This content explores the multifaceted nature of personality, emphasizing its dynamic and transformative aspects. It argues that understanding personality is crucial for personal growth, effective functioning in the world, and navigating complex human interactions, drawing insights from diverse historical and theoretical perspectives.
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Much of what you're doing as you journey
through life is to continually expand
your personality.
Is there something small that you can do
on a daily basis that would
incrementally improve you that would
lead to an expanding transformation of
your productive ability and your ability
to function in the world across time?
You have your own nature and it's best
to work with it rather than against it.
You don't want to just win. You want to
get better while you play, right? So,
you want to find a partner who's as good
as you or maybe even slightly better.
And then that puts you on the edge,
right? Edge of what? Edge of the
development of your perceptions, your
attention, and your action. So, you
become a more skilled player.
If you're disagreeable and
self-centered, you can learn to [music]
do well for others by practice. If
you're too agreeable and you sacrifice
others, you can dispense with your
resentment and learn to stand up for yourself.
yourself.
These are things that everybody needs to
know and they're not only of abstract
intellectual interest. They're
extraordinarily practical. You need to
know about personality to hire people
properly and to place them and to
promote them. And to do the same with
yourself. It helps you understand your
children better. It helps you understand
your wife better. We deal with
personalities all the time. We are personalities.
personalities.
You'll walk through dream analysis with
Freud and analysis of religious
mythology with Carl Jung and analysis of
the dark tetrad personality types.
You'll learn about communicating with
others, negotiating with others, and
developing your own personality for
So, um, why personality and its transformations?
transformations?
Well, because people are something and
they're also becoming something. And so,
if you want to understand personality,
you have to understand it as a state and
as a transformative process. And of
those two, probably the transformative
process is most relevant because the
transformative process is essentially
equivalent to consciousness. And there's
nothing that's more emblematic of what a
human being is than the process of
consciousness. So personality and its
transformations, state and process. Why
a clinical introduction? Well, some
people who teach personality
are also social psychologists and a
smaller minority are clinical
psychologists and I'm a clinical
psychologist and so I got interested in
personality through clinical psychology
rather than the reverse. So, I'm
interested in understanding
personality as it pertains to mental
health or or even flourishing, you might
say, as opposed to psychopathology and
the hell that accompanies mental
that's the rationale for the clinical approach.
approach.
So, and that means that what we'll cover
in some ways is more theoretical than
might be the case for people who are
trained more purely empirically or from
the social perspective. I'm very
interested in the philosophical
approaches to religious and
philosophical approaches to personality
as well as the scientific approaches and
I think they're reconcilable.
So one of the
experiences you might have if you train
as a clinical psychologist is going to
be depending on the school that you
attend is that the psychoanalytic types
who are increasingly rare are
set against the behaviorist and more
physiological types or vice versa. The
behaviorists are set against the
psychoanalysts. But from my perspective,
they're just viewing the same set of
phenomena from different perspectives.
And one of the things that I'm going to
help you appreciate is the hierarchical
nature of personality. The fact that it
can be analyzed at multiple levels, that
there's some apparent internal
contradiction depending on where you start,
start,
depending at what level at which you
approach the problem, but that those
contradictions are more apparent than
real. So, I'll endeavor to provide you
with something approximating a coherent
and complete description of personality,
lacking in detail, as all forms of
knowledge are, but one that will allow
you to reconcile the findings of the
more empirical biologists, let's say,
and behaviorists with the more abstract
psychoanalytic thinkers and
phenomenologists. I believe that they
all those levels of analysis have their
utility and to the degree that they're
correct they're not going to be
fundamentally disunited assuming that
there's something coherent about both
personality and the approaches to
personality and there is something
coherent took me a long time in teaching
and thinking to start to understand
not only how the theories differed the
multiple theories that we'll discuss but
what was the same about them which is I
suppose equivalent to something like the
core of personality theory and that's
very very exciting thing to understand
because ev everything that you'll learn
in this course
I will endeavor to make directly
personally relevant to you it shouldn't
ever devolve into a collection of dead
facts this is something you always want
to do if you're
lecturing in a manner that is actually
compelling. The material has to be
accurate. So, let's say factually
accurate, but it also has to be relevant
to the people who are listening because
otherwise they'll their attention will
wander and they won't remember and
you'll bore yourself and your audience
and that's never a sign that you're on
the right track, let's say. All right.
So, what are we going to cover?
seven different domains in an
introductory manner because this is an
introductory course. We're going to talk
first about religious and mythological conceptualizations
conceptualizations
of personality and its transformations.
I like to set the more recent, let's
say, psychoanalytic
traditions and everything that stemmed
forward from that, including the
behavioral traditions in a much more
more
broad historical context. I think that's
necessary partly because you don't want
to suffer from the delusion that
everything about human beings that's
relevant and accurate has been
discovered in the last 150 years which
is most definitely and absolutely not
the case. The scientific understanding
of personality and the clinical
understanding of personality have a deep
affinity with marketkedly traditional
understandings of the nature of human
beings stemming all the way back as
we'll see to the shamanic
conceptualizations which are in all likelihood
likelihood
hundreds of thousands of years old.
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>> Modern human beings in our current
genetic form emerged about 350,000 years
ago. We can assume some con continuity
of conception and process over that
entire period of time. And that's also
something extremely interesting to know
as setting yourself in a historical
context that's that archaic gives you a
much more fundamental sense of who you
are and where you came from. And it's
also the case that understanding those
extremely archaic ideas which also tend
to be very fundamental and unchanging
shed substantive light on many of the
things that you'll experience in the
modern world. most particularly the
meaning of the narratives, the fictional
representations, the movies and dramas
that grip your imagination and entertain
you. There's a reason that a fictional
representation is entertaining when it's
of high quality. And the reason is is
that it echoes in your soul, so to
speak, at a very, very deep level. And
one of the things that you'll come to
understand more deeply I hope in
consequence of this course is why that
echoing occurs.
Then we'll talk about the psychoanalytic
tradition. Now the more strictly
scientific types tend to be skeptical of
the analytic tradition and that's a big
mistake. It's partly because the
scientific enterprise actually has a
number of stages let's say and one stage
is scientific hypothesis testing and
data analysis careful experimental
analysis. The behaviorist types who are
pretty physically grounded were very
good at uh that end of the scientific
enterprise as were the psychometricians
who concentrated on the measurement of
personality. But the psychoanalysts, the psychoanalysts
psychoanalysts
were exceptionally good at generating
hypothesis. And that's a more unexamined
part of the scientific tradition. Where
do ideas come from? How do you generate
an idea that's innovated, innovative,
and interesting? and the Freud and Jung
let's say and their associates and followers
followers
were unbelievably innovative in their
approach to conceptualizations of the
human mind. And I would also say that
recent developments especially with
regards to large language models and
artificial intelligence have
demonstrated I believe in conclusively
that the psychoanalysts were exactly on
the right track in relationship to the
structure of the human unconscious and
we'll go into that in some detail and
that's something very new. I've only
been able to understand that
relationship in the last 2 years, let's
say, be because the large language
models have really only been on the
scene for that length of time. So, I
think large language model cognition can
help us understand what the
psychoanalysts meant technically meant
by symbol. You know, one of the reasons
the behaviorists
who are more down to earth, let's say,
have criticized the psychoanalysts,
literary critics for that matter, is
their claim that the interpretations
laid out by people like Freud and Jung
were nothing but projections of the
imagination. They bore no relationship
to reality, no demonstrable relationship
to reality. But the large language model
calculations are predicated on the idea
in a in a way that every word or every
idea is surrounded by a cloud of ideas
that are highly likely to co-occur
together statistically.
