YpqXNgvfa4k.srt

1
00:00:00,040 --> 00:00:04,960
This is a story that the ancient 
Egyptians predicated their society on,

2
00:00:05,920 --> 00:00:08,710
and to understand this story,
the first thing you have to know is what

3
00:00:08,711 --> 00:00:10,780
the characters were in these characters 
were gods.

4
00:00:11,380 --> 00:00:14,500
There's four of them.
Although the Egyptians had far more than

5
00:00:14,501 --> 00:00:19,501
four gods.
You might think of these as the central 

6
00:00:19,501 --> 00:00:21,730
Gods and you might think what is the 
central God and then you might think,

7
00:00:21,731 --> 00:00:26,731
well,
imagine that the gods compete for 

8
00:00:26,731 --> 00:00:28,411
dominance across time in people's 
imaginations and some gods when they 

9
00:00:30,131 --> 00:00:33,280
occupied the primary position of 
dominance in the hierarchy,

10
00:00:33,490 --> 00:00:38,490
in the dominance hierarchy of gods,
and those are ideals and ideals compete 

11
00:00:38,860 --> 00:00:41,650
across time for dominance and their 
embodied,

12
00:00:42,070 --> 00:00:45,550
and so when diverse tribal people come 
together,

13
00:00:45,940 --> 00:00:50,080
they throw all their gods into the ring 
and they fight across time and something

14
00:00:50,081 --> 00:00:55,081
emerges as a victor,
and that's the emergence of monotheism 

15
00:00:55,081 --> 00:00:58,801
out of polytheism and it.
It parallels the development of a 

16
00:00:59,031 --> 00:01:04,031
unified morality in within each of us as
we develop across time and the the god 

17
00:01:09,331 --> 00:01:13,020
that emerges as dominant across time 
bears a substantial,

18
00:01:13,021 --> 00:01:15,390
represent a substantial

19
00:01:16,660 --> 00:01:21,660
resemblance.
Imagine you have a set of gods in this 

20
00:01:21,660 --> 00:01:22,630
locale that are competing across time 
and something emerges as dominant,

21
00:01:22,870 --> 00:01:27,870
and then over here you have another set 
of gods that compete across time for 

22
00:01:27,870 --> 00:01:31,291
dominance and something emerges.
You'll see major commonalities across 

23
00:01:31,291 --> 00:01:34,150
the two things that emerge and the 
reason for that is because the emergent,

24
00:01:34,290 --> 00:01:39,290
the process of emergence that gives rise
to both of them is similar in both 

25
00:01:39,290 --> 00:01:42,691
situations and that's part of what 
accounts for the cross cultural 

26
00:01:42,691 --> 00:01:46,180
similarity of high order religious 
ideas.

27
00:01:46,490 --> 00:01:47,590
All right.
Anyways,

28
00:01:47,620 --> 00:01:49,960
you need to know the characters.
Oh,

29
00:01:49,961 --> 00:01:54,961
Cyrus Cyrus is the old king.
He's Dumbledore.

30
00:01:56,261 --> 00:01:58,360
For all intents and purposes,
he's the king.

31
00:01:58,840 --> 00:02:03,840
He's the.
He's the spirit that established the 

32
00:02:03,840 --> 00:02:04,210
Egyptian state.
When he was young,

33
00:02:04,211 --> 00:02:07,480
he was a great hero,
but now he's old and he's willing.

34
00:02:07,540 --> 00:02:11,230
He's our cat and he's willfully blind.
That's Cyrus.

35
00:02:12,010 --> 00:02:17,010
He has a brother Seth.
Seth is set and set is Satan because the

36
00:02:17,861 --> 00:02:22,750
word Satan comes from the word Seth and 
set via the Coptic Christians.

37
00:02:23,050 --> 00:02:24,010
So,
so.

38
00:02:24,340 --> 00:02:27,820
So he's a precursor to the western idea 
of Satan.

39
00:02:28,450 --> 00:02:31,900
You have isis.
Isis is queen of the underworld,

40
00:02:31,901 --> 00:02:36,901
and Isis was the goddess of a religious 
structure that prevailed across 

41
00:02:39,041 --> 00:02:43,480
thousands and thousands of years.
Isis and you have horace.

