Conversations with David J. Temple

David J. Temple
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Listen to intimate conversations with David J. Temple and friends exploring the unfolding vision of CosmoErotic Humanism. worldphilosophyreligion.substack.com

  1. Sep 7

    Value and Anti-Value: The Silence That Thickens Into Divinity or Evil

    About the podcast: These are unscripted, early David J. Temple conversations where Dr. Marc Gafni and Dr. Zak Stein are unfolding the inner workings of CosmoErotic Humanism in real time. Formal statements and propositions will be published in forthcoming volumes by the World Philosophy and Religion Press. About this episode:  In this dialogue, Dr. Marc Gafni and Dr. Zak Stein enter a series of conversations on the Tree of Life, exploring value and anti-value. This first dialogue focuses on Keter, the crown, and on how silence can either deepen into divinity or thicken into evil. They examine how this happens and scenarios where silence arises from a loss of voice, where individuals become numb to suffering, manifesting anti-value. If you deploy any material from David J. Temple in this episode, please cite directly using the following reference: Temple, David J., Conversations with David J. Temple, World Philosophy and Religion Press, September 2026, Episode: “Value and Anti-Value: The Silence That Thickens Into Divinity or Evil” Get the book: First Principles and First Values is the tip of the spear in the fight for a humane future. Establishing frameworks for a new school of thought called CosmoErotic Humanism, the book is built around forty-two propositions that provide new source code for the future of planetary culture. Like Europe in the early Renaissance, humanity is in a time between worlds, at a time between stories. First Principles and First Values contains blueprints for the bridge needed to cross from this world to the next. About the Authorial Voice of David J. Temple: David J. Temple is a pseudonym created for enabling ongoing collaborative authorship between Dr. Marc Gafni, Dr. Zak Stein and Ken Wilber at the Center for World Philosophy and Religion, a leading international think tank whose mission is to address existential risk by articulating a shared universal Story of Value for global intimacy and global coordination. The Center focuses its work on a world philosophy, Cosmo-Erotic Humanism, as the ground for a global vision of value, economics, politics, and spiritual coherence. The Center for World Philosophy and Religion is a reader-supported publication. Consider becoming a paid subscriber and get instant access to a 7-day self-study course with Dr. Marc Gafni valued in $297, for only $9/month. Chapters: 0:00 — Introduction 0:34 — Context Setting: Exploring Value and Anti-Value by Understanding Anti-Sefirot in the Tree of Life 2:07 — Where the Tree of Life Is Located: The 10 Sefirot Are 10 Divine Stories that Are Numbers 5:58 — Keter Is the Ultimate Silence of Presence 10:02 — The Value Within Keter: It Isn’t just About Silence; It’s About not Speaking 13:28 — About First Principles and First Values 14:15 — The Value Within Keter: It Isn’t just About Silence; It’s About not Speaking (continued) 15:16 — The Anti-Value of Silence Isn’t The Silence of Fear, It’s the Silence of Having Lost Voice 17:51 — Three Ways to Lose Your Voice: The Story You Live In, Early Trauma and the Digital Disruption of Speech 22:55 — There’s An Anti-Value Evil in the Bureaucracy: I’m Participatory in the System Because I Don’t See Any Way Out 25:45 — Evil Is Coming from the Parts of You that You Have Silenced Within 28:46 — A Certain Kind of Silence Thickens Into Divinity; Another, Into Evil 29:32 — About Who We Must Become End — Mentioned Sources End — Mentioned People Episode Transcript: Context Setting: Exploring Value and Anti-Value by Understanding Anti-Sefirot in the Tree of Life Zak: David isn’t here again, and he’s in a kind of dark mood. He left us a note about evil. It’s a topic he’s brought up before, but this note was interesting. It was cryptic, in the lineage, something about the anti-Sefirot. Marc: Yes. It’s funny, I looked at it, you sent me a copy of the note by text. It’s always good to see his handwriting. And it’s a big topic. So let’s do this: apparently, if I understand, he wants us to spend some real time talking about this topic that we might call value and anti-value. That’ll be our frame. His suggestion is to talk about it through the prism of the Solomon Lineage. We’ll use that prism, and particularly through a particular prism within the Solomon Lineage: the Tree of Life. We’re just going to get started today, but in the next two or three conversations, let’s really focus on it. I’ve been thinking about this, obviously, for a long time. I remember when David first sent us a note about this a couple of years ago, we began this conversation then. We began it, I think, on the porch here, in this great state that we’re in. So let’s try to frame it in a broader sense for a second. Let’s see if we can locate the Tree of Life, and then enter into its details. Where the Tree of Life Is Located: The 10 Sefirot Are 10 Divine Stories that Are Numbers Marc: When we say the Tree of Life, we’re talking about a particular structure within the Solomon Lineage. For anyone who hasn’t caught David before: the Solomon Lineage’s major document, in the thirteenth century, is the Zohar, the Book of Radiance. The Zohar is the major influence on Luria, in a particular line of understanding: Lurianic Kabbalah. So the Zohar is thirteenth century; Lurianic Kabbalah is approximately Renaissance time. What’s so interesting—and we have talked about this before, Z—is the influence of the mystery schools of the Renaissance: • Particulary the Florentine Platonic Academy, which has in it Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola. • It was funded by Cosimo de’ Medici. • We have talked about Plethon, as a big influence on Cosimo. And we hae also talked between us, that: • The teachers of Pico are Yohanan Alemanno and Elia Delmedigo. Many people have talked about this—when I say many people I mean, within a very small group, there’s an awareness that this is the case. We mentioned before that Moshe Idel, in his book Kabbalah in Italy, traces some of these filaments. So the point is: this Tree of Life—the Solomon Lineage—appears in many places. Let’s locate ourselves in the Zohar, the Book of Radiance. The Book of Radiance shapes Luria; the Tree of Life is a primary structure that Luria developed extensively. And then this Tree of Life enters the Renaissance in many ways. I just want to locate it. Already in the Zohar, in volume two, there’s a passage, maybe in one of our conversations we’ll actually read it, but it’s pretty cryptic. It’s heavy Aramaic, which doesn’t make it cryptic; it just makes it Aramaic. The allusions aren’t actually clear, but what he’s doing is looking at this Tree of Life, which is: • 10 luminations. • 10 sefirot. • 10 divine qualities. • 10 sefirah — mispar, number; the word mispar, number, like cipher in English. • 10 sipurim — 10 stories. So: 10 numbers that are stories. Or 10 divine qualities. Usually it’s translated in English as 10 attributes, which doesn’t get you far. It’s 10 divine stories that are numbers. It just occurs to me now, this way, the gap between the stem cells and the humanities just disappears. Number and story are thought to be one—mathematics and story are thought to be one. So there are these 10 core story-numbers, essential logos structures of Reality. That’s the Tree of Life. And the relationship between the 10, and the nature of each of the 10, is critical. So what we’re going to do—I think this is what David’s wanting us to do—is, you and I, way back in the day, looked at the 10. Zak: Yeah. Totally. Marc: Now we’re going to go through each of these 10, following the Zohar, which does this explicitly, although what the Zohar means is actually completely unclear. Keter Is the Ultimate Silence of Presence Marc: We’re going to start with the top of the Tree of Life, which is Keter, the crown. Our friend and colleague Art Green actually wrote the primary scholarly work on Keter, Princeton University Press. An irrelevant piece of information, I agree. Keter is the crown. If you read lineage sources carefully, Keter is often identified with silence. Shtika, silence. For example: when Akiva, who’s the transition between the Temple and the oral law, the Temple and the study hall—is being killed by the Romans, in Tractate Menachot 29a, there’s a description of Moses saying to God: he’s the master of Torah, zu Torah, zu sekharah, and this is his reward. And God says: shtok—be silent—kach ala b’machshaba, so it ascends in My thought. When the Solomon Lineage mystics read it, they say: shtok, shtika, silence—the quality of Keter. Keter, that top quality, which is silence, that is the path to Me. So they read it, instead of the classical Talmudic reading, which is: shut the f**k up, don’t ask questions, this is divine providence. No. Actually, divinity is saying that when you confront the void, this apparent evil, this master who’s being tortured, there’s actually a way through the void, which is shtika, which is silence. There’s actually a way through the void, which is shtika, which is silence. And the person who reads it this way is Nachman. In Torah 64, he says: oh, no. There’s a way through the void: silence. So silence is this silence of presence, where you have this experience—let’s cross-fertilize traditions—of shunyata. Of this living, breathing meaningfulness, even if you can’t formulate it as theology, even if you can’t formulate it as laws of ethics. I remember you describing to me, a couple of years ago—I’ll pass it to you—we’ll talk first on the positive side, a particularly beautiful meditative experience with our friend at the monastery in Vermont, with our friend Soryu. You were meditating there, and you had this very deep experience of this very deep shunyata. This very deep silence, where you’re in the meaning field. In some sense, you’re in it.

