WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.339 Imagine two completely different religious worlds 00:00:02.339 --> 00:00:07.080 just, you know, colliding. OK. Let's say a 17th 00:00:07.080 --> 00:00:10.339 century Muslim prince on one side and a society 00:00:10.339 --> 00:00:12.660 of Hindu mystics on the other. Right. So two 00:00:12.660 --> 00:00:16.519 very distinct groups. Exactly. And by all conventional 00:00:16.519 --> 00:00:19.719 logic, they should just clash. Yeah. Right. Over 00:00:19.719 --> 00:00:21.719 their wildly different rules, their distinct 00:00:21.719 --> 00:00:23.640 rituals, the opposing dogmas. Oh, absolutely. 00:00:23.760 --> 00:00:26.100 That's what you'd expect. But instead, they forge 00:00:26.100 --> 00:00:29.179 this profound civilization altering connection. 00:00:29.710 --> 00:00:32.950 Really? Yeah. And how do they do it? Not by sitting 00:00:32.950 --> 00:00:36.130 down and finding safe, easily defined common 00:00:36.130 --> 00:00:38.049 ground. Like they don't just find a compromise. 00:00:38.509 --> 00:00:41.109 Nope. They did it by weaponizing the one thing 00:00:41.109 --> 00:00:43.369 we usually assume drives people apart. Which 00:00:43.369 --> 00:00:46.250 is? Their deepest, darkest, most unutterable 00:00:46.250 --> 00:00:49.609 secrets. Oh, wow! Right. Because when we usually 00:00:49.609 --> 00:00:52.109 talk about secrets, especially in religion, there's 00:00:52.109 --> 00:00:55.060 this immediate... Almost visceral image that 00:00:55.060 --> 00:00:57.159 comes to mind. Yeah, the heavy oak door with 00:00:57.159 --> 00:01:00.299 the iron hinges. Exactly. It's the whispered 00:01:00.299 --> 00:01:02.899 password in a dark alley. It's that exclusive 00:01:02.899 --> 00:01:06.620 esoteric mystery cult where you are either on 00:01:06.620 --> 00:01:08.680 the inside bathed in the light of hidden truth 00:01:08.680 --> 00:01:12.680 or you are on the outside. In the dark. Right. 00:01:12.819 --> 00:01:15.739 We inherently think of secrets as walls. They 00:01:15.739 --> 00:01:18.420 are the ultimate tools of gatekeeping. But that's 00:01:18.420 --> 00:01:20.599 what makes this so wild. It goes against everything 00:01:20.599 --> 00:01:22.859 we're taught about human behavior and sociology. 00:01:23.219 --> 00:01:25.620 It really does. Because a secret is fundamentally 00:01:25.620 --> 00:01:28.379 defined, well, at least in our common imagination, 00:01:28.680 --> 00:01:31.560 by the barrier it creates between the knower 00:01:31.560 --> 00:01:33.879 and the non -knower. It's an exclusionary mechanism 00:01:33.879 --> 00:01:36.439 by design. You build a wall to protect what's 00:01:36.439 --> 00:01:39.019 yours. Exactly. But then you step into the world 00:01:39.019 --> 00:01:41.120 of comparative religious studies and you look 00:01:41.120 --> 00:01:43.620 at how different faiths actually interact out 00:01:43.620 --> 00:01:46.480 there in the messy real world. And suddenly that 00:01:46.480 --> 00:01:48.540 heavy oak door starts to look a lot less like 00:01:48.540 --> 00:01:50.560 a wall and a lot more like a bridge, which is 00:01:50.560 --> 00:01:53.430 what we're getting into today. We are exploring 00:01:53.430 --> 00:01:56.390 this conceptual landscape where the very things 00:01:56.390 --> 00:01:58.689 we thought were designed to keep outsiders out, 00:01:58.790 --> 00:02:01.849 the deep unexplainable mysteries of a faith, 00:02:02.010 --> 00:02:05.049 are actually the most effective, profound interfaces 00:02:05.049 --> 00:02:08.330 connecting totally different traditions. It completely 00:02:08.330 --> 00:02:11.150 upends our basic assumptions about what a secret 00:02:11.150 --> 00:02:14.289 is doing when two different worldviews collide. 00:02:14.530 --> 00:02:17.509 It's this massive counterintuitive paradigm shift. 00:02:17.729 --> 00:02:19.830 Because we assume transparency builds trust. 00:02:20.030 --> 00:02:22.960 Right. And secrecy breeds suspicion. Right. But 00:02:22.960 --> 00:02:25.099 history shows us something far more complex. 00:02:25.379 --> 00:02:27.979 And that complexity is exactly what we are exploring 00:02:27.979 --> 00:02:30.530 today. We're taking a deep dive into some really 00:02:30.530 --> 00:02:33.650 fascinating 2026 research by scholars Philip 00:02:33.650 --> 00:02:36.169 Reichling and Knit Martin Stunkel. It's a brilliant 00:02:36.169 --> 00:02:38.770 text. It really is. It focuses on secrecy as 00:02:38.770 --> 00:02:40.889 a promoter of contact between religious traditions. 00:02:41.270 --> 00:02:44.610 So our mission for this deep dive is to unpack 00:02:44.610 --> 00:02:46.849 the hidden mechanics of religious secrecy. To 00:02:46.849 --> 00:02:49.330 move past the gatekeeping idea. Exactly. And 00:02:49.330 --> 00:02:51.590 discover how the blank spaces created by secrets 00:02:51.590 --> 00:02:54.469 actually serve as these incredibly dynamic, powerful 00:02:54.469 --> 00:02:57.090 interfaces for interfaith understanding and translation. 00:02:57.129 --> 00:03:00.129 It's a huge topic. It is. OK, let's unpack this. 00:03:00.449 --> 00:03:03.409 Where do we even begin when the very thing we 00:03:03.409 --> 00:03:06.370 were trying to study is defined by the fact that 00:03:06.370 --> 00:03:08.550 it's hidden? Yeah, you're hitting on the exact 00:03:08.550 --> 00:03:11.650 epistemological nightmare that plagues this entire 00:03:11.650 --> 00:03:13.669 field of study. It's a nightmare. Oh, totally. 00:03:13.789 --> 00:03:16.969 It's what scholars call the methodological double 00:03:16.969 --> 00:03:19.530 bind. Double bind. OK, how does that work? Well, 00:03:19.669 --> 00:03:23.030 if you want to study a secret. objectively to 00:03:23.030 --> 00:03:25.909 truly understand its internal architecture and 00:03:25.909 --> 00:03:28.370 how it functions in society you essentially have 00:03:28.370 --> 00:03:30.169 to break it apart right you have to look inside 00:03:30.169 --> 00:03:32.310 you have to expose it to the light of inquiry 00:03:32.310 --> 00:03:35.669 but the very moment you do that the moment you 00:03:35.669 --> 00:03:38.250 drag it out of the shadows dissect it and publish 00:03:38.250 --> 00:03:41.949 a paper on it it's destroyed exactly it is fundamentally 00:03:41.949 --> 00:03:45.460 no longer a secret oh man It's like trying to 00:03:45.460 --> 00:03:47.759 study a snowflake by holding it in your warm 00:03:47.759 --> 00:03:50.800 hand. That's a perfect analogy. The act of observation 00:03:50.800 --> 00:03:53.099 melts the very thing you're trying to observe. 00:03:53.379 --> 00:03:55.979 Right. Or to borrow a metaphor I've heard in 00:03:55.979 --> 00:03:58.280 these academic circles, if you take the secret 00:03:58.280 --> 00:04:00.780 house and its inhabitants to pieces just to see 00:04:00.780 --> 00:04:03.789 how the plumbing works. You ruin the house. Right. 00:04:03.849 --> 00:04:06.210 You can't live in it anymore. Exactly. Which 00:04:06.210 --> 00:04:09.110 creates this massive anxiety, particularly within 00:04:09.110 --> 00:04:11.330 the modern scientific worldview. I can imagine. 00:04:11.689 --> 00:04:14.210 Cicela Buck, who is a really prominent ethicist, 00:04:14.270 --> 00:04:17.110 makes this brilliant observation. She says scientists 00:04:17.110 --> 00:04:19.550 have developed what she calls a ritualistic denunciation 00:04:19.550 --> 00:04:23.009 of secrecy. Ritualistic denunciation. That's 00:04:23.009 --> 00:04:26.209 intense. It is. But think about the foundational 00:04:26.209 --> 00:04:29.310 pillars of the scientific method. What are they? 00:04:29.430 --> 00:04:32.600 Free, open, transparent communication. Peer review. 00:04:32.939 --> 00:04:36.560 Shared data. Reproducible results. Transparency 00:04:36.560 --> 00:04:39.160 is the literal oxygen of science. Right. Because 00:04:39.160 --> 00:04:41.899 of that, modern scholars often treat secrecy 00:04:41.899 --> 00:04:44.139 almost like a rival sinister religion that they 00:04:44.139 --> 00:04:47.100 have to actively conjure away or exercise. Wow. 00:04:47.259 --> 00:04:50.259 Yeah. They view a secret purely as a withholding 00:04:50.259 --> 00:04:52.920 of truth, you know, an obstacle to human progress. 00:04:53.220 --> 00:04:55.319 Which is incredibly ironic when you think about 00:04:55.319 --> 00:04:57.600 it. Well, so. Well. The scholars are treating 00:04:57.600 --> 00:04:59.839 the concept of the secret with the exact same 00:04:59.839 --> 00:05:03.339 ritualistic fervor and absolute dogma as the 00:05:03.339 --> 00:05:05.240 religious adherents who are keeping the secret. 00:05:05.480 --> 00:05:08.079 Ah, that's so true. It's a clash of fundamentalisms. 