Welcome to the Jordan Be Petersen Podcast. You can support these people costs by donating to Doktor Peterson's Patria on the link to which we found him description. Doktor p and self development programmes, self authoring found itself authoring dot com, Thank you very much, Thank you very much for showing up again that's

Pretty good to see everybody here so. One of the things that I. Been realizing as a consequence of go. Through these stories. Is that degree to which they are about. Individuals is quite remarkable, and I think that's really telling now The reason I prefer Dostoevsky Tolstoy is because Tolstoy, of a sociologist. He's more interested in the relationship between groups boy. This is an oversimplification because, obviously Tolstoy a great author, but I like Dostoevsky, better Is he really delve into the souls of individuals? And I think it's remarkable degree, to which the stories that we ve covered So far in Genesis are about.

Individuals and are quite realistic, which is quite remarkable to you're, not ready, romanticize to any great degree because all of the people, regard is regarded, let's say as patriarchal or matriarchal figures in Genesis have no shit judge of ethical different, no shortage of ethical flaws and also no shortage of difficulties in their life and the difficulties are realistic there there major league problems, you know like familial catastrophes in full men and war and revenge, and how Treating all those things, it's not it's not a pretty, it's not a pretty book and that's one of the things that makes it great. I mean that's one of the things that characterize is great. Literature right is that it it doesn't present you with a white. View of of of humanity or of existence and that's really a relief. I think, because As you all know, because you're alive there's, no such thing as a whitewash existence like here to be alive, is to be in trouble,

ethically end existentialist I've been reading this book recently. We'll talk about it a little bit later, it's called better, never to have been, and it was written by a philosopher in South Africa in case the Benatar that's his last name and he basis the argues. I think it's fishes argument and I think it's artificially constructed, but he basic the argues that because life is full of suffering. Even good lives, are very much full of suffering that its Wrong to bring children into the world because the suffering outweighs the good, even in good lives and it's actually wrong. It would also be better not to exist for exam for the same reason, and- My sense in reading the book is that he came to that conclusion and then wrote the book to justify it, which is actually the reverse of the way that you should write a book

you should do when you're writing a book. Is you should have a question and you should and should be a question right, it should be one you dont know the answer to, and then you should studying in writing like mad and reading everything you can get your hands on to see. If you actually grapple with the problem and come to some solution in and you should walk the reader as well through your process of thinking so that they can come to that Well, not necessary to the same conclusion, but at least track what you're doing, and I don't think that's what I did. I think he wrote it backwards, but then, and so I was thinking about it- a lot because that's actually a question that I've contended with in my rating Our methods of- and our satanic figures, for example in Europe, is fast and also Ivan in the in the brothers grams off who basic make the same case. You know that existences so rife with trouble and suffering that it would be better if it didn't exist at all and the problem

had with that. There's a variety of them, but one of the problems I've had. But that is what happens if you start to think that way, because what. Observed, is that people who begin to think that way that isn't where they stop like. They get angry at existence, which is what happened to gain as we saw in the can enable story, and then the next step is to start taking Van against existence and doubt cascades until its revenge against, while I think the best way of thinking about it is revenge against God for the crime of being, which is, I think, the deepest sort of hatred that you can entertain. And when you're, in the grip of a really deep emotion like a really profound emotion, right at the bottom of emotions, you're in something that's like a clause. I religious state and that's more or less in depend of your belief, saying a transcendent daddy, I mean you can be in a profoundly general state. This is deep as it can be, and it can have religious significance without that necessarily signifying anything about a transcendent, be no. But but then I was thinking

see the problem. Without argument is you can gerrymander it? Endlessly, you know because Well. How do you measure suffering and how do you, MR happiness, it's like how do you assign waits to them and got there's just no way of doing that. If you have to do it arbitrarily, and so you can make an army, that, the suffering outweighs the happiness. You just wait, the suffering more heavily than you wait to happiness, and that's the end of that. No one! So that's that's a problem, but I think there's a deeper problem. And I was reading this other book while back as well, it was written by the guy who randy human genome project and I dont member exactly what it was called, but with something like a scientists case for God, or something like that, and one or two things he referred to, which didn't strike me as or does it should have to begin with was the he. He thought that one of the. Phenomena say that justified a belief. And it transcendent being with something like the moral

intuition of human beings that now we have a sense of right and wrong, and you know certainly in what happens in jail this in this story about a belief. Is that the, That story announces the coming of the sense of right and wrong right. The knowledge of good and evil, and it isn't something we ascribe to animals- is something that you need to human, These animals can be predators and you when they can be gentle. And you can have a relationship with them, but you never think of an evil character, ignored, evil. Wolf, even though there you know their predatory. But human beings, we have this capacity to judge between evil right and wrong? And it's really an integral part of our are being, and I thank you, make an evolutionary case for that, a biological case for that, as you can make a biological case for most of what is relevant about human beings because we're biological creatures but

we don't really understand the significance of that like what happens in the story of Adam and Eve, is that that's that realisation not coming to the knowledge of good and evil is actually represented as a shift of cosmic significance right it puts it, puts a permanent fracture in the structure of being and. You know what you think of human beings as insignificant amounts on a tiny smoke in the middle of an infinite cosmos can cause that care is less for us. Then, who cares fundamentally if human beings have the knowledge to distinguish between good and evil, if you give consciousness a central role in being- and you can make a perfectly reasonable case for that because without consciousness, there's no being spars, anyone can determine what may be much more central than we think and and. I really don't think there's a counter argument to that, like not a solid one, you can state that consciousness is epithet nominal in and that the world is

mentally materialistic and it doesnt matter that there's consciousness, you can state that, but you can make an equally credit case the other way. Certainly are lived experiences. That consciousness is crucial, obviously, and we treat each other as if most of the time, we're valuable conscious beings and we wouldn't give up our cars not even though its often consciousness of suffering. And so then I think another problem with the book is that its two predicated on the idea that life is for happiness and I dont that's right and I don't think that's how people experience life and I might be wrong, but it see to me the p experience life at something like a series- crucial ethical decisions, it something like the ottoman when Just can't imagine. Maybe I'm being naive about this, but I cannot imagine that I can't imagine another being that's like mean:

in most census that isn't constantly wrestling in some sense with what the next proper thing to do- is it's not like it's obvious, it's not bloody obvious and it did doesn't mean you'll. Do the right thing? Is you don't law of times, and you know that by your own judgement right because you're making mistakes all the time. Sometimes you don't know what you're doing, and maybe it's a mistake, and maybe it isn't it to save that. Isn't what I'm talking about I'm talking, but when you know that what you're doing is wrong and you go ahead and do it anyways people do that all the time, and that's also extremely peculiarly bloody. Well think that if you knew it was wrong- and you told yourself It was wrong that there would be Efficient, so that you just wouldn't do it, but that is what your like at all. You know, and you can tell yourself something is wrong. Fifty times and you'll, do it the fifty first time and then you'll feel you know like like you deserve to feel probably and but it doesn't stop you, and so so I think the other problem with the viewpoint. The idea that,

offering of life eradicate Two utility is that its predicated on the idea that happiness or locked suffering even is is the right: criteria, by which to judge life, and I dont think that's how we actually experience life. I think what we do instead is put out. Through a series of excruciating moral choices. You no one one of the things that that's really significant about the biblical story, tonight, I think about the entire implicit flaw. Sophie you know that's embedded in the stories. Is that that's all? is presented in. The stories is all of these individuals. First through individuals do not groups and second agonising over their moral choices. All the time. All the time, they have a relationship with God, and but it's not that it's not Directive relationship exactly even the people to whom God speaks directly

I suspect is not something you'd exactly wanna have happen. Is it it? It's there still the fact that they have a direct relationship with God, doesn't stop them from being tormented continually by their moral choices, and so world is presented as a moral landscape, not as a not as a place that defies itself by happiness. Presented as a moral landscape and people are presented as creatures who, reverse through the rural landscape, making ethical disease. That determine the course of the world and seems to me to be right and that's not it that's not the same as happiness. By any stretch of the imagination, it's a whole different. Category of being and Then I thought that through a lot I think. Well, we do choices, and what we do contend with the future, you know and that the future seem

You appear to us as a realm of possibility, that's a more accurate way of thinking about it and then that the future presented of two it to us as a realm of determined thinks it's it's presents itself as around the possibility in theirs good choices in Rome and there's Portugal. Or even evil choices in the realm and were negotiating continually deciding what, those choices, we're going to bring into being That seems to me to be phenomenal, logically indisputable, and we certainly treat each other as if that's what we're doing, because we hold each other responsible for our actions with exceptions and that we're deciding each moment whether to things better or worse, and that seems to me to be correct and I think that that's what these stories illustrate. They don't say that directly. You know, although I think it gets more and more explicit as the narrative unfold, but

and then part of the realism of the story is that the people are the people there presented are by no means good, maybe with the x, I know I know I seem to be a pretty good guile. They get. You did get drunk and open and and end up naked exposed to his sons and so forth, and but I mean he isn't talked about. A lot as a character to pretty compressed story, but Abraham I mean Abraham had plenty of problems, not least of which was in his inability to leave home and then no he's lying about his wife and there's also of mistakes and Jacob who were going to talk about tonight is An even more morally ambivalent character, his especially beginning of the story is its. He isn't the sort of person that you would out, especially if you are a hack writer, you wouldn't It came out as the hero of the story. He does

lot of things that are really pretty reprehensible and take them a long time to learn better. And yet he is. The person whose put four as the father of the twelve tribes of Israel, it's from this flawed person that the people that that may that whose story you might say is at the fundamental labour costs it's the fundamental underpinning of our culture. Its from this deep Flawed individual that that group emerges. And so you might think about ass, a relief to because you know, you're, no, no shining armor you know with with with a cure moral past. I mean people make mistakes of catastrophic report non stop. You know, and that also means that these stories put forward, something approximating hope because in their realism in their more realism, they present heroes,

I suppose the heroes of renown right, the patriarchs of old, let's say who are realistic. People. Have fits of anger and rage and who are murderous at times and who are deeply deeply. Broiled with family dispute and and who, who adulterous affairs and like they do the terrible things that people do, and good thing. Is that God still with them and. No, it isn't obvious what that means, or even. Means anything but its very it's not mutable as far as I can tell that a were conscious in that justice is a transcendent phenomena which which we do not understand, and that the landscape that we travel through his moral like every story you ever watch anything that grips your imagination on the screen or in the theater, like any store grabs! You is a story. Moral striving. It's it's.

Not interesting. Otherwise, the person has to be confronted with complex we'll choices, and then you see the outcome and in all the good guy doesn't right in the back Does it badly and things don't go so well for the bad guy generally and if its More sophisticated, the good and the bad or in the same individual and that's you know, that's more compelling story, but. So we could say well let let's we could make the assumption that it might be worth while thinking of the world as a as it has been what of classically as a theatre upon which the forest of good and evil continually. Strive for dominance? And I for the life of me, especially after I started reading deeply into twentieth century history and all the terrible things that happened in the twentieth century and all the terrible unbelievably incomprehensible things that people did to one another I just couldn't see, see, things

any other way is realistic, because. I dont think that you can immerse yourself and twentieth century history without coming to the conclusion that evil is a reality and if it's a reality. It depends on what you mean by reality, but its fundamental enough reality for me if its reality than I don't see how you can escape from the conclusion that the car, most, as we experience it at least is place of moral striving and well that's. Things. That's really illustrated in the story of Jacob And- and I find that quite striking. So. So, the last time last lecture, I ended with the Abraham EC stories with the death of Sarah. Now was safer, wife and so we're going to and you from from their member Abraham had a son Isaac and he was asked by God.

