it's this delicate balancing out it has to be relevant ly similar to the world I want to go to but still
43:59
Speaker A
relevantly similar to the world that I'm in because I want to put myself into a place where I can play whether it's with the two so that I can compare them together this trick this creates this creates it demands I should say it
44:16
Speaker A
demands tremendous skill this ability to come up with a opt there's there's a beauty and an elegance here an opt metaphor that you can actually play within that you can participate in so that you can ah that's what it would be
44:33
Speaker A
like ah but I but I still know who I am right now and I can feel and see and sense the two together that's what you're doing in therapy one of the things we need to do as you can probably
44:50
Speaker A
see it where the implication of what I'm saying as a part of a dressing the meaning crisis is we have to recover play and I hope you now understand what I'm going to say and that is not meant
45:04
Speaker A
to be disrespectful one of the important things that religion was was play that's what ritual properly understood is people are playing serious playing in order to try and put themselves into a liminal place a place between two worlds
45:27
Speaker A
the normal world and the sacred world they want to dwell within they're playing there in order to see how and whether they should go through the change in world and self that the religion is demanding and affording now
45:54
Speaker A
notice in order to make a worldview viable to me I have to go through this self world sensibility transcendence but you've seen that before you've seen that before this is Anna gaga and a Gaga is precisely to set things up
46:17
Speaker A
so that as this as this is transcending as its decline as I'm coming more into contact with what's real getting below the illusion like Paul just seeing things in mirror or just shadows on the KFOR player as that opens up that
46:34
Speaker A
affords me transforming right so sensibility transcendence is just I think an acog a and Sensibility transcendence is how I enter into a world view so what I need is I need not only an inactive analogy I need a way of
47:00
Speaker A
enacting and a gargy and that it's also what religious ritual used to do for us religious ritual was a way of playing with inactive analogies so that I can compare so I could overcome the ignorance I can write I can that see
47:24
Speaker A
isn't even the right verb I can see be these two worlds these two ways of being these two persons within those worlds but ritual also was enacted an ACOG a it was giving you the skills for it knowing
47:42
Speaker A
how to get unstuck how to go through sensibility transcendence how to make that world world viable so in therapy you're often doing this you're giving people an active analogy okay so you're having like it's coming clear that you're stuck and it has to do with how
48:02
Speaker A
you're related to your mom okay so pretend that your mom is in that chair I know she's dead now forget that this isn't literal but it's not fun it's not frivolous it's serious play pretend your mom is there
48:14
Speaker A
enact that get the analogy talk to her and then here I'm a therapist I'll give you ways of reframing her and reframing yourself I'll help you to engage in oggi so you'll start to know how to go through the senseability transcendence
48:30
Speaker A
and that's how you get out of being existentially trapped you have this ritual behavior again like when I'm doing Tai Chi look Tai Chi right these are all this is an active analogy I'm doing these motions this is how like if
48:51
Speaker A
somebody's this is how single whip is helping me actually enact what it would be like to be in a fight situation but it's also an agogic right the whole point about doing Tai Chi is it's also radically transforming that's
49:08
Speaker A
one way of understanding Chi don't understand it as magical energy understandings instead as it's a way of radically transforming how I'm experiencing myself in the world and Tai Chi we talked about the two eyes I have an eye this looking out at the world and
49:23
Speaker A
looking at myself and what I'm doing is I'm radically transforming them I'm trying to bring about the know-how of an agog a and I'm enacting the analogy of fighting it's a ritual I'm seriously playing with an inactive analogy and
49:41
Speaker A
enacting and a GOG ik transformation that's why it's a path of wisdom and a martial art at the same time you see therapy real martial arts martial arts that aren't just kicking punch but real martial arts that we're all doing this
49:58
Speaker A
that's why so many people in the meaning crisis are attracted to martial arts are attracted to things like Jeep form they're hungry that's why they go into therapy they are hungry they are hungry for ways of dealing with being
50:16
Speaker A
existentially trapped so people are looking for ways of transforming not just their cognition their beliefs but prospectively transforming their consciousness and a participatory fashion transforming their character what they identify with and how they that identification enables them to inhabit an agent arena
50:49
Speaker A
relationship we're close to telling you what gnosis is so in nauseous what I'm trying to do is bring about an altered state of consciousness because that it's going to put me into the flow State it's got the possibility of giving me a
51:25
Speaker A
higher state of consciousness a mystical experience that's transformative and then what I'm doing is I'm setting this within a ritual context where I'm viewing an active analogy and I'm doing inactive and agog a I'm doing serious play and I have the flexibility the
51:57
Speaker A
cognitive flexibility this is how the psychedelics can be a mesh why psychedelics can improve therapy so much because the psychedelics give you the cognitive flexibility in the flow state and the possibility even of a higher state of consciousness that then right
52:13
Speaker A
empowers this process to get you free from existential entrapment this is why you give people right psychedelics and you put them through the therapeutic process and you can get them free from post-traumatic stress disorder okay so now what's gnosis this is nauseous gnosis is
52:44
Speaker A
to have a set of psycho technologies that create a ritual context like jeep form like martial arts like therapy that allows us to overcome being existentially stock existentially stupefied and that is being powered by an altered state of consciousness that's
53:14
Speaker A
induced by chanting sleep deprivation psychedelics and what this does what gnosis does is it frees me from being existentially trapped it's this combination this integration of psycho technologies that activate and transform perspectival and participatory knowing and give us a sense of a greater reality
53:49
Speaker A
that we want to live within and thereby liberate sus from being existentially trapped and heals us from our fractured suffering our fragmented agency our broken world that's gnosis so what I want to look at next time is how gnosis
54:13
Speaker A
was taken up within a movement within the same time period as early Christianity thank you very much for your time and attention [Music] you you
Topics:gnosisGnosticismJohn Vervaekemeaning crisisparticipatory knowingIris MurdochSpinozasensibility transcendenceworldviewaxial revolution

