2017 Personality 04/05: Heroic and Shamanic Initiations

0:08[Music] all right so I suggested to you last

0:12class that human beings world as a place of action through the lens of their

0:18social cognitive biological sub structure and I made that argument on

0:26the basis of the supposition that our primary environment was actually other

0:34people and I mentioned to you I believe that those other people are arranged in

0:40hierarchies of influence and authority or power or dominance which is often how

0:46its construed and that the dominance hierarchy as a structure is at least 300

0:52million years old which makes it older than trees and it's

0:56for that reason that you share the same neural biology to govern your

1:02observations of your position in the hierarchy as lobsters do which is a

1:09remarkable fact you know it's a remarkable that the lobster uses

1:13serotonin as the mechanism to adjudicate its status position and that modifying

1:20the serotonin function in the lobster can produce changes in its behavior can

1:26can / help the logs to overcome defeat for example which is very much

1:30equivalent to what happens to a human being when they take antidepressants you

1:36know it's it's it's a good example of the conservation of biological structure

1:41by evolution and another a good illustration of the continuity of life

1:45on Earth it's really amazing but the other thing it is a testament to is the

1:50ancient nature of the social structure now we tend to think of the social

1:55structure as something other than nature right because society is I suppose

2:00mythologically opposed it's opposed in a narrative way cultures opposed to nature

2:06it's the town in the forest but the town has been around a long time so to speak

2:12and the structure of the town is also part of nature in that the dominance

2:17hierarchy is part of and because it's so ancient you have to

2:21consider it as part of the mechanism that has played the role of selection in

2:28the process of natural selection and so roughly seem what seems to happen is

2:34that there is a plethora of dominance hierarchies especially in complex human

2:41communities and many of them are masculine in structure in that their

2:47dominance are keys that primarily men compete in or that has been the

2:50historical norm and that some men rise to the top based on whatever the

2:56dominance hierarchy is based on and they make their preferential mates and it's a

3:02good strategy for women to engage in because why and many sorts of female

3:08animals do precisely this is they let the male's battle it out and then pick

3:13from the top and or often the dominant males there's no choice on the part of

3:20the females it's the dominant males just chasing away the subordinate males but

3:24with humans it's usually the case that the females have the opportunity to do

3:29at least some choosing and so we have if you think about that what that implies

3:35is that we have evolved to climb up dominance hierarchies and then I would

3:41say it's not exactly that even because there are many different dominance

3:46hierarchies and so the skills that you might use to climb up one might not be

3:50necessarily the same skills that you would use to climb up another and so

3:54then I would say what we have all evolved for instead and I'm still

4:00speaking mostly on the masculine edge of things historically speaking is the

4:07ability to climb up the set of all possible dominance hierarchies right and

4:12that's that's a whole different idea it's like the averaged hierarchy across

4:16vast spans of time and I think it's for that reason that we among others that we

4:22evolve general intelligence because general intelligence is a general

4:27problem-solving mechanism and it seems to be situation in depend

4:31so to speak and of course there's been an arms race for the development of

4:37intelligence between men and women because each gender has to keep up with

4:41the other and women have their own dominance hierarchies there's certainly

4:44no doubt about that and of course now men and women more

4:49increasingly compete within the same hierarchies and we don't exactly know

4:53how to sort that out yet because it's an extraordinarily new phenomena but in any

4:57case because of the the permanence of the dominance hierarchy it has come to

5:06be represented in fundamental narratives because human beings and this is

5:11something that we share everywhere it's the thing the Wall Street bankers shares

5:15with with the kalahari Kung Bushmen who are among the genetically speaking they

5:26seem to be very close to what the original most original human beings were

5:31like in Africa before the Diaspora about fifty thousand years ago but you know

5:36both of those people despite their vast differences live in

5:41communities that have a hierarchical structure that are composed of

5:46individuals that are embedded in a natural world you know the world outside

5:50of the dominant Sarki and so that's the standard human environment I would say

5:55and so stories that rely on the representations of those environments

5:59and their interactions are what you might describe as universal stories and

6:06that's why people can understand them and I would say further and this is

6:09drawing substantially on say derivation of the work of Carl Jung because I think

6:15he delved into this more deeply than anyone else so a lot of this stuff is

6:18quite Union in its in its origins we the commonality between human beings so you

6:29know you have to have commonalities in order to communicate right axiomatic

6:33commonalities because otherwise you have to explain everything and so there's

6:38many things that human beings don't have to explain to one another we don't have

6:42to explain anger we do have to explain jealousy we don't have

6:46to explain fear we don't have to explain pain we don't have to explain joy we

6:51don't have to explain love etc those are built into us and so there are

6:56predicates of being human and you could say that those human predicates and the

7:02standard human environment produce standard narratives and then you could

7:06say even further and this is more of a leap I would say is that those who act

7:12out the role of the victor in those standard narratives are precisely the

7:17people who attain victory in life and I would say biologically defined in that

7:24they make more attractive partners but also I believe that there's an alignment

7:29between human well-being which is a very weak word and participation in these

7:35meta narratives that drive success because well do you want to be a failure

7:41or a success well you know it's hard to be a success you have to adopt a lot of

7:45responsibility and so you might be willing to take your chances as a

7:48failure but I can't exactly I'm not going to make the presumption that

7:53that's going to put you in a situation other than one where you experienced a

7:58lot of frustration anger disappointment depression pain and anxiety at the

8:04bottom of the heap and so generally that's not what people are aiming for

8:09although under certain circumstances if people don't like responsibility and are

8:15willing to take their chances they might take the irresponsibility and it's

8:23apparent freedoms over the necessity of thinking things through the medium and

8:27long run anyways we stop here I suggested to you that one of the primary

8:35narrative representations was the known or culture or order I think those or the

8:41explored territory or the dominance arc I think those things are basically

8:44interchangeable from from a representational perspective and you

8:50know in the movie The Lion King that's represented by Pride Rock which is the

8:55central place of orientation founded on Raw

8:59which is the sort of thing that people embed their memories in that's why we

9:03make sculptures and gravestones and that sort of things rock stands for permanent

9:07and to have rock under your feet as to be on a solid foundation and that's a

9:13pyramid in some sense in that movie and the pyramid has topped by you know the

9:17king and queen and they're their offspring so that's that's the divine

9:23couple that's one way of thinking about it and Simba of course is the newborn

9:27hero and you know you extend that even though it's lions and drawings of lions

9:34at that and animals are acting it out it's completely irrelevant to you that

9:38those characters happen to be animated and that what you're watching is a

9:43fiction so and I would say to you with regards to fiction you know you might

9:48say well is fiction true or not and the answer to that is yes and no it's not

9:56true in that the events portrayed in fiction occurred in the world they

10:02didn't but they're fiction is true the same way numbers are true I would say

10:08like you know if you have one apple and one orange and one banana the common

10:15analogy between all of those three is one and you might say well is one as

10:20real as one fruit is the abstraction one as real as one fruit and I would say it

10:27depends on what you mean by real but representing things mathematically and

10:32abstractly gives you incredible power and you could make the case that the

10:37abstraction is actually more real than the phenomena that it represents and

10:42certainly mathematicians would make that case they would say that mathematics is

10:47in some sense more real than the phenomenal world and you know you don't

10:51have to believe that mostly it's a matter of choice in some sense but you

10:56can't deny the fact that an abstraction has enough reality so that if you're

11:00proficient in using it you can really you can change the world and in and in

11:06insanely powerful ways you know I mean all the computational equipment you

11:11people are using or depending on the abstractions one and zero

11:15essentially and I mean look at what emerges from that and so I would say

11:20with regards to fiction if you take someone like Dostoyevsky oh I think it's

11:24a favorite of mine by the way I would highly recommend that you read all five

11:27of his great novels because they are unparalleled in their psychological

11:31depth and so if you're interested in psychology Dostoyevsky's the person for

11:37you Tolstoy is more of a sociologist but

11:40Dostoyevsky man he gets right down into the bottom of the questions and messes

11:45around transformative reading anyways Dostoyevsky's characters this character

11:53named her skull in the Cobb is a character in crime and punishment and

11:56Raskolnikov is a materialist rationalist I would say which was a rather new type

12:02of person back in the 1880s and he was sort of taken by the idea that God was

12:08dead and took and convinced himself that the only reason that he that anyone

12:15acted in a moral way in a traditional way was because of cowardice they were

12:19unable to remove from them the restrictions of mere convention and act

12:25in the manner of someone who rose above the norm and so he's tortured by these

12:32ideas he's half starving he's a law student he doesn't have enough to eat he

12:36doesn't have much money and so you know he's not thinking all that clearly

12:40either and he's got a lot of family problems his mother's sick and she can't

12:44spend him send a much money and his sister is planning to engage in a

12:49marriage that's loveless to someone who's rather tyrannical who he hopes

12:53will provide the family with enough money so that he can continue in law

12:57school and they write him brave letters telling him that she's very much in love

13:02with this guy but he is smart enough to read between the lines and realizes that

13:06his sister is just planning to prostitute herself in you know in an

13:10altruistic manner he's not very happy with that and then at the same time as

13:16all this is happening he becomes aware of this pawnbroker who he's you know

13:22pawning his last possessions to and she's a horrible

13:26person and not only by his estimation she pawns a lot of things for the

13:32neighborhood and people really don't like her she's grasping and cruel and

13:36deceitful and and resentful and like and she has this niece who's not very bright

13:42intellectually impaired whom she basically treats as a slave and beats

13:46all the time and so Raskolnikov you know involved in this mess and half starved

13:53and a bit delirious and possessed of these strange new nihilistic ideas

13:59decides that the best way out of this situation would be just to kill the land

14:04let the pawnbroker take her wealth which he all she does is keep it in a chest

14:10free the niece so that seems like a good idea so remove one apparently horrible

14:17and useless person from the world free his sister from the necessity of this

14:21loveless marriage and allow him to go to law school where he can become educated

14:25and do some good for the world you know so one of the things that's lovely about

14:30Dostoyevsky is that he you know when sometimes when one person is arguing

14:35against another or when they're having an argument in their head they make

14:39their opponent into a straw man which is basically they take their opponent and

14:43curricular their perspective and try to make it as weak as possible and and

14:48laugh about it and and then they come up with their argument and destroy this

14:53straw man and feel that they've obtained victory but it's a very pathetic way of

14:59thinking it's not thinking at all what thinking is is when you adopt the

15:04opposite position from your suppositions and you make that argument as strong as

15:09you can possibly make it and then you pit your perspective

15:14against that that strong iron man not the straw man and you argue it out you

15:23battle it out and that's what Dostoevsky does in his novels I mean he's the

15:27people who stand for the antithesis of what dust is dust is he actually

15:32believes are often the strongest smartest and sometimes most admirable

15:37people in the book and so takes great moral courage to do that and

15:44you know in risk Olenick oov what he wanted to do was set up a character who

15:47had every reason to commit murder every reasonable reason philosophically

15:53practically ethically even well so risk Olenick off goes and he kills the old

16:01lady with an axe and it doesn't go the way he expects it will because what he

16:05finds out is that post murder Raskolnikov and pre murder Raskolnikov

16:11are not the same people at all they're not even close to the same people he's

16:16entered an entirely different universe and Dostoevsky does a lovely job of

16:21describing that universe of horror and chaos and and and deception and and and

16:29suffering and terror and all of that and he doesn't even use the money he just

16:33buries it in a and an alley as fast as he can and then doesn't want anything to

16:37do with it again and anyways the reason I'm telling you all this is potentially

16:43to entice you into reading the book because it is an amazing amazing book

16:47but also because you might say well his risk is what happened to Raskolnikov

16:52true are the stories in that book true and the answer to that is well from a

16:58factual perspective clearly they're untrue but then if you think of

17:01Raskolnikov as the embodiment of a particular type of person who lived at

17:06that time and the embodiment of a certain kind of ideology which had swept

17:11across Europe and really invaded Russia and which was actually a precursor a

17:16philosophical precursor to the Russian Revolution then Raskolnikov is more real

17:21than any one person he's like a composite person he's like a person

17:27who's irrelevant sees have been eliminated for the purpose of relating

17:33something about the structure of the world and so I like to think of those

17:36things as sort of meta real meta real they're more real than real and of

17:42course that's what you expect people to do when they tell you about their own

17:47lives about their own day you don't want a factual description of

17:53every muscle twitch you want them to distill their experiences down into the

18:01gist which is the significance of the experience and the significance of the

18:06experience is roughly what you can derive from listening to the experience

18:13that will change the way that you look at the world and act in the world so

18:17it's valuable information and they can tell you a terrible story and then that

18:21can be valuable because that can tell you how not to look in the world look at

18:26the world and act in it or they can tell you a positive story you can derive

18:30benefit either way which is why we also like to go watch stories about horrible

18:34psychopathic thugs you know and and hopefully we're learning not to be like

18:40them although there are additional advantages in that you know someone you

18:46might be some say that someone who is incapable of cruelty is a higher moral

18:51being than someone who is capable of cruelty and I would say and this follows

18:55young as well that that's incorrect and it's dangerously incorrect because if

19:00you are not capable of cruelty you are absolutely a victim to anyone who is and

19:07so part of the reason that people go watch anti heroes and villains is

19:12because there's a part of them crying out for the incorporation of the monster

19:17within them which is what gives them strength of character and self-respect

19:21because it's impossible to respect yourself until you grow teeth and if you

19:26grow teeth and you realize that you're somewhat dangerous and let or maybe

19:30somewhat seriously dangerous and then you might be more willing to demand that

19:35you treat yourself with respect and other people do the same thing and so

19:40that doesn't mean that being cruel is better than not being cruel what it

19:44means is that being able to be cruel and then not being cruel is better than not

19:49being able to be cruel because in the first case you're nothing but weak and

19:53naive and in the second case you're dangerous but you have it under control

19:59and you know a lot of martial arts concentrate on exactly that as part of

20:03their philosophy of training it's like we're not training you

20:07to fight we're training you to be peaceful and awake and avoid fights but

20:14if you happen to have to get in one and then I guess the philosophy also is is

20:18that if you're competent at fighting that actually decreases the probability

20:24that you're going to have to fight because when someone pushes you you'll

20:28be able to respond with confidence and with any luck and this is certainly the

20:32case with bullies with any lock a reasonable show of confidence which is

20:36very much equivalent to the show of dominance is going to be enough to make

20:40the bully back off and so the strength that you develop in your monstrousness

20:46is actually the best guarantee of peace and that's partly why Jung believed that

20:50it was necessary for people to integrate their shadow and he said that was a

20:55terrible thing for people to attempt because the human shadow mmm which is

21:01all those things about yourself that you don't want to realize reaches all the

21:05way to hell and what he meant by that was it's through an analysis of your own

21:10shadow that you can come to understand why other people are capable and you as

21:14well of the sorts of terrible atrocities that characterize let's say the 20th

21:19century and without that understanding there's no possibility of bringing it

21:23under control when you study Nazi Germany for example or you study the

21:28Soviet Union particularly under Stalin and you're asking yourself well what are

21:34these perpetrators like forget about the victims let's talk about the

21:37perpetrators the answer is they're just like you and if you don't know that that

21:42just means that you don't know anything about people including yourself and then

21:46it also means that you have to discover why they're just like you and believe me

21:51that's no picnic so that's enough to traumatize people and that's partly why

21:56they don't do it and it's also partly why the path to enlightenment and wisdom

22:01is seldom trod upon because if it was all a matter of following your bliss and

22:06doing what made you happy then everyone in the world would be a paragon of

22:10wisdom but it's not that at all it's the it's a matter of facing the thing you

22:14least want to face and everyone has that old there's this old story in King

22:19Arthur where the night's go off to look for the Holy

22:22Grail which is either the cup that Christ drank out of it the Last Supper

22:27or the cup into which the blood that gushed from his side was poured when he

22:32was crucified the stories vary but it's it's basically a holy object like the

22:37Phoenix in some sense that's representation a representation of

22:41transformation so it's a it's an ideal and so King Arthur's knights who sit at

