The Meaning Crisis, Process Philosophy, Psychedelics & Religion | Jared Morningstar & John Buchanan - Mind-Body Solution

Episode Transcript
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(00:08):
Jared, John, thank you so much for joining me in this Mind Body
Solution special series, part ofthe Minded Lodge project.
Both of you key contributors, soit's a pleasure to host you
both. Thanks for joining me.
Glad to be here. I think let's kick off with the
big question at hand, the MindedLodge project.
It's fully in the process. We've been promoting it,

(00:28):
publicizing and trying to get itout there as much as possible.
It's been a hit so far. People are loving it.
So I'm excited to chat to you both because you've both been
part of this from the very beginning.
From your perspectives, John, Jared, what is the project
becoming? When you think about what has
emerged across your engagements with Peter, Matt, Andrew, Ellie,
the entire team, and now this conversation, what direction do

(00:53):
you feel this is going? That's Jared.
Do you want to start? And then, John, we can take it
from there. Yeah, I'll take it.
Yeah, I feel like we are exploding out the frontiers of
metaphysical thinking that involves consciousness and
mindedness, agency, individuality, and yeah, really

(01:13):
exploring what what are the possible ways of thinking about
these things beyond the kind of very mainstream metaphysics,
often very materialistic, often dualistic.
But yeah, see, see what happens if we can find some different
frameworks that are likewise very integrative, very in tune

(01:35):
with scientific findings, aligned with accounts of first
person experience and a wide variety of different mental
states. And yeah, see see what kinds of
results these different frameworks can can give if
they're taken as sort of guidingpoints for different kinds of
scientific and existential investments.

(01:57):
John, same question. Well, you know, as I've been
sitting in these planning meetings and we're kind of
feeling our way into getting a group of people together that
both representative alternative perspectives on the place that
mind has in the universe, as well as bringing in some, you

(02:23):
know, some contrary voices, you know, some, you know, some
critique. We don't want to be too, too
flippant in our, in our approach.
And so I, I think we're getting together a, a good collection of
people for exploring a few different alternative ways of
looking at, at the issue of mindin the universe, as well as some

(02:46):
that will keep us reigned in a bit and, and give us some good
foils in the discussions. Yeah, I think I've seen it
personally. It's just growing constantly,
consistently and the more thinkers and speakers we have on
board, it's just going to get more and more exciting and that
seems to be what's happening right now.
You've both been part of this from the get go.

(03:07):
As I said to you both, John, perhaps you could start what is
mind at large to you? I think it's a opportunity now.
Now you think, are you asking about the conference or about
the more general idea of mind atlarge?

(03:28):
Here I think we could take it into both.
Well, I think the conference is the opportunity to explore the,
the really quite fascinating, the issues brought our, you
know, our last, our, our plan for the the third meeting of
this is to look into psychedelic, mystical and all

(03:52):
kinds of extraordinary experience, which is sort of my,
was my initial interest in theseareas when I took some
psychedelics and thought, well, there's a lot more here than I
expected and things are not looka lot different than I expected.
So I'm, I'm looking forward to that, but I'm also very
interested in the, in the second, the second conference,

(04:14):
which is going to look at mind as it may appear in the universe
at large, as it were, you know, such things as it.
We recently did a, we recently did a conference on plasma and
Robert Temple's book with his speculations about the these
giant plasma clouds that are between the Earth and the moon

(04:35):
may contain inorganic intelligence.
It's really piqued my interest. I I didn't think I'd find
something that would be that quite that stunning at this at
at my age. And there it is, you know, the
possibility of these plasma in intelligences which, you know,
could extend up into the galactic and intergalactic.
So, so there's always such a such, you know, such a

(04:57):
fascinating possibilities of, of, of mind through, you know,
through of a minded universe. And, and I'm also, I'm also very
interested in the more colloquial mind body relations,
the mind, brain interaction. And you know, I come at all come
at it all from kind of a Whiteheadian process philosophy

(05:19):
perspective, which I think just offers so many interest, so many
interesting ways of addressing these questions.
And Jared, to you, what is mind at Lodge and then the project?
Yeah, Yeah. I think I have a very, very
similar answer to to John here, especially on the conceptual

(05:39):
side. It's being able to see
mindedness, sort of experience, agency, these sorts of phenomena
that we normally associate primarily, if not exclusively
with higher order organisms as maybe more diffuse since maybe
more basic in in our ontology than than certainly a

(06:02):
materialist metaphysics would presuppose.
So yeah, thinking OK, what what what is what is maybe this
plasma intelligence that some cutting edge physics is
beginning to hit up against and explore.
Or I think of the work of Michael Levin in biology, who's
dealing with these interesting Platonic morpho spaces and

(06:25):
bioelectricity and finding interesting forms of agency and
becoming and intentional action at at very basic levels in kind
of biological realities. And so our contemporary
metaphysical options on offer, especially in sciences like
that, seem ill suited to really fully explore those phenomena,

(06:50):
unpack them on that level. At yeah, what happens if we take
these things seriously and beginopening to to seeing mind and
intelligence in in different, different ways than we've become
accustomed to? At what happens when that
becomes kind of more of a guiding paradigm in, in

(07:11):
scientific thinking especially. And yeah, I think that's a big
part of what we hope to do with these conference conversations
and the auxiliary projects we have around mind at large.
Here is let's open the field. Let's see see where where mind
is manifesting and what happens when we take that seriously.

(07:31):
Yeah, I think and it's, it seemsto be the perfect time because
there's almost this paradigm shift occurring at this moment
where people are becoming a lot more curious about these
conversations. I mean, from consciousness to
cosmos to connection, this, thisproject embodies all of this so
beautifully. And it's exciting because even
when you look at both of your work, very different, very
diverse, and yet ties together very beautifully as well.

(07:54):
If you each had to name 1 misconception.
So now we're going to explore your work individually and then
we'll take it, we'll bring it all together a bit.
If you each had to name 1 misconception people have about
your work, John, perhaps with process philosophy and
transpersonal psychology, Jared with Islamic studies maybe and
meta modern spirituality, what would it be?
What would these misconceptions be, and why does it matter for

(08:17):
the broader discourse on consciousness?
Jared, you can take it. Sure.
Yeah. I mean, there's unfortunately so
many misconceptions about Islamic thought, Islamic
intellectual history. And I mean, I think the biggest
1 is just a lack of awareness ofthe richness and diversity in

(08:37):
this really long standing and broad kind of intellectual
heritage of Islamic civilization.
I just one example that that might be relevant here.
The Islamic physician and metaphysician Ibn Sina, known in
the West as Avishana, had had this interesting philosophical

(08:58):
thought experiment long before our famed Rene Descartes of the
floating man, where he went through this process of, yeah,
thinking what it would be like to be just a kind of disembodied
experience floating in in nothingness and going through

(09:18):
the the process of thinking thisthrough coming to a kind of
reduction of yeah, you could still know mind, you could still
know existence even in in this kind of void experience.
And it's fascinating that, yeah,far before Descartes does his
own kind of skeptical method, here we have a a very important
Islamic thinker who's doing something at least in a in a

(09:41):
similar vein, even though the the conclusions and the
significance is, is different. And yeah, just just how
important in the history of metaphysics, even as it came
into the Western world through Islamic civilization.
Yeah, it just had so much development in in this
intellectual context and whetherwe're thinking about, yeah,

(10:02):
questions of of mind or causation or selfhood.
There's just so much in in Islamic thought traditions,
whether it be Sufi spiritual mystical metaphysics or Islamic
occasionalism that delineates interesting theory of causation

(10:23):
that has some resonance in fact,with the process thought of
Alfred N Whitehead. There's there's truly just so
much so much there. So I think a big part of what I
would especially like to see in our Mind at Large conversations
is just, yeah, broadening the intellectual field to hopefully
include these non western and non modern traditions of thought
that in many ways seem particularly well suited to some

(10:47):
of our contemporary intellectualexplorations.
Yeah, beautiful said. And John, for you and
misconception people have about perhaps process philosophy and
transpersonal psychology that you believe matters for the
broader discourse in consciousness.
Well, starting with say psychedelic experience or, or
any kind of extraordinary experience, I, I think it tends

(11:10):
to be on one side people who dismiss them as, you know,
they're not real, they're, you know, or they're subjective.
And on the other side, they're people that take them at face
value and perhaps too, too easily as objective.
So sorting out the the very difficult process of of sorting

(11:33):
out how you, how you approach subjectivity, objectivity in the
1st place is Whitehead's very, very helpful for I think and and
and try. I, I, I, I'm.
I guess I'm more concerned with those who dismiss psychedelic
experience, although I, I think we're in the, in the, you know,

(11:56):
now in the second emergence of psychedelics in western, in the
Western world. I, I think it's got a much more
secure foundation because a lot of people that were interested
in back in the 60s and 70s are now, you know, in government
heading up departments. And so it's, it's got a, a

(12:18):
support in that way that's very different than from the 1960s.
You know, with process Whiteheadin particular, you know, there's
one group that, oh, he, you know, he's a, you know, he's a
theologian. He believes in God, you know,
the gods in his system. So it's non scientific.
And that, you know, that's one easy way to dismiss him when

(12:39):
really, you know, although in, he was very extremely interested
in religion. You know, he was a mathematical
physicist, first of all. He was extremely interested, you
know, throughout his life in, inMaxwell's equations and
electromagnetic formulas. And he was, you know, a

(12:59):
philosopher of, of history, of education, of, of science.
And so too had his own theory of, you know, critique of the
theory of relativity. So to see him as some kind of
theological figure is, you know,is a, is a misnomer.
He's A and, you know, and also he could also be dismissed.

