The 'politics of well-being' has a credibility issue with politicians and the general public, partly because of how research is communicated. In brief, there is too much leaping for joy.
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Following on from my earlier post on 'the varieties of transcendent experience', I remain interested in the role of transcendent experiences, or the yearning for the transcendent, among humanists. Someone who is definitely exploring in this area is Sanderson Jones, one of the founders of the Sunday Assembly, which is a booming humanist congregation.
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I love the sociologist Peter L. Berger. For 50 years, he's been producing intelligent, rigorous and sympathetic work on the sociology of religion. I just got a copy of his 1970 little book, A Rumour of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural, in which he talks about what he calls 'signals of transcendence' in modern society - little flashes of light which seem to point to a transcendent reality.
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In his magnum opus, The Secular Age, the philosopher Charles Taylor charts western society’s unprecedented shift from a consensus belief in transcendent reality to a worldview that is much more immanent or ‘this-world’.
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It’s that time of year again, when people all over Britain go off for the traditional New Year's Vipassana retreat. But not me - this year, I decided to keep it old school. I went on a Benedictine retreat.
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Earlier this week, my girlfriend and I toured around Yorkshire and Northumberland, once the stronghold of English medieval monasticism. We visited the beautiful ruins of Rievaulx Abbey, which once boasted the biggest church in England. As we wandered around the ruins, I wondered what we lost, when Henry VIII dissolved more than 1000 monasteries in five years.
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Wisdom is a watering-hole at which animals of many different species can come and drink - as long as they don’t insist on trying to convert, denounce or attack each other, but instead meet in friendship and good humour.
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At the end of Philosophy for Life, I asked what the Socratic-Stoic tradition of philosophy misses out, and suggested there is an alternate approach to life and to emotional healing, which I called the Dionysiac tradition:
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Peter Vardy is a theologian and perhaps the leading Religious Studies teacher in the country. After teaching theology at Heythrop College and writing several best-selling books on ethics and religious philosophy, he and his wife Charlotte - also a theologian - set up Candle Conferences, which runs huge events for RS students around the country.
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At the beginning of Philosophy for Life, I talk about Raphael's famous mural of the School of Athens, and imagine getting a free ticket to study there. Well, this week, I got to join the school! The Idler Academy arranged a photo shoot on the steps of St Paul's, with various British thinkers and philosophers.
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It is quite easy to make noise in our culture. The internet and online media are like a giant echo chamber, and within a few days one angry tweet can turn into an ear-splitting feedback scream of indignation. Because of that, we can become entirely focused on making noise in our culture - getting retweeted, getting on the news, getting publicity somehow or other.
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Last week, I went to an exhibition on Goya, in Boston. It was filled with his bizarre and fantastic dream-drawings, exploring the strange manias and nightmares that fill humans’ minds when their reason is switched off - as in the classic engraving, the Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters.
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This weekend, I was at a conference in Boston called the International Symposium on Contemplative Studies. I know - sounds pretty niche, maybe two monks, a chakra healer and a shaman with maracas? Well, it was enormous - 1600 people, 300 presentations, including ones by some of the leading psychologists in the world, and the Dalai Lama.
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A lot of modern technology, particularly social media, is a technology for selfing. This is why we're so addicted to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest etc (well, I am anyway). They're technologies for Selfing. Every post and tweet, we're making another little carving in the epic construction of our Public Self, then we wait to see how many likes we get.
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It’s Monday evening, I’m tired after a boozy weekend, it’s dark, cold, and pouring with rain. I do not feel like dancing ecstatically. And yet that is precisely where I am headed: to an ecstatic dance session in a town hall in Islington (where else).
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There are lots of reasons to be anxious at the moment: the recession, ISIS, ebola, the rise of far right parties across Europe. But there's one big reason to be cheerful, and to be proud of UK public policy: mental health.
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I was obsessed with Twin Peaks when it was first shown in 1990. We all were. Every Sunday after lunch at boarding school, we piled in to the TV room, pushed in the VHS cassette of that week’s episode, waited for the first note of Angelo Badalamenti’s tremolo guitar to sound next to the opening shot of the wren, and that was it, we were in heaven.
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In my review of Sam Harris’ Waking Up two weeks ago, I wrote this sentence: "Spiritual experiences tell us something about the cosmos,...the experience of infinite loving-consciousness is a glimpse of the very ground of being, also sometimes called God, Brahman, Allah, the Logos, the Tao, the Buddha-realm."
