Eternalised

The fool is one of the most relatable, intriguing and recurring figures in the world. There have been fools who have caused surprise and laughter since time immemorial. We worship folly by seeing it in people and in the world and by willingly displaying it in ourselves. It is one of the timeless archetypes, which we all inherit at birth. Many of us suffer from the absence of the fool in our lives. Frenetic and upright, we take ourselves too seriously. As William Shakespeare said, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” Forgetting that playfulness is a basic human need, we wonder why we so easily become bored and exhausted, losing all capacity for spontaneity, authenticity, and passion. The antidote to this would be to give the fool archetype some space in our lives. “The soul demands your folly; not your wisdom.” - Carl Jung

Nightmares. We all have them. But what exactly do they mean? Why do we have bad dreams? Is there any psychological meaning behind them? Nightmares are the source of much of the horror we see in stories, myths, movies and games. They are an encounter with the dark side of the unconscious, which often includes facing some of the most painful aspects of who we are. And one does not know what that part of oneself is, until one confronts it.

Nightmares are the most substantial and vitally important dreams, and are of therapeutic value. They wake us up with a cry, as if all our repressed content forms a bubble which expands until it bursts one night, and we experience a nightmare. They are the shock therapy nature uses on us when we are too unaware of some psychological danger, and shock us out of deep unconscious sleepiness about some dangerous situation. As if the unconscious says, “Look here, this problem is urgent!” The psyche tells us to “wake up” and face what we have neglected. The majority of nightmares represent opportunities for personal healing through much-needed emotional release.

Shamanism is one of the oldest, if not the oldest system of healing known in the world. It forms the prototype from which many other forms of healing are derived, such as modern psychotherapy. The shamanic journey is an expression of the human condition, and despite the cultural differences around the world, the deeper structure appears to remain constant. A common thread seems to connect all shamans across the planet. An awakening to other orders of reality, the experience of ecstasy, and an opening up of visionary realms form the essence of the shamanic mission.

We all have a particular personality type, and at the same time, we are all unique. To partake in the journey of discovering who we truly are, it is necessary for us to know our true and authentic personality. The quest to know ourselves allows us to better understand the complexity and intricacies of the human condition, improve our relationship with ourselves, with others, and with the world.   

Carl Jung’s model of typology is not a system of character analysis, nor is it a way of labelling oneself or others. Much as one might use a compass to determine where one is in the physical world, Jung’s typology is a tool for psychological orientation.   

The main aspects are the attitude types: extraversion and introversion, and the psychological functions: feeling, thinking, sensation and intuition.

The legendary figure of Hermes Trismegistus (Hermes Thrice Great) is the inspiration for the spiritual teachings known as Hermeticism. He is a syncretism (joining) of the Greek deity Hermes, the winged messenger of the Gods, and his Egyptian counterpart, the Ibis-headed moon god Thoth.  

The Way of Hermes involved altered states of consciousness in which practitioners went through a training regime that involved luminous visions, spiritual rebirth, cosmic consciousness, and union with the divine beauty of universal goodness and truth to attain the salvational knowledge known as gnosis.

Philosophy is a mode of life, an act of living, and a way of being. Modern philosophy has forgotten this tradition, and philosophical discourse has all but overtaken philosophy as a way of life. Philosophy is not just an intellectual discipline, which can get abstract and divorced from the real world, but is most importantly a way of life that teaches us how to best live our lives.   

Philosophy is a mode of existing in the world, which has to be practiced at each instant, and the goal of which is to transform the whole of the individual’s life. Real wisdom does not merely cause us to know: it makes us “be” in a different way.   

Ancient philosophy proposed to mankind an art of living. By contrast modern philosophy appears above all as the construction of a technical jargon reserved for specialists.

The wounded healer refers to the capacity to be at home in the darkness of suffering and there to find germs of light and recovery. It is the archetype at the bottom of all genuine healing procedures. As long as we feel victimised, bitter and resentful towards our wound, and seek to escape from suffering it, we remain inescapably bound to it. This is neurotic suffering, as opposed to the authentic suffering of the wounded healer which is purified. The wound can destroy you, or it can wake you up.  As Carl Jung wrote, "The doctor is effective only when he himself is affected. Only the wounded physician heals."

Hell is understood as the archetype of ultimate suffering. It is no imaginary place, but rather a state of consciousness that we all experience at some point in our lives. Hell is an unavoidable journey in life. In ancient mysteries or rituals of passages, the hero must descend into a dark place in order to give birth to a new consciousness and gain access to a new stage of life. It is the most profound psychological death and rebirth of the self.   

We will be exploring the journey into hell as the path to self-knowledge, self-transformation, and ultimately, self-transcendence. Only in the region of danger can one find the treasure hard to attain. As Carl Jung stated, “No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell.”

Loneliness, emptiness, and anxiety – these are the main complaints American existential psychologist Rollo May encountered over and over from his patients. In 1953, May published Man’s Search for Himself, in which he explores these problems – that are perhaps more relevant than ever in our modern age.  

When society can no longer give us a clear picture of our values and standards, of what we are and what we ought to be, we are then thrown back on the search for ourselves. This is one of the few blessings of living in an age of anxiety. To venture causes anxiety, but not to venture is to lose oneself. To venture in the highest sense is precisely to become conscious of oneself.

The term puer aeternus is Latin for eternal boy. Carl Jung used the term  in the exploration of the psychology of eternal youth and creative  child within every person.   

It is an archetype, and like all archetypes, has both a positive and a  negative side. It can bring the energy, beauty and creativity of  childhood into adult life, or thwart self-realisation and doom us to  both unrealistic adolescent fantasies and experiencing life as a prison.    

The puer is the man-child who refuses to grow up, take responsibility,  and face life’s challenges, he expects other people, typically his  parents, to solve all his problems. He tries to go as high as possible  away from reality, ending up like Peter Pan, the boy who wouldn’t grow  up, who lives in Neverland, a place where people cease to age and are  eternally young. The puer aeternus is also known as the Peter Pan syndrome. This has become an increasingly common problem in our modern age.  

Those who find themselves unable to commit to work, to form satisfactory  relationships, to commit to the discipline of education, to carry the  weight of responsibility, or who feel that their life has become  meaningless, will find the integration of the archetype of eternal youth  invaluable in their life.

There is perhaps no figure in literature more fascinating than the trickster, appearing in various forms in the folklore of many cultures. Trickster is witty and deceitful. He is the timeless root of all the picaresque creations of world literature, and is not reducible to one single literary entity. Trickster tales have existed since ancient times, and has been said to be at the very foundation of civilisation and culture. They belong to the oldest expressions of mankind.   

Tricksters are the breakers of rules, agents of mischief, masters of deceit, and boundary crossers. He is an agent of change, and is amoral, not immoral.  

Trickster is at one and the same time creator and destroyer, giver and negator, he who dupes and who is always duped himself.   

Psychologically, the trickster is an archetype, part of the collective unconscious. Trickster is everywhere, he is an eternal state of mind.   

The integration of the trickster archetype allows us to go from being ruled by our own self-centred ego to a new way of living, in which one has integrity and relatedness. It allows us to become aware of our true emotions, behaviours, and thoughts, that our unconscious persona is hiding, and without which there is no individuation at all.

Franz Kafka's dark world deals with existentialist themes such as alienation, anxiety, disorientation and the absurd. His work is so original that the term Kafkaesque was coined to describe the nightmarish and bizarre atmosphere of his work. Throughout his works we see the strange dream-like mixture of perplexity and embarrassment play out, and the notion of a grand organisation with its incomprehensible bureaucratic system that hovers invisibly over each helpless individual, taking complete control over one's life.