Sacrifices sun, which we talked about in some depth, and I was attempting to make case that you know the idea of sacrifice was one of human kind, great discoveries, because it meant the discovery of the future essentially- but it also meant the discovery that the future with something that you could make a bargain with and that you can up something now something impulsive, some pleasure, even a deep pleasure in the moment, and you could strive and hyper Ethically, you could make a covenant a bargain with the future and if your sacrifice these were acceptable and that seem to mean an ethically acceptable. You had to sacrifice the right thing that that vastly increased the probability that not only you would be successful, let's say but that you're descendants would be too, and I dont think that that's and Iraq, proposition I mean you have to leave. It with the realisation that sometimes you know you get slice

if at the knees, no matter what right, because life has arbitrary element and that can't be tossed out. But. Building in the arbitrary element will say you still one think what what's your best bet given a certain amount of randomness, and it seems to me that corn- Self aware sacrifice and proper. Ethical. Striving is your best bet, and you know: there's The idea that as explained it when I've explained it to people, I've always use the move. Pinocchio as an example. You know that when Japan was trying to make his puppet into a self aware and autonomous moral agent, which is once above all else in oh, he aims at the highest good He can conceive which, which is the star that he praised, who essentially and hopes for the train nation, and there is also something in that that's unutterably profound, and maybe that is somewhat independent of the idea that you

to believe in God. I would also say that what it is to believe in God in the old testament is by no means clear and that something I was really want to talk about tonight. It's not obvious what it means and well to pedal. He does at least is aiming highest good of which he can conceive and that that's actually being a philosophical definition of God. Upon occasion God is the highest good of which you conceive, and you know that's different than The idea of a transcendent being precisely, but it's in line with it's in line with certain interesting psychoanalytic speculations. This is one of the things I really liked about Carl Young. You know young with so radical a thinker, it's just beyond belief like I've read a lot of critics of young and I've always goes a kick out of them. Because, the things they accuse, you of our so trivial compared to the things that you actually did, that it's like Accusing at A murderer of jaywalking, like

because young was unbelievably radical. Like here's one of his ideas, you know he thought that it was necessary. He believed that psychotherapy could be replaced a supreme moral effort and so the moral ever would be something like aiming at the good and then try to integrate self around that ended the the good at you aimed, would be something approximating what you would be like if you manifested your full potential and that you do a glimmering of what that forward. Was so that would be the potential future you and he thought of that. He thought of people ass for them let it is essentially that were stretched across time and that you as a totality ass time, including your potential manifested yourself also in the here and now, and that part of what your potential, infested itself with something like the voice of conscious conscience or intuition,

It's amazing idea an amazing idea right because it's like what you could be in the future beckoned to you in the present. And helps you determine the difference between good and evil Mind boggling idea, and I think that. It's an idea. You have to contend with And then he he went further than that, and this is This is also remarkable idea. You know he was interested in the symbolic representation of Christ, and I mean cycle logically speaking, and he thought of Christ as the representation of the ideal potential human, its like that, so it was a symbolic rip at at minimum. That's what Christ was as a symbolic represent. Of the ideal potential of a human being for you there is no difference between. There was no cycle real difference between who you could be in the future, According to you and the print in the present. And oriented yourself in relationship to Christ, psychologically

with the same thing and then so that the mind, boggling idea like seriously that's a mind, boggling idea, especially when you add the psychological idea that the One of the things that characterises you're ideal future self is the ability to make sacrifices right and the deeper. This outcome, is the better and then also. Recover from the sacrifice Rachel, that's the death rebirth, so that part of Europe its most. Essential to your father flowering as a being- is your ability to things go and then sprang back from that, so to die in some sense and to be reborn in the service of a higher good and then well, then. The next part of that is that The direction of the world depends on you doing that. So not only your own life, but your family's life and and because we're networked so intently together. You know that the whole planet, of human kind of maybe the structure of the of the cosmos, and you know

might think. Well, no, but you know not so simple, it's not so simple, first one person can wreak an awful lot of havoc. There is absolutely no doubt about that and as we get more technologically powerful, that becomes even more relevant and important, and and and crucial. You know one of the things that you said was that we had to wake up because we are to catalogue. We powerful to be as morally asleep as we are, and that seems too, just to be self evident. That's for sure, that's true were were were half asleep with nuclear bombs. It's not a good idea. It seriously, not a good idea, and so. Well, then, you might ask yourself to you: don't like what is the ultimate. Potential of a fully developed human being and well, we certainly know that you have admiration for people who are more developed rather than less developed. That's that's just happens,

automatic it or resentment that that's ok, it's the same thing. It doesn't matter, but It's not like. You can't identify that you can identify them and no one and their put forward to you in in in draftsman section and all of that constantly. So that's their form of moral intuition. You know you can read can discern the wheat from the chaff. Let's say and and so. The other thing that I was thinking about that's worth consideration to is that Maybe this is maybe this is petty, but I don't think it is. Somebody asked me the other day if I believe in miracles- and I hate being asked questions like that. You know You know it's also people ask me to do. I believe in God and like I don't. They mean when they say that, and so on what the answer, because I don't think we're talk necessarily gonna talk about the same thing, but in any case Yes, I have a variety of reasons:

but one of them is that you know. The consensus among physicists is that we can track the origin of the most to something like a hundred million of them. A second after the big bang. It's like it so close to. Big bang that differences literally infinitesimal, but The consensus is that before that, whatever that is the law, physics themselves breakdown. Well, what what do you call an event? exists outside the laws of physics that by deafened That's a miracle now that doesn't necessarily mean that there's a transcendent deity that caused the event. That's a separate issue, but it doesn't why area of some sort beyond which we can't go where some other set of rules apply, and so I find

Interesting as well so all right. Sarah dies and Abraham makes a bargain with the Hittites to purchase a burial place for they offer it as a gift and he insists upon paying for it and so little story that basically indicates to things that Abraham was the kind of guy that was very much when you see em and that even Something is offered to him as a gift he's going to do everything to be reciprocal about it, and so it's not a mouse, the important part of the story, but it's it's in keeping with the same narrative flow, and so, if Efron who's, a Hittite offers a burial place

a gift and Abraham says no, you know you have to. Let me pay for it, and everyone says he will and that works out very well. So he has a good burial place for his wife and then Abraham decides that Isaac needs a wife. So he sends his the servant to Miss Abbot we have to find a way for Isaac and there's a strange ritual perform. So it says in the story that the servant. This is hand under Abraham? Society to swear. But doesn't really what it means. It means that he placed his hand. I don't know exactly how to say this point. Really well use your imagination about that, The idea is that, as far as I can tell that-

he's swearing on the future. He swearing on future people at something like that, so that that sort of what testified means right think about the route I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding. That is what it That is the derivation right. It is the derivation, so so so anyway. This is a serious issue in so that servant to go and find eyes like a good wife, and he wants to find Isaac, a wife who is willing to said, the same fundamental belief system, which is something like the belief in that's a unity rather than a plurality in all the other thing that young was very insistent upon. Was that there was a relationship between polytheism and psychological confusion and more theism and psychological unification. I really like that idea to that. You know that

you're trying to do, because you are a plurality that that's one of the things the psychoanalysts were really good at figuring out that the cognitive scientists haven't touched yet, as far as I can tell the way behind Psychoanalysts in that element of thinking, is that you are composed of some personalities which all have their own design, in their own viewpoint, their own thoughts and their own perceptions, and therein a war with each other constantly Maybe even a darwinian wards been it's been portrayed that way. Certain euro and that that one of the goals of life is to integrate, of that plurality into a hierarchical ethical. Sure that has some canonical ethic at the pinnacle right. When we talk a little bit about that, it is not obvious what be at the pinnacle, but we can guess added its that which we admire. That's one way of thinking about it. It's that that describes fair

across a sequence of games. That's another good way of thinking about it. It's it's the heroic ideal, that's another way of thinking, but it's combined with generosity in because the hero, the mythological hero, goes out into the unknown and slaves the dragon and gets the gold, but then comes to the community and distributes what's found in so its courage, plus generosity and And so all of Europe, all of them interior, struggling You're doing is an attempt to. An yourself against the world with challenge constantly hit, breathing together, like your beating on a piece of iron, two to two to cure? It lets say so that you don't, not an internal contradiction. Massive competing something like that, because it's just to cycle logically stressful and hard on everyone else and impossible. To get along with you with your one thing, one moment and another thing another moment, and so.

So anyways Abraham insists that Isaac find a away from among people who are likely to carry forward the model. Yes to tradition and I'm not sure that the monotheistic tradition is actually indistinguishable is actually distinct people from the individualistic tradition. I think they might be the same thing at front levels of analysis in oh, so because individual means- I did in some sense right to be an individual means to be one thing, and the other thing that meat. It's against the idea of life is happiness. Is it isn't obvious to me that its happiness? That is what, holds you and shapes. You know it is something more like optimal challenge voluntarily undertaken at something like that right, and I think that echoed in the idea that everyone has a moral obligation to raise their cross something like that to accept the fact that there mortality vote terribly, I believe,

that's the case, and I do actually think that that's a prerequisite to proper psychological development, because, if you're not willing to. Take your mortality on voluntarily, like if your kicking in fighting about it constantly, and you have every reason to don't get me wrong. Then you can't act forthrightly in the world, Right you're going to be afraid and when you're afraid, then Can't voluntarily going to challenge and then, if you can't take voluntarily take on a challenge, then you can't develop and so again life seems to be something like if it's a proper life is voluntarily, voluntary taking one of great challenges and maybe that's better than happiness, I can certainly more noble. You know it's not a word. We use very much anymore, the idea of nobility, because we're so obsessed with happiness, but it happiness is like. Comes along man, great and wonderful, don't don't take it light or for granted, because its fleeting, but idea that that's what you should

for in some sense, too, seems to me. If you that's what life is for then, maybe it shouldn't be. Maybe that's correct because that What life is but it also doesn't it isn't obvious to me that that's what life should be? You know what I mean If you really loved someone like like your son, let's say, would you say I hope he hasn't a happy life or would you say I hope he accomplished his great things. It seems to me that that's better than the accomplishing of great things and because that's admirable in fact, happy person is a happy Person, butter, a no person is an admirable person and an that's. That's better man, and so maybe there are better things than happiness, and so you can judge being on the basis of the ratio of suffering to pleasure. Something like that. It's and I don't think we do that. I dont believe we do that

We comedians are happy right, but everyone doesn't aspire to be a comedian. Then you don't watch comedy all the time, even though we have not nonstop more less if the comedians funny get your teeth into something. It also seems to me that This is one of the reasons I liked existential philosophy was that the existential believed it sort of an original sin idea. They believed that we came into the world with an ethical burden already laden upon us something something like that and that we had a felt sense that it was necessary for us to justify our being and if we do that and we weren't authentic to ourselves. We weren't moving towards individuality. We weren't stating the community we weren't living properly, and that that idea was deeply embedded in people as part of their ordinary experience and that also seems to me to be accurate, and you know I've done lots of people say my clinical practice and they don't really.

They all they will come and say. I wish I wasn't so unhappy, but they do usually come and say I wish I was happier was things aren't the same and and then when we, when you talk to people we're having trouble. You know they want to straighten things out and figure out Do them right at something like that and and that that's the primary That's their primary goal and. So anyways Abraham senses, eldest servant off to his place. Tat God is I wanted him to find a wife and, interestingly it the borders of the promised land are quite similar to the current. Borders of Israel, beneath estimates right based on on the biblical demean. That's not a fluke, obviously, but its interest, to see the concordance between

these ancient stories in and the present day world. So I thought that was very interesting, and it shows once again that the past you. The past is the past, but it's not it's. It's still here. It's bet it in the present. You know just like that. Each and somehow in some ways folded up inside the present waiting to unfold the past a folded up inside the present too. So any ways the servant goes to the land that he's being charged to go to and He's trying to figure out how in the world am I going to find a good wife Isaac I mean, I don't know any of these people, and so we have little dialogue is presented in the form of a prayer suppose, and he Well, I'm gonna go to the play. Where you water, where people get water

What are the animals because that's a place, wherever we gather. So that's a good place to find someone, and in it it's not a place of funding. Lightness and relaxation and impulsivity its place of of life sustaining work and then they think something like well. What would a decent girl who at a watering place- and he thought Well- maybe she offer a stranger, some water and also offer to water the camels, because that would be brave to approach the stranger and then generous, and then indicative of of the not to make an effort and when you know that a camel I think he took ten camel, was quite a few camels anyways, not just one, and that a candle, drink, twenty gallons of water and Rebecca who was drawing water from the whip, turns out to be rid of I was drawing water from the well, which is hard right, because

there is heavy and you have to lifted up and its ten count com and so that's like two hundred gallons of water. So in Austria put herself out a fair bit in order to make this stranger have so, that's what happens and then the servant is brought along gifts and that sort of thing and anyways till it make a long story. Short Rebecca agrees to come back to come back with the servant and very Isaac, and so Then she has, she gets pregnant and as twins- and this is an interesting thing between- fight inside her. She can tell them that they are not getting along and this is an actual right. It's an echo of cane enable and there's mythological motif that the unions have called our style brothers, the hostile brothers and you see them all that A man in the Joker are hostile brothers in Thorun, Loki or hostile brothers, and

it's an unbelievably common motif and The ultimate hostile brothers are Christ and Satan. So that's the that's. The architectural presentation of the hostile brothers right there. But good in the ultimate evil? And so and so it's echo of the cane enable story. Although it's a little more complex, I would say from a literary the view because it isn't obvious which of these brother his cane and which of them is able they have parts of both in each of them. So Esau, whose turns out to be one of the brothers and Jacob who turns out to be the other oath, have their admiral or qualities and their faults anyways ISA, comes is born first, but Jacob hasn't by the heel, and so there was a fight within the womb. See who would emerge first now, that's relevant, because the first born, had a special status while has a special status and many communities, especially aggregate

RO communities and there's the real reason of these people were more herds people, but if you divide your property equally among all your children, then it like three generations. Everybody has one goat and everybody starve to death. The same thing happens with land, so one of the ways that that traditional many solve that? Is they just given almost everything to the first born and then the era who else knows well? Are you go out and do whatever you can and its current arbitrary and unfair, but You know at least its predictably arbitrary and unfair instead of doom. Over four generations. You know so it actually mattered to be the first born in and God generally favours the first born and then take what what is it about being born? First, it so relevant, apart from the the cultural practice of of a more generous inheritance, and I would say well too, sport is something like the model for the leader of the family right, because the first or child should be. If there's a number of siblings aid, should take care of this.

