Andreas Weber has studied marine biology and cultural systems alongside his work with theoretical biologist Francisco Varela. Andreas has worked over the years on the concept of enlivenment and looking at the “biosphere as a meaning-creating and poetic reality”. This episode is about dissolving the boundaries of a mechanistic worldview and finding a new depth of meaning, reciprocity, and service. Becoming edible is the touchstone for the talk as Andreas walks us through ideas of reciprocal transformation of matter, what it might mean to surrender to impermanence and that transformation, and how death links us to the whole of life and aliveness. It is also about how we define language and mentorship in response to everything we take in from the interconnected web of life. Andreas guides us through how Western culture and civilization has strayed from so many of these concepts and the trauma that represents on concentric levels. Our chat is wrapped up by exploring the invisible dimension. This is a wide-ranging and beautiful deep dive into our felt experience of matter, of aliveness, of death, and beyond and is absolutely not to be missed. 

Find Andreas:

Website: https://biologyofwonder.org/

Ecology of Love Course

Books:

The Biology of Wonder: Aliveness, Feeling, and the Metamorphoses of Science

Matter and Desire: an Erotic Ecology 

Timestamps:

00:05:59: Old Salt Festival Shoutout

00:10:58: Interview Begins with a line from Rilke and some ruminations on poetry

00:21:08: Becoming Edible 

00:28:48: The hard to define line between self and other 

00:37:13: Reciprocal Transformation

00:43:05: Healing rifts of isolation 

00:48:49: Surrendering to impermanence and transformation

00:58:31: Death links us to the whole

01:16:38: Non-meditation and finding mentors 

01:36:51: Gift, culture, and trauma 

01:46:02: The invisible dimension 

Books + Resources Mentioned: 

Tulku Urgyen

Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Joanna Macy

Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke

Philosophy of Baruch de Spinoza 

Works by Nagarjuna

Old Salt Festival 

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