(13:20):
Well, he's a philosopher, which is definitely, you know, real
bearing. We don't, you know, the whole,
you know, science, we don't really need philosophy because
we're not doing, you know, we, you know, because we make up our
own metaphysics that we go by, you know, instead of the, is the
is actually so trying to get people to understand what the
role, what the real, the role ofmetaphysics in philosophy is in

(13:43):
understanding, understanding religion and science, you know,
is, you know, I think really, really important.
And, you know, Whitehead had thegreat line that the primary
importance of, of speculative philosophy is to fuse within
one's system of ideas, science and religion.
And you know that that's, that'sa big, that's a big statement.

(14:07):
And, and I think Whitehead has succeeded as well as anybody
that I know of. Well, Greg, I think let's, let's
bring this together now. It's John.
Your work in process philosophy suggests a universe made of
events rather than things. And Jared, Islamic metaphysics
often treats consciousness as divine, relational, or

(14:27):
participatory. How do your frameworks converge
or diverge on the basic ontologyof consciousness?
Anyone can start. I hope you can handle that Jared
cuz I don't know. Sure.
Yeah, Yeah. I mean, I'm certainly steeped in
the the White Hedian tradition as well.
And really there's only kind of beginning to be some work done

(14:50):
bridging process metaphysics andtraditional Islamic systems of
thought. But there's some very promising
points of contact, especially inthe the thought of Mullah Sadra,
sort of high medieval she theologian, who likewise had a
much more perceptual cosmology and reconceived kind of

(15:14):
Aristotelian substance as it came through the Islamic
tradition in a more kind of relational, relational mode.
And so this is an interesting sort of point of contact with
the the White Hedian tradition that's beginning to be explored.
And likewise there's some more contemporary figures like the
founder, the intellectual kind of forefather of modern day

(15:35):
Pakistan and famed poet Alaman Muhammad Iqbal, who cites
Whitehead and a number of other more kind of process inflected
thinkers and in some of his own philosophical work.
And yeah, conceives of of God and in this kind of divine
movement and life and wants to, yeah, move to to a more

(15:57):
perceptual conception of not only kind of the divine, but
likewise kind of human, human becoming and, and selfhood as
well with his idea of hoodie. And so there's some, yeah,
interesting, interesting optionsfor, for crossover, for
parallel. But likewise some the ways that
the Islamic tradition retains a bit more of the kind of

(16:19):
classical theism of the the Abrahamic traditions, but in a
different mode than say, the onethat that came through,
especially the Protestant tradition in, in Christianity.
So there might be ways that Muslim thinkers have
conceptualized mind, selfhood and the divine in more, say,
classical sorts of ways with reference to Plato, Aristotle,

(16:43):
Platinus, and their own kind of Islamic Neoplatonic intellectual
forefathers that might have something there that we might
want to kind of re re exam and re excavate.
And maybe our process frameworkscan can likewise learn something
from from these Islamic frameworks.
So I'm, yeah, really interested in kind of a mutually
transformative intellectual encounter between those

(17:06):
traditions. John, anything you'd like to add
to that? Well, that's just what I was
going to say, Jared. I, I think my reading Islamic
studies is limited to Andrea Corbyn.
So I'm, I'm afraid I'm well. It's it's also the biggest
question that we and I think this podcast is fundamentally
about in general, right Mind body solution is obviously based

(17:29):
on the mind body problem. Is there a mind body problem?
That's a question for for another episode.
But what is consciousness, John?Do you think consciousness is
fundamental, emergent, relational, something else
entirely? And what does your preferred
model explain in your opinion better than the alternatives?

(17:50):
I'm glad you asked that. I'm, when you mentioned events,
I was going to sort of take off on that because, you know,
events are somewhat ambiguous since Whitehead uses it in, in a
various, you know, often in a very technical way.
And I think one of the one of the more important things is,

(18:10):
you know, every time I hear that, you know, everything's
consciousness, consciousness is everywhere.
It seems, it seems patently false.
You know, there's, I mean, there's a lot of stuff that, you
know, I don't think the, you know, this lamp is, is
consciousness. I it's a, it's a, it seems like
a bad place to start trying to convince materialists that, you
know, everything, that consciousness is pervasive.

(18:31):
So what I think is one of the more important things that
Whitehead did was to say that, you know, that consciousness is
the crown, the occasional crown of experience and that, you
know, David Griffin, you know, used the term pan
experientialism. So that there's experience is
pervasive, but experience is either uncan be unconscious.

(18:56):
It could be non conscious and itwas Whitehead.
The, the basic idea is that the,the past is being felt by new
momentary occasions. I, I, I like the drawing on the
idea of a quantum event, you know, quantum event incorporates
the, you know, through a probability field, the

(19:17):
influences of the past and a newquantum moment event emerges.
And, you know, that's the basic idea of what's going on at all
levels, so that the in the humanpsyche, it's absorbing the
momentary, the effects of the influences of the past directly

(19:38):
flowing into it. So you've got internal relations
going on rather than, you know, the billiard barrel universe.
And these, these momentary, these events, you know, at the
human level occasionally are complex enough and synthesize
deeply enough the past to createa consciousness.
But you know, even with the humans, you know, you know, I

(19:59):
mean depth psychology, most of it's, it's unconscious levels.
So, so you know, to say, you know, another, I think David
Griffin's really important points he makes is that
differentiating between a, a, a,a collection of.

(20:21):
Events that may have primitive experience, like a like the lamp
sitting here, you know, those moments of the events making up
that lamp have some kind of primitive experiential quality
or the synthetic quality. But the lamp itself doesn't
generate a higher level an emergent entity, I don't think

(20:44):
anyway, you know, which ones do and which ones don't is a big
question. But you know, you might think of
atoms and cells and molecules and human beings and and then
you then the questions start, you know, coming up.
Do galaxies, you know, do do Suns do do the Corbett?

(21:08):
Let's see. Korbeluski.
Anyway, the the giant, the giantplasma clouds.
Kordaluski. Clouds.
Kordaluski there it is something.
Like that? Yeah, yeah.
No, it named after the Polish astronomer who originally
discovered them. But so, so I, I, I just find
this whole, this approach so much, you know, more palatable

(21:30):
and, and hopefully acceptable by, by people who are not
immediately prone to thinking in, in more new age terminal,
new age ways of thinking. Yeah.
And I think that's, it's such animportant, you bring up
something very important there is that while trying to promote
and generate intrigue with this project, we have to have these

(21:54):
back steps. We have to almost be prepared
for something like that where the misconception, the
misunderstandings, the, the baggage that comes with it.
Just thinking outside of the brain for many materialists,
it's, it's quite difficult for many people And to just bombard
them with like the lamp is conscious, it's too much.
You've got to have some sort of a, an approach here.
And I think it's, it's, it's, it's a fine-tuned task that's

(22:16):
ahead of us. Yeah, yeah, the and you know,
and I'm I'm very sympathetic. I mean, we, you know, the the
world does look like it's a bunch of objects.
I mean, our experience does pro prone us to think that incline
us to think that way and experience that way.
Part of that I think is a bias in the way language has

(22:38):
developed and our thinking patterns have developed.
But part of it is it, you know, if you look around, I think you
know, most, even without these biases, the world does look like
these, except so the way Descartes saw it, it's 33
dimensional objects, which is one reason I particularly like

(22:58):
Whitehead's idea that you draw on evidence from everywhere.
You know, I was, I did a lot of phenomena, studied a lot of
phenomenology and love phenomenology.
But I thought, you know, it doesn't, how do you, how do you
fit phenomenology with science, with history, you know, with a
lot of other. You can't draw in all this
fascinating evidence that's not part of the, you know,

(23:23):
experiential life, you know, conscious experiential life
world. And, and so Whitehead, you know,
draw, you know, we'll, we'll draw on, we'll draw on physics,
we'll draw on mathematics, We'll, we'll draw on neurology.
And and and then put together a package of how this all adds up
for understanding the nature of things.

