Full transcript
0:11so I think the best way to continue to walk you through the thinkers that we're
0:20planning to cover is to do that with examples they stick better and they're
0:25more interesting and it's very difficult to understand you outside of a narrative
0:30context and so I'm going to walk you through the Lion King today how many of
0:34you have seen the Lion King yes so how many of you haven't right okay so
0:40so you obviously were raised in a box somewhere out in the middle of field so
0:45anyways you know it's it's it's an amazingly popular animated movie I think
0:50it was the most highest grossing animated movie ever made made until
0:54frozen which I actually absolutely detested but the Lion King The Lion King
0:59is actually consciously influenced by archetypes as well as unconsciously
1:03influenced by them so it's a bit of a cheat I would say in some sense but it
1:07doesn't I don't for the purposes that we're using it for I think it's just
1:10fine and so partly what you might think about is that it's its relationship to
1:17archetypal themes that made it so overwhelmingly popular it's same being
1:22the case with say books and movies like Harry Potter or the entire Marvel series
1:27the Marvel series is quite interesting I know somebody who wrote for Batman and
1:31for Wolverine I know Batman he's into Marvel comic but one of the things that
1:35he told me that was quite interesting was that once these characters take off
1:38and establish a life of their own they have a backstory and which becomes part
1:42of the mythology that's collectively held by the readers and if you you can
1:46invent an alternative universe where you can muck about with the backstory but
1:50otherwise you better stick with it or the readers are gonna write you and tell
1:52you that you've got the story wrong and so there's a bit of a collaboration
1:56between the writers and the readers after these things take on a life of
1:59their own and so and of course the they they tend to the the comic books in
2:05particular tend to tend towards mythological themes very very rapidly
2:08and so anyways Carl Jung was a fascinating person I think
2:13you can read his biography autobiography / biography which is called memories
2:18dreams and reflections which in many ways I think is an unfortunate book
2:21because it's usually the only book that people read that's that is more or less
2:25by young but and it is more popular yet popularly accessible which is probably a
2:30good thing but it's also it's not as rigorous as his other books and so the
2:37problem with someone like Jung is you kind of have to read him as much as you
2:40can in the original because interpreting him is not a very straightforward matter
2:45he was a very visionary person by which I mean he had an incredible visual
2:49imagination and he used that a lot he used it in his therapy practice I
2:53believe that most of his therapy clients were high in trade openness I have a lot
2:59of clients who are high in trade openness they kind of seek me out
3:01because I'm high and trade openness and you know they watch my videos and that
3:05sort of thing and they're interested in what I'm doing and many of them are
3:09astute dreamers and prolific dreamers and many open people in my experience
3:14have archetypal dreams whereas people who are lower in openness they either
3:18don't dream at all or they don't remember their dreams as much or they're
3:21not interested in them and they're not interested in the mythological
3:24underpinnings of them so I've taught psychology roughly speaking to many
3:31different types of people including lawyers and lawyers and physicians and
3:35they tend to be higher in trade conscientiousness than in openness and
3:38they're much more interested in the practical applications of psychology and
3:42maybe the big five theories than they are in the narrative underpinnings and
3:45you know people say that when they went to um-- they had union dreams but I
3:50don't and then when they went to Freud they had Freudian dreams and I don't
3:53really believe that's exactly true I think it was a matter of selection bias
3:56a priori selection bias on the part of the people who were likely to go see
4:01either of those two and so but I've been struck by some clients in particular how
4:07unbelievably continually they can generate deep archetypal dreams with a
4:11really coherent narrative structure it's really phenomenal and how revealing
4:16those dreams our problem with archetypal dreams is that they're not really
4:19personal right so if you're looking for a personal way out of a situation an
4:22archetypal dream doesn't help you that much because it gives you the general
4:26pattern rather than a specific solution to your problem
4:28but a good dream will do both at once anyways yung was an astute student of
4:35Freud's I will cover Freud next although generally and in personality courses the
4:40the order is reversed Freud first menuing because of their temporal of the
4:45temporal order of their thought but I think it's better to start with Jung
4:49because it's it's as if you Freud excavated into the basement and then
4:53Jung excavated into many many floors underneath the basement of the mind and
4:58so from if you're transitioning from an archaic understanding of archaic modes
5:03of thinking towards Freud it's better to go through young because Jung is I think
5:07I think Freudian theory is a subset of Jungian Theory fundamentally just like
5:11Newtonian physics is a subset of Einstein Ian's physics and I think that
5:16Freud knew that even to some degree although he was very much opposed to any
5:20sort of religious thinking or mythological religious thinking I would
5:24say he was a real 19th century materialist and he didn't like the fact
5:28that Jung's work started to delve into religious themes in a manner that
5:33actually in some sense validated those themes and so that's actually why they
5:37split they split when you published a book called symbols of transformation
5:40Jung was also a deep student of Nietzsche Nietzsche wrote a book called
5:44thus spake Zarathustra which is kind of an Old Testament revelation poetry kind
5:49of book it's a strange one and I wouldn't recommend if you want to read
5:52Nietzsche that you start with that one but most people do but you get a seminar
5:57on thus spake Zarathustra which is about I've got this wrong it's somewhere
6:02between 700 and 1100 pages long and it only covers the first third of the book
6:06and thus spake Zarathustra is actually quite a short book and so well so you
6:12can imagine how much you had to know about Nietzsche to derive that many
6:16words out of that few words and Nietzsche was a well an absolute
6:20absolute genius and Jung was actually trying to answer the question that
6:25Nietzsche posed fundamentally which is why part of the reason why it's
6:29incorrect historically to consider him a Freudian he was so nietzsche basically
6:35stated let's say explicitly that scientific empiricism / rationalist
