Dr. John Vervaeke

In this episode of The Lectern, John Vervaeke sits down with Zevi Slavin to explore the radical metaphysics of Ibn Gabirol and the role of divine desire at the heart of reality.
Ibn Gabirol, also known as Avicebron, was a major figure in Jewish Neoplatonism whose philosophy reshaped medieval thought across traditions. His view that matter and form seek each other through divine desire challenges mechanical models of existence and reintroduces relational depth into metaphysics.
John and Zevi examine how Gabirol's ideas intersect with Jewish mysticism, medieval philosophy, and contemporary discussions about consciousness and meaning. They explore the tension between universal truth and particular tradition, and whether unity requires sameness or whether difference itself can be sacred.
This conversation invites listeners to reconsider whether reality itself is structured by longing, participation, and sacred relationship.
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00:00 Welcome to the Lectern 02:30 Key concepts in Ibn Gabirol's philosophy 04:46 Matter and form bound by divine desire 07:30 Zevi Slavin and Seekers of Unity 15:00 Jewish philosophy and Neoplatonism 24:00 Philosophy and religious orientation 38:30 Existential identity and engagement 42:00 Faith and sacred relationship 44:00 The Philosophical Silk Road 46:30 Divine desire and agency 49:30 Jewish mysticism and metaphysics 57:00 Universal and particular tension 01:12:00 Philosophical common language

How can ancient spiritual practices be reanimated for modern life?
In this compelling episode, John sits down again with therapist Seth Allison to delve deep into the themes of suffering, trust, and growth within the frame of internal family systems therapy and Jungian analysis. Seth discusses his transformative experiences over the past few years, including the impact of previous conversations with John and his own journey through a profound period of liminality. They touch upon voluntary necessity, the role of suffering in cultivating faith, and the transformative power of relationships and community in overcoming personal crises. Seth also highlights the significance of humility in effective leadership and his aspirations for fostering supportive, growth-oriented environments in both personal and professional settings.
Seth Allison is a psychotherapist and depth-oriented thinker whose work integrates attachment theory, Internal Family Systems, and Jungian psychology with spiritual and existential inquiry. Drawing from both clinical training and lived experience, he specializes in helping individuals navigate midlife transitions, relational struggles, addiction dynamics, and identity shifts. Seth's approach emphasizes authenticity, relational depth, and the courageous engagement of suffering as a doorway to growth and deeper participation in life.
Seth Allison: LinkedIn
The Cost of Discipleship 
 Murray Stein
The Serenity Prayer 
 
00:00 — Welcome to the Lectern
05:00 — Voluntary necessity and spiritual depth
08:00 — Bonhoeffer's profound insights
11:00 — Personal reflections and resonance realization
25:30 — Exploring liminality and midlife transitions
29:54 —  You can't serve money and God, and money doesn't just mean money, it means ego, success and accomplishment. 
52:00 — Hermes and the concept of love addiction
52:30 — The arena of partnership and self-discovery
54:00 — Addiction and attachment strategies
56:30 — Faith and recovery: a new perspective
58:30 — The role of symbols and sensory experience
59:30 — Transcendence and metanoia
01:07:30 — The importance of community in recovery
01:18:30 — Navigating betrayal and suffering
01:35:00 — Leadership and humility
01:44:00 — The subversive power of trust
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Want to go deeper? Join the Lectern platform on Teachable for full-length courses, guided series, and structured pathways into the ideas explored here.
 
John Vervaeke: 
Website: https://johnvervaeke.com/
Twitter: https://x.com/DrJohnVervaeke
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@johnvervaeke/videos
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/johnvervaeke
 
Thank you for Listening!

