The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - 206. A Lecture by Jonathan Pageau： The Symbolic World

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00:02:44.000 Hey, everybody. I'm going to put up a video from my colleague and friend Jonathan Pazzo, a Russian Orthodox icon carver, a great artist and a very profound thinker in my estimation.

00:02:58.000 About a month ago, so that would be October of 2021, I listened to a lecture he gave to the Montreal Jung Society on the conceptual structure of Genesis.

00:03:11.000 And I thought it was brilliant. It was like 20 years of thought packed into an hour of lecture and then also brilliant Q&A that followed analyzing some iconic images in the Russian Orthodox tradition.

00:03:23.000 And I thought that it would make an excellent adjunct to my biblical series on Genesis, coming at it from the different tack that Jonathan takes, elucidating the ideas that I had developed and certainly the ideas that he has developed.

00:03:38.000 I always learn a lot from listening to Jonathan. And so I reached out to him and the Jung Society of Montreal, which kindly gave us permission to repost the lecture and he agreed to do it.

00:03:49.000 And my production team has been working on it. And so we're pleased to bring it to you.

00:03:54.000 And I hope that you enjoy it even more or at least as much as you enjoyed the Genesis lectures from a few years ago.

00:04:02.000 And hopefully there's more of this sort of thing to come.

00:04:05.000 Hi, everybody. My name is David D'Andrea. I'm a college teacher in Montreal.

00:04:10.000 It's my pleasure today to introduce Jonathan Pajot, who I see as one of a small handful of cultural commentators helping us make sense of our strange historical moment.

00:04:21.000 I first came across Pajot in 2017 in the chaos and contestation of that time.

00:04:28.000 The mood of rebellion was especially pervasive on the Internet, with the memes of 4chan's edgelords fueling the triumph of Trump and Brexit.

00:04:37.000 We all remember those years not too long ago.

00:04:40.000 And Jordan Peterson hosted Jonathan Pajot on his YouTube channel to talk about what they called the metaphysics of Pepe.

00:04:48.000 Pepe, of course, was that cartoon frog that seemed to symbolize the worst instincts of the alt-right or maybe just the timeless urge of the jester to poke at the sanctimony of the powerful.

00:05:02.000 Peterson and Pajot's discussion seemed to move beyond the tawdry politics of the moment and grasp something deeper going on.

00:05:10.000 So like many people at that time, I decided to keep an eye on this interesting new commentator.

00:05:17.000 A little bit later, Pajot organized a documentary screening on Jordan Peterson that was held here in Montreal.

00:05:24.000 So I saw that name pop up again. Oh, I think I've heard of that fellow.

00:05:29.000 You may know that Pajot is a carver by profession. He is an editor at the Orthodox Arts Journal.

00:05:36.000 Today, I see him mainly as a YouTube commentator. And in that medium, I see him occupying a role somewhere between an intellectual, a social critic.

00:05:45.000 And can I say an entertainer?

00:05:49.000 He speaks with a series of interlocutors, amongst them, of course, Jordan Peterson, Christian commentators like Paul van der Klee, secular psychologists like John Verveke of the University of Toronto.

00:06:01.000 Very interesting fellow. Novelist Vesper Stamper.

00:06:05.000 These are a few of the guests he's had on who stick out for me.

00:06:10.000 Some recent topics that Pajot has discussed include universal history, this kind of retro idea of a grand narrative that includes and makes sense of everything.

00:06:20.000 Right. With, of course, a Christian foundation, the interpretation of scripture, but also symbolism within pop culture.

00:06:28.000 He seems to be fascinated by superhero movies and TV shows, as well as rap stars like Lil Nas X and Kanye West.

00:06:36.000 And I confess that I share that last fascination.

00:06:41.000 Throughout all of this, as Pajot says, symbolism happens.

00:06:45.000 So today, it is my great pleasure to introduce him, and I'm hoping that he will lay out a roadmap to the symbolism which is happening today and which maybe is gathering for the near future.

00:07:00.000 Well, hello, everybody.

00:07:02.000 Thank you for inviting me.

00:07:03.000 This is really a wonderful opportunity.

00:07:06.000 I'm surprised to see some people that I know in the I'm kind of looking at the mosaic here of everybody, not everybody, but some people.

00:07:13.000 So I'm surprised to see some people that I know and then some people that I don't know.

00:07:18.000 And so what I want to do with you today is I want to kind of take you on a kind of symbolic trip.

00:07:25.000 The I want to present to you, first of all, the let's say the source of the symbolism that I tried to present the frame, you could say, of the symbolism.

00:07:34.000 So I'm going to present it maybe in a little more of a little more of a technical way that I usually do in the in the more kind of colloquial way that I do on YouTube.

00:07:42.000 So hopefully that'll be OK.

00:07:44.000 OK, and then what I'll do is I'll take you on an example of this symbolic pattern, a very basic example, which is we're going to read the first chapter of Genesis together.

00:07:54.000 And we're going to try to look at how it kind of manifests the symbolic pattern and how this becomes a kind of map that you can use to interpret the world, but also a map, especially a map that you can use to inhabit your life.

00:08:10.000 And so we'll see that symbolism is not also not only about interpretation.

00:08:14.000 I mean, as Jungians, you know that it's a way to be in a way to kind of inhabit the world.

00:08:20.000 And so there's an interesting moment right now, I think, in the zeitgeist in the culture, something like the end of materialism or the end of physicalism.

00:08:29.000 We saw, of course, I think that that Jordan Peterson has played a big role in poking at this, you know, kind of poking at the new atheist, this last weird new atheist moment that we had in the early 2000s.

00:08:43.000 And so what we're seeing is kind of materialism running to its end.

00:08:48.000 And it's happening in physics with the problem of the observer.

00:08:51.000 It's happening in things like just this notion of complexity or complexity theory, the problem of emergence.

00:08:58.000 All of these things are bringing materialism to its end.

00:09:03.000 And the way that I like to to understand it is that for a while we had this kind of weird duality of mind and body or mind and matter where we kind of abstracted the mind into this place that we didn't talk about.

00:09:16.840 And then we look at the world and we interpret reality.

00:09:19.840 And as materialism kind of ran its course, as this kind of scientism ran its course, at some point, you could say there is something of a little moment, a surprising moment of pride where as we're kind of exhausting the things that we study, people realize that, well, there's this one thing that we haven't studied.

00:09:38.980 It's the thing that's looking at everything else, like we're studying the world, the world, the world, but all of a sudden, we realize that there's a viewer that's doing that studying.

00:09:49.280 And as soon as the materialist eye, you could say, turned towards the viewer, turned towards the interpreter, turned towards trying to understand consciousness, trying to understand meaning itself, then things become very loopy.

00:10:03.720 And certain, the simplicity of the dualistic model stops to make sense.

00:10:11.100 And this happens very much in terms of evolutionary thinking.

00:10:14.540 What evolutionary thinking is, did in some parts is try to explain the motivations of humans.

00:10:22.260 And when you start to do that, you have a problem because this human who's talking about evolution is what you're trying to interpret.

00:10:30.760 And so you're actually interpreting the interpreter.

00:10:33.840 And so what has happened is that it's opened the door to all kinds of questions, the problem of emergence, the problem of quality.

00:10:42.280 And one of the big things that's happened is the problem of attention.

00:10:46.500 And this has been manifesting itself in different fields.

00:10:49.760 And it's realizing that the world is too complex, that the world actually is kind of indefinite in its complexity.

00:10:58.080 You know, everything you look at, everything you encounter has an indefinite amount of complexity.

00:11:03.900 And it's made of parts.

00:11:05.360 And those parts also have an indefinite amount of complexity.

00:11:07.880 And you can just scale that down, you know, to the quantum field or whatever.

00:11:11.460 And many thinkers realize, how is it that, how does this work?

00:11:17.020 How do things scale up between different levels of phenomena?

00:11:21.460 That is, how is it that I can look at a chair and see that the chair is both one thing, it's a chair, but it also is many things.

00:11:30.260 And those many things are also many things.

00:11:32.120 But I can perceive at every level of reality that there's unity.

00:11:36.500 So I can notice a leg of a chair, and I can notice the color of the chair, but I can also see that all of this participates in the being of the chair.

00:11:46.100 And this is like a hard problem.

00:11:48.060 It's a difficult problem because it ends up being, it ends up infecting all of meaning making.

00:11:55.940 And it infects science and infects, it's not an infection.

00:11:58.620 It's actually a kind of healing, I think.

00:12:00.260 But it kind of seeps back into science and seeps back into the very way in which we understand the world.

00:12:08.880 And we realize that we have difficulty accounting for the qualities of things using descriptive means.

00:12:18.740 That we have difficulty even accounting for the identity of things using descriptive means.

00:12:23.600 So once we have the identity, we can describe things.

00:12:27.460 But the identity seems to kind of emerge from somewhere else or come from somewhere else and kind of brings multiplicity into unity.

00:12:36.080 And so what's fascinating is that it has, like I said, it has opened up all of a sudden the possibility for people to kind of, to understand ancient thinking in a way that until recently was very difficult to understand.

00:12:50.840 And so if we understand, so we realize that the world has to be patterned, that there has to be patterns in the world.

00:12:58.900 And this is more than just a psychological reality.

00:13:02.740 It's not just about describing the psyche of the human person.

00:13:05.600 It's actually a description, a cosmological argument.

00:13:09.480 It's an argument about how reality works, which is that for things to exist, they have to be patterned.

00:13:16.840 And those patterns seem to stack up at different levels of reality and also seem to exist in smaller patterns, seems to exist in bigger patterns, right?

00:13:29.860 I mean, you can think about it physically or think about it any way you want.

00:13:33.740 And this actually seems to be something which is inevitable for us to be able to even encounter the world.

00:13:40.560 Now, what it means is that it brings back the idea of intelligence, the idea of consciousness, and it can reconnect us to how the ancients talked about it.

00:13:52.500 Some people are talking about something like the revenge of Aristotle, right?

00:13:55.700 Or the revenge of Plato.

00:13:56.820 Because suddenly, when we have to reenter our experience and try to analyze our experience, we realize that, oh, actually, when Aristotle talks about potentiality and actuality, I experience that every single day of my life, right?

00:14:15.660 I actually encounter the field that presents itself to me as potential, which is brought into patterns, brought into actualities that I need in order to be able to exist, right?

00:14:29.900 And those actualities, those patterns, they're not just mathematical patterns or ideas in the vague Platonic sense that people have, but they're actually teleological, their purposes, right?

00:14:46.460 And these purposes, they can be regained from evolutionary thinking, which is just the strangest thing in the world.

00:14:53.660 Like, who would have thought that Darwin would bring Plato back?

00:14:55.860 But when we reenter evolutionary thinking, we realize that we need purposes in order to encounter the world.

00:15:03.720 So it's like, if I, this cup, the fact that I recognize it as a cup is because I recognize its purpose.

00:15:11.580 Its purpose to me as a human being.

00:15:14.740 And that actually scales the hierarchy of purposes, even in terms of science, right?

00:15:20.880 People think that science is just a study of phenomena.

00:15:24.800 But we always forget that science is embedded into social systems.

00:15:30.400 And that, for example, the science that will get the most attention will always be the science that is the most fascinating or useful for humans.

00:15:38.300 And the science that will get the least attention, which means the least money, the least effort to study, will be the things that are the least useful for humans.

00:15:46.100 So as soon as you re-embed science into its actual social frame, then all of a sudden, this hierarchy just reappears again.

00:15:54.600 This ancient hierarchy, which is basically, you could call it something like the religious hierarchy.

00:15:59.860 So what it does is that these patterns, these teleological patterns, these patterns with purpose, come back into the way in which we actually exist in the world.

00:16:13.220 So you can understand that ritual suddenly makes sense again.

00:16:18.460 Not only does it make sense, but it's actually inevitable.

00:16:23.000 And you can see everything you do through ritual.

00:16:27.340 Because everything you do in the world is patterned teleologically.

00:16:33.980 It's patterned towards purpose.

00:16:37.340 And sometimes, let's say, there are moments in which that purpose will kind of break down.

00:16:42.700 But that is also part of the, let's say, great ritual, which usually involves something like carnival, which involves aspects of chaos on the edges of these patterns.

00:16:51.840 And so if you, so you realize that like drinking a cup of water is necessarily ritualized.

00:17:00.760 It has to be teleological and it has to have a certain form.

00:17:04.840 I have to do certain things in a certain order in order for me to be able to achieve the purpose that I'm reaching with my, with my, with my cup.

00:17:18.560 Now bring this into the human sphere.

00:17:20.740 It's the same.

00:17:22.820 When I encounter someone, my encounter necessarily has to be ritualized.

00:17:29.180 And you can realize that it has to be ritualized because if you try to do the opposite of the ritual, you're going to get some funny reactions.

00:17:37.460 Try to talk to the back of someone's head, for example, for a while.

00:17:40.480 Or just lay down on the middle of the ground while you're speaking to someone.

