All Episodes
Previous Next
Dec. 21, 2006 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
58:33
566 Monkey Sculpture: Greg's Dream

A powerful dream from a longtime listener

| Copy link to current segment

Time Text
Good morning. Hope you're doing well.
Hope you're having a wonderful preparatory to the Christmas world and getting all your shopping done and make sure to feed the elves.
This is a dream.
I haven't done a dream analysis in a while, and our good friend Greg, who's been kind with donations, will get his very own dream analysis.
And if you'd like one, well, you know the job.
Also, the survey, Freedom Aid Radio Survey, is still running.
If you could come and check that out and give me some answers, that would be great.
Very helpful for me to take it to satellite radio stations, which I hope to next year.
So here, Greg's dream.
I had a fascinating dream last night that was both exhilarating and frightening to me.
I think that it might be a message from my subconscious, validating both the changes I have made thus far and the changes I am preparing to make in the near future.
I'm still a little unsure how to correctly interpret the symbols, so I'll throw the dream out there and see if there is much agreement.
I and my whole family are visiting some sort of zoo, mostly primates.
The entire zoo is indoors, an enormous cavernous building.
It has 20 foot high ceilings made entirely of thick glass, allowing a 60 to 70 degree view of the sky.
Okay, let me just make sure I get that right.
Cavernous building. Everything is lit very brightly as a result, but the sky is obviously overcast.
We are in an enclosed observation area at the far end of the zoo where we can see several extremely large airplane-hanger-like chambers with rolling doors that open onto a jungle-like landscape off to the back of the zoo.
In one of these chambers I can see two or three 18-foot tall gorilla-like creatures carrying normal gorillas on their backs, from one chamber into another, where what looks like veterinary and examination tables are waiting for the, quote, normal gorillas.
I realize there is something not quite right about the extremely large gorillas doing all the toting because they have obviously intelligent expressions on their faces.
They seem sad to me, but not for themselves.
They seem to be grieving for the beasts they carry on their backs.
But they also seem to be bearing their burden by choice, since I cannot see how they are restrained or prevented from leaving.
So we are led by a tour guide to an open observation area off to the side of one of the larger, hangar-like chambers.
The door rolls open, and we can see a dozen men or so trying to lead an 18-foot-tall, grey, featureless, clay-like humanoid figure into the chamber.
I can see tethers dangling from this featureless giant down to the men leading it.
And at first all is calm as it enters the chamber.
Then for some reason the creature begins to resist.
The men pull back on the tethers, but they are no match for the creature which straightens its back, lifts its arms, and swings its torso left and then right, scattering the men like water droplets, flying off a dog's back as he shakes himself dry.
This featureless beast makes a hollow sort of trampling yowl noise, which I won't imitate, And looks around.
He has no eyes, but there are dark depressions where eyes would be expected, as though he were an unfinished statue.
Now the eighteen-foot-tall gorilla figures in the other chambers all turn in unison, and look directly at the featureless creature.
There are no walls here, only heavy steel support girders between rooms.
The bodies of the large gorilla creatures begin to shimmer and oscillate, as if they were weak television signals, and they too become featureless like the creature just led into the adjacent chamber.
I do not move, but in all the excitement, the rest of my family has scattered for safer purchase a few observation areas back.
They are hiding under the suspended walkways and behind girders.
I suddenly realize what is taking place.
These gorilla creatures are the same species as the raging beast just led into that open chamber.
I think he is being tamed or prepared for something.
Now my attention is transfixed on the new creature.
The once gorilla-like featureless creature remains still as well.
They stare on at the new creature.
Without sound or motion, the new creature rages in the centre of the new chamber, stomping around, pounding the floor and trumpeting.
Then he notices the other creatures like him staring back at him.
He stops for a while and cocks his head in confusion.
At that moment, almost as if they had been expecting it, several men in white lab coats enter the open chamber hauling a large marble replica of Michelangelo's David on a motorized hand truck.
The bemused shmoo-like creature quickly turns towards the statue and the men in lab coats scurry a safe distance back from it towards the edge of the chamber.
The shmoo swings an arm around and snatches up the statue in one hand as a child taking hold of a favorite doll.
He looks intently at it, rotating it and moving it from hand to hand like a child with a new toy.
He stares stiffly at it for a moment as though dazed, and suddenly the creature begins to shimmer and oscillate.
The other creatures follow suit, and soon all the chambers are filled with eighteen-foot tall alabaster David replicas.
The angry creature, calmed now an enormous David replica, puts down the marble statue carefully and begins to look himself over, first his hands, then arms, then down the length of his body.
Then he looks back up at the other creatures, and he looks at me.
He has a look of wonder and amazement on his face.
He opens his mouth wide, and asks, What is this?
