Welcome to the Jordan B. Peterson podcast. My name is Mikhaila. This episode featured Jonathan Pageau and Jordan Peterson discussing the issue of conscience, narrative with objective reality, the perfect mode of being the responsibility to move things towards the divine, the inevitability of religion, the significance of the virgin birth, the idea of heaven, and much, much more. It was recorded on February 14th, 2021. Jonathan Pageau is a symbolic thinker, YouTuber and class carver of Orthodox icons.

He makes the most amazing icon carvings. Big news. Dad's book is coming out Tuesday, March 2nd, Beyond Order, available at his website at JordanBPeterson.com, Amazon, wherever you buy books. And he has posters for sale with absolutely incredible illustrations on it from the book. I like them better than the last book. Check them out, but mainly the book available Tuesday or for preorder now at JordanBPeterson.com. Enjoy this episode. Also, if you want to know about Tammy Peterson, my mother and my dad's wife, I released a podcast with her on my podcast, the videos on YouTube at Mikhaila Peterson videos if you want to meet my mom.

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So today, I have the great pleasure of speaking with Jonathan Pageau, whom I know primarily as a thinker, who's a carver of Orthodox icons that are absolutely beautiful. I have one in my house of St. Michael and the Dragon and an increasingly prominent YouTube, prominent among intellectual YouTubers, I would say essentially, as particularly those who are interested in religious and philosophical and artistic ideas.

And Jonathan, I have been talking back and forth for I would think about six or seven years now,eh?

We met in 2015 at the time, it's crazy, time flies. It's crazy, that's for sure.

So I we haven't spoken for two years maybe.

Yeah.

We saw each other. I think when you book came out and you came to Montreal for a little event and I picked you up at the airport, that was the last time we saw each other. Yeah. So while a lot of water under the bridge.

That's right. Indeed. And in your case, literally. Yes, exactly.

Jonathan Jonathan's house was flooded out.

That was when it was in twenty nineteen. But we just moved back into our house this Christmas. And so it was a long, kind of a long thing.

It lasted a very long time. So. And are you in your house right now?

Yes, I am in my my house all fixed up. And so we're really enjoying it. We're happy to be back. I bet it must have been unbelievably dislocating to be slotted like that. Your whole basement filled with water, if I remember correctly.

Yeah, exactly. It was a dike broke in the in the city. And, you know, I think it was thousands of people got evacuated within an hour. And so for my kids, especially my kids and even my wife, it was with little bit of a trauma because it was right where we could see the water coming and there were cops and, you know, all these firemen and everything. And so it was a pretty intense moment. Yeah.

And where where were you living when your house was underwater? We moved around.

We lived in my parents. Then we rented a place and we had to move. And so we ended up living in three places during the about a year and a half that we were gone.

So but it was it was one of those things where, you know, we say symbolism happens. You know, a lot of the things that even you talk about or that I talk about just manifested themselves, this problem of the dike and the idea of, you know, corruption or inattention to the situation and then thinking you're safe when in fact, you're not aware of what's what's kind of looming on the margins. And and so for me, it was a real learning experience.

I hope that I've come out of it stronger and more more attentive, let's say.

Yeah, well, I hope so, too. I mean, we all hope that we come out of unpleasant experiences stronger than when we went in, although that isn't always the case.

It's the case when things are functioning optimally and when you're fortunate and courageous and I suppose as honest as you can be, but fortunate definitely ranks high among all of those necessary preconditions for successful recovery, I would say.

Yeah. And I have to say that I am. We are I'm so grateful to see you back online. You know that I know you've heard this, but there have been thousands of people thinking about you, praying for you and really rooting for you. And, you know, I actually saw Tammy last year when I went to bring your icon. And I just remember just feeling helpless. And, you know, she was like, would you go to Russia?

I was like, I'll go to Russia. I could see in Russia, it didn't seem like it was a reasonable thing to do. And it's probably better didn't happen. But we've definitely been praying for you and rooting for you and thinking about you.

Jordan, you know, I appreciate that a lot. And I'm I'm back to some degree, I would say I still think I'm running at about five percent. So. Yeah, and that's partly why I was.

Concerned about talking to you today, and we're generally discuss things that are relatively deep and it's still difficult for me to go deeply into anything that's happening to me because it's so unbelievably awful and it's it's been hard on my face, I would say, you know, and I've my book is coming out in my new book.

I should show it to.

I just got yesterday that the old order, it's it's unbelievable that you wrote that during all of this.

I can't believe that when you say you're running at five percent, I think that you're five percent is is pretty close to the 100 percent of people.

Yeah, well, I don't know if that's true or not, but it's five percent for me. And getting the book was actually somewhat of a traumatic experience, I would say, because it reminded me like it's a it's a it's a it's a concrete reminder of everything that's happened over the last three or four years.

And it's all things that I found very difficult to process, both on the social front and on the, let's say, biological health front.

So I was reading oddly enough, I got a book sent to me by Bishop Barron, the first draft of a book, and it's written by a couple of professors. It's called Jordan Peterson God and Christianity The Search for Meaning Meaningful Life by Dr. Christopher Cox R and Dr. Matthew Petrusich. We're on Fire Institute to Catholic response to my biblical series. Hopefully they won't be too upset about me talking about it today, but I won't talk about it that much.

The book itself. It was rather a shock to me there at Loyola Marymount University. It was kind of a shock to me to see them.

Talking about my I mean, these are religious scholars talking about my biblical series, but I think people are just people don't a lot of people didn't understand and I could see it in my reaction the way people were reacting to your biblical studies, the biblical interpretation that people didn't understand. How is it that he we can barely get 100 people in our church and Jordan has a million people listening to him kind of struggle to to to get through these passages and do it in a very improvisational kind of existential way?

And and to me, it's funny because, I mean, I think I I have a group I have deep affection for. You're the way that you approach thing. And I and obviously we connect together in the way we think. And so to me, it was like, this is what you guys should have been doing for a while, is trying to understand how it is that this stuff is talking about reality and not just a bunch of arbitrary things that you need to believe or that you need to kind of attend to and end, because these stories, they really are telling us about the structure of being.

And so I think that that's the way that you approached it. And and that's why people are resonating to what you're saying, because they're like finally someone can can can help us make sense of the stories that we're somehow strangely attracted to or frustrated by or disgusted by or whatever it is. But there's this push and pull with these stories. And so so I think that I've seen a lot of Christians listen to your biblical talks. And of course, sometimes you say things and they're like, OK, that's way off the rails.

And then other times you say things and they can't believe the insight that you're able to to pierce. And so so I'm not at all surprised that Catholic scholars would kind of look at what you were doing.

And we all hope that you're going to do more of that for sure.

Yes. Well, I would like to I'm thinking about trying to attempt a book on Exodus and lecture lectures as well, although I wouldn't say that I'm in any shape to do that yet.

I'm but it's a dream, let's say. I mean, I'm pretty much completely nonfunctional for the first three or four hours of the day.

I get up and I can barely stand up and I go have a sauna for an hour and often sleep during that period of time. And then at the same time, I cook breakfast, are using their cooker, and then I go walk for anywhere between seven and 10 miles.

And even though I can, by the time I get out of the house, I'm desire's as can be and it's difficult to stand up. But after about a mile or two, I get my legs under me to some degree and then by two o'clock I'm kind of functional, although extremely anxious.

And then I'm able to do a little bit of work and often to sit down at four o'clock. My mind seems sharp enough, although my memory isn't good, I can't bring things to mind like I used to, which is quite distressing.

And I have very little emotional resilience and I'm worried for that reason about the release of this book. I mean, I just at times interview, London Times interview, that was really. We followed that say that frustrating, it's it's I mean, it's funny because, you know, again, it was like the same stories are playing out again. This person goes after you and then it just turns against that person. And and it's just she's exposed for for the fraud that she was being and during that interview.

And so, you know, I think in the so strange that it keeps happening over and over, I mean, I already decided not to do mainstream interviews now for a good while because I've.

It seems to me that I've gone to the well of public sympathy, so to speak. Enough times, and that if this happens to me two or three more times, let's say people are going to rightly say, you know, how many times does it take for Peterson to learn? And so I don't want that to happen.

I mean, I've been you know, I feel an obligation to my publishers, obviously, to talk about the book, although that interview had virtually nothing to do with the book, we hoped that I would be able to discuss my health issues with someone who would treat them squarely and then I could ignore them from then on him, but. That isn't what happened. Well, it's been it's a sign of the politicized discourse like you, it's a sign of the breakdown that we're going through that we see this capacity to have so entrenched aside that people are can't doesn't it doesn't matter what they do.

