A Dialogue with All Presenters

Abstract

The first four Phase 1 speakers gather, with Sunday's Dr Rhett Gayle joining for the first time, in a closing dialogue Claudius opens with a single question: in listening to your fellow presenters, what touched you? The answers braid together. Kobus names the thread running through everything — hope. David picks it up but qualifies it: hope, in his decade of reading environmental books, is too often the final-chapter consolation that asks nothing of the reader; authentic hope is conditional, requiring action and a new consciousness. Jude broadens the thread to love as foundational to the universe, and offers an alternative to paradox: parallax — different ways of seeing the whole, rather than opposites to be reconciled.

Jeff then introduces the dissonance that gives the session its weight: drawing on the Smuts–Margaret Clark letters, he reports that Smuts never found the God of holism he was looking for. After meeting Hitler and Mussolini, Smuts confronted evil directly and came to believe that the tendency towards unity does not always lead to good. Marcus responds with a fractal-mathematics image of the living range between 1.3 and 1.5 — the breathing space between collapse into selfhood (Apollo) and dissolution into chaos (Dionysus) — and reframes evil as life-force that has been repressed and misunderstood. David draws on Kingsley Dennis's The Threshold and Steiner's cosmic role of evil ("for us to ascend"); Jude, speaking as a psycho-spiritual healer, frames evil as the collective psyche mirroring back what has not yet been healed. Jeff returns to Smuts' own position: he didn't recognise evil as a separate category; it is a phase in holism, just as materialism is a phase in holism on the way to the spiritual.

The dialogue then opens to the floor. Ora asks whether the gathering can step out of the sociopathological narrative of good/bad, ascendance/descendance, into simple belonging. David, Marcus and Jude respond with Thomas Berry's communion of subjects, Cecil Collins' Fool, P.W. Martin's archetype of withdrawal and return (in Jung, Eliot and Toynbee), Jean Houston's Dancing-Queen-on-stage moment in New York, and Jude's coinage the weirdo's journey — weird in Old English meaning the way of wisdom, the journey from me to we. Toynbee's creative minority is named as a frame for the participants themselves. Ross Olson brings the Lakota concept Mitákuye Oyás'iŋ — "all my relations" — as another word for holism that includes ancestors and descendants. Tarryn van Wyk speaks for those discovering they are not alone in this thinking. Berry Behr names her sense of being in a trans-disciplinary, trans-civilisational dialogue with the panel. Rhett previews Sunday's talk on pre-imperial Christian mysticism, theosis, and the incarnation as the moment God shows up at the party. Marcus closes by gifting back to David a book David had once recommended to him — P.W. Martin's Experiment in Depth — and quoting Eliot: to arrive again where we began and know the place for the first time.

Michael closes by inviting all to Phase 2, opening 10 June 2026 with Dr Glen Martin on holism in ecosystem governance for planet Earth.

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Transcript

Opening

Claudius van Wyk: If you have returned, please turn your camera on so we know you're back. Michael?

Michael Stock: Yes — I'll just echo that and invite people to turn on the cameras so we can be fully together. Thank you all. I hope the break was long enough for you to do what you wanted to. Some people might still be eating, or drinking.

Claudius van Wyk: I want to welcome Dr Rhett Gayle, who will be presenting tomorrow — Pentecost Sunday — on the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, within the framework of the incarnation, and what that might mean as drawn from the early Christian mystics. But first, we're going to have a conversation with the presenters who have presented until now.

The question I want to ask the presenters — Professor Du Pisani, Jeff Blumberg, Marcus, Jude Currivan and now David — is: in listening to your fellow presenters, what was it that touched you? It can be any one in particular, or several. Just reflect and share with us. Then we'll open up to the general group. Whoever's ready to go, when you're ready.

Kobus Du Pisani: Can I start?

Claudius van Wyk: Professor Du Pisani, you were the first to present.

Kobus — hope as the thread

Kobus Du Pisani: Very briefly: the one big word that runs through all these presentations is the word hope. I started off by saying that Smuts was the messenger of hope in the time of anxiety after the Great War. All the other presenters linked up with that idea. Jeff's idea of how Smuts tried to create a new image of God. Marcus, Jude, and David — each one of them focused on it. What they achieved is to break open the concept of holism as, in essence, a message of hope. That's all I want to say for now.

David — conditional hope and Smuts as a representative man

David Lorimer: I valued learning more about Smuts. As it happens, I'm also an alumnus of Christ's College, Cambridge, and I'm going there for a dinner next month — so I'll look forward to seeing his portrait, which I'm pretty sure is in the hall. One of the things I meant to say when I was talking about Representative Men: had he been alive in the time of Emerson, then Smuts would have been a representative man, in the sense that Goethe and the others were. So I think it's very valuable to focus on his contribution, particularly that holism has made enormous advances in the last hundred years, and we have a much better understanding of how that manifests, particularly in the biological sciences.

