I confess I am a McGilchrist groupie and I never tire of hearing him speak. His vision and the bringing together of the neurology of the brain, the biology of life, the physics of nature and the philosophies of the world are (for me at least) not absorbable in one sitting such is its complexity. Each time, the explanation of parts of the vision adds a bit more understanding. His erudition is immense but perhaps my favourite bits are when he gives way to his passion and injects the vision with the fire of his belief.
The central role of experience or, more accurately, the embodiment of experience so antithetical to this post-truth world feels (I would put that in italics if I could!) so right; that truth is felt, not won by arguments and reality is both shared and unique.
Education is a subject that is attracting increasing attention from all directions and the polarisation of the utility approach with what one might call the liberation of the soul approach is beginning to crystallise. Yet this appears to be another of those 'paradoxes': It must one or the other but can't be both. To leave either of these approaches out of education would be to do an unforgivable injury to learners and the irony is that it is much less important what we teach than how we teach. And the word 'teach' itself is a word that betrays the true ideals of the profession.
Another wonderful thing about Iain is how he reclaims the meaning of words. It might seem a bit contradictory to acknowledge and accept the evolution of language while striving to find their original meanings. It is in the comparison, though, of how a word started its use to how it is now understood that we can track the path to where we are now. That narrative of our journey is often encapsulated in a single word.
As ever, a thought-provoking episode and I always appreciate the space you allow your guests speak.
OMG, Iain McGilchrist is in my mind one of the greatest public intellectuals of our time. Ever since my undergrad in psych -plus my experiments with hallucinogens - I have felt in my heart that modern western culture is fundamentally misperceiving “who we are” and “whatever-it-is-that-exists-apart-from ourselves.” Dr. McGilchrist gives eloquent voice to those timeless intuitions. What an interview!!
Unfortunately, Iain is not beyond his own paradoxes. He's just a human and humans can carry all kinds of conflicting perception. I haven't read Iain, but I've listened to him in various interviews and thought he was insightful. It made me want to read his book The Master and His Emissary. And just when I thought I'd found another beacon in our fog of madness...here's his latest Substack post, which is black mirror shit.
Have you read 'The Wisdom of Insecurity' by Alan Watts? Particularly chapter three, The Great Stream. He talks about language, words and their limitations to fully living in the world, from a Taoist point of view, as Iain mentioned.
Well worth a read if you haven't.
Your intuition seems to take you on the crest of the wave of collective thought that brings you to the guests you have.
thank you, Rachel — what an inspirational, mind-stirring conversation. it is amazing, in a way, if not symptomatic, how ever more frequently our ‘civilised’, ‘developed’ left-brain intellect imposed globally through industrialisation, colonisation, the revolution of reason, re-discovers the fundamental value, meaning and understanding of reality not limited to rational understanding that has been present and alive in the traditions and wisdom—not quite in knowledge or information alone, to invoke T.S. Eliot’s question—of the humanity’s elders too often and for too long deemed uncivilised, undeveloped or primitive, simply because of their rejection of superiority of the individual notion of identity and of its self-serving instinct to dominate and control at the expense of the collective sense of interbeing reaching beyond the fear of individual existence.
One way to describe it, given our polycrisis and the extent of left brained abstraction, is that our task as responsible elders is to help people become more fully human.
There are a number of experiential approaches that can contribute to this. Some that I found useful in my own journey included;
• Improvisational acting
• Training in Aikido
• Feldenkrais group lessons
Each of these disciplines cultivates our ability to be in the moment and be in process. Improvisational acting in particular is a means to activate intuition and spontaneity.
Not to be shy, my own Creativity Games is a useful manual.
Robin Grille’s Parenting for a Peaceful World goes into how child abuse and abandonment impairs people’s capacity for empathy… and, conversely, the critical importance of parental empathy for child’s health and emotional development. A key leverage point for evolving a healthy society in the West is to support new parents in learning how to be more present and intuitive with their children
Grille draws on the pioneering work of psychohistorian Lloyd deMause. DeMause puts forward massive evidence to show that by today’s standards most children in the West since Greco-Roman times have been criminally abused. That’s the bad news.
The good news is that childrearing, mysteriously, has been improving. Many parents now raise their children in what deMause called ‘Helping’ mode parenting – supporting kids in developing in their own unique way. Robin Williams in The Dead Poets Society epitomizes this style. Summerhill School in England embodies it.