00:17:44.940 And you'll realize that human relationships are extremely ritualized.

00:17:50.300 We speak and we, and we feel the tension, right?

00:17:54.000 So it's really like a rubber band.

00:17:55.580 You speak and then you have to stop speaking and you have to listen.

00:17:59.020 And so there's this kind of wave, this back and forth wave, this, this call and response, you could call it.

00:18:04.540 That happens in a conversation that if you don't follow that pattern, you're going to break the relationship and no one's going to want to talk to you anymore.

00:18:13.240 And everybody knows someone like that.

00:18:14.960 And everybody sometimes has fallen into that excess where they've talked too much and they realize it, or they haven't talked enough.

00:18:22.480 They just listened and didn't give their opinion and the other person feels like you weren't there.

00:18:26.500 So we can see that this is how it works.

00:18:28.900 Now, you can scale this pattern up from simple human interactions, from simple human engagements with objects, into social interactions as well.

00:18:43.180 That is, we realize that in order to have teleology, in order to have purpose, and in order for a group to have purpose, it has to encounter itself ritually.

00:18:55.200 It has to have things which bind it together, which make the group recognize that it is together.

00:19:06.000 Because the problem of multiplicity and the problem of complexity happens especially in terms of human interactions.

00:19:14.240 What's the difference between a group and a crowd?

00:19:17.980 What's the difference between a team and a crowd?

00:19:19.740 There are a bunch of people that are together, but one of them is not bound teleologically, and the other is.

00:19:28.300 A team is bound teleologically.

00:19:30.120 It's a soccer team.

00:19:31.560 They are bound towards a purpose.

00:19:33.620 They're bound towards a common, a common identity.

00:19:36.400 And that common identity will manifest itself in ritual.

00:19:40.560 And those rituals include the rules of the game, the rules of engagement.

00:19:46.080 Those rituals also includes other things which are more related to identity.

00:19:51.040 And this is something which will bring us straight into religious ritual.

00:19:55.280 That is, those rituals include the capacity to attend to the thing that binds us together.

00:20:04.700 And this is when we're going to start to realize that this pattern is almost first and foremost a pattern of attention,

00:20:11.940 or the manner in which we're capable of paying attention.

00:20:14.140 And so a team will have to attend to those things that bind them together.

00:20:20.080 And what that will look like will be something like celebration.

00:20:24.840 You know, at the fear of sounding somewhat scandalous to people, it's going to look something like worship, like a little worship.

00:20:32.500 It's going to be a celebration of the thing which binds us together, reverence towards the thing that binds us together.

00:20:39.940 I don't want to, I use the word worship to scandalize you a little bit, but like reverence is fine, right?

00:20:44.560 And so they will have to reverence their team colors.

00:20:47.640 They have to reverence their team name.

00:20:49.340 They have to have a totem, a mascot, which will represent them in a mythological, with the mythological frame as a kind of an animal or some figure that has more social connotation that will bind their identity together.

00:21:03.340 And then they will also be bound, you'd say, on the human level through a person who will represent their ideal, the team captain, the coach at different levels in this kind of hierarchy of being.

00:21:16.840 And so you will see that a sports team, but not a sports team, a knitting group or anything that is bound together, will necessarily have to have these elements at different levels of reality.

00:21:33.380 Now, one of the aspects is that it will also have to judge what is inside and what is outside.

00:21:41.040 And what will be the judge of that inside and outside will be their reason for existing, right?

00:21:49.440 And so you could say the logos, and to use a Christian term, the logos of the group will be that which binds together, which joins the body into one, but will also be that with judges, those that are inside, to bind them, but also to exclude them.

00:22:07.680 And so think of a knitting group, for example, right?

00:22:10.700 You have a knitting group, a bunch of people come together, they knit together, that's what they do.

00:22:14.740 And so there's a ritualized reality to that, which is that when they meet, they're going to knit.

00:22:19.920 Now, as they're knitting, they'll probably do other things as well.

00:22:23.200 Well, they'll talk, they'll chat, they'll talk about their lives, they might, you know, someone might bring something to eat, and this is all going to kind of organically participate in the knitting group.

00:22:31.780 But let's say that at some point, someone comes and says, well, you know, oh, I like this knitting group, I like to meet with this knitting group, but I don't want to knit, I want to play music.

00:22:42.780 And so they're like, okay, well, maybe one person playing music while we're knitting is not a big deal.

00:22:46.520 And so, you know, they play music, and then that person invites someone else and says, oh, I like this knitting group, but this music playing is pretty cool.

00:22:52.460 So what if I brought my instrument, and then we start playing music?

00:22:55.920 So imagine now that process going on to a point where, well, okay, are we a knitting group?

00:23:01.620 Are we a band?

00:23:02.360 Like, what's going on?

00:23:03.120 We have to decide.

00:23:04.120 We have to judge.

00:23:05.420 Either we exclude these musicians or exclude their practice, or we cease being what we are.

00:23:11.140 We die, basically.

00:23:12.600 This knitting group is going to cease to exist.

00:23:14.320 It's going to be transformed into something else.

00:23:16.020 Okay, and so this is how kind of this pattern acts as the attention that we give towards the teleology of the group will also act, the logos of that, the reason, the purpose that I'm looking at, will look like a binding agent, but will also look like a judge.

00:23:37.360 And so, like I said, this is how all kind of reality works, or how reality lays itself out.

00:23:44.220 And so, what I want to do is, I want to kind of show you that this pattern that I'm talking about is really just, it is a cosmological argument.

00:23:56.200 It's an argument about how reality works.

00:24:00.200 And what it does is that it argues about how reality works based on the notion that intelligence is necessary for reality to unfold.

00:24:10.100 And so, this is something which is kind of bubbling up, right?

00:24:12.480 It's not something which is that everybody agrees with in the world, but it's something which is bubbling up, and we're seeing appear in different fields as, even in science, we're finding some physicists who are arguing what they call the strong anthropic principle, which is that consciousness or intelligence is necessary for the world to unfold.

00:24:35.680 Because intelligence is the only thing which is able to discern pattern.

00:24:43.120 And not just discern, but it's like a, it's not just a discernment, it's a participation in pattern, right?

00:24:48.980 Because the agent, the pattern ends up coagulating in the agent, you could say.

00:24:54.260 And so, the conscious being sees these patterns, but also engages with these patterns and transforms these patterns.

00:25:01.740 It's not just a, it's not just a passive, can I say, it's not just a passive relationship to the world, right?

00:25:08.760 It's an active, embodied relationship to the world.

00:25:11.640 Okay, now, before I give you, before we go on the example, I want to say that this, once you kind of enter into this way of thinking, it has certain consequences, right?

00:25:24.600 And one of the consequences is that the intelligent perception, the perception of the embodied intelligence becomes the primary mode of engagement and interpretation in the world.

00:25:40.040 And when I'm saying this, this is extremely important, because we tend to abstract and become scientists.

00:25:49.560 And we think that that is the primary way to interpret reality, right?

00:25:55.660 And we do it, we all do it, we analyze, we're analysts, we look at the pattern from outside, right?

00:26:01.480 We try to stand above and say, well, look at that interesting pattern in that culture, and look at that interesting pattern in that culture, and look at how nice it is that they're the same.

00:26:10.040 And we're kind of like these disembodied beings that are just looking at the world supposedly.

00:26:15.560 But once you realize that, once you realize this notion that intelligence is necessary, and this ritualized embodied reality is necessary for the world to appear, then it changes everything.

00:26:29.800 Because you have to embody, the real way to engage the world is the embodied way.

00:26:37.660 So it's not that we're standing above the stories, and we're interpreting the stories.

00:26:41.480 It's not that we're standing above the images, and we're interpreting the images.

00:26:44.860 We are in a story.

00:26:47.200 We participate in a story.

00:26:49.620 We participate in communities.

00:26:51.360 We participate in images, right?

00:26:53.800 They are our communities.

00:26:54.940 They are our images.

00:26:56.500 They are the things that make us exist, right?

00:27:02.560 As we kind of actively engage with them.

00:27:05.860 And so that's why, if you look at the way that, you know, when David at the beginning said that Jonathan is an artist, this is extremely important in my theory about reality.

00:27:17.940 Is that it's not, it's like I'm presenting it to you in a way in a theory, but this presentation that I'm giving you, this is secondary to what is really going on.

00:27:27.480 What is really going on is that to the extent that I'm capable of, I get up, I get up in the morning, and I physically carve sacred images, right?

00:27:37.200 I go to church on Sunday, and I physically participate in the rituals and the liturgy.

00:27:42.700 You know, I sit there with my family around the table, and I eat a meal, and I realize that this meal is a smaller version of the ritual that I'm engaging in on Sunday morning with my parish.

00:27:57.100 And so it's an embodied reality.

00:28:00.720 It's an embodied engagement with the world.

00:28:04.120 And so, like I said, it's a pretty radical, it's very radical.

00:28:08.880 Sometimes people don't realize how radical the proposition I'm making is.

00:28:13.360 The proposition I'm making is, is that if what the things I said are true, that means that the only way for them to be fully true is for us to dive in and embody.

00:28:24.980 While realizing, of course, and while being aware of all the problems that come with this pattern as well.

00:28:30.600 There are many problems that come with this pattern, because I said, right, one of the issues of the reality of being engaged in a group that has a teleology, that has a purpose, is that it excludes.

00:28:42.060 That's the very nature of a group.

00:28:43.800 A group excludes.

00:28:45.660 Groups always exclude.

00:28:47.440 That's why they're a group, because they're not the totality of all manifestation in the universe.

00:28:52.680 They necessarily need to exclude.

00:28:55.040 You know, I mean, even if you want to be inclusive in the kind of, let's say, politically correct way, you're still going to exclude animals from your group, or you're still going to exclude rocks from your group.

00:29:08.140 You necessarily have to exclude, because you're not God, right?

00:29:11.440 You're not the totality of everything.

00:29:13.000 In order to kind of move teleologically in the world, you have to exclude.

00:29:17.320 And so that has difficulty to it, but there are ways to kind of, let's say, to deal with those in a manner which won't make the group completely self-devouring, and also won't make you kind of fall into the chaos of thinking that nothing has identity and everything is just a mush of potential, let's say.

00:29:37.660 Okay, so hopefully if that's clear, what I want to do is I'm going to go into the first chapter of Genesis and show you how the creation narrative, it's a very, very wide story.

00:29:52.740 It's a very, very, it's a huge narrative.

00:29:54.440 Obviously, I can't exhaust it, but I want to show you is that the manner in which it shows that the world manifests itself through intelligence, through consciousness, and that this is actually the agent of how reality comes together, and how we participate in that as intelligent beings, okay?

00:30:15.040 Okay, and so hopefully you are a little aware, I will go through the verses, but I mean, I'm not going, I hope everybody's a little bit aware of the creation narrative in Genesis, enough that you'll be able to at least follow.

00:30:27.680 All right, so here we go.

00:30:33.680 Okay, so scripture starts, it says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

00:30:40.040 Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the spirit of God was hovering over the waters.

00:30:50.500 So what we have are first a setup of one thing which seems to be outside of the system, but is related actually to the top of the system.

00:31:03.000 So you have God who is in the beginning.

00:31:05.700 The beginning can be interpreted as the head, the actual word means the head of something.

00:31:11.520 It also means something like the principle, right, or the origin.

00:31:17.320 All of these words work into in the beginning.

00:31:19.940 And so God is in the beginning, and he separates heaven and earth.

00:31:25.180 And the characteristics he gives of heaven and earth is that, because he says that the spirit was hovering above the water.

00:31:34.040 Now we have to see the spirit hovering above the waters as a repetition.

00:31:38.100 You'll see it's all going to be repetition and showing you what the pattern is.

00:31:42.600 And so the spirit hovering above the water is the same as heaven.

00:31:47.960 Heaven is just wind, right?

00:31:49.620 We have to read immediate about this.

00:31:52.120 Heaven is that, are the things that you can't see.

00:31:54.660 Like wind you can't see.

00:31:55.980 Like your breath you can't see.

00:31:57.640 Like speech you can't see.

00:31:58.960 All of these things are things that you can't see.

00:32:03.260 And then, so it separates heaven and earth, two basic principles of reality.

00:32:07.440 The earth is void.

00:32:08.800 It's empty.

00:32:10.080 It's silence.

00:32:11.100 It's water.

00:32:12.340 And heaven is spirit, wind, breath, and speech.

00:32:16.400 So at first, we basically just have two categories, right?

00:32:19.620 The implications of these two categories are not going to be clear right away.

00:32:24.060 They're going to start to manifest themselves, but you can already understand it as something

00:32:28.240 like spirit and potential or actuality and potential is actually totally fine to see it

00:32:34.040 that way.

00:32:34.300 Dante completely joins together the Aristotelian categories of actuality and potential and

00:32:42.140 in the creation narrative, the idea of heaven and earth as these two basic principles.

00:32:48.640 And so this is just this, right?

00:32:50.600 It's no different.

