What is interesting for me in this discussion is the range of the speaker’s intelligence; his capacity to entertain and articulate many subtle and complex themes in a coherent and accessible way.

Most important also is his ethical engagement with these questions and the exploration of phenomena in a steady and creative way.

This makes a very valuable epistemological contribution to our (humanity/our civilisation’s) ability to rise to the challenges that we generate. This is instead of navigating life by denying or fearfully avoiding awareness of what we don’t understand but urgently need to.

It is not an interest or fascination with the strangeness of phenomena that prompts me to share this. It is to indicate that what is naturally within human experience is miscategorised as excluded from it. As I see it, we have an imminent need to allow the extension of capacity to handle ourselves well in the diversity of what life presents. This implies becoming increasingly able to discern and to work creatively with its truth. This is not something to do that is difficult; it is something whose ways of becoming can naturally unfold as we give our intimate consent.

The richness, vitality and diversity of experience that this opens to, for each of those who are willing, is in itself worth reaching for, as is the prospect of humanity not having to perpetually reach for threatening stimulation in order to feel excitement and satisfaction in daily life.