Dante's Divine Comedy (Mark Vernon)

Dante’s Divine Comedy famously opens with the poet wakening in a dark wood. His life has seemingly taken a wrong turn. But why must he embark first on a journey through hell, before ascending Mount Purgatory, only then entering paradise? What has the way into darkness to do with the way into light? 

He learns to say ‘yes’ to all of reality, and that the light includes the darkness, even as tragedy is integrated into the comedy of divine life.

This event is part of a series looking at dualities with the Pari Centre. For more information - https://paricenter.com/event/dualities/2022-02-05/.

For more on Mark's book, Dante's Divine Comedy: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey - https://www.markvernon.com/dantes-divine-comedy

This episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues continues Rupert and Mark's exploration of Dante’s Divine Comedy, taking a lead from Mark’s book, Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey. 

Dante and Virgil have found the way out of hell and a new adventure begins on Mount Purgatory. They first encounter souls who are shocked by their deaths and bemused by the afterlife. Then, the transformative ascent up the various terraces of the mountain begins. On each, souls are reckoning with the part of themselves marked by pride and envy, anger and lust, as well as other feelings and desires that must be cleansed in order to open their perception to the divine life that draws them. 

Finally, Dante and Virgil reach the earthy Eden, where Dante experiences a surprising, even shocking, encounter with the love of his life, Beatrice.

The notion of hell is delighted in by some and causes offence in others. So why did Dante write about this infernal domain on his journey through reality? What is its meaning? What might be learnt from it?

The inferno illuminates how desires go awry, the nature of our being is misunderstood, perceptions narrow, and how societies, even civilisations, become lost.

This is the first of three talks, originally hosted by the Fintry Trust. Why Purgatory and Why Paradise follow.

The talk draws on Mark's book, Dante's Divine Comedy: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey - https://www.markvernon.com/books/dantes-divine-comedy-book

The liberal world and western churches increasingly seem to suffer from the lack of a sophisticated understanding of erotic love - an approach not merely governed by morals but arising from insight into who we are and our deepest nature.

Erotic love can be felt on nearly every page of the Divine Comedy, in perverted and desperate forms, as well as in free and joyous souls.

He understood that eros has a goal as it draws us towards God, though that goal is readily thwarted as we traverse its energies. Rules minimally help because love must be combined with light and learnt about from within experience and reflection.

Love fills the cosmos. It will not let us go. So how can a path be navigated from the passions that can trap us to the delight that is connection with all?

For more on Mark's book, Dante's Divine Comedy: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey, see here - https://www.markvernon.com/books/dantes-divine-comedy-book

The mode of life called purgatorial is a medieval superstition, according to some, and the very purpose of mortal life, according to others. So what did Dante make of Purgatory and what has it to teach us now?

In the Purgatorio, the essence of the spiritual path is shown in encounters and discussions. Purging itself, for example, is not about being rid of what we don't like, an activity that is another form of vanity. Rather it is about becoming clearer of that which hinders our sight of God and so limits the expansion of our being. Purgatorial living cleanses the doors of perception.

This is the second of three talks, originally hosted by the Fintry Trust.

The talk draws on Mark's book, Dante's Divine Comedy: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey - https://www.markvernon.com/books/dantes-divine-comedy-book

Paradise. Destiny for a chosen few? Dismissed today by many. Or might it be the end for us all?

Dante tells us to follow closely in the richest, subtlest and most expansive part of the journey conveyed in the Divine Comedy. He shows us how to develop paradisal perception, the way to know this experience of reality now, and to become ready for it in the hereafter.

Paradise is when the deepest truths become clear, the most intimate participation with life is known as divine.

This is the third of three talks, originally hosted by the Fintry Trust.

The talk draws on Mark's book, Dante's Divine Comedy: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey - https://www.markvernon.com/books/dantes-divine-comedy-book

This is a contribution to recent dialogues on idealism between Bernardo Kastrup, John Vervaeke, Matt Segall, Philip Goff and others, including myself.

I draw particularly on:

- Dante's account and analysis of his journey to the heart of consciousness in all its fullness - source and manifestation - in the Divine Comedy

- how minds as we know them not only dissociate but also project and introject, and what meaning this might have for Bernardo's thesis

- trinitarian understandings of oneness, and the dynamics of creation.