    Value and Anti-Value: The Silence That Thickens Into Divinity or Evil

  2. Aug 28

    Value is Real: From Mathematical to Mystical Value – Part 2 (with Ken Wilber)

    About the podcast: These are unscripted, early David J. Temple conversations where Dr. Marc Gafni, Ken Wilber and Dr. Zak Stein are unfolding the inner workings of CosmoErotic Humanism in real time. Formal statements and propositions will be published in forthcoming volumes by the World Philosophy and Religion Press. About this episode:  In this dialogue, Dr. Marc Gafni, Ken Wilber, and Dr. Zak Stein explore the profound assertion that "Value is Real," tracing its presence through five dimensions: mathematical, musical, molecular, moral, and mystical. They also analyze the modern tendency to interpret spiritual experiences through materialist and computational prisms, arguing that the experience of awakening can never be value-neutral. They discuss how the deep realization that "I am", is always "I am Value", always revealing inherent value and meaning. If you deploy any material from David J. Temple in this episode, please cite directly using the following reference: Temple, David J., Conversations with David J. Temple, World Philosophy and Religion Press, August 2026, Episode: “Value is Real: From Mathematical to Mystical Value – Part 2” Get the book: First Principles and First Values is the tip of the spear in the fight for a humane future. Establishing frameworks for a new school of thought called CosmoErotic Humanism, the book is built around forty-two propositions that provide new source code for the future of planetary culture. Like Europe in the early Renaissance, humanity is in a time between worlds, at a time between stories. First Principles and First Values contains blueprints for the bridge needed to cross from this world to the next. About the Authorial Voice of David J. Temple: David J. Temple is a pseudonym created for enabling ongoing collaborative authorship between Dr. Marc Gafni, Dr. Zak Stein and Ken Wilber at the Center for World Philosophy and Religion, a leading international think tank whose mission is to address existential risk by articulating a shared universal Story of Value for global intimacy and global coordination. The Center focuses its work on a world philosophy, Cosmo-Erotic Humanism, as the ground for a global vision of value, economics, politics, and spiritual coherence. The Center for World Philosophy and Religion is a reader-supported publication. Consider becoming a paid subscriber and get instant access to a 7-day self-study course with Dr. Marc Gafni valued in $297, for only $9/month. Chapters: 0:00 — Introduction 0:42 — Context Setting: The Five Ms as an Opening Frame 1:40 — It’s a Mathematical Cosmos, and Mathematics Is This Unimaginably Complex Set of Meanings 6:02 — Musical Value: Music Has an Ought in Terms of the Beautiful 8:06 — Molecular Value Is Mathematics Coded to Generate a Reality that Creates Larger Wholes 9:05 — Wholeness Is Moral Value; It Is the Right Relationship Between Parts 9:46 — Mystical Value Is the Realization that the Human Being Is a Part of the Largest Whole, But Is a Discrete Expression of It 10:25 — Value Has Weight and Gravitas, and that Weight Weigh on Us as a Measure of the Value 11:54 — Gravity Is Allurement and Autonomy, All the Way Down 12:33 — The Phenomenology of Discovery in Music and Math Are Actually Similar 16:44 — About First Principles and First Values 17:31 — My Identity Is Value: My Unique Perspective Is a Unique Configuration of Value, Intimacy and Desire 19:46 — There’s A New Nihilism: When Awakening Gets Split from Value 23:51 — An Insight from Semiotics: Awakening Is Coded with the Good 25:05 — Awakening Means Awakening to Meaning per se, to Value per se, to Gravitas as gravitas 27:18 — The Revelation of Satori Is that Meaning Is Everywhere, Not an Absence of Meaning 31:12 — Waking Up Is Always Interpreted Through Growing Up, and a Materialist Will Interpret Awakening Through a Materialist Lens 33:58 — We Need to Take Away, In a Sacred Way, This Hijacking of the Authority of Meditation for Nihilism, Materialism and Computationalism 39:04 — About Who We Must Become End — Mentioned Sources End — Mentioned People Episode Transcript: Context Setting: The Five Ms as an Opening Frame Marc: We were thinking, in our little convocation here, that we would riff a little bit on: Value is Real, and the relationship of value and meaning. And I thought, to kick us off—you guys have assigned to me that job as the kicker offer, so I want to be good about that. Everyone has to have a job in the football team. I want to go back to something that we raised, that came up spontaneously right before one of our calls. We talked about it maybe three or four David J. Temple conversations ago. That was what we could call the five Ms: * Mathematical value * Musical value * Molecular value * Moral value * Mystical value Zak and Ken, I’m going to riff for a few minutes, to unpack it a little, and it’ll be at least a good place to start. It’s a Mathematical Cosmos, and Mathematics Is Nothing but Meaning Marc: When we talk about mathematical value, one of the great things about mathematical value is that it lives at the very inception of the manifest universe. At the very inception of the manifest universe, we clearly have mathematical value; the laws of physics are at play. What we mean by mathematical value is that it’s not a tabula rasa Cosmos. It’s not a blank cosmos. It’s a Cosmos with vectors. Ken: It’s mathematical. Marc: It’s a mathematical Cosmos. And mathematics is nothing but meaning. Ken: Right. Marc: Mathematics is not a blank slate. It’s this very unimaginably complex set of meanings. Ken: And it’s astonishing that it describes the universe with mathematical precision. It’s just mind-boggling. Marc: Right. What was that Wigner’s phrase, the unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics? It’s astonishing. And you could almost have, in the beginning of a book, one of those pictures of some theoretical physicist writing all the mathematical equations, and then right on top: “no meaning in the universe.” [Laughs] It’s actually a great New Yorker cartoon. Oh, that’s no meaning. Got it. It’s a very dramatic New Yorker-cartoon, inspired by what you said before we flipped the switch on, in terms of responding to some of the nihilism of Harari’s children’s book writings with a kind of childish response. We could almost have, in this new book, some New Yorker-cartoon kind of things. Zak: [Laughs] Marc: You have the physicists writing all the mathematical equations and then, you know, “conception of cosmos”, no meaning. Right? It’s not a bad cartoon. So that’s mathematical value. And again, there are mathematicians who should be in this conversation—it’s clearly, obviously true when I read, for example, Morphogenesis, I specifically did not do the mathematics. I don’t know mathematics. I can play in mathematics, but unlike a page of Talmud, I don’t have a feel for it, I can’t tell if it’s wrong. But having said that, if you look at even something like Cantor, who committed suicide, and Hilbert, who were trying to complete mathematical sets, and essentially what Gödel is saying is: well, actually there’s an infinitely unfolding field. Mathematical sets unfold into infinity, and you can’t create complete mathematical sets around infinity, or you’ll kill yourself. And Tarski takes Gödel and formalizes it across knowledge fields. So in some sense, our notion that the eternal Tao is the evolving Tao, or that eternal value is evolving value, actually is very, very tightly interlinked with Gödel’s incompleteness theorem, in a very beautiful way. And also with constructor theory. When I was at Oxford, I was at Wolfson College. There were two good things about Wolfson College. One is that Isaiah Berlin was there before me, and I sat in his row — that’s where I did my writing, which was fun. But the second thing is there’s this guy, David Deutsch, who’s the head of the physics department there. I know you guys are both into Peirce, which I’m not—I just say things, and Zak tells me it was in Peirce already, so I’m annoyed. But if I would try to say clearly what Deutsch is saying, he comes up with something that’s almost a Peircean kind of move, where he says: “There are no a priori constants or laws in the classical sense. The laws are always evolving as nodes in an interconnected network of underlying physical properties. And because of that, it’s not just that there are new higher-order things coming out of the base without changing the base layer, because there is top-down causation, it is always changing as the higher-order ones are emerging and affecting it.” So what he’s basically saying is that he’s trying to develop this ontology of physics that evolves with time—and he’s actually happening in physics in a big way. So in all of this, we have at play both value and evolving value. That’s my point: that we not only have value at play, we have evolving value at play, which is quite interesting. That’s one. Musical Value: Music Has an Ought in Terms of the Beautiful Marc: So then, briefly, we move to musical value—and these are the ones that take a little time; the rest are pretty fast. When we talk about musical value: first off, we’d have to write, Zak, a few paragraphs about the relationship between music and mathematics. Zak: Well, they’re all deeply — all the Ms are deeply connected. Marc: Yeah, all the Ms are completely interconnected. We have the Pythagorean realization of the musical-mathematical nexus. Music is a particular expression based on interval and rhythm, because music also only appears with the manifest universe. Music is an expression of the manifest. And now we have these musical values, which mean a very particular quality in Cosmos, which has a rightness to it. A quality that has a rightness, and you hear it, as we said last time—da da da da—and you’re moved

