Lectern Live Launch Event — Reflections, Updates, and a Major Announcement

34:51So the Rewind Pass will allow you to get these courses like as a bundle. And then you get to watch them and go through them just as people did last year. And frankly, if Plato's around still, I think waiting a year for John Verbeke's courses is still all right. But, so that's not all. What I told John and have been telling folks is that what I don't want is for your work, these courses to become glorified archival. And I don't want it to be left that they need to live and continue to grow, which is why all self-study courses at specific points within the year will be entered into what we call a teaching assistance program.

35:38All right. Or we call it on tap. So you have a course on TAP. These are small intimate groups, 20 people. They're limited to sign up. It's got a small top up fee of 150. But what happens when you enter into a TAP is you'll get two weeks of the courses. Your homework will be to watch two of the lectures. And then we'll gather every other week to run ultimately what is a Socratic salon. And this is something that I'm taking the initiative to pilot first, even though I know that there are some people who will be interested in taking that up. I want to be clear. This is teaching assistance program, not teaching authoritarian program.

36:22I'm not here to countermand you or your argument. What I am here to do is to facilitate a discussion of the kind that we were talking about earlier. So if you don't mind saying a couple of words of like, what is a Socratic salon like? You describe it better than I do. Well, I mean, I've led a few of them on retreats, and they're not as like we have more formalized, structured practices like dialectic into dialogos and the Socratic search space. The Socratic Salon is much more where one person will make themselves available for being questioned on the understanding that that person gets to question the questioner.

37:08And that's sort of the move. So like when I did this in a retreat last year, the retreat that I ran with Kyle and with Guy. And people, yeah, they come in, they ask questions, and I'll answer the question, but then I will often question them in a Socratic fashion, try to draw out. And so you get kind of a more informal dialogos going, and people get their questions addressed. But often when people ask questions, and this is part of the Socratic knack, they're often not fully articulating the question they need addressed. And that includes me, by the way, right? But people who have done a lot of Socratic practices, like myself and Ethan, and are very familiar with the material, we can answer that part of the question.

38:01but we also have the skills and hopefully the virtues to be Socratically provocative and try and get at, okay, so you asked me this question, and we do a little bit of that when we're doing the courses in the Q &A. I'll sometimes ask people, so I answered your question, but let me ask you a question. Like, is this going on or is this happening? Or I sense that there's like, and you try and do what we call amplification and dialectic and the dialogos with people. And what that does is that brings in an existential beyond the merely intellectual, so that what's happening is people are not only addressing their curiosity with questions, you're actually also provoking wonder so that they're calling themselves and their world into question.

38:51And that's what we try to do with the Socratic Salon. And you come to realize like, oh, how much you care about the question. That's right. What's underneath it. That's right. And I think the salons have been one of my favorite things to do. Ever since you introduced me to them at Virtuosity in Action. Yeah. Because I noticed that it dovetails very well with the relational practices and the subjectivity practices that I'm doing. It dovetails well with DID, with Socratic Search Space. And I think something that I've been wanting to reclaim for myself, but also to inspire in other people, is you think you want to know that thing over there.

39:33But that thing over there is actually here. It actually matters here. So this is something that we're going to be rolling out at the start of next year, right? So that people can do Einstein and Spinoza's God on tap. And I look forward to seeing you all at the salon. Yeah, that's excellent. Now, as we move through, this is probably where the lease changes are going to be, but I'll talk to them rather quickly. The next tier is our Delta tier. This is$200 per month. And you get Silk Road seminars. You don't get the Rewind Pass, but you get a Season Pass instead. And the Season Pass is all of the current year's courses in a bundle.

40:18You get basically automatically registered for all of the courses. You don't have to sign up ahead of time. We count you as already in when you buy the season pass. And that means you're guaranteed a spot. So between Gamma and Delta, there is a fork. If, and I tried to make this as explicit as possible. If you are realizing like, oh man, I need to catch up on all the courses that have been there. Hey, go for Gamma, right? If you want to really be at like the cutting edge of stuff, you want to know what's at the edge of the argument and evolve it, right? And wrestle, go for Delta. However, I have to say this, if you are a student, if you are a full-time student, please do not buy either Gamma or Delta.

41:06Please do not do that because it is much cheaper for you to email me. We have student concessions. We'll drop the price of the course and then you buy Beta on top of that because you get Silk Road seminars for free anyway, right? So even if you were to do that, like, please let me know if you're a full-time student, I will cancel your subscription immediately. I'll guide you down the better financial path, right? We want you to learn and grow as much as possible. So please, if you're watching this, don't hesitate, email me, let me know. I just need a small proof of enrollment and I'll be happy to kind of like guide that process.

41:44It's worth it to just name. it might take a while for me to get to that because we have a small team and we don't use any AI to help with customer service. So anytime that you're talking to somebody, you're talking to me. So it would take me a while to get there. But the effort here is like, I don't want auto replies coming to you guys. I sit down, I write every email as tired as I might be, but I try to be as sincere, but also as quick as I can and as efficient as I can. So I ask for some patience and some charity, but please note that this is a choice that we're making. Yes, and I think it's a valuable choice.

42:27I think we are trying, there's a couple of principles we are trying to uphold here. One is we are trying to do a reliable recognition of the status of students and be helpful towards that. Remember, that doesn't just mean that you're in an academic university. It can mean that you're in a psychotherapeutic training program. You're training for Chinese acupuncture. Proof that you're in a bona fide vetted program. That counts. The other principle, as Ethan said, is we want as much as possible for you to be knowing that you'll be interacting with human beings. This is becoming increasingly important, and it will become more important, I predict, rather confidently as we go forward.

43:23In fact, one of the functions of the lectern is to give people access to the kind of education that puts them in touch with those aspects of their humanity individually and collectively that are not going to be captured, at least in any foreseeable time, by the AI. And so this is your place. And in recognition that we stand for the flourishing of humanity, Ethan has very kindly, because it does take extra time on his behalf, right? He's very kindly to do this role of giving you a human person to guide you through things. yeah so i just wanted to flag that like the lectern is trying very hard we're aspiring to do things with virtue and virtuosity that so i'll turn it back over to you ethan thanks john um i want to double click on the on the being human bit because i think there is a way in which we're sort of wading through the ai waters um and i have concerns about future proofing but as I was talking to a friend earlier today, so much of this, what we do is, okay, how do we become even more human?

44:50What is that? When we talk about human flourishing and I know that this excites me, but I also know that it's going to excite a lot of people who have been asking the question of, okay, after awakening from the meaning crisis, what's next? Yes. We've been talking about this for a long time. So I'm very, very happy to announce that the lectern and the company that I run, Five to Midnight, is going to come together and collaborate on an eight month long practical program called Tiamat X. Excellent. Excellent. It's eight months. Yes. Oh, go ahead. No, no, no, no, no. I want you to talk a lot about it.

