Dr. John Vervaeke

Can we find freedom in a world of endless choice—or is deeper liberation found in the people we refuse to leave?
In the first of a three-part Lectern Dialogues series, John Vervaeke is joined by Elizabeth Oldfield and her husband, Christopher Oldfield, for a conversation on intentional communal living as a spiritual practice within a Christian orientation.
Elizabeth and Christopher share life with their children and three other adults in a small London home shaped by a shared rule of life: collective prayer, hospitality, study, play, administration, and the daily work of formation. They distinguish committed community from casual cohabitation, exploring how proximity, conflict, repair, and shared rhythms can cultivate deeper friendship and fellowship.
The conversation connects intentional community with John's work on the philosophical Silk Road, renewing the senses, dialogical selfhood, attachment, participation, and the critique of modern individualism. It also takes seriously the risks of self-deception and toxic religion, asking what discernment and faithful communal maturation require.
Guests
Christopher Oldfield is a philosopher affiliated with the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion in Cambridge. His work explores wisdom, metaphysics, personhood, participation, and the sacred.
Elizabeth Oldfield writes and speaks on spirituality, community, and relational life, examining how shared practices can restore connection with one another and with God.
Resources
Christopher Oldfield: https://www.chrisoldfieldphilosophy.com/
Elizabeth Oldfield on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabeth-oldfield-5a5b6216/
Plato, The Seventh Letter: http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/seventh_letter.html
A Hidden Life: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt5827916/
The Thin Red Line: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120863/
Explore courses and teachings from The Lectern: https://lectern.johnvervaeke.com/
Support The Lectern on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/johnvervaeke
Follow John Vervaeke: Website: https://johnvervaeke.com/ X: https://twitter.com/vervaeke_john YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@johnvervaeke Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/johnvervaeke
Chapters
00:00 Welcome to The Lectern 02:00 Elizabeth on friendship 04:30 Christopher's introduction 08:00 Why intentional community 09:30 Commitment and covenant 12:30 Rhythms of a rule of life 16:30 Plato and collective spirit 21:30 Creed, "we," and "I" 27:00 Dialogical self and science 31:30 Relearning wisdom today 39:00 Intimacy and modern culture 46:30 Rethinking eros 48:3030 Hearth and fellowship 49:00 Covenant friendship 49:30 Life inside community 52:30 Religion as holy listening 54:00 Religion as care and rebinding 56:30 Empire and invented religion 59:00 Shared scripture and shared life 01:01:00 Is religion accessible? 01:03:00 Practice and participation 01:05:00 Communal maturation 01:08:30 Rupture, repair, and intimacy 01:13:00 "We too" identity in Ephesians 01:17:30 Renewing the senses 01:24:30 Attachment and attunement 01:27:30 Discernment and toxic religion 01:30:00 Friendship as the path

What if the very thing we fear most—nonbeing—is also what gives life its deepest meaning?
John Vervaeke welcomes philosopher Corey Anton to discuss his book, How Nonbeing Haunts Being: On Possibilities, Morality, and Death Acceptance. They explore how absence, limitation, possibility, mortality, and death are not merely negations of life, but central to how meaning, identity, and moral responsibility emerge.
Corey situates the book as the third in a trilogy and describes a naturalist yet spiritually open orientation: one that rejects an afterlife while affirming reverence for the mystery of existence and a morality grounded in this life. John and Corey consider embodiment, perception, grief, ego death, psychedelics, dignity in dying, AI and the meaning crisis, and the challenge of evil.
Drawing on Sartre, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Nishitani, Terence Deacon, Epicurus, and Douglas Harding's Headless Way, this conversation asks how accepting mortality might deepen wisdom, enrich ordinary life, and open us to a more participatory relationship with reality.
Resources
How Nonbeing Haunts Being: On Possibilities, Morality, and Death Acceptance by Corey Anton: https://www.amazon.com/Non-being-Haunts-Being-Possibilities-Communication-ebook/dp/B08MDL3LX7/
Explore courses and teachings from The Lectern: https://lectern.johnvervaeke.com/
Support The Lectern on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/johnvervaeke
Follow John Vervaeke: Website: https://johnvervaeke.com/ X: https://x.com/DrJohnVervaeke YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@johnvervaeke Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/johnvervaeke
Chapters
00:00 Welcome and book praise 00:41 Nonbeing East and West 04:54 Spirituality without an afterlife 06:58 Thirst and everyday absence 09:15 Recovering Catholic roots 12:20 Reverence versus fire insurance 15:12 The Headless Way and openness 22:10 Embodiment makes relations real 24:14 No view from nowhere 27:24 Grief and mortality acceptance 31:54 Sartre meets Harding 34:45 Merleau-Ponty and psychedelics 37:55 A community of the dying 38:35 Epicurus on the fear of death 40:56 Dignity and dying 42:47 The right to die 46:02 Pain and despair 53:23 The sacred as inexhaustible 55:36 AI and the meaning crisis 59:43 How meaning works 01:01:16 Resonance over happiness 01:09:59 Mystery, love, and evil 01:14:52 The bodhisattva response 01:17:02 Closing reflections

