The Sense of the Sacred | Iain McGilchrist with Jnanavaca

Dr Iain McGilchrist in conversation with Jnanavaca about 'The Sense of the Sacred' for the Nature of Mind project. Find out more at natureofmind.net.
Dr Iain McGilchrist is a psychiatrist, neuroscience researcher, philosopher and literary scholar. He is a Quondam Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, an Associate Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and former Consultant Psychiatrist and Clinical Director at the Bethlem Royal & Maudsley Hospital, London.
He has been a Research Fellow in neuroimaging at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore and a Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Stellenbosch. He has published original articles and research papers in a wide range of publications on topics in literature, philosophy, medicine and psychiatry.
He is the author of a number of books, but is best-known for The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (Yale 2009).

[@rowlandharryweston6037]

We are truly blessed to have such people in our world.

[@cheri238]

Another discovery of learning with an openness of engagement of listening. Thank you both.

[@skipper.mindplayers]

Super impressed, you dared not only going down this path but also mastered this tricky territory with brilliance, broadest wisdom and a big heart. Thank you so much.

[@HeloisaAOliveira]

Marvelous!

[@CaptainOfTheLostWaves]

Such an evocative and daring space to fall and be coerced into, with a concurrent measure of wisdom and wonder, embracing such insightful and raw analogies that most conversations in the post modern culture are deemed as not worth having. This has been a torrent of beautifully presented digestible paradoxes and is bloated with a sensitivity that is a rare commodity. Thank you. Love and peace to all. X 🙏

[@rebekkahaascetin3733]

Not loud enough, soundwise. Wonderful people and content.

[@tinychapter.]

This conversation is a supreme gift to us all. Thank you!

[@spiralsun1]

Panentheism yes. ❤️‍🔥🙏🏻 Love the dipole stuff. It’s a definite key to understanding. Thank you so much. 🥰 Love this.

[@cecilcharlesofficial]

If there’s a huge explosion in space and nothing to slow the expanding matter, when is the explosion ‘over?’ In this way, how are we not the Big Bang? :)

[@daviddrew7852]

Gravity may well turn out to be a dipolar electrical force.

[@BethPia]

💜Elvis - the wonder of you... A love song for ALL 🌻🐦😊

[@udo9999]

Thank you for offering us this wisdom!

[@nugley]

Thankyou. I am a better person for having watched this, and I'll be back.

[@javadhashtroudian5740]

My favorite teachings are not those I always agree with but those that make me think. I always appreciate Lian exceptionally and tend to agree with him 100 percent In the case of this video not only I agree but I'm thinking and discovering Thank you thank you thank you

[@mcnallyaar]

I very, very much look forward to watching this!

[@andreasschroeder2873]

Wonderful, I feel blessed.

[@bridecolbourne1305]

It’s all so intellectually , I’m not feeling a knowing from the heart , to me it’s all coming across as so wordy and dry , with out feelings🌅🙏🏼

[@rumcelt]

I hope Iain might have his work made into an audiobook at some point. As the extracts from his book and the discussion were enthralling.

[@cecilcharlesofficial]

If we were ever able to put into words the mystery of existence, then we’d have no use for it anymore. Mystery and surprise are what we desire, and the story that situation generates. Nihilists have it “all figured out,” and I feel sorry for them I wish they’d stop ruining things, and it’s our job to tell a better story. The hesitance at having a chapter about the sacred is evidence of our cultural nihilism. We must be the change. Just start feeling every sensation before you label it as an emotion. Feel everything. You’ll be surprised how enamored you become with life. It’s the receptivity Eckhart is talking about. Feel everything, but don’t label. Sure, physical pain might overcome you, but everything else you can handle… they’re just buzzes in your body. And the time spent focusing on sensation and not thinking with words - that’s just as valuable. And it means you never chastise yourself for feeling anything. And then you’ll likely act your best, your most calm, your most generous and wise, because you’ll not be spooling in thought and neuroses.

[@alfonso31ification]

Strong socks

[@stephenbastasch7893]

Wonderful discussion of Panentheism and what makes it different to, and irreconcilable with, pantheism. The Panentheist principle is simply expressed: God is both "here" (immanent) and "more than here" (transcendent). ALL the world is contained in God, God contains the world, is present all through the world, and at the same time also embraces or surrounds the world. That's Pan EN theism.

[@bayreuth79]

I do not agree that evil has some kind of substantial reality. Evil, it seems to me, is the absence of good in a certain context. It is impossible to will evil qua evil. We always will it under the aspect of the good. As Milton's Satan says: evil be thou my good. If one wills destruction, for example, it is always because one thinks that things are better if x or y are destroyed, even if that is the whole cosmos.

[@daviddrew7852]

Divine shouldn't be a dirty word.

[@gilcostello3316]

Made me think of the resistance involved in Jacob wrestling with God's angel all night that would take him to higher ground.

[@alexmaurilewis]

What you mentioned is the true religion. Islam is maybe the most clear in his theology, but all the religion at their pinnacle are explaining the same thing. And each religion will have followers that don’t understand that pinnacle and their are indeed misguided by idolatry

[@bellybear4559]

I’d become a Mcgilchristian if I didn’t know he would chastise me for missing the point.

[@howardhadley9820]

ρɾσɱσʂɱ 🤪

[@arthurwieczorek4894]

Can an atheist have a sense of the sacred?

[@danarose5749]

Yes. I think as sacred all things essential for life to exist e.g. clean water, air/oxygen, fertile soil.

[@TallinnCity2410]

not sure but one can definitely have a sense of awe and wonder