The Eye of Value is a term coined and shared by Dr. Gafni in multiple oral teaching over many years and in this more formal essay from 2018. This early draft was drawn from the forthcoming volumes of The Universe: A Love Story—First Meditations on CosmoErotic Humanism in Response to the Meta-Crisis by Dr. Marc Gafni. A more expanded version will also appear in forthcoming work by Gafni, Stein, and Wilber under the moniker of David J. Temple.

The essay was edited and prepared for publication by Kerstin Tuschik. We welcome substantive feedback as we prepare a more advanced version of this essay.

Download a PDF of the Essay

The Empiricism of Love: The Three Eyes of Knowing—The Three Eyes of Eros—The Three Forms of Gnosis—The Three Eyes That Are One

How do we know that Love is Real?

Not because of faith or dogma.

Rather, we know Love is real because the depth of our direct felt experience of Love tells us it is so. Our experience of Eros generates gnosis. That Love is real, and not a social construction, a fiction, or a figment of our imagination, is, like all good science, an empirical truth. This is, in fact, how all true knowledge in every field of inquiry is obtained.

Knowing through experience, however, is precisely the opposite of dogma. Knowing through experience is what we call empiricism. And knowing that Love is real—in fact more real than anything else, as the intrinsic value of Cosmos it is—is what William James correctly called Radical Empiricism.

Indeed, all of science, as opposed to organized religion, is based on the authority of direct validated experience. This is true both in the exterior science and what we have called the interior sciences. Indeed, in exterior and interior sciences, there are three ways to unfurnish our eyes—or what have been called the Three Eyes of Knowing. In fact, these Three Eyes are three distinct forms of the Anthro-Ontological Method.

In CosmoErotic Humanism, we refer to them as the Eye of the Senses, the Eye of the Mind, and the Eye of Consciousness.

The Eye of Consciousness is also known by at least four other names: the Eye of Value, the Eye of the Heart, the Eye of the Spirit, or the Eye of Contemplation.

It is this last set of eyes, by all of their names, which discloses Love’s Ultimate Reality, which is Love’s Knowledge, which is Love’s Value.

But we will see, as consciousness evolves, these very distinct eyes begin to come together, and we realize that, at the higher levels of consciousness, they inseparably inter-animate each other.

Each of these eyes illuminates a different dimension of Reality.

Each one is the province of particular dimensions of knowledge.

At higher levels of consciousness—what is sometimes called, in the interior sciences, nondual realization—the different dimensions, perceived by the different eyes inter-animate, pointing towards a larger Seamless Field of Eros.

Each of the Three Eyes goes by different names.

The Three Eyes Are:

The Eye of the Senses or the Eye of the Flesh.

The Eye of the Mind or the Eye of Reason.

The Eye of Consciousness, alternatively known as the Eye of Value, the Eye of the Heart, the Eye of the Spirit, or the Eye of Contemplation. [These names, however, are not quite synonyms. Rather, each implicitly implies a different quality of the Eye of Value. As such, we will occasionally use all of the names together with the lead name(s) being written first and the other names in brackets next to it.]

The Eye of the Senses [Eye of the Flesh] is generally referred to as empiricism. This eye is what is classically called empirical knowledge. But, as we shall see, it is referring to a very narrow strain of empiricism.

The Eye of the Mind [Eye of Reason] is generally known as rationalism, while the Eye of Consciousness [alternatively the Eye of the Spirit, the Eye of Contemplation, the Eye of the Heart, or the Eye of Value] is generally known as mysticism.

But it would be more accurate to say that all of the eyes are forms of science, what we refer to, in CosmoErotic Humanism, as exterior and interior sciences. All Three Eyes are forms of empiricism. (more…)

The Eye of Value: Early Draft Essay – Dr. Marc Gafni, 2018The Editors2024-05-21T08:24:09-07:00

First Principles and First Values — Dr. Marc Gafni on The Metagame

Enjoy this podcast with Dr. Marc Gafni featured on The Metagame Podcast.

Marc Gafni | First Principles and First Values

Propositions on Cosmoerotic Humanism, the Meta-Crisis, and the World to Come

This podcast is about the latest book “First Principles and First Values” by Dr. Marc Gafni and Dr. Zak Stein under the pseudonym David J. Temple.

Our new book can be pre-ordered from the US and Canada (we are working on creating direct ordering from Europe and other countries – please stand by!):

FIRST PRINCIPLES AND FIRST VALUES

Forty-Two Propositions on CosmoErotic Humanism, the Meta-Crisis, and the World to Come

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

Order Here

First Principles and First Values — Dr. Marc Gafni on The MetagameThe Editors2024-08-30T08:48:36-07:00

Decoding Dune: A Revelatory Exploration w/ Dr. Marc Gafni and Aubrey Marcus

Enjoy this podcast with Dr. Marc Gafni featured on Aubrey Marcus’ Podcast

Spoiler Alert! This episode is for people familiar with the Dune series, and want to explore the complicated themes of this iconic sci-fi masterpiece. Like a message that is echoing from the past, what is particularly relevant about Dune now?

In this podcast with Dr. Marc Gafni, we go on a journey to uncover the hidden lessons and timeless wisdom woven into the fabric of this incredible series. Marc Gafni and Aubrey Marcus discuss the multifaceted realms of power, politics, psychedelics, prophets, and the nuances of messianic leadership. We also explore the notion of destiny and the complexities of free will. Whether you’re a passionate aficionado or a curious soul, prepare to be enlightened as we meticulously decode the philosophical intricacies of Dune, offering fresh insights and revelations.

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Decoding Dune: A Revelatory Exploration w/ Dr. Marc Gafni and Aubrey MarcusThe Editors2024-08-30T08:49:07-07:00

First Principles and First Values (Interview with David J. Temple)

Enjoy this three-part podcast with Dr. Marc Gafni and Dr. Zak Stein (David J. Temple) featured on The Integral Stage Podcast on the new book: First Principles and First Values.

In this episode, Layman Pascal sits down with Dr. Marc Gafni and Dr. Zak Stein to discuss their jointly authored book, First Principles and First Values. They are publishing the book pseudonymously under the name, David J. Temple.

For privacy reasons YouTube needs your permission to be loaded.

In this episode, 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.

For privacy reasons YouTube needs your permission to be loaded.

In this third and final episode in this series, 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.

For privacy reasons YouTube needs your permission to be loaded.

Our new book can be pre-ordered from the US and Canada (we are working on creating direct ordering from Europe and other countries – please stand by!):

FIRST PRINCIPLES AND FIRST VALUES

Forty-Two Propositions on CosmoErotic Humanism, the Meta-Crisis, and the World to Come

by David J. Temple

AS THE META-CRISIS DEEPENS, THE FATE OF CIVILIZATION AND HUMANITY HANGS IN THE BALANCE.

“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

Order Here

First Principles and First Values (Interview with David J. Temple)The Editors2025-11-06T04:19:33-08:00

Dr. Marc Gafni & Layman Pascal: Public Shadow in the Planetary Age

Enjoy this podcast with Dr. Marc Gafni featured on The Integral Stage Podcast.

“Public shadow in the planetary age”

This is the first episode of a new series exploring the subtle dynamics of collective shadow, narrative making & our responses to how we are perceived. In the digital epoch, it is unlikely that anyone will escape confrontation with a negative image of themselves existing in the minds of others. Do we learn from it? Fight it? Absorb it? Ignore it? And how do we evaluate anything when information itself becomes dubious?

Layman is joined this time by Dr. Marc Gafni — the world philosopher of “cosmo-erotic humanism” together with Dr. Zak Stein. Gafni is the co-president with Stein of the Center for World Philosophy and Religion, founded with Ken Wilber in 2010, where they are articulating a “new meta theory story of value in response to the meta crisis”, even as Gafni lives as a character, both beloved and controversial, in the public mind.

Our task in this episode, and in this series, is not to demonize or exonerate. We encourage people to do their own research if they are interested. Facts matter. So do feelings. But that is not our topic in this series where we are focused on something more specific. We are not exploring the content of the narratives but rather how they emerge, how they are perceived by the people inside them, how those people respond under the conditions of the emerging digital, planetary age & what they have concluded about their responses.

We are not exploring content of the narratives but rather how they emerge, how they are perceived by the people inside them, how those people respond under the conditions of the emerging digital-planetary age & what they have concluded about their responses.

Dr. Marc Gafni & Layman Pascal: Public Shadow in the Planetary AgeThe Editors2025-11-04T11:38:06-08:00

The Three Selves: A Memory of the Future

An Essay by Dr. Marc Gafni

This is an early draft of an essay, written by Dr. Marc Gafni. It is part of The Phenomenology of Eros: Meditations on the New Narrative of Desire by Dr. Marc Gafni with Barbara Marx Hubbard & Dr. Kristina Kincaid. The essay was edited and prepared for publication by Kerstin Tuschik. We welcome substantive feedback as we prepare a more advanced version of this essay.

Download a PDF of the Essay

Desire: The Heart of Reality

We will start with just a couple of sentences recapitulating what we have discussed in depth elsewhere.[1]

We live in a CosmoErotic Universe. Reality itself is animated and driven by Eros.[2] That is one of the tenets of what we have called CosmoErotic Humanism.[3] The core understanding, drawn from an extensive integration of a broad range of exterior and interior sciences, is that the human participates directly and uniquely in the larger Field of Value, which is Cosmic Eros.