At least to some degree, but also could be a role model for them. So it's like a natural position of leadership, but there's a site is a psychopath. Psychology, cessation of the idea of the first born in these stories, because God or And passes over the first born in favour of a later born child? He seems to do that on the basis of we'll character essentially, and so there's this idea that listen natural proclivity towards leadership. That's just a biological fact that would be so she added with being a first born, but there's a element of character a logical development that transcends that, and so that you it's more important be spiritually, firstborn, let's say than to be biologically first born and God In nice is that continually in these stories and inverts natural order and favours a later born, whose done more work with regards to character a logical development and that's also interests, do you know: I've talked to lots of business well about leadership and theirs,

John leadership. But it's not a good literature. It's pretty shallow partly because it's not that easy to define leadership and partly because there are different, you know you. People have different temperament and front temperaments can be leaders. They just do it in different ways. Now there's something common about being a leader, though- and I would say one is that if Europe, for leader, you actually know where you're going right does what they do lead people in circles. It's like. Maybe they'll, follow you but you're, not a leader, you're, just a charlatan, so you have to know you're going, then you have to be able to communicate that and then, we'll have to trust you. So you actually have to be honest. Is people are that stupid, at least not for a long period of time and then, where knowing how to have some value, because otherwise, why would anyone want to go along with you? So then you might say what what what are the attributes, then that make you a leader and I would say whether character, illogical fundamentally, and this is not naive, optimism or or or

casual moralising, it has nothing to do with that in mind. For example, that. Conscientious knows that the personality trade is a good predictor of long success in most occupations, not all, but most and then one of the things its associated with conscientiousness is the people keep their word there trustworthy and that certainly one element of a leader, especially across any reasonable amount of time. You have to be able to trust the person even be harsh right, doesn't matter because you can see harsh leaders and kind leaders, but as long as they do what they say, they will do and then can follow them, and you know that the Future pay office is is secure, something like that so the idea that character, logical development is more important to leadership than primal janitor. I think that's the right word primal genesis. The waste being a first born? That's it very crucial psychological realisation that its character large,

development that makes you favoured of God, you no one. I do you think We ve forgotten this in many ways, because. There isn't a lot of emphasis in our education system on character, a logical development and very, very surprising. To me, I think, maybe it's partly because in our fractured society can't agree on what constitutes a reasonable or a logical goal. So we just throw up her hands and don't educate our kids too degree at all, especially in schools, about what Global person is like, or even let them know that. Well, maybe you should actually try to be warned. You know that that's actually the most impact, be possible thing that you could learn right. So when I also think- and I think this is laid out very thoroughly in the bin- call stories as well as that. If there are enough people who are admirable, then things work

and if their art and things things are terrible. Wiped out. You remember we neighbour, miss bargaining with God with regard to Ottoman Gomorrah, he ass God to save the city. If there's like forty admirable people right respect, Oh let's say admirable right. I don't know what to say good has good has been corrupted in some sense by casual usage, Mean Adam bull, noble people right. I think Abraham organs got down to like ten. If there's ten of them in the city, the city won't be destroyed and others, However many in the city, so there's an interest, idea there, which is that their there does. Have to be that many people in a group who have their act together but zero is the wrong number and if it zero, then than swear seriously in trouble, and I think that both

with the idea of the breed principle in economics too, which is that it's a small minority of people who do most of the productive work in any given domain but so a small number of of property People might have enough of an impact to keep everything moving in. That might also, they might actually be true, but it can't fall below some crucial level and I do so but we're in some danger of allowing it to fall below some crucial level, because our societies seems to be at war in some ways against the idea of the individual and individual character per se. And I think that's absolutely. I think that's absolutely catastrophic and that's part of them that I do these biblical lectures now, because I think that I've known for a long time that them oh presuppositions of culture are instantiated in its stories. Stand. She ate it in its explicit philosophy,

be a layer of explicit philosophy and of course, the reason. The western, a layer of explicit law, but underneath that there are stories isn't anything under the stories except maybe behavior. You know- and that's so im so it doesn't even actually count. It's not a cognitive operation So this is the story, these stories that underneath our culture and so the better, be something to them. That's what we hope and but, more importantly, Maybe we shouldn't toss them away without knowing what they mean, because if we talk them away. Then we are throwing everything that we do and on a way. As far as I can tell him we'll, we will pay for it will pay for it individually because will be weak in oak as if you're, not firm in your convictions,. And someone else whose firm in their convictions can you're there puppet like instantly and then you're also Puppet of your own doubts right because unless you have convictions, you're going to generate doubts, mad, because everyone does and then the

Wind and and you'll be paralysed because, though, be fifty percent of you moving forward and fifty percent of your frozen stiff and that'll be enough just to- large you in place, and so. Ok! So there's a psychologist nation of the idea of leadership which is very important and then its associated with the idea of character, a logical development and its associated with the idea of struggle, not happiness, and it's also associated with this Abraham idea, which I really liked and which was something that's been very useful to me as a consequence of doing these lectures, because Remember at the beginning of the Abraham stories, Abrahams like a stay at home guy right he's like the guy who's forty years old living in his interest in his mother's basement God says like get get the hell out of there. You know get out in a world where you belong. Go, do something difficult, because what you're doing isn't except but you know the first thing he does. This go somewhere, there's a terrible famine and then he goes somewhere there's a tyranny. So in our heads it's pretty

It follows gods, call it it's not like goodness and light in Paradise immediately, it's nothing like that. It's instantaneous combat, you know one of the most difficult kind. So, but Abraham does in fact follow that impulse, and you know it's interesting too, I mean, I don't know, here's another that made me a really an advocate of psychoanalytic thinking it was the sort of thing that started to terrified me about what the human psyche was actually like. I started to understand that not only were we like an amalgam of of relatively autonomous sub personalities, each of which had the possibility of gaining control, but that we are also. Victim, you might say, or beneficiary of impulses. We're beyond our conscious formulae. Or or understanding or capacity to resist soul of wonder, here's

he's a funny story. So I was talking to one of my your own people online this week and he said he's he was a committed atheist and that's fine lots of atheists are very honest people in their areas because they don't know how to reconcile what they know with traditional let's say and are not willing to just mangled them together. You know be cynicism all that associated with it as well, but he said he was he said he was entranced by these biblical lectures, which is pretty well and he said if someone were to told him a year ago that he was gorgeous like be obsessed with a sequence of biblical lectures. He would have told them that they were mad and so we are a bit of a discussion about that and because this is an interesting thing, you know. And he mentioned this- he said it was something like you don't choose your interests, they choose you. And that's really worth thinking about two man, because you know it's really hard interested in something you're not interested in, even if you know there's a good reason for it. You know you're

for an exam. You find the material boring. You know Anything will be more interesting than than the study. Even though you know that that's what you need to do, you voluntarily grab yourself by the scruff of the neck. Let's say and shake yourself and say: sit down and concentrate your mind will just go everywhere, but then, if you're interested in something and eat, it's something you shouldn't be interested in cars that happens all the time they need. You're a laser focused man. You can pay attention forever. You can work until you're exhausted. You won't even notice it. Then you remember everything. It's like! Ok, if you can't control your interest. What does. And now I tell you can think about that for a very long time, so you talk, the Spirit Mercurius in our work. Is the winged messenger of the gods and and hears we conceptualize did psychologically. He thought this is what the ancient people who thought about mercury as the wing messenger of the gods we're trying to states psychologically. You know you're you're in flits around its like there's something

Captures it and then moves your interest from place to place. You know like if you walk into a bookstore you'll, get interested in a particular book. If the book grips you, if you don't know why you're interested in you might but often you dont, know why you're interested in that book- and you know you're in this floating around and so that mercury. The thing that makes your interests like Flickr around as mercury, the winged messenger of the gods and mercury is the messenger of the gods, because it's the things behind the scenes psychologically that are manipulating your attention and for you, those were equivalent in some sense to the lost gods and so for young you're. You're interest was being. Nip related behind the scenes by unseen forces that were associated with your character, a logical development across time that was the manifestation of the self. So the self is this: that the potential you let's say and the way operates in the present is by gripping your interest in directing its somewhere and that's part of the instinct. Self realisation, it's mine.

Boggling idea. Man really it's, I think its correct. I can't see how it can't be correct it doesn't mean- I understand it completely, but it certainly seems phenomena logically correct, and I mean the poultry. So that you are has to manifest itself somehow in the here and now it has to and what better way than by directing your attention you don't like it seems like this might be useful for you. Maybe you get attracted this person. Maybe you admire this person that happens with kids a lot they'll admire someone and then copy them, and you can see that obviously part of their developmental progression right. It's a form of hero, worship, but kids are very imitative and they hero worship at the drop of a hat and so they're there in trance, by the next stage of development, and if they see someone who embodies that, especially in the zone approximate development, it's it's some it's something they could achieve stretching a bit. They find

someone who embodies that next stage of development and then they start to imitate them and act like them. Well were adults are no different, where no different we're just we do it at a perhaps more abstracted, sophisticated level, so ok, so Jacob at ease, are, are hostile brothers. There there, like Kane, enabling the mixture of cane and evil and are very different I was red and covered with hair. He was a hunter and a man of the field so he's like your basic jock right, he's extroverted, these outgoing he's, really tough he's like stored, Nerli masculine, he hunts and he's a real fast rid of his father and so and and Jacob isn't he's a dweller in tents and yeah right. Exactly exactly exactly right, it says: Isaac, love Diesel, but Rebecca love Jacob. Now about a problem right that that's a big boy woman that there's a Friday an element to this is like this family? Is

divided, because one child is the favorite of the mother and that's Jacob and one child is a favorite of the father and son. Jacob is kind of a mother's boy, guest to use and are a rather archaic phrase and certainly not as admirable from his father this perspective as ISA, whose a tough guy who goes out with border and, like you know why, there's round on the plains and brings animals home and and he's tough he's a tough guy. So and but but there's this discord in the family, because one parent prefers one child in the other parent prefers the other and its obvious from the story. Did the parents do not communicate about this because they really take sides and so there's a split in the family That's, I think, very realistic, because one of the things that you do learn if you have a family and of course most of you do. But if you also think about families, is that there's there's deep divisions within families very, very frequently that no one will ever talk about and nor

and think about often because it's too painful to think about your own Freud himself- Fried was clearly his mother's favourite and the families, faced a lot, including some of the potential ambitions of the other children in order to kind of put Sigmund Freud up on, had a stolen and advances education, and it worked. I mean you know he did it turned into a great man, but there was a call. To a siblings and for himself said that there was something about being a favourite of the mother that gave a person additional confidence throughout their life and in know there's something to be said about that. Even someone like Eric Ericsson, you know he noted that very interested in child development that first bonding with the mother was the was the place where trust was established maybe trust, even in the goodness of existence, was established in so many ways. Jacob is Rachel's favorite Amanda