Alchemy occupies a unique place in the collective psyche of humankind. Swiss psychiatrist and psychologist Jung discovered alchemy and devoted the remaining 30 years of his life to studying it, which he practically dug up from the dunghill of the past, for it was considered pseudoscience, a forgotten relic of history and despised field of investigation which he had suddenly revived.   

Alchemy allows one to achieve wholeness of personality, of aligning one’s ego to the Self through a reconnection with the unconscious. For Jung, the task of alchemy was and has always been psychological. The end product is not material in nature, but rather spiritual. Alchemy is the art of expanding consciousness, of self-realisation.

Projection is a psychological fact that can be observed everywhere in  the everyday life of human beings. It is an unconscious mechanism where  one ascribes one’s own motivations, thoughts, feelings, and desires that  are unacceptable to oneself, while attributing them to others. It is a  misalignment of the inner and outer world, because what one is inwardly,  one will see outwardly.  

To really know who we are, we must concern ourselves with correcting  such misjudgements. Many people will cling to them with every fibre of  their being, because if one accepts correction, one may fall into a  depression.  

When we find certain unacceptable feelings, thoughts or behaviours in  ourselves that we refuse to acknowledge, and see someone with that  specific trait, we will feel resentment, hatred and anger towards them.  Projection occurs not because of what other people say to you, but  rather because of what you yourself think about those people.

Synchronicity is a term coined by Carl Jung which describes a meaningful patterns or meaningful coincidences of outer and inner events that cannot be causally linked. It occurs with an inwardly perceived event (dream, vision, premonition, thought or mood) is seen to have a correspondence in external reality: the inner image has "come true", bringing meaning to your life.

When Jung was investigating the phenomena of the collective unconscious, he kept on coming across “coincidences” that were connected so meaningfully, that they broke all statistical probabilities. The culmination of his investigations is covered in his work: Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle.

Active imagination is a technique developed by the Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist Carl Jung. He considered it the most powerful tool to access the unconscious and for achieving wholeness of personality.    

Jung discovered this method between the years of 1913 and 1916, a period of disorientation and intense inner turmoil which he called his confrontation with the unconscious. He searched for a method to heal himself from within, through the power of the imagination.   

Active imagination is a dialogue with different parts of yourself that live in the unconscious. In some way it is similar to dreaming, except that you are fully awake and conscious during the experience.   

If we honestly want to find our own wholeness, to live our individual fate as fully as possible; if we truly want to abolish illusion on principle and find the truth of our own being, however little we like to be the way we are, then there is nothing that can help us so much in our endeavour as active imagination.

In his book Owning Your Own Shadow: The Dark Side of the Psyche, American author and Jungian analyst Robert A. Johnson states that to honour and accept one’s own shadow is a profound spiritual discipline. It is whole-making and thus holy and the most important experience of a lifetime.  

In this podcast, we briefly clear up some misconceptions regarding the concept of shadow. It is not our enemy, but our friend. It contains pure gold waiting to be integrated into our personality.  

It is not the light element alone that does the healing; the place where light and dark begin to touch is the most profound religious experience we can have in life. The religious task is to restore the wholeness of personality. Religion means to put things back together again, to connect whatever is fractured.

William Blake was an English poet and visionary artist whose unique work gives us a glimpse into an entirely different world. His art was ignored and neglected, and few people took his work seriously. He was generally seen as a madman.  

His vivid imagination, visions and mystical experiences lead him to a spiritual task that was the exploration of his inner self. For Blake, the essence of human existence is imagination.

Arthur Schopenhauer was a German Philosopher born in 1788 known for his dark pessimistic philosophical reflections.

For Schopenhauer, the underlying force of reality is the Will (also called will to live or will to life), which is the essence of existence. It is an unconscious and blind desire that restlessly strives for more activity. The will is the tornado that swirls inside of us and throws us from one place to the other, it is the source of our insatiable appetite that results in strife and misery.  

Schopenhauer’s writing is far from the sterile and academic German of the time, his work is straight-forward, colloquial, concrete, full of metaphors and anecdotes. His philosophy sent him on a quest for tranquility and peace of mind. He offers as alternatives the denial of the will, the wisdom of life through philosophy, aesthetics and ethics.

Nothingness is generally considered to be analogous with death and extinction which every healthy living instinct wants to avoid. Many find the notion of nothingness unfathomable.   

Japanese philosopher Keiji Nishitani, however, was convinced that the way out of nihilism, that which renders meaningless the meaning of life, could only be reached by gazing into the abyss itself.   

Nishitani understands human existence as consisting in three fields: consciousness, nihility and emptiness. Nihility is as part of the fabric of reality as Being is, it is relative nothingness, and emptiness is absolute nothingness, where the “absolute negation” as the negation of negation becomes the “great affirmation”.   

In the openness of śūnyatā realised by nihility overcoming itself, one completely oversteps the confines of self-consciousness and comes to be free of egocentrism, anthropocentrism and even theocentrism, thus allowing ultimate reality to manifest itself in all its fullness.  

We will be focusing on two important works of Nishitani: The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism and Religion and Nothingness.

In The Courage to Be, Paul Tillich presents his antidote to meaninglessness through the concept of courage. He was a German-American Christian existentialist philosopher born in 1886 and is considered as one of the most influential theologians of the 20th century.   

While lecturing on anxiety, Tillich noticed that there was an enormous response in the post-war era, especially in the younger people, and he sought to give an answer to the growing anxiety which had developed. The aftereffects of the two World Wars had left the world in a state of disorientation, estrangement, anxiety and meaninglessness.

Lovecraft's dark philosophy is known as Cosmicism, which focuses on the insignificance of humanity and its doings at the cosmos-at-large, in contrast to the anthropocentric philosophies in which many find intellectual reassurance.  This form of non-anthropocentrism is crucial to the philosophy of Cosmicism.  

The question of the meaning of life was better left unanswered. Cosmicism is a type of extreme existentialism, as it brings up the uncertainty about the role of humanity in the uncaring universe, an existential crisis on a large scale.   

Lovecraft embraces the truth of reality. Things are important to us on the human scale, but we simply don’t matter in the cosmos. He described us as "the miserable denizens of a wretched little flyspeck on the back door of a microscopic universe.”

Few artists have so powerfully evoked the uncanny otherness of the unconscious like Swiss artist Peter Birkhäuser. His unknown dream paintings were met with blank incomprehension, and were not well-received by the art community of the time, but, viewed today, his vivid paintings bear striking testament to the disruptive and transformative reality of individuation, the purpose of Jungian psychology, which is to seek wholeness of personality by bringing the unconscious contents into reality.  

After a midlife crisis, Birkhäuser dedicated himself exclusively to bringing these unconscious images into reality. Just how hard this struggle with himself must have been is suggested by the fact that it took the artist twelve years to make the great break and paint a picture entirely according to his own imagination, with no model from the real world.   

The fantasy pictures reflect not only the artist’s own personal psychological situation, but also the spirit of the age, revealing what is taking place in the depths of the collective unconscious in all of the people of our time. Because of this, they are not easy to decipher: they are simply there, and wish to be experienced.

The anima and animus are two contrasexual archetypes crucial for individuation and to progress towards the Self in Carl Jung’s analytical psychology, they are the archetype of life and archetype of meaning, respectively.  

The anima is the personification of all female psychological tendencies in man, while the animus is the personification of all male psychological tendencies in woman.   

They form part of the collective unconscious, as archetypes or collectively inherited patterns of behaviour, which are autonomous, making them particularly difficult to integrate into one’s personality.   

The integration of the shadow, or the realisation of the personal unconscious, marks the first stage in Jungian psychology. Without it, a recognition of anima and animus is impossible.   