6:40had resulted in the death of the mythological tradition of the west
6:44roughly speaking that's Nietzsche's comment on the death of God and in that
6:49comment he also said that the fact that God was dead was going to produce
6:52tremendous idiy a tional and social historical upheavals that would result
6:58in the deaths of millions of people that that he didn't say all that in one place
7:02it's it's spread between part of its in will to power and and I can't remember
7:07the source of the other one some of its referenced and thus spake Zarathustra
7:11but Nietzsche believed that in order to overcome the collapse of traditional
7:16values with the idea say of God as its cornerstone people would have to become
7:21creatures that could produce their own values as a replacement that we would
7:26have to become capable of generating autonomous values and Jung but but
7:31that's easier said than done because trying to impose a set of values on
7:35yourself is very difficult because you're not very cooperative and you know
7:38that if you try to get yourself to do something that you don't want to do or
7:41that's hard you just won't do it and so it's not like you can just invent your
7:45own values and then go along with that that just doesn't work and so what Jung
7:48and the Freudians did Freud first I would say was to start looking to be
7:52looking into people's fantasies autonomous fantasies unconscious
7:56fantasies to see if they could - and and discover that values bubbled up of their
8:04own accord into those fantasies and you can imagine for example if you've become
8:07enamored of someone that you might start fantasizing about them and if you read
8:11off the fantasy then you can tell what you're after and what you're up to and
8:14so the motivational force composes the fantasy and Freud was more interested
8:19not in a personal sense so in in so far as your fantasies might reveal your
8:24personal history so for example if you have a burst of negative emotion in the
8:28clinical session there'll be a fantasy that goes along with that an association
8:31of ideas that that that kind of manifest themselves of their own accord and
8:36they're not necessarily coherent and logical they're linked by emotion that's
8:39the free association technique in Freudian psychology and they also might
8:43manifest themselves in dreams and fantasies and so Freud started doing the
8:46analysis of these spontaneous let's call them fantasies and Jung link that more
8:52at Freud did this first with the oedipal oedipal
8:54complex but then you linked up spontaneous fantasies and dreams with
8:58with myth mythology and fantasy across history and of course Piaget did the
9:03same thing from a completely different standpoint so and that a lot of that's
9:07embedded in this movie so we might as well just walk through it so the first
9:12question might be well why is a lion a king right and because it makes sense to
9:17people that a lion could be a king and of course a lion is an apex predator and
9:20so which means it's at the top of the food chain roughly speaking and it's
9:24sort of golden like the Sun so that's also useful and you know it has that
9:28Mane that makes it look majestic and of course it's very physically powerful and
9:32it's it's and and and it's intimidating and so it's something that you run away
9:37from as well right or you're awestruck by so the fact that you know it's like
9:41snail king just doesn't make any sense right but lion king that works and and
9:45you got to think about those things because it's not self-evident why a lion
9:49would work as a king but uh but a snail wouldn't but it fits in with the your
9:54metaphorical understanding of the way the world works much better and so the
9:58Lion King makes sense and well and when things like that that aren't rationally
10:03self-evident makes sense you have to ask yourself in what metaphorical context do
10:08they make sense so you have the Lion King now the movie opens with a sunrise
10:12and the sunrise is equivalent to the dawn of consciousness so that in many
10:16archaic stories the Sun was a hero like Horus if I remember correctly was a
10:23solar king but but Apollo in particular but Apollo Greek Greek myth the idea was
10:30that at the Sun was this was the the hero the hero who illuminated the sky in
10:37the day and so heroism and illumination and enlightenment are all tangled
10:41together metaphorically and then at night what would happen would be that
10:44Sun would fight with the with the dragon of darkness basically or with evil all
10:48night and then rise again victorious in the morning and so it's a death and
10:53rebirth theme and it's very very very very common mythological theme and the
10:57reason the Sun is associated with consciousness as far as I can tell is
11:00that were not nocturnal creatures right we're awake during the day and we're
11:04very very visual half our brain is devoted to visual processing and to be
11:08lightened and illuminated means to develop to move towards a higher state
11:12of consciousness and we naturally use light symbolism to to represent that you
11:17know like the light bulb on the top of someone's head you know you don't say I
11:21was in darkened when you learn something new and so again that fits into this
11:25underlying metaphorical substrate that that's I think deeply biologically
11:30grounded but but also social or socially grounded so it's a new day it's the
11:35start of a new day and a day day actually means like French your name
11:39means day the day trek in some sense and how to comport yourself during the day
11:45is the fundamental question the day is the canonical unit of time and so you
11:50have to know how to comport yourself during the day and part of that is a
11:53journey from consciousness into unconsciousness and that's and that
11:56return so like Apollo you you've you descend into unconsciousness and then
12:01re-emerge and of course that's not metaphorical at all that's exactly what
12:04you do you descend into the underworld of darkness and dreams and strange
12:09things happen down there and so and then you awake if you're fortunate or
12:12unfortunate depending on your state of mind you awake in the morning and it's a
12:17new day right and so the dream world seems to help you sort out your thoughts
12:22by the way if you keep people awake for an extended period of time then they
12:25they they they lose their minds essentially the dream that the
12:31unconsciousness and the dream state seem absolutely critical in the maintenance
12:34of mental health although people don't exactly understand why it looks like
12:38dreams might help you forget because forgetting is really important you just
12:42can't really wait you just can't remember everything that happened to you
12:45gets today I'm cluttered that that you you'd fall apart and so you reduce
12:49things to the gist and when you're doing that you pack them in it's like you
12:53compress them in some sense you pack them into a smaller space and get rid of
