This is the first half of a discussion in which Layman and the Rabbi Marc Gafni discuss the origins, nature, community use, philosophical necessity, and intriguing extensions of the tripartite concept of pre-tragic, tragic & post-tragic.
Parallax hosts this second dialogue: Zak Stein moderates an intense conversation between Dr. Iain McGilchrist and Dr. Marc Gafni
This is the second dialogue between Dr. Marc Gafni, Iain McGilchrist and Zak Stein at Parallax:
See Part 1 Dialogue (The Sacred Power of Story) HERE:
The dialogue spans the sacred nature of story, the loss of value and eros, the nature of evil, and the deep structures shaping culture today.
In Part 2, the conversation turns explicitly toward the question of value itself — whether the sacred is intrinsic to reality or merely projected, and what is at stake in that distinction.
Iain McGilchrist is a British psychiatrist, literary scholar, and one of the most important philosophical voices of our time. He is best known for The Master and His Emissary and *The Matter With Things*, where he argues that the left and right hemispheres of the brain attend to the world in fundamentally different ways, with massive consequences for civilization. His work bridges neuroscience, philosophy, art, and depth psychology, offering a vision of human consciousness grounded in attention, embodiment, and reverence.
Dr. Marc Gafni is a visionary philosopher, spiritual teacher, and social theorist. A former Orthodox rabbi with a doctorate from Oxford University, he is the co-founder of the Center for World Philosophy and Religion and a leading voice in the articulation of “cosmo-erotic humanism.” His books include *Your Unique Self*, *A Return to Eros*, and *Radical Kabbalah*. Gafni’s work fuses Jewish mysticism, integral theory, and Western philosophy to explore the nature of self, eros, and value at the evolutionary edge of human identity and spirituality.
Zak Stein is a Harvard-trained education and transformation philosopher known for his work on developmental ethics, meta-crisis, and the future of human learning.
Published by World Philosophy and Religion Press in conjunction with Integral Wisdom Publishers.
Title: Live Your Story: The Categorical Imperative of Reality: Reality is an Outrageous, Evolutionary Love Story: Reality is a Unique Self Symphony of Stories, Rooted in a Shared Story of Value
Author: Dr. Marc Gafni
Series: Oral Essay Series – Volume 32
Publisher: World Philosophy and Religion Press in conjunction with Integral Wisdom Publishers.
ISBN-13: 979-8888340936
Formats: Paperback, e-book, audiobook.
CHAPTER 1 TAKE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE GOD VOICE: PERFORMING EVOLUTION AS YOUR UNIQUE STORY
CHAPTER 2 GOD IS REAL, GOD IS STORY
CHAPTER 3 THE DIGNITY OF HUMANITY: BEING THE SAVIORS OF GOD
CHAPTER 4 OUR FIRST CONVERSATION ON THE CONVERSATIONAL COSMOS
CHAPTER 5 LIVE YOUR STORY: THE FIRST COMMANDMENT OF COSMOS
CHAPTER 6 OUR FRIEND YUVAL HARARI GOT IT SO WRONG & WHY IT MATTERS: INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER 7 WHY YUVAL HARARI GOT IT SO WRONG, PART 2: THE ETERNAL TAO IS THE EVOLVING TAO
CHAPTER 8 FROM GEORGE ORWELL TO B.F. SKINNER TO YUVAL HARARI: THE DECONSTRUCTION OF MEANING AND VALUE AS THE ROOT CAUSE OF THE META-CRISIS
CHAPTER 9 NO “NEXUS” WITHOUT SHARED VALUE: RESPONSE TO YUVAL HARARI
CHAPTER 10 INTIMACY IS CONVERSATION: THE THIRTEEN BROKEN CONVERSATIONS WE NEED TO HEAL AND THE EVOLUTION OF CONVERSATION
CHAPTER 11 MY FAIR LADY: THE REVOLUTIONARY RESPONSE TO TECHNO FEUDALIST UTOPIANISM IN ALL ITS DISTRESSING DISGUISES
CHAPTER 12 MY FAIR LADY: THE GOOD SOCIETY—PRODUCT OF THE PROGRAMMED, OR LOVED INTO EXISTENCE BY SHE? PART 2
CHAPTER 13 THE REVOLUTIONARY ACT IS THE LOVE STORY: LOVE IS NOT AN ALGORITHM
CHAPTER 14 WHY MOVING BEYOND YOUR STORY IS NOT ENOUGH: TO BE FULLY ENLIGHTENED MEANS TO GET YOUR STORY STRAIGHT
CHAPTER 15 VALUE AND ANTI-VALUE, STORY AND ANTI-STORY: SIX ELEMENTS OF STORY FROM SUBATOMIC PARTICLES TO THE LORD OF THE RINGS
CHAPTER 16 THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION: THE URGENT NEED OF OUR TIME
Dr. Marc Gafni is a leading public intellectual and teacher impacting the source code of global culture.
Gafni is a visionary thinker, social activist and passionate philosopher. He is known for his “source code teachings”, including Unique Self theory and the Five Selves, the Amorous Cosmos, A Politics of Evolutionary Love, A Return to Eros and Digital Intimacy.
He is author of twenty five books, of which the first ten have been published, including the award-winning Your Unique Self: The Radical Path to Personal Enlightenment.
He holds his doctorate in philosophy from Oxford University, as well as Orthodox rabbinic ordination.
He teaches on the cutting edge of philosophy in the West, helping to evolve a new ‘dharma’ or meta-theory of Integral meaning that is helping to re-shape key pivoting points in global consciousness and culture, with the aim of participating in the articulation of what Dr. Gafni together with Dr. Zak Stein and colleagues are calling CosmoErotic Humanism.
At the core of CosmoErotic Humanism is what Dr. Gafni and Dr. Stein are calling ‘First Principles and First Values’, Anthro-Ontology and a “Universal Grammar of Value”.
This is the ground of a new shared universe story and a new narrative of identity for the new human and the new humanity. This is what they are calling the emergence from Homo sapiens to Homo Amor.
This shared story rooted in First Principles and First Values can then serve as the matrix for a global ethos for a global civilization.
Gafni is considered by many to be a kind of Einstein of Philosophy who is leading a team of thinkers articulating a new vision of meaning for the world.
Dr. Gafni is the Co-Founder together with Ken Wilber and Sally Kempton of the Center for World Philosophy and Religion where he serves as its co-president. Together with Dr. Zak Stein, they are co-leading a team of thinkers, articulating a new vision of meaning for the world.
In 2014 Dr. Gafni co-initiated the Success 3.0 Summit and Rise Up movie, whose method and movement is to bring together key thought leaders and change-agents to collaboratively evolve a bold new Integral vision of Success, rooted in the entrepreneurial values of Wake Up, Grow Up, Show Up, and Outrageous Love.
Over the past 30 years, Dr. Gafni has developed evolutionary and activist programs rooted in his commitment to what he has termed “participating in the evolution of love.” Together with author and social innovator Barbara Marx Hubbard, he is working on a series of new works revolving around Evolutionary Spirituality.
Explore the Great Library:
Center for World Philosophy & Religion – Oral Essay Series → https://worldphilosophyandreligion.org/books/
Learn about the full Oral Essays series:
Complete Oral Essay Series → https://worldphilosophyandreligion.org/oral-essays-series-one-mountain-marc-gafni/
Dr. Marc Gafni Official Website:
https://marcgafni.com/
Center for World Philosophy and Religion:
https://worldphilosophyandreligion.org/
Free Weekly Broadcast with Dr. Marc Gafni:
https://www.onemountainmanypaths.org/
Join the community Who We Must Become:
https://who-we-must-become-3166d4.circle.so/
Free Unique Self Mini Course:
https://www.uniqueselfinstitute.com/the-unique-self-mini-course/
Formal refutations on controversy:
WhoIsMarcGafni.com
Social Media Dr. Marc Gafni:
Substack: https://substack.com/@marcgafni
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marcgafni/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MarcGafni
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrMarcGafni
Twitter:https://twitter.com/MarcGafni
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmarcgafni/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drmarcgafni
We’re in a time between worlds and a time between stories. We are in a postmodern era characterized by the deconstruction of intrinsic value and the deconstruction of the Story of Value. But story is not merely a human construct that is useful for cohering society (as the postmodern zeitgeist suggests). Story is an ontology of Cosmos. Story is a First Principle and First Value of Cosmos. The deepest readings of interior and exterior sciences now demonstrate that Reality is a Story. And Reality is not just an ordinary story—Reality is a love story. Eros itself is not merely the mechanics of Reality; it is the value of Reality. Eros is value and value is filled with Eros. Reality is animated by the music of ErosValue.
The failure to recognize ourselves as living within a Story of ErosValue has led to the meaning crisis that is the hallmark of our contemporary human experience. This vacuum of ErosValue has been filled in modernity and postmodernity by the pseudo-erotic story, the success story. The success story is defined by rivalrous conflict governed by win/lose metrics.
This success story in which we live today is one of the primary generator functions for the meta-crisis. As such it is entirely accurate to diagnose the meta-crisis as the failure to recognize that we live within a “Story of Value that is the very fabric of the Real.” It is only the articulation of a new Story of Value rooted in First Principles and First Values that has the ability to respond to the meta-crisis of existential and catastrophic risks we face today.
Published by World Philosophy and Religion Press in conjunction with Integral Wisdom Publishers.
Title: Story Is Real: Reality Is a Story of Value, Rooted in First Principles and First Values: Only a New Story of Value Can Respond to Existential and Catastrophic Risk
Author: Dr. Marc Gafni
Series: Oral Essay Series – Volume 31
Publisher: World Philosophy and Religion Press in conjunction with Integral Wisdom Publishers.
ISBN-13: 979-8888340615
Formats: Paperback, e-book, audiobook.
CHAPTER 1 A TIME BETWEEN WORLDS, A TIME BETWEEN STORIES—TELLING THE NEW STORY
CHAPTER 2 BIRTHING THE NEW POLITICAL BODY THROUGH THE PERSONAL BODY
CHAPTER 3 YOUR UNIQUE STORY IS CHAPTER AND VERSE IN THE LOVE STORY OF THE UNIVERSE
CHAPTER 4 HEALING THE GLOBAL INTIMACY DISORDER
CHAPTER 5 HEALING THE GLOBAL INTIMACY DISORDER THROUGH A NEW STORY OF VALUE, ROOTED IN FIRST PRINCIPLES AND FIRST VALUES
CHAPTER 6 “I’M WILLING TO LET YOU LOVE ME UNCONDITIONALLY”—THE NEXT CHAPTER IN THE UNIVERSE: A LOVE STORY
CHAPTER 7 THE EMERGENCE OF HOMO AMOR: TRANSFORMING THE WAY WE LOVE
CHAPTER 8 GOD NEEDS MY STORY—MY LIFE IS A SACRED AUTOBIOGRAPHY WRITTEN IN THE ONE HEART OF THE DIVINE
CHAPTER 9 TELLING THE EVOLUTIONARY STORY OF CRUCIFIXION AND RESURRECTION
CHAPTER 10 FROM VALUES TO VALUE AND A STORY OF VALUE: FROM MY PRECIOUS AS ANTI-VALUE TO THE STORY OF VALUE IN THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING
CHAPTER 11 ARE YOU ALLURING TO GOD? THE GREAT QUESTION OF COSMOEROTIC HUMANISM
CHAPTER 12 TELLING A NEW STORY EQUAL TO OUR NEW POWER, PART 1
CHAPTER 13 TELLING A NEW STORY EQUAL TO OUR NEW POWER, PART 2
CHAPTER 14 CONVERSATION ON STORY WITH AUBREY MARCUS
We Respond to the Collapse of Story by Telling a New Story
The Moment I Love One Thing, I’m in the Love Story
The Plotlines of Reality
The Evolution of Story
Dr. Marc Gafni is a leading public intellectual and teacher impacting the source code of global culture.