It doesn't matter what they say. They don't feel like they're responsible because in a way, you're the enemy. And, you know, and it's not just you. It's other other it's between different groups. But if you're the enemy, then everything is justified. And so.

Well, I think a huge part of this is driven by the desire to have an enemy.

Yeah. You know, there's it's it's very difficult to feel. It's an easy route to self righteousness to have an enemy. Exactly, and it's a great place to put all evil.

Yeah. And because you attract so much attention, you're an easy you're definitely easy target. Well, that's the theory.

Seems not to turn out that way. Yeah, but it's also was the timing. You know, the when you kind of came up in the public sphere, there was a massive shift happening in culture. And I think that's one of the things you could feel. And that was happening around us. And to some extent, you know, Donald Trump had something to do with that as well, in the sense that it was this malaise that was there and this kind of this jostling in this this and this is what led to all that kind of discourse.

And so I think that you were identified you became identified almost mythologically, I guess, as as a character and and people, you know, have treated you that way. And they act with you that way in many respects. Yes.

Who becomes very difficult to to it's become very difficult for me to understand what character I am.

You know, so much has changed in my life over the last five years, I've been on leave from the university, so that's very destabilizing. I don't have my clinical practice anymore. And so I was, you know, seeing 20 people a week. So that's a huge transformation in my life. My my house has been completely renovated. It was renovated while my wife was ill. And so we didn't. Well, the renovation went on in our absence.

And so I'm a foreigner in my own house, which is which is although I'm starting to become accustomed to it. And there's some things I like about the new house, but I don't feel at home in it. I wouldn't say. And I've only been here for two months in the last three years because I was on the road and then.

Well, all this. And so that and everything that's happened has been very disruptive for my family and of course, Tammy got so unbelievably sick with something that was supposed to be fatal and recovered more or less miraculously.

And then I've been so unbelievably ill or still am, and I have just I just don't know where to put any of this.

Yeah, I can't think about the past at all because so much of it is incomprehensible, especially over the last five years. I can't think about the present because I'm in so much pain and I can't think about the future because I don't know what I'm going to do. And I have no idea how long this pain is going to last. It's been I've been in pain, really severe pain for two years now and. Yeah, and that's. It's a strange thing because in this book, one of the chapters, the last chapter is called Be Grateful in spite of your suffering.

You know, and I went through every sentence in that chapter, a very large number of times, because much of the time, while I was rewriting it particularly, I was in a lot of pain and like, it's Crip, it's it's it's a pain level.

It's hard to fathom in some sense, because I would say every single day I have now is worse than any day I ever had in my life before I got ill.

Mm hmm.

So and then I know very well that adding bitterness to your malaise is a very bad idea. You know, it doesn't help but that that I can certainly see the attraction that I feel like shaking my fist at the sky and complaining bitterly and but it doesn't help.

But but there doesn't seem to be any relief either. And so that's why it's so it's so perverse. It's shaken my faith.

I suppose I I mean, this perverse position where. My work has in principle helped so many people in the area don't seem to be able to dig myself out of my current circumstances, so. Well, or even to make sense of them. Yeah. I think that I think that the role that you've you played is is a kind of a transition role, and that transition manifests itself to you as a. As a. Trying to have your feet on two sides of rifting, of an eye to islands that are floating away from each other, and you're trying to hold on, you're trying to kind of help people focus on the middle and help people avoid radicalization and avoid falling into camps in a manner that will lead to God knows what.

And so I think that. I think that that's the role that you played, and it's and it's been like I've seen, for example, people transition through your work, transition from worlds, moving worlds. That's really what I've seen happen. It's more than just changing the way, changing your opinion or changing your mind about something. It really is about changing the world you inhabit. And so that's a. That's a crazy that's a crazy role to play, and especially because, like I said, you you have your foot.

It's like you kind of have your one foot or one eye, let's say, looking towards. I would call religion are looking towards Christianity or something like that, and then you have another eye which is still very much immersed in a kind of secular humanism. And you have one leg that, you know, you understand people that are more left leaning, you understand people that are more right leaning. You have this capacity to kind of understand everybody. But you're.

Yeah, it's it's that means that you make enemies on on all sides, too. Well, you know, the overwhelming response that I've got publicly has been. I would say traumatically positive, yeah, and you wouldn't think that that would be possible, really, but I find it that way. I mean, partly it's overwhelming to have people constantly tell me in person.

Their responses to what I've been doing, it's very emotional and I get caught up in that quite quickly and of course on YouTube and the social media platforms, YouTube, particularly the bulk of the comments about me are very, very positive.

It's ninety nine to one often in terms of likes and dislikes it. Yeah, and. And. It's too much. Well, I don't know. I don't know how to. I don't know how to. I don't know what category to put it in. I don't know how to conceptualize it.

I mean, part of part of me, the practical part, of course, says, well, I just happened to adopt a new technology at a time when it started to boom and filled that kind of niche that was empty in that technology at that time. But in some sense, that that doesn't really cut it, you know, because it doesn't have anything to do with the content.

And then I think while I have been dealing with these, well, borderline religious issues. Well, certainly not just borderline. There's lots of religious people who seem to think that I'm dealing with religious issues and said, well, and that's really what I wanted to talk to you about tonight.

So this book I mentioned earlier.

To talked about. Disagreements with my conceptualization of Christ, let's say, and which and I'm not sure what that conceptualization is, by the way, exactly. It's a mystery to me.

But but I can say some some concrete things about it. I mean, I certainly I I can understand and appreciate the symbolic significance of the ideal human being. And that finds its embodiment, and I took these ideas in large part from Young and Eric Newman, that that Christ is a represented Christ is at least a representation of the ideal man, whatever that is.

And we we all interestingly enough, we all seem to have an ideal. And we and that or that ideal has us, right, and that's where it's very interesting to consider the role of conscience because. Your conscience will call you out on your behavior, and so it seems to function as something that's somewhat independent or at least is something that you can't fully voluntarily control, because if you could voluntarily control it, then you just tell the pesky little bastard to go away or to pat you on the back continually.

Because there must be few things in life more pleasurable than being a fully committed narcissist to really believe that everything that you do is right and that you're a good person. And I suppose if you could wave a magic wand and rearrange your mind so that it was constantly telling you that you do it, but you don't seem to be able to do that in relationship to your conscience, it trips you up. And so and so it tells you when you're not living up to your own ideal.

And that means that you have an ideal and you don't even know what the hell it is. But you certainly know when you transgress against it.

And I know that there's a strong line of Christian thinking that's identified the conscience with divinity, sometimes with Christ inside, sometimes with the Holy Spirit. And those are very interesting conceptualizations.

But you can think of them psychologically and you can even think about them biologically, you know, to some degree because we're so social.

If we don't manifest an appropriate moral reciprocity, we're going to become alienated from our fellows and we won't survive and we'll suffer and die and we won't we certainly won't find a partner and and have children successfully.

And so. To some degree, the conscience can be viewed as the voice of reciprocal society within, and that's a perfectly reasonable biological explanation, but.

But the thing is, is the deeper you go into biology, the more it shades into something that appears to be religious because you start analyzing the fundamental structure of the psyche itself and and it becomes something. Well, it becomes something with a power with with with with with a power that transcends your ability to resist it.

So OK, so you can think about Chris from a psychological perspective and the critic, the critic, my critic, this particular critic that I've been reading.

Said, well, that doesn't differentiate Christ much from a whole sequence of dying and resurrecting mythological gods and of course, people have made that claim in comparative religion. Joseph Campbell did that and Jung, to a lesser degree, I would say, but Campbell did that.

But the difference and C.S. Lewis pointed this out as well, the difference between those mythological gods and Christ was that.

There's a there's a representation of there's a historical representation of his love, of his existence as well. Now you can debate whether or not that's genuine.

You can debate about whether or not he actually lived and whether there's credible objective evidence for that, but it doesn't matter in some sense because well, it does, but there's a sense in which it doesn't matter because there's still a historical story. And so what you have in the figure of Christ is an actual person who actually lived plus a myth. And in some sense, Christ is the union of those two things.

The problem is, is I probably believe that. But I don't I don't I'm amazed at my own beliefs and I don't understand it because I've seen. Sometimes the objective world. And the narrative world touch. You know, that's the union synchronicity, and I've seen that many times in my own life, and so in some sense I believe it's undeniable. You know, we have a narrative sense of the world for me that's been the world of morality. That's the world that tells us how to act.

It's real, like we treat it like it's real. It's not the objective world, but the narrative in the objective world touch.

And the ultimate example of that in principle is supposed to be Christ. But I don't know what that seems to me oddly plausible. Yeah, well, I still don't know what to make of it.