The human being is the CosmoErotic Universe in person. And by CosmoErotic Universe we do not imply merely the physical structure of matter, but rather the entire Universe in all of its interiors and exteriors. The realization that the CosmoErotic Universe distinctly incarnates in every human being is the core of CosmoErotic Humanism.

An essential quality of Eros is desire. Throughout traditional, modern, and postmodern societies, the surface chatter of human culture has tended to identify desire with sex. The two words are virtually synonyms. But deeper levels of realization in all three time periods inform us that desire is not in any sense reducible to the sexual; indeed, sexual desire participates in the larger Desire of Reality—a Desire that powers Reality.

When I am on the inside, when I am fully intimate with myself, I am able to access desire, the most wanton and poignant quality of the erotic experience. Desire is an essential expression of Love and Eros. But when I am on the outside, a stranger to myself, I am alienated from my deepest desires. I cannot access my yearning, though longing and desire are vital strands in the textured fabric of Eros.

It was Rilke, rebelling against the old religious dogmas, who wrote of the shivering blaze that is Reality’s Desire as it awakens in human consciousness:

You see, I want a lot.

Perhaps I want everything

The darkness that comes with every infinite fall

And the shivering blaze of every step up

So many live on and want nothing

…

But what you love to see are faces

That do work and feel thirst.[4]

Desire is a quality of Cosmos itself. To place desire only in the realm of the sexual is to exile the erotic to the sexual[5]—but we must remember that twelve billion years of Cosmic Eros existed before sex disclosed itself.

(more…)

The Three Selves: A Memory of the FutureThe Editors2024-05-27T05:59:13-07:00

Story as a First Principle and First Value of Reality

By Dr. Marc Gafni

This is an early draft of an essay, written by Dr. Marc Gafni. It is part of Volume Two of a forthcoming six-volume book series, The Universe: A Love Story, by Dr. Marc Gafni & Dr. Zachary Stein with Barbara Marx Hubbard. The essay was edited and prepared for publication by Kerstin Tuschik. We welcome substantive feedback as we prepare a more advanced version of this essay.

Download a PDF of this Essay

We often speak of three great questions of CosmoErotic Humanism.

The first is Who—as in Who am I? Who are You? Who are We? This is the great question of identity.

The second question is What—What do I really want? What is my deepest heart desire? These inquiries are closely linked to the great question of normativity. What is there for me to do? What is there for you to do? What is there for us to do? What ought I do? What ought we do?

The third question, the one which we want to focus on here is Where—Where am I? Where are You? Where are We? This is the question of Universe Story. In CosmoErotic Humanism, we respond to the Where question with the following series of brief, precisely formulated sentences:

Reality is not merely a fact.

Reality is also a story.

Reality is not an ordinary story.

Reality is a love story.

Reality is not an ordinary love story.

Reality is an Outrageous Love Story, or what we might also call an Evolutionary Love Story.

An Outrageous Love Story is not a pollyannish love story. Rather, an Outrageous Love Story embraces the full ecstasy and agony of life.

“Reality is a Love Story” applies to the narrative arc of the Whole—all of Reality, in its sequenced movement, contingency, and freedom in the context of telos and plotline.

YOUR love story is chapter and verse of the Universe: A Love Story.

Your Unique Self intimately participates in the Love Story of Reality.

One of the key purposes of the writings of CosmoErotic Humanism is to validate every phrase in these sentences, based on the validated insights at the frontiers of human gnosis as found in the exterior and interior sciences across space and time. More specifically, we are engaged in synergizing traditional (premodern), modern, and postmodern Principles and Stories of Value into a new grammar and Story of Value that is greater than the sum of all previous stories or plotlines.

Here we will focus particularly on the elements and dimensions of Story. The series of sentences featured above points towards what we are calling the narrative arc of Reality.

Our point is that Story is not a mere human contrivance that developed and survived because of its adaptive power. Rather, the adaptive power of Story is rooted in its fundamental, ontological status. Reality itself is stories all the way down the evolutionary chain. Said differently, Story is a First Principle and First Value of Reality. Human beings think and feel in stories because this first Value of Reality lives in us, as us, and through us. And here we are referring to the anthro-ontological Principle that lies at the very heart of the epistemological method of CosmoErotic Humanism.

The First Principle and First Value of Story is implicit in both the interior and the exterior sciences. To approach this First Principle, we need to pause and briefly unpack four implicit elements that apply to every manner of Story all the way down and all the way up the evolutionary chain, through all levels of matter, life, and the depths of the self-reflective human mind. It will then become apparent that these core elements of Story are at play throughout all of Reality, across space and time.

The Four Elements of Story

The first element of Story is a thread of action, in which events and dynamics are causally connected to each other. (more…)

Story as a First Principle and First Value of RealityThe Editors2024-03-27T07:03:03-07:00

Introduction from the New Book on “First Principles & First Values”

Forty-Two Propositions on CosmoErotic Humanism, the Meta-Crisis, and the World to Come by David J. Temple

CosmoErotic Humanism is a philosophical movement aimed at reconstructing the collapse of value at the core of global culture. This movement emerges in response to the meta-crisis, understanding existential and catastrophic risks as rooted not only in failures of economics, politics, and technology, but in failed worldviews. The core of CosmoErotic Humanism is a system of First Principles and First Values that recasts cosmic evolution as a Story of Value in which humanity plays a unique role. These First Principles and First Values ground a comprehensive set of theories, including self and psychology, epistemology, scientific metaphysics, education, theology, mysticism, sexuality, and value.

CosmoErotic Humanism thereby responds to the three great questions: Where? Who? and What? It offers a new Universe Story (Where am I?), a new narrative of identity (Who am I?), and new vision of ethics (What ought I/we do?). These are some of the first words on the possibilities of a world philosophy adequate to our time of civilization transformation. What is offered by CosmoErotic Humanism is a new Story of—eternal yet evolving—Value that can serve as a context for our diversity, finally allowing us to speak of humanity as part of a shared Story of evolving Cosmic Value.

Download Chapters 1-5 of the Book HERE

To the Reader

The propositions collected here unpack the urgent moral need to articulate a new vision and theory of value. Simply put, humanity must redefine what it understands to be valuable if it is going to survive. Humans must understand the importance of what they value in the Cosmos—the reality of value itself—beyond the notion that what they value is, for example, simply an arbitrary price that can be fixed to a commodity. The idea that a tree is only as valuable as what it can be sold for is absurd. The idea that a person is only as valuable as what they can contribute to society is also absurd. In fact, both incarnate a dimension of value that is immeasurable and fundamentally irreducible to its commodified form. Yet just this kind of absurdity has been driving global culture for centuries.

There has been great confusion in value theory over the last two hundred years. On the one hand, conservatives have attempted to simplify the discussion to a single list of preordained and eternal values, which must be protected, and to which all people must pledge allegiance. At the same time, driven by a reductive materialism, scientific communities largely claim that only what is described by physics is real and that therefore nothing ultimately has intrinsic value. Given this metaphysical assumption, contemporary value theory has stridently argued that value is but a contrived human invention. The rise of postmodernity has only exacerbated this trend, labelling all values “social constructs,” “fictions,” or “figment of our imaginations.” This claim has now entered mainstream culture. To cite but one example, two extremely popular books by Yuval Harari, Sapiens and Homo Deus, present these kinds of dogmatic postmodern claims as taken-for-granted assumptions. Harari’s books have received enthusiastic endorsements from popular cultural luminaries, including prime ministers, presidents, corporate leaders, and myriad literary, spiritual, and religious figures.

Value, however, is not merely instrumental or economic. It is not a social construction or cultural contrivance—not a mere fiction covering over a truly valueless and therefore ultimately meaningless world. The propositions here begin to demonstrate that value is intrinsic to Cosmos, all the way down and all the way up the evolutionary chain. Value is foundational and evolving. It is not that human beings contrive value; rather, value precedes life. Life is an inherent expression of value. Life is contrived in pursuit of Cosmic Value. Cosmic Value in this way generates life, as life emerges in pursuit of value. We live inside of value even as value lives inside of us. Reality is value. But this is all ahead of the story.

The material collected here from the internal writings of the Center for World Philosophy and Religion. The Center is co-founded and led by Marc Gafni and Zak Stein. Together with Ken Wilber—also a cofounder of the Center—and an international team, they execute the Center’s mission: to evolve culture as needed in response to the looming threat of existential and catastrophic risk. This movement in culture has become referred to as CosmoErotic Humanism. Future volumes will include many colleagues who have been in leadership positions or dialogue with the Center for World Philosophy and Religion over the years—including Barbara Marx Hubbard, Lori Galperin, John P. Mackey, Howard Bloom, Ervin László, Sally Kempton, Daniel Schmachtenberger, and others. In each volume, as appropriate, we will recognize any particular partners who played a key co-authorship role in that particular work.

