From: jimruttshow8596
This article explores various historical philosophical influences that have shaped human understanding of reality, consciousness, and meaning, drawing insights from the work of John Vervaeke and other thinkers.
Higher States of Consciousness
The concept of “higher states of consciousness” (HSC) is central to the Axial Revolution and was carried into world religions like Buddhism and Taoism [00:02:35]. These states often straddle the boundaries between being religions and being philosophies, and they are believed to afford a profound transformation of the individual [00:02:52].
Unlike dreams, which are often strange but not considered “more real” because they cannot be coherently integrated into one’s worldview, higher states of consciousness are often perceived as being more real than everyday reality, despite their unique and ineffable nature [00:03:15]. While some prefer the more neutral term “altered states of consciousness” [00:04:31], the focus should be on their underlying functionality, particularly their capacity to increase insight and lead to profound “breakthroughs” [00:05:58]. A mere fascination with the altered phenomenology can lead to “spiritual narcissism” or “spiritual bypassing,” and the Buddha himself warned against attachment to such states [00:07:11]. As quoted from Deichmann, the true aim is not altered states, but “altered traits of character” [00:07:01].
Fluency and Optimal Grip
In psychology, “fluency” refers to the brain’s use of processing ease to make judgments about information content. For example, text that is easier to read is often judged as truer or more trustworthy [00:08:03]. This concept extends beyond mere ease to what Vervaeke calls “optimal grip” [00:09:16], an idea rooted in the phenomenology of Merleau-Ponty [00:11:04]. Optimal grip involves finding the right balance between different perspectives (e.g., zooming in or out, viewing from different angles) to best fit a given task [00:11:23].
An “insight” is characterized as a sudden shift from a non-optimal to an optimal grip on a problem, often accompanied by a flash of vividness and a sense of “realness” [00:11:56]. When multiple insights are chained together, this can lead to a “flow state,” an extended “aha” experience [00:12:16]. A “mystical experience” is theorized as a flow state where one achieves an optimal grip on “the world” or “reality” itself [00:12:54], offering a profound sense of meaning and a better fit between the individual (agent) and their environment (arena) [00:13:18]. This idea is part of Vervaeke’s “continuity hypothesis,” which proposes a progression from fluency to insight, flow, and ultimately to mystical and transformative experiences, suggesting a shared underlying cognitive machinery [00:10:05]. It is likened to a “meta stance” in martial arts, preparing one for any situation [00:13:35].
Decentering
Decentering, a term from McNamara [00:15:29], describes the process of moving away from an egocentric perspective. Just as a child is more egocentric than an adult, adults can be seen as egocentric compared to a sage [00:15:35]. This egocentrism contributes to various cognitive biases, such as confirmation bias and my-side bias [00:16:09]. Mystical experiences and flow states can weaken this egocentrism, shifting one towards a “world-centric” or “onto-centric” perspective, where the connection to reality becomes more salient than the ego [00:16:51].
The Solomon Effect demonstrates this in practice: simply redescribing a problem from a third-person perspective can lead to insights unavailable from a first-person viewpoint [00:17:15]. Psychedelics, for example, can facilitate this decentering by helping individuals realize that the ego is not an essential part of their being [00:17:57]. The flow state also illustrates this, as agency is enhanced when the “nattering nanny manager ego” recedes [00:18:24].
The Role of Tradition and Community
Vervaeke emphasizes that mystical experiences should be integrated into an “ecology of practices” within a community and its tradition [00:20:12]. Research suggests that human cognition is generally more effective in collective settings than individually, as shared reasoning can help overcome individual biases like confirmation bias [00:20:20]. Engaging with a community or “new emerging communities” that establish their own traditions (like the Game B movement) provides a vital “inter-subjective collective verification” [00:21:27], offering critique and mutual correction, especially when exploring altered states that can open one up to “self-deceptive self-destructive behavior” [00:21:40].
The value of reading ancient texts, such as those by Thomas Aquinas or Plato/Socrates, lies not just in their propositions but in the opportunity to engage with powerful minds, developing one’s own thinking skills [00:23:13]. This process is akin to training in a dojo or gymnasium, fostering intellectual “skills” that are more valuable long-term than any specific belief [00:23:34].
Complexification
The concept of “complexification” refers to a system that simultaneously differentiates and integrates, producing emergent functions [00:26:14]. The brain is an example of such a complex, self-organizing system, continually integrating and differentiating its parts [00:26:47]. This process is analogous to biological development, where a zygote complexifies into an organism with specialized organs that also remain coordinated [00:26:57].