45:38I just thought we should also mention Taylor Barrett. Yes, exactly. And it's not just the John that will be there. It's not just me co-teaching. Taylor Barrett, the wonderful, wonderful Taylor Barrett, who, by the way, builds the pedagogy for DID, helped us design Socratic search space. We were doing Socratic Imaginal Self-Reflection. All of those practices are in TMEDX, by the way. And he also runs Awaken to Meaning. He'll be there throughout the entire thing for us and with us. Sorry, did I say for us? With us. Now, TMNX is very, very... It's a long-form program that's going to be largely in the EU time zone.

46:28Part of that is because I can't stay awake and run workshops until 1 o 'clock in the morning for the Eastern time zone. right but also because um in the uh in the containers that i've been running i've gone to meet some wonderful people who are now training as facilitators and a lot of them are based in the eu so it's not just me it's not just john it's not just taylor you'll also be supported by seven wonderful facilitators in training who are bridging the gap and really there to get to help get a sense of intimacy with the cohort. Now, the way this will run is we will start in January, end of January next year.

47:13You'll see the course page going up real soon. And it is going to be every other week practice session. There'll be some framing lectures where we'll talk through things like shadow work. We'll talk through things like character adaptation. What do I mean by the ego? because I'm a Jungian, I have to talk about that. So we'll have these online sessions and there will be two in-person retreats. There'll be a Tier 1 that happens in Netherlands at the Universal Sufi Temple, the Universal Murad Hasil. That's going to be amazing, which is beautiful. It's a temple, but it's also a museum and people can go in and meditate and we have pilgrimages every year.

47:59And then we'll have a few months break. And then after that, we'll come back together again for the second in-person, right? The first one is three days. The second one is five days long of TierMAT Tier 2. And that's Anagoga Through Dynamics, where we're doing a lot of work on shadow, on projection, on assumptions, on judgment, belief, desire. And that will be five days in Czechia. We'll have a cottage to ourselves. It has like log cabins all around and a big open space for us to live together and to practice together. And then once we finish with that, we'll come back, we'll take you through an integration and transfer process.

48:40and then as the roadmap moves along, if you are up to it, if you feel at capacity and there's a mutual acknowledgement of health and safety, you can be invited onto a Tiamat Tier 3 container which is required to take up what we call SPIRE facilitation training. And then I really recommend this. If you are looking to lead people through a process of development, please consider coming for Tiamat It's a big commitment. Do not impulse by this. Do not impulse by this. Take your time. My team and I are running events and talks. We'll do a Q &A, right? As well as some online workshops for you to get a sense of what we're doing.

49:26Make an informed decision because we are asking for a lot of your time and a lot of your money. And I don't want to be facetious about that. It is quite hefty. it's not anything ridiculous. But when we try and space it out, but I want to be very, very clear, the commitment that's required is not small. So, you know, really consider it and consider it well. Yeah. So that's a lot of what I have to say. Anymore, I'll be rambling. But is there anything to add, John? Well, I mean, this is our first major response. There are going to be others to something we continually get from the students, which is the lectures and the Q &A and the dialogue and the tutorials are excellent.

50:14And we're adding more to that, as we've already said. But a lot of people say, yeah, but I want to practice. I want to learn practices. This is your opportunity. Like I said, this is our first big addressing that. Ethan and Taylor and I, also Christopher Masterpatro, we're working towards the possibility of getting something more like as an ongoing thing as part of the lectern where people can, in addition to the lecture courses, be taking courses on practice. Tiamat X is the way in which we're basically launching that initiative to start to respond in depth to people's requests. Now, the thing you have to understand is when you're learning practice, like it takes a lot more from the instructor.

50:59You have to be there to be with people. You have to Like you have to be in person with them and they have to have lots more interaction. So it demands more time and demands a proper venue. This is why you get the added cost. Yeah. Yeah. And it's, I think, just divided into a tuition fee and a residential fee. And we are very transparent about that, right? How much of it is going towards actually sustaining just being there for the amount of time we need to be in person, right? And how much of it is to also be able to say, okay, we're paying facilitators, we're getting people to come in and ensure that there's intimacy in groups so that nobody is left unheard.

51:41It's going to be a big cohort. We're aiming for, we can accommodate about 60 people for this cohort, which means we have to divide the in-persons into two groups, like a group one and a group two. right but that just means with 30 people and 10 facilitators ultimately that ratio allows us to address things and ensure that people are safe but you're also growing so this is where we are now i know that um i said this is actually for the eu uh sort of audience um if you are if you are in n.a and you want to uh stay up for the online sessions um you're welcome to if you would like to, I wouldn't begrudge that.

52:24But this doesn't mean that the NA is left out. So, you know, so much of our courses, especially all this year, has been done in your mornings. And that means that people get to wake up and do some philosophy, which a couple of years ago, you told me is the best way to wake up. And I agree. So, we're going to talk a little bit about the courses that are coming up for 2026 because you're not teaching all of them no uh so it has always been uh what the what just a rough headline of what the courses are if i'll help you out if you need yeah i'm just really looking up i just want to make sure i get the the order right uh okay so So we're going to be starting not with John Verveke in 2026.

53:16We're starting with Mark Miller. Mark has requested that I guest lecture in the course, which I will. But Mark is a former student of mine. He's a colleague of mine at the University of Toronto. While I'm on sabbatical, he's the person teaching the courses, Introduction to Cognitive Science, that I normally teach. Mark is considered one of the great teachers already. He is charismatic. He's powerful. The student evaluations for Mark are amazing. Yeah, I actually had a conversation with Mark the other day just to sort of like move, like do some of the marketing things ahead of time. And the stuff that he was talking about, because so much of it is around predictive processing.

54:06Actually, you know, I'm sorry. I don't feel qualified to talk through the courses. But you know who is, John? Who? Mark Miller, Brendan Graham Dempsey, and Charles Stang are more than qualified to talk through all of these courses. And I would like to welcome them into the room. Thank you very much. Please join studio if you're here, guys. Excellent. Excellent. Yeah, they will give them a minute to come in because I think it lags through on the YouTube.

54:48Hey. Is Charles here as well? Yeah, he's coming in. He's coming in. Hey, Mark. Hey, Brennan. Hey. Hey, friends. How's it going?

55:05That was amazing. This was unexpected. So excellent, excellent. What a wonderful surprise. So I'll just say a bit while we're waiting for Charles. It's always been my vision that I would not be the only voice at the lectern. And I always wanted to be other voices and vibrant voices that would converge with the lectern, but would also complexify it. um and so hey there he is hey charles um and so um we've got the three people here um i've reached out to all three of these beautiful gentlemen and i'm not i'm going to stop talking uh and i'm gonna i'm gonna ask them uh to talk about their courses they're going to be offering and first of all uh many of you have seen me in deep discussions with all of these people and uh you're going to see charles uh when the philosophical silk road is uh released because he was there with me in athens it's good to see you again by the way charles um so um let's uh ethan if you want to sort of shepherd us through it'd be great if everybody could talk and about their course and let's make sure we tell when it's going to be happening, what it's going to be about.

