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.

This series below is from One Mountain, Many Paths, a weekly live broadcast of Evolutionary Sensemaking with Dr. Marc Gafni. Click here to register to participate live every Sunday at 10 am PT.

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Barbie, Hamas, & Homo Amor: From Degraded Love Stories to “The Universe: A Love Story”2024-06-05T09:57:45-07:00

The Hidden Wisdom of the Temple Solomon Recovered w/ Rabbi Dr. Marc Gafni and Aubrey Marcus

What is the wisdom of the Temple of Solomon that has been hidden for over 3000 years?

The Hebrew Wisdom sage, leading world philosopher, my teacher, Dr. Marc Gafni, has been on a quest to decipher these texts like the Da Vinci Code, and the evolution of the secrets revealed may be exactly what is necessary to deliver us from the existential threats we face today.  

For more on the wisdom from the Solomon lineage, and a deeper understanding of the CosmoErotic Universe, check out the book: ⁠A Return to Eros by Marc Gafni and Kristina Kincaid. 

Time Stamps:

00:00– Intro

2:00– The Lineage Of The Temple Of Solomon

17:00– Totalitarianism, Invisible Controllers, AI, Dystopia

41:12– Downloading The Temple Of Solomon

1:05:33– Understanding Eros More Deeply

1:17:50– Desire, Will, & The Name Of God

1:33:53– The Feminine Desire & Pleasure

1:40:55– Paganism, Eros And Ethics

1:53:34– What Actions Can We Take?

The Hidden Wisdom of the Temple Solomon Recovered w/ Rabbi Dr. Marc Gafni and Aubrey Marcus2023-12-06T05:29:26-08:00

Challenging the Purity Culture: All of Reality Is Driven by the EROTIC — with Dr. Marc Gafni and the Medicin Podcast

In this important conversation, we are challenging the ethos of Purity Culture and offering a new shared Story of Value.

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Timestamps

00:00 Intro + What Marc would gift to the world

08:28 Our upbringing in purity culture

15:17 Sex: Negative, Positive, Neutral + Sacred

28:50 New Narrative: Sex Erotic

35:20 Purity of F*ck

44:40 How GOD becomes more GOD

50:20 Many qualities of love-making

55:55 The “Holy of Holies” of the Bible

1:02:00 Collapsing under unbearable shame

1:10:23 The tragedy of Fundamentalism

1:16:04 How to start experiencing Eros

1:26:30 Accessing your unique script of desire

1:33:33 Boundary breaking in Eros

1:41:24 How to approach with our children

1:42:00 Free gifts from Marc

1:45:08 Where to find more from Marc

Challenging the Purity Culture: All of Reality Is Driven by the EROTIC — with Dr. Marc Gafni and the Medicin Podcast2023-12-06T05:40:46-08:00

Israel-Hamas: The Impossible Questions – Podcast Aubrey Marcus with Dr. Marc Gafni

Note to Listener from Aubrey Marcus and Dr. Marc Gafni:

We are at a time between worlds, at a time between stories.

We live in a world of outrageous pain. We live in a world of outrageous beauty. We live in a world of outrageous love.

In this time between stories, we step beyond the old stories of good and evil in its primitive forms. But that does not mean that we are moral relativists or that value is not real. Indeed all of reality, all of life is Value. We can feel the truth of this in our bodies. We may not be able to explain it perfectly, but when we feel we know. And this is what gives us courage to stand on the side of Life.

And to stand on the side of Life is to take a side. A stand for Life, is by nature a stand against anti-Life, or anti-Value. What that means about what should be done is a question of impossible complexity, pain and uncertainty.

We stand for a culture of Eros against a culture of death. We stand for intimacy against alienation. This requires us to be both tender and fierce, to stand for Life against the forces of anti-life.

It is not that there is no value in the universe and therefore naturally no battle between value and anti-value. Value is real. Good and Evil are real. But good and evil are not split along racial or national, or ethnic or religious grounds. This is a seductively simple conception, that in and of itself is the cause of so much horror.

In our formulation, Good and Evil is discerned simply: To be Good is to be ALL IN FOR ALL LIFE.

No one is outside of the circle of Life. To be All in for All Life requires the cultivation of radical discernment within a broken information ecology, and full blown 5th generational warfare in the form of attention hijacking and propaganda. To stand for Life means to make love to the tender sensuality of sensemaking.

Feeling our way slowly and carefully, but not with timidity masking as humility.

Evil is evil.

As much as we might be tempted, we cannot be afraid to call it what it is. Within that is a rejection of universal moral relativism. It is a solemn vow to protect the innocent, all of the innocent, and to protect the world from being held hostage by the forces of anti-life – wherever they are found.

We speak with broken hearts, with clarity, but always in the unknowing. Always in devotion to the Mystery, while always whispering love in every distinction with every breath. It is our prayer that this inspires a story that is unifying rather than dividing. Clarifying rather than confusing. It is a prayer for all Life. Comments will be off on this video, so that everyone can watch it and feel with their own hearts and minds.

Israel-Hamas: The Impossible Questions – Podcast Aubrey Marcus with Dr. Marc Gafni2023-11-01T05:05:16-07:00

The God Pod: Spiritual Evolution & A Vision of Value for Humanity with Dr. Marc Gafni and Luke Storey

This is what podcast host Luke Storey says about this episode:

Today, we’re going to find a way to navigate ourselves into a higher state of being, both individually and collectively, during this conversation with Dr. Marc Gafni.

Dr. Marc is an incredible human, to say the least. He’s a visionary, thinker, social activist, and passionate philosopher 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.

I was introduced to Marc and his teachings through our mutual friend Aubrey Marcus, with whom he’s been doing some incredible work toward a better future for all.