12:56everything that isn't relevant and the dream seems to not be part of that it
13:00also seems to be a place where you deeply encode learning that might have
13:03been done that day which is something that Freud actually noted in his
13:07interpretation of dreams which is a great book if you're ever gonna read a
13:10book that Freud wrote the interpretation of Dreams is the proper one to read in
13:13my estimation it's a brilliant book and it laid the groundwork for a lot of what
13:17Jung did and so anyways that's how the movie starts and the animals come out in
13:22to the light and that's that's a metaphor for the dawning of
13:24consciousness to come out into the light where you can see and so this is a baby
13:29giraffe and babies emerge into the light roughly speaking and that's that's like
13:33I said that that's a representation of the emergence or expansion of
13:37consciousness and so this is how the movie starts it starts a very expansive
13:41music as well celebratory music and that's to indicate
13:45to you to set the tone for the movie but also to indicate to you that you're
13:48about to watch something of import and the opening scene is actually a real
13:53scene of genius in my estimation the animators did a great job and it goes
13:56along very nicely with the music and so you see this little a sand then you see
14:00this rock Pride Rock I believe it's called and in the middle of it and it's
14:05the center it's the center it's like the spot that's marked by a cathedral which
14:08is an X or a cross and you're right in the middle of that and so it's the
14:12center of the light that's another way of thinking about it or it's the center
14:15of the territory or it's the home or it's the fire in the in the wilderness
14:20or it's the tree in the center where you live it's all of those things at once
14:24it's inhabited territory with you at the center and the rock represents tradition
14:29because people tend to inscribe their traditions on rock right or to build
14:34them into rock like the pyramid so you could think about that as a pyramid as
14:38an Egyptian pyramid and it's the right way to think about it
14:41you could also think about it as a dominance hierarchy with the apex
14:44predator at the top and that's the lion so it makes sense that the lion would be
14:48in the light on the rock that's a pyramid in the middle of the territory
14:51right that makes sense to people psychologically so because that's what
14:55the state is the state is a hierarchy with with something at the top that
15:00occupies a space that has been illuminated and made safe by
15:03consciousness that's what the state is and that's all represented right away in
15:07this movie and all the animals come to to observe what's happening in the
15:12pyramid and at the top because they need to know what happens at the top
15:16partly to organize their world that's the pyramid but also to see how the
15:20organizational principle works and that's why they're all gathering and so
15:24they're gathering in the light in the morning to observe something new that's
15:28going to be born that's of significant importance and that's the birth of the
15:32hero and this little bird here Zazu right
15:36the zoo is like Horus the Egyptian God who was a Falken and an I at the same
15:40time he is the Kings I in this Kings eyes in this movie right he flies up
15:46above outside of the pyramid so he can see everything that goes on and reports
15:50to the King and so partly what that indicates is that the thing that's at
15:54the top of the pyramid needs to be an eye and that's partly why you see an eye
15:58on the top of the pyramid on the back of the American dollar bill it's exactly
16:01the same idea or if you look at the Washington Monument which is a pyramid
16:05at the top you see that it's capped with aluminum and you think well why aluminum
16:09and the answer to that was it was the most expensive metal at that time and so
16:13the notion is is that at the top of the pyramid there's something that actually
16:16doesn't belong in the pyramid it's something that goes up above the pyramid
16:21and can see everything and so you could think about it this way is that you're
16:24gonna be in a lot of pyramids in your life dominance hierarchies and different
16:28states and families and all of that and they'll arrange themselves into a
16:32hierarchy and there'll be something at the top and the top is the thing that
16:35can do well across hierarchies so it's not stuck in any one pyramid it and it's
16:40partly associated with vision and the ability to see a long long distance also
16:45to see what you don't want to see and to report that back to the king and so the
16:50king fundamentally as far as you guys are concerned from a psychological
16:54perspective that's your super-ego that's the Freudian perspective or it
16:58might be the moral system by which you comport yourself but your eyes are the
17:02thing that updates that right you need it to orient yourself in the world you
17:06need it to orient yourself among other people but your eye and your capacity to
17:11pay attention especially to what you don't want to pay attention to is the
17:15thing that continually updates that model exactly as Piaget laid out with
17:18children so and all of that's packed into the imagery in the first you know a
17:23few minutes of this movie and that's actually why it relies on imagery why
17:27this isn't just a lecture by a psychologist you know when you go to see
17:30the movie it's because the images they say a picture is worth a thousand words
17:34but and there's thousands of pictures in this movie obviously but maybe a picture
17:39is worth more words than you can actually use to describe it if the
17:43pictures is is profound enough and we have many many pictures like that
17:48any deeply symbolic picture is virtually inexhaustible in terms of
17:52its of semantically with regards to its explanation images are very very dense
17:57so anyways the animals all gather now the animals are also in representations
18:02from the Freudian perspective and the it is the part of your psyche from the
18:06Freudian perspective that's animalistic and and and full of of implicit drives
18:12sexual and aggressive in particular as far as Freud was concerned and that's
18:16because those two drives say unlike thirst or hunger are much more difficult
18:20to integrate into proper social being and tend to be excluded and left
18:25unconscious and so a lot of Freudian psychology and I would say psychology in
18:30general is focused on the integration of sexual impulses and aggressive impulses
18:35into the psyche I would also add to that anxiety because anxiety is also a major
18:40problem anxiety and negative emotion that's pain like is also a major problem
18:44for people and so the animals represent those it'd like impulses that have to be
18:49organized hierarchically before you can become an integrated being and precisely
18:53the piagetian manner right because Piaget would say well the child comes
18:57into the world with reflexes and maybe a more modern psychologists would also
