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The imagination is often regarded as a valuable but fanciful capacity. But what if imagination were not an optional extra, or even the possession of human beings alone, but a fundamental feature of reality?

In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon draw on the ideas of William Blake to explore Blake’s insistence that “nature is imagination itself!”. 

They discuss how the understanding of the imagination has contracted in recent times, though also how modern science is a remarkable exercise in the imagination. They consider matters from how the Platonic notion of ideas relates to cosmic and evolutionary novelty, to whether angels can be said to be imaginative and creative. 

Mark’s new book is "Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination". For more information see https://www.markvernon.com/books/awake-william-blake-and-the-power-of-the-imagination.

The imagination is often regarded as a valuable but fanciful capacity. But what if imagination were not an optional extra, or even the possession of human beings alone, but a fundamental feature of reality?

In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon draw on the ideas of William Blake to explore Blake’s insistence that “nature is imagination itself!”. 

They discuss how the understanding of the imagination has contracted in recent times, though also how modern science is a remarkable exercise in the imagination. They consider matters from how the Platonic notion of ideas relates to cosmic and evolutionary novelty, to whether angels can be said to be imaginative and creative. 

Mark’s new book is "Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination". For more information see https://www.markvernon.com/books/awake-william-blake-and-the-power-of-the-imagination.

Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination is now available worldwide.

To celebrate, Mark Vernon and Robert Rowland Smith discuss all things Blake from angels and images, to poetry and prophecy.

For more on the book see https://www.markvernon.com/books/awake-william-blake-and-the-power-of-the-imagination

I very much enjoyed speaking with Jason Whittaker, a profound lover of Blake, because we have our differences about how Blake speaks to us and, I hope, that is illuminating.

We discussed Blake the visionary and mystic, and resisting forcing Blake through the sieve of more recent psychology. We thought about how Blake speaks to us now, as a poet and analyst of the modern spirit. We examined the significance of the imagination and the nature of God for Blake.

For more on Jasons’s work see - www.jasonwhittaker.co.uk
For more on Awake! and Mark’s work see - www.markvernon.com

0:00 Introductions
1:36 How Blake speaks to us
5:35 Mystic or visionary?
7:45 On not psychologising Blake
9:40 Reading Blake’s poetry
11:54 Blake as a prophet of now
15:40 Understanding Blake’s characters
19:20 The significance of the imagination in Blake
23:12 Blake and God
27:03 Why deism matters
32:55 Infinite perception
37:46 Against the church
43:05 Dialogues and the expansion of perception

Why is the mechanical view of reality so strong? Why does billiard-ball atomism remain the default popular metaphysics? 

William James was horrified by such “nothing buttery” and the way it substituted bare concepts for rich phenomena.

A.N. Whitehead famously – or perhaps not famously enough – described the problem as the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness”.

William Blake is another critic. “General Knowledge is Remote Knowledge. But General Forms have their vitality in Particulars. It is in Particulars that Wisdom consists & Happiness too.”

We should care about what Blake called “single vision and Newton’s sleep”. The antidote is to reestablish a relationship with presence. Poetry and imagery evoke the lived moment of experiencing and the fluid dynamics of that perception. Regain contact with that, regain contact with life.
This is the promise of Blake and others.

For more on Mark’s book, Awake!, and more of his work see - www.markvernon.com

Mark Vernon provides a fresh route into Blake, taking him at his word. Exploring his writings, artwork and life, Vernon illuminates Blake’s vivid worldview and shows how his thinking is still relevant for us today.

Please note that the ideas expressed in this lecture do not necessarily represent the views of L’Abri Fellowship.

You may agree that the so-called hard problem of consciousness exposes the deep inadequacies of a materialist worldview. 

But the alternatives - various forms of panpsychism, panentheism and idealism - raise rich and fascinating questions, too. 

In this episode of The Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon explore the leading edge of consciousness research, with Rupert just back from The Science of Consciousness Conference 2025 in Barcelona. 

They discuss the impact of Indian researchers of consciousness and the proposals of microchip inventor, Federico Faggin. They consider trainings in extra-ocular vision and questions thrown up by the hit podcast series, The Telepathy Tapes. 

One thing is clear: when the materialist paradigm passes, the science of consciousness will have only just begun.