Shadow integration is the ‘apprentice-piece’, while the anima or animus is the ‘master-piece’.

In Harrison Bergeron, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. describes the nightmare of total equality, a society in which equality is finally achieved, but at the cost of freedom and individuality. One’s utopia is another’s dystopia.  

We’ll be exploring the increasing promotion of equality to the point of it being absurd as a consequence of the “unheard cry for meaning” that plagues modern society.   

The modern age is characterised by a sense of disorientation of not knowing what to do with one’s life. Nietzsche’s foresaw nihilism as an inevitable consequence of the Death of God, where God is replaced with public opinion, the entertainment culture, and the State.   

Without objective values, we fall into relativism, making us fall prey to authoritarianism and conformism, as displayed by George Orwell's Animal Farm and 1984.

The Russian existentialist philosopher Lev Shestov is known for his “philosophy of despair” or “philosophy of tragedy”. For Shestov, the sources of philosophy were the human tragedy, the horrors and sufferings of human life and the sense of hopelessness.    

Tragedies take place in the depth of the human soul, where no eye can reach out to see. Consequently, He saw the beginning of philosophy starting not with knowledge, not with wonder, but with despair.   

Despair is what he considers a “penultimate knowledge”, that is, a preliminary step that we must acknowledge, in order to progress towards something higher, the “ultimate knowledge”.

The persona is one of Carl Jung's most well-known concepts, representing the social mask that we put on. We all embody different masks in different settings, as it is our way to adapt to the demands of society, playing an important part in shaping our social role and in how we deal with other people. But, it also has its dangers.   

We will be discussing the dangers of concealing our true self. We may use the persona to help us conceal our vulnerabilities and other parts that we do not want to reveal about ourselves, or we may excessively identify with the persona.  

The persona prevents us from what Jung considered the most important task in our lives, the process of individuation, bringing one closer to the Self.

In the 19th century the status of mass society became a philosophical and moral issue in a manner hitherto unseen. It came to be defined as the permanent possibility in all individuals of losing concern for their personal status and worth, and assigning themselves to something outside themselves in an abstract “other”.  

We’ll be exploring the various existential critiques and interpretations of this phenomenon peculiar to modern society from four major 19th century thinkers who have integrated the event of the masses into the very structure of their philosophies: Søren Kierkegaard ("The Crowd is Untruth" and "The Public"), Friedrich Nietzsche ("The Last Man"), Martin Heidegger ("Das Man") and José Ortega y Gasset (The Mass Man").

Carl Jung’s collective unconscious is one of his most well-known (and controversial) concepts. The collective unconscious is the aspect of the unconscious mind which manifests inherited, universal themes which run through all human life. He came upon the idea in a dream.  

The collective unconscious does not owe its existence to personal experience and consequently is not a personal acquisition, while the personal unconscious is made up essentially of contents which have at one time been conscious but which have disappeared from consciousness through having been forgotten or repressed. The personal unconscious consists of complexes, while the collective unconscious is made up of archetypes (or primordial images).  

Archetypes are collectively-inherited forms or patterns of behaviour. They reflect basic patterns common to us all, and which have existed universally since the dawn of time.

Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote Notes from Underground in 1864 which is considered to be one of the first existentialist works, emphasising the importance of freedom, responsibility and individuality. It is an extraordinary piece of literature, social critique and satire of the Russian nihilist movement as well as a novel with deep psychological insights on the nature of man.  

Dostoevsky’s most sustained and spirited attack on the Russian nihilist movement is voiced by one of the darkest, least sympathetic of all his characters – the nameless narrator and protagonist known as the Underground Man, revealing the hopeless dilemmas in which he lands as a result.  

Notes from Underground attempts to warn people of several ideas that were gaining ground in the 1860s including: moral and political nihilism, rational egoism, determinism, utilitarianism, utopianism, atheism and what would become communism.

In his best-known work The Hero with a Thousand Faces published in 1949, Joseph Campbell describes the archetypal Hero’s Journey or “monomyth” shared by the world. The Hero’s Journey occurs in three sequential phases: separation, initiation and the return. In the climax of the myth, the Hero experiences a psychological death and rebirth. The death of an old aspect of one’s self and the birth of a new and more capable self, receiving insights and experience.  

Joseph Campbell was influenced by Carl Jung’s analytical psychology and his extensive work in comparative mythology and religion covers many aspects of the human experience. The Hero’s Journey is not just a mythological story, but is deeply embedded within the human condition. It tells the story of a person encountering a difficult life problem and their journey in resolving it through personal transformation.   

In therapy, patients who were introduced to the Hero’s Journey as a means of reconceptualising their disorder as a hero quest, rather than an external stressful task, shifted their attitude from passive to active, supporting them to become the “author of their own lives”. This has been clinically tested in a diverse range of issues, such as: anxiety, depression, trauma, addiction, PTSD and psychosis.

Modern society has seen a massive spike in mental illness. Why could this be? We will be exploring the characteristics of modernity and associate it with the rise of mental illness. Modernity is associated by scientific and technological advancement, individualism and hedonism. The empowerment of the individual self is one of the most ramifying features of modernity.

In The Myth of Mental Illness, Thomas Szasz suggests that many people who suffer from mental illness is due to the consequence of the attempt to confront and to tackle the problem of how to live. Modern man feels the weight of his freedom and responsibility to live his life, as Sartre asserts, we are “condemned to be free”. Kierkegaard says that one can get lost in the finite (becoming lost in the crowd) or in the infinite (a state of analysis-paralysis). Camus’s absurd person is one who has seen through the ridiculous repetitions of daily life (Sisyphean condemnation). When we do not have a “why” to satisfy our existence, we must search for alternatives or risk falling into an existential crisis.

Nietzsche’s proclamation of the death of God engenders the most profound cultural, sociological and psychological repercussions, leaving many facing a crisis in discerning a meaning or purpose for their existence, leading to a sense of disorientation. Viktor Frankl tells us that we are living in an existential vacuum, the mass neurosis of modern times is the “unheard cry for meaning”.

Modern man is in desperate need for the hero journey, described by Joseph Henderson. Carl Jung analyses the question: “What actually takes place inside the mentally ill?” Sebastian Junger tells us of he importance of a tribe which modern man lacks, and finally, Carl Jung describes the psychic dissociation in modern man.

Friedrich Nietzsche provided the first detailed diagnosis of nihilism as a widespread phenomenon of Western culture and warns the world of its consequences, most famously in the parable of the madman where he proclaims that "God is dead".  

Nietzsche was concerned primarily with existential nihilism, where life as a whole has no intrinsic meaning or value. He defines nihilism as the “radical repudiation of value, meaning, and desirability." In other words, nihilism consists in an inability to find value and meaning in the higher aspects of this life and world. It empties the world and purpose of human existence.   

In order to overcome nihilism, Nietzsche proposes a “revaluation of all values”, through concepts such as the Übermensch, the Will to Power and the Eternal Recurrence, seeking to replace the old values with new ones that focus on life-affirmation, rather than some beyond. He tells us to remain faithful to the earth.  

In this episode, we begin with an introduction to nihilism followed by three different manifestations of nihilism throughout Nietzsche’s works: nihilism as despair, nihilism as disorientation and nihilism as a lack of higher values. We then discuss the formal distinction he makes of nihilism in the will to power as active nihilism and passive nihilism. Finally, we consider nihilism in modern man, answer the question: Is Nietzsche a Nihilist? And end with how to overcome nihilism according to Nietzsche.

The knight of faith is one of Kierkegaard’s most important concepts, which he discusses in Fear and Trembling under the pseudonym Johannes de silentio. He begins explaining the knight of faith through the story of Abraham and Isaac.   