Get More with the SozAI App

Transcribe recordings, audio files, and YouTube videos — with AI summaries and speaker detection. 30 minutes free.

App Store Google Play
Or transcribe another YouTube video here →

Free tools: TXT to SRT · SRT Validator · Merge SRT · Subtitle to Text · All tools

More from John Vervaeke’s Lectern

View All
Ep. 26 – Awakening from the Meaning Crisis – Cognitive Science — Transcript59:36
Ep. 26 – Awakening from the Meaning Crisis – Cognitive Science — Transcript
7,922 1 English
Ep. 25 – Awakening from the Meaning Crisis – The Clash — Transcript59:18
Ep. 25 – Awakening from the Meaning Crisis – The Clash — Transcript
6,203 1 English
Ep. 24 – Awakening from the Meaning Crisis – Hegel — Transcript55:57
Ep. 24 – Awakening from the Meaning Crisis – Hegel — Transcript
6,417 1 English
Ep. 23 – Awakening from the Meaning Crisis – Romanticism — Transcript56:36
Ep. 23 – Awakening from the Meaning Crisis – Romanticism — Transcript
7,329 1 English
Ep. 22 – Awakening from the Meaning Crisis – Descartes vs. Hobbes — Transcript52:48
Ep. 22 – Awakening from the Meaning Crisis – Descartes vs. Hobbes — Transcript
6,594 1 English
Ep. 21 – Awakening from the Meaning Crisis – Martin Luther and Descartes — Transcript55:54
Ep. 21 – Awakening from the Meaning Crisis – Martin Luther and Descartes — Transcript
6,417 1 English
Ep. 20 – Awakening from the Meaning Crisis – Death of the Universe — Transcript54:03
Ep. 20 – Awakening from the Meaning Crisis – Death of the Universe — Transcript
6,462 1 English
Ep. 19 – Awakening from the Meaning Crisis – Augustine and Aquinas — Transcript54:02
Ep. 19 – Awakening from the Meaning Crisis – Augustine and Aquinas — Transcript
6,108 1 English
Ep. 18 – Awakening from the Meaning Crisis – Plotinus and Neoplatonism — Transcript53:45
Ep. 18 – Awakening from the Meaning Crisis – Plotinus and Neoplatonism — Transcript
6,431 1 English
Ep. 16 – Awakening from the Meaning Crisis – Christianity and Agape — Transcript54:40
Ep. 16 – Awakening from the Meaning Crisis – Christianity and Agape — Transcript
6,599 1 English
Ep. 15 – Awakening from the Meaning Crisis – Marcus Aurelius and Jesus — Transcript58:40
Ep. 15 – Awakening from the Meaning Crisis – Marcus Aurelius and Jesus — Transcript
7,004 1 English
Ep. 14 – Awakening from the Meaning Crisis – Epicureans, Cynics, and Stoics — Transcript55:45
Ep. 14 – Awakening from the Meaning Crisis – Epicureans, Cynics, and Stoics — Transcript
6,784 1 English