JOHN VERVAEKE | Religion and Psycho-technologies (w/ Christopher Mastropietro)

I had a rich discussion with philosopher and cognitive scientist John Vervaeke and his writing partner Christopher Masteropietro about religion for people ‘between worlds’; in other words, for those who can’t accept either traditional religion or mere atheism. We talked about the need for what John has called psycho-technologies, such as meditation and dia-logos. Our central question was: how do we recover the sacred in the age of science, expand the meaning of our rationality, and find meaning in an age of nihilism, fundamentalism, and the meaning crisis? John believes we are on the cusp of a paradigm shift which resembles the axial age. But the ‘two worlds’ mythology of the axial age no longer will satisfy our rationality or religious longing in the quantum and virtual age. This means we live in a time of radical reinvention and rediscovery of meaning.