Although he has never found any knight of faith, he would not deny on that ground that they exist. He looks like any normal person, one detects nothing of the strangeness and superiority that marks him.  

Before one can be a knight of faith, one must become a knight of infinite resignation, one who renounces that which he most loves in the world. The knight of faith makes the leap of faith and by virtue of the absurd, he renounces everything and regains everything, coming back to his original position through a double movement.  

He compares both movements: the movement of infinite resignation and the movement of faith with the leap of a ballet dancer and gives the example through the story of a man in an impossible love with a princess.  

The general message is that the notion of faith is so far cheapened that what is talked about is not properly called faith at all.

Carl Jung warns us against the dangers of the collective shadow (the unknown dark side of society) and urges us to develop our personal shadow (the unknown dark side of our personality) to be consciously aware of the collective shadow and not fall prey to it. We must acknowledge our personal shadow and enter into long and difficult negotiations with it through shadow work.  

Allowing us to rescue the good qualities that lie dormant within us, which improves our lives and the lives of those around us. We can then face the collective shadow and take responsibility to address the denial of important issues and a lack of individual and collective initiative. Telling the truth is the most desirable way to deal with a difficult past, rather than dismissing the atrocities and having the shadow grow blacker until it can no grow no more, and thus history repeats itself.

Man cannot stand a meaningless life. What is the meaning of life? It is hard to think of a single proposition that can make your life meaningful in an instant. One can, however, orient oneself more meaningfully towards one’s goals. To find meaning is a dynamic process that constantly shapes yourself, immerses yourself in reality and has reality immersed in you.  

A meaningful life can be defined according to a positive life regard, referring to an individual’s belief that he is fulfilling a life-framework or life-goal that provides him with a highly valued understanding of his life.  

In this episode we explore several models to the development of a positive life regard, the problems of a meaningless life and dangers of nihilism, life affirmation and meaning as embedded in life and Viktor Frankl’s Will to Meaning.

What is the meaning of death? It is the unequivocal and permanent end of our existence. Most people unconsciously repress the idea of their death, as it is too horrifying a notion to think about.  Some are perhaps not so horrified of the idea of death, but rather the pain associated before one’s death, or the death of loved ones. 

We live entirely unique lives with complete different experiences, but we all share one common fate: Death. This is what links all of us together. Death smiles at us all and all we can do is smile back.  

In this episode we will analyse death philosophically and psychologically: if it is undesirable, if it is to be feared and the misconceptions around the notion of death. Starting with the terror of death with Becker’s The Denial of Death and how to confront one’s mortality with the Stoic Memento Mori and Nietzsche’s Free Death “dying at the right time”.  

We’ll then discuss the Death of Socrates “the unexamined life is not worth living” and Carl Jung’s notions of Life and Death along with his near death experience.

Life is a journey of self-realisation, of understanding and discovering who we truly are, and of maximising our potential. While this might be a life long journey, one can be closer or further from one's true self.  This video analyses self-realisation from a philosophical and psychological perspective. 

Starting from the father of existentialism, Søren Kierkegaard, where we’ll discuss the self, despair and the leap of faith. Sigmund Freud as the father of psychoanalysis, Carl Rogers’ self-concept and Abraham Maslow’s self-actualisation.   

We’ll then discuss some aspects of eastern philosophy and their notion of self (Buddhism, Taoism, Advaita Vedanta), concluding with Carl Jung’s analytical psychology and process of individuation.

What is the meaning of suffering? One of the problems of life is meaningless suffering. Life is pervaded by suffering, and this suffering must be meaningful. It is hard to deny that to live is to suffer, as long as we do not mean that to live is only to suffer.   

One who cannot bear suffering and tries to avoid the unavoidable is bound to end up in existential despair and nihilism, death is just as welcome as there’s no purpose for living.  

We'll explore how to tackle the problem of suffering ("why do I suffer?"), with the objective of finding a meaning to one's suffering. There are two ideals: to see suffering as a punishment (ascetic ideal) or to seeing it as something for human growth, flourishing and greatness.

In Either/Or, Kierkegaard dedicates a chapter on the problem of boredom and the difficulty of maintaining happiness, and proposes his solution for it through the aesthetic sphere of existence.  

To explain how one avoids boredom, the aesthete’s worst enemy, he proposes “crop rotation” as an attempt at a theory of social prudence. It is a sort of science of seeking pleasures characteristic of the reflective aesthete, and not mindlessly doing it as an unreflective aesthete, such as the legend of Don Juan.   

This method can be done extensively or intensively. The aesthete proposes the intensive cultivation of pleasure as the means to avoid boredom, achieve pleasure and subsequently, happiness.

Nietzsche recommends to spend some of our time in complete solitude. To reflect upon the inner voice that conditions our life which is the product of the common conscience of society. 

Solitude is but a temporary matter. He also recommends to spend time with people who possess virtues of the love of life, these “higher men” allow for mental elevation. An individual who isolates himself without ever valuing external opinions will only have his conscience with himself and nobody to ever confront or challenge his views.  

Solitude is thus not just a result of the contempt of the masses, but allows to forge a more profound longing for a community that allows one to explore the best version of oneself. Company is important, and if chosen well – can be mutually beneficial.  

In this sense, solitude is compatible with life in community, but it is also necessary to retreat into complete solitude once in a while, in order to receive its fruits.

Nietzsche’s Übermensch (Overman) is among the most important of his teachings, along with the eternal recurrence and the will to power.  The appearance of the overman most famously occurs in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. He is declared as “the meaning of the earth”. The overman is the ultimate form of man, he is one who overcomes nihilism by creating his own values and focusing on this life, not the afterlife.   

He puts all his faith in himself as an autonomous creator and relies on nothing else. He is the pinnacle of self-overcoming, to rise above the human norm and above all difficulties, embracing whatever life throws at you. He is one who overcomes mediocrity and is not afraid to live dangerously.   

We’ll be exploring the translation and origins of the Übermensch, its connection with Nietzsche’s early conception of the “free spirit”, the relation between the three metamorphoses, the tightrope walker, the last man, the higher man, the death of god and we'll finish by comparing it with the eternal recurrence and the will to power, where self-overcoming is what unites everything together.

The Present Age was published in 1846 by Søren Kierkegaard. He discusses the philosophical implications of a society dominated by mass media, foreseeing the rise of twenty-four hour news and social media, it examines the philosophical implications of a culture of endless, inconsequential commentary and debate – a society eerily similar to our own.

Human, All Too Human: A Book for Free Spirits was published by Friedrich Nietzsche in 1878 and represents a “monument of a crisis” for Nietzsche, a critical turning point in his life and thought.

The book marks the beginning of a second period in Nietzsche’s philosophy, his period as an independent philosopher.

The will to power is one of the most fundamental concepts in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche. It is also one of his most complex concepts as it was never systematically defined in his works, leaving its interpretation open to debate.   

The central point revolves around gaining power over oneself, not others. It is the expression of self-overcoming, becoming who you truly are.  

This episode intends to shed light on this concept, tracing all the way back from his psychological insights of the "desire for power'" to the conception of "will to power", as well as its relationship with the "will to existence", "will to live" and "will to truth".  

We will be focusing on what Nietzsche actually wrote and published himself during his active years, as well as making some references to his posthumously published notes (The Will to Power) where it is appropriate.

Either/Or: A Fragment of Life was published by Søren Kierkegaard in 1843, making it his first major work. It was written under the pseudonym Victor Eremita “Victorious Hermit”.   

