The Master, his Emissary & the Meaning Crisis, Iain McGilchrist & John Vervaeke 

This film was recorded a few weeks ago, before the current crisis began - so if you want a break from Pandemic content - enjoy!

I read the Master and His Emissary and just finished the first half of "The Matter With Things". I can't be grateful enough that I found this mans works, as I believe he is as great a philosopher as anyone alive right now. Many have seen the world in similar ways (Nietzsche, Heidegger, Heraclitus, Whitehead, Shelling, etc.) but Ian is using hard data from the neurological sciences to dismantle scientific materialism. It's beautiful.

Hands down without a doubt my favorite Rebel Wisdom conversation to date. Thank you for your service to humanity.

Absolutely one of the top 5 conversations on the web! Thanks for making this available - and PLEASE host more conversations between these two!

I had to come back to this. I love how Vervaeke handles what could be potential disagreement. His ability to clarify and articulate concepts and ideas is extraordinary.

The Master And His Emissary now available on Audible! Grabbed immediately. Looking forward to quality quarantine listening ...

Rebel Wisdom - this is exquisite. You have put the two most dynamic thinkers of this era that I have ever seen and heard. What a joy. I am glad you accomplished this dialogue.

Wow I was standing today in the dark toolshed. The sun was shining outside and through the crack at the top of the door there came a sunbeam. From where I stood that beam of light, with the specks of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in the place. Everything else was almost pitch black. I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it. Then I moved, so that the beam fell on my eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture vanished. I saw no toolshed, and (above all) no beam. Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the branches of a tree outside and beyond that, ninety-odd million miles away, the sun. Looking along the beam, and looking at the beam are very different experiences. CS Lewis

John looks like a kid on Christmas lol. Good for him! I'm loving this convo!

“We don’t have different words for different kinds of knowing ...” and “...We even treat religious systems as if they are systems of belief ...which is a serious misrepresentation of what’s happening with religion”...thank you, praise the lord and hallelujah I’ve been thinking this for years and it feels so affirming to my soul hearing it from you both 💎

John is getting better at presenting his arguments. The religio stuff near the beginning from John was excellent. This conversation is flow. I play music with people every week and this is what flow feels like both in conversation and music.

Another great conversation. I am reminded of Josh Waitzkin's book The Art of Learning, and his notion of "small circles". The conversation also has echoes of ideas that Joseph Jaworski (who was a friend of the late physicist David Bohm) talks a lot about in his books Synchronicity and Source (ie the source of 'knowing'). Jaworski's basic conclusion is that knowing requires connection to nature, meaning also one's own nature (which is embodied). For those that don't know, Waitzkin was a chess grandmaster who then achieved a supposedly impossible feat: becoming world Tai Chi champion after 2 years of training... as a martial artist, I had always 'understood' that it takes 10 years of internal martial arts practice to achieve the equivalent skill level to black belt in an external martial art - like Karate or one of the external Shaolin Kung Fu styles - in which black belt can ge attained in 3 years. Waitzkin talks about his approach to learning tai chi and makes reference to an idea he calls "small circles" which is a sort of fractal idea, but has interesting likeness to some of this conversation. By choosing to deeply master just a few significant aspects of Tai Chi practice and skill (based on acute, experience-based observation), Josh believes you learn something of the 'whole'. The small circles contain that whole, and so you effective learn of its essence - but not in any deconstructive sense; perhaps that is some sort of discovery of the 'sum' that is more than its parts? And so the suggestion seems to be that learning can transcend experience (of the parts) in some way... On a related note to Daoism, I recently watched a BBC documentary about Confucius. One thing I hadn't realised before was that Confucius taught the value of "practice" in the form of rituals, and made this central to his teachings. He believed that Chinese culture at that time had lost its way, and that simple rituals could be part of the answer to finding their way back... I think rituals are another great example of the sort of practical wisdom discussed here. Fascinating conversation. I didn't know of Vervaeke's work... so this is doubly satisfying!

I read Iain's book first, and then watched John's lecture series, and I was using Iain's knowledge to help me grasp what John was talking about. It doesn't surprise me these 2 are in such wide conceptual agreement.

Thank you Rebel Wisdom, Iain and John for these conversations. These days I feel pretty lost and isolated due to this whole situation. But I find these conversations to be deeply life-giving.

“Science takes things apart to see how they work; but religon puts things together to see what they mean.” [Jonathan Sacks]

I have wanted this conversation so bad, I almost feel limp as it starts. These two people have been so formational for me.