00:05:08.600 --> 00:05:10.939 The scientist says everything must be illuminated 00:05:10.939 --> 00:05:13.680 and the mystic says some things must remain in 00:05:13.680 --> 00:05:16.579 the dark. Right. It's two completely incompatible 00:05:16.579 --> 00:05:19.699 approaches to truth. But before we get too deep 00:05:19.699 --> 00:05:21.500 into how these shadows actually connect people, 00:05:21.759 --> 00:05:25.449 we need to define our terms. In everyday conversation, 00:05:25.730 --> 00:05:28.209 we blur a lot of lines, but there is a crucial 00:05:28.209 --> 00:05:30.930 distinction we need to make here between a mystery 00:05:31.519 --> 00:05:33.920 and a secret oh this distinction is absolutely 00:05:33.920 --> 00:05:36.639 foundational right yeah we toss those words around 00:05:36.639 --> 00:05:39.240 interchangeably all the time but conceptually 00:05:39.240 --> 00:05:41.620 they operate on entirely different planes of 00:05:41.620 --> 00:05:45.240 reality jan assman an incredible scholar of egyptian 00:05:45.240 --> 00:05:47.500 religion provides a really clarifying framework 00:05:47.500 --> 00:05:50.420 here okay let's hear it so a mystery is something 00:05:50.420 --> 00:05:53.319 that is fundamentally unfathomable it's rooted 00:05:53.319 --> 00:05:56.100 in the very nature of the cosmos or the divine 00:05:56.670 --> 00:05:58.910 It is not hidden because a group of priests decided 00:05:58.910 --> 00:06:01.730 to lock it in a gold box and throw away the key. 00:06:02.050 --> 00:06:05.730 It's hidden because the human mind is neurologically 00:06:05.730 --> 00:06:08.750 conceptually incapable of fully grasping it. 00:06:08.930 --> 00:06:11.750 So like the origins of time, the experience of 00:06:11.750 --> 00:06:15.050 death, the absolute. Essence of a creator. Exactly. 00:06:15.230 --> 00:06:17.610 Those are mysteries. Right. Whereas a secret, 00:06:17.810 --> 00:06:20.069 which sometimes gets called an arcanum in these 00:06:20.069 --> 00:06:23.370 historical texts, is something that is just hidden 00:06:23.370 --> 00:06:26.629 from most people by strategic human action. Yes. 00:06:26.910 --> 00:06:28.410 It's something that could be perfectly known 00:06:28.410 --> 00:06:31.009 and understood by a human brain, but it is intentionally 00:06:31.009 --> 00:06:33.889 concealed by a group or an individual. That's 00:06:33.889 --> 00:06:36.689 it. And Immanuel Kant gives us a really useful 00:06:36.689 --> 00:06:39.470 threefold taxonomy to break this down even further, 00:06:39.550 --> 00:06:41.750 which really helps clarify the stakes here. Okay. 00:06:41.790 --> 00:06:44.879 What's Kant's breakdown? First, Kant says there 00:06:44.879 --> 00:06:47.560 are secrets of nature, the arcana. These are 00:06:47.560 --> 00:06:49.819 things like the laws of quantum mechanics, dark 00:06:49.819 --> 00:06:52.680 matter, or the cure for certain diseases. Things 00:06:52.680 --> 00:06:54.399 we just don't know yet. Right. They're currently 00:06:54.399 --> 00:06:57.000 hidden from us, but through scientific discovery 00:06:57.000 --> 00:06:59.939 and time, they might one day become known. The 00:06:59.939 --> 00:07:02.139 universe is hiding them, but they are discoverable. 00:07:02.339 --> 00:07:05.399 Okay, so arcana are puzzles waiting to be solved. 00:07:05.600 --> 00:07:08.579 Correct. Second, there are political or strategic 00:07:08.579 --> 00:07:11.800 secrets, the secreta. These are state secrets, 00:07:12.000 --> 00:07:14.660 military troop movements, the recipe for Coca 00:07:14.660 --> 00:07:17.660 -Cola or your bank password. The stuff humans 00:07:17.660 --> 00:07:20.439 actively hide. Exactly. These are facts deliberately 00:07:20.439 --> 00:07:24.360 hidden by humans from other humans. If I steal 00:07:24.360 --> 00:07:26.879 the recipe, I understand the secret completely. 00:07:27.139 --> 00:07:30.019 Makes sense. And third, Kant identifies the holy 00:07:30.019 --> 00:07:34.459 secret of religion, the Mysterium. Ah, the mystery. 00:07:34.620 --> 00:07:37.970 Yes. This is the substantial secret that is forever 00:07:37.970 --> 00:07:40.709 beyond human capacity to unravel, no matter how 00:07:40.709 --> 00:07:43.069 much science advances or how many spies you hire. 00:07:43.290 --> 00:07:45.089 Okay, let me make sure I'm mapping this correctly. 00:07:45.269 --> 00:07:48.170 A secret, the arcanum or the secreture, is like 00:07:48.170 --> 00:07:50.449 a stage magic trick. Okay, I like that. If I 00:07:50.449 --> 00:07:52.649 go to Las Vegas and see a magician make a tiger 00:07:52.649 --> 00:07:55.709 disappear, I'm amazed. But once I pull back the 00:07:55.709 --> 00:07:58.290 velvet curtain, go backstage and see the trap 00:07:58.290 --> 00:08:00.550 doors and the mirrors, the illusion is totally 00:08:00.550 --> 00:08:03.430 gone. The magic is dead. Right. It's just mechanics. 00:08:03.550 --> 00:08:06.829 The secret is dead. But a mystery. The Mysterium 00:08:06.829 --> 00:08:08.730 is like the mathematical concept of infinity. 00:08:08.970 --> 00:08:11.310 Oh, that's good. Even if I explain the math to 00:08:11.310 --> 00:08:13.509 you, even if I write the equation on a chalkboard 00:08:13.509 --> 00:08:16.129 and you memorize it, it still completely blows 00:08:16.129 --> 00:08:19.810 your mind. You literally cannot hold the entirety 00:08:19.810 --> 00:08:22.529 of infinity in your physical brain. That is a 00:08:22.529 --> 00:08:25.269 great way to delineate them. The Mysterium retains 00:08:25.269 --> 00:08:27.470 its power even when it's placed right in the 00:08:27.470 --> 00:08:29.829 center of the fully lit room. But here is my 00:08:29.829 --> 00:08:32.580 pushback. This is the exact thing that was tripping 00:08:32.580 --> 00:08:34.120 me up as I was looking through this research. 00:08:34.259 --> 00:08:37.240 What's that? If a mystery is inherently unknowable 00:08:37.240 --> 00:08:39.919 to everyone, how can two different religions 00:08:39.919 --> 00:08:43.559 ever use it to understand each other? If a Muslim 00:08:43.559 --> 00:08:46.000 and a Christian are sitting across from each 00:08:46.000 --> 00:08:48.480 other and they both have this core mysterium 00:08:48.480 --> 00:08:51.500 that they literally cannot articulate, aren't 00:08:51.500 --> 00:08:53.100 they just staring at each other in the dark? 00:08:53.259 --> 00:08:55.480 That's a fair point. How do you build a bridge 00:08:55.480 --> 00:08:57.700 out of something neither of you can see or describe? 00:08:58.200 --> 00:09:00.820 It's the most logical question to ask. And it's 00:09:00.820 --> 00:09:02.740 the hurdle that has stumped interfaith dialogue 00:09:02.740 --> 00:09:05.139 for centuries. Right. To understand how that 00:09:05.139 --> 00:09:07.279 bridge is actually built out of the unknowable. 00:09:07.360 --> 00:09:09.980 Yeah. We first have to deconstruct how we have 00:09:09.980 --> 00:09:12.720 traditionally misunderstood the social function 00:09:12.720 --> 00:09:15.480 of a secret. OK. We have to look at why we've 00:09:15.480 --> 00:09:18.100 always assumed secrets are just walls. And that 00:09:18.100 --> 00:09:20.759 brings us to the foundational sociology of secrecy. 00:09:21.049 --> 00:09:23.049 If we want to look at the traditional view, we 00:09:23.049 --> 00:09:25.169 have to talk about Georg Simmel. Right, Simmel. 00:09:25.529 --> 00:09:27.509 If you're studying the sociology of secrecy, 00:09:27.610 --> 00:09:30.070 Georg Simmel is the godfather of the field. He 00:09:30.070 --> 00:09:32.450 really is. He wrote a cornerstone text back in 00:09:32.450 --> 00:09:34.990 the early 20th century, and he essentially viewed 00:09:34.990 --> 00:09:38.250 the secret as a tool of what he called egoistic 00:09:38.250 --> 00:09:41.789 individualization. It was all about group isolation. 00:09:42.230 --> 00:09:44.409 Yeah, Simmel was obsessed with how societies 00:09:44.409 --> 00:09:47.809 form boundaries. He argued that the primary function 00:09:47.809 --> 00:09:50.610 of a secret is to form a protective border. He 00:09:50.610 --> 00:09:53.570 used a very specific German term of Scheidungsfecht, 00:09:53.690 --> 00:09:56.370 which translates roughly to the aim to separate. 00:09:56.629 --> 00:09:59.110 The aim to separate. Right. In Simmel's view, 00:09:59.269 --> 00:10:01.389 the secret unites the in -group, the people who 00:10:01.389 --> 00:10:03.990 possess the hidden knowledge, by creating a rigid, 00:10:04.210 --> 00:10:07.490 impermeable wall against the out -group, the 00:10:07.490 --> 00:10:10.269 profane masses who don't know. Right. Us versus 00:10:10.269 --> 00:10:13.309 them. Exactly. The shared secret gives the in 00:10:13.309 --> 00:10:15.889 -group a sense of intense prestige, deep trust, 00:10:16.029 --> 00:10:18.590 and mutual protection against a hostile outside 00:10:18.590 --> 00:10:21.679 world. There's a metaphor from researchers Paul 00:10:21.679 --> 00:10:24.940 Christopher Johnson and Hugh B. Urban that perfectly 00:10:24.940 --> 00:10:28.240 encapsulates this traditional view. Oh, the revolving 00:10:28.240 --> 00:10:32.679 door one. Yes. They describe secrecy as a revolving 00:10:32.679 --> 00:10:35.559 door of information that keeps some information 00:10:35.559 --> 00:10:38.840 and some people in and others out. It's a great 00:10:38.840 --> 00:10:41.320 image. It's just a sorting mechanism. You walk 00:10:41.320 --> 00:10:43.159 up to the revolving door. If you have the password, 00:10:43.259 --> 00:10:45.429 it spins you into the lobby. If you don't, it 00:10:45.429 --> 00:10:47.230 spits you back out onto the street. Exactly. 