42
00:02:43,960 --> 00:02:47,200
Horace is a Falcon,
and the Egyptian,

43
00:02:47,201 --> 00:02:48,970
I.
everyone's knows that.

44
00:02:48,971 --> 00:02:52,360
I write the eye with the open pupil.
That's horace.

45
00:02:52,500 --> 00:02:56,050
And Horace is a fall can because falcons
can see way better.

46
00:02:56,110 --> 00:03:01,110
They can see better than us.
They can see better than anything else 

47
00:03:01,110 --> 00:03:01,300
except for eagles,
and they fly above everything.

48
00:03:01,580 --> 00:03:06,580
Zazu in lion king is horace,
and move Fossa is Cyrus and scar is seth

49
00:03:14,770 --> 00:03:17,470
and there no specific representation of 
Isis,

50
00:03:17,471 --> 00:03:22,000
but the closest there is in that story 
is probably the queen of the hyenas.

51
00:03:22,001 --> 00:03:24,700
That's played by.
Who's the actress?

52
00:03:25,130 --> 00:03:25,480
Um

53
00:03:26,640 --> 00:03:27,020
Hm.

54
00:03:27,900 --> 00:03:29,010
Yes.
Whoopi Goldberg.

55
00:03:29,040 --> 00:03:30,030
That's right.
That's right.

56
00:03:30,031 --> 00:03:33,300
Because they inhabit.
She's like the queen of the underworld,

57
00:03:33,301 --> 00:03:38,301
right?
She's the queen of the hygienists that 

58
00:03:38,301 --> 00:03:38,301
live out among the death,
but.

59
00:03:38,301 --> 00:03:38,400
Okay.
Anyways,

60
00:03:38,820 --> 00:03:42,090
Seth Osiris,
seth,

61
00:03:44,120 --> 00:03:45,320
Isis,
and horace.

62
00:03:45,770 --> 00:03:49,880
Here's how the story goes on.
Cirrus is a great king.

63
00:03:49,910 --> 00:03:54,910
He established the Egyptian state.
You could think about him as the 

64
00:03:54,910 --> 00:03:55,910
embodiment of the,
of Egyptian customs and tradition.

65
00:03:56,510 --> 00:03:59,540
You can think about him as the thing 
that the pyramid represents.

66
00:03:59,850 --> 00:04:02,330
All right,
but he was great when he was young,

67
00:04:02,331 --> 00:04:05,990
but he's not young anymore.
He's old and he's willfully blind,

68
00:04:05,991 --> 00:04:08,720
and what that means is that he doesn't 
see what he could see.

69
00:04:08,721 --> 00:04:11,330
He refuses to see what he could see.
Why is,

70
00:04:11,331 --> 00:04:16,331
oh,
cirrus old and willfully blind because 

71
00:04:16,331 --> 00:04:18,551
that's what culture is.
It's a paternal spirit that's old and 

72
00:04:18,551 --> 00:04:19,580
willfully blind and it's always that 
way,

73
00:04:19,700 --> 00:04:24,700
always that way,
and the reason for that is because it's 

74
00:04:24,700 --> 00:04:24,950
a construction of the dad.
The Dad aren't alive,

75
00:04:24,980 --> 00:04:29,980
they can't,
so they're out of date and they can 

76
00:04:29,980 --> 00:04:30,680
update themselves anymore and you 
inhabit their corpse.

77
00:04:30,740 --> 00:04:35,740
And that's actually what happens in an 
earlier story that I'll tell you next 

78
00:04:35,740 --> 00:04:38,950
week.
The early Mesopotamian gods inhabited 

79
00:04:38,950 --> 00:04:40,870
the corpse of their father,
roughly speaking anyway.

80
00:04:40,871 --> 00:04:41,680
So,
oh,

81
00:04:41,690 --> 00:04:45,170
Cyrus was great and when he was young,
but he hasn't young anymore.

82
00:04:45,171 --> 00:04:50,171
He's old and he's willfully blind.
He won't look where he knows he should 

83
00:04:50,171 --> 00:04:53,501
look.
He doesn't have the energy or maybe he 

84
00:04:53,501 --> 00:04:55,301
doesn't have the spirit.
His brother Seth is not a good guy and 

85
00:04:55,301 --> 00:05:00,130
Cyrus knows it,
but he underestimates his malevolence 

86
00:05:00,130 --> 00:05:01,040
and power,
and so seth wants to rule the kingdom.

