Lecture VIII Background: Abrahamic Stories, with Matthieu & Jonathan Pageau

So it's July 18, Tuesday, July 18, 2017, and I've been working for the last few days on the 8th lecture in my series, "The Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories." I'm planning to talk about the Abrahamic stories that immediately follow the stories of Noah and the Tower of Babel. I'm not as familiar with the Abrahamic stories as I am with the earlier stories in Genesis, say, from the beginning of the Bible through the stories of Noah and the Tower of Babel. I'm not as familiar with the Abrahamic stories as I am with the stories of Moses that begin with Exodus and continue in the succeeding chapters.

So I've had to do a lot of reading and a lot of thinking and some conversing as well. As part of that process, I spoke once again with Jonathan Paola, a carver of stone icons and an Orthodox Christian and student of religion. Also this time, I did a video with a while back; you might remember it — called "The Metaphysics of Pepe," where we discussed the psychology of the stranger and some of the Abrahamic stories involving Lot in Sodom and Gomorrah.

I also had the opportunity to meet his brother, Matthew Pazzo, who's been working on a book on the Bible for the last three and a half years. We spent 90 minutes talking about the Abrahamic stories and the conceptual background that's necessary to understand them. That's what I wanted to show you today after this introduction, so I hope it's useful.

I'm going to introduce both of you. Jonathan is a carver of icons, and I've spoken with Jonathan a number of times already. He now has his own YouTube channel as well, where he discusses issues that are similar to the ones that we're going to discuss today. Matthew is his brother, whom I haven't met before this day, and Matthew has been working on a book for how long? You're not here? Three and a half years? Do you want to tell everyone very briefly about the book?

Well, it's a book about symbolism, but I'm trying to rediscover the worldview that was present in the time of the Bible or at least actually not that long ago. Because modern interpretations of reality, materialist interpretations of reality, aren't that old, right? The worldview that was there when traditional societies were still there. So I'm trying to rediscover that worldview. Basically, there are basic patterns of time and space, things like that. It's like a cosmology that's been completely lost as far as I'm concerned. People have glimpses of it; I think a lot of people do, but they're very general patterns that we have to re-understand so we can understand the Bible, for example, in other societies.

Did you get interested in this? What is it that has compelled you to do this?

Oh, I don't know where to start. I mean, my whole life has been about that. I mean, you read the Bible. You can take it literally, you can take it figuratively, or you can take it both ways. I'm trying to take it both ways. I'm trying to get rid of that dichotomy — the dichotomy of symbolism and factual description. I think there is no such dichotomy if you understand what the words mean. If you have the right perspective, there's no more metaphors in the Bible. There are none. Okay? But it takes a while to get there because you have to adopt a completely different perspective than a materialistic one, obviously.

It can be a materialist and a Christian, or it can't be a religious and immaterial; that's what I think. One of the things we're hoping is that you know we've been getting — I've been getting a lot of questions, and I know you've probably, Jordan, been getting a lot of questions about this question of metaphor. A lot of people have been asking me, "How do we reconcile? How do I reconcile metaphors with what's in the Bible? How do I reconcile these metaphors with how I'm supposed to live in the world?"

I think that what Matthew has been working on is writing, and what I've been reading, is that he's really able to answer that question in a way that I think will be one of the most satisfying answers that we've seen in a while. So we're pretty excited to see how we're going to get that out to people.

So, let me start by telling you what I've been thinking about just briefly, and then you guys can comment. I'd like you to do most of the talking if we can manage that, although I'm so damn talkative, it's hard to imagine that will happen.

So I've been reading this book called The Disappearance of God, by a guy named Richard Friedman, and it was published, I think, in 2005. I think that's right. It might have been earlier than that. But he makes a couple of interesting points about the Old Testament. They're parallel points. The first is that the closer you are to the beginning of the Bible, the more God is present, and as you progress towards the end of the Old Testament, God sort of vanishes in stages until he only manifests himself, if at all, in prophetic visions.

At the same time, the parallel development is that the stories of individual human beings become more and more well-developed. It's like as the idea of the individual personality emerges, or the fact of the individual personality emerges, the presence of God as a detectable entity, like an external entity, even seems to decline proportionately. So I'm trying to puzzle that out in a variety of different ways.

Partly neurologically, because there's some evidence that the domain of experience that you might associate with the divine is a consequence of suppressed left hemisphere function and augmented right hemisphere function. Then I'm trying to also consider that in relationship to the effect of chemicals like psilocybin, which obviously can produce powerful mystical experiences, experiences of consciousness that are really of a different type than normal waking ego consciousness.

I've also been reading Jung's — mostly commentaries about Jung's Red Book and his attempts to use active imagination as a means to explore the contents of different forms of consciousness, which is something that modern people just really never do, although he did it for years. The consequence of that was the Red Book, also the Black Books, which haven't been published yet, but the Red Book, which was published two or three years ago, was a collection of visionary experiences and his continuing discussions with figures of his imagination, which he regarded as the most important work he did in his life.

So what's — what does that all boil down to? It's definitely possible for people to have experiences that produce the intimation of the divine. That seems to be factually indisputable. We're not exactly sure how those experiences manifested themselves in the periods of time that are associated with the early biblical stories — the Bible talks about those sorts of experiences very forthrightly in the earliest Abrahamic stories and also in the story of Noah and obviously in Adam and Eve and all of that. God's very present, and then he disappears over time.

One of the things that the guy who wrote The Disappearance of God, Friedman — one of the things he pointed out was the fact of the disappearance of God in the Old Testament — the fact that that's a continual, like it has narrative continuity. That fact he really remarked on — both those things, because, of course, the books were written by different people and then they were aggregated, but out of that came two elements of narrative continuity. One was the gradual disappearance of God, and the other was the gradual rise of the increasingly well-defined and powerful individual.

So anyways, associated with that is the idea that as God withdraws, he also starts to manifest himself more through the idea of a covenant, and that the covenant is something that's established with an individual. It's obviously also with the nation in the case of Israel, but it's mediated through individuals.

Well, that's a brief wander through the sort of cloud of associations that make up my thinking about the topic at the moment.

So, with what you described, it sounds a lot like what you see in the Bible. I'm not so sure about the God being more distant part. Where in further on — and from what I understand, there are two kinds of consciousness in the Bible. One of them is called "inhabiting the land." That's when reality fits the best with the theory, okay? So the principles and the facts agree. There are laws, and people follow the laws, okay? Or there's an idea, and reality fits with that idea. So that's called inhabiting the land.

