“Circles of hell" has become commonplace in language. But what was Dante trying to show us when he wrote the inferno? What has been lost in translation, with this first canticle in Dante’s trilogy now part of a secular culture?

Jason Baxter talks about his new translation of the Inferno with Mark Vernon. They discuss what Dante could convey in language and why the text never ceases to offer fresh insights. How can we understand his encounters with figures from Virgil to Ulysses? What is it truly to be trapped in a hellish state? Why is the road down the necessary precursor to the road into God’s presence?

Jason’s new translation is published by Angelico Press - https://angelicopress.com/products/the-divine-comedy-inferno
Mark’s introduction and guide is too - https://www.markvernon.com/books/dantes-divine-comedy-book

00:00 What Dante could do with language
9:05 Dante and the infernal landscape of today
12:50 Distraction and seeing the truth of ourselves
19:18 Intelligence as reason and love
26:33 Why must Dante descend into hell?
36:08 What was Virgil’s ultimate destiny?
41:30 The fulness of divinity we are called to
48:07 Jason’s translation of the famous opening line
56:20 Jason’s future plans

Rowan Williams and Jesse Armstrong talked at The Idler festival, partly around the idea, caught in the expression, “boring as hell”. But is that right, they asked, when a drama like Succession so clearly appeals to us?

The question is fundamental, for an age inclined to regard hell as appealing or intriguing, is one on the way to being lost. 

Drawing on Dante and William Blake, two great diagnostic writers about different states of mind, this talk explores how the passions of the soul, to use Williams’s expression, can hinder and help us on our way. 

I then think about how various facets of life change when known from within hellish, purgatorial and paradisal perspectives - movement, words, love, time, memory, possessing, faces, wonder.

Hell is boring, not from its own perspective, which knows nothing else, but from that of purgatory and paradise. A time that thinks hell is the most interesting place to be is in hell; one that can still say “boring as hell” has at least a flicker of hope.

See Dante's Divine Comedy: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey - https://www.markvernon.com/books/dantes-divine-comedy-book

Bernard Carr is a leading cosmologist who worked with Stephen Hawking and now investigates time, multidimensionality and consciousness, amongst other things. 

Bernardo Kastrup cites him as at the vanguard of the great task to integrate matter and mind.

So I was delighted to get the chance to ask Bernard about images from Dante. 

We talked about relational cosmologies as advocated by Carlo Rovelli, who has talked about being  inspired by Dante, and whether alternative images from the Divine Comedy might illuminate his own approaches, as well as our understanding.

Still in the lovely valley of the rulers, angels and a serpent dramatically appear, though oddly no-one's concerned.

Virgil and Sordello embrace again, before Sordello explains they must find a safe place for the night.

Hassled by agitated souls, Dante asks Virgil if prayers can effect divine laws. A discussion brings a new state of mind.

At first distracted by the indolent, they encounter a new group of agitated souls, though keep their focus.

Virgil and Dante find the narrow path that leads up, and begin the climb. A break brings another group of souls.

Virgil is troubled. They encounter slowly moving souls, and search for an entry onto the mountain.

As the sun rises, an angel speeds towards them, bringing a friend and a tense sense of tremendous things.

Virgil and Dante are in a world of freshness and hope, sunlight and stars, but also strangeness and novelty.

The last canto of the Inferno sees Dante and Virgil face to face with Lucifer, before a surprising turnaround.

Dante and Virgil encounter Count Ugolino deeper in Cocytus, as well as the souls of the living dead.

This episode of the Sheldrake-Vernon Dialogues continues Rupert and Mark's exploration of Dante’s Divine Comedy, taking a lead from Mark’s book, Dante’s Divine Comedy: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey. 

Dante is now guided by Beatrice through the heavenly spheres and into the Empyrean. It is a journey into the abundance of infinity and eternity, which immediately struck Rupert as akin to a DMT trip. 

Mark and Rupert explore how that is an apt analogy with Dante enabling us to incorporate the visionary into everyday life and understand how deeper perceptions of being can inform different times and cultures. 

The conversation moves over the relationship between the one and the many, the universal message of Christianity, the ways in which love and intellect work in tandem, and how Dante can aid various quests for knowledge today.

Seeking heavenly help to find the true words, Dante steps into Cocytus, revealed as a reality of imprisoning, deadening ice.

Virgil and Dante wander into a grey zone, hear an ominous horn, and encounter the terrible giants.

Minds and bodies themselves begin to disintegrate in souls driven rabid and feverish by playing god in life.

Dante and Virgil argue, divided, and then walk to the tenth bolgia. It's infected with the pestilence of denuded nature and humanity.

The ninth bolgia entombs figures Dante sees as schismatic in life, now rent asunder themselves.

Still overlooking the eighth bolgia of Maleboge, a new writhing flame approaches. The soul says he trusted a pope.

The eight bolgia appears almost majestic until Dante understands how its souls are trapped in flames.

They see even more terrible metamorphoses in the seventh bolgia and realise the serpents are human souls too.

Virgil helps Dante climb from the sixth bolgia. They come to the seventh, a melee of serpents chasing souls.

