A Lecture by Jonathan Pageau： The Symbolic World ｜ EP 206 (ZQ43i5nKuZk)

https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=ZQ43i5nKuZk

Hey everybody I’m going to put up a video from my colleague and friend Jonathan Pagio a Russian Orthodox icon carver, a great artist, and a very profound thinker in my estimation About a month ago, so that would be October of 2021. I Listened to a lecture he gave to the Montreal Jung Society on the Conceptual structure of Genesis and I thought it was brilliant It was like 20 years of thought packed into an hour of lecture and then also brilliant Q&A that followed analyzing some iconic images in the Russian Orthodox tradition and I thought that it would make an excellent adjunct to my Biblical series on Genesis coming at it from the different tack that Jonathan takes Elucidating the ideas that I had developed and certainly the ideas that he has developed I always learned a lot from listening to Jonathan and so I reached out to him and the Jung Society of Montreal which kindly gave us permission to repost the lecture and He agreed to do it and my production team has been working on it And so we’re pleased to bring it to you and I hope that you enjoy it even more or at least as much as you enjoyed the Genesis lectures from a few years ago, and hopefully there’s more of this sort of thing to come Hi everybody. My name is David d’Andrea. I’m a college teacher in Montreal It’s my pleasure today to introduce Jonathan Pagio who I see as one of a small handful of cultural commentators Helping us make sense of our strange historical moment. I First came across Pagio in 2017 in the chaos and contestation of that time The mood of rebellion was especially pervasive on the internet with the memes of 4chan’s edge Lords fueling the triumph of Trump and brexit we all remember those years not too long ago and Jordan Peterson hosted Jonathan Pagio on his YouTube channel to talk about what they called the metaphysics of Pepe Pepe of course was that cartoon frog that seemed to symbolize the worst instincts of the alt-right Or maybe just the timeless urge of the jester to poke at the sanctimony of the powerful Peterson and Pagio’s discussion seemed to move beyond the tawdry politics of the moment and grasp something deeper going on So like many people at that time. I decided to keep an eye on this interesting new commentator A little bit later Pagio organized the documentary screening on Jordan Peterson that was held here in Montreal So I saw that name pop up again. Oh, I think I’ve heard of that fellow You may know that Pagio is a carver by profession. He is an editor at the Orthodox Arts Journal Today I see him mainly as a YouTube commentator and in that medium I see him occupying a role somewhere between an intellectual social critic and He speaks with a series of interlocutors amongst them, of course Jordan Peterson Christian commentators like Paul VanderKlay Secular psychologists like John Vervecky of the University of Toronto very interesting fellow Novelist Vesper Stamper. These are a few of the guests. He’s had on who stick out for me Some recent topics that Pagio has discussed include universal health and social justice Some recent topics that Pagio has discussed include universal history this kind of retro idea of a grand narrative That includes and makes sense of everything Right with of course a Christian foundation Uh the interpretation of scripture but also symbolism within pop culture He seems to be fascinated by superhero movies and tv shows as well as rap stars like Lil Nas X and Kanye West And I confess that I share that last fascination with the So today it is my great pleasure to introduce him And i’m hoping that he will lay out a road map to the symbolism which is happening today And which maybe is gathering for the near future Well, hello everybody Thank you for inviting me. This is a really wonderful opportunity I’m surprised to see some people that I know in the i’m kind of looking at the mosaic here of everybody Well, not everybody but some people so i’m surprised to see some people that I know and then some people that I don’t know um and so what I want to do with you today is I want to kind of take you on a um kind of symbolic trip the I want to present to you first of all the let’s say the source of the symbolism that I tried to present The frame you could say of the symbolism i’m going to present it maybe in a little more of a A little more of a technical way that I usually do in the in the more kind of colloquial way that I do on youtube So hopefully that’ll be okay. And then what i’ll do is i’ll take you on an example Of this symbolic pattern, uh very basic example, which is we’re going to read the first chapter of genesis together and we’re going to try to look at how it kind of manifests the the symbolic pattern And how this becomes a kind of map that you can use to interpret the world But also a map especially a map that you can use to inhabit your life And so we’ll see that symbolism is not also not only about interpretation I mean as Jungians, you know that it’s a way to be in a way to kind of inhabit the world And so there’s an interesting moment right now I think in the zeitgeist in the culture uh Something like the end of materialism or the end of physicalism We saw of course, I think that that Jordan Peterson has played a big role In poking at this, you know kind of poking at the new atheist this last weird new atheist moment that we had in the early 2000s So what we’re seeing is Kind of materialism running to its end and it’s happening in physics with the problem of the observer It’s happening in things like like just this notion of complexity or complexity theory The problem of emergence all of these things are Bringing materialism to its end and the way that I like to to understand it is that for a while we had this kind of weird duality of mind and body or mind and matter where We kind of abstracted the mind into this place that we didn’t talk about And then we look at the world and we interpret reality And as materialism kind of ran its course as this kind of scientism ran its course at some point You could say there is something of a little moment a surprising moment of pride where as we’re kind of Exhausting the things that we study people realize that Well, there’s this one thing that we haven’t studied. It’s The thing that’s looking at everything else like we’re studying the world the world the world But all of a sudden we realize that there’s a viewer that’s doing that studying Uh, and as soon as the materialist eye you could say turned Towards the viewer turned towards the interpreter turned towards trying to understand consciousness trying to understand Meaning itself then things become very loopy uh and certain The simplicity of the dualistic model stops to make sense and this happens very much in terms of evolutionary thinking what evolutionary thinking is Did in some parts is try to explain the motivations of humans But when you start to do that you have a problem because this human who’s talking about evolution Is the what you’re trying to interpret and so you’re actually interpreting the interpreter and so what has happened is that It’s opened the door to all kinds of Questions the problem of emergence the problem of quality And one of the big things that’s happened is the problem of attention And this has been manifesting itself on in different fields Uh, and it’s realizing that the world is too complex That the world actually is kind of indefinite in its complexity You know everything you look at everything you encounter has an indefinite amount of Complexity and it’s made of parts and those parts also have an indefinite amount of complexity and you can just scale that down You know to the quantum field or whatever and Many thinkers realize how is it that how does this work? How do things scale up? Between different levels of phenomena That is how is it that I can look at a chair and see that the chair is both one thing It’s it’s a chair, but it also is many things And those many things are also many things but I can perceive at every level of reality That there’s unity so I can notice a leg of a chair and I can notice the color of the chair But I can also see that all of this participates in within the being of the chair And this is like a hard problem. It’s a it’s a it’s a it’s a difficult problem because it ends up being It ends up infecting all of meaning making and in fact science and in fact, it’s not an infection It’s a it’s actually a kind of healing I think but it kind of seeps back into science and sees back into um back into uh, the very way in which we understand the world and we realize that That We have difficulty accounting for the qualities of things using descriptive means That we have difficulty even accounting for the identity of things using descriptive means so once we have the identity we can describe things but the identity seems to to kind of emerge from somewhere else or come from somewhere else and kind of brings multiplicity into unity and so What’s fascinating is that? It has like I said, it has opened up all of a sudden the possibility for people to kind of to understand ancient thinking In a way that until recently was very difficult to understand And so if we understand for so we realize that the world has to be patterned That there has to be patterns in the world and this is more than just a psychological Uh reality, it’s not just about describing the psyche of the human person. It’s actually a descript a cosmological argument It’s an argument about how reality works, which is that For things to exist they have to be Patterned and those patterns seem to seem to stack up at different levels of reality and also seem to exist in Smaller patterns seem to exist in bigger patterns, right? I mean you can think about it physically or think about it any way you want uh, and this actually seems to be Something which is inevitable for us to be able to even encounter the world Now what that means is that it brings back the idea of intelligence the idea of consciousness and it can reconnect us to How the ancients talked about it some people are talking about something like the revenge of aristotle, right or the revenge of plato because suddenly when we talk when we Have to re-enter our experience and try to analyze our experience We realize that oh actually when aristotle talks about Potentiality and actuality I experience that every single day of my life right, I actually encounter the field that presents itself to me as potential which is brought into patterns brought into Actualities that that I need in order to be able to exist right and those actualities those patterns they’re not just uh They’re not just mathematical patterns or ideas in the in the vague platonic sense that people have but they’re actually teleological their purposes right and these purposes they can be regained from Evolutionary thinking which is just the strangest thing in the world Like who would have thought that darwin would bring plato back But when we re-enter evolutionary thinking we realize that we need purposes in order to encounter the world so so it’s like if I if I This cup the fact that I recognize it as a cup is because I recognize its purpose Its purpose to me as a human being And that actually scales the hierarchy of of purposes Even in terms of science, right people think that science is Is just a study of phenomena, but we we always forget that science is embedded into us into social systems And that for example the science that will get the most attention will always be the science that is the most fascinating Or useful for humans and the science that will get the least attention which means the least money the least Effort to study will be the things that are the least useful for humans So as soon as you re-embed science into its actual social frame then all of a sudden This hierarchy just reappears again this ancient hierarchy, which is basically you could call it something like the religious the religious hierarchy so what it does is That these patterns these teleological patterns these patterns with purpose Come back into the way in which we actually exist in the world so you can understand that Ritual Suddenly makes sense again Not only does it make sense, but it’s actually inevitable And you can see everything you do through ritual Because everything you do in the world is pattern teleologically It’s patterned towards purpose And when it and sometimes let’s say there are moments in which that purpose will kind of break down But that is also part of the that’s a great ritual which usually involves something like carnival which involves aspects of of chaos on the edges of these patterns And so if you