So it's familiar space, okay? So when you live in that space, things make sense because your ideas match what's happening. Then you can fall away from that, and that's the covenant, okay? The covenant is an agreement between theory and practice; that's what a covenant is in the Bible. So God gives laws, and the people have to agree to follow, basically. The law is an identity; it's not just you do this, you do that. This expresses God's identity in practice. So when the facts match that identity, that's like a soul and a body that are not agreeing.

When you fall away from that, you fall into exile; that's the other mode. Yeah, and it looks like — and that's what you were talking about before. I'm not so sure until you talk about a covenant.

But that's when the meaning ends; the facts do not match.

Let me ask you a couple of questions about that. So you know I've been describing the cosmology in the Bible as mappable onto the domains of order and chaos, and I actually think the best way to define order is — order is the place you are when what you're doing matches what's happening.

Yes, very, very, very similar to the idea that you just expressed.

Exactly, it is — okay. And yeah, that's a state — there's a state of harmony between preconception and actuality, and that's also, I think, the circumstances under which people's emotions remain regulated.

I thought about that neurologically too. I think what happens is that under those conditions, your left hemisphere stays in charge, and there's some evidence for that kind of thing too, especially from the writings of this neurologist, I think he's a neurologist; his name is Ramachandran. He's quite a famous brain scientist, and there's another neuropsychologist named Belknap Goldberg, who's also talked about hemispheric function in the same way. So when things are going according to plan, let's say, you're in order, and then the individual ego consciousness that's focused and specific stays in charge, but that also keeps negative emotions regulated because there's no need for them because everything is working properly.

Then you can fall out of that, and you called that — you call that exile, not when you fall out, for me. Yeah, yeah. When you fall out of the order is like a quest also; the flood is also the flood.

Okay, so the exile is like the wandering in the desert?

Oh! It's — the idea of exile is, it's exactly just what we said. It's about serving strange things. So you're not in charge anymore. Relax; something else is. But you're in that — you live in a world where you're not in charge, or your identity is not in charge of the facts, and they don't fit with reality. So that means something else is in charge, and so you're serving that.

So the idea of serving strangers in exile simply means absolutely your identity does not match reality.

Oh, that's really interesting. I never thought about that — that idea of serving strangers in exile.

So, okay. So I'm going to branch off that a couple of different ways. So one idea there is that there's an idea from you, which is paraphrased something like, if you don't act out your own myth, you serve a bit part in the myths of others. Okay, so that will be in keeping with that idea of serving the stranger in exile.

The next part would be, when you're in a chaotic state and your emotions are dysregulated, your personality fractionates, and the fractionated personality — subpersonalities fight for control over behavioral output. So you dissolve from unity. You might think about it as a pyramid — a pyramid with a unifying conception at the top that disintegrates. That would be like the Tower of Babel to some degree. That disintegrates, and then sub-entities — you can think about them as spirits or think about them as psychological entities — regulate your behavior.

That would be equivalent, I think, to a movement from the left hemisphere to the right because I think the right is dominated by subcortical structures. Rather, I think that's how the animals exist: it's sequential domination by subcortical structures rather than some overarching conceptualization from the top down. I think that what you call the left is the right hemisphere.

Okay, I'm not so sure yet. But when you say left hemisphere, what do you mean?

Well, like what — the left hemisphere governs the right hand, okay? So the left hemisphere is the one that went — when it's in charge and when everything works. Yes, okay? It's the right. Oh, it's exactly the opposite of the traditional imagery. Usually, it's the right that's…

Well, yeah, because they're using the hands, and I talked about the brain rock. Exactly. So the right — it would be mapped onto the left hemisphere. Okay, so that's fine. That's fine. The traditional imagery, I think, is associated with the hemispheric specialization as well because the idea of right — you know?

Well, I want to ask you a question about that. You said that the living — what was it — you contracted exile with. What was the other conceptualization?

Inhabiting the homeland, sure. Absolutely.

Working on the homeland is another way to say that.

Okay, now tell me again how you conceptualize the relationship between God and his people — let's say in the homeland.

Well, God, like I said at the beginning, there's the idea of heaven and earth is at the basis of everything in the Bible. So heaven is meaning, and earth is fact. So in that relationship, there's God. It's always the name of God, by the way, if you look. If you look in the way it's described in the Bible, it's talking about the name of God.

So that means the meaning of God. God is not just meaning, but when they talk about it in the Bible, it's always about the name of God. So the name of God is an identity. It's like a principle, an axiom or something like that, and it has to embody itself in physical reality, flesh, or in matter.

The role of the nation of Israel is to embody that identity, and it's also to embody it in reality — not just in themselves. So basically, they're a mediator between heaven and earth, right? They're trying to make God's identity practical or concrete — or that's why it's all about laws, because you take — and that's like mathematics. You've taken an abstract principle that's really extremely simple; it doesn't seem like it contains much information, right?

If you take an axiom in mathematics, then you have to derive all the implications here. So that's making it practical; that's making it concrete; that's bringing heaven into the earth. So that's their job. Yeah, it's like a cosmic mediator.

Okay, Dean, okay. Follow you so far?

So, alright. It looks like there are two ways, maybe in the biblical narrative, that will is instantiated in reality. One would be as a consequence of individuals aligning themselves with the Word of God, and the other is the instantiation of the Word of God into the State of Israel.

Okay. Seems reasonable.

And that seems to begin — and that has its origin in the first Abrahamic story. So Abraham talks to God, or God talks to Abraham and tells him that he's going to be the father of a nation, essentially, and then — it's to inherit the land. That's important. Those two things are the same.

He's going to inherit the land, and he's going to become the principal of a great many people. So that's like he's fleshing out an identity — right? It gives a nation rather than just an individual, right? And he's going to be the identity of a nation.

Okay, and so how do you understand the description of that in the biblical narrative? Because one of the very — one of the things I find very strange about the Abrahamic stories is that immediate presence of God — and God shows up to Abraham and tells him this. Then Abraham makes an altar, if I remember correctly, once he gets to the land where he's supposed to be. He makes an altar, and then God appears to him again.