Right? So you could imagine that the
word witch, for example, is quite likely
to be accompanied by words like cauldron
or coven and very unlikely to be
surrounded by words like skyscraper or
stainless steel. And so that a given
concept exists within a cloud of
associated conceptions. And the
elaboration of that cloud of associated
conceptualizations is something like the
symbolic analysis, the free association,
symbolic analysis of the psychoanalysts
and also of the symbolic investigation
of the literary critics. I suspect we're
on the cusp in the realm of artificial
intelligence of mathematically
systematizing our assessment of symbolic
representations. I already have a large
language model built that's predicated
on my work that's very good at dream
analysis. And so that that that means to
me and I think this will happen that the
analysis of dream images will become
something that can be purely scientific
and mathematically encapsulated. So and
I think I really believe the
psychoanalysts starting with Freud
were on the right track conceptually and
practically with regards to the
investigation of the symbolic meaning of
dreams and and literature for that
matter drama. So that's extremely
exciting the the idea that we can make a
not only a science but even a
mathematical model of the symbolic
landscape that we inhabit. So we'll
delve into that in some detail.
Carl Rogers and the humanists
the humanist tradition is I think it's a
secularization of Christianity
essentially. Carl Rogers himself was a
was a missionary before he lost his
religious faith and his representation
of human personality in psychotherapy
because Rogers was very involved in the
psychotherrapeutic tradition is a
recasting of the Christian idea of
redemption into the
realm of secular mental health and psychopathology.
psychopathology. Um,
Um,
Rogers believed that
truth seeking in the psychotherrapeutic
process was intrinsically redemptive,
which is a restatement, you might say,
of the gospel notion that the truth will
set you free. We'll delve into Rogers
analyzing in particular his conception
of dialogue as transformative and do our
best to understand
what that means practically. Let's say
with regard to your relationship with
yourself but also to other people and
also what it means in relationship to
the genesis of psychopathology and its
cure. Existentialism
and phenomenology.
The existentialists,
the Freudians, let's say, the Freudians
made the essential presumption that
the the trauma
was the cause of much psychopathology,
that the default human personality was healthy.
But when it suffered damage, especially
early in life,
the healthy developmental path was
circumvented and various forms of
pathology emerged. The existentialists
question that particular Freudian
presumption, making the case instead,
which is also a case grounded in deep
religious tradition, that the vagaries
of human existence are such that
suffering capable of generating
psychopathology is not necessarily a
consequence of trauma, but built into
the structure of human existence itself.
Not least because we're self-conscious,
say, and aware of our own mortality,
which is a existential problem of
sufficient magnitude to give us all
grounds for a certain degree of mental
illness and perhaps even malevolence in
the absence of any particular market
trauma, which is not to say that some
people don't have it worse than others
or that you won't have it worse at some
times in your life than others, and you
will. It's not to say as well that the
consequences of having it worse might
not have some additional
influence, let's say, on on your the
course of the development of your
personality. I really like the
existentialist approach because I think
that the notion that the the pro that
what would you say mental health problem
so to speak the problem of psychopathology
psychopathology
is not a consequence of the deviation of
the normative or ideal human pathway but
something that's baked into the
structure of human existence itself that
we all have to grapple with the finitude
of our existence let's say and our
subjugation to suffering and that
understanding that
how that warps and demens us and also
how that might be dealt with in a
forthright manner is of great utility.
Alexander Soljanitson, who's not
precisely a personality theorist in the
classical sense, although is definitely
an existentialist,
made the case that
the lies attendant on the human
proclivity to deny the existential
reality of our own experience not only
warped our souls in the most profound of
ways, but also laid the groundwork for
the development of the terrible Atro ity
seeking totalitarian states that most
particularly characterized the 20th
century. And so the other great
contribution of the existential
theorists as far as I'm concerned is
their ability to link the inadequacy of
any given individual's approach to the
existential problems of their own life
with the emergence of something like
state sponsored hell on earth. And I
think that that's something of
absolutely crucial significance to
understand. There's probably, you know,
one of the
what cliches that emerged in the
aftermath of the Holocaust in World War
II or prior to World War II, prior and
during prior to and during World War II
was the notion that we should never
forget what happened. But you can't
remember something you don't understand.
And it's not particularly easy to derive
the lesson from Oshwitz. Now the
existentialists and again I would say
particularly Solja Nitsen went further
and Victor Frankle went further along
that path than any one else trying to
draw a relationship between your
individual moral obligations.
your failure to live up to them and the
genesis of the authoritarian
catastrophes that characterized the
secular 20th century. The phenomenologists
phenomenologists
I find particularly interesting because
they following Haidiger approached the
problem of what constitutes reality in a
very unique manner. The more
scientifically oriented enlightenment
behaviorist types and the
psychometricians make the assumption
that the most appropriate way to
conceptualize reality, the truest way of
conceptualizing reality is in
relationship to its objective truth. Now
there's some problems with that
presumption in that our experience of
reality which in some complex way is
indistinguishable from reality itself
has an irreducibly subjective element
which the objective tradition has a very
difficult time dealing with. The
phenomenologists attempted to circumvent
that subjective objective dichotomy by
describing reality itself as that which
is experienced and
and
adopting that approach.
Well, first of all
profoundly transforms the manner in
which you think about what constitutes
the real.
If you assume consciously or implicitly
that only objective
that only the objective is real, you
cast your own emotions, motivational
states and dreams, fantasies, visions of
the future, even the meaning of your
life into something that constitutes
some second order reality or even a nonreality.
nonreality.
And that has potentially devastating
that contributes in a potentially
devastating way to the development of a
kind of life devouring nihilism.
If you're nothing but a brief flicker of flame,
flame,
you know, composed of dust on a third
rate planet at the edge of a minor
galaxy, it's very easy to become cynical
and dismissive about the
fact of existence itself and your own
life and reconstituting your idea of
what constitutes reality
to on the assumption that what you
is is the is the fundament and the foundation
foundation
transfigures the manner in which you
might conceptualize the dignity
and significance of your own existence.
And that's a crucial
that's crucial
existentially because if you have
contempt for yourself, you know, as a
second order reality, let's say, that's
it's very easy for that to become
contempt for other people and even
contempt for existence itself. And
that's a very dangerous road to walk
down and one whose
nature has been laid out quite
comprehensively in the religious and
mythological representations of man and
woman that we already discussed and in
the psychoanalytic and existential
traditions. So the analysis of the
phenomenological approach which puts
human experience at the center of things
or maybe even experience itself or maybe
even conscious experience itself is a
powerful antidote to that dehumanizing
objectivism let's say and Haidiger himself
himself
formulated his philosophy upon which the
phenomenological approach was predicated
in order to combat that dehumanization
and then paradoxically fell prey to the
Nazi ideology and say degenerated into a
supporter of precisely the kind of
psychopathological approach that he in
principle was attempting to fight. So a
ironic twist in 20th century history.
the Pedian tradition.
Jean Pier, developmental psychologist,
not often regarded as a personality
theorist, but that's generally because
personality theorists don't know how to
integrate his thinking into the
personality tradition. And um I think I
know how to do that and so that's not a problem.
problem.