00:32:52.280 It's a universal category.

00:32:53.580 It's there in every culture that exists, this idea of this basic separation of heaven

00:33:00.820 and earth.

00:33:01.600 And it is completely based on our actual experience in the world.

00:33:06.360 And if you can't kind of re-embody yourself and realize that this distinction is a very

00:33:12.460 simple and clear one, you're going to struggle to understand what the meaning of it can be.

00:33:18.320 Because as you're standing there, like imagine yourself standing there on the ground, right?

00:33:23.740 All light comes from above, right?

00:33:26.740 Wind comes from above.

00:33:28.100 The things that are above are unreachable.

00:33:30.280 You can't touch the stars.

00:33:31.800 You can't touch the sky.

00:33:33.260 You can't touch the sun and the moon.

00:33:35.020 All of these things which give you light and which are the source of wind, invisible movement.

00:33:41.440 Think about it that way.

00:33:43.220 Think of wind as invisible movement, as invisible patterns of transformation, okay?

00:33:48.300 See them that.

00:33:48.940 Think of it that way.

00:33:50.100 So you have all of this above you.

00:33:52.420 And then below, you have a world that you knock your foot against.

00:33:57.200 You have a world that you can touch, that you can count, that you can get dirty with,

00:34:02.340 that can kill you.

00:34:03.700 And that is also dark, right?

00:34:05.780 It hides the sun.

00:34:06.840 If you take something that's on the ground, you take a rock and you put it above your head,

00:34:10.820 it's going to hide the light from you, right?

00:34:13.460 This is very embodied, right?

00:34:14.940 This is very, very...

00:34:16.360 But what it does is it separates two basic categories of reality.

00:34:22.420 And so when God said, let there be light, and there was light, God saw that the light

00:34:29.220 was good, and he separated the light from the darkness.

00:34:33.500 God called the light day, and the darkness he called night.

00:34:35.860 There was an evening, and there was a morning, the first day.

00:34:39.860 So now it starts to become clear.

00:34:41.420 You can easily understand, of course, if you can embody yourself, that light has to do with

00:34:47.800 heaven, has to do with spirit, it's above, and then darkness has something to do with

00:34:55.060 this void.

00:34:57.240 So you don't necessarily have to represent it below, but it becomes analogous to below,

00:35:01.220 because it's the moment when the light stops being...

00:35:05.800 It's the moment where the light stops showing you what the world is like.

00:35:10.300 So I'm placing it like this for you to understand.

00:35:12.460 You wouldn't necessarily have to put night at the bottom, but this is a good way to kind

00:35:16.680 of see light, dark, earth as void and empty, and heaven as wind, spirit, breath, and speech.

00:35:26.500 So God...

00:35:27.460 Sorry, let me say it.

00:35:31.400 So God is above, and he speaks, and light comes down on the world.

00:35:39.600 So then God says, let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.

00:35:50.660 So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it.

00:35:54.860 And so it was so.

00:35:56.160 God called the vault sky, and there was an evening, and there was a morning, the second

00:36:00.120 day.

00:36:01.620 All right.

00:36:03.100 So already you're starting to see something like a narrowing.

00:36:06.460 You have heaven above, but now you have like a second heaven, which is like, okay, what's

00:36:12.620 going on?

00:36:14.380 You have the water that is below, it's kind of split in two.

00:36:17.840 The potential, the earth that is below, it's kind of opened up, and now we have a pattern

00:36:24.080 which is similar, which is setting itself up inside the world.

00:36:28.280 So there's, you're going to start to see that this pattern of attention is fractal, just

00:36:34.360 like the way in which multiplicity moves into unity in any object in the world, or in any

00:36:39.720 community in the world, happens at every level of reality.

00:36:44.000 And this is what is going to start to appear to you, is that the pattern just repeating

00:36:49.260 itself at different levels until it comes together in the middle, okay?

00:36:53.660 And so we have these waters being separated, and then we have now a secondary heaven, another

00:37:01.840 heaven, which is also above, but it's something like inside the earth.

00:37:08.440 The earth now is, is obviously not the earth exactly the way that we understand it, but it's

00:37:13.460 inside the things that are visible and have, are quantifiable.

00:37:17.760 Now, Augustine said this clearly, he, he said, he said, everything you see, and when you

00:37:23.700 look up in the sky, all the things you see, the sun, the cloud, the stars, all of this

00:37:27.560 is the earth.

00:37:30.700 All of this, because it, it can be quantified, but it, the, the second heaven, those things

00:37:36.080 above that actually can be seen and identified, they are like a secondary heaven.

00:37:41.680 There are pointers towards something which is truly invisible, we could say, or patterns

00:37:47.040 that are truly invisible.

00:37:48.900 So the, I mean, it's, it's, it's not, it's not a, I don't want you to think that I'm being

00:37:53.040 all esoteric here, right?

00:37:54.420 It's like the world has a pattern.

00:37:56.940 It's a day and night, that's a pattern.

00:38:00.180 And the, the thing that manifests that to you, that you can recognize that is a pattern

00:38:04.820 is those shining lights up in the sky that move, right?

00:38:09.080 These shining lights up in the sky, they move and they reveal to you a regular pattern.

00:38:14.760 The regular patterns of reality are in the sky.

00:38:20.220 The irregular, the more embodied irregular patterns are in the world.

00:38:24.160 They're still there, but they're more irregular.

00:38:26.300 But the ones in this heavens are regular, right?

00:38:28.640 Every day the sun comes up, every day the sun goes down, the moon has its phases, the

00:38:33.960 stars move in the sky.

00:38:35.180 And so it's, it's, it's completely natural that these heavenly bodies are pointers to

00:38:41.340 patterns, they point us to patterns, they point us to the invisible patterns, you could

00:38:46.200 say, even though they are obviously visible.

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00:41:38.820 So God said, let the water under the sky be gathered to one place and let the dry ground

00:41:45.740 appear, and it was so.

00:41:48.160 So God called the dry ground land and gathered the water, and the gathered water, he called

00:41:53.780 seas, and God saw that it was good.

00:41:57.040 Now, I want to point to you here something that I haven't pointed to yet before.

00:42:03.760 So now think of the problem of intelligence that I'm trying to present to you, and this

00:42:10.080 kind of embodied or active participation in the way that reality manifests itself to you

00:42:16.740 teleologically.

00:42:17.660 So God says, and you can imagine it like God says is God's shining light, okay?

00:42:26.920 So imagine an eye in the sky, and that a sun, an eye, the sun is the same thing as an eye,

00:42:34.000 let's say.

00:42:34.800 And this is shining light down on the world, and he's showing you things.

00:42:39.480 And that has to do with identifying.

00:42:44.480 So when you encounter something that you've never seen before, and you see it, what is

00:42:51.100 it that you want to do?

00:42:52.860 You want to identify it.

00:42:55.100 That's your job.

00:42:56.180 Your job is to identify it.

00:42:57.440 If you don't identify it, you don't know if it can kill you.

00:43:00.220 You don't know if it's dangerous.

00:43:01.400 You have no idea.

00:43:02.120 And so there's a direct relationship between seeing, speaking in the sense of identifying,

00:43:11.200 naming, you could say, okay?

00:43:13.240 And so God speaks, identifies as light comes down from heaven, manifests itself on the thing,

00:43:23.080 and then God speaks it into being.

00:43:25.520 But then he sees its relevance.

00:43:29.560 He recognizes that which is manifesting itself to him, and he says that it's good.

00:43:36.160 He judges it.

00:43:37.560 Right away, God judges.

00:43:40.500 Now, think again of your experience.

00:43:43.740 Think of your just basic experience, right?

00:43:45.580 You walk into the room.

00:43:47.620 You see the glass.

00:43:49.880 You identify it.

00:43:52.180 And immediately, you ask yourself, consciously or unconsciously, you're always asking yourself

00:43:57.480 if it's good.

00:43:59.560 This is necessary.

00:44:01.300 Because the reason why you even perceive the glass in the first place is because you

00:44:05.600 use it to drink water.

00:44:07.960 And so you always have to ask yourself if it's good or not.

00:44:14.160 Is it a good glass?

00:44:16.520 And this is true about everything that you encounter.

00:44:19.960 You don't even do it consciously.

00:44:21.360 This is true of everything you encounter.

00:44:22.860 As you're walking on the grass, you have a system which is constantly judging, because

00:44:30.120 it has to be able to recognize if there's a hole.

00:44:32.540 It has to be able to recognize if there's an object in your way.

00:44:35.720 And so it's looking at the ground, at the grass that you're walking on, or the path,

00:44:39.360 and it's always identifying, naming, and recognizing whether it's good.

00:44:45.980 And so hopefully this makes sense.

00:44:50.760 All right.

00:44:51.040 So now we're really going to start to see this fractal pattern start to appear more clearly.

00:45:01.500 So you have the basic structure.

00:45:04.960 You have the very invisible patterns of head, principle, origin, wind, spirit, breath, speech,

00:45:12.280 which is completely above.

00:45:14.740 And now you have the void, empty, silent, question, puzzle, darkness, potential.

00:45:21.920 All of this is below.

00:45:24.360 And now at every level of reality, this is going to start to appear as being the same pattern.

00:45:30.640 And so like I said, the potential and the actuality of the glass is relative, obviously.

00:45:39.060 But it points to the pattern itself, to the pattern of identity and potentiality itself.

00:45:46.420 And so this is why you're going to see at every level, it's going to repeat.

00:45:50.840 So you have the secondary heavens, which are the sky, and then you have the secondary earth.

00:45:57.040 And now in the secondary earth, the same pattern happens again.

00:46:00.640 So God creates dry ground and separates it from the waters.

00:46:05.620 So dry ground is above.

00:46:08.700 It's higher than water, right?

00:46:11.420 This is just basic experience.

00:46:13.940 Dry ground is higher than water.

00:46:16.000 Dry ground is the place where you live.

00:46:18.180 Dry ground is the place where you find meaning.

00:46:20.580 Because that's where you build cities.

00:46:22.900 That's where you do things.

00:46:24.160 That's where you eat.

00:46:25.160 All of this is from the dry ground.

00:46:27.840 That's where you can breathe air.

00:46:30.200 You can encounter spirit from the dry ground and light.

00:46:35.500 But you can't in the sea, right?

00:46:37.700 In the sea, if you stay there too long, you die.

00:46:40.560 Because you run out of spirit.

00:46:42.220 You run out of meaning.

00:46:43.300 You run out of air.

00:46:44.200 All of these analogies play themselves out.

00:46:47.980 So imagine dry ground as a mountain is the best way to understand it.

00:46:51.320 You have this mountain.

00:46:52.700 And then at the bottom of the mountain or around the mountain, you have the sea.

00:46:56.680 Which is an image of the original chaos, the original potentiality, now at a different level.

00:47:05.800 Then God said, let the land produce vegetation, seed-bearing plants, and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to the various kinds.

00:47:14.680 And it was so.

00:47:15.520 The land produced vegetation, plants, bearing seeds according to their kinds, and trees bearing fruit with seed in accordance to their kinds.

00:47:22.160 And God saw that it was good.

00:47:24.420 And there was an evening, and there was a morning of the third day.

00:47:26.680 Now here, notice, again, what is going on, right?

00:47:31.300 So God says, let the land produce vegetation.

00:47:34.740 But not just produce vegetation.

00:47:37.200 What is he saying?

00:47:38.200 He's saying produce seed-bearing plants.

00:47:41.160 Why seed-bearing plants?

00:47:42.500 What a strange thing to say.

00:47:44.200 He's saying seed-bearing plants.

00:47:47.200 Because once again, in this pattern now, the seed is the identity.

00:47:54.500 And the vegetation is the variation, or is the bottom part of this pattern.

00:48:01.380 So he's repeating the pattern.

00:48:02.660 He's saying, you need a way for this identity to recognize the identity of the plant.

00:48:10.700 That's the seed.

00:48:11.680 The seed is the manner in which you recognize the identity of what you're encountering.

00:48:17.900 So you want reality to have stability.

00:48:23.720 This is how we work in the world.

00:48:25.600 We have to be able to recognize the different plants.

00:48:28.960 And in that pattern, what there is, is there's both identity and variability.

00:48:33.880 So we're moving towards a kind of multiplication.

00:48:37.100 But this multiplication always has to be a recognition also of the identity of each plant

00:48:43.920 and how these plants are different from each other and how they participate in a major pattern of just plants.

00:48:51.280 So you can see this fractal process just kind of continuing.

00:48:54.820 Then once again, the same thing.

00:48:57.860 God says the identity is in the God said.

00:49:01.280 It's in the seed of the plants.

00:49:03.040 And then the plants kind of manifest this variability.

00:49:05.880 God sees and judges and says that it is good.

00:49:12.540 So now you can see same thing.

00:49:16.500 The dry ground.

00:49:17.240 On the dry ground, you have the same pattern of above and below, right?

00:49:20.840 Identity, spirit, obviously it's not spirit in this case, but identity and variability, all right?