Taking the form of forty-two telegraphic propositions, this extended monograph provides a brief unpacking of CosmoErotic Humanism’s First Principles and First Values. We are not making our full arguments here; these will appear in longer forthcoming volumes. Please read through the propositions themselves, skipping ahead to those most interesting to you, those that elicit the most desire. Also review the list of First Principles and First Values (see pages 168–170) and try to hold the whole picture before beginning to read through them in sequence. Here we are putting it all on the table, as it were, so that, as we begin to publish more and elaborate on these themes, there is no confusion as to where we stand.

David Judah Temple
October 2023
Vermont, USA

Photography by Kristina Tahel Amelong

The following is the Introduction from our new book “First Values & First Principles” by David J. Temple.

Download Chapters 1-5 of the Book HERE

Order the Book

David J. Temple is a pseudonym created for enabling ongoing collaborative authorship at the Center for World Philosophy and Religion. The two primary authors behind David J. Temple are Marc Gafni and Zak Stein. For different projects specific writers will be named as part of the collaboration. In this volume Ken Wilber joins Dr. Gafni and Dr. Stein.

Dr. Marc Gafni is a visionary world philosopher and futurist, one of the leading formulators of world spirituality and religion of our time, and a beloved teacher and public intellectual with a doctorate in philosophy from Oxford University. He has more than twenty books to his name, including Your Unique Self, A Return to Eros, and three volumes of Radical Kabbalah.

Dr. Zak Stein is an educator, groundbreaking educational theorist, and futurist who specializes in developmental theory and metrics with a doctorate in the philosophy of education from Harvard University. He is the author of Education in a Time Between Worlds, among many other publications.

Ken Wilber is the creator of Integral Theory, with over twenty-five books to his name. He is one of the most influential philosophers of our time.

Introduction: On Redefining “Value” & Realizing Intimacy with All Things During the Meta-Crisis

The world is not what it was when the great wisdom traditions first began to (re)connect (“religion” is from the Latin religare, meaning to bind or tie) the human to the Cosmos through the identification of a Field of Value in which all life participates. The last century has seen more change in the conditions of human existence than any other period in known history. Technologies and societal evolutions have moved the center of culture outside the Field of Value. Humanity has become untethered from Reality, and more specifically: divorced from the Reality of Value. And so there is an urgent need for new forms of religion, philosophy, and culture that reconstruct value and reconnect humanity with nature and Reality.

Concern for the legacy of the great traditions is what unites the writing collected here to the modern tradition of perennial philosophy. This tradition suggests that a common core of truths can be found within all the best works of humanity’s religious imagination and interior sciences of contemplation. We propose here an Evolving Perennialism in which universal and eternal truths can be identified without becoming fixed. Eternal values evolve. As explained below, this is one of the ways beyond the devastating criticisms of accepted forms of value that modernity and postmodernity have rightfully offered. The failures of prior traditions that enthroned value do not put an end to value; in our hands, these critiques serve to evolve value. (more…)

Introduction from the New Book on “First Principles & First Values”The Editors2024-03-12T08:34:49-07:00

The Narrative Thread of Cosmos: The Evolution of Intimacy Through the Four Big Bangs

By Dr. Marc Gafni

This is an early draft of an essay, written by Dr. Marc Gafni. It is part of Volume 2 of a forthcoming six-volume book series, The Universe: A Love Story, by Dr. Marc Gafni & Dr. Zachary Stein with Barbara Marx Hubbard. The essay was edited and prepared for publication by Kerstin Tuschik. We welcome substantive feedback as we prepare a more advanced version of this essay.

Download the Essay as PDF

It is the new information of the sciences that opens us to the most profound realization that the essential nature of Cosmos itself is Story. This narrative view of Cosmos informs what we briefly termed above as cosmological, biological, and cultural evolution. It is only now that the leading edges of modern science are beginning to realize that there is a direct throughline, a narrative thread, if you will, beginning with this current Universe at the Big Bang and moving all the way from matter (chemistry, physics, and cosmological evolution) to life (biology and biological evolution), to mind (spirituality, psychology, and cultural evolution).

Before we turn to the Four Big Bangs, which we will unfold as the narrative arc of Cosmos, the core of the Universe Story, and particularly of Evolution: The Love Story of the Universe, some crucial contextual notes are in order.

Evolution as Crisis and Invitation: The Context for the Four Big Bangs

In other writings on CosmoErotic Humanism, we will unfold six plotlines of the Intimate Universe. To simply state them here, evolution evolves to more and more Eros. The plotlines of Cosmic Eros include

more and more complexity,

more and more uniqueness,

more and more consciousness,

more and more creativity,

more and more care and concern,

more and more intimacy, and

more and more story.

For the sake of this writing, however, let’s just focus on the evolution of intimacy as the overarching vector of evolution’s progression. Eros and intimacy evolve within a narrative arc. The narrative arc of the evolutionary plotline—the evolution of Eros and intimacy—is what we have termed the Four Big Bangs. They form the crux of the narrative thread of Cosmos. Central to the emergence of Conscious Evolution is our very recent ability to discern precisely this narrative thread.

To grasp the narrative arc of Cosmos more fully, we need to place our discussion of the Four Big Bangs in a larger context. One common feature of all evolutionary theories is the idea that evolution is hard, painful, crisis-prone, and existential—a matter of life and death. It is clear that, at key moments, evolutionary crises occur—cataclysmic events that bring into the Universe something that is totally new and truly unprecedented.

As we have already discussed in Volume One of this series, there is little doubt in the minds of those thinking seriously about evolution that we are in the midst of an evolutionary meta-crisis. This is the first totalizing crisis of the Anthropocene, as humanity and the planet itself are forced into what we have termed a reconfiguration of intimacies toward higher-order evolutionary emergence.^[1] This is a moment of crisis, and yet, such a crisis is perfectly in sync with the narrative structure of Reality. Everything we know about evolution suggests that, precisely at such a moment of breakdown, we are poised for breakthrough.

But our choices matter. That is exactly what Conscious Evolution means. It is the movement to the pivotal role of conscious human choice—evolution in person as us—in both ensuring that there will be a future and in designing the quality of that future. Our choices are the leading edge of evolution itself. We are the verbs in the arc of evolution. This narrative arc will become clearer, as we outline the Four Big Bangs below.

This meta-crisis must shift not only our physical systems and exteriors (infrastructure and social structure), but also our interiors—our consciousness—or Eros itself (superstructure). And this evolutionary leap will be catalyzed by the meta-crisis that we are in the midst of, right now. This crisis has not only to do with the geo-history of technology and the limits of the biosphere. It is not just about the complexity of the planetary stack. It is, more fundamentally, a crisis of self-understanding. Or, as we frame it in our writings, virtually every crisis, at its core, is a crisis of intimacy. We are not intimate with ourselves, and our world, and as such, we are not in love with ourselves, or our world.

But the two are related. We need to be in love with our world, our planet, and with our Cosmos. It is because we are not, that we are naturally not intimate and in love with each other or ourselves. Or said slightly differently, we need a Universe Story, in which we can locate ourselves. We need a Universe Story that meets the depth of our longing and the depth of our knowing—the truth of the interior and exterior sciences.

One of the core sentences of CosmoErotic Humanism is:

Evolution is Love responding to need.

It is the depth of this need, emergent from the meta-crisis of this moment that can generate such a new Universe Story. Our CosmoErotic Humanism is one model of precisely such a new Universe Story. Only from the depth of such a new Universe Story can we articulate a narrative of identity, in which are literally in love, in which we participate in the very fabric of Reality’s Eros.

We are in the midst of an unprecedented species-wide identity and relationship crisis (and this is happening during the very decades when the self-inflicted extinction of our species has become a potential reality for the first time). Our Universe Story and its derivative narratives of identity, power, desire, and community have collapsed on themselves, no longer able to claim alignment with any genuine features of Reality beyond the surface structures of what postmodernity calls social construction. We no longer know what it means to be human.^[2] And for the first time we are aware of this ignorance, collectively.^[3] Dogmatic materialism coupled with postmodernism and superficial evolutionary psychology, the conventional narratives of the age, have de-story-ed Reality. Together, they reject the notion that we have any intrinsic purpose on the planet.

And yet, at the very same time, the leading edges of post-dogmatic and post-conventional thinking in the sciences, both interior and exterior, have begun to tell a new Story. At the leading edge of thought, there is a growing understanding that consciousness, and the Eros that animates it, as well as our own core self-understanding, are not epiphenomena. Eros and consciousness are not side effects in our lives. They are the main event. Eros, consciousness, our Universe Story, and narrative of identity are not merely supervening or reacting to a more basic bio-technological base. Rather, human Eros or its lack and its desire for greater intimacies, consciousness, and self-identity (or their lack) are at the core of everything. It is because of Eros’s fundamental and central nature that failures of Eros are driving the global crisis on all levels. We cannot live without Eros, for it is our fundamental nature and the nature of Cosmos. Reality is Eros.

As we point toward in other writings of CosmoErotic Humanism,^[4] when Eros breaks down, pseudo-eros in the form of every kind of substitute gratification seeks to fill the void. Pseudo-eros is the direct cause for the collapse of ethos. Formalized succinctly, we can say: All failures of Eros lead directly to a breakdown of identity, which in turn engenders a collapse of ethics.

Our generation is in an unprecedented position to take responsibility for participating in profoundly generative and destructive evolutionary crises. The question is: Can we understand our crises in a Cosmic Context, as opportunities for the emergence of the unprecedented, and as invitations into a higher form of life?