Thank you all very much. Deeply needed and appreciated personally.

Thx so much for this...have been on a McGilchrist binge the last few days...so great timing.

This reciprocal opening is something I look for in my work training horses. I'm someone whose strong stubbornly held intuitive sense has kept me out of institutions, while dedicated to learning what life is teaching me. Also parenting is a process which gives so much education in the area of knowledge, practice and wisdom. Thanks for this, at this fragile time, it's good to feel others thinking on similar lines.

Cool. I love his book. Never have I ever took so many notes from a single book. I just revised them yesterday again. All the best wishes!

I love the energy of this conversation. Both of them have huge insights in their work. Lovely to see them enjoy sharing so much.

John Vervaeke puts me off with his use of convulated sentences and complicated words. McGilchrist is crystal clear and hence more enjoyable to listen to.

What a fantastic conversation! Exemplifies so many good things i wish we saw more of in the world. Many thanks to Rebel Wisdom for hosting it.

Iain's become one of my new 'heroes'. Yet throughout his work and the interviews that I've seen, the focus usually seems to be on the current 'problems' of our modern R/L processing 'imbalance', and it's often disappointing not hear more about the 'solutions' and 'alternatives'. And if as Sperry and Gazzaniga's work with Split Brain patients suggests, that we really are of "two minds", often with different interests and Points of View, then what *_should_* be the 'appropriate' relationship between them?

In the exploration of the concept of "perfection" I am reminded of one of the dialogues between J. Krishnamurti and Allan W. Anderson. In fact, Vervaeke's approach to dialogue, dialogos, has reminded me from the very beginning of Krishnamurti. In dialogue 3, On Responsibility, there is an exchange about perfection, practice and the Greek praxis. This is Professor Allan Anderson speaking to Krishnamurti: "I hope I won't annoy you by by talking about words here again. But you know so many of the things that you say cast a light on common terms which for me at least illuminate them. They sound altogether different from the way they used to be heard. For instance, we say in English, don't we, practice makes perfect. Now obviously this can't be the case if we mean by practice we are repeating something. But if you mean by practice the Greek praxis, which is concerned directly with act, not repetition, with act, then to say, makes perfect, doesn't refer to time at all. It's that upon the instance the act is performed, perfection is."

We need science, reason, intuition, and imagination, in most subjects we are only using 1 or two of these way.

I became familiar with Ian's work around a year or a year and half ago, and absolutely resonate with it. In some ways it was like a profound "relief" that someone out there not only understood these things but has dedicated his life to getting that information out into the world. I hadn't even heard of John Vervaeke until last week when I saw him on Jordan Peterson's podcast and immediately felt that he was another person I absolutely N E E D E D to hear more from. I've been listening to his "Awakening from the Meaning Crisis" ever since (awesome series)...I'm up to Ep. 22 now I think....and what's SO INTERESTING is that JUST A COUPLE OF DAYS AGO I was at the episode where he goes into the differences between "Having Needs" and "Being Needs" and I was literally thinking... "Hmmm...I wonder how this lines up with Ian McGilchrist's work. It sounds like the "having" mode is likely associated predominantly with the left hemisphere and the "being" mode is likely associated with the right hemisphere....I wonder if these guys know each other....It should would be awesome to see how THEY feel these things intersect." ....and then later that day....I kid you not...this interview just "appeared" in front of me on RU-vid....I wasn't even looking for it.....but I've gotta say it feels like "Christmas"!...and I just received the best gift ever...and never in a million years would have expected it. Didn't have time to really put my attention on it at the time, so I saved it until today so I could savor every word. :p Thank you soooo much David, for getting these guys together and sharing the result!

“For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”

I saw the interaction between Iain McGilchrist and Jordan Peterson, which was much more an exchange with both on the same level. John Vervaeke is too abstract, mean too much left hemispheric also using complex terms where there could be simpler ones, maybe to appear more intellectual, don't know. Hearing McGilchrist talk, is listening to a whole human being, whereas John is bunkered inside his complexity castle not breathing wisdom but dry knowledge. This was a conversation between a master and his apprentice, not master with master, I think. Was always asking myself, why am I not touched by Johns series, think it's because of that.

Such a great conversation! They both look like they are playing a game and having so much fun to go back and forth. I would love to see them both face to face.

Ken Wilber writes about how (hyper-) Rationalism and Scientific Materialism (which are generally left hemisphere orientations) mindsets lead to a “disenchantment” of the world, and helped give rise to approaches that attempted to counteract this tendency, approaches among which are neo-Romanticism and some forms of Post-Modernism, which attempted to refocus on the almost purely subjective (vs. objective) experience (generally right hemisphere orientations). I imagine we would ideally want each hemisphere informing the other and avoid extreme reliance on simply one or the other.