22:47a round table because they're all roughly equal go off to find the most

22:51valuable thing and they and where do you look for the most valuable thing when

22:55you don't know where it is well each of the knights looks at the forest

23:00surrounding the castle and enters the forest at the point that looks darkest

23:04to him and that's a good thing to understand because the gateway to wisdom

23:10and the gateway to the development of personality which is exactly the same

23:14thing is precisely through the porthole portal that you do not want to climb

23:19through and the reason for that's actually quite technical this is a union

23:23presupposition - is that well there's a bunch of things about you that are

23:27underdeveloped and a lot of those things are because there's things you've

23:30avoided looking at because you don't want to look at them and there's parts

23:34of you you've avoided developing because it's hard for you to develop those parts

23:38and so it's by virtual necessity that what you need is where you don't want to

23:44look because that's where you've kept it and so and that's why there's you know

23:49an idiosyncratic element of it for everyone your particular place of

23:53enlightenment and terror is not going to be the same as yours except that they're

23:57both places of enlightenment and terror so they're equivalent at one level of

24:02analysis and and different than another so anyways back to the fiction and and

24:08and and what it does if it distills truth and it produces characters that

24:14are composites and the more they become composites the more they approximate a

24:19mythological character and so they become more and more universally true

24:25and more and more approximating religious deities but the problem with

24:29that is they become more and more distant from individual experience and

24:33so with literature there's this very tight line

24:38where you need to make the character more than merely human but not so much

24:45of a God that you know one of the things that happened to Superman in the 1980s

24:50Superman started out he's got a heavenly set a parents by the way in an earthly

24:53set of parents and he's an orphan like Harry Potter very common theme is that

24:58when Superman first emerged he could only jump out of her buildings you know

25:02and maybe he could stop a locomotive but by the time the 1980s rolled around like

25:06he could juggle planets and you know swallow hydrogen bombs and you know he

25:11could do anything well people stopped buying the Superman comics because how

25:15interesting is that it's like something horrible happens and Superman deals with

25:20it and something else horrible happens and Superman deals with it and it's like

25:25that's dull he turned into such an archetype he was basically the

25:30omniscient omnipresent omnipotent God and that's no fun it's like God wins and

25:38then God wins again and then again God wins and you know so then they had to

25:43weaken him in different ways with kryptonite you know so green kryptonite

25:47kind of made him sick and red kryptonite I think kind of mutated him if I

25:51remember correctly and anyways they had to introduce flaws into his characters

25:55so that there could be some damn plot and that's something to think about you

25:59know there's a deep existential lesson in that in that your being is limited

26:05and flawed and fragile you're like the genie which is genius in the little tiny

26:12in the little tiny lamp you know this immense potential but

26:16constrained in this tiny little living space as Robin Williams said when he

26:20played the genie in Aladdin but the fact that you have limitations means that the

26:26plot of your life is the overcoming of those limitations and that if you didn't

26:30have limitations well there wouldn't be a plot and maybe there would be no life

26:35and so that's part of the reason why perhaps you have to accept the fact that

26:39you're flawed and insufficient and and live with it and consider it a

26:43precondition for being it's at least a reasonable

26:49it's a reasonable idea so anyways one of the main characters is the country the

26:55known the explored territory we went over that a bit and it always has two

26:59elements I mean your country is your greatest friend and your worst enemy you

27:05know because it squashes you into conformity and demands that you act in a

27:11certain manner and reduces your individuality to that element that's

27:16tolerated by everyone else and it it constrains your potential in a single

27:21direction and so it's really tyrannical but at the same time it provides you

27:27with a place to be and all of the benefits that have accrued as a result

27:33of the actions of your ancestors and all the other people that you're associated

27:38with so there's the good tyrant or the bad tyrant and the good King and those

27:45are archetypal figures and that's because they're always true and they're

27:48always true simultaneously you know which is partly why I object to the

27:52notion of the patriarchy because it's a myth the law the it's the what do you

27:57call that it's the apprehension of a mythological trope which is that of the

28:02evil tyrant without any appreciation for the fact that the archetype actually has

28:07two parts and the other part is the wise king and you know you can tell an evil

28:12tyrant story about culture no problem but it's one-sided and that's very

28:17dangerous because you don't want to forget all the good things that you have

28:23while you're criticizing all the ways that things are in error that's a lack

28:26of gratitude and it's a lack of wisdom and it's it's founded in resentment and

28:32it's it's very dangerous both personally and socially I told you that Captain

28:40Hook is a tyrant because he's got this crocodile chasing him in the crocodile

28:44has a clock in its stomach and that's death it's like obviously right tick

28:48tick tick tick and it's a crocodile and it's under the water and it's already

28:53got a taste of him so he's being chased around by death and that makes him

28:57terrified and resentful and and cruel and bitter

29:02so he's a tyrant and he wants to wreak havoc everywhere and then Peter Pan of

29:06course looks at Captain Hook and thinks why the hell should I grow up and to be

29:12a tyrant and sacrifice all the potential of childhood and the answer to that is

29:17the potential sacrifices itself if you don't utilize it as you mature and you

29:22just end up a 40 year old lost boy which is a horrifying thing to behold it's

29:28almost as if you're the corpse of a child the living corpse of a child

29:31because who the hell wants a six-year-old 40 year old you're a little

29:35on the stale side by that point and not the world's happiest individual so you

29:41know your potential is going to disappear because you aged anyways and

29:45so you might as well shape that potential in a particular direction and

29:50at least become something no matter how limited rather than nothing so you know

30:00Peter Pan that's a great story it's a great mythological story so well so

30:08let's talk about tyrants well not only are they mythological figures but they

30:13exist and they tend to be deified I mean Stalin was for all intents and purposes

30:18God the Father in Soviet Russia although he was pretty much only the worst

30:23elements of Old Testament God who was you know constantly smiting people and

30:29and wiping out populations and doing all sorts of things that seem to be quite

30:32nasty but nonetheless you know people worshipped him in many ways and and he's

30:39a representation of just exactly what goes wrong when things really go wrong

30:43when people stop paying attention and when they all lie because one of the

30:47things that characterized the communist state was that no one ever got to say

30:52anything they actually believed ever and that was partly because one out of three

30:58people was an informer which meant if you had a family of six people two of

31:02them were informing on the government about you and that included your own

31:05children and you and if you were an informer you were often amply rewarded

31:10by the state so that if you lived in an overcrowded apartment building with

31:14three families in the same flat and you informed on you know the

31:18woman down the hall that you didn't like she got shift shipped off to the old

31:22concentration camp and you got her apartment and so that was a lovely

31:26society and it only killed about thirty million people between 1919 and nineteen

31:32fifty-nine so that's what happens when the archetypal structure gets tilted

31:37badly when people forget that they have a responsibility to fulfill as citizens

31:43as awake citizens who are capable of stating the truth and the archetype

31:48shift so there's nothing left of the Great Father except the tyrant and let's

31:53not have that happen I mean the one on the right is really interesting because

31:57consciously or unconsciously you know there's Stalin surrounded by what is for

32:03all intents and purposes fire you know he looks like he looks like Maleficent

32:09in Sleeping Beauty when she shows up at Aurora's christening you know she puts

32:13her arms up in the air and green fire surrounds her it's like it's like he's

32:22surrounded by fire and there's Lenin above him who's like king of the fiery

32:26realm and that's for sure so I mean all the terrors that happened

32:30in the Soviet Union didn't start under stell and they started under Lenin and

32:35Lenin was or Stalin was definitely Lenin's legitimate son let's put it that

32:41way so you know this is another example of the tyrannical element of the Great

32:48Father and the sorts of things that can happen I mean I kind of got a an evil

32:55kick out of this bad that was quite old you know

33:00it's kitschy in some sense and and you know it shows I don't think that's

33:03something you'd ever see at a magazine today

33:0610 unusual stamps showing evil dictator you know well fair enough I mean that's

33:14what he was and that's the consequence and that's just a tiny bit of the

33:19consequence because the Nazis wiped out a very large number of people often

33:24using compassion as a as a as a as a justification so when they went

33:32after the mentally ill and the terminally ill and those who whose

33:39intelligence was compromised for biological reasons and and those who

33:44were too old they basically justified it by saying

33:47that the enforced euthanasia was merciful and that you were actually

33:52being a good person by complying with the requirements and so something to

33:58think about more mythological representations I like

34:02these quite a bit so there's their Hitler as you know Knight of the faith

34:06essentially with I suppose that's a recreation of the Christian holy spirit

34:12dove you know except it's an eagle which is a bird of prey and and a prayer and

34:18uh what do you call those things a scavenger right so that's kind of

34:21interesting but that's Hitler as night of the of the blood roughly speaking and

34:28there this is an allied war poster essentially that assimilates the Nazis

34:35to poisonous snakes and you know we don't like poisonous snakes very much

34:40and and it's probably because they've been preying on us for approximately

34:44twenty million years because snakes and primates humans in particular co-evolved

34:51and so the snake is a representation of that which lies outside the comfortable

34:57domain and that can be you know a snake obviously or it can be an abstract snake

35:06and the abstract snake is your enemy or an even more abstract snake is the evil

35:11in your own heart and this is going to be a bit of a leap for you but there's

35:16this ancient idea that developed in what in the West over thousands of years far

35:22predating Christianity that at least its origins that the snake in the Garden of

35:29Eden was also Satan which is like of what the hell it's a very strange idea

35:33but the reason for that as far as I can tell is that you know we have this

35:38circuitry that detects predators and a predator

35:42representation of a predator is a snake or a monster that incorporates

35:46snake-like features like a dragon or something like that or a dinosaur with

35:49lots of teeth or a shark that lives under the water and will pull you down

35:54you know because I suspect a lot of our ancestors met a nasty death at the hands

35:58of Nile crocodiles while they were in the African veldt going down to get some

36:02nice water so you know that's the thing that jumps up and pulls you under and

36:07you know that happens in your own life because things jump up and pull you

36:11under you know and use the same circuitry we use the same circuitry to

36:15process unknown things that upset us as we once used to detect predators who

36:21were likely to invade our space and so and and human beings are capable of

36:27abstraction and so you know you could think about the real predator that might

36:30invade your space and maybe that's a snake or a wolf or or some kind of

36:35monster you know and that's pretty concrete and biological chimps have that

36:40you know chimps don't like snakes and so if you a chimp comes across a snake in

36:45the wild then like a big let's say I don't know what live with chimps I don't

36:50know if they're pythons but they have constrictors there anyways so you know

36:54maybe there's like a 20 foot constrictor and this and the chimp like stays a good

36:58distance away from it but it won't leave and then it has this particular cry that

37:02it uh ters that's called a snake rah WRA a and so it makes this noise which means

37:09something like holy shit that's a big snake and I actually mean that because

37:14the circuits that primates use to utter distress calls are the same circuits

37:20that we use to curse just so you know that's why people with Tourette's

37:25syndrome swear because like what what's up with that how can you have a

37:29neurological condition that makes you swear well it turns out that guttural

37:34effect Laden curses are mediated by a different speech circuit and that's the

37:40speech circuit we share with the predator alarms of other primates so

37:45that's pretty cool so anyways this chimp stands there and makes this snake noise

37:51and then all bunch of other chimps come running and you know some of them stay a

37:55fair ways from the snake can some of them get pretty close but

37:58they'll stand there and watch that snake for like 24 hours you know so they're

38:03fascinated by it and you know if you've handled snakes you can understand that

38:06fascination because they're fascinating you know and they're numinous I would

38:12say that that's the right way of putting it at numinous is a word that means

38:17intrinsically meaningful like a fire you know you can't look away from fire you

38:22know if you're sitting in front of a fireplace it's like you're staring at it

38:25and that's because you're all descended from the first mad chimpanzee who had

38:30some weird genetic mutation that made it impossible for him to stay away from

38:35fire it was like the first chimp arsonist you know and and he figured it

38:40out and well hey now he was a chimp with a stick with fire on it like that's a

38:45mega chimp man and so you know we have that mutation in spades and no wonder so

38:53anyways so they they make this you know they have this reaction to snakes and

39:01chimps that have never seen a snake if they're in a cage and you throw a rubber

39:05snake in there it's like bang they hit the roof but then they look at the snake

39:10you know it's so it's like it's terrifying and fascinating at the same

39:14time and you should look at the snake because you want to know what it does

39:17but you should stay away from it because it's a snake so you you're kind of

39:20screwed in terms of your motivations right one is get the hell away and the

39:25other is well don't don't let that thing do anything that you're not watching and

39:30so that's really the reaction we have to the unknown it's terrifying but we watch

39:36it and then you know the meta story is that not only do we watch it but we go

39:41explore it and so you might think well back in the Garden of Eden so to speak

39:45when we were living in trees the snakes used to come and eat us and and our

39:51offspring more likely and you know we weren't very happy about that and then

39:56we figured out how to maybe maybe by accident draw up a stay a stick on a

40:00snake and that was a good thing because the snake didn't like that and then

40:04maybe the next thing we learned a little later was to like actually take a stick

40:09and like ock the snake with it and you can

40:11believe that the first primate who figured out that was just as popular as

40:16the guy who mastered fire and so we're pretty good at whacking state snakes

40:21with sticks which is why Springfield has a snake

40:25whacking day it's devoted to nothing but that right I don't know if you know that

40:30Simpsons episode but it's quite comical so well so then you think about the

40:35snake as a predator and it's the thing that invades the garden always because

40:40you just can't keep snakes out of the damn garden no matter how hard you try

40:43and then you think of snakes and maybe you think of meta snakes and like a meta

40:48snake would be also a predator but maybe that's the predator that represents the

40:54the destructive spirit of the other tribe because chimpanzees for example

40:59are quite tribal and they definitely go to war with one another and so you think

41:03you abstract out the idea of the predator to represent malevolence as

41:09such and then you take that one step further and you realize that the worst

41:14of all evil predators is the human capacity for evil and then at that point

41:22you know you're starting to I would say psychologize or spiritual eyes the idea

41:27of danger and making it make it into something that's conceptual and

41:33something that's psychological and something that you can you can face sort

41:38of on mas I mean one of the things people had to figure out was how do you

41:41deal with danger and so you feel figure out how you deal with a specific danger

41:47but then because human beings are death so damn smart they thought well what if

41:51we considered the class of all dangerous things and then what have we considered

41:56a a mode of being that was the best mode of being in the face of the class of all

42:01dangerous things well that's a lot better you get you know you could solve

42:06all the dangerous problems all at once instead of having to conjure up a

42:10different solution for every dangerous thing and that's basically as far as I

42:14can tell where the hero's story came from and the hero's story is basically

42:19you know there's a community it's threatened by the emergence of some old

42:23evil often represented by a dragon that's

42:26sort of typical say of the Lord of the Rings stories there's a hero often a

42:32humble guy but not always sometimes a knight decides he'll go out there you

42:37know and chase down the snake maybe even or the serpent or the dragon maybe even

42:42in its lair and he'll have a bunch of adventures on the way that transform him

42:46from you know useless naive Hobbit into you know sword wielding hero and he

42:53confronts the dragon and gets the gold and frees the people that it had

42:57enslaved and then comes back transformed to share what he's learned with the

43:03community it's like well that's the human story fundamentally and that's

43:07that's our basic instinctive pattern and it's represented in narratives

43:10constantly and that's partly what this see this has meaning you know what this

43:15means why why do you know well you know

43:20because it draws on symbolic representations that you already

43:23understand you understand that a mess of tooth snakes is not a good thing and

43:29that may be the sensible thing to do is stomp them and it's not like you need an

43:37instruction manual to figure out what the poster means and so you know that's

43:42two different representations of Hitler that's sort of the pro-hitler

43:45representation and I would say that's the anti-hitler representation and you

43:49know that's the real Hitler who at this point does not look like a very happy

43:53clam so so that's the known that's culture that's order and what's

44:00eternally juxtaposed to culture and the known and the explored and order is the

44:06unknown and the unknown is a strange place the unknown is actually it's a

44:13physical place like the unknown is the place that when you're camping and

44:17you're around a fire the unknown is everything outside the circle of the

44:22light and you remember in the Lion King you may not remember when when when

44:28Mufasa that's the king right goes and takes Simba up to show him his territory