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Professor Nancy Sherman has worked with the US military for over 20 years, and has written several books on military ethics, including Stoic Warriors: The Ancient Philosophy Behind the Military Mind; and The Untold War: Inside the Hearts, Minds and Souls of Our Soldiers.
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Sam Harris, the second-most-famous atheist in the world, is an unusual sort of atheist. On the one hand, he’s a neuroscientist who reveres the scientific method and despises the superstitious dogma of religion - so far, so normal.
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This week, I read Abraham Maslow’s 1964 little book, Religions, Values and Peak-Experiences. It’s only 100 pages long, but something of a classic, and anticipates the contemporary interest in the science of spiritual experience that’s apparent in, for example, Sam Harris’ new book (which I will review shortly).
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I sent out a tweet last week asking to interview someone who'd found mindfulness useful for coping with depression. Mary got in touch and told me her story, which was fascinating. I thought I'd share it for this week's newsletter.
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I broke up with my therapist yesterday. Actually, it was the first time we’d met - a first date, if you will - but it rapidly turned into an argument. This is the latest in a series of failed attempts to find a therapist. I struggle with therapeutic relationships. I should get some therapy for it.
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A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a blog-post analysing the video for Blondie’s Rapture, and pointing out the voodoo, occult and mystic symbolism in it. I wondered if Blondie were into that sort of thing, or perhaps I was seeing things. It turned out they were, and one of them - the bassist Gary Lachman - had even become a historian of the occult. He was kind enough to give me his time for an interview.
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Last week I got the chance to interview the Bishop of London, Richard Chartres, for my research on spiritual ecstasy. It was an informal conversation, and it was very kind of the Bishop to give me the benefit of his time and wisdom. I thought he'd be a good interviewee because of his interest in contemplative practices and in Christian mystics like Thomas Traherne. And he was!
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Last week, a reader called Tom wrote in with this story:
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Dear Jules, I have been going through a really rough time lately and it is quite similar to your experience. I was quite a happy go lucky person through life until I had a bad terrifying trip on weed (my first time trying) I took way too much and freaked out and that traumatised me - having very anxious scary thoughts like what if I harm my self, what if I harm others - what is the meaning of life and whats the point of it all.
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I'm doing a Philosophy for Life workshop for the deaf and hard-of-hearing, which will be interpreted in sign language. It's happening next Monday, July 14, at 7pm, in the upstairs room of the Wheatsheaf pub on Rathbone Place.
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I had Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from 1995 until 2001. Seven years of fear, anxiety, depression and paranoia, which I feared would last forever. But I got better, thanks to a near-death experience.
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100 years ago this year, James Joyce published Dubliners, his first book, in which he explored the lives of characters through what he called ‘epiphanies’. He’d been experimenting with epiphanies for some years, and even started to write a ‘book of epiphanies’, which he intended - with customary modesty - to send to every library in the world. You can read some of them here.
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Today I'm going to a seminar at Queen Mary, University of London, on music and well-being. It's one of the best things about being a sort-of-academic - you get to hang out for a day with experts in a field. Today, that includes Roger Scruton, who is the British philosopher I most respect, although I have a love-hate relationship with his work.
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This year I’ve developed and trialled an eight-part course in practical philosophy, called Philosophies for Life. The pilot was financed by the Arts and Humanities Research Council via Queen Mary, University of London. I trialled the course with three partner organizations: Saracens rugby club; New College Lanarkshire and HMP Low Moss prison; and Manor Gardens mental health charity.
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This week, I met Nataline Daycreator, a wonderful coach and author who works to help victims of spiritual abuse. She is herself a survivor of 14 years in an abusive Pentecostal community. She told me her story and the lessons we can draw from it.
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It's been a busy couple of weeks, hence no newsletter last week. I feel like I am spinning plates at the moment. Luckily I'm off to Cornwall tomorrow to take it easy with some good friends. In the meantime, here are three insights I have taken from this weekend's wild adventure.
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Jane Davis says that literature saved her life. She grew up in a broken home, with a single mum who died of alcoholism. She left home and lived in squats, with a husband who also eventually died of substance abuse.
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Professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is one of the world's best-known psychologists, famous for developing the concept of 'flow'. Inspired by the creative process of artists and musicians, Csikszentmihalyi spent decades researching the 'flow' states of consciousness that people can achieve when they're totally absorbed in doing what they're best at.