I am stunned. I do not answer, but the men in white lab coats come forward now, and answer to him, You are free to go, of course, but you were brought here so that you could choose your own form.
If you stay, you must choose a form.
With that, all the other eighteen-foot-tall Davids begin to shimmer and oscillate again.
Each one transforms into a new and different shape.
One returns to the form of a large gorilla, but others transform into all manner of different creatures.
As each one finishes, they look back at the one remaining David still in the open chamber.
He looks down at his hands again, and then at the men in lab coats.
Slowly the alabaster grey begins to recede from his face and down, his shoulders replaced by...
A warm, tan-pink hue, his hair darkens to a thick brown, his blank eyes crystallize and coalesce into dark, glassy stones.
At this living, breathing David, as this living, breathing David takes shape before me, he looks once again down at the men in the lab coats and now asks, in a deep and sonorous voice, I can be anything I want?
The other creatures slowly begin to move away, now returning to their original duties.
As if relieved to hear the sound of the living David's voice, the men in lab coats smile and nod approvingly in their unison.
With that, this colossal David turns to look straight at me, complete with that stoic and thoughtful expression that Michelangelo originally left on his face, and says, then I choose this.
At which point I wake at 4.15am.
Gack! I did a little research on Michelangelo's David on the internet today, and came up with this very interesting passage about its metaphorical value as a work of art, and it seems to confirm my initial impression about the dream.
Traditionally, David was portrayed after his violent victory, triumphant over Goliath.
Both Veracchio's and Donatello's Davids are depicted standing over Goliath's severed head.
Michelangelo has depicted David before the battle.
David is tense, but not so much in a physical as in a mental sense.
The slingshot he carries over his shoulder is almost invisible, emphasizing that David's victory was one of cleverness, not sheer force.
This interpretation comes from Gardiner's art through the ages.
Irving Stone is somewhat more specific in stating that David is depicted at the moment he decides to engage Goliath.
Michelangelo was a citizen of the city-state of Fidenz, Florence.
The national state of Italy is very young, and in the time the statue was made, between 1501 and 1504, Power resided with individual cities.
Firenze was surrounded by enemies, and that much stronger and more numerous than the city was.
When the statue of David was placed on the square in front of the city hall, where you can now find a copy, the people of Firenze immediately identified with him as a cunning victor of superior enemies.
To them, David was a symbol representing forteza and ira, strength and anger.
The statue had an intended political connotation, For the city-state that had recently cast off the ruling of the Medici family, note how David's character traits are considered more important than his victory over Goliath, which is why Michelangelo depicted him before a battle strong-willed and ready to flee.
What an amazing dream.
Thank you so much for sharing it with us.
I'm just going to recap, because there's a lot of details here, I'm just going to recap the general movements of the metaphors within the dream.
Some sort of zoo, his home family, some sort of zoo, mostly primates.
The entire zoo is indoors.
An enormous cavernous building, so it's got these 20-foot high ceilings made entirely of thick glass, allowing a 60- to 70-degree view of the sky.
Everything is lit very brightly as a result, but the sky is obviously overcast.
I guess what he means by that, I think what he means by that is the sky is hard to see because it's bright-lit inside.
So he can see two or three 18-foot-tall gorilla-like creatures carrying normal gorillas on their backs from one chamber to another, and the veterinarian's examination tables are waiting for the normal gorillas.
I realize there's something not quite right about the large gorillas doing all the toting, obviously intelligent expressions, and they seem to be grieving for the beasts they carry on their backs.
So we are led by a tour guide to an open observation area, and then this featureless clay-like humanoid figure that's 18 foot tall Comes in and smashes away or shakes away the men who are holding him down.
And then his call...
He has no eyes, Doctor.
He puts this call out, this yowling noise.
And he looks at the other featureless creatures.
Sorry, the other girders.
And then they morph into this in-between creature.
And... His family scatters.
The other creatures stare at him.
And then... Sorry, just a second.
I don't want to know where the other creatures...
Right, so the bodies of the large gorillas begin to shimmer and oscillate.
As if they're weak television signals.
Okay, and then David comes in.
And the memused Chumulak quickly turns towards the statue, and then he becomes a statue and comes to life.
And this is the statue of David.
I didn't actually believe it or not.
I mean, I love the statue, and Ayn Rand has wonderful things to say about it as well.
But I had no idea that it was the David of David and Goliath.
I thought it was just some handsome kid that he'd sculpted.
Alrighty, now let me just make sure my plugs are all correct so that I don't lose my show again.
Give me the power!
I want the power!
Alright, we're good to go.
Well, this is an amazing dream.
This is a dream that is a marker dream.
Some people call it a number of different names.
A marker dream is perfectly valid.
It is a signpost dream, a marker dream, a transition dream.
It is a dream about...
And there's no question that it was going to throw you awake at four o'clock in the morning.