The only effective response to the meta-crisis is, in fact, the movement from unconscious to Conscious Evolution. And Conscious Evolution means, as we noted at the outset, not only the structural realization that we are a direct emergent of and expression of evolution. It is not enough to know that evolution lives in us and that the evolutionary impulse beats in our hearts. Conscious Evolution means that we have gathered new information from the sciences, integrating its interior and exterior disciplines. In doing so, we have realized that evolution itself is love in action. And as Conscious Evolution, we are, quietly and literally, evolution as love in action in person. Indeed, this is the impulse that moves the project of CosmoErotic Humanism itself and all likeminded meta-projects.

What moves us to gather all the fragments of information—myriad separate parts—into a new larger whole, weaving strands from all the diverse disciplines into a larger embrace, is none other than the same Love that moves the Sun and other stars: Evolutionary Eros itself. And the primary action of Evolutionary Love is the evolution of love itself.

That evolution has now awakened to itself inside of our own identities. That is what we refer to as Conscious Evolution. We now realize that we are personal incarnations of the Force of Evolutionary Love pulsing fiercely and tenderly in us and as us. So, it is Conscious Evolution from here on out: We are able to know and do too much to pretend otherwise; we must consciously orchestrate the future of the planet and the biosphere. And as we have begun to unpack above, the next step in Conscious Evolution is the realization of the Universe: A Love Story.

The interior sciences remind us that the inside of consciousness is Love, or what we are calling Eros, which is defined by an incessant drive for ever-deepening intimacy and creativity. And, as we have begun to point towards,^[5] and will deepen future writings, intimacy and creativity are the same movement of Cosmos.

As we began to unpack earlier, new intimacy is created by fostering ever wider and deeper shared identities in the context of (relative) otherness. Separate parts allured together to foster new wholes is the essential movement of both intimacy and creativity. It is the movement of becoming, which characterizes the Story of the Intimate Universe. (more…)

The Narrative Thread of Cosmos: The Evolution of Intimacy Through the Four Big BangsThe Editors2024-02-28T07:51:55-08:00

The Evolutionary Love Creed by Dr. Marc Gafni & Dr. Zachary Stein

The following creed was written in 2017 and signed by Dr. Marc Gafni, Barbara Marx Hubbard, and Dr. Zachary Stein. It emerges from some of the core tenets of CosmoErotic Humanism.

THIS SHORT PROLOGUE MUST BE READ AS PART OF CREED:

The Evolutionary Love Creed is not merely poetry or metaphor. It is the most accurate take on Reality that we have today, based on the deepest integrated insights from all the premodern, modern, and postmodern sciences – and from both, what we call the interior and the exterior sciences – woven together in a higher evolutionary embrace. Elaborating the tenets of this creed in practice and theory constitutes the combined work of the Center for World Philosophy and Religion and the Foundation for Conscious Evolution.

The Evolutionary Love Creed

We seek to live according to a new Story of Self and Cosmos. We believe that the human being and the Universe are both expressions of an evolving LoveIntelligence. Therefore, the nature of the human is to embody and express the evolution of love itself.

The Universe is not simply a fact or event; it is a story. It is not an arbitrary or meaningless story. It is a love story. It has direction and is driven by an underlying force. The Universe is a Story about the evolution of love. It is a Story in which love emerges into ever-new and higher forms.

Reality at all levels is animated and driven by a Force that can be called Evolutionary Love, or Eros. This Force moves all of Reality towards ever-greater contact and wholeness. Reality evolves toward ever-higher and more complex forms of interconnectivity. The interior experience of this interconnectivity is intimacy. The true nature of Reality is thus a profound and growing intimacy among all beings.

The Evolutionary Love Story that is Reality – like all love stories – includes mystery, agony, and ecstasy. All unfolds within the arch of ever-deeper configurations of intimacy. Humanity is a key player in the CosmoErotic drama that is the evolution of love.

Thus the human must always inquire:
Who am I?
Who are You?
Who are We?

Every human is an irreducibly unique expression of the LoveIntelligence, LoveBeauty, and LoveDesire that is the initiating and animating Eros and energy of the Universe. Evolutionary Love is that which lives in you, as you, and through you.

As such, you have an irreducibly unique perspective and an irreducibly unique taste, like none other in the Universe. You incarnate an irreducibly unique quality and place within a Cosmic Web of configurations of intimacy. Your unique quality of intimacy and your unique perspective come together to form your Unique Self.

You are (every human is) a Unique Self participating in the evolution of love.

We, the species Homo sapiens, are evolving into Homo amor. We are becoming the self-conscious stewards of evolutionary love on a planetary scale.

The fullest expression of humanity as Homo amor occurs when each and every Unique Self is able to give its unique gift of Evolutionary Love. Every human (and all other beings) emanates a quality of unique being and doing whose enactment is the intention and purpose of their life.

Every Unique Self lives in the context of evolving configurations of intimacy. We are all part of a larger Evolutionary We-Space. The evolution of love in and through humanity reaches beyond individual Unique Selves to form Unique Self Synergies.

Unique Selves can unite (beyond ego) in cooperation to create symphonic harmonies of collective LoveIntelligence. These Unique Self Symphonies are unions that emerge as a natural outcome of human diversity.

Thus does the Love Story of the Universe manifest through humanity in the form of a Unique Self Symphony – a jazz symphony in which every Unique Self improvises their own irreducibly unique part in complex and intimate harmonies with all others.

It is in these crescendos of interconnectivity and love that humanity gives birth to Homo amor. We are becoming a new species that is conscious of its role in the Love Story of the Universe. Homo amor will remake the Earth and explore the galaxy in the pursuit of advancing the evolution of love.

Download as PDF

The Evolutionary Love Creed by Dr. Marc Gafni & Dr. Zachary SteinThe Editors2024-03-05T07:27:51-08:00

Download Chapter 1-5 of First Principles and First Values

Download Chapter 1-5 of First Principles and First Values (2024) by David J. Temple.

FIRST PRINCIPLES AND FIRST VALUES

Forty-Two Propositions on CosmoErotic Humanism, the Meta-Crisis, and the World to Come

by David J. Temple

AS THE META-CRISIS DEEPENS, THE FATE OF CIVILIZATION AND HUMANITY HANGS IN THE BALANCE.

“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

David J. Temple is a pseudonym created for enabling ongoing collaborative authorship at the Center for World Philosophy and Religion, a leading international think tank whose mission is to address existential risk by articulating a shared universal Story of Value for global intimacy and global coordination. The Center focuses its work on a world philosophy, CosmoErotic Humanism, as the ground for a global vision of value, economics, politics, and spiritual coherence. The two primary authors behind David J. Temple are Marc Gafni and Zak Stein. For different projects specific writers will be named as part of the collaboration. In this volume Ken Wilber joins Dr. Gafni and Dr. Stein.

Receive chapter 1-5 in your inbox! Sign up now:

Download Chapter 1-5 of First Principles and First ValuesThe Editors2025-08-07T03:21:45-07:00

“Twelve Faces of Eros” — Podcast Series with Dr. Marc Gafni and Kyle Kingsbury

New podcast series ‘Twelve Faces of Eros” based on the book A Return to Eros: the Radical Experience of Being Fully Alive by Dr. Marc Gafni & Dr. Kristina Kincaid.

This amazing new podcast with Marc Gafni and Kyle Kingsbury is the first introduction to a series of episodes on the Twelve Faces of Eros as Dr. Marc Gafni outlined in the audio workshop The Erotic and the Holy and the book A Return to Eros.

We are honored to have this 14 episode series’ home be with the Kyle Kingsbury Podcast.

May this illuminating podcast help us all see a common horizon and work towards the more beautiful world we all know is possible.

This podcast series is based on the book A Return to Eros: the Radical Experience of Being Fully Alive.

Discover the hidden relationship between Erotic, the Sexual and the Sacred.

None of the four old philosophies about sex are sufficient to inspire us or even hold us in our sexuality. Sex is not merely negative or positive. Sex is not just neutral, nor is it merely sacred because it creates babies.

Erotic Mystics from the hidden tradition of Solomon’s temple taught a secret doctrine. Sex is the source of all wisdom. Sex is an expression of the erotic impulse of existence itself alive in us-the yearning for contact, pleasure, and aliveness. The Sexual however is not the sum total of the erotic. Rather, the sexual models the Erotic. The sexual teaches us how to live an Erotic life in all dimension of our existence.

It is these secret doctrines that were later taught by Mary Magdalene and that sparked excitement around bestselling novels such as The Da Vinci Code.

Deep understanding of the sexual becomes the portal to accessing aliveness in every dimension of our reality. This realization demands that you live sexually without shame and shows you how to re-eroticize all areas of your life.

A Return to Eros: On Sex, Love, and Eroticism in Every Dimension of Life, from Drs. Marc Gafni and Kristina Kincaid, reveals the radical secret tenets of relationship between the sexual, the erotic, and the holy. They reveal what Eros actually means and share the ten core qualities of the Erotic, which are modeled by the sexual. These include being on the inside, fullness of presence, yearning, allurement, fantasy, surrender, creativity, pleasure, and more.