When I was writing my book The Protein Crunch, about the future of food and the environment, over ten years ago, one of the things I noticed when I was reading a lot of environmental books was that the first eleven of twelve chapters would be a doom-and-gloom scenario about how awful things are — and then the last chapter would be about hope. Really, the hope has to be conditional. Unless X, Y, Z happens — and we're still in this situation — then we're still going around the same track. That's the dilemma: the system we have, and the people we collectively are at this moment, are not up to the job. That's why we need a new consciousness, a higher frequency, a different sense of how we relate to each other and the world. I think this was prefigured in Smuts' vision for the League of Nations and the UN. And, with Jean Houston's last remark, we have to move to more collaborative, cooperative systems, rather than empire trying to outdo another empire and ruining the planet in the process.

Jude — love, and parallax instead of paradox

Dr Jude Currivan: I'm happy to carry on the theme of hope, and thank you, Kobus, for raising it. I mentioned that I wrote a book called HOPE: Healing Our People and Earth, back in 2010, and I began each chapter with a quote on hope. I just looked up the manuscript from all those years ago. The final chapter, Chapter 24 — twelve times two, a good masculine–feminine Christed energy — is called Our Cosmic Destiny: 2012 and Beyond, as it was then. And the quote I had was: the moment that God created hope was the first moment of creation. I actually wrote that myself. That's what came through for the final words in that book. The first moment of creation was when God created us.

So I very much agree with my fellow presenters, and I'm sure all of us here, that authentic hope — that which we can stand on and reach forward with — is the invitation of the universe. I just wanted to mention one other word, which a number of us also brought in: love. To take love seriously, and to appreciate that it is foundational to the very nature of our universe, and of course, to who we fundamentally are. I was so grateful to see both of those co-weave through our various perspectives.

We talk a lot at the moment about paradoxes. I'd invite a consideration of a different word: parallax. Paradox tries to find and navigate between what appear to be opposites, or irreconcilable. But parallaxes are different ways of seeing the whole — seeing through different directions, but seeing the wholeness of things. Perhaps that's helpful for us as we navigate these times of unity and diversity: not to diminish the diversity, but to celebrate it. And celebrate it from a grounding of love and of hope.

Jeff — Smuts and evil

Jeff Blumberg: Can I go, Claudius?

Claudius van Wyk: Yes, please.

Jeff Blumberg: What I'm going to say might dampen spirits slightly — the spirit of hope. Because we've got to keep this grounded with Smuts. When Smuts asked, where was the God of holism at Versailles? — to be honest, he never found that God of holism until he died. When he met Hitler and Mussolini in the Second World War, he questioned: how does this God create personalities like this? He expresses this in his letters to Margaret.

He had an evolutionary hope. He had hope in evolution. Hope in evolution by natural selection — that he always believed in. But what he came to understand later in life was that the evolution of holism didn't always lead to good. He really came face to face with evil when he confronted Hitler head on. So when Professor Kobus says alles sal regkom — am I right, doctor? — that is an expression Smuts used his whole life. Everything will come right. But it was an evolutionary expression — that evolution will somehow work out.

And to David's point: he believed in hope, but you have to do something about it. To Marcus's point: what is your footprint looking like? If you don't do anything about it, what chances do we have of changing the course of evolution? He was very realistic towards the end of his life. He was pessimistic too. Could we change the course of evolution? He always had faith in his theory of holism — that there was a tendency towards unity in this universe. But he did not always believe that the tendency towards unity meant good. I had to throw that in.

My reflections on the other panellists. David's talk; Jude; Kobus; Marcus. Marcus, for me — as a young man — you have an unbelievable interpretation, the way you are seeing what is happening, the destruction of our civilisation that we're living in right now. The way you are able to articulate, witnessing this in real time, and your ability to express it in your songs — if I can call them that. In honour of Blake, you are singing the song of the earth. It's beautiful to see and to listen to.

Kobus, I mentioned Mitákuye Oyás'iŋ — I think that should be something we celebrate as part of nature's point of view, as an expression of what Smuts lived with.

Jude and David — to use Gregory Bateson's words, the pattern that connects. Listening to David and Jude, the many authors you mentioned, David, you just hear the pattern connecting all the time. It all comes together very nicely for me. Thank you everybody.