Yes, I was Isaacs favorite. Now you so being extroverted, let's say is also a bit impulsive and Maybe he's not he's a man of action he's not a forward thinker and bodies as we do in hard work, and so he goes out in these hunting. It is worn out and he comes home. Unease faint with hunger and Jacob is at home. Cooking is boiling up lentils, red lentils and use our comes in from the hunt eddies like half starved to death, and he sitting there and the euro of these red lentils, reaches amend, is exhausted and and- and he tells Jacob that he wants some of this stew and Jake Who's being a pain in the neck, fundamentally, a beer, basically says no there's it there's a teasing thing going on here and and war,

were many and there's you? You have to abandon this because it's not laid out explicitly in the story, but the Some dispute about whether Esau get have lunch and Jacob. Finally, as well give you some, but you have this. You have to give me your birthright and either you get. You saw you think he must say something like well to hell with it take it. You know you, son of a bitch, take. Just give me some damn stew it something like that. So that's what happens, but you know what these are key. People once you made a statement like that- that was your dog now is it, and so ISA sells his birthright and This turns out to be incredibly significant. Benson, who wrote biblical commentary said: oh there's a bit of a twist to its own Aesop eats the red lentils and then from then on. His name is red and you gotta use your imagination a bit. I mean people are making fun of him

right, that's why they're calling them read, I mean he's already read because we established that, but no one was calling him red before this and so forth. Of his life, Every time he goes out amongst his friends and family, they call him red and sort of snicker because he's the you know, half famished idiots who sold his birthright for a bowl of lentil, and so it's it's not it's not that funny. Actually, and so ISA is not happy about this in, and it actually turns out that this. So what does it mean? It means don't sell the future for the desires of the present and don't be kept all about what you have and then there's an catapult element to this too and then says various have been the opinions. What this birth rate was, which is so sold, but the most probable is that together, the right of sacrificing so determining what should be sacrificed in wind and being the priest of the family. It include. The peculiar blessing promised to the seat of Abraham, that of being the project,

or of the Messiah and the air of the special promises of God. Respecting Christ's kingdom it was Least, typical of spiritual privileges, those of the first born that are written in Heaven. Well, that's a lot harsher than meets to begin with, and so there is a very interesting deep moral story there, which is it sort of These are, does the opposite of a sacrifice. It's the reverse right. He sacrifices the future for the present and so that the store, We basically says the weights laid out across stories that, if you're the sort of person that sacrifices the future to the present than that eradicate the possibility that you will bring then, the most noble being into existence, that's what it means, and you can again. This is the psychological significance of

biblical story. So that's a bad thing to do. If you want do realize your potential, let's say you dont do reverse sacrifices, that's a very bad idea, and so each, really did himself in by being too attached to the present without a vision, the future, so he's too in the moment, you know and Annie a heavy price for it I mean he's these the first. Why loses his birthright and and is double inheritance, so there's a practical consequence and then there's a spiritual consequence and then he's while he's been made a fool. By his brother. Jacob means supplanted by the way, that's what the name means and Jacob is always trying to usurp. Isa was as we and so Jacob gets one over on him, and you know that's not doesn't make an older brother happy with the younger brother get somethin overall,

that's for sure, and then he loses the opportunity to debate the progenitor of the Messiah, which is like he probably didn't, realize that precisely but it seems to be. You know it's kind of rough that so. And then there's that there's a statement in Matthew, one thousand six hundred and twenty six for what is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul or shall a man give in exchange for a saw its an echo of the same idea. You know when you think well what is it. I d have sole mean, and it's not intellect, and it said something like it, something like consciousness, allied with character. I think, and I think the reason that its values much. Is that because you gotta ask yourself: what are you really have when it comes down to its life? Is suffering let's say, and you know you can you can pile up world the goods and the garden Yalta, It doesn't seem to have anything against that really right. The people who he favours seem to prosper nicely in the world, but they also have to make a choice between whether their goal.

Fundamentally sustain their character or whether they're going to prosper in the world. When push comes to shove and the idea constantly Is that really what you have in the world that allows you the best possible defence against the suffering its intrinsic? To being? Is your character? That's what you have period and I don't think there is anything that's more psychologically true than that. You know, because everything else will. First of all, your relationships with others depend on your character, and certainly this is part of the story of Noah's Ark notices. Generations were perfect, so we had a very tight familial arrangement. Everyone trusted each other, that's a big deal if you hit a rocky patch in your life, right and its character that its character. That determines that you know, if your generous and honest and all of those things people. They can rely on you assuming their not resentful. That's a whole different story. Then they're going to come to your aid, when its necessary they're gonna, pull together with you, and you don't want

really after you for one reason or another, and there are accused, you have all sorts of things and your guilty because you you have passed its even with character, logical errors. Then it's very easy for people to take you down, because their poke until they hit a place where you guilty and then you're done does you'll. Do yourself in with your own judgment, and so we also ie so makes a very big mistake and. There's a sacrificial idea here to which, as you know now and then you're going to be faced with a situation where it's something really want or your character? Maybe you'll have to lie about something you know, and you think I what difference does it make? You know a lie about it. Jacob does this, but the problem a bunch of problems with that. One is that. Well now you know that you're, the sort of person that will, in fact deceive yourself about the name reality. If something shining Dangled in front of you- and that's not good, because it underlines your face in yourself,

and when you really in trouble, they called out the dark night of the sea. When you really in trouble. That's what you got you ve got within what you can trust yourself and that's it you know, when things are really harsh, and so if you ve betrayed yourself in that manner than you, can yourself under the worst possible circumstances, and that's just that's really not a good thing. So this is very practical advice. It's not casual moralising, those very little casual moralising in these stories in the next part of the story. There's some parallels with Abraham, that's built into the narrative. I think, because Isaac is Abrahams descendant, and so we have to keep the narrative echoing forward. Otherwise lose its its continuity and there's a famine in the land that Isaacson and God tells them to stay the course anyways repeating the promising he gave to Abraham

although Isaac goes to build a democratic, also telling the king and people that Rebecca was a sister just exactly what Abraham did when you went to Egypt, and so there's another echo there of the same of the same, it's the story is being told for a second time essentially and that's to remind you of the of the previous story, but their careless, the king, sees that Rebecca and Isaac or intimate together and luckily doesn't have them put to death. He just tells everybody in the kingdom that there to be left alone, and then Isaac prospers in that land, just like Abraham did in Egypt until the Philistines ask him to leave he's just getting too rich and powerful things. Too well for him, so he's asked him he's asked to leave now. In the meantime, ISA gets married and this is a funny little story. He says he marries too and who give grieved, Isaac and Rebecca. So they

Whoever ISA marries they're not popular with his with their in laws, not in the least that actually becomes relevant a little later because they drive Rebecca quite mad. So I get a kick out of that That's very common! You know it's not easy to integrate new people into your family and hope that that will go smoothly is actually one of the real catastrophes in life right. You have kid: maybe you get along with them, and maybe you don't But, let's assume you do, but then they marry someone that you just don't like and or maybe- it is wrong for them. I mean that's, really rough, that's what Do about that? You know because you're you're, basically screwed both ways. If you have the person you love around and you have to put up with this tremendous creature that they allow themselves with it. If you, if you get rid of completely. Well, then you know you don't have your child anymore, so it's very, very difficult position, and so that's another example of the real ism. I think of the stories Isaac whose hypothetically on his death bed asks you so

four venison, because he likes venison these happy that his son is a hunter and Ruby overhears this is so she conspires with Jacob too, to slaughter to small goats and make his father some stew, because he wants is how to make em stew out of innocent, but who's being, I would say, let's say slightly deceitful or horribly lying- that would be more accurate. She conspires with Jacob. So Jacob kills two little goats, kids boil suppers do and then he puts on some my God skins, because he saw was a hairy character and and Rebecca dresses Isaac in ethos. Clothing. Does Isaac can't see very well at this point, and so then Jacob goes into father with the stew and he's trying to disguise his voice. But it doesn't work very well and so Isaac ask them to come close and Jacob puts out his arm with the goat skin

Britain and Isaac smells them too, and eastwards smells like a sound which may be present the best thing, but And feels like amend and so because eyes, thinks he's on his death bed. He decides to deliver a blessing to hypothetically to ie so and so, but its Jacob and so you that's a big deal too, because the blessing is actually, as I said before, with these ancient people it appeared is, though, Once you said something you didn't get to take it back, you couldn't say: well, look you deceived so it doesn't count, it was like I did. They weren't, maybe is, as were weak, might be one way of thinking about it, but another way as though they were quite is attentive to context. You know, because if I make you a deal and then it turns out that you ve betrayed me, I may feel

the deal is no longer valid, because the assumption was, you were being honest to begin with and that you know violates the whole spirit, but that isn't how these people thought. They said once you man you promised, and that was that so Isaac blesses Jacob. He says God give you the do of Heaven and the fairness of the earth and plenty of corn, and why not? Let people serve you a nation's bow down to you be lost for thy brethren, that's gonna be rough on you, so Let thy mother sons bow down to the curse. It be everyone that courtesy and blessed be he the bless you see, and so there is a quite remarkable painting of that. So there's Rebecca she's, looking pretty old and Isaacs, looking pretty blind Jacobs, taking directions from his mother- and we might say he's perhaps a little old to be taking more or less from his mother, especially given how she's acting in so it's a pretty. Ugly see altogether, especially that we also know that Jacob already

strict. Isa out of his birthright, and so now he's like taken the birthright and he's taken the blessing, and so, as I said that Jacob he turns out to be the father of Israel, like he's a reprehensible character. These are major league betrayals that he's engaging in its not trivial. He really really pose the rug out from under his brother, and you know you could say, will you so? is not as awake as he might be. You know he's kind of a wild man and fair enough, but it certainly seems to me that the the predominant. Moral error falls on Jacobs shoulders, it's very treacherous behavior. What he's doing So then he saw shows up in he's, got a nice stag for his dad and it's like little late for that when he states that his brother was rightly name Jacob, which means supplant her, because he's been deceived twice and Isaac says Isaac,

Sir he's he's asking fun yourselves asking fundamentally, if there's anything at all left over for him, and I can't give the same blessing because that's already been given. So we have to think of something else and Isaac says behold I've made him thy Lord and all Brothers, I've given to him for servants which includes you and with corn and wine of ice sustained him, and what shall I How do you want to be my son and Esau said unto his father? Have you even one blessing for me? My father and left me also, and a nice out lifted up his voice wept and you don't. We already know that he saw a pretty tough guy by all appearances, and you know he's out, hunting on his own encamping and like he's no pushover, and the fact that this reduces them to tears is an indication of the magnitude of the betrayal, and Isaac says you hold dwelling shall be the fatness of the earth and of the do of Heaven, from above and by thy Lord Thou shall live and thou shalt serve your brother and it she'll come too

ass when you will have the dominion and you'll break the yoke, his yoke off from died, Neck Anita hated Jacob because of the blessing where, with his father, blessed him and he saw said in his heart. The days of mourning for my father are at hand. Then I sleigh my brother Jacob. So, fundamentally, you know if Isaac dies or when he dies, and we mourn for him and then Jacob better, look the hell out, because it's like it's it's serious death coming his way and you know He'S- got a he's gotta white he's in Dantes infernal. I think I mentioned this at one point, so Dantes Infernal, it's a very interesting story. It's a descent into Hell, and it's it's actually. One of the places that we sort of derive the popular conception of Hell was partly based on Dante's, on Dante's imagination, on his work and what Dante was trying to do to discover the hierarchical structure of evil, and you know you might think, there's a hierarchical structure of good. Some things are better than other things. But there's all

a hierarchical structure of evil, some evils are greater than other evils and he put betrayal in the in the in the lowest part of health rights, fewer betraying people. You were right beside Satan himself and soul and I think that's good It's very smart, while Dante was a genius after all, I think the reason for that is that you see if some trusts you, their laying their vulnerability open to you now they might be naive. Let's say, and that's we won't think about that, because you just a child. If your name, you can still be betrayed, but if you're an adult and new trust its often as you, if you're at actual adult, is he willingly open yourself up knowing that you could be heard right, cousin naive anymore. So you decide to trust in you see all open myself up and I know that I'm laying myself open to you if you choose to use that power it's a good thing to know. You know if you ve been hurt as a child. I heard as naive person, you might say. Well. Why should I ever trust again, which is really good question

and the answer is the reason you trust again once you're an adult is because your courageous, your courageous, it's an active courage to trust and the reason its useful is because if you trust someone you open the door to reciprocity and negotiation, and cooperation and you entice the best part of the person forward, and so it's it's a courageous act. But then, if you better someone than what you ve done. Is you ve taken the best part of them, which is the part that will courageously trusting in with open eyes right, and you stuck a dagger in that, and so you ve purposefully damaged the best part of them, and so that's why it's such a egregious fault and and its often people don't recover from that sort of thing you, if you betray someone badly enough, you can damage them like you can give them post, traumatic, stress disorder. If you really, if you really put your mind to it- and you know, that's not

the psychological disorder. If your post, traumatic stress disorder produced permanent neurological alterations that make you more neurotic, more sensitive, negative emotion, really for the rest of your life. You can you recover from it to see degree but stress, will tend to re instantiated PTSD. So you you someone and it's not merely cycled, not not that psychological is merely, but it's not merely psychological right. It's its funding, physiological damage so anyway. Jacob Smart enough to get out of there which is also not really a testament to his integrity. Right I mean, he's done these terrible things at the behest of his mother because he wants power and and wants to get it without deserving it. And then you know he finally two foreigny, tales it out of their to his two

family member to his mother's brother and so. It's not exactly the world's most heroic story. That's for sure, and so now, there's an interlude here- and this is a really interesting interlude. It's the story of Jacobs Ladder after visit LA ban or lab and whose his his mothers and on the way he has asleep he lighted upon a certain place and Terry there all night. The sun was set and he took up the stones of that place and put them for his pillows, which seems to indicate very bad planning on on his part. And and lay down in that place to sleep any dreamed. I held the ladder set up on the earth in the top of it reached to Heaven and be held the angels of God, ascending and descending on it and behold the Lord stood above it and said I am the Lord God of Abraham by Father and the guard of Isaac.