(23:43):
And Gerald T, What is consciousness?
Yeah, I feel like the way I think about these big
philosophical questions like this, I don't know if I end up
with a final answer or a real like definitive framework that I
put my stake on at sort of denounce other frameworks as as

(24:05):
inadequate. But I definitely do find a lot
of value in the kind of white Hetty and Pan experientialist
framework that John just did a phenomenal job outlining.
I think it treads the the right middle ground between a kind of
crude pan psychism where it's like, wait, really?
Are we sure that atoms are having the same kind of

(24:25):
reflective sort of self-conscious mode of
experience that we as human beings are?
I think that is quite implausible and I think it's not
not ridiculous that many would sort of bulk at that
proposition. But the idea that, OK, there's
some kind of first person aspectto all, all centers of

(24:48):
experience, all objects, that there's a what it's likeness to
an atom, to a river, and that the kind of causal influences
that coalesce to to manifest these various things and our
reality have have some quality of interiority to them.

(25:09):
But it's, it's different though,than the very refined and, and
complex interiority of, say, thehuman person that is marked by
the self reflective, introspective, metacognitive
mode of, of consciousness. And so that's a, it's a
framework I use a lot in, in life.
I feel like it has both existential and more kind of

(25:33):
scientific value to it. And it's able to, yes, integrate
those things together in the, the way that, that John is
saying. But I found various modes of
idealism to be rich and having acertain intellectual vitality to
them. And what plausibility some of
those schemes I worry about to totalizing to monistic of a

(25:58):
metaphysics. And I think that is likewise one
of the problems with the thorough going materialism as
well. Part of me wonders if we need
just a radical Poly ontology where some things are events,
some things are substances, Maybe consciousness is
fundamental in some contexts or cases and not and others, and

(26:20):
less satisfying and harder to use that kind of a standpoint as
a robust and stable framework for things like scientific
investigation. But I think it's worthwhile even
exploring kind of that level of speculative metaphysics where
any sense of a sort of non localfoundation is disregarded and

(26:43):
we're able to. Yeah, think very wildly and and
freely at least in in ways that still have certain kind of guard
rails and intentions to them andto be integrative and adequate
to experience and evidence. Yeah.
Jared, you mentioned you're a big part of it.

(27:03):
Is this the existential component to it for you as well?
It's a big part of it, and a major threat in your work is
responding to contemporary nihilism and the meaning crisis.
How does Islamic metaphysics, and especially its contemplative
traditions, address meaning in ways that modernity has just
completely neglected? Yeah, let me let me try and tie

(27:28):
some stuff together here. So John briefly mentioned the
20th century French scholar of Islam, Henri Corban, and a big
part of his work was investigating this idea of
imagination in traditions of Sufi and and Shi spirituality.
And for these Islamic thinkers, imagination was not just being

(27:51):
able to to dream up a, a scene in your kind of isolated mind.
And it's this purely subjective interior reality, but
imagination was a kind of basic faculty of both perception and
creation. So when we are in an imaginative
experience, say, especially in like a visionary mystical

(28:15):
experience, we aren't just seeing some private vision that
is idiosyncratic to our own atomized consciousness.
But actually we're in some kind of reciprocal relationship with
various kinds of ideal divine archetypal realities that are

(28:36):
appearing to us in the imaginative vision in ways that
are unique to our own psychology, our own kind of
individuality. But they are also exemplary of
realities beyond ourselves In, in this say, I say more kind of
divine realm or realm of forms. And so I think this is a great

(28:57):
framework for psychedelic visionary experience as it is
able to strike a middle ground between, on the one hand, a very
kind of reductive, more materialist conception where
it's like, oh, there's chemicalsin my brain.
So I'm getting weird perceptionsbecause of how my neurons are
are firing, which is definitely true.
That's part of this. But if that's all you can say,

(29:20):
but you're in a hermeneutically kind of diminished capacity to
actually make sense of like whatcould be, could well be the one
of the most profound experiencesof your of your life.
If all you could say is my brainwas doing something weird of
your peak mystical experience, you're probably not going to be
in a great position to integratethat and reap as much wisdom and

(29:41):
benefit from it as you could. On the other hand though, it's
very easy to get overtaken by those kinds of experiences and
think that you have seen the singular divine truth that
something has been kind of fullyrevealed to you and you get it
all now. And maybe you even are sort of

(30:01):
veering into a spiritual psychosis on the other side of
that, that type of peak experience.
And it's it's a real danger. And this Islamic perspective of
imagination allows you to kind of qualify these visions, play
with them hermeneutically. The Arabic word is tah wheel for
kind of esoteric interpretation.And so there's a real way that

(30:25):
these things need to be wrestledwith and integrated and can't be
can't be taken at face value. And you need to wrestle with
your own soul to actually kind of get them to really revealed
themselves fully. And so that kind of interpretive
meaning making process that comes out of this say more
metaphysics of imagination and this kind of Neoplatonic sacked

(30:49):
cosmology allows for a real, yeah, an emanation downwards of
insight and and revelation from a cosmos that is diffuse with
meaning. But also a sort of emergent
process of your own struggling to grapple with interpreting

(31:10):
these various signs and in the cosmos.
And yeah, not not having this hubris of thinking, one
understands immediately. And John, from a Process
philosophical lens, what is the root of the meaning crisis?
Is it metaphysical, psychological, spiritual, or a

(31:33):
breakdown in narrative coherence?
Or none of the above? I don't know.
I think I mean you. You I think I'd be stating a lot

(31:55):
of the the obvious that the well, I guess I'll, I'll go
along David Griffin's thinking again that that the a worldview,
our worldview helps, you know, stabilize us in everything with
the way we understand things. And so with the collapse of
religion largely worldwide and you know, from the influences of

(32:19):
of a scientific worldview and the two of them not being able
to be reconciled leaves us, you know, a lot of people adrift,
you know, the doubting, doubtingthe religion.
Yet, you know, knowing something's, you know, missing
that we don't, you know, everything isn't some kind of
purely objective, rational, logical formula that can can be

(32:44):
that can that can be worked out scientifically.
And I know, I know my my parents, my, you know, my mother
was, you know, brought up, you know, religiously and then went
to college and discovered that God doesn't exist, you know, and
that was, you know, that was a big shock.
You know, back in the 1940s, that was AI mean that was a

(33:05):
huge, you know, it's been a hugething for a while, but I think
it became sort of hit the culture more, you know, more
widely than it did the the the major intellectual influences
who saw it early on, like Nietzsche, What help with this?
So this impact's really been unfolding.
And then there this, you know, the reactions of the

(33:26):
fundamentalist churches because,you know, people want community.
You know, the lack of community is a huge part of it.
And, you know, I mean there, there's a scientific community,
but that really doesn't provide community for for the you mass
masses of the world. So I think it's a collapse of a
of a central sense of connectionof, you know, to community and

(33:50):
to something larger. And, you know, we're, that's one
of the, I think, you know, what's so important is trying to
piece, trying to put together a worldview that incorporates the
best of best of religion and science and, and life in general
into a, into a coherent thing that people can, can believe in.

(34:14):
Because, you know, it's, it's, it's resonates, you know, with
who they are and who we are and,and find a way to share that
effectively. David Griffin has a, has a nice
little book called 2 great truths.
And so he looks at what's great about religion and what's where
it's gone wrong and what's greatabout science, where it's wrong
and and perhaps how they can be put together.

(34:36):
You know, we're not Humpty Dumpty can still be put together
again in some form or another. Maybe not, you know, not the
original ones, obviously. But and, you know, I think, I
think Whitehead was very concerned.
I don't want to sound like complete like a 1 trick pony,
but I pretty much am. I think he's done a, you know,
does a does a great job of, as you know, as I said, trying to

(34:56):
fuse religion and science into once into one into one scheme of
thought. And I just want to throw in with
with when Jared was talking about having mystical
experiences and separating out the wheat from the chaff, as it
were. I, I think, you know, one of my

(35:18):
big concerns was trying to understand what, what
psychedelic experiences mean andand how they, how they could
happen. And and that's another place why
it was so helpful, this idea that each new each new human
level event not only incorporates the feelings, as it
were from and data from the brain, but more generally has a

(35:39):
has an Open Access to the entirepast.
So, you know, this opens up, youknow, if God's floating around,
you're, you're we're at some deep level.
We're, we're being informed by God.
We're being informed by, you know, the Kordolowski clouds,
you know, if we can have something that open, you know,

(35:59):
that kind of breaks open our, our usual work way of being in
the world to access what's flowing in from the depths.
You know, real, real stuff is coming in.
But as Jared pointed out, it's being being funneled through a
lot of our, our own past experience and ways of thinking.
And so sorting that out's a major task.