A Return to Eros shows why these qualities of the erotic modeled by the sexual are actually the same core qualities of the sacred. The relationship between the sexual and the erotic becomes clear, teaching you how to live an erotically suffused existence charged with purpose, potency and power.

To be an Outrageous Lover–not just in sex but also in all facets of your life–you must listen deeply to the simple yet elegant whisperings of the sexual. This book will forever transform your understanding and experience of love, sex, and Eros.

Buy the book

Listen to the Erotic and the Holy Workshop

Imagine walking into your place of worship – your local church, synagogue, mosque, or meditation center – to find that all of the usual adornments have been replaced with statues and pictures of sexually intertwined cherubs. Chances are, you’d be quickly taken aback.

But according to Mark Gafni, bestselling author of “Your Unique Self” and “Soul Prints”, these were the precise images found atop the ark of the ancient Temple of Jerusalem. “These ‘angels of desire’ were, for the mystics, the very key to the mystery of love at the heart of our lives”, he explains. Now listeners can join him in exploring the tantric secret of these cherubs, and experience Eros in all of life’s activities, including the spiritual, with “The Erotic and the Holy”.

Download for free

“Twelve Faces of Eros” — Podcast Series with Dr. Marc Gafni and Kyle KingsburyThe Editors2024-08-30T09:28:02-07:00

The Inside of God’s Face — with Dr. Marc Gafni and Kyle Kingsbury

Enjoy this podcast with Dr. Marc Gafni featured on Kyle Kingsbury Podcast.

Kyle Kingsbury about this podcast:

I am without words yall!!! Marc Gafni came and delivered on all of my deepest podcast dreams. We had a proper introduction. Marc gave us one of the most informed recountings of what it’s like on The Inside of God’s Face. Walked us through “I-We-All”. Then casually wove together the relationship of Light and Dark. This one is special. Enjoy!!!

The Inside of God’s Face — with Dr. Marc Gafni and Kyle KingsburyThe Editors2024-01-31T06:59:37-08:00

Early Ontologies of Both—The Universe: A Love Story and Evolution: The Love Story of the Universe—in the Interior Sciences

An Early Draft of an Excerpt from Volume Two of

The Universe: A Love Story

First Meditations on CosmoErotic Humanism

in Response to the Meta-Crisis

The first draft of this essay was written by Dr. Marc Gafni. It is part of Volume 2 of a forthcoming six-volume book series, The Universe: A Love Story, by Dr. Marc Gafni & Barbara Marx Hubbard with Dr. Zachary Stein. The essay was edited and prepared for publication by Kerstin Tuschik. We welcome substantive feedback as we prepare a more advanced version of this essay.

Download a Preview Draft of the Essay

We now turn to early ontologies of both, the Universe: A Love Story and Evolution: The Love Story of the Universe, in the interior sciences of the great traditions. By this we mean both realizations of the Cosmos as animated and driven by Eros, as well as a sense of Eros as the animating and motive force of the Evolutionary Story.

We alluded to Charles Darwin in passing above. But before we turn again to Darwin himself, more ancient sources for the ontologizing^[1] of love—the realization of Love as an organizing Cosmic Principle in the interior sciences—are important sources which require at least some prior mention. By ontology we of course mean to refer to Eros, not as a materialist social construction of reality but as an intrinsic meaning structure of value of Cosmos.

Early sources for this understanding of Love as a basic ontology of Cosmos—as the animating energy of Reality, and particularly as the Creative Process—appear as an esoteric thread that runs through key texts of the interior sciences. We speak not of a premodern dogma claiming a central place for love as the motive force of Reality but of the contemplative realizations of the great traditions. These sets of common realizations derive from the cross-cultural interior investigation and experimentation conducted by some of the greatest hearts, minds, and spirits in known human history.

The writings of the interior sciences on the motive force of Eros deserve at the very least their own volume. Indeed, each of the interior science traditions deserves its own volume, with a second volume integrating their shared perennial features. But since that is beyond our purview here, we must at least mention them as part of the larger source context for the ontology of Evolution: The Love Story of the Universe, the Universe: A Love Story, and the Intimate Universe that we are presenting here. After we adduce below at least the fragrance of these important ontologizers of Eros as the motive force of Reality, we also need to briefly explain why these sources have been largely ignored—with some notable exceptions—in the contemporary evolutionary conversation.

One great tradition that has a profoundly historical, even proto-evolutionary character is that of Hebrew mysticism. Here, Eros is often portrayed as the central animating force of both Reality itself and what would come to be called the evolutionary process. I (Marc) have written an entire volume on this realization of the Universe: A Love Story and Evolution: The Love Story of the Universe within the interior sciences of Hebrew wisdom. That volume is entitled: The Wisdom-of-Solomon Matrix of CosmoErotic Humanism: Early Ontologies of the Love Story of the Universe in the Interior Sciences of Hebrew Wisdom.^[2] The next section will naturally not cover all of the material but will at least evoke some of the parameters of this crucial lineage in the interior sciences.

I first described these sources in 2003, in a work called The Mystery of Love, later expanded under the title A Return to Eros.^[3] In the early work, there are thirty pages of primary sources, drawn from two millennia of texts, supporting the above claim.

The premise of that heavily footnoted work, The Mystery of Love, and its later recension, without the explicit footnotes and in a more evolutionary context, as A Return to Eros, is that we live in a CosmoErotic Universe—and that the CosmoErotic Universe lives in us—and that Reality is incepted, animated, and driven by Eros all the way down and all the way up the evolutionary chain. (more…)

Early Ontologies of Both—The Universe: A Love Story and Evolution: The Love Story of the Universe—in the Interior SciencesThe Editors2025-11-04T11:43:31-08:00

From Barbie to Hamas: The Failed Love Story at the Root of All Evil w/ Aubrey Marcus & Dr. Marc Gafni

We are absolutely delighted to share with you this new, incredible podcast with Aubrey Marcus and Dr. Marc Gafni, in which they talk about one of the most complex issues in philosophy and religion: the root cause of evil.

The thesis that Dr. Marc and Aubrey present is that the evil we see in the world is rooted in failed love stories. Our own love stories—personally and collectively—are, in Marc’s words, “chapter and verse in the Universe: a Love Story.” Evil therefore—the opposite of “live”—is at its root the failure of the love story, which is the very plot line of the real.

Marc and Aubrey unpack the potent and poignant realization, that when you lose the plot line of the real you act against Reality. This sacred hermeneutic—lense of sensemaking—allows us to begin to approach so much of what we see in the world today.

The fundamentalist distortions of Jihad, the hidden power agenda’s of military industrial complexes, and the AI driven “digital dictatorships in the making”, all share a common root: their dissociation from the plot line of “Reality is a love story.”

This frame will help bring understanding to much of what we are seeing in today’s culture, from AI to the war in the Middle East.

The surprise reveal is how the box office hit Barbie, actually points to the reality of our failed love story in Western culture.

We encourage you to slowly listen to every sentence of this deep and nuanced podcast. Marc and Aubrey speak with broken hearts, with clarity, but always in the unknowing. Always in devotion to the Mystery. Yet every sentence and literally every phrase in every sentence, offers new insight and whispers love in every distinction, opening hearts and minds with every breath.

This stunning conversation is not an ordinary podcast. It can’t just be listened to—it must be studied, meditated on and engaged deeply.

It is only that level of deep listening that both allows us to integrate the new Gnosis, even as it generates our own unique contribution, addition and even challenge to this new Dharma.

So that we can together birth “the new human and the new humanity.”

It is our prayer that this deep conversation begins to evoke what we call “a new story of value” that has the power and poignancy to respond to the meta-crisis.

From Barbie to Hamas: The Failed Love Story at the Root of All Evil w/ Aubrey Marcus & Dr. Marc GafniThe Editors2024-08-30T09:05:15-07:00

Exploring the Self with Dr. Marc Gafni and Paul Chek

The state of our world is in such a fragile place right now, which means it’s up to all of us to step up to the plate and do our part to make it better. You can’t be that agent of change, however, if you don’t know your self…

Explore the concept of self and be prepared to tackle the three most important questions any human being has to answer as Dr. Marc Gafni returns for another deep dive into cosmo-erotic humanism in this Living 4D conversation with Paul Chek.

Paul Chek is a world-renowned expert in the fields of corrective and high-performance exercise kinesiology, stress management and holistic wellness.

In this conversation Paul Chek and Marc Gafni explore what Self really means. Discover the three most important questions a human being has to answer and the one thing we need to get right to not go extinct!

SHOW NOTES

The most important questions a human being has to answer. (4:14)
“If we don’t get this right, we’re going to go extinct.” (10:15)
The second simplicity. (18:41)
The separate self is a puzzle piece. (32:18)
Your unique self. (40:23)
Uniqueness: The currency of connection. (52:57)
“God is an ultimate wholeness…” (59:09)
Evolutionary unique self. (1:11:33)
“My unique self is my unique eros.” (1:33:11)
The self as an archetype. (1:53:26)
Your storyline. (2:10:44)
One of the mysteries of reality. (2:20:37)
Certainty and uncertainty: Values of the cosmos. (2:27:59)
The other door in the self. (2:35:28)

RESOURCES & FURTHER READING

Self in Integral Evolutionary Mysticism (paperback and audiobook) by Dr. Marc Gafni
Soul Prints: Your Path to Fulfillment (paperback and audiobook) by Dr. Marc Gafni
The Erotic and The Holy by Dr. Marc Gafni
A Return to Eros: The Radical Experience of Being Fully Alive (paperback and audiobook) by Dr. Marc Gafni
Your Unique Self: The Radical Path to Personal Enlightenment (paperback and audiobook) by Dr. Marc Gafni

Paul Chek on Marc Gafni: “His work is absolutely friggin’ phenomenal!”