    Value is Real: From Mathematical to Mystical Value – Part 2 (with Ken Wilber)

  3. Aug 19

    The First Principle and First Value of Attention; The Mathematical Value, to Musical, to Molecular, to Moral, to Mystical Value; Introducing ErosValue (with Ken Wilber)

    About the podcast: These are unscripted, early David J. Temple conversations where Dr. Marc Gafni, Ken Wilber and Dr. Zak Stein are unfolding the inner workings of CosmoErotic Humanism in real time. Formal statements and propositions will be published in forthcoming volumes by the World Philosophy and Religion Press. About this episode: What if the simple act of paying attention was one of the most powerful forces in the universe? We often think of attention as something we do, but what if it’s something that does things—something that actually shapes the world around us? In this dialogue, Dr. Marc Gafni, Ken Wilber, and Dr. Zak Stein propose a radical new idea: that attention is a First Principle of reality, a fundamental value that gives rise to everything else. They explore how this value expresses itself across five different dimensions of existence: the mathematical, the musical, the molecular, the moral, and the mystical. You’ll also hear them discuss the deep connection between value and “gravitas”—the weight that creates integrity and coherence in reality. By the end of this conversation, you’ll be introduced to a completely new understanding of how the universe is held together and the crucial role your own attention plays in the unfolding of it all. This is the fourth in a series of dialogues between Marc Gafni, Ken Wilber, and Zak Stein, reconvening after the release of First Principles and First Values. If you deploy any material from David J. Temple in this episode, please cite directly using the following reference: Temple, David J., Conversations with David J. Temple, World Philosophy and Religion Press, August 2026, Episode: “The First Principle and First Value of Attention; The Mathematical Value, to Musical, to Molecular, to Moral, to Mystical Value; Introducing ErosValue” Get the book: First Principles and First Values is the tip of the spear in the fight for a humane future. Establishing frameworks for a new school of thought called CosmoErotic Humanism, the book is built around forty-two propositions that provide new source code for the future of planetary culture. Like Europe in the early Renaissance, humanity is in a time between worlds, at a time between stories. First Principles and First Values contains blueprints for the bridge needed to cross from this world to the next. About the Authorial Voice of David J. Temple: David J. Temple is a pseudonym created for enabling ongoing collaborative authorship between Dr. Marc Gafni, Dr. Zak Stein and Ken Wilber at the Center for World Philosophy and Religion, a leading international think tank whose mission is to address existential risk by articulating a shared universal Story of Value for global intimacy and global coordination. The Center focuses its work on a world philosophy, Cosmo-Erotic Humanism, as the ground for a global vision of value, economics, politics, and spiritual coherence. The Center for World Philosophy and Religion is a reader-supported publication. Consider becoming a paid subscriber and get instant access to a 7-day self-study course with Dr. Marc Gafni valued in $297, for only $9/month. Chapters: 0:00 — Introduction 1:01 — The Critique of the Tech-Plex Has Fallen Flat Because Its Critics Are Not Willing to Declare Attention as a Value 3:57 — Framing the Inquiry: Where’s The Continuity of Mathematical, Musical, Molecular and Moral Value? 8:38 — There are Two Dimensions to a Value: Quality and Configuration 12:19 — Three Things True of Every Value: Irreducibility, Depth, Quality 13:21 — Value Is Wholeness that Evokes Wholeness 16:06 — The Idea That a Part Ever-Evokes the Whole Is Present Across Several Domains 17:55 — The Elder and the Child Are Valued for their Different Forms of Evoking the Whole: The Elder’s Integration and the Child’s Undeterminedness 19:14 — We Could See Mathematical Value as Truth, Musical Value as Beauty, Molecular Value as Goodness 22:32 — Ken’s Question: What’s the Relationship Between Value, Gravitas and Weight? 23:39 — Part of the Nature of Mental Breakdown Is the Incapacity to Weight Things Properly 26:14 — Midah: Weight, Measurement, and Value in One Hebrew Word 28:58 — About First Principles and First Values 29:52 — There Is An Ancient Connection Between Weight, Our Ability to Measure It and the Value that Exists 31:59 — There’s Only One Gravitational Field: The Field of Gravitas Is a Moral Field 36:07 — Love Is Goldilocks: It’s Precisely The Right Weight Between Allurement and Autonomy 36:51 — You Can Be Wounded By Wrong Weighting 38:15 — Right-Weighting Is a Practice, Not a Finicky Thing 39:51 — Gravitas Is the Weight of Evolution 40:32 — Value Confers Dignity Because Value Means: You Are Weighty, You Have Gravitas 42:11 — A Number Is Always Telling a Story: A Question Left on the Table 45:12 — About Who We Must Become End — Mentioned Sources End — Mentioned People Episode Transcript: The Critique of the Tech-Plex Has Fallen Flat Because Its Critics Are Not Willing to Declare Attention as a Value Marc: Zak, Ken, I want to try and clarify a couple of things here, throw some stuff down on the table, and then open it up in our usual style. Ken, Zak and I were talking about—we wanted to share with you, but probably for next conversation—that as we deepen into value, we thought of the three of us taking one particular value which is not viewed as a value: attention. Paying attention. Attention as a value. And you know, David J. Temple, being the three of us in this moment, has been talking a lot. These two components of David J. Temple, I would like to talk to that expression of David J. Temple about this value of Attention. It is wildly important because, if I can just frame it in a sentence: you have someone like Shoshana Zuboff, who writes Surveillance Capitalism—just one example of a book—screaming against the tech-plex for essentially stealing attention. But then when she tries to locate what’s wrong with that, she makes this complete—what Walter Kaufmann, if you both remember, called “intellectual gerrymandering.” She makes this move and says, wow, attention, Sartre talks about the first person—and then she quotes Being and Nothingness. Ken: [Laughs] Marc: So she puts the apostle of cosmic meaninglessness as a source for critiquing the tech-plex for stealing attention. Meaning, she’s not willing to declare attention as a value. So, after we finished the meta-conversation on Attention, on Value, we want to turn our attention with you together to particular instantiations of Value which have enormous implications. In some sense, David J. Temple might argue that one of the reasons the critique of the tech-plex has fallen flat is because—paradoxically—Shoshana Zuboff agrees, in her ground, with the people she’s critiquing: that there’s no Field of Value. And so they’re like, huh. Zak, you and I had talked about that the other day—when I was thinking, Ken, maybe when I come out, or we come out, we could spend that day just talking about attention. It would be crazy fun. And obviously your Buddhist training—that dimension of you—obviously has a lot to say about this, right? Ken: Right. It does. Marc: Okay, so I’m going to dive in. Again, thank you for your forbearance as I take a few minutes—then I will, as the Talmud says, third century, shut the f**k up, and turn it to you guys. But I’m going to take a little time to try to identify a very particular issue which is core to this whole conversation. It takes us precisely to the next step. So, just bear with me to unfold a little bit, okay? Framing the Inquiry: Where’s The Continuity of Mathematical, Musical, Molecular and Moral Value? Marc: We could talk about Value in several registers at once: * Mathematical value. * Molecular value. * Musical value. * And—other than the fact that they all begin with M, which is helpful—we could add a fourth: moral value. Now we already have, even in our framing, a very important and interesting thread. In other words, there’s music at the very beginning of Cosmos. There’s an enormous literature of the kind of gong music that moves through Cosmos. Our friend Howard Bloom has collected a lot of that literature in his footnotes on pages 39, 40, and 41 of his The God Problem. One of his most interesting sections is where he adduces that literature; he has a good set of footnotes there. But yes, we know there’s music at the beginning of Cosmos. In other words, Cosmos does not emerge from music—part of manifestation is intervals in music, etc. So there’s music, there’s musical value. There’s clearly mathematical value at the very inception of the Big Bang... Ken: Why are you limiting it to four values? Marc: I’m being arbitrary. Completely arbitrary. Ken: Okay. Marc: This is just a way of talking about a broader field. This is not a clear boundary, and these are not absolute categories, as in, like, four quadrants in any way. These are just—if we can borrow a term from my Bar Mitzvah—a smorgasbord of values, right? Zak: It was illustrative and alliterative, right? Marc: That’s right. But the point is that these are, from the inception: you have mathematical value, you have musical value. You don’t quite yet have, but you’ll have very soon, molecular value. But you start very early with what we talked about last week—two up quarks and a down quark as a proton, two down quarks and an up quark as a neutron. Those are values that are going to lead to that reality—that leptonian, muonian, or hadronian reality is going to lead to an atomic reality, which is going to lead to a molecular reality. So let’s talk about a molecular value just to stand for that whole vector. I’m obviously jumping forward a little bit. And obviously, at some point, we’re going to incept a conscious realization of a moral value. What we’re saying is that there’s this princip