87
00:05:01,400 --> 00:05:03,200
So what does that mean?
It's easy.

88
00:05:03,380 --> 00:05:08,380
Every stable society is,
is threatened by willful blindness and 

89
00:05:08,380 --> 00:05:13,190
malevolence always.
Every bureaucracy has that proclivity to

90
00:05:13,191 --> 00:05:18,191
stagnate and to become blind.
That's why corporations die all the 

91
00:05:18,191 --> 00:05:21,971
time.
That's why a fortune 500 company only 

92
00:05:21,971 --> 00:05:22,940
last 30 years.
It's why we have to have elections.

93
00:05:22,940 --> 00:05:26,780
It's to stop the Dad from staying in 
control for too long.

94
00:05:27,880 --> 00:05:28,800
Seth,
oh,

95
00:05:28,801 --> 00:05:31,610
Cyrus turns a blind eye to seth.
Seth is happy about that.

96
00:05:31,611 --> 00:05:33,890
Same thing happens in the lion king,
roughly speaking.

97
00:05:34,310 --> 00:05:37,910
Seth one day waits for Cyrus to make a 
mistake and to be weak,

98
00:05:38,210 --> 00:05:43,210
and he attacks him and he chops it up 
into pieces and he distributes the 

99
00:05:43,210 --> 00:05:45,230
pieces across the entire Egyptian state.
In fact,

100
00:05:45,231 --> 00:05:48,470
the Egyptians regarded their provinces 
as pieces of,

101
00:05:48,471 --> 00:05:49,610
oh,
Cyrus's body.

102
00:05:50,450 --> 00:05:52,850
Okay,
so now you can kill.

103
00:05:52,851 --> 00:05:53,480
Oh,
cyrus,

104
00:05:53,481 --> 00:05:55,910
because he's a god.
And why is he god a God?

105
00:05:55,911 --> 00:06:00,740
Because he represents the of structure.
There's always structure.

106
00:06:00,741 --> 00:06:03,740
It can't be destroyed.
It always reconstitutes itself,

107
00:06:03,741 --> 00:06:08,741
it can be hurt and broken into pieces,
which is exactly what happens to a 

108
00:06:08,741 --> 00:06:09,620
cyrus.
Things fall apart.

109
00:06:09,980 --> 00:06:14,980
Why?
Because they get old and because 

110
00:06:14,980 --> 00:06:16,430
malevolence undermines them.
That's what the Egyptians were trying to

111
00:06:16,431 --> 00:06:16,970
sort out.

112
00:06:17,000 --> 00:06:19,800
Okay,
so seth distributed says,

113
00:06:19,801 --> 00:06:21,140
oh,
cyrus all over Egypt.

114
00:06:21,141 --> 00:06:24,890
So he can't get himself back together.
Right?

115
00:06:24,950 --> 00:06:27,530
Things fall apart and they can't be 
brought back together.

116
00:06:27,830 --> 00:06:30,110
But the spirit of Vocera is still lives 
in the pieces.

117
00:06:30,470 --> 00:06:33,110
So what happens?
Orders demolished.

118
00:06:33,140 --> 00:06:35,630
What would you expect?
Chaos emerges.

119
00:06:35,690 --> 00:06:38,870
That's isis.
Isis is queen of the underworld.

120
00:06:39,170 --> 00:06:42,920
She's Cyrus's wife,
order and chaos.

121
00:06:42,921 --> 00:06:47,921
Just like the Yin and the Yang order 
collapses upcoming the queen of the 

122
00:06:47,921 --> 00:06:49,520
underworld.
She's looking for order.

123
00:06:49,550 --> 00:06:52,160
Chaos cries out for order.
She's looking for order.

124
00:06:52,340 --> 00:06:55,130
She goes all around Egypt trying to put 
our.

125
00:06:55,131 --> 00:06:58,430
So Cyrus back together.
It's a state of chaos.

126
00:06:58,640 --> 00:07:01,790
She finds this fellas.
She makes herself pregnant with it.

127
00:07:02,030 --> 00:07:03,800
And what does that mean?
Well,

128
00:07:03,801 --> 00:07:07,790
it means it's like it's like Japan in 
the belly of the whale.