The land whereon thou, biased to the I will give it and to thy seed, and so this story of Jacob. Ladder has really possessed the imagination of the west and then there's a reason for that. It's because it's an architect story, because the eye a ladder that reaches to have, it is one of the oldest ideas of mankind, so you find it widely distribute among the romantic cultures, for example, and it's a hallmark of psychedelic experience. That's another way of thinking about it, which is a very peculiar thing. So there's one representation of of the ladder you see got up at the top. There picking out from the clouds. Now I know that sort of where we get the idea that God is in in Heaven and the Heavens up in the sky and and that's an easy story to make fun of, because you know we ve gone up to the moon and there's no god there and and but but this This is not a reasonable way of conceptualizing what these experiences are about

This experience is what this is, the opening up their that's like an opening into an alternate dimension. That's a better way of thinking about it's beyond like from from the judeo Christian perspective, one of the things you have to. The standards that God is beyond space and time here, in the universe, he's out the universe in some manner, and so the idea that that experience of God in its up, isn't that Europe is the best that the imagination can do with essentially a form of extra dimensional experience or or that's the best waited conceptualize and these experiences aren't rare, you know they they make the they make up. The core of this Monica tradition, and so there's an intrusion, of the ancient shamardal tradition, which is tens of thousands of years old into the biblical stories at this point now why

hi Jacob had a essentially somatic experience is very difficult to tell, because we don't know what these old people were up to right and we don't know how much of the archaic tradition or can't religious tradition was still exist, that pursue at that point in time, but we certainly do know that our ancient forebears we're using Psychedelic substances constantly, like I'm Anita, miscarry mushrooms, for example, which were widely used in India before they became extinct. That's the theory anyways, that's to be the basis of the Chemical Sohmer which much has been written about and so we hear of this is a dream hours and perhaps that's what it was, but perhaps that wasn't what it was either and perhaps it was an experience that was induced by I Are the same processes that show manic P We have always induce these experiences, and so we're gonna go through this little bit. So anyways there's a there's, a connect,

and between Heaven and earth that opens up. That's that's! That's the that's the this and there's messengers moving up and down now, one way you can conceptualize. That is psychologically, as we already discussed that in order there are four is within you that are active in alive. And you can. Think of them in some sense as messengers of the higher self. And so you can think about this as a image of a psychological reality. But then so we can stick with that. But but here's some of the representations that have been made. I really like the one on the right at the William Blake. I, like the helix idea, and I dont think that that's that's fluke through helix is in double helix, is in all sorts of imaging, imagery, very ancient and very modern that are associated with both healing with this kind of vision so- and you see it in the Blake Reparative

patient God is associated with well really with the sun and with light, and you see that on the left as well. That wherever God is where light is, and so that's a very interesting idea as far as I'm concerned as well, there's some other representations one by Should gal. So now there's this idea that there's a there's the positive the of opening up a line of communication between the human psyche on the transcendent divine and there is. There is a great image of Christ. S pantry, there's who created the world is one of the first mosaics. If I remember correctly- and I wish remember where it was, but I dont but its very interesting image, I'm having a carving up it made at the moment by a friend of mine, but I do believe you see Christ's face in italy- maiden portrayed in a mediaeval maharanees holding a book. So it's him.

As is the importance of of the book you know about as a means of transmitting wisdom and his face. Very asymmetrical and that the eyes are different. One side and the other end, one half of the face represents the human part and the other side of the face represents the divine part and you know, I also think about that psychologically, because I do think it that's the right way conceptualize human beings is that there is an aspect of us, that's mortal and human, limited, but there's an aspect of us: that's transcendent and divine as well and its latent in I'm sense, but there are times when it manifests itself, and this is not speculation right. This is like the just experience of human beings. Now it's necessarily uneasy experience to have, but its reported everywhere,

and it can be reliably induced as we discuss before by chemical means, which- and I dont know what that means. Exactly. We ve talk a little bit about suicide and mushrooms, for example, and you could say that the mystical experiences that have been involved in the newest experiments down it at Johns. Hopkins are. Arrangements or forms of psychosis. You know because they have some similarity to cycle psychotic experiences, although Cotter people were given LSD in the sixties and they always said that that was something different than what they were happy and if you give psychotic people amphetamines, you can make them worse, so their biochemical separate and then we know that in but also the thing that so interesting about the seller. Simon experiences, is that they reliably produce mystical experiences. The people rate as among the most important experiences of their life and among those who have the psychedelic experience, positive things happen to them

and so that kind of message with the whole psychosis theory right, because what you gonna do you gotta claim that you give an appeal and they have a psychotic break and then another healthier. So I know that isn't how psychotic breaks work you're, not healthier after having one you're like you're a broken. And it's not easy. To put you back together so Older people all over the world have discovered every manner of psychedelic substance that you could possibly want. You imagine, there's lots of hungry people wandering the earth for a long time and they eat every damn thing they can their hands on it now and then something very peculiar happened as a consequence. So. So I'm gonna tell you a little bit about the shamanic tradition, because its associated with Jacobs Ladder, so according to earlier routine earlier. It was great historian of religion, compatriot of youngsters and and the influenced each other.

Substantially Ellie. I too believe that chauvinism that used psychedelic was a degeneration from the original more pure chauvinism. But I think later scholarship has demonstrated that that's incorrect, that that the dramatic ritual per SE was a direct consequence of the use discovery of an end, ritualistic use of psychedelic substances, but anyways earlier identified three pathways to chauvinism and the chairman in it in a tribe, was more educated than the typical. Person with a larger vocabulary and was the repository of the oral tradition and so learned all the stories that had been passed down word mouth and people by the way are very, very can vary there, accurately tell the same story across generations. That's been quite well documented, so, and people who can We really can remember because what else are they going to do

Their memories are are far greater than modern people's memories, because we can forget everything, because we can just look it up, but they remembered things because they had no choice. My father knew someone who was illiterate and and and and can use numbers either when when he grew up in a Scotchman sixty years ago- and he was he had sheep- if I remember correctly- and although he couldn't care he knew if one of the sheep was missing has he knew all the sheep, and so he could just by looking if one of the sheep was missing, but he couldn't count and so well so people who don't have our particular set of skills. First of all, there not stupid, and second they have other skills that we don't understand. To fill in the gaps. So earlier identified spontaneous vocation, so you were just you had the spirit of a showman, let's

so you're, probably extremely high and openness, let's say from a modern perspective, hereditary transmission. So you know your father was a showman in your grandfather was a charming and so forth and you got initiated into that process or a personal quest. In Siberia. This is from earlier in Siberia. The youth, who is called to be a showman, attracts attention by his strange behaviour. For example, we seek solitude, becomes absent, minded loves to Rome and the woods or unfrequented place. Has visions and sings in his sleep. You know if you put someone in a place, that's deprived, that's where you're you're deprive from a sensory purse if it be normal, people were hallucinate quite quickly what seems what happens is that if you dampened down sensory input, then you start to become aware of the background processes of your mind. Like that. It's like the signal to noise ratio. I gotta get this right. As the noise decreases, Some of the noise become signal, the background noise become signal and you start to become

of your own internal psychological process? Is it something like that, Here's visions and things in his sleep in some instances? This period of incubation is marked by quite serious symptoms among the acute young man. Sometimes has fits of fury and easily loses consciousness hides in the forest feeds on the bark of trees, throws self into water and fire and cuts themselves with knives. We went to a potlatch in northern in Vancouver Island about a year ago, and they had this one dance. It was the clock, clock, Iowa, natives and they had this interesting dance. That was the dance of the wild man and so on. The person who invited us was the wild man and he was dressed up and in tree branches and so forth, and so he was the person who had been in the Bush too long and he came in ass, a cannibal and therefore there is genuine cannibalistic rights among these people. Not so long he came in as accountable, and everybody had to wear this like cedar head dress, because if you had a cedar here Yes on, then the cannibal wouldn't take a bite out of you in this area

took this rather seriously. So you should have your cedar dress on, and so here, looking around the crowd and there's like four hundred people in this place, and he could really acted so he's doing this wild Dance and then all the women stood up and started to tat kind of death in place and sing, and they- taming him. So that was really cool you can open. It was really interesting to see that those people are about. They ve had an unbroken culture for about thirteen thousand years, a that's how long they ve been out, what an island there, and it was very interesting to see that dramatization of the domestication of of man by women laid out in that dance in that way. But it was also interesting in relationship to the show. Tradition because he came in ass, a wild man right and he had to be re civilized in some sense and brought back down to earth so but by whatever Method he may have been designated a showman is recognised as such only Having received two methods of instruction, the first is ecstatic dreams.

Francis visions. The other thing that this guy told me I have no reason to doubt him he's also not illiterate person and so has a great memory. He does carving traditional carving and he's very good at it. He carved a fifty three foot total that's now in front of the Mute Museum of ART in in downtown Montreal. So if you ever go there, you can go see it. I won't be there forever, but it's there right now and he was taught to car by his grandparents and he said that he dreamed in you know. You know what the hell images look like clockwork locks, her kind like that the same sort of imagery. He told me, he dreamed in those images. So when he dreams, that's the form that the things he dreams about takes, and he also said that he would talk to his grandparents and his dream. So if he was working on a piece of wood and trying to figure out how to carve it and he ran into a particularly difficult problem, he dream in his great he'd, have a conversation with his grandparents

help and figure out how to solve the problem of many wake up and he could go carved and the thing is, he told me these things, sort of factly right like you know what I mean you, it wasn't like. He was telling me he's weird things that happened to a mobile. He was doing that to some degree. I asked him a lot of questions about what he carved in what it all meant, and you know that was just part of his explanation of how we did it and he he called me a couple of doors that I haven't my house, and one of them is quite interesting the two make a panel and their an underwater seed and under the water. There's a bunch of you know, mythical monsters. Some of them are killer whales and think there's an octopus down there and carved in this particular style, and he said that the only thing that happened to me when he dreams, as he goes down to the bottom of the water, where these mythical creatures are, and he gets inspiration from them, and so I thought that was extremely interesting. You know we! We don't know what a mind that isn't.

Civilized. Let's say hyper later it like, like our minds, Arcas we're so bombarded by external stimuli who have no idea what the now RO mind, is like really, and so it was quite interesting to two to listen to that end and also to see the consequences caused. Quite a great he's, quite a great carver, so the is ecstatic dreams, trances visions. The second is traditional shamardal techniques, names and functions of the spirits, pathology and genealogy of the clan secret language. This twofold teaching imparted by this. It's in your master shamans constitutes initiation, while also you don't modern, we'll- have a problem with that, because we don't really get initiated. But I would say that. You don't let's say that, where each on a quest of some sort you wouldn't be here, I dont think if, if you weren't, because why else would you be here Can you people, and so your own request of some sort to figure out to sea

but with the meaning of life, let's say, and You don't want to do that alone, because you only last like seventy years and good luck figuring out on you're on your own. It's just not gonna happen. It's too complicated, and you'll be to isolated right. If, if it's just you That's insanity! That's no one can stand that, and so you hope that other people have things tell you in that. Your culture has something to tell you you know so you're on a quest, maybe not with the same density. As a somatic initiate. But you know, let's give you some credit and then you're also trying to understand the wisdom of the past and that that's the second part of this, is like ok, what you're, a human being and human beings have been telling stories for a long period of time trying to figure out. Going on trying to. How to we themselves in the world and so on. What you're doing here is exactly what the romantic initiate does in the second part of the process, which is too, suppose yourself to the degree that you can two names and functions,

the spirits mythology and genealogy of the clan and the secret language. This twofold teaching imparted by the spirits in the old master shamans constitutes initiation. So it's that's rebirth right, that's that's what would initiation as its being born again and and that's a birth of the sea? it rather than of the body at something like that, and so it's the rebirth of an integrated psyche. That's one way of thinking about it and a psyche. That's that's individual! so grounded in port common humanity in the wisdom of common humanity, and that makes you strong, or at least it makes you stronger, because there is a limit to your strength God only knows to some degree what that limit is. You know. People can be unbelievably tough, unbelievably tough and

I think it's even the more admirable for human beings to be tough, because we're so conscious of how we can be hurt and we're so conscious of what that hurt can lead to you know you can have your family taken away from you and you can be destroyed, The fact that you can be courageous in the face of that at all is something that is absolutely unbelievable. Right in people deserve a lot more credit. I think, than people give themselves because the fact that weaken the honourable under conditions of If a death rate of suffering- that's that's a testament to the human spirit, and there is a profound anti human ethos. I think that pervades our culture. You know that considers human beings, answers on the planet, something like that, you know and that there should be less of us. It's the same spirit that motivated the guy, who wrote the book about it better to have never been in sight.