if So you realize that like drinking a cup of water Is necessarily ritualized It has to be teleological and it has to have a certain form I have to do certain things in a certain order in order for me to be able to achieve the purpose that i’m reaching with my With my with my cup Now bring this into the human sphere It’s the same and when I encounter someone my encounter necessarily Has to be ritualized And you can realize that it has to be ritualized because if you try to do the opposite of the ritual You’re gonna get some funny reactions Right try to talk to the back of someone’s head for example for a while or Just lay down in on the middle of the ground while you’re speaking to someone And you’ll realize that that that human relationships are Extremely ritualized right we speak and we and we feel the tension, right? So it’s really like a rubber band you speak and then you have to stop speaking and you have to listen And so there’s this kind of wave this back and forth wave This this call and response you could call it that happens in a conversation that if you don’t follow that pattern You’re going to break the relationship And no one’s going to want to talk to you anymore and everybody knows someone like that and everybody sometimes has fallen into that excess Where they’ve talked too much and they realize it or they haven’t talked enough They just listen and didn’t give their opinion and the other person feels like you weren’t there So we can see that this is how it works now You can scale this pattern up from simple human interactions from simple human engagement with objects into social interactions as well That is we realize that In order to have teleology in order to have purpose and in order for a group to have purpose It has to encounter itself ritually It has to have things which bind it together Which make it make the group recognize that it is It is together because this is the the problem of multiplicity and the problem of complexity Happens, especially in terms of human interactions What’s the difference between a group and a crowd? What’s the difference between the team and a crowd, right? There are a bunch of people That are together But one of them is not bound teleologically And the other is right a team is bound teleologically. It’s a soccer team They are bound towards a purpose. They’re bound towards a common a common identity and that common identity will manifest itself in ritual And the ritual include those rituals include the rules of the game the rules of engagement Those rituals also includes other things which are more related to identity And this is something which will bring us Straight into religious ritual that is those rituals include the capacity To attend to the thing that binds us together And this is when we’re going to start to realize that this pattern Is almost first and foremost the pattern of attention or the manner in which we’re capable of paying attention And so a team will have to attend to those things that bind them together And what that will look like will be something like celebration You know at the fear of sounding somewhat scandalous to people it’s going to look something like worship like a little worship Right. It’s going to be a celebration of the thing which binds us together reverence towards the thing that brian binds us together I don’t want to I use the word worship to scandalize you a little bit but like reverence is fine, right? And so they will have to reverence their team colors. They have to reverence their team name They have to have a totem a mascot which will represent them in a mythological with the mythological frame as a kind of An animal or some some figure that has more social connotation that will bind their identity together And then they will also be bound you say on the human level through a person who will represent their ideal The team captain the coach at different levels in the in this kind of hierarchy of being And so you will see that a sports team but not a sports team a knitting group or anything that is bound together Will necessarily have to have these elements at different levels of of of reality now One of the aspects is that it will also have to judge What is inside and what is outside? And what will be the judge of that inside and outside will be their reason for existing Right, and so you could say the logos and to use a christian term the logos of the group Will be that which binds together which joins the body? into one But will also be that with judges those that are inside to bind them but also to exclude them And so think of a knitting group for example, right you have a knitting group a bunch of people come together They knit together. That’s what they do. And so There’s a ritualized reality to that which is that when they meet they’re going to knit now as they’re knitting They’ll probably do other things as well. Well, they’ll talk they’ll chat. They’ll they’ll talk about their lives They might you know, someone might bring something to eat and this is all going to kind of organically participate in the knitting group But let’s say that at some point someone comes and says well, you know, oh, I like this knitting group I like to use this knitting group, but I don’t want to to knit I want to play music And so they’re like, okay Well, maybe one person playing music while we’re knitting is not a big deal And so, you know, they play music and then that person invites someone else and says I like this knitting group But this music playing is pretty cool. So what if I brought my instrument and then we start playing music so imagine now that process going on to a point where Well, okay. Are we a knitting group? Are we a band like what’s going on? We have to decide we have to judge Either we exclude these musicians or exclude their practice or we cease being what we are we die basically This knitting group is going to cease to exist. It’s going to be transformed into something else. Okay And so this is this is how Kind of this pattern acts as the attention that we give towards the teleology of the group will also act The logos of that the reason the purpose that i’m looking at will look like a binding agent But will also look like like a judge um, and so like I said that this is how all kind of uh reality works or all of how reality lays itself out and so What I want to do is I want to kind of show you that this this Pattern that i’m talking about is really just it is a cosmological argument It’s an argument about how reality works And what it what it does is that it argues about how reality works based on the notion that intelligence Is necessary for reality to unfold? And so this is something which is kind of bubbling up, right? It’s not something which is that everybody agrees with and in in the world but it’s something which is bubbling up and we’re seeing appear in different fields as Even in science, we’re finding some physicists who are arguing what they call, uh, the strong entropic principle, which is that consciousness or intelligence is necessary for the for the world to unfold because Intelligence is the only thing which is able to discern pattern And not just discern, but it’s like a it’s not just a discernment. It’s a participation in pattern right because the agent The the pattern ends up coagulating in the agent you could say And so the the conscious being Sees these patterns but also engages with these patterns and transforms these patterns. It’s not just a it’s not just a passive Can I say it’s not just a passive? Relationship to to the world. It’s an active embodied relationship to the world Okay now Before I give you before we go on the example, I want to say that this Once you kind of enter into this way of thinking it has certain consequences Right and and one of the consequences is that the intelligent perception The perception of the embodied intelligence becomes the primary mode of engagement and interpretation in the world And what i’m saying this this is extremely important because we tend to abstract and become scientists And we think that that is the primary Way to interpret reality Right, and we do it. We all do it. We analyze we’re analysts We we we look at the pattern from outside, right? We we try to stand above and say well look at that interesting pattern in that culture And look at that interesting pattern in that culture and look at how nice it is that they’re the same and we’re kind of like these disembodied Beings that are just looking at the world supposedly but once you realize that Once you realize this notion that intelligence is necessary and this ritualized embodied reality is necessary for the world to appear Then it changes everything Because you have to embody You have the real way to engage the world is the embodied way So it’s not that we’re standing above the stories and we’re interpreting the stories It’s not that we’re standing above the images and we’re interpreting the images We are in a story We participate in a story. We participate in communities. We participate in images, right? They are our communities. They are our images. They are our uh They are they are the things that make us exist, right as we kind of actively engage with them um, and so so that’s why if you If you look at the way that you know when uh when david at the beginning said that jonathan is is an artist This is extremely important In my theory about reality is that it’s not it’s like i’m presenting it to you in a way in the theory But this presentation that i’m giving you this is secondary to what is really going on What is really going on is that to the most to the extent that i’m capable of? I get up I get up in the morning and I physically carve sacred images, right? I go to church on sunday and I physically participate in the rituals and the liturgy You know, I sit there with my family around the table and I eat a meal and I realize that this meal is Is a smaller version of the ritual that i’m engaging in on sunday morning with with my parish And so it’s it’s an embodied. It’s an embodied reality. It’s an embodied, uh engagement with the world um, and so So like I said, it’s it’s a pretty radical. It’s very radical Sometimes people don’t realize how radical the proposition i’m making is the the proposition i’m making is is that if what the things I said are true That means that the the only way for them to be fully true is for us to dive in and embody Uh while realizing of course and while being aware of all the problems that come with this pattern as well there are many problems with come with this pattern because I said right one of the issues of the the The reality of being engaged in a group that has a teleology that has a purpose is that it excludes That’s the very nature of a group a group excludes Groups always exclude That’s why they’re a group because they’re not the totality of all manifestation in the universe. They necessarily need to exclude you know, I mean even if you want to be inclusive in the kind of uh, the kind of uh, let’s say A politically correct way you’re still going to exclude animals from your group or you’re still going to exclude rocks from your group You necessarily have to exclude because you’re not god, right? You’re not the totality of everything in order to kind of move teleologically in the world You have to to exclude and so that has a problem that has difficulty to it and so but there are ways to kind of let’s say To deal with those in a manner which won’t make the group completely self-devouring um And also won’t make you kind of fall into the chaos of thinking that just that nothing has identity and everything is just a mush of potential, let’s say Okay, so hopefully if that’s clear what I want to do is i’m going to go into the the first chapter of genesis and show you how the creation narrative It’s a very very wide story. It’s a very very it’s a huge narrative Obviously, I can’t exhaust it, but I want to show you is that the manner in which it shows That the world manifests itself through intelligence through consciousness and that this is actually the agent of How reality comes together? And how we participate in that as intelligent beings, okay? um And so hopefully you are a little aware. I will go through the verses But I mean i’m not going I hope everybody’s a little bit aware of the creation narrative in genesis Enough that that you’ll be able to at least follow All right. So here we go Okay Okay So scripture starts it says in the beginning god created the heavens and the earth Now the earth was formless and empty Darkness was over the surface of the deep and the spirit of god was hovering over the waters So what we have are First the setup of one thing which seems to be outside of the system But is related actually to the top