Not again. Not again. He appears to him the first time. He doesn't appear. I think I'm pretty sure the first time God speaks to him.

Okay, he's active. That's important.

Because he's just — he's just, yeah, he's not physical. He's not into practical reality yet. It's invisible. So God speaks — he's not manifest; it's just an idea, a principle, a word.

Okay, and unmanifest word or it's like the minimum of manifestation is like just language, just word, and then what he says is, "Go to this place, go to this land and you'll inherit the land." Then he goes there, and then he says — God appears.

In our city, so okay, so there's a — there's a progression. There's a progressive appearance of God, and it's partly a consequence of Abraham's original obedience to the initial idea, which was very abstract — means go here. You can't be more simple than that. Go there.

So it's like it doesn't mean anything, but it means everything. It's a very — everything we do is let's go there, go there and do something, right? It's like the principle of all things appear to Abraham saying just go there and you'll inherit. That doesn't really mean anything here, but it contains everything humans do.

Yeah, okay. That's an interesting observation because I think of human beings as — well, they're very directional. They're always going from point A to point B. They're always aiming there, like archers, right? It's definitely the case, like I had someone write to me — I was doing a Patreon interview with one of the people who've been supporting me, a young guy, and we were talking about the idea of Christ as Redeemer and Judge, and he was — this young man was unredeemed, let's say, for a period of time because he didn't have any direction.

You have to know what's good and what isn't, because to have direction you have to go towards what's good and away from, let's say, evil. The Judge is what helps you figure out what's good. If you don't know what's good, then you can't be redeemed, because to be redeemed is to be moving towards the good and away from, let's say, evil. So the Judge and the Redeemer have to be the same thing.

And that fits in with what you're saying because the Judge is the thing that makes qualitative distinctions, let's say, and you need to make a qualitative distinction before you can move ahead.

Okay, and so your point is that the principle that Abraham encounters to begin with is the principle of directionality itself — qualitative directionality.

It's something like that, so that's right. Yeah, it's well, it's the positive identity of anything. It's like a seed. It's like the seed of a tree; that's the traditional way to understand it. It's just a seed.

Yeah, it contains everything in it, but in itself, it's just something like "go there," something — go there.

Okay, so that's it. One of the things that's been interesting, I think, for me to learn personally as I moved through my life was that if I ever actually did anything, it was worthwhile.

You know what I mean? It's that something would come of it. It wouldn't necessarily be what I expected to come of it, but yet, the act of going and doing did bear fruit.

Yeah, and that's pretty much the story of Abraham in a nutshell, actually, what he just said, because God says "go here." The only hair is the land; Abraham doesn't inherit the land. I mean, he could have been — right away, he could have gone there, and it's yours, right?

No, sir, that's what it says. As soon as he gets there, it says there's already people there; the land is already owned by other people. There's always a famine.

Yeah, exactly. And that means — it means, like I was saying before — the facts support the theory, okay? Here, he's going to the land; that's the theory. "You'll inherit," that's the theory, and the facts don't support it.

That's a fun — okay. The earth doesn't supply, the earth doesn't give you sustenance to make it reality. It doesn't give you matter.

Yeah, it gives him a disease in Egypt, and I mean, his wife is separated on a limb essentially because he lies about her. Then it's so strange because he tells the Pharaoh and the Pharaoh's men that his wife is actually a sister — that's Sarai. Is that how you say that?

Yeah, Sarai, or she changes the name, yes.

It is actually his sister, and that's to protect them, and so the Pharaoh takes Sarai.

And then, okay, can I say something?

You bet there's a meaning to all those things — there's a meaning to it.

Okay, so the idea is that when facts support the theory, okay, when the flesh supports the identity or the matters of heaven support seven things are square.

Okay, that's just a traditional way of understanding it. That basically means that what you see is what you get. Okay, it's true — things are true. That's the definition of meaning matches — fact, yes, true.

Okay, fine, when pragmatic definition, yeah, when the other side happens — then things are round; they're cyclical. Okay? And it essentially is time; it's space in time — that's what it is.

One of them, you're falling into time — things are not square; that means things do not — the meaning doesn't match the facts. That's why it's all about lies.

Okay, because they're in that domain; they're in a domain where meaning in fact doesn't match, so everything happens through lies — interception.

Even the whole idea of saying "my wife is my sister," that represents a cyclical paradox, okay?

It's supposed to happen.

Well, why cyclical?

Your parent has a son and a daughter, and they get married; it's like a regression, okay? It's like you're producing different things, and then you're joining them back together.

And I'm supposed to join them back together because when you join them back together, it's like you're regressing. When you rebuild something, you start on principle, and you develop it; take — you make specializations of that principle.

When you start to mix them up again, it's like a regression; you're going back to something more primitive than before.

Okay, now, essentially, how do you see that in relationship to Abraham's insistence that Sarai is his distant sister?

Because you're not supposed to marry your sister, and I'm not saying that as a moralistic thing, even though it becomes one. But the reason you shouldn't marry your sister is that you're undoing the work, the specializations that your father or your mother have created. It's like going back; it's like regressing.

So like if you marry your father or your mother or depending — you're going back; it's a cycle. You're not supposed to make — because it's like you're annihilating something that was specified.

Okay, look, I'll give you an example that's pretty important in the story of the flood. There are traditions that the giants created hybrids, okay? One of the things that giants like to do is create hybrids that they are either themselves or they created hybrids; they took the species and they confused them back into who knows what.

Okay? And that's very significant because it actually means that you are regressing in a confused manner. There is a connection between the flood and what I just said — making hybrids and causing the flood; it's actually considered one of the same things because... I mean, that makes some sense.

Yeah, it's about returning to confusion.

Yep. Look, look, I'll say it this way: either names the animals — Adam names animals and gating — God asks Adam, and that's in Genesis — first job in the universe.

So he's asking — it's just specify different things, okay, that are all — I'll have the same source, right? Differentiate that it — the idea of incarnating a principle into practice, damn, please get differentiated.

Okay? Now if you reverse that process, you're going back to a more primitive level — you're going back to the flood, because the flood is the most primitive thing in that cosmology, right?

It starts with a flooded world; that means everything's in confusion. So what you have to do is specify things out. But if you go back — there says — okay, so let me reformulate that and tell you what popped into mind, alright?

