Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories¹

Numbers are more real than what they represent (abstractions from fiction can be more real than literal stories, fairy tales last over 10,000 years).

Path of understanding patterns: 1st you act them out, 2nd you imagine/dream of the pattern, 3rd you finally articulate through written or spoken word.

The king is subordinate to the divine principle (law).

Psychological sub-personalities as demons or gods (Mars/Rage can possess you and others and lives forever). Greeks thought Man was the plaything of the gods. Christians: fear of God is the beginning of wisdom (you are not in control of yourself).

Loving/caring for others is similar to caring for your future self.

JBP is an Existentialist: people believe what they act out – not what they say.

Phenomenology: study of what matters (rather than matter itself).

4 sources for the Old Testament: Elohist, Deuteronomist, Jahwist, Priestly.

John 1:1 “The Word…” Logos = God/Christ = consciousness = necessary for being.

Dostoyevsky: Crime and Punishment, The Possessed.

Gulag Archipelago is result of not seeing others with their conciousness as divine.

God is Fatherly (can negotiate wit the future), God is Son-like (chaos into order, redeemer and victim/scapegoat), God is spirit-like (spoken truth – prophetic voice).

Marduk (order) vs. Tiamat (chaos). Tiamat (Tehome) is the chaos that God makes order out of at the beginning of time, in Genesis.

Trust is the fundamental natural resource (reputation/soul)

• Dante’s Inferno: Betrayal is the worst Hell

Ego death is a journey to the Underworld

Adam and Eve realize they are naked

• self-concious awareness of vulnerability

Dostoyevsky’s “Notes from the Underground”

• People don’t want utopia

Goethe’s Faust: Mephistopheles

• Enemy of the Word: “Being is just suffering and should end”
• “God said it was good” – better there’s something rather than nothing
• Leo Tolstoy’s Confessions: Suicidal Ideation and how to escape it

What does God (all-powerful) lack? – Answer: limitations

• For good, there must be evil
• For being, ther must be limitations

Lucifer = Intellect and Pride

• Consciousness/Knowledge of your own limitations/vulnerabilities makes you capable of evil
• The root of malevolence is to get revenge agaisnt God for creation itself – “the crime of being”

Jaak Panksaap: Emergent Morality (rats need to play fair)

Sexual Selection: Men form competence hierarchies

• women choose top men (as designated by men)

Action comes first, then observation and abstraction into “Laws”

Jean Piage: Kids learn to play a game before learning the rules

• learn to play by the rules -> learn to make the rules
• Old Testament: Prohibition (follow the rules)
• New Testament: once disciplined, do good

Awareness of the possibility of evil:

• is a pre-condition for good
• There’s no virtue is being truly “harmless”

Yin: Chaos, femininity, night, the unknown, decadence, nihilism

Yang: Order, masculinity, day, the known, authoritarianism, fascism

Story of Adam and Eve is the discovery of time

• and knowledge of our own death
• sacrifice is a contract with the future

Given vision by snake and fruit: Evolutionarily true

• evolved motion detection to avoid snakes
• evolved color perception to see ripe fruit

With knowledge comes work and pain

• Work (sacrifice present to the future) – Adam’s punishment
• Pain in childbirth (larger skulls) – Eve’s punishment

Mircea Eliade: A History of Religious Ideas (3 volumes)

Abstractions (like numbers) are more real than the things they are extracted from

Sleeping Beauty: overprotected by “eatable” Mother

• wants to be unconscious, not prepared for reality

Marriage: must be shackled to someone who can’t run away

• only way to tell/hear the truth

Adam and Eve: “Fall” into history

Cain and Abel: the discovery of sacrifice as a remedy for the “fall”

• Unclear whether Cain’s sacrifices were subpar, or he was just unlucky (like someone with cancer)
• emergence of malevolence as enemy to proper sacrifice

When things aren’t going well, is problem what you value most?

Sacrifice who you are for who you could become

Famous Marshmallow experiment (1 now or 2 later)

Michelangelo’s Pieta: Mary and Christ’s dead body

• She weeps, it was “her fault” – she brought him into the world
• Mary = archetype of women that say “yes” to life
• Voluntarily brings life into this “terrible” world

Nested Frames: why we do what we do

• Write a sentence, author manuscript, practice science, be a productive citizen (good person), confront the unknown
• You feel happiness (fulfillment) by approaching a goal, not by completing the goal

Your routines are not trivial

• Everything (your subpersonalities) should be subordinate to that which pays attention and learns (Logos)
• Logos = confronting the unknown
• Sin against the Holy Spirit – one that cannot be forgiven

Ordering Society: Unity at the highest order (lowest resolution)

• Everyone should be nested in the overarching value of Logos
• Unity at that level allows freedom (diversity) everywhere else
• Problems should be solved at the most local (lowest resolution) level

Things fall apart naturally (entropy) – The Flood is always coming

• Be the type of person that builds an Ark

We are all born into a damaged structure

• perpetual call (to young people) for repair
• Heroes/Giants of the past handed down great things/structures, but the pillars of corruption were passed down too

Carl Rogers: We can feel when we are aligned with Truth

• Dostoyevsky: trouble is more interesting than it is boring
• but if enough people aim down, things disintegrate into chaos
• John Milton in Paradise Lost: You are in Hell, to the degree you are distant from the good

Your life has meaning (can be terrifying to realize)

• Your moral degeneration contributes to the degeneration of the entire cosmos
• Sermon on the mount (Matthew 6 and 7): articulates what it means to walk with God so you are in the Ark when the Flood arrives
• Kierkegaardian Leap of Faith: Aim at the highest possible good, the things you need to survive will manifest.

