Iain McGilchrist and D C Schindler: Is Love the Source and Sustenance of Everything in the Universe?

Links to extended introductions of the guests follow timestamps.
Iain McGilchrist and David Schindler respond to a question about a passage from Cs Lewis's book, The Discarded Image, then delved into a discussion of the passage and its implications for understanding the nature of God and the universe. They discussed intelligence, beauty, and goodness in the cosmos, and explored the idea that even non-animate aspects of the universe reveal intelligence, beauty, and complexity. They also touched on the idea that good can embrace evil, but evil cannot embrace good.
The speakers engaged in a wide-ranging discussion about the relationship between beauty, order, and the transcendent principle. They explored the idea that disorder and chaos can be incorporated into order to create something even more beautiful and profound, drawing on examples from art, philosophy, and theology. They also discussed the complex and multifaceted nature of intelligence, beauty and love and the importance of values in shaping our understanding of the world.
D C Schindler mentioned the book by Dionysius the Areopagite On the Divine Names, and I found a link: www.tertullian.org/fathers/ar...
Timestamps
00:00 Intro
03:00 The impact of love in biology
07:50 The extraordinary question of biological form
09:00 The heart of the philosophical foundation of Western Civilization
10:22 Modernity's move to remove goodness as an ontological principle and replace it with goodness as simply a moral principle
12:22 Everything seeks beauty, actuality
15:40 The need for an absolutely Transcendent First Principle
16:30 The sense of purpose
17:30 Attraction
22:00 The conflict between freedom and love
30:31 The coincidence of opposites and creativity
35:00 Beauty, Order and the Transcendent Principle (The nature of order and disorder in the universe)
51:50 Artificial Intelligence and the Importance of Values
The limitations of artificial intelligence and the importance of embodiment
58:14 Discussion on the Nature of Reality
1:01:06 Views on Reality and Time
The concept of time and its relationship to unity and multiplicity
1:06:07 Discussion on the Implications of Wolfram's Theory
1:09:00 The Importance of Context and Relationship in Understanding Knowledge and Truth
The implications of a principle of analogy in classical metaphysics
The issue of context and its relationship to postmodernism
1:18:35 Love, Knowledge, and Beauty
D. C. Schindler:
www.johnpaulii.edu/academics/...
Iain McGilchrist:
channelmcgilchrist.com/about/

[@PaulVanderKlay]

Oh my, what a great pairing! Great job Karen!

[@nancyc9169]

Pure gold. I am intrigued by both Schindler and McGilchrist but have had a hard time understanding them. You drew them into a conversation that brought out their love of the topic, so they let go of their academic personas. Thank you Thank you Thank you!

[@ricklilla]

Yes, this conversation was a grand slam home run! Thank you Karen, David and Iain.

[@sherieharkins2460]

Such a joy to listen in on this conversation. The beauty in the irregular and unpredictable patterns of kintsugi pottery make me think about the pleasure of massage by a person rather than by a mechanical device, or the pleasure of a natural breeze than what an electric fan produces. I have often wondered why the former examples are so superior to their mechanized counterparts in our experience of them. Maybe it is a part of our non-mechanized being. Always love hearing Ian McGilchrist, my first time hearing D.C. Schindler but I look forward to hearing and reading more from this gracious man. Love the idea of the beauty in how we respond to life’s imperfections. Thank you all very much, and Karen especially for hosting this discussion.

[@Lucasvoz]

Good to see you back in full health, Karen! I think this talk will be a memorable one. Wishing you well❤️

[@ourblessedtribe9284]

Oh my goodness. Just starting to listen, I am so thrilled about this. All three of you make my heart sing because you care as much as you do about the things which are most precious to me.

[@S.G.Wallner]

Karen, my favorite part was you jumping in to reveal that beautiful triad; love, context and anomaly through the eyes of an artist. I would love to hear you unfold those concepts or tell us how they can be woven together.

[@TheMeaningCode]

When we get together next time, ask me any question you want. It's easier for me to explain it when I'm responding to questions.

[@TheVeganVicar]

That is a rather bizarre use of the term, "triumvirate".

