Iain McGilchrist & Bernardo Kastrup discuss their Daimons

Hinzugefügt: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]But she says, "I'd love to know whether Bernard's accounts of attending to, surrendering to, or sometimes bargaining with the daemon correspond in any way to Ian McGilchrist's understanding of what happens when we attend to right hemisphere apprehensions of the world, and perhaps also to his concept of attention as a moral act."

[00:00:19]I don't know how familiar you are already, Ian. Yeah, oh, um I was just checking if Ian was familiar with I I'm I'm not sure I know about your Is it Is this your experience of a daemon? Cuz I have an experience of a daemon. Yes, I do.

[00:00:36]All my life I have had it, at least since I was 12. Overwhelming experience, yes.

[00:00:41]It It's It's the the most beautiful thing in my life and and and the most damned curse of my life at the same time.

[00:00:52]I I think we may share some of this.

[00:00:56]So, I I describe the daemon as the flow of impersonal will within us.

[00:01:02]It's not serving our agenda, it's not what my ego is telling me I should do or should go for or should prefer. It has a life of its own. Often it's destructive to us at a personal level.

[00:01:14]Yeah.

[00:01:16]But it's just I I defended the notion that it's just natural. We are part of nature. We didn't parachute here out of somewhere else. So, if Of course, nature wills through us.

[00:01:28]Why would it be different? I mean, nature wills through the apple tree blossom in spring. Imagine that the apple tree blossom say, "No, my life is about me. I want to stay open and fresh forever." Well, it's silly, right? So, for the exactly the same reason I think it's silly for us to pursue our own personal agenda in life. And it's silly to deny that there is an impersonal will flowing through us for the same reason that it's silly to deny that there is an impersonal will flowing through the apple blossom in the apple tree. So, that's the summary of my account of the diamond. I mean No, I like that.

[00:02:03]Um and that's that's I suppose fairly constant with my own experience. I suppose ultimately I'd say that it's describable in terms of conventional psychology, but I have found myself in the grip of something that forced me to do uh notably writing The Matter of Things, which was a colossal effort. Um it it says people may know a disgracefully long book and it took me a long time. And I I didn't uh and for a lot of that time I was absolutely not free to do what I wanted to do.

[00:02:39]Um and I felt very strongly that um something was uh as it were riding on my shoulders and saying, "No, you may want to go and do you're not going to do that. You stay here and write this thing down." Um what does one make of it? But anyway, that's my diamond.

[00:03:03]Yes, I I mine is the same. Some people have a diamond that is like a muse. It seduces from the front. Mine >> Yes. kicks from behind. Mine is will use torture if it needs to. It will coerce. It will force. It it will dominate. [clears throat] So, yeah, we have it in common again. My whole life is this. It's like this.

[00:03:27]I >> [snorts] >> I don't know. I mean, I it's interesting cuz I mean, reflecting on the course of my life which at the time it seemed I mean, I know this is a bit corny. It it seemed not obvious that I would suddenly give up um a successful career in humanities with a fellowship at Oxford and in order to become a medical student. I know and and then it didn't seem obvious that I I do all sorts of So, there's been a lot of things in my life where it didn't seem obvious. But in fact, um the retroscope retrospectoscope is a wonderful thing. Um it makes sense in in in retrospect. But of course, it would do, wouldn't it? Because I am where I am as a result of those things. But uh but certainly in that particular case of the Daimon that um uh forced me to write, it it it it um it's had consequences that um you know, it's taken me some time since I finished writing really to get uh back to being more or less my normal self, I would say. I I used to think burnout I didn't think it exists. I think it's just, you know, a fanciful way of saying you're a bit tired and so but no, I think I something something burned out.

[00:04:42]And I think it's it's I've allowed it to come back into in into like the scorched earth is beginning to give forth flowers again.

[00:04:51]Uh are you free now?

[00:04:53]Did you did it give you peace now? Yeah, more or less. Yes, more or less. Yes.

[00:04:59]Thank you.

[00:05:00]Can you I am I wish I wish well I wish peace for you.

[00:05:07]I will speak to your demon.

[00:05:10]>> [laughter] >> I I don't like to write, Ian. I wrote 12 books under the leash of I know. of the Daimon. I don't like to write. It's not an enjoyable thing. I don't like to be a public person. Um I don't like to receive projections of being some kind of wise person. I I find it incredibly uncomfortable. Uh I don't like the whole shebang.

[00:05:35]The whole thing. I'm with you.

[00:05:37]I'm with you. I'm really with you.

[00:05:39]Um people say I I say, you know, and then they say, "You must find it very easy to write, you know." and I go I do not. And they said, "Well, it doesn't read like that." And I said, "Well, one of the reasons it doesn't read like that is that I sweated blood to make it not read like that."

[00:06:00]Yeah. [clears throat] Yeah. The real Bernardo just wants to build his computers in his home lab.

[00:06:06]>> Okay. And and go hiking in the mountains in Switzerland and Austria.

[00:06:11]>> Yes. That's That's all the real Bernardo wants to do. And and to be as anonymous and unknown as possible because I'm a natural introvert. This whole show we are doing here today, I can't begin to describe to you how unnatural [clears throat] this is to me. But the only peace I found was to just say, "Look, >> Yes. my life is not about me."