of the system. So you have god Who is in the beginning? The beginning can be interpreted as the head The actual word means the head of something. It also means something like the principle right the the Or the origin All of these words work into in the beginning and so god is in the beginning and he separates heaven and earth and the characteristics he gives of heaven and earth is that Because he says that the spirit was hovering above the water now We have to see the spirit hovering above the waters as the repetition You’ll see it’s all going to be repetition and showing you what what the pattern is and so the spirit hovering above the water is The same as heaven heaven is just wind right if we have to read immediate about this Heaven is that is are the things that you can’t see like wind you can’t see like your breath You can’t see like speech. You can’t see all of these things are are things that you that you can’t see And then so it separates heaven and earth two basic principles of reality The earth is void. It’s empty It’s silence. It’s water And heaven is spirit wind breath and speech So at first we basically just have two categories, right? The implications of the two categories are not going to be clear right away They’re going to start to manifest themselves, but you can already understand it as something like Spirit and potential or actuality and potential is actually totally fine to see it that way dante completely Joins together The aristotelian categories of actuality and potential and the in the creation narrative The idea of heaven and earth as these two basic principles Um, and so this is just this right? It’s it’s it’s no different. It’s a universal category It’s there in every culture that exists this idea of this basic separation Of heaven and earth and it is completely based on our actual experience in the world And if you if you can’t kind of re-embodied yourself And realize that this distinction is a very simple and clear one Uh, you’re going to struggle to understand what the meaning of it can be Because as you’re standing there like imagine yourself standing there on the ground Right all light comes from above Right wind comes from above the things that are above are unreachable. You can’t touch the stars You can’t touch the sky You can’t touch the sun and the moon all of these things which give you light and which are the source of wind invisible movement Think about it that way think of wind as invisible movement as invisible patterns of transformation Okay, see them that think of it that way so you have you have all of this above you and then below You have a world that you knock your foot against you have a world that you can touch That you can count that you can that you can get dirty with that can kill you And that is also dark Right. It hides the sun if you take something that’s on the ground you take a rock and you put it above your head It’s going to hide the light from you All right. This is very embodied right? This is very very But what it does is it separates two basic categories of reality And so when god said let there be light and there was light god saw that the light was good and He separated the light from the darkness god called the light day and the darkness he called night There was an evening and there was a morning the first day So now it starts to become clear. You can easily understand of course if you can embody yourself That light has to do with heaven And then Has to do with spirit it’s above and then darkness has something to do with This void so you don’t necessarily have to represent it below but it becomes analogous to below because it’s the moment when The light stops being Stopped it’s the moment where the light stops showing you what the world is like So I’m placing it like this for you to understand you wouldn’t necessarily have to put night at the at the bottom This is a good way to kind of see light dark earth as void and empty And heaven as wind spirit breath And speech So god Sorry, let me say So god is above And he speaks And light comes down on on the world So So then god says let there be a vault between the waters to separate Water from water so god made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it And so it was so god called the vault sky and there was an evening and there was a morning the second day all right So already you’re starting to see something like a narrowing You have heaven above but now you have like a second heaven which is like, okay what’s going on? You have the water that is below it’s kind of split into the potential the earth that is below it’s kind of opened up and now we have A pattern which is similar which is setting itself up inside the world so there’s You’re going to start to see that this pattern of attention is fractal just like The way in which multiplicity moves into unity in any object in the world or in any community in the world Happened at every level of reality And this is what is going to start to appear to you is that the pattern just repeating itself at different levels Until it comes together in the middle, okay And so we have these waters being separated and then we have now a Secondary heaven another heaven which is also called the second heaven Another heaven which is also above But is something like inside the earth The earth now is is obviously not the earth exactly the way that we understand it But as they inside the things that are visible and have are quantifiable Now augustine said this clearly he he said he said everything you see and when you look up in the sky All the things you see the sun the cloud the stars all of this is the earth All of this because it can be quantified but it the second heaven those things above That actually can be seen and identified They are like a secondary heaven. There are pointers towards Something which is truly invisible you could say or patterns that are truly invisible So the I mean it’s it’s not it’s not I don’t want you to think that i’m being esoteric here, right? It’s like the world has a pattern It’s like the world has a pattern That’s a day and night That’s a pattern and the the thing that manifests that to you that you can recognize that is a pattern Is those shining lights up in the sky that move? Are these shining lights up in the sky they move and they reveal to you? a regular pattern The regular patterns of reality are in the sky The irregular the more embodied irregular patterns are in the world they’re still there but they’re more irregular But the ones in this heavens are regular, right? Every day the sun comes up every day The the sun goes down the moon has its phases the stars move in the sky And so it’s it’s it’s completely natural that these heavenly bodies Are pointers to pattern they point us to patterns they point us to The invisible patterns you could say even though they are obviously visible Okay So god said let the water under the sky be gathered to one place and let the dry ground appear And it was so So god called the dry ground land and gathered the water and the gathered water water as he called seas And god saw that it was good Now I wanted I want to point you here something that I haven’t pointed to yet before so Now think of the think of the the problem of intelligence that i’m trying to present to you And it’s kind of embodied or active participation In the way that reality manifests itself to you teleologically So god says And you can imagine it like god says is god’s shining light Okay So imagine an eye in the sky And that a sun an eye the sun is the same thing as an eye let’s say And this is shining light down on the world And is showing you things And that has to do with identifying So When you encounter something that you’ve never seen before and you see it. What is it that you want to do? You want to identify That’s your job your job is to identify if you don’t identify it You don’t know if it can kill you. You don’t know if it’s dangerous. You have no idea And so there’s a direct relationship between seeing Speaking in the sense of identifying naming you could say okay, so god so so god speaks Identifies as light comes down from heaven Manifest itself on the thing And then god speaks it into being but then he Sees its relevance. He recognizes That which is manifesting itself to him and he says that it’s good. He judges it Right away god judges Now think of your think again of your experience think of your just basic experience, right? You walk in to the room You see the glass You identify it And immediately you ask yourself consciously or unconsciously you’re always asking yourself if it’s good This is necessary Because the reason why you even perceive the glass in the first place is because you use it to drink water And so you always have to ask yourself if it’s good or not Is it a good glass And this is this is true about everything that you encounter. You don’t even do it consciously This is true of everything you encounter as you’re walking on the grass You have a system which is constantly judging Because it has to be able to recognize that there’s a hole it has to be able to recognize that there’s an object in your way And so it’s looking at the ground at the grass that you’re walking on or the path and it’s always identifying naming And recognizing whether it’s good Is hopefully this makes sense all right So now we’re really going to start to see this fractal pattern start to appear more clearly So you have the basic structure you have The very invisible patterns of head principle origin wind spirit breath speech, which is completely above And now you have the void empty silent question puzzle darkness potential All of this is below And now at every level of reality This is going to start to appear as being the same pattern so like I said the the The potential and the actuality of the glass is relative obviously And the actuality of the glass is relative obviously But it points to some to the pattern itself to the pattern of the of identity and potentiality itself And so this is why you’re going to see at every level. It’s going to repeat So you have the secondary heavens Which are the sky and then you have the secondary earth And now in the secondary earth the same pattern happens again So god creates dry ground And separates it from the waters so dry ground is above It’s higher than water, right? This is just basic experience Dry ground is higher than water dry ground is the place where you live dry ground is the place where you find meaning Because that’s where you build cities. That’s where you do things That’s where you eat all of this like this from the dry ground. That’s where you can breathe air You can encounter spirit from the dry ground and light But you can’t in the sea, right in the sea if you stay there too long you die because you run out of spirit You run out of meaning you run out of air all of these analogies play themselves out So imagine dry ground as a mountain is the best way to understand it You have this mountain and then at the bottom of the mountain or around the mountain you have the sea Which is an image of the original chaos the original potentiality now at a different level Then god said let the land produce vegetation seed bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it According to the various kinds and it was so the land produced vegetation plants Bearing seeds according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in accordance to their kinds and god saw that it was good And there was an evening and there was a morning the third day Now here notice again what is going on, right? So god says let the land produce vegetation, but not just produce vegetation What is he saying? He’s saying produce seed bearing plants. Why seed bearing plants? What a strange thing to say He’s saying seed bearing plants Because once again in this pattern now The seed Is the identity? Is the identity And the vegetation Is the variation or is the bottom part of this pattern? So he’s repeating the pattern he’s saying You need a way for this identity to recognize the identity of the plant that’s the seed the seed is The manner in which you recognize The identity of what you’re encountering so you want reality To have stability This is how we work in the world. We have to be able to recognize the different plants And in that pattern what there is is there’s both identity And variability so we’re moving toward the kind of multiplication but this multiplication always has to be A recognition also of the identity of each plant and how these plants are different from each other And and and how they participate in a major pattern of just plants So you can see this fractal this fractal process just kind of continuing and then once again The same thing god says the identity