56:29So go ahead, Ethan. 100%. Yeah, Mark, man, it's good to see you, Radha. Yeah, why don't you go ahead and tell us a little bit, yeah, it's going to tell us a little bit about Generations of Joy, the cognitive science of happiness and well-being. We talked a lot about it. Exactly, yeah. It's a delight. It's just an absolute delight to be able to offer this. Thanks guys for making such a wonderful place for it. This is, this is my, so far my life's work. So I've, I'm going to be able to put together in one place, sort of everything that I think is the most sort of exciting, interesting, pretty sexy, cognitive science of how to be well, sexy and completely applicable.

57:12Sexy because we're, One of the things that I work with John so closely with that I get to spend a lot of my time doing is exploring some of the brand new cutting edge cognitive science models that we have. And we're in a sort of Capernian revolution right now for what we think about cognitive systems. And it's opening all sorts of new powerful doors for understanding where do cognitive systems like us go wrong? Where is it a problem? and also more importantly, where can we make it better and where can we, new ways of understanding what happiness and wellbeing are and also the sorts of practices that can lead us to happiness and wellbeing.

57:53So the cool thing for me is I get to do the most interesting research that I do in this course, the light and it's not only interesting, but I think it's hugely applicable. So I think this is also the research that gets us into contact with the kinds of practices This is the kind of view that's, I think, most supportive of long term happiness and well-being. And it's a perfect time for it. We've just ended a two year granted project called the Predictive Dynamics of Happiness and Well-Being. We have all of the research in. This is very much living research. It's going to be so cool. I mean, this will not be a course by telling you about something that was done 10 years ago or even one year ago.

58:34This will be a course where I'm going to be augmenting it week by week as the research comes in. Wow. So it's very fresh. It's very alive. And it's what I love talking to John most about. And I get to pull him in for almost nearly half of the course to talk about. And we'll do loads of good stuff. Yeah, and you know, there are five of us in the room, most of you, Mark Smart and I. So by all means, I've specifically allocated this whole remaining hour of time for us to basically open up into a five-way discussion. And part of that is because there is a through line that runs through the course or the courses from the year, starting all the way from TMX, all the way down to Demons in Divinity, which is Charles's course.

59:24And so I'm wondering if we can like, oh, is there a way in which we can thread this through? Because I think who's next? You, John. Between East and West. So this is, I've been saying cryptic enigmatic things here and there about Zen neoplatonism. And so I decided to be less cryptic, open the crypt and try and make that a positive platform for people. Now, to foreshadow that, I will be talking with Nicole Abaddon very soon. and she is a Zen abatist. And she was the first person I openly, we were at a conference actually run to a very significant degree by Charles, Charles Stang. And I took Nicole aside and she had given an excellent talk on Zen and she was familiar with my work.

1:00:24And I said, you know, do you think there can be a Zen neoplatonism? And she looked at me and she said, yeah, I think so. And then, you know, in a very Zen fashion, she walked away.

1:00:40So to turn that into something more, I just want to quickly give you an idea. I brought some books to show you, just so you have a sense of what we're going to be relying on. So the Zen Neoplatonism is sort of the epitome of the aspiration of the philosophical self-growth, where neoplatonism is the spiritual backbone, the synoptic integration, if you will, of the West. And notice I do this because that's a very ambiguous term. And then Zen, insofar as it brings together Taoism and Buddhism and an indigenous philosophy, religion, Shinto, also has a similar kind of status. And they have been talking to each other and seeking each other out for extended periods of time.

1:01:26So we're going to start, for example, with D.T. Suzuki, an old and glorious book, Mysticism, Christian, and Buddhist. We'll start with that. And what you'll note, of course, is when a point I will make is that Christian mysticism is basically Christian Neoplatonism, the people he's making use of like Eckhart and others. And that's how you'll start to see it. And then somebody who's very close in time, so we start with some older stuff, is William Johnston's work, The Still Point, Reflections on Zen and Christian Mysticism. and so that gives us a background we're going to do a book by David Hinton a new book called China Root Taoism Chan and Original Zen in which he makes I think a very important argument that Zen is as if not more Taoist than it's Buddhist and I want to bring this out because that combination of Taoism and Buddhism actually makes it more responsive to Neoplatonism because Neoplatonism is itself, you know, a syncretism of Platonism, Aristotle, Stoicism, etc.

1:02:31So bringing out the syncretism within Zen allows it to talk to the syncretism within Neoplatonism. So that's what we're going to do with this. This is a really beautiful book, by the way. And then we have the two anthologies. When I used to talk about this, people would look at me like, nobody talks about that. Well, that's not true anymore, because we now have two great and recent anthologies. We have Crossing the Stream and Leaving the Cave, Buddhist Platonic Philosophical Inquiries, and we're going to be going through that. And then even more recently, and I think I bought the first copy of this, is Buddhism and Neoplatonism.

1:03:07There you go. Okay? So that's what we're going to be going through. And that is an attempt to bring to hopefully a focal clarity how we can get a deeply mutually transformative dialogos between an Eastern interreligious spiritual backbone and a Western interreligious spiritual backbone, and thereby helpfully afford more of the advent of the sacred. That's what's going to be happening in that course. You know, what's wonderful about that, John, just very quickly, flowing out of the course that I'm going to be starting in the year, because we're going to go through some of the, like the cognitive science mechanics.

1:03:51Yes. That, that, that undergrid things like opioid and the opioid crisis that we're in also the meaning crisis that we're in. But the last, the last tale, like almost half of the course is going to be on the cognitive science of meditation, metacognition, self-transcendence, flow, play, adaptive uncertainty, wisdom, insight, plasticity, which is exactly the kind of scientific backbone you might want to have in your pocket to then do a deep dive in the philosophical interconnection between these other models. It's lovely. You'd almost think that somebody ordered the courses in the way we've done it.

1:04:29And that person, of course, is Ethan. I mean, of course, and he was trying to, you know, there's a joke in academia, you know, trying to get academics together is like hurting cats because they all have really busy schedules and working with everybody but still getting that through line and mark i'm glad you picked up on it excellent thanks ethan i was properly playing like abstract tetris for months because john would message me and go like oh i want i want like on this person this person this person to teach on the course and like immediately i go who where does that fit how does that go and you know mark you brought up a really good point which is like we're not talking about just the science of stuff that happens at the level of the really small or at the level of like the really big and abstract when you come into these with practices having done uh ecology practices maybe you've been a meditator for many years right maybe you've been doing contact improv or maybe you've attended a workshop at atm or you've done some work with me or if you're in tmedx this would be really helpful your two gateways to walk through you want to walk through the science, the science is going to take you into the philosophy, it's going to take you into the philosophy of spirituality.