I like pedian thought a lot, not least
because it points and and he knew this
to something approximating an emergent
morality that has a certain
grounding in objective in the objective.
So, PJ noted and and we'll delve into
this in in some detail that
the games that children spontaneously
play have a particular pattern. So part
of that pattern would be if I force you
to play that's not a game and I'm not
going to be a popular child and you're
going to be a bitter and resentful kid
in consequence of the force and
compulsion that's being applied to you.
A game, a true game has to be voluntary,
has to have rules that both parties
accept and are willing to abide by.
There's only a set, there's a pattern,
you might say, to games that have that
quality and that can be played
sustainably or that can be played in an
improving manner. And you might say the essence
essence
of the set of all playable games that
can be played in an improvable manner is
the foundation of morality.
There's a very important thing to
understand. You see that
importance of that make itself manifest
in the stages of childhood where
children start to become truly social
which starts to emerge around the age of
three when they can begin to take the
perspective of someone else. When they
begin to have true friends when they can
engage in reciprocally altruistic
behavior. when they can take turns and
share, right? Which is to learn to begin
to learn how to treat another person as
if they had the same status and
importance as themselves or their own
desires. That capability
welldeveloped makes them highly
socialized, popular and happy children
and also turns them into the kinds of
adults who can engage in sustainable and
improving patterns of cooperative and
competitive behavior with other people
which is a good way for example of
conceptualizing a friendship or a
marriage. It's a game that can iterate
repeat it has a certain pattern and the
iteration produces improvement as it
progresses. Now you can imagine that
there's many ways of interacting with
people that do not have that property
and a small subset a straight and narrow
path you might say that characterizes
the set of interactions that do have
that property. And if the goal is voluntarily
voluntarily
sustained improvement of function,
socially distributed, that's not much
difference than the establishment of a
transcendent ethic, the transcendent
ethic upon which morality itself might
be predicated. And so that's a very
useful and interesting thing to
understand. You know, it's it's a great
anti antidote to the idiot moral
relativism that proclaims that all
approaches to social interaction are of
equal are diverse first in their essence
and also of equivalent value because
there's no
transcendent ethic, no possibility of a
transcendent ethic. I think that's
mostly just an escape from fundamental
responsibility rather than an
intelligent approach. But I also think
that the pedian analysis of the
emergence of games in children, which
you could dismiss if you were casual in
your thinking as something relatively
trivial, why be interested in the games
that children play before they're
mature? His analysis of what children
are doing is so profound that it points
the way to the reconciliation between
the religious viewpoint and the
scientific viewpoint which was actually
what PG was trying to do. That was his
motivation. And so that's really
something to understand as well. I also
like the pedian tradition because
it builds the
it it it
allows for the comprehension of
personality from the bottom up so to
speak. PJ was interested for example in
what he called the basic reflexes that
children bring into the that infants
bring into the world when they're born.
the micro movements and preconceptions
that they're capable of manifesting upon
which the entire super structure of
socialized personality is erected. It's
a bottomup approach. And one of the
things that's so lovely about that from
a philosophical perspective is that it
maps extremely well onto the
neurobiology of the brain and the
development maturation of those
neurobiological structures in the course
of human socialization. And so we'll
move from the Pedian tradition to the biological
biological
talk about the
physical foundations of the motivational
and emotional systems in particular,
although also the perceptions and
patterns of action that characterize us
as biological entities. And we'll do
what we can to integrate that biological
view with the religious tradition, the
analytic tradition, the humanistic
tradition, the existentialists and the
phenomenologists, the pageian
developmental constructivists. And then
finally we'll close with the
psychometric approach which
concentrates on the science of
measurement and the use primarily of
statistics to lay out the domain of
human personality.
The most effective psychometric
psych psychometrically oriented
psychologists have
identified six
seven it depends on how you break them
up fundamental human traits. One is
general cognitive ability which is
likely the most what would you say it's
the most powerful abstracted conceptualization
conceptualization
of the entire corpus of social science
and medicine. There is nothing that's
more well doumented, easier to measure
and more powerful and reliable as a
conception and predictor than
psychometric intelligence. And there's
nothing more controversial and
potentially cultural culture destroying.
The culture war that besets us is in no
small part an emergent consequence of
the findings of the psychometricians
particularly on the intelligence side.
It's a brutal bloody business. One of
the things you learn as a clinician,
especially if you do IQ testing, is the
absolute scope of the intellectual
differences between people. They're
stunning. And given that there's no
better predictor of long-term life
success than psychometric intelligence,
there's no better predictor of climbing,
let's say, the economic ladder. There's
no better marker of future success at
birth than intelligence, including
wealth. The differences between people
in intelligence are pervasive and market
and also very fundamentally biologically
predicated, which is also an awful
realization because we like to believe as
as
what would you say? compassionate people
committed to the notion of equality that
everyone can learn equally and that the
field of opportunity
especially with regards to complex
matters is open to all and there is very
little evidence that that's true. So one
of the most damning statistics for
example which we will refer to further
is the fact that the US armed forces
which has been using psychometric tests
continually since World War I when they
were trying to determine how to organize
people rapidly to fight off the threat
that the war constituted. They turned to
psychometric testing which was developed
by French psychologists and perfected to
some degree by the English especially
the socialists. As it turns out, they
turned to psychometric testing to
identify potentially promising officers
um and continued their investigations
into psychometric measurement for
60 years, concluding, I believe by the
1980s, something like that, 1990s
perhaps, that no one with an IQ of less
than 83 could be trained under any
circumstances whatsoever to do anything
that wasn't positively counterproductive
while they were members of the armed
forces. And that is really something to
understand given that that's about
10% of the population
and that the armed forces is always
desperate for manpower and committed to
using a career in the armed forces as a
stepping stone for people let's say in
the underclass or in the working class
to move themselves up the economic
hierarchy. So, they're highly highly
motivated to make use of everyone
available and yet concluded after their
50-year investigation that 10% of the
population cannot be utilized in any
productive manner whatsoever for
military enterprises. And so it doesn't
take much thought about that to
understand that something approximating
the same thing applies in the general
world. Which means that the conservative
idea that everyone can get ahead merely
as a consequence of diligent effort and
the liberal idea that everyone can be
trained to do anything given enough
resources are both seriously wrong and
nobody knows what to do about that. So
now the psychometricians also outlined
the basic structure of personality
considered from a statistical
perspective generating the now
well-known so-called big five models.
Extraversion, neuroticism,
agreeableness, conscientiousness and
openness. Honesty, humility is sometimes
added to that as is the dark tetrad
which is a constellation of malevolent
and counterproductive personality
traits. We'll analyze all the five
traits broken down each into their two
aspects. Make some reference to honesty,
humility, and delve a bit into the
patterns of the dark tetrd types.
relating all of that back as we progress
to the other psychological models that
we're going to cover. So
that's the plan. We'll start with
religious and mythological conceptualizations
conceptualizations
uh to provide this historical context.
So, as I mentioned earlier,
human beings of our type took our form
something approximating 350,000 years
ago. And so, we've been around for quite
a long time. One of the anthropological
mysteries that beevil us is if we've
been around for that long, why did it
take us so long to get our act together?
Right? because there's not a lot of
evidence for rapid cultural progression
till something approximating
20,000 years ago, something like that.