The book expresses the viewpoints of two distinct figures with radically different beliefs – the unknown aesthetic young man of Part One, called simply “A”, and the ethical judge of Part II, which he calls “B”.  The first part "Diapsalmata" contains some of Kierkegaard's most popular lines, such as the "unmovable chess piece", "the tragic clown", and "do it or don't do it, you'll regret it".  

Kierkegaard was far more interested in making us think than in giving us answers. We are thus encouraged to decide for ourselves the merits of the various viewpoints presented.

Memories, Dreams, Reflections is the autobiography of Carl Jung written in collaboration with his close associate Aniela Jaffé. It was published a year after his death in 1962.  At his advanced age he would not undertake anything of the sort unless he felt it was a “task” imposed on him from within.

At his advanced age he would not undertake anything of the sort unless he felt it was a “task” imposed on him from within.   

Jung had spoken with many great men of his time but only a few of these occasions remained in his memory. On the other hand, his recollection of inner experiences had grown all the more vivid.  

This book is the only place in his extensive writings in which Jung speaks of God and his personal experience of God. In his scientific works he uses the term “the God-image in the human psyche” based on the objective language of scientific inquiry, while in this case it is subjective, based on inner experience.

Waiting for Godot is a 1953 play by Samuel Beckett that has become one of the most important and enigmatic plays of the 20th century. The story revolves around two men waiting for someone – or something – named Godot. His play remains one of the most magical and beautiful allegories of our time. 

Beckett was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature and commended for having “transformed the destitution of man into his exaltation”.  Waiting for Godot belongs to "The Theatre of the Absurd”, focusing on absurdist fiction. It shares the existentialist condition that there is no God or superior knowledge we can depend on. 

However, a major difference from existentialism that it does not share that we can create our own meaning.   It is better described as an absurdist play. This stems from the absurdist philosophy of Albert Camus, who describes the Absurd in his essay “The Myth of Sisyphus”, as the human incapacity of finding meaning in a meaningless world. The characters are doomed to be faced with the Absurd, and all they can do is try to pass the time.

The Dream of a Ridiculous Man is a short story published in 1877 by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It is practically a complete encyclopedia of Dostoevsky’s most important themes.  

Most of Dostoevsky’s major characters always have “something ridiculous” about them, but they are simultaneously highly self-conscious and capable of deep insight into themselves and the world.   

The story opens with the narrator contemplating the ridiculousness of his own life, and his recent realisation that there is nothing of any value in the world, everything to him appears as indifferent.  

Dostoevsky's The Dream of a Ridiculous Man, explores the dangers of nihilism and rational egoism, as well as the importance of suffering.   

"The consciousness of life is higher than life, the knowledge of happiness is higher than happiness – that is what we have to fight against!”

Man and His Symbols is the last work undertaken by Carl Jung before his death in 1961. The principle aim of “Man and His Symbols” is an introduction to Jung’s work and ideas.  It is an examination of man’s relation to his own unconscious, emphasising the importance of dreams in the life of the individual.  

The book was first published in 1964 and is divided into five parts, four of which were written by Jung’s closest associates in the world of analytical psychology. 

One of the most important part of the whole book is his idea of individuation, the process by which consciousness and the unconscious have learned to live at peace and to complement one another. This addresses the essence of Jung’s philosophy of life: Man becomes whole when (and only when) the process of individuation is complete.

Man’s Search for Meaning was published by Viktor Frankl in 1946. Frankl is the founder of logotherapy. The most important force in a man’s life is his desire to find meaning.   While Freud speaks of a “will to pleasure” and Adler speaks of a “will to power,” Frankl focuses on a “will to meaning”, as the primary motivational force in man.  

The book sold over 10 million copies at the time of Frankl’s death in 1997, and continues to this day to inspire many to find significance in the very act of living. The success of the book may be a symptom of the "mass neurosis of modern times" since the title promised to deal with the question of life's meaningfulness.

No Exit (Huis Clos) is one of Jean Paul Sartre’s most interesting existentialist short stories. The book is the source of one of Sartre’s most celebrated phrases: “Hell is other people”.  

Sartre brilliantly emphasises that hell is not so much a specific place, but a state of mind. It is connected with his idea of the Look, which explores the experience of being seen, as we are always under the eyes of others.   

The conflict of being a subject (an agent of one’s life) and being an object that other people are observing, alienates us and locks us in a particular kind of being, which in turn deprives us of our freedom, because we are unable to escape the “devouring” gaze of the other.   

Sartre illustrates the difficult coexistence of people, as the entire social realm is based on adversarial aspects.

The Plague was published in 1947 and is widely considered as Albert Camus’s most successful novel. It tells the story of a plague epidemic in the Algerian coastal town of Oran, where thousands of rats are found dead all over the city.  

Camus’ absurdist philosophy is at the background of the novel. He stresses the powerlessness of the individual to affect his destiny in an indifferent world.   

Illness, exile, and separation are themes that were present in Camus’ life and his reflections upon them form a vital counterpoint to the allegory. This makes his description of the plague and the pain of loneliness exceptionally vivid and heartfelt.

The Metamorphosis is a book written by Franz Kafka and published in 1915. It has been called one of the seminal works of fiction of the 20th century as well as a classic absurdist fiction novella.  

It starts off with one of the most iconic opening lines in literature: “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin.”  

Franz Kafka's Metamorphosis embodies an absurdist tone with ordinary daily concerns (such as being late for work) even after Gregor Samsa's extraordinary transformation into a monstrous vermin. It is an allegory of modern society's alienation and angst. The story mostly takes place in a single confined room.   

The cause of Gregor’s transformation is never revealed, and Kafka himself never gave an explanation.

The eternal recurrence is a central notion of Nietzsche’s thought. It supposes that you’d have to experience the same life, with the same events and same experiences, repeated for eternity.   

Nietzsche suggests that most people would consider this a curse and that it would require the most impassioned love of life: to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal.  

The idea is horrifying and paralysing as it carries the burden of the “heaviest weight” imaginable. However, it is also the ultimate affirmation of life, it is the rock the fills the emptiness and weightlessness void of nihilism.

The Gay Science is one of Nietzsche’s most beautiful and important books. He describes it as “the most personal of all his books”.   Gay Science has the overtones of a light-hearted defiance of convention; it suggests Nietzsche’s “immoralism” and his “revaluation of all values”. 

In Nietzsche’s own words, one must strive to be an “artistic Socrates”, a philosopher with both an intellectual conscience and with a feeling for art.  The book contains Nietzsche’s first proclamation of the death of God, as well as the eternal recurrence. 

It also contains some of his most sustained discussions on knowledge and truth, the intellectual conscience, and the miseries that accompany religion and morality, warning us against the “preachers of morality”.

Jean Paul Sartre’s first novel, Nausea, gave a name for existential angst. He considered it as one of his best works. It is a philosophical novel with existentialist vibes, that delves into the pure absurdity of the world with Sartre's wild imagination and explores the randomness and superfluity of the world.   Some of the most important themes include the sensation of "nausea", contingency, freedom, bad faith and Sartre's philosophical idea of existence precedes essence.

The Antichrist was written in 1888 one year before Nietzsche’s descend into madness and immediately after his Twilight of the Idols. Both books should be read under the aspect of the last words of his final original book, his autobiography Ecce Homo: “Dionysus against the Crucified.”  

The German title can be translated as either “The Anti-Christ” or “The Anti-Christian”. It was likely meant to mean both. Dionysus has two opponents, one worthy of him, the other unworthy.  

The name Nietzsche gives to his worthy opponent is Christ – hence Dionysus is the Anti-Christ.   “In reality there has been only one Christian, and he died on the Cross.” – The Antichrist §39  

As Nietzsche discusses Christ, the tone becomes ever warmer and even ecstatic. It becomes one of the most moving and powerful parts of the book.  