    The First Principle and First Value of Attention; The Mathematical Value, to Musical, to Molecular, to Moral, to Mystical Value; Introducing ErosValue (with Ken Wilber)

  4. Jul 20

    Value and Desire Broken Open: The Ontological Structure of Cosmos (with Ken Wilber)

    About the podcast: These are unscripted, early David J. Temple conversations where Dr. Marc Gafni, Ken Wilber and Dr. Zak Stein are unfolding the inner workings of CosmoErotic Humanism in real time. Formal statements and propositions will be published in forthcoming volumes by the World Philosophy and Religion Press. About this episode: This is the third in a series of dialogues between Marc Gafni, Ken Wilber, and Zak Stein, reconvening after the release of First Principles and First Values. Philosophers and truth-seekers for thousands of years have wrestled with a timeless question: is life innately meaningful, or are we just merely the byproduct of a random cosmos? In this dialogue, three great philosophers—Dr. Marc Gafni, Ken Wilber, and Dr. Zak Stein—take a radical stance. They argue that meaning and value are woven into the very fabric of reality itself—more fundamental to the cosmos than even space and time. Throughout this discussion they explore how desire, prehension, value, and meaning are fundamentally interwoven, and how chemistry itself can be seen as the music of desire, with each element expressing unique scripts of desire. They conclude that understanding desire and value as ontological primitives reveals a universe of intimate coherence, re-enchanting science and the internal daily experience with deeper meaning. If you deploy any material from David J. Temple in this episode, please cite directly using the following reference: Temple, David J., Conversations with David J. Temple, World Philosophy and Religion Press, July 2026, Episode: “Value and Desire Broken Open: The Ontological Structure of Cosmos” Get the book: First Principles and First Values is the tip of the spear in the fight for a humane future. Establishing frameworks for a new school of thought called CosmoErotic Humanism, the book is built around forty-two propositions that provide new source code for the future of planetary culture. Like Europe in the early Renaissance, humanity is in a time between worlds, at a time between stories. First Principles and First Values contains blueprints for the bridge needed to cross from this world to the next. About the Authorial Voice of David J. Temple: David J. Temple is a pseudonym created for enabling ongoing collaborative authorship between Dr. Marc Gafni, Dr. Zak Stein and Ken Wilber at the Center for World Philosophy and Religion, a leading international think tank whose mission is to address existential risk by articulating a shared universal Story of Value for global intimacy and global coordination. The Center focuses its work on a world philosophy, Cosmo-Erotic Humanism, as the ground for a global vision of value, economics, politics, and spiritual coherence. The Center for World Philosophy and Religion is a reader-supported publication. Consider becoming a paid subscriber and get instant access to a 7-day self-study course with Dr. Marc Gafni valued in $297, for only $9/month. Chapters: 0:00 — Introduction 1:01 — Context Setting 1:49 — Desire, Prehension, Value, and Meaning Are All Words for the Same Thing 8:47 — Chemistry Is Literally the Music of Desire 12:36 — This Characterization of Chemistry Is a Way of Revivifying Logos Mysticism 15:33 — Chemistry Is a Desire Between Parts that Generates a Unique Whole, and the Cosmos Is Intimate Coherence All the Way Up and All the Way Down 20:45 — Value Is More Primordial Than Space and Time 26:11 — Three Stages of Scripts of Desire: A Degraded Condition, a Deed, a Condition That Can Be Clarified 29:18 — The Desire We Hold Is Continuous with the Animal Realm of Desire, but It Is Also More 33:20 — About First Principles and First Values 34:08 — Value Is Both the Field and the Emergent Properties of the Field 41:01 — Value Is Both the Cause and the Product 47:53 — In Order for My Desire to Be Dignified, Desire Has to Be a Value 52:55 — About Who We Must Become End — Mentioned Sources End — Mentioned People Episode Transcript: Context Setting Marc: Thinking even a little more deeply, we’ll start maybe with holons and deepen a little bit into what we actually mean by value. Ken, we had started last time, at the very beginning our conversation, throwing out a few understandings of value, so we thought we’d stay in that conversation, but before we did that, to circle back to holons, because holons always like being circled back to. To find our way. So I’m just going to dive in. I don’t know why, by the way, you started like three years ago on the hair thing, it’s getting better and better. This new iteration, it’s nice. Ken: [Laughs] Desire, Prehension, Value, and Meaning Are All Words for the Same Thing Marc: Ok, so when we talk about value, we talk about Value as being the logical primitive of cosmos. Value is a given. It’s not that value is equally primordial to space and time. It’s prior. And it’s not that Value is equally primordial to space and time. Value is that in which space and time arise. I’ve been thinking about this the last few days. So one way to say it, which is wrong, is, oh, value is equally primordial to space and time. No, value actually operates both in the frame of being and becoming. So value is that in which all being arises. Or Value is being, and Value is also the space which is the ground of becoming. It’s prior to space and time in that sense. Ken: Since we’re circling back to holons, let me present it in a similar way. All holons have prehension, or a small amount of awareness, or consciousness, or feeling, or however you would like to think of it. And generally speaking, meaning has value because what meaning is, linguistically, let’s say, is a signifier. Like the meaning of the word tree. The signifier is T-R-E-E. And the meaning is whatever the tree it’s pointing to. That’s the value of that signifier. So all holons have a signifier, which is prehension. Because prehension touches everything that it’s aware of. That’s Whitehead’s point. And so value is an intrinsic part of the self-prehensive meaning system of the individual holon. It has prehension, prehension reaches out and touches, sees, feels, knows something. And that’s its meaning. The meaning of the word tree is the real tree, which is the referent to the signifier T-R-E-E. You can see value as a sea that things arise in. So you’re saying space and time arises out of Value, and that’s, in a certain sense, correct. I just wanted to mention those couple of facts. Marc: That’s great. In a certain sense, we’re in the elephant conversation. There is a lot of ways to describe the elephant. Let’s see if we can go into a couple of doors here, see how they work and just see what happens. Let’s go to holons for a second, because that’s where we started. So we have holons, which are whole parts. And we say that all of reality’s foundational structure is holons and that everything that exists in the world, in the universe, in any form, is either made up of holons or made by holons. Holons are fundamental building blocks of the universe. Now, of course, I’m just going to say the obvious, so I apologize for boring you both. I know you both know this well. Let me just say it so we can have it on the table in the conversation. A holon is anything that’s at the same time, both a whole and a part. * An atom is both a whole and a part of a molecule. * A molecule is both a whole and part of a macromolecule. * Macromolecules are wholes and parts of cells. * Cells are wholes and parts of organs, etc… These are all holons. Now here, what’s crucial for us is that holons are a structure of Value. And there’s a currency of desire that runs through all holons. In other words, parts come together in desire to form larger wholes. The larger whole is formed in fulfillment of the desire of the parts. Ken: And the prehension that’s in the holon is always reaching out and touching. So Value is an inherent part of every holon. Marc: Exactly. And touching is: I’m desiring deeper contact. Ken: That’s right. Marc: And then you get particular value because the whole itself, which comes from the part reaching out prehensively, is a direct result of a particular pattern or configuration of desire. In other words, the unique configuration of desire in the parts forms the intimate coherence of the whole. And we’ve been driving each other crazy in a good way. I’ve been just marinating, almost like in this insane ashram meditation on Value the last couple of weeks. Zak and I have been going back and forth. It’s getting very clear. * The whole itself is the direct result of a particular pattern or configuration of desire. * This unique configuration of desire in the parts forms the intimate coherence of the whole. Or said differently, you could say: * The intimate coherence of the whole is woven from the threads of the unique desire configuration that inheres in the parts. We can say one more thing: * The parts can be said to share a common telos that’s implied by each of their respective—and I want to make up a word here—scripts of desire. In other words, every part has a script of desire. But in order for these unique parts, these scripts of desire to come together and to create something new, a new value, there’s already a shared ground of Value between them, a shared telos. The implicit ontological structure of the science in this regard, the disclosure is that diverse parts, each with their own quality of desire, both share a desired ender telos. In other words, the ontological structure of reality is such that, again, diverse parts, each with their own quality of desire, both share a desired ender telos that’s enacted in the whole that emerges from the distinct parts. So all of a sudden we have this realization that, literally, holons and desire generating new value are exactly the same. I mean, it’s very beautiful. It’s so f*****g elegant, you could cry. A