This is one of the deepest conversations on love, spirituality, conscious evolution, collective healing, and the human experience that I’ve had on the podcast, which says a lot because there have been many – and I am thrilled to share it with you.

If you find value in this conversation, which I suspect you will, please feel free to share it with someone you love. You can find links to Marc’s courses, books, and other offers at https://lukestorey.com/marc.

The God Pod: Spiritual Evolution & A Vision of Value for Humanity with Dr. Marc Gafni and Luke Storey2023-11-01T04:55:31-07:00

The Meaning of Life | Lost & Found Podcast with Dr. Marc Gafni

This is what Sabri Gazail, host of the Lost and Found Podcast, who has since become a valued contributor to the Center, says about this episode:

Wow! This conversation with Dr Marc Gafni blew my mind. I first heard Dr Marc on the @AubreyMarcusPod and felt so much truth in the explanation of self, God, love and life.

We dive into – dealing with trauma and how the western therapeutic approach doesn’t work, what is the self, what is desire, why we are here, what our purpose is, what God is, what our relationship to God is and our meaning of life!

The Meaning of Life | Lost & Found Podcast with Dr. Marc Gafni2023-11-01T04:55:32-07:00

Toward a New Story: Mini-Series with Aubrey Marcus & Dr. Marc Gafni

We are at a time in our world, where we need to birth a new story, and there is nobody that I know who has felt and thought through what this new story might look like, more than Rabbi Dr. Marc Gafni.

How do we respond to the meta crisis of compounding existential threats? The answer that Dr. Marc Gafni PHD gives is that the root cause of the meta-crisis is a global intimacy disorder.

As he puts it:

Global Challenges require global coordination which in turn requires global resonance, which in turn requires global intimacy, which can only be sourced in a shared global story of value.

For this very reason, we must articulate a shared global story of value.

This story, according to a set of compelling teachings by Dr. Gafni and his colleague Dr. Zak Stein, is the evolutionary love story of the intimate universe. This claim is not casual, but rather based on a profound integration of myriad wisdom streams in what they call the interior and exterior sciences across space and time.

But, and this is Gafni’s core point, not only must we be tellers of the new story, but we must also actually be the story. We must know that our personal story is chapter and verse in the Universe: A Love Story. And that story is a story of transformation.

And that therefore,

Y/our transformation is the transformation of the whole.

In other words, the change you are seeking in the world begins with changing the way you see yourself and your place in the world. You literally become the New Story.

You cross to the other side, awakening as the new human and the humanity.

This series of podcasts under the title “Toward a New Story” is about building what Gafni and Stein call CosmoErotic Humanism, a shared story of value as a context to celebrate our diversity.

While Dr. Gafni began his path as an ordained Rabbi intimately versed in the ancient Aramaic texts, we recognize together, that this new story must include and transcend the validated insights from all the great religions, philosophies, and cultures from premodern, modern, and postmodern times.

This is a historic moment, and for people who want to claim their seat at the table of history, this podcast is a resplendent invitation.

As Aubrey Marcus puts it:

I cannot imagine inviting you to a more important, heart opening, mind bending, and exciting journey than the conversations we are having in this podcast series.

Volume 1: A New Human for a New Humanity in Response to the Meta-Crisis

Volume 2: LoveIntelligence, LoveBeauty, & LoveDesire of All-That-Is

In Volume 2 of the series, we tackle the most fundamental question of our existence.

Who Am I?

Volume 3: The Path to Enlightenment Is Through Your Uniqueness

In Volume 3 of the series Toward A New Story with Dr. Marc Gafni PHD we continue with part 2 of the most fundamental question of our existence.

Who Am I?

Toward a New Story: Mini-Series with Aubrey Marcus & Dr. Marc Gafni2023-11-01T04:55:32-07:00

Healing the Wounds of Culture: Aubrey Marcus, Dr. Marc Gafni, and Dr. Kristina Kincaid

In this powerfully vulnerable podcast with host Aubrey Marcus, and Dr. Marc Gafni and his partner Dr. Kristina Kincaid as guests, they discuss the wounds of culture – meaning, the myriad wounds that culture can inflict – and their personal process of healing and resolution.

Healing the Wounds of Culture: Aubrey Marcus, Dr. Marc Gafni, and Dr. Kristina Kincaid2023-11-01T04:55:32-07:00

The Journey to CosmoErotic Humanism: Mini-Series with Layman Pascal and Dr. Marc Gafni

In this new mini-series, Layman Pascal talks with Marc Gafni about an emerging model he is developing together with Zak Stein and others, which they call CosmoErotic Humanism.

We will be adding to this post whenever new dialogues are being published. So, come back and scroll down for the most recent episode.

Episode 1: Certainty & Uncertainty

For episode one, Layman and Marc discuss the origins of this project, and Marc’s work on exploring and unfolding a model of Certainty and Uncertainty for addressing the meaning crisis, grounding moral value, and wrestling with perennial theodicies.

Episode 2: Soul Prints

For episode two, Layman and Marc discuss the concept of Soul Prints, the origin of the notion of the Unique Self; the importance of story and spiritual autobiography; the issue of working appropriately with boundaries; and towards the end of the conversation they begin to open up the question of evil and shadow in relation to the Unique Self.

Episode 3: Eros

For episode three, Layman and Marc discuss the concept of Eros, its understanding and role in esoteric Judaism, its connections to evolutionary spirituality, the uniqueness and irreducibility of desire, and much more.

The Journey to CosmoErotic Humanism: Mini-Series with Layman Pascal and Dr. Marc Gafni2023-11-01T04:55:32-07:00

Love or Die: A Conversation Series with Dr. Marc Gafni Hosted by Andrew Sweeny

This Series Is Hosted in Partnership with the Parallax Academy and the Unique Self Institute

We are adding to this post whenever there is a new dialogue. So come back and scroll down to the bottom of this post to see the most recent dialogue.