44:34he says he is the king of everything that the light touches

44:38and that's a very old idea and you guys had no problem with you know that was

44:42fine that made sense and that I would be on the light was the darkness and that

44:46was the elephant graveyard that was death that was the place of death and

44:50danger that's where the hyenas hung out and you weren't supposed to go there and

44:54so of course Simba because he's a rule breaking hero just like Harry Potter

44:58immediately goes there and so you know that's like the forbidden fruit it's the

45:02same sort of idea if you want someone to do something the best thing to do is

45:08tell them that they shouldn't and not explain why you know so for example if I

45:14said to you at the beginning of this class look I've got one rule here don't

45:20sit in that chair no matter what you'd be thinking the whole year especially if

45:25I reminded you well just what's up with that chair like let's chair as magical

45:29all of a sudden you some of you might even well you probably wouldn't because

45:33this is a ridiculous example but maybe you know you come to class early and sit

45:37in that chair just to see what would happen you know and people are very

45:41curious and that's exactly what we're like and that's a very old story too

45:45right it's like opening Pandora's box don't open that box you'll be sorry it's

45:49like oh huh you know all the horrors of the world fly out and believe me you

45:55will open Pandora's box many times in your life because you know with your

46:00family or maybe your mate or maybe your children you'll have this idea that they

46:06have a box with things in it that you want to know about and you'll say well

46:11I'm kind of curious about this particular event so why don't you tell

46:15me about it and they say well no we probably really shouldn't open that box

46:19and you keep bugging them and then they open it and then all sorts of things fly

46:23out that you didn't expect and then maybe you think hey it would have been

46:26better if I would have just left that damn box closed but and you can do the

46:31same thing to yourself believe me and so the Pandora's box idea the

46:35forbidden fruit idea that's that's a major-league idea and part of the reason

46:40in the judeo-christian tradition why people are saddled with the notion of

46:44original sin is because hyper cortically developed chimpanzees without much sense

46:51can keep their hands off things and so they

46:55keep exploring even when they know better and every time they do that they

47:00learn something that is that destroys the paradise that they currently inhabit

47:07right because there's plenty Unni and I never learned anything in your life

47:11that's of importance without it having a pretty damn destabilizing effect on you

47:16at the moment of realisation right you learn something happy it's like whatever

47:23you know that all that means is that I was doing things right like it's nice

47:26and everything but it's not informative you do something and all hell breaks

47:32loose that'll make you think that's for sure you might never stop thinking for

47:38the rest of your life so anyways the unknown the unknown is that which

47:44surrounds the known it's an unexplored territory it's usually represented as

47:49female I think for a variety of reasons and not not as female exactly it's not

47:54the right way to think about it as feminine and that's not the same thing

47:58because feminine is a symbolic category whereas female is like an actual female

48:03and so you don't want to confuse the metaphor with with the with the

48:08actuality because we have these social cognitive categories built-in you know

48:14you might say masculine feminine and offspring something like that we had to

48:19use what we could to represent what we were attempting to figure out and we

48:23kind of mapped them onto the external realities of being the best we could

48:30using what we could and so you know nature is benevolent and it's fruitful

48:35you know all things come from nature and all things come from the unknown right

48:40because the known is already there it's the unknown that manifests the new right

48:46and so that's part of the reason for the characterization of the unknown as

48:51feminine and then there's also the case that women play a massive role in sexual

48:57selection among human beings so that mmm from an evolutionary perspective you're

49:02twice as likely to be a failure if you're a man then you

49:05or if you're a woman in that you have twice as many female ancestors as male

49:11ancestors and you think well that's impossible but it's not all you have to

49:14do is imagine that every woman has one child half the men have two and the

49:20other half have zero and so end of problem and that's basically how it

49:25works out so women are more choosy mater's than men by a substantial margin

49:31there was a funny study done by the guy who established it's one of the big

49:37dating sites and he looked at how women rated men and they rated the 50th

49:46percentile man at the 15th percentile so 85% of men were below average according

49:52to women's ratings now men had their same arbitrary choices because of course

49:57they preferred younger women to older women and and they were more swayed I

50:02would say by by attractiveness but that didn't have set nearly as big an effect

50:07on their actually actually writing of women so anyway so you know from from a

50:15Darwinian perspective nature is that which selects so that's all it is and so

50:22sexual selection plays a massive role in human evolution you know the fact that

50:27we have these massive brains is very likely a consequence of a positive

50:31feedback loop and sexual selection you know because otherwise that's the

50:35only time you can get really rapid changes in evolutionary space where you

50:40know you get a process going that reinforces itself so there's a little

50:44preference for intelligence and then that produces more intelligent men and

50:48women and then there's a little more preference for intelligence and you know

50:52maybe then that turns into the ability to speak and or to master fire and then

50:56there's way more selection for intelligence and the brain just goes

51:00like this you know and women have paid a pretty big price for that because your

51:06hips are basically so wide that you can barely run and if they were any wider

51:10than you couldn't and of course the pelvic passageway through which the baby

51:16travels is too small so it's really painful and dangerous and the

51:20baby's head has to compress quite a lot I mean they come out cone-shaped often

51:26and then they're born really young so you have to take care of them forever

51:30like what the hell you know a deer is born a fawn is born and it's like two

51:34seconds later it's standing and then it's running from a lion it's like you

51:38know it's like 15 minutes later and a baby it's like you just lies there and

51:44you know utters plaintive noises that's all it can do and that does that for

51:49like ten months before it could skitter away from a sloth if it was predatory

51:56you know so you really got to take care of those creatures and so that's a big

52:01price to pay that's a big price to pay for our cortical evolution so anyways

52:06here is some of the symbolic represents representatives of the unknown the

52:12unconscious Dionysian force of the it'd that sort of Freud's representation of

52:17the unknown the terrors of the darkness that's the unknown the monsters that

52:23lurk they're the source and the resting place of all things the great mother the

52:28Queen the matrix which means matter which means mother

52:32the matriarch matter mother the container the cornucopia the object to

52:37be fertilized the source of all things the fecund

52:40the pregnant the strange the emotional the foreigner the place of return and

52:46rest the deep the valley the cleft the cave hell death and the grave because

52:51it's beyond the moon ruler of the night and mysterious dark and matter and the

52:57earth then you know all this because when you watch a movie that's rife with

53:03symbolic representations it draws on those underlying metaphors and they're

53:07natural I mean where does a witch live well in a swamp for God's sake she

53:11doesn't live in the penthouse of a New York Tower she lives in a swamp and it's

53:16dark there and if the moon's up that's a better and maybe it could be a crescent

53:20moon or maybe it could be a full moon but you know witches live in the right

53:23place if you're going to understand it and you all you understand all of that

53:28and it's part of the structure of your imagination you could say

53:33and so it's part of the unspoken fantastical imagination that unites all

53:40of us and it makes us specifically human there's a good representation of the

53:45underworld and the place of transformation so that's Hell in Isis in

53:50Egypt was queen of the underworld and the underworld generally has a queen and

53:54she usually shows up when order falls apart and so you go to the underworld

54:01when your life falls apart that's what it means and so when you see these

54:05stories of the hero you know journeying to unknown lands of terror and danger

54:13that's that's what happens to you it happens to you all the time you know

54:16you're you're in this little safe space like The Hobbit in the Shire and then

54:22you know there's a great evil brewing somewhere and you can no longer ignore

54:26it so off you go into the land of terror and uncertainty and better to go on

54:31purpose then accidentally that's for sure because at least you can be

54:35prepared and we also know that if you're going to face a threat if you face it

54:41voluntarily what happens is your body activates itself for exploration and

54:45mastery but if you face it involuntarily same size threat then you you you you

54:52revert to pray pray mode and you're frozen and that's way way way more

54:57stressful it's way harder on your body and so it's better to keep your eye open

55:03and watch for emergent threats because you all know you know what you're not

55:07doing quite right and where your life is likely to unravel you all have a sense

55:10of that and the best thing to do is to not ignore that to pay attention to it

55:16to watch it and to take corrective action early and then you know you stay

55:21on top of things and things your little trip to the underworld might be a few

55:26minutes long instead of a catastrophe that produces post-traumatic stress

55:30disorder knocks you out for four or five years and maybe you never recover so and

55:35that's right you know that's what these kind of symbolic representations mean

55:39it's those are states of being that that that indicate being devoured and you can

55:46be devoured your own unconscious Jesus that happens

55:49all the time what does that mean well you know and it's an autonomous thing in

55:54some sense you know like if you if you get depressed or if you get really

55:57anxious you don't have any control over that it's like it sweeps up over you and

56:02pulls you down why down well down is where you go when you're sad you don't

56:08go up man I'm up today oh that's too bad no it's man I'm down today and well

56:14that's partly this and it's partly because this is subordinate and it's

56:18partly because down is closer to the ground and farther from the sky like

56:24there's all sorts of reasons you're feeling down rather than up up is where

56:29you're aiming right yeh MUP you don't aim down well there the reason those

56:34phrases make sense is because they're locked deeply into this underlying

56:38structure of imagination and well those are the architect or the archetypal

56:44structures according to Jung and I I think that he's far as I can tell he's

56:52dead accurate and I think we understand the biology of such things much better

56:58than we did so there is more representations she's she's quite the

57:02friendly creature that's Kelly I like this representation better those

57:07are heads by the way in hands so she sort of represents well very complex

57:12things she represents death she represents transformation in this I

57:17already like this representation I think it's brilliant so imagine that what the

57:20people were doing who formulated these representations what they were trying to

57:25do was to make a representation of the domain of threat itself right so that

57:32they could deal with the idea that because we can say threat well what is

57:35that what the hell does that mean well threat is the category of all

57:39threatening things and so then you can think about threat and you can think

57:42about threat across all those individual instances and maybe you can figure out

57:47how to deal with threat right how what's the best way to be in the world so that

57:53you most effectively deal with threat well that's sort of like apart from how

57:58do you deal with pain that's sort of like the ultimate

58:00question of human beings you want to be terrified No

58:05so you want to be in danger No so like you better figure out how to deal with

58:09threat so first of all you have to conceptualize it so we'll take a look at

58:13this representation so that's Kelly shear

58:16her hair is on fire well fire you know that's that's a numinous phenomena

58:22dangerous but transformative she's wearing a headdress of skulls she has a

58:28weapon in this hand and and she has a tiger's tongue she often has a snake

58:33around her waist need none of these do but she often does but in this case this

58:39then that's because you know it it's a snake we've already covered that well

58:44these things that look like snakes here aren't you notice how her belly is

58:47concave well it's because she's just given birth to this unfortunate person

58:52that she happens to be standing on and she's eating him intestines first and

58:56that's a fire ring which he is in and then it's got skulls on the inside of it

59:01it's like what's that supposed to do well partly it's supposed to represent

59:05that which terrifies you it's like yeah fair enough man because I don't imagine

59:11you saw those things in there before I explained them but someone who was

59:14familiar with that image would know what it meant it's like some poor artist was

59:18sitting there thinking well how do I represent destruction it's like bang

59:22whoa okay well put that down and then we won't look at it again so and then what

59:27do you do with this you make sacrifices to it and you think well that's kind of

59:33primitive you know first of all well that doesn't really exist well it does

59:40if it's an amalgam of threat symbols I can tell you that it exists that's for

59:44sure so it exists as an abstraction if nothing else do you offer it sacrifices

59:51well what the hell do you think you do what are you doing in class why aren't

59:55you like drinking vodka and snorting cocaine you know because you could be

59:59doing that instead here you are listening to me you know slaving away in

1:00:06university you're young it's like really you've got nothing better to do than sit

1:00:10there you know well what you're willing to forego today

1:00:15pleasure for tomorrow's advantage and that's what sacrifice is and human

1:00:20beings discovered that dramatically first you know like we were we were apes

1:00:25for God's sake we didn't just leap up and think oh we better save for tomorrow

1:00:29you know we it took thousands of years for that idea to emerge and it emerged

1:00:34in dramatic form and it was sort of like well society is sort of like a god know

1:00:40what they weren't thinking this through is like if you're gonna represent

1:00:42society well it's like this masculine God that's always judging the

1:00:47hell out of you that's everywhere all at the same time it's like yeah yeah that's

1:00:51true absolutely and what do you have to do with it well you have to give it what

1:00:55it wants why why do you have to give it what it wants because it'll crush you if

1:01:01you don't and that's exactly right and if you're lucky and you give it the

1:01:06right sacrifice then it'll smile on you and you get to have a good life and that

1:01:12was like that was the major discovery of mankind man that was a killer discovery

1:01:17it was like the discovery of the future you know we discovered the future as a

1:01:23place and it was a place that you could bargain with you can bargain with the

1:01:29future wow that's just what an idea that is you know it's it's so unlikely well

1:01:34how do you bargain with the future well you give it what it wants and you know

1:01:40some of that you maintain your social relationship and you know you make

1:01:44yourself useful to other people and you shape yourself so that you can cooperate

1:01:49with people and you you don't act impulsively and maybe you squirrel

1:01:55something away for the next harvest even if you're hungry and you know and then

1:01:59the future isn't hell and you make the proper sacrifices and so if you

1:02:04sacrifice to Kelly then she turns into her opposite and showers benevolence on

1:02:11you and that's Mother Nature right it's like look out for Mother Nature man you

1:02:17know two weeks out in the bush right now and you're dead and it's not pleasant

1:02:22and then if it's the spring you last longer huh but the bugs eat you and so

1:02:27that's not very fun either so nature you know it's bent on your

1:02:32destruction but if you treat it properly and carefully and make the right

1:02:37sacrifices then maybe one of her trees will offer you some fruit and that would

1:02:41be okay and so believe me lots of people died trying to figure that out

1:02:48so here's another way of looking at it so I said you know order and chaos known

1:02:53unknown explored territory unexplored territory I love this this is the Taoist

1:02:58symbol it's a symbol of being and being isn't reality as you would conceptualize

1:03:04it as a scientist it's more like reality as it manifests itself to you as a

1:03:09living thing which is completely different you know science extracts out

1:03:14all the subjectivity all it is there is an array of our objective facts of

1:03:19equivalent value and that's part of its method but that's not the world in which

1:03:22you live the world in which you live is full of motivation and emotion it's full

1:03:27of terror and pain and joy and frustration and and other people that's

1:03:33for sure and so that's the real world and so well that's what this is it's

1:03:38it's the real world and what is it made out of well it's made out of all those

1:03:42things you know that can get out of hand you know because the explored territory

1:03:49and the known can get so damn tight that it's nothing but a tyrant and then it's

1:03:53all those things you don't know and that's pretty exciting because you know

1:03:56you want to go find out some things you don't know and that adds a lot of spice

1:04:00to life you want a little adventure you don't want to go out with someone who's

1:04:04so predictable that you know everything about them in a week you know unless

1:04:08you're hyper conservative you want to go out with someone who's got they're a

1:04:11little erratic like not too erratic let's say they're a little dangerous

1:04:15perhaps not too dangerous but some of that at least you want predictability

1:04:21with a bit of unpredictability in there well that's exactly what this means it's

1:04:25like that's predictability with a little unpredictability in it and what that

1:04:29also means is that what you know can be turned into what you don't know just

1:04:34like that and that's going to happen to you lots of times in your life man when

1:04:38someone close to you dies suddenly it's like poof

1:04:42order turns into chaos and now you're in chaos and what the hell are you gonna do

1:04:46there and that's a good question because you need to know what to do

1:04:51there cuz you're gonna be there and it happens to you when your dreams fall

1:04:55apart you know I mean your dreams for your life or you know when you discover

1:04:59something awful about yourself that you didn't know or you know it flips on you

1:05:03all the time and in small ways sometimes you know you have a fight with a friend

1:05:08or in big ways that that wipe you out for well indefinitely sometimes because

1:05:13you can fall into chaos and never get out you know that's the people who are

1:05:18trapped in the belly of the beast it isn't necessary that when you descend

1:05:22into chaos that you learn something and you get back out you could just be stuck