(36:24):
Where do you guys both see the deepest overlap between process
philosophy and meta modern spirituality in constructing a
meaning generating worldview adequate for the 21st century?
Yeah, I think for me it would definitely be the the discourses
process thinkers spearheaded in the later 20th century and

(36:47):
onwards of constructive postmodernism as as I think
David Ray Griffin maybe coined that that term.
But yeah, having this perspective that takes modernity
and sees, sees its real values, sees it turns out we have

(37:08):
medicine that is quite effectiveat helping people, at developing
new cures, at doing all these things that are life preserving
and very positive. So we don't want to be
reactively anti modern. We obviously want some of these.
Yet seeing all these critical perspectives that came in the

(37:29):
wake of of modernism as having having some real value to them,
of seeing the ways that large kind of grand narratives are a
little over totalizing and leavethings out.
And the way that, yeah, the reductionism of a lot of modern
thought wasn't able to incorporate some very valuable

(37:52):
aspects of human human life and the kind of stitch things
together. So the the process thinkers
developed this constructive postmodern discourse and drew on
Whitehead, William James, a number of other kind of Anglo
and Anglo American thinkers outside of the typical analytic

(38:14):
tradition, though that yeah, hada little bit more cosmology, had
a little bit more speculative philosophy to them to kind of
chart a different path than say the one that was predominantly
taken by continental, especiallyFrench post structuralist
thinkers. And yeah, see, see what kind of

(38:34):
constructive postmodern responsecould be, could be given.
And a lot of what many thinkers nowadays using the term
modernism are doing is, is really quite similar, though
they have different intellectualsources than the the process
thinkers did. And so it's, it's interesting
watching watching this kind of emergent discourse develop that

(38:58):
in some ways is paralleling the the process constructed
postmodern tradition, but in other ways is kind of the making
its own stakes. I'd say in general, meta
modernism is a broader term and there's a number of different
understandings of, of what it means and different usages of it
both inside academia and in kindof a broader cultural mode.

(39:20):
And so I think it's, yeah, a little bit more encompassing of
different, different traditions,different sources for
nonetheless doing this kind of intellectual project of
incorporating critique of modernism while also trying to
shepherd the best of modern thinking forward in a in a new

(39:42):
mode that kind of has is a little more balanced, a little
more harmonious. John, anything you'd like to add
to that? No, I think Jared's covered it
pretty well. Pretty damn well.
Well, when you look at both of your work from both your
perspectives. What do you think psychedelics

(40:02):
and classical mystical traditions agree and disagree on
regarding the structure of reality?
John, you could start. Say that one more time, please.
So when it comes to, for example, your work on, let's say
holotropic breath work and transpersonal psychology
intersects with altar States andexpanded consciousness, and then

(40:24):
Jared's work with comparative religion and Islamic mysticism,
he, well, he studies that. And if you think about
psychedelics sort of within thissphere, what do psychedelics in
classical mystical traditions agree and disagree on regarding
the structure of reality? You know, the, the biggest

(40:48):
influence for me with the psychedelic universe was
Stanislav Kroft's work. I did a whole trophic breath
work training with him and he was on my dissertation committee
and I was just talking to him. Actually, he's in his mid 90s.
So he's, I wish you could come. Otherwise I'd be inviting him to

(41:10):
this to the to mind at large conference.
But he's, I don't think he's doing that anymore.
I, I found, I found that his approach was to do a cartography
of extraordinary experience basically.
And he, he drew on thousands of psychedelic experiences that he

(41:30):
sat in on, and you might say supervised, but really just, you
know, observed and, and, and followed up on as well as 10s of
thousands holotropic experiences.
So it creates a it creates a base of of the varieties of

(41:54):
psychedelic experience as Gene Houston and Robert Masters book
title and you know, comes up with the various areas and
categories of kinds of experiences people have.
And I find this really helpful rather than trying to, trying to
think which, which experience, which are the right experiences,

(42:16):
you know, where, where, where are things wrong?
Although he has, I think, 3 ultimate experiences, which are,
you know, what are they? The metacosmic void the, and
these things, by the way, I, in my book, I, I, I think fit
really quite well with civil Whiteheadian understanding of,
of what an ultimate entity in the, in the universe might be

(42:39):
like. You know, the, I think one place
I tend to, I don't know if I disagree with as I, I, I really
like Houston Smith and I love Huxley's, but, but this notion
that, you know, they, I think they tended to be caught up a

(43:00):
little bit in some of the Indianphilosophical monism a little
bit too much, you know, that there's this one, one truth and
1, you know, and so I, I, I loveWilliam James more pluralistic,
pluralistic universe and that there's, you know, different,
different modes of experiencing ultimate, ultimate mystical

(43:24):
experiences. And I also like Whitehead
because I think it kind of givesyou a centre to I to kind of
pull together how those different modes might, might be,
might be connected. I I turn it over to you to be
more clear. Yeah, you're in luck.

(43:45):
I did my undergraduate thesis onpretty much this topic actually.
So I do have some thoughts. And one of them that has really
kind of emerged stronger and stronger in my thinking over
time is connects back to what I was saying in terms of
imagination and hermeneutics, that there isn't a psychedelic

(44:08):
or traditional mystical experience that is somehow
devoid of our own interpretation.
We are always kind of making meaning of these, of these types
of peak experiences. There can be very intense
moments of them that feel luminous and revelatory, but

(44:28):
especially as we return to soberconsciousness and try to make
sense of, OK, what, what is whatsignificance can I draw from,
from, say, this mystical vision or this encounter with the, the
machine elf in the DMT experience?
That's always a a process of interpretation that, that we're

(44:50):
going through. And I think it's really
important that we don't sort of shirk that responsibility, that
we. Yeah, really have a a strong
sense of, OK, I'm doing a interpretive maneuver here with
the deeply intense and obscure kind of personal experience that

(45:12):
I need to, yeah, be responsible for that.
So you hear sometimes of people who have these intense
psychedelic experiences for for a first time, and they get all
these revelations and have this intense kind of visionary
experience. And on the other side of that,
they're like, oh, turns out Mother Ayahuasca told me to

(45:34):
divorce my my wife and go be a monk in in the mountain.
And I just got to do that. And it's like, well, there's
something there. There's obviously something
there that you want to really wrestle with and unpack.
Maybe you are deeply unhappy in in this relationship.
Maybe though also this is a kindof avoidant fear response that

(45:56):
that came up and manifested in this profound way and in this
visionary experience. And you can't defer that
interpretive response ability tothe experience itself.
So whether we're talking about, say, traditional Buddhist
enlightenment, samadhi type experiences, a Christian, say a

(46:17):
vision of the Virgin Mary or some kind of psychedelic
experience, I think there's always going to be this process
of interpretation and wrestling that we need to go through.
And having a metaphysics that isn't too reductive in either
direction of, yeah, either ratifying these types of visions

(46:41):
into, well, this is my kind of religious vision that has the
kind of highest epistemological value I can imagine.
And it just is what it is. I'm going to make some dramatic
sudden changes into how I'm living.
Or if we are doing the kind of reductive materialist mode of
saying, well, I had some wacky hallucinatory brain experience

(47:04):
that doesn't have any significance.
Neither of those options kind ofgive you a good a good grounding
to to productively integrate andmove forward with taking this
experience as a revelatory and enlightening, but in a way that
nonetheless balances with with your life, social aspects and
all sorts of other entanglementswe have.

(47:27):
Yeah, I think these these experience have a way of
fundamentally changing big ontological pictures,
experiences of life, death, continuity.
There's it impacts so many different realms.
And I think one of the importantones we should discuss is
something like death or these big ontological problems.

(47:47):
John, in your book Processing Reality, it explores death,
psychedelics and sobriety through a process lens.
And Jared, many Islamic theologians argue that death is
a transition rather than a an endpoint.
How do your frameworks rethink the boundaries between life and
death? Well, David Griffin again has a

(48:13):
really interesting book called Parapsychology, Philosophy and
Spirituality. And he looks at, but first of
all, he presents that how what whiteheads metaphysics allow for
the possibility of there being the the psyche existing outside
of a body. And, and so, but then he starts,

(48:35):
then he wants to look at, well, that's if it's possible, you
know, doesn't actually happen. And so he looks at out of body
experiences. He looks at medium mask
experiences, he looks at reincarnation, ghost, ghost
experience and finds a lot of really interesting and highly
suggestive evidence to this nature.
So then he, you know, he, he concludes that, you know, nobody

(49:00):
knows. He doesn't know anyway whether
or not there's continued existence of some sort after
death. But, you know, it's a, it's a
real, it's a metaphysical possibility.
And there's a lot of interestingevidence pointing in that
direction. But he also makes a quite
interesting suggestion that it's, it's not just either or,

(49:21):
you know, there's other, there'sother possibilities that, you
know, we might have various kinds of continuing existence.
We, you know, different kinds ofreincarnation.
We might have different kinds ofunitive experiences with the
universe. And he also suggests that we
might also have a choice. You know, we might choose to go
on. We might think, well, that was
that was plenty. You know, that's enough.