1:05:44You can go through the philosophy and you're not going to run away from the science. They're going to come together. And I think like where I'm really interested is, well, no, there's a way in which you could situate those within a scientific framework and a philosophical framework and they talk together. But there's also a way in which they need to fit together into a narrative framework. What is that historically? And that's what I'm super excited about uh brendan's course which we've called matters over time because we want to figure out what matters over time as like a history of the evolution of meaning if i quoted you right go ahead brendan take it away yeah thanks um yeah that's that's uh that's basically it um so yeah i'm really excited for this and by the way it's great to see everyone here uh and uh it's a delight but yeah i'm really uh excited for this um what we're going to basically be doing is speaking of sort of science and philosophy, speaking together, start out with the question of meaning.

1:06:41What is meaning? What do we mean by meaning? And of course, you know, there's a lot of rich work that John's done on this topic around relevance, realization, that sort of thing. But actually trying to track that all the way back to sort of a first principles approach and thinking about meaning at like a really information and thermodynamic level. And so starting out with It's sort of what does it mean to be able then to track the progression or complexification of what meaning or meaningful information for entities in context. That's sort of our starting place that kind of grounds and frames this notion and situates human meaning as part of a broader process of relevance, realization and entities learning meaning through learning processes.

1:07:27So once that kind of, you know, framework has been laid out, then we'll kind of zoom in to what that looks like at the human level now that we've got some of that theoretical framing. And then to do this, we're going to look at both the individual and collective level. So I'm going to start out with sort of a what is human meaning making look like across the lifespan, sort of look at ontogenetic models. In particular, we're going to zoom in on a model called faith development theory, which was pioneered by a theologian named James Fowler in connection with sort of developmental psychologists in the Piagetian and the new Piagetian tradition.

1:08:03And similar to kind of Mark's work, in a sense, this is also going to be a very kind of timely course that's bringing in very, very new research. So I'm doing some research right now, really trying to update the faith development tradition, working with a vast data set, working with some scholars at Sani. And, yeah, really trying to bring faith development theory into kind of a new, more expansive frame of human meaning making and worldview studies. And so we're going to be looking at actual faith development interviews and seeing how certain ideas unfold and develop across the lifespan and actually having certain quantitative metrics that you can use, specifically hierarchical complexity that can actually track how these particular ideas unfold as they develop through basically the individual learning process.

1:08:53So looking at words like meaning, God, spirit, significance, whatever, a whole bunch of really important ideas, including importance itself, I suppose, and seeing how people think differently about these things through their learning processes. So that'll be kind of the individual framing. And then we're going to switch to sort of the sociological level. So how does this get embedded in collective contexts and how do the individual justification systems people use like link up together into kind of more mean plexes and the collective belief structures, religions, worldviews, essentially. So this will be zooming in then or zooming out rather at sort of the worldview angle and how human beings make meaning in in transjective context with other human beings and in social environments.

1:09:39And then that's really going to tee us up for the remainder of the course, which is with those two kind of angles at the, you know, in on the meaning making question, we'll look at the history. So in terms of matters over time, there's both matters over time for the individual. But there's also how matters have evolved and meaning has complexified and changed and transformed across the human cultural evolutionary process. And so we're going to take a look at sort of these different worldview frames that have come online over the course of, you know, 10 ,000 years and see how they're embedded in particular social organizational contexts.

1:10:15But again, continue to be tracking like how do how does the idea of God evolve here? How is the very notion? How does this word mean something different in this context versus this context and what's going on there? So, yeah, we're going to be looking at a lot of really fascinating materials. I mean, gosh, books, you know, well, there's a whole syllabus I've come up with, obviously, for this. And I could list off some of these books, but I'll leave it there for now. I'm really super excited for this. Um, we're going to basically be going from sort of, uh, really from the dawn of human, you know, civilization, uh, well, way, way back hundreds of thousands of years in the sense of, um, you know, the move from sort of paleolithic and the neolithic meaning making structures into agrarian, uh, societies into the axial age, and then, uh, focus on modern postmodern and meta modern, maybe transformations of meaning making, uh, into the contemporary period.

1:11:10So, yeah, that's a little taste of what we'll be getting into. Wow, that's amazing.

1:11:21Well, I thought I was doing history, but damn, it's gone way back. OG history. You see, this is one of those things which like, there's a way in which I feel insignificant in the face of what you've just named. So Brendan, you give us a huge tapestry of not just what we think is big, but actually how what we think is big to us started really small and grew over time. And there's a way in which I used to be a nihilist and self-confessed. And there was a point in time where I felt like, okay, nothing was really very significant to me. And then it just fell into a hole. which is very ironic because I'm now writing a book that's based on the course Beyond Nihilism.

1:12:16But someone really helped me get through that. And that person was Nishitani. I picked up Religion and Nothingness and I've gone through that like back to front twice. And I keep telling people, if you really want to understand me, read Religion and Nothingness, which I think I put on Tinder and then no one bit. But I found that which is great. Now, having said that, though, that tees us up for the next course, which is we will call Notes on No Thing, because the people who tackled nihilism the most, to my mind, profound, practical, philosophically rigorous way was the Kyoto School. And John will be heading that course.

1:13:04Yes. Yes. I would say that now I would I would now say that William Desmond with the from the Latin West and Christos Unaris from the Greek East also have tackled nihilism at that level of depth. And part of what I'm trying to do is to get those three Desmond, Unaris and the Kyoto School to talk to each other more deeply. um but um as easton said uh uh the kyoto school is uh something that if you've taken any course with me the kyoto school has come up because i will talk about nishida or nishitani i will make reference to to to tanabi um and it's been an ongoing influence on me now i had to wrestle here um um because i i don't think this is going to be my only course on the kyoto school because i I thought, should we pick a primary text like Religion and Nothingness and go through it?

1:14:02I've already done that in other courses I've taught where I've gone through the self-overcoming and nihilism. But I thought for this, instead, what I would do was a more comprehensive introduction to the Kyoto School as exemplary of the kind of cross-cultural philosophy, inter-religious dialogue that I'm talking a lot about with the Philosophical Silk Road. So we'll make use as an introductory book of the Kyoto School, an introduction by Robert Carter, who is a great, great introducer. His book, The Nothingness Beyond God, is what introduced me to the Kyoto School. And this is a very good introduction.

1:14:43And that way we'll get introduced to some of the main players. And then we're going to zero in on two. And the two are chosen because they represent sort of poles, poles that are talked about in the Kyoto school between Jariki and Tariki, between self-power and other power. And so the one is somebody you heard Ethan just mentioned. This is Nishitani. And we're going to do an anthology of people reflecting on Nishitani, the religious philosophy of Nishitani. okay we're going to go through that uh and by the same publisher and meant as a companion volume so this is this is this emphasizes like it comes up the form of buddhism that's emphasized here is zen it's very much about practice and how one self-transcends in conversation with heidegger which is really i will argue continuously conversation with neoplatonism and i'll make that case when i do zen neoplatonism um james filler and others and alexandrov and others uh the growing consensus uh capa bianco that heidegger is basically a neoplatonist who won't admit it um because he has a particularly uh jaundiced view of plato um so we'll do this and then the companion will be the religious philosophy of tanabe the same thing the meta So this one is encounter with emptiness, and this is the metanoetic imperative.