Note: On this website link below, right underneath the one hour video version, you’ll find the longer audio-version:

Listen to the full podcast here

Exploring the Self with Dr. Marc Gafni and Paul ChekThe Editors2025-03-11T03:47:27-07:00

Barbie, Hamas, & Homo Amor: From Degraded Love Stories to “The Universe: A Love Story”

Looking at two seemingly unconnected events — the Barbie movie and the Hamas atrocities of October 7, 2023 — helps us clarify our perception and articulate a third possibility. Although there is zero moral equivalence between Barbie and Hamas, both are degraded love stories.

That’s what makes them so dangerous.

Hamas is a wildly destructive expression of fundamentalism; it degrades and demonizes the body and desire itself. Desire, perceived as evil, is projected outwards, onto ‘infidels,’ and then brutally destroyed.
Barbie is an expression of postmodernism: it disqualifies love, value, and desire as non-real, as mere social constructs.

In absence of real value, we lose capacity for moral distinctions; that’s why Hamas atrocities were celebrated on university campuses across the Western world. Postmodernism and fundamentalism are swelling movements in today’s world, and both will destroy us.

Our only chance is the third way, the third possibility — articulating a shared story of value rooted in the clarified realization that the Universe is a love story, Reality is desire, and no one is excluded from the love story.

(more…)

Barbie, Hamas, & Homo Amor: From Degraded Love Stories to “The Universe: A Love Story”The Editors2024-06-05T09:57:45-07:00

From the Holy of Holies: A Dialogue between Drs. Tom Goddard and Marc Gafni on ErosValue and Choice and Choicelessness

Listen to this Dialogue and/or Read the Transcript Below

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Here is the transcript of this dialogue between Dr. Marc Gafni and Dr. Tom Ronen Goddard.

Marc: Let’s talk about this new word in the Dharma, which is a word that appeared maybe a year ago, which is this word ErosValue. That’s our topic for the next few minutes. And in some sense, as you know, my love, we didn’t start talking about First Values and First Principles. The first time I ever mentioned that term, it was probably 2018. I mean, in other words, we talked about the Dharma until then. And at a certain point, I realized that’s the wrong word for lots of different reasons. And so we moved to First Values and First Principles that’s turned out to be extremely rich and necessary. The topic of the first book we’re putting out with World Philosophy and Religion Press is called First Values and First Principles, and according to, whatever the subtitles are, David J. Temple book. I should introduce you to him.

Tom: No, I met him in Vermont.

Marc: Yeah, that’s right. He did stop by for a second, didn’t he?

Tom: Yeah, absolutely.

Marc: He was there. That’s true.

Tom: I’ve got some of his writing right over there.

Marc: Wow! Wow! That’s awesome. That is awesome. That is awesome. Yeah, that is awesome. So it’s very, very, very big deal to put those words together as one word, And we started doing something like this when we started talking about maybe five, six, seven years ago, eight years ago. We started talking about maybe a decade ago. We even started talking about LoveIntelligence and LoveBeauty. And then I added LoveDesire, LoveIntelligence, LoveBeauty and LoveDesire.

We realized that in those words that we had to construct new language. Because if language is this building block of reality, and if we want to evolve reality, we have to evolve language. And Elena actually just wrote me a 10,000-word paper on the nature of language because she’s a linguist and how that fits into the intimacy formula. So language is its own gorgeous world. So ErosValue, what does that mean? What does the ErosValue means? What does it mean to you? Let’s just talk about it. This is not a dial-a-lecture. This is not dial-a-dharma Let’s study it together. What’s Eros?

Tom: What first occurs to me is bidirectional. I mean, Eros generates value, but there’s also Eros as a value.

Marc: Right. So on the one hand, so I started saying it as Eros, we made a list of First Principles and First Values. We could only do like deep in Holy of Holies. So we made a list of First Principles and First Values, and there’s 18 of them, and that shows up in the new book. And okay, so what’s the primary values? The primary value is Eros, and it’s all of them in a certain sense emerge from Eros, But it’s also true that when I say that there’s intrinsic value in the cosmos, what I mean is that value is erotic. What that means is that value is alluring. My value is alluring. I’m allured to value. It’s not a dry category. It’s not a desiccated category. It’s wet. It’s too messy. It’s pulsing. It’s alive, which is why value arouses will.

Let’s go really slow here because we get to like breathe here and go slow, not like quick in a one minute. So what’s will? Let’s see if we fill in the pieces of it. It’s very exciting and it keeps me up at night in a good way. So will as we know is ratzon, R-A-T-Z-O-N.

Tom: Right, I remember that, yeah.

Marc: Ratzon. Ratzon, always as well. That’s the word. So in radical Kabbalah, for example, there’s an entire extremely important chapter. And again, if you can, as we start Holy of Holies again, there’s like the Sixth, Seventh core books, like have them accessible so you can find this stuff, because it’s…

Tom: Right over there. Radical Kabbalah right over there.

Marc: Right over there. So there’s a section on ratzon. So ratzon is literally Ratzon Hashem, the Will of God, or Hashem, H-A-S-H-E-M, the Will of the Name.

Now let’s go slow. So will is my will. But where does my will come from? So free will. So I’m looking at this book. It’s popular these days. It’s a very bad book, but everyone thinks it’s brilliant, by Sapolsky basically saying determined life without free, becoming the du jour position these days. Lots of reasons. So bracket that for a second. So ratzon is will. So we’ve got the sense of will.

Okay. So where does my will come from? So if we look at the Song of Solomon and we opened the Song of Solomon, and let’s just read it together, let’s just open it together. Maybe open it up. Read us the first four verses. You give us the first four verses. Give us a slow, dramatic Ronen reading of the first four verses of the Song of Solomon.

Tom: Oh, I need a bookmark in that. Here we go. The Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s. Oh, that you would kiss me with the kisses of your mouth for your love is better than wine. Your anointing oils are fragrant. Your name is oil poured out. Therefore, the maidens love you. Draw me after you. Let me make haste. The king has brought me into his chambers. We will exult and rejoice in you. We will extol your love more than wine; rightly do they love you.

Marc: So let’s do that last verse. Okay? So draw me after, read that one again. Mashcheni Acharecha Narutzah.

Tom: Draw me after you. Let me make haste. The king has brought me into his chambers. We will exalt and rejoice in you. We will extol your love more than wine; rightly do they love you.

Marc: So this is a major text. So let’s look at the whole thing, we could, but let’s just go for that verse. Mashcheni Acharecha, draw me after you, Mashcheni Acharecha [Hebrew] Narutzah, and I will ruts, I will run after you, but run doesn’t make haste loses the sense of it, is the sense of ruts is to run. And in the account of the chariot, the Maaseh Merkabah, in Ezekiel and Isaiah, [Hebrew], the animals, the wild animals, but also the [Hebrew], that’s how the lineage reads it, [Hebrew] is the aliveness, [Hebrew], the aliveness, ratzo, ruts, ratzo, runs towards, expands, explodes, Ronen explodes. [Hebrew] and then comes back and rests.

So the movement of cosmos, the movement of She, the movement of divinity in Maaseh Merkabah, in the account of the chariot, which is the locus classicus of divine science in the Western world, has this word as its major word, the explosion, the ecstatic explosion is ratzo, to run towards. Make haste is like boring. No, no, it’s like Mashcheni Acharecha, draw me after you, [Hebrew] Narutzah, and I will run towards you.

Tom: Right.

Marc: [Hebrew], the king has brought me into his inner chambers, Nagila V’nismecha Bach, let us rejoice ecstatically in you, Ki Tovim Dodecha Meyayin, et cetera. Okay, this is a very, very, very important word. So ruts, Ratzon Hashem, very beautiful brother, at the will of God, means this moment in Eros where the first stages, and you wouldn’t know anything about this, but you may have friends.

Tom: I’ve read books too. Yeah.

Marc: Books.

Tom: Yeah.

Marc: Sketches. So Mashcheni Acharecha is the seduction. It’s like, “Draw me after you.” And the word meshiha in Hebrew means literally to draw towards or meshiha in Hebrew, you would say, [Hebrew], are you drawn to her? So meshiha means attraction, literally. So Mashcheni Acharecha, allure me to you, so that’s the first stages of allurement. Then there’s a certain moment at which I’m in. You cross that line. There’s a certain line, it’s an invisible line in the sand. Up to the moment of that line, there’s choice. The second you cross that line, choice disappears.

Now in bad literature of sexual harassment, “Oh, I was so and I felt coerced,” we’re talking about the exact opposite. We don’t go choice downward, we go choice upward. So from choice to choicelessness, which is the word that we use in radical Kabbalah in Part 7, Volume 1. So I’m now so in that I’ve crossed the line, I’ve given up my sense of choice, and that’s ruts. That’s running towards, which is will.