It's too hard part because it's too terrifying a reality to fully believe.

I don't even know what would happen to you if you fully believed it, if you believed in the story of Christ or if you believe that history and and let's say the narrative. Make me clear both, I think I think you because when you believe that you buy both those stories, you believe that the narrative and the objective can actually touch. Yeah. I mean, we saw that you and I. I mean, this is a trivial example, but we had it when we were discussing we had a sequence of discussions around frog symbolism.

Four years ago, yeah, that was very bizarre, to say the least, and that was a trivial example, relatively trivial example of the narrative world in the objective world coming together didn't feel that trivial at the time. Well, the way the way that I like to deal with this is that one of the things it's already there in your thought, it's already there in the way that you talk about reality, which is that one of the constitutive aspects of how reality unfolds and how it appears to us is something like attention.

Right, it's something there's a hierarchy of of manifestation, because everything that happened that appears to us in the world has an infinite amount of details. It has an indefinite amount of ways that you could describe it, that you could angle by which you could analyze it. And so, nonetheless, the world appears to us through these hierarchies of meaning. Right. I always kind of use the example of a cup or a chair that a chair is is a just a multitude of things.

It's a multitude of parts. How is it that we can say that it's one thing there's a there's a capacity we have to attend in this capacity we have to attend is something like a creation of the world. And so the world actually exists.

No chair is a good example because you can try to define it objectively, but you end up with beanbags and stumps and they don't have anything in common while they're both made of matter. You know, for whatever that's worth, it's pretty, pretty trivial level of commonality.

But you can sit on them.

Yeah. And that's why there's a mode of being which defines them.

Well, and that's so strange. So many of our object perceptions are projected modes of being. And so even the objective world is ineluctably contaminated with its utility and then therefore with morality. Exactly. And so I think that that's the key. The key is that once you understand that the world manifests itself through attention and that consciousness has a place to play in actually the way in which the world reveals itself. And so you can you can try to posit a world outside of that first person perspective.

But it's good luck. It's a diluted activity.

It's also it's very, very difficult because you don't you don't know what to make of something like time, because time hasn't ineradicable subjective element and duration, which is different than time.

I mean, time is kind of like the average rate at which things change, but duration is something like the felt sense of that time. And if you take away the subjectivity, it isn't obvious what to do with time. And I think physicists stumble over this all the time, so to speak. So and this is something that this this intermingling of value, in fact, was something that I never thought I never thought I made much traction with with Harris, with Sam Harris.

He didn't seem to me to be willing to admit how saturated the world of fact is inevitably with value. And I actually think he's denying the science at that point because from everything I know about perceptual psychology. There's a great book called Vision as a. Oh, God, now I can't remember the name of the book. That's a memory trouble. I'll remember it. No worries. The idea is that. If that is true. Then there are certain things which come out of that there are certain necessary things down the road from that that insight, which is that attention plays a part in the way the world plays itself out and that one of them and one of them is that the stuff that the world is made of is partly something like attention, something like consciousness, and that has a pattern.

And that pattern is the same pattern as stories. It just it just it doesn't lay itself out exactly the same. But things exist with a pattern which is similar to stories. They have identities, they have centers, they have margins, they have exceptions. And that's how stories lay themselves out. Like so a story happens in time, how an identity, let's say, is broken down and then reconstructed. You could say that that basically the story of every story, how something breaks down and is reconstructed.

And so that is a way for us to perceive the identity of things. And so if the world is made of this, then it's actually. It's actually our world, our secular world, which is a strange aberration on how reality used to exist for every culture and every time from the beginning of time, which is to take that for granted, to take for granted that something that they didn't call it consciousness. But intelligence and attention are part of how the world plays itself out and it lays itself out in modes of being.

And one of the things that comes out of it is not only that, but.

Like you said, it's not only that you have ideas, but it's that ideas have you, or that it's not only that you engage in modes of being, it's that modes of being have you. And that recognition means that the first level of the first level of attention to that looks something like worship. It looks like celebration. It looks like it's. It's like the thing which makes the let's say, the National Hockey League so successful has more to do with celebration than just a bunch of guys on skates, on a piece of ice throwing a puck around.

There's a celebration of the purpose of that thing, and it manifests itself through a bunch of stuff. Which one is like a trophy that stands in the middle on the top of a bunch of on a stand and everybody looks at it and kisses it. And and and so there's this this veneration, you know, and there's a mascot to the hockey league example. It's very interesting because it's a it's a it's a social game and know all the players. They're attempting to aim, right, right, so there's a symbolic element to that sin is misplaced aim.

And so you hit the you hit the small space in the net block, though it may be by your enemies. And everyone celebrates that. And and you do that in cooperation with other people and in competition with other people. And if you do it properly, not only are you a brilliant player from a technical perspective, but you're also a great sport. And so there's an ethic there and a morality. And and this is why people are so upset when hockey players or any other pro athlete does something immoral in their personal life, is because it violates the the ethic that that's being celebrated as a consequence of this great game.

Yeah, right. So you can see that that the striving for an ideal mode of being the religious, striving for an ideal mode of being is central to what it is that makes hockey addictive.

That's right. Yeah, it necessarily. And and so being pro wrestling, there's a great documentary, Bret Hart called Hitman Haaz, one of the best documentaries I've ever seen.

And it portrays pro wrestling as a stark religious battle between the forces of good and evil.

And Bret Hart, who at one point was the most famous Canadian in the world, was overwhelmed by his the archetypal force of his representation as the good guy. It's a great documentary, Hitman Hart, and it shows you how, you know, pro wrestling is is it's not the world's most intellectual activity, to say the least. And people can easily be dismissive of it. But one of the things I loved about the documentary was that it attempted to understand from within what was compelling about what was being portrayed.

And it was a religious drama. It just was shocking and brilliant.

And so so that is that is actually there is a there's an objective part of that, that there's an objective way in which these patterns kind of come together and manifest that the higher and higher versions of this drama. And so the sports drama has a certain level, but it's it's limited to a certain extent because it still happens as a confrontation, let's say, between two irreducible sides. And so what happens in something like the story of Christ is that that gets taken into one person.

And so all the opposites become the king and the the the criminal, the, you know, the highest even in the image of the cross. You have this image then as Christ is being crucified, they're putting a sign above his head saying that he's the king. As Christ is being beaten, they're giving to him a crown. And so Christ joins together all the opposites. And so in his in his story, you see, if you if you're attentive to these patterns, you see the highest form of this pattern being played out.

And one of the aspects that has to be there for it to be the most reveal, their highest form is that it also has to include the world of manifestation. I mean, it can't just be a story. It has to be connected to the world. So that's why Christians insist on the fact that Jesus is not just a story, that he's an incarnated man, that he was incarnated.

But I don't believe their insistence. I don't believe. Well, this is this is because I don't it isn't obvious to me and I think maybe I derived this criticism from nature, but. We know people have asked me whether or not I believe in God, and I've answered in various ways no, but I'm afraid he probably exists. That's that's one answer. I know. But I'm terrified he might exist, that that would be truthful answer to some degree or that I act as if God exists, which I think is I do my best to do that.

But then there's a real stumbling block there because.

There's no limit to what would happen if you acted like God existed. Yeah, you know what I mean? Because I believe that the acting that out fully. I mean, it may be it's not reasonable to say to believers, you aren't sufficiently transformed for me to believe that you believe in God or that you believe the story that you're telling me you're not you're not a sufficient you're not the way you live isn't sufficient testament to the truth.

And people would certainly say that, let's say, about the Catholic Church or at least the way that it's being portrayed, is that with all the sexual corruption, for example, it's like really, really you believe that the son of God, Jesus Christ, was the son of God, and yet you act that way. And I'm supposed to by your belief and it seems to me that the church is actually quite guilty on that account because.

The attempts to clean up the mess have been rather halfhearted, in my estimation. And so I don't think people people don't matter if Christians don't manifest this. And I'm including myself, I suppose, in that description perhaps don't manifest.

The. Transformation of attitude that would enable that enables the outside observer to easily. Conclude that they believe that the other way, the way to deal with that or the way to to understand that is that it they do, but they do in a hierarchy. There's there's a hierarchy of manifestation of the transformation that God offers the world. And we kind of live in that hierarchy and those above us hold us together, you would say. And so in the church, there's the testimony of the Saints.

There's there are stories. There are hundreds and hundreds of stories of people who live that out in their particular context to the limit of what it's possible to live it. And even today, there are there are saints living saints who, for example, in the Orthodox tradition, we have this idea of what they call it, the gift of tears or the joyful sorrow of of people who live in prayer with weeping, constant weeping. And it's this kind of strange mix of joy and and sadness which they which kind of overwhelmed them.