The unworthy opponent is the Christian, who is undeservedly dignified by being treated to such elaborate condemnation.   The book is directed to a minority and is relatively short composed of 62 sections, mainly devoted to attacking Christianity in its institutional form.

Fear and Trembling is a book by Søren Kierkegaard written under the pseudonym Johannes de silentio. Through the biblical story of Abraham sacrificing Isaac, Kierkegaard, as a great explorer of human psychology, looks into the anxiety that must have been present in Abraham when God commanded him to offer his son as a human sacrifice.   

Kierkegaard coined the term angst to refer to the dizzying awareness of one’s freedom of choice. It is the anxiety of freedom when considering infinite possibilities and the immense responsibility of being able to choose. This proved to be very influential in Existentialism.  

Fear and Trembling contains some of Kierkegaard most important concepts such as the knight of infinite resignation, the knight of faith, the leap of faith, the teleological suspension of the ethical and the stages on life’s way (aesthetic, ethical, religious).

The Meditations by Marcus Aurelius remains one of the great works of spiritual and ethical reflection, as well as one of the key works of Stoicism.  

It is perhaps the only document of its kind ever made, the private thoughts of the world’s most powerful man. Today Marcus Aurelius is considered as the quintessential Stoic.   

The Meditations can be best seen as “spiritual exercises” written as reflections against the stress and confusion of everyday life, a sort of self-help book. He had clearly no expectation that anyone but himself would ever read his Meditations. It seems unlikely that he gave the work a title at all.

Twilight of the Idols or How to Philosophise with a Hammer is one of Nietzsche’s last books, written in 1888.   

As Nietzsche was starting to become recognised, he felt that he needed a short text that would serve as an introduction to his thought.   In a letter, he wrote: “This style is my philosophy in a nutshell – radically up to criminal…”  

The Stranger or The Outsider is a 1942 novel by French author Albert Camus. Though it is a work of fiction, it is often cited as an example of Camus’ philosophy of Absurdism.  

The Stranger has had a profound impact on millions of readers. Through the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach, Camus explored what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd."   

The major themes of the book include: the importance of the physical world, the meaninglessness of human life and the irrationality of the universe.

Modern Man in Search of a Soul was published in 1933 and is a comprehensive introduction to the thought of Carl Jung. The writing covers a broad array of subjects such as gnosticism, theosophy, Eastern philosophy and spirituality in general.

The first part of the book deals with dream analysis in its practical application, the problems and aims of modern psychotherapy, and also Jung’s theory of psychological types. 

The middle part addresses his beliefs about the stages of life and Archaic man. He also looks at the differences between his theories and those of Sigmund Freud.  

In the last essays, Jung discusses psychology and literature, the basic postulates of analytical psychology as well as the spiritual problem of modern man, comparing psychotherapists and clergymen.

Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment first published during 1866, remains the most widely known Russian novel as well as one of the greatest achievements in world literature.  

The book is disguised as a murder mystery, in which the reader knows from the start who has committed the crime. This in-depth exploration of the psychology of a criminal is at the heart of the novel, delving deeply into psychological punishment.  

The main themes include alienation, suffering, morality, faith (or the God-man, Jesus Christ) and the “extraordinary man” (or the man-God), as well as the philosophical themes of nihilism and utilitarianism.  

The protagonist Raskolnikov, is an alienated materialistic rationalist, as well as an atheist and nihilist, taken by the idea that God is dead, believing himself to be an extraordinary man allowed to transgress accepted moral standards for the common good, with a clean conscience.

Existentialism is a philosophy that explores the problem of human existence, with an emphasis on the individual who starts in an apparently meaningless world, and who seeks to create meaning in a world without inherent meaning.  

Existentialism is most commonly associated with several 19th and 20th century philosophers: Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Martin Heidegger, Jean Paul Sartre, and Albert Camus.  

Many of these thinkers never used the term “existentialist” to describe themselves, some of them even rejected the label, while others accepted it. What they did share is a common template. Many of them regarded traditional systematic or academic philosophies too abstract and remote from concrete human experience and focused on the authenticity of the individual.  Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard is regarded as the father of existentialism, who along with Nietzsche, provided the basic foundations of 19th century Existentialism.   

Core ideas to Existentialism include authenticity, individuality, subjectivity, freedom, and responsibility, in order to understand and pursue the meaning of your life.

Sigmund Freud was a neurologist most popularly known as the founding father of psychoanalysis. He popularised and structured the concept of “the unconscious”.  Some of his most popular concepts include: id, ego and super ego, Oedipus complex, free association, repression, libido and the psychosexual stages of development.

Jacques Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist sometimes referred to as “the French Freud” and is regarded as an important figure in the history of psychoanalysis. The Imaginary, the Symbolic, the Real and the Mirror Stage are some of Lacan’s most notable ideas.  His teachings explore the significance of Freud’s discovery of the unconscious, proposing a “return to Freud”

Martin Heidegger is known as one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century. He is best known for his work in existentialism and phenomenology.   

His early work as a phenomenologist and university professor culminated in his masterpiece and one of the most significant works of contemporary European philosophy: Being and Time.  The fundamental concept of Being and Time is the idea of Dasein, which simply means existence, it is the experience of the human being.   

This episode explores many of his key terms for an introduction to Heidegger’s thought. Most importantly: Being-in-the-world, ready to hand and present-at hand, facticity, thrownness, existentiality, fallenness, Das Man, temporality, being-toward-death and the fourfold.   

The later Heidegger reorients his philosophical concerns towards poetry, language, and technology.

Kierkegaard and Nietzsche provided the basic foundations of 19th century Existentialism. It is a philosophy that emphasises the existence of the individual as a free and responsible agent determining their own development.   

They both ended up savagely criticising Christianity, recognising that God no longer exists in the minds of most people. People live falsely religious lives and follow a herd mentality.  In much Kierkegaard and Nietzsche are alike, in the moral decline of society and the corruption of religion, in their existential orientation and in their psychological interests, however they were absolutely opposed on what it means to live a human life to the fullest.  This is largely precipitated by Nietzsche’s complete disillusionment with religion in contrast to Kierkegaard’s continued faith in the existence of God.  Almost one hundred years before it became a historic fact, 

Kierkegaard had prophesised nothing less than the total bankruptcy toward which the whole of Europe seems to be heading. Nietzsche, similarly, predicted the death of God, with nihilism looming dangerously.  Nietzsche urges us to create new values through a Revaluation of All Values, giving way to the figure of the ubermensch, thus man becomes god.   

Kierkegaard tells us that man cannot in any way become God, and a central feature of despair is the inability of a person to manufacture his own identity, something essential is missing, something that would prevent you from simply demolishing the ideal and beginning all over again with a new ideal, such a person lacks something “eternally firm”, God.  

Kierkegaard saw the problem of religious downfall as an opportunity for renewal in Christian beliefs, a chance to embrace Christianity’s original teachings and return to a dynamic and living faith, emphasising the subjective truth of the individual.

Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book For All and None was Nietzsche’s favourite of his creations. It is indeed one of the most fascinating and creative pieces of work in western philosophy.   

It presents the journey of Persian prophet Zarathustra, who spends his time in solitude in the mountains for ten years and grows weary of his wisdom, beginning his down-going to humanity to teach them what he has learned.   Zarathustra's principal teachings are: the Übermensch (Overman), the Eternal Recurrence and the Will to Power.   

The God is dead theme is most famously expressed in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, although it first appeared in The Gay Science. It is commonly misinterpreted. It refers to a historical event in response to the decline of Christianity with the Enlightenment bringing about scientific rationality, representing a crisis in the existing moral values opening the possibility for nihilism. The death of god theme is prevalent throughout the book.