One of the things that Greg has posted, and I hope you don't mind if I use your name, one of the things that Greg has posted elsewhere was that he went to go and see Mel Gibson's film Apocalypso, which I would never in a million years see, but he went to see it with his brother, and he got a very important thing out of it, because Mel Gibson is psychotic, right?
I mean, Mel Gibson is an absolutely crazy, corrupt, weird, vicious...
I mean, his movies are just gore-fests.
I mean, boy, I watched a little bit of his film about Christ and it really was just pure sadomasochism, blood spattering, gore, hate-filled.
I mean, this is his life. This is his inner life, right?
We've talked about this in the realm of art, right?
This is the argument he's making about the world.
And so he went to go and see Apocalypto and found...
And also, I mean, I just had read the reviews of Apocalypto.
Not only did it seem like a completely bizarre topic for a film, but it's also just a complete blood fest, right?
I mean, it's just full of Tarantino...
Oh, it's worse than Tarantino violence.
At least the Tarantino violence is cartoony, but, you know, just the most repulsive gore.
And, yeah, I mean, Greg and I had the sort of same experience that when...
We were younger, we could watch this kind of stuff, and it didn't really faze us.
I found, though, I was done, I guess about, I don't know, 12 years ago, 10 years ago, whenever the film Casino came out, and I went to see it.
Because I quite enjoyed Goodfellas.
So I went to go and see Casino, and there's some scene where a guy's head's in a vice, and that was just it for me.
I mean, and this is one of these big changes where you just don't ever go back.
So that scene was just so horrible and horrifying to me that I simply did not ever go to another violent movie again.
And it doesn't mean that I haven't seen violence in movies.
Sometimes it shows up and it's a surprise.
But it's almost always particularly, like, pretty horrible.
And Greg also said that before he had gone to see the movie Apocalypto, or in the past, he would have just laughed off that kind of violence, which I certainly understand, right?
But now his soul is really waking up to empathy, right?
So this is, I think, what the dream is largely about.
Empathy and choice, and the choice that comes from individuation.
Now, just very briefly, and this is not going to get wholly technical, but since I believe that this is a dream about individuation, we might as well spend a few minutes talking about what individuation means, at least in the way that I understand it.
I mean, every psychologist has their own interpretation of what individuation means, but this is sort of what I think it means from a philosophical standpoint.
Individuation is the process of thinking for yourself.
Really, that's all it comes down to.
Individuation is the process, and it's actually quite coincidentally similar.
No, no, it's part of a master plan from what we were talking about last night around escaping your culture or getting out of the fantasy and the psychosis of culture.
And individuation is fighting your way free and thinking for yourself, but not thinking for yourself in a sort of psychotic, delusional way, insofar as, you know, I am Ixtapixquil, reincarnation of the Incan God.
And that's not really thinking for yourself.
That's just sort of going mental.
But when you think for yourself, as I've talked about in the Intro to Philosophy series, you think for yourself with reference to reason and reality, and with reference to empathy to others.
Empathy to others is different from sympathy to others.
And we talked about this before, but I might as well mention it again.
That empathy towards others can provoke great anger.
We always think empathy is like, you know, tender and, oh, let me hold you while you gently rock back and forth with sobs.
And it is at times, but there is an aspect to empathy, which is, I get that you're evil.
And that makes me angry.
I get that you're evil, and this doesn't mean that everyone I get angry at is evil.
What a silly... I mean, that would be a silly thing to even say.
I apologize to you for bringing it up.
But... I would certainly suggest...
That the sort of empathy that's portrayed in this dream is more along the individuation standpoint or the individuation side.
And that the individuation has a lot to do with acceptance of knowledge that you already have, right?
We have a vast amount of knowledge about reality.
We're exposed to it every day.
We have a vast amount of knowledge about...
Our families, in particular, and our society.
We know. All the stuff that I write about, Lou Rockwell, and all the stuff that I talk about here, this is all not knowledge that you don't have.
And this is all stuff that you know.
This is all stuff that you know.
And... So, when it comes to individuation...
Individuation is more archaeology than it is invention.
Individuation is simply accepting the facts that you already have in your mind about reality, your family, your history, your circumstances, your priests, your kings, your politicians, your presidents, whoever.
You already know the truth. And the reason that people are unhappy why depression is like the number one or number two medical scourge in the world is because, as I've said before, everyone knows everything.
And it is a very delicate operation, sometimes running into the hundreds of podcasts, it's a very delicate operation to get people to understand that they already know everything.
You have to come at them with humor, with anger, with playfulness, with seriousness, with fear, with horror, with tears, with everything that I've got.
You have to come at people from a number of different angles.
And that liveliness, the liveliness that's in these podcasts, It's not just, as I've mentioned before, it's not just in the content that I aim to free people, but in the form that I aim to free people.