And they live in that joy and sadness non-stop. And they pray, you know, without end. And so that exist. But then we in this that's one of the reasons why.

That's kind of one of the reasons why when I talk about this idea of attention, like it manifests itself in the in the church as well, is that you often say, and I understand it when you say something like, you know, I act as if God exists or, you know, I'm afraid to say that God exists. And I think it's because you you think or you tend to think that the moral weight of that is so strong that you would we would crumble under it, that you would just be crushed under it.

And and I think that and I think that that's I think that I understand that. But. The first thing that to act as if God exists, let's say this way, to act as if God exists, the first thing that it asks of you is not a moral action.

The first thing that it asks asks of you is attention. That's why to act as if God exists is, first of all, to worship like that. And I know people are going to hear this.

Well, then I have then I have a terrible problem with that, too, at the moment, because I'm in so much pain.

Like one of the things that one of these theologians discussed the idea of and I'm sorry, I won't let you get back to your point, but he discussed the idea of the yoke of Christ being light and that there was joy in it and.

And there's a paradox there, obviously, because it's it's also a take up your cross and follow me sort of thing, but.

The fact that I've been living in constant pain makes the idea of joy seem cruel, I would say, and so and I have no idea how to reconcile myself to that. I mean, I've reconciled myself to that by staying alive despite it, you know.

Although. By staying alive despite it, but there's very little worship, and it doesn't mean I'm not appreciative of what I have, I'm I'm not only am I appreciative of what I have, I do everything I can to remind myself of it all the time. And so does my wife. I mean, she's changed quite a bit as a consequence of her struggle with cancer has become much more overtly religious, I would say.

And, you know, we say grace before our meal in the evening and it's very serious enterprise and it always centers around gratitude, you know, for.

Well, for. For the ridiculous. Volume of blessings that have been showered down upon us at a volume that's really quite incomprehensible, but. Despite that, do let. Despite that, I'm struggling with this because I don't know how to reconcile myself to the to the fact of constant pain. Yeah, and I don't I feel that it's unjust, which is halfway to being resentful, which is not a good outcome. No, I, I, I agree, and I can't speak like I can't I don't know how to speak to that because I don't necessarily don't have that experience, you know, I don't I, I don't have that.

I don't live with constant pain. And so I don't know what that would do to me. You'd probably probably one of the reasons why it might ruin me, you know. And so. I'm. It's very difficult to answer that, I think that the answer, like the answer has been the cross, like that's been the answer. It's and maybe maybe easy for me to just say it that way. But that's always been the answer of of Christianity, which is that.

That God went to to the cross and that God went down into death and and plunged down into death and there that there are mysteries hidden and there may be there very well hidden, but there are mysteries hidden in that then that depth. But it's not I don't think it's my job to to to moralize to you at this at this particular moment.

So we talked about the narrative and the object of touching, and so I wanted to touch on that again, is that like I, I, I understand C.S. Lewis, his argument and, you know, I'm even inclined from time to time to think, well, I've got the choice between believing two impossible things.

I can either believe that in the world is constituted so that God took on flesh and was crucified and and died and rose three days later. Or I can believe that human beings invented this unbelievably preposterous story that stretched into every atom of of culture.

And it isn't obvious to me that the second hypothesis is any easier to believe than the first, because the more you investigate the manifestations of the story of Christ, the more insanely complicated and far reaching it becomes. So I read Iron, for example. And for all of those who are listening, if you want to read a book that will completely make you insane, then you could read Jung's Iron.

And it's a study of Christian symbolism and astrology, which doesn't sound particularly dangerous, but or or or even particularly necessary to read, I suppose, but.

Young describes the the juxtaposition of astrological and Christian symbolism, and it's a brilliant book, and it's terrifying because he outlines the concordance between the levels of symbolism over several thousand years.

And it's obvious when you read the book that no one plotted this. It's not a conspiracy.

Whatever is going on to make that concordance occur isn't something that we understand. And it seems to be best understood as one of these situations where the narrative and the objective touch the saturation of Christianity with fish symbolism, young associates with astrological movement of of into the house of Pisces. And and so he he describes how a drama so ancient people saw a drama played out in the sky, and that was a projection of their imagination. And that projection contained symbols that were associated with the emergence of Christianity.

And so you can see in that the the alternative explanation is that there's this there's this unfolding of a symbolic landscape over centuries or millennia that's part of human, biological and cultural evolution.

But that that starts to touch on the religious anyways.

When you when you describe it in those terms, like it's the operation of a of a cognitive of a natural cognitive process, let's say, natural cognitive process that supersedes any one individual or any one culture.

And so I've never seen a critique of I on you know, I think people read that book and they think, oh, it's like John Allegra's The Sacred Mushroom in the Sacred Cross.

Do you know of that book? I believe that's the title.

That's another book you read and you think, well, I have no idea what it's a study of.

Mushroom symbolism in Christianity, and it's another book that. You know, it claims that. Christianity was heavily influenced by psilocybin use, and it was published in the nineteen sixties, its amazing book, but it's another book you read and you think I have no idea what to do with that.

I have no place to put that book. So but I is really like that.

And well, one of the things that, for example, you know, we talked about just before, the idea that, you know, the idea of Christ being a dying and resurrecting God and, you know, that's really actually not the case. If you actually just look at the story of Christ and not just the story in scripture, but let's say the whole story as it kind of developed in tradition, kind of melded together in the ancient world.

You had this idea of God that went down into the underworld, you know, either that went down for some reason to visit or went down to save somebody even or, you know, or died and then and then rose again. But that's actually not the story of Christ, because if you if you understand the full tradition of the Christian story, we think that Christ died, went into Hades and then destroyed death. And he pulls everybody out of death and then that's it, like what other story are you going to tell after that story?

You have a story of someone who dies, goes into death and then and then destroys death, and then that's it like that. That's the thing with this story, that every story, every aspect of his story reaches the limit of storytelling. And it's it's impossible to have you got it right.

That's right. That's right. Well, even from a psychological perspective, that's correct. And that in itself is a kind of miracle. And so you're stuck in some sense constantly having to choose between miracles. It's like, OK, it's a it's a figment of the human imagination. Fine. But it's the limit figment in multiple ways. How did that happen?

And also but as soon as you start to start to think that the world is made of attention, the idea of just a figment of somebody's imagination, especially of just a figment of someone's imagination, which is happens, like you said, over thousands of years within communities of thousands of people. It just becomes a ridiculous statement. It doesn't it doesn't mean anything.

It's like, yeah, it only means something if you assume that and you pointed this out, it only means something. It only to say it's a figment of imagination and have that brush it aside means that you think that imagination is nothing. And you pointed out constantly that you should not attribute nothing to the psyche. It's what you depend upon, it's the ground of your existence, it's it's it's not nothing. It's the thing that you take for granted more than anything else.

So any anything that you can recognize as a story will definitely be manifesting patterns that you can recognize and so they can't just be brushed aside from this from the most insane conspiracy theory to the most like child, this fairy tale, anything that manifests itself as a as a pattern of story that you can recognize, it has a certain level of value, has a not enough level that if you pay attention to it, you actually can gather some some some nuggets of of how the world works and how the world lends itself out.

You know, and that's why I like if I find these symbolic interpretations, I can do it for scripture, but I can also do it for some Marvel movie or some video game or whatever it is, because that's just the way for you to even recognize something as having been.

It's already part of that world. It's already manifesting these patterns, this critic.

Said that the mere psychologizing of Christ. Was insufficient because and you made the same case in some sense, that it doesn't make sense unless the narrative in the. Objective world truly touch, and I think you could debate that because I think that there's some utility, there could argue to be some utility in a secular version of the hero myth.

You know that the best way to cope with existence is to for to tell the truth and to face what you don't know forthrightly.

And that will enable you to orient yourself within our finite and bounded existence that ends with our death more properly, more accurately, more advisedly than any other route. I've seen people from Orthodox priest to, you know, the more the most Protestant Protestant you can imagine, recognize in the way that you represent reality, something that has value, something that has value because you are manifesting that that pattern like what you're saying is is true. But I think that.

I think that. If we if we if we take seriously this the problem, the relationship between attention, psyche and the way the world reveals itself to us, then it scales up, it scales up. After that, it jumps up a level and it also scales up in terms of. Because one of the things that one of the things that you talk about, like looking up to the star and looking up to the highest thing you can look at and then aiming towards that, you know, once again, one of the things that that does for me is that.

The first thing you do is actually it's for attention that people like the word worship, it's a form of reverence, of form, of veneration.