00:49:27.200 So we continue.

00:49:29.640 So God said, let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night

00:49:33.280 and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times and days and years.

00:49:39.560 And let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth.

00:49:42.620 And it was so.

00:49:43.920 God made two great lights, the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night.

00:49:48.880 He also made the stars.

00:49:49.940 God set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth, to govern the day and the night,

00:49:54.620 and to separate light from darkness.

00:49:56.200 And God saw that it was good.

00:49:57.940 And there was an evening and there was a morning, the fourth day.

00:50:02.620 So now in the heaven, even in the world of meaning, the same pattern appears.

00:50:08.360 So the pattern appears below in kind of the world of manifestation, you could say, as a fractal pattern.

00:50:13.480 But it also appears above in the pattern itself.

00:50:17.180 And so we have these signs in the sky.

00:50:21.280 They are signs to mark the day.

00:50:23.280 They are signs for you to identify the pattern of reality.

00:50:27.700 And there's one of the major ones, one of the major lights, which is there to govern the day and when to govern the night.

00:50:35.400 So you have light and dark, even in the heavens.

00:50:39.940 The pattern is fractal all the way through.

00:50:42.980 Every day is going to be like that.

00:50:44.980 Just spoiler here.

00:50:46.340 And God said, let the water team with living creatures and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.

00:50:53.920 So God created the great creatures of the sea, sea monsters.

00:50:57.460 It doesn't say, they don't like to say sea monsters, but great creatures of the sea mean sea serpents and sea monsters.

00:51:03.820 All these demythologizing biblicists are the worst.

00:51:09.340 It just means, it means sea monsters.

00:51:10.680 God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teams and that moves about it according to their kinds and every winged bird according to its kind.

00:51:20.560 And God saw that it was good.

00:51:22.980 God blessed them and said, be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water and the seas and that the birds increase on the earth.

00:51:29.440 There's an evening and there's a morning, the fifth day.

00:51:31.800 Now, this is where you're going to start to see what's really going on.

00:51:34.840 Because until now, you might have thought that what I'm saying is just a bunch of, like, just random interpretation.

00:51:41.800 But here, it becomes impossible not to see.

00:51:45.580 Why on earth would God create birds and fish on the same day?

00:51:50.440 What is happening?

00:51:51.880 It's the strangest thing in the world, it seems to us.

00:51:55.080 It doesn't make any sense, right?

00:51:56.660 Well, it only makes sense if we understand that he's constantly establishing the repetition of the heaven and earth pattern, of the above and below pattern, which is started from the beginning.

00:52:10.340 And so he puts, he creates the birds above and the sea monsters below and the fish.

00:52:16.300 So even in the sea, he separates fish and sea monsters.

00:52:19.740 The fish are those that you can eat, that you can encounter, and the sea monsters are those that are going to eat you, right?

00:52:24.800 There's a difference between the two.

00:52:26.660 So you have the fish and the sea monsters, but even in this whole pattern, you have the birds and the fish as framing, again, the same duality, which is being framed from the very beginning of the text.

00:52:41.440 And you have to understand that that's what's been going on from the beginning.

00:52:44.340 Because why would God create vegetation before he created the sun and the moon?

00:52:52.840 It doesn't make any sense in terms of science.

00:52:55.500 How can you create vegetation first and then create the sun?

00:52:59.980 It's completely logical in terms of a scientist.

00:53:02.700 But in terms of a pattern of reality, it's completely understandable.

00:53:08.980 And what you'll notice is that from the beginning of this whole thing, the bottom stuff appears first.

00:53:18.080 The potentiality kind of manifests itself first as a question, as this kind of darkness, which is calling to be solved, this potential which is asking to be resolved.

00:53:30.100 And then comes the answer from above, right?

00:53:34.400 The name, the idea, the light.

00:53:37.040 So think again about your experience, right?

00:53:38.680 You encounter something in the world.

00:53:40.640 You can imagine in a microsecond, in a micro-microsecond, the first thing it does is present itself to you as potential or as puzzle.

00:53:47.400 And then, obviously, it happens almost simultaneously.

00:53:51.780 You immediately identify, judge, and make it participate in reality.

00:53:56.880 But you can obviously have the experience of seeing something you've never seen before.

00:54:03.400 I mean, everybody's had that experience.

00:54:04.740 You see something or you experience something that you've never seen before.

00:54:08.440 So at first, it presents itself to you as a puzzle, right?

00:54:11.700 It's like, what is this?

00:54:12.700 And then the process has to happen, this back and forth process of question and identification, of question and judging, in order for you to finally be able to kind of identify and participate in its existence.

00:54:30.720 All right.

00:54:31.360 And so now we have God said, let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds, the livestock, the creatures that move along the ground, and the wild animals, each according to its kind.

00:54:44.920 And it was so.

00:54:46.420 God made the wild animals according to their kinds, the livestock according to the kinds, and all the creatures that move along the ground according to their kinds.

00:54:53.660 And God saw that it was good.

00:54:55.920 And so, once again, what is happening?

00:54:58.440 What is happening in this text?

00:55:02.200 Why is it that God separates living creatures between livestock, wild animals, and creatures that move on the ground?

00:55:16.100 And the answer is very simple.

00:55:18.080 It's just to continue the very same pattern.

00:55:22.200 This hierarchy that we're seeing is a hierarchy of meaning, right?

00:55:28.620 It's a hierarchy of identification, participation in reality.

00:55:35.660 And so, when God creates the animals, he does it in the same pattern.

00:55:44.860 That is, you have livestock.

00:55:47.920 Livestock is more intelligent animals.

00:55:50.620 You can call them animals that are closer to us.

00:55:55.760 Animals that participate in our intelligence.

00:55:58.300 They are the sheep, the cows, all the animals that kind of, let's say, are almost, not almost, but are more like extensions of human society.

00:56:08.440 And then you have the wild animals, which are out there in the chaos, in the wild, in the world that doesn't completely make sense to us.

00:56:19.140 And now, then, the creepy crawlers are the ones that live underground, like the sea monsters live on the ground, that dig holes in the ground, that come up, you know, and that don't actually, are not completely in the light, you could say.

00:56:32.880 That they are actually hiding in darkness, hiding under rocks.

00:56:36.520 And so, you have to kind of dig in order to encounter them, you know, just like the sea monsters are, and the fish are underground, just like the very pattern from the beginning of darkness, chaos, you know, at the bottom, and light meaning participation at the top.

00:56:55.220 And then, of course, now we come to man, and again, then God said, let us make mankind in our image and our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.

00:57:14.640 So, why is it that man has to rule?

00:57:18.520 This is like the most politically incorrect thing that you could say, right?

00:57:22.160 What are we talking about?

00:57:25.220 But once you realize this pattern, the pattern of intelligence, it has to change the way you see reality, which is that intelligence is the place in which reality is encountered, identified, and also judged.

00:57:46.880 And this is going to be a tough pill for a lot of people to swallow, but at least try to understand it, try to understand it in this pattern.

00:57:55.220 So, man has to rule, because man is an image of God.

00:58:01.600 Man is an image of God in the sense that man is a locust of intelligence.

00:58:06.740 And all the things that God said, all the things that you saw from the beginning, in terms of how God creates the world, is something that we participate in at a lower level, we could say.

00:58:18.700 We recognize that we participate in that at a lower level, because we do that.

00:58:23.040 We cast light, we identify, we judge, and then we are the place in which meaning is gathered into us.

00:58:34.300 And so, now God puts man above all the creatures which are below.

00:58:40.000 Now, remember, those creatures were already organized in this hierarchy of meaning, right?

00:58:46.660 Livestock, wild animals, crawlers, fish, sea monsters, all of this is organized in this kind of hierarchy of meaning, this hierarchy of danger, this hierarchy between that which is in the light, which is identifiable, which participates in intelligence, and that which is below and is in the chaos and is also dangerous to you, okay?

00:59:08.060 And so, we have the human person meeting in the middle, becoming the place where all of these patterns kind of join together in the center.

00:59:21.880 And so, then to understand the role of man a little better, we actually have to go into Genesis 2 just for a little bit to kind of understand, because in Genesis 2, there's another creation narrative, which focuses more on the human person.

00:59:34.240 And then it says, God, sorry, let me skip this, actually.

00:59:41.780 Oh, yeah, so it says, I don't want to run out of time here, but it says, God blessed them and said, be fruitful, increase in number, fill the earth and subdue it.

00:59:49.740 Again, this is going to be difficult, but intelligence fills the earth and subdues it.

00:59:57.300 Not in a negative sense, but in the sense of identifying, right?

01:00:00.980 The scientist that is constantly discovering new species and all of this is something like intelligence or man, filling the earth and subduing it in the sense of identifying it and making it participate in a pattern of meaning.

01:00:15.660 Rule over the fish in the sea and the bird in the sky and over every living creature that moves in the ground.

01:00:20.400 Then God said, I give you every seed-bearing plant, et cetera, et cetera.

01:00:24.960 And then he saw that it was good.

01:00:28.760 And it's important that when God created the humans, he creates them male and female.

01:00:35.680 And in scripture, there's a sense in which at first this is almost like man is actually androgynous, that he creates man, male and female.

01:00:44.340 That is, in man is the duality of heaven and earth itself, right?

01:00:50.320 So there's a microcosm of this basic duality of heaven and earth, which is being reproduced inside the human person.

01:01:00.020 As within them, they also contain this actuality and potentiality and how they also participate in the manner in which actuality and potentiality come together in the world.

01:01:11.620 So it's not just in them, but it's actually in, as being intelligent subjects, they are able to now encounter the world as this union of these two.

01:01:25.380 All right, so this is where I wanted to go into the second chapter of Genesis just for a little bit to help you understand how this kind of comes together.

01:01:31.180 So it says, this is the account of the heavens and the earth when they were created, when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.

01:01:38.000 Now, no shrub had yet appear on the earth.

01:01:39.820 Now, you see, it's different here.

01:01:41.080 Here, there is a sense in which actually man kind of comes before everything.

01:01:45.000 He's actually there at the outset.

01:01:46.640 Before God did all those other things before, you can imagine that God was man or the microcosm or the intelligent agent was there even in the origin of creation itself.

01:01:57.360 No shrub had yet appeared on the earth and no plant had sprung up for the Lord God had not set rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground.

01:02:05.800 But streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground.

01:02:09.940 Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living being.

01:02:19.840 So it's a similar image as to what we have before.

01:02:23.040 But here, man is there right at the outset.

01:02:25.180 So it says that there was no plant, there was nothing on the ground, and that water covered the earth.

01:02:32.440 Water came out from the earth and covered the earth.

01:02:34.900 So it's the same image as before.

01:02:36.580 You have heaven above and the earth below.

01:02:39.180 The earth is chaos and water.

01:02:41.020 And then what God does is he gathers all the potentiality, the dust, all this formless chaos.

01:02:49.120 He gathers it into one place, and then he puts heaven into it.

01:02:56.460 He blows air into this gathered dust, and that's how man becomes a living being.

01:03:04.300 Now, what I want to propose to you is that process of gathering dust and putting air into it.

01:03:13.980 That's what was being described in the first chapter of Genesis, and that is how you encounter everything in reality all the time, nonstop.

01:03:24.180 That is, the world presents itself to you as indefinite potential.

01:03:28.560 And the manner in which you are able to exist in a living world is that intelligence gathers potential into bodies and then puts purpose or recognizes purpose, engages with purpose, meaning, spirit, breath.

01:03:52.820 And that is how the world actually exists, right?

01:03:58.720 And so the description in Genesis is a description of how the world exists, not in a scientific way, but in a way which takes into account that intelligence is necessary, that we are intelligent beings in the world, and that we can't avoid that problem.

01:04:18.600 We can't pretend that we're not in the world, and that we're just analyzing phenomena, and that we're not part of that process, right?

01:04:26.540 So it's a cosmic vision of reality, which includes the viewer, which measures the viewer, or includes the viewer in the way in which we understand the world.

01:04:37.160 All right, and so we have this image again.

01:04:44.320 Now, we can represent it this way, but we can also represent it this way.

01:04:51.600 This is a way that will help you understand, if you can realize that you can represent it this way, you're going to understand so much.

01:04:59.160 And this is where I want to make a shameless plug, which is that my brother, Mathieu Peugeot, and I, we developed a lot of this way of speaking about reality together, which is not something that we invented.

01:05:11.420 It really is just a reinterpretation of traditional pattern making.

01:05:15.200 It's an interpretation of the church fathers, of the rabbis, of the brahmin.

01:05:18.700 It's just a way in which we are trying to represent these traditional stories for the modern world.

01:05:25.960 He wrote a book called The Language of Creation, which goes through a lot of the things that I'm talking about in almost in a more, even in a more kind of mathematical, technical way.

01:05:35.540 So now think of this, the first image that I showed you as heaven and earth, you could say.

01:05:42.160 So this is the same.

01:05:44.420 At the top, you have, just lay them out there.