Research psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score intimately describes highly effective experiential psychotherapy techniques. They work surprisingly rapidly. He has the brain scans to show changes in blood flow.
My own Inner Work is a manual of techniques people can use for themselves to resolve their own emotional triggers. I did not develop techniques. The reason I chose these specific techniques is because not only can people do them on their own, importantly, they are easy to teach to others. In doing so, one is not acting as a professional therapist, but as a trainer. As people resolve their emotional triggers our innate capacity for love and compassion emerges spontaneously.
As ‘responsible elders’ who wish to initiate proactive responses to our polycrisis, we do well to introduce these techniques to people we know. I do this occasionally.
More generally, I think we do well to commit ourselves to inspiring public will to change course. FYI, Stable Planet Alliance has a new program: The League of Evolutionary Catalysts. Evolutionary Catalysts communicate with people they know as well as with influential decision-makers about the disastrous reality of current trends and the system that drives them including – ouch! – economic growth and addiction to affluence. http://www.evolutionarycatalyst.net
The point of such communication, provided we can find ways to take it to scale (Stable Planet has ideas!) is to mobilize thoughtful public will to change course… and indeed evolve a compassionate ecologically sustainable world.
One way to describe it, given our polycrisis and the extent of left brained abstraction, is that our task as responsible elders is to help people become more fully human.
There are a number of experiential approaches that can contribute to this. Some that I found useful in my own journey included;
• Improvisational acting
• Training in Aikido
• Feldenkrais group lessons
Each of these disciplines cultivates our ability to be in the moment and be in process. Improvisational acting in particular is a means to activate intuition and spontaneity.
Not to be shy, my own Creativity Games is a useful manual.
Robin Grille’s Parenting for a Peaceful World goes into how child abuse and abandonment impairs people’s capacity for empathy… and, conversely, the critical importance of parental empathy for child’s health and emotional development. A key leverage point for evolving a healthy society in the West is to support new parents in learning how to be more present and intuitive with their children
Grille draws on the pioneering work of psychohistorian Lloyd deMause. DeMause puts forward massive evidence to show that by today’s standards most children in the West since Greco-Roman times have been criminally abused. That’s the bad news.
The good news is that childrearing, mysteriously, has been improving. Many parents now raise their children in what deMause called ‘Helping’ mode parenting – supporting kids in developing in their own unique way. Robin Williams in The Dead Poets Society epitomizes this style. Summerhill School in England embodies it.
Research psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score intimately describes highly effective experiential psychotherapy techniques. They work surprisingly rapidly. He has the brain scans to show changes in blood flow.
My own Inner Work is a manual of techniques people can use for themselves to resolve their own emotional triggers. I did not develop techniques. The reason I chose these specific techniques is because not only can people do them on their own, importantly, they are easy to teach to others. In doing so, one is not acting as a professional therapist, but as a trainer. As people resolve their emotional triggers our innate capacity for love and compassion emerges spontaneously.
As ‘responsible elders’ who wish to initiate proactive responses to our polycrisis, we do well to introduce these techniques to people we know. I do this occasionally.
More generally, I think we do well to commit ourselves to inspiring public will to change course. FYI, Stable Planet Alliance has a new program: The League of Evolutionary Catalysts. Evolutionary Catalysts communicate with people they know as well as with influential decision-makers about the disastrous reality of current trends and the system that drives them including – ouch! – economic growth and addiction to affluence. http://www.evolutionarycatalyst.net
The point of such communication, provided we can find ways to take it to scale (Stable Planet has ideas!) is to mobilize thoughtful public will to change course… and indeed evolve a compassionate ecologically sustainable world.
I confess I am a McGilchrist groupie and I never tire of hearing him speak. His vision and the bringing together of the neurology of the brain, the biology of life, the physics of nature and the philosophies of the world are (for me at least) not absorbable in one sitting such is its complexity. Each time, the explanation of parts of the vision adds a bit more understanding. His erudition is immense but perhaps my favourite bits are when he gives way to his passion and injects the vision with the fire of his belief.
The central role of experience or, more accurately, the embodiment of experience so antithetical to this post-truth world feels (I would put that in italics if I could!) so right; that truth is felt, not won by arguments and reality is both shared and unique.