Conscience = Socratic daemon = Jung’s “self” (divine within)

Judge not, Lest Ye be judged

• You will be held accountable for the rules you choose
• Revelation added to the Bible because otherwise Christ is too merciful. Christ return as the judge and EVERYONE fails
• There is no escaping eternal judgement

Interpretations of the Flood:

• Shallow = A man built a ship to house animals
• Better = The entire world depends on your righteousness
• Biblical stories need to speak to everyone, including those not too bright – they read things concretely (like a child)

God is manifest in the early Bible, but seems to fade away as the individual self is more developed.

Noah’s son (Ham) finds him naked

• nakedness is to see vulnerabilities
• Noah’s other sons cover him up again
• Ham was insufficiently respectful of his Father
• Proper criticism is to identify good from bad, then keep the good – not to burn everything down
• Modern society only points to the bad in culture

It’s more difficult to rule yourself than to rule a city

• Because there is a lag when messing with complex systems, we often don’t recognize societal errors until it’s too late.
• If the intellect thinks it can do without the transcendent (Satan’s error), then you are immediately in Hell
• The rational mind generates a production (model of reality), then worships it – as if it were absolute

Jill Bolt Taylor – “My Stroke of Insight”

• stroke makes her right hemisphere dominant
• she experiences a sense of divine unity
• Split brains: each hemisphere capable of consciousness

Sleeping Beauty – fairy tale

• Evil Queen (negative feminine) shackles hero in a dungeon
• Queen torments him – he will be only be freed as an old man
• 3 fairies (positive feminine) free the hero to slay the dragon

JBP recommended books:

• Carl Jung – Symbols of Transformation (validity of religion)
• Erich Neumann – The Origins and History of Consciousness
• Erich Neumann – The Great Mother
• Jaak Panksepp – Affective Neuroscience

Carl Jung: The Red Book

• Religious and Factual domains brought back together, “most important conceptual event of the 20th century”

What you most need is found where you least want to look

• King Arthurs Knights search for the Holy Grail, each enters the forest at the point which looks darkest to him.

Potential Models of proper being:

• the entire corpus of the Bible seems to be searching for a personality model that (eternally) works in the world
• Adam -> Noah -> Abraham -> Moses -> (Samson) -> Jesus

What controls your attention?

• if not you, then it’s a subpersonality
• you cannot control what interests you
• if you ignore what calls you forward, you will pay the price

The Holy Spirit calls Abraham to adventure

• Abraham makes mistakes, but at least he acts
• To sin is to miss the mark, or to not aim at all
• Geppetto (Pinocchio) wishes upon a star (circumambulation)

Kierkegaard: some truths can only be learned through experience

The “meek” shall inherit the Earth (meek is NOT weak or passive)

• Meek = those that have weapons and know how to use them, but keep them sheathed.
• (meek = strength under control, in Greek often used to describe warhorses that were powerful but obedient)

_{^{Not much in this lecture – notes on Abraham went into next lecture}}

Success crisis: what to do after the goal is achieved?

Neuropsychology of Anxiety, by Jeffery Grey

• Embodied Response, Dream, Explore, Articulate
• “True Artists” stand in that imagistic threshold

Jung: Unknown -> Known

Nietzsche: slavery is a prerequisite to freedom

Trust is a fundamental natural resource

• Book: The Wealth and Poverty of Nations

All you have in a difficult situation is the truth

• Never lie to a paranoid stranger

Abrahamic stories: punctuated epochs in his life

• After each period, a sacrifice should be made
• Sacrifice renews the commitment ot the aim upward
• How good could the future be if sacrifice was optimized?

Best way to think of the future = as a Judgmental Father

If something is holding you back, you must let it go

• How to catch a monkey (treats in a jar)
• Monkey won’t let go (sacrifice) the treats

Socrates: “in 6 months you’ll be on trial and will be put to death”

• His conscious (daemon) told him not to run

Religious Impulse from a materialistic standpoint:

• Humans have the capacity to imagine a better self (ideal) and to move toward it
• If you can posit “an” ideal, could you think of the ultimate ideal?
• Best parts of leader = a Lord; best qualities of all Lords = a King; best qualities of Kings = God
• Christ is “King of Kings” and “Lord of Lords”

Finally – the story of Sodom and Gomorrah

• The chief sin of the cities was not sexual impropriety, it was mistreatment of the stranger
• The principle of “Guest Protection” was a life-or-death social contract rooted in survival, honor, and religious duty. Violating it (as Sodom did) was seen as a fundamental breakdown of civilized society, while upholding it (as Abraham and Lot tried to do) marked righteousness.
• God was set to destroy the city of Sodom, Abraham asked God if he would spare the city for 50 -> … -> 10 righteous men. God agreed and sent angels to find such people.

