Ep. 35 - Awakening from the Meaning Crisis - The Symbol, Sacredness, and the Sacred

In this episode of "Awakening from the Meaning Crisis," Dr. John Vervaeke explores the concept of sacredness through the lens of relevance realization, contrasting Geertz's notion of homing against horror with Otto's numinous experience. He proposes that sacredness involves serious play with relevance realization, advantageous for agency, action, and self-transcendence, often engaged through symbolic behavior. Vervaeke distinguishes symbols from mere signs, emphasizing their participatory aspect and metaphorical nature, drawing on Lakoff and Johnson's work while critiquing purely bottom-up notions of projection. He suggests symbols facilitate holding and activating mental processes, using the example of the cerebellum's role in coordinating cognitive functions and the Booba/Kiki experiment to illustrate participatory symbol use. Vervaeke argues symbols transform individuals, enabling them to see beyond the symbol and cultivate skills, using breath in meditation and patriotism towards a flag as examples. He posits symbols integrate individuals and disclose reality, affording anagogic experiences and trans-framing, ultimately defining sacredness as the activation and enhancement of religio through mythos, intrinsically interesting due to relevance realization's self-referential nature, and challenging the notion of an essence to relevance inherent in supernatural objects.