Also, if you sign up for our newsletter, you will be notified when there is a new dialogue coming up, and you can be there live.

Love or Die #1: The Global Intimacy Disorder and CosmoErotic Humanism

The first of a monthly series of discussions, Love or Die, in which Marc elaborates on what he has called the Global Intimacy Disorder and CosmoErotic Humanism. How can we rewrite the source code of the present epoch and create a New Story? The stakes are high. It’s Love or Die!

Love or Die #2: Radical Kabbalah

The stakes are high. It’s Love or Die! This week we delve into Hebrew Wisdom and Radical Kabbalah.

Love or Die #3: The Meta-Crisis, Hebrew Wisdom, and AI

The 3rd of a monthly series of discussions, Love or Die, in which Marc and Andrew discuss the meta-crisis, Hebrew Wisdom, and AI.

Love or Die #4: Sabbatai Sevi Part 1

In this passionate conversation, Marc speaks the unspeakable: about Sabbatai Sevi, the Hebrew Wisdom Messiah, and his wife Sara. Where sex and Eros meet religion and the clarification of desire.

Love or Die #5: Sabbatai Sevi Part 2

In part 2 of this passionate conversation, Marc speaks the unspeakable: about Sabbatai Sevi, the Hebrew Wisdom Messiah, and his wife Sara, where sex and Eros meet religion and the clarification of desire.

Love or Die #6: The Tree of Life Part 1

Andrew questions Marc about the famous Tree of Life and the ten Sephirot in Hebrew Kabbalah. An introduction and a radical interpretation. And a discussion on the first Sephirot, Keter, the crown.

Love or Die #7: The Tree of Life Part 2

Andrew questions Marc about the famous Tree of Life and the ten Sephirot in Hebrew Kabbalah. An introduction and a radical interpretation. And a discussion on the 2nd and 3rd Sephirot: Chokhmah and Binah.

Love or Die #8: The Tree of Life Part 3

Andrew questions Marc about the famous Tree of Life and the ten Sephirot in Hebrew Kabbalah. An introduction and a radical interpretation. And a discussion on the 4th and 5th Sephirot: Chesed and Gevurah.

Love or Die #9: The Tree of Life Part 4

Andrew questions Marc about the famous Tree of Life and the ten Sephirot in Hebrew Kabbalah. An introduction and a radical interpretation. And a discussion on the 6th Sephirot: Tiferet.

Love or Die #10: The Tree of Life Part 5

Andrew questions Marc about the famous Tree of Life and the ten Sephirot in Hebrew Kabbalah. An introduction and a radical interpretation. And a discussion on the 7th and 8th Sephirot: Hod and Nezach.

Love or Die #11: The Tree of Life Part 6 – Yesod

Andrew questions Marc about the famous Tree of Life and the ten Sephirot in Hebrew Kabbalah. An introduction and a radical interpretation. And a discussion on the 9th Sephirot: Yesod.

Love or Die #12: The Tree of Life Part 7 – Malkuth

Andrew questions Marc about the famous Tree of Life and the ten Sephirot in Hebrew Kabbalah. An introduction and a radical interpretation. And a discussion on the 10th Sephirot: Malkuth.

Love or Die: A Conversation Series with Dr. Marc Gafni Hosted by Andrew Sweeny2024-07-05T07:06:45-07:00

The Universe Is a Love Story: Marc Gafni on Daniel Kazandjian’s Podcast

Watch and listen to this beautiful conversation:

The Universe Is a Love Story: Marc Gafni on Daniel Kazandjian’s Podcast2024-04-03T09:16:36-07:00

Evolutionary Funeral: Aubrey Marcus’s Father Died – The Blessing of the Father

This is what Aubrey says about this dialogue:

On Saturday March 25, I discovered that my dad had died.

As the intimate universe would have it, the tender and powerful @marcgafni (a Rabbi turned CosmoErotic Humanist mystic) was with me when my father was discovered.

After four days of us sitting shiva house in mourning and celebration of the passing of my dad, I am utterly in awe. These days have been some of the most magical, miraculous, painful, and beautiful days of my life.

This podcast may be the most important and vulnerable thing I have ever offered. It’s what Michael Phillips Marcus would have wanted.

Marc and I have been combining all of our human tenderness with elements of our respective mastery to co-create an evolutionary week of mourning, celebration, and ceremony. While many aspects of the Hebrew shiva tradition have been maintained, the practice has been evolved and adapted for this unique situation to include shamanic medicine ceremonies and the psychotech of the Shabbat table.

Ultimately the purpose of this is to evoke the blessing of the father, and to assist him in his journey into wholeness in the life beyond life. And then to open source this process to the community and the world.

This live stream conversation … is both intensely personal and universal, raw, and refined. It is the highest blessing to my father, that his passing is bringing the deepest revealing connections with everyone who knew and loved him, and that hopefully these stories and the wisdom they contain will touch some of you.

The Blessing of the Father Part 1

The Blessing of the Father Part 2

Evolutionary Funeral: Aubrey Marcus’s Father Died – The Blessing of the Father2023-10-03T03:53:07-07:00

Dr. Marc Gafni on Anthro-Ontology: How We Know What We Know

An Excerpt from Our Online Course “Actualize: Living Your Deepest Heart’s Desire to Empower Your Life and Awaken Humanity”

Get the Whole Course

Transcript

Bring it in. Silence of presence. Do we have a drum roll in the house? Do we have a drum roll in the house? Are we ready to go? Do we have, do we have, do we have, do we have, do we have, do we have, do we have, okay, so let’s do addition. Ten second recapitulation. Here we go. This is critical. Here we go. So what did we say yesterday? What did we say yesterday? And kind of part two. Just in 10 seconds. Evolution is the evolution of intimacy. Evolution, which is an expression of ultimate reality, Divinity, one face of Divinity, that would be the third face, is the evolutionary impulse. The evolutionary impulse is desire. The evolutionary impulse is the desire that pulses through reality, the feeling of the evolutionary impulses, the desire of ecstatic urgency. What is it? Desire, desire’s intimacy. So desire is Eros. It desires contact, touch. That creates greater wholeness, which is a new intimacy, intimacy, shared identity in the context of otherness.