Christina was listening to my criminal series yesterday when she was driving to some appointments and she said, you know, in the one you made me cry and in the other you made me laugh.
And... And partly why I do that is, well, obviously I enjoy being free in my expression, but it's also to unstick the lever, right? I mean, when your lever is stuck, you work it back and forth, you work it from different angles, you loosen it, you do this, that, and the other.
And the goal is simply to Hit you from a bunch of different angles with a large amount of emotional and intellectual energy to loosen the knowledge that's already in you.
I mean, this is not me teaching you, right?
This is just me saying, you already know.
Which is another reason why people get so mad at me, right?
rank, because they do know, and they pretend that they don't.
So, in this dream, and this may be a two-parter, but in this dream, we see a very interesting And this occurred after... I know that Greg listened to the Santa Christ podcast last night because he mentioned it on the boards.
And then he went to... No, sorry.
Did the stream come last night? No, I think the stream came two nights ago.
Two nights ago? Anyway, I have been talking about culture lately and art.
And again, this may come from other sources.
This is just the only one that I can sort of think of or have access to sort of understanding.
And so in this large area where you're free to move around, you're still enclosed, right?
So it's like a zoo, but it's not like a zoo.
It's like a cage, but it's not like a cage.
And the sky is enclosed.
And I have this in a line from one of my poems called Arch, I think.
The sky was enclosed in something of stone.
And you can't see the sky, and it's brightly lit from the inside, but you just can't see outside.
And really, that's the very definition of delusion, of fantasy, especially of culture.
I mean, culture produces lots of art, and culture produces lots of trinkets, and culture produces endless and insistent arguments from morality, and So the fact that it's bright-lit from the inside and you can't see outside seems to me that this is the setup for talking about the world.
This is the world in which most everybody lives.
Now, these very large gorillas, this may harken back to the podcast that I did on Part 1 of King Kong, These very large gorillas are carting around the smaller gorillas with sadness and with loss and with concern for the smaller gorillas who are being taken to the veterinarians.
Now, the interesting thing, and I can't quite puzzle it out, maybe it'll come as I go forward.
I actually just read the dream for the first time as I was reading it now, so I had to go over and do my backup.
I'm not sure, because later on, there's white lab coats who are examining the smaller gorillas, The monkeys, or the smaller gorillas.
And then there's the people who wheel in the lab coats, guys who wheel in Michelangelo's David later.
So we'll see if we can't puzzle out why both of these people are in lab coats.
But what I will say is that the transformational potential of the larger gorillas is really well pointed out in the dream.
Based on the fact that they seem very intelligent, that they are performing some sort of service Which appears to be beneficial, or at least is required, without having to be there, and they seem to be wise and concerned for the monkeys on their back.
Now, of course, A Monkey on Your Back, as you know, is a great Aerosmith song, and is a metaphor for being addicted to something that you just can't.
You just can't shake, right?
So a monkey on your back is an addiction that you just can't shake.
So this is, I think, important because I certainly would put forward that the greatest addiction that people have is to culture.
What is it that evil Nazi warlord got right in his quote when he said, whenever I hear the word culture, I loosen the safety on my revolver.
And insofar as he identifies culture as an act of aggression, he's quite right.
You don't respond with a revolver, but he's quite right.
So, the transformational potential of these wise, elder, larger apes, I think is very, very important.
I think it's also important that this be recognized as, I would say, an overall metaphor for people, for blind people in a culture.
So... They enclosed their skies in...
Worship of stone? They enclosed their worship in skies of stone.
They enclosed their worship in skies of stone.
That's the metaphor for a church, right?
That you claim to worship God, and then you cut off your view of the sky.
That was the metaphor from my poem.
See, I can remember poems that I wrote 20 years ago.
Ask me where my keys are.
Black out! So...
In the dream as a whole, there's a large and roomy and brightly lit from the inside, can't see outside...
Zoo. And people, monkeys, apes carrying smaller apes around.
And I would say that that is a metaphor for culture, the zoo.
And the average person is represented by the large wise ape carrying the small ape.
And I don't believe there were any emotional content characteristics around the smaller apes.
But... This really is the relationship between most people's unconscious to their false self, right?
So, most people have a true self, which I would say is the large ape, and they have a false self, which is the small ape, that according to the...
Yeah, actually this does work.
Okay, according to the dream, the small apes are being carried by the larger apes to these...
Veterinarians. And what that indicates, of course, is that the smaller apes are ailing.
That the smaller apes are ailing, and they're unable to carry themselves.
So the smaller apes are not doing well.
They are unhealthy and they're so unhealthy that they need to be continually monitored and checked by veterinarians.
So you have these largely unconscious, largely true self apes carrying these smaller apes to constant medical attention.
