Inner Life, Talks and Thoughts

How can we understand what is happening today from the perspective of what is sometimes called salvation history? What might be struggling to be born in our times? Why is a spiritual analysis - an unfolding of consciousness - key?The talk was delivered at The School of Myth, “Wild Christ”, weekend with Martin Shaw, Rowan Williams, Heather Pollington and others.I use the insights of Owen Barfield and Rudolf Steiner, to interpret developments across 3000 years of Christianity, given the movement of spirit began a millennia before Christ. I also take their lead on the value of William Blake to perceive the significance of what Blake called a “New Age” emerging now - which we might love, too.My book unpacking Barfield’s interpretation of Christianity is “A Secret History of Christianity: Jesus, the Last Inkling and the Evolution of Consciousness”.My book on Blake’s prophetic analysis of the dynamics active today is “Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination”.For more see www.markvernon.com

The mood has shifted. Subjects that were once taboo - like God - are now discussed openly. So if a new theism is abroad, what might it bring? In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon ask why individuals engaged in pursuits from cultural critique to theoretical biology are now actively interested in traditions such as Christianity and Platonism. What is new about this turn and what is old? What does it mean in terms of understanding our humanity, the sciences and wider cosmology? And how can these new currents be best assessed and discerned?Rupert and I have almost 100 dialogues online.For more on Rupert see - https://www.sheldrake.orgFor more on Mark see - https://www.markvernon.com

An interview with Mark Vernon at the Harvard Divinity School with Adam Walker.Mark Vernon's book is "Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination".Adam Walker’s YouTube channel is Close Reading Poetry.

The Romantic movement is a tragic movement. In response to the Enlightenment, poets and painters sought a return of feeling but failed in one crucial aspect: to ground the vision, to make clear how it is a means of truth.The result is that, alongside the wonderful, powerful presence of reason in the modern world, runs a desire to intensify feeling is if that can bring back the meaning otherwise lost to the technological and abstract.Only, ungrounded, Romantic feeling doesn't. Instead, too often, it leads to reactionary nationalism, fundamentalism in religion, hedonism and sentimentality, and modes of inner healing that offer exaggerated experience as a proxy for transformation.William Blake spotted this tendency. He realised that Romanticism must come of age, to borrow the expression of Owen Barfield, by understanding the imagination as a way of knowing of and growing into the fundamentals of existence. In this talk, delivered to the Centre for the Study of Platonism at the University of Cambridge, I explore how Blake conveyed the crucial awareness that might redeem the tragedy of Romanticism, so damaging alive in the modern world.For more on Mark, and his book about Blake, "Awake!", see www.markvernon.com

A psychotherapist, philosopher and writer drawn to the wellsprings of both ancient and modern philosophy and the illumination of the inner life. His work moves between the timeless and the modern, exploring friendship and belief, wellbeing and wonder, and the quiet art of living with depth in a restless age.His recent books trace paths through the visionary landscapes of William Blake, the awakening of spiritual intelligence, the pilgrimage of Dante’s Divine Comedy, and the Christian imagination as seen through Owen Barfield — the Oxford Inkling and close companion of C.S. Lewis.You can find out more about Paul via his website - www.paulwilkinson.co.ukYou can find out more about Mark via his website - www.markvernon.com