Episode 1: Peter Sas - Nondualism
A look back at Episode 1 of Strange Exiles, with Dutch philosopher Peter Sas
Episode 1 of our new podcast about ideas, identity and ideology was a conversation about nondualism and consciousness with philosopher Peter Sas, author of the blog THE CRITIQUE OF PURE INTEREST.
Thanks for subscribing to the Strange Exiles newsletter. This is the first one, so congratulations for getting on board at day dot. I'm Bram, host of the show.
Strange Exiles is all about ideas, no matter how strange or far out. It's about identity - how we relate to ourselves, and the world. And it's about ideology - the structuring beliefs that underpin the way we see things, and how we act.
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Each month, I'll be sending you some more information about the previous episode's guest, and a list of the books, essays or sites they recommended during our chat.
I'll also send you a preview of the next episode. We just moved this newsletter to Substack, so if you’re reading this here, Episode 2 is now available:
In this one, I spoke to Ian 'Cat' Vincent, a journalist who writes about all sorts of what he calls "weird shit" for magazines including Fortean Times.
Cat is also a practicing magician, and we discussed the roots of his ritual practice and beliefs, the curse he placed on Boris Johnson, and his work on the stage version of Robert Anton Wilson's Cosmic Trigger.
Like me, Cat's a huge comics nerd - we also do a deep dive into magical symbolism in The Invisibles, Hellblazer, Jonathan Hickman's X-Men run and more.
Check our Anchor page for links to streaming services beyond Spotify.
Absolute idealism, nondualism and consciousness: Recommendations from Peter Sas
In Episode 1, I spoke with Dutch philosopher Peter Sas, author of the blog The Critique of Pure Interest. Over the years, Peter's work has taken in German idealism, Hindu mysticism and all points on the spiritual and philosophical map.
I was especially fascinated by the way Peter has blended together these influences and ideas, often demonstrating their shared roots and associations in his essays. The influence of Eastern religion on Western thought is widely acknowledged, but little explored.
Below are some essays from Peter Sas, and some links to the books he mentioned in Episode 1. These podcasts are about discovery and exploration for me, so a lot of these are books I hope to dip into myself over the next few months.
Let's start with a few recommendations from Peter's blog, The Critique of Pure Interest. In this essay, he explores the concept from the Upanishads that 'Atman is brahman' - that our consciousness and the universe are the same phenomenon.
In another essay, Peter asks a provocative question echoing Nick Bostrom's 'simulation argument' paper. Is the universe a self-computing consciousness? And in a in a short essay, Peter discusses how nonduality leads to "the problem of ego".
In perhaps my favourite essay from Peter's blog, he explores the possibility of constructing a dialectical approach to nihilism, drawing on ideas from Buddhism.
Peter's first book recommendation is the volume that inspired the name of his blog. Immanuel Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, first published in the 1780s, is a seminal philosophical enquiry into metaphysics. He also recommends an earlier work by GW Liebniz, Principles of Nature and Grace, one of the building blocks of his later work on the nature of reality and consciousness.
On nondualism, he recommends Michael W. Taft's volume Nondualism: A brief history of a timeless concept. I'll definitely be ordering a copy of this to help me further explore nondualism and its history as an idea.
As a musical bonus, here’s a playlist of beatless, ambient and atmospheric music that I use for meditation and relaxation. I hope you enjoy it.
The next recommendation comes from me rather than Peter Sas - John Gray's Straw Dogs is one of the central texts I tend to refer to. It offers a rationalist, skeptical argument against progress, neoliberalism, and the belief that humans and animals have radically different modes of consciousness. It's an iconoclastic, sometimes challenging read, which frames our belief in progress as a legacy of Christian millenarian tendencies.
You can find out more about The Upanishads on Wikipedia. These ancient Vedic texts are hugely important, and exist in many different translations and editions. As Peter mentioned during our chat, they are old tales, told within a symbolic framework and system of allegory that can be difficult to penetrate. But they are also beautiful, and it's well worth exploring a translation just to let the ideas and stories wash over you.
One book Peter recommended as one of the key works in German philiosophy is Georg William Friedrich Hegel's The Phenomenology of Spirit - Hegel is a writer I've struggled with in source texts, but have started to understand a little better through reading Slavoj Žižek. Last month's chat has definitely inspired me to try again with the originals!
We also discussed Karl Marx's Das Kapital and Communist Manifesto in relation to Peter's new theory of Buddhist Marxism. These are both key texts that I will likely discuss with more of the guests coming up on the show, and even if you have read both before, I find they are worth revisiting regularly. I get chills every time I read the words: "A spectre is haunting Europe..."
Episode 3 is out everywhere on 12 February with radical poet David Lee Morgan. I’ll talk a little more about David in our next newsletter, and deliver a cornucopia of magic(k)al recommendations from Cat.
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Take care of each other.
Bram E. Gieben, Glasgow, January 202