https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=1B7KyP1rB6U
We mentioned baptism a little earlier, and I was writing about the descent of the Holy Ghost in the Gospels. So that’s when Christ’s ministry starts. So it’s an opening of the sort that you described. It’s an opening to possession by this ultimate ineffability. And there’s a consequence of that, and that’s the descent of the Holy Spirit. And so that descent, we talked earlier about, and you helped me characterize too in different language, what that ineffable spirit, how it might make itself manifest. I talked about the interplay between conscious and calling, and you talked about love, and you talked about the axiological, and there was one other dimension. The sotological, the transformative, the healing. Right, okay. So imagine now you open yourself up to that. Okay, so that’s when Christ’s ministry starts, but here’s something very interesting and weird, and I’m interested in your take on this. As soon as the baptism ends, Christ goes into the desert. Yes. Okay, so now what that indicates is a radical transformation of personality. So what was there before has, I wouldn’t say, it’s been supplanted, but that leaves a desert emptiness. That’s a good way of thinking about it now. So Christ goes out into the desert. It’s like the Israelites leaving the pharaohic- The 40 days. The tyranny. Yeah. Okay, so now he’s in the desert, and that parallels the Israelite desert. And then he goes to the bottom of things. So you can imagine this is a colloquy with conscience. That’s a good way of thinking about it. So imagine that you did something wrong, and you decided that you were going to delve into the depths to understand exactly why it was that you set yourself up for that, and that you were willing to go wherever the Spirit called you to delve into the understructure of that error. So I think that’s what happens. I think that’s what’s being presented in the sequence of temptations that arises in the desert. So imagine you go into the landscape of the soul, and then you go down the dependency hierarchy to the point from which evil emerges. That’s a good way of thinking about it. It parallels the notion in Dante’s Inferno. Yes. Right, because Dante’s Inferno is a set of concentric circles. I’m reading the Inferno. What’s that? I’m reading the Inferno. Oh, okay. So it’s a journey. So my sense with the Inferno is you could take any given proximal and trivial sin and delve into it and end up at the bottom. And what Dante presents is that the meta-sin, the sin upon which all others emerge, is something like betrayal, right? Because it violates trust. Yeah, I mean, for me it’s betrayal, but of the ultimate that is also idolatry. Because all of the sins are versions of idolatry, about loving something in place of loving God. Right. That’s a Tower of Babel problem, too. Yes, right. And this is Tillich’s notion. And Tillich’s notion is what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to bring an ultimate concern and have it properly conform to what is most ultimate. And this is the quest for the God beyond the God of theism. But I see that tunneling down. I mean, I do other practices. I do a spiritual alchemy practice in which you try to recall moments of profound hurt and humiliation. Because those are the moments where you get the falsification of the pretentious projections that you make. The pretensions to know and to control both within and without. And in those moments of hurt and humiliation. So profound indications of error and presumption. Yes, yes, exactly, exactly. So they remove the pre-…they give you…now what you try to do is you try to bring agape to bear on them, neither pride nor guilt. So that you can turn away from the super salience of the pain and get the revelation. And humiliation. Right, and get the revelation, though, of, but look, there’s an aperture of hurt. There’s a glimpse of how things are outside of the pretence and the presumption. And then what you’re trying to do is smelt that and bring it in. See, I think that’s the same thing as the father who’s trapped in the belly of the beast. I think so. This happens to Jonah, you know, when Jonah descends into the depths. And the consequence of that is his radical revaluation of his ethical stance and his reemergence as a prophet. But he goes all the way down to the bottom of things. He does that, interestingly enough, because he tries to escape both his calling and his conscience. Yes. Because God, well, God tells him to do something stupidly impossible and dangerous. And he basically says, yeah, I don’t think so. I’ve always been fascinated by that story. Of course, Melville makes a lot of it in Moby Dick. There’s a moment in that story that I find particularly compelling. And one of the things I like about the Bible is that it will have these little moments of very powerful humanity in the midst of resting with the numinous. If you remember the story, they come to Jonah, the sailors, and say, what’s going on? And he says, well, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, and God’s punishing me. And they don’t immediately throw him overboard. Right, right, right. They go back and they try to save his life. They try to save him. Yeah. And I thought, what’s going on there? That’s such a powerful moment. And for me… Right, they only throw him overboard when there’s nothing left to do. They try everything they can. They exhaust their human capacity in the pursuit of this stranger. Yeah. Guilty stranger. Yes. By his own admission. Right. And it would be so easy to be self-righteous. Yeah. And fun. Yeah. And throw him overboard and witness the miracle. And they put all of that aside for this. And it’s often for me… I mean, I am often like everyone else. I mean, especially coming through the Christmas season, I am impressed by the impressive moments of the Bible. But even that, I mean, you think about Elijah right after he has to… You know, he defeats the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel and the fire from heaven and all. And then he flees into the desert. And then God, you know, says, come, I’m going to show you something. And there’s the big fire and God’s not in the fire and the big wind and God’s… That’s conscience there, right? Right. The still small voice within… Or it sometimes even… It also can be translated as a sheer silence. It’s like it can be translated that way also in the Hebrew. And so it’s almost like what we were talking about before that… I love this idea of the sheer silence because it’s the ineffable but not as negativity, but as superlative, as that which is calling it. Because what does he do? He covers his face, right? He beholds… Do you think there’s any difference between the valid voice of conscience and the voice of the ineffable? I mean, if the ineffable is the foundation and if conscience is a sign of transgression against it, then those things should be related. Well, see, here’s the problem. And this is a problem that goes back that I have with Descartes. Descartes, I mean… And this is a standard philosophical trope, so I’m not claiming any originality here. But Descartes seems to get bunched up on the difference between a psychological and logical indubitability, right? He gets to things that he can’t doubt, and he then concludes that they’re ontologically certain. And of course, our inability to doubt can be driven by many things other than metaphysical necessity. They can be driven by all kinds of psychological issues, self-deception issues. Femens of various sorts. Yeah, yes. And so, and of course, everybody made a continual philosophical hay out of that. And I worry also, because this comes up in Plato’s private problem about what actually turns people towards the good because of the problem of El-Sabaites. And I don’t trust any… Maybe, let me try a different word. I don’t idolize any one of my faculties. I think my conscience can also be something that was driven into me, perhaps by aspects of my culture, my parents. That’s the pathological superego problem. And I suffer from a sadistic superego in a lot of ways. Yeah. And so… In Pinocchio, the puppet has to establish a relationship with the conscience, and it transforms as well. Yes. Right, so it’s not an unerring divine voice from the outset. It’s something like a generic approximation that can err, and a tyrannical great father within would be an example of that. Right, and I think part of the Socratic project and how it’s unfolded for me, often in a psychologically startling way, is to try and enter into a dialogical relationship with my conscience, with my consciousness, with my character.