Affection balances fear. Thought counters foolhardiness. They escape to fresh despair in the sixth bolgia.

Various human experiences are deepened and resolved as Dante travels through hell, purgatory and paradise. The Divine Comedy can be read as an examination of this transfiguring of perception.

From the alienation of hell, through the transforming time of purgatory, to the ever-expanding awareness of paradise: Dante show us how time & love, seeking & suffering, telepathy & transhumanising can change to reveal divine life without limit.

For more on Mark's book on the Divine Comedy - https://www.markvernon.com/books/dantes-divine-comedy-book

Virgil and Dante are escorted by 10 Malebranche demons. Something has gone very wrong.

They meet the demons of Malebranche. Virgil reckons he can outplay them. Dante does not.

Dante is perturbed when they encounter the diviners, an art he practices too.

Dante perceives the bleak bankruptcy of exchanging spiritual gifts for temporal goods.

They are in the eighth circle, the place called Malebolge, as the descent deepens further.

Approaching the cliffs into the deeper reaches of hell, they confront the monster Geryon and souls disfigured by usury.

Ominously tumbling waters. An odd encounter with three trapped souls. And then stranger things happen.

Following the red stream, across burning sands, a gaggle of souls approach them.

On the edge of an expanse of burning sand and falling fire, they speak with a soul cursing Jupiter and see a vision.

They enter an ugly wood to encounter souls who killed themselves.

This is a contribution to recent dialogues on idealism between Bernardo Kastrup, John Vervaeke, Matt Segall, Philip Goff and others, including myself.

I draw particularly on:

- Dante's account and analysis of his journey to the heart of consciousness in all its fullness - source and manifestation - in the Divine Comedy

- how minds as we know them not only dissociate but also project and introject, and what meaning this might have for Bernardo's thesis

- trinitarian understandings of oneness, and the dynamics of creation.

I start with some concerns that I have with Bernardo's account of analytic idealism, much as I value all that he does. They focus on his sense of mind at large, or God, and his use of the phenomenon of dissociation.

I'm struck that Dante's discovery of his true nature in God goes hand in hand with the increase of his individuality and personhood. Also, he not only experiences dissociation, or a sense of separateness, but projection and introjection - two further mechanisms that minds deploy, which I think are key.

This takes me to trinitarian understandings of oneness, in its eternal and infinite form. In divine life, kenosis is ecstasis; giving is receiving; knowing and unknowing are a mutual unfolding; longing is satisfaction; expansion is the expression of what already is. If the meaning of our life is the discovery of our nature in theosis, that might add to the model.

Beatrice conveys this movement to Dante, overcoming his separateness by discerning his projections, and offering them back to him as introjections of the truth of himself, others and God.

Finally, I raise questions of suffering, the nature of life, and why we experience separateness at all, before the discussion concludes with the hadith beloved by Sufis, another idealist expression of genius:  

“I was a Treasure unknown then I desired to be known so I created a creation to which I made Myself known; then they knew Me.” 

Descending a steep slope, they see the minotaur, centaurs and a river of boiling blood.

A foul stench prompts illumination of lower hell's subtler entrapments and evils.

Now inside Dis, they meet those who have followed their own way: heretics.

Terrified by the demons that block their path, Dante and Virgil wait.

Still in the fifth circle, they face the river Styx and the terror of Dis.

Virgil and Dante are in the fourth and fifth circles of hell shocked by souls trapped by money and by anger.

The third circle of hell brings filth and muck, Cerberus and Ciacco.

Virgil and Dante enter the second circle of hell and meet those whose love in life has trapped them.

Virgil leads Dante into the first circle of hell where they meet souls who didn't live their lives, as well as pagan poets and philosophers who did.

Dante and Virgil pass through the gates of hell and enter the vestibule to encounter anxious souls.

Paradise. Destiny for a chosen few? Dismissed today by many. Or might it be the end for us all?

Dante tells us to follow closely in the richest, subtlest and most expansive part of the journey conveyed in the Divine Comedy. He shows us how to develop paradisal perception, the way to know this experience of reality now, and to become ready for it in the hereafter.

Paradise is when the deepest truths become clear, the most intimate participation with life is known as divine.

This is the third of three talks, originally hosted by the Fintry Trust.

The talk draws on Mark's book, Dante's Divine Comedy: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey - https://www.markvernon.com/books/dantes-divine-comedy-book

Dante wavers and Virgil reveals why he is here. 

Dante frightened by his plight, terrorised by strange beasts, discovers a guide. 

The mode of life called purgatorial is a medieval superstition, according to some, and the very purpose of mortal life, according to others. So what did Dante make of Purgatory and what has it to teach us now?

In the Purgatorio, the essence of the spiritual path is shown in encounters and discussions. Purging itself, for example, is not about being rid of what we don't like, an activity that is another form of vanity. Rather it is about becoming clearer of that which hinders our sight of God and so limits the expansion of our being. Purgatorial living cleanses the doors of perception.

This is the second of three talks, originally hosted by the Fintry Trust.

The talk draws on Mark's book, Dante's Divine Comedy: A Guide for the Spiritual Journey - https://www.markvernon.com/books/dantes-divine-comedy-book