is in the god said it’s in the seed of the plants And then the plants kind of manifest this variability god sees and judges and says that it is good So now you can see Same thing the dry ground on the dry ground you have the same pattern of above and below right identity spirits Obviously, it’s not spirit in this case, but identity and variability. All right So we continue So and god said let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night and let them serve as signs To mark sacred times and days and years And let them be lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth and it was so God made two great lights the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night He also made the stars god set them in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth To govern the day and the night and to separate light from darkness and god saw that it was good And there was an evening and there was a morning the first the fourth day So now in the heaven even in the world of meaning The same pattern appears so the pattern appears below in kind of the world of manifestation you could say As a fractal pattern, but it also appears above In the pattern itself And so we have these signs in the sky. They are signs to mark the day. They’re signs for you to identify the pattern of reality And there’s one of the major ones one of the major Lights which is there to govern the day and went to govern the night. So you have light and dark Even in the heavens the pattern is fractal all the way through like every day is going to be like that just spoiler here Um, and god said let the water team with living creatures and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky So god created the great creatures of the sea Sea monsters, it doesn’t say they don’t like to say sea monsters, but great creatures of the sea mean sea serpents and sea monsters That all these demythology demythologizing Biblis says are the worst It just means it means sea monsters. Um god created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing With which the water teams that moves about it according to their kinds and every winged bird according to its kind And god said saw that it was good God blessed them and said be fruitful and increase in number and fill the water in the seas and that the birds increase on the earth There’s an evening and there’s morning the fifth day now This is where you’re going to start to see what’s really going on Because until now you might have thought that what i’m saying is just a bunch of like just random interpretation But here you it becomes impossible not to see why on earth would god create birds and fish on the same day What is happening? It’s the strangest thing in the world. It seems to us doesn’t make any sense, right? Well, it only makes sense if we understand that he’s constantly establishing the repetition of the heaven and earth Pattern of the above and below pattern which is started from the beginning And so he puts he creates the birds above and this and the sea monsters below and the fish So even in the sea he separates fish and sea monsters The fish are those that you can eat that you can encounter and the sea monsters are those that are going to eat you Right. There’s a difference between the two So you have the the fish and the sea monsters, but even in this whole pattern you have the birds And the fish as framing again the same duality which is being framed from the very beginning of the of the text Um, and you have to understand that that’s what’s been going on from the beginning Because why would god create vegetation? Before he created the sun and the moon It doesn’t make any sense in terms of science. How can you create vegetation first and then create the sun? It is completely logical in terms of a scientist but in terms of a pattern of reality It’s completely understandable and what you’ll notice is that From the beginning of this whole thing The bottom stuff appears first The potentiality kind of manifests itself first As a question as this kind of darkness which is calling to be solved this potential which is asking to be resolved And then comes the answer from above right the the the name the idea the light So think again about your experience, right you encounter something in the world You can imagine in a microsecond in a micro microsecond. The first thing it does is present itself to you as potential or as puzzle And then in obviously it happens almost simultaneously You immediately identify judge and make it participate in reality, but you can obviously Have the experience of seeing something you’ve never seen before I mean everybody’s had that experience you see something or you experience something that you’ve never seen before So at first it presents itself to you as a as a puzzle, right? It’s like what is this? And then the process has to happen this back and forth process of question and identification of question and judging in order for you to to Finally be able to kind of identify and participate in its in its existence All right And so now we have god said let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds the livestock the creatures that move Along the ground and the wild animals each according to its kind and it was so God made the wild animals according to their kinds the livestock according to the kinds and all the creatures that move along the ground According to their kinds and god saw that it was good And so once again, what is happening? What is happening in this in this this text? Why is it that god separates? living creatures between Livestock wild animals And creatures that move on the ground And the answer is very simple it’s just to continue the very same pattern This hierarchy that we’re seeing is a hierarchy of meaning right, it’s a hierarchy of Identification participation in reality And so when god creates the animals He parted he does it in the same in the same pattern That is you have livestock Livestock is more intelligent animals You can call them animals that are closer to us Animals that participate in our intelligence there they are the sheep the cows all the animals that kind of uh Let’s say are almost not almost but are more like extensions of human society and Then you have the wild animals Which are out there in the chaos in the in the in the wild in the world that doesn’t completely make sense to us And now then the creepy crawlers Are the ones that live underground like the sea monsters live on the ground that dig holes in the ground that come up You know and uh and that don’t actually are not completely in the light you could say That they’re actually hiding in darkness hiding under rocks And so you have to kind of dig in order to encounter them, you know Just like the sea monsters are and the fish are on the ground just like the very pattern from the beginning of darkness chaos Uh, you know at the bottom and light meaning participation uh at the top And then of course now become two man again then god said let us make mankind in our image in our likeness So that they may rule over the fish In the sea and the birds in the sky over the livestock and all the wild animals and over all the creatures that move along the ground So why is it that man has to rule This is like the most politically incorrect thing that you could say right, what are we talking about? But once you realize This pattern the pattern of intelligence it’s it has to change the way you see reality Which is that intelligence is the place? in which reality is encountered identified And also judged um And this is going to be a tough pill for a lot of people to swallow Um, but at least try to understand it try to understand it in this pattern So man has to rule because man is an image of god Man is an image of god in the sense that man is a locus of intelligence and all the things that god Said all the things that you saw from the beginning in terms of how god creates the world is something that we participate in To a lower at a lower level we could say we recognize that we participate in that at a lower level because we do that We cast light we identify We we judge And then and then we we are we are the place in which meaning is gathered into into us And so now god puts man above all the creatures which are below now Remember those creatures were already organized in this hierarchy of meaning Right livestock wild animals crawlers fish sea monsters All of this is organized in this kind of hierarchy of meaning this hierarchy of danger uh this hierarchy between that which is in the light which is identifiable which participates intelligence and that which is Below and is in the chaos and is and is also dangerous to you. Okay? And so we have the human person meeting in the middle becoming the place where all of these patterns kind of join together in the center And so then to understand the role of man a little better We actually have to go into genesis 2 just for a little bit to kind of understand because in genesis 2 there’s another creation narrative which focuses more on the human person And then it says god Sorry, let me skip this actually Oh, yeah, so it says that I don’t want I don’t want to run out of time here But he says god bless them and said be fruitful increase in number fill the earth and subdue it again this is going to be difficult, but intelligence Fills the earth and subdues it not in in a negative sense But in the sense of identifying right the scientist that is constantly discovering new Species and all of this is something like intelligence or man filling the earth And subduing it in the sense of identifying it and making it participate in a pattern of meaning Rule over the fish and the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves in the ground Then god said I give you every bit seed bearing plant Etc, etc, and then he saw that it was good And it’s important that when god created the humans he creates the male and female um And in the scripture there’s a sense in which at first this is almost like man is actually androgynous that he creates man male and female That is in man is the duality of heaven and earth itself Right, so there’s a microcosm Of this basic duality of heaven and earth which is being reproduced inside the human person as within them they also contain this Actuality and potentiality and how they also participate in the manner in which actuality and potentiality come together in the world So it’s not just in them, but it’s actually in in as being intelligent uh intelligent uh Subjects they are able to now encounter the world as this union of of these two All right, so this is where I wanted to go into the second chapter of genesis just for a little bit to help you understand How this kind of comes together? So it says this is the account of the heavens of the earth when they were created when the lord god made the earth and the heavens Now no shrub had yet appeared on the earth now you see it’s different here here There is a sense in which actually man kind of comes before everything He’s actually there at the outset before god did all those other things before you can imagine that god was Man or the microcosm or the intelligent agent was there even in the origin of creation itself Uh, no shrub had yet appeared on the earth and no plant had sprung up For the lord god had not sent rain on the earth and there was no one to work the ground But streams came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground Then the lord god formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life And the man became a living being So it’s a similar image as to what we have before but here man is there right at the outset So it says that there was no plant. There was nothing on the ground and that water covered the earth Water came out from the earth and covered the earth. So it’s the same image as before you have Heaven above and the earth below the earth is chaos and water And then what god does is he gathers all the potentiality? the dust All this formless chaos He gathers it into one place And then he puts heaven into it He blows air into this gathered dust And that’s how man becomes a living being Now what I want to propose to you is that process of gathering dust and putting air into it That’s what was being described in the first chapter of genesis and that is how you encounter everything in reality all the time non-stop That is the world presents itself to you as indefinite potential And the manner in which you are able to Exist in a living world is that intelligence gathers potential Into bodies And then puts purpose Or recognizes purpose Engages with purpose meaning spirit breath And that is how that is how the world actually exists That is how the world actually exists Right, and so the description