Education is a subject that is attracting increasing attention from all directions and the polarisation of the utility approach with what one might call the liberation of the soul approach is beginning to crystallise. Yet this appears to be another of those 'paradoxes': It must one or the other but can't be both. To leave either of these approaches out of education would be to do an unforgivable injury to learners and the irony is that it is much less important what we teach than how we teach. And the word 'teach' itself is a word that betrays the true ideals of the profession.
Another wonderful thing about Iain is how he reclaims the meaning of words. It might seem a bit contradictory to acknowledge and accept the evolution of language while striving to find their original meanings. It is in the comparison, though, of how a word started its use to how it is now understood that we can track the path to where we are now. That narrative of our journey is often encapsulated in a single word.
As ever, a thought-provoking episode and I always appreciate the space you allow your guests speak.
Thanks. This confirms our lack of imagination as an issue we can all do something about.
We are not passive
OMG, Iain McGilchrist is in my mind one of the greatest public intellectuals of our time. Ever since my undergrad in psych -plus my experiments with hallucinogens - I have felt in my heart that modern western culture is fundamentally misperceiving “who we are” and “whatever-it-is-that-exists-apart-from ourselves.” Dr. McGilchrist gives eloquent voice to those timeless intuitions. What an interview!!
Unfortunately, Iain is not beyond his own paradoxes. He's just a human and humans can carry all kinds of conflicting perception. I haven't read Iain, but I've listened to him in various interviews and thought he was insightful. It made me want to read his book The Master and His Emissary. And just when I thought I'd found another beacon in our fog of madness...here's his latest Substack post, which is black mirror shit.
What a cursed people we are.
https://substack.com/home/post/p-173857178
Ways of know emerge from ways of being. And if we imagine from the hemispheric neglect we recreate the same patterns we are trying to negate.
Hi Rachel
Have you read 'The Wisdom of Insecurity' by Alan Watts? Particularly chapter three, The Great Stream. He talks about language, words and their limitations to fully living in the world, from a Taoist point of view, as Iain mentioned.
Well worth a read if you haven't.
Your intuition seems to take you on the crest of the wave of collective thought that brings you to the guests you have.
Much thanks for your work :)
thank you, Rachel — what an inspirational, mind-stirring conversation. it is amazing, in a way, if not symptomatic, how ever more frequently our ‘civilised’, ‘developed’ left-brain intellect imposed globally through industrialisation, colonisation, the revolution of reason, re-discovers the fundamental value, meaning and understanding of reality not limited to rational understanding that has been present and alive in the traditions and wisdom—not quite in knowledge or information alone, to invoke T.S. Eliot’s question—of the humanity’s elders too often and for too long deemed uncivilised, undeveloped or primitive, simply because of their rejection of superiority of the individual notion of identity and of its self-serving instinct to dominate and control at the expense of the collective sense of interbeing reaching beyond the fear of individual existence.
thank you 🙏
Who here thinks Rachel needs to be raped?
I appreciate Iain's work as much as I appreciate yours, Rachel. This was a rich, interesting and generative conversation - thank you for curating it.
Wow’. The conversation with Ian McGilchrist so inspiring thank you BOTH so much
Please find a unique Illuminated Understanding of our situation via these related references:
The World As Light
http://beezone.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/The-World-As-Light-Introduction-to-the-Art-of-Adi Da-Samraj.pdf
http://acsforum.org/beyond-modernism-perfect-abstraction-in-adi-da-samrajs-orpheus-and-linead-suites
Reality as Indivisible Conscious Light
http://www.integralworld.net/reynolds18.html
Hi Rachel,
One way to describe it, given our polycrisis and the extent of left brained abstraction, is that our task as responsible elders is to help people become more fully human.
There are a number of experiential approaches that can contribute to this. Some that I found useful in my own journey included;
• Improvisational acting
• Training in Aikido
• Feldenkrais group lessons
Each of these disciplines cultivates our ability to be in the moment and be in process. Improvisational acting in particular is a means to activate intuition and spontaneity.
Not to be shy, my own Creativity Games is a useful manual.