[@S.G.Wallner]

@@TheVeganVicar haha that's true. I may have meant triad or something. Triumvirate would apply to three people in a political context. Thanks for pointing that out. Comment edited!

[@anthonybremner-kk9rq]

An excellent conversation with two mammoth intellects. Well done!

[@mills8102]

This is as rich a discussion as anyone could hope for. Very clarifying on the issue of epistemology at the end. Thank you all very much. 🙏

[@SimeonFM]

Thank you, Karen, Dr McGilchrist, and Dr Schindler. May God bless each one of you richly. And your families. This conversation is helpful for us all: those IN the Lord and those on a journey towards true faith in Christ. For GOD IS LOVE. 🙏

[@corykobel6117]

No way, you and Ken both post DC Schindler in one day?? And The great Iain McGilchrist with DC Schindler? I'm absolutely overcome with excitement to watch this! Congratulations on this combination!

[@WhiteStoneName]

Totally

[@psyfiles7351]

Absolutely delightful, I never heard the part that love can embrace hatred but not the reverse. So grateful!

[@shari6063]

Wonderful Karen! Really looking forward to this!

[@EmileBroussard]

A most fruitful Meeting of the Minds. Enriching and profound. More of these two in conversation would be delightful.

[@lukefreeperson]

What an incredible conversation!

[@climbingmt.sophia]

So excited about this one!! Thank you Karen!

[@rebekkahaascetin3733]

With each talk or interview that readjusts AI into perspective and shows it it‘s place i sigh of relieve, knowing that humanity has not totally lost it’s common sense. But these two intelligent and admirable men did it with particular pleasure and witt starting with taking the term itself even not serious. Feeling less alone. Thank you Karen for creating this environment. Inspiring conversation.

[@tomgreene1843]

Common sense is at a premium in some places ...the irish media might be an example ...our politicians are unsure what a woman is!

[@tomgreene1843]

I'm wading through The Matter with Things....a long way to go ! Great to be able to hear these folk ...long may they continue.

[@yosefrazin6455]

31:54 McGilchrest's point about good and evil was beautiful

[@Hyumanity]

30:45 My goodness, that was beautiful. I've been playing with the idea that love, in the context of the process of complexification being the organizing principle of reality (the Logos), is the only thing that can integrate conscious and psychological beings like us. Process of complexification is defined as the increasing and simultaneously differentiation and integration of parts working together as a functional whole. I can better see and grasp now why love _is_ the answer. Your part on the triumvirate of love, context, and anomaly was eye-opening as well! Thank you for the combo Karen! Excellent work! "What I'm not saying is that when there is a coincidence of opposites they are sort of asymmetrical in the sense that you can see one as big and the other as lesser. They are both important, fully equally to one another but in the end in either the bigger picture in time or the bigger picture in space, one of them can always embrace the other. For example union can embrace union and division, but division can't embrace union and division. Love can embrace hatred and perhaps redeem it that's what Christians believe but hatred can't Embrace love. Good can embrace evil take it up into itself and take it in and make it something else, but evil can't take good up into itself in any way at all, it resist it and repels it."

[@WhiteStoneName]

Thanks for writing out that quote. ❤

[@realitycheck4086]

This was a hugely enlightening discussion and left me with a lot to think about. Particularly emotive for me was McGilchrist’s analogy of Kintsugi. Best wishes to all.

[@user-uo3vn7tv4b]

Very inspiring! Thanks Karen and DC and Ian !

[@emilyhermann]

Great conversation! Thank you for making it possible, Karen. Gravitating around these moments 27:50 - 28:13 what I understand as the channel's ars poetica 50:43 - 54:00 revisiting the notion of progress and the one ruling principle 56:41 - 56:46

[@helenperala3459]

I enjoyed this. I study a lady called Dr Terry Burns, an English Professor who has a YT channel dedicated to studying John Dee's THE HIEROGLYPHIC MONAD. I am new to Kabbalah like Iain as I wasn't brought up studying it back in the UK. I feel closer to GOD when I stop putting anything in my body and just relax and go into Nature. That's how I feel closest to the Source. I have also studied Dan Winter's work on the Planck-Phi Ratio type physics which includes the idea of getting into a bliss state without the use of anything to get you there. It's fascinating when you look into the type of physics people like the Sufi's or Gurdjieff propounded if that's the right word. Anyway, enjoyed hearing D C Schindler as I had not heard of him before. Thank you ALL.