And that means that we were occupied
with God only knows what for about
320,000 years before that. And some of
the darker speculation
is predicated on the assumption that we
couldn't get off the ground because we
were too busy pulling anyone who was
successful down and engaging in constant
warfare with the other tribal groups in
our let's say in our local and that
whatever generated the unifying
thrust of civilization which was likely
something like the pervasive spread of
monotheistic religious systems.
had to fight against both of those
proclivities. Envy, let's say, and the
tendency to engage in continual
low-level chronic destructive
warfare. So
I studied the
most archaic
personality conceptualizations
including conceptualizations of transformation
transformation
primarily by investigating the writings
of Mercha Eliata who was a Romanian
historian of religions and a true
genius. He was someone who basically
operated in something approximating the
psychoanalytic tradition. He was a
compatriate of Jung for example of Carl
Jung who whose school was influenced
heavily by Freud and Iliad was very
interested in the universal patterning
of patterning of religious ideiation
across cultures. He's
a theorist who was cast aside by the
postmodernists who now dominate the
universities and certainly the field of
inquiry into the history of religious
ideas because the postmodernists claim
this is the fundamental postmodernist
claim that there is no fundamental
uniting meta narrative and so that's a
critique let's say an extended quasi
nitian critique
of the idea of God, a continuation of
the death of God that NZ so famously
pronounced, but also the insistence that
there is no fundamental unity that
aggregates our personalities, let's say,
within ourselves or across people. um a
very dismal and disenchanting view of
human nature. If you are not
particularly amendable to conflict
because if there's no fundamental unity
then there's a fundamental disunityity
and that if there's nothing but a
fundamental disunityity there's no
integration of personality and there's
no hope for peace. Now the way the post-modernists
post-modernists
dealt with that existential problem was by
by
what would you say surreptitiously
inserting a uniting meta narrative
derived from the Marxists which is the
narrative of power and the presumption
that the only game in town is my attempt
to attain dominance and status likely or
even inevitably at your expense. that
there's no such thing as genuine
dialogue. For example, there's no
discussion between in people of
intrinsic worth and good will oriented
towards establishing something like a
maintainable peace which would imply a
kind of unity. There is only instead
something like the Hobbesian war of
everyone against everyone. That's a
world predicated on power. And I believe
speaking psychoanalytically that people
who believe that are doing it primarily
because they want a justification for
using nothing but power. And I also not
only believe but think I know that a
world that's predicated on nothing but
power is indistinguishable from the
total the atrocity committing
totalitarian states of the 20th century.
Now I had a discussion at one point with
Camille Palia. is a very well-known
literary critic and she said something
very interesting that's relevant to this
course something I'd never heard any
other psychologically oriented thinker
state which was that if the academy the
universities particularly the
departments of English and their
literary critics had turned to the
school that I was part of that included
Eric Noman and Carl Jung for example
many other thinkers particularly of the
Bagan school the
the history of the last 30 years
particularly with regards to the culture
war would have been entirely different.
Merche Eliada and his group Jung etc.
massively influenced for example
Joseph Campbell and the filmmakers who
made Star Wars and who concentrated on
the reesentation of the hero myth.
The analysts of the hero myth
assumed that that myth in particular was
one form of the uniting narrative superstructures
superstructures
that did point to a overarching unity of human
human
psychological and social conception. I
I
eleed delve deeply
for example into the shamanic tradition
which was what I was originally making
reference to as the most primordial form of
of philosophical/religious
philosophical/religious
enterprise that we have any record of
the shamanic tradition likely extended
from the dawn of modern human beings
let's say approximately 350,000 years
ago until the present day. There are
still societies that are essentially
shamanic in their traditions extent on
the [snorts] earth, especially in places
like the Amazonian jungle, although
they're becoming more rare. There's a
pattern to the shamanic rituals which is
if properly understood in my
understanding equivalent to analysis of the
the
potentially creative breakdown of the
individual human personality and its reconstitution
reconstitution
on more solid grounds. So it's an early
variant of the notion of death and
rebirth as the pathway to progression
upward both psychologically and
socially. And I think and I I'll show
you in the course of this course the
existence of that pattern at every level
of psychological analysis that we're
going to engage in. I think it
constitutes the core which I referred to
earlier that unites all of the schools
of personality theory and investigations
into psychopathology that we'll cover.
You can decide for yourself as you walk
through this whether or not you find the
evidence compelling. I think [snorts]
that one of the reasons that it's
compelling and and this is actually a
technical description of what makes a
fact compelling is that it occurs in
multiple contexts that are independent
from one another. Right? So one of the
ways that you judge the reality of
something is whether it makes itself
manifest to various modes of various
independent modes of measurement. So
that's why you have five senses, right?
You can see something that isn't there.
It's less likely that you will see and
hear something that isn't there. It's
less likely still that you'll see, hear,
and touch something that isn't there.
But that's enough. Not enough. You have
two other senses just to nail things
down. And even more than that, we're
still skeptical. Which is why if I
believe something is real, I might ask
you and you and you and look for
consensus across all three of you to
help me adjust the potential error of my
perceptions. That's what you do when you
use multiple methods of measurement,
which is something, by the way, formally
recommended by the psychometric
psychologists who've been endeavoring to
determine when a psychological
measurement is real as a measurement,
but also reflective of something real in
the world. It's real if it can be
detected detected in a variety of
distinguishable and separate manners.
And so
the pattern that I'm going to lay out
for you that characterizes the shamanic
pattern of transformation
does make itself manifest at multiple
levels of analysis and we'll use it as a
uniting structure as we progress through
the various theories. Now I also think
and hope know for that matter that
you'll find this personally relevant
because understanding the pattern of
personality transformation can help you
maintain your faith when things fall
apart. Knowing as you hopefully will
come to that having things fall apart at
different levels of depth is actually a
precursor to transformation such that
things come together more reliably and
productively and understanding as well
and this is something absolutely
fundamental that to the degree that you
could engage in the process of
personality dissolution and its reconstitution
reconstitution
volunt voluntarily
your chances of success and your freedom
from anxiety and your ability to
maintain hope will be much much
improved. And so all of that's locked
into the shamanic
practices. And so we'll do an overview
of that now as well as a relatively deep
dive into the abstract structure of the
processes of transformation that the
shamanic rituals
both constitute and refer to.
We'll start with the shamanic foundation
and then we'll close
this first lecture with an analysis of
the relationship between the Judeo-Christian
Judeo-Christian
conceptualization of personality and its
transformations which is determinative
for all the psychological theories that
we're going to consider.
all protestations of the practitioners
of those schools of thought to the
contrary. I'll show you the relationship
between these Judeo-Christian ideas
which are ancient in their own right and
the underlying shamanic substrate, let's
say, that's far more archaic even than
those traditions. We'll talk about
descent into the underworld and
reconstitution because that's the
essential nature of the shamanic
endeavor, upward striving,
descent into the underworld and
reconstitution. You know how it is in
your life. You have periods of time
where you encounter something
initially incomprehensible and
profoundly difficult and things fall
apart around you and within you and
maybe there you are for some
indeterminant period of time in the
underworld, right? Suffering the
torments of hell. But you emerge
stronger and wiser now able to deal and
with and to understand things that were
beyond you to begin with. Well, that's
the characteristic pattern of human
adaptation. As such, there's no learning
without at least a small death, which is
part of the reason that we're eternally
resistant even to the learning that
might transform us. Now if you
understand that and you'll come to
understand that more deeply in
consequence of this class you may be
able to see not that every treasure has
a dragon let's say but that every dragon
has a treasure which is an unbelievably
useful thing to know as you encounter
the difficulties that will beset you as
you make your way through life.