Could I just mention one more thing? Actually, two. David mentioned God as the spirit of the whole when he was interpreting Smuts' idea of God — that was the first phase, but Smuts ended where God was the whole. God is no longer the spirit of the whole. He ends with God as the whole, because God as the spirit of the whole is still a dualism that was nagging him. He solved that later in life.

And then on the issue of love — I've just taken out one of his letters that I will be publishing. 27th of January 1944. Smuts is writing to Margaret, of course, and he says: "I do believe that holism is, in the end, what is generally called love, and the key to all existence in this universe. Love the unifier, the motive power of this world, the whole-making agency or principle. It is therefore, at bottom, the same as creative holism. And God is love, as we know, on the highest authority. In other words, God is holism. God is love." I thought I'd just share that letter that he wrote to Margaret. Thank you, Claudius.

Marcus — focus on one person opens a kaleidoscope

Claudius van Wyk: Thank you. Marcus, when you're ready.

Marcus Link: I'm suffering a little from what I tried to describe yesterday — there's an awful lot going on in me, but I find it very difficult to find the words. Which is one of the reasons why I write: it's a very long, slow process to find enough words for a single page, although there is so much behind it that wants to be said.

But a few things have crystallised. One is — be kind with me, because I'm worried the words will come out in the wrong way, but I'm just going to go for it. My relationship with Smuts goes through you, Claudius. I've always felt both constrained, tethered and liberated in this duality. In your life, everything goes back to Smuts, and that's — for me — look at all these other people who have said so many things that are all very much in line and so similar. And if holism is true, mustn't it be true that so many other people will say the same things? Yet in this conference, I found so many levels that revealed themselves through the deepest attention to just one person — which therefore helped me understand so many other people with so much greater attention, because there was this focus on one person in the festival.

This duality, this paradox that I'm now seeing as a parallax — thank you, Jude — is a fascinating phenomenon I'm deeply grateful for. Your insistence, Claudius, on but Smuts said… — and now I'm learning to see so many more layers in it, and yet the world is opening up through the focus on one man's writing and the depth that so many perspectives bring to it. So that is one way, for me, of looking at the talks as a kaleidoscope of the world with a focus.

The other thing — you see behind me a map of the Mandelbrot fractal universe. There was not enough time to talk about this, but one of the reasons I've found it difficult to finish my book is that I'm just so loving the many convergences across different knowledge systems. Because we live in the age we do, I'm trying to get over the woo-woo element and into the hard matter — say, of numbers. One of the trails I've been tracing is that fractal mathematics is a language that allows us to take literary, poetic, scientific, astrological — all sorts of phenomena — from the ECG readings of healthy hearts, through landscapes that inspire us as beautiful, and we arrive in a fractal range of 1.3 to 1.5 in all of these.

You just have to trust me on that — I'm not going to go into the depth. But the fractal mathematics reveals that there is a confluence in a range, not in a point. That range is 1.3 to 1.5. The two extremes outside it are 1 and 2. Either everything coalesces into a gravity and then has to implode, because it has no breathing space — it falls apart in too much selfhood, if you want. That's the Apollo I was pointing to. Or, on the other hand, you've got the Dionysian dissolution into the chaos of two. Everything resolves. You need this struggle in the range of 1.3 to 1.5, which is the reminder for me why I have that map behind me, so that when I see, I'm always seeing the map.

It's hard for me to explain why I bring that up, but it's to do with the opening up of many different perspectives through the one person, Jan Smuts — that leads to a range of perspectives, rather than a narrowing. Which is why I said I feel so tethered and so liberated. I hope that's made sense.

Jude — reframing struggle as a dance

Dr Jude Currivan: Just a word — thank you, Marcus, for the parallax. Maybe part of that is to reframe struggle as a dance. The reason I'm mentioning that is that Jean's theme tune was Dancing Queen by ABBA. I fondly remember being on the stage of the United Palace Theatre in New York with Jean — and Duane Elgin and Lynne McTaggart — dancing to Dancing Queen.

David and Marcus — evil, alchemising, descent

David Lorimer: I just wanted to respond to Jeff on two fronts. One is that God as the whole means you have to let go with Jung, to some extent, and say — well, that also contains what we call evil. I've been reading a book called The Threshold by Kingsley Dennis, which I've reviewed for the current issue of Paradigm Explorer. He draws on Steiner to talk about the cosmic role of evil. The cosmic role of evil, in a sentence, is for us to ascend. For us not to resist — because then you're in duality — but to alchemise. That's what happens with suffering. To alchemise this, and to say we can't go on like this. We have to find a higher way forward.

