Anatheism: Rediscovering God in a Secular Age by R.Sheldrake

In this talk, Rupert Sheldrake explores the theme of finding God again, in an increasingly secular society. Drawing from personal experiences in India and his journey through various spiritual traditions, Rupert provides insights into anatheism, or returning to God, and how this process is unfolding in a post-Christian world. He touches on the connections between science and spirituality, the value of pilgrimage and sacred places, and the emerging concept of panpsychism, which considers consciousness as a fundamental quality in nature. An engaging Q&A session with the audience dives deeper into perennial philosophy, the role of feminine energy in Christianity, and the impact of psychedelics on spiritual practices.

Chapters:

00:00:00 - Introduction and Rupert Sheldrake's Early Life
00:00:28 - Anatheism and Rediscovering God
00:01:38 - Secular Society and Belief Systems
00:02:29 - Diverse Spiritual Traditions and Modern Challenges
00:04:12 - Sheldrake's Childhood, Boarding School, and Methodism
00:08:14 - Transition to Atheism and Science Education
00:12:59 - Morphic Resonance and Intellectual Crisis
00:15:24 - Scholarship at Harvard and Intellectual Shift
00:16:20 - Thomas Kuhn and Scientific Paradigms
00:20:15 - Epiphany Philosophers and New Directions
00:24:08 - Discovering Morphic Resonance and New Research Paths
00:26:01 - Time in India and Influence on Research
00:32:10 - Work in Plant Development and Spiritual Awakening
00:34:09 - Immersed in Indian and Tibetan Traditions
00:38:17 - Spiritual Advice from a Hindu Guru
00:41:25 - Father Bede Griffiths and Catholic Mysticism
00:46:12 - The Trinity and Sacred Mysticism
00:48:35 - Logos and Holy Spirit
00:52:07 - Panpsychism and Cosmic Mind
00:57:06 - Scientific Research and Spiritual Practices
01:00:07 - Revival of Pilgrimage and Urban Spiritual Centers
01:03:40 - Audience Question 1: Perennial Philosophy and Interfaith Dialog
01:07:51 - Audience Question 2: Role of Feminine Energy in Christianity
01:12:25 - Audience Question 3: Philosophy, Technology, and Connection with the Divine
01:19:20 - Audience Question 4: Encounters with Krishnamurti and David Bohm

Prayer, alongside meditation, is an integral part of religious traditions.

God can be prayed to but also saints and angels. In this episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues, Rupert and Mark ask whether and why prayer is not widely discussed, how prayer can be practiced, and what prayer might be.

They share personal practices of prayer and explore the agency of angels and saints. They ask about the entities that people report encountering when using psychedelics, alongside other questions such as how to pray for people and what can be expected from prayer.

The desire to pray seems to be an almost universal human impulse. Much more might be made of it.

Alison Milbank discusses her new book with Rupert Sheldrake, covering the current threats to the parish system in England and its potential for spiritual revival. Alison first summarizes the main themes of her book, and then she and Rupert explore a variety of ways in which parish churches and communities could be revitalized.

Alison Milbank is a Professor of Theology and Nottingham University and Canon Theologian at Southwell Cathedral. She is a leading figure in the Save The Parish movement. https://www.savetheparish.com

Dr Rupert Sheldrake, PhD, is a biologist and author best known for his hypothesis of morphic resonance. At Cambridge University he worked in developmental biology as a Fellow of Clare College. He was Principal Plant Physiologist at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics and From 2005 to 2010 was Director of the Perrott-Warrick project, Cambridge. https://www.sheldrake.org

Concerning the possibility or claim that there is presently occuring a sort of revival of spirituality in our culture, I could just offer a few humble observations from my own life. I don't see it happening. In the "spiritual but not religious" category which I am in myself, which supposedly is expanding in the population, it really hasn't been the case over the last 30 years or so. There was a wave of interest in "new age" spirituality in the 1970s to the 1990's, but it mostly died out. Since then there have been several non-Christian spiritual organizations, notably the Center for Spiritual Living, that teach a nonreligious spirituality with a few new age and paranormal flavors that I tend to gravitate towards, but they have struggled to keep up interest and membership in a few existing centers, with some local branches losing too many members to keep operating. Typically the average age of members keeps increasing. It has looked to me at least from the local perspective that our society has just been becoming more and more divided between the completely secular and non-spiritual, and fundamentalist Christian denominations which have seemed to be expanding at least according to some surveys. This trend is somewhat poisonous from my perspective. 