I start with some concerns that I have with Bernardo's account of analytic idealism, much as I value all that he does. They focus on his sense of mind at large, or God, and his use of the phenomenon of dissociation.

I'm struck that Dante's discovery of his true nature in God goes hand in hand with the increase of his individuality and personhood. Also, he not only experiences dissociation, or a sense of separateness, but projection and introjection - two further mechanisms that minds deploy, which I think are key.

This takes me to trinitarian understandings of oneness, in its eternal and infinite form. In divine life, kenosis is ecstasis; giving is receiving; knowing and unknowing are a mutual unfolding; longing is satisfaction; expansion is the expression of what already is. If the meaning of our life is the discovery of our nature in theosis, that might add to the model.

Beatrice conveys this movement to Dante, overcoming his separateness by discerning his projections, and offering them back to him as introjections of the truth of himself, others and God.

Finally, I raise questions of suffering, the nature of life, and why we experience separateness at all, before the discussion concludes with the hadith beloved by Sufis, another idealist expression of genius:  

“I was a Treasure unknown then I desired to be known so I created a creation to which I made Myself known; then they knew Me.” 

Various human experiences are deepened and resolved as Dante travels through hell, purgatory and paradise. The Divine Comedy can be read as an examination of this transfiguring of perception.

From the alienation of hell, through the transforming time of purgatory, to the ever-expanding awareness of paradise: Dante show us how time & love, seeking & suffering, telepathy & transhumanising can change to reveal divine life without limit.

For more on Mark's book on the Divine Comedy - https://www.markvernon.com/books/dantes-divine-comedy-book

This episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues continues Rupert and Mark's exploration of Dante’s Divine Comedy, taking a lead from Mark’s book, Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey. 

Dante is now guided by Beatrice through the heavenly spheres and into the Empyrean. It is a journey into the abundance of infinity and eternity, which immediately struck Rupert as akin to a DMT trip. 

Mark and Rupert explore how that is an apt analogy with Dante enabling us to incorporate the visionary into everyday life and understand how deeper perceptions of being can inform different times and cultures. 

The conversation moves over the relationship between the one and the many, the universal message of Christianity, the ways in which love and intellect work in tandem, and how Dante can aid various quests for knowledge today.

Bernard Carr is a leading cosmologist who worked with Stephen Hawking and now investigates time, multidimensionality and consciousness, amongst other things. 

Bernardo Kastrup cites him as at the vanguard of the great task to integrate matter and mind.

So I was delighted to get the chance to ask Bernard about images from Dante. 

We talked about relational cosmologies as advocated by Carlo Rovelli, who has talked about being  inspired by Dante, and whether alternative images from the Divine Comedy might illuminate his own approaches, as well as our understanding.

A joy to speak again with Brian, this time on Dante's Divine Comedy.

We talked about what happened to Dante, what happened to Mark that opened up the Divine Comedy, how the poem works as an initiation, what it reveals about Christianity, what happens to Virgil, the nature of paradise, amongst other things.

For more on Brian see http://brianjames.ca

For more on Mark see https://www.markvernon.com

Dante coined the word "transhumanise" in the Divine Comedy, 700 years ago. "Trasumanar" is the transformation he will undergo in order to share in the life of paradise.

Today, the word has associations that are strikingly related to Dante's; partly quite similar, though changed in subtle but crucial ways. Understanding those differences illuminates the dangers of transhumanism today and how it might limit, not expand, our humanity.

I consider this constriction across half a dozen areas on the transhumanism agenda: telepathy, happiness, intelligence, stellar living, the superman, and death.

Transhumanising is a religious promise. It becomes a modern threat when that transcendent perspective is eclipsed and lost.

The Divine Comedy is all about guides - finding guides, following guides, conversing with guides. Virgil and Beatrice are the best known, but there are other modes of guidance that Dante seeks and explores.

Angels, dreams and myths accompanying Dante, even in the darkest moments. He learns to be present to them and trust that whilst in one encounter they can bring fear or shame, in another they inspire wrestling and struggle, and then in another again bring divine light and insight.