Otherness, as we’ll see today, is critical. Leave that aside. It’s not fusion. The atom doesn’t obliterate the subatomic particles. The molecule doesn’t obliterate the atoms. The cell doesn’t obliterate the parts of the cell. The organism doesn’t lose the individuated cells. Intimacy is shared identity in the context of otherness. Plus, stay with me, big additional sentence, plus mutuality of pathos, meaning we can feel each other. So in a cell or in any intimate new whole, there’s both telos. Desire has telos, direction and desire has pathos. When we’re in desire, we feel each other. And it’s another place that the sexual models Eros, it doesn’t exhaust Eros. Pathos means, we feel each other. So intimacy means shared identity. In the context of otherness, there still you and me, we’re part of a larger field plus mutuality of pathos, which means you feel me and I feel you.

So the first loop of IntimacyDesire is I feel you, You feel me. The second loop is I feel you feeling me. Isn’t that great? You feel me feeling you. You get what I mean by the sexual models the erotic? The sexual… that’s one of the places you can do that just by kissing shoulders. And I keep coming back to kissing shoulders to liberate us from that one vision of what the sexual is. So I won’t say it anymore, but just keep it in mind the whole morning kissing shoulders is our, our icon. Okay? So the second loop of Eros is: feel you, feeling me. Feel me, feeling you. Now that can be in terms of emotion, ideas, creativity, embodiment, but there’s loops of desire. There are loops of desire. So the third loop would be, this is totally hot. It doesn’t get hotter than this.

Feel me feeling you feeling me. Cha. Cha. And it’s hot. Emotionally, we’re talking about an idea. Just like at times you’re trying to share an idea, no no, feel the idea, feel me you feeling the idea, feel me you feeling me feeling the idea. It’s gorgeous. Does everyone, did you feel that? If you wanna know what they were doing in monasteries, well they’re doing a lot of things in monasteries, but, but you know what? They were trying. When they were trying, it was this, you were talking to your study partner and it was wildly, in Aramaic it’s called a chavruta. It’s a study partner. It’s short. I feel you feeling me feeling you. That takes time. Sometimes you gotta go a whole year till you get one walk for an hour.

Okay, we got to try. We could do that. It’s like that. But that’s, that’s, that’s intimacy. And we impact each other. Because we can feel each other. So, the third loop: Feel you feeling me feeling you. So, intimacy and desire merge together. So we live, and intimacy drives, we said yesterday, the entire process, all the way up and all the way down, the desire for intimacy. Evolution is the progressive deepening of intimacies. Now, I’m going to now resist the temptation to recapitulate that anymore, so stop. Okay? But now here we go.

Okay, here we go. Here’s the sentence. Ready? So what that means is: we live in an Intimate Universe. It’s a big sentence, but it’s only the first half of the sentence. We live in an Intimate Universe, but now that means something. And that’s what it means. We’ve created a new Kosmic habit. Those words have meaning now. It’s got all that. Had we not done yesterday, that would be just a nice sentence. Not even that interesting… We live in an Intimate Universe. Now, here’s the next step. It’s wild, but we need a drum roll for this. Give me a drum over this step. We’ve got a drum roll. We got drum roll, cheap seats in the back. Let’s get the hat. Don’t give me no flag, sag, ready? The Intimate Universe lives in us. Did everyone get that?

That’s why AI is such bullshit. Now you get it. Meaning not just we live in an Intimate Universe, the entire Intimate Universe lives in us. So in other words, all of that allurement, all of that attraction right from the first quarks, every one of those quarks and leptons and muons, they’re all in us. And every subatomic particle and every atom, right from the moments of the big bang, it’s all in us, the whole thing. But in all of them, all the cells, the whole thing, it’s all living in us. So the Intimate Universe, all the way up in all the way down in Linnaeus, who’s one of the greatest thinkers that ever lived, and Goethe said no man was greater to him. Linnaeus talks about this notion already a couple hundred years ago, about: it’s all in us. All of evolution lives in us all the way up and all the way down.

Linnaeus, by the way, is awesome. All the way up and all the way down. It’s everything’s in us. And then after all of that, vibrating, pulsing, feeling, pathos, is in us, then we finally evolve. 12 billion later, later, later, later, neocortex. But the neocortex is the thought. We don’t think just in our, our neocortex is utterly indivisible from everything. And we now know, we don’t even think from the neocortex. The frontal lobe, neocortex isn’t even where we think from. We actually think from the whole body, and that’s where we’re actually on. The whole body is thinking the neocortex is one of the organizing structures. But actually the whole body is thinking, there’s heart math. The entire body is awake and alive, which is why the word Ratzon – will – which is my intellectual decision means in the original Eros.

I’m seduced after you. So look, wow. So now we’re going to bypass all of that. You know what? You get it. Now we’re going to bypass all of that and we’re going to say, okay, let’s take computational power. Access through harvesting of data, because you’ve got a trinket, which was a free g-mail, you’re giving your data. It’s exponentially increasing in these next coming years. Biometric sensors that [inaudible] exponential data, and we’re now going to actually, we’re going to basically downgrade humans and upgrade computers. Do you get what I’m saying? And it’s like you’ve got a wild animal, a beautiful wild animal, and then you tame, not just tame, you domesticate and you crush the animal. So we’re downgrading humans. We can’t even taste anymore. We eat while we’re looking at our email.