Gafni is a visionary thinker, social activist and passionate philosopher. He is known for his “source code teachings”, including Unique Self theory and the Five Selves, the Amorous Cosmos, A Politics of Evolutionary Love, A Return to Eros and Digital Intimacy.
He is author of twenty five books, of which the first ten have been published, including the award-winning Your Unique Self: The Radical Path to Personal Enlightenment.
He holds his doctorate in philosophy from Oxford University, as well as Orthodox rabbinic ordination.
He teaches on the cutting edge of philosophy in the West, helping to evolve a new ‘dharma’ or meta-theory of Integral meaning that is helping to re-shape key pivoting points in global consciousness and culture, with the aim of participating in the articulation of what Dr. Gafni together with Dr. Zak Stein and colleagues are calling CosmoErotic Humanism.
At the core of CosmoErotic Humanism is what Dr. Gafni and Dr. Stein are calling ‘First Principles and First Values’, Anthro-Ontology and a “Universal Grammar of Value”.
This is the ground of a new shared universe story and a new narrative of identity for the new human and the new humanity. This is what they are calling the emergence from Homo sapiens to Homo Amor.
This shared story rooted in First Principles and First Values can then serve as the matrix for a global ethos for a global civilization.
Gafni is considered by many to be a kind of Einstein of Philosophy who is leading a team of thinkers articulating a new vision of meaning for the world.
Dr. Gafni is the Co-Founder together with Ken Wilber and Sally Kempton of the Center for World Philosophy and Religion where he serves as its co-president. Together with Dr. Zak Stein, they are co-leading a team of thinkers, articulating a new vision of meaning for the world.
In 2014 Dr. Gafni co-initiated the Success 3.0 Summit and Rise Up movie, whose method and movement is to bring together key thought leaders and change-agents to collaboratively evolve a bold new Integral vision of Success, rooted in the entrepreneurial values of Wake Up, Grow Up, Show Up, and Outrageous Love.
Over the past 30 years, Dr. Gafni has developed evolutionary and activist programs rooted in his commitment to what he has termed “participating in the evolution of love.” Together with author and social innovator Barbara Marx Hubbard, he is working on a series of new works revolving around Evolutionary Spirituality.
Explore the Great Library:
Center for World Philosophy & Religion – Oral Essay Series → https://worldphilosophyandreligion.org/books/
Learn about the full Oral Essays series:
Complete Oral Essay Series → https://worldphilosophyandreligion.org/oral-essays-series-one-mountain-marc-gafni/
Dr. Marc Gafni Official Website:
https://marcgafni.com/
Center for World Philosophy and Religion:
https://worldphilosophyandreligion.org/
Free Weekly Broadcast with Dr. Marc Gafni:
https://www.onemountainmanypaths.org/
Join the community Who We Must Become:
https://who-we-must-become-3166d4.circle.so/
Free Unique Self Mini Course:
https://www.uniqueselfinstitute.com/the-unique-self-mini-course/
Formal refutations on controversy:
WhoIsMarcGafni.com
Social Media Dr. Marc Gafni:
Substack: https://substack.com/@marcgafni
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marcgafni/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MarcGafni
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrMarcGafni
Twitter:https://twitter.com/MarcGafni
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmarcgafni/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drmarcgafni
This book is a call to reclaim value as real—because the future of the world depends on it. We live in a time between worlds and a time between stories, as the very existence of humanity is threatened by a meta-crisis. The meta-crisis is a series of interlocking social, political, educational, climate and technological crises, that we can all see and feel in our lives.
So what do we do? First, we need clear sensemaking—we need to understand where this meta-crisis is coming from? In this series of oral essays, we diagnose the root cause: a global intimacy disorder resulting from our personal and collective alienation from the Field of Value.
Shared value is the ground of intimacy. Therefore, our dissociation from the Field of Value is direct cause for the meta crisis whose root is self-evidently a global intimacy disorder.
As such, we have lost touch with each other and with Reality itself; we are no longer intimate with ourselves, with each other or with the Cosmos; we are alienated from the Field of Value, which is all of Reality itself. This is what we term the global intimacy disorder.
Our only response to this critical moment is to listen for the call of the future. The new Story of Value is a memory of the future. We must weave together the leading edge validated insights from all of the premodern, modern, and postmodern streams of wisdom into a new story. In this new story, value is both eternal and evolving, for indeed opposites are joined at the hip in myriad ways at the very heart of Cosmos. We must tell a new Story of Value rooted in First Principles and First Values, and in doing so we create the very future which calls us forth.
Published by World Philosophy and Religion Press in conjunction with Integral Wisdom Publishers.
Title: Value is Real: Reclaiming the Field of Value in a Time Between Stories: Responding to the Call of the Future through the Evolution of Love
Author: Dr. Marc Gafni
Series: Oral Essay Series – Volume 29
Publisher: World Philosophy and Religion Press in conjunction with Integral Wisdom Publishers.
ISBN-13: 979-8888340677
Formats: Paperback, e-book, audiobook.
CHAPTER 1 RESPONDING TO THE META-CRISIS: RELOCATING HUMANITY IN THE FIELD OF VALUE
CHAPTER 2 IS VALUE REAL? THE ORACLE OF OPENAI, AVATAR AND THE FIELD OF VALUE: A MEMORY OF TWO FUTURES
CHAPTER 3 FROM VALUES TO VALUE AND A STORY OF VALUE: FROM MY PRECIOUS AS ANTI-VALUE TO THE STORY OF VALUE IN THE FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING
CHAPTER 4 THE DEGRADATION OF DESIRE—DISCERNING ISRAEL & HAMAS CONFLICT: EVOLVING THE BATTLE OF GOOD & EVIL TO A HIGHER LEVEL OF CONSCIOUSNESS
CHAPTER 5 WHAT WOULD HOMO AMOR DO IN RESPONSE TO HAMAS? MORAL COMPLEXITY IS A SIGN OF HOMO AMOR, MORAL EQUIVALENCE IS THE FAILURE OF HOMO AMOR
CHAPTER 6 HAMAS IS NOT THE PALESTINIANS—HAMAS IS A JIHADI CULTURE OF DEATH: HOMO AMOR STANDS ON THE SIDE OF LIFE
CHAPTER 7 TOWARDS THE POST-TRAGIC HERO, PART ONE
CHAPTER 8 CLARIFIED FIRST VALUES AND FIRST PRINCIPLES GENERATE RIGHTS AND RESPONSIBILITIES
CHAPTER 9 FROM VALUES TO RIGHTS
CHAPTER 10 WHY FIRST PRINCIPLES AND FIRST VALUES SHOULD MATTER SO MUCH
CHAPTER 11 WHY DOES VALUE MATTER? PART 1
CHAPTER 12 BAD NEIGHBOR OR DOG: WHO DO YOU SAVE? THE COSMOEROTIC PRINCIPLE OF CONTINUITY AND DISCONTINUITY
CHAPTER 13 IS THERE A BATTLE BETWEEN GOOD AND EVIL?
CHAPTER 14 COSMOS IS HUNGRY FOR VALUE—AND YOU ARE TOO: WHY THAT MATTERS MORE THAN ANYTHING
CHAPTER 15 STORY AND ANTI-STORY, VALUE AND ANTI-VALUE, PART 1 OF 5: WHY MOVING BEYOND YOUR STORY IS NOT ENOUGH—TO BE FULLY ENLIGHTENED MEANS TO GET YOUR STORY STRAIGHT
CHAPTER 16 ANTI-EROS, ANTI-STORY AND ANTI-VALUE THREATEN TO DESTROY US ALL AND CALL ON US TO MAKE THE DAVID MOVE
CHAPTER 17 VALUE AND ANTI VALUE, STORY AND ANTI STORY, PART 3 OF 5: SIX ELEMENTS OF STORY FROM SUBATOMIC PARTICLES TO THE LORD OF THE RINGS
CHAPTER 18 VALUE AND ANTI-VALUE, STORY AND ANTI-STORY, PART 4 OF 5: A BUDDHIST TEACHER ON HARARI—BUDDHISM WITHOUT ETHICS CREATES MONSTERS
CHAPTER 19 THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION: THE URGENT NEED OF OUR TIME
Dr. Marc Gafni is a leading public intellectual and teacher impacting the source code of global culture.
Gafni is a visionary thinker, social activist and passionate philosopher. He is known for his “source code teachings”, including Unique Self theory and the Five Selves, the Amorous Cosmos, A Politics of Evolutionary Love, A Return to Eros and Digital Intimacy.
He is author of twenty five books, of which the first ten have been published, including the award-winning Your Unique Self: The Radical Path to Personal Enlightenment.
He holds his doctorate in philosophy from Oxford University, as well as Orthodox rabbinic ordination.
He teaches on the cutting edge of philosophy in the West, helping to evolve a new ‘dharma’ or meta-theory of Integral meaning that is helping to re-shape key pivoting points in global consciousness and culture, with the aim of participating in the articulation of what Dr. Gafni together with Dr. Zak Stein and colleagues are calling CosmoErotic Humanism.
At the core of CosmoErotic Humanism is what Dr. Gafni and Dr. Stein are calling ‘First Principles and First Values’, Anthro-Ontology and a “Universal Grammar of Value”.
This is the ground of a new shared universe story and a new narrative of identity for the new human and the new humanity. This is what they are calling the emergence from Homo sapiens to Homo Amor.
This shared story rooted in First Principles and First Values can then serve as the matrix for a global ethos for a global civilization.
Gafni is considered by many to be a kind of Einstein of Philosophy who is leading a team of thinkers articulating a new vision of meaning for the world.
Dr. Gafni is the Co-Founder together with Ken Wilber and Sally Kempton of the Center for World Philosophy and Religion where he serves as its co-president. Together with Dr. Zak Stein, they are co-leading a team of thinkers, articulating a new vision of meaning for the world.
In 2014 Dr. Gafni co-initiated the Success 3.0 Summit and Rise Up movie, whose method and movement is to bring together key thought leaders and change-agents to collaboratively evolve a bold new Integral vision of Success, rooted in the entrepreneurial values of Wake Up, Grow Up, Show Up, and Outrageous Love.
Over the past 30 years, Dr. Gafni has developed evolutionary and activist programs rooted in his commitment to what he has termed “participating in the evolution of love.” Together with author and social innovator Barbara Marx Hubbard, he is working on a series of new works revolving around Evolutionary Spirituality.
