https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=TuD56LZ72_o
I see the Bible as an attempt, a collective attempt by humanity, to solve the deepest problems that we have. And I think those problems are the problems of, primarily the problem of self-consciousness. The fact that not only do we are immortal and that we die, but that we know it. And that’s the unique, that’s the unique predicament of human beings. And it makes all the difference, and I think that’s laid out in Adam and Eve, in the story of Adam and Eve. I think the reason that that makes us unique is laid out in that story. And interestingly, and I really realized this only after I was doing the last three lectures. So the Bible presents a cataclysm at the beginning of time, which is the emergence of self-consciousness in human beings, which puts a rift into the structure of being. That’s the right way to think about it. And that’s really given cosmic significance. Now, you can dispense with that and say, well, nothing that happens to human beings is of cosmic significance because we’re these short-lived, you know, mold-like entities that are like cancers on this tiny little planet that’s rotating out in the middle of nowhere, on the edge of some unknown galaxy in the middle of infinite space. And nothing that happens to us matters. And it’s fine, like you can walk down that road if you want. I wouldn’t recommend it. I mean, and that’s part of the reason I think that for all intents and purposes, it’s untrue. You know, it isn’t a road you can walk down and live well. In fact, I think if you really walk down that road and you really take it seriously, you end up not living at all. So it’s certainly very reminiscent. I mean, I’ve talked to lots of people who are suicidal and seriously suicidal. And, you know, the kind of conclusions that they draw about the utility of life prior to wishing for its cessation are very much like the kind of conclusions that you draw if you walk down that particular line of reasoning long enough. If you’re interested in that, you could read Tolstoy’s Confessions, Leo Tolstoy’s Confession. It’s a very short book. It’s a killer, man. It’s a powerful book. Very, very short. And Tolstoy describes his obsession with suicide when he was at the height of his fame. Most well-known author in the world, you know, huge family, international fame, wealth beyond anyone’s imagining at that time, influential, admired. He had everything that you could possibly imagine that everyone could have. And for years he was afraid to go out into his barn with a rope or a gun because he thought he’d either hang himself or shoot himself. And he did get out of that. And he describes why that happened and where he went when that happened. So if you’re interested in that, that’s a very good book. So the biblical stories, starting with Adam and Eve, they present a different story. They present the emergence of self-consciousness in human beings as a cosmically cataclysmic event. And you could say, well, what do we have to do with the cosmos? And the answer to that is, it depends on what you think consciousness has to do with the cosmos. And perhaps that’s nothing. And perhaps it’s everything. I’m going to go with everything because that’s how it looks to me. Now, of course, anyone who wishes to is welcome to disagree. But if you believe that consciousness is a force of cosmic significance, which being itself is dependent on in any real sense, at least in any experiential sense, then it’s not unreasonable to assume that radical restructurings of consciousness can worthily be granted some kind of cosmic or metaphysical significance. And even if it’s not true from outside the human perspective, whatever that might be, it’s bloody well true from within the human perspective, that’s for sure. And so that’s the initial event, in some sense, after the creation, is the cataclysmic fall. And then the entire rest of the Bible is an attempt to figure out what the hell to do about that. And everything in it is… And so you could say, for example, in the earliest, in the Old Testament stories, what seems to happen is that the state of Israel is founded, and it rises and falls and rises and falls. And so there’s this experimentation for centuries, millennia even, with the idea that the way that you protect yourself against the tragic consequences of self-consciousness is by organizing yourself into a state. But then what happens is the state itself begins to reveal its pathologies. And as those pathologies mount, the state becomes unstable and collapses, and then it rises back up and becomes unstable and collapses, and then it rises back up. After it does this a number of times, this is primarily from Northrop Fry’s interpretations, people start wondering if there’s not something wrong with the idea that the state itself is the place of redemption. That there’s something wrong with that idea. And so then I think on the heels of that comes the Christian revolution with its hypothesis that it’s not the state that’s the place of salvation, it’s the individual psyche. And then there’s an ethic that goes along with that too, which is quite interesting. So the ethic of redemption after the state experiment fails, let’s say, is that it’s within the individual that redemption can be manifested, let’s say. And even insofar as the state is concerned, because the state’s proper functioning is dependent on the proper functioning of the individual rather than the reverse, most fundamentally. And that the proper mode of individual being that’s redemptive is truth, and truth is the antidote