00:10:47.269 --> 00:10:50.429 And if we stop there, Simmel's view makes total 00:10:50.429 --> 00:10:53.929 pragmatic sense. Secrets divide us. They create 00:10:53.929 --> 00:10:57.809 factions. But this newer research proposes a 00:10:57.809 --> 00:11:00.250 revolutionary pivot in how we look at this. It 00:11:00.250 --> 00:11:03.029 really does. They argue that to understand historical 00:11:03.029 --> 00:11:06.009 interfaith contact, we have to stop obsessing 00:11:06.009 --> 00:11:08.779 over the hidden content of the secret. We have 00:11:08.779 --> 00:11:10.559 to stop trying to pick the lock to see what's 00:11:10.559 --> 00:11:12.659 inside the vault. And instead, we need to look 00:11:12.659 --> 00:11:15.039 at the form of secrecy as a social practice. 00:11:15.200 --> 00:11:17.559 And that pivot changes everything. Think about 00:11:17.559 --> 00:11:20.529 it. If we accept Kant's premise that the content 00:11:20.529 --> 00:11:23.190 of the Holy Secret, the Mysterium, is ultimately 00:11:23.190 --> 00:11:27.470 unknowable anyway, then as scholars or even just 00:11:27.470 --> 00:11:29.649 as neighbors trying to understand each other, 00:11:29.750 --> 00:11:32.509 obsessing over the content is a complete dead 00:11:32.509 --> 00:11:34.590 end. Because you can't know it anyway. Right. 00:11:34.669 --> 00:11:37.529 You're trying to solve an unsolvable math problem. 00:11:37.909 --> 00:11:39.970 Instead, you have to look at the act of keeping 00:11:39.970 --> 00:11:43.049 a secret. Secrecy isn't just a passive absence 00:11:43.049 --> 00:11:46.250 of information. It's a highly active, dynamic 00:11:46.250 --> 00:11:48.970 social practice. How so? Well, the historian 00:11:48.970 --> 00:11:51.149 Daniel Jute points out that secrecy actually 00:11:51.149 --> 00:11:54.389 generates a dynamic market. A market. Yeah. When 00:11:54.389 --> 00:11:56.710 a group claims to have a secret, it doesn't represent 00:11:56.710 --> 00:11:59.169 a decline of open knowledge. Rather, the very 00:11:59.169 --> 00:12:02.429 act of hiding something creates a claim to authority. 00:12:02.809 --> 00:12:05.289 Oh, I see. It creates an aura of prestige. It 00:12:05.289 --> 00:12:07.590 creates a highly emphasized, energized space. 00:12:07.710 --> 00:12:10.250 By drawing a curtain around something, you are 00:12:10.250 --> 00:12:12.629 signaling to the entire world what is behind 00:12:12.629 --> 00:12:15.570 here is incredibly valuable. Right. And paradoxically, 00:12:15.570 --> 00:12:17.519 that energized space. becomes a genuine zone 00:12:17.519 --> 00:12:19.500 of contact. People are drawn to the curtain. 00:12:19.720 --> 00:12:21.899 Here's where it gets really interesting. Because 00:12:21.899 --> 00:12:25.440 if we start viewing secrecy as a dynamic economy 00:12:25.440 --> 00:12:28.200 or a type of currency, rather than just a locked 00:12:28.200 --> 00:12:31.120 vault that we can't open, we can start to see 00:12:31.120 --> 00:12:33.919 how different religions historically traded, 00:12:34.179 --> 00:12:37.659 negotiated, and interacted using this very specific 00:12:37.659 --> 00:12:40.220 currency. It's not about what the secret is. 00:12:40.320 --> 00:12:42.820 It's about what the secret does when it enters 00:12:42.820 --> 00:12:45.529 the marketplace of human interaction. That is 00:12:45.529 --> 00:12:48.610 the exact mechanism. And when we look at history 00:12:48.610 --> 00:12:52.409 through this lens, we see a really robust taxonomy 00:12:52.409 --> 00:12:54.669 of how this plays out. Like different categories 00:12:54.669 --> 00:12:57.450 of interaction. Exactly. We can break down the 00:12:57.450 --> 00:13:00.029 mechanisms of interfaith contact involving secrets 00:13:00.029 --> 00:13:02.970 into a few distinct scenarios. But before we 00:13:02.970 --> 00:13:05.370 look at how different faiths collide over secrets, 00:13:05.649 --> 00:13:07.710 we should briefly touch on why groups create 00:13:07.710 --> 00:13:10.049 secrets internally in the first place. What the 00:13:10.049 --> 00:13:12.809 research calls endogenous secrets. Yeah. Let's 00:13:12.809 --> 00:13:15.590 explore that, because internally, a religious 00:13:15.590 --> 00:13:18.129 group usually secretizes something for survival, 00:13:18.269 --> 00:13:20.289 right? Right. They're either trying to protect 00:13:20.289 --> 00:13:22.950 their members physically, or they are trying 00:13:22.950 --> 00:13:25.889 to preserve the absolute purity of their spiritual 00:13:25.889 --> 00:13:28.889 experience from being deluded, co -opted, or 00:13:28.889 --> 00:13:31.539 mocked by the outside world. And history gives 00:13:31.539 --> 00:13:34.879 us incredibly powerful examples of this internal 00:13:34.879 --> 00:13:38.340 protection. Let's look at taqiyya in Shi 'i Islam. 00:13:38.559 --> 00:13:40.580 Okay. This isn't just a theological concept. 00:13:40.639 --> 00:13:43.120 It was a gritty life -or -death survival tactic. 00:13:43.639 --> 00:13:46.700 Taqiyya is the practice of concealing one's faith 00:13:46.700 --> 00:13:49.460 or dispensing with ordinary religious ordinances 00:13:49.460 --> 00:13:52.059 when under threat of death or extreme persecution. 00:13:52.440 --> 00:13:55.379 Wow. Yeah. For centuries, minority Shi 'i populations 00:13:55.379 --> 00:13:59.000 lived under hostile rulers. By creating an endogenous 00:13:59.000 --> 00:14:01.990 secret, By hiding their true allegiance and rituals, 00:14:02.149 --> 00:14:04.330 they ensured the physical and communal survival 00:14:04.330 --> 00:14:06.370 of their faith against an oppressive majority. 00:14:06.830 --> 00:14:10.110 The secret was a literal shield. Another incredibly 00:14:10.110 --> 00:14:12.350 striking example of this comes from the Christian 00:14:12.350 --> 00:14:15.509 tradition, specifically during the rise of totalitarianism 00:14:15.509 --> 00:14:17.830 in the 20th century. Think about Germany in the 00:14:17.830 --> 00:14:20.870 1930s. You have the Nazi regime rising to power, 00:14:20.970 --> 00:14:23.529 and Nazis have functioned very much like a rival 00:14:23.529 --> 00:14:26.990 religion. It had its own absolute dogmas, its 00:14:26.990 --> 00:14:30.110 own rituals, its own demand for total devotion. 00:14:30.389 --> 00:14:33.210 It was an all -encompassing ideology. Exactly. 00:14:33.250 --> 00:14:36.070 So in response to this, the German theologian 00:14:36.070 --> 00:14:38.629 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who eventually died in a 00:14:38.629 --> 00:14:41.629 concentration camp for resisting Hitler, called 00:14:41.629 --> 00:14:44.250 for the church to return to what he called an 00:14:44.250 --> 00:14:46.590 arch and discipline. A discipline of the secret. 00:14:46.850 --> 00:14:50.250 Yes. Bonhoeffer looked around and saw the Nazi 00:14:50.250 --> 00:14:52.980 regime trying to co -opt. Christian language, 00:14:53.080 --> 00:14:55.419 trying to merge the church with the state. Right. 00:14:55.659 --> 00:14:57.940 He argued that the Christian church needed to 00:14:57.940 --> 00:15:01.139 actively hide its most profound mysteries. They 00:15:01.139 --> 00:15:03.480 needed to stop throwing their deepest sacraments 00:15:03.480 --> 00:15:06.340 and theology out into the public square because 00:15:06.340 --> 00:15:08.279 the public square had been poisoned. That makes 00:15:08.279 --> 00:15:10.500 total sense. He wanted to protect the Mysterium 00:15:10.500 --> 00:15:13.559 from being profaned, cheapened, or twisted by 00:15:13.559 --> 00:15:16.700 the totalitarian ideology of the state. He wasn't 00:15:16.700 --> 00:15:18.480 hiding the faith because he was embarrassed by 00:15:18.480 --> 00:15:20.720 it. He was hiding it because it was too precious 00:15:20.720 --> 00:15:22.600 to be left out in the open where the Nazis could 00:15:22.600 --> 00:15:24.919 weaponize it. It's an immune system response. 00:15:25.580 --> 00:15:28.960 In both the case of Takiyah and the Ark in Discipline, 00:15:28.980 --> 00:15:31.340 the secret is an internal defense mechanism. 