There is an insistence beginning with
the shamanic practitioners themselves
that the manner in which we encounter
the unknown elements of life tears us
into pieces before reconstituting us.
And if we can understand that process
and accept it and even welcome it and
even worship it, you might say, then
we're best positioned to transform
ourselves when necessity makes either
doing that or dying necessary.
So what'll we examine in the
Judeo-Christian tradition today somewhat briefly?
briefly?
The notions of pride,
self-consciousness, sin, and the fall of
man that characterize the opening
chapters of Genesis. The notion that
personality can transform, but that
that's a consequence of humility. First,
you're wrong. You admit it. You would
like to change and you're willing to,
which Carl Rogers identified as the
precondition for any successful psych
psychotherrapeutic endeavor. Right? You
have to come to the agent of change,
let's say the therapist,
knowing or hoping that you have
something to learn in some manner to
change in a beneficial way, even if
that's going to be painful to you as a
precondition for the transformative
process to even begin. That's identical
to the proclamation that religious
humility, which is the opposite of the
greatest sin, which is that of pride, is
the precondition for atonement
at onement, the pulling of yourself back
together. and the uniting of that
integrated self with you might say the
world and the spirit of the world, the
pulling together of that and redemption,
which is your assent out of Dante's
inferno and the abyss back into
something approximating the light. We'll
also assess the role of prayer so to
speak in revelation mostly in secular
terms because I want to draw your
attention to the correspondence between
those fundamentally religious ideas and
our secular notions of thought itself.
Here's a way of beginning that.
How is it that you go about thinking?
Well, first of all, you have to have
something to think about. And so what
does that mean? Well, you have to have a
problem or something that you're
interested in. That's conscience, the
problem or calling the thing that you're
interested in. Then you have to
understand that you don't know, right?
Because why think if you know and so you
that's the admission of insufficiency,
let's say, and ignorance. Then you have
to believe that if you're ignorant and
you want to know that something will
respond to that. And modern people when
they think they say well something
occurred to me or uh let's say something
revealed itself to me in consequence of
my questioning without understanding
that they're making a case right then
and there in their words and their
experience for something like the
revelation that's always hypothetically
attendant on questioning. Right? Knock
and the door will open. Well, that
presumes that you knock. And so, one of
the things that's worth understanding is
what are the psychological preconditions
for knocking and asking and seeking? And
certainly, one of them is the
realization that if you're not living in
paradise now, maybe you still have
something to learn. So, prayer, what's
that? The practice of upward aim in
relationship to personality
transformation. That's a very good way
of thinking about it. revelation. That's
what you learn if you're lucky and
fortunate, let's say, and if your aim is
true. When you
admit to your own insufficiency and
something descends upon you that makes
you more than you were. Carl Fristen has
made the case that
anxiety emerges as a consequence of
the manifestation of entropy, disorder,
chaos, anomaly, the unknown, right? And
that you become anxious when a
conceptualization that you hold that
structures the world and makes it
predictable disappears. That happens
when someone betrays you. Right? You
have a model of someone. That model
enables you to predict your interactions
with them. They violate a presumption of
the model. That's the betrayal. And all
hell breaks loose. Why? Because that
person is a lot more complicated than
you thought they were. Right? And that's
not just an encounter with their
unrevealed complexity, but also with
yours in so far as you're capable of
betraying and also with the malevolence
and unpredictability of human beings as
such. Because if your loved one can
betray you and you can do the same, then
everyone can do the same thing. And so
that encounter with unpredictability
and malevolence, right? The willful
violation of agreed upon
social rules. That's the revelation of
entropy, right?
Fristen also made the case which was
something I hadn't conceptualized that
pos so negative emotion is a marker for
the emergence of entropy. He also made a
case that positive emotion signified a
decrease in entropy in so far as if you
have a goal in mind which frames your
conceptions and your apprehension and
structures your world and you see
yourself progressing towards that goal
which is something that makes you happy
and enthusiastic. The reason that
positive emotion emerges is because it
marks a decrease in the distance between
you and the goal which is equivalent to
a decrease in entropy. So Fristen, we
did work on this idea in my lab as well
has associated the notions of positive
and negative emotion with one of the
most fundamental concepts of the of the
what of the world of physics. And so why
am I telling you that? Because the
descent into the underworld is the
dissolution into entropy, right? It's
what happens to you when the ground
under your feet dissolves and down you
fall. Why down? Well, it's a metaphor,
you know. It's the metaphor of hell.
It's the metaphor of below. Why is
down metaphorically
negative for human beings? Well, up is
positive, right? We climb upward. We
look up. When we're confident, we stand
straight and we look forward. We look
up. We gaze into the distance. We let
the stars guide us. We let the sun and
the moon be our markers. We're oriented
by the North Star. Up is where we look
for inspiration and illumination. Down
is where we collapse when things go
terribly wrong. Right? Down is where
your face falls when you're miserable or
depressed. Down is the more unconscious
realm of the body. Up is towards the v
towards vision which is associated with
illumination and enlightenment. Down is
dust and dirt and decay and death and
the grave. And up is heavenward and
skyward and towards the light. And so
the dissolution and descent into the
underworld is the collapse of unifying
structure into its constituent parts.
Confusion. Confusion. It's what you
experience, for example, when you're
when the rickety old car
that you can afford because you're
really not a very hard and reliable
worker breaks down on the way to the job
that you hate to go to. And so what
happens when the car breaks down? Well,
first of all, whatever you're in is
immediately not a car. And you think,
well, of course it is because it hasn't
changed in its important material
aspects. It still has four wheels, for
example, and two doors, some of which
might even be functional depending on
the cataclysmic state of your finances.
But you're under a misapprehension with
regards to your understanding of objects
because a car isn't something with four
wheels and let's say two doors. It's a
conveyance from one point to another.
And when it stops conveying you, it's
not a car. And when it collapses on the
freeway, let's say it's now a nest of
snakes and you're in it. And what's the
nest of snakes? Well, how stupid are you
that you're 35 years old, let's say, and
that's the best bloody car you can
afford. It's no wonder your wife or your
husband can't stand having you around.
And is the fact that you're driving this
old clunker a consequence of your own
fundamental inadequacy? Or is it a
reflection of the sorry state of the
cosmos itself? And what the cursed
nature of man at the hand of God? And is
it going to be that now you're going to
lose the third job this year because you
didn't get to work yet again? And are
you perversely happy about that? Cuz you
actually hate the damn job and your
boss. And what does that say about the
entire substructure of the capitalist
world, let's say, and poor, oppressed,
and enslaved you struggling mightily to
get your clunker off to your hateful
job. Well, that's what the cars turned
into, right? All that confusion and
chaos, all that noise and doubt, right?
That's a descent into the underworld.
That one happens to be involuntary
and that means it'll be signified by
negative emotion. Anxiety first that
indicates the multiplying of the
pathways in your life which had been
reduced to get in the car, drive to
work, do your job and expanded into
whatever the hell mess you're in now.