I don't see it. That way. You know I mean I think people do pretty well, for you know for having their leg. Cotonou bear trap and their heads, What advice there actually do in pretty well, because life is the hard and the fact that we're not absolutely brutal and murderous all the time is really something remarkable given what we actually have to contend with, that we can go out of our way to be honest and generous and altruistic, and to care for each other under unbelievably dire circumstances and to act nobly, sometimes under the most trying conditions. You know and soldiers, it's good, like archipelagos, he tells story after story of people who acted abysmally, but So people who, under the worst threats imaginable, never sacrificed their character, anyone reading about that is really it. While it really makes you wonder, that's that's what it does the future shamans among the fungus as they approach maturity, go through a hysterical or history crisis, but sometimes their vote,

manifest itself at an earlier age. The boy runs away into the mountains and remains there for a week or more feeding on animals which he tears to pieces, with his teeth. He returns to the village filthy bloodstained, and it's only after ten or more days that have passed and he began to babble incoherent words. Range behaviour of future Romans has not failed to attract the attention of scholars and from the middle the past century. Several attempts have been made to explain the phenomena as a mental disorder, but the problem was wrongly put from the one hand it is not true that shamans always are always have to be neuropathic in mentally deranged. On the other hand, the critical issue, those among them who had been able become shamans precisely because they had succeeded in becoming cured. So it was not the descent into this strange subterrane, psychological state that constitutes the transformation that makes the chairman. But it's the emergence,

back out of it, not a journey to the underworld into a rebirth right and so and there's a great book. This is a great book my guide him Henry Ellen version, and he was an existential psychoanalyst and philosopher he wrote a book called the discovery of the unconscious, which I would highly recommended on my list of record reading it is a great book if you want to know about the psychoanalyze tradition, the best introduction there is, and he discusses, Adler and Young and Freud, and does a very credible job of all three, but also takes the history, psychoanalytic thought back three four hundred years before Freud, and so it's it's we engaging reading and and and and very interesting, One of the things that membership points out quite clearly and he associates this to some degree with the shah tradition- that both Freud in young young, in particular, underwent very intense periods of psychological.

Durban, let's say, and I would say what was happening is that, because they were questioning, axioms at the most mental level. They were deranged, their cognitive, perceptual structures right and young was also experimental with imaginative techniques with visionary techniques, which he will you get a lot, and there is a period of his life where he was having constant. A constant stream of visions which he wrote down book called the red book. But at the same time he was still functioning as a psychiatrist and operating normally in the world and so speedily people have suggested? what he had was a psychotic break, but that's ridiculous because you don't know, that's not how it works Man, if you haven't psychotic break you you're not being in this active psychiatrist. Those things do not go together, especially not for a long period of time, and so there there's possibility of extreme experts, science, without cyclists, psychopathology and so and elaborate J C says much this

thing about Freud, about Charles Darwin as well, who underwent a terrible period of of of mental confusion. I would say, as a concept of formulating his theory of evolution, which was really hard on him ass. He was, he was a die hard Christian and he knew what he knew what the implications of this theory word. He didn't know what to do about that universal, Very very hard on him, so it's quite common for people of genius to go through an intense crisis. Psychological crisis. But then resolve that and the genius is in the resolution. The precondition for the genius is the dissolution. In some sense, is you have to be obsessed with the problem has to rip. You completely are you going to concentrate on it so obsessively that you might come up with a solution, but it's the people who can

with a solution that are their profits in the Sharm in and so forth, and so on and and and so that's not. This is something that only characterizes our cultures. We just don't recognize it in our own culture properly and and that's a problem. Well sometimes we do. Right? You remember that in the lion, king right, that perfectly shows up he's the Shopman heel he he brings. He brings Simba down that tunnel dark. Well, that's the darkness of the soul. He hasn't reflect upon himself in a pool when you reflect bought himself deeply sees the reflection of his father, then that becomes a car thing of cosmic significance and his father appears in the sky, just like God appears to Jacob and basically tells them that it's time for him to grow the hell up. And to return to the devastated kingdom and to set it right. You know, and so right. That's exactly right. I mean we live in the devastated kingdom, that's an eternal truth and it's the responsible

The of the individual to grow the hell up and to set it right because Its devastated and when things are not in place than everyone suffers too much, and that's not good, There is no excuse for not doing something about it, because you don't have anything better to do so and even like children's movies tell you this. So this is a fun one. This is from the EU wine Salter, ninth to twelve central, that's Adam and Eve, but the there is speculation that the fruit that the reading there you see it is so aside and mushrooms, because there are the only kind of mushroom that girl like that. So that's pretty wild. You might say and then this is the. I think it's called ban hysteria vine, if I remember correctly, and it's what I ask is made out of- and it has this double helix form, which is very very interesting and they are the people

If nobody could figure out how the hell they made. This, I was gonna which, which transports people spiritually in a very intense manner, there's a whole religion based on it modern religion, as well as the archaic religion, and to try to make this stuff they had to take two plants. We grow anywhere near each other and light. Like a million plants in the Amazon so like. How do you figure that out? Nobody knows many have to cook them in this very particular way for of particular amount of time before produce this stuff, so one of the plants has DM tee in it, which is a very intense psychedelic, but its very short acting. And the other has Emily inhibitor. So if you take the empty and you take the amino inhibitor, then they d empty trip. Last For much longer, and so that's what these, amazonian natives figured out and no one has any idea how they managed it. And if you ask- They tell you that the plants told them how to do it, which isn't much of an ex nation as far as modern people are concerned, but then, when modern people take me, I was gone and the plant so to speak, starts to tee.

To them they are a little less leary of the whole theory that the plants had something to do with this. So you know these things that these I'm low to talk about this because I'm not an advocate for drug use but by the same token, and ignore empirical data. It's not reasonable and the IMF, call doubted that psychedelic substances can produce mystical experiences and that those often have a transformative affect me. One of the latest studies show that if you took people who are dying of sir and you in gave them suicide and, in a sufficient doors, to produce a mystical experience that you radically decrease their their fear of death. It's, like you, gotta think about that. That's that's tough! That's a tough experiment! You you! Just! Wouldn't spect that you think you take someone. You do range them intensely and then come back they're not even though their dying you're, not nearly as afraid of dying in all. You ve got a kind of wake up and

the roses when you see something like that and the people who are doing this research are very reliable people, so there I'm Anita Mascara, there's this old idea. It's quite a funny idea. Toadstool so fly like emanating scarier and there's some. This is predict there is some evidence that they actually like getting stoned. Cause animals lead these like reindeer deroulede, these things too, and they get pretty tripped out by them and so on this book on psychedelic use among animals, which is a small book, but and so so there's this idea. The toads used to sit around the avenue the scary and wait for the stone flies to badly around them and then snap them up. So that's pretty funny, I think so and you know there are mushrooms in in the U S that are the oldest, the oldest or

systems on the planet, hey, there's one mushroom, I can't remember where it is, but it covers something like. Oh god I don't know like school hundreds of square miles. It's like this huge thing, because it all underground right and they have these very complex networks of of my celia they're called, and they think the thing is like a hundred and fifty thousand years old. Something like that. So there's plenty of things about the world that we don't know. That's for sure. There's the the chemical make up of the classic psychedelic cc. They all have the same fundamental structure. This is so tone, and that's the one of the major brain neural transmitters, and so what happens with the second Alex's that they they alter the they alter the brain function by altering the Neuro Chemical utilization of Saratoga change them

in which the certain ergic systems work and that is of the Sheraton on system is very basic, systematic as when you're an embryo and your brain is developing its the serotonin projections that basically orchestrate the development of your brain so there and their very archaic circuits, very, very archaic circuits. So- and this is the paper I think I should all this from suicide and Griffiths who's been doing a lot of this resource suicide and can occasion mystical type experiences having substantial and sustain personal meeting in spiritual significance. So why that's a good question right like so so here's a question for you. It is beyond dispute that human beings are capable of religious experience. Why. Why is that exactly and they like it, you can associate with psychosis, but that doesn't work is the theory doesn't hold. The theory doesn't hold water, it's not the same thing. So why is it there exactly

Maybe it's not an easy thing to figure out, like I've been trying to figure, I'm always trying to figure to biological explanation for everything right, because if you want to find to stand, or you want to make sure that it can resist a challenge, and so, if I can find an explanation for something that's reductionist taken materialistic and biological, then I'm going for that. That's a tough one! consciousness is a tough one, that the moral sense is a tough one there nor easy things to crack. The big bang is a tough one, so. You know I mean a cynic might say that maybe sometimes People are close to suicide. They'll have a mystical experience,

and you maybe you say well, it's a last- ditch attempt of your brain to delude you into thinking that your life has some significance. You know and that's it that's a plausible theory, but I dont think it accounts for the generality of the phenomena. So so I don't buy it. What happens in the show manic experiences that the chairman has the experience of being reduced to a skeleton. First saw death. A deaf expire, it's very realistic death experience. And then the next thing that happens is that he finds himself in a place where he's communing with his ancestors the ancestral spirits and then, after that, there's the

climbing up something like the ladder Jacobs Ladder say and an encounter with God, for all intents and purposes, and it's very widespread phenomena, It's the world tree, and I thought about this- a lot transfigure with this. With this, residents according to a yak outta, informant that that's in Siberia, the spirits carry the future common, hell and showed him in a house for three years Harry Moses Initiation spirits cut off his head, which they set off to one side for the north, Must watch his own dismemberment with his own eyes? Dissolution too primary elements in some sense and hackers body debates which are later distributed. The spirits of various sicknesses. It's only this condition that the future Sherman will obtain the power of healing his bones then covered with new flash and in some cases also given

blood. So there's a deaf resurrection experienced its associated with this. Your ritual. We're here in the presence of a very ancient religious idea which belongs to the hunter culture. Bone symbolizes, the final route of animal life, the move from which the flesh continually raw rises, It is from the bonded man, and animals are reborn for a time they maintain themselves in the existence of the flesh than they die and their life is reduced to the essence concentrated in the skeleton from which they will be born again to good graphic representation of the experience. Hats, an old painting by I think it's Hieronymus Bosh. If I remember correctly, I really like that, because its reminiscent of the near death experiences that you hear people described in their quite common as well and and

I have been very weird experience once I don't think I've told you this story, I was her, was assessing someone who had gone through a car windshield and he was very depressed. It had happened a long time before, but he was very depressed and the insurance company was basically accusing him of lingering, because he'd been depressed for so long and you don't need shorter, healed up and everything. But if you're left hemisphere is damaged, especially the frontal part of you left hemisphere, then you can be in chronic state of depression, because the left hemisphere, generally speaking, is responsible for paused. Motion and so, if it isn't there than it's like negative emotion for you, and so I went assessed him and I was giving him this. I think it was called the Mp I, the Minnesota, multifaith personality inventory, which is a kind of a standard, half personality test, half psychopathology test.

And he was so you don't use very serious guy middle aged guy. Nothing about him was new HIV in the least it was like an account, and I think I think in fact he was an accountant. If I remember correctly- and there is one question- and it said my spirit has left my body I think that's right, it's very close and he stopped any asked me what well. He said another How to answer this, and so on why and he said well after I went through the car when she allows in a coma for three weeks, something like that and I died. I think he said he died three times and he said that he could member. It couldn't remember anything during a period of time and he couldn't remember the car accident. That's retrograde amnesia, it's quite con common with head injuries and he said that during one of those issues variances, and this is all he remembered from the hospital was that he of his body and.

Down the long tunnel of light. You ve heard these near death experiences and then saw his family members therein. Saw the heavenly light and then realize that it wasn't his time and came back to his body What was interesting about this guy was that a first of all, I didn't ask him about this right. He basically volunteered this story, and it was instigated by this question and he didn't know than anybody also than he had ever had an experience like that, because I asked him if he had ever heard anything about like that. He said no star was interest, Really was interesting is how the hell did he remember that right because he had it means during the entire period of time he was in a bloody coma. So you didn't remember anything. They remembered that and so well those experiences are more common than you think and then there's a you know, there's a painting of one which is quite interesting and that's like a tunnel to have

it's the same basic idea, a little bit more suffering going on in this one. I think, but that's pretty much typical of Hieronymus Bush. I mean I don't know what was up with that guy, but he was. He was one strange character. Now the Scandinavians have this idea that the world is a tree and. I've been thinking about that a lot. I think that the tree idea tree is something that is grounded in in matter. Let's and reaches up to Heaven in the scandinavian tree at the bottom. This quite a cool idea at the bottom of the sea. This tree is constantly being not by snakes. You can sort of sea the snakes at the bottom and same time, it's being watered and the water makes it we grow at the same rate that the snakes nor its roots. So it's uniting idea. You know that there is continual chaotic destruction and replacement at the basis of whatever this process is.

But the tree seems to me to be a representation. Not so much of it said it's like a different dimensional space. That's that's! What's trying to be represented, so imagine that you know your structured. If you take power, of ten magnification, say human beings or about in the middle of the car. This thing and the largest thing, if you do it by my powers of ten and You know you have a subatomic level in an attack eleven a molecular level and then there are maybe the level organs, and then there's u within there's your family and so on all the way up the tree fundamentally, and so I think that what this Tree represents- and this is the things that thing that the shaman moves up now. I think that's what it represents its this. It's this different view of its dimensionality at something like that, and I think that what happens in the psychedelic experiences that consciousness can travel up and down that structure it some. Like that and maybe not only up and down, but maybe right through it

I know that a radical claim it's a really radical claim and if it might be wrong but it's probably wrong, even because most radical claims are wrong, but but but I'm not so sure it's wrong. And here's some cool. So that's the scandinavian World Tree and that was drawn. I had after policies to visited the tribes in the Amazon who use. I was scared. No, you see it's a snake, it's a tree with snakes. Well, you know that's reminiscent of the story in Adam and Eve, obviously, but it's also reminiscent of our primate dwelling place right, because that was basically are

that's your home, a tree surrounded by snakes and the snakes like to eat us, and this is a long time ago. This is like fifty billion years ago, it's really a long time ago, and so we don't know where these images come from precisely, but I do have the suspicion that we use the circuitry that. We develop to detect snakes to represent the unknown as such, because it like a snake, something that comes out of the unknown. Like we evolved right. We all evolved out of an animal substructure, and so we had to get our our biological cognitive structure from somewhere. We have this capacity of thinking about the absolute unknown in the terrors that our vote, in that the horrors that can emerge from what we don't understand and it stands perfectly to reason that we would use circuits that were already pre, develop.

