Understanding The Matter with Things Dialogues Episode 20: Chapter 20 The coincidentia oppositorum

This series of dialogues between Iain McGilchrist and Alex Gomez-Marin explores Iain's latest book The Matter with Things. In Episode 20 Iain and Alex discuss Chapter 20, The coincidentia oppositorum

To purchase The Matter with Things

Dr Àlex Gómez-Marín is a Spanish physicist turned neuroscientist. He holds a PhD in theoretical physics and a Masters in biophysics from the University of Barcelona. He was a research fellow at the EMBL-CRG Centre for Genomic Regulation and at the Champalimaud Center for the Unknown in Lisbon. His research spans from the origins of the arrow of time to the neurobiology of action-perception in flies, worms, mice, humans and robots. Since 2016 he is the head of the Behavior of Organisms Laboratory at the Instituto de Neurociencias in Alicante, where he is an Associate Professor of the Spanish Research Council. Combining high-resolution experiments, computational and theoretical biology, and continental philosophy, his latest research concentrates on real-life cognition and consciousness.

[mmnuances]

Dear Ian and Alex, Your conversation, necessarily, is of the highest intellectual caliber, using language in an astounding and beautiful way to point to the mysteries of being; and on an intellectual and interpersonal level is an exemplary portrayal of a beautiful way for human beings to converse with one another. When I watch your conversations, I am drawn into the "room" with you and Ian and feel that I am sitting in a comfortable chair at Ian's house fascinated as I listen in and take part. This is most enjoyable and I thank you for this experience... you have taken the whole Zoom phenomenon to the highest level and this is a gift of the pandemic; and a true example of coincidentia oppositorum.
The impact, however, is multilevel for some of us. Duality, non-duality and the non-duality which is the non-duality of duality and non-duality, are words and phrases that point to ways in which attention/awareness can inhabit the Universe. Through a process of negation and rebalancing, which is not denial or a gargantuan effort to eliminate "darkness", awareness/attention can come to reside in the vast, cosmic space pointed to by the words, non-duality of duality and non-duality. Being in this place with others who have had a glimpse is the restoration of human wholeness.
I love this Wallace Stevens poem as a pointer... Happy New Year to all... may this wisdom transport the global zeitgeist to a more balanced, wholesome and joyous place!

The Poem by Wallace Stevens
Of Mere Being

The palm at the end of the mind,
Beyond the last thought, rises
In the bronze distance.

A gold-feathered bird
Sings in the palm, without human meaning,
Without human feeling, a foreign song.

You know then that it is not the reason
That makes us happy or unhappy.
The bird sings. Its feathers shine.

The palm stands on the edge of space.
The wind moves slowly in the branches.
The bird’s fire-fangled feathers dangle down.
~Wallace Stevens, 1954~

[martinst]

This series just keeps on getting better! There's no chance I would get through Iain's book, so this is priceless. Alex, you made so many fascinating adjuncts today, even more than usual!!

[skipper.mindplayers]

Wonderful, so excited for the chapters to come. This book(s) is such a gigantic work executed with love, endurance, precision and scientific quality, I never expected anything like that covering such a broad terretory of knowledge to see in my life. Deep bows.

[cnavato]

What an extraordinary gift to the world this series is. Thank you both for so much illumination on the cosmos as it is. Invaluable in these beyond weird times.

[montyoxymoron]

Wonderful once again! I am reminded here of Ken Wilber’s description of evolutional forces as “spiral dynamics” and of his insistence that we “transcend AND include” as we go: nothing is wasted!

[tetonjuggler]

This is… just superb. I’ve been grappling with the new books heavily for a year and have finally started to view these videos. I cannot express how much they mean to me. Thank you 🙏🏻

[animamundi]

Hi Iain, I am so deeply inspired by your teachings and am forever grateful to have come across your work.

My background is in ultra Orthodox Judaism which is so badly riddled with rigid dogmatic left hemisphere thinking.

However, there is equally much right hemisphere thinking within Judaism too.