Lunch, we’re being productive. Why are we being productive? Because there’s a win/lose metrics. And we need to actually be assured that we’re actually loved in some way or another. We have to be productive, stay on our horse, we look at our email. We’re getting… win/lose metrics all the time. All of them all the time. Never stops. We don’t even taste. We don’t even taste. We just had a whole lunch. We have no idea what we just did. “Taste and see that God is good.” [Hebrew text] We don’t even taste. We barely see what’s in front of us. We can’t hear anymore. We’ve got facial recognition. We’re in every room face to face. We don’t recognize ourselves or each other in any real way. We’ve actually lost the ontology that lives in us. That’s what we meant when we said that word where a couple of eyes roll.

Don’t worry. I caught it. God, really? I mean really. Could you come up with something better? It’s a great word. Okay, and it’s going to become famous, I promise you. Okay. This is the Anthro-Ontological Method, anthro, Anthropology, anthro. It’s in me, ontology, for realsies, isn’t that gorgeous and it’s for real. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, good. Believe me, I knew it wasn’t you. Okay, here we go. So Anthro-Ontology means, ontologies, the mysteries are within us. That’s what it means: The Intimate Universe lives in us, like, wow. Which means I can trust my clarified desire. My clarified desire is a source of ontology and it’s a source of information. Harari writes, Yuval Harari, my colleague, writes one important thing. He’s a very good storyteller; the story is a bad story and it’s off in a thousand ways and he’s got some great sentences.

He says, the most important thing we need that we don’t have is we need new philosophers. What’s the story? He got that right. 1,000%. Anthro-Ontology, the Anthro-Ontological Method is: What are our shared deepest knowings and what are my unique, deepest knowings? But actually the mysteries, the ontologies live in me and they live in me and I can access them. That’s what we call One Love, One Heart. Isn’t that beautiful? It’s One Love, One Heart. One Love, One Heart. One Love, One Heart, isn’t it beautiful. It’s One Love, One Heart. We live in an Intimate Universe.

The Intimate Universe lives in us. And it’s trustable. It’s trustable. It’s not true. The second a society tells you you can’t trust your body, you’re a slave, I want you to get that. The second you can’t trust your own body… it doesn’t mean you don’t have to work with your body. It doesn’t mean you act out every bodily invitation. You’re discerning. You clarify desire. Well, but of course, duh. But, but at the core, you’re not living  in a home you can’t trust. I mean, do you get that? I mean, it makes me cry. We’re told we live in a home we can’t trust. Wow. Wow. I’m living in a home I can’t trust. I can’t trust my body.

I can trust my body. Anthro-Ontology. And Anthro-Ontology is AO. And AO is the response to AI. You got that? And that’s, AO, that’s the response to AI. And I want to just, I just want to give you a sense for a second with your permission, just going to do this very briefly, this is about three hours and I’m doing it in like two minutes. Okay, here we go. Ready? Two minutes. One everyone, okay? Do we get a drum roll? Help me out. Give me a drum roll so we are awake.

I’ll just give you a wild thing. Okay. Here’s a wild thing, I’ll just give you one source, one text, something about Shimon and something about Werner. Shimon says, why are you talking about me now? Oh, okay. So, so I was talking to this dude. I shared with somebody, this conversation, great guy named Werner Erhart and Werner starts something called originally EST and it became called the Landmark, the Forum. And it’s the largest kind of personal development transformation kind of industry in the world. And he’s a brilliant guy. Of course, his original name is Jack Rosenberg, different story. He changed it on a plane to Germany to Werner, kind of thought about it on the plane. And I met him, I don’t know him well. You know, I met him because we made contact when I was having a kind of rough moment about three years ago.

And he called me and he said, that’s nothing. Let me tell you what I went through. And so we had a great phone conversation and we liked each other. So we kept contact and we finally met, you know, I don’t know, X amount of months ago and Werner’s kind of actually like every second watching. He feels very close to the end of his life and there’s things he wants to get done and he’s not doing it. So we agreed to meet and it was a kind of a big deal. And you know, everyone around his world knows, he’s kind of inaccessible, and is like, wow. So we met in a hotel in Silicon Valley, you know, at the bar. And we spent the first hour, I would say something, I talked about Unique Self, he would talk about something.

I would say something, he would talk about something, and whatever. We suitably impressed each other, but basically nothing had happened. And you know, we hadn’t… We’re pretty much done and it took us a long time to make, and I was disappointed. You see, he was disappointed. I said to him, let’s, let’s, let’s break out some wine. So we started drinking. Four hours later, his wife comes down in the middle, he’s taking notes, we’re going like, we went ballistic. We had this awesome few hours, but here was like the height of the whole thing. So Werner has a distinction that actually comes from a Hasidic source, but the core of the distinction is right, which comes from a story about a Hasidic master in the 1950s that made his way to him. But I’ll resist the temptation to tell you any of that.

Here’s the distinction. The distinction is there’s only two choices in life, and it’s a core Landmark distinction. Either you’re in the stands or you’re on the court. That’s a great distinction. Either in the stands, you’re watching the game, you’re watching, you’re in the stands, or you’re on the court. If you’re on the court, you’re in action. I sometimes call it that in my language you’re a victim. You’re in the stands of being a victim, or you’re a player. You’re on the court. That’s always what you got to ask, where are you asking from? Are you asking from the stands? Or are you on the court? And, and I’m so tempted, but don’t, Marc, do not tell them the story of the Hasidic master where this came from. They don’t need to know that. You just want to tell it. Okay? So, boom! I’m not going to tell you that story.

