Ep. 34 – The Mystery of Love with James Cooke PhD

Sufi Heart with Omid Safi

Getting down to the basics of Sufism, James Cooke and Omid Safi discuss the mystery of love and our enmeshment with God.

This time on the Sufi Heart podcast, Omid Safi and James Cooke discuss:

• Sufism and mystical Islam
• Getting closer to a divine reality
• Types of love within Sufism
• Recognizing that we are interwoven with all things
• Pure love as the antidote of ego
• How we are enmeshed with God
• Making our daily life our practice
• The diversity within traditions of Islam
• Misrepresentations of Islam in mainstream media
• Extending love to absolutely everyone
• Self-love and growing in our practice of loving

About James Cooke, PhD:

James Cooke started the Inner Space Institute with the aim of helping greater numbers of people to access spiritual growth, without any of the unscientific beliefs that are common in spiritual circles. James trained as a neuroscientist after an awakening as a teenager that showed him the reality of spiritual states of consciousness. He holds three degrees from Oxford University (a PhD and Masters in Neuroscience & a BA in Experimental Psychology). He has conducted scientific research for over a decade at institutions such as Oxford University, University of California, Berkeley, University College London, Trinity College Dublin, and Riken Brain Sciences Institute in Tokyo. James is the author of The Dawn of Mind: How Matter Became Conscious and Alive (coming December 2024), which synthesizes science and spiritual insight to offer a radical solution to the Hard Problem of Consciousness.

“I feel like for some people, this emphasis on love can be quite healing to hear, because I grew up in a time where there was a kind of grotesque, simplified caricature of Islam…it’s healing to have contact with the reality of these traditions.” – James Cooke, PhD

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