The Science of Mysticism with Zevi Slavin Round 2- Voices with Vervaeke

This is part two of a series of deep dia logos sessions about mysticism and cognitive science with Zevi Slavin from the amazing KZbin channel Seekers of Unity: / @seekersofunity
Round 1 of this four part series can be found on Zevi's channel here: • The Science of Mystici...
Round 3 will be found on Zevi's channel and round 4 back here.
This is part of my series Voices with Vervaeke: Science, Spirituality, and the Meaning Crisis. You can support my work on Patreon, with the proceeds going into the research I do at the University of Toronto on the Meaning Crisis and the cultivation of wisdom here: / johnvervaeke
Join the Discord Server to discuss and reflect upon my work: / discord

[@SeekersofUnity]

Thank you John for hosting and sharing this. Your generosity of spirit in dia logos is humbling and inspiring.

[@mironalexandra4602]

wonderful conversation :) more please, have a wonderful day! blessed be 🙏

[@82472tclt]

I many times had to become what was being said to comprehend the said…a genuine conversation! Thank you gentlemen

[@danscieszinski4120]

It’s as if you’ve both met while meandering on the golden path. If only modern churches delivered such insightful content.

[@benjaminlquinlan8702]

Blown into space with this one... I'm somewhere between Earth and Saturn...

[@TheBookofBeasts]

Thank you so much for sharing these conversations. 🙏

[@chezispero3533]

Thank you John and Zevi. Fantastic conversation.

[@timberfinn3131]

Spinoza in the light of the meaning crisis would be fantastic! Thanks John and Zevi 🙏

[@Tzimtzum26]

Great dialogue. Enlightening and inspiring.

[@leedufour]

Thanks Zevi and John!

[@johnvervaeke]

Thanks Lee.

[@johnaghydon1]

really interesting conversation, thank you both : )

[@mironalexandra4602]

at aprox 1:52:00 your dialogue reminded me of a wonderful frase in the movie 'Jesus of Nazareth', when Jesus says to Judas: 'open your heart Judas, not your mind' (a frase I found so profound). the two of you speaking is like music to my ears and I will listen again and again to this beautifull dialogue/conversation

[@baroquecat2295]

Love Zevi, thanks for the discussion 😎

[@BcClarity]

What a dialogos two scholars schooled me on divine masculine expression. #Wisdom #Sophia

[@JiminiCrikkit]

Just the ticket. Nourishing. Thank you.

[@parallax_media]

A huge joy to listen to this! Thank you

[@AdielShnior]

Man. You two are a straight ticket home for me ❤

[@ChristianGrossCG]

Beautiful!

[@madzubmetler]

Don't mess with the Zohar

[@motiveinmotivation383]

This is what life is about right here

[@stian.t]

That was Great! You know I love your work, John. (Well, of course!) ;-) I'll sure be checking out Slavin's channel!

[@RobinTurner]

Thanks for another wonderful dialogue! "Nontheism" is a concept I've been grappling with for some time without having heard that word for it. I can't say I like the term, though - it sounds more like a kind of weak atheism (Laplace's "I have no use for that hypothesis"). Maybe "transtheism" or "metatheism" would be more descriptive. The ensuing discussion on the dynamic tension between the nontheistic One and a personal(ised) God, which seems to both enrich and beleaguer all monotheistic religions, is particularly interesting. Even in Islam, the most militantly anti-anthropomorphic of the Abrahamic religions, you have all this Sufi poetry where the figure of the Beloved is more than mere allegory. I've heard Turkish Sufis talk about the distinction between "zat" and "zan" (from Arabic ذَات and ظَنّ), which, if I have understood correctly, is similar: the former is the actuality of God and the latter, the graspable aspect - or rather aspects, for to be graspable means to be particular, and hence diverse (zan is literally "impression" or "supposition"). My personal view is that it's fine to sometimes regard God as, as Zevi puts it, a mother or father you can cry out to, so long as you know that this is what you are doing - it's a kind of metaphysical psychodrama, I suppose.