Vervaeke argues that complexification allows a system to increasingly “fit to the complexity of the world” [00:27:32]. This is an update of Plato’s notion of anagoge, or ascent [01:12:30]. Many modern problems arise from attempting to solve complex phenomena with merely “complicated” solutions, adding “another box to the flow chart” rather than seeking emergent, systemic understanding [00:27:52].
Buddhist Insights: Parasitic Processing and Dukkha
The practices of Buddhism offer a framework for dealing with “parasitic processing” [00:28:28]. This refers to maladaptive, self-organizing cycles of cognitive biases (like confirmation bias, availability heuristic, representativeness heuristic) that feed on themselves, leading to anxiety or depression spirals [00:29:06]. These processes are “parasitic” because they run off of adaptive machinery but take on a self-preserving life that drains vitality [00:31:52].
The genius of the Buddha, according to Vervaeke, was to propose creating “counteractive dynamical systems” – ecologies of practices – that intervene at multiple points and levels within these spirals [00:32:40]. The Eightfold Path is designed to do this [00:33:00]. This model redefines “foolishness” not as mere ignorance but as succumbing to parasitic processing, and “wisdom” as the ability to cultivate ecologies of practices to counteract it [00:34:04].
Regarding the Buddhist concept of dukkha (often translated as suffering), Vervaeke proposes an alternative interpretation. Looking at the Buddha’s parables and the etymology of the word, dukkha might be better understood as a “loss of agency” [00:35:41]. Many parables illustrate self-entrapment and loss of freedom, rather than just physical pain or distress [00:35:50]. The Buddha’s emphasis on “freedom” as the taste of his teaching supports this, as freedom is an agency word [00:36:44]. Just as the word “mad” shifted from meaning “insane” to “angry,” “suffering” may have narrowed from meaning a “loss of agency” (to undergo something that overwhelms one’s agency) to primarily meaning “pain” [00:37:18]. This broader understanding also explains why ignorance is a primary mark of dukkha, as it profoundly impairs agency [00:38:26].
The Hellenistic Age and Domicide
The conquests of Alexander the Great had profound historical philosophical influences on the Western world, including the preservation and spread of Greek philosophy [00:39:15]. However, the creation of large, distant empires, a departure from the Greek city-state (polis) model, led to “domicide” [00:43:16].
Domicide, a term coined by Porteous and Smith and influenced by Brian Walsh, describes the loss of “home” [00:43:47]. This is not merely the loss of housing, but the deeper psychological sense of belonging [00:44:05]. In the polis, individuals were deeply rooted in their communities, sharing religion, language, and ancestral ties [00:45:24]. Ostracism was a severe punishment because it inflicted domicide, akin to solitary confinement [00:45:38]. Alexander’s empire displaced populations, created diverse linguistic and religious environments, and shifted governing power far from local communities [00:45:55]. This resulted in an “age of anxiety” due to a profound sense of homelessness and not belonging [00:46:36].
This historical experience is paralleled by modern globalization and, even more profoundly, by the breakdown of extended families and face-to-face communities over the last 120 years [00:47:13]. The replacement of these organic support systems by impersonal government and market forces has significantly contributed to the modern sense of domicide [00:47:41]. The decline of the church, which once served as a “homing function” for communities, has further exacerbated this loss of belonging [00:48:38].
Stoicism as a Response to Anxiety
In response to the domicide and anxiety of the Hellenistic age, philosophy took a “therapeutic turn,” shifting from an emphasis on wisdom to counter foolishness, to seeking to relieve existential suffering [00:49:36]. Stoicism emerged as a prominent answer, with its practices directly influencing modern cognitive therapies (CBT) [00:50:18].
Stoic practices emphasize paying attention to internal dialogue, akin to a “socratic dialogue” with oneself, replacing rumination and parasitic processing [00:50:36]. Rooted in the teachings of Antisthenes (a disciple of Socrates), Stoicism teaches internalizing the Socratic method [00:51:13]. The Stoics coined the term “cosmopolitan,” encouraging individuals to find the cosmos itself as their “polis” or home [00:51:24].
Inspired by the Cynics, Stoicism asserts that suffering arises from “setting our heart on the wrong things” – external, contingent, and conventional matters like wealth, fame, or political power, which are easily lost [00:51:42]. Instead, true “home” is found in how one makes meaning of any place, by wisely and resiliently engaging with the world through conscious attention (prosoche) to one’s moment-to-moment perceptions and thoughts [00:52:31]. This allows one to resist mistaking temporary conventionalities for permanent realities, acknowledging that life will always be subject to fate [00:53:17]. As a line from Milton’s Paradise Lost expresses, “the mind is its own place, and can make a heaven of hell and a hell of heaven” [00:53:45]. This ancient philosophy is experiencing a revival in contemporary society [00:53:51].