[@thesecondlawandthetowerhou6026]

24:45 Dionysus the Aeropagite unlocks Dante’s Commedia beautifully with his understanding that Dr Schindler highlights: “this desire that moves all things towards God ultimately is an image of the desire that God has towards its creatures”. Desire/longing towards the good, tutto fractally instantiating goodness as “an object of desire moves those who desire it.” (Lewis). Longing towards what we perceive as good, beautiful and steadfastly true has a magnetic quality. Happened to be reading Canto 16 of Purgatorio where Dante makes Dr McGilchrist’s key point of free will, freeing us once and for all from mechanistic deism. Dante places this focus on free will right in the Center of his great work, in case we miss the point. As well, Dr McGilchrist’s explanation of the asymmetrical nature of reality was so beautiful and brilliant and clear as crystal in this discussion.

[@TheMeaningCode]

I really need to read Dante, but I feel like I will have a lot of questions as I go along.

[@thesecondlawandthetowerhou6026]

@@TheMeaningCode Dante is a good friend. You can spend your life with him and always be intrigued. The Commedia lends itself to be read in a Book Club, as indeed there is much to be discussed and mulled over. I think you would love his great work, as it is far-ranging in scope, musing over the same explorations as we are still doing today.

[@leedufour]

Thanks Ian, David and Karen!

[@Terpsichore1]

I LOVED this Karen. Thank you all!

[@UpCycleClub]

Absolutely wonderful!

[@thomassimmons1950]

This was absolutely, utterly fantastisch!

[@TheMeaningCode]

Thanks! If you want more people to see it, “like” and “share”:-)

[@thomassimmons1950]

@@TheMeaningCode I have. I will.

[@MaudMargretheRex]

Thanks … to have been invited into this becoming .. in an envirement of love, thought and moving moments.

[@Belialith]

That's awesome, at 4:32 Wow, I've been doing the same research, finding the exact same thing. It's quite beautiful.

[@tomgreene1843]

Well done!

[@jamesayres6697]

A lovely conversation Thankyou so much

[@dalibofurnell]

Amen! 1 John 4:8 God is love ❤

[@hjvjccc]

Love is God and Jesus was a Mushroom.

[@roslynross2649]

Surely the drive is to connect and connection is love in all its forms.

[@amurdo4539]

Great convo. Thanks Karen.

[@DeepTalksTheology]

wow! what a combo! Looking forward to listening to this.

[@WhiteStoneName]

I need to text/call you sometime, guy. 👋🏼

[@dalibofurnell]

Whaaaat?! I was thinking of you today, Karen. I trust you are well ❤ this is a gift! Thank you! God bless you ❤

[@S.G.Wallner]

Things get really interesting around @1:00:00 . The discussion of time is critical!

[@_ARCATEC_]

🎡🤹

[@b.melakail]

Very happy with this

[@Andrea-mh6ox]

Iain really does talk beatifully about all this.

[@merlingeikie]

Thank you 🙏✅

[@tinfoilhatscholar]

This is an introduction to Schindler for me, thank you for that. I love it where, at about the 51:00 mark, he describes how it's Love that's the binding force, which when lost leads to an inevitable reductionism... Great discussion.

[@TheMeaningCode]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@newglof9558]

Good conversation

[@Joeonline26]

What a pleasant surprise! 2 of my favoruties thinkers in the whole world. Going to save this one for when I have 90 minutes to really pay attention.

[@ollielearnstoread]

What a delightful conversation! So many beautiful thoughts to ponder. I’ve read McGilchrist’s work before, but don’t know where to start with Schindler’s. Any suggestions?

[@TheMeaningCode]

My entry point is Love and the Postmodern Predicament. I know others who have started with Plato’s Critique of Impure Reason, and if you have a deep background in Plato, maybe that works, too. I was introduced to him via a KZbin lecture on love and beauty.

[@ollielearnstoread]

@@TheMeaningCode Perfect, thank you! I know of him because Vervaeke references him quite a bit. I look forward to diving into his ideas more, because they are beautiful from what I know so far.