[@mediocrates3416]

I had one experience; i don't expect to have another. It lasted a week and it was more real than a daydream. I can control a daydream: my experience just happened, like real life just happens. As vivid as a daydream but driven by something/someone else.

[@mediocrates3416]

More vivid than a daydream, i should say: that's why i'm thinking the inputs should be doubletime.

[@mediocrates3416]

The EEG over the input cortices, i should say; a doubling of frequency components in the EEG over the sensory cortices.

[@mediocrates3416]

Ah-ha! The *cerebellum* recognizes something and initiates an active response. So, i have to postulate an ancient recognition process used by the cerebellum to activate a flow state independent of the cerebrum: so...., huh. I had originally thought a global cortical self-sustaining dynamic but, that's too much; this cerebellum thing works better, i think.

[@BcClarity]

Yes more more more~~~Rebel Yell

[@mediocrates3416]

Eros degrades because we choose comfort more often than coherence. The brain has been a comfort finder since the beginning and is becoming a coherence detector... *trying* to become a coherence detector.

[@deepblack67]

Yes, book list please.

[@mediocrates3416]

I began my spiritual search so that i could become an atheist with a clear conscience. I'd notice a muting of opinion in people who had "become spiritual", usually buddhist, and i made a commitment to comment; if i found it would be to affect. I think i have and, i think it is.

[@JH-ji6cj]

What I feel I learned from this is that it actually comes off as an interuption and disrespectful to agree and insert points like "yes", "exactly", "umm-hmm" esp in cases where you have obvious disagreement with a particular point the other is trying to make. It is especially so, when John tries to address every side of his idea so profoundly as to not let his company actually answer the question he posed at minute 2 of the 5 minutes he took to ask the question. I realize this has much to do with John working real-time to ask in a way that encompasses an idea with precision, but it would make the convo much less hard to listen to for him to recognize when he has added the tone of ? and stop there out of respect.

[@Frauter]

I was also deeply struck by Zevi's attempt to "embody" Vervaeke's philosophy, and concluding that something like being in the body was far more important than something like "flow". They do explore this further in the rest of their conversations, but I wonder whether this little juxtaposition stood out to anyone. Flow versus being in the body, as being different "approaches" to presence, grace ..? If anyone wants to riff on this below, please do!

[@veranaessens8592]

this is the stuff.

[@82472tclt]

Very Forming

[@johnvervaeke]

Thanks Guy!

[@peretzk]

צמצם=260=10*26 (יקוק) , מקום(place) =186=י*י + ה*ה + ו*ו + ה*ה, זמן(time)=97=מ"ה + ב"ן.

[@fatema555]

So complex.

[@brisingr12]

Haha, that's so different from how I talk irl.

[@lonapopoki1181]

🌺 aloha gents

[@mediocrates3416]

The flow state, as i understand it, is about watching yourself move exactly right and having time to think about extraneous details. The cerebellum drives the body and you tweak. Seems to me anyhow.

[@mediocrates3416]

It happens in the union of malchut and yesod: always.

[@justinbirkholz7814]

Another great convo so far! Is the God of the mystic impersonal, personal, or both? At times in my life I was sure that God was one or the other, now I think both concepts serve a purpose. Of course, I can't comment on mysticism without leaving a relevant quotation: "When I think of the Supreme Being as inactive - neither creating nor preserving nor destroying -, I call Him Brahman or Purusha, the Impersonal God. When I think of Him as active - creating, preserving, and destroying -, I call Him Śakti or Māyā or Prakriti, the Personal God. But the distinction between them does not mean a difference. The Personal and the Impersonal are the same thing, like milk and its whiteness, the diamond and its lustre, the snake and its wriggling motion. It is impossible to conceive of the one without the other. The Divine Mother and Brahman are one."

[@RobinTurner]

Spot on!