00:15:31.620 --> 00:15:34.820 Right. But the truly groundbreaking part of analyzing 00:15:34.820 --> 00:15:37.980 secrecy comes when we move from those internal 00:15:37.980 --> 00:15:41.059 immune responses to exogenous contact. External 00:15:41.059 --> 00:15:44.460 contact. Exactly. What happens when two completely 00:15:44.460 --> 00:15:46.879 different religious traditions, both possessing 00:15:46.879 --> 00:15:50.659 their own profound, heavily guarded secrets actually 00:15:50.659 --> 00:15:53.039 collide in the marketplace. This is the core 00:15:53.039 --> 00:15:55.000 of the deep dive. Yeah, and this research outlines 00:15:55.000 --> 00:15:57.659 a few historical scenarios that are just fascinating. 00:15:58.059 --> 00:16:00.000 Let's look at the first one, which we might call 00:16:00.000 --> 00:16:02.379 mutual secrets. Okay. This is where the shared 00:16:02.379 --> 00:16:05.259 practice of secrecy literally unites diverse 00:16:05.259 --> 00:16:08.580 groups, leading them to search for a philosophia 00:16:08.580 --> 00:16:11.740 perennis. A perennial universal philosophy that 00:16:11.740 --> 00:16:15.100 they believe underlies all distinct faiths. Precisely. 00:16:15.100 --> 00:16:17.080 This historical example they give completely 00:16:17.080 --> 00:16:19.879 blew my mind. We're going back to 17... century 00:16:19.879 --> 00:16:23.019 Germany, specifically to the small Salzbach court 00:16:23.019 --> 00:16:25.419 of Count Palatine Christian August. That's a 00:16:25.419 --> 00:16:28.580 wild historical moment. It is. And to understand 00:16:28.580 --> 00:16:30.940 why this is so radical, you really have to understand 00:16:30.940 --> 00:16:34.720 the context. This is the 1600s in Europe. They 00:16:34.720 --> 00:16:36.899 have just gone through the meat grinder of the 00:16:36.899 --> 00:16:39.639 Thirty Years' War. Oh, yeah. Which was essentially 00:16:39.639 --> 00:16:43.600 a continent -wide slaughter driven by rigid, 00:16:43.740 --> 00:16:47.419 dogmatic, religious differences between Catholics 00:16:47.419 --> 00:16:50.629 and Protestants. millions of people died over 00:16:50.629 --> 00:16:53.450 defined theological boundaries. The trauma of 00:16:53.450 --> 00:16:57.289 that era really cannot be overstated. The semiospheres, 00:16:57.289 --> 00:17:00.429 the atmospheric bubbles of meaning and truth 00:17:00.429 --> 00:17:03.190 that these different groups breathed were completely 00:17:03.190 --> 00:17:05.990 toxic to one another. Completely. If a Catholic 00:17:05.990 --> 00:17:07.829 and a Protestant interacted, it was usually, 00:17:07.910 --> 00:17:10.109 you know, at the end of a pike. Right. So into 00:17:10.109 --> 00:17:12.029 this blood -soaked environment steps Christian 00:17:12.029 --> 00:17:15.319 August. He is incredibly forward -thinking, and 00:17:15.319 --> 00:17:17.920 he decides to deliberately bring together Catholics, 00:17:18.200 --> 00:17:21.140 Protestants, and Jews at his court in Salzburg. 00:17:21.319 --> 00:17:23.319 He even sets up a printing press to publish their 00:17:23.319 --> 00:17:26.359 combined works. Yeah, but he didn't just invite 00:17:26.359 --> 00:17:28.519 them to sit around a table and debate their dogmas. 00:17:28.559 --> 00:17:30.220 He knew that would just lead to another war. 00:17:30.519 --> 00:17:33.339 Instead, he brought them together to study the 00:17:33.339 --> 00:17:36.039 deeply secret, esoteric knowledge of the Jewish 00:17:36.039 --> 00:17:39.000 Kabbalah. alongside other occult philosophies 00:17:39.000 --> 00:17:41.880 this is the absolute genius of the move he didn't 00:17:41.880 --> 00:17:44.119 ask them to compromise on their bright clearly 00:17:44.119 --> 00:17:47.339 defined daytime dogmas he invited them into the 00:17:47.339 --> 00:17:50.640 shadows wow yeah he used the shared pursuit of 00:17:50.960 --> 00:17:54.799 deep, complex, inherently hidden secrets as the 00:17:54.799 --> 00:17:58.059 foundation to foster a utopian ecumenical community. 00:17:58.480 --> 00:18:00.740 They were united by the fact that they were all 00:18:00.740 --> 00:18:03.220 seekers of the hidden truth. So they bonded over 00:18:03.220 --> 00:18:05.759 what they didn't fully grasp yet. Yes. The Christian 00:18:05.759 --> 00:18:07.579 scholars believed that hidden within the Jewish 00:18:07.579 --> 00:18:10.019 Kabbalah were the secret, uncorrupted truths 00:18:10.019 --> 00:18:12.859 of early Christianity. And the Jewish scholars 00:18:12.859 --> 00:18:15.119 were eager to share and elevate their mystical 00:18:15.119 --> 00:18:17.740 texts. It's a beautiful example of the secret 00:18:17.740 --> 00:18:20.420 as a bridge. Because the content of the secret 00:18:20.420 --> 00:18:23.420 was so obscure, so difficult to grasp, and required 00:18:23.420 --> 00:18:25.980 intense collaborative study across different 00:18:25.980 --> 00:18:29.579 languages like Hebrew, Aramaic, Latin, the actual 00:18:29.579 --> 00:18:32.200 process of seeking the secret forced them into 00:18:32.200 --> 00:18:34.640 cooperative contact. Yes, the process itself 00:18:34.640 --> 00:18:36.940 is what united them. They had to rely on each 00:18:36.940 --> 00:18:40.549 other. to decode the mystery they built a micro 00:18:40.549 --> 00:18:43.609 society of religious tolerance based entirely 00:18:43.609 --> 00:18:46.069 on the premise that none of them had the full 00:18:46.069 --> 00:18:49.329 transparent truth it's incredibly moving but 00:18:49.329 --> 00:18:52.109 unfortunately history isn't always a utopian 00:18:52.109 --> 00:18:55.490 court in sulzbach right more often than not religions 00:18:55.490 --> 00:18:57.990 don't want to hold hands and seek a shared perennial 00:18:57.990 --> 00:19:00.970 philosophy they want to win yeah human nature 00:19:00.970 --> 00:19:04.549 and that brings us to the second scenario of 00:19:04.549 --> 00:19:08.440 exogenous contact one secret One explanation. 00:19:08.880 --> 00:19:12.140 The battle for supremacy. Exactly. This is what 00:19:12.140 --> 00:19:14.519 happens when religions compete in a shared marketplace. 00:19:14.640 --> 00:19:17.920 And instead of merging or cooperating, one tradition 00:19:17.920 --> 00:19:20.359 aggressively tries to explain away the other 00:19:20.359 --> 00:19:22.759 tradition's secret. This is basically intellectual 00:19:22.759 --> 00:19:25.420 colonization. Right. You aren't killing the other 00:19:25.420 --> 00:19:27.380 group. You're just claiming that their deepest 00:19:27.380 --> 00:19:29.859 mystery is actually just a footnote in your theology. 00:19:30.200 --> 00:19:33.000 We see this vividly in the early centuries of 00:19:33.000 --> 00:19:35.220 the Christian church, when Christianity was trying 00:19:35.220 --> 00:19:37.430 to establish dominance in the Roman Empire. Right, 00:19:37.509 --> 00:19:40.450 because at the time, the Roman world was full 00:19:40.450 --> 00:19:43.630 of these incredibly popular, highly secretive 00:19:43.630 --> 00:19:46.329 mystery cults, like the cult of Mithras. Yeah, 00:19:46.390 --> 00:19:48.730 the cult of Mithras was a massive rival to early 00:19:48.730 --> 00:19:51.549 Christianity. They had secret initiation rites. 00:19:51.670 --> 00:19:53.910 They had sacred communal meals involving bread 00:19:53.910 --> 00:19:57.390 and wine. They had themes of salvation and rebirth. 00:19:57.630 --> 00:19:59.950 To an outside observer, they look uncomfortably 00:19:59.950 --> 00:20:02.950 similar to Christian sacraments. Very similar. 00:20:03.109 --> 00:20:05.890 So how did the early Christian writers handle 00:20:05.890 --> 00:20:08.359 this? You have a figure like Justin Martyr looking 00:20:08.359 --> 00:20:11.019 at the Mithraic mysteries. He doesn't say, oh, 00:20:11.119 --> 00:20:12.960 wow, look at this. We share a similar mystery. 00:20:13.059 --> 00:20:15.380 Let's achieve concrescence. No, definitely not. 00:20:15.500 --> 00:20:18.119 No, Justin Martyr goes on the offensive. He claims 00:20:18.119 --> 00:20:20.200 that the secrets of Mithras are actually demonic 00:20:20.200 --> 00:20:23.960 imitations. Demonic imitations. He argued that 00:20:23.960 --> 00:20:26.259 demons had foreseen the coming of Christ and 00:20:26.259 --> 00:20:28.559 they planted these fake copycat mysteries in 00:20:28.559 --> 00:20:31.740 the Roman world to confuse people and steal souls. 00:20:31.960 --> 00:20:34.640 It's a ruthless rhetorical strategy. It really 00:20:34.640 --> 00:20:37.799 is. Or you have writers like Lactantius who looked 00:20:37.799 --> 00:20:41.319 at the ancient, highly revered secrets of Hermes 00:20:41.319 --> 00:20:44.599 Trismegistus, which were foundational to a lot 00:20:44.599 --> 00:20:47.960 of Hellenistic philosophy and mysticism. Lactantius 00:20:47.960 --> 00:20:50.240 argued that those ancient secrets weren't demonic, 00:20:50.420 --> 00:20:53.240 but they were just a flawed preliminary overture. 