129
00:07:08,330 --> 00:07:11,450
That thing has the potential to reemerge
this.

130
00:07:11,510 --> 00:07:14,060
The thing that collapses into its 
pieces.

131
00:07:14,060 --> 00:07:19,060
It's still alive.
It can unite with the chaos and produce 

132
00:07:19,060 --> 00:07:23,471
something new.
That's the story of the disillusion of 

133
00:07:23,471 --> 00:07:24,340
structure into chaos and then it's 
reverification.

134
00:07:26,000 --> 00:07:28,880
Ice just makes herself pregnant.
She goes back down to the underworld.

135
00:07:28,881 --> 00:07:32,800
She gives birth to horace.
Horace is the Egyptian Ayesha.

136
00:07:32,840 --> 00:07:35,810
He's the son of the great father and the
great mother.

137
00:07:35,811 --> 00:07:38,690
He's a.
he's a messianic figure and in fact,

138
00:07:38,930 --> 00:07:43,930
much of the mythology that described 
horace was extracted without much 

139
00:07:44,451 --> 00:07:47,120
modification and then attributed to 
Christ.

140
00:07:47,121 --> 00:07:49,760
Very much memory and you can read about 
the parallels.

141
00:07:49,761 --> 00:07:51,370
You can read about it online if you 
want.

142
00:07:51,680 --> 00:07:56,680
There's any number of parallels and of 
course there is the mythology that the 

143
00:07:56,680 --> 00:07:57,630
Jews came out of Egypt and of course the
Christians,

144
00:07:57,631 --> 00:08:02,631
he emerged from the Jews and so there 
was a tremendous influence of Egyptian 

145
00:08:02,631 --> 00:08:06,140
thinking on the development of these 
later ideas and you see pictures of Isis

146
00:08:06,141 --> 00:08:11,141
with horace on her lap that are 
virtually identical in content and form 

147
00:08:11,141 --> 00:08:13,370
to the later pictures of Mary with the 
infant Christ.

148
00:08:13,580 --> 00:08:16,310
But that's the holy mother of God and 
the hero.

149
00:08:16,350 --> 00:08:18,170
It's.
It's not a Christian motif.

150
00:08:18,440 --> 00:08:21,440
It's far deeper than a Christian motif.
It's a human motif.

151
00:08:21,980 --> 00:08:26,980
So Isis,
queen of the underworld gives birth to 

152
00:08:26,980 --> 00:08:27,860
horace.
Horace grows up outside the kingdom.

153
00:08:28,010 --> 00:08:29,780
Why?
In underworld?

154
00:08:29,990 --> 00:08:34,990
Because that's what human beings do.
You're alienated from your culture 

155
00:08:34,990 --> 00:08:34,990
always.
Why?

156
00:08:34,990 --> 00:08:39,790
It's old and dead and corrupt.
And so that leaves you growing up in 

157
00:08:39,790 --> 00:08:41,220
chaos.
Uh,

158
00:08:41,240 --> 00:08:44,030
what would you call alienated from your 
fundamental culture?

159
00:08:44,630 --> 00:08:48,170
That's the story of adolescence.
Horace grows up.

160
00:08:48,680 --> 00:08:51,200
He can see that's what differentiates 
them from,

161
00:08:51,201 --> 00:08:51,710
oh,
Cyrus,

162
00:08:51,711 --> 00:08:55,040
that's why he's a faulconer.
He goes and has a fight with seth.

163
00:08:55,050 --> 00:09:00,050
And now the difference between those 
Cyrusone and Horace is that horse does 

164
00:09:00,050 --> 00:09:01,500
not underestimate seth.
He knows exactly what he's up against.

165
00:09:01,530 --> 00:09:05,070
He goes and has a terrible battle with 
him trying to get his kingdom back.

166
00:09:05,190 --> 00:09:08,600
Something else that's echoed in the lion
king story and well,

167
00:09:08,700 --> 00:09:13,700
Horus and seth are fighting seth 
terrorists out one of his eyes.

168
00:09:14,730 --> 00:09:15,510
Now,
why?