1:05:26there suffering until you die and that's you know I wouldn't recommend that you

1:05:32know it's something to avoid but it happens to people all the time all the

1:05:37time you see them wandering around you know shattered on the streets of Toronto

1:05:42you know they're done they're in chaos and there's so much chaos around them

1:05:47that you won't even go near them the chaos spreads like eight feet around

1:05:52them and so when you see someone like that you're like well first we're not

1:05:55going to look too closely and people like that often don't like you to look

1:05:59at them because that also helps them remember where they are and that's no

1:06:03Pleasant thing and you're gonna just stay away from that maybe you'll cross

1:06:07the street maybe you'll keep your head down whatever you're not going anywhere

1:06:11near that chaos and no bloody wonder you know and and you don't think about it

1:06:16much after you pass it because it's a hell of a thing to think about and what

1:06:22are you gonna do about it anyway so you don't know what to do about it you might

1:06:25just make it worse well so chaos you know that's the other half of life and

1:06:32it can turn into order sometimes better order that's actually what you do when

1:06:36you explore right you explore you find out something new not too new not to

1:06:40Pandora boxy you know you bite off as much as you can chew but no more and so

1:06:47that rearranges the way you look at the world but you're doing it voluntarily so

1:06:51you can kind of tolerate there the recalibration and you strength

1:06:55and the order right because now you become more competent and I would say

1:07:00that you're trying to live on the edge between order and chaos and I and I mean

1:07:05that's a real place that's an actual it's a meta place but it's more real

1:07:10than places because it's so old it's such an old place it really exists and

1:07:15your nervous system knows that it sees the world this way in fact the right

1:07:19hemisphere is roughly specialized for chaos and the left hemisphere is roughly

1:07:23specialized for order which is why the left hemisphere tends to have the

1:07:27linguistic elements and and why people are right-handed and the right

1:07:31hemisphere has a more diffuse structure it's more associated with negative

1:07:35emotion and imagination and the two communicate between each other through

1:07:39the corpus callosum and the right hemisphere appears to update the less

1:07:42left hemisphere kind of slowly often in dreams and so if you were hurt if your

1:07:49right hemisphere is hurt for example back here in the parietal lobe then you

1:07:53lose the left part of your body you can't move it anymore

1:07:58but you also lose the idea that you have a left part of your body so it's like

1:08:02blindness it's a blindness to the left and so if someone comes along and says

1:08:07you know you're not moving your left arm you're gonna say yeah well my arthritis

1:08:11is bothering me 2d have moved it for six months MA my arthritis is bothering

1:08:16today or you know you don't move in your left foot it's like well you know uh I'm

1:08:22too tired well what's happened is the left hemisphere has a representation of

1:08:26the body and it's not being updated because the part of the brain that would

1:08:30notice that the left is gone because of a stroke it isn't there anymore and so

1:08:35the left already has a model and it's not gonna change just it's hard to

1:08:40change your model of yourself you know have a tooth pulled what happens it's

1:08:44like your damn tongue is in that hole for the next six months fiddling around

1:08:49constantly and that's because you're rebuilding your neurological model of

1:08:53your body it's like try it out with your whole left side and see how well you do

1:08:58you know so this guy named Ramachandran was experimenting with people like this

1:09:03and one of the things he did was kind of he was checking their balance and you

1:09:07can do that by irrigating the ear with cold water and

1:09:12that makes people go like this makes their eyes move back and forth because

1:09:15it upsets the vestibular system and what he found was that if he if he poured

1:09:20cold water in the left ear of someone with right per aisle damage who had left

1:09:24neglect that they'd all of a sudden sort of wake up catastrophic ly they'd have a

1:09:30terrible reaction to the fact that they were paralyzed on the left and they

1:09:34would know that it had happened and cry and you know amid all sorts of distress

1:09:40and no wonder and then like 20 minutes later they'd

1:09:44snap back into their damaged mode of being and they would not deny because

1:09:52that isn't really what it is is that they couldn't update the model they just

1:09:56didn't have the neurology for it anymore so they were back to not noticing that

1:10:00it was gone and coming up with stories about it and so well so that's a good

1:10:05example of how the right and left hemispheres worked together and how

1:10:08they're kind of mapped onto this weirdly enough so you know we're map were

1:10:13adapted to the meta reality and so what that would be is we're adapted to that

1:10:19which remains constant across the longest spans of time and that's not the

1:10:25same things that you see flitting around you day to day those are just they just

1:10:30like clouds they're just evaporating you know there's things underneath that that

1:10:34are more fundamental that are more fundamental realities like the dominance

1:10:38hierarchy like the tribe like the danger outside of society like the threat that

1:10:44other people pose to you and that you pose to yourself

1:10:47those are eternal realities and we're adapted to those that's our world and

1:10:53that's why we express that in stories and so then you might say well how do

1:10:57you adapt yourself to this world and the answer to that isn't I believe this is a

1:11:01neurological answer I believe this that your brain can tell you when you're

1:11:08optimally situated between chaos and order and the way it tells you that is

1:11:13by producing the sense of engagement and meaning so let's say there's a place in

1:11:20the environment you should be okay what should that place be

1:11:24well you don't want to be terrified out of your skull like what good is that and

1:11:28you know you don't want to be so comfortable that you might as well sleep

1:11:33you want to be somewhere where you know you're kind of on firm ground here but

1:11:38over here you're kind of testing out new territory and some of you who are

1:11:43exploratory and emotionally stable you know you're gonna go pretty far out into

1:11:47the unexplored territory without destabilizing yourself and other people

1:11:51are gonna just put a toe in the chaos and you know that's neuroticism

1:11:57basically that's that your sensitivity to threat that's calibrated differently

1:12:01in different people and more some people are more exploratory than others that's

1:12:05kind of extraversion and openness working together and and intelligence so

1:12:09some people are going to tolerate a larger admixture of chaos in their order

1:12:15those are liberals by the way and I mean that technically liberals are more

1:12:20interested in novel chaos and conservatives are more interested in the

1:12:26stabilization of the structures that already exist and who's right well it

1:12:32depends on the situation and that's why conservatives and liberals have to talk

1:12:35to each other because one of them isn't right and the other wrong sometimes the

1:12:42conservatives are right and sometimes the liberals are right because the

1:12:45environments go in like this you can't predict the damn thing so that's why you

1:12:49have to communicate and that's what a democracy does it allows people of

1:12:53different temperamental types to communicate and to calibrate the damn

1:12:57societies so anyways so let's say you're optimally balanced between chaos and

1:13:02order so what does that mean well you're stable enough but you're interested

1:13:09right because a little novelty heightens your anxiety that wakes you up a bit

1:13:14that's the adventure part of it but it also focuses the part of your brain that

1:13:18does exploratory activity and that's actually associated with pleasure

1:13:22that's the dopamine circuit and so if you're optimally balanced and you know

1:13:27that you know you're there when you're listening to an interesting conversation

1:13:30or you're engaged in one it's a real conversation you know you're saying some

1:13:35things you know and the other person is saying some things they know

1:13:37but the both of what you know is changing it's like wow that's so

1:13:43interesting you'll have a conversation like that forever or maybe you're

1:13:46reading a book like that or you're listening to a piece of music that

1:13:50models that because what music does is provide you with predictable forms

1:13:56multi-level predictable forms that transform

1:13:59just the right amount and so music is a very representational art form it says

1:14:03this is what the universe is like you know there's a dancing element to it

1:14:08repetitive and then cute little variations that sort of surprise and

1:14:13delight you and and you think wow that's so cool and it doesn't matter how

1:14:18nihilistic you are you know music still infuses you with a sense of meaning and

1:14:23that's because it models meaning that's what it does that's why we love it and

1:14:27you know you can dance to it and that sort of symbolizes you putting yourself

1:14:31in harmony with these multiple layers of reality and positioning yourself

1:14:37properly and you like that too you know you'll pay for it oh boy I get to go

1:14:42dancing you know oh boy I get to listen to music it's like what the hell are you

1:14:46doing listening to music what good is that well you think that's a stupid

1:14:50question I don't care about your dopey criticism I'm going to listen to some

1:14:54music right it did there's no rational there's no rational argument against

1:14:58music it's like you just don't even think about it you just walk away from

1:15:04someone who's stupid enough to ask that question it's like some things are

1:15:10obvious well why okay so that's pretty fun so

1:15:19what mediates between these two domains well that's what consciousness does far

1:15:24as I can tell and that's sort of the individual and that's the hero that's

1:15:28another way of thinking about it it's the logos that's another way of thinking

1:15:32about it it's the word that generates order out of chaos at the beginning of

1:15:37time it's the consciousness that interacting with the matter of the world

1:15:42produces being that's basically it that's basically you for all intents and

1:15:47purposes how do you do that well the unconscious

1:15:52does it to some degree you know because it's with our fantasy that we first meet

1:15:57the unknown right well look say you're going out with a new person it's like

1:16:02what do you do you project a fantasy on them and then you fall in love with the

1:16:06fantasy and aren't you stupid because you're gonna find out that the match

1:16:11between your damn fantasy and the actual person is tenuous at best and so young

1:16:17would call that a projection of either the anima or the animus you know the

1:16:23anima is what a man projects onto a woman he finds desirable it's like oh

1:16:27she's the perfect woman it's like well how do you know that

1:16:30you've like seen her for four seconds you know but it grips you and the same

1:16:35thing happens in the opposite direction and it's an action of instinct you know

1:16:39it's like you fall in love with the image and but interestingly enough what

1:16:42you do in a relationship that works is that you actually I think that what you

1:16:47see it's a rough approximation when you

1:16:50project the ideal and fall in love with it you see what could be it could be

1:16:56that but it's going to take you a hell of a lot of work because like you got no

1:17:00shortage of flaws and the other person has no shortage of flaws and so you're

1:17:05bringing your flaws together and that's going to produce a lot of friction and

1:17:09you're gonna have to engage in a lot of dialogue before you approach that level

1:17:14of perfection again but maybe you can do it then you get to live happily ever

1:17:21after well would not be nice well so the

1:17:25unconscious meets the unknown and it it meets it with imagination and fantasy

1:17:29and dream and art that's how you take so you don't just go from what you don't

1:17:35know to fully articulated knowledge in one bloody leap you can't do that you

1:17:40have to extend pseudo pods of fantasy and imagination into the unknown that's

1:17:46kind of what theorizing is like right even scientifically you know you don't

1:17:50know something scientifically you generate a theory well it's an

1:17:53imaginative representation that your unconscious is helping you generate and

1:17:58so you meet the unknown with fantasy that's what the unconscious is for from

1:18:02the psychoanalytic perspective that's what

1:18:04rheems do and you can see why you dream about the future you know it's like well

1:18:09what's the future gonna be like well you have a little imaginative story going on

1:18:13and it's like you don't really create it it's sort of you watch it unfold you

1:18:17know maybe you could tweak it here and there but it sort of comes to you from

1:18:21wherever the hell things like that come from you know the unconscious that's the

1:18:26psychoanalytic answer it's not really much of an answer because it's more like

1:18:31a representation of a place that we don't understand but that's where

1:18:36creativity comes from and I mean some people are really creative right down to

1:18:41the bloody core so in my clinical practice I often see people who are high

1:18:45in openness because they're attracted to me because they watch my lectures and

1:18:49you have to kind of be high in openness to like my lectures so because well you

1:18:53do because they go everywhere you know and and they're not necessarily very

1:18:56orderly so so anyways lots of my clients are really high in openness and they're

1:19:02funny people often especially if they're smart because sometimes they have the

1:19:05most nihilistic intelligence you can imagine it's just self-critical and

1:19:10nihilistic and brutally brutal man and smart and so they just criticize

1:19:16themselves out of existence and so often I have to just try to get them to quit

1:19:22listening to their chattering right self-critical rationality and go out and

1:19:26create something you know with their massive creativity and as long as

1:19:30they're doing that they're engaged in the world and happy as hell but as soon

1:19:34as that self-critical rationality comes in and shuts down the creativity they're

1:19:38just they're just like walking corpses you know and it's because if you're

1:19:43really open like that's your a tree and it has some trunks and you know your

1:19:48your most prominent trait is the most lively trunk and if you're a creative

1:19:52person and you're not engaging in a creative enterprise

1:19:56you're just you're like a tree that that has been that has had its vitality

1:20:00amputated and so this is not trivial this stuff is this is deeply deeply

1:20:07deeply rooted in your biology and and those are people often who have like

1:20:13dream lives you just can't believe I have one client

1:20:16he has like four spectacular dreams a week and most of the time we

1:20:20just spend discussing them I mean God he and I had another client who could be

1:20:25lucid in her dreams which is more common among women she could ask the damn

1:20:29characters what they represented and they would tell her it was like okay

1:20:34that was pretty weird and like a lot of the things they told her were really

1:20:37helpful and they were not things that she wanted to hear she she basically one

1:20:43of them told her she if she was gonna live she'd have to go visit a

1:20:47slaughterhouse and the reason for that was because she was raised as a little

1:20:52princess and protected from horrible mother nature until she hit puberty in

1:20:57which time she turned into an evil villain because that's how the family

1:21:00worked perfect child evil teenager overnight and then well

1:21:06that was hard on her and she wasn't prepared because she thought the world

1:21:09was princess world and you know she couldn't go through a butcher store

1:21:13without having a fit and no wonder you know like really Jesus you know it's no

1:21:18wonder but you do it but she couldn't so we used to go to butcher stores and that

1:21:23would make her cry and and that she was a vegetarian that would make her cry and

1:21:28you know bemoan the cruelty of the world and it's like yeah fair enough man those

1:21:32are bloody slabs of meat it's like I don't know why everyone isn't screaming

1:21:36when they walk through the butcher store but but you got to get used to it man

1:21:41because you can't live in the world otherwise and so the dream character who

1:21:45was a gypsy told her that she had to go visit a slaughterhouse which seemed

1:21:49rather impractical and so I asked her if she could think of anything else to do

1:21:54and she saw it well why don't we go visit a funeral home and and watch an

1:21:57embalming and I thought oh how good that sounds that sounds like a fun way to

1:22:02spend a day and so I phoned up a funeral parlor and I said I had a client it was

1:22:10terrified of death yeah and I was the therapist who was also a little shaky on

1:22:14the concept myself and so they they had no problem with that they deal with

1:22:20death all the time which is really something to think about right a human

1:22:23being can actually have an occupation where they do nothing but deal with

1:22:27death and they don't go stark raving mad it's like what the hell's up

1:22:32with that it's like working in a palliative care ward where your your

1:22:35clients that you you know have a relationship all they're gonna do is die

1:22:39this week next week the week after people do that it's like those people

1:22:44are tough man they're tough so anyways we went and watched this embalming which

1:22:50was I have a rather high level of disgust sensitivity so it was a little

1:22:56on the rough side for me but she sat there and first while she was not we

1:23:02were outside this little room she was not looking at that man no way and she

1:23:06kind of go like this and you know that was pretty good and then she'd go like

1:23:10this and then she go like this and then and she watched it and then she asked if

1:23:17she could go in and she put on the glove and she touched the body and she didn't

1:23:21have a fit she didn't have a panic attack and so she walked away from there

1:23:26learning that there was a hell of a lot more to her than she thought there was

1:23:29and that she could see things that she didn't think she could see and live and

1:23:33after that she sort of had a touchstone it's like well I'm kind of afraid of

1:23:37this well is it as bad as going to see the embalming

1:23:40no it's not that bad well I guess I can do it it's like an initiation right she

1:23:44had an initiation and so did I you know and I learned a lot from doing that I

1:23:50learned that one of the things you need to do if you're going to be a human

1:23:53being is to prepare yourself to be useful in the face of death and so when

1:23:57you have a parent that dies which you know shatters people's ideas often they

1:24:01can't even think about it if you can't even think about that man you've got

1:24:06some thinking to do because you need to be able to at least think about that

1:24:10because otherwise you're just gonna be a wasteland when it happens and you never

1:24:15know you could even have a higher ambition maybe you could even be useful

1:24:19when it happens instead of being part of the heap of destroyed people who also