I think many people on the planet are feeling exactly that, in the face of the various challenges we are setting ourselves — our own evolutionary challenges. I'm reminded of Chris Bache; many of you will be familiar with this. He has these incredible cosmic visions — LSD and the Cosmic Mind, 72 LSD sessions. He goes into the heart and the pit of the universe. The extremes of bliss and good, and the extremes of evil and separation and suffering. It's as if we have to go through this in order to come out the other side. And it's the realisation — and I'm sure this must have been something that went through Smuts' mind in relation to Hitler — that that is a false form of unity. He unified in order to divide. With nationalism, fascism, persecution and everything. So I think Jung's philosophy there was gnostic, in a sense: that we have to realise there is this principle in force, which I think is operating through people at the moment. We do, literally, have a battle for the soul. Greg Braden argues this.

The second point — I was very glad to hear that letter, Jeff, because I was kind of missing the love element in his philosophy in what I was able to read. This is from this book, Peter Deunov: "The basic principle of existence is love, which is a manifestation and essence of the spirit. And it is the inner unity of existence. As objective manifestations of the spirit in the human world, life and mind appear. The mind cannot manifest itself without life, without the heart. And the human spirit cannot manifest itself without love." There's plenty more where that comes from. This speaks to the necessity of developing this philosophy and ethic and science of unitive love — as a driver, and a form of understanding, and using our thought power to generate such a culture.

Claudius van Wyk: Marcus.

Marcus Link: I really appreciate you quoting Jung, David, in the way you have. I've personally been in eleven years of Jungian analysis, and I exited that when my Jungian analyst disagreed with the diagnosis of autism. She felt that autism was about the self falling apart, when for me it was suddenly a recognition that I have a different way of knowing the world by my neurodiversity. You could put me into another club of the autists — but for me, it was a moment of individuating through my brokenness, if you want. Because I suddenly realised that things I was wrestling with as trauma weren't actually trauma; they were a way of being different. Once I saw it as such, they no longer were broken. I could suddenly endorse that. I have different sleep patterns. I have dreams — I have a dream journal of over 400 dreams, which I love to interpret. I struggle with institutional authority at work, but I can do really good work. I have to do that in a way that allows, that is a bit darker, and all sorts of things. So I had to embrace this as: how do I find the wholeness of my being, not in being broken in one way of life, but in the way I can work with my environment and find people who see the contribution I can make, rather than the difficulty I cause?

So I don't disagree with my eleven years in Jungian psychoanalysis. I took a lot with me, and one of them was that I really had to descend into my own darkness to find the light — which was, ironically, the one thing my Jungian analyst could not allow me to do, because it felt as though it was against my individuation, as opposed to in its favour.

I can see Smuts struggling with Hitler. My father struggled with his — my father was German, and he struggled, as a post-war child, with the question he posed his elders: how could you do this? How could you support this? And why do you now have nothing to say? It was a lifelong struggle that was never resolved.

The issue, though, that I've found, is that there's always this idea that the collective darkness can't somehow be individually addressed. When we focus on the ascent only — in fractal-mathematics terms, we go to one, we miss the living range, and what happens is an explosion of all that life that wants to come out.

I'm wondering — I don't want to say that evil isn't evil. But there's an energy behind it that has been repressed, misunderstood, and in its misunderstanding becomes evil. The force behind it does not originate evil in its intent. It originates evil in its not being allowed. I was a very unhappy, depressed person when autism was an unknown thing that caused me lots of problems. When I realised the gifts in it, I found myself not being depressed. I think this is expandable into a collective phenomenon. We struggle with things that become easily explainable as the phenomena of small boats — that somehow a small group of people crossing the channel makes the entire nation of the United Kingdom unhappy is a simplification of a process that lacks self-reflection about what's actually going on in our own country. Not dealt with in the right ways, it could easily lead to the phenomena of Hitler repeating. But underneath it is a life that wants to be lived, and to be expressed in joy and love; in its frustration, it becomes the evil. That would be my attempt at helping that.

Lastly: in fractal mathematics, in fractal geometry, you have plenty of branches that essentially die. Which is why I disagree with the idea of linear progress. Certainly not linear progress of consciousness. Consciousness is a phenomenal dance — to pick up your word there, Dancing Queen — in so many different guises and shapes. Sometimes they just need to recurse back on themselves in order to give life to what actually wanted to come through. Thank you.

Jeff — Smuts on evil and materialism as phases of holism

Claudius van Wyk: Carry on, Jeff.

Jeff Blumberg: I was just going to pick up again on what Marcus said about evil, and what David said about evil, in relation to Smuts. From his writings, he's trying to say that he doesn't recognise evil. As soon as you recognise evil, it's an abstraction for him. He doesn't want to abstract evil from good, because that's breaking up the whole. So evil is part of the process towards that perfect unity. You're standing on evil as you're progressing towards unity.