in genesis is a description of how the world exists Not in a scientific way but in a way which takes into account That intelligence is necessary That we are intelligent beings in the world and that we can’t avoid That problem we can’t pretend that we’re not in the world and that we’re just analyzing phenomena And that we’re not part of that process So it’s a it’s a cosmic Vision of reality which includes the viewer which measures the viewer or includes the viewer in the way in which we understand the world All right, and so we have this image again now we can we can represent it this way We can also represent it this way This is a way that will help you understand if you can realize that you can represent it this way I’m going to understand so much and this is where I want to make a shameless plug Which is that my brother? Matthew pejo and I we developed a lot of this way of speaking about reality together Which I which is not something that we invented. It really is just a reinterpretation of traditional Pattern making it’s an interpretation of the church fathers of the rabbis of the of the brahmin of it’s just a Way in which we are trying to represent these traditional stories For the modern world. He wrote a book called the language of creation Which goes through a lot of the things that i’m talking about in almost in the more even in a more kind of mathematical technical way um, so now think of think of this the first image that I showed you as Heaven and earth you could say So this is the same So at the top you have i’m just lay them out there like there’s more complexity to this But it’s like father heaven spirit light essence pattern mind purpose all of these things which are above And then at the bottom mother earth waters chaos potential question body uh puzzle multiplication all of these images of that which is below and then what you have is you have The pattern which descends right the ray of light the speech the speaking which comes down Right the logos which comes down from the father And connects with heaven right Sorry connects with earth And that usually in in all traditions pretty much appears at the top of the mountain which is just completely completely Intuitive right the mountain is the place where heaven and earth meet it’s like the earth kind of coming together into a point Where the heaven now touches the earth at it at its highest point Okay, but it’s also an image of this difference between quality and quantity identity variability, you know all of this kind of image of uh of the relationship between the identity of your team And the variability of its players of its idiosyncrasies all of that will kind of come down below as this image of the mountain or the the pyramid And so I won’t go into to this right now, but there are there’s a century there’s a Centrifugal Force and a centripetal force that is there is there is a capacity to move into attention to move into identity to move into purpose And then there’s a way in which we are able to kind of have this let’s say What you could call a breakdown of attention or focused attention, but is also this kind of General attention you could call it where we’re We have this general attention on the on the borders of our even of our visual field Where it’s like almost like an alarm system, right where things if things we we don’t have a lot of a lot of energy there But if things pop in this variability kind of pops in on the edge and it’s the question right the puzzle something’s happening here And I can’t see it. It’s a puzzle. So what do I do? I then put my attention on it Identify it judge it and do all the things that we talked about before Um, and so there’s there’s a there’s a centrifugal force and a centripetal force and that’s true as much as you’re In your attention as it is in a team or a country or any group anything that has body There’s something which is making it more towards its identity and some aspect which is pushing it towards multiplicity variability And potentiality, okay I don’t want to go into that too much because that would take us into a whole other other world But just you understand that you you probably are if you’re Jungians you’re aware of the kind of coagulosol Structure that Jung used in terms of alchemy. This is exactly what i’m talking about, right? This is exactly the coagulosol pattern, which is a movement towards solidity and identity and then a dispersion into uh into potentiality But what I want to help you to understand especially is that this structure like this basic pattern can help you understand So many things right it’s it’s a pattern of a temple Right It’s a it’s a pattern of a temple where in a temple let’s say in the in the jewish temple You had the holy of holies where the that where the the glory of god would descend in the holy of holies And then there you would have a priest Who was just one person? And then outside of that you would have all these levels of quantification Where outside you would have the priestly cast then you would have the faithful and then you would have the strangers Right. It’s a pattern of a church which has the same pattern You have the altar in the highest point of the church where god descends on the altar and then there’s also a Reduced amount of people that are there that represent this moving into quality this moving away from quantity And then the sacraments get dispersed out into the nave where the faithful gather And then there’s a narthex or a vestibule where Strangers come and then on the outside of the church there are gargoyles and strangers and other aspects of reality Okay So this is the structure of It’s the structure of uh of the way that greeks understood themselves in ancient times, right? They had the umphalos they had the they had the navel of the world And in that place they received oracles from heaven Which would which would bind them together which would manifest their destiny all of that was manifested at the place where they had the the Belly button of the world the center of the world and then as you move the way you would have greeks and then Strangers that you knew and then finally barbarians and ultimately Monsters things that have confused identities things that you don’t recognize Would be outside on the outer edges of this, okay So like I said, this is basically just the pattern of of the way in which we encounter the world But it’s also the pattern of The pattern of how society is actually buying together It’s it’s not just it’s not just a subjective subjective experience But it scales up in terms of your experience into the social experience and ultimately I think into a cosmic Virgin it’s an image of the cosmic of the cosmic pattern Um, so I just want to show you quickly without even going into detail. I want to show you how this pattern just appears Everywhere. So here’s an icon of the ascension of christ Look you have above you have the the top of the pyramid or the top of the mountain You have the principle the logos which is above You can imagine that the father is actually above this hidden Above and then below you have the mother as the place of potentiality And then next to her you have all this multiplicity so you have the one you have the mother you have the 12 Okay, this is one example. Here’s an example of the image of baptism so you have Christ as the one who now joins heaven and earth as this Point at the top of the mountain joins heaven and earth But now he’s descending all the way down from the top. Let’s say down into the waters Down into the waters of chaos and you see the spirits above Which is coming down on the on on the top of the mountain and below you have the sea monsters Which are below in the chaos of the waters right Symbol just many many and so this is a version that I made which I call the image of everything basically Uh, and it’s just trying to kind of capture the bible story as an image of this this pattern As an image of what how the the top of the pattern relates to the bottom of the pattern the waters at the bottom The the sin the fall, you know the thorns as this multiplicity Um, et cetera the sea monster, uh, I don’t want to interpret it But there are different ways in which you can you can kind of see this And the last one I wanted to show you is an image of the last judgment which is really The ultimate image of this if you want to see an ultimate image of this whole pattern because obviously the last judgment Being the last moment or the eschaton or the moment in which all the totality is manifested in one final thing then you have this image of Of the world in this version, especially you actually have the father above above right at the top um Can you I don’t think you can see my cursor, huh? Can you see my cursor? Oh here you can see this way. Okay, so you have the father above here Then you have the logos descending onto the world Can you see that he’s got the world underneath him? And then you have That which is below Which is both the hell It’s kind of monstrous hell, okay But it’s also the place of Paradise here Because it’s the place in which we gather things together So remember in in in scripture the gathering of the dust and the blowing of the spirit Well, that also happens from the bottom right? It’s at the so you have the two sides. Remember I talked about the centrifugal and the centripetal force On the left of christ is the sword and there’s a descent down into death On the right of christ there is his hand lifting up right lip. Sorry wrong hand lifting up And here you find the gathering of the saints And they rise up see these little saints with angel with wings they go up on the right of christ into glory So there are very very mysterious things about this image that I don’t want to go into too much detail But you can understand that this is happening through these angels that are making music That are making sounds pattern sounds and this is what is calling to the end Bringing about the judgment of all of reality in which all of this is kind of happening the judging of the good bringing into the center and the the the The ultimate exclusion in a cosmic way towards towards death And then here this is the process so this is uh It’s a it’s a complicated thing in orthodox, uh theology But on this this is the soul which is you can see the soul here. The soul is moving up this serpent slash ladder So it’s both a way to go down and a way to go up just like shoots and ladders guys This is shoots and ladders is one of the oldest games in reality. It’s it’s a it’s a truly cosmic game, by the way Uh, it’s it’s almost religious as a game. So you have this coming down and moving up Which is which is captured in one image and on this are all the sins That you can have those sins are coupled with virtues And so as the soul ascends this thing they encounter at every level of reality A demon which is pulling it down, but also they also encounter angels which are pulling them up Here in this one, you don’t see the angel so much. Um In other versions you see are in other versions You’ll see the angel like in this one You see the angel as the one trying to push down the demon and as you move up you kind of move towards this This judgment and that’s actually that hierarchy that I showed you at the beginning in the creation that also obviously has a An analogous version of that in you in your virtues in your capacity To scatter yourself into chaos, right by falling into all these thoughts that rip you apart And the capacity to join together into one and to move up the ladder of attention as you worship god Of attention as you move towards virtue rather than this dilapidation and distraction By which you lose the worship you lose the capacity to attend to that which is above you and you fall into chaos and And the multiplicity of the passions right rip passions that rip you apart All right, jordan, I think we’re starting with your questions let’s go for it Well How about sub do Think of the word Sub to or to arrange hierarchically do to give everything it’s do That is so when man subdues the world he does exactly what you’re doing Right place and that’s a reflection of the Simultaneous Act of perception and judgment and the fact that those things as you pointed out are inextricable and that’s technically true, right? Yeah, people psychologists studying perception from the biological Ground have drawn that inescapable conclusion So that was really cool ritual encounters with other people In death in dostoevsky’s the devils the possessed there’s a great scene where stavrogan goes into a An officer’s club and he’s coming unglued at this point in his Political chaos utopian political chaos he’s possessed by these ideas He puts his fingers in the nostrils of an age of jimrow and