So, I said to Werner, at some point… And this is where we just kind of broke open. I said, “Werner, why are we here? Why are Shimon and I friends?” Same question, Shimon and I have known each other for 20 years. We don’t talk often. He does his thing, I do my thing, but I always know he’s there, and I’m always happy that he’s there.

And we went to a festival. “[Hebrew] Shimon, can’t do without Shimon.” “Why?” “Just because.” But what’s the core of our connection? The core of our connection is allurement. I like being with him. I like hanging out with him. Allurement. So, I said to Werner, “Werner, why are you and I in this meeting? You’re so busy.” I’m saying, “Why are we here? We’re here because of allurement. We were allured to this intimacy. And allurement drives your life.” And Werner went nuts.

He said, “Oh my God.” So, in all… And we recorded these conversations, all Landmark distinctions, I just missed allurement. That’s an on the court distinction, I’ve got to change and rework the system. He just got wildly excited. And the way a person does who is not egoically bound to my system that I… No, he’s just wildly excited. Allurement.

So allurement lives inside of me. Does everyone get that? Allurement’s Anthro-Ontology. Allurement actually… I can actually trust my allurement. My allurement… I follow my allurement. And to actually know that kind of changes everything.

So, I want to give you just a simple text, which is about: how do we know things? So, we know things, say the mystics, because, not that mystics are good. There are idiot mystics like there are idiot scientists. Mystic doesn’t mean good. A lot of corrupt mystics, a lot of mystics doing bad shit, … mystics. No, there are mystics who are clarified, and mystics who aren’t, just like anything else. But the best of the mystics. The best of it is an interior scientist. And I’m an interior scientist. I’m doing experiments in interior science.

So I want to read you just a couple of little passages, just you get Anthro-Ontology. And Anthro-Ontology is: the allurement lives in me and I can trust the allurement. The allurement means that which I desire, my clarified desire. And where does it live? In my body.

Here’s Kook, Abraham Kook, interior science, erotic mystic. He says, “To ask about the higher knowing… ” And I’m translating here. “To ask about the higher knowing, how do you know, has no meaning. Once we find it in the center of the heart-soul, there lives a higher spirit and a treasure of organized knowing which fit together. And this is the highest of all proofs. And all knowledge that comes from research is only a means by which to arrive and clarify this higher knowing, which the soul spills forth from within the deepness of her depths.”

Anthro-Ontology, AO. But if we don’t have a sense of AO because we’ve got a reduced human being who’s been disqualified, reduction, we have reduced the human being to a flatland, separate self, materialistic web of exteriors, well then, why don’t we get the most powerful web of exteriors we can find, which is AI. Do you get that? The logic makes sense. But no, it’s AO. But it’s Anthro-Ontology. It’s: the mysteries are within us, and if we don’t invest in info-tech and biotech and nanotech, which means the consciousness of those people who are creating it, with Evolutionary Love, and with the realization that I live in the Intimate Universe and the Intimate Universe lives in me.

We don’t put Homo amor into the world so that it’s accessible to every man, woman, and child, we don’t tell that new story, then the exponentialized AI, naturally becomes the culmination of reality.

Second text: “All words reveal themselves within the heart-soul. And the more we immerse…” Here’s the word, immerse. In other words what’s that word, immerse? Everyone? Immersion.

That’s what we’re doing this week. This week’s not… This week is beautiful, it’s not easy. Does everyone get what I mean by that? I’m having a beautiful week, I’m not having an easy week. Does everyone get what I mean by that? It’s a beautiful week, not an easy week. And there’s always a part of me that dreads the festival. Fuck! It’s festival time. It’s hard. How many of you can access that? Access it, it’s really important. In other words, the reason we need it is because we need immersion. I have to be immersed. We don’t immerse anymore. When they did Lakshmi chance in Kashmir Shaivism, they weren’t on the web and emailing and moving, they were deep in Anthro-Ontology. The mysteries are within, but we’ve got to go within. And we got to actually sit in it and let it well up. All the words reveal themselves within the heart-soul. And the more we immerse ourselves in inner knowing of the content of the heart-soul, the more our knowledge about everything increases and increases.” I wouldn’t miss the festival for anything. I wouldn’t miss it for anything.

Last one. “Let each person describe with truth and completeness what his/her heart-soul shows them.” That’s not reduction, everything, no, it’s just, no, there’s a unique truth which is where we’re about to go.

“Let him/her bring forth his/her spiritual fruit from potential to actuality without false lips of superficiality. And from sparks like these…” from sparks like these, that is from each of us, “torches of light will gather, and will illuminate the world with their glory. Particles of inner truth of flame like these will gather together as great truth.” Anthro-Ontology.

Here’s the last piece, and then we’re ready to start. Here’s the last piece. Last piece, and we’re going to finish on time, for sure, it’s all good. Just relax. We’re in Vipassana, it’s all good.

What’s the definition of life? It’s very beautiful. What’s the definition of life? So you might say, everybody, DNA. But that’s not true because for example, when we find old remains of skulls, we check the DNA. So DNA as Dr. Venu knows, and who knows much more about this whole field than I do, of course. So I’ll go to him for questions. But just the basics. The DNA obviously lives after you’ve passed. So, DNA is obviously not the marker of life. So I looked up, I don’t know, 60, 70 texts over the last couple of weeks.

And pretty much what people say is that life is connected to metabolism. And metabolism means, there’s this process of life. So, for example, a mineral crystal is not alive. It’s got a pattern of intimacy, do you get what I mean by that? A mineral crystal has a particular molecular, atomic pattern, has a pattern of intimacy, but it’s not alive.

What does it mean to be alive? It’s very beautiful. And this just hit me six days ago, like middle of the night. Actually to be alive is to be in dynamic intimacy. Because actually anabolic, catabolic, what does it mean? It means I’m constructing, I’m building and I’m building. I’m building. That’s actually, there’s anabolic and catabolic pathways in metabolism.

