A Gnostic Revival

Mutual Reciprocity - A Lesson for our Time

In this episode I review two significant - even seminal - books: Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake and Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. Both books convey a message of our need to recover a relationship with Nature by drawing inspiration from how organisms work (in Merlin's case fungi) and to go beyond a reductionist approach outwardly manifest in ecocidal destruction in the name of growth.

Here is what Robin says that we all need to remember in terms of ‘original instructions’: land is a gift not a commodity, we have kinship with all forms of life, flourishing is mutual, everything is relationship, gratitude is the currency of life, offerings are made with reverence, leadership is rooted in service and wisdom, gardening is a partnership, take only what is given, invest in abundance, unlearn hurrying, sit in circles of stillness, listen deeply. So listen and be inspired!

Technology and the Human Spirit

In this episode I review three books concerned with the human-machine interface in relation to consciousness and spirituality. Kingsley Dennis and James Tunney are well-versed in the implications of the advent of technocracy as a form of social control and engineering. This view is underpinned by exclusively materialistic and mechanistic philosophy that sees humans as hackable animals to be manipulated and controlled for commercial gain and political hegemony. As Jung indicated over 60 years ago, the individual is the cultural carrier of moral and spiritual life, so it is now crucial to affirm the ontological primacy of soul and spirit as we do in our Call for a Renaissance of the Human Spirit on www.galileocommission.org

Global Emergence

In this episode I review three books discussing our evolutionary potential and the collective choices we need to make in order to co-create a flourishing, regenerative and genuinely sustainable future. First, Choosing Earth by Duane Elgin (see www.choosingearth.org), then The Call to Uniite, edited by Tim Shriver and Tom Rosshirt. Finally, Our Moment of Choice, edited by Robert Aktinson, Kurt Johnson and Deborah Moldow. They make for challenging reading but do give reasons for hope if we can manage a radical change of course and reorientation.

Consciousness Unbound

In this episode I review two highly significant new volumes on a post-materialist science of consciousness - Is Conscious Primary? sponsored by the Academy for the Advancement of Post-Materialist Sciences (www.aapsglobal.net) and Consciousness Unbound, emanating from the Esalen Institute and the Department of Perceptual Sciences at the University of Virginia. Both books provide persuasive evidence and cogent arguments (and the first some accounts of personal experiences) to challenge the dominant scientific materialism that cannot adequately account for such evidence, choosing instead to ignore or dismiss it - without realising its congruence with quantum physics.

A Gnostic Revival

In this episode I review two books about the marginalisation and return of gnosis. The first is a masterpiece by classical scholar Peter Kingsley – Catafalque – subtitled ‘Carl Jung and the End of Humanity’ about the inner decay of Western culture that has lost touch with its primordial roots. The second – The Gnosric New Age – by Rice University scholar Prof April DeConick describes how a countercultural spirituality and way of knowing has acted as a transgressive but creative impulse for spiritual renewal.