drags him onto the street and it just causes Absolute chaos in the entire society So now you realize how fragile like how easy it is to actually just shatter, you know, these this ritual Ritual reality. Yes dostoevsky understood that so deeply it is so that’s stunning the the female potential Equation i’ve been criticized a lot for associating femininity with chaos Although it’s not an insult and it’s not something that I did casually and it’s not something I did and the idea of the seminal word is precisely a reflection of that and and the implication of that is feminine potentiality and the analog between the word and The drawing out of potential new forms so there’s a sexual element to that obviously that’s reflected in the idea of the seminal word the pyramid notion on top of the George Washington Tower the obelisk is a pyramid capped in aluminum of all things because aluminum was the most valuable metal at that point and so that idea that there’s a an Pure and valuable top to the pyramidal structure like that’s an icon of the entire structure of the united states and by by Extension the entire let’s say western world but world as such Yeah The the egyptian pyramids were were most probably capped with gold like the very top of the pyramid would be like a mini pyramid And then that would have been uh gilded You’re right So one of the advantages to the interpretive framework this interpretive framework is that it explains the intrinsic Sacred nature of the pyramidal structure It’s a great mystery like what’s up with these pyramids exactly and like people put a lot of work into those things So it wasn’t trivial. Yeah, and the ziggurats are pyramids too people always want to separate them But you know all these structures these kind of these structures that are representing mountains are like geometric versions of mountains That’s what they are. And if you want to once you understand that then you realize that every time someone goes up a mountain in scripture It’s it’s the same as a pyramid it’s going up to the top of reality I think you did a brilliant job of explaining that with your analysis of those images at the At the end. Are you going to make that image you made into a carving? Yes, I am but it just in line somewhere in one of my carvings someone someone is you need a client to purchase that I have one but I can also make one for you if you want. It’s quite something jonathan and then this last thing i’ll say I think is Um in the second creation version where you have man primary That’s a analog a repetition of the notion of the word Yeah, so it’s the same so that so interesting seeing that embedded in a really archaic narrative there Oh, so I do have one other thing. Why did you use intelligence as as the as the primary descriptor of the interactive consciousness instead of logos? Well, the reason why I mean I tried to kind of move between the two It’s also because it’s hard to use the know which word to use Because the way that the ancients understood intelligence was very is a little different from the way we understand it It was more it is a it’s called a noose in orthodox thinking which is it’s actually it’s beyond rationality It’s the capacity to directly grasp the pattern To attention and exactly that’s why it’s related to attention. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that’s yeah that and that supersedes Rationalities embedded inside that capacity to pay attention because attention selects the objects that rationality deals with and rationality tends not to notice that It’s like well, that’s the easy part. It’s like no. No. No, that’s that’s the hard part actually Yeah, and as we see like YouTube virality is a great way to understand what happens when we’re not careful about that because what we have with youtube virality Or just internet virality are just these random, you know stupid things that pop up gather all the attention Vanish pop up gather all the attention vanish. And so it’s actually it’s actually it ends up being a form of Breakdown of attention. It’s a distraction. It prevents us from seeing It’s the incapacity to pay attention to the right things and it leads us into uh into a kind of breakdown It’s great I really I always learn a lot listening to you. It’s really good Pretty good. Thanks. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much Thanks Okay, one question someone is asking could you elaborate on what you mean about above and below Um, well the idea of above and below It like I said, it manifests itself fractally but it you it’s about something like I mean It’s actual and potential and so it’s identity and potentiality Um, and so think about it. Let’s let’s think about it. Just like let’s bring it down to like a real real like a basic basic level um So let’s think of a of a sports team again, right? So you have the identity Of the sports team the reason why it exists, which is to win basketball games or to to do that Then there’s the identity of the team itself You know which is kind of embedded in that and then there’s the potential the potential of that team are the players Their their those players have also their own potential like it’s like I said, it’s fractal So the the players can change But the identity of the team won’t So that’s what we mean by potential right, and so you can It’s its variability which comes together And then is able to manifest the purpose in the world So that’s what we mean by above and below and so god says um To let the earth bring forth vegetation that has seed We always forget that god doesn’t just speak it into existence He says to the earth bring forth And then so it’s like out of the potential comes this variability Which then receives name from above and joins it together into specific identities And so so like I said this idea of above and below can be seen in any anything that you encounter Another question is You mentioned the pattern of livestock and wild animals that manifest heaven and earth Are people that try to tame animals such as tigers bears? Examples of breakdown of the pattern and that is why it usually tends in disaster Yeah, definitely I mean you can see that that you have to kind of have a Respect subdue as jordan said I love that I actually love that that is you have to be able to see things Where they really are and engage with them where they are in this kind of pattern of reality And so if you engage with if you engage with the pattern of reality in a wrong way That’s you die And it and it can be it can be something like taming a taming a tiger A tiger but it can also be something like eating rocks Like rocks are not potential that you have access to to eat And and and that’s true for like an indefinite amount of things that there are certain identities which have certain potentials that are That can participate in them and if you don’t encounter that properly Then you’re going not going to work if you have a basketball team and you decide to to fill the basketball team with gerbils Well, your basketball team is gonna is gonna lose it’s not gonna exist and so there this is how this this This is how it works like in terms of this idea of subduing right or judging Is is a very good thing. It’s a necessary thing because it’s how you judge what potential Is able to join with what identity? Okay, we have a heretical question How sure are you about the universality of heaven and earth distinction As far as I know it is symbolic pattern appearing with the axial age cultures buddhist christianity socratic greece islam Animistic culture, for example do not have clear distinction between those two categories So by extension what makes you sure that all of this isn’t just a perfect exposition of an axial age mind Axial age mind How can I say this Now i’m going to go back into what i’m saying i’m going to go back into what i’m saying which is about embodied reality People who talk about the actual age and animistic as if they don’t exist in the world They just I have no I have very little patience for that Like where are you? Where are you to tell me about the axial age as if it’s something which you’re not In and talk about the animistic age as if it’s something that somehow you can see from outside like this How can I say this it’s like We don’t know much about animistic Religions because we’re not animistic religions We’re always interpreting animistic religions from the place where we are And so it’s a very to me. It’s always like, do you know the secret traditions of the shamans? But you read the text that some european went out into tibet And wrote some text based on what they encountered there were you initiated? Right, did they bring you into the secret of secrets? Did they tell you what their secret traditions are? No, they didn’t you don’t know them. And so i’m not saying that that that the comet is true or false. I’m saying that You really know less about these traditions than you think you do Because the way, you know about something is not about it’s not by studying it from the outside But it’s about it’s about encountering it and living it from the inside And those that are initiated into the higher mysteries, they’re not supposed to talk about it anyways So they’re not going to tell you So even if a scholar was at some point maybe initiated into the higher mysteries They shouldn’t tell you and if they tell you it means they probably weren’t initiated and they’re bullshitting Right. This is true Like even of the elucidian mysteries everybody talks about the elucidian mystery as if they know what they are It’s like that was a pretty awesome thing because no one ever told anybody what happened there, right? And so it’s really important to understand that to understand this Anyways, i’m sorry. I don’t want to I don’t want to like go off on this person But it’s really just important to understand the implications Of these embodied patterns and how it is that every time we pretend that we can stand above them and and just Analyze them that we’re we’re we’re I think we’re deluding ourselves Um, and so coming back to heaven and earth, um How can I say this like I think that heaven and earth is a universal pattern Doesn’t mean that there maybe aren’t other ways of explaining that same duality or that same relationship um And also it’s the same. It’s the same. It’s the same thing. Like it’s the same problem like these animistic Uh cultures that were there before the actual age. You don’t know anything about them You you have no way of of encountering them and and the ones you encounter now The idea that they’re the same as the ones that were there before the actual age is also It’s all kind of weird scientific delusions people give themselves Sorry Sorry to ever ask that question. I didn’t mean to kind of go off but these are sometimes these things I I get itchy about them Okay, someone is asking What is the meaning of the god calling the human very good versus calling the other things only good And that’s very it’s super interesting because there’s even a there’s even a day where god doesn’t say that it was good by the way People always forget that Um when god separates the waters, he doesn’t say that it was good Uh, and so I mean, I think that’s what it is. It’s that in a way the human being Participates in the pattern of the good in a way similar to the way god participates in the pattern of the good That is the human being can do good and can recognize good right and can participate in the good Uh, whereas the other beings less so not completely not completely, uh Absent of it, but less so and so I think that all living creatures participate in the good and participating in god ultimately But it’s just it’s just a question of hierarchy and embedded embedded patterns you could say Okay There’s a psychological observation In terms of psychological work how out of the infinite complexity of interpretations certain interpretations of experience have been offered to us to stay inside the group we accept Defensively versus how can How we can seek out our intuited other patterns in our experience? Create a new reality for ourselves Um, okay, I would say Okay, let’s let’s let’s see this way that the patterns of specific groups They are always limited They’re limited by their limitation. They’re limited by the fact that they embody the patterns in a specific context So because they do so they will always be somewhat faulty They won’t be perfect because they’re not right. They they’re they’re they’re somewhat lower on the mountain of meaning you could say and so But ultimately if you’re attentive the idea is that within those smaller patterns you’re able to intuit higher patterns And all and hopefully participate in things that lead you into higher patterns So if you’re let’s give you