So you see something very subtle and very beautiful. We get to slow down and breathe in Holy of Holies, it’s like, “Oh, so will is the place where choice is given up.” That’s the ultimate paradox. Meaning I give up all of the senses of rational choosing, or of what we call in the Zohar ratzon tachton, lower will, and I moved to ratzon elyon, to higher will, which is the place of choicelessness,

So why am I connected to Tom Ronen Goddard? Just because higher will, choicelessness. You might go back and say, “No, no, no, we made a series of choices.” We had Shalom [Mountain Wisdom School] and we had that conversation behind the house. Of course, we chose. There were lots of other people around. There were lots of students. There were lots of teachers. Not that we were stuck and had no choice. True and not true at all. Choicelessness.

Tom: I can actually think of the moment I crossed the line with you. I was in the middle of that wisdom school and was like, “Oh, well that’s obvious.”

Marc: That’s what this verse is describing.

Tom: Beautiful.

Marc: Ain’t that gorgeous?

Tom: Oh, gorgeous.

Marc: Crazy gorgeous. It’s exactly describing that. So that’s where will, paradoxically, comes online. We would think in kind of classical materialist western culture, “Oh, that’s where will disappeared.” No, that’s where the obfuscations in the impediments to will disappeared, what seems to construe itself as will disappeared, and now we cross that line. At the moment we cross that line, you’re in, like, boom! So in a certain sense, everything that led up, we were in Don Manor. In other words, that’s all part of Mashcheni Acharecha, draw me after you. But then there’s a moment where we cross over. And that moment is will. That’s ratzon.

Tom: Yeah.

Marc: Very, very, very beautiful. Let’s find this first segment. So ratzon, will, is an erotic word. That’s so interesting. That word is tumescent with Eros in its very linguistic structure, not as a kind of later overlay. No, no, no, that’s the point. So it’s through my will that I choose value, but my will is Eros. It starts to get really beautiful, starts to get really beautiful. And what’s happening is, love, just to speak into this little pocket of Tom’s frustration, I’m trying to say big things like this in a minute in One Mountain, which you can’t quite do rely because there’s not enough. It’s why we talked about needing a wisdom school again. You got to go slow. And that’s what I do myself all the time. Everyone thinks I think fast and I don’t. I think very slowly. I read very slowly. And I got to step. Okay. No, no, no. Did I understand that or did I not?

Now I try and find it in my body. What is that? Because it’s in my body, [Hebrew]. To my body, I vision God. That’s the core of our lineage. So if I can’t locate it here, it’s not true. So we can locate it. We could locate it in our erotic union. We could locate it with Jubi, and you could locate it again and again. You can actually find it. The sexual models of the erotic, it doesn’t exhaust the erotic. And the Song of Solomon is, all of the Field of Eros, incarnate in the field of the embodied somatic, sexual, physical. And so we’ve got this notion of will is what chooses value.

And of course, the problem with this book is that it’s frightening. And this is becoming the du jour understanding. Frans De Waal, the [INAUDIBLE 00:15:41] dude. He writes in his usual frank and amusing style. Sapolsky argues that free will is an illusion. His stance is both hard to accept and hard to deny, an utterly fascinating topic with mind bobbling implications for human morality. Thank you, motherfucker. It’s intense. We’re saying something else. We’re saying that actually… it’s only my will that can choose great value. There’s no free will. There’s no point in talking about goodness. Conversation’s over. You can’t speak in terms of value unless there’s an ought in Cosmos. There’s only an ought in Cosmos if there’s a will in Cosmos. And that will has to reside in me and it has to have a dimension of freedom.

Otherwise, Cosmos is a mechanical manual. It’s not actually a sacred text. It’s actually a tech manual. I mean, it’s a very beautiful way to say it. Cosmos becomes a tech manual, if you don’t have that notion. And that notion of will which chooses value is Eros. It’s not you’ve mean to see it, and this hit me like a year ago. It’s not that Eros is a value or that value exudes and is suffused with Eros, although those are both true. But no, Eros and value are literally the same thing. And you’re like, “Oh, oh, ErosValue, one word, capital E, capital V, all the way up and all the way down.”

And let’s say we were doing wisdom school, by the way. What would we do? We’d spend an entire weekend on this term. That’s what we developed the Dharma. This is not a plug for doing wisdom school. Although in a non-Holy of Holies conversation, if we don’t do it at psalm, which my guess is we’re not moving that direction, we should do it. It isn’t necessary. I’m going to do a large wisdom school with Aubrey, but that’s a show. That’s a performance. That’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about the way we did it.

Tom: Study hall.

Marc: That’s right. What we did at Shalom birthed Dharma.

Tom: Yeah.

Marc: And it’s desperately missing in the system. We don’t have it. We just do an entire weekend and adjust on ErosValue, which we do practices on ErosValue. We do texts at ErosValue. But you can see it now. And as I’ve mentioned ErosValue in One Mountain, probably 15 times in the last six months that you’ve been there for, but it didn’t because it can’t land. It’s too subtle. It’s an actual realization in your body. Every decision Tom makes is ErosValue.

Now here’s where it gets really crazy. Is he choosing or isn’t he? Well, draw me after you, and I will run towards you. And so on the one hand, there’s this sense of, “Oh, reality, goddess, the awake fabric of cosmos, is drawing me towards. And in that drawing me towards, I have an actual experience of choosing,” which is real. “And then I step over a certain line and then she’s living me. I’m being lived as love.” She’s living me. But it’s not that it’s before choice, it’s beyond choice. It’s not that I’m less than choosing. It’s not that there’s no moral force in cosmos. It’s that I am the moral force of cosmos.

Now you might say, “Okay, Sapolsky would say you’re not choosing even in that first stage.” And so that is a mistake because it assumes that all of cosmos is measurable and quantifiable. And therefore, all reducible to antecedent causation. But actually there was a black box in cosmos. The black box is irreducible, it’s non-quantifiable, it’s non-commodifiable, and it’s directly available to you through a disclosure of the deepest anthro-ontological knowing. So there’s an ontological knowing, which is not breakable, downable, it’s not quantifiable, it’s not reducible. But it’s not an ontological knowing only. An ontological knowing means direct access, direct realization, direct experience. It’s an anthro-ontological knowing, which is our new word for the last three years. Because Tom cannot make sense of his experience without saying that on some level he chose Jubi, and on some level he didn’t. But Tom cannot feel, “Oh, I had to do this Holy of Holies with Marc.” It actually takes away some of his joy.

Marc says, “God, someone put a gun to my head,” or Cosmos, it had to be with Tom. No. No. It’s actually this free delight arose in me, which I got to reach out to, let’s meet once a quarter. And Tom said, “Yeah, let’s meet once a quarter.” And those two freedoms met and danced and created joy. And we have a direct access to that. Now could you then measure and go backwards and say, “Well, that which led to that moment, I’ll give you the entire trail of antecedent causation”? Legitimate? It doesn’t matter. But in that moment, something emerges from that moment, which is new.

Now how do I know that new things emerge from moments? That’s called emergence, what happens all the fucking time. So in other words, if antecedent causation ruled the universe, how would you have emergence? But you can only know it in the first person experience of will. And if you can’t know it, ratzon, you can’t know it in mind, and only known in a first person experience. And what I’d like to suggest is that the next time we have Holy of Holies in three months from now, I will bring a set of texts that we’ve never looked at in Kook, never been translated, which are on this notion of will, which are basically unreadable texts, sacred texts. We’re going to read them for the first time. We’ve never read them in our circles either. And this notion of ratzon and tzorekh means necessity. Couldn’t be any different. Living the relationship between those two is where realization lives.

So ErosValue says, on the one hand, value is free will. So subtle. Look how deep it is. It can make you shiver. It’s so beautiful. Value is like, “We choose.” Value means there’s free will. Eros means Mashcheni Acharecha, draw me after you. Narutzah, let us run. No free will. That old nursery rules disappeared. I’ve crossed the line, and we’re in. There’s no backing out without someone shooting you because you’re in, because there’s a higher will that’s living you.

ErosValue, actually, we now begin to see this very subtle, beautiful thing, which is that Eros is choicelessness and value is choice. Shit, is it beautiful. And now I’m going to tell you something that’s going to flip you out. It’s going to flip you the fuck out, which is really beautiful. The depth of our love and our relationship significantly clarified this to me, myself, as I transmitted it to you. That’s what Holy of Holies does. So I know this and understand this better than I did 20 minutes ago. That’s what Holy of Holies is. It’s not just that I shared information, and it’s your depth of presence, and all of our years and all of our trust, all of our love, that actually allowed this to emerge. That’s the space between the cherubs. That’s why we do this. What else is there to say?

Tom: It’s gorgeous.

Marc: It’s gorgeous. It’s crazy.

Tom: Bring on the unread Kook. Let’s do this. I may not be able to wait three months. How I might be tugging on Suzanne’s coat?

Marc: It’s gorgeous, right?

Tom: Yeah, it’s beautiful.

Marc: Gorgeous. Wow! Wow!

Tom: Oh wow!