(49:42):
And I, I think, I think Whitehead was inclined to think
probably not. And Charles Hartzern, one of his
great disciples, as it were, felt like I, I think he felt it
was kind of greedy to, to think that there's more, you know,
that this should this, you know,the, you know, we, we contribute

(50:05):
to God's, you know, richness through our own experience and
God experience. You know, you know, we're that
that's, you know, that isn't enough to generate a deep
meaning in life. And but it, you know, it's, you
know, I, I, I think it's really important, you know, that after
I read David Griffin's book, I thought, yeah, yeah, that's kind

(50:28):
of interesting. It's, it's, you know, it's more,
it's more likely than I I thought, which is also kind of a
scary notion because, you know, you know, the, you know, the
Buddhist made, you know, from some perspective, the main
Buddhist project is to end reincarnations, you know, to get
out of the game. So I it opens up possibilities,

(50:51):
it'd be my way of my I'd put it.Jared, your view.
Yeah. Well at least typical Islamic
thinkers are definitely going tohave a stronger conception of a
soul as a center of experience that is able to continue on
postmortem of the physical body.But interestingly for Islamic

(51:16):
thought, the soul also pre existed material body which is
different from say a typical Christian perspective.
Unless you're in one of the one of the various early Christian
heresies, I forget which one. I think origin actually, the
church father had had this perspective as well, but he he

(51:41):
we're I see Christian thinkers returning to it now, but it's
for a long time been pretty, pretty controversial.
But in anyways, that's a that's a very much orthodox Islamic
perspective coming right out of certain verses of the the Quran.
So yeah, very strong sense of both pre existent and post

(52:01):
mortem sort of center of experience of, of the soul, the
nafs in in Arabic. And yeah, how how exactly this
experience proceeds after the the biological death of the
physical form has definitely been a a matter of debate over

(52:23):
the course of Islamic intellectual history.
But yeah, I think that that aspect of the pre existence is
maybe even a little more interesting than the typical
question of the life after death, as Islamic thought puts a
lot of significance into that and says that, OK, there's some
basic kind of orientations or modes of recognition that the

(52:48):
human person has at baseline dueto the sort of experience the
the soul had in in pre eternity when it was still kind of in the
overall divine life and not yet in in our kind of material
cosmos. So an interesting kind of point
for for meaning making and and things like that.

(53:11):
Yeah. And Jared, you've also you've
written about the potential of Islam as a resource for
interfaith dialogue and global meaning making.
And which is something I find similar with John's work with
with the global contemplative and philosophical traditions
with this within this meaning making essence.

(53:31):
What would a truly cross civilizational philosophy of
consciousness look like with that in mind?
Yeah, what a what a big project,huh?
I think, I think it would need to involve, yeah, bringing
together as many different rich,sophisticated frameworks as as

(53:54):
possible within, say a narrower slice of our global
civilization. I think the Neoplatonic heritage
that is prominent within all theAbrahamic faiths, but also
beyond kind of stretching down to that early Hellenic period of
philosophical and mystical investigation.

(54:16):
I think there's a lot of potential there for at least
among Muslims, Christians and Jews to kind of rally around a
framework that can kind of crosssome of those confessional
boundaries. Well, having having a
metaphysics that is, is relatively consonant or, or
consistent. But I mean, there's reasons that

(54:39):
we've moved away from Neoplatonic modes of thought as
well. And I think one of the ways to
understand the process traditionis kind of trying to, to do
something similar, to serve a similar role as the, the
Neoplatonic tradition did in, inmore classical times of this,
yeah, large scale general metaphysical framework that can

(55:01):
have an expression in various different theological and
confessional traditions and, andtranslate between them
effectively. And I think that's why we've
seen these process discourses ofdeep religious pluralism pop up
and be so, so influential. Likewise, John mentioned Huxley

(55:22):
and Houston Smith, they're kind of perennialist project, along
with other other thinkers like Saeed Hussein Nasser, a living
Islamic philosopher and in this kind of overall traditionalist
school are doing very interesting projects as well,
bringing together likewise Eastern, say Advaita Vedanta,

(55:45):
Hindu metaphysics with with someof these more Western
Neoplatonic modes of thought, finding points of integration
there. Another theologian alive today
who's doing something somewhat similar is David Bentley Hart in
the Eastern Orthodox tradition. He likewise draws upon both

(56:05):
these early church fathers, Maximus, the professor, he likes
origin and but brings in the Hindu metaphysics as well, of
which there are certainly many varieties.
So I think there's there's options, there's points of
contact. The cognitive scientist John
Vervecki is trying to do a Zen Neoplaton project.

(56:27):
I find the work of the Kyoto school that he draws on for some
of that very influential and compelling, which integrates,
yes, a types of Zen thinking with various strands of Western
theological and philosophical reflection.
So let's let's kind of acknowledge all of those and see

(56:47):
what happens if we throw them ina big bag together, scramble
them up and see what kinds of chimeras we can create that
allow for this cross pollination, this these streams
of dialogue to to emerge. But I don't think we're going to
end up with just one final totalizing framework.
But the more we can have that play and interacting with each

(57:10):
other, the better. John, Jared says.
I mean, he doesn't think it willeventually become one, but do
you think that we are sort of moving toward a new shared
metaphysics, something that transcends individual traditions
yet honours them? And what might this include?

(57:31):
What? Oops.
Give Jared, and Jared's afraid of this one.
Give him a blast, Jared. A moment.
He's back. Hey, you can't get off that
easy, buddy. Yeah, I I following up on Jared
just a little bit. For an example, John Cobb did

(57:51):
quite a bit of inter religion, inter religious activity, and
one of his great books is, is beyond Dialogue where he goes
with the with the Buddhists and and a conversation with
Buddhism. And you know, it's done in such
a you know, you know, he doesn'twant to explain away Buddhism.

(58:13):
You know, he wants to have, you know, a mutual interaction and
informing and, and, you know, Whitehead has a famous line that
his, his philosophy in many waysis, has more in common with
certain Asiatic strains of thought than with Western
philosophy. And so, you know, I, I think, I

(58:37):
think some kind of some kind of organic realism, some kind of,
you know, organic philosophy andthe, and the tradition of
shilling and, and, and William James's pluralism and white as
metaphysics. And I, I think something of that
general sort, which can be adopted and be be non, non

(59:02):
totalizing in a lot of ways, although it's an attempt to be a
picture of, of everything. I, I, I'm certainly hopeful that
that might bring together peopleinto a common way of thinking.
And I, I should, I should just, I should for those who are
panicking, should mention that Whitehead was the first to say

(59:25):
that his ideas were not final. That speculative philosophy is
an ongoing attempt and to do to,to put together frames of
thought with imperfect language that can never, can never fully
accommodate the nature of reality.
It is always imperfect and always being, you know, being
improved and as new ideas come forth and and new metaphysical

(59:49):
concepts. Charles Hartzog does have a
wonderful quote somewhere about about Whitehead's idea of the,
you know, of the events incorporating past in a creative
synthesis thing. You know, he goes to the
greatest metaphysical generalization in history
because it brings together, well, wait a minute.
I have to quote it and have it here somewhere.

(01:00:13):
I love it so much. OOP not there.
I'll, I'll look it up. I'll, I'll, I'll let you go on
and I'm going to look it up. Look.
You can, you can. You can bring it up if you'd
like. I have it here.
I put together a few notes whichfortunately I haven't had to
bother you guys with. Well, Bill Wilson, who is, you

(01:00:39):
know, the founder of a A also had a wonderful quote about
science. He says I had a scientific
schooling. Naturally, I respected
venerated, even worship science.As a matter of fact, I still do
all except the worship part. I like that.
And the, oh, the, the hard certain quote is causality,

(01:01:04):
substance, memory, perception, temporal succession, modality
are all but modulations of one principle of creative synthetic
experience feeding entirely in its own prior products.
I consider this the most powerful metaphysical
generalization ever accomplished.