So God gives Abraham the word, and then Abraham follows it, and God manifests himself more completely to Abraham. And then what happens to Abraham is twofold — he ends up in a barren land, so nature rebels, and he also ends up in a tyranny.

Right? Because it's not only does the land not produce, so it's in a famine, but Egypt, eventually — Egypt is generally speaking a symbol for tyranny throughout the initial parts of the Old Testament. I mean, you see that with Pharaoh, for example.

And the symbolism in the Mosaic story of Egypt is always being associated with stone instead of water. And so you could say that God gives Abraham the command to move forward, but he has to contend with the intransigence of nature, which rejects him because there was a famine, and then he becomes subjugate — so become subject to both tyranny and to deceit.

And so, okay, they see him.

Oh, well, this is — there’s any — look, okay, I'll say it this way: it's more about deceits and tyranny. But the thing is when you're not in charge — I mean, desert here, nice — that's it. When you or whoever you identify with is not in charge, you're a slave to some other principle, right? You're embodying some other will that's not you. I mean, that's theorem; you're right.

I mean, so right, and that said, it's really directly related to the idea of hearing you're serving strangers.

It says it all.

Well, that also motivates Abraham's deception, right? Because he's terrified that the strangers that he's serving will kill him — yet for his wife, for his wife. And that's why he lied, and he's afraid that he's going to be treated very badly.

Yes, because he doesn't want strangers to have his wife, okay? His wife is like the earth. His wife is how he will incarnate himself or express himself in the world. He's like the seed, and the wife is like feet above the earth, something like that.

So she is like his earth; it's like a miniature version of heaven and earth. The male is heaven, and the female is the earth in that case. That's the whole idea.

He's not in charge of fact anymore. That includes his wife and dreams, so he doesn't want other men, other principles, to control his wife, right? Does that make sense?

Yes, well, it also seems to me that because he's — the land isn't fruitful for him, and because he's serving strangers in a strange land, he's also correct to be afraid for the loss of his wife. Yes.

And how does he get out of it? By being deceitful, because yes, he's in the cycle; he's in that — I mean, are you supposed to be truthful with your adversary? Usually, no. Especially when you're adversaries hostile, and if you're in enemy territory, your morality changes, because all of a sudden it's not about being truthful; it's about surviving.

It's about — it's like the most primitive existence there is, right? The more primitive state of existence is more about species than about truth.

Yeah, it's an advanced state to talk about truth; it's when we all agree. You know, we all agree on at least something, but before that, it's every man or woman for him or herself; it's all about deceit; it's almost survival.

Okay, so now the next thing that happens essentially is that the Pharaoh gets plagued, and he's wondering why. So, because — so the story indicates that the Pharaoh has broken some natural law, let's say, or some divine law, and things go very badly for him.

Then he discovers — I don't remember how he discovers that he's taken Sarai — sir. I think it doesn't say how.

Yeah, I think that's right. And he discovers that he's taken Sarah, but that Sarah is Abraham's wife. And so then the Pharaoh gives Abraham all sorts of goods and...

To them, okay so that's also quite confusing. So Abraham is rewarded for his deceitful, let's say ill-gotten goods.

Yeah, right? I love the story. Sorry, that it's ringing. Because you also see — I think — did not account some of the complexity that's embedded in the Old Testament accounts is that it's not a simple morality tale, it stretches the imagination.

Especially see that in the Abrahamic accounts because Jacob, who’s so deceitful with Esau, I mean, he comes off — I mean, he has kind of, he's kind of unconscious, Esau, yeah. He gives things up too easily; he's too easily deceived, and he's a bit primitive, too primitive and a bit too naive, something like that.

But Jacob places and Rachel plays some really nasty tricks on him, and yet they come out ahead.

Yeah, and so that’s also a very difficult thing to contend with.

Well, there's this idea, at least in traditional interpretation, there's this idea that Esau is actually supposed to be the king; he should be. The only reason he isn't is because there’s something wrong.

That pretty much describes the whole Bible in its entirety, that there's — there's the theory and the fact; the fact is supposed to be king, okay? Do you know what I mean by that? Like, I matter is king; that's what it's supposed to be, but it's not.

And the whole — all the stories are about redeeming that problem, taking care of that problem. That’s pretty much all the stories in the Bible are about that, and that pretty much what loss represents in the story of Abraham as well.

Okay, he represents the material reality; he represents facts, but there's something wrong with it.

Let's go into the larger story now. So, okay, Abraham leaves, and I believe he leaves with Lot, and Lot also becomes quite wealthy. They go back to where Abraham had built the altar initially, but Lot's men and Abraham's men started to fight.

Yeah, so they decide they're going to separate, and they basically do that somewhat arbitrarily; it could have gone either way, but Lot ends up going to Sodom.

Well, actually, there’s something you should be aware of. A lot of the stories in the Bible are based on a really ancient way of thinking that we don't really follow anymore, but I mean in the Bible there is a reason why the directions of the travels are not just random; like Egypt represents the earth, and what's the name of the city? What's the name of the place?

Above her, Amathie, the place where he goes to meet Laban.

Ah, it's in the north.

Okay, I'm not sure I remember the name of this sea. I think it's Iran that represents heaven.

Okay, and there's a reason; it’s not just arbitrary. It corresponds to the geography of the region. One of them goes up hills, the other one goes downhill, and the north is mountains, like snowy mountains, and in the south, there’s Egypt, which is like the low — a low place.

In summary to North, literally, is up.

Yeah, it's not a metaphor. It literally is close — going, getting closer to heaven, and the other one’s going into the earth.

So when they go in exile into Egypt, they're — it actually means they're going into the earth. It's like a descent into — you know, it's like death.

Right, and they say it a few times in the book of Genesis. They talk about your — it’s like dying. Going to Egypt is like a death.

Okay, so then now — so then we moved to the story of the strangers, right?

Wait — nothing — you were going to say why the separation of the land with Lot and Abraham?

Oh, yes, right. The idea is that Lot takes the south, right?

And then Abraham...

Oh, yeah, that was the whole point of that. Yes, a lot. There's a reason why he takes the south; it’s the lowest place on earth. Sodom and Gomorrah — that place — it's the lowest place, okay?

So literally the lowest place on earth, right? I'm not sure I — I think that region actually is the lowest place on earth, but in the story, that’s how — that’s what it means.

It means it's the lowest place you can go, and so it's a place that's farthest away from heaven, yeah.