1:24:24have to be taken care of you know and that's brutal you have to be brutal to

1:24:29be useful in the aftermath of your parents death you know you don't get to

1:24:32crumble and fall apart and no you have every reason to so you got to be kind of

1:24:39some tough monster to manage that but you want to be useful in the face of

1:24:43tragedy or do you want to be well you make your choice so out of the

1:24:54unconscious you get ritual you get dreams you get drama you get stories you

1:24:58get art you get music and that sort of buffers us we have our little domain of

1:25:03competence and we're buffered by the domain of fantasy and culture and that's

1:25:07really what you learn about when you come to university if you're lucky and

1:25:11and the professors are smart enough to actually teach you something about

1:25:13culture instead of constantly telling you that it's completely reprehensible

1:25:18and should be destroyed it's like why you would prefer chaos to order is

1:25:22beyond me and the only possible reason is that you haven't read enough history

1:25:27to understand exactly what chaos means and believe me if you understood what it

1:25:33means you'd be pretty goddamn careful about tearing down the temple that you

1:25:37live in unless you want to be a denizen of chaos and some people do you know

1:25:44because that's when the impulses that you Harbor can really come out and shine

1:25:49and so a little gratitude is in order and that makes you appreciative of the

1:25:54wise King well being smart enough to know that he's also an evil tyrant it's

1:25:59like that's that's a total conception of the world it's balanced it's like yeah

1:26:04we should preserve nature but good god it is trying to kill us and you know

1:26:09yes our culture is tyrannical and oppressive people but it is protecting

1:26:13us from dying that's helpful you know and yes we're reasonably good people but

1:26:19like don't take that theory too far until you've tested yourself and you

1:26:24know that's wisdom at least in part and that's what these stories try to teach

1:26:28you there's a nice mythological

1:26:34representation I love this one it's like the Dome of the known and the seeker

1:26:40looking outside you know that's a that's a metaphysical representation you know

1:26:46and then that is the world as it looks to us right you go out in a field and it

1:26:49looks like there's a dome covering it it's a circle a big circle with a dome

1:26:53over it and you know what's outside the dome well the unknown right that's where

1:26:57heaven is theoretically you know it's a projection obviously

1:27:01heaven is in the unknown well it was localized in space

1:27:05I suppose that's partly because when people looked up in the sky they were

1:27:08overwhelmed with all so it's a reasonable conclusion you know it it's a

1:27:15projection of an unconscious presupposition it's a projection of

1:27:19fantasy you know heaven is a fantasy and and I'm not denigrating fantasy by the

1:27:25way and it's projected imaginatively onto the sky and that's part of the way

1:27:30you discover what's in your fantasy well this is us man we mediate between chaos

1:27:35and order and you know those are the two archetypal representations fundamentally

1:27:40you know and I think they apply to both genders you know like women can act as

1:27:47the individual who holds the world on his or her shoulders and males men can

1:27:54play a maternal role you know meet female human beings are quite masculine

1:28:00and male human beings are quite feminine and so you know maybe maybe this

1:28:04archetype dominates among men and that archetype dominates among women which I

1:28:09would say is that is the case as far as I'm concerned although there in our

1:28:13individual conceptions and of course those two things have to work in

1:28:16conjunction but that's you the eternal mediator between chaos and order which

1:28:24also has its enemy so that's that's Horace there and that Seth who's

1:28:31eventually turns into Satan as though as the West progresses so to speak and

1:28:37that's represented there as well the temptations of I would say resentment

1:28:43and hatred which everyone has to fight with all the time all right

1:28:49initiations so this is cool this is a standard hero story and initiate

1:28:55initiative rights are a part of human heritage and so let's take a look this

1:28:59is from el yada I would like even now to stress the fact

1:29:02that the psychopathology of the shamanic vocation is not profaned

1:29:06it does not belong to ordinary symptomatology it's not mental illness

1:29:10it has an int initiatory structure and signification

1:29:13short it reproduces a traditional mystical pattern the total crisis of the

1:29:18future shaman sometimes leading to complete disintegration of the

1:29:22personality and to madness can be valuated not only as an initiatory death

1:29:26but also as a symbolic returned to the pre cosmogonic chaos to the amorphous

1:29:31and indescribable state that precedes any comes Morgan II well what he means

1:29:35by that is that I suppose the mythological view of the emergence of

1:29:40order that's a cosmogony is that there's a state of potential and chaos out of

1:29:46which order emerges and you know here's here's how it is that you think that way

1:29:52because you do think that way so you know imagine what you're facing when

1:29:56you're facing the future right well you might say well the future is full of

1:30:00potential right it's full of potential what the hell does that mean you know

1:30:05you act as if that you act as if that potential is really a real thing and

1:30:10you're confronting it all the time I'm confronting the potential of the future

1:30:14well it doesn't exist yet so did what you're confronting doesn't even really

1:30:19exist what you're conceptualizing doesn't really exist and in some sense

1:30:22you bring it into being by plotting your path through it well the pre cosmogonic

1:30:27chaos is the same as the potential of the future it's exactly the same idea

1:30:32it's the realm of possibility from which actuality emerges and you participate in

1:30:39turning that possibility into actuality that's what you're doing all the time

1:30:44now can I explain that well no I have no idea how consciousness and the substrate

1:30:52of the world interact i I can only say that that's how it

1:30:56looks that's how it feels you know that's how people act and

1:31:01they'll get into trouble if they don't manifest their potential whatever that

1:31:05is that's all those things you could be that you're not well where are those

1:31:10it's just potential well that's the chaos this is a that's the I would say

1:31:18that's the the cosmos that's the cosmos that you live in all the time it's a

1:31:23little story it's the thing that you extract out of the chaos it's

1:31:27- consists of your conception of where you are now and your conception of where

1:31:31you want to be at some point could be ten minutes could be three years if you

1:31:36can slide it and then you have a little plan about how you should move your body

1:31:41to do transform one in into the other that's your action powder and that's a

1:31:46little story and when you ask someone to say what they were up to you they'll

1:31:49tell you a little story like that you know I was at some place and I went

1:31:54somewhere else and here's how I did it then they might tell you more

1:31:56interesting story which is I was someplace and something happened that I

1:32:03really didn't expect and it knocked me for a loop you know and that's a good

1:32:09divorce story I came home one night and my wife was gone it's like yeah chaos

1:32:16and probably a bit of willful blindness preceding it we might suspect

1:32:21anyways down into chaos and then well maybe you learn something down there and

1:32:25maybe you don't but hopefully you do and you put yourself together if you're

1:32:28lucky and then pop bang you pop up into another little structure of order and

1:32:33that's an initiatory process it's like you're some more stable falls apart or

1:32:38maybe you break it apart on purpose you do it voluntarily you know people do

1:32:43that all the time you know they do that for example when they experiment with

1:32:47drugs and they do that when they go on wild adventures and you know when they

1:32:51break themselves out of their normal routine and throw themselves somewhere

1:32:56they don't understand and hope that that's going to produce a transformation

1:33:00of personality that's the basic story that's the initiatory story now this is

1:33:05William James who was the one of the establishes of modern psychology and a

1:33:10kind of an odd guy he was an early experimenter with psychedelics of course

1:33:14they'll never tell you that but he was and he is his drug of choice was nitrous

1:33:18oxide which is an inhalant gas which seems to be inert no one really knows

1:33:24why it works but it produces quite intense hallucinogenic experience

1:33:29mystical experience although if you breathe too much of it then you die

1:33:33because it doesn't it doesn't have any oxygen in it so so don't do that and and

1:33:38he wrote some really bad hippie poetry back

1:33:41in the 1880s well he was you know experimenting with with nitrous oxide

1:33:47I'll read a little bit of that to you pure experience is the name which I give

1:33:51to the original flux of life before a reflection has categorized it only

1:33:57newborn babes in persons in semi coma from sleep drugs illnesses or blows can

1:34:01have an experience pure in the literal sense of that which is not yet any

1:34:06definite what though ready to be any sorts of what's both full both of

1:34:13oneness and of many 'no specs that don't appear changing throughout yet so

1:34:18confusedly that its phases interpenetrate and no points either of

1:34:22distinction or of identity can be caught 1905 William James Journal of philosophy

1:34:29you know a lot of these old guys that established what we regard is you know

1:34:34fairly stable bodies of knowledge we're just as crazy as you could possibly

1:34:39imagine they're just the most peculiar damn people and they get sanitized you

1:34:43know as they are represented in history and that's no fun you know I mean it's

1:34:49much more interesting to know what they were like they were just so bloody

1:34:53peculiar and and strange and involved in all sorts of weird things that's a lot

1:34:58more fun to know that here's his poem Wow

1:35:01it's like right from 1968 no verbiage can give it because the verbiage is

1:35:08other incoherent coherent same and it fades and it's infinite and it's

1:35:14infinite don't you see the difference don't you see the identity constantly

1:35:18opposites United the same me telling you to write and not to write extreme

1:35:24extreme extreme something and other than that thing intoxication and other nest

1:35:29and intoxication every attempt at betterment every attempt at other menthe

1:35:34is a it fades forever and forever as we move it's like it's just about as

1:35:39incoherent as post modernist philosophy so we know for archaic and traditional

1:35:46cultures that a symbolic return to chaos is equivalent to preparing a new

1:35:50creation it follows that we may interpret the psychic chaos of the

1:35:53future shaman as assigned the profane man is being dissolved and a

1:35:57new personality being prepared for birth transformation here's a way of thinking

1:36:02about it paradise Paradise Lost redemption classic story

1:36:08of mankind always it was a great past we're in a state of chaos we're heading

1:36:13towards a better future everyone thinks that way the stories are based on that

1:36:19well that's that now Ellen Burch a who wrote a lot about the psychoanalysts

1:36:27believed that Freud and Jung in particular had a creative illness which

1:36:30he regarded as a sort of spontaneous shamanic transformation and he said a

1:36:35creative illness has these elements it follow succeeds a period of intense

1:36:39preoccupation with an idea and search for certain truth it's a polymorphous

1:36:44condition that can take the shape of depression neurosis psychosomatic

1:36:47ailments or even psychosis Jung was in that state when he wrote this book

1:36:51called the red book which was just released last year which is full of

1:36:55visionary illustrations and hands very strange poetry and it contains the the

1:37:03communications he had with imaginative beings that he conjured up when when

1:37:08practicing doing exactly that he practiced that for years and he had

1:37:13these autonomous beings manifest themselves in his fantasy it had long

1:37:17conversations with them it just you know while he was working as a doctor and

1:37:22having a sane normal life and well it's kind of well it's really something

1:37:28whatever the symptoms they're felt is painful while he thought maybe he was

1:37:31going mad and some people think he did if not agonizing by the subject with

1:37:36alternating periods of alleviation and worsening throughout the illness the

1:37:39subject never loses the thread of his dominating preoccupation it's often

1:37:44compatible with normal professional activity and family life but even if he

1:37:47keeps to his social activities he's almost entirely absorbed with

1:37:53himself he suffers from feelings of utter isolation even when he has a

1:37:57mentor who guides him through the ordeal like the shaman apprentice with his

1:38:01master the termination is often rapid and marked by a phase of exhilaration

1:38:05the subject emerges from his ordeal with a permanent Tran

1:38:08formation in his personality and a conviction that he has discovered a

1:38:12great truth or a new spiritual world many of the 19th and 20th century

1:38:19figures regarded universally as great Nietzsche Darwin Dostoyevsky Tolstoy

1:38:24Freud Jung were all additionally characterized by lengthy periods of

1:38:27profound psychological unrest and uncertainty

1:38:30well you don't generate a new theory without some birth pangs right because

1:38:36your old theory has to bite the dust first and when your old theory bites the

1:38:39dust it's like where are you you don't know do you know if you're gonna come up

1:38:44with a new one no here's a cool thing this is my daughter she was five years

1:38:51at this point she was playing prince or in princess

1:38:53with Julie and her three-year-old she said dad if we killed a dragon we could

1:38:58use his skin as armor wouldn't that be a good idea I thought

1:39:01hey yeah that's that's a hell of an idea kid you know you go right after the

1:39:05thing that frightens you the most and you develop something that protects you

1:39:09from doing that it's like where did she get that idea

1:39:12well good work kiddo she had plenty of dragons in her life so the following

1:39:22dream was described by my daughter Mikayla three years nine months old

1:39:25about my son Julian one year Julian was in the process of toilet training and

1:39:30rapid speech development was having some trouble controlling his emotions Mikayla

1:39:34liked to call him baby we had several discussions about the

1:39:37fact that he wasn't really a baby anymore she told me this story while I

1:39:40was at the computer so I was able to get it for Batum she wasn't very happy with

1:39:44the idea that he wasn't a baby anymore because she kind of liked the baby she

1:39:47took care of that baby a lot and her little brain was having a hard time with

1:39:51the notion that whatever that thing is now it isn't a baby it's like well

1:39:55where's my baby and believe me plenty of mothers go through the same thing then

1:39:59they attempt to keep their children babies for the rest of their lives so

1:40:03this is what Mikayla said the dream Julian's eyes fell out and then he

1:40:07falled into pieces I said what sort of pieces she said Julian pieces and the

1:40:13bones fall doubt too then a hole got him and there was water in it and when he

1:40:17came out he was big mom Julian isn't a baby anymore no he

1:40:22a big boy and a bug with legs got him out cuz bugs can swim and the whole was

1:40:26in the park and it moved into the backyard and he fall into it a tree

1:40:30burned and left the hole I thought wow that's so amazing it's like it was a it

1:40:36was a shamanic transformation dream it was like the tree that's The Tree of

1:40:40Life had burnt and left a hole the kid fell into it it dissolved him right down

1:40:44to his bones this little bug which would be a union representation of the self

1:40:49like Jiminy Cricket by the way in Pinocchio the bug was the thing that was

1:40:53alive that helped him through the transformation he stepped out and now he

1:40:56was big it's like that was her little brain conjuring up the notion of radical

1:41:01transformation so this is cool I hope this works

1:41:07this is a dream that my my nephew had did someone animated Jordan Peterson is

1:41:12a clinical psychologist from the University of Toronto Maya do disagree

1:41:16with some of his fundamental ideas but his thoughts and facing problems merge

1:41:20with my stoic values within one of his maps of meaning lectures he tells a true

1:41:27story about a four year old boy his nephew who for months was suffering from

1:41:31terrible night terrors terrors that were waking him up screaming this boy by the

1:41:37way did have some areas of instability in his family life Jordan visited the

1:41:42young boy's house and the boy was running around dressed as an eight with

1:41:46a sword a shield and a helmet at night aim he would take a sword and shield to

1:41:49bed so Jordan got speaking to him and the boy described his dream and the

1:41:54dream he's standing surrounded by knee-high Dwarfs these dwarves had beaks

1:41:59and every time you would try to move the dwarfs would jump up and bait him a very

1:42:04fretting scenario for a young boy and if you look behind all the dwarfs away in

1:42:09the background there was a dragon and every time this dragon would puff out

1:42:12fire and smoke more dwarfs would be created so there's no point fighting off

1:42:17the dwarfs because more would just be me it

1:42:20so Jordan tapped him and asked what could you do about that so the kid says

1:42:24he could jump up on the Dragons head he could poke out his eyes with a sword so

1:42:29he couldn't see then they could go go down the throat to the box where the

1:42:34fire came from carve a piece out of that box thereby destroying it and use that

1:42:39piece as a sheet its shamed before Jordan arrived was already a keynote in

1:42:45life what he knew he had to do and after that conversation he had no more Nate

1:42:50pears this is what Marcus really is meant when he said the impediment to

1:42:56action advances action what stands in the way becomes the way he was tell not

1:43:02us that we must not shy away from problems or shown or personal

1:43:06responsibility we must be willing to sacrifice her comfort Goethe source of

1:43:10her problems to solve them and then take something away well there you go so yeah

1:43:17he was waking up screaming at night for four weeks

1:43:21that's night terrorist he couldn't really remember what hell was going on

1:43:24and there was instability and his family his parents got divorced soon after and