For more on Rupert's work see - https://www.sheldrake.org/

For more on Mark's work see - https://www.markvernon.com/

In my book, I want to draw out two facets of William Blake, which I think get routinely sidelined now. My conversation with Jane Clark and Nikos Yiangou enabled us to explore these dimensions.

One is that Blake was a very sharp thinker. He had a very accurate and clear critique of the ideas that were beginning to bed down in his time and have really shaped our times in the modern Christian West. 

A second is that he is a religious figure, which gets sidelined in two ways. He lived daily with perceptions of angels and other entities: the divine, the dead. I don't explain that away by pathologising Blake. 

He is also a clear Christian mystic, a very important voice in Western Christianity since the Reformation - connecting us back to a mystical core, which again is very often sidelined.

For more about my book, Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination see - https://www.markvernon.com/books/awake-william-blake-and-the-power-of-the-imagination

For more about Beshara Magazine see - https://besharamagazine.org

A transcript is online here - https://besharamagazine.org/podcast/mark-vernon-awake-william-blake-and-the-power-of-imagination/

0:00 Introductions
1:57 Blake as thinker and mystic
5:20 The power of the imagination
14:40 Blake and science
21:12 The interconnection of music and poetry
26:04 Innocence and wisdom
32:29 Blake's Christianity
39:57 Blake the philosopher

James Harpur’s new book, "Dazzling Darkness: The Lives and Afterlives of the Christian Mystics", begins with an account of a mystical experience that happened to him - “an implosion of light”, as he describes it. That led to his book, Dazzling Darkness, in pursuit of the path that leads to ultimate reality: God.

Mark Vernon’s new book, "Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination", is the result of Mark’s engagement with his local mystic, William Blake, as well as practices based on encounters and texts including The Cloud of Unknowing.

In this conversation they explore the nature of mystical experience, as well as the mystics that speak powerfully to them, from Saint Columba to William Blake, via Marguerite Porete and Teresa of Avila, Ramana Maharshi and Krishnamurti.

For more on James’s book, Dazzling Darkness - https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/dazzling-darkness/
For more on Mark’s book, Awake! - https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/awake/

0:00 Two books on mysticism!
01:55 James’s mystical experience
07:00 Mark’s encounter through contemplative practice
11:58 The Irish mystics that speak to James
18:00 Living the porous life
22:49 Mysticism after monasticism
29:30 Church life and mystical life
32:01 Seeking spiritual directors
33:00 The voice of Krishnamurti
40:32 The presence amidst the diversity
42:30 What happens after the ecstasy?
52:00 Sustaining the double vision

Iain McGilchrist calls William Blake “the least cosy of poets and one of the most insightful that ever lived.” Blake is cited more often than most figures in Iain’s great book, "The Matter With Things".

So what did Blake express that might much matter now? How did he understand key features of our humanity such as the imagination and inspiration, as well as the character of our day?

In this conversation, prompted by the publication of "Awake!", Iain and Mark often land on wonderful quotes of Blake to unpack them. ”To the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.” “As a man is, so he sees.” "If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is: infinite."

They explore Blakean imagery such as the spiral shape of Jacob’s Ladder. Contemporary concerns are central too, from architecture to AI. 

Above all, they celebrate Blake as a figure who can guide our desires, aid us with the contraries of modern life, and sustain our faith that life is good, for all the ills that surround us.

For more on Iain’s work - https://channelmcgilchrist.com
For more on Mark’s work - https://www.markvernon.com

Mark’s new book on William Blake is “Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination” - https://www.markvernon.com/books/awake-william-blake-and-the-power-of-the-imagination

0:00 No-one has imagination!
05:27 The narrowing of imagination
08:36 Fantasy and uncoupling
11:55 The misenchantment of the world
13:08 Place, space and architecture
16:26 Spiritually aware consumerism
19:43 The glowing presence of infinity
21:13 Cleansing the doors of perception
24:38 Speaking from the outside in
26:38 The failure of empathy and need for the sacred
31:24 Primary connection not separation
33:10 Blake’s orthodoxy
34:37 Jacob’s Ladder as a spiral
38:12 The good can hold the bad
39:55 Data, memory and AI
42:33 Memory that inspires
45:44 The enlivening of ritual
48:10 Blake on divine science
53:37 The character of things and insights
57:17 Distinctions without difference
59:28 Illuminating Blake and Dante