(01:01:25):
And Charles, by the way, CharlesHartzhardt is, is, is, you know,
a brilliant philosopher in his own right.
He, he was still writing great books at age 100.
So he's, he's, he's got what it was like.
What is it? Insights, I think insights and
oversights of great thinkers. Because he knew almost all that,

(01:01:46):
you know, the 20th century's major philosophers and that
that's a wonderful little book and quite and quite accessible,
you know. When when you guys look at this,
I mean, even having these dialogues and discussions, it's
it's pretty cool because we knowthat this is evolving, growing
the mind and lodge project itself is do you see it as

(01:02:08):
participating in a larger historical movement akin to what
William James why Ted Ibn Arabi envisioned in their respective
errors. I would like to think so.
I would yeah, with, with a good dose of humility, hope that we
can, yeah, participate in something with, yeah, similarly

(01:02:32):
broad and scoping aims and yeah,bring in as much together as as
possible, as much diversity of, of thought in, in ways that can,
yeah, hopefully coalesce into some really, really interesting
speculations and frameworks and,and friendships.

(01:02:54):
So. Yeah.
I think this little group has the flexibility and, and ability
to bring together groups of people that might not normally
be at a conference and in a combination of formal and
informal way of interaction thatI, I think is very valuable for,

(01:03:16):
for exploring ideas in, in, in different ways and also bringing
people into contact and creatingnew collegial connections.
So I, I, I think this is, I, I, I think a lot could come out of
this. You know, this is not going to
change the, but alone change thetrajectory of a Western

(01:03:41):
civilization. But it's, I, I think it's part
of that trajectory. Yeah, it's a small step towards
the big hole. It's just it's, it's, it's part
of the puzzle. And we're just a piece that's
going to try and complete this beautiful puzzle.
The this this project is huge. It's, it's, it's going to be
diverse, bringing various different thinkers, unique in

(01:04:04):
many ways. And as you just said, the type
of people that you people are expecting to come together.
I mean, and, and, and what they're going to get is going to
be very different. People are just it's going to be
an amazing amalgamation of different cultures,
philosophies, encounters, and and for those who are
materialists fundamentally skeptical about it, there's

(01:04:26):
going to be materialists there as well.
So so everyone just needs to know that this is not just a an
anti materialism campaign. It's rather a diversity of
thought mission to move and think with new ideas and new
intentions. What do you both think each
other bring to this table with that in mind?
So John, when it comes to Jared,what what do you think is great

(01:04:48):
about the fact that Jared's in this team, part of his Mind at
Large project and what he bringsto this project?
Well be besides his incredible technical abilities and, and be
able to be able to help us with a lot of a lot of a lot of the
framework and technology. He, he's, I've, I've only known

(01:05:12):
Jared for a few years, but number one, he's bringing this
whole Islamic perspective that Idon't think you know, and the
whole and whole more really, really whole alternative
framework to, to the conference rather than just this, you know,
our traditional sort of Western,western philosophical thing.

(01:05:33):
But he also, he's also very familiar with the Western thing.
So he, he's, he's quite a remarkable, quite a remarkable
mind. I wish, I wish I had it.
He's quite, he's quite brilliant.
And it, it's, it's a very, as somebody who is on the older end
of the framework, it's, and as alot of Whiteheadians gatherings

(01:05:58):
tend to be older people. It, it's very, it's very
encouraging the group. Jared's the youngest, but this,
this group is in general by my perspective of pretty young and,
and, and it's really, really encouraging and, and hopeful for
me that these ideas are continuing to be developed and,

(01:06:18):
and, and not only perpetuated, but, you know, worked out,
worked out in new ways that are quite exciting.
Yeah, I, I love that John is bringing the transpersonal and
psychedelic experiences especially has key, key

(01:06:39):
components, key key frameworks here.
I mean, I've certainly done a good bit of work in psychedelic
thought as well at the way that John has used process and
transpersonal thinking to kind of delineate and unpack and
interpret these peak experiencesthat, hey, people are really

(01:07:00):
doing these substances regularly.
They're doing them in medical context, they're doing them in
new age spiritual context. We really need the modes of
thought that are able to integrate and bridge these these
experiences now, now more than ever that I think John's work is
uniquely poised in, in that regard to, to help.

(01:07:21):
And I mean all the all the implications in terms of
metaphysics of mind are, are so,so poignantly revealed in in
those discourses of so, yeah, I'm, I'm very interested in in
how peak and non ordinary extraordinary experiences ought
to be taken into account as important ontological data when

(01:07:46):
we're thinking metaphysically about consciousness, mind,
selfhood, agency. I think these have been a little
neglected and a sober consciousness has been been too,
too foregrounded as normative ina lot of our, our, our thinking
around these things in a way that has skewed our, our

(01:08:07):
frameworks. So so I think incorporating
those those experiences and having frameworks that do them
justice in critical ways is crucial right now.
Yeah, look, I completely agree, both of you.
It's, it's so great to have suchdiverse and connected thinkers
come together in this way. It's, it's only going to make

(01:08:29):
for an amazing project altogether.
So let's move into a little bit of ethics for now.
So I think perhaps, John, you could start with this.
If consciousness is relational and reality is a process, what
is the ethical center of such a universe?
What becomes of responsibility, Compassion.
Moral agency? Well, I mean, there's, there's 2

(01:08:57):
answers. One is if, if there's this God
who's entering into our experience all the time,
informing us, then the then that's, that's the center.
But let's leave that one aside. And but, but if we're deeply,
you know, if we're deeply interflowing relational beings,
then the the natural compassion is, is sort of the the feeling

(01:09:20):
with feel feel the one of the one of the ways of describing
the way prehensions whiteheads, the way one event feels another.
It's the feeling, the feelings of others.
So if we're constantly feel in in this deep under undertow
area, feeling the feelings of others, we're essentially

(01:09:41):
sympathetic or compassionate beings.
So I would, you know, if we can open up those channels or, or
heighten our awareness of those channels, that would be an
enormous and you know, I think psychedelics can help do that.
And, you know, and, you know, people put in terms of

(01:10:02):
connection or breaking out of isolation or, or open, you know,
or creating compassionate. But I, I, you know, from this
process perspective, that's who we are really, you know, that's,
that's our, that's our essentialbeing.
So, you know, we, we, if you throw it in God, you've got a
whole extra reinforcement there that, but I, I, I don't, you

(01:10:26):
don't necessarily need to add that into the process
perspective for it to be essentially an ethical way of
metaphysics. Jared can probably make that
better, however, say that more effectively.
Let's see what I got. Yeah, you.
Gonna take it from me. Sure.
Yeah. One thing I really like about

(01:10:47):
the process metaphysics coming out of Whitehead, but I think
we're seeing this converge from a number of different
philosophical traditions right now, is understanding value as
ontologically primitive. So if say experience goes all
the way down, well, what does that, what does that mean for

(01:11:09):
for Whitehead? It means that valuation has has
a kind of basic ontological status as well.
That's what's kind of happening as things become in
inexperience. They are valuing their
possibilities for becoming feeling prehending those

(01:11:29):
potentials and making a decisionon on how to develop out of all
these multifarious causal influences that kind of coalesce
to to create a particular event.But what that means is, well,
morality is maybe a a pretty similar to consciousness.
It might be this kind of higher order phenomena of valuation.

(01:11:54):
But if, if valuation itself is ontologically basic, it helps
us. Yeah, see, see moral decision
making. Not, not just as this kind of
atomized peculiar human thing weneed to deal with that is kind
of arbitrary. We don't know where it came from
or, or why we have this, but actually it's an expression, an

(01:12:18):
exemplification of kind of the basic qualities of, of the
cosmos we find ourselves in, in,in our human mode of existence.
So my colleague Andrew Davis, who you talked with talks about,
yes, the Anthropo cosmic sort ofdimension of human being and and
meaning making that we exemplifythese basic features of the

(01:12:42):
cosmos is evaluation, meaning making, process becoming that
that aren't we aren't this aberration that a lot of kind of
materialist metaphysics especially takes us as that, Oh,
the human being is this kind of weird thing that has this
consciousness and we don't really know how that fits in our

(01:13:03):
in our framework, but rather totally inverse.
OK, the human being actually is a poignant exemplification of
taking some of these basic features of the cosmos and
intensifying them, kind of complexifying them, developing
them further. So as we grapple with moral

(01:13:23):
questions and that aspect of life, feeling that we're doing
something that is a deep expression of some of the the
basic modes of interaction and relation of the cosmos we find
ourselves in, rather than something that's weird and alien
and peculiar, unique to to us ashuman beings.
I think that helps even just in that process, make it more kind

(01:13:47):
of meaningful and connected rather than, yeah, isolated and
and atomized. And also, yeah, helps us
consider moral, moral interactions with beings other
than just fellow humans. And I think ecologically this is
especially important right now as we consider maybe the
biosphere as a whole is a kind of relevant sort of thing we're

(01:14:12):
in relationship with in terms ofour, our ethics, our morals.
Maybe an ecosystem as a whole likewise is a relevant kind of
moral counterpart for us and certainly various kinds of
organisms. Maybe we have a moral obligation
to the atmosphere, maybe to the pH of the, the ocean.
And seeing that value is is dispersed all along our cosmos

(01:14:34):
helps, helps kind of hone us in on, on thinking in those ways.
John, anything about that you'd like to add on a comment on?
Yeah, I guess thanks for reminding me about the
intensity. You know, why did has God's
primaries a fostering of intensity of experience and
thus, you know, you get molecules are more intense than

(01:14:55):
atoms and cells and you humans are can be very intense.
I I think I suggest that psychedelics may be the ultimate
religious sacrament. It's for their intensive
intensification ability but and also God Whitehead his his
theory of events is an aesthetictheory.