1:43:28he was off to kindergarten and that was kind of destabilizing him too and so it

1:43:33was fun to watch him zip around as a knight it's like you know where'd he get

1:43:37that idea well you know he watched TV watch movies see his little imagination

1:43:42was aggregating the picture of the hero and then he was trying to act it out

1:43:46that's what he was doing pretending right I'm pretending to be the thing

1:43:50that takes on the unknown and then he has this amazing dream it's like it's

1:43:54mind-boggling it's so sophisticated it's like well here I am

1:43:58and there's troubles everywhere and they're biting me they're jumping up on

1:44:02me and it's like a Hydra you know in the Hydra you cut off a hydras head and

1:44:06seven more heads grow it's like that's life man solve one problem seven more

1:44:11appear right so also that that was the Dragons at the background chaos itself

1:44:17and chaos kept breeding these are the evil little Dwarfs which is what it does

1:44:23it's like it's one damn trouble after another we fight this one off fight this

1:44:26one off it's like who cares the dragon the dwarf generating machine is still

1:44:31working in the background so he I asked him and that was purposeful what

1:44:35could you do see that's a leading question that

1:44:39implies that there's something that he could do he said well I take my dad that

1:44:44was missing in the animation and we go well poke the dragon's eyes out go right

1:44:49down to the source of the problem extinguish it make a shield right so

1:44:54that meant that he would have strengthened his character by the

1:44:57encounter so brilliant and then and I talked to his mom for months afterwards

1:45:05done no more night terrors what had happened he identified with the

1:45:11mythological hero he did identified with st. George and the dragon he identified

1:45:15with that little bloody tree dwelling primate who 20 million years ago was the

1:45:20first one to drop a stick on a snake he adopted the classic human mode of being

1:45:26in the face of uncertainty and construed himself as that which could prevail end

1:45:34of terrors well I guess we're done E so we're gonna do something a little

1:45:46different than the syllabus today because you know we got this one hour to

1:45:50our problem and I really can't cover constructionism reasonably in two hours

1:45:55or one hour that was supposed to be today

1:45:57so what I'm going to do is instead is continue on the line that I've been

1:46:02pursuing but I'm going to expand it up more into Union psychology which is the

1:46:07what we're going after after constructivism anyways and so I can

1:46:11weave the constructivism and the depth psychology together and it's nice to do

1:46:15that because it gives you a kind of a coherent view so just so you know we're

1:46:19one lecture ahead at the moment roughly speaking and I'll do constructivism on

1:46:23Tuesday for two hours so all right so I showed you that anime animation I told

1:46:29you about my nephew's dream which is a remarkable dream you know really it's

1:46:33just amazing amazing dream and it's it's got this archetypal pattern you know and

1:46:40the pattern is that there's a threat and worse than not that there's there are

1:46:45threats and at the back of it there is the the

1:46:49fact of threat itself you see so human beings were so smart hey so this is so

1:46:55amazing that we figured this out so you imagine well human beings are the only

1:46:59creatures that can really conceive of the class of all threatening things

1:47:03right and that's kind of why we can be permanently anxious there's so it's sort

1:47:07of annoying so you know here you are and it's safe there's no Lions here or or

1:47:13anything that might prey on you but you can think of something to be anxious

1:47:19about no problem you know I'm certain you've got some little skeleton rattling

1:47:23around in your closet somewhere that's like eating away at you and so I think

1:47:28part of the reason we're so damn awake human beings is because we're always

1:47:33anxious like and you have to be awake when you're anxious and the the anxiety

1:47:38system actually activates your reticular activating system and that that that

1:47:42actually produces its the substrate for consciousness if you snap a few fibers

1:47:49in the back of your brain that are part of the reticulating activate reticular

1:47:53activating system in a car accident or something you'll go into a coma and

1:47:56that'll be that here you're not getting out of it doesn't take much of an injury

1:48:00either in the right place so anyways so human beings have been struggling with

1:48:05this problem of threat forever really for as long as there's been life

1:48:10or at least as long as there's been life with a nervous system and you know

1:48:14that's several hundred million years it's a long time and of course it's easy

1:48:20to you know to respond to a particular threat think about zebras they're out

1:48:24there on the veldt and there's lions everywhere right but the zebras are like

1:48:28they're calmed because there's lions are sleeping and so the zebras don't think

1:48:32apparently oh my god what was going to happen with those Lions wake up because

1:48:38they don't think that way you know and they're not going to be happy if the

1:48:41lion goes into a hunting Crouch and starts its hunting approach obviously

1:48:45but it's not like the zebras are freaking out non-stop because there are

1:48:50Lions around you know so they can react to specific threats but human beings

1:48:55partly because we discovered the future which was a big mistake was a big

1:48:59mistake because the future is an uncertain place

1:49:02we realized that well there isn't any threat right now but there might well be

1:49:06some tomorrow and if there isn't some tomorrow well maybe next week or next

1:49:10month or next year like it's coming and so there's danger so it's the category

1:49:15of danger you know and out of the category of danger emerged specific

1:49:21threats and the dragon seems to be a symbol of it is a symbol I believe of

1:49:27the ever-present fact of predatory slightly predatory threat but our

1:49:33nervous systems as they've become capable of abstraction have used that

1:49:37underlying architecture to represent more abstract categories so it's not

1:49:42it's not a predator like a dragon is not a predator because there are no dragons

1:49:46but maybe a dragon is a snake and a and a crocodile and maybe a leopard and

1:49:51maybe a predatory bird all mangled into one monster because a monster is

1:49:56actually technically something that's made out of disparate parts and so it's

1:50:00a good symbolic representation for the unknown as such that which lies beyond

1:50:05the campfire let's say and what lurks out there and so the eternal problem is

1:50:10what the hell do you do with the dragon and that also explains why the dragon

1:50:14typically is a treasure garter right because it's even more the problem is

1:50:18even worse out there in no-man's land out there in potential

1:50:23there's threat and and and like mortal threat but there's also endless

1:50:27opportunity and riches and wealth and and and the possibility of attracting

1:50:32someone and all of that and so well the dragon

1:50:35you can't just be afraid of it you just stay in your burrow the whole time and

1:50:39lots of animals more or less do that is you know especially the nocturnal ones

1:50:43they just hide away but that is what human beings alight because we're not

1:50:46only prey animals right we're also predators and then of course we're crazy

1:50:50we're absolutely insane chimpanzees right we're crazy and so we're always

1:50:54out there mucking about with things and with our you know fingers and and our

1:51:00thumbs and and taking the world apart and putting it back together and we're

1:51:04crazily exploratory and and in troublemaking and so we don't just run

1:51:09from dragons we go hunt them down and so and so there's a story here there's the

1:51:17oldest story that mankind knows and literally it is the oldest story that we

1:51:20know is this stories in this story basically is there's a bounded space a

1:51:26walled garden a walled city you know on all the original cities were walled

1:51:29because if they weren't barbarians would swoop in and they'd just steal all your

1:51:34stuff and so you know that was kind of pointless so you know you wanted to have

1:51:38some major-league walls surrounding your territory and so that's inhabited space

1:51:42and inside that is here little dominance hierarchy and so all you primates knew

1:51:47exactly who was who inside that space so you didn't have to fight with each other

1:51:50and you could predict each other's behavior because you believed the same

1:51:54things and saw the world roughly the same way and acted the same way and so

1:51:58you were sort of secure but then the problem is is that that can always be

1:52:02breached there's always something outside of it that's a danger and so

1:52:05that's signified by this this little creature here this is dragon and that

1:52:12that twirl in its tail is very common among dragons actually it's actually a

1:52:16symbol because you imagistic languages imagistic symbols have an ancient

1:52:21language and it it's referring to something that's basically eternal and

1:52:26so it lives down here in this in this cave because it's an underground thing

1:52:30it's an underground thing and you can kind of imagine what that's like and

1:52:33sometimes this happens in initiation rituals among archaic people they're

1:52:37gonna when they're gonna initiate usually the young men because nature

1:52:40initiates women know by itself usually the young men maybe they'll put them in

1:52:45a cave and leave them there you know for like well who know who knows how long

1:52:49and Sagada think what's in a cave that caves are dark man I don't know if

1:52:54you've ever been in one but like they're dark and they're really dark and so not

1:52:59only is there whatever there is in the cave and you don't know what the hell's

1:53:02in the cave there's whatever you imagined might be in the cave and so

1:53:07when you're in that cave and you're alone you you're confronting the devils

1:53:10and demons and monsters of your own imagination you know and so then you

1:53:14have a chance to perhaps deal with that and overcome it and that's perhaps part

1:53:18of the initiation ceremony you know and that's part of growing up because you

1:53:22have to learn how to face the things that terrify and upset you and

1:53:27and we cast them and put them back together we talked a little bit about

1:53:31this idea of the pre cosmogonic chaos that that Iliad it refers to and and

1:53:38that's this stuff out of which order is produced at the beginning of time and

1:53:43it's also the stuff out of which you constantly reproduce order and the young

1:53:48unions the psychoanalysts especially the really deep psychoanalysts like young

1:53:52Freud was a more surface psychoanalyst and that's not an insult there's some

1:53:56things that Freud figured out they're absolutely amazing he was a precursor to

1:53:59Jung for sure for Jung the hero's journey was the journey inside the

1:54:05unconscious and that would be perhaps in some sense that the the willingness to

1:54:10face everything terrible that's happened to you and to think it through and to

1:54:13articulate it and and to come to grips perhaps with your own capacity for

1:54:17malevolence that was a really important part of Union ideas that the first step

1:54:22towards individuation which is the manifestation of your full self let's

1:54:26say was the discovery of your shadow and your shadow is the part of you that will

1:54:31do terrible things under the right circumstances and maybe even without

1:54:35that much provocation and you know and it's a terrifying part of you to come

1:54:39into contact with because it's sort of it's sort of the way that you're

1:54:42specifically attached to the archetype of evil that's a that's a good way of

1:54:46thinking about it and you know modern people they don't really think much

1:54:49about think much about the idea of good and evil but that's because the most of

1:54:53them are so they I'm naive you can just barely even comprehend it you know if

1:54:58you read any history if you really read it like and you and you don't come away

1:55:04with the idea that evil exists it's like you're just reading the wrong kind of

1:55:07history you know it's just unbelievable what people can do to each other and

1:55:13we're so imaginative you know and one of the things I figured out about people

1:55:17the reason that we're we have the knowledge of good and evil let's say is

1:55:21that because we're self conscious and we know about ourselves we know about our

1:55:26own vulnerability right you know what hurts you you really know what hurts you

1:55:30way more than an animal knows and so when you're all so creative and so once

1:55:34you know what hurts you man you can really hurt someone else and you can do

1:55:38it in such a creative way you can draw it out you can

1:55:41make it excruciating you can take people apart physically and psychologically and

1:55:45you can keep them say even right on the edge of death so that you can keep doing

1:55:49that endlessly and you know that happens hell of a lot more than you think it

1:55:54happens it happens a lot and so well and you think well you know that doesn't

1:56:00involve me it's like oh yes it does man that's the problem because you know

1:56:04you're human and that's the sort of things that human beings are capable of

1:56:07and I'm not saying you're all it's all probable that you do that ever or or

1:56:13that but I'm saying that you know you got to take that into account when

1:56:18you're looking at the world and you think about all the perpetrators out

1:56:21there it's like it's not like there's perpetrators and there's victims that

1:56:26isn't how it works it doesn't work that way at all and so the horrors of

1:56:30humanity as well as the noble elements of humanity are all elements of your

1:56:34central being and for you and this is the terrible thing for young the pathway

1:56:39to higher wisdom was through the terrible portal of well you could say

1:56:43hell for that matter really in and so who wants to do that man it's like no

1:56:49you know like maybe you're resentful about something well you probably are

1:56:52because like everybody's resentful about something you know and resentment is

1:56:56just vicious emotion it's really useful it's really useful because if you're

1:57:01resentful about something it either means that you should grow the hell up

1:57:05and accept the responsibility and quit sniveling around and whining or it means

1:57:10that someone actually is oppressing you and and pushing on you too hard and

1:57:14bullying you and demeaning you and you have something to say or do that you're

1:57:20not saying or doing and no wonder you're not saying or doing it because you know

1:57:24it can be really dangerous to say things or do them to free yourself from from

1:57:30being oppressed you can get in a lot of trouble in the short term for doing it

1:57:34so it's easier just to not say anything sort of day after day in the short term

1:57:38you protect yourself but just crushes you and then the the resentment comes up

1:57:43and resentment and that can just get so out of hand you know it starts with

1:57:47resentment and then it starts it goes to the desire for revenge

1:57:51you know because you'll play nasty little tricks on the person that's

1:57:54opressing you at any chance you'll talk about them

1:57:56behind their back and if they want you to do something you'll do it badly or

1:58:00you'll do it grudgingly or you'll do a half rate job and you'll set up little

1:58:03traps and you know so it puts you in a poisonous space and then if that if you

1:58:08really start to dwell on that say in your basement for three or four years

1:58:13about just exactly how terrible the world is and how that's focused on you

1:58:16and how everyone's rejected you and how you get to this point where you're

1:58:20thinking that you know existence itself is a kind of poisonous endeavor and that

1:58:25the best thing for you to do is go out there and do as much you know create as

1:58:28much mayhem as you possibly can and if you really get to a dark place you think

1:58:33I'm going to create as much mayhem as I possibly can by targeting the most

1:58:37innocent thing I can possibly imagine and then you end up shooting kids in

1:58:41Connecticut and that's how you get there and so that's a bad road man there's

1:58:46dark things down there but you can go there and people do and they go through

1:58:51the hole of resentment and so resentment can tell you you've got something to say

1:58:57you bloody well better say it you've got a free yourself from what's oppressing

1:59:02you you have to stand up for that because otherwise you become oppressed

1:59:06and then once you're oppressed that's just not so good and so like in your

1:59:12marriage and your relationships you got to tell people what you're thinking you

1:59:17don't have to assume you're right that's a whole different story because you're

1:59:21not cuz you're you know ignorant and you're biased and you know so you're not

1:59:25right but you can stumble towards your this the expression of yourself and then

1:59:32you can listen to the other person and hope that they tell you some way that

1:59:35you're stupid that's useful so you can be a little less stupid in the future

1:59:39because that wouldn't that be good and so you know you go after the unknown you

1:59:45don't protect what you know you already know what you know you go after what you

1:59:50don't know that's why you have to talk to people you don't agree with that's

1:59:54where you have to talk to your enemies because they're gonna tell you things

1:59:57you don't know you could even listen to them it's possible they know a thing or

2:00:00two you don't know but people don't like that you know they just talk to people

2:00:03who think the same way and then they just stay stupid and so that's and

2:00:08that's not because if you're not wise the world

2:00:12will wallop you it'll flatten you and and far more than it has to and then

2:00:17you'll be better and resentful and you'll be part of that force that

2:00:21Wallops instead of the force that fights against that so well so you go after the

2:00:26dragon and that's what that's what this guy is doing he's going after the dragon

2:00:30it's it's threatening the society because it always does chaos what's

2:00:34outside of order always threatens order always always and so you have to step

2:00:40forward you know in this manner voluntarily and and and go after that

2:00:46when it's still manageable right and that's the case in your own life too so

2:00:49you know if you're if you've had a proclivity to be bullied in the past you

2:00:54know and you want to get out of that what you have to do is you have to make

2:00:57yourself awake to the to the Maite to the to the what would you say to the to

2:01:05the initial stages of that sort of bullying emerging in your life again

2:01:09that sort of domination and you have to step forward against it when it's still

2:01:14in its developing stages because maybe you can just not have it happen that

2:01:18would be better and so you have to be ready to speak what you have to say more

2:01:24or less at a moment's notice you can't be impulsive about it you know like if

2:01:28you and I are talking and you make a mistake or I make a mistake

2:01:31even if it's bothers one or the other of us we should just write it off because

2:01:34it's like one encounter what the hell you you know maybe we had a bad night's

2:01:38sleep or something you know you gotta be a little forgiving and what if it