an example like if if you’re part of a group of of uh of uh Addicts, let’s say right you hang out with a bunch of cokeheads or people who take heroin So obviously you’re in there’s something in that pattern, which is true Right. There’s something in that pattern which binds you together in a way towards the telos towards the reason but there’s also something in that pattern which is Leading you into a breakdown of yourself But it still has something And so hopefully that’s something right that capacity to bind together with others in a kind of communion That is ultimately what should lead you up towards a better version of that pattern Right toward instead of hanging out with a bunch of cokeheads, right? You hang out with some people who play sports or hang out with people who are interested in cars or people are interested in this But there is a way in which even in the lowest versions of these there’s always something for it to even exist That has to kind of participate now I would be wary about the danger of thinking The danger of seeing novelty as a value in itself Um, because this is something which we’ve seen very very much In the modern world, which is we value novelty as a Novelty is novelty is uh neutral Right. Some novelties are good and some novelties are bad And so we shouldn’t seek out new patterns New patterns Just because they’re new If we seek new patterns or better patterns, it’s because they’re better better in the sense that they they they bring us closer to something which is a healthy mixture of this A healthy balance of the patterning and the multiplicity, right? It’s this incarnational principle If you kind of if you’re not careful, it’s true You can move too high and go into tyrannical systems if you move too low then you fall into kind of anarchic Uh chaotic chaotic realities Someone is commenting that Your proposition at the beginning of the talk that intelligence is necessary for the world to unfold reminds them of Jung recounting in memory dreams reflection Standing over an african vista and having the feeling he’s the first But first consciousness whoever have witnessed such a thing Yeah I mean there’s definitely There’s there’s an aspect of potential uh, or encountering the strange which is which is very important because it there’s an aspect of um Surprise and wonder which comes with encountering that which we don’t know which is also part of the the pattern of reality and so there’s an idea right in ancient stories that There are treasures hidden in the deep right that there are treasures hidden in the outside there are treasures Being guarded by monsters. And so there’s a sense in which moving out into potentiality Is also a way in which to kind of discover These these pearls right these secrets these precious stones these gems that are kind of hidden in in the unknown So that’s definitely part of the pattern as well Yeah, I think we have another question by jordan Go ahead Actually, it’s a question from tammy, so i’ll let her ask it This question how did darwin bring plato back Because by coming back into the world of biology He inevitably brought back Purpose driven action or selection is the best way to to understand it right? He brought back the idea of selection and selection is not chaos right selection is not random Selection is is purpose oriented and it’s purpose oriented towards The perpetuation of the seed the perpetuation of the identity and so This is the argument that i’ve been trying to put forth with sam harrison richard dawkins It’s like you guys there’s a big contradiction here between darwin and newton or the way we look at newton It’s like this is a big problem And so it’s a surprise it’s like it’s a it’s a surprise I think that nobody kind of expected And nobody necessarily framed it completely that way, but it did end up bringing back uh the idea of quality Back into the back into the picture Because you you choose for a reason and the reason is something which is closer to your own The perpetuation of your own identity And it’s like crafted by evolutionary forces and so meaning itself is the consequence of the evolutionary process and how that tangles up with the Like the theological perspective that you brought to bear today That’s an incredibly complicated and difficult problem, but as you said god calls the earth to manifest its potential so Yeah, and so you could you could How can I say this? It’s like so you can see it bottom up Which is I mean i’ve been experiencing i’ve been expressing it more bottom up recently just because people are are kind of scientists scientifically minded But you can also you can see it completely top down like you can see it as Like like I was trying to explain to you as these The evolutionary process of maintaining your identity Is is a reflection of a deeper pattern? Which is a cosmic pattern of how the world actually unfolds So it’s not that it’s not necessarily that evolutionary process brought about this it’s that the reason why evolutionary processes work the way they do and do what they do is because their their functioning within a larger system Yes, they’re imaging they’re manifesting the way the world works so that’s how the world discussion of subdued starts to become so relevant because As creatures make their choices and live or die by them what they are in fact doing is the spiritual process of subduing And if they do it improperly then they perish Yeah, exactly and so so there’s an image Like we were talking about the idea of man at the outset, you know And so this is this is represented in iconography for example as the image of of christ Jesus christ human jesus christ creating the world Which is just like for people it just freaks them out because like how does this work? How is this possible? but that’s that’s the that’s the that’s the understanding there is a manner in which Which You how can I say this and there’s a manner in which Just like we have this christian idea that christ acts as an axis Which transforms the past and the present let’s say which kind of acts as this this central axis You could say that intelligence as it manifests itself in the world does the same That is the human person human intelligence Goes back into the past and makes sense of it and goes into the future and makes sense of it and so you could say that Intelligent is at the outset The things don’t exist outside of this this capacity to contain them in consciousness and so conscious so the world is is born in consciousness And the past as well the past is born in consciousness, too So all those those those processes that people try to understand all these all the big bang and all this stuff It’s still born in man like it’s still born in consciousness And so the real origin Is not the big bang This is going to be the weirdest thing you’re going to understand the real origin Is the intelligence? Which is able to even perceive the big bang or see it as a pattern as as not just a quantum field which never changes It’s like perceiving change transformation identity participating it Like that’s the origin of reality So the description in genesis like i’m trying to help you see that it is an actual description Of the origin of the world It’s not a metaphor like in the way that we want to think about it It’s not just a fairy tale which is helping us understand things we don’t understand It is describing the manner in which reality originates And it originates in meaning Then phenomena not phenomena Phenomena first as a puzzle, right? Right. I talked about that like this potential that bubbles up and calls to be answered And then meaning which comes down so you can see the same for every single all scientific theory Is like that. It’s like something presents itself as a puzzle and you’re like, what is that? And then here comes the logos the seed which comes in and patterns it Or identifies it judges it separates it from other things in the way that happens in the first chapter of genesis Okay Okay, there’s two more psychological questions i’m going to Tell them both together because I think they are linked And jordan you may also have something to contribute to that one How would you work with the problem of inclusive exclusive categories in these times? Projection scapegoating And the other question that’s I think is related Where do the movements of cancel culture or black lives matter fit or how to make sense of these movements into this? intelligence model Yeah So one of the things one of the things we’re seeing is we’re seeing We’re seeing out of control versions of this identification system or the system of communion Um The way in which reality works is fractal and so Communities or identities embed themselves in each other. That’s how it that’s how it works. And so in a in a normal kind of traditional world You can be a family In a neighborhood in a community Right in a nation in a church And it’s like it’s all embedded and you can also participate in all these different identities You can be in a club or you can be in this and that and so it all kind of works together um, so one of the problems we’re having right now is that Let’s say kind of woke woke culture has Understood the problem of identity, right? They understand they understand the problem of exclusion But the answer they give is that they want to account for everything They want everything to fit Now the problem is that that doesn’t it’s impossible. It’s an impossible and it’s even a dangerous thing And there there are a lot of ancient traditions which help you understand that So for example, like you have the idea in jewish law that you have to leave a fringe on your vestment Or you have to leave the corners of the field untilled for the strangers uh all of these patterns are there to manifest the fact that you can’t have A system which is both coherent and complete at the same time you can’t those two things Let me interrupt just for a second for it well the ziggurat answers that question too because People can be included at a higher level of unity and excluded at a lower and so part of this is conceptual confusion it’s like the problem of category is the problem of inclusion and exclusion and exclusion can lead to Demonization very easily and that’s a big problem a fundamental problem But the the problem that you’re talking about that’s manifesting socially is a is a consequence of this lack of understanding of the hierarchy of value so the the people who are pushing diversity inclusivity and equity are saying something like Look, we’re all divinely human And you object to that by saying well, yes But we still need to differentiate ourselves into specialized categories and we have to think through that very carefully so that we subdue things properly Oh exactly. And so what what’s happened and so what’s happened is that people want to make Inclusivity the only value Really the only value because of the problem of exclusion and so What happens and this is this is What i’m going to say is is going to be seem radical to some but what we’re seeing in this process is the actual destruction Of the world and it’s actually going to this type of thinking will can actually destroy the world or Lead to absolute tyranny one or the other or maybe one because causing the other because So imagine you have a basketball team, right? You have a basketball team the purpose of the team is to play basketball to win the championship to do this But then you say no, no, no The the purpose of the team is inclusion And now imagine you do that for every single level of reality and every single communion you say that the purpose of your group is inclusion But so then you sacrifice the actual purpose of the group which is to play basketball to win games and everything for inclusion And you end up doing that in all aspects of reality what you’re doing is you’re devouring the purpose You’re you’re eating it. It’s like it’s becoming eaten by this thing this this it’s a monster. It’s like it’s the potential It’s like potentiality is infinite. It’s like you need to let all this potential in and so we were like this is wrong Right, you’re excluding this potential. So we need to kind of Bring all this potential in so what it does is it’s like a sea monster that comes up and devours the and devours the identities um, and so either it brings about a kind of fragmentation and chaos and breakdown But often the world can’t sustain itself that way. So what it tends to do is it tends to lead to lead into a kind of Absolute identity and it’s weird because the way it seems to be happening It’s just the strangest thing is that it’s like people are trying to make inclusivity as the tyrannical system itself Which is just seems like it’s not possible, but that seems to be what’s happening is