> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.withrealityinmind.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Iain McGilchrist, Bernardo Kastrup: to perceive is to participate in reality - URL: https://www.withrealityinmind.com/iain-mcgilchrist-2/ - Published: 2026-04-08T15:21:21.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-20T14:48:25.000Z - Description: On the dashboard, the daimon, & if time is frames or flow - Author: Amir Giles - Tags: recording Recording details Date: 7 April 2026 Duration: 2h 2m Free preview Chapters 00:00:15 Welcoming announcements **AGREEMENT ON IDEALISM** 00:05:55 **Ian’s path to idealism** 00:08:36 The idea that consciousness is an illusion is ludicrous 00:09:23 Matter as an aspect of experience 00:10:40 Creativity and differentiation as fundamental aspects of the Cosmos 00:11:18 **Bernardo’s path to idealism** (work at CERN and with AI) 00:12:00 Structure & function cannot generate consciousness 00:15:50 **The implausibility of materialism:** 00:17:20 Complexity in the cerebellum ≠ consciousness 00:18:25 Preserved consciousness with virtually no brain 00:20:40 Complexity & emergence explanations = magical thinking 00:21:00 Reference to Jerry Coyne and simple organisms which he claims are conscious (e.g., Drosophila) 00:23:33 Materialism as a belief **IS PERCEPTION REPRESENTATION OR PARTICIPATION?** 00:24:24 Perception as participation in reality 00:25:00 We don’t inhabit the body, we live it 00:26:20 Immanuel Kant and the noumenal 00:27:00 The Dashboard metaphor (intermediate interface, evolutionary pressure) 00:29:11 Endogenous mental states, intentional content 00:30:00 Book by Owen Barfield: *Saving the Appearances* 00:32:00 Continuity between individual and universal consciousness, they are not separate but can, nevertheless, be distinguished 00:33:50 Brain hemispheres 00:34:52 Why does consciousness exist? 00:36:36 Map vs. territory 00:37:00 If what we perceive is not real, then what would “more real” mean? 00:39:00 The world is also experiential 00:42:24 Thermodynamics and game theory imply 00:43:23 Seeing without eyes 00:44:44 The ground of being is continuously becoming, unfolding, precipitating into actuality 00:46:46 We didn't evolve just to survive: The role of beauty, why do we need it, where does it come from? 00:49:40 Optical illusions 00:51:00 The experience of being in love 00:54:00 Only mental states between us and world, modulating each other 00:54:33 Book by Arthur Schopenhauer: *The World as Will and Representation* 00:56:46 Perception is representational 00:57:40 Intimate access to the self 00:58:00 Matter as appearance of mental states 00:59:20 Dreaming minds creating worlds 01:00:00 Fantasy and imagination: one pulling us away from reality, the other revealing it 01:03:43 Persian philosophy 01:05:00 All the world is an icon 01:06:00 Denotation and connotation: symbols connote that which cannot be conveyed by denotation 01:08:08 Art and mythology: what we can see through them **01:10:15 Perspectives on Time** 01:34:30 **The experience of a Daimon** 01:35:00 The Daimon as the impersonal will flowing within us 01:36:00 Nature wills through us 01:37:00 Ian’s experience with the Daimon 01:37:30 Bernardo’s experience with his Daimon 01:38:38 Ian was forced to write by his Daimon 01:40:00 Bernardo was also forced to write by his Daimon 01:42:00 Shared introversion of Ian and Bernardo 01:43:50 What is the Daimon? 01:46:20 **Attention changes the world** 01:47:34 Brain hemispheres and analytic idealism 01:52:22 Christianity and the teachings of Jesus 01:59:00 Closing remarks 02:00:00 Ian’s upcoming event in Oxford (value, goodness, beauty and truth) *In collaboration with Rita Conde* 💡 This event recording is available to members down the bottom, and also as a one-off recording [here](https://dandelion.events/e/r5yfz?ref=withrealityinmind.com). In this deep conversation, Iain and Bernardo share their arguments for idealism, clear up misconceptions about ‘the **dashboard of perception**’ and compare their views on **time**. (For Bernardo it is an illusion; for Iain it is real, a continuous flow indicative of the unity of nature.) They also shared their personal experiences of surrendering to their **daimon -** the real and often demanding impersonal force in their lives whose meaning is often only revealed in retrospect. Perhaps most important is where they most align: consciousness is primary, and to perceive is to participate in both the purpose and unfolding of reality. They agree that to rely on 'emergence' for how matter gives rise to experience is pure hand-waving. To evoke complexity ignores the facts: up to 80% of neurons are in the unconscious cerebellum, and there