Explore the Great Library:
Center for World Philosophy & Religion – Oral Essay Series → https://worldphilosophyandreligion.org/books/
Learn about the full Oral Essays series:
Complete Oral Essay Series → https://worldphilosophyandreligion.org/oral-essays-series-one-mountain-marc-gafni/
Dr. Marc Gafni Official Website:
https://marcgafni.com/
Center for World Philosophy and Religion:
https://worldphilosophyandreligion.org/
Free Weekly Broadcast with Dr. Marc Gafni:
https://www.onemountainmanypaths.org/
Join the community Who We Must Become:
https://who-we-must-become-3166d4.circle.so/
Free Unique Self Mini Course:
https://www.uniqueselfinstitute.com/the-unique-self-mini-course/
Formal refutations on controversy:
WhoIsMarcGafni.com
Social Media Dr. Marc Gafni:
Substack: https://substack.com/@marcgafni
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marcgafni/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MarcGafni
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrMarcGafni
Twitter:https://twitter.com/MarcGafni
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmarcgafni/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drmarcgafni
We stand at a time between worlds, a time between stories-poised between dystopia and utopia. How we respond will have consequences and reverberations for many generations. First Principles and First Values offers both the most compelling diagnosis and the most effective and indeed joyful response to the looming threat of existential and catastrophic risk.
The core diagnosis is a “global intimacy disorder.” This intimacy disorder is generated by and expressed as the modern success story which is the dominant narrative in virtually all of worldwide culture. The success story pits us against each other in rivalrous conflict governed by win/lose dynamics. This in turn generates what systems theory refers to as complicated or fragile systems which are optimized for short-term profit and efficiency rather than long-term resilience and depth.
Intimacy-whether in a couple, a nation or in the earlier worlds of biology and molecular coherence-is only possible when there is a shared Story of Value. At the molecular level such a story is implicit in the scientific laws of Cosmos. At the human moral level, the shared story of value needs to be explicated and made conscious.
To respond to the meta crisis, we must be able not only to restore premodern ethnocentric intimacies rooted in premodern visions of shared value or even the early modern intimacies of democracies, markets and liberal culture, rooted in implicit modern assumptions of value.
Rather we need to evolve a new global intimacy rooted in First Principles and First Values which are the grammar for a shared language of value.
Published by World Philosophy and Religion Press in conjunction with Integral Wisdom Publishers.
Title: First Principles and First Values: From Existential Risk to Evolutionary Love: a New Story of Value for Humanity
Author: Dr. Marc Gafni
Series: Oral Essay Series – Volume 25
Publisher: World Philosophy and Religion Press in conjunction with Integral Wisdom Publishers.
ISBN-13: 979-8888340523
Formats: Paperback, e-book, audiobook.
CHAPTER ONE THERE IS NO RESPONSE TO EXISTENTIAL RISK WITHOUT FIRST PRINCIPLES
CHAPTER TWO THE FIRST PRINCIPLE OF THE INNATE PLEASURE OF TRANSFORMATION
CHAPTER THREE FIRST PRINCIPLES & FIRST VALUES: THE URGENT & ECSTATIC MORAL IMPERATIVE OF OUR TIME
CHAPTER FOUR EVOLVING THE SOURCE CODE OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND CULTURE
CHAPTER FIVE SURVEILLANCE CAPITALISM: “WE’RE GOING TO STEAL YOUR EXPERIENCE WITHOUT YOUR PERMISSION”
CHAPTER SIX FIRST PRINCIPLES BEYOND RANDOMNESS
CHAPTER SEVEN FIRST PRINCIPLES RESPOND TO EVOLUTIONARY NEED
CHAPTER EIGHT INTEGRATING OUR UNIQUE SELF BY RESPONDING TO THE CALL OF OUR PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE SELVES
CHAPTER NINE EMERGENCE: CALLED BY MY FUTURE SELF
CHAPTER TEN BEING PERSONALLY CALLED
CHAPTER ELEVEN LANGUAGE AS A PORTAL TO FIRST PRINCIPLES
CHAPTER TWELVE DIAGNOSING THE TECH PLEX: FROM DIGITAL DICTATORSHIP TO DIGITAL INTIMACY, FROM SOCIAL SELF TO UNIQUE SELF, FROM SOCIAL HIVE TO UNIQUE SELF SYMPHONIES
Dr. Marc Gafni is a leading public intellectual and teacher impacting the source code of global culture.
Gafni is a visionary thinker, social activist and passionate philosopher. He is known for his “source code teachings”, including Unique Self theory and the Five Selves, the Amorous Cosmos, A Politics of Evolutionary Love, A Return to Eros and Digital Intimacy.
He is author of twenty five books, of which the first ten have been published, including the award-winning Your Unique Self: The Radical Path to Personal Enlightenment.
He holds his doctorate in philosophy from Oxford University, as well as Orthodox rabbinic ordination.
He teaches on the cutting edge of philosophy in the West, helping to evolve a new ‘dharma’ or meta-theory of Integral meaning that is helping to re-shape key pivoting points in global consciousness and culture, with the aim of participating in the articulation of what Dr. Gafni together with Dr. Zak Stein and colleagues are calling CosmoErotic Humanism.
At the core of CosmoErotic Humanism is what Dr. Gafni and Dr. Stein are calling ‘First Principles and First Values’, Anthro-Ontology and a “Universal Grammar of Value”.
This is the ground of a new shared universe story and a new narrative of identity for the new human and the new humanity. This is what they are calling the emergence from Homo sapiens to Homo Amor.
This shared story rooted in First Principles and First Values can then serve as the matrix for a global ethos for a global civilization.
Gafni is considered by many to be a kind of Einstein of Philosophy who is leading a team of thinkers articulating a new vision of meaning for the world.
Dr. Gafni is the Co-Founder together with Ken Wilber and Sally Kempton of the Center for World Philosophy and Religion where he serves as its co-president. Together with Dr. Zak Stein, they are co-leading a team of thinkers, articulating a new vision of meaning for the world.
In 2014 Dr. Gafni co-initiated the Success 3.0 Summit and Rise Up movie, whose method and movement is to bring together key thought leaders and change-agents to collaboratively evolve a bold new Integral vision of Success, rooted in the entrepreneurial values of Wake Up, Grow Up, Show Up, and Outrageous Love.
Over the past 30 years, Dr. Gafni has developed evolutionary and activist programs rooted in his commitment to what he has termed “participating in the evolution of love.” Together with author and social innovator Barbara Marx Hubbard, he is working on a series of new works revolving around Evolutionary Spirituality.
Explore the Great Library:
Center for World Philosophy & Religion – Oral Essay Series → https://worldphilosophyandreligion.org/books/
Learn about the full Oral Essays series:
Complete Oral Essay Series → https://worldphilosophyandreligion.org/oral-essays-series-one-mountain-marc-gafni/
Dr. Marc Gafni Official Website:
https://marcgafni.com/
Center for World Philosophy and Religion:
https://worldphilosophyandreligion.org/
Free Weekly Broadcast with Dr. Marc Gafni:
https://www.onemountainmanypaths.org/
Join the community Who We Must Become:
https://who-we-must-become-3166d4.circle.so/
Free Unique Self Mini Course:
https://www.uniqueselfinstitute.com/the-unique-self-mini-course/
Formal refutations on controversy:
WhoIsMarcGafni.com
Social Media Dr. Marc Gafni:
Substack: https://substack.com/@marcgafni
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marcgafni/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MarcGafni
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrMarcGafni
Twitter:https://twitter.com/MarcGafni
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmarcgafni/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drmarcgafni
We all recognize this pattern as it appears in our own lives, for example, in reference to our direct experience of falling love.
Station one: We fall in love. Station two: We experience separation. We lose access to the feeling of being in love.
Station three: we find our way back—we fall in love again, this time with greater depth and wholeness. At this third station we are quite literally lived as love. The Three Stations of Eros apply not only to falling in love but to all domains of life.
The capacity to recognize the Three Stations—to stay in and to not get derailed at station two, but instead to deepen, ascend and transform into station three—is the single most important skill we need to live a great life, to be truly successful, or to put it more clearly, to be lived as great Love.
Each sequence of the Three Stations of Love is a unique vector in the evolution of love, the irreducibly unique journey of Eros which is the purpose of a unique human life. The particular tone and texture, the unique potency and exquisiteness in each unique human journey directly participates in the evolution of love in Cosmos.
Published by World Philosophy and Religion Press in conjunction with Integral Wisdom Publishers.
Title: She Comes in Threes: Reality’s Plotlines Are the Three Stations of Eros: Trialectics Are the Structure of Cosmos
Author: Dr. Marc Gafni
Series: Oral Essay Series – Volume 24
Publisher: World Philosophy and Religion Press in conjunction with Integral Wisdom Publishers.
ISBN-13: 979-8888340738
Formats: Paperback, e-book, audiobook.
CHAPTER 1 SHE COMES IN THREES
CHAPTER 2 LIVING BEYOND COMPLEXITY
PART TWO: ONE MOUNTAIN, MANY PATHS
CHAPTER 3 LOVE OR DIE
CHAPTER 4 SHE COMES IN THREES: THE HOLY, THE BROKEN, AND THE HALLELUJAH
CHAPTER 5 OUR HIGHEST PURPOSE IS NO PURPOSE
CHAPTER 6 ODE TO EVOLUTIONARY JOY: THE HIGHER UNION OF A BROKEN HEART AND RADICAL ALIVENESS
CHAPTER 7 ODE TO EVOLUTIONARY JOY: THE NEXT STEP
CHAPTER 8 THE QUALITY AND FEELING OF HOMO AMOR: INCARNATING THE THIRD BEYOND POLARITIES
CHAPTER 9 THE RESPONSE TO PERSONAL CRISIS AND META-CRISIS IS THE EVOLUTION OF RELATIONSHIP AND THE EVOLUTION OF LOVE: THE RISE OF WHOLE MATE RELATIONSHIPS
CHAPTER 10 THE URGENT NEED FOR WHOLE MATE RELATIONSHIPS, PART 2
PART THREE: FORMAL WRITINGS
CHAPTER 11 THE THREE STATIONS OF EROS MODEL
CHAPTER 12 THE THREE STATIONS OF EROS MODEL IN DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY
CHAPTER 13 STATION THREE OF EROS: THE AWAKENING OF THE OUTRAGEOUS LOVER
CHAPTER 14 LOVE IS IN THE DETAILS
CHAPTER 15 EXPRESSIONS OF THE THREE STATIONS OF EROS
CHAPTER 16 PRE-TRAGIC, TRAGIC AND POST-TRAGIC LEVELS OF CONSCIOUSNESS
CHAPTER 17 THE EVOLUTION OF LOVE: FROM ROLE MATE TO SOUL MATE TO WHOLE MATE
CHAPTER 18 SHE COMES IN THREES: THE PRE-TRAGIC, TRAGIC, AND POST-TRAGIC IN ROLE MATE, SOUL MATE, AND WHOLE MATE
PART FOUR: APPENDIX
Dr. Marc Gafni is a leading public intellectual and teacher impacting the source code of global culture.
Gafni is a visionary thinker, social activist and passionate philosopher. He is known for his “source code teachings”, including Unique Self theory and the Five Selves, the Amorous Cosmos, A Politics of Evolutionary Love, A Return to Eros and Digital Intimacy.
He is author of twenty five books, of which the first ten have been published, including the award-winning Your Unique Self: The Radical Path to Personal Enlightenment.
He holds his doctorate in philosophy from Oxford University, as well as Orthodox rabbinic ordination.