The same way as materialism. He doesn't reject materialism. That's an abstraction — to argue we're too much of a materialistic society. Those are abstractions for Smuts. Materialism is a phase in holism. It's a phase towards the spiritual, because for him, mind and life evolve out of matter. All of this is part of the whole. It's just different phases, different expressions of the whole, on a journey towards perfect unity. That's how I'm reading Smuts at the moment from his writings on evil.

Rhett — turning the lead of human suffering into the gold of wisdom

Claudius van Wyk: Okay — come in, Rhett.

Rhett Gayle: Hello! You guys don't know me yet, because I didn't present yet. Yesterday I got an email from Joshua saying, could you say something about yourself so I can introduce you tomorrow? I wrote something, and I showed it to my wife, and my wife said, I don't think so. But I thought I would share the first sentence of the thing that I didn't submit to be used, because of some things that came up today that made me think maybe it would be okay. I said: what I'm interested in is turning the lead of human suffering into the gold of wisdom.

Since alchemy came up several times today — my wife mostly goes to mainstream philosophy conferences, where alchemy is kind of a bad word, so she suggested I avoid it. But I thought that would be a good way of introducing me.

Things I noted: you talked about Jung and synchronicity, and I wanted to mention that Amazon decided this morning to recommend Federico Faggin's Irreducible to me. I'd never heard of it before in any way whatsoever, and there it was. So now I'm excited about that.

I was super jazzed by all the presentations I was able to go to — which was not all of them. One of the things I really got out of it was: oh, there are other people who are very deep intellectually, who care about and are interested in and know about things that I care about, and know about and am interested in. Which is rarer than I would like it to be. So I feel very gifted in meeting you all, and getting to know your minds. Hopefully I'll be able to contribute to the discussion tomorrow.

Claudius van Wyk: Please give an invitation, very briefly — what will it be about?

Rhett Gayle: Well, about eighteen months ago I died of a heart attack. And then I came back, and I discovered that I was the Messiah, so I thought I would reveal that tomorrow. No, that is not what I'm — although I did die eighteen months ago.

I am going to be talking about pre-imperial Christian mysticism — using a word that came up in some earlier conversation. Probably mostly focusing on Maximus, although there's a big dollop of Assisi in the way I think about things. I'll be connecting Christian mysticism — the process of humans becoming God, theosis — with this work. I'll be talking about how Christianity can be — isn't always, but could be — a resource for those of us who are wanting to create a new world. There are plenty of symbolic, metaphorical, spiritual resources in the Christian story which could be of great service to us, especially given that it is woven into the culture we grew up in, whether or not we think it's true. I'm not arguing for its truth.

Maybe this would help. The core insight, fact, story — not sure what the right word is — is: that not only are we seeking God, but God is seeking us so strongly that God showed up. We had a party where we wanted God to be there, and God showed up. That's the incarnation. Then we don't have a supernatural God. Even though God is transcendent, but not supernatural — because God was a person, after all, in this story. It's only a story, I'm not arguing for Christianity. I'm just saying, there's power in it. It's built into some aspect of our unconscious, and we might as well use it if we can find a way to make it useful. I'm hoping to offer such. Okay. That's as good as it's getting.

Claudius van Wyk: Thank you so much. So tomorrow is Pentecost Sunday.

Rhett Gayle: That's right.

Claudius van Wyk: And the spirit of the whole — the Holy Spirit. You'll be so welcome tomorrow.

Opening to the floor

Claudius van Wyk: We're going to open up to the rest of the group now — to interrogate, query, question, observe on what you've seen and heard. Stick up your hand. Your question doesn't need to be profound.

David Lorimer: Ora has put her hand up.

Ora — relinquishing the sociopathological narrative

Ora: I wanted to reflect on the things that are showing up, and on my sadly limited participation in the various groups because of my other invitations. I wanted to ask a question. Have we come to a felt — to a felting — space, where we can relinquish and release the sociopathological narrative that we seem to be constantly duelling with in this moment together? Is it possible to begin to ask of ourselves a certain existential discipline — as not being the superior race that's got all the answers and ideas — but that we're actually part of that cloth, of that fabric, and therefore humbly we listen differently, and without the sociopathological narrative that keeps us in good and bad, right and wrong, ascendance and descendance, darkness, lightness, etc., but rather just the belonging?

I touch back on my very deep experience when I was listening to Marcus Link yesterday — that sense of the timbre of his voice, the pacing of the conversation, the sense that there was a weaving going on between us in that share, that didn't have anything to do with the pathologies that seemed to be the focus of trying to raise consciousness. Rather, we're already conscientious. I'd just like to throw that out into the fold. Thank you.