are extraordinary cases of conscious experience in humans with virtually no brain. ### But can we know the world as it is? Even if granting primacy to consciousness, it isn't clear if we can know reality as it is. Is perception merely a dashboard representation of an unknowable world, or are we embedded in reality in ways that are immediate and profound? For both Iain and Bernardo, we are parts of a wider field of consciousness. But for Bernardo, this field's inner experience is represented to us on a dashboard we could call our 'screen of perception.' And this *does* separate us from the world as it is to itself. But it also imbues experience with incredible meaning; every rock, tree and supernova represents a rich inner life that we can guess at by virtue of knowing our own inner life. ### A real encounter For Iain, however, the dashboard metaphor is too mechanistic, implying data that could be measured by a machine. Reality is not hidden behind a dashboard; it is an experience in which we're embedded: > I'm wanting to get towards is this idea of a very real contact being made between my consciousness and that field of consciousness: And it's not just like reading a dial, it's actually perceiving something that has qualities, and the qualities are true. > So, whatever it is out there, and whatever it is in me, are producing something together... It is a real encounter, and it's out of that encounter that all the experiential world that we know, including the world of science, comes ### Perception, imagination & participation Bernardo agrees, there are limits to the dashboard metaphor. If we *really* take in the forms and shapes of the world, they *can* evoke in us the deepest archetypes of nature. The universe becomes a living symbol charged with meaning. For Iain, if we regard our perceptions of the world not as mere representations, but rather look so deeply into them that we are "actually looking through them," we arrive at a deeper experience of reality. This requires a form of imagination that is the opposite of fantasy. As such, > "Imagination is not just something that's used by artists and poets. It is something we use all the time when we really make contact with reality." It is moments like these that made this such an inspiring conversation, tangibly shifting my experience the following day. I would love to also hear about your experience of engaging! With appreciation, Amir P.S. next week we discuss Bernardo's book [More than Allegory](https://www.withrealityinmind.com/more-than-allegory/) so make sure to get your copy and prep your questions. ### Also discussed - Divergent views on **time** - **Brain hemispheres** and analytic idealism - Art, mythology and Christianity - Owen Barfield: *Saving the Appearances* Speakers ![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c5/20/c520bbe6-927b-460d-bf38-d4f48d5dc338/content/images/2026/04/image.png) Iain McGilchrist **Iain McGilchrist** is a former Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, an associate Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, a Consultant Emeritus of the Bethlem and Maudsley Hospital, London, a former research Fellow in Neuroimaging at Johns Hopkins University Medical School, Baltimore, and a former Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Stellenbosch. He now lives on the Isle of Skye, off the coast of North West Scotland, where he continues to write, and lectures worldwide. He is committed to the idea that the mind and brain can be understood only by seeing them in the broadest possible context, that of the whole of our physical and spiritual existence, and of the wider human culture in which they arise – the culture which helps to mould, and in turn is moulded by, our minds and brains. He was a late entrant to medicine. After a scholarship to Winchester College, he was awarded a scholarship to New College, Oxford, where he read English. He won the Chancellor’s English Essay Prize and the Charles Oldham Shakespeare Prize in 1974 and graduated (with congratulated 1st Class Hons) in 1975 (MA 1979). He was awarded a Prize Fellowship of All Souls College, Oxford in 1975, teaching English literature and pursuing interests in philosophy and psychology, in particular the mind-body relationship, between 1975 and 1982\. As a result he went on to train in medicine, and during this period All Souls re-elected him to a further Fellowship (1984-1991), and again in 2002 (to 2004). He was formerly a Consultant Psychiatrist of the Bethlem Royal and Maudsley NHS Trust in London, where he was Clinical Director of their southern sector Acute Mental Health Services. He trained at the Maudsley Hospital in London, working on specialist