It's all in order. You're like the idea that Milton develops with regards to Satan: when he's thrown from heaven, the hell that Satan inhabits is the furthest possible away from heaven.

That's got to find, essentially.

Okay, that's like a journey into fear.

Yes, it's the same — it means the same thing as falling asleep.

Exile and sleep are the same in the Bible. Sleep is like a form of exile.

Okay, so now the next thing that happens is that we get the first warning about Sodom and Gomorrah.

Yes, that's just a very brief sentence; it's like a foreshadowing.

Then the next thing that happens is that there's an episode where there is a war among kings, and the kings, if I remember correctly, it's the king of Sodom who takes Lot, and Abraham has to go rescue him.

And actually, actually, I think it's the other way around. I think it's Kings from the north that come down and take Sodom and Gomorrah, and Lot is part of that, and so is the king of Sodom. Yeah, I think hives or something like that, please.

And then Abraham — the king of Sodom at the end gives gifts to Abraham to thank him that he today rescued him.

Yes, that's right. So what happens is that — it says, "It came to pass in the days of Amraphel, king of Shinar, etc., that these made war with Bera, king of Sodom, and with Persia, king of Gomorrah, etc., and these were all joined together in the Vale of Siddim, which is in the Salton Sea, which is the salt sea."

So I presume that would be the Dead Sea, and that would be that identity — the low point you’re describing.

Those are actual earth; it's the Dead Sea.

Yes, pretty interesting. Yeah.

And the Vale of Siddim was full of slime pits, and the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fell there, and they took away all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah and all their victuals, and they took Lot, Abram's brother's son, who dwelt in Sodom and his goods and departed.

So, you can really see this whole geography did Matthew talk about when they say that Sodom and Gomorrah — they had to flee and fall into slime pits. It's almost like they’re laying it out for us that they had to almost kind of go even further down into the earth to hide from these — these invaders of the north that are coming to take their land, so, okay.

So Abraham goes in and rescues Lot, and he does that successfully. And also, there’s kings that he frees — as far as I can tell.

Yeah, and probably then the kings want to reward him. Abraham says to the king of Sodom that he doesn't want any reward, and the reason he doesn't want to take any reward except for what his men have eaten is that he doesn't want to take anything because, "I will not take anything that is thine, lest thou should say, 'I have made Abram rich,' save only that which the young men have eaten and the portion of the men which went with me."

And it looks — see, God has already promised Abraham everything in some sense, and it looks like he doesn't want to take anything.

Abraham doesn't want to take anything from anyone else because what would it want to do? Would it interfere with the purity of his accomplishments? Something like that?

Well, I don’t know for certain because that’s just a line, I guess. But in the story, it's not that much of a big part of the story, but the way I see it is I think he says, "I don’t want to take even a shoelace from you."

So the reason why he said that is that the shoe is the lowest part; it's the lowest clothing, right? It is not on the feet.

So it's all related to the idea that the earth needs to be redeemed, needs to be rectified, and it's in that situation. It's not like he’s not allowed to accept a certain thing; it's not eating the forbidden fruit. There are things in the world that are poisonous to humans; we can't eat them, because they don't agree with our patterns, our mind.

So if you eat poison, you go into that place where things don't agree; your mind and your body don't agree. And if you drink alcohol, that takes you into the realm where your mind and your body don't agree; the theory doesn't match the fact.

And then you go into that whole confusion. And so it could — could it be that when you don’t have — he doesn’t want to take from Sodom because Sodom is already what we know Sodom to be?

I mean, it already represents kind of the land it can't hold and will be burned off.

Yes, it's something he can't — he can't integrate. Right? Something — it's like leather.

I said — the forbidden fruit, you don't want to eat — you don't want to accept matter that you can't handle, that you can't integrate.

So there's something in that place that he doesn't know how to deal with what to do with it, and he doesn't want his riches to come from that place.

You didn’t write these; he doesn't want his riches to come from that place.

Yeah, that would compromise him because he doesn't know how to deal with it.

Yeah, maybe someday you will — that’s correct. That's the whole idea.

Actually, here's an interpretation — Lot represents that place that will one day be redeemed.

The reason why they talk about Lot so much in the story of Abraham is because he represents King David, but he is the ancestor of the nation that will give rise to King David, okay?

It's like a secondary story within the story, but it's like it's meant to be interpreted in terms of a future redemption of that place that he cannot handle at that time, and that place will be redeemed.

I'm giving you a lot of tradition here; I happen this is what I quit — I what I've learned; it's King David, okay?

It's the future king, okay? So the whole one area, Lot is about King David; one — of course, Lot is Abraham's descendants as well because he's his nephew.

Yes, and so Abraham's nephew descends into the lowest place essentially.

Yeah, well, look, the story just starts out pretty clear. It starts out there's three sons to Terah. One of them is Haran, the other one is Nahor, and the other one's Abraham.

Okay, Haran dies; that's how the story starts. Okay, that's like the beginning of this story — Haran dies, and he has a son called Lot.

See, that's what I was — the idea is it's the same idea; the son of Haran represents death; he represents the thing we can't handle; he represents the material facts that we can explain with our theories or with our identities — it's the thing which is the matter we can't handle.

Okay, and that’s why the story starts with — he dies; the father of Lot dies; it means Lot represents some fact that we cannot correctly integrate into our universe.

This could be interpreted in so many different levels, but that's basically what this — I don't know if that makes sense, but the idea.

Yeah, I mean the idea is that is — I think we need to see the idea that an orphan or a widow — that's what they always represent. The idea represents something that has lost their principle that unifies them; they’re kind of variously connected from the hierarchy of the family.

So, so Lot losing — the fact that losing his father died means that he loses the thing that gives him identity, and so he's like this — he's like a piece of earth that is lost attachment or lost meaning or...

Well, that reminds me of what happens to Noah's son who sees him naked, yeah?

Right, and why they just — because — because to see — it seems to me, I'm going to talk about this a little bit tonight, that to see — Noah gets drunk and then, which — which son is it?

Ham.

Ham really first sees him, but doesn't respond properly. The other sons, when they see Noah naked, they cover him up, and they don't look.

And so it's like they're not exposing their father's weakness, his mortality, his insufficiency, right? They had attained respect, but Ham doesn't do that.