For more on Mark's book, Dante's Divine Comedy: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey see - https://www.markvernon.com/dantes-divine-comedy

For more on Mark see - https://www.markvernon.com

Dante would seem to be a key candidate for infernalism, the doctrine of endless punishment in hell for sinners who failed to turn to Christ.

He’s said to be medieval and isn't that what they believed then? And doesn’t his Divine Comedy clearly, indisputably say as much?

But Dante’s whole point is that nothing is as it seems to the unawakened eye.

I think what Dante is doing is taking evil completely seriously and showing why eternal damnation not only isn't, but can’t be the final result. And yet, this can only be seen when the darkness itself is fearlessly, fully seen.

What is the meaning of Easter? How might Holy Week be more than an occasion for its retelling? Can death and resurrection live today, as they once did, 2000 years ago?

Dante’s journey, in the Divine Comedy, begins on Maundy Thursday, 1300. It continues through the inferno, on Good Friday and Holy Saturday, before he enters purgatory on Easter Sunday morning, at dawn. 

The climb up Mount Purgatory, then, takes until Easter Wednesday when, finally, Dante reaches paradise. Though that is really another beginning, as he becomes more capable of knowing the light of Christ in him, and so knowing that light in all that surrounds him.

In other words, the Divine Comedy invites us to consider the story of Easter not as an historical event but as a pattern and path which makes sense of our lives, if we dare to live them deeply.

Augustine once remarked that the joy of being Christian is being a Christ. Easter, then, is not primarily a remembrance of things that happened, but a recollection of who we are called to be. That is the meaning of Easter, needed if Christianity is to live in people’s lives now.

Reason fails before the greatest spiritual truths. That much is not news. But part of the genius of Dante is his conjuring of images that reach beyond the impasses of paradox and seeming contradiction.

I consider 8 such moments when Dante sees the unsayable and offers images of the ineffable.
- how darkness leads to light
- how appearances can be the opposite of the truth
- how the immediate eclipses wider perspectives
- how all faces are the divine face
- how “I” and “we” coincide
- how divine and creature are one
- how consciousness expands
- how relationship is unity, many is one, movement is the unchangable.

For more on my book Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey see http://www.markvernon.com/dantes-divine-comedy

Dante's imagery, particularly in the Paradiso, offers powerful prompts to developing the sense of what it is to be intelligent. He wrote for modern times, he said. And now, as AI becomes more pervasive, he can help us understand how machine learning and human intuitions are very different capacities.

This was part of a talk given at the Scientific and Medical Network - https://scientificandmedical.net/webinars/

For more on Mark's work, particularly on Dante, see www.markvernon.com

Dante lived through a period of almost total social collapse. Civil war and city-state terror, practiced by the church as much as secular powers, drove him into exile for the last 20 years of his life. For a while, he lost everything. But then, through the trauma, he regained a ground and rediscovered the fullness of life.

The Divine Comedy is the product of that transformation. The journeys through hell, purgatory and paradise hold nothing back, be that terrible tortures of extraordinary delights. He wrote for himself, for his readers including us, but also as a warning to his time and future times, such as our ours.

So what has Dante got to say to now? What does his analysis illuminate? Much, I think, as I explore in this thought.

For more on Dante and my own book see - https://www.markvernon.com/books/dantes-divine-comedy-book

My earlier thoughts on Plato, Aristotle and Jesus are at my podcast, Talks and Thoughts.

Rowan Williams and Jesse Armstrong talked at The Idler festival, partly around the idea, caught in the expression, “boring as hell”. But is that right, they asked, when a drama like Succession so clearly appeals to us?

The question is fundamental, for an age inclined to regard hell as appealing or intriguing, is one on the way to being lost. 

Drawing on Dante and William Blake, two great diagnostic writers about different states of mind, this talk explores how the passions of the soul, to use Williams’s expression, can hinder and help us on our way. 

I then think about how various facets of life change when known from within hellish, purgatorial and paradisal perspectives - movement, words, love, time, memory, possessing, faces, wonder.

Hell is boring, not from its own perspective, which knows nothing else, but from that of purgatory and paradise. A time that thinks hell is the most interesting place to be is in hell; one that can still say “boring as hell” has at least a flicker of hope.