1:16:16And we're going to go through those. And that way you will get a deep introduction to the Kyoto school. So in some ways, you know, in Zen Neoplatonism, I'll be reaching from the West to the East. And in the Kyoto school, we'll be seeing how the East reached to the West. And I think that by doing those two courses together, I can really help afford people pursuing the kind of either literal or at least figurative interreligious pilgrimage that I have been increasingly advocating for as a meta practice that human beings need to engage in. if we're going to better orient ourselves to the advent of the sacred that is taking place in science and biology and systems theory and cognitive science, but also taking place.

1:17:12Like the fact that Jonathan Pajot, John Vervakian, Michael Levin recently were all talking together and it made sense. That's powerful. And more and more of that is happening right now. And what we want to do, what I'm hoping to do is afford that because I think this is the deepest response. I think this is how the Weltgeist, to quote Hegel, is responding to the zeitgeist of the meaning crisis. And more and more, I'm convinced, more and more people are taking me aside and saying, you know, something's going on. There's this convergence and there's these dialogues taking place and something. And there's this, there's like a paradigm shift, probably a scientific revolution happening in biology.

1:17:57and one part of that paradigm shift is the way biology and cognitive science are now deeply interweaving with each other there's just so much and then the fact that michael levin is you know he's here's the cutting-edge biologist you know he's cited all over the place in philip ball's book how life works and i know mike and you know i've been i've been controlling mike for years i said mike you got to come out you're a platonist um and he is he's a neil platonist and he's yeah he's basically now publicly said i've been at conferences he says actually the ontology that's coming out of the biology is best understood as something like a kind of Platonism, especially a Neoplatonism that has an emergence and emanation dimension to it.

1:18:35And of course, and part of that, and I'll let Ethan set him up properly, but part of that for me is the work of my good friend, Charles Stang, who is doing maybe more than anybody. Maybe Douglas is up there too, Douglas Headley but Charles yeah yeah Charles is trying to bring back Platonism as a living tradition in a viable powerful way and many of you have seen this in the interactions the dialogues I've had with Charles I've had like Charles and I you're going to see a lot of Charles as I said on the philosophical Silk Road and I think everybody's going to benefit from that but anyways Ethan I didn't want to steal your thunder but But I mean, that's why Charles is here, though.

1:19:26Charles is, you know, amongst other things, Charles is a vital and living presence in the endeavor to recover, in Tolkien's sense, Platonism as a living tradition. Yeah, well, I mean, you offered the thunder rightfully where it needs to go, which is in Charles's direction. The only thing I was thinking about is at some point, I have to title a course called Coming Out of the Platonic Closet. And then we'll see how that happens. I mean, I do have a question for Mark and Brendan actually on the back of that, but I'm willing to hold it. I'm sorry to jump in. I have to catch a flight. So would you mind if I actually just talked about my course and then you can ask?

1:20:17Yeah, please. Please do that. Brendan, I'm really sorry to do this. And I also have rather unstable internet. So if it's working, I want to just seize the moment, if you don't mind. First of all, thank you so much, John, for those very kind words. And thank you, Ethan, for making this morning possible, or what's morning for me, at least. It's really wonderful to be a part of this team. As John said, the course I'll be offering, which is called Demons and Divinity, grows out of the dialogue that he and I did for the lectern last year. And I think Brendan's scope, historical scope is vast. And what I will be offering in this course is what to me seems vast, which is about a thousand year philosophical history of reflection on this figure of the demon or the daimon.

1:21:11And you probably are all familiar with this idea that the Greek concept of the daimon before that term comes to name evil spirits in the Jewish and Christian tradition, and comes down to us, of course, as demon, that word daimon in the Greek tradition meant a range of things, but none of them evil spirit. So very briefly, the kinds of connotations of that term are, first, a kind of intermediary divine being somewhere between humans and gods. Secondly, and these are all kind of entangled secondly the idea that a daimon might have a personal or individual relationship with a human the most famous instance of that of course is socrates who says i had a t daimonion a daimon-like thing that appeared to me as a voice a third connotation this especially emerges out of plato is the idea that the daimon might actually be your noose, your intellect, so that the daimon might be a faculty that's actually properly yours.

1:22:19And these three meanings essentially are the warp and wef of the Platonic tradition for about a thousand years. So by virtue of Socrates speaking about this daimon that he had, we sort of embark got a thousand-year conversation from Plato to Proclus of what does this individual being or what do these beings have to do with the practice of philosophy? To quote something John mentioned earlier about the metaxu, the in-between, much of this will ramify in the sense of what Platonists think, how do we enter into this important in-between world? Not the world of the gods, but the worlds between us and the gods, the realm of the soul, the realm of the imagination.

1:23:14How do daimons help us do that? Maybe there's a fourth dimension of daimons that I'll mention also, which is that daimons are also thought at times to be spirits of place. That is to say, they are attached to particular places. So essentially, this is going to be a course, unlike some of the other courses, this will be a course in which the readings will be almost entirely primary sources. I want to get people reading Plato, Plutarch, Apollaeus, Plotinus, uh porphyry proclis if these are names that are unknown to you don't worry we'll introduce you to them all but these are some of the great um uh platonists um and i'll say one last thing which is uh this is this is the the material of a book i'm trying to write which will also i think take the form of a lament by which i mean i lament the fact that philosophy by and large has um

1:24:26discarded the daimon reflection practice can you all hear me i think yeah you're still you're still you're a little choppy but you're coming through charles okay great well maybe i'll just end with this by saying i i think there is something um to be lamented about the daimons disappearance from modern philosophy and maybe more positively to say something to be looked forward to to be anticipated if we can recover revive um this part of the blatantist tradition as uh living and you'll see a sense you'll get a sense of that by conversation

1:25:20i think charles unstable internet yeah he said i think he was going to say you'll get to see a sense of that if you see the conversations that he and i had around the daemon um i i i hope i'm foreseeing him correctly, which he's nodding. So I think I did. So, yeah, I'm back. And you said it, John. Yeah, you got it. You finished the sentence. Good. Good. And just to reinforce that some of you know, this came up in the conversation that I had with Charles a couple of times, both public and private. He also wrote the very wonderful book, The Divine Double. it's a good book also to perhaps read in preparation for the course because I think it also gives you that it gives you a different sense of people as individuals rather than individuals that opens you up to the kind of argument that Charles is going to be presenting in his course and it's and it's just a bloody wonderful book too it's extremely well written so I would recommend that too yeah i had trouble categorizing i just have to say quickly i'm just like chomping at the bit this makes me almost physically ill how good the course is i'm like having i'm having i'm having a hard time staying in my seat actually you don't find anything like this in the academy you don't find anything that like this at university not really you get a smattering of courses that people can link together but what they don't have is like six courses by the people that do that best linked together along an idea, not one idea.