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As you know, I’ve been researching altered states of consciousness for the last year and a half, for my next book. As part of that, I started going to various churches around London, including a big charismatic-Anglican church in South Kensington called HTB.
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I was watching Rev the other day. It’s a sitcom about a beleaguered inner-city priest, played by Tom Hollander. This series, Rev has been facing all kinds of trials. In the Easter episode, things get really bad. Adam’s reputation is rock-bottom, his church is facing closure, and he finds himself on a hill overlooking London, where he meets God in the form of a tramp, played by Liam Neeson. It’s a lovely moment (sorry for the crap picture quality):
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I write this from York, where yesterday I went to the ‘Story of Chocolate’ museum, and was shown around by a delightful and learned historian, Alex Hutchinson, who is the world expert on the Rowntree family and thus able to tell me some fascinating family gossip.
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My great-great-great grandfather, a York Quaker called Henry Isaac Rowntree (that's him on the left), set up Rowntree's chocolate company in York in 1862. He was an amiable young man, 'perhaps the only Rowntree with a sense of humour' according to one historian.
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I went to the book-launch of a new book on well-being policy yesterday, which brought together some leading figures in this nascent movement - including David Halpern of the government’s ‘nudge unit’, Canadian economist John Helliwell, psychologist Maurren O'Hara, and Juliet Michaelson of the new economics foundation.
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Do you want to make a living practicing philosophy beyond academia, but not sure how? I'm organizing a seminar on practical philosophy on the evening of May 22 in London, bringing together people practicing philosophy in the community, in adult education, in companies, in prisons, in schools and in the NHS.
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Yesterday I finished a pilot course in practical philosophy at Low Moss prison. It’s an eight-session course that introduces people to the ideas and life-philosophies of various ancient philosophers, including Socrates, the Stoics, Plato, Rumi, the Buddha, Jesus and Lao Tzu. I've been running it in partnership with New College Lanarkshire, which runs the learning courses in west Scottish prisons.
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I've been reading a very unusual book about sport, a classic really, called The Inner Game of Tennis, written by Tim Gallwey and published in 1974. I picked it up at a free bookstore in Holland. Two tennis players had recommended it to me as one of the few good books on tennis out there. What I didn't expect was it would be such a wise book about spirituality.
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I attended a seminar on wonder at the Centre for Medical Humanities in Durham last week. This post comes from our discussions there. Thanks to all the participants and to Martyn Evans for a great day.
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Apologies for the lack of newsletters recently - I’ve been in the depths of a project to design and teach a course based on Philosophy for Life. This month, I started teaching it in three organizations - a mental health charity in London called Manor Gardens; Saracens rugby club; and Low Moss prison in Glasgow (via New College Lanarkshire, which runs learning courses there).
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True Detective has an unusual amount of theology for a cop show. The hero, Rustin Cohle, is a fervent atheist, who delivers soliloquies on the meaninglessness of existence as he and his partner drive to the next crime scene. Human consciousness is an ‘evolutionary misstep’, humans are ‘biological puppets’, religion is a consoling ‘fairy tale’ for morons.
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I'm doing a very brief talk this evening exploring the relationship between Christianity, Stoicism and Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. This essay 'unpacks' the ideas I'll speed through this evening.
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Excited to be launching the Philosophy for Life course this week - tomorrow at Manor Gardens, a mental health charity in North London; then on Thursday at Saracens rugby club; then on Friday at Low Moss prison. I've been having fun making some material for the course today, including this poster and a 'Deidre's Photo Casebook'-style montage called 'Socrates' Case-Book'. I'm hoping to launch the course for other companies and organizations later this year.
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When I was six, my best friend Joe and I could give ourselves head-rushes by contemplating the size of the universe. We let our imaginations rise from the Earth, to the Solar System, to the Milky Way, and then stretched our imaginations as far as they would go to comprehend the universe. Then we’d wonder what was beyond that, and for a second we’d feel a sort of dizziness at the mystery in which we found ourselves.
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Yesterday I interviewed Simon Nelson, CEO of FutureLearn, which is the new UK platform for Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs). The interview is for a New Statesman piece I'm writing on adult education, but it was so interesting I thought it'd be useful to publish the whole thing here. How can academics get their research turned into a MOOC, and potentially reach a huge global audience? Turns out you only need £10K or so.