(01:15:16):
It's they're bringing together it into a new whole in a
aesthetic way. And so beauty is a creation of
beauty is one of the primary dimensions of reality.
What Whitehead also makes kind of a funny comment somewhere,
somewhere along the line towardsthe end of process in reality,
that that God is a little oblivious to morals.

(01:15:40):
So he's you know, his idea of religion was not that it's a set
of a set of of of morals to liveby.
It's AI think for him, it was much more of a living, a living
vitality and his his family. I think it wasn't his brother

(01:16:00):
and his uncle were both like his.
I think his uncle was a Bishop. His brother was a Bishop in
India and his father, I believe,was a minister.
So he, you know, he came out of a religious tradition, but he
also, you know, kind of gave up on religion, I think after his
son was killed in World War One and then almost converted to
Catholicism. So he so he had, you know, he

(01:16:22):
had, he had a he, he wasn't somebody that was, you know,
religious from the, you know, for his whole life.
He, he worked apparently also atone point of this enormous a
theological library, which then he gave, he gave away, you know,
when he had this, I think more agnostic period.
So he's, he worked, you know, he, he worked through these

(01:16:42):
ideas very, very carefully. He he, as he did with
everything. Which I think is a great sign
because it it shows an evolving thinker and someone willing to
change their mind, willing to grow with the ideas.
Which is pretty much what we want out of this project is to
get people together, let them explore new ideas, explore
topics that possibly diverge from their general day-to-day

(01:17:05):
lifestyle. What role do you think both of
you religious and philosophical traditions will play 50 years
from now in shaping our understanding of consciousness,
meaning, death, transformation, etcetera?

(01:17:25):
Yeah, I think, I think they're going to continue to have
relevance and, and influence. I think we're starting to see
kind of right now on, on the other end, on on the other side
of a kind of more intense new atheist moment that these things
are being reconsidered. Some people are, yeah, returning
to traditional religious systemsand trying to, yeah, find the

(01:17:49):
most depth and richness they canin these.
Some people are doing this in a more reactive way, and that's
unfortunate, but there's also kind of a larger constituency of
people who remain unaffiliated with traditional religious
beliefs and institutions. But nonetheless, they are taking
existential and spiritual questions seriously and.

(01:18:12):
And not, yeah, not deferring to the kind of dismissal of of a
more intensive materialist atheism.
And so I think, yeah, being ableto provide more sophisticated
and dynamic religious systems that have a a real philosophy
and structured metaphysics behind them or it's going to be

(01:18:35):
important and appealing. And the more that there can be
live options for those available, the the better.
I think things will go as peoplecontinue to kind of grapple and
and return to to some of these these questions.
Yeah, John, your your views on that?
I have a friend out in California who's been working as

(01:18:58):
a kind of advising some of the Protestant churches on how to
reinvigorate them. How to, you know, they're a lot
of Protestant churches are of the more liberal variety are
just losing membership, you know, over and they have been
for a while and it seems to be continuing.
So he's been working with them and he, you know, he, you know,

(01:19:21):
he, you know, he's sort of a whiteheaded process thinker.
You know, if they feels like they, they have to do something
different, you know, David Griffin writes that the, you
know, the, the fundamentalists have, you know, have, you know,
these, you know, speaking in voices and these, you know, huge
gatherings and very, very, you know, we people, people need to
feel, you know, to have an experiential base for to to

(01:19:48):
ground and to, I think to make make it feel like it's real.
I just picked up a book. I can't think of the shoot.
I I just started reading it by the by this woman who is
anthropologist who is basically arguing that rites and rituals
and various things. They, they aren't, you know,

(01:20:08):
that's what they create the theycreate the experience and the
connection. They aren't there to celebrate
the connection that they are. They are the way people enter
into religious experience and and I'm I hope the.
Religions with, with the with, you know, the kind of well, the

(01:20:30):
kind of liberal point of view for society that I, I think is
important are able to somehow incorporate this.
I'm not, I'm not highly optimistic, but but I think
what's, I mean, I, I think we're, we're going to be facing
more and more difficult times ahead in almost all areas.

(01:20:51):
And hopefully, I mean, it could,it could be, you know,
dramatically different. And I think as those things
unfold, people are going to be looking for something to hold on
to. And, you know, hopefully it
won't be fascism, you know, hopefully it won't be
demonology. Hopefully it will be something,

(01:21:13):
some positive way of integratinga new, a new religious and
philosophical ethic, You know, that will be help us help us
through those times. I, you know, it's kind of what I
was trying to do in my book to kind of show a possible vision,
you know, forward of, of how, you know, we might find meaning

(01:21:33):
in the world and and experience it and think of the world in in
a different way. And and hopefully philosophy and
religion can can do that. It's not going to be easy do.
You think, do you think it'll beeasier if we added a little bit
of psychedelics to it? Well, I was, I think I was
probably more hopeful for that with the first time I took

(01:21:54):
psychedelics. But I, I do, I do I think, I
think psychedelics used prudently can, can help break us
out of our out of our what what did Pete Townsend has let my

(01:22:14):
love open the door. They they what's a great line
it's from I think Tommy Messiahspointed to the door, but no one
had the guts to leave the temple.
I think, you know, psychedelics can help open up to open up or
actually throw us through those doors for a little while.
And, and, you know, hope hopefully if they, if they're

(01:22:37):
integrated, as Jared points out,way in in help help helpful ways
for people in society, you know,maybe that, you know, maybe
that'd be what makes the difference.
I I hope so. Yeah.
And then one thing that we know based on history is that many
cultures, religious cultures hadsome version of a psychotherapy

(01:23:01):
session within many prayers, many cultural get togethers.
It's very common. And, and back then it was still
always taken as a very respectful and generally in a
big group, lots of people comingtogether.
There was a place for it until it was obviously demonized at
some point. But I think it it was something

(01:23:21):
that throughout history, we've seen the positive effects of, of
bringing all of that to the community of religion, the
philosophy behind them all. And then the ad, the ad, this
almost dissolving and resolving with whatever substance was
being taken. You know, things like raves are
pretty close to that, except they don't really have a really

(01:23:43):
a religious context to to, you know, funnel that into something
more. Yeah, you sort of want a nice
philosophical grounded experience beyond that.
What are your thoughts on that, Jared?
Yeah, definitely. I mean there's so many cross
cultural examples of various mystical and shamanic

(01:24:05):
traditions, some of which use directly psychedelic substances
or antheogens, mind altering substances generally, many of
which don't though. I mean you can also get some of
these types of experiences certainly through various
breathing techniques. John certainly knows a lot about
holotropic breath work coming out of, of, you know, Stanislav

(01:24:28):
Grof's tradition and, and others.
There's various fasting techniques and drumming, all
kinds of modes of playing with our, our consciousness that all
sorts of cultures have, yeah, taken as, as kind of basic
practices to be incorporated. And it seems that there was a

(01:24:49):
real function or, or utility, and maybe some of that has to do
with the the neuroplasticity that could be induced by
certainly psychedelic substances, but other sorts of
experiences can tend in that direction as well.
Increased creativity and insight.
But yeah, also empathy and connection both to your fellow

(01:25:12):
human beings and also to the theecosystem, the broader natural
world, the cosmos as as a whole.And so I think, yeah, looking at
various kinds of shamanism and, you know, sort of loose sense
and how how these types of experiences were pursued and
incorporated in, in various cultural contexts.