    Value and Desire Broken Open: The Ontological Structure of Cosmos (with Ken Wilber)

  5. May 18

    Understanding the Field of Value: Holons, Eros, and ErosValue (with Ken Wilber)

    About the podcast: These are unscripted, early David J. Temple conversations where Dr. Marc Gafni, Ken Wilber and Dr. Zak Stein are unfolding the inner workings of CosmoErotic Humanism in real time. Formal statements and propositions will be published in forthcoming volumes by the World Philosophy and Religion Press. About this episode: This is the second in a series of dialogues between Marc Gafni, Ken Wilber, and Zak Stein, reconvening after the release of First Principles and First Values.  In this dialogue, Dr. Marc Gafni, Ken Wilber, and Dr. Zak Stein do a deep dive into metaphysics and the clarification of terms they're using to articulate what they call a new grammar of value. They discuss the distinctions between Eros in the Greek and Christian sense and their definition of ErosValue, the difference between value and the Field of Value, and how holons and their core drivers play into all of that. Join in as a fly on the wall as these three great philosophers discuss the nature of the Field of Value itself and explore the relationship between these terms in the context of Integral Theory as well as CosmoErotic Humanism. If you deploy any material from David J. Temple in this episode, please cite directly using the following reference: Temple, David J., Conversations with David J. Temple, World Philosophy and Religion Press, May 2026, Episode: “Understanding the Field of Value: Holons, Eros, and ErosValue” Get the book: First Principles and First Values is the tip of the spear in the fight for a humane future. Establishing frameworks for a new school of thought called CosmoErotic Humanism, the book is built around forty-two propositions that provide new source code for the future of planetary culture. Like Europe in the early Renaissance, humanity is in a time between worlds, at a time between stories. First Principles and First Values contains blueprints for the bridge needed to cross from this world to the next. About the Authorial Voice of David J. Temple: David J. Temple is a pseudonym created for enabling ongoing collaborative authorship between Dr. Marc Gafni, Dr. Zak Stein and Ken Wilber at the Center for World Philosophy and Religion, a leading international think tank whose mission is to address existential risk by articulating a shared universal Story of Value for global intimacy and global coordination. The Center focuses its work on a world philosophy, Cosmo-Erotic Humanism, as the ground for a global vision of value, economics, politics, and spiritual coherence. The Center for World Philosophy and Religion is a reader-supported publication. Consider becoming a paid subscriber and get instant access to a 7-day self-study course with Dr. Marc Gafni valued in $297, for only $9/month. Chapters: 0:00 — Introduction 0:48 — Context Setting 1:41 — First Definition of Value: Value Is the Quality of Irreducible Rightness that Exists in the Universe 8:59 — "Rightness” Works Across The Good, The True and The Beautiful 13:05 — Is the Field of Value a Real Place or a Real Thing? 15:52 — Understanding the Field of Value in terms of Self: Separate Self, True Self, Unique Self 21:36 — We Need to Distinguish Between the Field of ErosValue and the Narrow Sense of the Greek and Christian Notion of Eros 26:14 — About First Principles and First Values 27:01 — The Four Core Drives Of All Holons Are Included in Our Definitions of Eros and Intimacy 39:31 — We’re Using The Word “Value” in the Same Way Ken Uses Holons — Value Is Not Hard to Find, It’s Impossible to Avoid 51:18 — About Who We Must Become End — Mentioned Sources End — Mentioned People Episode Transcript: Context Setting Marc: David J. Temple’s next book is really anthro-ontology, which is how we know what we know. Anthro: human. Ontology: real. * How do we know what we know? * How do we know anything? * And how do we know that value is real? But it’s really two related questions: * How do we know what the value is real? * What is value? Which are obviously co-joined and related. What we did is, David J. Temple came over the other night, and he looked a little bit like you, Ken. He looked a little bit like Zak. He had some Jewish genes there someplace, but he came over and he wrote down about 50 formulations of what is value. And we actually had our friend Daniel over for three, four days, where we also did a deep dive into this topic: what is value? Only if value is real all the way down and all the way up the evolutionary chain do we have an omnicoherent Cosmos. Otherwise, we don’t have a coherent Cosmos. So when David talks about the Intimate Universe, he means intimacy all the way down and all the way up, right? Intimacy and coherence are almost the same word. It’s intimate coherence or coherent intimacy. With that in mind, I thought we would just jump in. I’ll throw out possible definitions of value. And it doesn’t get more delightful than this. We’re throwing out actual definitions of value, some of them will be, of course, overlapping. We haven’t done stage two here to get it down to five definitions. We’re still at the list of 50, where Zak rolls his eyes and says, “When’s that going to get down to 5 or 10?” But let’s play for now. Let’s play, okay? Here we go. First Definition of Value: Value Is the Quality of Irreducible Rightness that Exists in the Universe Marc: 1) Value is the quality of irreducible rightness that exists in the universe. Or I’ll say it a little differently. * Value is the quality of irreducible rightness for its own sake that exists in the universe. Before we comment on it, I’ll say it again. We’re going under the assumption that we’ll have to unpack, David has to unpack this, that all value, when we say value is real, we mean value is real and that it is eternal and evolving. Ken?: And each value has to be a part of some other value. Marc: And each value needs to be part of the Field of Value. Ken: And we already have a name for what that is. It’s called a holon. Marc: It’s called a holon. Okay. Ken: So value is a whole entity that is a part of a larger value. Essentially. That’s why value is part of a field. And if it’s a field of entities, then they each have to be interconnected. All holons are interconnected because they’re a whole that’s part of a larger whole, that itself is part of a larger whole. Atoms are parts of molecules, which are parts of cells, which are part of multicellular animals , which are part of an entire tree of life, and it just goes up. And each one of those has a value. Marc: Each one of those has a value and no value is independent of all the values. Ken: That’s right. Marc: And that’s what’s key. To have an omnicoherent Cosmos, we have to recognize that no value is ever dissociated from the larger Field of Value. If it would dissociate, it would become the source of evil. Meaning, it would become anti-value. And that’s beautiful, right? Ken: Right. Marc: The dissociation itself causes it to become anti-value. Ken: And that’s a great definition of anti-value. Marc: Right? It’s a value dissociated from the larger field of value. I decontextualize a value from the larger Field of Value, I transform it into an absolute, non-holon, and it becomes anti-value. Ken: And that’s to say, a value that isn’t part of another value ceases to be a holon. Because when any holon breaks off being a part of a larger whole, it ceases being a holon. Because it’s by definition not part of a larger whole. Marc: And in some sense, what it’s done is, it’s become cancerous. Ken: Right. Marc: It’s become a cancer. Then that value metastasizes by itself, it sub-optimizes the larger system, and then winds up both suiciding the larger system, and then itself. That’s the process. A good example would be a value like power. In some sense, power is a value. If we lose our relationship to power, we become powerless, which is often tragic. But power is a particular value which is most prone to dissociate from the larger field. Right? It’s funny, in Tolkien, when he writes Lord of the Rings, “My precious!” Precious means value. But it’s the value of power which is dissociated from the larger field, so that power becomes this ultimate eros dissociated from all other values. So it becomes the ultimate anti-value. Ken: The ultimate evil. Marc: The ultimate evil. Yay. Zachary, thoughts from the third floor? Zak: Yeah, insofar as we speak of a grammar of value and holonic theory applies to the idea of grammar, then you get this idea of: one way of thinking about what we’re saying is, value is not some illegible, weird ephemeral feeling, there’s a grammar to it. It has that logic of them being nested, they’re related. You get these things that appear as polarities that are actually these deep inter-inclusions in some way. So a lot of the holonic theory applied to thinking about the Field of Value is one way of getting into some of what we’re discussing. I think it’s an interesting cross-fertilization there. Back to your definition of whatever it was, Mark, at the beginning there, that the intrinsicness of the universe being appropriate… Marc: I’ll give it to you, just so you have it. Value is the quality of irreducible rightness for its own sake that exists in the universe. Zak: So rightness, goodness, appropriateness that there’s something at the base of the universe that is good, would be one way of thinking about the root of the whole value conversation. Without that as a premise, you can’t arguably, for example, boot from a universe that’s bad and create value, right? That’s an interesting place to start. “Rightness” Works Across The Good, The True and The Beautiful Ken: Let me ask what exactly you mean by—how does it compare to the good, the true, or the beautiful? Why not goodness? Marc: We could go for goodness, right? Ken: Because there are very real, there are very specifi