But there's also more of what Matthew was talking about before. In that story, there are two things that are implied of what Matthew was talking about before; this idea of wine that brings you into this cycle where causality ceases to be direct, and then what Ham told the fashion, yeah?

And the fact that Ham sees his father naked — he discovers his nakedness is also a kind of suggestion of incest as well, the same type — the same type of inappropriate causality that you'd be in the story of the two of Abraham's sister marrying this writer, right?

Yeah, and Lot with his two daughters.

Yeah, Lot, Lot's two daughters, right? So it's transgression against some fundamental boundary, yeah, I guess.

The hierarchical relationship of a family, right? Yes, they're not supposed to marry loops — that's a tree. You're not supposed to make loops in a tree, so you could say like that. It's really simple.

And that's supposed to regress, and I'm supposed to produce things. You're not supposed to turn back on yourself; okay? You're not supposed to go back — contradict ourselves.

Okay, so maybe that's why Lot's wife is turned into a pillar of salt — she lay back, right?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you have to do — is listen experimental and pine for something that was terrible.

They shouldn't be, and so — and she's come out not to look back. Once she escapes from that catastrophe, you don't get to be nostalgic for it.

The same thing happens in the story of Moses because what happens to the Israelites when they're out in the desert is they start to become nostalgic for Egypt, for the tyranny, yet, right?

And that's also, I think, when God starts to send poisonous snakes among them because, right — don't they — they start to pine for Egypt and complain about Moses, and then they start to worship other idols.

So that's part of that confusion that you were talking about, and then God gets irritated and throws a bunch of poisonous snakes in there to give them a good chomping.

Yeah, so I call that the snakes come as a result of them wanting to go back.

Yeah, well, right — that makes perfect sense.

And you see that nostalgia for tyranny, you know? You see that in the Soviet Union, in Russia right now, in regards to Stalin.

And so the question is, I think this is one of the things that the guy who wrote The Disappearance of God mentioned: do you want to be well-fed as a slave or hungry in freedom? Something like that.

And the choice — well-fed as a slave is not a good choice.

Yeah, so okay now. So, in Jonathan, you and I had talked to a fair bit about the story of Abraham and the strangers before.

So God decides to reward Abraham, and he tells him, just like he told him before, but he repeats it — that he's going to be the founder of the nation.

He tells him that Sarah is going to bear a child, and Sarah, of course, does not believe that. Let's see — let me just find this here, right?

Yes, okay. So that's what happens — is that God's word comes to Abraham in a vision, so it's the word again, saying that his reward will be great and that he's going to be the father of nations, but he doesn't have any children — so isn't that when he takes in — he takes Pharaoh's servant Hagar?

Yeah. And Hagar — we don't know much about her, but she gets haughty right away and starts to despise Sarai, and Sarai actually beats her, as far as I can tell.

It says Sarah dealt hardly with her, and then Hagar flees, and she ends up by a well where an angel appears to her, and the angel tells her that her son, her child, is going to be the father of the nation as well.

So the first question might be why is it that Abraham at this point in the story — why is it necessary for the story that Abraham takes a detour and has a child with Hagar?

What do you think is a signifier?

It's always the same problem in the Bible; it always starts with confusion, and it has to develop towards something that is clear.

So you're saying it yourself when you say detour?

Yeah, it's a detour; exactly; that's exactly what it is. It's a detour, okay?

That's not necessary, but it happens, then they say — well, isn’t there such as these detours or the others are?

Things that are not necessary but happen, there's something also in that detour. The fact that he gives birth to Ishmael which has to do with this turning because God kind of promises that Ishmael is going to come back and is going to be a big problem for you — he's going to be the father of a great nation, but it’s going to be a big problem for you later; like there’s going to be — there’s going to be fighting between your sons, basically.

Yeah, there’s that idea, yeah, of course, here — I don't know if it's in that story but — yeah, well, Esau seems to be associated with an idea that you might think about as successive approximation to an ideal. You know, so one of the things that I conceptualize, sort of visually, is this is associated with the idea of Geppetto wishing on a star.

You know, so what Geppetto does when he wants to facilitate the transformation of Pinocchio is lift his eyes up to the highest thing that he can conceive up and orients himself with that.

But the thing is that as you move through life, let's say, you're oriented by the highest thing you can conceive of. But as you move towards it, you transform, and then your conceptualization of what's the highest shifts as you transform.

So you're aiming at the highest thing, but perhaps your ability to conceptualize what's the highest thing develops as you move towards it, and so — but what that means in practice is that you do take detours because you aim at something, but your aim is off.

You move toward it, and then you get to a point where you can correct your aim and so it's not like you've made a mistake exactly. You're farther ahead than you were, and you've corrected your aim, but your aim wasn't — you weren't aiming at exactly the right thing to begin with.

And so, now go ahead.

Well, maybe that's what's happening to Abraham, is that you could almost say — I don't know that Ishmael is a practice run, something like that.

Well, so, alright. So then you were going to—Matthew, you were going to say something about that.

Oh yeah, I was going to say that exile in the Bible, there's always a reason for it, but it's not necessarily a logical reason; it's — it’s just like what you described.

You think you know something; you think you know what you're aiming at; you think you know what you want; you think you know what you’re doing. Something happens that you didn't plan, and that doesn't look like it's part of what you were aiming at; it makes you take a detour.

Well, this side is all about detours. It's all about turning around. You don't know where you're going — you're lost.

So, but in the end if it brings about something that maybe you weren't even aiming at in the first place?

Yeah, but might be better than what you were in the first place.

So it's not all bad, so I think that's the idea. The whole idea of exile is that there — it renews your plans, right? If you don’t die.

Yeah, if you don’t die.

Ha ha ha ha, yeah, even if you do die, for New York life.

Well, yeah, okay. Okay, so now.

Okay, now the next thing that happens is that the strangers come to visit Abraham, and he treats them hospitably.

And so now we might say that that's an indication of his increasing alignment with the good — maybe that's one way of thinking about it.

Because he does right by the stranger, and one of the consequences of that is that the angels, I guess we find out that they're angels, tell him that Sarah is going to give birth to someone, and Abraham finds that very difficult to believe.

Sarah finds it so difficult to believe that she actually laughs about it; she overhears it, she laughs about it.

But, but he — he has the strangers; he feeds them, and he has them wash their feet, if I remember correctly.