You submit yourself to that aim. It's not just that you see the aim and that you aim for it. You actually have to submit yourself to that, which is to what you're aiming. And so that magnifies to it. Exactly. And you have to sacrifice to it.

So that's why that's the religious version of this has to move towards the highest possible aim and also one that we can do together, because like the lower aims, like you could call them something like lower gods, that they are angels or whatever you want to call them, like these lower angels. They have value, but they're all fragmented.

But for this to stack up, we need to be able to look towards the same image. We need to look towards the same aim and that will bind us together. And so we don't we don't always then we don't also end up being just kind of individuals who have the weight of the world on our shoulders. But we're a communion of saints. We're communion of people who are submitted to aiming towards worshiping the same. Point, yeah, and I believe that that's necessary and I've had some profound experiences, which I can't really relate here, that I've of the necessity for that community is that this whatever our fundamental moral code is.

Immense, though it is crushing, though it is even. Requires the participation of others. So even if you were the perfect you, you would need other people to to be along with you.

It's a collective enterprise, even though it's an individualistic, even though it requires the perfection, it requires as much perfection as is possible at the individual level. That's not enough. There has to be that communal element as well. You need help. We all need help to aim as the highest aim requires communal endeavour. Yeah, and it's also because it actually is the way that everything works. You know, it's like the chair aiming to be a chair.

Is it is it constitutive of parts which are joined together towards a a a same goal and therefore hold together as it being and manifest the fairness of the chair. And that's the same with you. You have all these thoughts, right? You have all these feelings, all these these contradicting things inside you. And you need by aiming up towards, you know, the I mean, I believe that the image of Christ, let's say, about aiming toward the image of Christ, you constitute your being into that being that's able to attend, to sacrifice, to love, and then that scales up with people.

All right.

Grieve together. You are dreaming. And this is another something else I tried to point out to Sam. You are you're aiming you're either aiming at Christ or something lesser, yeah, or if things get really out of hand, you're aiming at something opposite and you don't want to be doing that.

But and this is a matter of definition in some sense, and it's actually not impossible to understand, is that you aim at something better. Generally speaking, I mean, maybe you're out to cause pain, but forget about that. You aim at something better. You wouldn't do it unless it was better. In fact, it virtually defines better. Like the whole idea of better is predicated on the idea that there's an aim that's beyond you. And then the highest of those aims is the amalgamate.

The highest aim is the amalgamates amalgamation of all higher aims. And that's a perfect mode of being. And that by definition, that's a psychological perspective. Again, that by definition is Christ. And then but then there seems to be something too convenient about C.S. Lewis, his insistence that that also had to manifest itself concretely in reality at one point in history. And I'm not like I.

I don't understand why I should believe that, and I don't I tend not to believe things without a Y. There's always a Y and yeah, and there's there's a hurdle there that I that. Well, that I waver on constantly because, well, I said that when you think these things through, at least my experience has been, if you think them through sufficiently, you end up with the choice between impossible alternatives and so death. But it has to do.

One of the ways to see it maybe is it has to do with the recognizing of the goodness of the world or the goodness of creation that that the world is capable of manifesting these patterns. So if you want to understand, for example, the big conflict between the early Gnostics and the Christians, that's what it was all about, because the Gnostics basically wanted a deus incarnated Christ. They were saying, you know, and they viewed the world as utterly foreland as having no value, having to be escaped, having to be fled in every way.

Whereas Christianity posits that it's a non dual it's a dual proposition. It's saying it's it all comes together. That's that's the promise. It all comes together. And so it has to come down. Right. And so it has to come down at every level. And not only that is had to come down into the person of Christ who's incarnated, but that person has to go down, down into death to the very bottom of the world, you know, to the belly of the leviathan and then come back up.

And so the whole world is declared as once again declared as being capable of participating in this good.

And so and so you could say, well, maybe, maybe wasn't that one, maybe wasn't you know, it's like, why would it be that particular particular place where it happened? But that's the place that's the story. I mean, that's where there is no other story like that story that we have. And and so once you recognize that this is part of the declaration that the world does embody these patterns, that it leads to this, it leads to this this story of of a man who embodied them.

Absolutely. And is bringing us in him to also embody them in a way that will transform us. You know, like the ultimate goal of of Orthodox vision of Christianity is is the osis. It's to become God, to become God through to transformation and participation in God. So that's the final goal of everything, is to become a participant in the divine.

And how do you how do you distinguish that from Catholicism? No, I mean, in terms of that, I think that it's a difference of emphasis, I think for sure the Orthodox emphasize the osis more than the than the Catholics. The Catholics are kind of iffy about the osis in terms of it's there in some of the thinkers. But I would say it's probably not official Catholic doctrine. But I think without the osis you're missing, the point of the whole thing are you're missing the point of of everything.

Like why why do things exist? Right. Like, why do things exist? And so I think that the idea that they exist to participate fully in. Their most perfect form, like that's what they're called, ta ta ta ta ta ta, do you know? And it ends up being a declaration of the ultimate possibility for goodness in the world. I think that that's. Yeah. Well. It seems it seemed to me I've observed, let's say that.

It's possible to. It isn't obvious to me that anyone wants to leave live a meaningless existence. I don't think you can live a meaningless existence without becoming corrupted because the pain of existence will corrupt you without a saving meaning. And it also seems to me that you can sell the story that meaning is to be found in responsibility.

When I've tried to sell that story to myself, I seem to buy it. And when I've tried to communicate it with other people, it renders them silent. Large crowds of people silent. And that's strange because I'm not sure why that is. It's perhaps because the connection between responsibility and meaning had never been made for it. That explicitly. Somehow. Because meaning it's. Contaminated with happiness or something like that, but it's to be found in responsibility and then you can say, well, there isn't any any responsibility that's more compelling than trying to aid things in the manifestation of their divine form.

That should be an adventure that could be sold. And I don't know why the church can't do it. I don't understand that and. Because it seems to me that that's something that I've done, at least in part and that accounts for. The strange popularity of the biblical lectures in particular, yeah, and. But I've also and I do believe that I do believe that. The right striving is to attempt with all your heart to encourage things to develop along that towards that divine goal, like what else would you possibly do once you think that through?

It's like you're always aiming at something that's better or you wouldn't be aiming. You're always moving towards something that's better or you wouldn't be moving. So then why wouldn't you move towards the greatest good? Yeah, well, it's because it's terrifying, I suppose, in part. But then I you know, I've tried to put that into practice in my life and.

It's tearing me into pieces. Yeah. I don't know, though, if if one of the reasons is because you are also a lone. And, you know, because you I mean, at least to my understanding, you're not in a in a in a community. Well, it's hard to say.

I mean, it's hard to say. His fans are certainly having a blast. Well, they've been a community, I mean, one of the things that has held me together certainly is the commitment that I feel to. To the people who've been so positive towards me and my family, I do feel that as a community, I understand what you mean. Why the hell not go to church?

I know he wasn't going to come right out and say it. Yeah, I know you're not that blunt about it.

But it's not just, you know, it's not just about going to church one time I told you something and and I don't know if I could drive, if I was able to drive it through. There's something about being in a hierarchy that is that because there's an aspect of being in a hierarchy that you talk about, which is this kind of striving to to kind of be the best within that hierarchy. But there's an aspect of being in a hierarchy, which is that the hierarchy covers you or definitely.

There's no doubt about that. Yeah.

And so there's something about why the lowest the lowest status members of a chimp group will still fight off interlopers.

Yeah. And so there's there's a value in being in a community and and a hierarchy where you like. I go to confession. I go to confession. I go to my priest and I confess my sins and and I give that to him. He actually takes responsibility for for an aspect of listening to my sins and and kind of participating in my salvation. And he and so the weight ends up being distributed across the community. It's not. So you don't actually just bear it on your on yourself.

And it's not just even that. And it's not just a living community. It's a it's not just those that are alive in the in the hierarchy, but those that are that have left their story. All the Saints are part of this hierarchy that you engage in, that you participate in and that you see as consolation, as examples, as you know, as examples of people who have lived through difficult things that you can kind of you can shoulder up against, you know.

And so that's one of the reasons why I I kind of insist with at least the people that watch my videos is is when I say go to church, it's not just because I tried to moralize you into doing something. It's because it's a it's actually a participation in how the best vision of reality works. I've got no objection to any of that. But I've seen you, I've seen you object, I'm probably one of the only people in the world that has actually seen you in church and seen you, that's worm a square in church y.

See, the other thing that I was reading again, I was reading this book, and it's mostly a jumping off place for me to think it's like.