And all what metabolism means is, it’s the livingness of a cell. A cell, a mineral… The crystal doesn’t have cells. A cell is the mark of life. And a cell means it’s metabolizing. And metabolizing means… But these are just words. What happens with scientists, science gives something a word and we stop thinking, we stop imagining. We can’t actually see what it is. Can’t see it in front of us.

So, metabolizing actually means, on the one hand, there’s these, we call them anabolic pathways, which means we build complex molecules, meaning new configurations of intimacy. But just… do you notice that? You could lose all of these; metabolism, anabolic pathways, complex, you don’t even see what’s happening.

Actually, what it means is, reality builds complex molecules from simpler ones. Meaning, new patterns of intimacy emerge, and then old structures break down, they’re called catabolic pathways, in order to pour new energy. So, old structures of intimacy break down because they’re not… You got to pour new energy into life.

So, life itself… This is wild, and we’re going to end our recapitulation here. Life is… the very definition of life, ‘evolving intimacy.’ Wow! And in all of the science, you could, as happens all the time, completely not even notice.

Let’s just breathe that in with permission. Thank you.

Get the Whole Course Recorded during that Festival

Dr. Marc Gafni on Anthro-Ontology: How We Know What We Know2023-09-02T06:26:00-07:00

Dr. Marc Gafni: Evolutionary Sensemaking Video Series

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Dr. Marc Gafni: Evolutionary Sensemaking Video Series2023-06-20T09:44:24-07:00

Evolutionary Spirituality: Towards an Engaged Evolutionary Mysticism – Dr. Marc Gafni & Andrew Cohen in Video Dialogue

Evolutionary Spirituality: Towards an Engaged Evolutionary Mysticism

Arguably our most significant interpretive framework for the nature of reality is the modern scientific discovery that the world and the universe are not, as the ancients believed, static or cyclical. The universe, and everything in it, is evolving. Cosmic and biological evolution are foundational truths of existence, and the implications are profound and multi-dimensional, extending outwards in every direction. In the 21st century, the context for any path or practice of enlightenment must surely embrace this knowledge and perspective. It is perhaps the most important shift in our understanding of enlightenment in the 2500 years since the Buddha first attained it.

Andrew Cohen and Dr. Marc Gafni are pioneers in the field of evolutionary spirituality, each with their own unique perspective on this newly emergent tradition. They share a strong foundation in an evolutionary approach to spiritual awakening, while emphasising distinctly different but intersecting dimensions of the path and practice. Both Marc and Andrew have produced pioneering bodies of work in this field, and formulated many of its core tenets. Their teachings uphold and demystify the foundational principles of traditional, modern and postmodern wisdom streams, weaving them together into an integral whole, and ultimately pointing toward a new evolutionary mysticism – what might even be considered a “religion of tomorrow”.

The aim of these dialogues is to celebrate the creative and dynamic evolutionary tension between these two perspectives – to catalyse awakening to higher states and stages of consciousness, giving rise to liberating insights and life-affirming perspectives in a unique tapestry of coherence and meaning, and an inspiring example of emergent spirituality in action.

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Episode 1

Episode 2: Evolutionary Relationships

From the Invitation by Dr. Marc Gafni to Episode 2: Evolutionary Relationships

I am wildly excited to, for the first time in a public forum, engage in an in-depth discussion with my dear friend and colleague Andrew Cohen on what the evolution of relationships – which is the evolution of intimacy, which is the evolution of love – means in our time.

  • What is the future of relationships?
  • What is an evolutionary relationship?
  • What do we mean by what we call a whole-mate relationship?
  • What is the place of romantic relationships?
  • What is the place of shared creativity in a relationship?
  • What are our new models for sexuality in relationships?
  • What are the core forms of relationship that all of us need to engage?
  • What are the First Values and First Principles that guide them?

Why is it true that no Enlightenment, no transformation, can be considered real, until it goes through the crucible of relationship and intimacy?

Let me share some deeper dharmic thoughts with you, which might help explain why this dialogue is deeply important, exciting and necessary.

“Reality is relationship.”

“Reality is evolution.”

“Reality is the evolution of relationships.”

These are the first lines of the forthcoming book that I have written with my dear evolutionary partner Barbara Marx Hubbard entitled The Future of Relationships: from Role Mate to Soul Mate to Whole Mate.

What is already apparent from the first three lines is that “relationship is not only a human category. Relationship is structural to Kosmos from the first nanoseconds of the Big Bang. In precisely the same way, evolution – Reality as a series of transformations and the transformation of relationships – is structural to Kosmos from the first nanoseconds of the Big Bang.”

When you put those two realizations together you get the following ostensibly simple but in fact insanely profound sentence:

“Reality is the evolution of relationship. Indeed the history of Reality can be most properly told as a history of the evolution of relationship.”

“By relationship however we do not mean casual or surface interactions between separate parts. Rather, by relationship we mean intimacy.” Intimacy as I define it in our forthcoming book The Intimate Universe, based on an enormous amount of information from the interior and exterior sciences, is “shared identity.”

Indeed, we’ve articulated an intimacy formula.

“Intimacy = shared identity in the context of [relative] otherness X mutuality of recognition X mutuality of pathos X mutuality of value X mutuality of purpose.” [read more in this article]

[A fuller unpacking of the intimacy formula appears in a forthcoming volume with Dr. Marc Gafni and Dr. Zachary Stein The Six Propositions and in the aforementioned forthcoming volume The Intimate Universe with Barbara Marx Hubbard and Dr. Zachary Stein.]

For now, it’s enough to say that “the evolution of relationship is the evolution of intimacy.”