Anyways, he treats them hospitably, and there's a blessing as a consequence of that.

And that's something we talked about a fair bit, Jonathan, when we were talking about how the thing doesn't fit in categories, yeah, the stranger — which is that invitation to chaos as well that you were talking about, Matthew.

Because the stranger is, well, the thing that you can be subjugated to, but also something that will bring something new and potentially disruptive, but also potentially beneficial.

And so then the idea there is whether or not the stranger is disruptive or beneficial depends to a large degree on how you treat the stranger, and that strikes me as very, very possible.

I mean, that’s the one thing that’s — that’s one of the things that has really entered my imagination as a clinician.

If you're approached by someone who's very in chaos, the consequence of that is very dependent on how you interact with them, because it can go any way, and they're not really in control because they're so chaotic.

And so if you're careful and awake, you can keep things moving in the proper direction and maybe even benefit from it.

And that's kind of like the idea of Noah walking with God, because one of the reasons that Noah gets through the flood is because he's oriented properly; he's walking with God.

And so you could say that exile can — it's something like exile can expand you if you stay properly oriented while you're in exile; it can fix it; it can fix your mistakes.

That's part of it; it cleans you; it renews you because you make mistakes.

Yeah, and they become part of you, and if you're just stuck with your mistakes, you're rigid about your own mistakes.

You need something outer to, something that you don't know, something that you don't understand to clean your — like takes away.

Well, that's like the gold — the dragon hordes with a virgin; that the dragon hordes, right?

If the dragon represents that chaotic, would say, exile state, the drag or the gold and the virgin both represent that which can be assimilated as a consequence of being in that situation.

The funny thing is, is in the hero myths, going into exile on purpose works way better than going into exile accidentally.

Yeah, so that's an interesting thing.

So, okay. Okay, so now — well, can I say something about the part you were describing? The whole story of Abraham — if you look at the big picture, it's really about progressively knowing something.

So it starts with just the voice, okay? Oh God, go here, doesn’t mean much. Goes there, then it becomes a little more precise — I will give you this land, but it's more specific.

And then as the further he goes, the more it becomes explicit.

Okay, and he says — like in the part we were talking about, he says three men come — these are angels, as it becomes clear later.

So this is God, right? God sending his message in a clear manner, and it's more right — specific than before.

He says, this time next year you will have...

Okay, so a couple of things about that. So yes, one of the things that — see, one of the ways that I've conceptualized the relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament, and I think — and it's also analogous to what happens to Moses, because Moses doesn't get to the promised land.

So there's this idea, Christian idea, that the reason that Moses can't get to the promised land is because he only represents the law.

Now, but then I thought about that — I thought, well, one of the — I've got to say about four stories at the same time here to get the bill as I'm right. So the first is, it's not so easy to speak the truth, but it's fairly easy to stop lying.

And so as you stop lying, you get better; you get to approximate speaking the truth.

But the way you start isn't by speaking the truth. The way you start is by stopping lying.

And then a lot of the rules in the Old Testament are prohibitions; here's a bunch of things you shouldn't do that you might be inclined to do.

And so the idea there would be if you stop doing all the things you know you shouldn't do, then you can — your head clears up enough so you can start to see the things that you should do.

And so then in the Abrahamic story, maybe it's something like this. You said — you implied, Matthew, that Abraham had originally followed something like a vague and ill-defined whim.

But he has enough faith to move forward, despite the fact that it's vague and ill-defined, and then as a consequence of moving forward, it becomes more and more concretized, differentiated, and clear.

Okay, that’s right. Because that’s — you know, it’s funny because the future authoring program we’ve developed is sort of predicated on that idea. The first thing you do is wander around in a kind of confused daze trying to find a direction of orientation, and then you clarify that.

And partly you do that by continuing to think about it, but you also clarify it by acting on it.

Okay, yeah, and that's the idea — these three men that come visit him; there's a reason why it's three, okay?

It's because it's trying to express the idea that it's more — expressed, it's more explicit. It's not just the seed anymore; it's like it's like a branch, okay?

You've got something that looks like a branch; it's branching out into a more concrete thing. And at first, it's just a voice, then it's a vision; then it's actual people.

Okay.

Okay? So that's...

So here's another idea. So let's say if you're beginning to develop morality, you behave so that the people who share your morality can get along with you.

That means you follow the rules, but if you're dealing with strangers, it's a different issue because they aren't part of your morality.

And so the question then is how do you act properly when you're not in the domain of your morality?

And I always thought about that as a meta-moral domain, and it seems to me that it's the domain that Christ occupies because he's like the mediator between morality.

He's in no man's land, and he's a mediator between moralities.

And if you’ve oriented yourself properly, then you even know how to act with — there aren’t any rules.

And that’s why Abraham can act properly in relationship to the strangers; he’s awake enough so that when the strangers show up, he can pay attention to the way they’re acting and can act spontaneously as a consequence of paying attention, and things go well.

And so the strangers aren't hostile; they don't kill him; they don't take his wife; they don't do any of the terrible things that strangers could do, and he gets a blessing as a consequence of it.

That seemed reasonable.

It is, but we have to understand that these strangers are coming from heaven in the sense that they’re bringing a message.

They're not just random strangers there.

They might have done — they might have done what they did in Sodom and Gomorrah; that's the whole thing.

Okay, so now I want to switch — I want to flip the head a little bit. This is really what I — this is, I think, of all the things I wanted to discuss with you guys. I think this is the one that’s most crucial because, okay, so now we’re in — let's say — we're in Sodom with the angels, and we’re in the part of the story where the townspeople of Sodom gather around the house, and they tell Lot that unless he throws out the strangers so that they can be raped, well, the townspeople demand that.

And then Lot offers them his daughters, which seems like a hell of a thing to do. It's like the sacrifice of Isaac to some degree what it looks like to me because he's willing to sacrifice his daughters to protect the strangers.

Now, okay, so that's a morally let's call that a morally ambiguous element of the story, but then the townspeople reject him, and they tell — they basically tell him that he has no right or power to bargain and that not only are they going to take his daughters but they're also going to take the stranger's, so it doesn't work.

But, you know, to modern sensibility, the offering of his daughters is a reprehensible thing, but it seems to be that in the context of the story, it's an indication of how hard Lot is trying to treat the strangers properly in a place where that's essentially impossible.