00:20:53.359 --> 00:20:55.359 He claimed they were just breadcrumbs leading 00:20:55.359 --> 00:20:58.380 up to the true and final revelation of Jesus 00:20:58.380 --> 00:21:01.180 Christ. So they are dissolving the rival secret. 00:21:01.640 --> 00:21:04.160 By claiming to have the ultimate decoder ring. 00:21:04.700 --> 00:21:07.619 Precisely. Justin Martyr and Lactantius are looking 00:21:07.619 --> 00:21:10.740 at the pagans and saying, we know what your secret 00:21:10.740 --> 00:21:13.700 actually means better than you do. It's a way 00:21:13.700 --> 00:21:16.039 of asserting total dominance over the rival's 00:21:16.039 --> 00:21:18.059 meaning -making world without ever having to 00:21:18.059 --> 00:21:20.180 engage on its own terms. And while that's an 00:21:20.180 --> 00:21:22.359 aggressive strategy, there is a third scenario 00:21:22.359 --> 00:21:24.680 of interfaith contact that might be the most 00:21:24.680 --> 00:21:26.799 fascinating of all. Oh, this was my favorite. 00:21:26.920 --> 00:21:28.799 Yeah, this is when the contact between a religion 00:21:28.799 --> 00:21:31.180 and a surrounding culture actually forces the 00:21:31.180 --> 00:21:34.240 religion to generate a new secret. just to survive. 00:21:34.500 --> 00:21:36.440 I found this part of the research so compelling, 00:21:36.539 --> 00:21:39.180 it totally flips the script. It does. Because 00:21:39.180 --> 00:21:42.500 usually we think of religions slowly abandoning 00:21:42.500 --> 00:21:44.779 their superstitions and secrets as they become 00:21:44.779 --> 00:21:47.599 more modern and rational, right? That's the secularization 00:21:47.599 --> 00:21:49.779 theory, yes. But the research points out that 00:21:49.779 --> 00:21:52.660 sometimes when a religious tradition is enveloped 00:21:52.660 --> 00:21:55.039 by a highly rational, secular, or philosophical 00:21:55.039 --> 00:21:59.079 culture, it has to invent or heavily emphasize 00:21:59.079 --> 00:22:02.500 a secret. to avoid being completely assimilated. 00:22:02.619 --> 00:22:04.759 And if you look at early 20th century liberal 00:22:04.759 --> 00:22:07.319 Judaism, you see this exact survival mechanism 00:22:07.319 --> 00:22:09.460 playing out brilliantly. Okay, set the scene 00:22:09.460 --> 00:22:11.359 for us. You had brilliant rabbis and thinkers 00:22:11.359 --> 00:22:14.579 like Leo Beck and Max Wiener, and they were operating 00:22:14.579 --> 00:22:17.160 in the long wake of the Haskalah, which was the 00:22:17.160 --> 00:22:19.569 Jewish Enlightenment. For decades, the Haskalah 00:22:19.569 --> 00:22:22.849 had heavily emphasized reason, universal ethics, 00:22:22.930 --> 00:22:25.630 and rational philosophy. The goal had been to 00:22:25.630 --> 00:22:28.069 show that Judaism was perfectly compatible with 00:22:28.069 --> 00:22:31.329 modern, enlightened European thought. But thinkers 00:22:31.329 --> 00:22:33.769 like Leo Baik looked around and realized they 00:22:33.769 --> 00:22:36.950 had a massive problem. The danger was that Judaism 00:22:36.950 --> 00:22:40.829 was becoming too explainable. Too rational. Exactly. 00:22:40.829 --> 00:22:43.359 If you strip away all the mystery... all the 00:22:43.359 --> 00:22:46.140 paradox, and you reduce a thousands of years 00:22:46.140 --> 00:22:49.539 old faith only to a set of good ethical postulates 00:22:49.539 --> 00:22:51.960 like be kind to your neighbor and pursue justice, 00:22:52.299 --> 00:22:55.680 then it just dissolves into generic secular ethical 00:22:55.680 --> 00:22:58.220 philosophy. Right. Why be Jewish if it's the 00:22:58.220 --> 00:23:00.359 exact same thing as being a secular humanist? 00:23:00.400 --> 00:23:02.359 Exactly. It loses the very ground that supports 00:23:02.359 --> 00:23:05.859 it. So to counter this hyper -rationality, Baik 00:23:05.859 --> 00:23:08.039 and others executed a brilliant philosophical 00:23:08.039 --> 00:23:12.299 pivot. They aggressively re -emphasized the secret 00:23:12.299 --> 00:23:15.660 and the inherent unresolvable paradox of Judaism. 00:23:15.940 --> 00:23:17.940 You leaned into the mystery. They argued that 00:23:17.940 --> 00:23:20.599 true religion must contain a core that defies 00:23:20.599 --> 00:23:23.380 human logic. They weaponized the mystery as a 00:23:23.380 --> 00:23:25.799 survival mechanism. By asserting that there is 00:23:25.799 --> 00:23:28.059 a profound irrational secret at the heart of 00:23:28.059 --> 00:23:30.220 the faith, they built a fortress that secular 00:23:30.220 --> 00:23:32.829 rationality couldn't penetrate. They saved the 00:23:32.829 --> 00:23:34.930 distinct identity of the religion by plunging 00:23:34.930 --> 00:23:37.210 its core back into the dark. Okay, so let's synthesize 00:23:37.210 --> 00:23:40.029 where we are. We have seen secrets act as literal 00:23:40.029 --> 00:23:42.289 shields for physical survival, like Takiyah. 00:23:42.390 --> 00:23:45.109 We've seen them act as shared utopian projects 00:23:45.109 --> 00:23:48.650 in Solspach. We've seen them used as battlegrounds 00:23:48.650 --> 00:23:50.690 for intellectual supremacy by early Christians. 00:23:50.910 --> 00:23:53.789 And we've seen them utilized as life rafts against 00:23:53.789 --> 00:23:56.109 the rising tide of secularization in liberal 00:23:56.109 --> 00:23:59.549 Judaism. It's a very dynamic tool. It is. But 00:23:59.549 --> 00:24:02.150 I keep coming back to the listener. If you are 00:24:02.150 --> 00:24:04.390 listening to this deep dive and you are sitting 00:24:04.390 --> 00:24:06.369 in a room with someone of a totally different 00:24:06.369 --> 00:24:10.289 faith, say you are a Christian and they are a 00:24:10.289 --> 00:24:12.910 Buddhist or you are a Muslim and they are a secular 00:24:12.910 --> 00:24:16.349 humanist, logically it sounds like avoiding the 00:24:16.349 --> 00:24:18.809 deep unexplainable mysteries of your respective 00:24:18.809 --> 00:24:22.690 worldviews would prevent a real connection. Which 00:24:22.690 --> 00:24:25.049 is what we're always taught. Right. We are taught 00:24:25.049 --> 00:24:26.970 to find common ground. We are taught to find 00:24:26.970 --> 00:24:28.869 the things we can clearly define and agree on. 00:24:28.950 --> 00:24:30.950 How on earth do we connect over something neither 00:24:30.950 --> 00:24:33.069 of us can articulate? What's fascinating here 00:24:33.069 --> 00:24:35.289 is that the research argues the exact opposite 00:24:35.289 --> 00:24:37.750 of our standard intuition. Okay. The inability 00:24:37.750 --> 00:24:40.490 to articulate the secret is not a bug in the 00:24:40.490 --> 00:24:43.430 system of human communication. It is the ultimate 00:24:43.430 --> 00:24:46.900 feature. A feature, not a bug. Yes. The fact 00:24:46.900 --> 00:24:49.640 that the secret is conceptually empty of defined, 00:24:49.859 --> 00:24:53.740 rigid, exclusionary dogma is exactly what makes 00:24:53.740 --> 00:24:56.019 it the perfect interface. And this brings us 00:24:56.019 --> 00:24:58.700 to the conceptual core of this entire framework, 00:24:58.960 --> 00:25:02.380 the theory of the secret as a blank space. The 00:25:02.380 --> 00:25:04.720 blank space. The German word used in the research 00:25:04.720 --> 00:25:07.579 is Leerstell. Right. And what's wild is that 00:25:07.579 --> 00:25:09.799 the authors borrow this concept not from theology, 00:25:10.039 --> 00:25:12.640 but from a literary theorist named Wolfgang Eiser. 00:25:13.019 --> 00:25:15.259 Now, Iser wasn't writing about religion at all. 00:25:15.299 --> 00:25:17.319 He was writing about how human beings read books. 00:25:17.400 --> 00:25:20.019 Right, literary theory. And Iser argued that 00:25:20.019 --> 00:25:22.119 in any piece of literature, there are blank spaces, 00:25:22.559 --> 00:25:25.420 things the author deliberately leaves unsaid, 00:25:25.539 --> 00:25:27.940 undetermined gaps in the narrative. Think about 00:25:27.940 --> 00:25:30.099 reading a novel. The author doesn't describe 00:25:30.099 --> 00:25:32.839 every single leaf on a tree or every single microscopic 00:25:32.839 --> 00:25:35.059 facial expression of a character. They leave 00:25:35.059 --> 00:25:37.740 gaps. And Iser pointed out that these blank spaces 00:25:37.740 --> 00:25:39.940 aren't just empty voids where the author got 00:25:39.940 --> 00:25:44.140 lazy. They are an active, highly charged matrix. 00:25:44.619 --> 00:25:47.000 They are the elementary conditions of communication 00:25:47.000 --> 00:25:49.839 because they force the reader to use their own 00:25:49.839 --> 00:25:53.059 imagination, their own memories, their own life 00:25:53.059 --> 00:25:55.740 experience to connect the dots. The blank space 00:25:55.740 --> 00:25:58.240 invites the reader into the text to co -create 00:25:58.240 --> 00:26:00.259 the meaning. Exactly. If the author explains 00:26:00.259 --> 00:26:03.059 every single detail, the reader is just a passive 00:26:03.059 --> 00:26:06.339 observer. But if there is a blank space, the 00:26:06.339 --> 00:26:08.900 reader has to step up and participate. Precisely. 