He teaches on the cutting edge of philosophy in the West, helping to evolve a new ‘dharma’ or meta-theory of Integral meaning that is helping to re-shape key pivoting points in global consciousness and culture, with the aim of participating in the articulation of what Dr. Gafni together with Dr. Zak Stein and colleagues are calling CosmoErotic Humanism.
At the core of CosmoErotic Humanism is what Dr. Gafni and Dr. Stein are calling ‘First Principles and First Values’, Anthro-Ontology and a “Universal Grammar of Value”.
This is the ground of a new shared universe story and a new narrative of identity for the new human and the new humanity. This is what they are calling the emergence from Homo sapiens to Homo Amor.
This shared story rooted in First Principles and First Values can then serve as the matrix for a global ethos for a global civilization.
Gafni is considered by many to be a kind of Einstein of Philosophy who is leading a team of thinkers articulating a new vision of meaning for the world.
Dr. Gafni is the Co-Founder together with Ken Wilber and Sally Kempton of the Center for World Philosophy and Religion where he serves as its co-president. Together with Dr. Zak Stein, they are co-leading a team of thinkers, articulating a new vision of meaning for the world.
In 2014 Dr. Gafni co-initiated the Success 3.0 Summit and Rise Up movie, whose method and movement is to bring together key thought leaders and change-agents to collaboratively evolve a bold new Integral vision of Success, rooted in the entrepreneurial values of Wake Up, Grow Up, Show Up, and Outrageous Love.
Over the past 30 years, Dr. Gafni has developed evolutionary and activist programs rooted in his commitment to what he has termed “participating in the evolution of love.” Together with author and social innovator Barbara Marx Hubbard, he is working on a series of new works revolving around Evolutionary Spirituality.
Explore the Great Library:
Center for World Philosophy & Religion – Oral Essay Series → https://worldphilosophyandreligion.org/books/
Learn about the full Oral Essays series:
Complete Oral Essay Series → https://worldphilosophyandreligion.org/oral-essays-series-one-mountain-marc-gafni/
Dr. Marc Gafni Official Website:
https://marcgafni.com/
Center for World Philosophy and Religion:
https://worldphilosophyandreligion.org/
Free Weekly Broadcast with Dr. Marc Gafni:
https://www.onemountainmanypaths.org/
Join the community Who We Must Become:
https://who-we-must-become-3166d4.circle.so/
Free Unique Self Mini Course:
https://www.uniqueselfinstitute.com/the-unique-self-mini-course/
Formal refutations on controversy:
WhoIsMarcGafni.com
Social Media Dr. Marc Gafni:
Substack: https://substack.com/@marcgafni
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marcgafni/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MarcGafni
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrMarcGafni
Twitter:https://twitter.com/MarcGafni
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drmarcgafni/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@drmarcgafni
Join Matt Segall in conversation with Dr. Marc Gafni and Dr. Zak Stein:
In Matt’s voice:
In this conversation with Marc Gafni and Zak Stein, I began by asking about philosophy’s relevance in our current moment of crisis:
What role can philosophy play?
As philosophers, we like to engage in dialogue, but our present world seems very far from dialogue being what guides the decisions that are shaping the immediate future. I invited us to consider how we can feel like what we’re doing here is meaningful when we’re facing this type of rivalrous, revenge-based antagonism.
Regarding my use of “as if” language in my review of First Principles and First Values that Marc questioned, I explained that the “as if” is an invitation to my readers rather than a direct statement of my own position. It is intended as a bridge to the dominant culture, as a pragmatic invitation to see how people’s lives might change if they took these ideas seriously. I shared my grounding in process philosophy and particularly C. S. Peirce’s pragmaticist approach to theologizing: When I use terms like “as if,” it’s really just my way of signaling the participatory nature of truth and the reality of value. It’s not just waiting out there for us to find it. We have to become worthy of it. I emphasized that we need to imaginally body forth truth, goodness, and beauty to maintain them as realities. That’s our crucial role as human beings.
I asked whether consciousness being fundamental implies that the human being is not just the product of an evolutionary process but something more like the very medium of evolution’s expression. I brought in Schelling’s insight that “the human soul is conscientious of creation”—that we’re tapping into our own memory when doing evolutionary cosmology, not just abstractly reconstructing the universe’s exterior development. The intimacy paradigm Marc and Zak are proposing is something like a poetic proof of the existence of God as that than which nothing more intimate can be felt, a phenomenological proof of the existence of the divine ground within and between us. This divine ground, ultimately, is relational, and thus personal.
by Dr. Marc Gafni (Author), Dr. Zak Stein(Contributor), Elena Maslova Levin (Contributor)
Story is the source code of culture and consciousness and of all Reality-all the way up and down the evolutionary chain. Story is the attempt to gather information about the nature of Reality and translate it into narrative frameworks bounded by Value.
Stories that organize culture are “Stories of Value, backed by the Universe”.
Postmodernity argues that Reality is just a story, and that all stories are created equal (equally meaningless of inherent value) because value itself is not real. And therefore, all stories of value are but social constructs, fictions, or figments of our imagination.
The postmodernists are wrong.
Story is real. And not all stories are equal. There are better and worse stories. A better story is an eternal and evolving story of Value. Evolving Value backed by the Universe.
A worse story-one with flawed, incomplete, or distorted plotlines of distorted value, like the story we’ve lived in the West for the better part of the last century-can, and will, bring us to the brink of existential risk, the potential end of humanity as we know it.
Value is both real, backed by the Universe, and like everything in the Universe, value evolves. The evolution of value itself is the evolution of love, as Eros and evolution themselves, are inherent plotlines of value in the great story of Cosmos.
The goal of The Evolution of Love, and its companion volume Whole Mate: The Future of Relationships, is to provide a first articulation of a new, better story of Value in the domain of relationship. At the core of this New Story of Value are a new Universe Story and a new narrative of identity, which we have called CosmoErotic Humanism and Homo amor.
If we fail to articulate this New Story of Value, the results will be excruciating for billions of human beings and for the entire life system–as for the trillions of lives that will remain unborn.
All of the past depends on us to fulfill its dreams.
All of the present depends on us to live.
All of the future depends on us to be born.
In this enlightening discussion, Dr, Marc Gafni—in a fierce and funny tour de force—dismantles the grim assumptions presented in both Harari’s adult and children’s literature, aiming to set the record straight and introduce a new Story of Value. In Marc’s words, “ Value is Real, and, Value is Not Hard to Find, Value is Impossible to Avoid”. Embark on this profound exploration of both Gafni and Harari’s works like never before. This conversation is a game-changer, illuminating the fundamental principles and values that govern the cosmos and our personal lives.
* 0:00:00 Introduction
00:00:43 The Chilling Effect of Yuval Harari
00:03:20 – A New Model to have a Conversation
00:06:30 – Totalitarianism and Freedom
00:18:18 – Part I – Meaning and Value
00:27:11 – A New Story of Value
00:33:53 – Meaning and Value are not Mass Delusion
00:39:54 – Why this Matters
00:55:14 – Premodern, Modern and Postmodern Value
01:00:49 – Evolution of Value
01:07:31 – Harari’s Hijacking Science
01:09:41 – Part II – Science, Rights and Artificial Intelligence
01:10:10 – Ten Dogmas of Modern Science
01:14:17 – Human Rights are Real
01:23:40 – Artificial Intelligence
01:35:19 – Napoleon’s Five Goals
01:37:07 – Part III – Reality is a Love Story
01:41:57 – Telling Children Life has No Inherent Value
01:55:17 – Evolution is the Progressive Deepening of Intimacies
01:56:21 – The Intimate Universe
02:01:26 – Metacrisis and a New Story of Value
02:06:28 – Value is Real, Eternal and Evolving
02:07:32 – Interior Science Intimacy Equation of CosmoErotic Humanism
02:16:04 – Love Story Stands Against Totalitarianism
02:21:02 – Trust is Based on Shared Value
02:27:58 – We Need to Tell a New Story of Value
02:28:47 – Our Imagination is a Figment of God
02:32:19 – Credits
by David J. Temple
AS THE META-CRISIS DEEPENS, THE FATE OF CIVILIZATION AND HUMANITY HANGS IN THE BALANCE.
First Principles and First Values is the tip of the spear in the fight for a humane future. Establishing frameworks for a new school of thought called CosmoErotic Humanism, the book is built around forty-two propositions that provide new source code for the future of planetary culture.
Like Europe in the early Renaissance, humanity is in a time between worlds, at a time between stories. First Principles and First Values contains blueprints for the bridge needed to cross from this world to the next.
“The position argued for in this book is of vital importance . . . it needs urgently to be read.”
IAIN McGILCHRIST, author of The Master and His Emissary
ABOUT:
Welcome to Superhumanize, where we explore the frontiers of human potential and the complex tapestry of consciousness. Today, we have an extraordinary guest—one of the most controversial and transformative thinkers of our time, Dr. Marc Gafni. Marc is not just a philosopher; he’s a revolutionary mind, a master teacher, and a provocateur who challenges us to rethink the very fabric of our reality.
Marc Gafni is known for his groundbreaking ‘source code teachings’ that delve into the profound depths of spirituality, ethics, and human connection. His theories, such as the Unique Self, CosmoErotic Humanism, and the transition from Homo sapiens to Homo amor, are not just philosophical musings; they are calls to action for a global reawakening—a radical shift in how we view ourselves and our collective story.
In this episode, we talk about Marc’s latest work, ‘First Principles & First Values,’ where he collaborates with other visionary thinkers like Ken Wilber and Zak Stein to chart a path through the meta-crisis facing our civilization. This book is a manifesto for the future of humanity, where love, value, and the essence of what it means to be human are redefined in the most fundamental ways.
We’ll explore some of the most pressing questions of our time: How do we confront the root cause of evil, what does it mean to reclaim our collective narrative as a love story? And how do we ensure that emerging technologies serve to enhance, rather than undermine, our journey toward becoming Homo amor?
Marc’s insights are intellectually stimulating and they challenge us to integrate spiritual enlightenment, ethical living, and the art of meaningful relationships into our everyday lives. This is a conversation that promises to push boundaries and invites you into a new way of seeing the world.
Episode highlights:
01:09 Exploring First Principles and First Values
03:08 The Think Tank and Metacrisis
05:08 The Shocks of Existence
06:23 Existential Risks and AI
09:13 The Death of Our Humanity
10:41 The Techplex and Skinner’s Box
22:48 Creating a New Story of Value
47:29 Exploring Eros and Intimacy
48:03 The Principle of Continuity and Discontinuity
49:44 A Story of Timeless Love
51:57 The Evolution of Intimacy and Freedom
54:29 The Debate on Free Will
57:48 The Impact of Technology on Freedom
01:02:09 Understanding Intrinsic Value
01:04:34 The Field of Value and Shared Stories
01:19:47 The Democratization of Heroism
01:21:01 Concluding Thoughts and Reflections
Join Tim Adalin in conversation with Dr. Marc Gafni.
Show Notes:
Why do we value stories, and how do stories transmit value? Marc Gafni joins Tim Adalin for a dialogue on the philosophy of story, risk, and trust in the context of personal and cultural transformation. Dr. Marc Gafni is a visionary thinker and social activist, holding a doctorate in philosophy from Oxford University, as well as Orthodox rabbinic ordination.