1:26:57This isn't a survey course on one idea. It's like, it's obviously more living transformational and comprehensive than that. Like this is a series of very complex ideas that interlock wonderfully and powerfully. And, and you get to just do this over a year. That doesn't, it just doesn't exist. I've never seen, I've never seen such a thing. I mean, I just, I, I, I don't know. I don't know what to do with myself sitting here and hearing what you guys are going to teach. I mean, it's just absolutely, it's absolutely wonderful. And it's so needed. God, I wish this, I'm so happy to be a part of this thing.

1:27:33I wish this was around when I was in my formative time learning things. This is exactly the, this is exactly the trajectory I'd want to be on. What an exciting program you guys have put together. Wow. I mean, Mark, you took the words out of my mouth. Like you said pretty much what I was going to say, which is that it was so hard for me to categorize Charles's course as purely like a theological course in some way. And then when I looked at the course slate, oh, I realized I can't do that to any course. It doesn't, it's not possible. And it's because of the ways in which I think what we're looking at pulls and tug so strongly on so many lines that are interconnected, that to try and tear them apart is almost, well, it's impossible.

1:28:19It's really impossible. And I want to name for folks, and I've spoken to all of y 'all individually a number of times, all of the membership stuff that I talked about earlier, like say things like lectern Q &As, while the course that is running is in session, like say during Mark's course, during Charles's course, during Brandon's course, these guys will be the ones doing lectern Q &As. Yes, yes. So that John gets to take a break. But it's also that you guys can ask questions and get a different take or a different angle from what you might be used to with John. And I'll be hosting them as always, but I'm happy to learn from you guys as well.

1:29:00I'm so excited to be able to sit in that room. And Charles, I don't want to hold you if you're taking too long, but I am also holding that question of just sort of like, as we sort of open each other's courses up, what are we actually converging around? What is the lectern 2026?

1:29:24I don't know. I mean, I have a similar reaction to Mark, which is, you know, this is the first time I'm hearing all of our courses linked together. And I'm trying to see, okay, I like Mark sort of marveling at the interconnection, the Zen Buddhism, that inside the Zen, Zen Neoplatonism. I mean, it makes me want to take the whole series as well, not just teach my unit. Can we? Can we take the whole series? Can I take the whole series? The answer is yes. No requirement to do so, but the option and the extended permission is given to you. Yes. Can I just, just Charles, just quick. Just to give you just a little bit more food for your response.

1:30:14After hearing everybody talk about the courses that they're planning on building, one thing that might not be obvious from the initiatory course that I'm going to be doing is while we're doing modern cutting edge computational neuroscience. I never teach science that I don't think is transformational. I'm not interested in this at all. So I'm more and more eschewing informational approaches to transformational approaches. And actually, this computational neuroscience, I do it because, because really at my heart, because it's the right framework for revealing the meaning making structures that I'm that I'm most interested in.

1:30:59And I feel that this is actually, it's like a neuroscience of emptiness or this is what it lends itself to. So the end discussions that we have, like we're going to be starting with how does the perception system work? What are emotions, feelings, and moods? We're going to look into addiction and depression and the meaning crisis. But then the whole tail end is starting from this principled approach to what a cognitive system is. How do we best take care of that system? And the answer is exactly the kind of courses you guys are teaching. which is it directly dovetails with the wisdom and spiritual traditions because it turns out that things that are within all of those traditions are just the right ones to care for and to mature and to help this sort of system transcend the ordinary boundaries it's stuck within.

1:31:47So it really is a kind of neuroscience of wisdom. But we stopped there because I don't have years and I don't have all year. I just sort of stopped like here's the mechanics. So how wonderful that And just get picked up from there with, okay, now we've got the mechanics. What do we do with them? Like, let's fill that in, which looks like it might be the rest of the year. Ending with the most theological, which is just perfect, actually. You know, start from neurons and information and then end with the deeply spiritual and religious and theological. It's just a lovely arc. I also want to reinforce what Mark said.

1:32:25I think Charles's course is summative in a very important way because there's a deep sense in which the dialogos that is like a running thread through a lot of my work. Charles is trying to bring back, recover or renew. I don't know what the right verb is. This deeply dialogical aspect. I mean, like intra-psychically and intra-psychically, dialogical aspect of philosophy that, of course, is strongly associated with Socrates. And it's no coincidence that that figure also had the divine sign, the daemon. Right. And like for me, this this this question about the relationship between recovering the daemon, the dialogical aspect of our capacity for self-transcendence and philosophy, especially philosophy is the cultivation of wisdom.

1:33:20I think this is pivotal. And so that's why I'm glad that we end on Charles's course. Like you said, Mark, we do the mechanics and then Brendan gives us the history. And then Charles, I think in a very powerful way, brings it to summation. Yeah, I want to also jump in here because I meet a lot of people in a practice context. And they might all be in the same room. They might spend a lot of time together, three days, five days, 10 days. And each of them come from a different angle. Hey, what's the neuroscience about this, right? Where's the providence? Or they'll ask me big questions of how does it sit like philosophically?

1:34:00What about this, if not that? And something that, so just watching all of you talked through your courses that's really kind of like floated up to the surface for me is actually the ways in which all of those lines were never very clear in the first place. They were always very blurred. And I've seen people do stuff and practice in a particular way to describe science with religion and they don't know that they're doing it, right? But I look at it and I I cannot ignore it, thanks to you guys, and my life is better for it. So that really leans into, for me, the ways in which I've seen people's meaning-making structures evolve as an individual over time.

1:34:51And that can go from like, oh, I really want to feel a particular way, or I hold this worldview of my life. And over a period of time, go, hang on, wait a second. and to watch them complexify is a really, really amazing thing. So I'm personally, yes, very happy that Charles, you're doing your course. I imagine you can still hear this even though it's internet cut out, right? Because it grounds it in provenance and it grounds it in the tradition. And I'm also super excited that Brendan, you're coming on and going. Yes, totally. Crack this longer pattern. Look at what's happened from before. It's not just about the Greeks.

1:35:29It's even before then. so bless you but i just want to i just want to emphasize that you know and brendan's doing this amazing thing of doing the big like he's doing it individual and collectively but he's he's really doing a deep interweaving of you know epistemological and ontological development um and that is a very that's like a linchpin move in the entire arc of the entire argument running through all the courses So, yeah, I'll turn things over to Brandon. Knowing, being, valuing. Amazing. Yeah. Yeah, no, that's a great way of framing that because bringing the epistemological lens here is, I think, really important.