00:26:09.309 --> 00:26:12.289 And the absolute genius of Reichling and Schrunkel's 00:26:12.289 --> 00:26:15.869 work is taking Iser's literary theory and applying 00:26:15.869 --> 00:26:18.490 it directly to religious secrecy. It's a huge 00:26:18.490 --> 00:26:21.049 conceptual leap. It is. They argue that a religious 00:26:21.049 --> 00:26:23.650 secret acts as a linguistic and conceptual blank 00:26:23.650 --> 00:26:26.529 space. It is an empty frame. By lightly declaring 00:26:26.529 --> 00:26:29.150 this is our deepest unutterable secret, a religion 00:26:29.150 --> 00:26:31.130 is conspicuously indicating that something is 00:26:31.130 --> 00:26:33.089 absent from everyday language and understanding. 00:26:33.450 --> 00:26:36.390 But because that frame is technically empty of 00:26:36.390 --> 00:26:39.940 rigid, easily debated dogma, It actually invites 00:26:39.940 --> 00:26:42.660 the other tradition to step up, look at the frame, 00:26:42.779 --> 00:26:45.079 and relate to it using their own vocabulary. 00:26:45.299 --> 00:26:47.799 To help us visualize this, because it's a heavy 00:26:47.799 --> 00:26:50.579 concept, the research uses a brilliant analogy 00:26:50.579 --> 00:26:54.019 from art history, the hitomasia, or the empty 00:26:54.019 --> 00:26:56.279 throne. Oh, this is such a good visual. Right. 00:26:56.359 --> 00:26:59.339 If you look at religious and political art across 00:26:59.339 --> 00:27:01.660 vastly different cultures throughout history, 00:27:01.819 --> 00:27:05.680 you see this recurring motif of an unoccupied 00:27:05.680 --> 00:27:08.240 seat of power. It's everywhere once you know 00:27:08.240 --> 00:27:10.579 to look for it. Let's look at Buddhist art. You 00:27:10.579 --> 00:27:13.099 might see an intricately carved beautiful throne 00:27:13.099 --> 00:27:15.299 with absolutely no one sitting on it, perhaps 00:27:15.299 --> 00:27:17.480 just a set of footprints resting on the footstool. 00:27:17.599 --> 00:27:20.099 Right. In that specific cultural context, the 00:27:20.099 --> 00:27:22.420 empty throne symbolizes the Buddha's enlightenment, 00:27:22.740 --> 00:27:25.579 his absolute transcending of the physical form 00:27:25.579 --> 00:27:28.240 into nirvana. But then if you travel across the 00:27:28.240 --> 00:27:30.119 world and look at Roman art from a similar period, 00:27:30.299 --> 00:27:32.180 you see another empty throne. Maybe this one 00:27:32.180 --> 00:27:34.779 is draped to the specific purple cloths or has 00:27:34.779 --> 00:27:37.220 a diadem resting on it. In the Roman context, 00:27:37.319 --> 00:27:40.430 that empty throne. symbolizes the invisible, 00:27:40.710 --> 00:27:43.849 omnipresent, unchallengeable power of the emperor. 00:27:44.049 --> 00:27:46.470 And if you move forward in time and look at early 00:27:46.470 --> 00:27:49.230 Christian Byzantine art, you see the exact same 00:27:49.230 --> 00:27:52.049 visual, an empty throne, perhaps with the cross 00:27:52.049 --> 00:27:54.250 or a book of gospels resting on the cushion. 00:27:54.470 --> 00:27:56.670 And what does it mean there? In Christian theology, 00:27:56.930 --> 00:28:00.589 this symbolizes the parousia. the intense apocalyptic 00:28:00.589 --> 00:28:03.369 anticipation of christ's return to judge the 00:28:03.369 --> 00:28:06.170 living and the dead so it is the exact same visual 00:28:06.170 --> 00:28:09.069 nimble an empty chair right but because the throne 00:28:09.069 --> 00:28:11.410 is empty because the central defining figure 00:28:11.410 --> 00:28:14.230 is missing because it's a literal blank space 00:28:14.859 --> 00:28:18.440 It acts as a universal interface. Different faiths, 00:28:18.440 --> 00:28:20.460 different empires, different worldviews can look 00:28:20.460 --> 00:28:22.539 at the exact same image, the exact same blank 00:28:22.539 --> 00:28:24.259 space, and translate it perfectly into their 00:28:24.259 --> 00:28:26.539 own spiritual or political vocabulary without 00:28:26.539 --> 00:28:29.180 violating the image itself. Mark Tawin, a scholar 00:28:29.180 --> 00:28:31.240 cited in the research who studies Japanese religion, 00:28:31.519 --> 00:28:33.599 has a wonderful way of describing this dynamic. 00:28:33.900 --> 00:28:37.059 He calls the secret a vacuum displayed in a conspicuous 00:28:37.059 --> 00:28:40.420 place. A vacuum? Yeah. And because nature and 00:28:40.420 --> 00:28:44.519 human psychology abhors a vacuum, this conspicuously 00:28:44.519 --> 00:28:48.180 placed blank space has what he calls a black 00:28:48.180 --> 00:28:52.039 hole potency. A black hole potency. It irresistibly 00:28:52.039 --> 00:28:54.200 attracts people, theories, and interpretations 00:28:54.200 --> 00:28:57.299 from all sides. It pulls you in because you naturally 00:28:57.299 --> 00:28:59.339 desperately want to fill the void with meaning. 00:28:59.579 --> 00:29:01.299 I was trying to think of an everyday analogy 00:29:01.299 --> 00:29:03.819 for this, something that clicks instantly and 00:29:03.819 --> 00:29:06.579 it hit me. It's exactly like a blank tile in 00:29:06.579 --> 00:29:08.789 a game of Scrabble. Oh, I love that. Let's break 00:29:08.789 --> 00:29:10.990 that down. Think about how Scrabble works. Every 00:29:10.990 --> 00:29:13.089 other letter in the bag has a rigidly defined 00:29:13.089 --> 00:29:16.289 value and identity. An A is an A. A Q is a Q. 00:29:16.369 --> 00:29:18.589 They are dogmatic. Right. They can only be played 00:29:18.589 --> 00:29:21.349 in specific, limited ways. If I have a Z and 00:29:21.349 --> 00:29:23.390 you have an X and we are trying to build a word 00:29:23.390 --> 00:29:25.309 together, we are probably going to clash. The 00:29:25.309 --> 00:29:27.910 linguistic structures are too rigid, too incompatible. 00:29:27.990 --> 00:29:30.390 That is a phenomenal analogy. The rigid letters 00:29:30.390 --> 00:29:33.089 are the defined dogmas of a religion. The dietary 00:29:33.089 --> 00:29:36.190 laws, the historical claims, the specific rituals. 00:29:36.809 --> 00:29:40.480 Exactly. But the blank tile has no inherent letter 00:29:40.480 --> 00:29:43.299 printed on it. It has no strict identity. And 00:29:43.299 --> 00:29:45.539 because it is completely empty, because it is 00:29:45.539 --> 00:29:49.019 a Leerstell, it can be whatever letter the player 00:29:49.019 --> 00:29:51.740 needs it to be to connect their word to the rest 00:29:51.740 --> 00:29:54.640 of the board. It adapts. The blank tile is the 00:29:54.640 --> 00:29:57.420 ultimate interface. The secret, the mystery, 00:29:57.519 --> 00:30:01.220 is the blank tile of interface dialogue. It allows 00:30:01.220 --> 00:30:03.640 two entirely different words, two entirely different 00:30:03.640 --> 00:30:06.140 worldviews to intersect on the board. And this 00:30:06.140 --> 00:30:08.440 leads us to the most profound relevation of this 00:30:08.440 --> 00:30:11.539 entire framework. What happens when two different 00:30:11.539 --> 00:30:13.680 religious traditions essentially play their brank 00:30:13.680 --> 00:30:16.000 tiles at the exact same time? Right. We get a 00:30:16.000 --> 00:30:18.500 dynamic process of coming together, of shared 00:30:18.500 --> 00:30:21.279 meaning making that doesn't erase the distinctiveness 00:30:21.279 --> 00:30:23.700 of either tradition. Which brings us to the final 00:30:23.700 --> 00:30:26.019 major concept of the research. And it's a word 00:30:26.019 --> 00:30:28.920 we really need to unpack carefully. Concrescence. 00:30:29.119 --> 00:30:32.759 The authors specifically. and firmly warn us 00:30:32.759 --> 00:30:34.599 against using the word hybridization when we 00:30:34.599 --> 00:30:36.440 talk about this kind of interfaith contact. Yes, 00:30:36.440 --> 00:30:39.140 they do. Why is hybridization a dirty word in 00:30:39.140 --> 00:30:43.059 this context? Because hybridization implies mashing 00:30:43.059 --> 00:30:46.140 two distinct things together into a diluted soup. 00:30:46.660 --> 00:30:49.660 It implies a compromise where both sides lose 00:30:49.660 --> 00:30:52.200 a bit of their unique historical identity to 00:30:52.200 --> 00:30:55.940 form a new, generic, watered -down middle ground. 00:30:56.140 --> 00:30:58.319 And religions hate that. religious traditions 00:30:58.319 --> 00:31:00.539 generally hate that idea yes they don't want 00:31:00.539 --> 00:31:02.319 to be diluted they believe the revelation is 00:31:02.319 --> 00:31:05.619 true so the authors borrow a term from the philosopher 00:31:05.619 --> 00:31:11.309 alfred north whitehead Compressors. Yes. It translates 00:31:11.309 --> 00:31:14.289 literally to growing together. Whitehead defined 00:31:14.289 --> 00:31:16.990 it as the production of novel togetherness. Novel 00:31:16.990 --> 00:31:19.230 togetherness. It's like two distinct vines growing 00:31:19.230 --> 00:31:21.910 up the same trellis. The distinct religions remain 00:31:21.910 --> 00:31:24.150 entirely distinct. They keep their own leaves, 00:31:24.289 --> 00:31:26.529 their own roots, their own rigid scrabble letters. 