The Two Worlds Model: From Jesus to Augustine
The “two worlds model,” a significant development in the Axial Age, is particularly prominent in Christianity. Vervaeke uses the term “Christ-Paulism” to describe the phenomenon, acknowledging Paul’s crucial role in spreading Christianity and developing its cosmological vision [00:54:31]. A central continuity between Jesus and Paul is the notion of agape (unconditional, creative love) [00:56:09].
- Eros is the love of unification or consumption [00:56:40].
- Philia is reciprocal, cooperative love within a community, as seen in “philosophia” (love of wisdom) [00:57:09].
- Agape is the love of creation, prototypically the love a parent has for a child, focused on fostering independence and personhood rather than consumption or reciprocity [00:57:36].
Jesus is seen as a “chirotic” figure, embodying the revelation of God’s creativity as agape [00:59:53]. The Gospel of John integrates this agape with the Greek philosophical concept of logos (divine reason, order, intelligibility) [01:00:10]. Logos means to gather things together into order and patterning, while agape is a creative act that also brings people together (“where two or three are gathered in my name”) [01:00:38]. Thus, logos and agape are seen as interpenetrating aspects of a single reality. Humanity is fundamentally dependent on and participates in both logos and agape for its existence and continued flourishing [01:01:05]. This insight, offering an “ecology of practices” and a new way of “homing” oneself (ecclesia, the gathering/church), profoundly empowered early Christians in the Roman Empire, which otherwise relied on an ideology of power [01:01:31]. The idea that all are equal “children of God” has been fundamental to many positive developments in the West [01:01:54].
Augustine of Hippo, a “titanic individual” and the last great philosopher of antiquity, created a dominant synthesis for Western civilization that lasted over 1500 years [01:03:28]. He integrated the extensive philosophical and spiritual tradition of Neoplatonism (which unified Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics) with Christian agape and the Jewish tradition’s idea of a moral history [01:03:33]. Augustine personalized this synthesis, turning the kairos (opportune moment) into a template for an individual’s “metanoia” or transformative turning point, effectively creating the autobiographical self as a genre [01:04:22]. This framework provided:
- Coherence: through the logos of Neoplatonism [01:05:03].
- Purpose: through the moral history of Christianity [01:05:08].
- Significance/Connection: through agape [01:05:12]. This “massive coherence, purpose, and significance” [01:05:03] formed the bedrock of Western meaning during the decline of the Roman Empire [01:05:44].
The Aquinian Crack in the Synthesis
The Augustinian synthesis began to crack with the rediscovery of Aristotle in the Middle Ages. Aristotle’s emphasis on a scientific worldview and the reality of this world (accessible through senses and reason) challenged the prevalent extreme Platonism within Christianity, which had often devalued the physical world in favor of a glorified “upper world” [01:08:29].
Thomas Aquinas, another brilliant thinker, sought to reconcile Aristotle with Christian theology. He did so by creating a metaphysical division between two worlds:
- The Lower/Natural World: Real, accessible through reason and observation (science) [01:10:49].
- The Upper/Supernatural World: Real, but only accessible through faith, which is given by God’s grace [01:10:50].
This distinction, which became the standard “natural” versus “supernatural” [01:11:31], meant that the supernatural world operated by different, often “magical” principles, inaccessible to human reason or observation [01:11:40]. While this saved the jobs of both theologians and emerging scientists, it inadvertently “destroyed the whole anagoge” of Platonism (the ascent from lower to upper worlds) and ultimately made the natural world self-sufficient [01:12:29]. Soon, the supernatural world began to seem less plausible and even absurd, setting the stage for the modern “meaning crisis” [01:12:50]. Descartes further reinforced this division by separating mind and body, a move analogous to Aquinas’s two-worlds split [01:12:17].
Galileo and the “Death of the Universe”
Following Aquinas, the rise of “nominalism” (the belief that most patterns are in the mind, not the world) further set the stage for Galileo Galilei [01:15:00]. Galileo, though influenced by a revival of Platonism with its emphasis on mathematics, argued that everyday experience and spoken language were “illusory” [01:15:53]. He asserted that mathematics was the true “language of the universe,” cutting through to reality where other forms of knowing could not [01:16:07].
Galileo’s experimental approach, relying on mathematical description over sensory experience, led to the discovery of “inertial motion” [01:16:40]. This fundamentally challenged Aristotle’s teleological view, where everything moved purposefully towards its natural place [01:17:50]. With Galileo, the universe was no longer seen as a living, purposeful entity with a grand narrative driven by God’s plan. Instead, it became a collection of “inert” matter “slamming into each other” [01:18:24]. In this sense, Galileo “killed the universe” [01:18:41] by removing its inherent purpose and meaning, setting the stage for a purely mechanistic view.