[@EnemyOfEldar]

I want to comment with too much to say about the contents of this amazing conversation. But I will just leave my immense gratitude for the work of you, John, and you Zevi in the exploration. Charting new territory, but also old territory. Wierd that isn't it? And I wanted to say that I am very interested in this geometrically accompanying metaphysics and ontology of Kabbalah, is it?.

[@mediocrates3416]

Caught some of John's vids: twice (two different vids, two different contributors) i heard a contributor bring up apparent similarities between thinking and evolution. One time John just passed it by and the other time he saw fit to warn against contemplating such equivalencies. I've held a notion similar to those contributed in his vids; i've considered thinking as teleological tennis between worldview and visceral inputs and wondered if organism in ecosystem might be engaged in a similar exercise; and found it awesomely productive. Another issue that might be problematic is this notion of gnosticism as "conspirituality." Ralph Ellis has done some nice work connecting Jesus of Edessa with who I understand to be Jesus Barabbas in The Testament stories and beyond that to the Arthurian Mythos of Western Europe during the late first millennium: all good stuff that seems to be abandoned simply by a consideration of "conspiratuality."

[@johnvervaeke]

I have argued that relevance realization uses the same process of variation and selection as evolution and therefore there is deep continuity between intelligence and biological evolution. Deep continuity says there is both important similarities, just noted above, and deep differences in that thinking is plausibly teleological while evolution is plausibly not teleological in the sense of producing goals states as thinking does.

[@mediocrates3416]

@@johnvervaeke A reasonable argument: and i see elsewhere you're equating consciousness with self-consciousness...? So only the self-conscious can think. ... No offense but, it seems to me you used "thinking" in a proprietary manner and; it seems to me that consciousness precedes self-consciousness but, to equate them removes the consideration of the qualitative experience of things not self aware. Emotion is the environment of instinct, even before "i" did any thinking.

[@mediocrates3416]

We started out as comfort finders: who's doing the thinking? When we wrestle coherence detection from ecological coherence assertion; something profound happens: we can't say who.

[@mediocrates3416]

@@johnvervaeke I get your point; relevance realization as the quintessence of self. And, apparently no relevance realization in the evolution of biological life: good point, sure but; why consciousness? We can't say it's not because of relevance realization at some profound creative level: i.e. consciousness (as essential qualia, tension and compression in homeostasis generally, and opportunity) was a necessary ingredient for someone's purpose. Scientifically speaking, truth might be a person.

[@mediocrates3416]

It as though the movement from relevance realization to a realization of relevance is the liturgical exercise. ...? I think maybe so, so i don't wanna stifle that potential. Who knows the extent of these cognitive events?

[@mediocrates3416]

Let me mention a bit about my gnostic upbringing: i was 5yrs when i told my mom i was not going to Sunday school because they wouldn't answer my questions. They said ok and drove off. I was scared and ran after the car... they drove off and i cried my way back home. The next weekend we all stayed home, and every weekend after that. Most have had the fundamentalist upbringing and i find that odd.

[@mediocrates3416]

My mom would take the neighborhood kids for a nature walk every weekend; maybe cuz we were free Sunday mornings? She was awesome.

[@mediocrates3416]

Meaning and politics are strongly coupled: doing one without the other is how we got into this mess.

[@mediocrates3416]

It's not left or right; it's centrist, naturally. Ecologically sensitive and humanist: it observes the free movement of goods and the constraints on human travel and makes comment. Demand silence and lose meaning.

[@TheBookofBeasts]

If you have time, would you be able to suggest one book on Plato? I know that might be impossible. It doesn’t actually have to be only one book. I just don’t have a lot of time to read, and everything I am studying goes back to Plato and Neo Platonism. There must be a distortion in his conceptual structures around hierarchy, it must exist there, because it is present in everything that comes after him and before him, and his work certainly didn’t relieve our issue with hierarchical binaries. I am expecting to find that he reinforces them.....but I want to know how it shows up in his work. I need a book that gets into the metaphysics and routes the influence of Neo Platonism. I am more than willing to read a dense book, if a dense one comes to mind, and of course I would read as many as you are willing to suggest. Thank you so much for reading this. 🙏 ...again thank you for sharing your work. I look forward to sharing it with others. I am an occultist who was raised as by fundamentalist Christians. I have been a practicing occultist (or as the academics say ‘mystic’), for 16 years now. I really appreciated the way that you spoke of your fundamentalist upbringing. I also felt the apology that he said to you, and it had such presence that it went right through the screen.

