https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=XdZLl9b5-Cs
And it ties back to then how archetypes work. And that’s where I wanna move next is the archetypes and these Logi and how that relates back to this larger concept of Logos, which is who Jesus Christ is. For those who are new or haven’t caught on, the Logos is Jesus Christ. The Logos is what incarnated into space and time. And so you’re talking about Santa Claus and these archetypes and the reality of the archetypal realm, if you will. And for so many of the Western mind, they hear archetypes, they think of Jung, and then they think of the unconscious. Well, within their own Darwinian framework, the world itself is constantly changing and the unconscious is formed by our own personal experience with the world. Therefore, the unconscious and these archetypes of the father and the mother and the hero, they should also then be changing because by definition, it’s all based on a sort of a fluids framework because they don’t have a metaphysical point to root it in, which is what Logos theology is doing. It’s saying, no, no, guys, you can have your archetypes. Plato was talking about this well before Christianity, but you have to have a metaphysic in which these concepts and these ideas are rooted in so they are unchanging through space and time. Cause yes, Heraclitus is right. You don’t step into the same river twice, but that doesn’t mean that everything is fluid and unchanging. I mean, I agree that I usually even don’t even use the word archetype in my videos because of the Jungian problem where people tend to understand our, it’s a perfectly legitimate word by the way, Saint Gregor Nesta uses it in his writings. And so it’s just that people tend to associate it with this idea that it’s somehow psychic structures, whether these archetypes are psychic structures, but that’s not what we’re proposing. We’re proposing that they are universal structures and that reality actually unfolds based on these structures. And it’s not like, you don’t have to understand it as like a magical, a kind of magical thing, but the world has to be pattern. And it’s not just a psychic thing. In order for anything to exist in the world, there has to be order in the particularities. And that’s it, that’s all it is. It’s just that the order of that binds particularity to one, that’s an archetype. And so you can understand it very low in terms of how molecules bound together to form higher forms of qualities, but then you can also do it from a human perspective. That is for me to be able to recognize certain categories across space and time, they have to be bound by a pattern. And like let’s say the pattern of fatherhood, it’s just a real pattern. It doesn’t mean that in instantiation, there can be variability and there can be variability across it, but ultimately it leads to one, especially as you get higher and higher and you move towards the divine logos himself. And so in some ways you could say that all the Logie and all the patterns, they are not absolute. They’re not infinite, they are limited and they have a kind of relativity to them, but that relativity is always pointing up and up and up and up. And as you follow that line, then you reach the divine logos. Not with your thinking, but even in experience, you start to see through the glimmers of these patterns that there’s something holding them together at the summit of it. Can you explain for people then what we’re calling archetypes, how in an Orthodox worldview, they are called the Logie. As St. Maximus talks about the divine principles of creation. And like you’re saying, these are the divine principles that sets the pattern for reality. Can you explain a little bit about what these Logie are and how they relate to that? I mean, the way that I see them is that they’re the reason. Like they’re the reason why you perceive something in the first place. Like they’re the reason why multiplicity is binding into one. Why is it that when I look at the world around me or experience the world around me, I don’t just experience infinite chaos and infinite multiplicity? It’s like, no, I experience different levels and there’s a lot of patterns. Like there’s a lot of levels and there’s almost indefinite levels and play of patterns. But I always am able to see the one through the many. And that line, right? That line is that line that kind of drives you up towards the divine logos. And it’s not a rational, it’s not an exercise in thought. It’s an exercise in experience. And that’s why we tend to say that, we talk about the noose as this capacity to kind of grasp things, right? To grasp their unity without the dialectic, without the thought process. And so in some ways, perceiving the divine logos is closer to almost physical experience in the sense that it’s just intuitive. It’s like this intuitive grasping of the one. And most people aren’t even aware of it. They’re not conscious of it. We experience the noose all the time. The noose is actually what drives the way that you function in reality. But because we’re so clouded by our passions and our thought that we don’t tend to see it. But we do have that capacity to just grasp the one. That’s what leads you into the logy. And that noose is such a fundamental anthropological point because it’s not just mind, body, soul. Yes, if somebody saw noose and translated, they’d say, oh, well, that’s just the Greek word for mind. Yes, but orthodoxy, as we’ve done with everything, resanctifies whatever we’re talking about. And so the noose is the eye of the heart. It’s the eye of the soul. That the way that you’re participating with these patterns, which is gonna be tied to morality, which is gonna be tied to speaking truthful things, which is gonna be tied with how you treat people. This is essential for how you’re gonna see that line through the logy, through these archetypal patterns of reality back to the logos, Jesus Christ, the second person of the Holy Trinity. And so therefore, I’ve always talked about the archetype, if you will, of the evil genius, as somebody who is the noose is totally darkened. So yeah, they may have a high IQ. They may have the highest IQ, but at the same time, they’re totally irrational despite their using reason instrumentally for whatever ends that they have to conquer the world or to have power over people, but it’s still irrational, it’s self-defeating because the ways in which they live their life, they have darkened the noetic faculty of themselves that they really can’t see God and they really can’t see them, and so they’re just in the middle of these instrumental patterns in creation. Yeah, and I think that the word instrumental is the right word for people to understand sin or to understand the fall and how the logy get darkened. And the way the logy get darkened is through this kind of instrumental thing. It’s a funny situation, but the idea is that in some ways, if you grasp something for what it is only, it immediately becomes perverted, right? And rather, if you see through it, there’s a sense in which there’s a line that follows through it into something higher, beyond it. That’s when you kind of follow this line of logy. So it’s not, like I said, I wanna be careful not to sound like I’m saying arbitrary things, but if you, I love to use sports analogies because they’re so easy to understand. So if you play basketball and there are certain things that you’re doing in basketball, right? You’re dribbling, you’re passing, you’re throwing the ball, you’re doing all these things. Like all these things that you’re doing, you never wanna grasp them for themselves. But if you grasp dribbling and you’re like, man, I’m gonna dribble and I’m just gonna dribble for dribbling. And so you’re gonna lose the game, right? Because it’s a ridiculous thing to do. You have to see through the dribbling towards the purpose of what it is, right? I’m dribbling so that I can score points so that I can win the game. And then, but then that goes up. Obviously it doesn’t stop at sports. The idea is like, if things are lined up towards their higher purposes, then that’s when you participate in them in the proper way. But when you try to grasp them for themselves, then you’re done. Like then that’s what, in some ways that’s what sin is. So in our lives, it’s usually happens in terms of thoughts and in terms of desires, right? It’s like eating is great. Eating is a beautiful, wonderful thing. But if I try to grasp it for itself, then I’m disorder. Then I’m obsessed by food. I get fat. All these things happen to me that are, because I’m not going to the logos and moving up towards a higher purpose. It’s the destruction of the patterns. The gluttony literally begins to kill you, which is the nature of sin, right? Yeah, that’s right. It’s the nature of sin. It’s the nature of pride. It’s like when you think that you’ve got it, it’s like as soon as you think that you’ve got it and you’re God and you’re at the summit, then you’ve cut yourself off from higher participation. And it’s a deep irony because in orthodoxy, we do believe in theosis. Like we literally believe you could become God and not just you, but all of creation is called to be deified. And the only way for it to happen is to die to oneself. It’s the opposite of what we think. It’s like if you actually let go of your pride and you let go of your grasping at the different levels, then all of this is going to participate in God. It’s actually, I mean, it’s wild, but it makes sense once you start to see it in that way. It does.