The only positive trend in these matters that I can see is the evident slow spreading of awareness and acceptance of the existence of some paranormal phenomena (in particular NDEs) in the general population (not the scientists and engineers and academics).

Probably this is enough on that, so as not to get too involved in religious controversy which is rightly discouraged in this forum.

Probably this is enough on that, so as not to get too involved in religious controversy which is rightly discouraged in this forum.

Yeah I wasn't trying to get too deep into politics, I just think these efforts are quite interesting from the spiritual side.

Regular attendance in any house of worship has definitely been on a downward trend, but I'm not sure things will stay that way. There are hints of religious revival, including the ritual/community of certain mediumship practices.

Sometimes we think we're on an infinitely progressing (or regressing) line, but we may actually be in a more circular historical trend as suggest[ed] by John Greer:

The Unicorn, the Phoenix, and the Dragon

Let’s take them one at a time. The unicorn, as I trust all my readers know, is the most elusive of beasts as well as the most magical. It moves silently through the greenwood, leaving only the very occasional mark of its cloven hooves to tantalize hunters, charcoal burners, and stray princesses. Here it represents the first phase of the life cycle of a civilization, which is similarly reticent about leaving records and other detailed traces in the soil of history, and is similarly full of magic. Unicorn Time is the age when emotionally charged representations of the sort just described dominate human consciousness, and as at least some of my readers will have guessed, such representations are central to the art of magic.

The phoenix is also a magical beast, but it is far less silent and elusive. There is only one phoenix at a time, and after a lifespan of five centuries or so, it builds a great nest in one of the desert cities of Egypt or Arabia, fashioning it out of scented woods and resins. Once it has finished the nest, it settles into it and waits for the rising of the Sun, which ignites the nest and burns nest and phoenix alike to ashes. In the ashes appears a worm, which eventually becomes the next phoenix. Phoenix Time is the age when concrete representations and abstract concepts are both strongly present in human consciousness, interpenetrate each other, and produce an exuberant cultural and intellectual flowering, which promptly burns itself out in a most phoenix-like fashion and gives way to the next phase.

The dragon is not a magical beast, except insofar as it enjoys adding magical objects to its hoard. In theory, a dragon could do just about anything it happens to want to do, but in practice, what it wants to do is gather a great heap of treasure and lie on it, sleeping or drowsily counting and sorting every last gold coin. It is a truly fearsome beast in its prime, capable of gulping down any number of second-string heroes, but despite the claims of certain popular songs, dragons don’t live forever, and sooner or later someone is going to leap boldly past the flames and drive a sharp point into its heart. Dragon Time is the age when abstract concepts, heaped up like gold in a dragon’s hoard, dominate human consciousness and suppress magic—for a time.

C.S Lewis is not the apologist and writer you might assume, if Jason Baxter is right. Plato, Boethius and Dante mattered immensely to a man who felt more at home in the medieval world, and longed to inspire the modern world with a half-forgotten theophany. His friend, Owen Barfield, also anticipated a transfigured today, one in which participation with divine life was known by ourselves and within the inside of the whole world. Christianity itself would recover its experiential, mystical core, the friends hoped, and be less eclipsed by credal and moral formulations. In this conversation, Jason Baxter and Mark Vernon explore matters from Christian Platonism and the Incarnation, to the Eschaton and the strangeness of miracles. What might Lewis and Barfield have talked about in private? How closely are the soulmates' visions entwined? Why does Christianity need to recover its oddness and surprise, drawing on the past and being drawn by a renewed future?

This lecture sets the stage for discussion on the mythopoeia of Tolkien, Lewis, and the Inklings. We examine Tolkien and Lewis' idea of 'true myth', and how fantasy or fiction literature can be used to communicate the faith.