Two angels appearing as men were welcomed by Lot

• Lot = Abraham’s nephew, living in the city of Sodom
• the 2 men (angels) are now under Lot’s protection
• And angry mob of men surround Lot’s house, demanding he turn over the strangers (the 2 men/angels). _{The mob’s intent was homosexual gang rape}
• Lot refuses, even offering his own daughters to the mob to fulfill his duty to protect the guests he’s welcomed in
• The angels judge Lot to be righteous, lead his family out of the city before it is destroyed.

Lot’s wife is nostalgic for the sinful city of Sodom

• This is compared to the Israelites longing for the tyranny of Egypt as they are wandering in the desert.
• She is turned into a pillar of salt. (Salt is sometimes linked to covenants, so she becomes a permanent reminder of judgement)
• Lot’s daughters, believing no men exist to continue their family lineage, trick Lot into an incestuous relationship by getting him drunk – both get pregnant
• Their offspring become the ancestors of the Moabites and Ammonites.

_{^{Not much in this lecture}}

_{^{JBP reads from a chapter in his upcoming book, shows a “treasure trove” of art related to the Biblical stories, and summarizes the first 12 lectures}}

Abraham fears God; is willing to sacrifice his son

Carl Popper: the purpose of thinking is to let your thoughts die instead of you

Embodiment of good is more important than belief

Cain blames God for existence and suffering

• school shooters taking revenge against the innocent

Christ is He who took the sins of the world onto himself

Socrates: all knowledge is remembering

• Experience reminds the sould what it already knew

Sacrifice is the discovery of the future

JBP says he believes in Miracles

Insights from Carl Jung

1. Psychotherapy could be replaced by supreme moral effort

• Aiming at the good, the positive future beckons you forward
• Same as orienting yourself toward Christ

2. Polytheism = confusion; Monotheism = unification and sanity

3. The spirit mercurius (mercury)

• If you can’t control your interest, what does?

Esau sacrificed the future for the present

• This is wrong, and it cost him his birthright
• Jacob did some treacherous things – is progenitor of Israel
• Genesis 27:40 – Esau will serve Jacob, but will eventually have dominion over him
• Dominion: book by Tom Holland

Dante’s Inferno

• hierarchical structure of evil
• Betrayal at the lowest layer of Hell
• Jacob betrayed his brother Esau

Jacob’s Ladder occurs in a dream (shamanic?) state

Shamanism:

• Reduction to skeleton (death)
• Communion with the ancestors (descent into Hell?)
• Climbing the World Tree (Jacob’s Ladder)
• Scandinavian World Tree = Yggdrasil

Mircea Eliade: Shamanic Initiations, Rites and Symbols

• 3 pathways to shamanism = spontaneous vocation, hereditary transmission, personal quest

Henri Ellenberger: The Discovery of the Unconscious

• JBP highly recommends, its the best introduction

Israel = he who struggles with God

There are stories in fiction that are “meta-true”

• more real than ordinary life (reality itself, even)
• doesn’t matter if Jacob was a real person/story

Jacob tricks Esau and Isaac – and is the Father of Israel

Mircea Eliade: The Sacred and the Profane

• Founding of an explored center vs. the unknown periphery
• Walled City: inside = cosmos; outside = chaos

The “center” is where the lowest and the highest touch

• specifies the aim of a group of people

The structures and culture we inherit are at best blind and dead (and probably corrupt)

• in need of constant renewal
• both veneration and burning of flags

Two kinds of heroes:

• Go out and face the dragon
• Shake foundations of corrupt city and rebuild society

Dostoyevsky: Crime and Punishment

Jacob, then, is tricked in his marraige

• much the same way he tricked Isaac
• Marries Leah, instead of Rachel (who he wanted)
• needs to work 7 more years to marry Rachel
• Leah’s son, Judah, leads to Christ

In Pinocchio, Geppetto = culture (he shapes Pinocchio)

Carl Rogers: you can tell from experience whether you’re on a productive or destructive path

• Fool is precursor to Master (must be willing to appear foolish to later achieve mastery)

Soul = spontaneous act of consciousness and free will

• Nature (biology), Nurture (Culture), Soul (consciousness)

Jungian Psychology: Circumambulation

• Your potential future self manifests in the present as what interests you.
• It’s like you’re spiraling toward your future potential: as you get closer, it recedes (like God is described in the Bible)

Labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral:

• Need to explore everything (entire maze) to reach the center
• Center of Labyrinth = the Cross, Christ, Light
• Labyrinth is like Joseph’s “Coat of Many Colors” (experience everything)

_{^{Much time is used to just recount the story of Joseph}}