And Greg, when you hear this, if you could just let me know if there's any emotional content or affects about these smaller apes, I would really, really appreciate that.
That's something that is not particularly clear to me just now.
And of course, With the driving, I can't really check.
I don't remember it, though.
And that's quite important, right?
The fact that everybody has emotional effects, right?
Greg is filled with wonder and awe.
His family is frightened and hiding under catwalks.
And the larger apes are...
Wise and concerned and intelligent.
And the only group that shows no emotional content or effects is the apes that are ailing that are on the backs of the larger apes that need constant medical attention.
So they're the only ones that feel nothing or have no emotional content in the dream, which again is another indication of a false self, right?
Everyone else is full of rich or frightened or deep or feeling.
And yet these small apes are just inert.
And that has a lot to do with the false self, right?
So this is a view, right?
This is a very, very important thing to understand.
And I'm just going to hammer this point very briefly.
But it's absolutely crucial to understand.
You know, I was talking yesterday about culture...
Oh, this is going to screw up those who are listening out of sequence.
Naughty! I was talking yesterday about the need to view your own culture from...
Another culture or ideally from a philosophical standpoint.
This is not a bad segue to the more important aspect of that.
That's good training and that's a good place to start.
But this is the more important thing.
Because what the hell can we do about Scandinavian culture?
Nothing. Muslim culture? Almost nothing.
But If you really do want to understand yourself, then you need to get into the habit of looking at your false self from the vantage point of your true self.
At your pettiness, and my pettiness, and all of our pettiness, And our status-seeking, and our vanity, and our fear of conflict, and our fear of doing the right thing, for fear of disapproval, and our conformity with all the nonsense we were fed as children, and all of that structure, all of that fearful, vain, glorious structure, which we all have.
It's our dark side. When you can view that from the unconscious, right?
Looking at your own culture from the vantage point of another culture, or from no culture, in other words, from the truth, Is a wonderful practice for doing this.
For looking at your own illusions from the standpoint of truth.
So that your own illusions, which once seemed to be a certitude greater than that of gravity, are revealed as petty and fearful and conformist vanities.
And scar tissue from the abuse we all suffer at the hands of culture, if not in our families and certainly in our teachers.
Once you can look at your own illusions in the same way that you look upon the illusions and falsehoods of others, the falsehoods that are believed to be true, and true and deep and meaningful, right?
The massive errors, right?
I don't know what the capital of Mozambique is, but I think that George Bush or democracy is moral.
Those are the massive errors, right?
Those are the errors which it's almost impossible to recover from.
And what's happening here is that Greg is beginning to view his false self from the standpoint of his unconscious.
And he's viewing it not just within his own soul, which is represented by these gorillas, but also he is seeing it in the realm of culture as well.
And he's been posting some magnificent posts on the board.
Especially the one that was recent about the state.
I can't remember how it goes, but I was just struck dumb by the beauty of the language, right?
And this is what's all in it. It's in all of us.
It's in all of us.
All of this deep and rich appreciation of language and beauty and horror of violence and commitment to virtue, it's in all of us.
It's in all of us. It is not something that is a talent like singing.
It is in all of us.
So now Greg is beginning to view his sort of quote consciousness, or what people would say is false consciousness, or the false self, from the standpoint of the truth, of all of the accumulated truth that's in his nature, his animal nature, his instinctual nature, which is where the true rationality occurs, right? I'm not going to explain that one right now.
I know that may give you pause, and forgive me for that, but I'm not going to...
Ooh, instinctual rationality?
What are you, some sort of hippie? Eh, kind of, I guess.
Which is fine. Aristocratic and conservative, apparently, according to somebody else, but...
The truths in life are not reasoned out in syllogisms.
They're validated by syllogisms, but we...
We feel our way towards them.
We feel them instinctually.
And that's what tells us where to go and what to validate.
You can't simply validate every conceivable proposition that could occur to you or that occurs in the world.
You have to feel your way towards something.
We light up when we're on the path of truth and then we validate it with reason.
We light up inside.
So this bright light is...
An indication that the bright light inside the zoo and the difficulty of seeing outside the zoo is an indication that Greg is looking inside his own soul, deep in his own soul, deep down where our animal nature gives way to almost mere biology, to the mere mechanics of life, like the liver and so on.
And that's right down in the base machinery of the human soul.
And from down there, the false self looks tiny and ridiculous and inert and sickly.
So when we're embedded in the false self, the true self looks sickly and pathetic.
But when you're down there in the roots of truth around the bottom of your soul, where the percepts accumulate into axioms that are rational, where your senses accumulate into rational axioms, Where you don't make arguments about disbelieving your senses because that's the autonomous nervous processing of the sensual information.
And this is where, you know, people will argue about they don't believe their senses, but then you threaten to punch them and they flinch, right?
right?
I mean, this is down at the flinching area where bullshit does not get down to, right?