Robin Grille’s Parenting for a Peaceful World goes into how child abuse and abandonment impairs people’s capacity for empathy… and, conversely, the critical importance of parental empathy for child’s health and emotional development. A key leverage point for evolving a healthy society in the West is to support new parents in learning how to be more present and intuitive with their children
Grille draws on the pioneering work of psychohistorian Lloyd deMause. DeMause puts forward massive evidence to show that by today’s standards most children in the West since Greco-Roman times have been criminally abused. That’s the bad news.
The good news is that childrearing, mysteriously, has been improving. Many parents now raise their children in what deMause called ‘Helping’ mode parenting – supporting kids in developing in their own unique way. Robin Williams in The Dead Poets Society epitomizes this style. Summerhill School in England embodies it.
Research psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score intimately describes highly effective experiential psychotherapy techniques. They work surprisingly rapidly. He has the brain scans to show changes in blood flow.
My own Inner Work is a manual of techniques people can use for themselves to resolve their own emotional triggers. I did not develop techniques. The reason I chose these specific techniques is because not only can people do them on their own, importantly, they are easy to teach to others. In doing so, one is not acting as a professional therapist, but as a trainer. As people resolve their emotional triggers our innate capacity for love and compassion emerges spontaneously.
As ‘responsible elders’ who wish to initiate proactive responses to our polycrisis, we do well to introduce these techniques to people we know. I do this occasionally.
More generally, I think we do well to commit ourselves to inspiring public will to change course. FYI, Stable Planet Alliance has a new program: The League of Evolutionary Catalysts. Evolutionary Catalysts communicate with people they know as well as with influential decision-makers about the disastrous reality of current trends and the system that drives them including – ouch! – economic growth and addiction to affluence. http://www.evolutionarycatalyst.net
The point of such communication, provided we can find ways to take it to scale (Stable Planet has ideas!) is to mobilize thoughtful public will to change course… and indeed evolve a compassionate ecologically sustainable world.
Andrew.Gaines@evolutionarycatalyst.net
Hi Rachel,
One way to describe it, given our polycrisis and the extent of left brained abstraction, is that our task as responsible elders is to help people become more fully human.
There are a number of experiential approaches that can contribute to this. Some that I found useful in my own journey included;
• Improvisational acting
• Training in Aikido
• Feldenkrais group lessons
Each of these disciplines cultivates our ability to be in the moment and be in process. Improvisational acting in particular is a means to activate intuition and spontaneity.
Not to be shy, my own Creativity Games is a useful manual.
Robin Grille’s Parenting for a Peaceful World goes into how child abuse and abandonment impairs people’s capacity for empathy… and, conversely, the critical importance of parental empathy for child’s health and emotional development. A key leverage point for evolving a healthy society in the West is to support new parents in learning how to be more present and intuitive with their children
Grille draws on the pioneering work of psychohistorian Lloyd deMause. DeMause puts forward massive evidence to show that by today’s standards most children in the West since Greco-Roman times have been criminally abused. That’s the bad news.
The good news is that childrearing, mysteriously, has been improving. Many parents now raise their children in what deMause called ‘Helping’ mode parenting – supporting kids in developing in their own unique way. Robin Williams in The Dead Poets Society epitomizes this style. Summerhill School in England embodies it.
Research psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score intimately describes highly effective experiential psychotherapy techniques. They work surprisingly rapidly. He has the brain scans to show changes in blood flow.
My own Inner Work is a manual of techniques people can use for themselves to resolve their own emotional triggers. I did not develop techniques. The reason I chose these specific techniques is because not only can people do them on their own, importantly, they are easy to teach to others. In doing so, one is not acting as a professional therapist, but as a trainer. As people resolve their emotional triggers our innate capacity for love and compassion emerges spontaneously.
As ‘responsible elders’ who wish to initiate proactive responses to our polycrisis, we do well to introduce these techniques to people we know. I do this occasionally.
More generally, I think we do well to commit ourselves to inspiring public will to change course. FYI, Stable Planet Alliance has a new program: The League of Evolutionary Catalysts. Evolutionary Catalysts communicate with people they know as well as with influential decision-makers about the disastrous reality of current trends and the system that drives them including – ouch! – economic growth and addiction to affluence. http://www.evolutionarycatalyst.net
The point of such communication, provided we can find ways to take it to scale (Stable Planet has ideas!) is to mobilize thoughtful public will to change course… and indeed evolve a compassionate ecologically sustainable world.
Andrew.Gaines@evolutionarycatalyst.net