This scientific revolution led to a reduction of “knowing” (scancia) to purely propositional knowledge – justified true beliefs about facts [01:21:21]. This discarded other forms of knowing, such as:
- Procedural knowledge/skills: not true or false, but powerful or weak [01:22:52].
- Perspectival knowing: states of mind that offer presence or connectedness [01:22:56].
- Participatory knowing/identity: which creates belonging and opens up affordances [01:23:01]. Losing these other senses of “realness” is disastrous, leading to a “propositional tyranny” that ails modern culture [01:23:18].
Luther, Descartes, and the Enlightenment Gap
Martin Luther and René Descartes can be seen as precursors to the Enlightenment, sharing a common thread: they seemed to negate the need for personal transformation in their philosophies [01:24:29].
- Luther’s version of transformation (conversion) is entirely “heteronomous,” driven completely by God, thus denying human participation in the process [01:24:40]. His metaphysics, where God acts arbitrarily, paradoxically makes God absurd and irrelevant [01:26:09]. This radical individualism leads to fragmentation [01:27:46].
- Descartes believed no transformation was needed; a purely “scientific method” based on mathematical certainty was sufficient to address the meaning crisis [01:26:51]. God’s role in his system is reduced to merely guaranteeing the method’s reliability, making God largely irrelevant [01:27:15].
These ideas contributed to the Enlightenment, which, though largely unmentioned in Vervaeke’s series, forms the “tattered and decadent” [01:28:18] foundation of the modern world. The Enlightenment emphasized:
- Reason: Understood as logical, mathematical manipulation of propositions [01:32:00].
- Evidence: From empiricism [01:32:07]. These two, combined, were believed to provide all tools necessary to alleviate human suffering, leading to the rise of science, democracy, and markets [01:32:17].
Secularism, not identical to atheism, emerged as the idea that the natural world runs independently of the supernatural, and therefore, religious spheres should be separate from political and economic ones [01:32:32]. The Enlightenment vision, with its self-correcting processes of science, market, and democracy, was seen as sufficient to run the world [01:33:50]. However, this vision is based on a “truncated” understanding of reason, leading to “propositional tyranny” and a “naive Newtonianism” that ignores complexity, relativity, and systems thinking [01:34:03]. It assumes a “standard smart adult person” has all the necessary tools, failing to recognize cognitive distortions and the need to “go beyond the standard adult” for optimal grip on reality [01:35:15]. This “clockwork universe” [01:37:38] approach, embedded at the core of the Enlightenment, is inadequate for cultivating wisdom or dealing with phenomena like parasitic processing [01:37:50].
Romanticism as a Reaction to Enlightenment Austerity
The “austere” [01:39:02] and “truncated” [01:34:03] nature of the Enlightenment, culminating in Kant’s philosophy (where the mind shapes experience and cannot know the “thing in itself,” leaving us “locked inside of our heads” [01:40:06]), led to a reaction: Romanticism [01:40:50].
Romantics saw Kant’s layers of mental processing as an “escape hatch” [01:41:47]. They believed they could reconnect to the world by moving “backwards through these layers of processing” into the “irrational aspects of the mind” [01:41:53]. This quest was seen as a way to discover one’s “true self” – an idea popularized by Rousseau, who adapted Augustine’s autobiography to depict a self unspoiled by civilization [01:42:06]. For Romantics, wisdom involved strategies for accessing these earlier, less processed layers of mind to reconnect with the true self and the world [01:42:26]. This philosophical movement paved the way for Freudian psychoanalysis [01:42:46].
However, a major flaw in Romanticism is the idea of an inherent “true self” that is not emergent from one’s engagement with the world [01:43:13]. This contrasts with a “socratic model of the self” as a developmental, aspirational, and complex dynamical system [01:44:10]. Romanticism also rejected the Lockean idea of the mind as a blank slate, instead viewing the world as an “empty canvas” on which the individual “expresses” or “imposes” their authentic self through an act of will [01:44:40]. Vervaeke considers the idea of the world as a blank slate a “stupid idea,” noting it is the “ultimate culmination of nominalism” [01:45:10].
Romanticism also notably rejected Aristotle’s virtue ethics, viewing cultivation of character as rigid and stifling the “freedom” and “joie de vivre” of the true self [01:46:17]. This “decadent romanticism” [01:47:44], with its glorification of the inner self and its willful imposition on the world, formed the “underlying philosophical basis of fascism and Marxism,” and other “pseudo-religious ideologies” of the 20th century [01:48:05]. The notion of an “inborn true self” can be unsettlingly close to ideas of racism, and the 20th century violently demonstrated the genocidal implications of these beliefs [01:49:09].