In this episode of The Lectern, John Vervaeke and host Ethan Hsieh explore what Ethan calls the "Underground Man" problem. How we can get trapped in endless abstraction, lose contact with lived meaning, and oscillate between inflation and collapse.
They unpack the reflectiveness gap (hyper-reflection that disconnects us from motivation), how the imaginal bridges the abstract and the embodied, and why the cultural severing of transcendence and finitude fuels cycles of nihilism, indecision, and irresponsible action. The conversation also dives into the cognitive science of dissociation including volitional vs. pathological forms. Showing how disruptive strategies can support transformation when followed by reintegration.
The Q&A then turns toward prayer and ritual: how they can go wrong as "vicious abstraction," and how they can go right as re-centering a dialogical practice that reconnects us to reality, responsibility, and compassion.
This episode also includes an important announcement: this will be John's last Lectern Q&A for a while. Over the next few months, Mark Miller will host Lectern Q&As while his course runs on the platform.
Sign up for Lectern (Teachable) and explore current courses: https://lectern.teachable.com/p/lectern-lounge
Timecodes:
00:00 Welcome + Lectern Live Q&A begins 01:00 Format: pre-submitted questions + YouTube chat + call-in option 02:20 Announcement: John stepping back; Mark Miller hosting upcoming Q&As 03:05 Who Mark Miller is + why his course matters 06:00 The "Underground Man" problem + the reflectiveness gap 09:40 Phenomenology: inflation, collapse, depression, nihilism, atrophy of agency 17:35 Culture-level pattern: severing transcendence and finitude 19:50 Why "more abstraction" doesn't fix it 20:40 Non-duality, recentering, and the return to the lived 25:35 Dissociation + predictive processing + relevance realization 27:20 Dialogical self ("I-positions") + narrative binding across agency/selfhood/personhood 31:00 Self-organizing criticality + pivotal mental states 33:25 Volitional vs. pathological dissociation; reintegration vs. fragmentation 36:45 Being/non-being interwoven; mortality and transformation 38:45 Prayer/ritual: vicious vs. virtuous abstraction 44:45 A concrete example of re-centering prayer 51:55 Primordial vs. ultimate; intuition/insight/inspiration and the sacred 01:06:10 YouTube chat: sports/flow as an ecology of practices + sportsmanship 01:08:05 YouTube chat: how John re-centers (Søren / orientation-level flow) 01:13:05 YouTube chat: "Underground woman" problem + caregiving inflation/collapse 01:20:05 Closing + next Q&A with Mark Miller (date mentioned in episode)
John Vervaeke is a professor, philosopher, and cognitive scientist whose work focuses on the meaning crisis, relevance realization, and the cognitive science of wisdom. His research bridges cognitive science, philosophy, and contemplative traditions to explore how humans cultivate insight, agency, and deep transformation.
Ethan Hsieh is a facilitator, educator, and philosophical practitioner working at the intersection of performance, cognition, and transformative pedagogy. He is the creator of TIAMAT, a three-tier developmental framework integrating cognitive science, dialogical philosophy, and embodied practice. Through immersive learning environments and collaborative inquiry, Ethan helps individuals cultivate virtuosity as a way of life—emphasizing participatory sense-making, metacognitive mapping, and shared agency.
John Vervaeke:
Website: https://johnvervaeke.com/
Twitter: https://x.com/DrJohnVervaeke
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@johnvervaeke/videos
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/johnvervaeke
If you would like to donate purely out of goodwill to support John's work, please consider joining our Patreon. https://www.patreon.com/johnvervaeke

In this episode of The Lectern, host Ethan Hsieh sits down with philosopher and cognitive scientist Mark Miller to explore the science of predictive processing and its implications for happiness, meaning, and wellbeing.
They unpack how the brain is not a passive receiver of reality, but an active prediction engine—constantly generating its best guesses about the world and updating them through experience. From belief formation and perception to resilience, virtue, play, and mindfulness, the conversation bridges cutting-edge cognitive science with ancient contemplative wisdom.
Together, Ethan and Mark discuss how understanding the predictive nature of the mind can transform how we relate to uncertainty, cultivate agency, and develop a deeper, more participatory sense of happiness—both individually and collectively.
This episode also introduces Mark Miller's upcoming course, Generations of Joy, which explores these ideas through neuroscience, philosophy, and contemplative practice.
Sign up for the course: https://lectern.johnvervaeke.com/courses/generations-of-joy
 