There's also something. Because I'm not inside the church, so to speak. It's hard to say what the utility of that is. The utility of being inside the church. Now, being outside it all, being an outsider, talking about religious matters. Yeah, but I think that I think that I think that it has played a great role. Like I've often said something that I've often said that does something like King Cyrus, if you know the story of King Cyrus in scripture, King Cyrus was a Persian king who told the Jews to go back to Israel and build their temple.

So he wasn't Jewish like he wasn't he wasn't an Israeli. He wouldn't believe in the God of the Israelites. But he was like, hey, you know, that temple of yours looks pretty nice. Why don't you just go back there and and rebuild your own own thing? And so that's definitely an effect that I've seen. You have you know, the number of people that have become Christian because of you is hilarious. So it's just kind of it's just kind of this strange thing because you you kind of stand outside and you look at you're looking at the door and you're looking at the church and you're saying, hey, this isn't not so bad.

You know, look at this. What is what is going on here? Like, what is this about? And and then because of that, it's also do you think you've got something better? You know, I was talking to a friend of mine the other day when we were walking because, as I said, I walk about ten miles a day right now, try to keep myself under control. And. You know, he was raised a communist in Poland and is and then an atheist and.

He was complaining, I think I think this is what he told me, that he was complaining to his parents at one point about a religious wedding that they were going to. Despite not believing and he said as he got older, he realized he had nothing to replace that with. It's like, OK, throw it out. Fine. OK, now where are you?

Well, you're just as bad off as you were before, but you also don't have that beautiful thing. It's like what would happen if we dispensed with Christmas?

Well, that's a good way to compare us and the New Atheists is let's let's get rid of Christmas or we could say we could make it entirely secular, but then it would just disappear.

But, you know, that's not what's going to happen because religion is inevitable and we're seeing it coming back in very strange ways. It's going to be a weird WOAK identity and religion, which is which is going to come back. That's why it is you know, we did part of this part of it's going to tribalist. Doesn't matter. Yeah. Can you believe that? Yeah.

So it's a it's a scary thing that's you could say that that's one of the failures of the new atheists, is that they led to the what they partly led to the new WOAK phenomena because they they didn't realize that you can't get rid of religion, you can't get rid of rituals, you can't get rid of the problems and opportunities of identity. All of these things are going to come back. If you tried to just if you try to brush them aside, then they're going to come back in very weird ways.

And without you realizing what's going on, you'll have people kneeling to a shrine of a man who was killed by police and putting a halo on his head and, you know, and self mortifying themselves and doing all kinds of insane things or that look to you insane, but that you need to understand. It's just it's just this religious impulse gone gone off the rails, so. Yes, and then the question is, what's the right place for it?

That's right. You know, I've I've I've thought in might I suppose it's a form of comedy that Catholicism is seen as people get, you know, it's baroque.

Right.

And and it's Gothic, not baroque. It's Gothic. It's dark.

It's it's it's it has the same.

Ascetic in some senses, a horror film, and I'm not being I'm not being I'm not saying something denigrating by that. I mean it's part of its strange mystery. And all that strangeness is necessary because people would be much more insane without it than they are with it. And it's a container for that religious impulse. And that impulse is to the to the good. Yeah, and and and the image of the of the crucified Christ and also the act of communion gathers in all the extremes together, right?

It's if you think of the symbolism of communion, you'll notice that it gathers in every extreme from the highest to the most transgressive. All of it comes together.

That's worth unpacking that it's ritual cannibalism in the service of God.

Yeah. Yeah, and but it's also it's also seen as a as a normal, like meal of communion and it's also seen as a sexual union because there's a relationship, there's a notion in which then in the altar and in that moment of communion, there's the joining of heaven and earth, you know, the raise up the chalice. And there's this joining, which is which is this image of this the sexual union between God and the soul, between God and his church.

And so all of it it just jammed into this into into this ritual as a kind of center of reality would call it. And so, like you said, if you get rid of that, then you're going to have all kinds of strange fictitious versions of it that are going to pop up and are going to try to replace it. And it's leading to the fragmentation of our world and to the breakdown of the West for sure. So back to this idea of the the the mythological level and the historical level conjoining I thought of, that is convenient.

You know, that that's a stumbling point for me in relationship to the Christian story. It's you say. It has to be like this if the world is constituted in a good manner and it's the has to be I mean, is that so how about this?

Let me say. Just let me say this one thing, because I've been struggling towards it. This whole. It's an act of faith. And so let's say that your faith is that you decide to make the notion that reality is good, the the cornerstone of your faith. It's something that you that you want, that you believe, or is it something that you courageously assume? And is there a difference between that and belief? And if you courageously assume that the world is good, that reality is good, then the touching of the narrative and the objective in this manner that's demonstrated by Christ that becomes necessary.

Is that the idea? So I to me. It's funny, I don't see it as an act of faith in the way that we think of an act of faith like this jump of faith, or whenever I see it as an act of trust, faith as trust, you would say that's fine. That would be a courageous assumption if it's trust and and it's trust in the sense also of. So when we talk about the good, we always have to be careful not to just limit it to the good, to the moral good.

There is the moral good, but when we talk about the good, we're talking about the good in a in a much larger way. And the good is the the is the pattern of of the things. Right. And the sense that the fact that the world lays itself out as ordered as pattern inevitably, that there is no way around it. You cannot avoid the order of the world because because in order for you to even perceive anything, it has to have an identity.

It has to have a hierarchy, has to have a margin, has to have all these things. It's all there in every every act of perception. Exactly. In every act of perception.

And so it's every act of perception presumes a value hierarchy. Exactly. You can't avoid it. And so it's not so it's not like an act of faith in the sense that I, I, I, you know, I at the outset think the world is nihilistic and and and chaotic. It's like, no, I don't. I think that on the contrary, I think that you could say it in a religious way, that the love of God holds the world together.

And it's inevitable that things are held together by these by these these patterns of being that are always aiming towards the good, even in the very identity of whatever it is that you're encountering. Let me ask you something personal that I mean, you you weren't born an Orthodox Christian. This is something you came to. How? Well, I think that it has something to do with what you said before, it does has something to do with the sense that Christianity had fallen away from its original story and its original, all encompassing, let's say, cosmic narrative.

And so it was really, I would say, in searching for that and kind of discovering symbolic thinking on other fronts and feeling like I was confronted by this, like, OK, so I can see these patterns. I can see the world through these through this coherence. And it's like, why is it then that that Christianity doesn't have this? And then then after more looking in, more searching, I realized that it did that not only did, but that some of the earliest more some of the most powerful early saints talked about the world exactly this way, you know, and and so when I discovered that then I looked around and I saw, for example, that iconography that the relationship between icons and architecture and liturgy and and all of this was like this amazing giant pattern which was reinforcing, manifesting, making you participate in the way the world actually existed.

And so it was like this kind of self, you know, this positive feedback loop, I guess you could say in a good way where it's like you you you recognize these patterns. You engage in them, you see them, you you sing them. It's like this whole thing where you're engaged. And so I realized that it was really in the Orthodox Church that this was the most that had been the most preserved and the most alive, and that I would hear, you know, contemporary Orthodox speakers or thinkers or theologians who talked about the world exactly in that way.

And so I thought, OK, so this is the place. And also because they kept the idea of the osis as the ultimate goal, because I think that that's, you know, very, very early say to your NIAZ, which is, you know, like early third century said the logo's became man, so that man would become God. That's one of the earth. Some of the earliest saints said that, you know. And so it's like that's really what Christianity is.

And so that's what that's what ultimately led me to, to what is the greatest of all possible visions.

Yeah. Yeah. And so I but I think that, you know, I think that it's there late in even in in in other forms of Christianity. And one of the things that I've been trying to do is how people kind of wake up to that reality and try to see it wherever they are.

How's that going for you? Well, no, I'm really serious. I have to talk to you for a long time. I mean, you've got this I mean, you've had a strange.

Few years as we had a strange for years as well, it's all your fault, by the way.

Yeah, it certainly feels that way, but it's a it's a good it's a good in that sense. I mean, I've been surprised in the past four years since I met you and you kind of put me on out there in the world, you know. Now I have, what, like ninety thousand people following me on YouTube. And there's a community of, I would say, symbolic thinkers. I'm giving them a place to to to write like them on my website.

I'm putting up a blog. There's communities that kind of get together and talk about about this, trying to reinvigorate it in their own communities, whether that wherever it is they come from. And so I've been just nonstop excited about I mean, in a way, sad to see that I think the breakdown of Christianity is is going to continue like, you know, I'm not I don't have short term hope for that, say the situation. But I do believe that there are that there are seeds which are kind of being planted and there are people who are getting ready and and will bear fruit.