1:36:09And to see the kind of structures and patterns, that that's not a radically arbitrary process, that there are certain kinds of ways that that tends to unfold, whether that's in the individual lifespan in terms of how those kinds of paradigm shifts in the way that we think about things and make meaning how those occur. To see a through line in our own meaning making processes is, I think, itself very revelatory because a lot of the the beautiful pluralism that we experience these days can also be bewildering, bewildering to people in terms of how can you connect these dots or is everything just sort of different?

1:36:45So one of the core aspects of this is being able to see that there are ways of understanding how you can connect up, whether that's historically or developmentally or in these different sorts of ways, how ideas sort of lead into each other, how things actually kind of unfold. And there's a process to it rather than just sort of a chaotic jumble. There is some sort of method to the madness of our meaning making. So that's a really interesting thread. But the epistemological lens there, I think, is really elucidating. And, you know, the developmental tradition that kind of comes from what John Piaget would call the genetic epistemological approach of seeing how ideas can be sort of tracked in a kind of evolving way is when you can apply that to questions of your own way of thinking about ultimate concern is very fascinating.

1:37:36There's actually a kind of processual logic by means of which certain key theological and meaning rich ideas unfold. And so to be able to map that is, I think, again, just very revelatory and provides a bit more structure and pattern to what can otherwise seem a rather bewildering way that these processes unfold. So the epistemological thing and then seeing that process through history is a really fascinating question. So that's going to be one of the things that we're going to be focusing on and raising as a serious point of inquiry. To what degree do individual meaning making processes have isomorphic similarities to what the kind of broader human path of meaning making has looked like?

1:38:21Obviously, we want to hold that question with a lot of openness and nuance. There are ways that, you know, these can be alighted in very simplistic manners. But at the same time, there seems to be, you know, a kind of path or arc that the individual goes on. And to what degree can we use patterns that show up in those contexts to look at kind of the human evolutionary, cultural evolutionary story and see potentially similar kinds of processes underway? So that's a big open inquiry we'll be exploring. I think something is becoming clear to me. There's a book I use in Seeing God Again for the First Time, Part Two, Circling the Elephant by Thadam Adalil.

1:39:01Because a part of the prep for my course is I'm going through all the cross-cultural philosophy. How do you do cross-cultural philosophy? How do you do comparative theology? All of that. The students don't have to read that. You just have to read the books. But he does a turn, a phrase, and it's a turn of orientation. And I think we're the through line. What is happening here is we are one of the things we're doing. We're doing many things. But one of the things we're doing is we're actually saying pluralism isn't a problem. Pluralism is a promise. And we can show you how to appropriate that promise.

1:39:43and live it out. And I think that's what's really powerfully happening. Yeah. And maybe just to, to, to piggyback on that for a second. I mean, that's part, I mean, John, you mentioned this sort of paradigm shift to this conversation that's developing and things coming together, things getting integrated. It seems like there is a kind of, there's something in the air. There's a kind of Weltgeist shift underway here. And I think it speaks to some of this. I mean, this is sort of one of the core explorations in meta-modern discourses moving uh through and beyond post-modern pluralism into something that can bring that uh bring coherence to that pluralism right so the threat of pluralism as people experience it tends to be a kind of radical relativism which then can be experienced as a kind of nihilism oh well if if this is my meaning making structure and you've got a different one then i guess it doesn't what you know and so So being able to encounter that, but move through it to a wider expanse where you can have a space where you can hold that plurality, but with coherence, I think is the promise of this kind of paradigm shift that we're exploring.

1:40:51And so I think that that's really a key thread. Excellent. And Brandon, if I understood what you said right, you're starting from sort of information theoretic approaches, right? You're thinking about information and thermodynamics. Exactly the same place I'm starting. this uh this cognitive science program that's emerged is is is a unit is potentially the first unifying theory based right down in information science and so you're you're um you're you're preaching to the choir here man i love i love this point of moving past pluralism to something that can hold it together it's it's lovely well and and and on that note that is a really interesting touchstone for a lot of this is you know when one part of the confusion of that uh pluralism is in the academy itself and and and the the uh different ways that um in the different disciplines and the different fields of knowledge different approaches different methods different theories one of the things that seems core to this integrated pluralism that's emerging in a real way is the integration of being able to link up these kinds of uh approaches and methods and knowledge theories together so that you know i mean when you read a book for example like what is Life by Schrodinger.

1:41:58You've got a physicist talking about biology, but bringing a physicist's notion to the question of what is life. And all of a sudden, you've made this transdisciplinary move where you're bringing these deep principles into a whole new realm and opening up a whole new way of thinking about something. And I see that happening right now across these different fields where there's a kind of shared vocabulary and grammar starting to come online. And I think information theory and thermodynamics is a big part of that systems theory, because you're able to bring together these disparate ways of looking at the world and see a profound unity or a kind of wholeness to it that goes all the way up these different levels of emergence, this different layers of complexity.

1:42:37But there's a deep continuity and a kind of integration that kind of binds it all together. And I think that that's felt in a very viscerally profound, meaningful way is, oh, yeah, you know, there is a cosmos at the end of the day that, you know, there's an ordered whole to this amidst this beautiful diversity.

1:42:58I feel so humbled just being with you all. It's really overwhelming. My God, thank you all for coming on, for doing this. And I mean, if you are interested in seeing how all of these lines thread together, take it from me. I don't understand everything. When I started watching your videos, John, listening to interviews that you've done, Brendan, it's hard to grab. It's hard to grok. It's tricky to understand. but what makes it easier? What made it easier for me to understand John was talking to John. What made it easier to understand... Brendan, I read your stuff a lot because we go through on the Utah circle, right?

1:44:03I will admit to your face, I didn't fully understand what you were about until I talked to you. And I think that's kind of what, John, you were naming at the start of the session that we've done today. It's a different way of being together. There's a different way of talking about complex ideas that doesn't reduce them, doesn't make them simple, retains their complexity, but you learn the navigational stance. And I think that's tremendously affording. There is one small, not so small, shiny thing that I want to show off before we close. But I want to hear what you have to say, John, before we close off this segment.

1:44:46How has all of this sort of landed for you? For me? First of all, I just want to, I think Charles is gone now because he has to catch his flight. So hopefully he'll watch the recording later. And I just wanted to thank him. And I want to thank Brendan. Brendan, I'm so happy that you're going to be working and so happy. And I hope this is the beginning of an ongoing relationship with the lectern. You're most welcome here. And of course, Mark and I, we are destined to work together until I die. You know, we've got papers that we're both working on. We collaborate at the University of Toronto. And then to bring Mark here, and you can all taste the crispness of his mind and the sweetness of his enthusiasm.

1:45:38I'm just so, so, so grateful. So, Ethan, the way you've threaded this is, well, I mean, you are the master threader. You do this when we do the Q &As. You do this when we're working together. I, you know, a man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what is a heaven for? This is definitely exceeding my grasp.