— Access the shownotes & learn more about Voicecraft podcasts, events, courses and membership network @ https://www.voicecraft.io/content/e11…
— Dr. Marc Gafni is a visionary thinker, social activist, and passionate philosopher. He is known for his “source code teachings,” including Unique Self theory, the Five Selves, the Amorous Cosmos, A Politics of Evolutionary Love, A Return to Eros and Digital Intimacy. He is author of over twenty-five books, including the award-winning Your Unique Self: The Radical Path to Personal Enlightenment. He holds a doctorate in philosophy from Oxford University, as well as Orthodox rabbinic ordination. He teaches on the cutting edge of philosophy and spirit in the West, with the aim of participating in the articulation of what Dr. Gafni together with Dr. Zak Stein and colleagues are calling CosmoErotic Humanism.
At the core of CosmoErotic Humanism is what Dr. Gafni and Dr. Stein are calling ‘First Principles and First Values,’ Anthro-Ontology and a “Universal Grammar of Value.” This shared story rooted in First Principles and First Values can then serve as the matrix for a global ethos for a global civilization.
About Dr Marc Gafni: https://worldphilosophyandreligion.or…
First Principles and First Values (book): https://www.amazon.com/First-Principl…
Keywords
storytelling, poetics, noetics, trust, unique self, intimacy, meta crisis, education, value, humanism
00:00 – Introduction
00:20 – The Essence of Storytelling
11:37 – The Interplay of Poetics and Noetics
19:56 – Trust and the Sharing of Stories
39:19 – Unique Risks and the Pursuit of Wholeness
by David J. Temple
AS THE META-CRISIS DEEPENS, THE FATE OF CIVILIZATION AND HUMANITY HANGS IN THE BALANCE.
First Principles and First Values is the tip of the spear in the fight for a humane future. Establishing frameworks for a new school of thought called CosmoErotic Humanism, the book is built around forty-two propositions that provide new source code for the future of planetary culture.
Like Europe in the early Renaissance, humanity is in a time between worlds, at a time between stories. First Principles and First Values contains blueprints for the bridge needed to cross from this world to the next.
“The position argued for in this book is of vital importance . . . it needs urgently to be read.”
IAIN McGILCHRIST, author of The Master and His Emissary
Join Layman Pascal in conversation with Dr. Marc Gafni and Dr. Zak Stein
The Integral Stage
In this third and final episode in this series, which is cross-posted to both the Cosmo-Erotic Humanism and Authors Series playlists, Layman sits down again with Marc Gafni and Zak Stein to talk further about their jointly authored book, First Principles and First Values, this time focusing on some of the core philosophical arguments.
They are publishing the book pseudonymously under the name, David J. Temple.
First Principles and First Values https://www.amazon.com/First-Principl…
by David J. Temple
AS THE META-CRISIS DEEPENS, THE FATE OF CIVILIZATION AND HUMANITY HANGS IN THE BALANCE.
First Principles and First Values is the tip of the spear in the fight for a humane future. Establishing frameworks for a new school of thought called CosmoErotic Humanism, the book is built around forty-two propositions that provide new source code for the future of planetary culture.
Like Europe in the early Renaissance, humanity is in a time between worlds, at a time between stories. First Principles and First Values contains blueprints for the bridge needed to cross from this world to the next.
“The position argued for in this book is of vital importance . . . it needs urgently to be read.”
IAIN McGILCHRIST, author of The Master and His Emissary
Join Allana Pratt in conversation with Dr. Marc Gafni.
In this episode, which is cross-posted to both the Cosmo-Erotic Humanism and Authors Series playlists, Layman sits down again with Marc Gafni and Zak Stein to talk further about their jointly authored book, First Principles and First Values, this time focusing on some of the core philosophical arguments.
They are publishing the book pseudonymously under the name, David J. Temple.
First Principles and First Values https://www.amazon.com/First-Principl…
by David J. Temple
AS THE META-CRISIS DEEPENS, THE FATE OF CIVILIZATION AND HUMANITY HANGS IN THE BALANCE.
First Principles and First Values is the tip of the spear in the fight for a humane future. Establishing frameworks for a new school of thought called CosmoErotic Humanism, the book is built around forty-two propositions that provide new source code for the future of planetary culture.
Like Europe in the early Renaissance, humanity is in a time between worlds, at a time between stories. First Principles and First Values contains blueprints for the bridge needed to cross from this world to the next.
“The position argued for in this book is of vital importance . . . it needs urgently to be read.”
IAIN McGILCHRIST, author of The Master and His Emissary
Join Brendan Graham Dempsey in conversation with Dr. Zak Stein.
Philosopher Zak Stein joins me to discuss the “the great post-postmodern project, the reconstruction of value itself,” and get into the nuances of what his framework looks like as presented in his new co-authored book First Principles & First Values.
What does it mean to say that value is both fundamental and relational?
How does a metaphysics of value avoid premodern pitfalls (e.g., the myth of the given, a God’s-eye view/view from nowhere, etc.)? What are the challenges posed by language when trying to track value across discontinuities in the complexity stack?
Here we compare notes on our respective projects and try to clarify key points.
- 0:00 Introduction
- 1:58 Summary Overview of First Principles & First Values
- 7:35 The Project: A Post-Postmodern Reconstruction of Value
- 12:44 Is Positing Value as Fundamental a Premodern Move?
- 32:24 “Value”: Avoiding Reification
- 39:11 Languaging the Reconstruction: Difficulties and Diversity
- 48:29 The Challenge and Importance of Modern Critique of Value
- 52:39 “Intimacy” or “Complexity”? Seeking Normative Terminology without Anthropomorphizing
- 1:03:07 Shifting the Paradigm: Translation or Equivocation?
- 1:06:25 Panpsychist vs. Emergentist Framings
- 1:10:26 Shifting Telos across Scales: E.g., Dissipative Structures
- 1:17:56 Value and Anti-Value
- 1:22:04 New God: Moving towards the Infinite Intimate
- 1:27:21 Building the Cathedral/Temple: Living with Sacred Purpose
Book available here: https://www.amazon.com/First-Principl…
by David J. Temple
AS THE META-CRISIS DEEPENS, THE FATE OF CIVILIZATION AND HUMANITY HANGS IN THE BALANCE.
First Principles and First Values is the tip of the spear in the fight for a humane future. Establishing frameworks for a new school of thought called CosmoErotic Humanism, the book is built around forty-two propositions that provide new source code for the future of planetary culture.
Like Europe in the early Renaissance, humanity is in a time between worlds, at a time between stories. First Principles and First Values contains blueprints for the bridge needed to cross from this world to the next.
“The position argued for in this book is of vital importance . . . it needs urgently to be read.”
IAIN McGILCHRIST, author of The Master and His Emissary
Dr. Zachary Stein is the co-president of the Center for World Philosophy and Religion. He was trained at the interface of philosophy, psychology, and education, and now works in fields related to the mitigation of global catastrophic risk. He is a widely sought after and award winning speaker, and a leading authority on the future of education and contemporary issues in human development. Zak is the author of several books, such as Education in a Time Between Worlds. In this conversation we primarily discuss the new book he contributed to, together with Marc Gafni and Ken Wilber. It’s called First Principles and First Values: Forty-Two Propositions on CosmoErotic Humanism, the Meta-Crisis, and the World to Come.
David Nicol is an Australian native now living in North California. His book, Subtle Activism: The Inner Dimension of Social and Planetary Transformation (SUNY Press) was the first comprehensive study of the idea that focused collective intention can powerfully and measurably contribute to social change.
David writes a blog on Substack called Geistic Musings, offering his “reflections on the intersection of consciousness and culture.”
Today I want to share about (what I think is) a vitally important new book that offers profound context for why we need these novel forms of knowing to start to move into the center of culture as a matter of urgency in this time between worlds.
The book is First Principles & First Values: Forty-Two Propositions on Cosmoerotic Humanism, the Meta-Crisis, and the World to Come, by David J. Temple. David J. Temple is a pseudonym that represents a consortium of writers associated with the Center for World Philosophy and Religion, with Marc Gafni and Zak Stein being the primary authors.
Because of the significance of the book’s thesis, I go into some detail below to convey the essential argument. I hope you will stay with me, because there is something deeply hopeful about these ideas for our future.
First Principles is an attempt to articulate the foundations of a new worldview that can guide humanity through the global metacrisis. We have become deeply conditioned by postmodernity to be cynical of intellectual efforts to create frameworks of universal value, but this is indeed at the heart of the authors’ thesis. Post-modernity’s deconstruction of old stories of value has overreached, resulting not only in a pervasive global mood of nihilism but also an inability to coordinate in any meaningful way at a time when the stakes could not be higher.
Into this void, First Principles offers a ‘New Story of Value’ that provides a context for integrating the best of premodern, modern, and postmodern thought. It does so by explicitly articulating a universal set of values that underlies reality all the way up and down the evolutionary chain, and is validated by both science and the wisdom traditions. Below I provide a specific example. (more…)
The Temple of the ancient Israelites is the original Hebrew expression of pagan consciousness. Now—as we will see later in this essay—the difference between Temple and pagan consciousness is very crucial. But it is a difference that is only important because of their profound similarity. Both the Temple and the pagan cults shared an intoxication with the feminine Goddess, symbol of sacred eros.
The relationship with the Goddess was not a hobby for the Israelites like modern religious affiliation often tends to be. It was an all-consuming desire to be on the inside, to feel the infinite fullness of reality in every moment and in every encounter—it was an attempt to fully experience eros. Because the ancients were so aware of the depth of reality, to live without being able to access the infinite in this erotic way was enormously painful. (For an example, read the story of the idolatrous King Menashe, as retold in the Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin 92A.)
The prophets of the Temple period opposed paganism with all of their ethical fire and passion. For them, it was inconceivable that the ecstatic and primal Temple experience, religiously powerful and important as it might be, should become primary. When eros overrode ethos, the prophet exploded in divine rage. In moments of clash, the prophet taught that the ethical always needed to trump the erotic.
Modern Judaism has developed from the ethical teachings of the prophets. In the process, however, we have overlooked the erotic, present in the pagan consciousness of the Temple service. We have forgotten the Goddess, a vital presence in the life of ancient Israel. Hebrew liturgy reflects the virtually inconsolable longing of the Hebrew spirit for the rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem. This longing is not a dream of proprietorship over this or that hill in Jerusalem. Indeed, ownership and holiness are mutually exclusive. Instead, it is a yearning to reclaim sacred eros as part of the fabric of our lives. And, in the way of the circle, our longing for eros is also a longing for ethos. All ethical breakdown emerges from a dearth of eros. When we are overwhelmed by an erotic vacuum, ethics collapse. (more…)
The arena where emptiness—nonerotic living—is most destructive is in the ethical. Every ethical failure comes from the absence of eros. It is their inability to stay in the experience of emptiness that moves people to violate their ethics. All crimes are in some sense crimes of passion. But this is actually a misnomer. What we mean is that all crimes are rooted in the fear of passion’s loss! We cannot imagine what life would be like without the eros that we stand to lose.
Joel finds out that his wife is having an affair. The betrayal opens up the void within. Afraid that if he confronts her she will leave, he slowly becomes a workaholic to dull the pain. Work for Joel has become pseudo eros.
Or take Susan, who was verbally and physically abused by her mother. Never able to claim the dignity of her anger, she became gradually disempowered as a person. As an adult, she is constantly furious at her children, often lashing out brutally at them. She seeks to assure herself that she is still alive and powerful. For Susan, her displaced anger at her children is pseudo eros.