(01:25:34):
And maybe how, how there could be, yeah, other uses for these
psychedelic substances in in ourcurrent moment beyond just kind
of the individual medical function.
Maybe, maybe there's some kind of ways that these ought to be
leveraged in a more communal sense towards meaning making

(01:25:55):
insight, cultivation of solidarity, as certainly those
were some of the effects that emerged in, in these traditional
contexts. And I mean, the the archaic mode
of human existence is certainly the one that lasted the longest.
There's a lot of human history that was prehistory that

(01:26:16):
happened in this more kind of tribal shamanic context, which
obviously was ecologically very attuned and seemed to be quite
stable for a very long time. And so we do well to take this
very seriously and see see what may have been lost in the long

(01:26:38):
years of history from, from these types of, yeah, modes of
human culture that still exist in in various pockets.
But so yeah, I'm very interestedin a archaic futurism, a new
shamanism as potential options for, yeah, alleviating some of
the meaning crisis stuff, finding some more ecologically

(01:27:01):
attuned modes of relating and existing, and also, yeah, having
interesting things to contributeto metaphysics of mind.
Yeah, I think it's a beautiful time specifically because we get
to explore all of this together.When you look at Jared with meta
modernism emphasizes sincerity with within irony, hope within

(01:27:24):
critique, John would process thought.
It emphasizes creativity within constraint.
So these ideas sort of come together and offer this new
ethic in a way to navigate this uncertainty, which I think is
really great. And, and, and something that I
wanted to bring up with the bothof you was when you think about
something like Islam and how much people are moving towards

(01:27:46):
Islam at this point, and I've there's clearly a philosophical
shift occurring with thinking. And then for Jared, I wanted to
ask you about that. Then John, the same thing with
process philosophy, as you said earlier, you said there's lots
of older guys in in the group would be talking about it, but
you're surprised that there's all these younger people.
But that's also a shift that's occurring.
You've got both these different philosophies in a sense just

(01:28:07):
growing. Do you guys perhaps want to
touch on that and discuss why that is, what you think about
it? Yeah, I think, I think people
are hungry. People are hungry for different
sorts of frameworks than than just what does you have been
kind of percolating in in the broader Western culture,

(01:28:29):
especially the past, you know, really couple centuries and in
some sense. But yeah what what kinds of
philosophies can actually yeah integrate especially various
modes of knowing and and truth and make sense of our
experience. Well, still, still having

(01:28:49):
something like critical and effective to say the ways that
the natural sciences are are able to.
And I mean, one of the one of the things I think is drawing
people to Islam in particular iswow, this is a really global
tradition that has has such a such a history, such a such a

(01:29:11):
depth to it. And you can, yeah, have a kind
of an immediate connection with say between people from
Indonesia and Egypt. And wow, that's, that's quite
something. The ways that Islamic
civilization was able to really kind of, yeah, try, try to
interesting balance between kindof diversity and and unity is

(01:29:35):
definitely kind of an, an inspiring history.
You have these different legal and theological schools within
the the Sunni majority. And while they certainly have
their differences and stake their claims on, on certain
perspectives, they nonetheless recognize each other's
legitimacy and, and orthodoxy. And so you have people from the,

(01:29:57):
the Maliki legal school and the,the Hanafi legal school, They
can absolutely go to the same mosque, pray together, even as
their bodies might be in slightly different positions
during the prayers. And so I think there's, yeah,
something we can learn about howto have, have a deep kind of
spiritual and, and philosophicalunity, but still still be able

(01:30:20):
to, yeah, have a lot of speculation and diversity of
opinion. And Islamic civilization is
interesting example of that and one that is counter to
especially the history of religion in the West following
the, the Reformation. So, yeah, I think that's
certainly something that people can can be drawn to, feeling

(01:30:42):
that diversity, that richness, but feeling that, oh, if I go
down one of these particular pals, it's not going to divide
me from my Co religionist. I'm not going to get siloed in
in the same same way that you can in in other religious
contexts. Not that there's not also
problems with the contemporary intellectual scene in in the

(01:31:03):
Islamic world, to be sure. But there's a lot to there's a
lot to be drawn to, certainly. And John, your thoughts on the
process philosophy boom occurring right now, do you
first, did you see that boom occurring?
Yes, I, I think it's kind of 1 Ithink Jared was right.

(01:31:24):
There's a hunger for these things.
I think that's, that's maybe theprimary thing, but you know,
these things are kind of move ina interesting way that what
Whitehead's ideas were very, very popular and influential in
the 20s and 30s and 40s. And then slowly in the Academy,
they, they started fading away as analytic philosophy took over

(01:31:44):
and, and various other trends that made, you know, metaphysics
and speculative philosophy pushed off to the side.
However, you know, the people, the people also start those are
still involved, started writing ways to make it more his ideas

(01:32:05):
more accessible to a larger public.
And his ideas got picked up by Marc Ulis.
And is it Duluz? Am I correct there?
There are one or two of the postmoderate French post moderate
people who became quite intrigued with Whitehead.
And so, you know, he started coming in through the cut of the
back door through this. Well, if white, you know, if, if

(01:32:26):
these people like Whitehead, youknow, then then maybe he's OK.
And, you know, part of the turn off, unfortunately, was the that
he processed philosophy, developed into theology and
processed theology. And so anything around religion,
of course, we had to be, couldn't be in the philosophy
department. And I think that's, that's faded
a bit. But, and, and in the 1990s, two

(01:32:48):
Chinese scholars came over and got very terrifically interested
in John Cobb and David Griffin'swork.
And have really, there's been a huge influence over in China
with process thought and ecological civilization.
And so I, I think this is like, I don't know if it's a second or

(01:33:10):
third wave where it's both more spreading around the world and
also in more popular culture. So hope hopefully you know this
will continue in this direction.Hopefully this one lasts because
if it's if it's from the 20s and30s, we're basically there now.
You give it some time, history may repeat itself, but it's a

(01:33:32):
it's a beautiful time. I think for philosophy, for
processing reality. In many ways, it's a this is a
wonderful get together that we're having mind at large.
If you both had to give us the single most important insight
you'd want the listeners to takeaway from this conversation,
something that could generally shift how they understand mind

(01:33:54):
and reality, what would that be?Jared, you can start.
Yeah, I think just just like allthe opportunity that there is
that that these are live philosophical questions, that
some of the big questions about the nature of reality aren't in

(01:34:14):
fact settled. And there's very interesting
ideas from all kinds of contexts, different cultures,
different historical periods that we really ought to.
Yeah, reinvestigate and take seriously and and bring together
creatively and and syntheticallyto produce just more live
options for tackling these things.

(01:34:38):
John. I guess that there are important
ways of understanding our everyday experience, our
exceptional experience that are,that are coherent with religion,
with philosophy, with science, and that all of these things can

(01:35:01):
be understood in a way that illuminate one another and
don't, don't conflict and produce problems.
And that there's a, that there are world views that can, can
open up things in a way we can, as William James said, can you,
can you live it? And, and I, I think we can, we

(01:35:25):
can live all these things together in a, in a way that
will be empowering for individually and culturally.
Yeah. And I think having two people
like you on board in this journey to take us there's, it's
really a pleasure. It says it's such a privilege to
chat to both of you, such experts in your fields and you

(01:35:45):
bring such great work to the world that it's just going to be
amazing to watch you guys in person.
So I personally just want to saythank you so much for joining me
and being part of this with me. It's a real pleasure.
So thank you both for joining metoday.
Once again, thank you for specifically helping, helping
publicize and promote the Mind at Large project, but more

(01:36:08):
generally for all your work and exploring these ideas and with,
with your incredible, incredibleinterview skills and, and
background knowledge. And you're, you're really,
you're bringing a big contribution to this whole
movement. Thanks so much.
Sorry, Jim. Yeah.
Thanks for yeah, looking into all the things we've been up to

(01:36:29):
and asking such great and rich questions for, for this dialogue
you. Know it's been an.
Absolute pleasure for me. Sorry, John.
And thanks for not looking to some of the things we've been
into. Guys, if there's is there
anything about minded Lodge project, just in general that

(01:36:49):
you feel you've need, you haven't mentioned you'd like to
actually get out there, please do this is this is your time.
Yeah. I mean, I just say head to the
head to the program page, the project page and follow up.
We have a sign up form to get updates.
I mean our our conference is yeah, really coming together
this first event at Exeter in inApril.

(01:37:12):
So if you want to be early to get early bird pricing on
tickets once we once we open registration sign up to the the
e-mail list there and you'll getother updates as as things come
along as well. And yeah, if you're also playing
around with these ideas as a graduate student, even an
undergraduate student or an early career scholar, we yeah,

(01:37:33):
really invite you to submit an abstract and maybe, yeah,
participate alongside some of our other panelists for the, for
the event. And even if even if not, we'd
certainly love to have you in Exeter.
And we'll have online options aswell for for streaming the
conference, so. And in case you aren't

(01:37:54):
completely convinced, I recommend that you go and go
back and look at Tevin's interviews with Peter and
Matthew and Ellie and Andrew Davis, and I'm sure more to
come. Terrific.
Yeah. So we've got a whole bunch more
planned. Hopefully we'll get far more
guests on board as well. The goal is to get as many big

(01:38:16):
thinkers as possible coming together and just make this as
as best as we can. And we've already got such great
people in the two of you. So thank you very much for for
being there. It's it's been an absolute
pleasure likewise. Thank you, Tevin.

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