[00:06:32]So, because obviously it's not, right?

[00:06:35]Whoever thinks their life is about themselves didn't look a little broader because it's Yes. obvious our lives are not about us. No.

[00:06:43]>> Just for the same reason that the life of the apple blossom is not about the apple blossom. No.

[00:06:48]>> I found peace with it Yes.

[00:06:51]>> through my left brain hemisphere by just sort of accepting it's not about me. So, you know, stop complaining, you know, just do the thing. This This is what life is about. And I found a um a form of peace this way. It's a Yes.

[00:07:08]It's a unstable peace, but I do have it.

[00:07:12]Yes.

[00:07:13]Well, I think peace is Well, I don't know. I don't know what I'm talking about. But maybe some people discover a peace that is lasting and untroubled, but uh I find nothing in life nothing in life that has just a single simple soul or or characteristic. It It's usually composed of of opposites. And I It's interesting you say you're an introvert. I am, too.

[00:07:40]Um and you have to learn as introverts do, how to speak in public and so forth.

[00:07:46]But it is something that is No.

[00:07:49]It's interesting, you know, for years and years and years, I used to go to neurological conferences, and I I never spoke, and I never asked a question because somehow I didn't want to suddenly be, you know, thrown into a position of I'm being observed or So, it's just my psychopathology, but there we are.

[00:08:17]I don't even now I'm not comfortable with it, but as you say, there we are.

[00:08:21]This is what we do.

[00:08:23]>> [snorts] >> And on the whole, I wouldn't have it otherwise. I I think you know, I do like having written, I must admit. It's quite different from writing. I'm I'm happy to I'm happy to have written, yeah.

[00:08:36]Exactly. There must be There must be something in time, I think. No, no.

[00:08:40]>> [laughter] >> I am completely with you there. It having written is a liberation. Like It is.

[00:08:48]>> thing is done. It's done. It has been birthed.

[00:08:52]Yes. Yes, exactly.

[00:08:54]>> [laughter] >> I love having >> I am there.

[00:08:56]>> I love having been to the dentist. Um Yes.

[00:08:59]>> [laughter] >> Well, there's some people in the chat who aren't familiar with this concept, I mean, I know that you have a succinct definition, Bernardo, which would be interesting to see if resonates with Ian.

[00:09:10]Um Do you mind giving your I just mentioned it. It's the flow of the impersonal will within us. There are things we will, but we don't want to will them because they don't serve our agenda. Like that will to quit your high-paying job to suddenly suddenly pursue the highly risky career of a budding artist. I mean, most of us have faced those dilemmas. Things that we really wish that we everything in us points in a certain direction, but everything in our rational mind is telling us this is not the way to go. This is not good for you.

[00:09:48]It doesn't serve your agenda. It doesn't add to your bucket list. And by the way, what will him, her, or the other person think? What about what your family will think? So, who has never faced this dilemma between true will that they want to deny because it doesn't serve them. Uh and they go against it. So, the diamond is the impersonal will that forces its way into our lives even when we don't want it.

[00:10:15]Yes. As you may have already answered this, Ian, but uh just following through Sarah's question, does this account of the diamond correspond to your understanding of what happens when we attend to the right hemisphere apprehensions of the world? This surrendering to the diamond and this concept of attention as a moral act?

[00:10:34]Well, yes.

[00:10:36]No, I don't think it does in brief correspond to my idea of the right hemisphere as such. I don't think it's a hemispheric effect. I don't think it's well illuminated by reference to hemispheric differences. But I think it's perfectly coherent that we should we have conflicting desires at different levels. Some of them we're more aware of and some of them less.

[00:11:07]And I think that's normal. We're complex creatures.

[00:11:11]And I think that's the way I'd look at that. Attention being a moral act is is really a a reference to my view that attention changes the world and there is only the world that we experience. We can't know a world that we don't experience. And that world that we experience is altered by how we attend to it. And I And I don't just mean it alters what we see, which it does, certainly. But I think it actually alters whatever is there as as well. It It has since I believe that what is other than me is not an insensate lump of nothing, but is actually a conscious field. It has an effect on that. And cumulatively, these changes can make quite a difference to the world. So, that's why I say attention is a moral act, because it it it actually changes what there is to know in this world.

[00:12:17]I agree.

[00:12:17]>> Putting it at its at least ambitious.

[00:12:20]Yeah. Yeah. Totally with you there.

[00:12:22]Yeah.

[00:12:23]This was an excerpt from our weekly meetings with Bernardo Kastrup. And you can join us at withrealityinmind.com.

[00:12:30]We have weekly Q&A's, special guests.

[00:12:32]Upcoming guests include people like Michael Levin and Iain McGilchrist. And you get access to over a year's worth of recordings, which include guests such as Swami Sarvapriyananda, Rupert Spira, Athena Potari, um Christof Koch, a whole range of really amazing international thinkers on everything from mysticism to science to physics to philosophy. So, if you've enjoyed this little clip and you want to hear more, you can find us at withrealityinmind.com.