So so it's been just it's been amazing, I have to say. And thanks for that, by the way. I hope I guess you're welcome to the degree that I had something to do with it. Yeah. Did you want I No one on Twitter, you asked about the virgin birth, I don't know if you had if you still have issues of energy to talk about that or if or if or. Sure. Why not?

Well, one of the things that is important, I would say, in Christianity is understanding that the role that Mary has to play, let's say in the same. In the same in the same way that we talk about how the reality of Christ came, let's add to manifest itself in the world for us to understand that the possibility of this thing, the possibility of how everything comes together right in the same way. So, for example, in the Old Testament, you have the orphanage, you have places where God and humanity meet.

So on the mountain of Moses, in the temple in the Garden of Eden as well. So you have these they're usually at the top of a mountain or they're at the end of a temple. So it's still a mountain.

And that's that's a place where two worlds meet. That's the narrative world and the objective world, really. Exactly.

So the invisible world and the visible world, the world of of of logo's, the world, the pattern and then the world of possibility. Right. They come together and then that's when the coming together, that point is where you see something. So it's like that for everything. That's where Americans occur. Yeah. But not yeah. Miracles are like super events. Like they they show us the pattern of reality and a more in a in a more concise way.

But everything is like that. Right. So even a chair is a bunch of possibilities. Right. That Encounter's an idea can capture the purpose and logos and then, then you have a chair, you can't have just a bunch of stuff or else you don't have a chair. You need that to meet. So at the center of every thing of everything that exists, there's a little temple and mini temple and there's a little incarnation, right. A little like a mini one.

It's not another.

I want to don't want to seem heretical or anything, but there's this little like mini thing that happens. And so that aspect has a has a lower part, which is the nexus of possibilities, the coming together possibilities. And then this thing that this logo's which comes down. So this nexus of possibilities, you could call it a mountain house. A temple, a body. That's Mary. Right. That's that's her that she's the place of manifestation, so she's the ark of the Covenant.

She's the temple, she's the mountain, she's all of that. And so. And then and then we play that role, you could say the church, the body of Christ, we play that role, we come together in love, and then the divine logo's descends and manifests to unite the body right together and to reveal himself in that unity of the body. So we see Christ in the unity of love. So Christ says they will know you by how you love each other, because that's how you know that a body exists, is that it's coherent.

It holds together as a body. And so. This body has to be dedicated. It has to be dedicated to the thing which is manifesting. So, like, let's say let's say you have turkey, you know, a car and two bits of grass and you think I'm going to make a chair out of that? Well, it's not going to happen. Right? I didn't think you were going to go that route. But that's what this is it.

This is what it's about. It's not going to happen because that's not dedicated. And so and the same way of of a woman and her husband. So a woman has to be dedicated to her husband for the union to be recognized and fruitful. So if a woman is not is not faithful to her husband, then there's confusion on the identity of the child. Right. But if a woman is dedicated to her husband, which means that she's actually a virgin to all other.

Other identities, she's virginal to all other identities, and she's dedicated only to the one thing. So this idea of virginity is super important because it's about dedication, it's about not being mixed or not. It's not on contamination and contamination.

And so then you can understand that in order for something to manifest the entirety of the whole pattern. Right.

So it's like so so for for for someone to be the place of manifestation for the whole thing.

But that is what a mother does like. Right. What a mother does because she dedicates herself to a greater or lesser degree to bringing someone perfect into being. And the more she loves, the more she dedicates herself to that in every possible way.

So now the Virgin Mary is the extreme cosmic version of that, where she has to be perpetual virgin. She is a cosmic virgin, she is perpetually virginal because she's like you can imagine, like in order for the sun to reflect upon the waters and, you know, and all those men who don't believe that sort of thing, you should take careful stock of the fact that they're frequently terrified out of their skull whenever they encounter someone they're attracted to.

Mm hmm.

They project that or see it instantly. And in it, it did it demolishes them.

And then if they're rejected, they're crushed. And you can think of that as a projection, but you can also think of it as seeing more deeply what's there and that you only see that when you're actually attracted to someone. And then that attraction has a basis because you're seeing what they could be, even if you're not seeing what's there.

And so that's that's why the necessity of virgin birth, because she she is revealing the highest, right? She's like she's like a still ocean, which is on which the sun is reflecting. And if it was mitigated, then it would only reflect a mitigated manner. And then everything in between is mitigated. Like I said, it's like a woman who was faithful to her husband obviously is not a virgin in the technical sense. You could say she's she's a virgin, virginal to others.

She's untouched by others.

But she's dedicated to the one man just like, well, you know, the degree to which that's entangled with genuine virginity also isn't the case also isn't so obvious.

Yeah, you know, it isn't we don't know what the preconditions are for for setting up the ideal relationship. And and it's certainly the case that we bring the baggage of our previous relationships into our current relationship. And maybe sometimes that's for the better. And maybe the virginity can be symbolic, but. People can certainly be sullied by their past behavior and sometimes in a way that they can't figure out how to how to how to repair. Yeah, well, for sure that Christian ideal has always been the union of virgins in the sense that then the dedication ends up being tighter.

Right. And so you are dedicated to your husband and your husband is dedicated to you and and then your unmitigated mentally even. Right. In terms of memories and in terms of comparing and in terms of all of these things which we do as human beings. And so it can prevent slippage in terms of your dedication. Yeah, I don't know if that makes sense in terms of yes, and I wasn't I mean, you know, these things, grasping these things slips out in and out of my capacity.

And I mean, I you did a lovely job there of of of making a symbolic account for the virginity of Mary. I understand that.

I understand well, but no one's going to prove the virginity of Mary historically. I mean, that that's not that's something which is not that obviously is not possible. It's a secret. There's a secret aspect to virginity, which is actually part of its function and it's also part of its.

How can I say this, it's part of its of its mystery, which is something which is which is not public, you know, it's it's it's belongs to the identity. It belongs to, you know, it's like the the dedication of something belongs to that which is dedicated. We can talk about this to some degree.

I mean, I. Imagine that you wanted to form the perfect union with someone, hmm, let's say it's the perfect sexual union, for that matter. I think that requires love whenever I've had it in my life, a sexual experience that wasn't associated with love. I didn't feel right about it, my conscience bothered me very much, very rapidly, and maybe that makes me an outlier, although I don't think so. I think I think that that is how people react.

But they refused to notice.

Now, I might be wrong about that. Maybe I'm a prude. It's possible, although I don't think so, but it's possible. But it always struck me that sex was best undertaken within the confines of a committed.

Of an ultimately committed relationship that otherwise it was lesser, it was the lesser, it was less than it should be. It was solid. Hmm. And I. Now, well, I don't have anything more to say about that than that, that's been my experience. And so.

And I don't know what the preconditions are for establishing the perfect marriage, let's say, and the perfect marriage would be one that brought about the best possible children. These are not trivial things. They're very difficult things to get right. Certainly, you want the least amount of animosity, unnecessary animosity possible between the parents. You want the union to be tight. You want it to be based on love and commitment. That seems clear even from the psychological literature.

So I have another question for you. Go for it, go for it. This idea of theosis. I think it's lack of. I tormented by the possibility that its lack of courage that stops people from. From bringing into being that union with God. Do you think? You think that possibility, that possibility there sits there in front of all of us and it was actually realized once in history. Well, I would say that at least in the in the tradition of the church, it was perfectly manifested in Christ, but there are there are other saints that have reached the osis.

And that's what we're all called to, that we're all called to. To become one with God, to the extent that that's that that's possible, then I guess we're stuck with the old problem, which is if that's the case, then why does the world seem so unredeemed?

Yeah, well, because we're we're distracted, you know, with reason where we tend to attend to the lower things. You know, we we we get distracted by our our emotions. We get distracted by all these things around us that are trying to get our attention. And then we aim towards these smaller things. You know, we we aim towards whatever it is, right leaning towards making money. We aim towards getting this or having some prestige and these, because the problem is that these things all give us a small sense of satisfaction.

And so they they're like little idols, I guess you could call them.

And so we just aim toward these these lower things and and that's one of the reasons why we struggle to see this higher ideal, you know? And so that's one of the reasons why, I guess with one of the reasons for church as well, is that, you know, it's kind of forces you even if you're distracted or whatever, to come together at least once a week or whatever, stand together and stand together as well and to to content.

I know. I understand that.

Yeah. No, you know, I remember. Cynicism that was sort of in the air, I suppose, when. The Christianity of my youth started to decompose when people started to not attend church in droves, the cynical justification in part was, well, those are one hour a week.