01:05:47.380 Like, there's more complexity to this, but it's like father, heaven, spirit, light, essence, pattern, mind, purpose, all of these things which are above.

01:05:55.640 And then at the bottom, mother, earth, waters, chaos, potential, question, body, puzzle, multiplication, all of these images of that which is below.

01:06:10.160 And then what you have is you have the pattern which descends, the ray of light, the speech, the speaking which comes down, right?

01:06:22.080 The logos which comes down from the father and connects with heaven, right?

01:06:29.240 Sorry, connects with earth.

01:06:32.800 And that usually, in all traditions, pretty much, appears at the top of a mountain, which is just completely intuitive, right?

01:06:42.500 The mountain is the place where heaven and earth meet.

01:06:44.640 It's like the earth kind of coming together into a point where the heaven now touches the earth at its highest point, okay?

01:06:54.240 But it's also an image of this difference between quality and quantity, identity, variability, you know, all of this kind of image of the relationship between the identity of your team and the variability of its players, of its idiosyncrasies.

01:07:13.260 All of that will kind of come down below as this image of the mountain or the pyramid.

01:07:20.200 And so, I won't go into this right now, but there's a centrifugal force and a centripetal force that is, there is a capacity to move into attention, to move into identity, to move into purpose.

01:07:43.980 And then there's a way in which we are able to kind of have this, let's say, what you could call a breakdown of attention or focused attention, but it's also this kind of general attention, you could call it, where we have this general attention on the borders of our, even of our visual field, where it's like almost like an alarm system, right?

01:08:05.240 Where things, if things, we don't have a lot of energy there, but if things pop in, this variability kind of pops in on the edge, and it's the question, right, the puzzle, something's happening here, and I can't see it, it's a puzzle.

01:08:17.500 So, what do I do?

01:08:18.240 I then put my attention on it, identify it, judge it, and do all the things that we talked about before.

01:08:23.420 And so, there's a centrifugal force and a centripetal force, and that's true as much in your attention as it is in a team or a country or any group, anything that has body.

01:08:35.840 There's something which is making it more towards its identity and some aspect which is pushing it towards multiplicity, variability, and potentiality, okay?

01:08:46.140 I don't want to go into that too much because that would take us into a whole other world, but just to understand that, you probably are, if you're Jungians, you're aware of the kind of coagula solve structure that Jung used in terms of alchemy.

01:08:57.920 This is exactly what I'm talking about, right?

01:09:00.340 This is exactly the coagula solve pattern, which is a movement towards solidity and identity, and then a dispersion into potentiality.

01:09:09.980 But what I want to help you to understand, especially, is that this structure, like this basic pattern, can help you understand so many things, right?

01:09:19.040 It's the pattern of a temple, right?

01:09:22.360 It's a pattern of a temple where in a temple, let's say in the Jewish temple, you had the Holy of Holies where the glory of God would descend in the Holy of Holies, and then there you would have a priest who was just one person, and then outside of that you would have all these levels of quantification where outside you would have the priestly caste, then you would have the faithful, and then you would have the strangers, right?

01:09:48.960 It's a pattern of a church, which has the same pattern.

01:09:51.360 You have the altar in the highest point of the church where God descends on the altar, and then there's also a reduced amount of people that are there that represent this moving into quality, this moving away from quantity, and then the sacraments get dispersed out into the nave where the faithful gather, and then there's a narthex or a vestibule where strangers come, and then on the outside of the church, there are gargoyles.

01:10:18.960 And strangers and strangers and other aspects of reality, okay?

01:10:22.220 So this is the structure of the structure of the way that Greeks understood themselves in ancient times, right?

01:10:30.020 They had the umphalos, they had the navel of the world, and in that place, they received oracles from heaven, which would bind them together, which would manifest their destiny.

01:10:41.980 All of that was manifested at the place where they had the belly button of the world, the center of the world, and then as you moved away, you would have Greeks, and then strangers that you knew, and then finally barbarians, and ultimately monsters.

01:10:59.640 Things that have confused identities, things that you don't recognize would be outside on the outer edges of this, okay?

01:11:07.820 So like I said, this is basically just the pattern of the way in which we encounter the world, but it's also the pattern of how society is actually buying together.

01:11:18.920 It's not just a subjective experience, but it scales up in terms of your experience into the social experience, and ultimately, I think, into a cosmic version.

01:11:32.560 It's an image of the cosmic, of the cosmic pattern.

01:11:36.000 So I just want to show you quickly, without even going into detail, I want to show you how this pattern just appears everywhere.

01:11:42.940 So here's an icon of the ascension of Christ.

01:11:44.960 Look, you have above, you have the top of the pyramid or the top of the mountain.

01:11:49.420 You have the principle, the logos, which is above.

01:11:52.420 You can imagine that the father is actually above this, hidden above, and then below, you have the mother as the place of potentiality,

01:12:00.140 and then next to her, you have all this multiplicity.

01:12:03.360 So you have the one, you have the mother, you have the 12, okay?

01:12:07.260 This is one example.

01:12:08.660 Here's an example of the image of baptism.

01:12:11.300 So you have Christ as the one who now joins heaven and earth as this point at the top of the mountain,

01:12:17.720 the joints of the earth, but now he's descending all the way down from the top, let's say, down into the waters,

01:12:23.840 down into the waters of chaos, and you see the spirits above,

01:12:27.920 which is coming down on the top of the mountain, and below you have the sea monsters,

01:12:34.500 which are below in the chaos of the waters, right?

01:12:38.820 Simple, just many, many.

01:12:40.600 And so this is a version that I made, which I call the image of everything, basically.

01:12:44.580 And it's just trying to kind of capture the Bible story as an image of this pattern,

01:12:51.620 as an image of what, how the top of the pattern relates to the bottom of the pattern,

01:12:58.520 the waters at the bottom, the sin, the fall, you know, the thorns as this multiplicity,

01:13:04.620 et cetera, et cetera, the sea monster.

01:13:06.940 I don't want to interpret it, but there are different ways in which you can kind of see this.

01:13:10.440 And the last one I wanted to show you is an image of the last judgment,

01:13:14.880 which is really the ultimate image of this, if you want to see an ultimate image of this whole pattern,

01:13:21.660 because obviously the last judgment being the last moment, or the eschaton,

01:13:26.160 or the moment in which all the totality is manifested in one final thing,

01:13:31.400 then you have this image of the world.

01:13:35.360 The world, in this version especially, you actually have the Father above, above, right at the top.

01:13:41.960 Can you, I don't think you can see my cursor, huh?

01:13:45.040 Can you see my cursor?

01:13:47.920 Oh, here, you can see it this way.

01:13:49.140 Okay, so you have the Father above here.

01:13:52.800 Then you have the Logos descending onto the world.

01:13:56.920 Can you see that he's got the world underneath him?

01:13:59.420 And then you have that which is below, which is both the hell, this kind of monstrous hell, okay?

01:14:12.700 But it's also the place of paradise here, because it's the place in which we gather things together.

01:14:21.520 So remember in Scripture, the gathering of the dust and the blowing of the Spirit.

01:14:26.460 Well, that also happens from the bottom, right?

01:14:28.660 So you have the two sides.

01:14:31.380 Remember I talked about the centrifugal and the centripetal force.

01:14:35.500 On the left of Christ is the sword, and there's a descent down into death.

01:14:43.080 On the right of Christ, there is his hand lifting up, right?

01:14:49.040 Sorry, wrong hand.

01:14:50.200 Lifting up.

01:14:50.820 And here you find the gathering of the saints, and they rise up.

01:14:58.600 See these little saints with angels, with wings.

01:15:00.480 They go up on the right of Christ into glory.

01:15:05.820 So there are very, very mysterious things about this image that I don't want to go into too much detail.

01:15:12.920 But you can understand that this is happening through these angels that are making music, that are making sounds, pattern sounds, and this is what is calling to the end, bringing about the judgment of all of reality in which all of this is kind of happening.

01:15:30.600 The judging of the good, the judging of the good, bringing into the center, and the ultimate exclusion in a cosmic way towards death.

01:15:38.440 And then here, this is the process.

01:15:44.920 So this is, it's a complicated thing in orthodox theology.

01:15:50.860 But on this, this is the soul, which is, you can see the soul here.

01:15:54.880 The soul is moving up this serpent slash ladder.

01:15:58.280 So it's both a way to go down and a way to go up, just like chutes and ladders, guys.

01:16:02.780 Chutes and ladders is one of the oldest games in reality.

01:16:06.000 It's a truly cosmic game, by the way.

01:16:09.400 It's almost religious as a game.

01:16:11.780 So you have this coming down and moving up, which is captured in one image.

01:16:17.360 And on this are all the sins that you can have.

01:16:21.760 Those sins are coupled with virtues.

01:16:23.940 And so as the soul ascends this thing, they encounter at every level of reality a demon, which is pulling it down.

01:16:31.440 But also, they also encounter angels, which are pulling them up.

01:16:36.620 Here in this one, you don't see the angels so much.

01:16:40.280 In other versions, you'll see the angel.

01:16:43.880 Like in this one, you see the angel as the one trying to push down the demon.

01:16:47.040 And as you move up, you kind of move towards this judgment.

01:16:51.440 And that's actually that hierarchy that I showed you at the beginning in the creation.

01:16:55.700 That also obviously has an analogous version of that in you, in your virtues, in your capacity to scatter yourself into chaos, right?

01:17:06.660 By falling into all these thoughts that rip you apart and the capacity to join together into one and to move up the ladder of attention as you worship God, of attention as you move towards virtue, rather than this dilapidation and distraction by which you lose the worship.

01:17:26.060 You lose the capacity to attend to that which is above you.

01:17:28.920 And you fall into chaos and the multiplicity of the passions, right?

01:17:35.020 Passions that rip you apart.

01:17:37.880 All right, Jordan, I think we're starting with your questions.

01:17:39.940 Let's go for it.

01:17:42.240 Well, how about subdue?

01:17:46.060 Think of the word.

01:17:47.980 Sub, to arrange hierarchically.

01:17:51.060 Do, to give everything its due.

01:17:53.860 That is, so when man subdues the world, he does exactly what you're doing.

01:17:58.920 Right?

01:18:00.040 Everything is in its place.

01:18:01.080 And that's a reflection of the simultaneous act of perception and judgment and the fact that those things, as you pointed out, are inextricable.

01:18:12.500 And that's technically true, right?

01:18:14.900 Yeah.

01:18:15.400 People, psychologists studying perception from the biological ground have drawn that inescapable conclusion.

01:18:22.940 So, that was really cool.

01:18:25.720 Ritual encounters with other people.

01:18:28.840 In Dostoevsky's The Devils, The Possessed, there's a great scene where Stavrogan goes into an officer's club, and he's coming unglued at this point in his political chaos, utopian political chaos.

01:18:42.240 He's possessed by these ideas.

01:18:43.780 He puts his fingers in the nostrils of an agent general and drags them onto the street, and it just causes absolute chaos in the entire society.

01:18:53.400 Yeah, you realize how fragile, like how easy it is to actually just shatter, you know, this ritual reality.

01:19:00.340 Yes, Dostoevsky understood that so deeply, so that's stunning.

01:19:06.600 The female potential equation, I've been criticized a lot for associating femininity with chaos, although it's not an insult, and it's not something that I did casually, and it's not something I did.

01:19:18.760 And the idea of the seminal word is precisely a reflection of that, and the implication of that is feminine potentiality and the analog between the word and the drawing out of potential new forms.

01:19:34.100 So there's a sexual element to that, obviously, that's reflected in the idea of the seminal word, the pyramid notion, on top of that George Washington tower, the obelisk, is a pyramid capped in aluminum, of all things, because aluminum was the most valuable metal at that point.

01:19:54.160 And so that idea that there's a pure and valuable top to the pyramidal structure, like that's an icon of the entire structure of the United States, and by extension, the entire, let's say, Western world, but world as such.

01:20:10.920 Yeah, the Egyptian pyramids were most probably capped with gold, like the very top of the pyramid would be like a mini pyramid, and then that would have been gilded.

01:20:20.200 You're right, so one of the advantages to the interpretive framework, this interpretive framework, is that it explains the intrinsic sacred nature of the pyramidal structure.

01:20:29.700 It's a great mystery, like what's up with these pyramids exactly, and like people put a lot of work into those things, so it wasn't trivial.

01:20:38.040 Yeah, and the ziggurats are pyramids too, people always want to separate them, but you know, all these structures, these kind of, these structures that are representing mountains are like geometric versions of mountains, that's what they are.

01:20:49.380 And if you want to, once you understand that, then you realize that every time someone goes up a mountain in scripture, it's, it's the same as a pyramid, it's going up to the top of reality.

01:20:57.860 I think you did a brilliant job of explaining that with your analysis of those images at the, at the end.

01:21:03.080 Are you going to make that image you made into a carving?

01:21:07.140 Yes, I am, but it just in line somewhere in one of my carvings, someone, someone is.