Especially given that you can't afford
the repair bill. So, how are you going
to get anywhere? And you're the sort of
clueless character too dafted about your
own belongings to not be constantly
taken advantage of, let's say, by
malevolent mechanics who look upon you
as a deserving object of exploitation,
right? In no small part because of your
own stupidity, right? So all that mess,
that's what the car turns into. That's a
very interesting way of looking at it
and a very interesting way of looking at
the collapse of your conceptions in your
life as such. It happens all the time that's associated with the pattern of
that's associated with the pattern of shamanic initiation. So I'm going to
shamanic initiation. So I'm going to read you some material from Iliad and
read you some material from Iliad and we'll analyze it as we read it. Eliata
we'll analyze it as we read it. Eliata in his studies of shamanism which was a
in his studies of shamanism which was a pattern of practice and conception that
pattern of practice and conception that was very widely distributed especially
was very widely distributed especially in Neolithic times so let's say 40,000
in Neolithic times so let's say 40,000 years and previously um and as I
years and previously um and as I [clears throat] said and and is what
[clears throat] said and and is what mirrored in diverse places as far-flung
mirrored in diverse places as far-flung as Australia among the Aboriginal
as Australia among the Aboriginal inhabitants and in the Amazon as well as
inhabitants and in the Amazon as well as across the Siberian
across the Siberian plane, right? So, it's the you could
plane, right? So, it's the you could think about it as the default religious
think about it as the default religious system of homo sapiens
system of homo sapiens descent into the underworld, the
descent into the underworld, the collapse of the cosmos into the
collapse of the cosmos into the underlying chaos from which it was
underlying chaos from which it was originally generated. Something that
originally generated. Something that happens psychologically when you descend
happens psychologically when you descend into a state of confu of confusion and
into a state of confu of confusion and socially when your family or your
socially when your family or your community or your tribe or your nation
community or your tribe or your nation descends into say chaotic fractionation
descends into say chaotic fractionation and nothing is certain rights to the
and nothing is certain rights to the shamanic vocation as far as Eliatic
shamanic vocation as far as Eliatic could document spontaneous vocation. So
could document spontaneous vocation. So what does that mean? It's likely a
what does that mean? It's likely a hallmark of people who are high in trade
hallmark of people who are high in trade openness, right? People high in trade
openness, right? People high in trade openness are creative and interested in
openness are creative and interested in ideas. What does creativity mean
ideas. What does creativity mean technically? Well, imagine that I throw
technically? Well, imagine that I throw you an idea. Okay? Now, imagine that the
you an idea. Okay? Now, imagine that the neural systems that apprehend that idea
neural systems that apprehend that idea are surrounded by other neural systems
are surrounded by other neural systems which contain or represent associated
which contain or represent associated ideas. Okay? and that there's some
ideas. Okay? and that there's some probability that when you hear a given
probability that when you hear a given idea or encounter a given idea that
idea or encounter a given idea that associated ideas will be simultaneously
associated ideas will be simultaneously activated. Now if you were manic or
activated. Now if you were manic or schizophrenic or under the influence of
schizophrenic or under the influence of a hallucinogen then any given fact might
a hallucinogen then any given fact might trigger a plethora of associated facts
trigger a plethora of associated facts virtually without end. Now that's useful
virtually without end. Now that's useful creatively but overwhelming and
creatively but overwhelming and exhausting. And so for the purposes of
exhausting. And so for the purposes of normal adaptation
normal adaptation there needs to be some limit on how much
there needs to be some limit on how much idiation is triggered by your receipt of
idiation is triggered by your receipt of any given idea. And there's individual
any given idea. And there's individual variation in that
variation in that in that constraining.
in that constraining. Some people are an inexhaustible well of
Some people are an inexhaustible well of new ideas which as I said can degenerate
new ideas which as I said can degenerate into something approximating mania. Some
into something approximating mania. Some people
people stick with what they've heard and that's
stick with what they've heard and that's it. You can actually assess something
it. You can actually assess something like this quite straightforwardly. So
like this quite straightforwardly. So for example, I could get all of you to
for example, I could get all of you to spend three minutes writing down all the
spend three minutes writing down all the words you can think of that are four
words you can think of that are four letters long and begin with the letter
letters long and begin with the letter S. And what we'd find is that first of
S. And what we'd find is that first of all there's a parto distribution of your
all there's a parto distribution of your production. Some of you will produce 90
production. Some of you will produce 90 words at the exceptional exceptionally
words at the exceptional exceptionally fluent people among you and some of you
fluent people among you and some of you will produce five and far more of you
will produce five and far more of you perhaps not five 10 far more of you will
perhaps not five 10 far more of you will produce the lower numbers than the
produce the lower numbers than the higher numbers. That's an inerdicable
higher numbers. That's an inerdicable law of creative production. A small
law of creative production. A small minority of the people do all the
minority of the people do all the creative work. It's actually the square
creative work. It's actually the square root of the number of people who are
root of the number of people who are involved in the enterprise do half the
involved in the enterprise do half the work. That's that's Price's law, right?
work. That's that's Price's law, right? A brutal another brutal
A brutal another brutal psychometric/economic
psychometric/economic finding.
finding. How many words you produce in 3 minutes
How many words you produce in 3 minutes is a decent predictor of your lifetime
is a decent predictor of your lifetime creativity. So especially in combination
creativity. So especially in combination with general cognitive ability or
with general cognitive ability or intelligence. Intelligence is probably
intelligence. Intelligence is probably something like the rate at which you can
something like the rate at which you can produce ideas. Whereas creativity is
produce ideas. Whereas creativity is something like the breadth of idiational
something like the breadth of idiational scope and the probability that
scope and the probability that relatively distant ideas will be
relatively distant ideas will be co-activated. So you know someone
co-activated. So you know someone particularly creative makes a big leap.
particularly creative makes a big leap. So imagine there's an idea there's a
So imagine there's an idea there's a core of close concepts around it.
core of close concepts around it. There's a secondary penumbra of more
There's a secondary penumbra of more distal ideas. Outside of that, more
distal ideas. Outside of that, more distal ideas. Yet more creative people
distal ideas. Yet more creative people have more ideas in general but also leap
have more ideas in general but also leap farther out which can make them wrong
farther out which can make them wrong because they jump to the wrong
because they jump to the wrong conclusion and also difficult to
conclusion and also difficult to understand be because they're so
understand be because they're so creative and also make it hard for them
creative and also make it hard for them to explain how they got there because
to explain how they got there because that process occurs to them as something
that process occurs to them as something like a revelation rather than as the
like a revelation rather than as the consequence of say algorithmic cognitive
consequence of say algorithmic cognitive processing. you know, something will
processing. you know, something will occur to you rather than having you
occur to you rather than having you think it up. And if you're creative,
think it up. And if you're creative, something distant occurs, right? And so
something distant occurs, right? And so spontaneous vocation with regards to
spontaneous vocation with regards to shamanism, more creative people, the
shamanism, more creative people, the more creative people are likely to be
more creative people are likely to be more dynamic in their personality
more dynamic in their personality transformations. So a conservative
transformations. So a conservative person low in openness is likely to find
person low in openness is likely to find a pathway and bloody well stick to it.