You are helping me to allow myself to create a coincidence of opposites in trying to see how they can co-exist but with the right hemisphere thinking being the master.

I wish you had been my Chassidut (Jewish mysticism) teacher when I studied in Yeshiva!

[bearheart]

It’s such a treat to see these episodes pop up in my feed. Thanks so much guys!

[lizzie]

Loved this conversation, especially the suspicion confirmed that Dr McGilchrist sees everything as animate. Thank you for presenting these - makes the books accessible to all.

[kevinjns]

Heavens, my body was trembling (resonating) almost from beginning to end. Thank you to both.

[mills]

I really appreciate these talks which make the material more accessible. Thank you.

[jbrown]

The axiom of Maria Prophetissa - third century alchemist: "One becomes two, two becomes three, and out of the third comes the one as the fourth."

[jomancao]

Thank you. Interesting and thought provoking as always. Waiting for the next podcast .

[torbjornkarlsen]

I love that you bring in mythical stories.

[tetonjuggler]

Ah just amazing. Wanted to bring up the slackline and relate the experience of learning how to balance upon its tension as a process that opens the door to some wisdom of the coincidetia oppositorum. Slowness within high responsive movement. It’s quite powerful to give this chapter a listen or read and then spend a few hours on the “line”!!

[pendulistic_post]

as Leonard Cohen wrote // “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in”
great episode gentlemen

[andreasschroeder]

What wonderful books and video series. Thank you so much. I am actually working with "Tozan's Five Ranks" in my Zen work with the teacher and that is also a fascinating description of the path, humans take to deal and finally (after many decades of meditative practice) fully embrace the initial opposites of form and emptiness (relative and absolute). From psychology I learned to use the "Tetralemma" approach, another helpful perspective on initial opposites. And another nice perspective is offered by the "Polarity Thinking" approach. I hope, you like these references. I am excitedly looking forward to the next episode. Have a great time Alex and Ian and carry on with this inspiring series.

[sallywolfe]

I read TMwT a year ago after reading TMahE, finding Iain’s work more than profound.

These web/podcasts are a nice two person seminar that reviews and builds upon this tour de force.

I intend to read this gift (to all of us) again — perhaps not from front to back (otherwise without reading before might leave one — less well guided), but picking a chapter ‘at random’ if that is possible.
I read often and in depth — usually books of 800 + pages.
I read Iaian’s as a challenge and an expected guide to a uniquely broad source of wisdom (like reading Jung at age 19). It is indeed a profound literary high point.
1:01:56
I highly recommend reading his gift and owning it as you will want to reread the whole and parts as your intuitive self
wisely reminds you.

[geoffreydawson]

My teacher of values is the artist Mark Carder. Do I follow his social norms? No. Do I like how he perceives reality through values? Yes. As a portrait artist of President Gorge Bush and many other dignitaries, he now refuses to paint any portraits except for special circumstances. Like his muse John Singer Sargent, who eventually stopped painting portraits. Much like today, probably got sick of selfies. Mark Carder was a computer scientist before turning to the arts and now enjoys theoretical physics as a hobby. Mark claims he regrets not painting for galleries but had a family to support so maintained a disciplined realist avenue of art. Does live-in Texas so is a social norm, but originally from Hawai'i. Why share this? His right hemisphere wants to express but is inhibited by the left. I guess. I do not know, just love the man for his humble honesty. If I were to put this argument into a postmodern paradigm and a spanner in the works, when postmodernism is being challenged by past narratives, look up Michael Armitage. For his art will soon be immortalised on money.

[just_another]

Dear Dr Gilchrist. Thanks very much for providing this channel. I actually would really like to "read" your latest book (having just finished the Master and his Emissary). However, I am not a fantastic reader and so do need it in audible form if I am to be able to process it and finish it. I really hope there will be an Audible version available soon, and hopefully with the same reader as the first one - as he was fantastic (South African chap, I think). Is this in the pipe-line? Thanks so much. Amber