to the suffering that emerges with the fall of man in the story of Adam and Eve. And then that relates back to the chapters that we’ve already talked about, because there’s this insistence in Genesis 1 that it’s the word in the form of truth that generates order out of chaos. But even more importantly, and this is something, like I said, I most clearly realized just doing these lectures for the last three weeks, is God continues to say as he speaks order into being with truth that the being he speaks into being is good. And so there’s this insistence that the being that spoke into being through truth is good. And so there’s a hint there, it’s so interesting, there’s a hint there right at the beginning of the story that the state of being that Adam and Eve inhabited before they fell, before they became self-conscious, insofar as they were made in the image of God and acting out the truth, that the being itself was properly balanced. And it takes the entire Bible to rediscover that, which is a journey back to the beginning. And that’s a classic theme, it’s a classic mythological theme, that the wise person is the person who finds what they lost in childhood and regains it. I think that’s a Jewish idea, that Zadik, if I remember correctly, who’s a messiah figure, is the person who finds what he lost in childhood and regains it. His idea of this return to the beginning, except that the return is you don’t fall backwards into childhood and unconsciousness. You return voluntarily to the state of childhood, well awake, and then determined to participate through truth in the manifestation of proper being. Now, you know, I’m a psychologist and I’ve taught personality theory for a very long time, and I know personality theories, the profound personality theories, pretty well, and I’m reasonably well-versed in philosophy, although not as well-versed as I should be. But I can tell you, in all the things I’ve ever read or encountered or thought about, I have never once found an idea that matches that in terms of profundity, but not only profundity, also in believability. Because the other thing I see as a clinician, and I think this is very characteristic of clinical experience, and also very much described explicitly by the great clinicians, is that what cures in therapy is truth. That’s the curative. Now, there’s exposure to the things you’re afraid of and avoiding as well, but I would say that’s a form of enacted truth, because if you know there’s something you should do, by your own set of rules, and you’re avoiding it, then you’re enacting a lie. You know, you’re not telling one, but you’re acting one out. It’s the same damn thing. So, if I can get you to face what it is that you’re confronting that you know you shouldn’t be avoiding, then what’s happening is that we’re both partaking in the process of attempting you to act out your deepest truth. And what happens is that that improves people’s lives, and it improves them radically. And the evidence, the clinical evidence for that is overwhelming. We know that if you expose people to the things they’re afraid of, but that they’re avoiding, they get better. And you have to do it carefully and cautiously and with their own participation and all of that. But of all the things that clinicians have established that’s credible, that’s number one. And that’s nested inside this deeper realization that the clinical experience is redemptive, let’s say, because it’s designed to address suffering insofar as the people who are engaged in the process are both telling each other the truth. And then you think, well, obviously, because if you have some problems and you come to talk to me about them, well, first of all, just by coming to talk to me about them, you’ve admitted that they exist. Man, that’s a pretty good start. And second, well, if you tell me about them, then we know what they are. And then if we know what they are, we can maybe start to lay out some solutions, and then you can go act out the solutions and see if they work. But if you don’t admit they’re there and you won’t tell me what they are, and I don’t, and I’m like posturing and acting egotistically and taking the upper hand in all of that in our discussions, well, how the hell is that going to work? You know, it might be comfortable moment to moment while we stay encapsulated in our delusion, but it’s not going to work. So a lot of that seems, if you think it through, it seems pretty self-evident. And, you know, Freud thought that repression was at the heart of much mental suffering. The difference between repression and deception is a matter of degree, and that’s all. It’s technical. It’s a technical differentiation. And Alfred Adler, who was one of Freud’s greatest associates, let’s say, and much underappreciated, I would say, he thought that people got into problems because they started to act out a life lie. That’s what he called it, a life lie. That’s worth looking up, because Adler, although not as charismatic as Freud, was very practical and really foreshadowed a lot of later developments in cybernetic theory. Of course, Jung believed that you could bypass psychotherapy entirely by merely making a proper moral effort in your own life. And Carl Rogers believed that it was honest communication mediated through dialogue that had redemptive consequences. And the behaviors believe that you do a careful microanalysis of the problems that are laid before you and help introduce people to what they’re avoiding. It’s like all of those things to me are just secular variations of the notion that truth will set you free. Thank you.