01:21:11.740 You need a client to purchase that?

01:21:14.760 I have one, but I can also make one for you if you want.

01:21:17.400 It's quite something, Jonathan.

01:21:19.480 And then this last thing I'll say, I think, is in the second creation version, where you have man primary, that's a analog, a repetition of the notion of the word.

01:21:33.780 Yeah.

01:21:33.900 So it's the same, so that, so interesting seeing that embedded in a, in a really archaic narrative there.

01:21:40.780 Oh, so I do have one other thing.

01:21:42.380 Why did you use intelligence as, as the, as the primary descriptor of the interactive consciousness instead of logos?

01:21:50.480 Well, it, the reason why, I mean, I tried to kind of move between the two.

01:21:54.900 It's also because it's hard to use, to know which word to use, because the way that the ancients understood intelligence was very, is a little different from the way we understand it.

01:22:04.040 It was more, it is a, it's called a noose in orthodox thinking, which is, it's actually, it's beyond rationality.

01:22:10.940 It's the capacity to directly grasp the pattern, right?

01:22:15.560 And so.

01:22:16.380 To attention.

01:22:17.660 Exactly.

01:22:18.000 That's why it's related to attention.

01:22:19.560 Yeah.

01:22:19.780 Yeah.

01:22:20.040 Yeah.

01:22:20.320 That's yeah.

01:22:21.040 That, and that supersedes rationality is embedded inside that capacity to pay attention because attention selects the objects that rationality deals with.

01:22:28.840 And rationality tends not to notice that.

01:22:30.660 It's like, well, that's the easy part.

01:22:32.320 It's like, no, no, no.

01:22:33.580 That's, that's the hard part actually.

01:22:35.320 Yeah.

01:22:36.120 And as we see, like YouTube virality is a great way to understand what happens when we're not careful about that.

01:22:43.340 Because what we have with YouTube virality or just internet virality are just these random, you know, stupid things that pop up, gather all the attention, vanish, pop up, gather all the attention, vanish.

01:22:54.900 And so it's actually, it's actually ends up being a form of breakdown of attention.

01:22:58.620 It's a distraction.

01:22:59.460 It prevents us from seeing, you know, it's, it's the incapacity to pay attention to the right things and it leads us into a, into a kind of breakdown.

01:23:09.740 It was great.

01:23:11.180 I really, I always learn a lot listening to you.

01:23:14.560 It's really good.

01:23:15.600 Really good.

01:23:16.580 Thanks.

01:23:16.880 I really appreciate it.

01:23:17.920 Thank you so much.

01:23:19.520 Thanks.

01:23:21.840 Okay.

01:23:22.320 One question someone is asking, could you elaborate on what you mean about above and below?

01:23:29.460 Um, well, the idea of above and below it, like I said, it manifests itself fractally, but it, you, it's about something like, I mean, it's actual and potential.

01:23:39.800 And so it's identity and potentiality.

01:23:43.440 Um, and so think about it.

01:23:45.280 Let's, let's think about it just like, let's bring it down to like a real, real, like a basic, uh, basic level.

01:23:51.180 Um, so let's think of a, of a sports team again, right?

01:23:57.220 So you have the identity of the sports team.

01:24:00.780 The reason why it exists, which is to win basketball games or to, to do that.

01:24:04.820 Then there's the identity of the team itself, you know, which is kind of embedded in that.

01:24:09.280 And then there's the potential, the potential of that team are the players.

01:24:13.660 Their, their, those players have also their own potential.

01:24:18.300 Like it's, it's, like I said, it's fractal.

01:24:20.540 So the, the players can change, but the identity of the team won't.

01:24:25.640 So that's what we mean by potential.

01:24:28.000 Right.

01:24:28.540 And so you can, it's, it's variability, which comes together and then is able to manifest the purpose in the world.

01:24:37.620 So that's what we mean by above and below.

01:24:41.200 And so God says, um, to let the earth bring forth veg, vegetation that has seed.

01:24:49.040 We always forget that God doesn't just speak it into existence.

01:24:53.020 He says to the earth, bring forth.

01:24:56.240 Right.

01:24:56.780 And so it's like out of the potential comes this variability, which then receives name from above and joins it together into specific identities.

01:25:07.620 And so, so, like I said, this idea of above and below can be seen in any, anything that you encounter.

01:25:17.720 Another question is, you mentioned the pattern of livestock on the wild animals that manifest heaven and earth.

01:25:24.980 Are people that try to tame animals, such as tigers, bears, examples of breakdown of the pattern?

01:25:32.020 And that is why usually it ends in disaster.

01:25:35.760 Yeah, definitely.

01:25:36.580 I mean, you can see that, that you have to kind of have a respect, a subdue, as Jordan said.

01:25:42.460 I love that.

01:25:42.960 I actually love that.

01:25:43.760 That is, you have to be able to see things where they really are and engage with them where they are in this kind of pattern of reality.

01:25:50.620 And so if you engage with, if you engage with the pattern of reality in a wrong way, that's, you die.

01:25:57.080 And it, and it can be, it can be something like taming a tiger.

01:26:02.160 But it can also be something like eating rocks.

01:26:05.920 Like rocks are not potential that you have access to, to eat.

01:26:09.620 And, and, and, and that's true for like an indefinite amount of things that there are certain identities, which have certain potentials that are, that can participate in them.

01:26:19.940 And if you don't encounter that properly, then you're going, not going to work.

01:26:23.300 If you have a basketball team and you decide to, to fill the basketball team with gerbils, well, your basketball team is going to, is going to lose.

01:26:30.580 It's not going to exist.

01:26:32.280 And so there, this is how this, this, this, this is how it works.

01:26:35.560 Like in terms of this idea of subduing, right.

01:26:37.740 Or judging is, is a very good thing.

01:26:40.500 It's a necessary thing because it's how you judge what potential is able to join with what identity.

01:26:50.840 Okay.

01:26:51.520 We have a heretical question.

01:26:54.640 How sure are you about the universality of heaven and earth distinction?

01:26:58.860 As far as I know, it is symbolic pattern appearing with the axial age cultures, Buddhism, Christianity, Socratic, Greece, Islam.

01:27:09.020 Animistic culture, for example, do not have clear distinction between those two categories.

01:27:14.820 So by extension, what makes you sure that all of this isn't just a perfect exposition of an axial age mind?

01:27:23.940 How can I say this?

01:27:25.160 Now I'm going to go back into what I'm saying.

01:27:29.420 I'm going to go back into what I'm saying, which is about embodied reality.

01:27:33.100 People who talk about the actual age and animistic as if they don't exist in the world.

01:27:38.360 They just, I have no, I have very little patience for that.

01:27:42.120 Like, where are you?

01:27:43.940 Where are you to tell me about the actual age as if it's something which you're not in?

01:27:48.820 And talk about the animistic age as if it's something that somehow you can see from outside.

01:27:54.980 Like, this, how can I say this?

01:27:58.220 It's like, we don't know much about animistic religions because we're not animistic religions.

01:28:06.880 We're always interpreting animistic religions from the place where we are.

01:28:10.720 And so it's a very, to me, it's always strange.

01:28:13.520 It's like, do you know the secret traditions of the shamans?

01:28:17.740 But you read the text that some European went out into Tibet and wrote some text based on what they encountered there.

01:28:26.320 Were you initiated?

01:28:28.360 Right?

01:28:28.580 Did they bring you into the secret of secrets?

01:28:30.640 Did they tell you what their secret traditions are?

01:28:32.380 No, they didn't.

01:28:32.980 You don't know them.

01:28:33.740 And so I'm not saying that the comment is true or false.

01:28:37.220 I'm saying that you really know less about these traditions than you think you do.

01:28:42.180 Because the way you know about something is not by studying it from the outside.

01:28:47.180 But it's about encountering it and living it from the inside.

01:28:52.020 And those that are initiated into the higher mysteries, they're not supposed to talk about it anyways.

01:28:57.200 So they're not going to tell you.

01:28:58.560 So even if a scholar was at some point maybe initiated into the higher mysteries, they shouldn't tell you.

01:29:06.240 And if they tell you, it means they probably weren't initiated and they're bullshitting you.

01:29:09.940 Right?

01:29:10.100 This is true, like, even of the Eleusinian mysteries.

01:29:12.280 Everybody talks about the Eleusinian mysteries as if they know what they are.

01:29:15.340 It's like, that was a pretty awesome thing because no one ever told anybody what happened there.

01:29:21.040 Right.

01:29:21.980 And so it's really important to understand that.

01:29:24.820 To understand this.

01:29:26.420 Anyways, I'm sorry.

01:29:27.180 I don't want to go off on this first.

01:29:28.560 But it's really just important to understand the implications of these embodied patterns and how it is that every time we pretend that we can stand above them and just analyze them, that I think we're deluding ourselves.

01:29:44.900 And so coming back to heaven and earth, how can I say this?

01:29:49.840 It's like, I think that heaven and earth is a universal pattern.

01:29:54.020 It doesn't mean that there maybe aren't other ways of explaining that same duality or that same relationship.

01:30:01.500 And also, it's the same.

01:30:02.780 It's the same.

01:30:03.260 It's the same thing.

01:30:03.920 Like, it's the same problem.

01:30:04.760 Like, these animistic cultures that were there before the actual age, you don't know anything about them.

01:30:12.160 You have no way of encountering them.

01:30:15.140 And the ones you encounter now, the idea that they're the same as the ones that were there before the actual age is also, it's all kind of weird scientific delusions people give themselves.

01:30:24.260 So, sorry.

01:30:27.140 Sorry to ever ask that question.

01:30:28.400 I didn't mean to kind of go off.

01:30:29.300 But sometimes these things, I get itchy about them.

01:30:32.560 Okay, someone is asking, what is the meaning of the God calling the human very good versus calling the other things only good?

01:30:46.240 And that's very, it's super interesting because there's even a day where God doesn't say that it was good, by the way.

01:30:52.220 People always forget that.

01:30:54.360 When God separates the waters, he doesn't say that it was good.

01:30:57.920 And so, I mean, I think that's what it is.

01:30:59.300 It's that, in a way, the human being participates in the pattern of the good in a way similar to the way God participates in the pattern of the good.

01:31:08.060 That is, the human being can do good and can recognize good, right, and can participate in the good.

01:31:15.080 Whereas the other beings, less so.

01:31:17.920 Not completely absent of it, but less so.

01:31:23.800 And so, I think that all living creatures participate in the good and participate in God, ultimately.

01:31:28.480 But it's just a question of hierarchy and embedded patterns, you could say.

01:31:33.040 There's a psychological observation.

01:31:40.940 In terms of psychological work, how out of the infinite complexity of interpretations, certain interpretations of experience have been offered to us to stay inside the group we accept defensively versus how we can seek out our intuited other patterns in our experience.

01:32:02.860 Create a new reality, create a new reality, create a new reality for ourself.

01:32:09.040 Okay.

01:32:10.440 I would say.

01:32:13.840 Okay.

01:32:14.900 Let's say it this way.

01:32:16.940 That the patterns of specific groups, they are always limited.

01:32:22.820 They're limited by their limitation.

01:32:25.700 They're limited by the fact that they embody the patterns in a specific context.

01:32:29.940 So, because they do so, they will always be somewhat faulty.

01:32:35.160 They won't be perfect because they're not, right?

01:32:38.300 They're somewhat lower on the mountain of meaning, you could say.

01:32:42.760 And so, but ultimately, if you're attentive, the idea is that within those smaller patterns, you're able to intuit higher patterns.

01:32:51.400 And hopefully participate in things which lead you into higher patterns.

01:32:56.540 So, if you're, let's give you an example.

01:32:58.880 Like, if you're part of a group of addicts, let's say.

01:33:04.660 Right?

01:33:04.780 You hang out with a bunch of cokeheads or people who take heroin.

01:33:07.740 So, obviously, you're in a, there's something in that pattern which is true.

01:33:12.980 Right?

01:33:13.520 There's something in that pattern which binds you together in a way towards a telos, towards a reason.

01:33:18.580 But there's also something in that pattern which is leading you into a breakdown of yourself.

01:33:24.620 But it still has something.

01:33:28.260 And so, hopefully, that's something, right?

01:33:29.660 That capacity to bind together with others in a kind of communion.

01:33:34.180 That is ultimately what should lead you up towards a better version of that pattern.

01:33:39.140 Right?

01:33:39.700 Towards, instead of hanging out with a bunch of cokeheads, right?

01:33:42.500 You hang out with some people who play sports.

01:33:44.480 Or hang out with people who are interested in cars or people who are interested in this.

01:33:47.500 But there is a way in which, even in the lowest versions of these, there's always something for it to even exist that has to kind of participate.

01:33:56.460 Now, I would be wary about the danger of thinking, the danger of seeing novelty as a value in itself.

01:34:05.760 Because this is something which we've seen very, very much in the modern world, which is we value novelty as a, novelty is, novelty is neutral.

01:34:15.780 Some novelties are good and some novelties are bad.