[@ginrummy3996]

I've just started to listen... from a personal experience which relate to Coincidentia oppositorum, I think it is, whether love &/or truth intertwined. Looking forward into it, thanks!

[@bodgerliz5138]

Really stimulating. I find here that there is a difference between the speaker's approaches. DC Schindler seems to me to be interpreting the human constructs of nature, whilst Dr McGilchrist is interpreting nature itself, whilst using human constructs to exemplify his points. I think those differences are profound, and significant, in the understanding of the human place in natural processes (cosmos). TS Eliot only had Christianity to use to explain human nature. We have more than that now, as biology is providing answers that religions of any sort cannot fulfil. So grateful that biology and ecology is now being paid attention to.

[@ShannonMcCarthy]

7:30 “The very grain in the pattern of deer antlers is completely unique like fingerprints, and if you cut one off it will regenerate that particular shape. Where is that shape stored and accessible? What’s even more amazing is that during pregnancy, a half a million neurons are created every minute, and not only that, each neuron has to know eventually where it’s going to be. As the brain is generating its form, where is the three dimensional minutely accurate detail of the structure of the brain, where is that accessed? It’s not in the genome, I can give you that for free.” -McGilchrist

[@williamjmccartan8879]

Nice piece of this conversation, peace

[@Jacob011]

Epicness!

[@maggen_me7790]

In loving conversation You got the wise gentlemen's to giggle and relax.

[@patrickwagner2978]

"... the intellectual beauty of a theory is a token of its contact with reality...I believe that by now three things have been established beyond reasonable doubt: the power of intellectual beauty to reveal truth about nature; the vital importance of distinguishing this beauty from merely formal attractiveness; and the delicacy of the test between them, so difficult that it may baffle the most penetrating scientific minds." [M Polanyi]

[@WhiteStoneName]

I love your quotes. My mind often thinks in reference to quotes or music or film. But you always know bangers than I don’t. ❤

[@arono9304]

Thank you for setting this up, Karen! Kind of an interesting juxtaposition, as McGilchrist severely criticised Plato on several points, whereas D.C. Schindler obviously adores Plato

[@dalibofurnell]

Karen, you look beautiful, by the way, you've got that graceful glow, a joie de vivre shine 💗 sending love!

[@williamjmccartan8879]

Hi Karen 23 minutes, David says it cleanly with it having to be about an ultimate order, looked like you wrote it down as well. 31 minutes in and Iian, said so much in the brevity of that one minute. 38 minutes and I started to think about the order in a hurricane. 49 minutes, in response to Iian, I would probably have you all listen to Gregg Henriques last podcast, he does an excellent job of explaining where ai is in his brain leveling system. 57 minutes, Iian, great succinct discription of physics chasing its own tail in order to describe itself, rather then exploring the current operating systems we have, as Michael Levin is doing. Thank you all for letting us watch/listen along to the conversation, David, Iian, and Karen. Peace

[@grailcountry]

Homerun combo, way to go Karen.

[@ssevkin]

💯

[@BuBu-uz9qi]

First they don't want anyone know about Ukraine, me and Vatican. If they win China , they will attack Russia after Russia is lost. Suddenly, they attack India by the tanks same as Russia attack Ukraine while Ukraine didn't repair on Feb 2022 and then they will attack Japan, Viet Nam, Korea, Taiwan , Middle East and Africa. Because We don't have the paper work about the win but the paperwork just say we corporate with them . If they are serious . They must tell Taiwan, Philippines, Korea and Japan stop fighting. The reason they don't say because it is a best chance to attack those countries due to low weapons. Anyway, I have a question to Taiwan. Do you have a contract with them that Taiwan will take over China or China is belong to them either half of the land??,,?,??? Because their tanks will enter into the India .Another word, their army is on our land. Lastly; after they United all nations. They will announce to the public about the Vatican But we already forgot the bad deed of Vatican by that time same as Zeleski will claim himself Jesus. The bad thing to us , we might become their slaves because we don't have any one help us. Do you remember the Black slaves in the History.?? @BuBu-uz9qi 1 second ago That is why that man in the morning call me animal . Later; he sent a sentence ' animal and more animals. That mean we will be their slave as an animal in the future

[@WhiteStoneName]

44:11 “how about something that isn’t necessarily either physical or not, maybe transcends that duality…” Morphic fields. Relationships of instinct/habit outside space and time. Sheldrake. Karen, please bring in sheldrake if you can. ❤

[@TheMeaningCode]

I was pretty sure that was what he was talking about. I felt like I had been intervening too much already, so I held back on that one. There’s never enough time in these conversations to ask any of the questions that arise in my mind.