Or more mundane examples. We cheat on income taxes because we think that the extra money will paper over some of the fear of life. Money becomes pseudo eros.
Or we exaggerate our accomplishments because we are afraid that our real story is insufficient to fill the void. Self-aggrandizement is pseudo eros.
All of our inappropriate behaviors that violate our values are really us crying out, “Pay attention to me—I exist!” All forms of acting out are pseudo eros.
Life is about walking through the void. Every time we walk through and not around the void we come out stronger. Every time we are seduced by pseudo eros, ethical breakdown is around the corner. There is no ethics without eros.
The biblical myth text describes the pit into which Joseph was thrown by his jealous brothers: “The pit was empty, it had not water,” reads the story. “But isn’t this redundant?” ask the students. “If it had no water, don’t we know that it was empty?” The master replies, “This was an emptiness which bred evil. Water it did not have, snakes and scorpions it did!” Emptiness always breeds in its wake ethical collapse.
Of course, the real pit at play in the biblical myth is not simply a pit in the earth. The pit is in Joseph’s brothers’ very ground of being. Their own gaping sense of emptiness makes them envy Joseph so. It is their inability to walk through their own pit (void) that moves them to project a pit in the world in which they would cast their brother. The snakes and scorpions come from the unacknowledged emptiness of the brothers.
No, Joseph is not perfect, but when we respond to a person viscerally, it virtually always tells us more about ourselves than about the person. The brothers’ own deeply felt emptiness—their pit—moved them to the murderous rage of attempted fratricide.
You see, until this point in the book of Genesis one son has always been chosen as the inheritor of blessing. Abel was chosen over Cain. Shem over Ham and Yefet. Isaac over Ishmael, and Jacob over Esau. The brothers were convinced that Jacob, their father, was going to likewise choose Joseph over them. Joseph’s existence called into question the integrity of their stories. When the value and dignity of our stories are called into question we brush up against the emptiness. The inability to walk through the emptiness to the fullness is the source of all ethical collapse.
Ethics without eros is doomed. Only from a place of fullness of being can we reach out in love to others. The first step to love is always self-love. If you don’t fill yourself up with love, then you have precious little to dole out. But as long as your love is not rooted in your erotic matrix—the inside of your fullness—it is doomed to fail. You will have to rely on an ethical source outside yourself, which will always make you view yourself as a sinner. No one is ever able to consistently follow external rules that seem to violate their inner desire.
However, if ethics well up from the inside, if you are at the center, then sin is not disobedience but the violation of human well-being. In the end all ethical failure is a violation of eros—your own or someone else’s.
We now come to the second great shadow of circle consciousness. The pagans insisted that divinity was in trees and in all of nature. But the essential biblical idea is that God is also beyond nature. God is the creator of nature and therefore not trapped within it. Biblical myth therefore opens with the Genesis story—“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” The powerful and revolutionary implication is that God is not nature. Unlike the Greek, Roman, pagan, or Buddhist pantheons, biblical myth insists on a God who is both within and infinitely beyond the circle, radically immanent as well as transcendent.
When we say that God is infinitely beyond trees, we are also saying that if you can connect to God he can free you from the ensnaring web of nature. The notion that a human being is created in the image of God means for the Hebrew mystic that a person has it within them to reach beyond the natural.
The reason this is so critical is because in biblical consciousness, the loving God’s primary demand is ethical behavior. The single most important expression of love is how we treat one another, not how we think about one another. Perhaps the most important principle of Hebrew ethics is that although thoughts count, actions are infinitely more important. Moreover, in the formulation of sixteenth-century master Aron of Barcelona—“A person is formed by their actions.” Treat a person lovingly, and you will love them in the end. Love a person passionately and treat them unethically, and you will be alienated from them in the end.
When anyone suggests that we need to act against our instinctive nature we get slightly uncomfortable. Isn’t the unnatural intrinsically a violation of the right? The best antidote to the superficial aggrandizement of all that is natural is to keep toilet training in mind. Probably everyone who reads this book relieves themselves someplace other than in their clothes. This is, of course, decidedly “unnatural.” Indeed as a kind of protest against the violation of the natural implicit in toilet training, the central ritual of one pagan religion—the cult of Peor—was that its adherents defecate on the Peor idol itself. Biblical myth explicitly sets itself up as the alternative to the Peor cult.
Ethical behavior always requires that we will be able to act against our primal instinctive natures. If we were only part of nature, then clearly we could not be expected ever to control our nature. We are both part of nature, and beyond nature. Only because of this paradox are we capable of self-control.
What this means is that values need to serve as a guide in training our natures. Biblical line consciousness insisted that the most important value was ethical behavior. To be ethical, one must be responsible. Response-able. Able to respond to the conflicting drives of nature and nurture by charting a course that reflects an ethical vision. One can only respond if one can step outside the circle. Responsibility stems from a person’s awareness of their ability to control or transcend their instinctive natures.
A contemporary example: A priest can decide not to abuse a young boy if he is at least potentially able to resist his nature and say no! But in the pagan cult, the homoerotic attraction between priest and young boy was made sacred by being made part of the temple cult. In the context of a circle ethos, not only sexual drives are considered uncheckable. There can also ultimately be no accountability for doing evil. Mother Teresa and Hitler are equally innocent and equally guilty. Since there is no real possibility of choosing other than what you chose, you cannot be expected to do anything other than what you did. All the forces of nature acted upon you and produced the only possible result: precisely what you did. It is therefore not surprising that paganism is laced with deterministic overtones. Biblical myth insists that after all of the influences have had their say, we have a divine core that is beyond nature and can therefore choose against nature.
Circle consciousness claims that people are naturally the best that they can be. But the most important act of love, according to the Hebrew gospel, is to develop a training system for goodness. The problem, argues the circle, is not goodness but alienation. The great evil for the circle is to be cut off, distant, disenchanted, out of the circle. Line consciousness disagrees with the circle and says that people are potentially good but not naturally good. In biblical myth people are born innocent, but they are not born good. Goodness must be learned and even cultivated. The great evil for the line is to do evil.
The commonplace phrase “a good baby” is actually a misnomer. Babies are not born evil, but they are not born good either. In fact, as infant psychologists have pointed out, babies are actually minidictators (albeit adorable dictators). The ethical hero in the mother-baby relationship is most certainly the mother and not the baby. The baby presents his parents with a list of incessant demands, which he expects to have met no matter what else might be going on. Whether his parents are in the middle of a financial crisis, a medical emergency, or simply want to make love is irrelevant to the baby. Having been a kid who was very much the school misfit, I can tell you that kids are also naturally cruel. As a matter of fact, the level of raw meanness and sadism that kids are capable of inflicting on other kids is simply incomprehensible … that is, if you believe people to be naturally good.
For biblical myth the belief that people are naturally the best that they can be is not only wrong but also destructive. If people are naturally good, then evil must be the result of some set of external forces. These external forces could be anything from social environment, economic circumstance, hand-guns, parents, television violence, government cutbacks, or the devil. The result of this approach is that an enormous amount of energy is spent trying to fix all sorts of outside stuff while almost no time at all is spent transmitting the values that might change or develop our internal natures. This kind of thinking is an extension of pagan thought, which held that the manipulation of external nature would bring the good. The Hebrew Bible, then as now, says no to this thinking. Hebrew gospel teaches that only the control and refinement of our internal nature can bring the good.
In the view of the Hebrew Bible, the essential demand of God was justice. It is Dostoyevsky who best captures the Hebrew God when he writes in The Brothers Karamazov, “Without God all is permitted.” God was experienced by the Hebrews as a parent who is truly happy only when his children treat one another well. For this reason biblical wisdom insisted that God was beyond nature and that human beings were homo imago dei—created in the image of God. The power of this idea gives birth to the best of Western civilization.
There is another critical reason why the line-driven ethical prophet does not experience God as being exclusively in nature. If God were in nature and not beyond nature, then nature would be our source of ethics. It is clear, though, that for all of her splendor in reflecting a pale cast of divine beauty, nature is amoral. The law of nature is nearly always that the strong kill the weak. Certainly the helpless and the infirm have little chance of survival in the natural order other than as a dinner for a stronger adversary. If we were to transpose natural law into the human world, we would certainly live the law of the jungle. Social services, hospitals, and help for the disabled are all pro-foundly “unnatural,” at least according to the law of nature in the nonhuman world. In fact, the hospital is a direct corollary of line and not circle consciousness. The morality of the line insists that those higher on the line—that is to say stronger and with more means—take care of those lower on the line. This is the faith and God experience of the prophets.
Let’s frame the clash between circle and line in the most striking possible terms.
The prophet, the hero of the Hebrew Bible, represents ethics—the line. The pagan, hero of the ancient world into which biblical thought was born, represents eros—the circle. The clash between the prophet and the pagan—the circle and the line—is in the end the clash between the erotic and the ethical.
Obviously the prophet is not devoid of eros and the pagan not entirely oblivious of ethics. Yet the goal is their full integration. The erotic and ethical must merge. This is the secret of the cherubs and the model of the sexual.
What the prophet and the pagan respectively incarnate, however, is made manifest when the erotic and the ethical clash. An oft-quoted line from Jung, heir to the pagan myth tradition, is the best summation I have ever heard of the pagan position: “I’d rather be whole than good.”
The importance of this maxim is evidenced by the many times one hears it cited by Jung’s students. Apparently the circle will always seem more whole than the line. Circle and Shechina are the experience of eros for which we all yearn. The pagan yearns to feel whole. Indeed for the pagan the alienation from divinity is so palpable and painful that it must be overcome at all costs, even if ethics are the price. This is where the balanced scales start precariously to slip. It was Jung who was sadly seduced by the pagan goddess Ashera into a flirtation with Nazism, that menacing shadow of eros which horrifically darkened our world just a few short decades ago.
The prophet always responds, “I’d like to be whole. But if I have to choose, I’d rather be good than whole.” This is why the prophet is the great critic of the Temple. The erotic fulfillment of the Temple experience was all too often a replacement for the kind of direct ethical action that could heal the world. It is the widow and the orphan, the vulnerable and the dispossessed, who must be the primary concern of the homo religious. This is the word of the prophets.
The prophets oppose paganism with all of their ethical fire and passion. Their opposition to paganism is based upon pagan cruelty and corruption.
Built into the pagan ritual are demands for parents to burn their children as a sacrifice to the gods. Hardly a mention of the pagan occurs in the Hebrew Bible without a reference to this practice. “They have set their pagan abominations in my house… to burn their sons and daughters in fire.” (Jeremiah 7:30, 31.) The burning of children was not the exception in pagan worship. Rather it was the model of the pagan idea that erotic abandonment to the god must, by its very definition, overrun all intuitive human ethical boundaries.
Listen to the ethical cry of Isaiah in chapter 1:
I do not want your multitude of sacrifices
I delight not in the blood of bullocks or goats or rams.
Do not come to seek my face…
as you trample my courts of justice…
your hands are full of blood…
wash yourselves, make yourselves clean…
cease your evil doings… seek fair judgment,
argue the case of the widow and the orphan…
Ƶion will be redeemed
by justice and… integrity.
The ecstatic service of the Jerusalem temple, religiously powerful and important as it might be, had become primary. The reaching for Shechina experience overrode all; eros overrode ethos, and the prophet exploded in divine rage.