For that and that this is a reasonable representation of the existential structure of the world, so I think I'm going to show you this before, but it never ceases to amaze me this this picture. So my sundry this when he was nine, eight and so on the right. You see mushroom houses. They have the names of all his friends on them. Oh that's order right and then on the left side. You see chaos there and then the launch thing is bug and then there's a river that runs right down the middle, and so that's like the. The union's symbol with the divide in the middle that's quite cool and then there's there. It is theirs. Jacobs, louder! It's like Jack in the bienstock, which is by the way another variant of the same germanic story and through bugs going up and down it, they're taking messages from Heaven and then up there in Heaven it's got the sun and there's Saint p,

And I don't know where in the world he got this, it's not like. You had a lot of religious education, I mean really despite me, You know there's the poorly gates up there, and then that was the world as far as his he had a very ordered psyche, I would say, and still does, but when he drew out absolutely blew me away, and so I had it laminated. It's in my office because, while I dunno because like what the hell do you make of that in all that's that's. Why so will you sort of get the picture there? You know that cathedrals the great cathedral of Europe are. They are like the forest in stone right and they try to represent the light coming through the leaves, and so it's sort of our ancestors forest home. But it's it's transformed in

these great sculptures of stone and they produce or because of the combination of light and darkness and color, but also, I think, for the same reason that huge trees produce. I and people you know, and we don't want them tat down. They seem sacred in some sense and perhaps they are, but no, it would also seem to me. This is an intuition that the the architects of these great cathedrals we're trying to get it trying to express something that deep and structural their turn time. Trying to. Spread the idea that, if being was constituted properly, then it would be organised from the subatomic level all the way up to the highest cosmic level, perfectly so every layer stacked on top of each other without any contradictions that would be an ideal motive. And everything would come together under those circumstances and that's what's being expressed

he's cathedrals. It's not all of its being express, because there also shaped like a cross, and you know the idea is that the centre of the cross, which is the center of suffering, is also the place of the individual. The place where the transformation takes place. That's all built into the architecture is well so then there's the tree like structures that make us up. It stretched down to the tiniest realities. Microcosm, then there's this this idea, it's all represented in the same way again, it's this specially the Mandela up in the top right. It's the idea of its perfection of crystalline structure and that's what the yogi are trying to attain when they organ

their bodies that trying to get every single layer of there being a line properly in it. Something like kind of see an echo of that in the I think. That's a tibetan sand painting, if I remember correctly on the on the bottom left, I d, is that if you get yourself a line properly than information can flow along that tree. That that's you without without impediment, something like that, and that would be like a state of optimal health and that of physical and spiritual exercises can put you. At stake and that's, while those are all clouds of ideas that surround this idea of a ladder to Heaven. So Jacob is talk, the god- and God says behold, I'm with you and I will keep the in all places were you go and bring you again into this land, for I won't leave you until I have done that which I have spoken to you of and Jacob awakened out of asleep.

And he said: surely the Lord is in this place and I knew it not any was afraid and said how dreadful is this place? This is not About the house of God- and this is the gate of Heaven and Jacob up early in the morning and took the stone and he had put first pillows and set it up for a pillar and pour oil on top of it. That's a sacrifice, and he called the neighbour that place Bethel, but the name of the city was called laws at the first in about a vow saying if God will be with me and will keep me in this way, that I go and will give me read to eat and Raymond to put on so that I come again to my father's house in peace? Then shall the Lord B, my god and this stuff which I have set for a pillar shall be gods house and above all of that is given to me. I will surely give the tenth unto the and that's a pretty good place to stop so now I'll. Just.

Conclude so you have this very morally ambivalent character, right whose so far pretty much. Everything he's done that we're familiar with is not good, so he's he's betrayed rather horribly, twice badly enough, so that he his brother, wants to kill him and. Everyone can kind of sympathise with his brother, so then he runs away essentially because his mother tells them to which is not exactly a testament to his character and, despite that strain we enough. He has this experience, you know and that's heartening, I guess that's. The point is that.

People are predisposed to terrible error. There is no doubt about that, and yet, when I was writing my latest book, I had a friend of mine, Norman Deutsche wrote the forward and normal written a couple of great books and he's jewish, and he read some of what I had written and he took me to task for making the God of the old testament in over, christian perspective too harsh and unforgiving, and I wrote a fair bit of it because of his criticism, because what I ve learned doing these lectures is like not exactly right. You know, I mean what happens in the old testament is, if you screw up a spell, you know you do and you decide that you're not going to do anything about it. So it's conscious and deliberate then like look there, allow you are in serious trouble and I actually think that's also psychologically accurate. One of the things young pointed out this always struck me was that

If you don't know what you're doing this is actually in the gospel of Thomas is well, interestingly enough as one of the guards Gnostic Gospels Christ tells his followers something like If you make a mistake- and you don't know what you're doing then you'll be forgiven for it. But if you the mistake, knowing what you're doing. And you do it anyways than like good luck to you and and- and I think that's I think- that's that's psychologically accurate. One of the things it's very interesting about they judge Mental God in the old testament, however, is that he can be bargained with. And even if you make mistakes. Especially if you're unconscious of them, if you haven't learned yet, let's say, then you always have the opportunity to return to the proper path and that people get cynical about that cause. There's no this.

Mostly christian idea that you can live a terribly sinful life. But if you repentant on your deathbed, it's like Heaven for you and it's like a house. That sounds like a great deal right. It's like You do whatever the hell you want until just before you die course. You might not know that is that support You then you just say: well, I'm sorry- and you know everything's forgiven, but a problem within cynical about that sort of thing is that it's no trivial matter to repent. You know, because to repent means a figure out what you actually did and the worse things that you did. The more horrible it is to figure it out, it's no joke right and there's no genuine repentance without understanding of the depth of your depravity. And so, if you lived a particularly reprehensible, life and you come to understand it, I think that in and of itself could kill you. You know it's a terrible thing to wake up and see what you ve done. If what you ve done is truly terrible.

So there's no easy out: it's not an easy out! It's it's just pure cynicism. To associate that I deal with with an easy out. It's not, but there is that positive idea that. That's continually represented is that the individuals, the source of moral choice, the individual, is prone to genuine error and temptation in a verbal and realistic way, but that that doesn't sever the relationship between the individual and the divine and the possibility of further growth. And then I would say well, thank God for that, because without that like who would have a chance right. Who would have a chat? And so the idea that the deity has presented the infinite. Let's say as presented in the old testament is merely judge. Metal is definitely wrong and, and is in fact something that you can.

Tend within organ, with close with one thing, one of the things that I learned while I was going through. This was meaning of the name. Israel does Jacob eventually gets named Israel and and jumping ahead a little bit to move to the next lecture, but Israel, and so he's also the father of Israel and the Father of the twelve Sons who make up the twelve tribes of Israel, but what Israel means is he who struggles with God and that's an interesting idea, because its begin, a psychological idea, and that that's. Why I said earlier that it isn't obvious in the old testament what it means to believe in God, because what Jacob does a struggle with God, and I think that that's a really good characterization of an ethical life, because, if you're trying to lead an ethical life, that's what you're doing. As you see, your struggling like blind belief isn't helpful because you don't know what you're believing in like it's just not that helpful, but if you're possessed by

by the desire to orient yourself properly, but also confused by the by the existential structure of the Which we all are, then, then what you're doing when you're trying to orient, probably in life is struggling ethically and Jacob actually gets quite heard here those with God, literally and God, Dislocates is his. His thigh As you know, the idea, there is war, the hell out right. The thing that you're contending with is powerful, although you and contend with it. That's the thing that so interesting, but you know you That's some genuine peril, which I think is exactly right But the idea that Israel so there's Israel to state- let's say it- is real, the poor this land and all of that, but there's this more important idea, which is again a psychological idea, which is the Fate of Israel, which is the promised land, is the state that everyone who wrestles with God, exists in and that's not happy naive belief in

you know and eternally bless it after life. It's not that it's not a wish fulfilment. It's it's it's to be active. We engaged in life and in the difficulties of life right and try. To find the path, because that's what wrestle with God is trying to find the path and that to me what believe me fundamentally in the old testament. Perhaps in the new testament as well. Is that belief is expressed in trying to find the path and that's an ethical struggle and it's a real struggle. It's the struggle of life. So as long as you're willing to engage in that struggle, then hypothetically you have divine behind you, and so I believe that I think that's true

because the other thing I see is that the people who set things right so that the air, the the horrible forces of cosmic destruction, don't do us in the people who are trying to set things right are the ones that are struggle. Ethically and so, and that there is a redemptive element to that and I think. There's any way of being cynical about that. So also, thank you

So remember to speak right into the might, because there are all these other people watching. That will hear it will hear us. So, ok, I doktor killers. So what the story of Jacob today there is a theme of betrayal agency that from the beginning, because he was very angry and jealous at his brother. I was thinking Are there any stores are waking, say about betrayal? That does come from a loved one right, where it's not from a place, so so black and white of anger, resentment and bitter, and how did the parties kind of recover or is anyway to renamed or is it as black and white, as if you betray someone than there it's like Jacob? Where he's your spirit, he was hatred no one. In fact in this story, it's not black and white, because We know we're only halfway through it and one of the things I ve noticed as a clinician let's say is that an as an observer of peace? in General- is that I've never ever seen anyone get away with anything and

doesn't get away with any of this, and so. You know he's humbled by his eventual experiences and he learned but he did it wrong and there's reconciliation that it happens throughout the story of Jacob so and Anders, minor, betrayals and major betrayals. You know that some of them have tremendously serious consequences in some of them have lesser consequences. But there is an underlying idea that things can you'll be set right, even though its well. I think it takes Jacob some twenty years, something like that to set things right and even then it's like touch and go. So if I answer your question: ok, yeah, hey! You speak frequently in your lectures about. I guess the war between good and evil are the struggle of life really is a struggle between good and evil being at the core of a conscious lived existence.

And I guess on that note. If you were one hundred percent certain that there was no afterlife, would you still be able to preach the there's, a positive meeting in life if you're a hundred percent certain some atheists seem to be one hundred percent certain, and yet they still preach that there are some positive meaning to life. Would you be one of those or would you turn into Kane? You know so cynical. I think that well for as far as I'm concerned, one of the things I learned from studying twentieth century history is that like, even if the idea that, even if you take the most cynical of ideas, lights. Life is irredeemable suffering and and perhaps isn't even justified. Because of that, it still seems to me that you have an ethical duty, let's say,

to live in a manner that reduces that to the degree pot that that's possible and so, and I think that that can be experienced as meaningful in since independently of the transcendent context. Now I don't We know how to strip off the transcendent context, because one of the things I would say that happened to me is because I've spent so much time looking at the horrible things that people have done is that it's like Young, said that he did when it is one of his famous Coty said no tree can reach up to Heaven unless its roots reached down to Hell, and so as I've Doug pour into the depravity of human beings. My sense of the possibility of human beings has also grown. What would you say in proportion and intel I've become convinced? Actually, the goods? more powerful force than evil. Even no evil is an unbelievably powerful force, and so

can't really strip the transcended away. Now, whether what bearing that has on eternity say on an after life, I mean I I I I can't see anything about that, but the only thing I guess I can say is that there are many things about being that we don't understand in the least, and we don't understand the nature of consciousness or the nature of time. So I am not. I wouldn't despair about that. But yes, I think that life can still meaningful without without there being a necessity of an after life. So no,

No, no. I doktor Petersen since studying your work. One of the things that I find most fascinating is your analysis of the story of can enable, and my question is if it came, got to the point that he did right before killing his brother, murdering his ideal and decided that that was something he didn't want to do. What and vice or guidance. Would you would you give a personally got to that. Well, there's a story I read called the cocktail party mentioned this before by tears. Elliot in the cocktail party is a scene to play where this woman approaches a psychiatrist and starts talking to him

Her problems and she said something that surprises him. She says I hope that I'm the problem this is well. Why would you hope that says. Well, I thought about it a lot and if the world's the problem, then I'm done because I can't change the world. But if I'm the problem, then maybe there's something about myself. I can change and I can undo this tariff situation that I mean- and so I would say- that's repentance fundamentally, like thirty

and I say this carefully because I understand that people are susceptible to bad fortune. Sin and ignorance can make that worse, but independently of that, like good people suffer, make no mistake about it, but if things are right for you, if you're resentful about being that's the right way of because that's the deepest way of thinking about, if you read the writings of the people who do the mass killings, for example, that's what you see over and over its Kane, it's like there. Angry beyond comprehension at the intolerable oddity of being and their angry at God, even if they don't say it exactly like that they come so close to saying it like that. That is it there's no difference.