units including the Neuropsychiatry and Epilepsy Unit, the Children’s Unit and the Forensic Unit, as well as, at Senior Registrar level, the National Psychosis Referral Unit and the National Eating Disorder Unit. During this period he also worked as a Research Fellow in neuroimaging at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, USA. His clinical experience has been broad-based, and he has run a busy Community Mental Health Team in an ethnically diverse and socially deprived area of south London. He has published original research on neuroimaging in schizophrenia, the phenomenology of schizophrenia, and other topics, and contributed chapters to books on a wide range of subjects, as well as original articles in papers and journals, including the *British Journal of Psychiatry, American Journal of Psychiatry, Philosophy, Psychiatry & Psychology, Religion, Brain and Behavior \[a special issue on his work\], Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, The BMJ, The Lancet, The TLS, The London Review of Books, The LA Review of Books, The Listener, The Literary Review, Essays in Criticism, The Modern Language Review, The English Historical Review, The Wall Street Journal*, *The* *Sunday Telegraph and Sunday Times* on topics in literature, medicine, psychiatry and philosophy. He has taken part in many radio and TV programmes and documentaries, including the BBC’s *The Moral Maze*, *Start the Week*, and *Today*, as well as their series *In Doubt We Trust*, NPR’s *The Hidden Brain, WNYC’s The Leonard Lopate Show, ABC’s All in the Mind,* TVO’s *The Agenda*, the BBC’s *Soul Searching* by David Malone, and his *Heart vs Mind*, Angel TV’s *Animate Earth,* Pat Collins’s *What We Leave In Our Wake,* the feature film *Innsaei – The Sea Within* by Hrund Gunnsteinsdóttir*,* Bruce Parry’s feature film, *Tawai: A Voice from the Forest*, and recently a Canadian full-length feature film about his work, *The Divided Brain*. He has numerous podcasts, and interviews on YouTube, among them dialogues with Jordan Peterson, Sam Harris, David Fuller of *Rebel Wisdom,* Rowan Williams, John Cleese and philosopher Tim Freke, as well as lectures, seminars and commentaries. His books include *Against Criticism* (Faber), *The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World* (Yale UP), *The Divided Brain and the Search for Meaning; Why Are We So Unhappy*? (Yale UP), and *Ways of Attending* (Routledge). His latest publication is the two-volume work, [*The Matter with Things*](https://channelmcgilchrist.com/matter-with-things/?ref=withrealityinmind.com) which was published in November 2021 by Perspectiva Press. This is a sustained critique of reductive materialism, and concerns such questions as ‘Who are we? What is the world? What is the nature of time and space? What do we mean by purpose, value and the divine? And how do we most reliably set about finding out?’ He has also been commissioned by Oxford University Press to write a book of reflections on the humanities and sciences; and plans to write a critique of contemporary society and culture from the standpoint of neuropsychology, as well as a study of what is revealed by the paintings of subjects with psychotic illnesses. Speakers ![CTA Image](https://storage.ghost.io/c/c5/20/c520bbe6-927b-460d-bf38-d4f48d5dc338/content/images/2026/09/Bernardo-Kastrup-profile.jpg) Bernardo Kastrup Analytic idealism Bernardo Kastrup is the Executive Director of Essentia Foundation and Founder/CEO at AI systems company Euclyd BV. His work has set off the modern renaissance of metaphysical idealism. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy (ontology, philosophy of mind) and another in computer engineering (reconfigurable computing, artificial intelligence). As a scientist, he has worked for the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Philips Research Laboratories (where the ‘Casimir Effect’ of Quantum Field Theory was discovered). He has also been creatively active in the high-tech industry for almost 30 years, having founded parallel processor company Silicon Hive (acquired by Intel in 2011) and worked as a technology strategist for the geopolitically significant company ASML. Most recently, he has founded AI company Euclyd BV. Formulated in detail in many academic papers and books, his ideas have been featured in *Scientific American*, the magazine of *The Institute of Art and Ideas*, the *Blog of the American Philosophical Association* and *Big Think*, among others. His most defining book is *Analytic Idealism in a Nutshell: A straightforward summary of the 21st-century’s only plausible metaphysics.* [Explore Bernardo’s work →](https://www.bernardokastrup.com/?ref=withrealityinmind.com)