Can We Be Rational AND Spiritual? | Prof. John Vervaeke on Solutions to the Meaning Crisis

For more than a decade Prof. John Vervaeke has been studying what he calls the meaning crisis: “Millions live disconnected and without a sense of home—anxiety within, alienation without, and a sense of absurdity with the world. The scientific world gives us tools for innovation, but it cannot tell us how to live. Few of us know where to turn to develop the transformative wisdom necessary to cultivate a meaningful life.”

Hans Busstra sat down with John Vervaeke to discuss the meaning crisis, the Zombie myth we’re in, and how it all relates to what Vervaeke calls "rabbit hole metaphysics": the conspiratorial, outlandish and often absurd ideas people start believing in, in search of meaning. A characteristic of rabbit hole types of metaphysics is that they have a ‘thick’ description of reality: a constellation of ungrounded assumptions build up to a ‘once you get this, there’s no way back’ narrative, which repeats itself in online echo-chambers.

John Vervaeke's YouTube channel:

The Vervaeke Foundation:

Chapters
00:00 Intro edit with highlights
06:01 Is John Vervaeke a 'Wounded Healer'?
09:53 The only modern myth is the myth of Zombies...
13:18 How to kill the Zombies?
15:25 What is the origin of the meaning crisis?
19:59 Metacognition and the Axial revolution
24:40 How we became locked into dualism
26:25 Hume's empiricism and Newton's attempt of integration
28:51 Unawareness of metaphysics: Vervaeke's critique on Kant's critique
32:51 Kant and ontology
34:20 Heidegger, Wittgenstein and the attempt to break out of the Cartesian split.
36:59 Quantum and a relationality ontology
39:57 Vervaeke's ontology of transcendent naturalism
45:29 On what's happening in psychedelic research 50:09 What about Buddhism and mindfullness without the ontology? 53:13 On the necessity of religion
56:59 Defining the sacred
1:00:46 Psychedelics and the advent of the sacred
1:03:52 On spiritual bypassing and rich ecologies of practices
1:08:20 Intelligence, rationality wisdom and relevance realization 1:16:39 The alignment problem
1:21:20 Where in your model do you fit phenomenal consciousness? 1:26:41 On the adverbial vs adjective quality of consciousness 1:28:12 Can machines be conscious and have relevance realization? 1:30:41 The library of Babel
1:34:03 On the syntax-semantics divide
1:37:29 Penrose's argument about the non-computability of consciousness and quantum mechanics
1:43:11 A consciousness theory should be compatible with cognition first, not physics 1:44:47 The work of the Vervaeke foundation
1:47:20 All the thinking that goes into a 'thin' description... 1:48:07 John's own ecology of practice
1:55:32 What was John's last moment of STRONG transcendence?

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[djkayce]

Being and Doing; simultaneously transcending and grounding. Up and Down. Connecting and Flowing. Positioning and Waving. Collapsing and Creating. Thanks for another enlightening conversation. 🙏

[VitorSantos-ibdn]

The defect is mine as Dr. Vervakee is a very smart and cultured person. But I can't extract utile conclusions to me from his words. At the end of it, in this interview and others, I can never get to a conclusion of what he thinks. Hans is very good. He did a great job as ever.

[philipdsouza]

The thing with John is that as much as I like what he has to say he is often in a state of "performative contradiction" himself.
As for rabbit hole metaphysics, wouldn't his claim about it and people who get into it be similar to his point of view of not getting into rabbit hole physics. Heard of Moore's Paradox!

[bluespruce]

55:57 "There is an advent of the sacred taking place." Confirming this. Something shifted recently for me, the build up may have been decades long, but it feels like a transition stage now. I'm 52 living in US suburbs with 3 teenage kids a wonderful wife 2 dogs and a boring 9-5. The other day I walked into a dispensary, kind of on a lark, bought an 1/8 oz of an "up" marijuana. Smoked a tiny amount and had the most intense experience. There were visions and realizations about the material condition and creation and myth and joy and death and always this feeling of being connected to everyone. Trying to make sense of it now, but it feels amazing.

[javadhashtroudian]

I was a radical materialist before 1967 when I had my first psychedelic experience on 100 micrograms of pure Sandoz (LSD). Since then, I have had about 20 more such experiences and many studies of philosophy, wisdom traditions, and much meditation. I was a scientist in education and a software engineer in practice. I became a radical monist in 1972 when I was a neurochemist. I went through panpsychism to discover Advaita Vedanta, which I prefer to Buddhism (the only other metaphysical system that agrees with my experience).
Tat Tuam Asi. That Thou Art or better yet, you are the Ultimate Reality.
Thank you both for a wonderful interview.

[diweon]

Yes! John Vervaeke on Essentia Foundation! Thank you so much for this interview!

[quixodian]

Thank you for this great interview, I’ve come late to John Vervaeke’s opus - well, two years ago! - and listened to a lot of his material. He’s a wise guide, and you’re a superb interlocutor. This interview is a very useful synopsis of JV’s work, among other things. ❤

[basirbita]

I am PhD student and this is the only channel I cannot wait for their next video to get released. Always full of people with strong and articulate abilities. Please let me know if your audio podcast channel is built. I am from a country with slow internet connection

[TheInfiniteGM]

This might not be entirely correct, but I like to think of Creativity as one of the biggest ways we can connect the sensible and the supersensible worlds into a single paradox of perception.

It takes a lot of effort to learn a craft, but the Art truly comes when you play with the boundaries that others have established to create something of your own. Other's work (external) invokes us (internal) to then create something that marries the two together into something new. I could be wrong, but maybe that's why the concept of Art, in its many varied ways, is fundamental to the human experience.

[SusanButcher-prft]

Thank you, Hans. You are fast becoming an amazing interviewer! Keep them coming!!!

[nomadchad]

Wow! Penrose and now vervaeke! Amazing, thank you. This channel is a source of essential wisdom for me.

[ArlindoPhilosophicalArtist]

This is brilliant! I am with John Vervaeke on most things! Love it! Physicalism goes nowhere.

[ABFPV]

I think it’s important to understand that we are not discovering new things, but simply reinterpreting what already exists.

[Ashleyyy]

So glad you've brought John on for this talk.

[brandis]

Love this man. His honesty & openess & heartfelt teaching has helped me more than anyone else that I have not met in person.

[justinlawmad]

The channel it's amazing, keep the awesome work!

[derekwhite]

When I was doing my degree largely in psychology the question of consciousness was something that nobody was ever even willing to discuss!!
Until sir Joseph Campbell's
Hero with a thousand faces explained where we got star wars from!
Nothings changed!
Except that I've suffered a huge amount since & nothings getting any better
NOTHINGS Changed even though in global terms
Everything's Changed!
We're just telling the mythology of our existence to ourselves & anyone who'll listen for 5-6mins or longer!

[Afrika_Percussie]

Totally amazing, this condensed, concise and deep overviews of most important questions. Thank you so much again!

[akirabaycrest]

It’s one of the best explanation on a subject of meaning crisis. Thank you!

[hugobruzone]

Borges is Argentine, not Spanish. Other than that, great interview! Very thought-provoking and encourage me to keep on searching for meaning or, at least, thinking better about it.