19:01concentrate on the implicit motivations and those have to be organized inside
19:06the child into some kind of hierarchy of unity before the child can organize him
19:11or herself into the broader unity of the state and that's basically what's being
19:15represented here and so so Zazu the eyes of the king comes to check out the King
19:22and that's uh what's his name what's the King's name Mufasa yeah and he's a very
19:28regal looking person lion and he stands up straight and tall and that means that
19:33he's high in serotonin because serotonin governs posterior flexion and if so if
19:37your dominant and near the top of hierarchies you tend to expand so that
19:41you look bigger than then you could if you shrunk down and so if you're low
19:44dominant person you wander around like this so that you look small and weak and
19:48you don't pose a threat to anybody but if you're at the top you expand yourself
19:52so that you can command the space and that's why he has that particular kind
19:56of regal posture and if you look at his facial expression you see that it's
19:59quite severe it like he's he's capable of kindness but he's also
20:03harsh and judgmental and that's what society is like that's what the
20:07super-ego is like and what that means is that he's integrated his aggression and
20:10I've seen this happen in my clinical clients when they come in and they're
20:13too agreeable they look like Simba looks later in the movie when he's an
20:17adolescent and he's sort of like a deer in headlights everything is coming in
20:21and nothing is coming out but when the person integrates their shadow and gets
20:26the aggressive part of themselves integrated into their personality their
20:29face is hardened and if you look at people you can tell because the people
20:33who are too agreeable look childlike and innocent and the people who well a hyper
20:36aggressive person will look you know mean and cruel but uh let's see if
20:42that's good that's still working so but I've seen people's face changes change
20:47face change in the course of therapy men and women so and what happens is they
20:53start to look more mature and it's it's more like they're they're judging the
20:57world as well as interacting with it properly once they integrate that more
21:01disagreeable part of them it's very very necessary that's part of the
21:04incorporation of the Union shadow or the incorporation of the unconscious from a
21:09Freudian perspective but old Musa Musa there he's already got that he's already
21:15got that covered so and he's capable of obviously he can smile and he's full
21:20capable of the full range of expressions but he's a tough looking character and
21:23and now this baboon here who's supposed to be basically just a fool when the
21:29story was first written he turned into what's essentially a shaman across time
21:33and so he represents the self from the Union perspective now the self is
21:38everything you could be across time so you imagine that there's you and there's
21:42the potential inside you whatever that is you know and potential is an
21:46interesting idea because it's represents something that isn't yet real yet we act
21:50like it's real because people will say to you you should live up to your
21:53potential and that potential is partly what you could be if you interacted with
21:58the world in a manner that would gain you the most information right because
22:03you build yourself out of the information in the piagetian sense but
22:06it's deeper than that - because we know that if you take yourself and you put
22:09yourself in a new environment new genes turn on in your nervous system they
22:13encode for new proteins and so you're full of biological
22:17tential that won't be realized unless you move yourself around in the world in
22:21two different challenging circumstances and that'll turn on different circuits
22:25so it's not merely that you're incorporating information from the
22:28outside world in the constructivist sense it's that by exposing yourself to
22:32different environments you put different physiological demands on on yourself all
22:37the way down to the genetic level and that manifests new elements of you and
22:42so one of the things that happens to people and this is a very common
22:45cultural notion is that you should go on a pilgrimage at some point to somewhere
22:50central and that would be say like the rock in the Pride Rock and the Lion King
22:54because you take yourself out of your dopey little village and that's just a
22:58little bounded you that everyone knows and that isn't very expanded and then
23:02you go somewhere dark and dangerous to the central place and while you do that
23:05you have adventures and they tough on you and pull more out of you like partly
23:10because you're becoming informed which means in formation it means you're
23:15becoming more organized at every level of analysis but there's also more of you
23:19too and so that's a very classic idea and then in in cathedrals in Europe
23:23especially at Chartres there's a big maze on the floor a circular maze which
23:27is a symbolic representation of the pilgrimage for people who couldn't do it
23:31and so it's a huge circle divided into quadrants which is a union Mandela and
23:36you enter the maze at one point and then you have to walk through the entire maze
23:40north east west and south before you get to the center and the center is
23:45symbolized by a flower that's carved in stone it looks like this it's big this
23:49maze a it's it's large so that you can walk it and that's a symbolic pilgrimage
23:54it takes you to the center that's the center of the cross because it's in a
23:57Cathedral and that's the point of acceptance of voluntary suffering that's
24:02what that means and so you walk through you can call that a circumambulation you
24:07go to all the corners of the world to find yourself and so well the self is
24:12the baboon in this particular in this piece of mandrill actually in this
24:17particular representation and he lives in the tree he lives in the tree of life
24:21it's a bale bob tree in this particular so he's the spirit that inhabits the
24:25tree of life and he's the eternal wise man that's a way of thinking so is the
24:30king but he's sort of a superordinate king or an
24:33outside king in some sense he's the repository of ancient wisdom and the
24:37king is the manner in which that wisdom is currently being acted out in the
24:41world and so they're friends and that means that the king is a good king
24:44because if they if the king was a bad King he would be alienated from himself
24:49and that would make him shallow and one-dimensional and that would make him
24:53a bad ruler no Union with the traditions of the past to be a good ruler you have
24:57to rescue your father from the underworld and integrate that and of
25:02course that's a main theme in this entire movie so hey a new mystery to
25:11solve
25:35okay so the hero is born and that's what the Rising Sun represents and everybody