David — between stories, communion of subjects

Claudius van Wyk: Thank you, Ora. Who's ready to respond? David.

David Lorimer: Yes. We're in a kind of no-man's land, between stories. What you've identified is the need for a new story. This was something Thomas Berry was particularly exercised with, among many other thinkers — the idea that the world is not a collection of objects, but a communion of subjects. That brings us back to relationship. What our relationships are with ourselves, with each other, with nature, and with the divine. The new story is a new relationship.

I don't know how many of you read Resurgence, but the current issue is on stories. One of the first articles is about the need to go beyond the story of the hero's journey — the individualistic one we all know very well from Joseph Campbell — towards a story more of partnership and belonging and relating. So this is being articulated.

One of the other points you made, which is very important — and which I was also making — is this need to go beyond the categorisation of good and evil. Particularly in geopolitics, it's just used wholesale. Who is the demon of the moment? Saddam Hussein. No, it's Putin. Or someone else. The Ayatollahs, the regime in Iran. We're the good guys. We don't have a shadow. This is very toxic and pathological, because it means you can't recognise yourself, and you don't recognise the other either. What it means in political terms is you can't have diplomacy: because we're the good guys, we have to impose our view on the bad guys, because the bad guys can't be trusted, because they're the bad guys. And yet we behave as the bad guys as well, and we can't be trusted either. We need to grow up. It makes good news, it makes good propaganda, it brings people together — but at the same time, it simply perpetuates a pattern which is ultimately self-defeating and unconscious.

Marcus — the Fool, and finding the cave-dwellers' community

Claudius van Wyk: Marcus?

Marcus Link: My response goes back to the early 2000s, when there was a book — sadly, I forget the author — called Cultural Creatives. What struck me about it was that it made a thing about the story told by what it called the postmodern media complex, which essentially gives the impression of a uniform global story — gives everyone the feeling that that is the news. Cultural creatives exist in this state of loneliness outside of that uniform global story. They are somehow trying to keep up, trying to be part of it, but also notice a different experience. What the book was trying to say is that there is, in fact, a majority of people who feel they live in isolation — who actually make up the majority of the planet — who are not part of this postmodern news story cycle. It has a different intent, but it's very hard to break through its flattening existence.

It was only then, through my therapy, that I found the English painter Cecil Collins' work on the Fool. Where he describes this not as cultural creatives — which, in a way, is a term that almost makes you part of what the Cultural Creatives book was arguing against. It's not an archetype strong enough to break through to the other side. But Cecil Collins' Fool, with a capital F, did that. He described that there are so many of us who find ourselves in loneliness at any time in history, in our culture, in our society — and we suddenly realise we are of the Fool. We have, in that sense, a community that is not just all the other fools in all these other places, not yet connected: we are connected in deep time, in chronic time, as the Greeks called it. The timelessness, which is actually the time-fullness. Where we are always in touch with that original proto-mind that is exploring in myriad different ways how to be conscious, how to be, how to explore, how to dance.

That has given me an experience of companionship that is actually at the deepest recess of my cave, in my darkness — but I feel so beautifully connected. This festival has actually lifted something off my shoulders, because I felt burdened by that. I felt alone, in a way, and I felt — well, hang on, where is the dinner party where I can talk about what I'm interested in? So I wrote a book, and then here I got to talk about it, and I suddenly feel — there's a whole community back there in that cave. I'm absolutely delighted. For the last few days, I feel an increasing sense of joy, rather than despair about these times. Thank you for that question, Ora, and to Kobus and Jeff and Jude and David, and whatever it was in myself that allowed me to participate.

Jude — the weirdo's journey, evil as collective mirror

Claudius van Wyk: Jude.

Dr Jude Currivan: Thank you, Ora, for that question. Speaking to the storytelling: we are a narrative-sharing, story-sharing social species. The underlying narrative, often, we don't really see. We see the stories on the surface, but we don't necessarily question the deeper narrative. I feel what we're sharing during this time together is that evolution of the underlying narrative — from separation to holism and oneness and unity-and-diversity. These stories are coming forward because the narrative itself is changing.

I wasn't sure who mentioned Joseph Campbell — David, thank you. The Hero with a Thousand Faces, the whole idea of the hero's journey. All those stories are about me — my journey, my dark night of the soul, my going out into the wilderness and finding a call and coming home somehow. It seems to me we're at a time now where, instead of the me, we can expand the space of that journey to we.