1:46:04And to some degree, you know, I mean, I've learned from all of you. I continue to learn from all of you. But to some degree, I've influenced all of you. And to see that taken up and to see it affording you to contribute in such a creative and rich fashion to the lectern, I'm extremely happy. And I don't mean American happiness about some sort of content. I mean, I have joy in that I think I am more closely comported and in contact with the true, the good, and the beautiful and the meaningful. And so that's what I'm experiencing right now. And I have good reason to believe that that's what will happen for the students who take these courses.

1:46:45And that makes me very happy indeed. As Mark said, and we both work and we work in the same university, in the same department. And I think we're both loyal to U of T, but it doesn't matter. The academic world doesn't do this. And this is a treasure to be a part of. And I want to thank all of you. And I especially want to thank you, Ethan. I told you when we were talking about this the other day, you're a true partner in this. The lectern wouldn't be what it is without you, deeply. And so very, very grateful. Thank you, good sir. It is my duty and my honor. And I do this not because it makes me happy.

1:47:33I do this because it fills me with joy. And so I want to thread one thing through. Mark, Brendan, I don't think I've shown this to you. So this might be your first time seeing this. but I have received some emails over the past year that navigation on the lectern is really hard it's kind of difficult to you know sort of find out where things are and it looks a little bit clunky I know I'm an artist at heart and for a year it has bugged me so this year finally I did something about it. And so I'd like to present to you the new lectern site, which will go up very shortly. You can take a look at this new format.

1:48:25We have a nav bar at the top so that you can access about. You can see our memberships at a glance, courses at a glance. And we have a new segment called insights. And if you're already on the lectern, clicking my dashboard will take you to all of the content. And this is what it looks like.

1:48:47Welcome everybody to the new lectern. These are the courses that are coming up. Generations of Joy, Between East and West, Matters Over Time, Notes on No Thing, Daemons and Divinity. TMX is already up here and that means registrations are open. As the year goes by, you will see these portraits turn to full color. And then that means you can come in and get a spot in that course and get ready to have your mind blown and your life changed. These are all of the courses that are already here. All of the courses that have already been on have been migrated over, so you have access to them anyway. And if you want to know a little bit about how we teach, that's available here in quick blurbs for you to read.

1:49:27You can sign up a membership at the bottom of the screen if you want. If you would like to receive our newsletters, please sign up for our newsletter at the bottom of the page but also they will be collected here anyway in case you missed them some of the wonderful work that's being done by our dear I think I don't know if I call him a marketing guy anymore he's not really doing that he's doing communication he's doing so much of that work David Kemper does a wonderful, wonderful job at taking chunks of John's arguments which will now have Mark's arguments and Brendan's arguments, ideas and turn them into a digestible format that you can read.

1:50:09We thought that was so valuable. And I almost said vulnerable. But yeah, vulnerable and valuable. To have them collected in one place so that you could go through them, share them, cost nothing. By all means, go ahead. If you would like to read something or you saw that newsletter that was like, that was really interesting, you'll find it here. as the courses get populated they're going to show up here and then of course if you happen to have amnesia and forget something about John Verveke you'll find on the about page a wonderful wonderful breakdown of everything here that John has done this is amazing Ethan this is so beautiful thank you very much yeah books videos are available um yeah thank you everybody thank you very very very much everybody um yeah so on the back of that we are we have nine minutes to go i would just like to um plug a few things which are coming and then we can bring this to a close uh today there will be some really interesting things happening.

1:51:30The lectern dialogue second episode that John and I did where I invited Renz and Ellie, who are facilitators in training, will be premiering on YouTube at the top of the hour. So you have just enough time for water in, water out, and then watch that wonderful conversation if you're interested in TiamatX, what we do at tier two. TiamatX will have a Q &A on the 26th, same time, 10 a.m. Eastern, where we'll flip the tables and then John, it's your turn to ask me questions. Let me quote it this way. And then on the 29th, there will be a Silk Road seminar, as you heard mentioned earlier by John with Nicole Baden.

1:52:11And then that's going to be really wonderful. Remember, if you want to come into Silk Road seminar, you're a full-time university student, email me. I'll put you into that guest list so that you can jump into that conversation. and then lastly our first live officially first live on youtube lectern q a will be happening on the 30th and that will be on ecologies of practice we've talked about that quite a fair be quite a fair deal you might first heard it in awakening from the meaning crisis but a lot has happened since then yeah a lot a lot of thoughts a lot of ideas like bring them through and we'll answer those questions.

1:52:50So having said all of that, John, boss, I'm going to turn it over to you to turn us off. Thank you, good sir. Well, it looks like Mark is also gone. So I'm glad I got to thank him. Brendan's still here. I'm really glad to be reconnecting with you, Brendan. We have been connected in a bit and this is really wonderful. I've been watching your work and admiring it, I guess, from afar. And I hope you take this as a compliment because it's intended to be so. You're obviously doing a lot of your own work, but I also like what you're doing with my work and how you're extending it and developing it. That means a lot to me.

1:53:33And so I wanted to say that before we close. One of the things I hope the lectern does is give people a way, in a way that just even coming on, I mean, the lectern courses, coming on and doing like the Silk Road seminars or the lectern dialogues, that's great. But I'm hoping that people can get to know Brendan and Mark and Charles the way I have gotten to know them. And Ethan, you're getting to know them. And because Ananda was the friend and disciple of the Buddha, and Ananda is sweet and charming and he never quite gets it. And his job is to never quite get it, although apparently he had a really good memory.

1:54:20And he once came to the Buddha and he said, I think that half of the way is the people we keep company with. And the Buddha turned to him and said, no, Ananda, that is the whole of the way. And Plato said something very, very similar, especially in his letters and in the dialogues. Keeping deep company with good people who are oriented towards the true, the good, the beautiful, and the meaningful is one of the best ways in which you can deeply and consistently, reliably improve your life in a way that it goes beyond what sort of popular culture and market capitalism can do for you. Many of you are now coming to the realization that while they have done and will continue to do wonderful things, they have also left a lot of important things out that are not being addressed.

1:55:16And they're also offering threats to us now that they're not, that it doesn't seem like they're capable of addressing in a way that can help us now. I'm not saying the lectern can comprehensively or completely do this, but it's a damn good start for doing it. And you've got some of the best people to offer that. And so I want to really give you a strong invitation. If you're already a student, please continue. I love my students, and I think they know that. And if you're not a student, really consider. I think this is very, very important and transformative in a way that you'll find in very short term and very long term, very, very enriching.

1:56:10So that's how I'm going to end it. But I wanted to make that very clear call to people and make it as crystal clear as I could what's being offered here and why it's so imperative that you consider it deeply.

1:56:30And with that, that's what we have in store for Lectern 2026. Thank you very, very much. We welcome you in. The door's already open. Don't bother knocking. You're invited. See you very, very soon. And thank you all for watching.

1:56:57Thank you.