25:39goes oh oh isn't that cute and the reason for that is because you're
25:43biologically wired especially if you're agreeable to respond with caretaking
25:47activity - cute - cuteness and cuteness button nose big eyes small mouths round
25:53head symmetry and helpless movements and you'll respond to that across the entire
25:57class of mammalian of mammalian creatures even maybe down to lizards you
26:01know isn't that cute it's no it's a lizard but you know so so so that's an
26:07archetype as well that's the archetype of the vulnerable hero at Bohr the
26:12vulnerable hero newly born and that should invoke a desire mostly on the
26:18part of males to encourage and mostly on the part of females to nur it to nurture
26:22but males and females are quite cross wired among human beings and so there's
26:26encouragement from the women and there's also nurturing from the men and of
26:31course those those curves in some sense overlap so there's more nurturing males
26:35and more encouraging females but that's roughly the archetype and so he looks
26:39cute and everybody goes on and that's because the animators nailed that they
26:42caught the essential features of cuteness and he's also in the light
26:46right and so then the shaman mandrel basically baptizes him nots essentially
26:53what he's doing and he uses something that symbolic of the Sun which is this
26:57ripe fruit and fruits are symbolic of the Sun because of course they need the
27:00Sun to ripen and they're round like the Sun and so and people know that they
27:04need light but and and so anyways the animators make a relationship between
27:09the fruit that the shaman is going to break and the Sun and so he's also being
27:14baptized into the Sun and that means that he's being baptized into the light
27:18or that he's being transformed into a hero and so then everyone's happy and
27:23that's basically you know the divine father and the divine mother and the
27:26divine son and the self who's taking care of that and there's a union between
27:30the baby and the wise old man because the baby is all the potential that's
27:35realized in the self and there's an old idea that the way to full maturity is to
27:41find what you lost as a child and regain it it's a brilliant idea and that that
27:46that echoes through mists all over the world and that means you have
27:49to regain your capacity once you're disciplined and you know how to do
27:53something you have to regain your capacity for play and sort of for
27:56wide-eyed wonder and that's maybe the childlike part of your spirit and the
28:00reintegration of that childlike part with the adult grown-up part Reviva Faiz
28:06the adult grown-up part and allows the child to manifest itself in a
28:10disciplined way in the world and so that's all being hinted that there and
28:13then they showed the shaman shows the baby the newborn hero to the crowd and
28:19it's very cool what happens in the movie all the animals spontaneously Neil and I
28:24can give you an example of that kind of spontaneous action in a crowd
28:27it's imagine you're watching off gymnastics performance right and and
28:33it's like at a high level world-class performance and someone comes out there
28:37and they do this routine that's just dead letter-perfect you know and they
28:41stop and everybody claps like mad right and it's perfect
28:45and so then the next contestant comes out and they're basically in real
28:48trouble because you know this person just got nine point seven out of ten and
28:51it was perfect so how do you beat perfect and so will they come out there
28:55and then you watch them and you're right on the edge of your seat because what
28:58you see them do is something extraordinarily disciplined just like
29:02the last person did but they push themselves into that zone that's just
29:06beyond their discipline capacity and you can tell every second you're watching it
29:10that they're that close to disaster and so you're right on the edge of your seat
29:14and and you know that they're doing a high-wire act without a net and so when
29:18they finally land triumphantly you'll all stand up and clap spontaneously and
29:22it's because you've just witnessed someone who's a master at playing a game
29:26who's also a master at improving how to play that game at the same time and
29:30people love that more than anything to see that it's just absolutely
29:33overwhelming because it's a testament to the human spirit and you'll respond
29:37automatically and unconsciously to that and that's why that's an analogy to why
29:42the animals all spontaneously bow when now what happens is they shows the Lion
29:48King and the Sun breaks and shines on that the hero at the same time so
29:53there's this concordance between an earthly event and a so-called heavenly
29:56event and you would call that synchronous that's his idea of
30:00synchronicity where something important subjectively is also
30:04signified by something that appears in narrative keeping with that in the
30:08outside world that's one of the most controversial elements of his theory but
30:12I've experienced a variety of synchronous events and they often happen
30:16in therapy especially around dreams but they're very hard to communicate because
30:20they're so specific to the context in which it occurs they're very difficult
30:24to explain so anyways it's the synchronous event that make drops all
30:29the animals to their knees so there's the Sun coming out and there's shining
30:33on them and all the primates go mad for that and that's of course exactly what
30:37we do when we applaud and then we switch to scar now scar is mufasa's brother
30:44evil brother the king always has an evil brother and so does the hero the hero
30:48always has an adversary and the reason for that is the king always has an evil
30:52brother and that means that the state always has a tyrannical element and the
30:57tyrannical element exists for two reasons one is the state deteriorate of
31:02its own accord and that's an entropy observation what that means is that the
31:07state is a construction of the past right but the present isn't the same as
31:12the past and to the degree that the past is mismatched with the demands of the
31:17present then it's then it's then it's a tyrannical it's malfunctioning and so
31:22it's it's a continual problem with the state it's always two steps behind the
31:27environment and so then that means that the awareness of living people has to
31:31update the state and so Eliot and Maria Eliot who's a great historian of
31:36religions looked at flood stories from all over the world because there are
31:39flood stories from all over the world partly because there are floods all over
31:42the world but that's there's a psychological reason to so imagine that
31:46New Orleans was wiped out by a hurricane right a flood didn't you say well that
31:50was an act of God but then you think wait a second wait a second they knew
31:55those dam dykes weren't gonna hold they knew they weren't built strong enough