Christians, how hypocritical can you get to. Claim allegiance to this high ideal and then to go back and live your tawdry life. How could anyone participate in anything like that? And what we've replaced it with is never doing it, even for an hour, a week, which is actually quite a lot of time compared to none. Yeah. So the replacement is not being an improvement by any stretch of the imagination. Yeah, and so and then we we replace it because we need to come together and we need to commune and we need to celebrate, and so we end up doing it.

And in these kind of secondary places like sports or politics and all these other places, you know, will will replace that.

But ultimately, like I said, one of the things that help us to trust, let's say, or or to find some respite is that we do it together, like we're doing this together. And so when you see. There's some comfort in knowing that that some people have dedicated their life to God and have lived that way, and it serves as a smaller example, but also as a as a comfort in those moments, because usually and the stories of the Saints, you'll find time when they're struggling, when they're completely off the rails, when they're not, you know, when they're struggling with thoughts, with passion, with desires about you see that in the Old Testament stories.

I mean, Abraham is all of the all the patriarchs.

I mean, they lived full lives, complete with catastrophic failure and malevolence and murder and genocide and war and mean and yet were redeemed. And so I think that that's one of the things that helps us to to, like you said, to to to see it's like you don't know, you don't have to obviously you don't look at the person who goes to church one to once a year or whatever. That person has their own thing to deal with you.

You you find and you see these these people that are the opposite, that really live and everybody has met. I would say probably a few people like that. At least I've met a few that are just I've met some priests, monk priests that are glowing, like they're just glowing. And and you see it in their eyes that they live at a level of of peace and acceptance that I don't have access to. And so it's like that type of encounter is also part of your transformation, because it gives you it tells you like, oh, yeah, I see it in your eyes.

Like, I can see that that that this exists. You know, it's not just something we talk about. I want to talk a little bit about heaven. So I talked to Matt Ridley a while back and and Bjorn Lomborg, and I'm interested in their thinking because they're trying to. Plot an optimistic course for the future, one where at the highest levels of social integration, we decide how human society should look. At least insofar as. We conceptualize how it might look if we address some of the major problems that beset us, but it's an attempt and it's an attempt to make things better.

It's an attempt to bring about something increasingly resembling heaven on earth. I mean, heaven is generally conceptualized. You can conceptualize it as a state of being. It might be the state of being that those people that you describe live in. I've had paradisal experiences where everything transformed itself into something that was perfect, that appeared perfect, and I was unable to stay in those frames of mind.

The heaven, is that something we build, is that something I don't understand the relationship between the heaven that awaits us, let's say after we die?

That's the idea. And what we build here on Earth to those touch is that the DA is that the doctrine? There's so much of this doctrine. I don't understand.

I think I think a wait to see it has to do with with attention again and it has to do with a hierarchy of attention. If you tried to build heaven, you're going to fail, you're going to fail miserably because you because you're not aiming high enough, right? You're aiming and then you get stuck in this in these weird world of opposites that you don't even understand the side effects of what you're doing, you know? And so for one person, heaven will look like if everything could be perfectly ordered, then.

Right. And then we know what that looks like. And another person to look at heaven and think if everything could be free, if we could all just be free, and then that we know what that looks like. And so the idea is to look higher. You know, there's a there's a there's a story that we have to strive for something better.

But then we end up in, which is what you're saying is that we end up with the Tower of Babel or we end up with the flood where we end up with.

Yeah, with the catastrophe, continual catastrophe of unintended consequences. But as you yourself said, we are aiming for something better. So so the question is, how do you pursue pursue utopia while avoiding the pitfalls? And that's a theological question. Yeah, it is. And I think it I know that people are going to hate that I say this, but it has to do with worship. It's it has to do with what you worship. So if you worship if you worship those things that you're aiming towards, the lower things you worship, the making a safer society, if you worship the making a freer society, if you worship making a stronger society, all of these things are going to go off the rails because they they have unintended consequences that you don't understand, because they're they're a fragment of reality.

They need to be encompassed together in order to reach something higher.

And so that's the danger of ideology. It's the part takes the place of the whole.

So that the idea is that if you if you worship God. Then those other things will will kind of laid themselves out slowly and you won't be able to force them, they'll just kind of lay themselves out slowly and they'll start to manifest, you know, progressively and as you but you have to attend to the highest or else, like I said, you know, and there's a there's even like there's an image of Antichrist which is related to this problem.

You know, in scripture, you could one of the first anticrisis you could say was Judas, who betrayed Christ. Well, there's a story with Judas, which is very fascinating because crises and talk to Judas very often. But one of the places where Christ talks to Judas is when a woman comes in and wants to anoint and wash Christ's feet with a very expensive perfume. And then Judas says, what are you doing? Like, why are you doing this?

You need to why don't we give this to the poor, right? And Christ says, you know, the poor will always be with you, but the bridegroom Christ, the Messiah is there for a short time. This idea of the kind of story it's very difficult to understand how anyone could have invented that story, like it's not the story of propagandists. No, it's in fact, it's the opposite. Yeah, but that story has to do with attention.

So Grace obviously isn't saying you shouldn't help. The poor Christ is said to help the poor. He said it many times. You have to help the poor give to the poor, of course. But he's saying get your higher hierarchy in order and you'll help the poor more effectively.

And then that's that's the case there is that is that it starts with worship and the acts that she's doing. If you look at what she's doing, she's first of all, she bought something expensive. She's sacrificing it. She's she's sacrificing it to to to bow down and to wash the feet, to submit, to sacrifice, to and to worship. So those three things, like when I talk about the aim, how you end up having to submit to that aim.

And so this is what so Chris is saying, first come to worship, then the world lays itself out below that in an appropriate way.

And those are the Sermon on Mount says to that and those that are are saying help the poor as their ultimate goal in the scripture says that Judas didn't even want to help the poor. He wanted to take the money for himself, really like he was a thief, actually, and he was taking the money out of the purse. And so those that just want to I suppose the truth of the matter is, is that the genuineness of your desire to help the poor is precisely proportional to the degree that you embody Christ.

That's right. And it can't be otherwise. It cannot be otherwise. I see that I see that clearly because otherwise things will go astray.

So that's one of the problems with the modern projects of Utopia, is that they're their Bibles in their attempts. And you can see like the type of gestures that the world. Authorities are posing in terms of in terms of safety, extreme, like, you know, with covid in everything, this desire to create absolute safety, this desire to create absolute identification and and tracing and all of these weird these kind of weird gestures that show that they think they can control reality is, is it's leading us towards a very dangerous place.

Well, one of the things I noticed, I did some work on a committee at one point that was. Advising. The UN in relationship to the establishment of its millennium goals and there was hundreds of goals, never not rank ordered, and so was a Tower of Babel. Because you can't have hundreds of goals that aren't rank ordered and have any goals at all. Because the goal to have a goal means a hierarchy, something has to be more important than something else.

And there isn't anything more important than getting your act together, so to speak. You know? Well, I'm going to have to think about all this a lot more. Yeah, but the question that keeps lurking in the back of my mind, which is. Does the fact that that's how it should be mean, that that's the way that it is? And that's trust, that's a question of trust. Yeah, and it's a. It's a it's a question of trust with which ends up manifesting itself in love, you know, and I think that.

That the love that you have for the world, which is which is which is clear. Anyways, it shows me that you might be closer to that, to that trust than than you might want to admit to yourself maybe. Well, I don't know what to do with it, I suppose, is the real problem, especially in my current circumstances. Yeah, I'm I'm I'm the most confused person I've ever met. Hmmm, I would say yeah. And I've met some pretty confused people, so.

Well, thank you. That was really something. Yeah, you know, it's it's a really a joy to talk to Jordan. And, you know, like I said, there are thousands of people who are praying for you and they're keeping me alive. And your story isn't isn't your story isn't over yet.

You know, it's so much the pity for me. Hmm. Well, you know, I really I can do is really pray that you that you that you I don't know how to how to formulate it, but I hope that you. That you that you encounter. A moment of grace and that you can also find find a body to join with.

And I'm always here, you know, like I we haven't talked in a few years, but obviously you're more than I can stand talking to you, but you're you're more you're definitely always a part of my life, you know, even if if it's through weird YouTube videos and everything, you know, and people remind me that you're a part of my life all the time because a lot of people that watch my videos, you know, they they come they come from you.

They're always they always start with while I watching your computers and videos. And so so you're you're a gateway to to you're a gateway to what I'm talking about, you know, so I. Well, that's a good gateway. Thank you for the carving. It's beautiful. I'm happy to know that it's there, that it's in your house and that, say, Michael, is is at least holding that dragon at bay a little bit. Good talking to you as you're talking to Jordan any time.