2:01:42happens twice then you know you should be a little awake and you should

2:01:46remember both times and then if it happens a third time it's like that's

2:01:49when you that's when you act and you say look we talked and this happened and I

2:01:56thought yeah whatever and but then you did it again

2:01:59and then you just did it again well then the person is basically like what are

2:02:03they gonna do you know no well maybe they might argue with you but you kind

2:02:08of got them and you're generally if you just point that out to people just like

2:02:13that just that you noticed and they're willing to say something about it

2:02:16they'll back the hell off they'll often apologize and sometimes you even make

2:02:20them a little more conscious which is like hey that's

2:02:22not such a bad idea that's what all this means and so this caught this chaos idea

2:02:28it's so for young it was the unconscious right it was the contents of your

2:02:31unconscious and so that might be the unknown past the threatening past that

2:02:35you have never dealt with there might be the threatening future it might be the

2:02:39threatening present but you realized as his as he got older that that the

2:02:45unconscious was also the world and you think and so the chaos is not only your

2:02:50unconscious mind which meets the unknown but it's actually the unknown itself

2:02:54mingled together you think what the hell does that that's why the dragon is a

2:02:59land creature and an air creature it's matter and spirit at the same time and

2:03:03this sort of gets us into constructivism because the constructivist think that

2:03:07basically what happens is that you encounter those elements of the world

2:03:10that don't fit into your theory and out of those new elements you make the world

2:03:15through your perceptions and you make yourself by incorporating the

2:03:18information and transforming yourself and that's how Piaget explains the

2:03:22development of a child if the child starts out with some reflexes basic

2:03:26reflexes and manifesting the reflexes produces results in the world and then

2:03:30the child has to reorganize its perceptions to take into account the

2:03:35transformations and so then it it gets a little more sophisticated and then it

2:03:39can do a few more things and then it can manifest more changes in the world and

2:03:43then it martyr it attracts them and modifies its perceptions and actions to

2:03:47account for them and it just keeps doing that that's how the child boots itself

2:03:51up like a computer does it's a very cool idea and so from from the Piaget Gian

2:03:57stance so it's constructive the stance you could think of the world as a latent

2:04:01pool of information it's something like that with a structure obviously that you

2:04:06can interact with with your little fingers in your body and your mind and

2:04:09your eyes and your mouth and you make changes happen and you track them and

2:04:14you model them and you build your skills and as you continue to do that in the

2:04:19safety of your house initially under the care of your parents who who fill in

2:04:23where you're ignorant you you you just emerge more and more competent and

2:04:28confident and ready to move ahead so that's that's how the constructivist

2:04:31idea works and so so there's kind of a chaos idea at the bottom of that which

2:04:36is that out of which you emerge and the world emerges at the same time because

2:04:41you know you don't see reality not at all you see almost like an animated

2:04:46version of reality you know like when I look at you I just see the front of you

2:04:50I just see the outside of you I see you at this height I don't see any of your

2:04:53internal structure I don't see the the back part of you at all I don't see your

2:04:58family I don't see your history I don't see your future you know I just see this

2:05:03slice of you you're so complicated I just see this little like oversimplified

2:05:09slice of you right now and I think that's the reality that's it's it's sort

2:05:13of the reality the way that the Simpsons a Simpsons character is you it's like

2:05:20it's sort of like you and it's enough so that you can watch the story but the

2:05:24real you man god only knows what that is and that's a union idea you know that

2:05:29the real you is something that radically transcends your perception of yourself

2:05:34or your conception of yourself and that you get to that higher you at least in

2:05:39part by going into the darkest place and so it's a hell of an idea man it's

2:05:45really but it's the old idea of initiation it's as old as time that idea

2:05:50and and there's something to it and we definitely recreate it in psychotherapy

2:05:53like this isn't an airy theory it's quite the contrary because what you do

2:05:58and as a psychologist always always a behaviorist say that the most the most

2:06:04logical clinical type of psychologists a behaviorist is it an initiatory shaman

2:06:10even though he or she doesn't know it because what they do is they say okay

2:06:13well let's take a look at your life like okay you got a bunch of problems and

2:06:17they're like massive dragons and you're just like you're not going anywhere with

2:06:21those problems you're just cowering in the corner and what the behavioral

2:06:26therapist does is cut them cut that dragon into those little Dwarfs until

2:06:30the dwarfs are small enough so that you can really kick the hell out of them and

2:06:34so and that by the way they do that is they they take the problem and they

2:06:37decompose it into elements that are small enough that you have a reasonable

2:06:43probability of mastering them so you take that problem apart into into its

2:06:47micro problems careful careful process and then you think okay well how

2:06:53could we progress a little bit this week and some of that is to face to practice

2:06:57facing things you're afraid of so like if you're a graphic and you can't get on

2:07:01an elevator you can't get on a taxi and you can't stand up to your husband and

2:07:05I'm saying husband because most agoraphobic sar women most of them are

2:07:08middle-aged women and most of them were too dependent for most of their life so

2:07:12that's a monster it's like society husband elevator taxi

2:07:17subway it's a monster and it's that place you will not go and that's because

2:07:23you feel this high and everything else looks this big and so and partly that's

2:07:27because you've run away and when you run away from something it grows and chases

2:07:31you which is well it's exactly what happens to a prey animal man if you go

2:07:35in the woods and you find a bear especially a grizzly well you're in real

2:07:40trouble if it's a grizzly but if it's a black bear you know generally speaking

2:07:43if you stand your ground and make a hell of a lot of noise that thing will leave

2:07:47you alone but if you run well what's it supposed to think it eats things that

2:07:52run from it so that's exactly where that idea came to come from you turn tail and

2:07:57run and then the thing that you're afraid of is really a monster and it's

2:08:01gonna like get you and eat you it's like well that's true psychologically as well

2:08:05and and the same circuits that we use to when we were you know out in the forest

2:08:10even even in trees the same circuits that we used to parse up the world then

2:08:15into safe territory and place where the predators loom is the way we parse up

2:08:21the world now which is safe territory and the place where the predators loom

2:08:25it's just become abstracted way up abstracted way up so but it's the same

2:08:30damn circuits it's we know this like the same circuits you used to forage for

2:08:35information it's a dopaminergic circuit is the

2:08:38circuit that squirrels use to forage for nuts and you think well why well it's

2:08:42because there's no difference between information and food like you trade

2:08:47information for food all the time that's what you're doing when you're working

2:08:50especially if you're working on a computer so the idea that there's

2:08:55there's an equation between information and food it's like well obviously

2:09:00obviously there's an equation between them so of course you'd use the same

2:09:04and I mean the damn squirrel has to remember where the nuts are and so for

2:09:08him information is food even so when what happened to human beings is that we

2:09:12started thinking hey maybe it's better to go after information than it is to go

2:09:17after food because going after information produces more food than just

2:09:21going after food and so that was a pretty damn smart idea so we're still

2:09:26doing that so anyways this is what you're supposed to be doing and so and

2:09:30this is what behavior therapists do they decompose your problems what are you

2:09:33afraid of well okay you're afraid of everything well let's get something

2:09:38specific you're afraid of well I'm afraid of an elevator okay an

2:09:42elevator so I have a client she's afraid of elevators the elevator door open she

2:09:46goes that's a tomb and I thought oh wow I thought it was an elevator but for you

2:09:52it's not a bloody elevator it's death and so that's what you're

2:09:56afraid of it's worse than that you're afraid of being trapped inside there in

2:09:59the dark alone alone not knowing if anyone is going to rescue you stuck

2:10:04there with your damn imagination freaking out it's like and if that's not

2:10:09and then maybe you have a heart attacks because you're so terrified and you die

2:10:12it's like you know so that's the elevator

2:10:16well it's no bloody wonder there no one's gonna get into something like that

2:10:19and then maybe underneath that is your distrust in the mechanisms of society

2:10:23right because you know a normal person those weird creatures they'll get an

2:10:29elevator what the hell they don't care and partly it's because they have an

2:10:32implicit belief even if the thing stops somebody will come along and rescue them

2:10:36and usually you don't even think about it right it's like no what the hell it's

2:10:40an elevator it's like the danger is invisible to you and it's partly because

2:10:47you implicitly trust the structure and so maybe you go into the unconscious

2:10:51presuppositions of the person who is terrified of the elevator in the subways

2:10:55and you find out they have a real problem with trusting Authority that's

2:10:58partly why they don't get along with their husband why they've never been

2:11:01able to stand up for themselves so then you say okay well you're afraid of the

2:11:05damn elevator but it's not an elevator it's a tomb and the tomb is partly you

2:11:09and partly it's partly the elevator and partly your unconscious mind and so well

2:11:14what can you handle can you go look at an elevator from

2:11:17and feet away it's like yes okay how about 9 feet away yes 5 feet yes 4 feet

2:11:24no okay no problem four and a half feet we're gonna go from that elevator we're

2:11:29gonna look at the damn thing until you're bored of it because that's what

2:11:33we're trying to you should be bored of the elevator because then you're not

2:11:37afraid of it obviously it's like it's an elevator you just don't notice it right

2:11:41all these things around here that you don't notice I take you out of here and

2:11:45ask you what color the walls are you haven't got any idea you know yeah I

2:11:49suspect for most of you there's not a chance you'd be able to identify the

2:11:53gender of the person who's sitting next to you unless you know them it's like

2:11:57you just don't remember anything and why should you everything works like you

2:12:01don't have to pay attention to it it's like is that staying up yeah it's still

2:12:07up yeah still up still up if it's like really no you know you get bored of that

2:12:14real quick and so then you just ignore it and but the agoraphobic has had that

2:12:19veil of ignorance torn away and what they see behind it is mortal threat and

2:12:24so that's really what you're helping them deal with and so this week there

2:12:28are four and a half feet from the elevator next week they're a foot from

2:12:30the elevator and the week after that the horrible gates of Hell open and they

2:12:35look inside and they don't run and so hey they're tougher than they thought

2:12:39they were and that's what you're teaching them actually you're not

2:12:42teaching them that the world isn't dangerous because that's a stupid thing

2:12:45to teach someone bloody right the world is dangerous it's terrifying and

2:12:50sometimes people under they realize that and the veil lifts and they see horror

2:12:54everywhere they see that and then they think well I'm just a little rabbit I'm

2:12:58over here in the corner I can't move I'm petrified and then they

2:13:03can't move they hide it home they cower at home because everything has become a

2:13:08predatory domain and so what you teach them is you're not as much of a rabbit

2:13:13as you think and part of that is that you help them grow some teeth so that

2:13:18they can go home and have that fight with their husband that they should have

2:13:21had 25 years ago and it happens very frequently with agra phobic clients that

2:13:25you get them so they can go on the damn elevator and they can go on the subway

2:13:30and they can take a taxi maybe they learn to drive Wow they get

2:13:34some autonomy and then they're a little tougher and so then they can stand up

2:13:37from loot for themselves and they go back and like their husband might not be

2:13:41very happy with any of this really it depends on what sort of guy he is you

2:13:45know if he's a real tyrant he might be just perfectly happy that he's married

2:13:49to someone who you know was afraid of her own shadow because then she won't

2:13:53ever leave and so that's a nasty little story and believe me it's not uncommon

2:13:58so she gets tougher by facing what she fears and what she finds out is there's

2:14:02a hell of a lot more to her than she thought and that's really what happens

2:14:06when you do behavior therapy with someone who's agoraphobic it isn't

2:14:09really that they get less afraid it's that they get braver that's way

2:14:13different it's because brave is alert and able to cope naive is there's no

2:14:21danger it's like hell yeah right there's no danger Jesus what a stupid theory

2:14:25that is so anyways that's what all this is that's that's the story man and it's

2:14:30a it's a major story it's the story of human transformation and growth it's the

2:14:37evolution of mankind it's like it's a major story and we've been working on

2:14:41the damn thing for like god only knows how long you know snakes and primates

2:14:48co-evolved and our vision are sharp sharp sharp vision seems to have been an

2:14:54evolutionary adaptation forced on us by the presence of predatory snakes and

2:15:00we're talking tens of millions of years ago and human beings have unbelievably

2:15:04sharp eyesight the only thing that can out see us is birds of prey and they

2:15:09have eyes like an eagle a bald eagle has eyes as big as ours and it has two

2:15:13phobias that phobia is the central part of the vision so an eagle is all eyes

2:15:18man and so but human beings we're kind of like that too and like half our brain

2:15:22is devoted to visual processing we have acute vision in Madagascar where there

2:15:27are primates with no predatory snakes there are lemurs they can't see worth a

2:15:31damn and I'm a anthropologist named Lynn Isabelle did a comprehensive study

2:15:35worldwide trying to account for the acuity of primate vision and what she

2:15:39found was that the more predatory snakes in the vicinity the sharper the eyesight

2:15:43of the primates and so we have a really sharp eyesight

2:15:47so that means a lot of us were eaten by snakes and none of your ancestors

2:15:51fortunately because otherwise you wouldn't be here but a lot of those who

2:15:54fell by the wayside were snake snack and you know when you're little and living

2:16:01in a tree a snake is no damn joke and even now lots of people get bitten by

2:16:05snakes and people are phobic of snakes at quite a rate and some of that

2:16:09actually seems innate there's arguments about cycle between psychologists about

2:16:14this but even the ones who don't accept the fact that it's innate accept the

2:16:17fact that you can make someone afraid of a snake by conditioning just like that

2:16:22we're trying to make them afraid of a flower by conditioning is really really

2:16:26hard so we're at least at minimum prepared to be afraid of snakes minimum

2:16:32and I believe it's I don't I believe this fear is actually an 8 although you

2:16:36can learn to control it so anyways so that's that story and like

2:16:40what a story man it's an amazing amazing story you see the the den of the dragon

2:16:46here is littered with skulls and bones that's what that is so either thing is

2:16:50no joke it's like look the hell out and that's this you know and look it up at

2:16:54the top right hand corner there you know that's from Peter Pan right well you

2:16:59remember Captain Hook we talked about him already he's a tyrant and he's a

2:17:03tyrant because he's afraid of death and that's all he sees in life and so it

2:17:07makes him cruel and better and death has already taken part of him right that's

2:17:11why he has a hook and that damn crocodiles chasing him tick tick all the

2:17:15time and of course that's the same situation you're all in man there was a

2:17:19crocodile with a clock at its stomach chasing you and it could easily turn you

2:17:23into a tyrant it can turn you into a tyrant or a cowering victim or a hero

2:17:28those are the options fundamentally so and that's the Gorgon looking at her own

2:17:33the Medusa looking at her own reflection you know mother nature with a head full

2:17:37of snakes you know a terrifying vision and that's actually to some degree an

2:17:41archetype that men get confused with women and you know that's the witchy

2:17:45part of women and that's the part that's attractive attractive attractive but

2:17:49rejecting rejecting rejecting it so many men are petrified by women they won't

2:17:54approach them at all they have no idea how to talk to them they're just

2:17:57petrified into and that's way more common than you

2:18:01think and so that breeds resentment like you wouldn't believe you know you hear

2:18:06the guy who shot up like Dawson College it's like what the hell do you think

2:18:10motivated him it's like he that's what he saw and and it was because well he

2:18:16was my opinion is he was too goddamn useless to be attractive to anyone and

2:18:20so that's a hell of a place to be in you know it's then that's the problem

2:18:25too if you're chronically rejected by people it's often because of your own

2:18:28insufficiencies you know whether that's cowardice or lack of social skills or

2:18:33whatever it is it's like you can't just brush it off as oh well you know no one

2:18:37likes me but really I'm okay it's like no no wrong if everyone rejects you

2:18:43there's probably something wrong and it's probably deep and difficult and

2:18:46it's going to be horrible to fix and so it's this isn't a trivial problem it's

2:18:52not a trivial problem at all and so you know that's mother nature for man too

2:18:56because from from the sexual selection point of view if they if they're not

2:19:01selected as a mate Nature has taken them out of the game right and so you know

2:19:09people don't really like that they're not that happy with that and so but

2:19:12getting all whiny about it and then getting violent it's like that's just

2:19:15not all not really very helpful although it's very common so this is Lyndon