H.P. Lovecraft was an American writer who is known for his creation of what became the Cthulhu Mythos and the creator of the literary philosophy known as Cosmicism, emphasising the Cosmic Horror of the unknown and the insignificance of human beings in the vast realms of space and time.  This episode explores the peculiar philosophy of Cosmicism and its similarities with absurdism, existentialism, and nihilism, three movements that arose from the human experience of anguish and confusion stemming from the Absurd, ultimately diverging to different perspectives on life.  

Soren Kierkegaard wrote one of the most remarkable theistic existentialist works of the 19th century, The Sickness unto Death is famed for the depth and acuity of its psychological insights.  

Writing under the pseudonym Anti-Climacus, Kierkegaard explores the concept of ‘despair’. Despair is a deeper expression for anxiety which is a not-wanting-to-be-oneself. It is a "misrelation" that arises in the self when once cannot balance the eternal (God).  The book is a psychological exposition with Christianity as its background and as intended for “edification and awakening”.  

The sickness which is the topic of Kierkegaard’s work is mental, he describes it as a “sickness of the spirit”.  The book presents a step-by-step progression towards this crisis from a state in which the sufferer is not even aware of this sickness. The principal focus is the raising of the level of a person’s awareness of the urgency of the choice.  

This despair, however, is not something that should be rooted out. From the point of spiritual development, there is actually something healthy about it. Spiritual development is bound to progress through a state of sickness.   The only way out of escaping despair, therefore, seems to be to go through with it.

The Myth of Sisyphus is a philosophical essay by Albert Camus and is considered as one of the most popular existentialist works of the 20th century. It gave rise to the philosophy of Absurdism, sharing some concepts with Existentialism and Nihilism.  

The fundamental concern of the book is the notion of the Absurd, which is best described as “the conflict between the human tendency to seek inherent value and meaning in life, and the human inability to find any in a purposeless, meaningless, and irrational universe.”   

Camus draws from the absurd three consequences: revolt (we must not accept any answer or reconciliation in our struggle), freedom (we are absolutely free to think and behave as we choose), and passion (we must pursue a life of rich and diverse experiences).  

The Myth of Sisyphus explores the value of life in a world devoid of religious meaning. His work can be seen as a reply to Dostoevsky and Kierkegaard.

Notes from the Underground is a novel published by Dostoevsky in 1864. It remains as one of the most important works of existentialist literature. In this work Dostoevsky attempts to justify the existence of individual freedom as a necessary part of humankind.  

The novel consists of two parts. The first one, titled simply “Underground” is told through an unnamed narrator, known as the Underground Man. This part serves as an introduction into the mind of the Underground Man. The second part of the novel is called "Apropos of the Wet Snow”, where he begins to recount his troubled past experiences when he was 24 years old. His inability to interact with other people causes his attempts to form relationships and participate in life to end in disaster and drives him deeper underground.  

Notes from the Underground launches an attack on all ideologies of social progress which aspire to the elimination of suffering (which cannot be eradicated), solving one problem and directing our nature to become unhappy in other ways. It is a novel against Utilitarianism, Utopianism & Rational Egoism.

This episode summarises Nietzsche’s On the Genealogy of Morals in 10 minutes. It is among Nietzsche’s most sustained and cohesive works consisting of three essays: “Good and Evil, Good and Bad”, “Guilt, Bad Conscience and the Like” and “What is the Meaning of Ascetic Ideals?”

In the first essay, Nietzsche sets up a contrast between what he calls “master” morality and “slave morality” and shows how strength and actions have often been replaced by passivity and nihilism as well as that the revolt of slaves in morals begins in the principle of ressentiment.  

The second essay looks into the origins of guilt and punishment, it shows how the concept of justice was born and how internalisation of this concept led to the development of what people called “the soul”.   

In the third and final essay, Nietzsche dissects the meaning of ascetic ideals.  It is not Nietzsche’s intention to reject slave and master morality, internalised values out of hand or ascetic ideals; his main concern is to show that culture and morality, rather than being eternal verities, are human made.  

Zen is a form of Buddhism. It originated in China, when Buddhism spread from India to China and was strongly influenced by Taoist philosophy.   

Zen literally means “meditation”. Zazen or “seated meditation” is the primary practice of the Zen Buddhist tradition. Unlike religion, Zen does not mention God, it does not try to explain how the world was created and what happens after death.  

It highlights meditation as a way of experiencing basic reality. Sitting quietly, going deep  and asking the question: What am I? That is the fundamental question in Zen. It begins with the curiosity and wonder of who you are.   

Be present and see what is happening, not your fantasy about what is happening but seeing what’s actually happening and then responding. That in a nutshell, is Zen practice, and Zen life. To be really present in this moment.   

This episode explores Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov presented in Crime and Punishment and Nietzsche's concept of the Ubermensch.   Raskolnikov’s pride separates him from society, he sees himself as a sort of “higher man”, indeed an ubermensch, a person who is extraordinary and thus above all moral rules that govern the rest of humanity, and so he cannot relate to anyone of the ordinary people "the herd", who must live in obedience and do not have the right to overstep the law.

Although it is almost sure that Dostoevsky, who died in 1881, had never even heard the name of Nietzsche. Nietzsche on the other hand, not only knew some of Dostoevsky’s principal works, but actually acknowledged that he regarded him as the only psychologist from whom he had anything to learn.

Nietzsche and Dostoevsky together both had strikingly similar themes, both were haunted by central questions surrounding the human existence, especially ones concerning God. They were both keen questioners and doubters.  Both were “underworld minds” unable to come to terms either with other people or with the conditions they saw around them and both of them desperately wanted to create truth.

However, Nietzsche and Dostoevsky take separate paths at the crossroads of illusion. But both understood reality in the same way; both faced reality with the courage of despair. Survival for one meant the embracing of illusion; survival for the other meant ultimately the rejection of illusion.

Nietzsche frequently laughs and he especially recommends laughing at oneself. He does not speak of just any laugh, but of a laugh that comes from the depths of man. It is from that depth that one must learn to laugh the superhuman laugh. This laughter arises from the state of anguish and suffering.   

Indeed, comedy must be included within the very art that Nietzsche proclaims is: “the highest task and the true metaphysical activity of this life.”

This is important for those who want to ask clear-eyed questions about the values, phenomena, institutions, and people that they cherish. Laughter makes it possible – if only briefly – to achieve some distance from things one loves, thereby enabling a less biased evaluation of their true worth. It enables one to take oneself less seriously and admit that some of one's cherished beliefs are most likely false.

Perhaps best expressed in his masterpiece Thus Spoke Zarathustra, where the prophet Zarathustra, talks about the “laughter of the herd” and the “laughter of the height”. Other books worthy of mention are: The Gay Science, Beyond Good and Evil and The Will to Power.

Zarathustrian laughter highlights the sense of humour's potential to make your world bigger from your childlike “new beginning” of being amenable to seeing things in a new way, or from a new perspective, and to realise that there are more ways of looking at the world than you previously acknowledged or of which you were even aware of.

It is closely tied to the figure of the child (the final metamorphosis) and amor fati. For Nietzsche, it is vitally important to understand that the tragic and the comic are not polar opposite, but inter-linked modes of experience.

This episode explores the concept of The Absurd of Camus, Kierkegaard, and Dostoevsky as well as the differences between these three existentialists.   

Camus defined the Absurd as: "The conflict between the human tendency to seek inherent value and meaning in life, and the human inability to find any meaning in a purposeless, meaningless, and irrational universe, with the ‘unreasonable silence’ of the universe in response.” 