31:58they took the money that was allocated to the dikes and spent it badly and that
32:02was willful blindness and so you could say that it was God who caused the flood
32:07so to speak metaphorically but you could also say that it was the degeneration of
32:11the state and the willful blindness of the politicians that call
32:15the flood in Holland they build the dikes to withstand the worst storm in
32:1910,000 years in the you southern US they built them to withstand the worst storm
32:24in a hundred years and they knew that that was insufficient and so the flood
32:29if there's a flood well you can say well that's an act of nature but you can also
32:32say just wait a sec maybe if there was a flood because we looked the other way
32:36and because our systems were out of date and that's why in flood stories there's
32:41there's a continual theme which is the the people get wiped out by the flood
32:45because God judges them harshly for their senility and their willful
32:52blindness and it's a story that's very much you'll have a flood in your life
32:56right it'll be a flood of chaos and you'll find of one form another and
33:01you'll find when you investigate the causes of the flood that some of it will
33:05be and sometimes this is cake the case it's just random
33:08you just got singled out you got a terrible disease and that's the end of
33:12you or something like that but there'll be other situations where the flood
33:15comes and you're surrounded by chaos and you'll look into it you'll think I knew
33:18this was coming I knew I wasn't paying attention I knew I hadn't sorted things
33:23out and the consequences of that will have cascaded and wiped you out and then
33:28you're in real trouble because not only did you get wiped out but you also know
33:31it's your fault and that is not a good thing that makes you bitter and
33:35resentful and murderous when that happens so anyways scar is scarred right
33:40so what that implies is he's had a pretty rough life and he's kind of
33:44skinny and he said he was born in the low end of the gene pool and so he has
33:47reasons to be resentful he's also hyper intelligent and rational
33:51and it's one of the things you see very commonly about the evil adversary of the
33:56state or of the individuals often intelligent and hyper rational and the
34:01best commentator on that was probably John Milton and Paradise Lost because
34:05that's how he represents Lucifer or Satan who's the spirit of rationality
34:10and enlightenment strangely enough hence Lucifer the bringer of light and the
34:14reason for that as far as I can tell and this is something that Milton figured
34:17out when he compiled all these ancient stories about evil and tried to make
34:21them coherent was that the problem with irrationality with rationality is that
34:26it tends to fall in love with its own product
34:29right and so then it comes up with a theory that makes that a totality and
34:33then it won't let go so the rational mind has a totalitarian element and we
34:37know that to some degree because that kind of rationality seems more left
34:41hemisphere focused and the left hemisphere tends to impose structured
34:46order on the world and be updated by the right hemisphere and the right
34:49hemisphere generally updates it with negative information and with fantasy
34:53and so the left hemisphere will impose a coherent structure on the world which is
34:57really necessary for you live in it but the problem is there's a tension between
35:01coherence and completeness and that's partly why you need two hemispheres you
35:05need one to represent the world and you need one to keep track of the exceptions
35:09and to feed those slowly into the representational system so that it so
35:14that it can stay updated without collapsing into complete chaos
35:17so anyways scar and he's got this like droopy mouth and this whiny arrogant
35:24voice and he feels hard done by and he's resentful and and in in classic heroes
35:29stories stories of the state as well the so this is an Egyptian take on it Osiris
35:35was was the god of the state and set who later became Satan that name became
35:40Satan as it transformed through Coptic Christianity Osiris had a brother named
35:45set and set he didn't pay attention to set enough attention and set was always
35:51scheme scheming to overthrow the kingdom just like scar is and the Egyptian said
35:57straightforwardly that the reason that Osiris got overthrown by said he got
36:01chopped into pieces and his pieces distributed throughout the state in the
36:04mythological representation and those pieces were actually the provinces of
36:08Egypt technically speaking so and that's what the Egyptians thought so that's
36:12quite cool but the Egyptians said explicitly that the reason that Osiris
36:16got overthrown by set was because he was willfully blind old senile and willfully
36:21blind same idea as the flood myth you don't see that quite here because Mufasa
36:26is sort of on to set or to scar but scar is more treacherous than Mufasa believes
36:31and he gets at he gets at Mufasa by going through his son by by by playing
36:37on on the impulsivity and and juvenile qualities of his son
36:42so obviously there's some antagonism between these two as you can see by
36:46their facial expressions there and there is a good example of scar you know he's
36:51got that droopy kind of whiny malevolent face and that malevolent voice that
36:55Jeremy Irons pulls off so incredibly well and he's always skulking he's a
37:01creature of the night he always skulks around he's not a creature of the day in
37:05any sense of the word and you know obviously Mufasa is golden like the Sun
37:10and scars dark like the night that's another thing another clue another hint
37:15okay there's the tree that's The Tree of Life we already talked about that I
37:19think that represents the multiple levels at which you exist simultaneously
37:23all the way from the subatomic all the way up to the cosmic so to speak and
37:27that's a different kind of dimension and that's the that's the place that the
37:31self inhabits and it can kind of move up and down those dimensions but anyways
37:35that the shaman lives inside that tree and and that's our first introduction to
37:42him basically but he's the spirit of the ancient tree that's another way of
37:45thinking about a very very common element in stories right the spirit of
37:49the ancient tree and so all right so now Mufasa has taken taken Simba up to the
37:56top of the pyramid right so that's the the aluminum place let's say or the
38:00place of the eye where you can really see a long ways and he's explaining to
38:04him what his kingdom is going to be and you see the Sun of course appears that
38:08that to begin with and that's another hint about being at the top that's the
38:12illuminated part of the pyramid and so they're up there talking and what Mufasa
38:16tells Simba is that his kingdom is everyplace the light has touched and
38:21that's so brilliant so one of the things you'll notice if you move into a new