00:00 Welcome back to The Lectern 02:30 Mark Miller's background and research focus 06:00 Predictive processing and cognitive science 09:00 Belief, perception, and meaning-making 10:18 "You're not seeing the world—you're seeing your best guess about the world." 13:00 Course overview and key themes 27:00 Honesty, virtue, and transformation 39:30 Practical applications and course dynamics 41:30 Real-world implications of science 43:00 Emptiness, neuroscience, and insight 43:30 The frame problem in cognitive science 45:30 Optimism vs. pessimism: locking onto the world 46:30 Training the mind to discern 47:30 The interpretive nature of reality 52:00 The role of play in cognitive development 56:00 Managing uncertainty through play 01:12:30 Mindfulness and emerging evidence 01:22:00 The Transformational Neuroscience course
 
Mark Miller is a philosopher and cognitive scientist whose work bridges philosophy, neuroscience, and contemplative science. His research explores how the predictive brain shapes happiness, wellbeing, and meaning in a technologically saturated world.
He is a Senior Research Fellow at Monash University's Centre for Consciousness and Contemplative Studies (Australia), cross-affiliated with the Psychology Department at the University of Toronto (Canada), and a visiting researcher at Hokkaido University's Centre for Human Nature, Artificial Intelligence, and Neuroscience (Japan).
Website: https://www.markdmiller.live/
 
Ethan Hsieh is a facilitator, educator, and philosophical practitioner working at the intersection of performance, cognition, and transformative pedagogy. He is the creator of TIAMAT, a three-tier developmental framework integrating cognitive science, dialogical philosophy, and embodied practice.
Through immersive learning environments and collaborative inquiry, Ethan helps individuals cultivate virtuosity as a way of life—emphasizing participatory sense-making, metacognitive mapping, and shared agency. His work with the 5toMidnight collective focuses on building deliberately developmental communities grounded in relational ontology and lived philosophical transformation.

Thank you for joining us live for this month's Silk Road Seminar, featuring Kevin Lu and Anderson Todd.
Kevin Lu is a Jungian psychoanalyst, lecturer, and scholar whose work bridges analytical psychology, philosophy, and religious studies. As a senior lecturer at the University of Essex, his research explores symbolic thought, depth psychology, myth, and individuation, with a focus on reintegrating Jungian wisdom into contemporary conversations around meaning and transformation.
Anderson Todd is an award-winning lecturer at the University of Toronto, teaching in Cognitive Science and Buddhism as well as Psychology and Mental Health. With a background spanning philosophy, complexity science, and transformative practice, Anderson brings clarity and rigor to questions of wisdom cultivation, existential resilience, and mental health.
Together, Kevin and Anderson bring a rare synergy of psychological depth and cognitive precision to the Silk Road Seminar, offering insight into meaning-making and transformation in the modern world.
Silk Road Seminars are live, hour-long conversations hosted by John Vervaeke, weaving together ideas from cognitive science, philosophy, psychology, and wisdom traditions. Each seminar is streamed live on YouTube and followed by an exclusive Q&A where participants can engage directly with John and the guests.
 
To be entered onto the guest list for the live Q&A, sign up at the Gamma Tier (or above) on The Lectern: https://lectern.teachable.com/p/lectern-lounge
University students (undergraduate through doctoral level) receive free access to the Q&A. Email proof of student status to: [email protected]
Students added to the guest list also receive access to previous Silk Road Seminars.
 
 
If you'd like to support John's work through a goodwill donation, consider joining the Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/johnvervaeke
John Vervaeke online: https://johnvervaeke.com/ https://twitter.com/drjohnvervaeke https://www.youtube.com/@johnvervaeke https://www.patreon.com/johnvervaeke