See Dante's Divine Comedy: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey - https://www.markvernon.com/books/dantes-divine-comedy-book

“Circles of hell" has become commonplace in language. But what was Dante trying to show us when he wrote the inferno? What has been lost in translation, with this first canticle in Dante’s trilogy now part of a secular culture?

Jason Baxter talks about his new translation of the Inferno with Mark Vernon. They discuss what Dante could convey in language and why the text never ceases to offer fresh insights. How can we understand his encounters with figures from Virgil to Ulysses? What is it truly to be trapped in a hellish state? Why is the road down the necessary precursor to the road into God’s presence?

Jason’s new translation is published by Angelico Press - https://angelicopress.com/products/the-divine-comedy-inferno
Mark’s introduction and guide is too - https://www.markvernon.com/books/dantes-divine-comedy-book

00:00 What Dante could do with language
9:05 Dante and the infernal landscape of today
12:50 Distraction and seeing the truth of ourselves
19:18 Intelligence as reason and love
26:33 Why must Dante descend into hell?
36:08 What was Virgil’s ultimate destiny?
41:30 The fulness of divinity we are called to
48:07 Jason’s translation of the famous opening line
56:20 Jason’s future plans

Dante frightened by his plight, terrorised by strange beasts, discovers a guide. 

Dante wavers and Virgil reveals why he is here. 

Dante and Virgil pass through the gates of hell and enter the vestibule to encounter anxious souls.

Virgil leads Dante into the first circle of hell where they meet souls who didn't live their lives, as well as pagan poets and philosophers who did.

Virgil and Dante enter the second circle of hell and meet those whose love in life has trapped them.

The third circle of hell brings filth and muck, Cerberus and Ciacco.

Virgil and Dante are in the fourth and fifth circles of hell shocked by souls trapped by money and by anger.

Still in the fifth circle, they face the river Styx and the terror of Dis.

Terrified by the demons that block their path, Dante and Virgil wait.

Now inside Dis, they meet those who have followed their own way: heretics.

A foul stench prompts illumination of lower hell's subtler entrapments and evils.

Descending a steep slope, they see the minotaur, centaurs and a river of boiling blood.

They enter an ugly wood to encounter souls who killed themselves.

On the edge of an expanse of burning sand and falling fire, they speak with a soul cursing Jupiter and see a vision.

Following the red stream, across burning sands, a gaggle of souls approach them.

Ominously tumbling waters. An odd encounter with three trapped souls. And then stranger things happen.

Approaching the cliffs into the deeper reaches of hell, they confront the monster Geryon and souls disfigured by usury.

They are in the eighth circle, the place called Malebolge, as the descent deepens further.

Dante perceives the bleak bankruptcy of exchanging spiritual gifts for temporal goods.

Dante is perturbed when they encounter the diviners, an art he practices too.

They meet the demons of Malebranche. Virgil reckons he can outplay them. Dante does not.

Virgil and Dante are escorted by 10 Malebranche demons. Something has gone very wrong.

Affection balances fear. Thought counters foolhardiness. They escape to fresh despair in the sixth bolgia.

Virgil helps Dante climb from the sixth bolgia. They come to the seventh, a melee of serpents chasing souls.

They see even more terrible metamorphoses in the seventh bolgia and realise the serpents are human souls too.

The eight bolgia appears almost majestic until Dante understands how its souls are trapped in flames.

Still overlooking the eighth bolgia of Maleboge, a new writhing flame approaches. The soul says he trusted a pope.

The ninth bolgia entombs figures Dante sees as schismatic in life, now rent asunder themselves.

Dante and Virgil argue, divided, and then walk to the tenth bolgia. It's infected with the pestilence of denuded nature and humanity.

Minds and bodies themselves begin to disintegrate in souls driven rabid and feverish by playing god in life.

Virgil and Dante wander into a grey zone, hear an ominous horn, and encounter the terrible giants.

Seeking heavenly help to find the true words, Dante steps into Cocytus, revealed as a reality of imprisoning, deadening ice.

Dante and Virgil encounter Count Ugolino deeper in Cocytus, as well as the souls of the living dead.

The last canto of the Inferno sees Dante and Virgil face to face with Lucifer, before a surprising turnaround.

Virgil and Dante are in a world of freshness and hope, sunlight and stars, but also strangeness and novelty.