a pathway and bloody well stick to it. And that's a good idea. If you're not
And that's a good idea. If you're not very smart and if times are uncertain
very smart and if times are uncertain and if everybody knows what's going on
and if everybody knows what's going on and the pathway has been well specified,
and the pathway has been well specified, stay the hell on it. But in times of
stay the hell on it. But in times of change, right, or if you're trying to
change, right, or if you're trying to gain an edge, a creative approach is
gain an edge, a creative approach is useful. High risk but high return,
useful. High risk but high return, right? And so whereas the conservative
right? And so whereas the conservative approach is low risk and moderate return
approach is low risk and moderate return and characterized by a relative lack of
and characterized by a relative lack of entropy. Now I suspect as well that the
entropy. Now I suspect as well that the shamanic types are not only high in
shamanic types are not only high in trait openness which makes them dynamic
trait openness which makes them dynamic and flexible in their personality
and flexible in their personality restructuring but also high in trait
restructuring but also high in trait neuroticism.
neuroticism. Right? because you can fall apart, so to
Right? because you can fall apart, so to speak, or transcend yourself because
speak, or transcend yourself because you're creative, but you can also fall
you're creative, but you can also fall apart because you're very sensitive to
apart because you're very sensitive to negative emotion. And it's a rather
negative emotion. And it's a rather dreadful combination of traits to be
dreadful combination of traits to be very high in openness and very high in
very high in openness and very high in negative emotionality because you keep
negative emotionality because you keep sawing off the branch that you sit on
sawing off the branch that you sit on and then suffering because of it. But
and then suffering because of it. But that's also a pathway to transformation.
that's also a pathway to transformation. And it's often the case that people who
And it's often the case that people who are tormented by ideas
are tormented by ideas solve problems. That was certainly the
solve problems. That was certainly the case for example of people like Darwin
case for example of people like Darwin who was obsessed with the idea that
who was obsessed with the idea that immediate eventually made itself
immediate eventually made itself manifest as the theory of natural
manifest as the theory of natural selection despite his faithful and
selection despite his faithful and staunch Christianity. And that conflict
staunch Christianity. And that conflict also threw him into the underworld and
also threw him into the underworld and tortured him. We'll talk about the
tortured him. We'll talk about the creative illness with the close of this
creative illness with the close of this section on the shamanic transformation
section on the shamanic transformation because there is a pattern of disscent
because there is a pattern of disscent and ascent that characterizes creative
and ascent that characterizes creative revelation even among secular people
revelation even among secular people even among you know atheistic
even among you know atheistic scientists. They still their discoveries
scientists. They still their discoveries still follow the ancient religious
still follow the ancient religious pathway so to speak spontaneous
pathway so to speak spontaneous vocation. So that would be
vocation. So that would be temperamentally determined. Let's say
temperamentally determined. Let's say maybe even a slight tilt towards various
maybe even a slight tilt towards various forms of mental illness. Manic
forms of mental illness. Manic depressive disorder for example or
depressive disorder for example or possibly even psychosis
possibly even psychosis would also
would also increase the probability that someone
increase the probability that someone would undergo something approximating a
would undergo something approximating a spontaneous deep personality
spontaneous deep personality transformation.
transformation. Many of the earlier investigators into
Many of the earlier investigators into the shamanic
the shamanic process made the presumption that it was
process made the presumption that it was emblematic of psychopathology. But the
emblematic of psychopathology. But the important consideration here and you
important consideration here and you want to really keep this in mind is that
want to really keep this in mind is that whether or not a radical transformation
whether or not a radical transformation of personality is psychopathological or
of personality is psychopathological or redemptive depends to a large degree on
redemptive depends to a large degree on whether it's undertaken voluntarily
whether it's undertaken voluntarily or thrust upon you. Right? And so one of
or thrust upon you. Right? And so one of the reasons to be courageous and
the reasons to be courageous and forthright in your approach to life is
forthright in your approach to life is so that you can encounter the snakes at
so that you can encounter the snakes at a time of your choosing and on ground
a time of your choosing and on ground that you prepare rather than waiting for
that you prepare rather than waiting for them to get you in your what would you
them to get you in your what would you say as you cower under your bed. That's
say as you cower under your bed. That's not a good strategy. It's also not the
not a good strategy. It's also not the human strategy, not the fundamental
human strategy, not the fundamental human strategy. And it's associated with
human strategy. And it's associated with far greater levels of stress. This is a
far greater levels of stress. This is a good thing to know.
good thing to know. Imagine that I submit you and you to the
Imagine that I submit you and you to the same stressor but you involuntarily and
same stressor but you involuntarily and you voluntarily and I measure your
you voluntarily and I measure your psychophysiological responses let's say
psychophysiological responses let's say from the neuron level upward. What what
from the neuron level upward. What what I'll find is that if you're in the
I'll find is that if you're in the condition where you're encountering the
condition where you're encountering the stressor voluntarily, an entirely
stressor voluntarily, an entirely different pattern of psychophysiological
different pattern of psychophysiological preparedness, including attentional
preparedness, including attentional focus, characterizes you then would
focus, characterizes you then would characterize you doing it involuntarily.
characterize you doing it involuntarily. If you do it voluntarily, you're in
If you do it voluntarily, you're in challenge mode and you confront the
challenge mode and you confront the stressor as if it's an opportunity and
stressor as if it's an opportunity and that primarily produces motivation on
that primarily produces motivation on your part in consequence of the positive
your part in consequence of the positive emotion that marks progress towards a
emotion that marks progress towards a goal. If by contrast it's thrust upon
goal. If by contrast it's thrust upon you, kicking and screaming, then you're
you, kicking and screaming, then you're going to go into defensive prey animal
going to go into defensive prey animal mode, produce an overwhelming amount of
mode, produce an overwhelming amount of cortisol, shrink, fail to pay attention,
cortisol, shrink, fail to pay attention, refuse to learn, petrify. That's why the
refuse to learn, petrify. That's why the basilisk in Harry Potter turns people to
basilisk in Harry Potter turns people to stone, by the way. petrified like a
stone, by the way. petrified like a rabbit being gazed at by a wolf and
rabbit being gazed at by a wolf and forego the advantages of voluntary
forego the advantages of voluntary exploration. Right? Okay. Hereditary
exploration. Right? Okay. Hereditary transmission. Well, like hereditary
transmission. Well, like hereditary priesthoods, the vocation of sha of
priesthoods, the vocation of sha of shaman can be transmitted from
shaman can be transmitted from generation to generation
generation to generation that can be explicitly taught. So
that can be explicitly taught. So amongst
relatively preiterate tribal groups, the shaman and their apprentices often have
shaman and their apprentices often have a vocabulary that's three or four times
a vocabulary that's three or four times greater than the typical vocabulary of
greater than the typical vocabulary of the typical group member because they're
the typical group member because they're the storehouse of cultural tradition.
the storehouse of cultural tradition. Part of the cultural tra tradition is a
Part of the cultural tra tradition is a description of the shamanic
description of the shamanic transformation process. the means by
transformation process. the means by which it might be brought about and the
which it might be brought about and the conceptualizations that allow it to be
conceptualizations that allow it to be bounded and understood so it's not
bounded and understood so it's not terrifying. Now Eliata believed that
terrifying. Now Eliata believed that most shamanic practitioners who weren't
most shamanic practitioners who weren't pathological
pathological engaged in their enterprise in a state
engaged in their enterprise in a state of comparative sobriety. He believed
of comparative sobriety. He believed that those practitioners who turned
that those practitioners who turned let's say to the use of psychedel
let's say to the use of psychedel psychedelics were an aberration from the
psychedelics were an aberration from the fundamental stream. But I think he was
fundamental stream. But I think he was probably wrong in that matter given more
probably wrong in that matter given more recent investigations into the historic
recent investigations into the historic use of psychedelic substances. It's the
use of psychedelic substances. It's the case that psychedelics produce a
case that psychedelics produce a physiochemical state that's quite
physiochemical state that's quite analogous to what happens to you when
analogous to what happens to you when you're highly stressed. That produces a
you're highly stressed. That produces a neuroplasticity that facilitates
neuroplasticity that facilitates learning. It disinhibits the effects of
learning. It disinhibits the effects of memory on perception because most of
memory on perception because most of what you see is what you presume rather
what you see is what you presume rather than what's there. Which is why the
than what's there. Which is why the world is not as magical for you as an
world is not as magical for you as an adult as it was when you were a child.