I came up with a term a while ago: the weirdo's journey. It's more than just a joke, because weird in Old English means the way of wisdom. So it was a play on moving from me to we, and a play on a way of wisdom rather than knowledge. The weirdo's journey. Going back to what you were saying, Marcus, not to feel alone. Because in the weirdo's journey, we find each other and we come together. In doing so, we can, it seems to me, serve the good of the whole.

I just wanted to say a little bit on evil. As a healer, working with psycho-spiritual healing for many decades with individuals and beyond, I've seen the same patterns playing out in a fractal way — for individuals, families, friendship groups, nations, our whole collective. Where we meet these expressions of trauma or dysfunctionality — or an individuated expression such as Hitler — it seems to me, it's part of our collective psyche, mirroring back to us what we have not yet healed. In that sense, it offers us a way-shower. Our response to it is a way-shower to how we move forward together, through that healing journey, through that weirdo's journey, through that journey of homecoming and remembering.

David — Toynbee's creative minority

David Lorimer: Thank you, Jude. I just wanted to pick up on the Cultural Creatives — I put the details of the book in the chat. I remember reading it 25 years ago, whatever it was. But some of you will also have read The Turning Point by Fritjof Capra, which is 1980. I actually read that with my pupils at Winchester College, and got them to read it.

It goes back to Arnold Toynbee — who I was talking about, A Study of History. He says that when you have a civilisation in decline, you've got what he calls a dominant minority — and you can see this in the authoritarian tendencies surfacing in our culture at the moment. You also have the creative minority. He puts it at about 5% of the culture, and the creative minority is formulating the next wave. That's, in a sense, what we've been talking about over the last few days. There's a huge amount of work going on in the margins — the new story, the new science, the power of love, regeneration, healing. You name it, it's all happening — a lot of it through the Scientific and Medical Network, through WholeWorld-View, through IONS, and so on. It's all beginning to cohere, but it's not on the radar.

The vast majority of people out there don't know this is going on. They just see the mainstream news, and they despair — which is what they're meant to do. Meant to despair, meant to become anxious, fearful, think they've got no power, can't do anything, the world is going to hell, and I can't do anything about it. But that actually isn't true. As Jean Houston maintained, as I was quoting today.

We have to take that initiative ourselves. We were asking ourselves — is it the Spirit of Humanity Forum? — how do we make this more visible? Johanna, who's the director of the Spirit of Humanity Forum, gave an incredible speech at the opening of this event. I went up to her afterwards and said, Iceland has got to send you to the UN, to give that speech in the General Assembly in September. She or the President have to give it. She might well be able to do that. Because this is what people want to hear. They don't want to hear all this chaos and disintegration. They want to hear what we can actually do — how we can think, how we can be differently together, how we can cooperate, collaborate, and bring in all these principles I was talking about — mutuality, mutual aid, reciprocity, helping each other, cooperation, collaboration, synthesis, synergy. We need to think how all these impulses can become more visible to the general public. Then they will say — yes, there's something going on here that I really want to be a part of.

From the floor — Ross, Tarryn, Berry

Claudius van Wyk: Thank you. I'm going to invite the people who are present — stick up your hand and just articulate what this has meant for you until now. We'll take that into our meeting with Rhett tomorrow, when we look at Pentecost and the Holy Spirit. Ross?

Ross Olson: Thank you, Claudius and Michonne, and all the core people for making this happen, all the presenters. I'm going to offer an Indigenous point of view that relates to what's been said, only it's using different words. For me, it's the same spiritual principle. There's a tribe in North America — the Sioux — where it came from, but I've expanded on it. It's called Mitákuye Oyás'iŋ, and that means all my relations. When I first heard this term, it meant all living life on the planet at this time. I used that for years until I heard the interpretation I'm going to share: it not only includes every living being and form of life on Earth, it includes every ancestor that's ever been, and it includes all the future generations. For me, that's another form of holism — my interpretation of what holism is at this point.

I really felt the need to share that, because I see parallels. I've done my own investigation about different religions, quantum physics, and almost everything we've talked about — including, I want to thank you so much for educating me on Smuts, because I didn't know a whole bunch of what I just found out in the last four days. I appreciate that. It expanded my vision about what you are creating — that co-creative power.

I haven't given up hope. But there comes with a stipulation: hope is one thing, but hope without action, and me engaging, participating to help co-create a world — it just stays inside of me. I feel like, yes, it's absolutely possible. Yes, it is happening. All of you are examples of how it's happening and can happen. The thing is, masses of humanity have not yet come to this awareness. And that's okay. In my view — another Native way of saying — that's the way it's supposed to be, but that doesn't mean it has to stay that way. I just keep pointing the finger back at myself: it's my responsibility to make that change within myself before I can change anything else. Thank you very much.