They’re right about perfectionism being a problem. Reminds me of two pearls of wisdom: firstly, a perfectionist is someone who takes great pains and gives even greater pains to others; secondly, don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

Incredible dialogue! I had a deep bubbling up of visceral excitement as these two danced through mindspace

Great conversation! Thanks Iain, John, David and Alexander. Keep up the great work.

David and Ally, this is one of the best videos you guys have put out there. This has the potential to be a series all on its own. Bravo!

This was excellent. The communication between the both of you was just right and I got a lot from this, many thanks!

A note on John’s 4 knowings: 5:16 -Propositional = “fact” based. Formal. Rationalisations after the fact. Believing humans are rational. Ignoring the possibility that argument may have evolved for persuasion, not some sort of hard truth. 5:55 -Procedural: Note how skills have a dimension of fitted-ness, aptness, without necessitating formal propositions or awareness/consciousness. 6:20 Perspectival = qualia and stuff I think? The thing that makes the hard problem hard. Salience landscaping. But then I don’t see how that necessitated hard qualia and conscious(ness)/awareness. I don’t understand why salience landscaping is lumped in with these others. 6:50 -Participatory = attunment. Basic result of an object in the world. Agent-Arena. You are within the world. Dimension of home vs domecide, but I’m not sure if this holds up and makes sense

Thanks, Rebel Wisdom. I revere both of these guys. I should have subscribed to this channel ages ago. After wishing for such a conversation it was RU-vid that suggested it. If they have another conversation I won't miss it. Even though both of them do lots of interviews and videos, there was no sense of either of them just 'going through the motions'. They seemed to really enjoy themselves. Both of them were so present and alive. A joy to watch.

Definitely one of my favorite videos from you guys, got to have these guests back

This is so fabulous. I wish Pirsig was here to agree on so many points.

Exceptional and inciteful. This is the best of the best and I am very happy to have experienced it. MOAR!!!!

What an unbelievably rich conversation. Love both of these thinkers.

Yay! Two of my favorite thought leaders. Thank you for bringing them together in conversation here! Dr McGillchrist's book The Master and His Emissary is very interesting and so is Dr Vervaeke's Crisis in Meaning Making lecture series on RU-vid. Both resonated for sure!

Two of my favourite thinkers in dialogue..... brilliant!

What a fantastic conversation between my two favorite thinkers. More please!

I love this conversation and the pure excitement and enthusiasm of these two minds meeting and co-discovering like long lost friends! It's like watching two kids who are passionate about the same game/toy/discovery! Wonder-Full! I've watched and listened to both on their won, but here the Spark is alive again :)

This is fantastic! If anyone hasn't listened to John or Iain before, I heartily recommend listening to Kurt Jaimungal's very in-depth interviews to get an excellent background for this conversation.

Thank you Rebel Wisdom for bringing these two 'wise men' together. I have one question, and it has been nagging at me for a while : The growing conversation in this community has been pointing to a central truth that was mentioned briefly in this dialogue, it was named fleetingly in passing - Advaita.(Sanskrit for Non-dual) I get a sense that there is a broad reluctance to 'name' the modern understanding of this truth - Nonduality Is there a reason for this 'not naming' ? The 'not two, but also not one' dynamic tension of non duality seems to me to be the healing property required for our polarising world. ps. The 'third wise man' who I think would bring his own particular gifts, would be A.H. Almaas. What a truly wonderful Rebel Wisdom trinity it would be to have a dialogue with all three together, each with their own gifts, but also none of them siloed within their own speciality.

Rebel Wilson consistently delivering more umwelt-cracking content!

What a wonderful wonderful dialogos - thanks so much!

This was such an inspiring, passionate and rich discourse. Many thanks!

My favorite statement ... " Certainty does not exist .. it's a fiction". Two of my heros discussing knowledge and meaning - made my day during a depressing COVID time in history. McGilchrist apparently has new book coming out. My morale just went up. His take on the history of religion and philosophy based on left/right brain processing is informative. We need these kind of videos ... thank you and please bring us more of the same caliber as these two brilliant minds. Much needed ...

Could it be that this episode is not on spotify?

This is why I give y’all my 💵 every month. So thankful!

Brilliant. Beautiful.

What a great conversation. I just cannot understand properly when they talk about experiments around 1:03:35. Do you people know any extra resources regarding that? Cheers.