[@WhiteStoneName]

@@TheMeaningCode you’re doing a great job. I feel your pain. There is no way that I could do what you do and hold space for two great thinkers like this. I’d be interjecting my own thoughts too much. 😂

[@yosefrazin6455]

Beautiful conversation - amazing that you introduced them. Would love to see them engage Judaism more (as McGilchrest does with kabbala to some extent) and not just Christianity tho (per the end of that initial quote you brought which I think sort of fails to capture the true difference, which is closer to whether God's Wisdom (logos) is also God or whether that's overly-reducing of God)

[@ChadTheAlcoholic]

55:24 reminds me of morphic fields sheldrake

[@jamesboswell9324]

1:11:00 Well, you might think so Iain, but I'm fairly certain I've actually seen a modern reinterpretation of Hamlet set in 11th Century Azerbaijan in which the titular hero led the struggle for the emancipation of the slaves... or perhaps it was King Lear?

[@karimchaya2432]

👏👏👏👏

[@WhiteStoneName]

1:06:00 when you say “how do you not fall into postmodernism?” By that do you mean completely arbitrary randomness and therefore complete non-meaning? Things are relative. Relativism is true. But they are not arbitrary. Embodiment: contextualization in time. There may be bodies that exist outside of time too. Eternal/spiritual bodies, which also have relations, just not time-bound. Idk. That’s beyond my purview. McGilchrist’s response after was good.

[@TheMeaningCode]

Peterson always says that the postmodernists got a lot right, but we must not give up on the existence of categories.

[@anavartalitis8425]

A banquet, indeed!

[@TheMeaningCode]

I can tell you watched all the way to the end:-)

[@ourblessedtribe9284]

1:13:15 "Either its this or its that - the black and white position is superficial. Things are more complicated" This is how I think of eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Its to make a world of colors artificially into blacks and whites

[@davidwilsonBC]

Love is the source of everything real. I don't know what that entails.

[@SlackKeyPaddy]

The etheric realm is where stem cells draw on to regenerate new limbs and organs, such as skin for a more revealing example. Unfortunately science does not have the machine advanced enough to take such measurements yet.

[@huguettebourgeois6366]

OH Iain, you need all the patience in the world - what is an interesting question - the word interesting itself is so void!!!

[@jamesboswell9324]

Physics always deals with measureables. When we talk about time we mean clockness. When we talk about space we mean rulerness. I don't see anyway of getting around this.

[@mostlynotworking4112]

Wow grand slam

[@Brad-RB]

This was great Karen.

[@Loenthall88]

Given that we live in a world where everything lives by eating everything else, I would be curious to know how that corresponds to love as the core principle behind reality. Apparently, something went terribly wrong--either that or love enjoys things eating other things, sometimes in the most horrific ways. (I do not mean this to be sarcastic. I genuinely struggle with this.)

[@TheMeaningCode]

A quote that helps me. “I could never myself believe in God if it were not for the cross. The only God I believe in is the One Nietzsche ridiculed as ‘God on the cross’. In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it? I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statue of Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time after awhile I have had to turn away. And in imagination, I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through his hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in God-forsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in the light of his. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross which symbolizes divine suffering. ‘The cross of Christ … is God’s only self justification in such a world’ as ours.1 (John Stott, The Cross of Christ, pp. 335-336)

[@Loenthall88]

@@TheMeaningCode Thank you. That's a good quote. The God revealed on the cross is the only God I can see worth believing in. All other gods are remote or detached or somehow beyond our sorrows. The God revealed in Christ is right there in the middle of it. I was struck by the title of a particular book by the theologian Jurgen Moltmann: The Crucified God. He talks about some things in that book i've never read anywhere else.