Claudius van Wyk: Thank you. Tarryn.

Tarryn van Wyk: Sorry about that. I would have to agree with what Ross just had to say — pretty much what I have to say. It's just so inspiring to see, not just from a woo-woo side of we've all won, love and light and all of that — but that there's so much deep intellectual research and passion and everything going behind it, which this festival has brought to light. That there are so many people who are on the same wavelength.

I'd just like to say thank you, everybody, for sharing and doing the work yourselves, and bringing all these very important messages to the forefront. I just hope that we can ripple further out. We are the way forward, and it would be good to do that. Mark, anything you want to add? No, not at this point, thanks. So, thank you everybody, and I look forward to continuing this, and to the liminal space when we get to that as well.

Claudius van Wyk: Thank you, Tarryn. Berry.

Berry Behr: Hello. I just want to express that I am blown away at the timing of this conference for me personally. And just at the expansion of consciousness that I feel so deeply immersed in, in this company, and in the incredible presentations. I feel incredibly privileged to have listened to — and, in fact, when I say listened to, I feel like I am in dialogue with all of you right now.

I have also, at the same time, been immersed in a transdisciplinary and trans-civilisational dialogue — a book about that particular topic. It feels as if all of this is speaking into some missing pieces I had. I am so appreciative of the fact that we are bringing the voice of Africa — Smuts as a son of Africa — into an international conversation that is beyond space and time, through all of the cosmos. I don't have the word to describe what I'm feeling, but it is so expansive and so inclusive. For me, that feels like the absolute building block — an architecture of bridging, a new architecture of life. I feel as if we are in some kind of collective emergence. It's been so amazing to be part of this, and I look forward to more. I can't tear myself away. Thank you.

Marcus — book recommendation back to David

Claudius van Wyk: Thank you, Berry. Anyone more? Marcus.

Marcus Link: I just have a book recommendation, which actually is one from David to me, when a few years ago I gave my first talk as part of the Holos project. My talk was called Alchemy of Wholeness, and afterwards David recommended the book by P.W. Martin, Experiment in Depth — which takes Toynbee, Jung and Eliot as three examples of what he called the archetype of withdrawal and return. He was a Jungian psychologist; he does that in a beautiful way, by reading these three biographies as expressions of the role of those who go into this process of withdrawal and return.

I see now that you gave that to me, David, not just as the right book at the time in a small way, but also in a really big way. I see cycles and ripples. I felt it is a good read to recommend, because of the work it did in me and for me — and it came from you, someone I deeply admire. I'm very humbled to have spoken in a forum with so many people of such calibre, and there's little me. Thank you.

Rhett Gayle: Could you repeat the name of the book, please?

David Lorimer: Experiment in Depth. P.W. Martin. I just re-read it. It's in my library in Scotland, so I'll have to have a look at it when I go next.

Jeff Blumberg: At least the Eliot you talk about, Marcus — it's the poetry, yeah.

Marcus Link: Yes, Eliot. To arrive again where we began, and know the place for the first time. That Eliot.

Closing

Claudius van Wyk: Thank you so much. Over to Michael.

Michael Stock: Thank you, Claudius. A few words from me. We're at the end of Day 4 in what has been a wonderful week. Thank you all for great company, and to our presenters today. Kobus — hope has been a theme. Yes, it has. And Jeff — seriously about reality: where was holism in the time of Hitler, or the Treaty of Versailles? Marcus — I was delighted to hear the way you summed up your experience: both tethered and liberated and lifted. Maybe that speaks for many of us. And thanks to Jude, for noting that hope on its own maybe isn't enough — it has to be authentic, and there is the parallax view. And thanks to David, particularly, for the invitation to all of us who've been on this Phase 1, to see Jan Smuts as a representative man. That was wonderfully true.

Tomorrow. The good news is it starts half an hour later, so that's almost time for breakfast. With Dr Rhett Gayle and Dr Claudius van Wyk. I don't know who this Dr Claudius van Wyk is — we haven't seen much of him — but I hear he's really good.

And then Phase 2: please register for Phase 2, which starts with an event on the 10th of June, with Dr Glen Martin, on a theme which I think is going to appeal to many of us — Holism: an Ecosystem of Governance for Planet Earth. See you tomorrow! Great journeys!

Claudius van Wyk: Thank you.

David Lorimer: Thanks so much.

Dr Jude Currivan: Thanks, everyone.

Tarryn van Wyk: Thanks so much. Thanks, everybody!

Rhett Gayle: Good night. Thank you. See you tomorrow.

Joshua Malkin: See you tomorrow.