What God says to Kane is look to yourself. First before you criticise be, and that strikes me as right. It's because to not do that is arrogant beyond belief that satanic arrogance, literally, if something like that can be literal like don't make yourself the judge of being before you clean up you're your room. That's her and it became we are referring to is. This is something I learned in some part from souls Nixon when he, when he was in the prison camps and try to understand how these heroic people he's. So I could possibly manage it. Exercises the undertaken. He really view this within a christian orthodox context of repentance and reduce Action is. He said he went over his life with a fine tooth comb and try to imagine all of the ethical mistakes he made in its entire life he knew where mistakes right it was? It was. This was the sole search not

relying on external standards of morality, except in so far as were inevitably influenced by those and then This idea was, is there's something I could do right now to put that right and that's the right questions if things aren't going your way, and I think that means that your resentful and arrogant and deceitful- those are the three things the clump together. I think that that constitute the core of evil at something like that, and so, if your possessed by that, which is hell Then it's repentance. That's the right answer and what that means is you have to figure out what you did wrong and you have to pay for it. And then at least you could think well look. I can try that with all of my soul, let's say and see what happens right. It could at least an experiment and then I would also say that that's an act of faith in the it's an act of faith to conduct that experiment, because you put yourself on the line right, that's what an act of faith. Is you don't know the outcome

you don't know the outcome of your life so live in some senses, inactive faith, it you're putting faith in something that that's why you're moving forward. You couldn't move forward without an act of faith people say well. I only move forward on the basis of the facts. It's like yeah, but you select the fact and there's an infinity of facts, and they don't just tell you what to do so. It's not a credible answer. So, if you're in that situation, it's like look to yourself. You know one and one of the things about Solzhenitsyn. That's a bloody amazing is that's what he did. Then he wrote the gulag archipelago and you know he took an axe to the intellectual and moral substructure of of the totalitarian commune states so well. He was redeeming himself. Let's say he was we'll take seriously redeeming the world. You see something like that? Like you, you got a wake up, man, that's.

That was really something so. Not because I have a lot of questions that arise from your comments at the above all one hundred event, your I'm one of three video, your recent discussion with eye on our Shelley, and you can. On Islam in the west in general, and in your comments there's this common theme. One of these things is not like the other. You put the judeo Christian, Tradition on the one side and Islam on the other, specifically the quote, complex problem of Islam and the quote, as I quote, organizing system before I go further, let me state that if hypothetically a final enough, of Islam resulted in those total, a denunciation, as your analysis of modernism or New Marxism, when we personally offended at all this isn T a personal question, in a recent interview with I honour she only she said was

Values are superior to islamic law islamic values. I agree with that. Basically, certainly in the context of let's say current global affairs, skip the courtroom, reason magazine reason magazine interview, but you should read them because a view which is very much the West versus Islam, not radical Islam, but Islam, including necessarily the military option, My question is at the level of psychological significance of these stories at the level of mythology and archetype towers, Islam so different from the judeo christian tradition. You know because other each of us exaggerate and so on and so forth, everything from the fall to the flood. A lot of what you discuss in this lecture, series, is necessarily part of Islam as well, and in fact I think one of the strong criticism of Islam is that its perhaps really gonna regional. You said that the more presuppositions of a cultural instantiated in stories I see the same stories so kind

further site, I'm asking the deepest levelled how different or these stories in the more supposed presuppositions cable. That's that's a killer question! Well, ok! So the first thing I would say is fundamentally I dont know, and so part of the reason that I am one of the things I am planning to do is to have a series of discussions, and plenty of people have contacted me about discuss. With Iron Hersey Ali has, as you know, she has powerful and serious falls, and they are not happy with her black and white distinction. And so now I read infidel and I really like that book like I've. My sense was that she, she was a heroine now what that means in relationships. Islam, that's a different story because she came out of a like a totalitarian. Let's say

family structure in a relatively totalitarian society, and you could make the case that there is a correspondence between that and Islam and you can make the case that there isn't and of course, that's the critical issue, and so there's a couple of things that I can't rap my head around with. We have my head around easily in relationships is low, and so one is what I. As the failure to separate church from state and that's a problem now, it may not be a problem as such, but it certainly a problem in relationship to the relation between Islam and the West, because we separate church from state now there's fundamentalists in the United States, christian fundamentalists who think that that separation is a mistake, So it's not only.

It's not only an idea, that's rooted in Islam, that those should be united, but it's definitely a problem with regard to our coexistence, because that's a fundamentally different presumption. Okay, so that's problem number one problem number two for me and again this may be a consequence of my egg. Which I am trying to rectify Mohammed was a warlord, and I dont know what to do about that fact. One thing you can say about cries hypothetically, let's say I'm not talking about it. Storing reality, necessarily, although I am not denying it either, is that. All the things he was warlord was definitely not one of them. I dont, know what to do about that and so know how to reconcile that and I dont know

to reconcile like not only was Mohammed, a warlord, which I dont think is an unreasonable thing to proclaim the experts mention that he initiated was unbelievably successful, mean with six hundred years it was the biggest empire the world has ever seen and demolish business. In Christianity, which is something that West people don't even know you. I've read thinkers who said that the west so traumatized, culturally, let's say by the demolition of byzantine christianity- We can't even study it now, and so I don't know if that's But I dont know that it's not true either and the Buddhists were wiped out. Afghanistan and we saw about echoed in the Talibans destruction of those great buddhist monuments and so.

So what I am hoping is that there is a bridge there better, be a bridge And that's why I want to have these discussions because I'd like to understand if there's a bridge and so lots of people have sent me people who I should talk to- who they think Rep. Is Lamb far better than I am Rosalie and perhaps their correct and hopefully I'll get an opportunity to talk to them, because I would like to know why like to know. If what I think is wrong, because if it's wrong, it's important. That I know it's wrong, but moment I don't I don't know it's wrong and B. I dont see. I'm not sure what it signifies so and I dont think anyone is sure right because we have this in angle entangling of the civilizations,

other things too, like I'm not very happy though saudi Arabs and the war hobbies Don't think they're our allies. I don't see how any western woman can possibly think that there are allies, and I happy with the fact that the petrodollars that we send them are transformed insubstantial part into the kind of propaganda. That's definitely a threat to the west and I'm not very happy with the fact that our politicians appear stupidly blind to that now. That may again be a consequence of my ignorance. It certainly possible, but those are the sorts of things that that I can't read,

soil, and so you know I've seen. I've also seem parallels between the ideas that I am presenting here and other religious traditions. Taoism Buddhism Hinduism it's hard for me to bridge the gap with Islam, and I'm not sure why that is. I think it has something do with the things that I just laid out now. What I dont know about Islam would feel very many volumes, many of which I have sitting on my shelves at home right now, because I want to do the reading. You know as I progress through this, but good evening: doktor beers and thanks for continuing this serious, even us atheists appreciate Thea Action and the the conversation

I wanted to ask you something that is both emotional and analytical, because oftentimes you're, basically pegged at seeing things very annulled. So you were talking earlier about. You were talking about the the juxta. Position between happiness and honour, even though I don't think they're mutually exclusive personally, but If there's a situation that say where someone is truly in love with someone else and they loved them for many years and decades, they have a whole history. Other and then someone and then one of the people in this grouping. Start falling in love with someone else. So It's not that there is less love for the original partner, how analytically and emotionally. Do you take care

a situation like that when you feel that you want to stay honourable and be happy. So the first thing I would say, is the devil's always in the details right. So one of the things that I'm not happy about with much modern moral theorizing is that it takes a story like that. You know and then tries to extract out a general moral principle and often that's impossible, because the particulars of this, Duration are very important, but, having said that, let me think about that for a minute, I'm not sure that it's possible to be honourable, in a situation like that, because I think that you have acted out. The vial nation already and having acted out the violation to confess it might be the right thing to do, although perhaps not.

Because if you, it isn't obvious to me that if you betray someone, then you get to have the right to tell them about it. I know no you're. Not. I understand it. The area I understand. I understand. My observation has been that if there is a tight relationship and if one party is betrayed by the other in that manner, that it's almost always irreconcilable, it breaks it and. You know I've. I've helped people try to struggle through that, both on both sides of the person who was betrayed and the person who did the betrayal seem people grow up and not do it again, and this was in situations where their partner didn't know and in a couple of those situations, it seemed to me that

it might have even been unnecessary learning experience for the person who did it, you know it it, it help them develop. That doesn't mean I'm justifying it, but life is complicated, but but I think that society works better. All things considered when you make a promise and you stick to it and one of the things I learned from reading Young, which which I really liked was you know he believed that and he had his affairs too. So you might think about it as somewhat hypocritical, but but I think that can make mistakes without having what they think necessarily be wrong. You know he said that there were things in a marriage that you can't have unless you're all in, and I believe that I believe that, and so, if there's a back door open or though like to begin with or a back door opens, then I think that there's something about that

Ship that is lacking at least, and I think you pay a big price for that. So I mean it depends on whether you regard marriages, a practical arrangements or spiritual arrangement. Now really it's both in both are important But if it's a spiritual arrangement or psychological arrangement above all, then I do think that you, you don't get the transformation without being all in and if you violated then, if you can work it out with your partner, there's something that you will never get as a consequence. So last question. It will make us good thanks. Also for continued the lecture series, I haven't listen to all of the lectures, but it seems

focus very much on the appeal of the biblical stories to the individual psychology? Give any thoughts on the relative importance of crowd, psychology to the appeal instinct, our bible, and also the reason why the bible biblical stories, precedence over other ideologies which could have taken its place? Ok! Well, let's go to the second one. First, I think it's the same thing that happens when on one both creates an editor great movie. No one knows like magic. How many choices are there in a great movie? Let's say it's an animated movie, because absolutely everything in an animated movies constructed everything, There's God only knows how many choices like me, millions of choices, no each

This is guided by some intuition of narrative. Suitability or beauty or there's some higher ideal motive. Doing it right there, to produce a masterpiece. Maybe that's it it. That was certainly the case with the Disney movies, for example, and so that that aspiration then then makes the decisions So I would say well something like that. Guided the writing and the selection of the stories in in the biblical cannon now. Could There have been other stories included while the Catholics and Protestants don't have the same biblical tradition and neither do the Jews in the Christians, and so it isn't exactly clear what to make of that. You know mean that's akin in some sense to the discussion we just how about Islam and Christianity. In some sense, I've left that, aside, that specific question, except in so far as I've, just answered because I'm trying to do

what we have, which I know is at the root of our culture and to figure out what it is that we have we It is that we have it. While I made some attempt to explain that in the manner that I just did aye. But I dont have a final answer. I could. It have been different. It could have been different had some levels but the same at others. You know, I the things that scholars of comparative religion who haven't been infected fatally with postmodernism have definitely realized. So young, for example, Elliot and people who are interested in grand narratives. What one of the things they pointed out quite clearly is that there's there's there's a set of common, mythological themes across many cultures, and I tried outlined that an maps of meaning and that worked out quite nicely for me at least as far as I was concerned, because once I had the basic archetypal structure mapped out, it opened up. Also,

stories to me from all sorts of different cultures, and that's been unbelievably useful, like the mesopotamian story. The innumerable asking when I figured out what TAT meant spar as I was concerned, I have never forgotten attitude. Seared itself into my memory. In the same with the egyptian stories- and you know some buddhist writings that I've read in some doubt a is also very powerful. So I think that things can be different on one level and this. Met another but that humanity kind of coalesce is on what's the same over a reasonable period of time, because there isn't that many ways that human beings can live properly as individuals and as groups together, and so there's this constant force. That makes our ethical presuppositions converge and then that's automatically expressed in the stories. It's something like that. Now it's an imperfect process and its full of error. So.

So just one announcement well to announcement the next lecture, I believe as November fourteen so hopefully finish off the story of Jacob looks like it and then I'm so appearing on a panel with God, sod end or an amity Member eleventh and there's still quite a few tickets available for that. So, if your interested, you could go to my website and pick up those tickets, it should be well, hopefully it'll, be interesting. I think it will be in might be too interesting. That's one possibility so we'll see better, I'm going to do to more these this year, and I hope I get through the story. Joseph and then I can start in the new year with with exodus and that's a story that I know quite well and the exodus Leviticus and what's the one after that term,

thank you. So I very much looking forward to that, because that is one killer story. Man so- and I've got some surprises for that as well so anyway. So thank you very much coming and hopefully will seal November fourteen