Yes, that’s the whole point of that story — that place is impossible! That's the whole point, I think, of what he just said.

Okay, there's no way out of it, right? Leonard Cohen said something about that; he said there's — he had a line that I remember quite well: he said, “There’s no decent place to stand in the massacre.”

And what that seems to mean is that something — it's something like you can get into a place where that’s made of such a compound of errors and deceit and catastrophe that no matter which way you turn, there is no good.

Yeah, I’ve seen people like that in my clinical practice.

There's no good; there's no good alternative. Everything is sin.

That's a good way of — no matter which way you shake it, you're not going to hit the mark because you're not somewhere where the mark can be hit.

Okay, now I’ve been trying to think about the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in relationship to modern sexual confusion.

So this is what I see happening on the social justice front, let's say, on the one hand, since the 1960s, and probably as a consequence of the birth control pill, but other factors as well, there’s been tremendous stress placed on sexual liberation.

And so there's this idea that I think is associated in large part right now with the radical left of total sexual freedom, but at the same time there's increasing emphasis from exactly the same sources on restricting sexual interaction.

So you see this in the campuses, for example, where increasingly particularly heterosexual contact is regulated by a doctrine that says you have to get spoken permission for every move in the mating process.

And so you see — and I know I'm not expressing myself very well, but there seems to be in our current culture, there seems to be massive sexual confusion.

It's some weird combination of extreme libertinism and extreme authoritarianism. Part of what's happening is that the sex impulse of sexual gratification trumps everything.

It's something like that. I mean, I know there’s more to what’s going on inside of the knob, but there’s certainly that.

And so, well, I'm trying to figure out what to say about that tonight, because, well, there's, there's a lesson in there. The lesson is something like don't let sexuality — don't let impulse and sexuality get the upper hand.

It's something like that, or all hell will break loose, which I actually happen to agree with.

So one of the things that we haven't been able to talk about in our culture, I think, is let's take the idea of the phenomenon of AIDS. Like AIDS mutated to take advantage of promiscuous sexuality, and that's just nothing — you never hear that publicized, you know?

People had associated AIDS with homosexuality, and there was a reason for that because it's much more easily transmitted as a consequence of homosexual sex than heterosexual sex because the anus is a much more delicate physiological structure.

It's not as robust and can be eaten much more easily damaged and — and with disease resulting as a consequence.

But it isn’t only the matter of sexual action that's the issue; it's also the fact that promiscuity provided the evolutionary platform for the AIDS virus to mutate into a very — into the form that it finally took.

And it was only through the skin of our teeth that we escaped a totalizing plague; you know, if that emerged 100 years ago, God only knows how many people would have died.

AIDS was unbelievably fatal, so I know that's a mishmash of ideas, and I'm not exactly sure how to see my way clear through it.

But there is a clear warning in that story about something to do with sexual iniquity in the Bible — that sexuality has two poles that define it, and it's pretty clear.

One side is reproduction, and the other side is — we could, let's say, recreation.

Okay, so those are the two folds of sexuality in a normal world. So it's not just for reproduction, and it's not just for recreation; it's both.

Like that was the idea; I mean, I mean actual idea.

Now if you — if there’s a balance there, you know, that should be — if you lose this balance and it becomes just about reproduction, that's a problem.

If it becomes just about recreation, that's another problem, you know. Okay?

It's not that complicated, really, but it's so politically incorrect to talk about these things.

I'm a little bit obvious — well, that nobody cares; you talk about it.

The thing is that the most difficult things to talk about are the things that are obvious, because when they're obvious, you don't have to talk about them.

And so then when people start to question the obvious, you don't know what to say.

Yes, I guess so. For example, I’m thinking about the slut walks, you know?

And so women go out, and they dress very provocatively, and they go out and manifest their right to be as provocative as they possibly can be without being interfered with, and I have some sympathy for that perspective.

Because it seems to me appropriate for women to be the final arbiters in sexual contact, but on the other hand, it also — it's that whole exercise is blind to the fact that clothing, for example, has communicative intent.

And that people broadcast their invitation to sexual congress in a million ways, subtle and not-so-subtle.

And you can't just say, "I have the right to broadcast myself in any manner possible" and be completely immune from the consequences.

There's something wrong with that, and with regards to basic sexual morality, you know, I've read things about like slut-shaming is that the more radical feminist types, for example, claim that women shouldn't be held responsible for their sexual behavior in some sense.

Shouldn’t be held against them how many men they've slept with, etc. But then I think, well, you never recommend to someone that they lay down naked on the side of the street with their legs spread and invite anybody who walks by to partake of the opportunity.

Everyone would regard that as inappropriate, I think without question, and so what that indicates is that some degree of sexual propriety is both normative and ethical.

And then, of course, you can start asking yourself about what that degree of social sexual propriety should be, and it does have something to do with getting the balance between reproduction and recreation right.

Okay, but the thing — even in the Bible, there’s there are the two aspects; some stories are about just this aspect, and there are the most strange stories in the Bible.

For example, the story of Tamar is one of those, so I don't know if you're familiar with that story, but it’s in that — it's intercut with the story of Joseph, okay?

It's essentially — it says that Judah has children with some woman, and I think it's a stranger, it doesn’t necessarily say so, but it seems like that's what it is.

Then the sons die off, and then there's this woman called Tamar, and she disguises herself as a prostitute, great, and she has a kid with Judah himself.

So all the symbols in the story — all the symbols deal with that.

And it says that she needs to have ownership of the symbols; she wants to secure her status.

So the thing is that you get warnings in the Bible about sexual iniquity, you get warnings about sexual iniquity, and it’s expressed in the character of Tamar, but that’s a different dimension of it — recognizing the role of sexuality within the family structure.

And so all these things point to the fact that if you don't regulate it, things become disastrous.

So yeah, so then — so let's get back to Sodom again for a moment because it's a red flag in a way.

Yes, people who can manage their sexuality and act responsibly can thrive, and those who cannot seem to go the way of Sodom.

That's the ultimate warning.

All right, now so, if we tie this together, the arc of the narrative draws conclusions about how to live not only responsibly in the family structure but in their civic communities at large.

So all these patterns of behavior template for how to understand things.

And it’s often said that Sodom is the lowest of lows for a reason; we have to write these things down because we need to remind ourselves.

Thank you very much!