adult as it was when you were a child. That's reversed by psychedelic agents
That's reversed by psychedelic agents which also produce this stress state
which also produce this stress state which can degenerate into an experience
which can degenerate into an experience of hell but that also facilitate
of hell but that also facilitate learning. And so part of the technology
learning. And so part of the technology of psychological transformation in the
of psychological transformation in the shamanic tradition is actually the usage
shamanic tradition is actually the usage and handling of psychologically active
and handling of psychologically active hyper powerful psychological active
hyper powerful psychological active psychologically active substances.
psychologically active substances. psilocybin mushrooms for example or
psilocybin mushrooms for example or urgot which is a fungus on rye which
urgot which is a fungus on rye which contains LSD or ammonita muscaria
contains LSD or ammonita muscaria mushrooms the fairy tale mushroom red
mushrooms the fairy tale mushroom red with white dots which is also a powerful
with white dots which is also a powerful psychoactive chemical although different
psychoactive chemical although different chemically than the classic
chemically than the classic hallucinogens that was used particularly
hallucinogens that was used particularly by the Siberian shaman there are in
by the Siberian shaman there are in ongoing investigations now into the use
ongoing investigations now into the use of psilocybin for example for addiction
of psilocybin for example for addiction sess ation for the treatment of the fear
sess ation for the treatment of the fear of death which it appears to be
of death which it appears to be successful at managing which is the
successful at managing which is the understatement of a of the century if
understatement of a of the century if it's true. How can a physiochemical
it's true. How can a physiochemical reaction produce sessation of death
reaction produce sessation of death anxiety? This is among people who are
anxiety? This is among people who are terminally ill. It produces a spiritual
terminally ill. It produces a spiritual transformation that reconciles people to
transformation that reconciles people to their mortality.
their mortality. God only knows how, but that's part of
God only knows how, but that's part of what we're going to investigate. Most of
what we're going to investigate. Most of that work was done at John's Hopkins by
that work was done at John's Hopkins by Roland Griffith, who's a very solid,
Roland Griffith, who's a very solid, wise scientist who unfortunately
wise scientist who unfortunately recently perished of cancer. Hereditary
recently perished of cancer. Hereditary transmission,
transmission, that's what we're doing in this course,
that's what we're doing in this course, is the hereditary transmission of the
is the hereditary transmission of the shamanic vocation, just so you know. And
shamanic vocation, just so you know. And personal quest. Well, what's a quest?
personal quest. Well, what's a quest? A quest is the adventure of your life,
A quest is the adventure of your life, right? Whatever you're doing and
right? Whatever you're doing and wherever you're going, you're after
wherever you're going, you're after something, right? It's it might be
something, right? It's it might be something proximal. You're after
something proximal. You're after something sitting here, you're after
something sitting here, you're after whatever it was that made you interested
whatever it was that made you interested in coming here. And that's associated
in coming here. And that's associated with whatever it is that you're
with whatever it is that you're interested in general. And that's
interested in general. And that's associated with with what?
associated with with what? Are you here for good or for ill? Let's
Are you here for good or for ill? Let's say, let's assume you're here for good.
say, let's assume you're here for good. Well, then the specific manifestation of
Well, then the specific manifestation of your interest in the topic at hand is a
your interest in the topic at hand is a specific instance of the manifestation
specific instance of the manifestation of your tilt in general towards the
of your tilt in general towards the upward voyage, let's say, or the good.
upward voyage, let's say, or the good. Be if you're not sophisticated,
Be if you're not sophisticated, particularly if you're immature, that
particularly if you're immature, that orientation towards the good will be
orientation towards the good will be proximal and very time bound. You'll be
proximal and very time bound. You'll be only interested and compelled by what
only interested and compelled by what might happen in the very short term. And
might happen in the very short term. And that's how a child reacts, right? As you
that's how a child reacts, right? As you become increasingly mature, you're able
become increasingly mature, you're able to take a longer and longer view of what
to take a longer and longer view of what is motivationally significant,
is motivationally significant, concentrating more and more, more and
concentrating more and more, more and more on what's not only good for you
more on what's not only good for you right now, let's say from an emotional
right now, let's say from an emotional perspective, but on what might even be
perspective, but on what might even be difficult for you right now from an
difficult for you right now from an emotional perspective, but highly
emotional perspective, but highly beneficial in the medium to long run or
beneficial in the medium to long run or not specifically beneficial to you here
not specifically beneficial to you here right now, but beneficial in the long
right now, but beneficial in the long run for everyone that you love around
run for everyone that you love around you and for the broader community. And
you and for the broader community. And so you can think of that orientation
so you can think of that orientation upward toward the transcendent good as a
upward toward the transcendent good as a manifestation of the maturation that
manifestation of the maturation that makes you able to increasingly apprehend
makes you able to increasingly apprehend longer spans of time and include more
longer spans of time and include more people in your conception of appropriate
people in your conception of appropriate action. right now. The way that's marked
action. right now. The way that's marked instinctively,
instinctively, this is such a cool thing to understand.
this is such a cool thing to understand. The way that's marked instinctively,
The way that's marked instinctively, that that proclivity to mature and
that that proclivity to mature and develop across time is by the grip of
develop across time is by the grip of your interest by forces that are beyond
your interest by forces that are beyond your control. So you this is easy to
your control. So you this is easy to understand. You know that if you're
understand. You know that if you're studying, for example, for a course that
studying, for example, for a course that you
you spontaneously find rather dull, you have
spontaneously find rather dull, you have to beat yourself with a stick in order
to beat yourself with a stick in order to concentrate. Even though you know
to concentrate. Even though you know hypothetically that you need to learn
hypothetically that you need to learn the material, that you have to pass the
the material, that you have to pass the course, that it's necessary for your
course, that it's necessary for your future, the spark just isn't there. And
future, the spark just isn't there. And yet there are other circumstances under
yet there are other circumstances under which you can learn things equally
which you can learn things equally difficult much much more easily because
difficult much much more easily because why? Because the subject matter calls to
why? Because the subject matter calls to you. Well, that call has a pattern. This
you. Well, that call has a pattern. This is something unbelievably important to
is something unbelievably important to understand because
understand because your ultimate aim known or unknown to
your ultimate aim known or unknown to yourself is what calls to you. And so
yourself is what calls to you. And so one of the reasons that you follow the
one of the reasons that you follow the Socratic dictim, which is know yourself,
Socratic dictim, which is know yourself, is because you want to bloody well make
is because you want to bloody well make sure that you're following something
sure that you're following something that isn't leading you to the worst
that isn't leading you to the worst possible place in a permanent way. So
possible place in a permanent way. So calling
calling that's that.
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