2:19:22Isabel an evolutionary arms race between early snakes and mammals triggered the

2:19:26development of improved vision and large brain in primates a radical new theory

2:19:30suggests these are old representations I really like this one this is I don't

2:19:35remember I think it's Greek but it doesn't

2:19:38exactly look Greek it might be older it doesn't matter anyways you see it's

2:19:42the same thing same ideas as Graham's dream right it's like there's this thing

2:19:46that exists this this multi headed snake and it's got this infinity problem it's

2:19:51everywhere that's that little circle down there and the problem is well what

2:19:55do you do with it you cut off one head seven more growth that's the eternal

2:19:58problem of life and the problem is there there there is the category of problems

2:20:05in life and it ain't going anywhere and so the question is can you deal with the

2:20:10whole category at the same time that's the thing that's how to be in the

2:20:15world is to deal with that category all at the same time and so how did how did

2:20:19human beings what did they come up with as a solution and that's so cool too

2:20:23because the solution they come up with not only was the heroism that allows you

2:20:27to approach what you're terrified by and what you find offensive and to learn

2:20:31from it but also the idea of sacrifice and and that was played out by cultures

2:20:35everywhere including human sacrifice and you think what the hell was up with

2:20:39those crazy bastards so long ago they were sacrificing two gods all the time

2:20:43what kind of clueless behavior was that burned something and please God burn

2:20:48something valuable and please God it's like what was with them what were they

2:20:53thinking well they weren't stupid those people if they were stupid we wouldn't

2:20:58be here they were not stupid and believe me they lived under a lot harsher

2:21:02conditions than we do so those were some tough people man you know back then

2:21:07you'd last about 15 minutes and so you don't want to be thinking of your

2:21:11ancestors as stupid like there's no real evidence that we're much different

2:21:15cognitively than we were a hundred and fifty thousand years ago

2:21:18so anyways sacrifice what does that mean sacrifice well it's a discovery man it's

2:21:25the discovery of the future it's like the future is actually the place where

2:21:29there is threat and it's always gonna be there so what do you do you make

2:21:33sacrifices in the present so that the future is better right everyone does

2:21:40that that's what you're doing right now that's what you're doing here that's

2:21:43what your parents are doing when they pay money to send you to university they

2:21:46think you can bargain with reality it's amazing you can bargain with reality you

2:21:52can forestall gratification now and it'll pay off it at a place in time that

2:21:59doesn't even exist yet it's like who would have believed that it's like

2:22:04that's a miracle that that occurs and it's not like people just figured that

2:22:07overnight you know we were chimps for Christ's sake like how are we gonna come

2:22:12up with an idea like that well it's like well we thought about it for seven

2:22:15million years and you know we got to the point where we could kind of act it out

2:22:20but we didn't know what we were doing but it was a merge it's like a dream it

2:22:25was so the terror of the future is a dream

2:22:28and the solution to the terror the dream of the terror of the future is another

2:22:32dream and and it comes out in mythology and in fantasy and in drama where you

2:22:38act out the sacrifice and then it's a step on the way to full understanding so

2:22:43we can say sacrifice now instead of doing it you know although we still do

2:22:47it it's just not concretize like it used to be we do it abstractly and we all

2:22:53have faith that it will work you know and we also set up our society so that

2:22:57it'll work and one thing about you know I'm not a fan of moral relativism for a

2:23:03variety of reasons partly because I think it's an it's an extreme form of

2:23:07cowardice but anyways apart from that no no no no there's minimal ways that you

2:23:13can set up a society that will work and so one of them is is that the society

2:23:18has to be set up so that your sacrifices will pay off or you won't work and then

2:23:23the society will die and so it has to make promises people have to make

2:23:27promises to one another and that's what money is money is a promise that your

2:23:32sacrifice will pay off in the future that's what money is and so if the

2:23:36society is stable you can store up your work right now you can sacrifice your

2:23:42impulses and you can work and you can store up credit for the future and then

2:23:48you can make the future a better place but Society has to be stable enough to

2:23:52allow for that hyperinflation will do you in so the promise that's implicit in

2:23:57the currency is the promise that what you're doing now will pay off in the

2:24:01future and if people don't have that promise then well we know what they do

2:24:06because in in gangs for example and say gangs in North America the time horizon

2:24:11of the gang members shrinks rapidly because they don't really expect to be

2:24:14alive at much past 21 and so they get really impulsive and violent and like

2:24:18why the hell not that's that's what you do when when the future doesn't matter

2:24:23when it's not real you you default back to living in the moment and you take

2:24:27what you can get right now and no wonder because you don't know if you're gonna

2:24:31be around you know in a year and you get whatever you can well you can bloody

2:24:36well get it and that's like anarchy that state and so

2:24:39you don't want to live and some people like to live in that state because

2:24:42they're really wired for that you know and so they're they're much more

2:24:45comfortable in those conditions there they're kind of like warrior types I

2:24:50would say in some sense but you know for most people that's just where that

2:24:56stress will just do you in you know the stress of a life like that so that's a

2:25:03pretty horrible picture the one on the right I think and you know it's it's a

2:25:07creepy picture and don't you think doesn't it seems like a creepy picture

2:25:10to me yeah and so that's quetzel a codel if I remember correctly who's me who is

2:25:15an Aztec dragon God and that's the Eye of Horus by oh by the way this little

2:25:21thing here and that see the Egyptians they worship the eye

2:25:25yeah well that's cool because well why did they worship the eye well wake the

2:25:30hell up and look at the world that's your salvation to do that pay bloody

2:25:33attention especially to the things you don't want to pay attention to and use

2:25:37your vision have some vision and you can use your vision to see into the future

2:25:43and that is your that's your Redemption and the Egyptians they didn't know how

2:25:48to say that but they knew how to represent it and that's how they

2:25:52represented it like the pupil on that is completely open completely dilated and

2:25:56that's a God as far as the Egyptians we're concerned it's Horus and I'll tell

2:26:00you Horus a story at some point so early primates developed a better eye for

2:26:04color detail and movement and the ability to see in three dimensions

2:26:08traits that are important for detecting threats at close range humans are

2:26:11descended from these same primates all right

2:26:15so now the initiation when you go into psychotherapy or when you make any

2:26:21supreme moral effort which is roughly the same thing you have to confront that

2:26:26which you do not know now I mentioned the called prima cosmogonic chaos and

2:26:31the idea that at the end of Jung's life he sort of thought of the unconscious

2:26:34and the world as the same and you think what the hell does that mean but here's

2:26:38what it means so let's say you're in a long-term intimate relationship and you

2:26:42get betrayed okay so what is it that you see when you see your partner at the

2:26:48moment you know of the betrayal well you see the pre

2:26:53maganda chaos and here's why well it rattles your unconscious up because you

2:26:59don't know anything anymore you don't know what the past was right you don't

2:27:03know what it was and it's supposed to be real and all of a sudden you don't know

2:27:07what it was and so you come up with wild ideas about what it might have been and

2:27:11what it represented and then you don't know what the future is gonna be anymore

2:27:15so then your fantasy fills that space and you don't know who the hell you're

2:27:18looking at that's for sure and you don't know much about human beings and you

2:27:22certainly don't know anything about yourself

2:27:25and so all of a sudden not only is everything in chaos inside your mind but

2:27:29everything is in chaos in your world and it actually is and

2:27:33there's no telling the difference between those two things you know and so

2:27:36then they you're just shattered and so then you go talk to a therapist for like

2:27:41two years and you think what happened what was the reality and the reality is

2:27:47because who knows what the reality was like but as far as you're concerned the

2:27:51reality is I better represent this properly in my head I better figure out

2:27:56who I was who that person was what we did together and what it meant because I

2:28:01do not want this to happen again and so you're healed

2:28:07when you get to the point where you've grasped the bloody moral of the story

2:28:11what went wrong and how can I not have that happen again

2:28:16because that's the purpose of learning right that's the purpose of memory it's

2:28:20to prepare you for the future and so you have to pull out of that massive chaos a

2:28:26functional representation that increases your wisdom so that you're not this

2:28:31naive target the next time you enter into a relationship so at least you can

2:28:35have another relationship without being so traumatized that you know you you're

2:28:40done and you know it can take people years to talk that through because this

2:28:45landscape of potential opens up when when they're betrayed it's like well

2:28:49anything could have been the truth well you to sort through that you have to

2:28:55wander through all that mess and it's really painful and and emotional as well

2:28:59you have to sort through all that mess to come out with the new you right there

2:29:04renewed you and so well this is a representation of it this

2:29:10is how people act this out by but whatever method he may have been

2:29:14designated the shaman is recognized as such as only after having received two

2:29:19methods of instruction the first is ecstatic dreams trances and visions the

2:29:24second is traditional shamanic techniques names and functions of the

2:29:27spirit mythology and genealogy of the clan and the secret language well one of

2:29:32the things that happens this happens to you even if if you encounter something

2:29:36terrible like a betrayal what happens is that you have to take a journey into the

2:29:41domain of morality essentially which is how did I act and how did that person to

2:29:46act and how should have they acted and how should have I acted and so and

2:29:49that's part of your cultural structure and so that's the idea of rescuing the

2:29:54dead farther from the depths right and that's what we'll show you some examples

2:29:57of that so this is a critical issue with regards to the shamanic transformation

2:30:05is that people go through these terrible terrible experiences often drug-induced

2:30:10by the way with regards to the shaman they usually use psychedelic chemicals

2:30:13of one form another often mushrooms but but they've come up with some very

2:30:17strange concoctions like ayahuasca down in the Amazon and ayahuasca is an

2:30:22amazing substance it's made out of the bark of one thing and another plant

2:30:27whose name I don't remember that hardly even grow in the same place and that

2:30:30have to be cooked together in a special way and no one has any idea how the damn

2:30:35Amazonians figured that out it looks impossible and if you ask them they say

2:30:39well the plants told us how to do it which you know Western people don't find

2:30:43very helpful but the shamans are perfectly helped happy with that that

2:30:47description in ayahuasca takes them apart and it does that in part because

2:30:51its effects the serotonergic system very very powerfully like all psychedelics do

2:30:56and it transports them to another world and that's how they interpret it and and

2:31:02and and what we know about psychedelics you could put in a thimble and then

2:31:07throw the thimble away we know nothing about psychedelics there's new

2:31:11experiments going on at Johns Hopkins for example with psilocybin which is

2:31:15part of this active chemical in magic mushrooms same structure basically as

2:31:19LSD and mescaline all the real psychedelics have basically

2:31:22the same structure except the one that's derived from Amanita muscaria which is

2:31:27called muscarinic acid and it's a it's its own weird thing that no one knows

2:31:30anything about anyways they have profound neuro chemical effects in very

2:31:34small doses and the research group at Johns Hopkins has given psilocybin to

2:31:40research subjects you know purified psilocybin because

2:31:43they started the new experimentation with psychedelics and that's been banned

2:31:47for like 40 years because psychedelics were so terrifying

2:31:50to our culture that we just put them away it's like oh no we're not going

2:31:53there and so even from a research perspective and even though some of the

2:31:58psychedelics look very promising for the treatment of disorders like alcoholism

2:32:02they recently used psilocybin to help people stop smoking down at Johns

2:32:06Hopkins and I think they had an 80% success rate which is just like that's

2:32:10just absolutely mind-boggling and so but if you give people psilocybin

2:32:14and they have a mystical experience which is very common among people who

2:32:17take these sorts of chemicals then their personality transforms permanently such

2:32:23that one year later their one standard deviation higher in openness and

2:32:27openness is the creativity dimension and that seems to be a permanent

2:32:31transformation so that's really remarkable and about 80 percent of the

2:32:35people who undergo the Johns Hopkins experiments report that the experience

2:32:39is like one of the two or three most important things they've ever that's

2:32:43never ever happened to them and so well that's that's something you know it's

2:32:48like and then there's this guy named Rick Strassman down at I think he was at

2:32:52the University of Texas and he did experimentation with DMT and DMT

2:32:56dimethyltryptamine I remember I remember correctly is the active ingredient in

2:33:01ayahuasca and you produce it in your brain and it's in plants it's like a

2:33:05very common chemical but DMT is a weird hallucinogen because it has an

2:33:10extraordinarily short mechanism of action it's like and people who take it

2:33:14report that they're blasted out of their body like out of a cannon and then they

2:33:19go out somewhere and encounter beings of various sorts and then ten minutes later

2:33:25they're back and virtually everyone reports that which is really strange and

2:33:29and so strassman was giving people DMT intravenously so that the trip

2:33:34would last longer he this was all all you know nih-funded

2:33:39experimentation all cleared with the relevant ethics boards all conducted

2:33:42within the last 10 years and he basically quit doing it because he was a

2:33:46pretty straight scientist you know he was measuring heart rate and pulse and

2:33:50all that sort of thing trying to look at the physiology and then the people he

2:33:53was giving these chemicals to kept coming back and telling him these these

2:33:57crazy stories and well it just it was too much for him you know and no wonder

2:34:04you know cuz they all said the same thing and he'd say well that was a dream

2:34:07and they'd say no and it was the most real thing that ever happened to me and

2:34:10he'd say well you know it's an archetypal experience and they'd say no

2:34:14no no that was no archetypal experience I went somewhere else and I saw things

2:34:17and I'm back and like I don't care what you think and like who the hell knows

2:34:21right because it's all subjective but but the weird thing about it is that

2:34:25everyone's reporting the same thing how the hell do you account for that and

2:34:29then the shaman you know when they take these psychedelic chemicals they

2:34:32basically say the same thing they say well first of all it more or less killed

2:34:36me that's this you know i dissolved two skeleton and then I climbed the tree

2:34:43that unites heaven and earth and I went into the realm of the gods and they gave

2:34:47me some information and I'm back it's like okay well you know we don't really

2:34:52know what to make of that and we and certainly that's what Elia describes

2:34:56when he describes the shamanic the shamanic procession not the shamanic

2:35:00initiation and you know there's dissolution to a skeleton first and then

2:35:04like a death the symbolic death or experienced as an actual death and then

2:35:08bang up into the realm of the gods and then they come back there's a very old

2:35:13idea and that's a medieval representation of the tunnel that people

2:35:17travel through at the end of their life to you know to find the light which is a

2:35:21very common near-death experience report and people don't have any idea what the

2:35:25hell to do with those reports except say well it's the paroxysm zuv the dying

2:35:29brain which you'd expect to be a hell of a lot more random in my opinion and the

2:35:34idea is there's a rebirth after that and you know here this is the Scandinavian

2:35:39representation of that tree that unites earth with heaven and so there's the

2:35:43Scandinavian representation it has a snake snakes down here eating it and

2:35:48and that's the amazonian representation it's like how the hell he account for

2:35:53that I mean those those pictures are so similar that it's just it's beyond

2:35:58belief well you know we lived in trees for a long time a long long long long

2:36:05time millions of years and there were lots of snakes around them and so the

2:36:10idea that reality is a tree that's surrounded by a snake is that's in us

2:36:14man it's down there it's deep and there's something about it that's true

2:36:18now not true like we normally think of truth a truth true in an entirely

2:36:23different manner so and all that's pretty damn strange we'll stop with this

2:36:28my son drew this when he was seven years old blew me away man I thought it was so

2:36:32cool so I had it laminated and so here is what it is on the right hand side

2:36:37that's ordered it's like the yin-yang thing that's order left-side chaos right

2:36:42and those are all mushroom houses which I thought was amazing and then there's

2:36:47this river that runs right down the middle like the line for order and chaos

2:36:51and then there's this tree that goes up to heaven and that's heaven up there

2:36:55it's like there st. Peter there's the pearly gates there's the clouds it's

2:36:58like it's he never went to church you know it's like what the hell and then

2:37:03there's a little bug there that goes up and down from heaven to earth and that

2:37:08was him and I thought he had a very organized psyche that kid he was a very

2:37:13very stable kid and still is and I he drew that and I thought Jesus that's

2:37:17just bloody will unbelievable and I still think that when I look at it and

2:37:22that's a great example of an archetype and so we'll see you Tuesday

2:37:26you