Propositional isn’t as much “belief”centric as *think*centric. Thinking is more precise than belief, at least in Western terms. We often talk past each other when we talk another what we believe. It doesn’t take into account self-deception and psychological conflict between thinking and (I would say) deeper, embodied/lived belief. It’s static vs dynamic thing.

thank you. Great to spend time with other humans in this dialogue. What is love? I thought I knew until my awakening into emptiness. A few weeks later I 'awoke' into unconditional love. That was so clearly not an emotion but as much essence of the true self. Like awakening, once I opened into this, it just is. Very beautiful and releasing from so much fussing that it created freedom from the mind's games. Simple and sublime. Wisdom? It has changed some tendencies, gives me trouble if I do jump in with a comment or advice, I would say I react with mone wisdom than previously. Something I always sought in life.

Absolute gold! I don't really get why not make full use of the screen instead of this laptop trick but the content is so insightful

I wonder what you both think about Paul Feyerabend's work Against Method and his statement that in research "Anything Goes"? and I am curious also about your take on Hans Georg Gadamer Truth And Method and the implicit interpretive background given to us by experience / tradition?

David and rebel wisdom thank you so much for your progression and bringing these two together bless all of us🦋🕊 “yes but” not this or that but this and that...

Balance is our only truth. Peace can only be expressed by an outlet that understands it. We are a constant expression of our relationship with Self. David my brother. You have a light that shines from your eyes that many of the people you interview lack. This warmth I speak of can be felt In the depths of your voice. Many that you interview are out to prove. Their voices express this constant stress. It makes it hard for one to put trust into another with eyes that are so tense. So tired... Regardless of the information the outlet gives, my heart does not activate with the power I crave until I sense someone walking their talk. You have interviewed so many talkers. Its time for some walkers. So far, the doctor on polyvagal theory has come the closest for me. Everyone else has some background drama that needs to be worked through before they can share... You David, and your teammate. You two are the brothers that must walk some of this talk. Its not enough to just keep bringing talkers on here. You must walk to gain the respect. If you walk for us viewers, you will have done something here that creates an unstoppable wave. As of now, in my world... The only way to walk this talk is to disconnect from the techno world, 100%. Idk for how long, thats your knowing, but it must be done for you to KNOW what these men TALK about. Until you do this, you are just as caught up in the GOGOGOGOGO as everyone else and will NEVER feel the stability needed to STAND in your PERSONAL KNOWING. Giving us with your eyes what you are TRYING to give us with your mouth. Much love my brother, Joe

Why do I get the feeling that despite all the importance of the topics addressed I witnessed two brilliant thinkers talking past each other and touting their knowledge, advertising their latest books etc? 4E cogscience?

I would have loved to hear what Iain would have liked to discuss.

1:05:55 RE: "My Stroke of Insight" … she has a great TEDtalk describing the stroke and the drift from left hemisphere to right and back. There is a RadioLab interview with her (available on y/t) where she talks about waking up in the hospital without speech/memories and how blissfully "in the moment" life was … BUTT in the years of her recovery, as speech returned, so did the nattering egoic self (paraphrasing). She was asked, if you could return to the "blissful" state, without speech/memory, would you … and she replies "that would be a very difficult choice." Sam Harris jokes that being human is like "being held hostage by the most boring person on earth," and argues for meditation (and maybe a mushroom or two?) as a way of gaining greater perspective for the possibility of not (always) being held hostage by one's own mind. BTW, thanks for a BRILLIANT dialogue !

What John Was saying at 49.36 about breaking the framing that locks us into debate....He was saying it in the context of the debate between theism and non-theism but I believe this is not only true regarding THAT debate, but MOST if not ALL important debates... Yet another example of the feeling of "relief" on my part to hear someone share so eloquently what seems almost "obvious"...except that it apparently still needs to be understood by so many.... Music to my ears!

Exhilarating conversation. The elasticity of the word 'we' seems tantalising given that the spectrum of 'we' from 'I' in any context seems to relate to wisdom, such that I/We can nibble at it. But our systems are generally devised by 'I's and deployed upon 'We's.

This is absolutely wonderful.

Being reasonable of objective is best to call it “looking at as many persepectivs as possibel and see which fits best. Not “my line of reason leads to x” “

This discussion has covered so much ground. Absolutely wonderful! Apropos syllogisms, here’s one that came to mind: no dog has six legs; a dog has four more legs than no dog; therefore a dog has ten legs.