that inclusivity is going to turn into tyranny but what’s important is that That that gesture is going to create something like absolute scapegoats Absolute scapegoats, which is that those that will refuse to participate in this highest this weird principle of inclusivity will be Absolutely excluded. It’s the only sin um, and it’s an unforgivable sin and so we’re moving kind of moving toward that and it’s uh, Yeah, it’s kind of scary to see it to see it happen Well, it’s part of Terminologically part of an assault on the idea of the patriarchy and that means it’s assault on the idea of pyramidal categorization itself because that’s assimilated in the indiscriminate imagination with Tyranny and the identification of tyranny with the act of categorization itself And so this is a deep struggle, right? So if the act of categorization is part of subduing and that’s part of the manifestation of the word then the assault on that under the guise of Destructuring the patriarchy is an assault on that principle itself and an identification of the principle of discrimination with the principle of tyranny Yeah I mean the idea that for example like the idea that the word discrimination Has become an absolute evil is insane It’s an insane moment because you discriminate all the time You’re you constantly discriminating discriminating is like a normal aspect of reality Which is that you’re constantly judging like you’re you’re constantly kind of Discriminating whether or not this piece of paper is the right one to to to scribble on or to print on and you’re discriminating Whether or not this is the right keyboard for my computer. It’s like you’re constantly discriminating uh, and so but the fact that we’ve even made that word into Well, you also said jonathan that god himself said that that capacity for discrimination transformed good into very good Yeah, when you think of what an assault on that means it means an assault on our ability to distinguish between that Which is higher and that which is lower God And so but there’s a way in which like it’s important to understand that there is a way in which Which this this system like they say that especially especially when you see it in many versions But in the christian system is the one I know the best the way in which she kind of heals itself or the way in which it it um It deals with this problem is that at the very very top of the hierarchy Is something like identity? And then right above that identity is something like sacrifice That is there’s the the pyramid is kinetic it’s self-emptying and so the highest thing The highest thing is the king And then the very highest thing is the martyr And that’s super important. It’s super important to understand that and it’s it’s actually it’s actually uh, it’s technically accurate right in the sense that In order for the leg of a chair To be part of the chair It has to sacrifice itself to the higher purpose it has to Because it can’t just be a leg of a chair. It has to participate in the higher pattern And so the the highest point of the pattern is the negation of identity and this is This is going to be this might be a little hard for people to kind of get but it’ll help you understand a lot of christian symbolism The highest point of identity is negation of identity but it doesn’t the problem is that now what we have is something like We don’t realize that negation of identity leads to identity Then there’s a then there’s an identity going like this and then there’s a negation of identity below or a breakdown and And they’re confusing the negation of identity below with the negation of identity above Which is the the capacity to sacrifice yourself for a higher good And the capacity to sacrifice yourself for your own parts And so the chair also has to sacrifice its purity In order to be able to exist Because all chairs have idiosyncrasies All chairs have aspects of it that aren’t the pure chair or else the chairs couldn’t exist And so the identity of things sacrifice themselves Above they give themselves up, right? So imagine You you burn up you take your best cheap and you give it up to god, right? You give it up to you give it up to god or you die as a martyr But then there’s also a way in which that which is above then sacrifices itself for that which is below so that’s one of the ways in which we kind of Deal with the problem because so it’s so it’s not like a kind of Nietzschean will to power thing It’s not at all that right the the real hierarchy ends in in self-sacrifice All right, that’s why the cross is at the top of the hill, right? That’s why the mystery at the top of the hill is in in mystical terms. We talk about the divine unknowing Like that that you reach knowledge you read gnosis and then when you reach the top of gnosis The next step is unknowing. It’s actually a form of divine darkness. That’s the highest form of mystical mystical union And this is how one of the ways in which the the system Can can balance itself out because it is true that sometimes we struggle to think that the highest thing Is okay. Let’s let’s think of it this way The highest thing of the team is the quarterback that everybody loves and everybody worships and it’s like yeah That is the top of the team, but it’s only the top of the team when the quarterback sacrifices himself above To the purpose of the team and sacrifices himself below to make the other team members participate in the team If he doesn’t do that Then he’s not going to be at the top He’s going to be a tyrant. He’s going to be he’s he’s not going to be able to get the team to go here All of these things are going to happen. Um, and so this is something which like I said It’s maybe a bit harder to understand. I really didn’t expect to go into this in this conversation but it might be important to understand the problem of of identity and And how it can be solved let’s say through this through this pattern Okay, another question Maybe a big one. I don’t know if can be summarized What is the intelligence of dreams you suggested the dream is a purest expression of individuating intelligence This seems at odds with the orthodox view. Can the two views be reconciled? It’s very difficult so the the the orthodox view or the the say the the way that the fathers talk about dreams is that they are mostly Chaos that they’re mostly this lower waters this kind of these these these these moving waters and that you have to be careful not to Pay too much attention to them But like I said, so there’s an interesting image for example, like let me give you an image that you find in in the revelation It says in revelation at the end of time The sea will become like glass The sea will become like crystal And so you that’s the way you can kind of understand the purpose of dreams is that It’s this lower potential that’s kind of bubbling up, right? And and and so manifests all your passions all your desires and it kind of in a kind of wild way That sometimes is illogical that it’s kind of breakdown of logic, but then once in a while you could say through divine providence or through eschisis like that is through like let’s say the mystic who will Transform himself and will kind of reduce their slavery to the passions at some point this potential Can still itself can become still and then it becomes a mirror Because it is a mirror in the first place, right? It’s already a mirror because that’s how that’s where reality comes out of reality kind of comes out of this potential That’s you know, the earth is pulled out of the waters. All of this is is true and so you can understand it that way it’s like the chaos and this kind of Kind of madness and chaos on the edge out of which reality comes You have to be careful not to pay too much attention to it because it can can break you down but once in a while It becomes this pure mirror and then that’s the vision right? That’s the that’s the mystic’s vision. That’s the capacity to see reality Clear more clearly than you ever could because suddenly it it becomes a a mirror for the highest highest things so it’s like You know, I one of the things you might have seen when you see the pattern of creation is that God is going like this, right? So the waters the earth and then the grass the stars and then it’s like it’s kind of moving in this way So you can understand it as these extremes, but you can also understand that the lowest part Can become a mirror for the highest part In the proper circumstance. It can become like this That’s one of the things christ does by the way christ that’s one of the we if you want to understand the story of jesus He goes to the bottom of reality And then kind of transforms it into glory um Anyways little tidbit on that Okay, i’m aware of the time i’m also aware we could go on for hours and hours So jonathan, I don’t know how you’re doing about time. You want to take one last question? I’m fine. Yeah, if you want i’m totally fine. I I went too long in my presentation anyway, so i’m willing to accept more questions Okay, if the theological Teleological patterns of being of being constitute the realm of heaven What then is the abode of the individual human soul? in other words What is the relationship between the semi-platonic conception you’ve presented here and the standard christian model of heaven as a domain of souls? And so there’s the they’re the same That is that your soul Is your invisible Part of you it’s the it’s the pattern the patterning of your of your being right that’s what your soul is and There’s a way And this is this there’s a way in which that soul In in its very center, right you could say that there’s there there’s a more there’s a hierarchy of patterns in you And at the core of that hierarchy of pattern is god I don’t know what to tell you Like that that it’s the spark of the divine is that the center of every Individual soul that’s the manner in which we actually exist is that we contain a spark of of the divine and that As we commune with each other as we love each other Then we become this embodied pattern and The your your individual logos Joins with the divine logos and becomes the body of christ And so that’s the way that it works and so you can understand it in different ways you can understand it as physically, how can I say this that Christ says things like, you know, you are you are you are called to be like angels And he says you are gods and what he means is that human beings can become patterns for other human beings Right, we become models. That’s why we have models. We have models because humans can move up into heaven We can ascend into heaven And then we become patterns for others And we become patrons for others So we name a church after someone we name a city after someone we name we name things After people because those beings are like gods They become patterns for the rest of us And so and that’s that’s actually how reality works like we reality doesn’t hold together by ideas Even your nations, they don’t hold together by ideal They hold together by a succession of people who modeled behavior on which you you base yourself And some of those rise up very high And become the patron saints of entire Aspects of reality and that’s how they become like angels they become gods in the divine council Right. They they become co-rulers with christ All these things that christ talks about And and these are things that it can happen at a very small level right your own father your own mother Can image for you How to be like? How to live and how to be? Uh, and then that can scale up, you know all the way to Saint peter and saint paul or the mother of god or or or the the saints which are venerated as uh As uh as being like in the divine council Thank you so much for a great talk and jordan and tommy. Thank you so much for your participation Thank you so much for your participation Yeah, this has been great i’ve i’m really happy because i let me say this is that I was hoping that this This discussion would push me further in uh saying things uh in a certain way and kind of bringing things together and i’m very grateful because I feel like it it has And so I appreciate I appreciate jordan you pushed to me and I think the questions were were wonderful And so it’s it’s actually been a great opportunity for myself to just say okay. I’m gonna Try as hard as I can to really Bring this together. So thank you But thank you everybody sorry for those who we didn’t have time to Ask their questions Only some so many questions. Sorry for time I’ll just jump in if if like me you didn’t have a chance to answer to ask a question. Maybe you can uh, uh attend another young society of montreal event and uh Will form our group with our purpose and continue in this uh in these rituals Very good. I think everybody