Marc: We had no idea Ronen what would happen in this Holy of Holies. And it was up to her to either [Hebrew] place her scarf on her Holy of Holies, or to not. It’s hers. And she did. There’s no bone in my body that takes that for granted. She just opened the door and she confirmed us and in this huge and gorgeous and tender and beautiful way.

Tom: I’m inspired to add just one recollection of that beautiful sit down you had with Jerry*** and there were like probably a half a dozen of us in the room, Sean and Victoria and Adele, and we’re kind of surrounding you at the table view with your wine and Jerry with his two little glasses of carrot juice, as I recall. The question was, “Is it urgent or is it not urgent?” What just came to me is that the urgency feels like this, I will run after you, ratzon.

Marc: That’s exactly right. No, that’s beautiful. That’s very brave and that’s exactly right. We should find, let’s ask. So I believe we should have that someplace.

Tom: You know, Sean has that. He sent it to me about three times. So I have it.

Marc: Let’s find it and let’s post it. And my thought is, like a crazy idea, we could even post this and that together. Let’s clarify the Dharma.

Tom: Beautiful. Beautiful.

Marc: Isn’t that gorgeous?

Tom: Gorgeous!

Marc: It’s crazy good to us. I love you beyond mad, my friend. I’m grateful.

Tom: I love you. I’m in tears.

Marc: I’m in tears too. Yeah.

Tom: I miss you.

Marc: All the way. All the way.

Tom: I run after you.

Marc: I run after you, my love. Together. No words.

***See this beautiful dialogue between Dr. Marc Gafni and Jerry Judd, the founder of Shalom Mountain.

Listen to the Dialogue between Jerry Judd & Marc Gafni on Unique Self and Urgency

From the Holy of Holies: A Dialogue between Drs. Tom Goddard and Marc Gafni on ErosValue and Choice and ChoicelessnessThe Editors2023-12-11T07:24:22-08:00

Discovering Your Unique Self Is the Key for New Conscious Business Leadership — with Dr. Marc Gafni and Studio Stijn

In this episode Marc Gafni shares his ideas about Conscious Business, Conscious Leadership, purpose and the importance of developing yourself as a conscious leader, manager and, in fact for any human being, in order to serve others. He elaborates on the idea of ‘The Unique Self for leaders and their business in todays world’.

Marc is a visionary thinker, spiritual teacher, social activist, passionate philosopher, and author of ten books, including the award-winning Your Unique Self: The Radical Path to Personal Enlightenment. He holds his doctorate in philosophy from Oxford University, is a rabbi and had a talk show on Israelin television.

Together with John Mackey , CEO of Whole Foods Market and entrepreneur Kate Maloney he brings revolutionary ideas on how business should and can be meaningfull far beyond the individual benefit but serving for the better of society and the world.

Marc is known for his rare combination of brilliant mind and overflowing heart. He is a leading public intellectual and has been called a trail-blazing visionary in opening up new possibilities for love, Eros and relationship.

In that regard he is the co-founder and president of The Centre of Integral Wisdom and at the end of August he will be in Belgium leading a retreat called the ‘Eros mystery School’. If after listening you feel like you want to participate to this great event, you can use the link below.

Listen to this podcast here

Discovering Your Unique Self Is the Key for New Conscious Business Leadership — with Dr. Marc Gafni and Studio StijnThe Editors2023-12-11T07:35:43-08:00

Previous 456 Next

The Eye of Value: Early Draft Essay

On the Erotic and the Ethical

NonDual Humanism

The Wisdom of Solomon

The CosmoErotic Universe

Eros as Value Perception

Eros and Ethics

ErosValue: First Thoughts

Value: For Its Own Sake

Four Prisms of the Eye of Consciousness: The Eye of Value, the Eye of Contemplation, the Eye of the Spirit, and the Eye of the Heart

Enjoy this podcast with Dr. Marc Gafni featured on The Metagame Podcast.

Marc Gafni | First Principles and First Values

Our new book can be pre-ordered from the US and Canada (we are working on creating direct ordering from Europe and other countries – please stand by!):

FIRST PRINCIPLES AND FIRST VALUES

Forty-Two Propositions on CosmoErotic Humanism, the Meta-Crisis, and the World to Come

Enjoy this podcast with Dr. Marc Gafni featured on Aubrey Marcus’ Podcast

Enjoy this three-part podcast with Dr. Marc Gafni and Dr. Zak Stein (David J. Temple) featured on The Integral Stage Podcast on the new book: First Principles and First Values.

Our new book can be pre-ordered from the US and Canada (we are working on creating direct ordering from Europe and other countries – please stand by!):

FIRST PRINCIPLES AND FIRST VALUES

Forty-Two Propositions on CosmoErotic Humanism, the Meta-Crisis, and the World to Come

Enjoy this podcast with Dr. Marc Gafni featured on The Integral Stage Podcast.

“Public shadow in the planetary age”

THIS SHORT PROLOGUE MUST BE READ AS PART OF CREED:

The Evolutionary Love Creed

Download Chapter 1-5 of First Principles and First Values (2024) by David J. Temple.

FIRST PRINCIPLES AND FIRST VALUES

Forty-Two Propositions on CosmoErotic Humanism, the Meta-Crisis, and the World to Come

“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

Receive chapter 1-5 in your inbox! Sign up now:

New podcast series ‘Twelve Faces of Eros” based on the book A Return to Eros: the Radical Experience of Being Fully Alive by Dr. Marc Gafni & Dr. Kristina Kincaid.

This podcast series is based on the book A Return to Eros: the Radical Experience of Being Fully Alive.

Listen to the Erotic and the Holy Workshop

Enjoy this podcast with Dr. Marc Gafni featured on Kyle Kingsbury Podcast.

SHOW NOTES

RESOURCES & FURTHER READING

Paul Chek on Marc Gafni: “His work is absolutely friggin’ phenomenal!”

Listen to this Dialogue and/or Read the Transcript Below

Here is the transcript of this dialogue between Dr. Marc Gafni and Dr. Tom Ronen Goddard.

CENTER FOR WORLD PHILOSOPHY & RELIGION

Register to receive updates from the Center

The Eye of Value: Early Draft Essay

On the Erotic and the Ethical

NonDual Humanism

The Wisdom of Solomon

The CosmoErotic Universe

Eros as Value Perception

Eros and Ethics

ErosValue: First Thoughts

Value: For Its Own Sake

Four Prisms of the Eye of Consciousness: The Eye of Value, the Eye of Contemplation, the Eye of the Spirit, and the Eye of the Heart

The Empiricism of Love: The Three Eyes of Knowing—The Three Eyes of Eros—The Three Forms of Gnosis—The Three Eyes That Are One

The Three Eyes Are:

Enjoy this podcast with Dr. Marc Gafni featured on The Metagame Podcast.

Marc Gafni | First Principles and First Values

Our new book can be pre-ordered from the US and Canada (we are working on creating direct ordering from Europe and other countries – please stand by!):

Forty-Two Propositions on CosmoErotic Humanism, the Meta-Crisis, and the World to Come

Enjoy this podcast with Dr. Marc Gafni featured on Aubrey Marcus’ Podcast

Enjoy this three-part podcast with Dr. Marc Gafni and Dr. Zak Stein (David J. Temple) featured on The Integral Stage Podcast on the new book: First Principles and First Values.

Our new book can be pre-ordered from the US and Canada (we are working on creating direct ordering from Europe and other countries – please stand by!):

Forty-Two Propositions on CosmoErotic Humanism, the Meta-Crisis, and the World to Come

Enjoy this podcast with Dr. Marc Gafni featured on The Integral Stage Podcast.

“Public shadow in the planetary age”

An Essay by Dr. Marc Gafni

Desire: The Heart of Reality

The Four Elements of Story

Forty-Two Propositions on CosmoErotic Humanism, the Meta-Crisis, and the World to Come by David J. Temple

To the Reader

Photography by Kristina Tahel Amelong

Introduction: On Redefining “Value” & Realizing Intimacy with All Things During the Meta-Crisis

By Dr. Marc Gafni

Evolution as Crisis and Invitation: The Context for the Four Big Bangs

THIS SHORT PROLOGUE MUST BE READ AS PART OF CREED:

The Evolutionary Love Creed

Download Chapter 1-5 of First Principles and First Values (2024) by David J. Temple.

Forty-Two Propositions on CosmoErotic Humanism, the Meta-Crisis, and the World to Come

“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

Receive chapter 1-5 in your inbox! Sign up now:

New podcast series ‘Twelve Faces of Eros” based on the book A Return to Eros: the Radical Experience of Being Fully Alive by Dr. Marc Gafni & Dr. Kristina Kincaid.

This podcast series is based on the book A Return to Eros: the Radical Experience of Being Fully Alive.

Listen to the Erotic and the Holy Workshop

Enjoy this podcast with Dr. Marc Gafni featured on Kyle Kingsbury Podcast.

An Early Draft of an Excerpt from Volume Two of

The Universe: A Love Story

First Meditations on CosmoErotic Humanism

in Response to the Meta-Crisis

SHOW NOTES

RESOURCES & FURTHER READING

Paul Chek on Marc Gafni: “His work is absolutely friggin’ phenomenal!”

Listen to this Dialogue and/or Read the Transcript Below

Here is the transcript of this dialogue between Dr. Marc Gafni and Dr. Tom Ronen Goddard.

“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