What if nihilism is not the end of meaning, but an opening into a deeper way of seeing?
John Vervaeke is joined by Ethan Hsieh to introduce Notes on No-Thing, a course on the Kyoto School of Philosophy and its response to nihilism, nothingness, and the advent of the sacred.
They explore why modern people often oscillate between nihilism and narcissism, why meaning must be shareable, and how the Kyoto School offers a different way through the meaning crisis. Rather than treating nothingness as a wound to be covered over with distraction, John considers it as an aperture—a way of seeing through nihilism toward a renewed encounter with reality, religion, sacredness, and transformation.
The conversation draws on Nishida, Nishitani, and Tanabe alongside Zen, Neoplatonism, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Heidegger, Sartre, grief, shame, the death of God, and post-Christian nihilism. It asks what a post-nihilistic understanding of the sacred might make possible.
Notes on No-Thing runs September 14–November 9, with no class on October 26.
Learn more and register: https://lectern.johnvervaeke.com/courses/notes-on-no-thing
Explore courses and teachings from The Lectern: https://lectern.johnvervaeke.com/
Support The Lectern on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/johnvervaeke
Connect with John Vervaeke: Website: https://johnvervaeke.com/ X: https://twitter.com/vervaeke_john YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@johnvervaeke Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/johnvervaeke
Chapters
00:00 Nothingness as an opening 00:40 Welcome to The Lectern 01:20 Why this course matters 03:10 The Kyoto School and nihilism 07:10 Beyond nihilism and the sacred 11:10 The everyday voice of nihilism 12:30 Nihilism and clinical depression 17:20 The clenched fist analogy 20:50 Forms of nihilism 25:00 Beyond familiar Western religious frameworks 26:00 From hole to aperture 27:00 Grief, loss, and reality 29:10 Narcissism as a response to nihilism 32:40 Why meaning must be shareable 35:10 Nishitani and self-overcoming 37:20 Nihilism and narcissism 38:30 The Kyoto School as a dialogical partner 45:20 Nietzsche, Christianity, and modernity 49:10 Guilt, shame, and cultural frameworks 52:30 Grief over the death of God 58:00 The advent of the sacred 60:20 What students can expect 61:20 Transformation and no-thingness 64:40 Meaning, flourishing, and resilience 66:40 Mourning, grief, and love 68:40 Course registration and closing

