Opening the Eye of Value During the Meta-Crisis

The New Parallax Course on the First Principles Book Starts April 6, 2024!

The 4-week course on the new book First Principles and First Values. Forty-Two Propositions on CosmoErotic Humanism, the Meta-Crisis, and the World to Come, starts this week!

This 4-week course is offered by philosopher and co-author Zak Stein in collaboration with Parallax.

In the first week Dr. Marc Gafni will join Zak Stein in discussing the major themes of CosmoErotic Humanism.

Learn More and Register for This Course

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.

Learn More and Register for This Course

Book Release Worldwide

Our new book can now be ordered worldwide from each country’s amazon and other bookstores. It is available as Paperback, eBook, and Audiobook.

From the US and Canada, it can also be ordered directly from the publisher HERE:

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


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.

Order Here
Download the First Five Chapters HERE for Free

Below we link to everything that has been posted on this site in March 2024.

Featured Essay in March 2024

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 WhatWhat 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 WhereWhere 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…)

Read the Whole Essay

More Essays and White Papers Published on This Site in March 2024

Read the Most Recent Essays on Substack

Follow Us on Substack
New Teachings Emerge from Our Weekly Sensemaking Sessions in One Mountain, Many Paths

New Podcasts in March 2024

Watch More
Listen More

In Case You Missed This Documentary with Dr. Marc Gafni

In collaboration with Aubrey Marcus and the Unique Self Institute

In Dr. Gafni and Dr. Stein’s language: “We stand at a pivotal moment in history – a time between worlds and a time between stories  – poised between dystopia and utopia.” To bridge the gap between our external technologies and internal narratives of identity and purpose, every human and every epoch of humanity must evolve responses to three essential questions, what we refer to as the three great questions of CosmoErotic Humanism: “Who? Where? And What?”

  • Who am I? and Who are we?
  • Where am I? and Where are we?
  • What ought I do? and What ought we do?

In a profound analysis of our current meta-crisis and what he calls the “global intimacy disorder,” Dr. Marc Gafni draws from what he refers to as “the exterior and interior sciences” to deepen our responses to these three questions. The responses offer a new understanding of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful, and generate the beginning of “a universal grammar of value as a context for our diversity.” 

“A universal grammar of value is grounded in eternal yet evolving First Principles and First Values, which are inherent in the Intimate Universe, in which we all participate. A new grammar articulates a potent Story of intrinsic Value, with the poignancy and power to respond to the meta-crisis. At the core of this Story of Value, called CosmoErotic Humanism, is a new narrative of identity, both personal and collective. Principles of Unique Self and Unique Self Symphony contribute to the shaping of a shared reality that is flawed and human, filled with holy and broken Hallelujahs. Yet, that Reality reaches insistently towards better tomorrows that are suffused with ever-deepening Eros and ethos, kindness, and creativity.”

For privacy reasons YouTube needs your permission to be loaded.
I Accept

Dr. Marc Gafni: Our First Steps as “Homo amor” – FREE Abridged Course

This 27-Part Video series is part of the 7-week Online Video Course:

“Our First Steps as Homo Amor” – OUR FIRST STEPS AS “HOMO AMOR” BIRTHING THE NEW HUMAN AND THE NEW HUMANITY

A 7-Week Online Video Course with Dr. Marc Gafni

When looking at the state of the world today, if your head is not in the sand, you feel a sense of urgency. There is outrageous beauty and goodness. But there is also outrageous pain. But not of the ordinary kind. There is the pain of dislocation as we enter a phase shift in human history where all of the old narratives of identity are collapsing. In this 11th hour, as we are poised between utopia and dystopia, we have no authentic sense of who we are and what is our personal place in this pivotal moment in human history.

This playlist is a short introduction to the 7-week Online Video Course: “the First Steps as Homo Amor” with Dr. Marc Gafni.

Enjoy the FREE Series HERE:

For privacy reasons YouTube needs your permission to be loaded.
I Accept

We are at a pivotal moment – in the 11th hour poised between dystopia and utopia – between the capacity to create heaven on earth or unleash, especially for the most vulnerable two billion people on the planet, a hell of suffering and death. We are at a tipping point, where our next steps can either usher in heaven on earth or all hell break loose. We are faced with global challenges at an existential level – threats to our very existence.

Global challenges can only be met with concerted global action. But we suffer a global action paralysis or rampant global action confusion. The global action paralysis is rooted not merely in political struggle but in something far more fundamental. Our global action paralysis is rooted in a global intimacy disorder.

Therefore, in order to move towards collective mutual action that can take us to the next level, we need to heal the global intimacy disorder that is at the root of our crisis.

Intimacy disorders – personal and collective – are always rooted in one root cause: living in different stories of reality. Intimacy disorders are only healed when partners, beloveds, parents and children, or tribes and societies, experience themselves as living in a shared story, with a shared vision and values. Whenever there is alienation, it is because there is a breakdown in our own story.

The purpose of this offering is to locate you in the most accurate, good, true, and beautiful story of the universe and your personal life that is available at this moment in time. This is the great eternal, evolutionary story of cosmo-erotic humanism in which you are personally implicated. This is the most urgent question of your identity. Who Are You? The truth of your identity is that you are Homo amor.

As such, your personal love story is implicated in the evolutionary story. But for REAL. This course is about YOUR transfiguration into Homo amor, a term we use to describe the New Human and the New Humanity, that is the evolutionary fulfillment of Homo sapiens.

In this program, Dr. Marc Gafni will take you deep into a new vision that understands the progressive deepening of intimacies as the core evolutionary driver. You will begin to birth the new human in your own being.

This is a personal invitation. Your response to this invitation may well be pivotal in activating Homo amor.

Welcome to this extraordinary journey that will show you the way to activate your identity as Homo amor.

Read More About the Full Course HERE

Online Video Course with Dr. Marc Gafni

CosmoErotic Humanism: The New Story of Value – Birthing the New Human and the New Humanity (recorded in 2022)

CosmoErotic Humanism in Seven Chapters:

Chapter 1:  Responding to the Meta-Crisis with a New Story: CosmoErotic Humanism
Chapter 2: Reading Texts of Culture: Don’t Look Up Explores Value, Beyond the Intention of Its Writers
Chapter 3: Why is There Something Rather Than Nothing?
Chapter 4: The Radical Path to the Transformation of Shame: From the Shame of Finitude to the Celebration of Finitude
Chapter 5:  The Leading Edge of Human Identity
Chapter 6:  Towards a New Universal Grammar of Evolving Value as a Context for our Diversity
Chapter 7:  Blessings of the Father and Blessings of the Mother: Am I Welcome in Cosmos?

Each level consists of the main teaching by Dr. Marc Gafni that was recorded on one of seven days during Eros Mystery School in Holland in 2022. It contains dharma talks, practices, prayers, chants, movie clips, songs, poems, and dance sessions – seamlessly woven into one whole. It is kind of like being at a Mozart concerto played on that day – in those hours – unrehearsed and raw – never to be played in that way ever again but recorded for you in this course journey which is reality’s gift for you.

Learn More About the Course Here
2024-04-03T10:05:01-07:00
Go to Top