It is often noted that the ancient Greeks had an advantage in possessing several words for love. Eros, philia, agape and others allowed them to be nuanced about love and navigate its differences. So is there benefit in considering how love has been understood in different wisdom traditions, too? 

This conversation, hosted by the Pari Center, explores how love has been understood in various faith contexts and across time, looking at Christian, Sufi, Platonic and other insights. The aim will be to tease out similarities and differences so as to deepen and refresh the felt presence of love in our lives.

Jane Clark is a teacher and independent researcher who has been studying the Islamic mystical tradition for more than forty years. She is a Senior Research Fellow of the Muhyiddin Ibn ʿArabi Society, and also the editor of Beshara Magazine.

For more on Mark Vernon - www.markvernon.com

00:03:29 Four kinds of ancient Greek love
00:09:13 Four kinds of love within Islam
00:15:34 Love and spiritual paths in Neoplatonism
00:25:34 Love and the Sufi path
00:32:48 Love and suffering within Christianity
00:38:20 The fire of love in Ibn ‘Arabi and Dante
00:40:56 Is creation God’s act of love in Plato and Christianity
00:46:57 God making a hidden treasure known in Sufism
00:52:20 Is God love? Is God beauty?
00:57:13 The unconditional love of God
00:58:30 Charity, pastoralia and hospitality
01:03:58 The imperative for sacrificial love after the Reformation
01:10:30 Devotion, love of saints and idolatry
01:13:43 Attitudes to sex and sin across traditions
01:19:07 Attitudes to friendship across traditions
01:26:23 What about love and suffering?
01:32:38 Is there hope in collective movements of love?

A quick thought on the deep, inner, even esoteric history and significance of the Platinum Jubilee in the UK.

The full story of monarchs and the birth of individual consciousness is part of the story told in A Secret History of Christianity: Jesus, the Last Inkling and the Evolution of Consciousness - https://www.markvernon.com/books/a-secret-history-of-christianity

There is a kind of love which brings consolation in crises. But there is also another kind of love which appears in times of crisis; indeed, can only be known through crises.

This is worth considering because love is often use in nebulous or ill-defined ways, which means that its nuanced perceptions and mature forms can be hard to grasp. The need for a deeper awareness of love because particularly acute in times of crisis, though times of crisis also offer moments to understand love move fully. 

This talk was given at the Pari Centre. I explore the links between love and personal, spiritual and civilisational development; different types of power, and its relationship with freedom and mind; as well as erotic yearning, suffering and loss; and so also to the knowledge of the ways in which reality itself is shaped by transcendent love.

William Blake is famous for his phrase "cleansing the doors of perception". But he has much, much more to offer the renewed interest in psychedelics underway in our times.

He responds to the need for a social and spiritual setting, widely recognised by those investigating psychedelics now, so that personal experiences can be not only beneficial for individuals but transformative in cultural.

Here, I discuss facets of his insight that suggest seven elements in which the psychedelic experience overlaps with cultural need.
1. Learning that imagination is truth-bearing
2. Realising that inner freedom is crucial
3. Perceiving that consciousness is basic
4. Recognising that healing is collective
5. Experiencing death as a portal
6. Understanding that vision matters more than morality
7. Awakening to the malleability of time.

"More! More! is the cry of a mistaken soul, less than All cannot satisfy Man," wrote William Blake. 

How we might participate in the All, without consuming more and more, can serve as a summary of Blake's vision and vocation. All he did was, in a way, an increasingly extended, expansive reflection on how to live in the presence of infinity.

The mistakes we make, when confusing this eternity with mere accumulation, offer an analysis of the modern predicament. Blake realised that there is no point telling people to want less, or even to moderate their desires. Rather, we need to learn how to discern our desires so they lead towards that which they really seek: the all.

It's an education of attention, an awakening of the divine. He provides powerful pointers in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, a series of provocations not to live modestly but, rather, transformatively. 

Perceiving the infinite tracks a path of liberty and vision, love and fearlessness, which I explore in this discussion of the proverbs that he tells us he heard in the energetic, exuberant fires of hell.

The reality TV star, Tyler Henry, became famous with his celebrity readings. His new Netflix series, Life After Death, is a chance to consider what he does in a different light.

My sense is he is one of the relatively rare highly gifted clairvoyants, who have impressed investigators like William James.

I'm also struck by how his way of working resonates with psychotherapeutic phenomena like countertransference, as well as the testimony of Dante in the Divine Comedy.

Tyler Henry challenges worldviews. But if not simply dismissed, and also approached in a less starry more discerning light, he offers a chance to understand more of life, its relationship to death, and what our times may be rediscovering.

The land commons are the shared material resources that nobody in particular might own, and everyone might have, though they are routinely taken from us. Land and forests, water and minerals.

The spiritual commons are the being of life itself that nobody owns and everyone has. And arguably, they are being taken from us even more carelessly and callously....

For more on Idler Drinks see - https://www.idler.co.uk

For more on Nick Hayes see - https://www.foghornhayes.com

For more on Mark Vernon see - https://www.markvernon.com

A conversation on wrestling with Christianity - or perhaps more accurately, the Christianities that swirl around the figure of Jesus - at the Medicine Path podcast, #87, with Brian James.

For more on Brian - http://medicinepathpodcast.com, http://brianjames.ca

For more on Owen Barfield and his take on Christianity - https://www.markvernon.com/consciousness

Modern Stoicism is more diverse than I knew, I learnt when I spoke with Simon Drew, Kai Whiting and Sharon Lebell. In particular, the divine element in ancient Stoicism, which was central, has not been discarded by everyone involved in the recent Stoic revival.

In this conversation, we talk about Stoicism, the Logos, the cosmos, Christianity, and the spiritual path of Dante’s Divine Comedy. I hope it's enjoyable.

For more on The Walled Garden - https://thewalledgarden.com

Politics and religion is a question of our times. The role of the church and Christianity is contested in both Russia and the liberal West.

William Blake was aware of the failure of politics in his time, recognising it wasn't ultimately a failure of leadership or practical solutions but of vision.

What politics is for? What role do religious institutions play in it? What has been lost in the Babylon materialism of today?

Blake applied his deepest perceptions and devised a dynamic fourfold schema that can guide us through the blindness and failure of our times. 

It is radical and pressing.