169
00:09:16,560 --> 00:09:19,590
Because Seth is the embodiment of 
destruction and malevolence,

170
00:09:19,591 --> 00:09:23,940
and no matter how conscious you are,
if you encounter that even voluntarily,

171
00:09:23,941 --> 00:09:28,941
the probability that it's going to 
damage your consciousness is 

172
00:09:28,941 --> 00:09:30,130
extraordinarily high.
That's white.

173
00:09:30,131 --> 00:09:33,900
People don't do it,
so the eyes torn out,

174
00:09:33,990 --> 00:09:38,990
but seth is defeated and Horace banishes
him to the nether regions of the 

175
00:09:39,061 --> 00:09:40,590
kingdom.
You can't kill them.

176
00:09:41,010 --> 00:09:46,010
Why?
Because the malevolent destructive 

177
00:09:46,010 --> 00:09:46,010
force,
the threatened states never dies.

178
00:09:46,290 --> 00:09:50,880
It's always there.
You can only remove it temporarily.

179
00:09:51,330 --> 00:09:55,140
Now Horace is King Pharaoh,
King God.

180
00:09:55,770 --> 00:09:57,540
He's got his eye and so you think,
well,

181
00:09:57,541 --> 00:10:02,541
he's going to just pop that back in his 
hand and then he's going to be able to 

182
00:10:02,541 --> 00:10:05,841
lead.
He's going to be able to take his place 

183
00:10:05,841 --> 00:10:08,220
at the upper most pantheon,
pantheon of gods properly,

184
00:10:08,910 --> 00:10:12,960
but that isn't what he does.
He takes his eye and he goes back to the

185
00:10:12,961 --> 00:10:15,060
underworld,
just like Pinocchio,

186
00:10:15,061 --> 00:10:20,061
going into the depths to rescue Japan 
and down there is the spirit of Cyrus 

187
00:10:20,061 --> 00:10:22,890
who's who's extent as a kind of half dad
ghost,

188
00:10:25,290 --> 00:10:26,020
and it gives,
oh,

189
00:10:26,060 --> 00:10:29,970
Cyrus's,
I now we'll cyrus can see.

190
00:10:31,480 --> 00:10:35,170
So what does that mean?
You go down into the chaotic,

191
00:10:35,410 --> 00:10:40,410
when threatened by malevolence,
even to the point of damage to your 

192
00:10:40,991 --> 00:10:45,991
consciousness.
You go down into the chaos and you find 

193
00:10:45,991 --> 00:10:49,441
the dead spirit of your tradition and 
you give it vision and so provided with 

194
00:10:51,251 --> 00:10:56,251
vision or Cyrus regenerates and then no 
Osiris and horus go back up to to to the

195
00:10:56,501 --> 00:11:01,501
world linked together and rule jointly,
and the Egyptians believed that the 

196
00:11:04,091 --> 00:11:09,091
Pharaoh who had an immortal spirit was 
the embodiment of the conjunction of 

197
00:11:09,581 --> 00:11:12,910
Horus and Osiris,
and that's what gave him sovereignty.

198
00:11:13,810 --> 00:11:15,640
So when you think about how brilliant 
that is,

199
00:11:15,641 --> 00:11:18,730
the Egyptians are trying to puzzle out 
who should lead,

200
00:11:19,300 --> 00:11:24,300
who should be feral and what do you have
to be if you're going to be feral in 

201
00:11:24,300 --> 00:11:27,511
order for things to work,
you have to be awake to malevolence and 

202
00:11:28,840 --> 00:11:33,840
chaos and you have to embody your 
tradition and that puts you at the 

203
00:11:33,971 --> 00:11:36,850
highest pinnacle of the dominant 
structure.

204
00:11:37,360 --> 00:11:40,900
It's and that's the same as.
It's the same thing.

205
00:11:41,230 --> 00:11:46,230
It's the same thing as the battle 
between the gods across centuries or 

206
00:11:46,230 --> 00:11:51,030
Ian's and the emergence of the highest 
possible moral virtue as a consequence 

207
00:11:51,521 --> 00:11:56,500
of that competition.
It's the eye on the top of the pyramid,

208
00:11:56,890 --> 00:11:58,290
right?
It's you know,

209
00:11:58,291 --> 00:12:03,291
and the Washington monument,
there's a cap on the Washington 

210
00:12:03,291 --> 00:12:03,291
monument,
the protopic,

211
00:12:03,291 --> 00:12:05,890
The Washington monument is a pyramid.
At the top of the pyramid is a cap.

