You may agree that the so-called hard problem of consciousness exposes the deep inadequacies of a materialist worldview. But the alternatives - various forms of panpsychism, panentheism and idealism - raise rich and fascinating ques...

In my book, I want to draw out two facets of William Blake, which I think get routinely sidelined now. My conversation with Jane Clark and Nikos Yiangou enabled us to explore these dimensions.One is that Blake was a very sharp thinker. ...

James Harpur’s new book, "Dazzling Darkness: The Lives and Afterlives of the Christian Mystics", begins with an account of a mystical experience that happened to him - “an implosion of light”, as he describes it. That led to his book, Dazzling ...

Iain McGilchrist calls William Blake “the least cosy of poets and one of the most insightful that ever lived.” Blake is cited more often than most figures in Iain’s great book, "The Matter With Things".So what did Blake express that mig...

A conversation from History with Chris Harding.In Mark Vernon's new book "Awake!", he argues that we’re missing something from our view of the great visionary artist William Blake.It’s that word - ‘visionary.’Mark argues...

Recorded in St James’s Piccadilly, the church in which William Blake was baptised, with his life mask also present.Thoughts on Blake’s great call to us today from the launch of my new book, “Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imag...

A taste of Blake’s genius and what he might mean for us. Celebrating the release of "Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination" by Mark Vernon.The full countdown:10. I’ll sing to you to this soft lute, an...

Acknowledging that there are complementary modes of perception has become commonplace. But left-hemisphere analysis can diagnose the problem without offering much sense of how better to incorporate the right.Which is where William Blake...

A live conversation with Mark Vernon, Katy Carr and Dexter Bentley from the Hello Goodbye Show.Who was William Blake? What might his music have sounded like? What did he say about the imagination? Why might he understand our predicament...

Saint Francis was born into a world in a panic. The stabilities of the feudal world had collapsed with the rise of mercantilism. The gap between rich and poor was unsustainable and a new underclass was tearing apart the fabric of society. <...

The conviction that the natural world is obedient, adhering to laws, is a widespread assumption of modern science. But where did this idea originate and what beliefs does it imply? In this episode of the

William Blake opens the third part of his epic poem, Jerusalem: the Emanation of the Giant Albion, with an astonishing remark. “He never can be a friend of the Human Race who is the Preacher of Natural Morality or Natural Religion.”

There is undoubtedly a new spirit of interest in Christianity abroad in the presumed secular world. Some increases in church-going are even showing up in the stats. But what can be made of the curiosity? Is it straightforwardly to be welcomed? ...

Ibn ‘Arabi is arguably the greatest philosopher in the Islamic world, though controversial; Seal of the Mohammedan Saints, as he is known, alongside Shaykh al-Akbar, he is becoming more important again, especially against a backdrop of fundamen...

The first in a series of talks I’ll be posting in anticipation of my new book, Awake! William Blake and the Power of the Imagination, out in June/Sept (UK/US).Do consider pre-ordering! (Thanks: it really helps early sales and so booksho...

The extraordinary spread of Islam after 632 - from Central Asia to North Africa in a century - reached Europe from the eighth century, generating issues still energising to this day. Not ones of religion, though, but of technology.Withi...

Owen Barfield was the genius Inkling, said CS Lewis and JRR Tolkien. But why does he so much matter today?They consider how Owen Barfield addresses the idea of secularism developed by Charles Taylor and why that might matter in...

Much of the modern world has become uncoupled from the transcendent in a cultural experiment Nietzsche called the death of God. But might this spiritual crisis prove to be a time of rebirth? In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dial...

A discussion with Jason Baxter, Nicholas Colloff and Mark Vernon.The Abolition of Man is a series of three lectures given by C.S. Lewis in defence of objective value, arguing that modernity has undermined our humanity by uncoupling inte...

Darwinian evolution shapes modern biology, but the notion of evolution has a wider history, too. In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon dialogues, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon explore linear and cyclical conceptions of human and c...

Francis Lucille is teaching of Advaita Vedanta who brings together nonduality with science, amongst other subjects, his past having been in physics. Here, he talks with Mark Vernon about the universality of consciousness and how that fits with ...

Mysticism is a modern word, as Simon Critchley discusses in his tremendous new book, On Mysticism. And its novelty is not a happy intervention in the history of mystics and their significance, Fundamental aspects of the insights pursued by figu...

Nick Cave and Tom Holland discussed Christianity in an event organised by Unherd entitled In Search of Wild Gods on Thursday 9th January 2025. Chaired by Freddie Sayers, the conversation revolved around whether and why there is renewed interest...

Sermon One (in Walshe, Complete Mystical Works) has become known as capturing the essence of Meister Eckhart’s thought. “Here, in time, we are celebrating the eternal birth which God the Father bore and bears unceasingly in eternity, because th...

Forms are all around us: clouds, flowers, creatures, even systems of thought and logical relations. And yet the nature of forms is rarely part of the modern scientific conversation. In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Ru...