00:31:26.730 --> 00:31:29.490 But they grow together by connecting at the interface 00:31:29.490 --> 00:31:32.690 of their shared blank spaces. They touch without 00:31:32.690 --> 00:31:35.529 merging. They create a new field of mutual understanding 00:31:35.529 --> 00:31:38.230 without destroying their original borders. OK, 00:31:38.289 --> 00:31:39.930 let's look at how this concrescence actually 00:31:39.930 --> 00:31:41.710 works in the real world, because the research 00:31:41.710 --> 00:31:44.710 gives us two mind blowing historical case studies 00:31:44.710 --> 00:31:47.269 where we can see the blank tile being played. 00:31:47.430 --> 00:31:49.890 OK, let's do it. The first is the story of Muhammad 00:31:49.890 --> 00:31:54.190 Darashikis in the 17th century. Ah, yes. This 00:31:54.190 --> 00:31:56.210 is one of the most remarkable and ultimately 00:31:56.210 --> 00:31:59.569 tragic figures in religious history. Dara Shikash 00:31:59.569 --> 00:32:02.829 was a devout Muslim prince, the favored son of 00:32:02.829 --> 00:32:05.509 the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan, the man who built 00:32:05.509 --> 00:32:08.269 the Taj Mahal. Right. He was the heir apparent 00:32:08.269 --> 00:32:11.269 to an empire in India where Orthodox Islam and 00:32:11.269 --> 00:32:14.230 deeply rooted Hinduism were living side by side, 00:32:14.230 --> 00:32:17.549 often in deep tension. His younger brother, Arun 00:32:17.549 --> 00:32:20.569 Zeb, was a strict Orthodox conservative who believed 00:32:20.569 --> 00:32:23.210 the two faiths must remain entirely separate. 00:32:23.369 --> 00:32:25.529 But Dara Shik believes something different. Very 00:32:25.529 --> 00:32:28.049 different. He didn't try to force the two religions 00:32:28.049 --> 00:32:30.990 to hybridize into a generic soup. Instead, he 00:32:30.990 --> 00:32:33.170 looked for the blank spaces. He did something 00:32:33.170 --> 00:32:36.250 incredibly ambitious and dangerous. He gathered 00:32:36.250 --> 00:32:38.849 Hindu scholars and mystics, and he translated 00:32:38.849 --> 00:32:41.690 50 of the Hindu Upanishads, their most deeply 00:32:41.690 --> 00:32:44.809 philosophical, mystical, esoteric text, from 00:32:44.809 --> 00:32:47.150 Sanskrit into Persian, which was the language 00:32:47.150 --> 00:32:49.609 of the Muslim court. A massive undertaking. And 00:32:49.609 --> 00:32:52.230 he called his translation Sir A. Akbar, which 00:32:52.230 --> 00:32:55.210 translates to The Great Secret. And his method 00:32:55.210 --> 00:32:57.170 of translation is exactly what we've been talking 00:32:57.170 --> 00:32:59.839 about today. He didn't try to align the rigid 00:32:59.839 --> 00:33:02.059 dogmas. He didn't try to argue that the Hindu 00:33:02.059 --> 00:33:04.440 gods were the same as Islamic prophets. Right. 00:33:04.599 --> 00:33:07.299 He used the secret spiritual meaning as his interface. 00:33:07.599 --> 00:33:10.640 He played the blank tile. In his introduction 00:33:10.640 --> 00:33:13.779 to the translation, Darashiku argued that the 00:33:13.779 --> 00:33:17.720 Upanishads were, in fact, the hidden secret book 00:33:17.720 --> 00:33:20.140 that is mysteriously referred to within the Quran 00:33:20.140 --> 00:33:22.680 itself. Let's just pause and appreciate the sheer 00:33:22.680 --> 00:33:25.200 intellectual audacity of that move. It's staggering. 00:33:27.849 --> 00:33:31.390 unutterable secret of hinduism the mystical concept 00:33:31.390 --> 00:33:34.390 of advaita vedanta the ultimate oneness of reality 00:33:34.390 --> 00:33:37.950 and mapped it directly onto the unutterable hidden 00:33:37.950 --> 00:33:40.549 references within orthodox islam the concept 00:33:40.549 --> 00:33:43.750 of tahit the absolute oneness of god yes he used 00:33:43.750 --> 00:33:46.230 the secret as the bridge by doing so he allowed 00:33:46.230 --> 00:33:49.390 these two massive semiospheres to achieve congressman's 00:33:49.390 --> 00:33:52.109 they could remain distinct A Muslim remained 00:33:52.109 --> 00:33:54.410 a Muslim, a Hindu remained a Hindu, but they 00:33:54.410 --> 00:33:56.470 now had a shared interface, a shared blank space 00:33:56.470 --> 00:33:58.450 where they could actually converse about the 00:33:58.450 --> 00:34:00.829 ultimate hidden nature of reality. He proved 00:34:00.829 --> 00:34:03.490 that the mystery wasn't a wall, it was a door. 00:34:03.960 --> 00:34:06.940 Unfortunately, history is brutal. His Orthodox 00:34:06.940 --> 00:34:10.039 brother, Oran Zeb, defeated him in a war of succession, 00:34:10.440 --> 00:34:14.099 had Darashikas executed for heresy, and instituted 00:34:14.099 --> 00:34:16.639 a deeply intolerant regime. It's heartbreaking. 00:34:17.019 --> 00:34:19.920 It is. But Darashika's intellectual achievement, 00:34:20.260 --> 00:34:23.139 his translation, survived and had a massive impact 00:34:23.139 --> 00:34:25.360 on how Eastern philosophy was eventually understood 00:34:25.360 --> 00:34:27.679 in the West. And that leads us to the research's 00:34:27.679 --> 00:34:30.480 culminating example of this process. It is perhaps 00:34:30.480 --> 00:34:32.260 one of the most famous encounters in Western 00:34:32.260 --> 00:34:34.460 religious history. And it perfectly illustrates 00:34:34.460 --> 00:34:37.519 playing the blank scrabble tile, the Apostle 00:34:37.519 --> 00:34:40.260 Paul, at the Areopagus in Athens, as recorded 00:34:40.260 --> 00:34:42.880 in the book of Acts, chapter 17. This is an absolute 00:34:42.880 --> 00:34:45.440 masterclass in reading the sociology of secrecy. 00:34:45.769 --> 00:34:48.710 To set the scene, Paul is a devout Jewish Christian 00:34:48.710 --> 00:34:50.710 steeped in the Hebrew scriptures and the new 00:34:50.710 --> 00:34:53.789 revelation of Christ. He walks into Athens. Now, 00:34:53.869 --> 00:34:56.610 Athens at this time is the intellectual, philosophical 00:34:56.610 --> 00:34:59.090 and religious center of the Hellenistic world. 00:34:59.230 --> 00:35:01.929 It is crawling with Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. 00:35:02.469 --> 00:35:05.070 It is a city that loves to debate, but it is 00:35:05.070 --> 00:35:08.019 also a city steeped in anxiety. Right. They are 00:35:08.019 --> 00:35:10.780 absolutely covered in idols and temples to a 00:35:10.780 --> 00:35:13.019 thousand different strictly defined Greek gods. 00:35:13.320 --> 00:35:17.000 Zeus, Athena, Hermes, every god has a specific 00:35:17.000 --> 00:35:20.139 domain, a specific rigid letter in their alphabet. 00:35:20.440 --> 00:35:22.659 And Paul is deeply distressed by this. He looks 00:35:22.659 --> 00:35:25.019 around and from his perspective, it's a city 00:35:25.019 --> 00:35:28.119 drowning in idolatry. Now, if Paul had just walked 00:35:28.119 --> 00:35:30.480 into the marketplace and started arguing dogma, 00:35:30.519 --> 00:35:32.780 if he had just started slamming his rigid letters 00:35:32.780 --> 00:35:35.699 down on the board saying, your use is a fake, 00:35:35.800 --> 00:35:38.750 my... God is the only real God. Let me explain 00:35:38.750 --> 00:35:40.710 the theology of the cross. He would have hit 00:35:40.710 --> 00:35:43.050 a brick wall. The Athenian philosophers would 00:35:43.050 --> 00:35:45.369 have just dismissed him as a babbler. The semiospheres 00:35:45.369 --> 00:35:47.949 were too incompatible. But Paul is brilliant. 00:35:48.130 --> 00:35:50.550 He surveys the city and he looks past all the 00:35:50.550 --> 00:35:53.289 rigid dogmas. He looks for a gap. And he finds 00:35:53.289 --> 00:35:55.929 a literal, physical blank space in the Greek 00:35:55.929 --> 00:35:58.630 religious framework. He finds an altar with a 00:35:58.630 --> 00:36:01.469 very specific, curious inscription. To the unknown 00:36:01.469 --> 00:36:05.829 God. To the unknown God. It's the ultimate Hedoimasia, 00:36:06.010 --> 00:36:09.329 the ultimate empty throne. The Greeks, in their 00:36:09.329 --> 00:36:11.809 deep anxiety to cover all their bases and not 00:36:11.809 --> 00:36:14.230 accidentally offend some powerful deity they 00:36:14.230 --> 00:36:16.010 might have missed in their massive pantheon, 00:36:16.010 --> 00:36:18.809 had built an altar to a god they explicitly admitted 00:36:18.809 --> 00:36:21.269 they knew absolutely nothing about. It was a 00:36:21.269 --> 00:36:24.309 monument to a secret? Yes. It was an empty frame. 