I am delighted to present my first interview with Bernardo Kastrup, who I consider to be an essential thinker of our time. His bio:
Bernardo Kastrup is the executive director of Essentia Foundation. His work has been leading the modern renaissance of metaphysical idealism, the notion that reality is essentially mental. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy (ontology, philosophy of mind) and another Ph.D. in computer engineering (reconfigurable computing, artificial intelligence). As a scientist, Bernardo has worked for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Philips Research Laboratories (where the 'Casimir Effect' of Quantum Field Theory was discovered). Formulated in detail in many academic papers and books, his ideas have been featured on Scientific American, the Institute of Art and Ideas, the Blog of the American Philosophical Association and Big Think, among others. Bernardo's most recent book is 'Science Ideated.' For more information, freely downloadable papers, videos, etc., please visit www.bernardokastrup.com.
As followers of my work know, I also support the model of metaphysical or monistic idealism. I first wrote about this my book 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl (Penguin, 2006), looking at idealist thinkers including Rudolf Steiner and Amit Goswami. Like Kastrup, I believe the shift from reductive materialism to analytic idealism is inevitable, and will have broad effects across the collective field of human consciousness and society. The real question is how long will this new understanding take to supersede the materialist model — will we get there before we see a civilizational crash?
I hope you enjoy this interview!
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