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Last Sunday I was on my way to Holy Trinity Brompton (HTB) for their 7pm service. On the way, I went into a second-hand book store on Kensington Church Street. I picked out a book called The Revelations, thinking it was about spiritual experiences. It turned out to be a novel about someone who lives on Ken Church Street, who goes to a church based on HTB, which turns out to be a sinister cult. So I bought it and read it.
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This year I got some funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council to teach a course in practical philosophy with three partner organizations - Manor Gardens, a mental health charity in North London; Low Moss prison in Glasgow; and Saracens rugby club.
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A few months back I was giving a philosophy workshop in a mental health charity. It was one of my less popular events - only one person turned up, a Romanian man who had recently moved to the UK and was finding it tough. We talked about Socratic philosophy, about the idea of engaging your inner voice in a rational dialogue, and the man (let’s call him Anghel) quietly told me that he heard voices.
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I like this Vice documentary about the Ministry of Drunken Glory, an ecstatic Christian movement in Minnesota.
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Imagine if the Nazi regime was still in power - perhaps with the leadership changed, perhaps slightly less murderous and more pragmatic - but with no reconciliation or recognition of former crimes. Imagine if the Holocaust was celebrated, with aging veterans of Auschwitz wheeled out for public adulation, to show their medals and tell stories of the killings.
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How do you fit experiences of ecstasy, awe, wonder, the Sublime, or the Numinous into a materialist paradigm, without reducing or devaluing such experiences? With difficulty.
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I was up in east Scotland on New Year's Day, and found myself walking along a path called the John Muir Way. A few days later, a book I was reading mentioned a famous naturalist called John Muir, so I looked him up. It turns out John Muir was a father of modern conservationism, and the founder of many of California’s national parks. He is also a perfect specimen for my research into ecstatic experiences in nature.
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One of the things that has happened in our culture over the last 300 years is the shift from theology to morality to psychiatry. Conditions that were once deemed vices are now considered diseases. Gluttony has become obesity. Despair has become depression. Lust has become sex addiction.
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Well, that was a weird year. 2013 was the year I became a Christian, or rather 'committed my life to Christ' as Christians put it. What does that mean? How did I get here? Am I really a Christian or am I kidding myself? Let's re-wind and play the tape again.
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This panel was part of an event in November called Stoicism for Everyday Life, which was funded by the AHRC. The videoing of this event was funded by the Centre for the History of the Emotions. I love the philosophical expressions assumed by me and the other participants when we're not speaking. Very pensive!
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The annals say: when the monks of Clonmacnoise
Were all at prayers inside the oratory
A ship appeared above them in the air.
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In my research into ecstatic experiences, I've become interested in the idea of poetry as a door to transcendence. Has our imagination withered as scientific materialism became the dominant world-view? Have we lost poetry's subtler way of knowing in our desire for quantifiable and testable facts? Can we get it back?
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There is an anecdote in the psychotherapist Stephen Grosz’ book, The Examined Life, about a client who is always talking fondly about the house he is renovating. Whenever he’s had a bad week, he lets off steam by talking about all the wonderful improvements he will make to this dream-house - the new conservatory, the bay windows, the rock garden, and so on.
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Tomorrow is the big event on Stoicism for Everyday Life in London, at which Mark Vernon and I will be discussing the relationship between Stoicism and Christianity. Mark has an interesting story to tell - he was a priest, who then left Christianity and found an alternative in Greek philosophy (particularly Plato) and depth psychology.
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Should liberal governments try to cultivate certain emotional states in their citizens? In Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice, University of Chicago philosopher Martha C. Nussbaum argues that liberal political philosophers, from John Locke to John Rawls, have dangerously ignored ‘the political cultivation of emotion’, failing to explore how governments can encourage pro-social emotions like love, patriotism and tolerance, while curbing anti-social emotions like envy, shame and excessive fear.
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This is a guest post by Julia Kalmund from Munich
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This week I met a charming young man who had recently dropped out of university. He was writing an undergraduate dissertation on free will, read Sam Harris’ book on the subject, and came to the conclusion that free will does not exist, therefore there was no point finishing his dissertation. So his university gave him a ‘pass’ and he’s now wondering what to do next (not that he has any choice in the matter).
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Here's a talk I gave last month at TEDX Breda.
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