Bullshit is filtered out way before it gets down to the bottom layer of the soul, which is where the percepts build truly rational axioms.
And this is where the true rationality and the emotional uniting of rationality and feeling occurs.
There is no bullshit down there.
And there is no bullshit in this dream.
And this is an amazing dream from that standpoint.
So then in comes this semi-evolved being.
And the semi-evolved being is this clay-like creature who is as tall as the apes, in other words, is heavily associated with the unconscious, with the strength and primitiveness of the unconscious.
And primitive does not mean irrational.
Lord knows we all know these hyper-intellectualized, over-educated people who can say that up is down and black is white.
Well, what's primitive is this kind of base-level perceptual reality that occurs at the bottom of her soul.
It's primitive But it's also the most connected to reality, right?
The part of our minds, the part of our souls, which process reality directly from the evidence of the senses, is the most connected part to reality that we have.
It's the most primitive, in a way, in that even an amoeba has it.
But when it's not obscured by nonsense intellectualizing and false self pomposity, it is our direct connection to reality.
It is the only direct connection. We don't get to reality through thought.
We get to it through the senses.
We validate our theories with thought and reason, but all of that is derived from the senses, as we've talked about before.
So, this creature is wheeled in by people, and this creature is very strong, and this creature also comes from outside the zoo.
I might flatter myself that the eyeless creature is me because I make a call, But I don't think so.
I don't think so.
Because the choice that is in the dream for Greg, what is it you are going to be, is directly spoken to Greg, and I believe that this is Greg's true self that comes in, that comes wheeling in.
And I would say, if you look at the sequence, Greg's family shows no indication of having any appreciation of...
The emotional content of the zoo.
Greg is the only one who picks up the emotional undercurrents that are going on in the zoo.
That the large apes carrying the inert and sickly smaller apes are sad and wise and intelligent and so on.
Which of course would indicate, that's the first indication, that they shouldn't be in the zoo.
And he can't quite figure out why they're there.
And that, of course, is something...
And this is... Oh, man, there's so much to cram about in this dream.
I may have to do a two-parter.
But I just really want to get this point across, because it's so important.
Once you get how amazing and powerful and deep human beings are, then seeing them ordered around by idiots with guns in the form of the state is just so appalling.
You just... Once you get that...
Ugh...
It is...
Once you get how amazing and deep and wonderful and powerful human beings are in their essence, in their true selves, once you know what people are capable of and the beauty and virtue and wonder of the human soul in a state of freedom, in a state of self-knowledge, after it has recovered from the scar tissue of childhood falsehoods,
once you see what human beings are and how incredible we all are, seeing them ordered around and herded into the rape rooms of prisons and wars and Once you see the beauty of the childhood soul,
seeing it stuffed into the madras and stuffed into the synagogue and stuffed into the church and lied to and bullied and abused and sometimes raped, and once you get what is destroyed through corruption...
Once you get the grandeur and beauty of the human soul, you can really clearly see what is being destroyed every moment of every day.
And it is absolutely heartbreaking beyond anything that I could ever talk about.
But Greg is empathizing with and wondering why are these intelligent wise apes in a prison?
If you think that Human beings are petty and selfish and stupid and that's all they'll ever be, then I can understand the prison planet approach, right?
That everyone should be ordered around.
It's not rational, but I can at least understand the emotional impetus.
It's one of the reasons why empathy is kept, empathy for yourself and empathy for others is kept so far away by everyone who teaches us when we're young.
This is why we're whipped into frenzy about our sports teams and it's why we're whipped into frenzies about our religions and our culture and our God and our political system and everything that is ours, right?
It's to destroy your empathy and depth with yourself.
And once you start to feel empathy for others, you get a sense of your own depth and the beauty of your own soul, and you also get a sense of the beauty and terror of other people's souls.
Don't get me wrong, having empathy for people doesn't solve problems.
That's an illusion I still have, where sometimes I'm on the board or in emails and I keep sticking a fork into an electrical socket when communicating with someone, and then what I do is I try and rotate the fork and stick it in a different way, and then I try, oh, maybe if I lick it, maybe if I put on rubber boots, it's like at some point I just have to go, well, some people are beyond reasoning with, and I have to stop sticking my finger or my fork into the electrical socket.
So it's not like there's some magical healing power and empathy.
There is for the self, but there isn't for everyone else because of choice, right?
So, Greg feeling that there are wise creatures that should not be enslaved to the sickly.
I think that this also could be, and these metaphors are not proof, right?
This is just sort of what connects. But I think this also could be a metaphor for democracy, right?
That the people who are larger carry the sickly leaders around, and they are their slaves.
Right? Even though the people are wiser than the leaders because the people are not leaders, right?
You are automatically wiser than a political master because you are not a political master, right?