01:34:19.860 And so, we shouldn't seek out new patterns just because they're new.

01:34:25.160 If we seek new patterns or better patterns, it's because they're better.

01:34:29.880 Better in the sense that they bring us closer to something which is a healthy mixture of this, a healthy balance of the patterning and the multiplicity, right?

01:34:40.160 It's this incarnational principle.

01:34:41.660 If you kind of, if you're not careful, it's true, you can move too high and go into tyrannical systems.

01:34:46.680 If you move too low, then you fall into kind of anarchic, chaotic, chaotic realities.

01:34:51.380 Someone is commenting that your proposition at the beginning of the talk, that intelligence is necessary for the world to unfold, reminds them of Jung recounting in memory dreams reflection, standing over an African vista.

01:35:20.780 And having the feeling he's the first consciousness to ever have witnessed such a thing.

01:35:28.060 Yeah.

01:35:29.060 I mean, there's definitely, there's an aspect of potential or encountering the strange, which is very important because there's an aspect of surprise and wonder, which comes with encountering that which we don't know, which is also part of the pattern of reality.

01:35:52.400 And so there's an idea, right, in ancient stories that there are treasures hidden in the deep, right?

01:35:59.180 That there are treasures hidden in the outside.

01:36:01.240 There are treasures being guarded by monsters.

01:36:04.120 And so there's a sense in which moving out into potentiality is also a way in which to kind of discover these pearls, right?

01:36:13.300 These secrets, these precious stones, these gems that are kind of hidden in the unknown.

01:36:18.180 So that's definitely part of the pattern as well.

01:36:23.760 Yeah, I think we have another question by Jordan.

01:36:30.440 Go ahead.

01:36:35.700 Actually, it's a question from Tammy.

01:36:37.960 So I'll let her ask it.

01:36:41.140 How did Darwin bring Plato back?

01:36:45.560 Because by coming back into the world of biology, he inevitably brought back purpose-driven action or selection is the best way to understand it, right?

01:36:59.620 He brought back the idea of selection and selection is not chaos, right?

01:37:03.360 Selection is not random.

01:37:05.700 Selection is purpose-oriented and it's purpose-oriented towards the perpetuation of the seed, the perpetuation of the identity.

01:37:14.040 And so this is the argument that I've been trying to put forth with Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins.

01:37:20.040 It's like, you guys, there's a big contradiction here between Darwin and Newton or the way we look at Newton.

01:37:25.980 It's like, this is a big problem.

01:37:29.380 And so it's a surprise.

01:37:30.920 It's like, it's a surprise, I think, that nobody kind of expected.

01:37:34.100 And nobody necessarily framed it completely that way, but it did end up bringing back the idea of quality back into the picture, right?

01:37:45.800 Because you choose for a reason, and the reason is something which is closer to your own, the perpetuation of your own identity.

01:37:54.120 Yes, and it's like crafted by evolutionary forces.

01:37:58.700 And so meaning itself is a consequence of the evolutionary process and how that tangles up with the, like the theological perspective that you brought to bear today.

01:38:09.620 That's an incredibly complicated and difficult problem.

01:38:13.640 But as you said, God calls the earth to manifest its potential.

01:38:17.380 So, yeah, and so you could, you could, how can I say this?

01:38:22.840 It's like, so you can see it bottom up, which is, I mean, I've been, I've been expressing it more bottom up recently, just because people are kind of scientists, scientifically minded.

01:38:33.200 But you can also, you can see it completely top down.

01:38:36.000 Like you can see it as, like, like I was trying to explain to you as these, the evolutionary process of maintaining your identity is, is a reflection of a deeper pattern, which is a cosmic pattern of how the world actually unfolds.

01:38:54.780 So it's not that, it's not necessarily that evolutionary process brought about this.

01:38:59.740 It's, it's that the reason why evolutionary processes work the way they do and do what they do is because they're, they're functioning within a larger system.

01:39:10.400 Yeah, so that's what they're imaging, they're manifesting the way the world works.

01:39:14.680 So that's how the world works.

01:39:15.520 That discussion of subdue starts to become so relevant, because as creatures make their choices and live or die by them, what they are in fact doing is the spiritual process of subduing.

01:39:26.820 And if they do it improperly, then they perish.

01:39:30.760 Yeah, exactly.

01:39:31.800 And so, so there's an image, like we were talking about the idea of man at the outset, you know, and so this is, this is represented in iconography, for example, as the image of, of Christ, Jesus Christ, human Jesus Christ, creating the world, which is just like for people, it just freaks them out, because like, how does this work?

01:39:49.640 How is this possible?

01:39:50.340 But that's, that's the, that's the, that's the understanding, there is a manner in which, how can I say this, and there's a manner in which, just like we have this Christian idea that Christ acts as an axis, which transforms the past and the present, let's say, which kind of acts as this central axis.

01:40:10.620 You could say that intelligence, as it manifests itself in the world, does the same.

01:40:15.900 That is, the human person, human intelligence, goes back into the past and makes sense of it, and goes into the future and makes sense of it.

01:40:24.960 And so you could say that intelligence is at the outset.

01:40:29.520 The things don't exist outside of this, this capacity to contain them in consciousness.

01:40:34.160 And so conscious, so the world is, is born in consciousness.

01:40:38.960 And the past as well, the past is born in consciousness too.

01:40:42.380 So all those, those, those processes that people try to understand all these, all the big bang and all this stuff.

01:40:48.760 It's still born in man, like it's still born in consciousness.

01:40:52.840 So the real origin is not the big bang.

01:40:56.900 This is going to be the weirdest thing you're going to understand.

01:40:58.980 The real origin is the intelligence, which is able to even perceive the big bang or, or see it as a pattern as, as not just a quantum field, which never changes.

01:41:09.580 It's like perceiving change, transformation, identity, participating it.

01:41:14.000 Like that's the origin of reality.

01:41:16.080 So the description in Genesis is like, I'm trying to help you see that it is an actual description of the origin of the world.

01:41:24.160 It's not a metaphor, like in the way that we want to think about it.

01:41:27.380 It's not just a fairy tale, which is helping us understand things we don't understand.

01:41:31.540 It is describing the manner in which reality originates and it originates in meaning, then phenomena, not phenomena, phenomena first as a puzzle, right?

01:41:42.600 I talked about that, like this potential that bubbles up and calls to be answered and then meaning, which comes down.

01:41:49.340 So you can see the same from every single, all scientific theory is like that.

01:41:53.820 It's like something presents itself as a puzzle and you're like, what is that?

01:41:57.460 And then here comes the logos, the seed, which comes in and patterns it or identifies it, judges it, separates it from other things in the way that happens in the first chapter of Genesis.

01:42:08.120 Okay, there's two more psychological questions.

01:42:18.320 I'm going to tell them both together because I think they are linked.

01:42:23.340 And Jordan, you may also have something to contribute to that one.

01:42:26.520 How would you work with the problem of inclusive, exclusive categories in these times, projection, scapegoating?

01:42:35.420 And the other question that I think is related, where do the movements of cancer culture or Black Lives Matter fit or how to make sense of these movements into this intelligence model?

01:42:47.560 Yeah, so one of the things we're seeing is we're seeing out of control versions of this identification system or the system of communion.

01:43:00.020 The way in which reality works is fractal.

01:43:03.320 And so communities or identities embed themselves in each other.

01:43:08.800 That's how it works.

01:43:09.860 And so in a normal kind of traditional world, you can be a family, in a neighborhood, in a community, right, in a nation, in a church, and it's like it's all embedded.

01:43:23.440 And you can also participate in all these different identities.

01:43:25.820 You can be in a club or you can be in this and that.

01:43:28.700 And so it all kind of works together.

01:43:30.220 So one of the problems we're having right now is that, let's say, kind of woke culture has understood the problem of identity, right?

01:43:42.640 They understand it.

01:43:43.420 They understand the problem of exclusion.

01:43:46.020 But the answer they give is that they want to account for everything.

01:43:52.460 They want everything to fit.

01:43:55.800 Now, the problem is that that doesn't, it's impossible.

01:43:58.760 It's an impossible, and it's even a dangerous thing.

01:44:02.200 And there are a lot of ancient traditions which help you understand that.

01:44:05.760 So, for example, like you have the idea in Jewish law that you have to leave a fringe on your vestment.

01:44:11.140 Or you have to leave the corners of the field untilled for the strangers.

01:44:16.940 All of these patterns are there to manifest the fact that you can't have a system which is both coherent and complete at the same time.

01:44:27.020 You can't.

01:44:27.700 Those two things.

01:44:29.660 Let me interrupt just for a sec.

01:44:31.160 Well, the ziggurat answers that question, too, because people can be included at a higher level of unity and excluded at a lower.

01:44:40.860 And so part of this is conceptual confusion.

01:44:43.540 It's like the problem of category is the problem of inclusion and exclusion.

01:44:48.680 And exclusion can lead to demonization very easily.

01:44:51.280 And that's a big problem, a fundamental problem.

01:44:54.060 But the problem that you're talking about that's manifesting socially is a consequence of this lack of understanding of the hierarchy of value.

01:45:02.300 So the people who are pushing diversity, inclusivity, and equity are saying something like, look, we're all divinely human.

01:45:10.760 And you object to that by saying, well, yes, but we still need to differentiate ourselves into specialized categories.

01:45:18.140 And we have to think through that very carefully so that we subdue things properly.

01:45:22.260 Oh, exactly.

01:45:24.040 And so what's happened is that people want to make inclusivity the only value, really, the only value because of the problem of exclusion.

01:45:37.560 And so what happens, and this is what I'm going to say is going to seem radical to some, but what we're seeing in this process is the actual destruction of the world.

01:45:50.040 And it's actually going to, this type of thinking can actually destroy the world or lead to absolute tyranny, one or the other, or maybe one causing the other.

01:46:00.940 Because, so imagine you have a basketball team, right?

01:46:04.820 You have a basketball team.

01:46:05.480 The purpose of the team is to play basketball, to win a championship, to do this.

01:46:09.340 But then you say, no, no, no.

01:46:11.280 The purpose of the team is inclusion.

01:46:15.360 And now imagine you do that for every single level of reality and every single communion.

01:46:21.080 You say that the purpose of your group is inclusion.

01:46:27.540 But, so then you sacrifice the actual purpose of the group, which is to play basketball, to win games and everything, for inclusion.

01:46:32.560 And you end up doing that in all aspects of reality.

01:46:36.420 What you're doing is you're devouring the purpose.

01:46:39.100 You're eating it.

01:46:39.980 It's like it's becoming eaten by this thing.

01:46:42.980 It's a monster.

01:46:44.000 It's like, it's the potential.

01:46:45.260 It's like potentiality is infinite.

01:46:47.860 It's like you need to let all this potential in.

01:46:50.280 And so we were like, this is wrong, right?

01:46:52.540 You're excluding this potential.

01:46:54.120 So we need to kind of bring all this potential in.

01:46:57.380 So what it does is it's like a sea monster that comes up and devours the identities.

01:47:03.160 And so either it brings about a kind of fragmentation and chaos and breakdown, but often the world can't sustain itself that way.

01:47:10.700 So what it tends to do is it tends to lead into a kind of absolute identity.

01:47:17.960 And it's weird because the way it seems to be happening, it's just the strangest thing, is that it's like people are trying to make inclusivity as the tyrannical system itself, which is just seems like it's not possible.

01:47:28.660 But that seems to be what's happening, is that inclusivity is going to turn into tyranny.

01:47:34.200 But what's important is that that gesture is going to create something like absolute scapegoats, absolute scapegoats, which is that those that will refuse to participate in this highest, this weird principle of inclusivity will be absolutely excluded.

01:47:55.440 It's the only sin.

01:47:56.920 And it's an unforgivable sin.

01:47:59.260 And so we're moving, kind of moving toward that.

01:48:01.280 And it's, yeah, it's kind of scary to see it happen.

01:48:05.580 Well, it's part of, terminologically, part of an assault on the idea of the patriarchy.

01:48:11.640 And that means it's an assault on the idea of pyramidal categorization itself, because that's assimilated in the indiscriminate imagination with tyranny and the identification of tyranny with the act of categorization itself.

01:48:28.660 And so this is a deep struggle.

01:48:31.020 Right.

01:48:31.520 So if the act of categorization is part of subduing and that's part of the manifestation of the word, then the assault on that under the guise of destructuring the patriarchy is an assault on that principle itself.

01:48:43.460 And an identification of the principle of discrimination with the principle of tyranny.

01:48:48.140 Yeah.

01:48:49.140 Yeah.

01:48:50.140 I mean, the idea that, for example, like the idea that the word discrimination has become an absolute evil is insane.

01:48:57.820 It's an insane moment because you discriminate all the time.

01:49:02.680 You're constantly discriminating.

01:49:04.580 Discriminating is like a normal aspect of reality, which is that you're constantly judging.

01:49:09.840 Like you're constantly kind of discriminating whether or not this piece of paper is the right one to scribble on or to print on.