    Understanding the Field of Value: Holons, Eros, and ErosValue (with Ken Wilber)

  6. May 13

    Selection, Desire and the Becoming of the Universe

    About the podcast: These are unscripted, early David J. Temple conversations where Dr. Marc Gafni, Ken Wilber and Dr. Zak Stein are unfolding the inner workings of CosmoErotic Humanism in real time. Formal statements and propositions will be published in forthcoming volumes by the World Philosophy and Religion Press. About this episode:  In this dialogue, Dr. Marc Gafni and Dr. Zak Stein explore the profound interplay between selection, desire, value, and the evolutionary process of the universe. They discuss: why does the universe select certain structures instead of others, across all levels of matter, life, and mind? They engage with the deep cosmic question: what does the universe value? — and argue that in order to respond to our escalating challenge of humans overriding natural selection with their own choices, we have to be able to clearly see and distinguish between value and its counterfeit forms.  If you deploy any material from David J. Temple in this episode, please cite directly using the following reference: Temple, David J., Conversations with David J. Temple, World Philosophy and Religion Press, May 2026, Episode: “Selection, Desire and the Becoming of the Universe” Get the book: First Principles and First Values is the tip of the spear in the fight for a humane future. Establishing frameworks for a new school of thought called CosmoErotic Humanism, the book is built around forty-two propositions that provide new source code for the future of planetary culture. Like Europe in the early Renaissance, humanity is in a time between worlds, at a time between stories. First Principles and First Values contains blueprints for the bridge needed to cross from this world to the next. About the Authorial Voice of David J. Temple: David J. Temple is a pseudonym created for enabling ongoing collaborative authorship between Dr. Marc Gafni, Dr. Zak Stein and Ken Wilber at the Center for World Philosophy and Religion, a leading international think tank whose mission is to address existential risk by articulating a shared universal Story of Value for global intimacy and global coordination. The Center focuses its work on a world philosophy, Cosmo-Erotic Humanism, as the ground for a global vision of value, economics, politics, and spiritual coherence. The Center for World Philosophy and Religion is a reader-supported publication. Consider becoming a paid subscriber and get instant access to a 7-day deep dive into CosmoErotic Humanism course, valued in $297, for only $9/month. Chapters: 0:00 — Introduction 0:41 — Context Setting 1:02 — Framing the Conversation: There Is a Selection Process across the Levels of Matter, Life, and Mind 3:20 — There Must Have Been a Point in Which Humanity Started to Override the Organic Selection Processes of the Biosphere 6:44 — Distinguishing Between Value and its Counterfeit Forms Is Not So Simple 13:13 — We Have to Be Able to Say that Selection Is Off Course 15:38 — About First Principles and First Values 16:25 — To Liberate Yourself from Pseudo-Eros and Counterfeit Values, You Need a Better Script of Desire That’s Part of the Field of Value 26:36 — You Don’t Want to Make the Fantasy into Reality, but to Bring the Fantasy in Touch with What Is Real 33:27 — It’s Through Imagination that We Can Be Covenanted with All of the Present, All of the Past, and All of the Future 39:08 — Invitation to Who We Must Become End — Mentioned Sources End — Mentioned People Episode Transcript: Context Setting Zak: So, joking aside, David was in touch. He hangs out in a bunch of places. He was over at CRI with me and Schmachtenberger and others, thinking about this topic of what sometimes is called generator functions. We’ve talked about this with regards to X-Risk with David quite a bit. Marc: Right. That sweetheart, Chris, who was at the house here for a couple of weeks, was he there? Zak: Precisely. Yeah, he’s a sweetheart. Framing the Conversation: There Is a Selection Process across the Levels of Matter, Life, and Mind Zak: One of the things that emerged was this notion of selection. It’s a very deep topic. Meaning, we know selection from natural selection. That’s where there’s a genetic mutation, and then it either lives or it doesn’t live. And that’s interesting, because that’s kind of the whole biosphere deciding if this thing stays or goes. But what’s interesting is before you get biological selection, there are structures in the universe that simply don’t exist, and other structures that are super, super common. There’s a selection process at the level of the physiosphere, meaning, physics. So, there’s this deep question about multi-level selection across basically matter, life, and mind. It’s a deep issue. And another way to frame it, to bring it into our bailiwick in terms of value theory, is: One of the deeper questions is: why is there something rather than nothing? Which is, why was there first, the universe, selected for at all? Meaning, the universe was chosen. And then, if you set the universe adrift temporally, it means at any moment you can ask the question, why is the universe in this state and not in some other state? This is the big question of cosmic selection, which is, what does the universe value? Why does the universe have some things hanging around? Other things are basically impossible, and other sets of things come for a time and then disappear and be selected out. Deep questions. It begins with thermodynamics and then self-organization at the level of physics. So, that’s the biggest frame. And then, there are these layers of the selection process. And again, we know natural selection because it’s popular and it totally exists. 1) Natural selection is very common. But there’s also all of these other ones, which you know a lot about. 2) Group selection, what’s called co-selection. The lion becomes more powerful, but then the gazelle becomes faster. And so, you get symmetry of co-selection, balancing ecosystems. You also get niche creation, which results in phenotypic accommodation. This was the Baldwin effect, where the organism creates for itself an environment that protects it until there’s a genetic mutation that allows it to adapt better. That’s a quasi-Lamarckian mechanism. There Must Have Been a Point in Which Humanity Started to Override the Organic Selection Processes of the Biosphere Zak: 3) Then this abrupt thing occurs, and this is where the whole conversation started, which was: How is it that the things that are selected for in the biosphere lead to more life, and then at a certain point, the things that start to get selected for in the biosphere start to destroy life? Marc: The meta-crisis. Zak: The meta-crisis. And at a micro level, something like suicide. How is it that an organism emerges, which has the capacity to destroy itself when that just didn’t exist in nature? There’s not suicide in nature. Humans are unique in the category of suicide. And so, this question of species suicide—which is what the meta-crisis is—and ecocide, we take the whole biosphere with us. What that means is there must have been some switch in selection where humanity at some point started to override the organic selection processes of the biosphere. So: * Technological group augmentation becomes the predominant mode of selection. * That turns into self-domestication, which means we start to self-alter our own genetic codes, the genetic codes of animals, crops and other things—and start to radically alter through our own choice, not the holistic selection of nature, but our own choice augmented by technology. * Then, eventually we’re at this moment of cyborgic self-augmentation, which even more fundamentally augments what’s possible to select into or out of existence. So, there’s this stack. And what’s interesting about that is that at all of those layers, First Principles and First Values suffuse the mechanisms by which selection work. And so, this is the classic thing we’ve said for long, just slightly reframed. In the first minutes after the Big Bang, there are these processes of intimacy and Eros which draw together certain structures. Those structures survive to this day and constitute us. Every moment of the universe, they’re continually selected for, and they instantiate these principles. Now, the things that get selected out, like a civilization that self-terminates, for example, must somehow have deviated from those things which are selected for which confer survival. And of course, we don’t mean that in the simple Darwinian sense. We mean in this really richly ontologically stratified way. So, that biggest question of selection is this question of what the universe values, and the human steps in at this juncture and starts to override, through its own freedom and creativity, that universal structure. That’s the thing. And it’s so related to First Principles and First Values, but that specific launchpad to reflect this was useful… Marc: Yeah. In some sense, it’s the same conversation, but with a unique formulation, which is always good. There’s always a particular formulation that reopens it again in a very fructifying and rich way. I love the presentation, thank you. I haven’t thought this through, so this is not like a prefabricated home. We’ll build it together. Let me just put a few pieces together. First, just a meta comment. Distinguishing Between Value and its Counterfeit Forms Is Not So Simple Marc: What we found over the years is that there’s these series of issues that we frame in terms of existential risk as particular problems. Like, existential risk is a particular problem, of a particular nature, which, of course, never existed before. And as a result of a unique set of variables, both in the interiors and the exteriors that conflate at a particular moment in time in a way that they never have before. At the same time, we became a

    Selection, Desire and the Becoming of the Universe

  7. Apr 29

    Value and Wholeness: A New Story of Value Is a New Story of Wholeness (with Ken Wilber)