212
00:12:05,891 --> 00:12:09,280
It's made out of aluminum,
and the reason it's made out of aluminum

213
00:12:09,281 --> 00:12:11,170
is because when they made the Washington
monument,

214
00:12:11,171 --> 00:12:14,650
it was the most valuable metal known,
and so what does it mean?

215
00:12:14,980 --> 00:12:17,920
It means there's a pyramid and there's 
something at the top of it,

216
00:12:17,921 --> 00:12:22,921
but the thing that's at the top of the 
pyramid isn't the same as the rest of 

217
00:12:22,921 --> 00:12:23,920
the pyramid.
That's the thing.

218
00:12:24,340 --> 00:12:25,450
The pyramid exists.

219
00:12:25,450 --> 00:12:28,060
There's a dominance hierarchy.
Something climbs up to the top,

220
00:12:28,061 --> 00:12:30,790
but it's not just at the top of one 
pyramid.

221
00:12:31,300 --> 00:12:36,300
It's at the top of all of them.
The thing that rises to the top of any 

222
00:12:36,300 --> 00:12:38,350
given pyramid is the same thing that can
dominate all pyramids.

223
00:12:39,910 --> 00:12:43,660
It isn't good enough to be the best at a
dominance hierarchy.

224
00:12:44,530 --> 00:12:49,530
What you want to be is the best at the 
set of all possible dominance 

225
00:12:49,530 --> 00:12:50,350
hierarchies.
Right?

226
00:12:50,560 --> 00:12:53,170
And that's the thing that's gold at the 
top of the pyramid,

227
00:12:53,171 --> 00:12:55,870
and that's the eye.
That's what the Egyptians figured out,

228
00:12:55,871 --> 00:13:00,871
and what does that mean?
It means the thing that puts you at the 

229
00:13:00,871 --> 00:13:03,280
top is attention.
Pay Attention,

230
00:13:03,520 --> 00:13:06,040
keep your eyes open.
It's not the same as thinking.

231
00:13:07,000 --> 00:13:12,000
It's not the same thing.
It's like watching and the thing about 

232
00:13:12,000 --> 00:13:16,051
human beings is we can see,
we can see better than any other 

233
00:13:16,181 --> 00:13:21,181
creature except birds of prey and so our
capacity to see is in fact what we use 

234
00:13:23,411 --> 00:13:25,750
in the world.
Our brains are actually organized around

235
00:13:25,751 --> 00:13:27,280
vision.
Unlike most animals,

236
00:13:27,281 --> 00:13:29,650
their brains are organized around smell,
not us.

237
00:13:30,490 --> 00:13:35,490
We can see we stand upright so we can 
see a long distance and in our ability 

238
00:13:35,490 --> 00:13:39,421
to see is what saves us and what saves 
our communities and that's what these 

239
00:13:39,421 --> 00:13:42,850
stories are trying to portray.
You might say,

240
00:13:42,851 --> 00:13:46,780
well why didn't people just say so?
An answer to that is because they didn't

241
00:13:46,781 --> 00:13:47,290
know.

242
00:13:48,930 --> 00:13:52,080
It took a long time to figure it out 
forever.

243
00:13:52,290 --> 00:13:57,120
It's taken forever to figure it out.
It's.

244
00:13:57,360 --> 00:14:02,360
It's part of what I hoped when I wrote 
this book and part of the reason that 

245
00:14:02,591 --> 00:14:07,591
I'm teaching it is because it seems to 
me that it would be useful for everyone 

246
00:14:07,591 --> 00:14:10,840
to actually understand this instead of 
just having it told as a story.

247
00:14:10,841 --> 00:14:11,770
It's like,
that's great,

248
00:14:11,771 --> 00:14:12,580
man.
Yes,

249
00:14:12,610 --> 00:14:16,210
you need the story,
but why not also just understand it

250
00:14:18,060 --> 00:14:18,570
so

251
00:14:21,130 --> 00:14:22,550
well,
so that's what we're trying to do.

252
00:14:22,880 --> 00:14:24,170
We're trying to understand this,

253
00:14:25,700 --> 00:14:26,120
so

254
00:14:27,960 --> 00:14:29,160
that's good enough for today.