Having said that, we want to make a radical claim—which, as is often the case, is patently obvious once you see it. On the essential interpretation of reality, the prophet was actually a circle and not a line. The difference was that the pagan was a first-stage circle archetype and the prophet a third-stage circle archetype.
The prophet’s line expression is a necessary corrective response to the pagan consciousness that dominated the world at the time. The prophet saw his role to overturn that pagan ethic, which was bound up with so much cruelty. Human sacrifice was but one of the outrages that prophecy sought to eliminate. The prophet was wildly successful and gave an ethical cast to the foundation stones of all Western civilization.
In the picture of the prophet as a social reformer, it is, however, too easy to lose sight that at his core, he was an erotic mystic.
Though the prophet insisted that nature was not all of God, he expert enced with all his being that God was all of nature. Even as he decried the pagan claim that identified God with the Ashera tree, he knew and rejoiced in the truth that God was fully present and accessible “on every hill and under every tree.” God was not only reflected in nature as the external creator but God was also fully present in nature. The later mystics used mamash, meaning literally “actually,” to describe that God was actually present in nature and not just as a metaphor or symbol. The words of later Hebrew mystics capture accurately prophetic consciousness. Schneur Zalman of Liadi writes that “trees and stones are mamash divine.” Nachman of Bratzlav told his disciples that “every blade of grass has its own (divine) song.”
The Temple in its ideal state was supposed to manifest the third-stage circle moment in Hebrew consciousness. What the prophet realized, however, was that the people had not incorporated second-stage line consciousness. The erotic was overrunning the ethical. In principle, however, the Temple was meant to be a balance between line and circle, erotic and ethical.
Only a short distance from the seat of eros, the Holy of Holies with her sexually intertwined cherubs, was the lishkat hagazit, the “room of hewn stone.” This was the Chamber of Justice, whose passionate concern was the ethical—the creation of a just society. On the face of it, its sensibilities seem so far removed from the erotic motifs of the sensual and the sacred that permeated the Temple’s aura. What, after all, do ethics and eros have to do with each other?
The answer is—everything. In the short run we can train people through behaviorist rituals, social engineering, and a good deal of guilt to behave ethically. However, in the final analysis, we also find that nonerotic ethics will always collapse under the weight of contracts and contacts it cannot fulfill. The room of hewn stone must necessarily be housed in the eroticized Temple in order for its ethics truly to thrive.
Picture a house that has three consecutive rooms. In the first room is Master Schneur Ƶalman of Liadi, founder of the mystical Hassidic court of Habad, the grandfather in our story. In the second room is his son and successor, known as the Middle Master. In the third room is a small baby who will ultimately succeed his father and grandfather as the third master of Habad.
Father and grandfather are lost in erotic mystical rapture. They have crossed over to the inside; suffused with yearning they have entered the fullness of being. Eros. Suddenly the baby cries. Grandfather rises from his ecstasy, goes to pick up the child and rock him to sleep. Afterward he is unable to recapture his ecstasy. He smiles and falls asleep.
Come morning, father and grandfather meet at morning meditation. “Did you not hear the baby crying?” inquires Schneur Zalman gently of his son.
“Why no, Father. I was so caught in rapture I could hear nothing but the singing of the angels,” the Middle Master replies, secretly hoping his father would be impressed, for it seemed that he exceeded even his father in the interiority of his en-trance-ment. “You have not understood, my son,” responded Schneur Ƶalman, a tear slowly wending its way down his cheek “Rapture that deafens you to the crying of a baby—such holiness is not kosher.”
Another image: Abraham sits at the en-trance to his tent, deep in meditation. God appears to him in the heat of the day. Celestial fires encircle him. The breath of the Divine caresses him. Abraham basks in perfect Presence.
Abraham opens his eyes and sees in the distance three strangers passing by. He jumps up to greet them. Perhaps they are thirsty from the desert sun or in need of lodging for the night. He races after them. “But wait!” cries out God. “Where are you going… one second… we were just about to—”
“Hold that thought, God. I’ll be right back.” And off Abraham runs.
“How could it be?” inquire the fourth-century Babylonian myth masters in radical amazement. “Is not rapture with the Divine the point of everything? How could Abraham just run off and leave God hanging?!”
They answer their own question with a gorgeous Hebrew koan: “Greater is the feeding of guests than the receiving of the face of the Shechina.” Face and Shechina are words that we recognize—virtual synonyms for the erotic. And yet the imperative is clear. In the clash between the erotic and the ethical, the ethical must take priority.
In order to foster a loving world we need to merge the masculine line with the feminine circle. Any attempt to maintain line or circle consciousness when they are independent of each other is doomed to failure. The deepest wisdom of Hebrew myth will require eros and ethics to interpenetrate. Prophet and pagan will need to merge into one.
When we unpack stage three we will see that the erotic is not opposed to the ethical. For the erotic to be full and life giving, the masculine and feminine must merge. Failing to effect this erotic merger, the Shechina remains in exile. The marriage of the masculine and feminine in the sexual models the merger of the circle and the line, the erotic and the ethical, in every facet of being. Whenever that marriage fails, there is a failure of love, and failures of love always produce evil.
Indeed, every ethical failure comes from the absence of eros. It is the painful experience of emptiness that moves people to ethical violation. The universe does not tolerate a vacuum. Ethics without eros is doomed. It is only from a place of fullness of being that we can reach out in love to the other. The first step to love is always self-love. If you don’t fill yourself up with love then you have precious little to dole out. As long as my love is not rooted in my erotic matrix—the inside of my fullness—it is fated to fail. I will have to rely on an ethical center outside myself in reference to which I must always be a sinner. If ethics well up from the inside, however, and if we are at that center, then sin is not disobedience but the violation of human well-being.
In the end the only ethical failure is a violation of eros—your own or someone else’s. The prophet in us needs to reclaim holy paganism. The pagan within must be open to hearing the call of the prophet. When the prophet and pagan meet, the Temple of the heart will be rebuilt.
I have long believed in my heart of hearts that ethics without eros cannot survive even on the ethical level. First, our erotic longing will not be assuaged by prophetic ethics. We can do the right thing our entire lives and still feel empty. The prophetic idea that God, and thus the God point within us, is beyond nature and can therefore act against nature is important. But it is only a stage in the unfolding ethical conscious of man. I was delighted many years back to happen across this passage from Abraham Kook, the greatest modern Hebrew mystic:
We are filled with the emotion of ethics;
we yearn toward a life that is pure
Our imagination excites the desire in our heart
With images of life that are most pure and most noble.Yet this desire cannot be realized
except through inner and outer commitment
to the light of being the Light of God,
to erotic morality
…
Morality not guided by the sacred is not deep,
and does not enter into the inwardness of the soul;
and even though a person might be drawn to it for good reason
—for she recognizes the uprightness of logical things—
this kind of instruction does not have a lasting hold
in the face of. ..passions strongly aroused.
Such a weak morality
does not have the power to guide…
the polis, the human community,
to penetrate to the depth of the soul
and to transform the heart
of universal man and of individual man
from stone to flesh.There is no alternative plan for humanity
other than that it be guided by the erotic morality.
And it is much better
that a person fall a number of times
on the journey
but establish his vision of world
and the morality of his life
according to that profundity of the erotic morality,
than if he has fewer failures
but lives a weakly spiritual life
at the hands of the superficial influence
of secular morality.
Ethics that are not rooted in eros ultimately fall apart. We yearn for eros. By exiling God from nature and secularizing the sexual, we condemn our-selves to emptiness and vacuity. For example, the company “line” ethic of the 1950s in America produced the “circle” yearning for communes and free love of the 1960s. This is the recurrent pattern of the human soul. Eros cannot be denied. Any ethical collapse is ultimately rooted in a failure of love, a lack of eros.
When we talk only about a God giving rules that run counter to our nature, the rules cannot hold. The eros of our nature will always overrun them. But if we come to understand that ethics is an erotic expression of our deeper divinity, we are truly moved to the ethical. For that is when we realize it is an expression of our deepest selves, a response to the call of our own voice. To be compelling and powerful, ethics must be an expression of your erotic divine nature and not a contradiction of it. So when the prophets insist that God, which is also the God within you, is beyond nature and can therefore act ethically against nature, they are referring only to your first nature, not to your deeper second nature. Your deeper nature is God. This is the secret whispering in the leaves of the Ashera tree and in the embrace of the cherubs.
Now this transmutation of the Ashera energy to the female cherub was not just a superficial “biblicizing” of a pagan notion. To read it this way would be to miss the whole point of the Hebrew myth revolution. It was rather one of the first moves toward union, the ultimate integration between masculine and feminine, the ethical and the erotic.
Ashera was represented in most temples by both male and female prostitutes. These temple prostitutes were either sacrificed to the Goddess or engaged sexually by the king or priests as incarnations of the goddess. To say that the prophets radically opposed human sacrifice is obvious. What is more revealing is that they opposed the entire institution of the temple prostitute.
Here again it is critical to understand the nuance of the argument between prophet and pagan. Both agreed that human sexual encounter could potentially reenact and even catalyze the cosmic divine sexual encounter between the God and Goddess. The Zohar is replete with imagery in which the priest plays an essential role in arousing the feminine waters of the Shechina so she will be ready to receive her divine partner. Close readings of such passages make it deliberately unclear if the human role is only to sexually arouse the Shechina or actually to merge with her in ecstatic sexual union.
Yet the prophet passionately opposed the temple prostitute. The reason is clear. The temple prostitute was the classic case of the erotic overriding the ethical. The entire human persona of the prostitute was effaced. The sexual became an expression of the cosmic, which absolutely overrode the personal face of sexuality. The prostitute in the temple, as in contemporary society, has no name. She serves a cosmic function that “defaces” her. The prophet opposes anonymous sex because in his ethical mission his essential goal is the personalizing of the sexual. The ethical moment in sexuality of commitment and personhood needs to be seen as primary, overriding even cosmic erotic needs.
The great biblical myth affirmation is that for sex to be sacred it must be personal. Personal means connected to a story. The prostitute whose name you do not know, to whose dreams and vulnerabilities you are impervious, is the archetype of the impersonal. Impersonal (as we will see) can also describe sex that is used to weave a false story. It refers to sex that is detached from the web of soul print passions and commitments that is your life. It refers as well to sex that we reach for compulsively to cover up—even from ourselves—the dull throb of emptiness.
It is not that the biblical myth masters did not recognize the power of the impersonal and even cosmic erotic. They did. Indeed, in the myth of Luria,.the world itself is re-created every moment. In every second and in every space, cosmic circles and lines erotically penetrate one another and existence is brought forth anew. Ecstasy, dance, music, prayer, study, and meditation were all part of the prophetic service. They were all practiced in a way that would allow the initiate to access the coursing eros of being as it washed and revitalized his soul. Impersonal cosmic eros was vitally important to the prophet. But not when it required the depersonalization of a human being, the temple prostitute. And yet we need to find ways to reclaim the power of impersonal eros in our personal lives and in the larger life of the polis. If we do not, the void will continue to be filled with abusive and degrading forms of pornography. We must find a way to reclaim the eros of the temple prostitute, cleansed of its shadow qualities, even as we affirm the centrality of sexuality rooted in personal commitment and shared dreams.