38:24apartment you're like a cat cats don't like changing houses and they have to
38:29zoom around in every corner to see exactly what the hell's going on there
38:32before they calm down they need to know where they can hide and where the
38:36potential dangers are and what you'll find if you move into a new place that
38:40you will not be comfortable there until you've investigated potentially cleaned
38:44and repaired every single square inch of it the more attention you pay to it the
38:50more it'll become yours and that's far more than mere like material ownership
38:54which is also relevant but in order to feel comfortable
38:57somewhere and to dominate that place to be in meshed in that place you have to
39:03attend to it you have to shine light on every corner and you have to do that
39:07with yourself and with your relationships as well and so anyways
39:10Mufasa tells Simba that his kingdom is everything that the light shines on and
39:15that's exactly right and then there's a metaphor there too which is that what
39:19you've Shawn light on which is what you've come to understand and master is
39:22surrounded by an Otherworld of all the things that you don't understand and
39:27some of those would be natural things and some of them would be tyrannical
39:30things and some of those would be things you don't want to know about yourself
39:33but they're outside of where you've managed to shine the light and so that's
39:37exactly what Mufasa tells Simba says we live in this pyramid we're at the top
39:41there's a domain of light around it that's explored territory outside of
39:46that there's explore unexplored territory and that's partly the
39:49unconscious because you fill it with fantasy and it's partly what you just
39:53don't know and then Mufasa tells Simba and it's sort of like God telling Adam
39:59and even in the Garden of Eden not to eat the apple Mufasa tells Simba there's
40:03that this outside place that's dark that's not part of your kingdom and you
40:07should not go there and that's really interesting because Simba doesn't even
40:11know about that place yet and so Mufasa is doing something very contradictory
40:16there it's like telling him that it exists and and heightening his curiosity
40:21but also saying that he should go there almost ensuring that that's exactly what
40:25Simba is going to do you see this in the Pinocchio movie to where Pinocchio is
40:30planning to jump into the ocean to go get Geppetto from the underworld and
40:35he's following his conscience is along with him Jiminy Cricket
40:38and the cricket is warning him about all the dangers that he'll face down there
40:42and telling him that he will be fish food personally and while he's doing
40:46that Pinocchio ties a knot around his donkey
40:49tail around a rock so he can sink and and the little cricket helps him tie the
40:53knot so well he's warning him about the adventure he's going to undertake at the
40:57same time he's encouraging him to do it and there's that paradoxical thing which
41:00is that if you go outside what you know it will cause a fall because it'll
41:05damage your knowledge structures and you'll go down into chaos and that can
41:08really destroy you so you should do it but by the same token if you do do
41:12it and you do it successfully then the new you that are' arises can be stronger
41:17and more complete than the previous you so you should do it and you shouldn't do
41:21it and that's anyone sensible says look don't bother right but sensible isn't
41:26enough that's the thing you have to also be not sensible enough in order to live
41:31and your typical hero and Harry Potter is a really good example is always a
41:35rule breaker always but he you know the rules he breaks are like there's
41:40judicious nough speaking the hero breaks a rule in the service of a higher good
41:45but he's still breaking the rules and that's what puts them outside the
41:48boundary of the social of the social establishment so now at this point Simba
41:55also gets introduced to scar and that that that has two meanings one is that
42:00scar is the tyrannical element of the state and so as a child when you're
42:04being socialized you encounter the tyranny of the state and one of the best
42:09you can't yet there's no way around it one of the best examples of that is that
42:13children are always running around having fun and they're really bubbly and
42:16and impulsive and joyous and playful and that causes a lot of trouble because
42:21positive emotion is very disruptive they'll run around and break things
42:24they'll hurt themselves and they'll get into trouble and so you're always saying
42:28calm down sit down behave don't do that and it's it's not because they're crying
42:32or angry it's because there's a day I'm happy and impulsive that no one can
42:36stand them and so and so that's a tyranny it's like that the state puts
42:40puts pressure on you to regulate your emotions positive negative and positive
42:46and it crushes you it crushes the life out of you a lot of it and so you end up
42:49you know your age and you're all mopey because the holes especially because
42:53you've been forced to sit down in school for like 17 years you're all mopey and
42:58it's no wonder you know you've had the spirit taken out of you by the process
43:01of discipline but without that you'd be completely useless so it's another one
43:05of those paradoxical you know gifts and and catastrophes that you encounter as
43:11you move through life so anyways Simba look at how happy he is you know I mean
43:15he doesn't know a damn thing he's so naive you can tell but oh look it's my
43:19uncle Scar it's like you know and this is not a guy you smile at
43:24clearly but he's all positive emotion and joy and enthusiasm and that's not
43:29good because that means this character can take serious advantage of it and
43:32that's exactly what he does and so scar pretends to be on his side which is what
43:37a good pedophile always does by the way and so you know you you take advantage
43:41of the child's trusting nature and openness in order to exploit them and
43:45that's that's what horrible people do that all the time including the parents
43:49of children and other children themselves so you know there's this
43:53false I mean look at the animators are so damn brilliant Hey look at that
43:57expression really like you know you just look at that and you think well that's
44:00just a facial expression but of course it's not some damn animators worked
44:04really hard to get that they're really observant and they distill the facial
44:08looks like the face is right it covers the whole head and and they've got the
44:13eyebrow lifts proper and they've got this horrible sanctimonious smile and
44:17the tilt of the head then you know and he's sort of crushing him while he's
44:21hugging him at the same time and really really and you know it took a lot of
44:25thought for every single one of these frames to be put together right there's
44:28a tremendous amount of cognitive effort that went into that so none of this is