As the sun rises, an angel speeds towards them, bringing a friend and a tense sense of tremendous things.

Virgil is troubled. They encounter slowly moving souls, and search for an entry onto the mountain.

Virgil and Dante find the narrow path that leads up, and begin the climb. A break brings another group of souls.

At first distracted by the indolent, they encounter a new group of agitated souls, though keep their focus.

Hassled by agitated souls, Dante asks Virgil if prayers can effect divine laws. A discussion brings a new state of mind.

Virgil and Sordello embrace again, before Sordello explains they must find a safe place for the night.

Still in the lovely valley of the rulers, angels and a serpent dramatically appear, though oddly no-one's concerned.

Dante falls asleep and dreams. It's erotic, transformative, and leads to the gate and the gatekeeper of Purgatory.

In Purgatory proper, a zig-zagging path leads to a terrace of beautiful images and burdened souls.

With the souls carrying heavy burdens, Dante speaks with them. He learns about the gordian knot of pride.

Alleviated of the constrained vision that pride brings, an angel sweeps down and shows the way up.

The second terrace seems barren, though the generous sun is guide and they meet envious souls with eyes wired shut.

Still with the reforming envious souls, Dante reflects on the degeneracy of a civilisation that's become avaricious.

Encountering another angel of light, Virgil explains a way of limitless growth in life. Dante is rapt.

They are the terrace where blind rage becomes righteous anger. A discussion brings revisionary truths about free will and love.

The midpoint of the Divine Comedy is filled with thoughts on love, the exact midpoint with the word itself.

They talk more on love, and it's good and bad forms, before a crowd of rushing souls run up behind them.

Dante has a second dream. It disturbs him as they make their way to the fourth terrace where souls mourn.

Dante speaks with another mourning soul and is led to lament the history that shaped his own life.

A transitional canto, Virgil and Dante meet the soul of Statius. The two pilgrims have become three.

Virgil and Statius talk on new insights into the nature of divine reality and the limits Christian understanding.

Dante meets a friend from life, and it becomes clearer how their communing did and didn't truly sustain him.

Dante and Forese continue to talk on the nature of desire and perception. They encounter another tree and angel.

Dante is bursting with questions. Virgil and Statius to describe the creation of our physical and subtle bodies.

Dante is before the flames that would render him capable of divine love. He pauses. He desires and fears.

Dante is before the flames. He hesitates, terrified. But he gathers his will, with the help of Virgil and the angels.

They are an enchanting, if mysterious, forest. A solitary lady approaches at Dante's request. They converse.

He follows the enchanting lady along the stream before, with a flash of light, the most extraordinary vision begins.

Cries, angels and light shock and bring a chastising Beatrice, Virgil's disappearance, and Dante's bitter tears.

Beatrice continues to berate Dante, until he collapses. Then, he's carried through the Lethe and changes.

Dante is saved from momentary madness, before Beatrice leads him to a display of spiritual corruption.

Beatrice prophecies about the future for Dante and Christianity, and Dante is ready, renewed for the stars.

Dante explains how his intellect and desire, drawn by Beatrice, blessed by gods, enable him to rise into reality.

Dante warns that the journey into paradise is risky. Then, they arrive in the sphere of the Moon.

Dante is immersed in the state of mind that confuses reflection and reality as a soul appears, Piccarda.

Dante is dazzled, overwhelmed by the seeming paradoxes of paradise. Beatrice shows how they are transcended.

Beatrice shows Dante and us something of the freedom to align our lives with divine life, prompting a dramatic change.

Dante presents a big history and, in this mercurial sphere, we are invited to peer beneath events.

Dante is dissatisfied with the traditional account of the crucifixion. Beatrice leads him to a beautiful new vision.

Dante, in the reality of Venus, encounters a kingly soul and kindred spirit to explore love, diversity and unity. 

Dante meets souls who in life were erotic lovers, to discover more about what carries us heavenward.

They arrive in the heaven of the sun, the light most manifest to mortals, heralding divine light within.

Thomas Aquinas offers the life of Francis of Assisi to illuminate seeing the light of the Sun in this life.

Dante contemplates a double circle of light in the sun, as Dominic adds wisdom to the ascent of love.

Imagining the motion of the stars is practice for perceiving the divine splendours Dante enjoys in the sun.