01:49:18.080 And you're discriminating whether or not this is the right keyboard for my computer.

01:49:21.220 It's like you're constantly discriminating.

01:49:23.500 And so but the fact that we've even made that word into.

01:49:26.700 Well, you also said, Jonathan, that God himself said that that capacity for discrimination transformed good into very good.

01:49:35.260 Yeah.

01:49:35.700 Think of what an assault on that means.

01:49:37.880 It means an assault on our ability to distinguish between that which is higher and that which is lower.

01:49:43.060 God.

01:49:46.460 And so but there is a way in which like it's important to understand that there is a way in which this this system like they say that especially especially especially when you see it in many versions.

01:49:57.300 But in the Christian system, the one I know the best, the way in which he kind of heals itself or the way in which it it it deals with this problem is that at the very, very top of the hierarchy is something like identity.

01:50:11.380 And then right above that identity is something like sacrifice.

01:50:18.860 That is, there's the pyramid is canonic, it's self emptying.

01:50:24.200 And so the highest thing, the highest thing is the king.

01:50:29.060 And then the very highest thing is the martyr.

01:50:32.660 And that's super important.

01:50:34.080 It's super important to understand that.

01:50:35.680 And it's actually, it's actually, it's technically accurate, right?

01:50:41.380 In the sense that, in order for the leg of a chair, to be part of the chair.

01:50:48.280 It has to sacrifice itself to the higher purpose, it has to, because it can't just be a leg of a chair, it has to participate in the higher pattern.

01:50:56.760 And so the highest point of the pattern is a negation of identity.

01:51:00.500 And this is, this is going to be, this might be a little hard for people to kind of get, but it'll help you understand a lot of Christian symbolism.

01:51:06.340 The highest point of identity is negation of identity.

01:51:10.180 But it doesn't, the problem is that now what we have is something like, we don't realize that negation of identity leads to identity.

01:51:18.460 Then there's a, there's an identity going like this.

01:51:22.620 And then there's a negation of identity below or a breakdown and, and they're confusing the negation of identity below with the negation of identity above, which is the capacity to sacrifice yourself for a higher good.

01:51:38.700 And the capacity to sacrifice yourself for your own parts.

01:51:45.260 And so the chair also has to sacrifice its purity in order to be able to exist.

01:51:51.740 Because all chairs have idiosyncrasies.

01:51:54.740 All chairs have aspects of it that aren't the pure chair, or else the chairs couldn't exist.

01:52:00.840 And so the identity of things sacrifice themselves above, they give themselves up, right?

01:52:07.140 So imagine you, you burn a, you take your best cheap and you give it up to God, right?

01:52:13.080 You give it up to, you give it up to God, or you die as a martyr.

01:52:17.240 But then there's also a way in which that which is above then sacrifices itself for that which is below.

01:52:22.920 So that's one of the ways in which we kind of deal with the problem.

01:52:28.200 So it's not like a kind of Nietzschean will to power thing.

01:52:31.420 It's not at all that, right?

01:52:32.760 The real hierarchy ends in self-sacrifice, right?

01:52:38.320 That's why the cross is at the top of the hill, right?

01:52:40.720 That's why the mystery at the top of the hill is, in mystical terms, we talk about the divine unknowing.

01:52:49.040 Like that you reach knowledge, you read Gnosis, and then when you reach the top of Gnosis, the next step is unknowing.

01:52:56.700 It's actually a form of divine darkness.

01:52:58.500 That's the highest form of mystical union.

01:53:01.900 And this is how one of the ways in which the system can balance itself out.

01:53:07.840 Because it is true that sometimes we struggle to think that the highest thing is, okay, let's think of it this way.

01:53:14.100 The highest thing of the team is the quarterback that everybody loves and everybody worships.

01:53:19.740 And it's like, yeah, that is the top of the team, but it's only the top of the team when the quarterback sacrifices himself above to the purpose of the team and sacrifices himself below to make the other team members participate in the team.

01:53:35.120 If he doesn't do that, then he's not going to be at the top.

01:53:39.780 He's going to be a tyrant.

01:53:41.060 He's going to be, he's not going to be able to get the team to go here.

01:53:44.920 All of these things are going to happen.

01:53:46.100 And so this is something which, like I said, it's maybe a bit harder to understand.

01:53:50.340 I really didn't expect to go into this, in this conversation, but it might be important to understand the problem of, of identity and, and how it can be solved, let's say, through this, through this pattern.

01:54:02.520 Okay.

01:54:03.000 Another question, maybe a big one.

01:54:06.280 I don't know if it can be summarized.

01:54:08.700 What is the intelligence of dreams?

01:54:10.540 Jung suggested the dream is the purest expression of individuating intelligence.

01:54:16.100 This seems at odds with the orthodox view.

01:54:19.220 Can the two views be reconciled?

01:54:22.540 It's very difficult.

01:54:24.720 So the, the, the orthodox view or the, the, the, the way that the fathers talk about dreams is that they are mostly chaos, that they're mostly this lower waters, this kind of these, these, these, these moving waters.

01:54:37.800 And that you have to be careful not to pay too much attention to them.

01:54:43.020 But like I said, so there's an interesting image.

01:54:45.940 For example, like, let me give you an image that you find in, in the revelation.

01:54:49.300 It says in revelation, at the end of time, the sea will become like glass.

01:54:55.780 The sea will become like crystal.

01:54:58.100 And so you, that's the way you can kind of understand the purpose of dreams is that it's this lower potential that's kind of bubbling up.

01:55:04.340 Right.

01:55:05.040 And, and, and, and so manifests all your passions, all your desires, and it kind of, in a kind of wild way that sometimes is illogical, that it's kind of breakdown of logic.

01:55:12.540 But then once in a while, you could say through divine providence or through eschesis, like that is through, like, let's say the mystic who will transform himself and will kind of reduce their slavery to the passions.

01:55:27.820 At some point, this potential can still itself, can become still, and then it becomes a mirror.

01:55:34.260 Because it is a mirror in the first place, right?

01:55:36.180 It's already a mirror because that's how, that's where reality comes out of.

01:55:39.340 Reality kind of comes out of this potential that, you know, the earth is pulled out of the waters.

01:55:43.480 All of this is, is true.

01:55:45.080 And so you can understand it that way.

01:55:46.500 It's like the chaos and this kind of, kind of madness and chaos on the edge out of which reality comes.

01:55:52.440 And you have to be careful not to pay too much attention to it because it can, can break you down.

01:55:56.240 But once in a while, it becomes this pure mirror.

01:55:59.720 And then that's the vision, right?

01:56:01.380 That's the, that's the mystic's vision.

01:56:02.900 That's the capacity to see reality clear, more clearly than you ever could, because suddenly it, it, it becomes a mirror for the highest, highest things.

01:56:14.300 So it's like, you know, I, one of the things you might've seen when you see the pattern of creation is that God is going like this, right?

01:56:21.420 So the waters, the earth, and then the grass, the stars, and then it's like, it's kind of moving in this way.

01:56:27.760 So you can understand it as these extremes, but you can also understand that the lowest part can become a mirror for the highest part in the proper circumstance.

01:56:37.220 It can become like this.

01:56:38.200 Um, that's one of the things Christ does, by the way, Christ, that's one of the, we, if you want to understand the story of Jesus, he goes to the bottom of reality and then kind of transforms it into glory.

01:56:51.340 Um, anyways, little tidbit on that.

01:56:56.600 Okay.

01:56:57.080 I'm aware of the time.

01:56:58.760 I'm also aware we could go on for hours and hours.

01:57:02.700 So Jonathan, I don't know how you're doing about time.

01:57:05.280 You want to take one last question.

01:57:06.960 I'm fine.

01:57:07.760 Yeah.

01:57:07.940 If you want, I'm, I'm totally fine.

01:57:09.660 I, I, I went too long in my presentation anyway, so I'm willing to accept more questions.

01:57:14.600 Okay.

01:57:15.480 If the theological, teleological patterns of being, of being constitute the realm of heaven, what then is the abode of the individual human soul?

01:57:26.720 In other words, what is the relationship between the semi-platonic conception you've presented here and the standard Christian model of heaven as a domain of soul?

01:57:37.960 And so there's, they're the same.

01:57:40.400 Uh, that is that your soul is your invisible part of you.

01:57:48.220 It's the, it's the pattern, the patterning of your, of your being, right?

01:57:52.320 That's what your soul is.

01:57:53.920 And there's a way, and this is this, there's a way in which that soul in, in its very center, right?

01:58:02.120 You could say that there's a, there, there's a, there's a more, there's a hierarchy of patterns in you.

01:58:06.520 And at the core of that hierarchy of pattern is God.

01:58:10.440 I don't know what to tell you.

01:58:12.180 Like that, that, that it's the spark of the divine is at the center of every individual soul.

01:58:18.880 That's the manner in which we actually exist is that we contain a spark of, of the divine.

01:58:25.360 And that as we commune with each other, as we love each other, then we become this embodied pattern and the, your, your individual logos joins with the divine logos and becomes the body of Christ.

01:58:44.060 And so that's the way that it works.

01:58:47.400 And so you can understand it in different ways.

01:58:49.460 You can understand it as physically, how can I say this?

01:58:53.740 That Christ says things like, you know, you are, you are, you are called to be like angels.

01:58:59.620 And he says, you are gods.

01:59:01.980 And what he means is that human beings can become patterns for other human beings.

01:59:12.000 Right?

01:59:12.420 We become models.

01:59:13.120 That's why we have models.

01:59:14.200 We have models because humans can move up into heaven.

01:59:18.720 We can ascend into heaven.

01:59:20.460 And then we become patterns for others.

01:59:24.300 And we become patrons for others.

01:59:27.420 So we name a church after someone.

01:59:29.580 We name a city after someone.

01:59:31.140 We name, we name things after people because those beings are like gods.

01:59:37.740 They become patterns for the rest of us.

01:59:40.720 And so, and that's, that's actually how reality works.

01:59:44.680 Like we, reality doesn't hold together by ideas.

01:59:47.780 Even your nations, they don't hold together by ideal.

01:59:51.060 They hold together by a succession of people who modeled behavior on which you, you base yourself.

01:59:57.520 And some of those rise up very high and become the patron saints of entire aspects of reality.

02:00:05.840 And that's how they become like angels.

02:00:08.240 They become gods in the divine council.

02:00:11.160 Right?

02:00:11.700 They, they, they become co-rulers with Christ.

02:00:13.720 All these things that Christ talks about.

02:00:16.500 And, and these are things that, that can happen at a very small level.

02:00:20.600 Right?

02:00:21.020 Your own father, your own mother can image for you how to be like, how to live and how to be.

02:00:29.440 And then that can scale up, you know, all the way to St. Peter and St. Paul or the mother of God or, or, or the, the saints, which are venerated as, as, as, as being like in the divine council.

02:00:41.720 Thank you so much for a great talk.

02:00:49.660 And Jordan and Tommy, thank you so much for your participation.

02:00:55.820 Yeah, this has been great.

02:00:57.060 I've, I'm really happy because I, let me say this is that I was hoping that this discussion would push me further in saying things in a certain way and kind of bringing things together.

02:01:08.120 And I'm very grateful because I feel like it, it has.

02:01:10.660 And so I appreciate, I appreciate Jordan, you pushed me and I think the questions were, were wonderful.

02:01:15.480 And so it's, it's actually been a great opportunity for myself to just say, okay, I'm going to try as hard as I can to really bring this together.

02:01:23.420 So thank you.

02:01:25.980 Thank you, everybody.

02:01:27.620 Sorry for those who we didn't have time to ask their questions.

02:01:31.780 So many questions, only some, so many questions, so little time.

02:01:37.300 I'll, I'll just jump in.

02:01:38.580 If, if like me, you didn't have a chance to answer, to ask a question, maybe you can, uh, uh, attend another, uh, Jung Society of Montreal event and, uh, we'll form our group with our purpose and continue in this, uh, in these rituals.

02:01:55.260 Very good.

02:01:56.560 All right.

02:01:56.760 Thanks everybody.

02:01:57.360 Thank you.

02:02:01.780 Thank you.

02:02:31.760 Thank you.

02:02:35.260 Thank you.

02:02:53.520 our time. From guests including Bishop Robert Barron, Father Mike Schmitz, and Jonathan Rumi,

02:02:59.060 known for his role as Jesus in the hit series The Chosen, you'll discover prayer techniques that

02:03:03.700 have stood the test of time while equipping yourself with the tools needed to face life's

02:03:07.880 challenges with renewed strength. Ready to revolutionize your prayer life? You can check

02:03:12.780 out the new series as well as an extensive catalog of guided prayers when you download the Hallow app.

02:03:18.340 Just go to hallow.com slash Jordan and download the Hallow app today for an exclusive three-month

02:03:23.380 trial. That's hallow.com slash Jordan. Elevate your prayer life today.

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - December 04, 2021

206. A Lecture by Jonathan Pageau： The Symbolic World

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