The prostitute archetype manifests itself in two forms. The first is the classic prostitute with whom sex is nonintimate and impersonal. The second is the Temple prostitute, who expresses the sexual as transpersonal and cosmic. The Temple prostitute would engage in transpersonal sex both with worshippers and temple priests as part of the erotic service of the Goddess. What both share in common however is that the prostitute, whether man or woman, is not related to in personal terms. The prostitute is upgraded to a symbol. Once that happens degradation is sure to follow eventually.
For the slippery slope between the impersonal and the depersonalized is seductive and steep. Thus, as powerful and even necessary as a transpersonal erotic moment might be, the prophets disallowed the Temple prostitute. The prophet recognizes that the sexual model of the erotic courses with a powerful energy that is essential to human ful-fill-ment. However, they insisted on replacing the male and female Temple prostitutes with the male and female cherubs. This was their way of insuring that the transpersonal did not slip into the impersonal, which could slip into the nonpersonal, which could slip into the nonethical, which could slip into evil.
Remember, paganism allowed the mutilation and even slaughter and sacrifice of the prostitute as an integral and regular part of the pagan cult. Once the sacrifice of a human being who was seen only as a symbol occurred, all ethics broke down.
The prophets insist on the radical holiness of the individual. The individual is of infinite worth and dignity and can never be reduced to a symbol. It is this emphasis of infinite value—the personal story of every human being—that is the driving force of prophetic ethics. We see in our own culture just how insightful this prophetic intuition is. Everyday pornography and soft porn may play the role of the Temple prostitute and seem innocent enough to be on the counter of respectable newsstands or on the movie channel at the best and most established hotels. But the line—driven by profit and emptiness—between the impersonal and the depersonalized is very, very slippery. Eventually it may lead to the radical depersonalization that lies at the core of all evil. Pornography based on rape, abuse of minors, and even murder—“white snuff”—is now available all over the world.
Personal eros comes from living your story. But though the prophet is fully identified with eros, he insists nevertheless on the merger of ethos and eros. Now what does it mean to be ethical? The answer: to behave in a way that supports a person’s ability to live their story.
What is an ethical violation? It is to behave in a way that undermines someone else’s ability to live their story. According to biblical myth, this could be an active violation—theft, deception, or violence. Or it could be a passive violation—failing to get involved in making the world a place where every human being has the opportunity to live their story. Since the primary ethical violation would be to violate someone’s story, the ethical and erotic merge, because the underlying principle of ethics is to affirm and support the erotic integrity of every human being’s story.
The only clash, then, between the erotic and the ethical is when my eros is at the expense of yours. Since biblical myth affirms that every human being is a homo imago dei, in Dante’s phrase, a divine miniature, then all human beings are equal in their erotic entitlement. Any violation of that equality would be an ethical—and an erotic—violation. So all ethical lapses are really violations of eros.
As we saw earlier, the inner impulse for all ethical violation is a lack of eros. When we human beings feel empty, exiled from our stories, we try to feed off other stories. That is the core of every ethical violation: when another person becomes not an end, a story unto themselves, but rather a means of fulfilling your own story.
Moving one step beyond what we saw in our discussion in chapter 8, it now becomes clear that there is no possible distinction between the erotic and the ethical. In fact, the word ethics comes from the Greek ethos, meaning “the special nature of a person or group”—to be precise, their story, which is also the source of the most powerful erotic fulfillment.
The prophet insists that the erotic sexual affirm the stories of both partners in the relationship. To de-story the sexual destroys intimacy, which leads to the prostitute archetype, the exile of the Shechina, and the destruction of the Temple.
Sex models eros in that it must always emerge from deep within our story line. When it does, then we can embrace the full erotic nature of the sexual as the guiding spiritual model for all of the nonsexual dimensions of our lives.
Union is the ultimate erotic state. Interconnectivity, the fullness of presence, the inside of God’s face, the yearning force of being, they all characterize our experience of Union. This is enlightenment. Yet for the Hebrew mystic if Union does not lead us to compassion and great love then we have missed the point. The medieval intellectual mystic Maimonides wrote a great book of mystical philosophy, Guide for the Perplexed. In the last sentences, after the book reaches its erotic crescendo (Cheshek, meaning “raw sensual passion” is the Hebrew translation of the Arabic term employed by Maimonides), he appends an implicit postscript. Paraphrasing: If all this doesn’t make you a better lover of people then you are no lover of God and certainly no lover of your self. Eros must always lead to ethics.
The human being begins her journey as part of the circle of nature. In the creation story of Genesis 1, man and woman are created as part of the natural order. Ancient myth reflected this circle of being, in which mortals and immortals, humans and Gods, and all of nature participated together. This is the circle of eros.
Biblical consciousness injected the line of duality and ethics in the circle. Compassion must always override eros. Mysticism—in every major system of thought—protested that this line view of reality was in itself distorted and called us back to the unity consciousness of circle. This return to eros how-ever is not at the expense of ethics; much to the contrary it becomes the most powerful motive and force for loving in the world.
Isaac Luria explains that rules and ethical obligation can never be sufficient motive for compassion. It is only when I realize that both my neighbor and I are part of the Shechina that true ethics begins. When a guilty person is punished the Shechina cries out, “My head aches, my arms are in pain.” To slap another human being is to slap the Shechina. When you are kind to a fellow human being you are befriending the Shechina. In Hebrew mysticism the Shechina is em-bodied in us.
This is the deep understanding of the most famous of all biblical maxims: Love your neighbor as yourself. The ultimate source of loving is knowing your neighbor as yourself. The ultimate source of loving is knowing that your neighbor is part of yourself. Both of you are woven in the seamless cloak of the universe.
When the Baal Shem Tov would engage in the spiritual practice of ascensions of the soul his wife would sometimes become very frightened. He would become totally inert, and she was sometimes unable to waken him from his trance. On one such day she had become quite desperate, not knowing how to return him to this world. As she paced to and fro his baby son pulled on his beard Immediately he came to and gently asked his son, “What do you need, my son.” To attend to a person in need, taught Master Israel, is deeper than even the deepest mystical communion. It is said that the Baal Shem Tov, while listening to the language of the birds and eavesdropping on the music of the spheres, could also hear the cries of all the tormented souls in the world. All of his work was for their healing.
The body leads to the soul, and the soul leads back to the body. “When I look at the I of my body I find the I of my soul. When I look at the I of my soul I find the I of God.” The Sufis have a wonderful saying—“Say your praise to Allah and tie your camel to a post.” What this really means is, touch the fullness of God and let that inspire even the simplest service.
My favorite Zen story is the one about the old Zen monk who has spent many years in meditation. He had attained deep levels of peace but had never achieved that moment of enlightenment when the I and the other collapse into one. So he asked his master, “Please grant me permission to leave the monastery and go practice on the great mountain by myself. There is nothing I want more than to realize the true nature of my non-dual self”
The master, sensing that his student’s time has come, granted permission. Well, our old monk took his begging bowl and few meager possessions in hand and began the journey to the mountains. It took a while, but he finally left the last village behind and began his ascent of the great mountain. Just then he saw coming toward him, down the mountain, an old man with a very large bundle on his back. The old man of course was none other that Manjushri—who, according to some Buddhist traditions, appears to aspirants to give them their last nudge toward enlightenment.
So said the old man going down to the old man going up, “Friend, tell me where you are going.” Well there was something about his voice that was kind, so the old monk told of his woe at being unable to cut through illusion and achieve illumination. “I’ve practiced for so many years…” His voice trailed away, and his eyes lowered. Suddenly however he raised his eyes and looked at the old man going down the great mountain. His face was shining and seemed so full of infinite compassion. “Tell me,” he entreated, “might you know something of enlightenment?” At this point the old man with the shiningface abruptly let go of his bundle. It crashed to the ground… and the old monk instantly achieved enlightenment.
It would seem to be all about dropping the bundle that we carry with us—past, future, needs, obligations, fears, and even hopes. At this point the newly enlightened monk looks at the wise old man and asks a bit sheepishly. “Now what?” The old man smiles, picks up the bundle, and walks down the mountain.
The difference is true compassion. It is not that one hand is good to the other hand because there is a moral obligation. How silly. They are of the same body. Unity consciousness. Eros. Ethics. Healing. Tikkun. So it is with us. We need to let our bundles fall. Only to then pick them up again and walk down the mountain.
by David J. Temple
AS THE META-CRISIS DEEPENS, THE FATE OF CIVILIZATION AND HUMANITY HANGS IN THE BALANCE.
First Principles and First Values is the tip of the spear in the fight for a humane future. Establishing frameworks for a new school of thought called CosmoErotic Humanism, the book is built around forty-two propositions that provide new source code for the future of planetary culture.
Like Europe in the early Renaissance, humanity is in a time between worlds, at a time between stories. First Principles and First Values contains blueprints for the bridge needed to cross from this world to the next.
“The position argued for in this book is of vital importance . . . it needs urgently to be read.”
IAIN McGILCHRIST, author of The Master and His Emissary
I don’t know about you, but being a human is pretty cool. All of us almost always take it for granted. It’s so easy getting caught in what’s going on in our our lives that we forget about the bigger picture.Marc paints this picture. We are at a bit of a crossroad it seems on this planet right now. I don’t believe anyone really knows which way things will go, though I’m 101% confident us humans need to change the way we do things if we want our descendants to enjoy this amazing planet the way we can.The work Marc and his colleagues are doing provides the tools and stimuli for those of us courageous enough to fight for everlasting love.
by David J. Temple
AS THE META-CRISIS DEEPENS, THE FATE OF CIVILIZATION AND HUMANITY HANGS IN THE BALANCE.
First Principles and First Values is the tip of the spear in the fight for a humane future. Establishing frameworks for a new school of thought called CosmoErotic Humanism, the book is built around forty-two propositions that provide new source code for the future of planetary culture.
Like Europe in the early Renaissance, humanity is in a time between worlds, at a time between stories. First Principles and First Values contains blueprints for the bridge needed to cross from this world to the next.
“The position argued for in this book is of vital importance . . . it needs urgently to be read.”
IAIN McGILCHRIST, author of The Master and His Emissary
The dear Dr. Gafni is back in a different capacity than he has been lately. We’re taking a short hiatus from learning the Faces of Eros to discuss a work he has most recently collaborated on with Zach Stein and Ken Wilber under the pseudonym “David J. Temple”. The book is First Principles and First Values and it is the basis for much of his views on the CosmoErotic Universe. Please go get the book, work through it at a manageable pace, and let’s create this more beautiful world fam!
NEW BOOK: First Principles and First Values – David J. Temple
A Return to Eros (paperback)
A Return to Eros (audiobook)
The Erotic and the Holy
Your Unique Self
Soul Prints: Your Path to Fulfillment
Self in Integral Evolutionary Mysticism
by David J. Temple
AS THE META-CRISIS DEEPENS, THE FATE OF CIVILIZATION AND HUMANITY HANGS IN THE BALANCE.
First Principles and First Values is the tip of the spear in the fight for a humane future. Establishing frameworks for a new school of thought called CosmoErotic Humanism, the book is built around forty-two propositions that provide new source code for the future of planetary culture.
Like Europe in the early Renaissance, humanity is in a time between worlds, at a time between stories. First Principles and First Values contains blueprints for the bridge needed to cross from this world to the next.
“The position argued for in this book is of vital importance . . . it needs urgently to be read.”
IAIN McGILCHRIST, author of The Master and His Emissary