George Lakoff got me on the 4e train many years ago. I am very glad to see that it is picking up steam!

Wisdom may elude definition. But what interests me is the relationship between insight and wisdom. There has to be one, doesn't there? And surely insight can be defined. One thing I am sure of is that idolatry gets in the way of insight. And that insight is related to artistic taste. I.e., the gradual progressive refinement of our aesthetic perceptions. For it seems to me that the finer they are the more insightful we are.

Thanks Ian, John and David.

This was great fun. Enjoyed hearing both the varied and complementary nature of their ideas.

29:30 "Projects of knowledge acquisition" might I add, "...of which there are many"?

1:05:00 Is the divided hemisphere of the brain and the import of blending the two akin to the idea of “wise mind” found in DBT (dialectical behavioral therapy) A combination of what they call emotion mind and logic mind.

Have anyone, please, found the study of left / right hemisphere differences on interpretting the statement on paper? :)) I'm looking for it, but can't really hit the right words, obviously :)

Fantastic, thank you so much , brought joy to my very sore heart at this time 🙏❤️

For ALL THAT IS SACRED AND HOLY please go FULL SCREEN. Thousands are watching on 4.5 inch screen to discover, “Oh, they have reduced the VIEWABLE IMAGE AREA, by 20%, how WONDERFUL!”

I love this channel. More women please!

This was one of the best things I've seen

Thank you. This is very good.

Lovely talk for a corona lock down Sunday morning run in the park and lolligag with dog. The theme more or less being meaning and wisdom it's understanding and cultivation leads me to the observation that this is basically a joyful internet-mediated dance. Both men are clearly having a "lovely" time in their true meaning of the word. Of course this "opening" is shared by the listener who is running along with them. To be able to complete the desired participatory component to the dialogue I'll contribute 2 streams of perspective that might serve to augment understanding of, or enhance resolution of, the subjects. Consider that "sense making" or "meaning" is personal and all attempts of sharing this "signification" is propaganda often labeled culture who's ultimate goal is coercion. To handle this agnostically or with the least amount bias one might be tempted to call it "pattern recognition" and "pattern making", albeit with the patterns being at times quite complex and when at times resonance or the ringing true of or universal recognition shows up, then we might wish to call it a "fractal". 2 videos to be seen in this order = 1) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-1DxauTMPzZs.html 2) ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-sUfsfuVRC80.html bon dimanche

I have been waiting for this all my life. Lol

Intellectual Theoria (vision) for Aristotle brings first principles to be used by reason or logic. We see into things (and this can't simply be reduced to formulas) before we manipulate propositions.

Missed this one.

Awesome

Its not even my birthday yet!! (Its tomorrow) What a wonderful present 😉

You don’t figure out how to solve the problem, you reframe the problem your solving. It gets you out of self deception, and allows for transformation.

Here's a thought: Exclude the Laws from the Platonic canon and treat the Dialogues as modelling tragic performance. In this light, the dramatic encounters the Dialogues present all stand as conversational thought experiments that fail to yield a descriptive model of reality. Rather, they demonstrate human cognitive limitation when it comes to the foundations, causes and ends of existence. Philosophy in Plato is a preparation for death and not an attempt to theorize about nature.

I was talking to a self admitted material atheist on Twitter about cathedrals. He said that cathedrals were only good because they required complex maths to build. I knew in that moment that utility is all he sees. I replied to him that the cathedral “ isn’t an abacus, it’s an ideal”

When will Iain's new book be released?

Why would anyone say yes without a understanding what your saying yes to? Here’s where that yes made sense to me as a stepdad, husband, father and survivor. “Behold, the bondslave of the Lord; may it be done to me according to your word” Luke 1:38 There needs to be a story that is old as time can be.

Yes it was beautiful conversations!!!

Why am I only seeing this now!?

When is the next talk with these two people with large weltanschauungs?

All I know is just 0*1. One is the union of Ones divided. Two apples are one and one of one thing; that in turn is one of one thing (fruit): that in turn is one of one thing (food): that in turn is one of one thing...Many comes from One. Any and everything always stem from one division. Because any and everything belong within the Word. Tree. Gold. Love. Work. All shades of one thing found within a word, belongs to that unit. I am One and so are you No matter what the extent we differ All You are is just One being in form. As beings in form we live in world1 purposed for being in 1creation1 Now is one thing time measures Me is one thing you and I unite

Great conversation

Panta Rei, always flowing. The boat I grew up on. Weird.

Who's the writer who thought about the map and the territory that Iain talks about 1:03 mark in the video?