I mean, since that is one of the...
It's the most evil. It's certainly the most corrupt.
I would say the most evil are the enforcers, but the most corrupt are the leaders.
And you're automatically wiser.
Like, even the trolls on the board are automatically wiser than political leaders.
They're not initiating the use of...
They're not... Forcing children to conform.
They're not lying to everyone. They're not making false arguments for morality.
They're not hungry with the desire.
Maybe they are, but they haven't enacted their desire to control other souls and so on.
So in comes the clay, the clay man.
The shmoo, he calls him.
And the shmoo has come from outside, is wheeled in.
By men in lab coats.
And this is very interesting because there's a combination here of both science and art.
Although I guess sculptors would work in a white lab coat or some sort of lab coat as well.
So there is a combination of art and science, at least I think.
Traffic has stopped. Ooh, you know what?
There's some wonderful thing about podcasting.
It just makes you so happy when you're on a roll.
It makes you so happy when there is a traffic jam.
It's one of the great things about podcasting.
So, let me just check here.
So, led by a tour guide to an open observation area.
Hey, maybe on the tour guide, or maybe somebody else that he's listening to or reading is the tour guide, but someone is intervening.
And... The creature begins to resist.
A dozen men or so, trying to lead an 18-foot-tall gray features Krala...
Okay... So, the first thing that this creature does is it shakes off the men who are leading it, right?
And its size and its power are, I think, important to sort of consider and to understand here.
Its size and its power are very important to consider and to understand here.
It easily shakes off the men who are trying to hold it down.
So, this is a reference to Gulliver or something like Gulliver.
Insofar as the Lilliputians will tie him down, I think, on a beach and so on.
So this is an evolution in some ways, but a devolution in others.
And that is perfectly consistent with my experience, at least, of this kind of personal growth.
So we have a more humanoid creature who's obviously a step up from the apes in terms of mere biological evolution.
Hairless, you know, the things which we would consider a step up from our good friends, the apes.
The hominids? But it's eyeless, right?
It has depressions where eyes could be, and of course this is also a reference, I think, to the fact that when you realize how blind you've been throughout life, you do get depressed.
I mean, I want to get overly clever here, but there's lots of ways that these metaphors all come together.
So, you need humility in order to grow, right?
You need to say, I don't know stuff.
And, of course, the amount of stuff that all of us knows is nothing compared to everything we could know.
So, you have to be humble in order to learn.
You have to be humble in order to grow.
It's the one thing that religious people never are as humble.
And that's, of course, the root of science.
How do you know what it is you should study?
Well, what is it I don't know?
So, the evolution comes from sightlessness.
It comes from humility.
It comes from knowing that you can't see.
The false self can't see out.
The false self can only manipulate.
Can only control. Can only bully.
Can only wheedle. Can only plead.
The false self cannot...
Connect with reality. Specifically, it's a rejection of reality.
In the same way that the government is a rejection of everything that people want, the false self is a rejection of everything that is true.
And because it rejects everything that is true but pretends that it is true, it has to control and manipulate other people's perceptions because it has no effect in reality.
It's the social metaphysician that Ayn Rand talks about where somebody says not, is this true, but do people believe that this is true?
Although the false self is more like, how can I get people to believe that I am right, rather than, am I right?
So once you get a sense of how blind you have been in your life...
And not from a sense of guilt, right?
This creature does not cower, right?
I mean, every attitude, every piece, every scrap of emotional content in these kinds of dreams is essential.
This creature is not coming in cowering, not hanging its head, right?
Not rubbing its face with its hands in a rueful fashion.
It's coming in tall. It's not guilty for being blind.
How could we not be blind?
It's like blaming somebody in the tenth century for not knowing about DNA. It's not ignorance.
It's lack of exposure.
And we can't all invent the wheel.
I certainly couldn't.
For everything.
So, this beast comes in, shakes off the men who are trying to control him.
Stands tall and sightless, right?
So he can't see, right?
And maybe it's a reference to podcasting, I'm not sure, because of course I can't see my listeners.
But I can make a sound.
I can make a joyful noise!
And so the clay evolution slash devolution, right?
So the evolution in the body, the devolution in the fact that the eyes of the apes carrying the smaller apes are wise.
The new creature has no eyes, but has come from outside, so knows something more about reality.
And the creature must have had eyes outside, unless it was some sort of lab that they came from.
I don't think that's specified. But in here, this creature has no eyes.
This creature calls out and causes an evolution in those apes that are carrying.
There's no mention made of what happens to the apes The small apes that everyone's carrying, no mention is made of that, which is important as well, right?
If when everyone cried out, the small apes began to scurry up and, you know, I don't know, shoot hypodermic nocleptic needles into the apes and control them and dance on their chests and so on, then that would be a different kind of indication.
Perhaps more political, I don't know.