In fact, one could accurately say that “evolution is not, as commonly understood, the movement from simplicity to complexity, but rather evolution is the progressive deepening of intimacies.”

“Evolution is the evolution of relationships.”

“This is true from the first nano seconds of the Big Bang when gazillions of quarks rain on planet Earth and the only quarks that would survive are those who are able to establish a stable structure of relationship. Those that are able to create between them a configuration of intimacy that can find its way to the unbearable pressures of the first nanoseconds of relationship.”

“From the singularity of relationships – intimacy continues to evolve.“

“There are two drivers to the evolution of relationships.”

  1. The inherent, erotic, creative impulse of Kosmos that desires, seeks, moves towards ever deeper contacts and ever greater wholes. That is to say: ever deeper, wider and more intense configurations of intimacy – relationships.
  2. The second driver for the evolution of relationships is crisis. Crisis is an evolutionary driver.
  3. All genuine crises are a crisis of intimacy or said slightly differently: all genuine crises are a crisis of relationships.

These core structures of Reality – evolution, relationship and intimacy and the play between them – are evolving First Values and First Principles of Reality. They are the plotlines in the great story of value that Dr. Zachary Stein and Dr. Marc Gafni call CosmoErotic Humanism.

The Evolution of Relationships is the source code of Reality. We are at a moment – in this time between worlds – when we need to participate together in evolving the source code of consciousness and culture.

And we need to do it personally!

This dialogue is not about relationships and their evolution. It is about OUR Relationships, and their evolution. You and me, all of us, in our personal and collective lives. How do we, as the leading edge of evolution itself, evolve Our Relationships?

How do we birth, from the inside of Our Relationships, the New Human and the New Humanity, that all of Reality and our deepest hearts, souls and bodies yearn for.

It is only such an evolution of relationship that can respond to what we have called the Meta Crisis of existential and catastrophic risk that hovers over our world.

For the Meta Crisis at its very core is a Global Intimacy Disorder.

We must evolve our intimacies – generating new forms of evolutionary intimacy, personally and collectively.

That is the overarching moral imperative, urgent necessity and the great agony and ecstasy of our time.

Episode 3: Evolutionary God

Episode 4: Evolutionary God (Part 2)

Episode 5: Karma, Destiny & Free Will

Episode 6: God Loves Stories

Episode 7: Evolutionary Spirituality, Desire & Need

Episode 8: The Evolution of God — “Evolutionary Perennialism” meets “Evolutionary Enlightenment”

Evolutionary Spirituality: Towards an Engaged Evolutionary Mysticism – Dr. Marc Gafni & Andrew Cohen in Video Dialogue2024-07-05T12:58:40-07:00

CosmoErotic Humanism: First Principles and Values – Video Dialogue at The Stoa with Drs. Zak Stein and Marc Gafni

In this dialogue, facilitated by Peter Limberg from The Stoa, Marc and Zak provide an overview of an emerging philosophy. Topics include neo-perennialism, Eros, ethics, evolutionary metaphysics, and the future of civilization.

CosmoErotic Humanism: First Principles and Values – Video Dialogue at The Stoa with Drs. Zak Stein and Marc Gafni2023-06-17T07:15:38-07:00

Parallax-Video-Dialogue: Eros & Libido in a Time Between Worlds

Alexander Bard, Zak Stein, & Marc Gafni in Dialogue, Hosted by Tom Amarque

Parallax-Video-Dialogue: Eros & Libido in a Time Between Worlds2023-06-17T07:18:26-07:00

Parallax Spiritual Book Club Video Dialogue with Dr. Marc Gafni Round 2: The Murder of Eros

Andrew Sweeney in Dialogue with Dr. Marc Gafni on The Murder of Eros

Round 2 of a dialogue with Marc Gafni hosted by Andrew Sweeny

Andrew Sweeny writes about this dialogue:

Dr. Marc Gafni is a Rabbi, an integral philosopher, and—and by his own description—an outrageous lover, as any good philosopher should be.

I spoke to him about his book A Return to Eros and the need for eros in spirituality, politics, and life.

In this conversation, I will query him about ‘the murder of eros’, based on the final chapter in his book—and ask him how spirituality and religion can integrate the erotic, beyond mere hedonism or repression. As Marc says, ‘We need to take sex seriously.’

Parallax Spiritual Book Club Video Dialogue with Dr. Marc Gafni Round 2: The Murder of Eros2023-06-17T07:19:49-07:00

Dr. Marc Gafni and Aubrey Marcus in a Video Dialogue: Secrets of the CosmoErotic Universe

Aubrey Marcus:

“When it was recommended that I do a podcast with Rabbi Dr. Marc Gafni, I knew nothing about him. I dove straight into his body of work and my life will never be the same. This is perhaps the most paradigm shifting podcast I have ever recorded. It tells the tale of the greatest love story of all–the story of the cosmo-erotic universe Herself. In this paradigm shifting masterclass, we learn how a force he calls Eros is the fundamental substrate of creation all the way down to the first principles of subatomic matter. Gafni’s wisdom stretches back deep into the secrets of the Temple of Solomon and the mystic Kabbalist tradition. Our conversation touches a wide range of topics, including the nature of the Goddess, the democratization of enlightenment, and rewriting our sexual narratives.”

Dr. Marc Gafni and Aubrey Marcus in a Video Dialogue: Secrets of the CosmoErotic Universe2023-06-17T07:31:26-07:00

Dr. Marc Gafni on Spiritual Practice – Podcast with James Bampfield

In this beautiful conversation, Dr. Marc Gafni and James Bampfield speak about Enlightenment and Intimacy.

“Enlightenment is intimacy with all things.” – Dr. Marc Gafni

Dr. Marc Gafni on Spiritual Practice – Podcast with James Bampfield2023-06-17T07:34:07-07:00
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