[@hjvjccc]

​@@Loenthall88no. Jesus was not a person. Jesus was a Mushroom and Christianity was the result of the psychedelic experience.. once you open yourself to the truth of that experience you can start to truly understand

[@Frederer59]

They are not parts to make a whole. They are wholes that make more complex wholes. Letters, make words, make sentences. All are wholes. See Ken Wilber who got it from I can't remember who.

[@Frederer59]

Furthermore 😄 they create hierarchies. There are two kinds of hierarchy nurturing and oppressive. When sentences realize the could be paragraphs, they nurture more letters, words, and most importantly for peace, other sentences.

[@marklefebvre5758]

Lovely conversation. Too much materialism and attempting to redeem it. Great refutation of post modernism. I don't think mixing the sciency people with non-science concepts is going to work, they don't get it and likely never will (not enough pus back, or good, easy questions that they cannot answer). Great points about asymmetry. Wish there had been more on the difference between information, knowledge and understanding. Perhaps next time!

[@TheMeaningCode]

There’s never enough time.

[@thephilosophicalagnostic2177]

The real problem with the idea of the planned universe is that it clearly isn't. Not only because of suffering, but also because of the sheer messiness of it all. I'm convinced that the universe is an emergent process all the way down and all the way up. Love has nothing to do with it.

[@shawnewaltonify]

WRT: kzbin.info/www/bejne/qqm3k3-FibV3hK8 What I am concerned with is how love was not always possible and how the introduction of certain ethics by religious authority gave birth to the type of social cohesion - which in essence, is safe space - that enables humans to celebrate marriages based on love. What we are talking about is natural selection and humans discovering ethics that cause the selection of desirable traits within populations to be natural. Systems of ethics effectively intervene on the natural selection of human traits. The ethics of marriage based on love seem to put the nature back into natural selection and take the failed attempts by human intervention out of it; yet there are infinite forms of marriage that are possible which may also add to this removal of the un-natural ego from natural selection. For example, the divorce rate seems to suggest that while polygamy is out of the question, relationships based on love can have a time limit especially when you consider that love heals wounds and we have wounds that are distinct from each other, requiring distinct prescriptions, meaning a readiness for a different loving relationship. Where I am going with this is this: presently, as humans are casting off their loyalty to religious authority and they are re-learning inner observations through new and old traditions there are many examples where they are discovering the ability to manifest things in their lives. I will give you a concrete example: so there are many people who discover that they can manifest sexual arousal on their own, and there are many derivations of this like avoiding the necessity for loving relationships all together, or like hacking a way for non-loving partners to experience love through sex that is typically only achieved within a successful loving relationship. The "ethics of care" may function as a litmus test for love, and furthermore, may measure many gradations of love that we can achieve. Empathy can be learned and may require the trauma of one's life as well as several generations of trans-generational trauma to be processes before this happens. If I am right, then the solution to many of the worlds problems will be solved by the acceptance of these ethics worldwide, and they could one day become universally accepted as universal human rights, and objective moral truth.

[@ourblessedtribe9284]

40:15 The spirit of adoption

[@ChadTheAlcoholic]

56:40 love is the impossible rule. The actuality of love. The whole embodiment of true love. This can be imagined and brushed up against but not possessed. Resurrection ascension miracles. This is time stopping. Christology incarnation. The beginning and the end the alpha and the omega.

[@geoffreydawson5430]

One thinks of a wise comment and then sees a glimpse into other people's worlds, sofas, chairs cushions all accumulated in one lifetime. Stuff, now a decade-old or more as an anthropology book no doubt on a shelf somewhere. But still, none the wiser, except to hand over the torch to another generation of form seekers.

[@olafhaze7898]

Why try to expand consciousness? In order to be able to handle that we have eaten the forbidden fruit better.

[@richards8916]

Yes. Sovereign lord Emmanuel the great(the lord of the bible) IS LOVE…THE greatest power,as revealed by Suzanna Maria Emmanuel (formerly Jesus).

[@HardAtWorkPainting]

Sounds to me like God is the meta self-organized criticality process in the universe.

[@hjvjccc]

Love is the ultimate truth. Anybody that knows knows