    About the podcast: These are unscripted, early David J. Temple conversations where Dr. Marc Gafni, Ken Wilber and Dr. Zak Stein are unfolding the inner workings of CosmoErotic Humanism in real time. Formal statements and propositions will be published in forthcoming volumes by the World Philosophy and Religion Press. About this episode: This is the first in a series of dialogues between Marc Gafni, Ken Wilber, and Zak Stein, reconvening after the release of First Principles and First Values. In this conversation, they discuss anthro-ontology, exploring the three great questions of CosmoErotic Humanism and the relationship between value and wholeness. Are they the same thing? How are they different? The dialogue also goes on to clarify the only actual cure to the meaning crisis: the clarification of value. This is a foundational conversation for anyone seeking to deeply understand and recognize value in their own lives. If you deploy any material from David J. Temple in this episode, please cite directly using the following reference: Temple, David J., Conversations with David J. Temple, World Philosophy and Religion Press, April 2026, Episode: “Value and Wholeness: A New Story of Value Is a New Story of Wholeness” Get the book: First Principles and First Values is the tip of the spear in the fight for a humane future. Establishing frameworks for a new school of thought called CosmoErotic Humanism, the book is built around forty-two propositions that provide new source code for the future of planetary culture. Like Europe in the early Renaissance, humanity is in a time between worlds, at a time between stories. First Principles and First Values contains blueprints for the bridge needed to cross from this world to the next. About the Authorial Voice of David J. Temple: David J. Temple is a pseudonym created for enabling ongoing collaborative authorship between Dr. Marc Gafni, Dr. Zak Stein and Ken Wilber at the Center for World Philosophy and Religion, a leading international think tank whose mission is to address existential risk by articulating a shared universal Story of Value for global intimacy and global coordination. The Center focuses its work on a world philosophy, Cosmo-Erotic Humanism, as the ground for a global vision of value, economics, politics, and spiritual coherence. The Center for World Philosophy and Religion is a reader-supported publication. Consider becoming a paid subscriber and get instant access to a 7-day self-study course with Dr. Marc Gafni valued in $297, for only $9/month. Chapters: 0:00 — Introduction 1:45 — Context: Value and Wholeness Are Inter-Included 9:41 — There’s a Danger of False Certainty in Fixating on the “Why” Question: The Why Is Self-Evidently Responded To 22:45 — Existing Theories of Value in Philosophy Are Pallid 27:38 — The Relationship between Economic Value and Intrinsic Value Is the “Pointing To” 31:01 — We Need to Align Use Value with Exchange Value 32:35 — Before We Are a Specific Value, We Are Value Itself 39:19 — Your Personal Value Is Your Unique Personhood and It’s Part of the Field of Value 45:13 — The Core Assumption of Technofeudalism Is that There Is Nothing Sacred, There Is No Field of Value 52:37 — We Are Talking About Value, Love, Eros in a Four Quadrants Perspective 55:08 — About First Principles and First Values 55:55 — It Should Be as Clear as Day that the Fundamental Problem Is a Problem of Value 57:25 — The Crisis of Meaning Is Used Today to Avoid the Value Conversation 58:54 — The Only Cure to the Meaning Crisis Is the Clarification of Value 1:02:13 — It’s a Conversational Cosmos — And Conversation Is the Exchange of Meaning, Which Is Embedded in Value 1:15:37 — Creativity Itself Isn’t Necessarily Good, Creation that Moves Us Towards Value Is Good 1:25:04 — We Need to Be Messiahs — We Need To Raise the Conversation to the Assumption that There Is a Field of Value 1:31:17 — By Hijacking Conversation, AI Can Create a Sense of Nothingness and Take Away Our Ability to Create Meaning 1:34:16 — About Who We Must Become End — Mentioned Sources End — Mentioned People Episode Transcript: Context: Value and Wholeness Are Inter-Included Zak: We want to speak about wholeness and value. Ken: Sure. Zak: I think Marc wanted to kick it off. Marc: Yeah. We will kick it off, but first, just to say, we’re here to celebrate the release of First Principles and First Values, which is really exciting. And to our friend John Mackey, who’s listening, John stepped in and created this possibility for Ken and I to work on this, Zak, many years ago. Ken: Right. Marc: This is a fulfillment of a commitment to John to put out a book together. And John is obviously excited that Zak has stepped in, and so David J. Temple has come through big time. Thank you John. That’s a good place to start. It’s so delightful to be at the beginning of another set of conversations. Ken: Right. Marc: People are not aware of this, Ken and I did a series of conversations six, seven years ago on Eros and sexuality on the seven levels of sexuality. That’s now a 12 volume set, which is being completed. So these things get somewhere, right? It’s very exciting. Ken: Right. What are you doing with it? Marc: It’s going to be published by World Philosophy and Religion Press, first as “2 m**********r volumes”—those big, you know—and then 12 individual volumes. It’s The Phenomenology of Eros. Zak subjected it to a very critical reading, on multiple levels, it’s gone through many years of revision and care. And it’s done, it’s monumental and you are clearly present, evoked, and of course cited. Ken: Ah! Great. Marc: Yeah, that’s fantastic. So, David really wants us to talk about: how do you know what you know? Anthro-ontology. By anthro-ontology, that Ken, Zak and I have talked about before, we mean anthro: human being, ontology: for real. That which is for real. True existence, the true essence, nature of things, that I know by accessing my own interiors. Or anthro-ontology in some sense: there is a mystery and the mystery is within us. Something like that. Now, what we want to particularly look at is this mystery through the prism of two lenses. One that David J. Temple spent a lot of time in this book First Principles and First Values, and one that Ken spent a lot of time completely independently in this new book about to be released, about Wholeness. And I would just note that Ken, you’ve been in this wholeness conversation for a long time. Back in 2004 you recommended, when I was talking about the four faces of Eros, that the fourth face, which was then the interconnectivity of the all with the all, you said, no, that should be wholeness. Which I changed in A Return to Eros, and that was yours. So this is an ongoing conversation for many, many years. And it’s really exciting to get to this place. Let’s begin. First off, what we’re saying is that that mystery within us could be called Wholeness, it could be called Value. And those are somehow two faces of the one. 1) One of the things we want to explore today is the relationship between them. Are they related? Are they the same word? Are they different words? That’s one. 2) Let me enter for a second from the perspective of value. David’s established a formula which is: clarified desire equals value. It’s based on a bunch of premises and CosmoErotic Humanism. And Ken, you’ve written way before CosmoErotic Humanism. I was writing on Eros on my side. You invoked Eros in multiple texts all through the years. And we’ve talked about Eros from the beginning. Ken: Right. And Eros, for me, is a primary force in the whole Cosmos. Marc: Right. And when we speak of Eros, we formulated an interior science equation of Eros. By Eros we mean: the experience that moves through all of reality, all the way up and all the way down, of radical aliveness desiring ever deeper contact and ever greater wholeness. That’s an interior science equation of Eros that appears of course, in First Principles and First Values that we’ve tested over the last 10 years. You can talk about: * Eros in an organization, * Eros between people, * Eros on the biochemical level, * Eros in the pure world of interiors. And we’re talking about the same thing, Eros. So: 1) Reality is Eros.2) One of the faces of Eros, the qualities of Eros is desire.3) Desire moves towards deeper contact and greater wholeness.4) Clarified desire yields value. Now, we could rewrite the Eros equation in one of two ways. We could say: Eros equals radical aliveness desiring ever deeper contact and ever greater wholeness. Or we could say the exact same thing: Eros equals radical aliveness desiring, moving towards ever deeper contact and ever greater value. The equation actually works both ways. It’s one of the places you begin to see the kind of inter-inclusion of value and wholeness. We actually have this understanding that value is not just—like Ken, you immediately said Eros is cosmic Eros, we’re understanding it the same way we always have. So by value we don’t mean values. By value, we don’t mean Christian values or the values conversation. By value we mean the Field of Value in which all values are included. And that is in the interior science tradition of Solomon, the lineage of Solomon, which strangely was pointed out to me when I was talking about it, is mirrored by Whitehead and I looked it up, it’s true, in Process and Reality. One of the 10 sephirot, the 10 luminations is tiferet. Tiferet means beauty. Beauty is the intensification of experience in which nothing is left out and all opposites are included. So the other name for tiferet, beauty, is shalom, wholeness. Because the word shalom literally means wholeness, of course. It’s very beautiful. So we have this sense of a Field of Value or a Field of Wholeness in which we participate, which discloses—not an answer, but

    Value and Wholeness: A New Story of Value Is a New Story of Wholeness (with Ken Wilber)

  8. Apr 1

    CosmoErotic Humanism and Metamodernism: Fragrances of Their Important Distinctions

