The Memes Will Set You Free
Apocalyptic Conversation and American Gnosis with Arthur Versluis
We had Arthur Versluis back on MindMatters to discuss his recent book Conversations in Apocalyptic Times (a dialogue with Robert Faas), and his forthcoming American Gnosis.
Tune in for a wide-ranging discussion on our current spiritual malaise, the hidden theosophic tradition within Western Christianity, neo-gnosticism, continuity of consciousness, the mystery of mysteries—the Holy Grail, and Arthur’s new and upcoming courses with the Hieros Institute.
Keep listening: Arthur also recommends a handful of mind-blowing books you may never have heard of. (Well, one of them happens to be the subject of this Substack, so that one’s a freebie.)
For audio, go where the podcasts are, or follow this link.
That was a great interview. I'd be interested to see more examples of the gnostic memes he mentioned. There are plenty of old /x/ memes on Google images, but I'm not sure those were the ones he was referring to, or if he meant rather that neon-gnosticism is a subtext of the meme right in general.
If you look at the relationship of Marpa and Milarepa, the demand is ferocious. Or figures in the Zen tradition like Ikkyu who chose the coldest place to train and rowed out to meditate nights on a freezing lake to stay awake. It actually may be that a police state is just what we need to provide the right kind of heat and pressure for spiritual breakthroughs. Looks like we are going to get it to find out. One problem is the bad guys may be putting in more “tapas” (austerities to increase siddhis) with their disgusting adrenochrome harvesting etc. than the good guys are putting into their practices, so they appear to be “winning” right now.