However, this world in itself is not absurd, what is absurd is our relationship with the universe, which is irrational.  He contributed to the rise of the philosophy known as Absurdism. 

Most famously expressed in The Myth of Sisyphus, which begins with the following thought-provoking statement: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide.”  

Camus argued against the “leap of faith” of Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky considering it as “philosophical suicide”. His response to the absurd is to revolt, which he considers as the only coherent philosophical position.

This episode focuses on the four stoic virtues: courage, justice, temperance, and wisdom. Stoicism is a philosophy most popularly associated with Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius.   

The supreme goal being “living in agreement with nature”, allowing us to flow through life smoothly and with inner peace, flourishing as individuals and fulfilling our own human nature, achieving eudaimonia, commonly referred to as “happiness”, although a better translation would be “fulfilment”.

There are some good reasons to believe that Nietzsche was interested in Eastern philosophy during his lifetime, especially in Buddhism and Hinduism.    

Both Hinduism and Buddhism are of interest to Nietzsche not in themselves, but as alternative positions from which to continue his attack on Christianity.    

Although Nietzsche considers these philosophies as nihilistic (wrongly), he does indicate their profundity. It seems that he studied this material closely and appreciated it greatly.  

Throughout Nietzsche’s books and notes, he refers to different aspects of Eastern philosophy on more than four hundred occasions, and in several of these he claims to be interested in it.   

Albert Camus was a prolific French-Algerian philosopher and author who contributed to the rise of the philosophy known as Absurdism. He is also considered to be an existentialist.

This video explores his main ideas: The Absurd, Revolt and Rebellion, as well as his most notable works: The Stranger (or The Outsider), The Myth of Sisyphus, The Rebel, The Plague, and The Fall.

In the Greatest Philosophers In History series we do an in-depth exploration of the most fundamental ideas and views on life of the greatest philosophers in human history.

Jean Paul Sartre is one of the key figures in the philosophy of Existentialism, which emphasises the existence of the individual or human subject who faces existential angst in an apparently absurd world.   

This episode explores his main ideas including: Nausea, the Absurdity of the World, Existence precedes Essence, Freedom, Bad Faith and The Look, among others.  Sartre had a great influence on many areas of modern thought. A writer of prodigious brilliance and originality. He worked in many different genres: as a philosopher, a novelist, and a cultural critic.   

Sartre is credited for revivifying and popularising Existentialism to the world after it had remained quite stagnant since the death of Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard.   

As well as a philosopher, Fyodor Dostoevsky is most popularly known as a Russian novelist. His works explore human psychology in the troubled socio-political atmosphere of 19th century Russia. His novels had a great impact on psychology, especially of people who lose their reason, who are nihilistic, or who become insane or commit murder. 

He is considered as one of the greatest psychological novelists in world literature.  His greatest novels include: Notes from The Underground, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, Demons and The Brothers Karamazov.

Søren Kierkegaard was a profound and prolific 19th century writer and philosopher in the Danish Golden Age of intellectual and artistic activity. He wrote about how we choose to live and what it means to be alive, centred in the individual or “existing being”. He is regarded as the father of Existentialism. The stress of subjectivity is one of Kierkegaard’s main contributions.  His concept of anxiety or angst is one of the most profound pre-Freudian works of psychology.

His most popular work includes the leap of faith, the concept of angst, the three stages on life (aesthetic, ethical, religious), among others.  In the Greatest Philosophers In History series we do an in-depth exploration of the most fundamental ideas and views on life of the greatest philosophers in human history.

In the Greatest Philosophers In History series we do an in-depth exploration of the most fundamental ideas and views on life of the greatest philosophers in human history.

Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher of the 19th century. He is regarded as one of the most revolutionary thinkers in Western philosophy and intellectual history. He was a cultural critic of his era, of traditional European morality and religious fundamentalism, especially of Christianity.  

Nietzsche shares his views on how he wants us to perceive the world liberating ourselves from oppressive tradition. The main concepts revolve around self-overcoming, perspectivism, human nobility, the will to power, the eternal recurrence, and the overman.

The Art of War is a book attributed to Sun Tzu, who is revered as a legendary historical military figure, as well as a philosopher, and whose real name is Sun Wu.   

“The supreme Art of War is to subdue the enemy without fighting” – Sun Tzu.  

The Art of War is not only concerned with modern warfare, but also spreads and influences the mindset of people in politics, games, and business. It presents a sort of philosophy, a state of mind or psychology for managing conflicts and winning battles. It is closely tied to the philosophy of Taoism, which follows the Tao or “The Way”.  This short book covers most elegantly the strategies that one ought to bear in mind for the defeat of the enemy.

George Orwell depicts what a world could possibly look like under an authoritarian regime in his dystopian novel 1984, coining neologisms such as Big Brother, Thoughtcrime and Doublethink.    

Published in 1949, it remains highly influential in popular culture, and you have probably heard about the term Orwellian before.   However, it is often misinterpreted, especially in social media, politics, and news. The term includes the manipulative and deceptive use of language to brainwash and control the society.  

It is no wonder that it is the most widely used adjective derived from the name of a modern writer, even more common than Kafkaesque or Machiavellian. Orwell was a heavy opponent of totalitarian regimes, especially after what had happened in Nazi Germany and Communist Russia. 

War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.  Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.

Psychedelics are the great mystery of mother nature, a way to open a portal and tap into a hidden consciousness. Find out what these mysterious and ancient plants and fungi are, their current role in society, their effects and benefits on the treatment of depression, anxiety and more, as well as their consciousness expanding capability.  

“Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behaviour and information processing." - Terrence McKenna 

Taoism is a philosophy attributed to Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu. The basic thing in the whole philosophy is the conception of Tao or "The Way", the natural order of the universe which one must discover to realise the potential for wisdom.   

And "Wu wei”, meaning “effortless action" or "action-less action", describing a state of flow that is characterised by great ease and awareness, in which, without even trying, we achieve perfect harmony and perfect knowledge of the current situation.  

Everyone carries a shadow. Find out how to discover and integrate your shadow, unleash your potential: your authenticity, creativity, energy, and personal awakening. The shadow can be described as the unknown dark side of the personality.

The shadow forms part of a projection, you deny the existence of all the things you despise in yourself, while attributing them to others. So, whatever qualities we deny in ourselves, we see in others.  

The shadow is a moral problem that challenges your ego, it affects you in the deepest roots of your personality. To become conscious of it, you must recognise the dark aspects of your personality as present and real.  That is how you can achieve becoming a better version of yourself, with the integration those elements of your psyche that have been repressed and have thus, formed your shadow. Which can be mitigated through shadow-work.  

This video focuses on what are regarded as the four major Jungian Archetypes: The Self, the Persona, the Shadow, and the Anima/Animus.  Few people have had as much influence on modern psychology as Carl Jung. 

He was a practicing psychiatrist and is regarded as the founder of analytical psychology or Jungian analysis.  Jung’s analytical psychology essentially gave birth to the empirical science of the psyche, which culminated in his magnum opus the “Collected Works”, written over a period of 60 years during his lifetime.  Jung distinguishes our psyche into three different realms: consciousness, the personal unconscious, and the collective unconscious.  

Stoicism is unlike any other philosophy in the world. A pragmatic philosophy that has gained rapid popularity in modern times. It teaches self-control and fortitude as a means for overcoming destructive emotions.  

A big challenge in today's highly technological era is people seeking attention, feeling ashamed or lack self confidence.   

This ancient philosophy, teaches you, among many other things, to stop caring about what others think of you. Understanding that it's not what others think that troubles us, but rather our thoughts on what people think about us.