Why are we losing our taste for what is real—and what practices can help us recover it?
John Vervaeke is joined by Guy Sengstock and Kyle Koch for a conversation on connection as something constitutive of who we are: our relationship to nature, one another, story, personhood, and the sacred.
Together, they explore the practices behind the Reconnecting to the Real retreat in Whistler, British Columbia. Kyle shares how nature connection, tracking, bird language, and embodied practice can transform how we perceive and participate in the world. Guy brings the relational depth of Circling, considering how conversation can become a practice of presence, listening, and genuine contact.
John situates these practices within his work on the meaning crisis, Socratic dialogue, wisdom, and the renewal of the senses. The conversation moves from fire, forest, and shared meals to deeper questions of flourishing, AI and virtual mediation, touch and taste, and how we can develop a more participatory relationship with reality.
Learn more about the Reconnecting to the Real retreat: https://lnkd.in/erVwif6A
Explore courses and teachings from The Lectern: https://lectern.johnvervaeke.com/
Support The Lectern on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/johnvervaeke
Connect with John Vervaeke: Website: https://johnvervaeke.com/ X: https://twitter.com/vervaeke_john YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@johnvervaeke Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/johnvervaeke
Chapters
00:00 Welcome to The Lectern 00:40 Reconnecting to the Real 01:20 Nature connection and meaning 04:20 Discovering Circling 07:20 Tending the earth and togetherness 13:20 Socrates, meaning, and dialogue 18:20 Retreat as practice and participation 24:20 Facilitating rather than lecturing 30:40 The senses reaching toward the world 36:00 Why connection restores energy and life 41:40 Touch, contact, and the real 43:20 Taste and spiritual perception 46:00 The skill that unlocks a life 48:00 Shared meals and tasting together 51:20 Renewing the senses 52:20 Flourishing and the real 54:30 Closing reflections

Is civilization making us smarter while disconnecting us from what matters most?
In this episode, John Vervaeke speaks with Kyle Koch, a deep nature connection practitioner and new father living in an intentional community in northern British Columbia, about applying Vervaeke's work to raise children with belonging and connectedness.
Together they explore cognition as a dynamical developmental process, how culture increasingly "raises" children through screens, and how capitalism functions as a dominant religion shaping salience and meaning. Drawing on Iain McGilchrist's work and 4E cognitive science, they discuss left-hemisphere dominance, relevance realization, extended families and credible role models, narrative as "keeping track of tracking," and the need for a meta-narrative beyond a chaos of stories.
The conversation also examines kinship and Indigenous worldviews, personhood as promise-making, the "spirit of place," pilgrimage as transformative theoria, and a civium model that combines Dunbar-scale communities with a more virtuous virtual world—including retreats like Reconnecting with the Real.
Timestamps
00:00 – Welcome to the Lectern
02:00 – Fatherhood and meaning
05:00 – Questions on development
06:30 – Cognition as dynamic
07:30 – Culture raises kids
09:00 – Capitalism as religion
11:00 – Alloparenting and nature
13:00 – Becoming self and person
17:30 – Trust and role models
22:00 – Narratives and consumption
26:00 – Spirit of place
31:30 – Promises and personhood
33:30 – Narrative practice tracking
39:30 – Meta-narrative challenge
43:00 – Why we cannot return
43:30 – The synergy of civilization
44:30 – Civium at Dunbar scale
46:30 – Making the virtual sacred
49:30 – Can the virtual be virtuous?
51:00 – Keeping civilization's gifts
57:30 – Hospicing modernity and cultural transition
1:00:00 – Capitalism and demographic collapse
1:02:30 – Pilgrimage and theoria
1:09:00 – Apprenticeship to sages
1:11:30 – Eldership and the sage symphony
About Kyle Koch
Kyle Koch is a nature connection expert who bridges philosophical concepts and embodied reality through tracking, bird language, and nature-based core routines. Coming from a background in Evolve Move Play, he helps people reclaim an innate sense of belonging within the natural world.
Learn more:
https://www.ecologyofconnection.com
Email:
kyle@ecologyofconnection.com
Resources
The Matter With Things:
https://channelmcgilchrist.com/the-matter-with-things
Evolve Move Play:
https://www.evolvemoveplay.com/
Follow John Vervaeke
Website:
https://johnvervaeke.com/
X:
https://x.com/DrJohnVervaeke
YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@johnvervaeke
Patreon:
https://www.patreon.com/johnvervaeke
Thank you for listening!