    About this episode: This dialogue is a special episode, a spontaneous conversation of Dr. Marc Gafni with Layman Pascal and Brandan Graham Dempsey, held at the Center for World Philosophy and Religion. It is a first step towards deeper conversation between CosmoErotic Humanism and Metamodernism. If you deploy any material from David J. Temple (Marc Gafni) in this episode, please cite directly using the following reference: Temple, David J., Conversations with David J. Temple, World Philosophy and Religion Press, April 2026, Episode: “CosmoErotic Humanism and Metamodernism: Fragrances of Their Important Distinctions” Get the book: First Principles and First Values is the tip of the spear in the fight for a humane future. Establishing frameworks for a new school of thought called CosmoErotic Humanism, the book is built around forty-two propositions that provide new source code for the future of planetary culture. Like Europe in the early Renaissance, humanity is in a time between worlds, at a time between stories. First Principles and First Values contains blueprints for the bridge needed to cross from this world to the next. About the Authorial Voice of David J. Temple: David J. Temple is a pseudonym created for enabling ongoing collaborative authorship between Dr. Marc Gafni, Dr. Zak Stein and Ken Wilber at the Center for World Philosophy and Religion, a leading international think tank whose mission is to address existential risk by articulating a shared universal Story of Value for global intimacy and global coordination. The Center focuses its work on a world philosophy, Cosmo-Erotic Humanism, as the ground for a global vision of value, economics, politics, and spiritual coherence. P.S. If you want to meet Dr. Marc Gafni in person, there is only one event of the year, and seats are going fast. Click here to join. Chapters: 0:00 — Introduction 1:45 — You Can’t Reduce Evil to Trauma 7:17 — Can We Talk About Evil Without Metaphysics? 27:07 — About First Principles and First Values 28:03 — Metamodernism and Cosmo-Erotic Humanism in Conversation 41:25 — We Need to Cultivate an Ethic of Synergy and Kindness in the Space End — Mentioned Sources End — Mentioned People Episode Transcript: Marc: So Isaiah Chapter 45 verse 7. We look at Isaiah as a prophet. He’s more of a shamanic master. Prophets are more shamans. We use the word prophet, it’s this kind of Christian word… But if you look at the literature, prophets are described almost always in the third century Midrashic literature, through texts of the Song of Songs. Meaning they’re erotic texts. By erotic I don’t mean sexual, I mean they’re shamanic erotic texts, and essentially the Song of Songs is a shamanic erotic document. The prophet for us is this guy at the gate saying, “Repent ye, repent ye,” but actually it doesn’t capture who they were. Which is why the prophets and the pagans were interlocked in debate. Not because the prophets were like, “Oh, pagans are bad,” but they were very close—they’re the flip side of the pagans. And what’s his name, that guy? Oh, Gafni. He has a chapter in The Mystery of Love, in the old thing, a chapter on prophets and pagans, which you would like—something we’ve never talked about. It’s directly related to that conversation. Layman: But we haven’t discussed it. Marc: Right. So back at the ranch. You Can’t Reduce Evil to Trauma Marc: 45:7 the text reads, Isaiah shamanic master, yotzer ohr u-boreh choshech oseh shalom u-voreh ra. yotzer ohr—who creates light u-boreh choshech—and creates darkness oseh shalom—creates wholeness (not peace) u’voreh ra—and creates evil Brendan: Mm-hmm. Marc: That’s the play. In the end, there’s a nondual monism in play, but there’s a dialectical ontology of evil within it. Brendan: Yeah. Big theodicy questions. Marc: Yeah. It’s everything. You may remember Brendan, we were once together in the space at that Symposium and we talked a little bit about that on Sunday, we talked there about the term “anthro-ontology.” Anthro-ontology tells me that I can’t reduce evil to trauma. There’s this move that we make in modernity, we basically reduce evil to a therapeutic problem. I’ve pushed back on you in a couple of conversations we’ve had just on this or that where you know, Layman’s very understanding of everyone and I’m saying, “No, there’s actually a line--that’s not okay.” But it’s not a moralistic prophetic sense. It’s a shamanic sense. We’re like, “What’s the line?” The Borgias were the line—they were murdering people all over. So it’s not just trauma. Trauma doesn’t anthro-ontologically explain it. Brendan: I know we both have benefited a lot from Nietzsche and integrated some thoughts around his framings into a religiosity that Nietzsche could maybe get behind or be comfortable with. And as an interesting exercise to attend to the critiques that he’s leveling, and then say “Oh, well, there’s something there.” He talks about the great health and about the possibility of conceiving a lot of these metaphysical principles more in terms of what leads to flourishing, vibrancy, vitality, increase of well-being—these sorts of things. Will to power, you could put that in that matrix. But yeah, for me that was very helpful to be able to re-situate, re-understand notions of sin and also evil as a failure to bring out the fullness of the vital, the healthfulness of things and so people… Layman: Somewhere between what the two of you are saying, the way I normally talk about nihilism and fascism is being related. The culture is full of nihilistic elements operating in various dimensions at various scales, where there’s self-undermining of all kinds of things going on, but it’s not really in my mind fascism until it mobilizes to start to destroy these things. Right? There’s all these tendencies that undermine or take away from or not fully increase in thriving, but there’s a slightly different move and a different felt quality when it actively starts to go back the other way. It’s not just not establishing thriving. It’s actively intending anti-thriving. Marc: Sauron. Yeah. Received. Nietzsche, I love Nietzsche. His passages on music and his understanding of reality not as mechanics, but music and his mocking of the mechanical understandings of reality are just like, “F**k! Thank you!” And Nietzsche is, in a way, Rilke is a similar way, where… When I first encountered Nietzsche I was majoring in philosophy, so I did all the courses at the college for one semester. Like, 25 courses in philosophy when you’re 18 and you do that crazy move. So I’m reading Nietzsche, and I’m like, “F****r, you m**********r.” What he basically does is he takes a loan of social capital. Nietzsche is the last great philosopher in a certain way. He’s both the end and the beginning of something new. He both destroys, but he’s still in the lineage. Nietzsche is taking a loan of philosophical capital or metaphysics from the great tradition still, in which he assumes that… On the one hand he’d have a passage where a postmodernist could say “It’s a social construct,” then he’ll have a whole series of other passages where he’s assumed that that aliveness and that flourishing is a value of reality and an inherent and intrinsic value of reality. Not a made-up value. When you read Rilke, Rilke is like, “Yeah, it’s all over when we die and dah, dah, dah,” and he’s filled with Value. So there are these hinge figures. I’ll give you another example. There’s a guy named Ephraim Ben Chaim, who was one of Israel’s great poets. We were very close friends. Another guy is Haim Gouri—these are two of the great poets of Israel and they died, I don’t know, 15, 20 years ago. They were at the ‘48 war, they were in love with Hebraic texts. Complete heretics, but they assumed the text would always be there. They never meant to get rid of the text. They meant like, “We’re going to borrow all that capital, then destroy it and then assume it’ll go on forever.” So that’s what Rilke assumed and Nietzsche thought: “Of course the values.” It never occurred to them that “Oh, it’s all made up.” Can We Talk About Evil Without Metaphysics? Brendan: Yeah, I understand that and could see how you could put Nietzsche in that lens. I guess for me, it’s less about Nietzsche as a philosopher, as a thinker, but he names a particular thing that I think is a merit of an idea that can be entertained outside of Nietzsche and the rest of his project. That’s the big thing for me. It’s an “immanent-izing” of value—in a way that we can appreciate how things have an intrinsic relational dynamic that can give rise to, “This is valuable, this is good,” for all the things. You’re talking about the Borgias, right? Murder, torture, all these things are entropic, dissolving things. They take away complexity. But if there’s an aspect of, “When do I feel full? When do I feel rich and filled with a kind of enthusiastic capacity?” These are things that enhance, improve and complexify—that all seem to be totally cognizable without having to refer to metaphysical principles in the classic sense. Marc: So here’s the question. This is great. I totally get it. You just hit the crux of the conversation, and again, you and I have talked through Z and we were in that space together, we’ve never been in a different space. But it’s the crux, which is like this. Let’s take a different example. Look at parapsychology. It’s a good example. It’s very clear that parapsychology violates the laws of physics. Clearly—time, etc. etc. So why would one think the laws of physics apply, when it’s very clear—based on a radical empiricism—that they don’t. The laws of physics are both real, yet it’s very very clear there’s an entire other world at play. In

    CosmoErotic Humanism and Metamodernism: Fragrances of Their Important Distinctions
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Listen to intimate conversations with David J. Temple and friends exploring the unfolding vision of CosmoErotic Humanism. worldphilosophyreligion.substack.com

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