44:32accidental yeah well that pretty much says
44:34everything it's like whoo I hate that kid and to hardly wait till he's gone
44:38and didn't I pull one over on him you know it's a real testament to an adult's
44:43genius when he can fool a kid so then Simba encounters the anima that's the
44:48anima the Jungian anima and the anima is the feminine counterpart in the soul and
44:53she well yeah you could tell what she does to him right because she's got this
44:59supercilious and and what would you say judgmental and teasing look on her face
45:03and she's really trying to put him down and it's work it like bad he's not very
45:07happy about that at all and she's the thing this is what the anima does the
45:11soul she's the thing that teaches the exploratory hero that that it's not
45:17everything it could be right and that's part of this can be read multiple ways
45:21but it's part of the eternal tendency of women to makes men self-conscious by
45:26their sexual selectivity that's part of it because that makes men self-conscious
45:30like nothing else and it's also perhaps been one of the phenomena that's
45:34produced the evolutionary arms race in this in the
45:37sex is among human beings that's caused our rapid cortical expansion and our
45:42quick movement away from chimpanzees who aren't selective mater's by the way so
45:47look at him Jesus you just want to slap him right he's a he's the son of a king
45:52so he's very very privileged and he confuses his privilege with competence
45:56rich of course all of you do because you're all sons of the King which is why
46:00you can sit here in the university and you confuse your privilege with
46:04competence as well because it's not has nothing to do with any of you that the
46:08lights are on and that's the place is so peaceful
46:10right but you take that for granted and it can make you false and arrogant like
46:14like Jesus that's just so sad you look at that kid you think he's he's in for
46:19real trouble man he thinks he knows everything and of course then he has a
46:23wrestling match with what's-her-name what's it was it Nala yeah he has a
46:28wrestling match with Nala and she just pins him every time right gotcha again
46:32pindy again and that's basically right one of the things that happens with men
46:36when they meet a woman who they really desire that Myers they project an idea
46:41onto her immediately that's an anima projection and then that Adam a
46:44projection judges them and they act all inferior and stupid and it's partly
46:48because they are that's why and so then they they go down in defeat constantly
46:53to this thing that they're projecting which at least has some concordance with
46:57the actual woman but not that much so okay they keep wrestling and then
47:01they're on the fringe of the kingdom this wrestling match between this pairs
47:04of opposites takes them to the edge of the kingdom and they end up in the
47:08elephant's graveyard right and and there's there's bones everywhere and so
47:13now they're out into the kingdom of death and what that means is that these
47:16two kids as they've grown up encounter death right they go outside the light
47:21it's very very shocking for them they're very curious about it obviously they go
47:26to explore the skeletons and all of that even though they were told not to but
47:30their curiosity they can't stay away from death they're too curious about it
47:34and so they developed knowledge of death and that and then of course out there in
47:38the Deadlands is where the hyenas are and that's exactly right because hyenas
47:42are scavengers right and they can break bones with their teeth they're really
47:46really quite the animal and you know you kind of have a shudder of repugnance
47:50when you see those things and I think it's partly I mean we shared
47:54an evolutionary landscape with the ancestors of hyenas for a very very long
47:57time and like vultures too you know you couldn't imagine something that would be
48:02more well designed to look like it was a horrible thing than a vulture right and
48:07there's this weird concordance and crows and ravens are like that - carrion
48:11eaters you know the Eagles are kind of an exception but they look just as
48:15creepy as they are which is really quite interesting and of course hyenas fall
48:19into that category and they laugh - which is you know really you you also
48:23have to laugh really with all these other things you have going for you and
48:27anyways the hyenas and hyenas are enemies of lions and they can take lions
48:31down they're tough things and you know they're not one high in obviously but a
48:35bunch of hyenas can give a lie in a pretty damn rough time
48:38and so and these little lines are really no match for the hyenas so they get
48:43threatened very very rapidly and one of the hyenas of course is just completely
48:48out of its mind and one of the things that's really interesting and you see
48:52this with the Muppets - there was often a puppet that was like a crazy puppet
48:55and its eyes would move in different directions you know and one of the
48:58things that happens with people who are schizophrenic is they show involuntary
49:01eye movements and it's because you have a brain center that controls your eyes
49:05voluntarily and you have another one that controls them involuntarily so you
49:09can see that look ahead and try to move your eyes smoothly back and forth you
49:13can't do it you'll see that they jerk hey but if you watch put a finger in
49:17front of your face and then do this they'll move perfectly smoothly and
49:21that's because you're using different eye control centers one voluntary and
49:25one more involuntary and the involuntary one is actually more sophisticated and
49:29so in schizophrenic the involuntary eye control centers tend to disrupt the
49:34voluntary eye control centers and that's likely part of the hallucinatory process
49:39you know because you have the ego in this schizophrenic that's being
49:42disrupted by processes underneath fantasies and that sort of thing and
49:46that looks like it's reflected in involuntary eye movements like like
49:49dream movements so anyways so much for the crazy hyena and they're in real
49:54trouble now the Kings I who's supposed to be keeping an eye on this and was
49:57supposed to be watching Simba is trying to intervene but I mean look at him he's
50:01a like a delicious little bird and so that's not working out very well
50:05anyways and then you see this immediate juxtaposition of the domain of death and
50:11the hyenas with hell right and everyone looks at that and they think well they
50:15know exactly what that means it's no surprise to anyone that that happens and
50:19I suppose that's partly because on the veldt where we evolved in large part but
50:24not by no means all part fire was an ever-present danger in the grasslands
50:28right and so and so that's a good that's a good example of Hell so huh well I
50:37guess that's it we'll do some more of this when we meet on Tuesday bye
50:52you