00:36:24.389 --> 00:36:26.329 It was a vacuum displayed in a conspicuous place. 00:36:26.550 --> 00:36:30.130 And Paul seizes on this black hole potency. He 00:36:30.130 --> 00:36:32.230 stands up at the Areopagus, the high court of 00:36:32.230 --> 00:36:35.650 Athens, and he uses this exact blank space as 00:36:35.650 --> 00:36:38.750 his interface. He says, for as I pass by and 00:36:38.750 --> 00:36:41.289 beheld your diversions, I found an altar with 00:36:41.289 --> 00:36:44.750 this inscription, to the unknown God, whom therefore 00:36:44.750 --> 00:36:47.769 ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. 00:36:47.929 --> 00:36:50.210 He plays the blank tile. He doesn't aggressively 00:36:50.210 --> 00:36:52.829 destroy the Greek framework. He utilizes its 00:36:52.829 --> 00:36:55.130 own acknowledged gap. He essentially says, that 00:36:55.130 --> 00:36:57.309 blank space you've left open, that mystery you 00:36:57.309 --> 00:36:59.409 admit you can't articulate, I have the vocabulary 00:36:59.409 --> 00:37:01.469 for that. He takes the secret of the Christian 00:37:01.469 --> 00:37:04.949 gospel, the mystery of Christ, which was entirely 00:37:04.949 --> 00:37:07.349 foreign and nonsensical to Greek philosophy, 00:37:07.590 --> 00:37:10.510 and he translates it directly into the blank 00:37:10.510 --> 00:37:14.489 space provided by the Athenian altar. He achieves 00:37:14.489 --> 00:37:17.250 concrescence by connecting his unutterable truth 00:37:17.250 --> 00:37:20.239 to their acknowledged mystery. It's a flawless 00:37:20.239 --> 00:37:22.860 execution of what we've been discussing. He doesn't 00:37:22.860 --> 00:37:24.840 hybridize Christianity with worship of Zeus. 00:37:25.119 --> 00:37:27.800 He finds the boundary where Greek rationality 00:37:27.800 --> 00:37:30.860 fails, where they admit a secret exists, and 00:37:30.860 --> 00:37:32.980 he builds this bridge right there. If we connect 00:37:32.980 --> 00:37:35.349 this to the bigger picture. to what this all 00:37:35.349 --> 00:37:37.510 means for you, the listener, because it completely 00:37:37.510 --> 00:37:39.969 changes how we might approach conversations with 00:37:39.969 --> 00:37:42.590 people who hold fundamentally different worldviews. 00:37:42.590 --> 00:37:44.789 Oh, absolutely. In modern interfaith dialogue 00:37:44.789 --> 00:37:46.769 or even just an everyday political or social 00:37:46.769 --> 00:37:49.409 discourse, we spend almost all our energy trying 00:37:49.409 --> 00:37:51.510 to find common ground in the bright light of 00:37:51.510 --> 00:37:54.349 day. We compare our rules, our ethical codes, 00:37:54.409 --> 00:37:56.750 our historical facts. We try to find the things 00:37:56.750 --> 00:37:59.090 we can clearly articulate and agree upon. We 00:37:59.090 --> 00:38:01.030 keep trying to match up our rigid Scrabble letters. 00:38:01.440 --> 00:38:03.960 and while establishing basic ethical common ground 00:38:03.960 --> 00:38:06.920 is important for a functioning society this research 00:38:06.920 --> 00:38:10.579 suggests that true profound connection the kind 00:38:10.579 --> 00:38:12.679 that builds lasting bridges between entirely 00:38:12.679 --> 00:38:15.519 different meaning -making worlds often happens 00:38:15.519 --> 00:38:18.199 not in the bright light of defined dogma but 00:38:18.199 --> 00:38:21.079 in the shared shadows of the ineffable it happens 00:38:21.079 --> 00:38:24.340 in the blank spaces exactly acknowledging that 00:38:24.340 --> 00:38:26.659 we both have mysteries we cannot explain that 00:38:26.659 --> 00:38:29.340 we both possess secrets that defy our own language 00:38:29.340 --> 00:38:32.260 actually provides strongest possible bond. Wow. 00:38:32.519 --> 00:38:35.239 The shared experience of awe before the unknown 00:38:35.239 --> 00:38:38.000 is a more universal language than any specific 00:38:38.000 --> 00:38:41.019 theology. When the Muslim prince and the Hindi 00:38:41.019 --> 00:38:43.179 mystic or the Christian apostle and the Greek 00:38:43.179 --> 00:38:45.539 philosopher admit that the universe contains 00:38:45.539 --> 00:38:48.619 a mysterium they cannot fully master, they suddenly 00:38:48.619 --> 00:38:50.800 have a place to stand together. It's a profound 00:38:50.800 --> 00:38:53.849 realization. We started this deep dive by looking 00:38:53.849 --> 00:38:56.469 at secrets as annoying obstacles. We saw them 00:38:56.469 --> 00:38:58.809 as the enemies of science and transparency, as 00:38:58.809 --> 00:39:01.530 Cicelo Bach pointed out with her concept of ritualistic 00:39:01.530 --> 00:39:04.389 denunciation. We saw them as typical tools for 00:39:04.389 --> 00:39:07.559 social exclusion and egoistic isolation. as George 00:39:07.559 --> 00:39:10.639 Simmel argued, the heavy oak doors built to keep 00:39:10.639 --> 00:39:13.360 the profane masses out. But by diving deep into 00:39:13.360 --> 00:39:15.980 the actual history of religious contact, from 00:39:15.980 --> 00:39:18.599 the eclectic scholars at the 17th century Solspot 00:39:18.599 --> 00:39:21.400 Court finding a perennial philosophy, to Dara 00:39:21.400 --> 00:39:24.179 Shiko translating the Upanishads as the Great 00:39:24.179 --> 00:39:27.260 Secret, to Paul preaching in the shadow of the 00:39:27.260 --> 00:39:29.800 Parthenon, we discovered that those oak doors 00:39:29.800 --> 00:39:33.280 operate much more like a revolving door. And 00:39:33.280 --> 00:39:35.500 even more profoundly, they operate as dynamic 00:39:35.500 --> 00:39:38.110 currencies. They are the blank scrabble tiles. 00:39:38.309 --> 00:39:40.409 They are the empty thrones. Empty thrones that 00:39:40.409 --> 00:39:42.550 have historically allowed totally different traditions 00:39:42.550 --> 00:39:44.630 to translate their deepest truths to one another 00:39:44.630 --> 00:39:46.789 without losing their own souls in the process. 00:39:47.070 --> 00:39:49.489 It requires a massive shift in perspective. It 00:39:49.489 --> 00:39:52.050 requires humility and an acceptance that the 00:39:52.050 --> 00:39:54.210 most important parts of our identity, the core 00:39:54.210 --> 00:39:56.429 of our worldview, might be the parts we have 00:39:56.429 --> 00:39:59.230 the least vocabulary for. And that isn't a weakness. 00:39:59.349 --> 00:40:01.489 It's the very thing that allows us to connect 00:40:01.489 --> 00:40:03.429 with the other. So the next time you encounter 00:40:03.429 --> 00:40:05.190 someone from a totally different background, 00:40:06.000 --> 00:40:08.420 different faith or a wildly different worldview, 00:40:08.780 --> 00:40:11.239 maybe don't start the conversation by demanding 00:40:11.239 --> 00:40:14.139 they explain everything perfectly. Don't start 00:40:14.139 --> 00:40:16.579 by comparing your rigid letters and arguing over 00:40:16.579 --> 00:40:18.739 who has the better alphabet. Definitely not. 00:40:18.940 --> 00:40:21.159 Maybe ask them what they can't explain. Look 00:40:21.159 --> 00:40:23.800 for their blank spaces. Look for their altars 00:40:23.800 --> 00:40:26.739 to the unknown. And offer up your own mysteries 00:40:26.739 --> 00:40:30.030 in return. You might find that the very things 00:40:30.030 --> 00:40:32.230 you thought were walls are actually the only 00:40:32.230 --> 00:40:34.829 bridges that can reach across the divide. It's 00:40:34.829 --> 00:40:37.449 a transformative way to view human communication. 00:40:37.869 --> 00:40:40.250 We leave you with this final, provocative thought 00:40:40.250 --> 00:40:43.329 to mull over. We live in an age, the digital 00:40:43.329 --> 00:40:46.210 age, the information age, that aggressively demands 00:40:46.210 --> 00:40:49.530 total transparency. We do. We expect every institution, 00:40:49.750 --> 00:40:52.050 every tradition, and every individual to be fully 00:40:52.050 --> 00:40:54.880 laid bare, totally categorized. And explained 00:40:54.880 --> 00:40:58.119 in simple, bite -sized, rational terms. We want 00:40:58.119 --> 00:41:01.340 all the lights turned on all the time. Transparency 00:41:01.340 --> 00:41:04.360 is our modern dogma. But if this research is 00:41:04.360 --> 00:41:07.880 right, if secrets, mysteries, and the unexplainable 00:41:07.880 --> 00:41:11.000 are the very blank spaces that allow human beings 00:41:11.000 --> 00:41:13.559 to connect across vast cultural and spiritual 00:41:13.559 --> 00:41:16.579 divides, what happens to our ability to truly 00:41:16.579 --> 00:41:19.460 understand each other? when we successfully eradicate 00:41:19.460 --> 00:41:21.659 all the secrets. If we light up every shadow, 00:41:21.840 --> 00:41:24.320 we might find we have lost the very canvas on 00:41:24.320 --> 00:41:26.400 which we draw our connections. Something to think 00:41:26.400 --> 00:41:28.199 about. Until next time.