[@lalalalalala739]

I know I'm not John, but Proclus' "The Theology of Plato". Taylor's translation is a bit out of date, but his occasional issues with Greek are compensated by his intimacy with the Neoplatonic Tradition. However, if there's a new translation I don't know about, go with that.

[@TheBookofBeasts]

@@lalalalalala739 Thank you so much for the suggestion! I will get a copy.

[@lalalalalala739]

@@TheBookofBeasts Hey cheers.

[@MrHwaynefair]

Anyone know what author John is referring to: Burhman (?), science and platonic forms???? 2:14:00 Thanks!

[@johnvervaeke]

Berman, Platonism and the Objects of Science.

[@MrHwaynefair]

@@johnvervaeke Thanks so much, Dr. Vervaeke!

[@mediocrates3416]

The theist is just truth. Beauty is what we do when we try to make the good true. Let truth tell us about the nontheist.

[@mediocrates3416]

The true and the good make a beautiful yin-yang.

[@mediocrates3416]

Look at this: there is one miracle that christians of faith are challenged to do and, there is a mountain of colonialism and misogyny grounded on roman fascism and it needs to move to the ground of truth and be the mountain of love it's supposed to be. I find that kinda interesting.

[@peretzk]

Zevi, How can you say that יקוק is the non-thesistic deity when all the commandments in the Torah are commanded by this name alone, " וידבר יקוק אל משה לאמר צו את בני ישראל לאמור".

[@Tzimtzum26]

I think what he means is that YKVK, in some Kabbalistic understandings, is beyond creation and transcendent, whereas Elokim is the imminent and intrinsically bound with creation. That the Torah’s commandments are given by YKVK is perhaps in the secret of Zeir Anpin being unified and dependent upon Arich Anpin. ZA of Atzilut is our “portal” to the entirely transcendent. Being a portal, it has the qualities of imminence and transcendence simultaneously. This is the secret of Havayah hu HaElokim. YKVK is Elokim, the transcendent and imminent aspects are one, and a complete unity.

[@amazonbooks237]

The realm of the intelligibility of the soul, personhood, and individuality, the 'indivisible,; is Unity, which is only possible due to the 'Reality' of the One, the One Mind of Tibetan Buddhism, which is shunyata, 'emptiness'. However, this does not mean, I suggest, that the One Mind is 'literally' empty, only that it is no-thing, or no-thought, Latin res. What is eternal, therefore, is the paradoxical nature of tye One Mind and the heaveny Sambhoga-Kaya, the Body of Perfect Ebdowment, or Paradise. 'As Above, so Below,- implies that our contact with God, the One, allows us to contemplate paradise on earth, which, in its symbolic formation, brings together the non-theistic/God and the theistic/soul to the degree where the individual living in the world can be aware of the transcendent and have compassion for the world when the emanation happens to creative come into being, as the case might be.

[@Frauter]

What is the name mentioned at 1:08:45?

[@Frauter]

Eurogines?

[@peretzk]

Zevi, As I mentioned in a previous video on your channel the TZMITZUM צמצום occurred in the light of G-d אור אין סוף and not in G-d ,as mentioned in the commentaries of the book Etz Haim עץ חיים.

[@mediocrates3416]

Politics: a man should leave his father and mother and become one with his wife; not a bunch of other men. Quit the all-male groups; it's about how truth presents.

[@madsenketty]

Prolepsis

[@mediocrates3416]

I appreciate the desire to avoid politics but; if you have an opinion or a position (and almost all of us are born into and reside in a political position) then it's part of you. You gotta be green politically because the wilderness liturgy is the grounding principle. Just sayin.... seems to me.