But... The apes shimmer and evolve.
into these humanoid creatures, right?
And I'm just making my turn here.
Let me concentrate on not crashing the car.
That's good, we're done. So they then...
Let me just... Traffic has come to a grinding halt again.
Oh, lovely, lovely, lovely, inefficient government, Rose.
And his family scatters, right, as this all occurs.
All right.
And what happens then is...
So these other apes evolve into this clay-like humanoid kinds of creatures.
And then in comes the Statue of David.
Now, the Statue of David is one of the most beautiful things in the world.
And the Statue of David is...
One of the first really compelling representations of...
I don't want to get into a boring history of art kind of thing, but if you also look at the old Egyptian pictures or paintings, then you could see that there would be a profile, but the eyes would be staring at you, and if you look at...
The early medieval paintings, their perspective is completely off.
They didn't get the vanishing point, lines all going into, you know, like a train track, meeting on the horizon when you're standing on the train track.
They didn't have perspective down, and then when you look at early sculptures, primitive sculptures, they're not representational, they're emotionally representational, right?
So, an early primitive sculpture about a pregnant woman has a tiny woman with a huge belly, because that's what everyone's focusing on, so it's a very subjective...
Interpretation of reality based on what is emotionally resonant in what it is that you're looking at.
But in the sort of revival of the Greek movement that occurred after the Quattrocento, there was a desire to reproduce reality as it was, right?
So there's Michelangelo and Henri and people like that who were actually just looking at, shockingly enough, were just looking at something and painting it directly and straight.
There's still art because it's what they choose to paint that is important.
But that's what they are trying to do, and it's the first time in the history of the modern West, certainly since the Greco-Roman times, where the human form has been considered worthwhile reproducing in and of itself, that it is beautiful in and of itself.
That it is not sort of the tortured Christ on a cross kind of body, and it's not the distorted primitive body where it's the emotional content that matters, where I guess they'd carve me with a forehead the size of, I don't know, one of Pluto's moons.
Jupiter? Jupiter's moons.
But... It's a very significant evolution, right?
I mean, if you look at the paintings and the statues and so on that were occurring or that were being worked on prior to David, not just, I mean, you know what I mean, like in a sort of larger sweep of history kind of sense, then they are pre-human, right?
You've got these...
Everyone's got a halo.
Everyone's got to have some sort of religious context.
Everyone's embedded in a background that's inconsequential, right?
There is no human being in the scope of the world doing human things, right?
And this is definitely an evolution.
It's not a perfect evolution, and it's not the final evolution, because Michelangelo was interested in human beings, and really, David is a statue of a beautiful young man.
It is not a statue of a religious hero.
The statues of religious heroes are all heads bent and robes, and going through a state of torture, like all those endless sadomasochistic images of Christ.
But... David is an enormous step forward in terms of the human perception of...
Of reality and of the self, right?
So he chose to sculpt a beautiful human being rather than a dwarf or a leper or a hunchback or something like that.
And again, no offense to dwarfs, lepers, and hunchbacks, but the aesthetics is sort of important, right?
They can have the soul as beautiful as Michelangelo's David, but that's not how it gets represented in art.
Okay, so I've made it to work.
I've got a few minutes before I have to start, so let me just finish up, and then I will head upstairs.
So, let me just see here.
Now then, everybody evolves from ape to clay to human representation.
To human representation.
And, I mean, there's art in these podcasts as well as philosophy, as I'm sure you're aware, right?
I mean, not just in the content of talking about art, but as I've talked about before.
So, this being blind to what is, and recognizing the blindness opens up possibilities, right?
Humility opens up possibilities.
And... The possibility that everybody seems to want to choose is a beautiful human, which, of course, I would think is an entirely wonderful thing to choose.
And then everybody becomes a marble David.
Everybody grows into a representation of a beautiful human being.
Not quite the thing itself yet, because it's a statue that moves.
Not quite the thing itself yet.
And then you get to choose a form, right?
So once you have the ideal, once you have the ideal of a beautiful human being, and you inhabit that ideal, you become a statue that is able to move, then you can choose your actual form, and this, he says, the alabaster gray begins to recede from his face and down his shoulders, replaced by a warm tan pink hue.
Healthy, right? Hair darkens to a thick brown, his blank eyes crystallize, dark glassy stones, and he says, I can be anything I want.
And I think it's interesting, just the last thing I'll say, that the people, the scientists, right?
And the fact that they're scientists is important, right?
I mean, the science is the abstraction of this base perceptual layer that we have at the bottom of our souls, which interacts the most directly with reality of any part of our consciousness.
And our neurological, sorry, neuro...
Neurophysical, right? I mean, they're nerve endings themselves, although not directly conscious themselves.
They interact very strongly with reality itself.
But this David now says, after the lab coats bring him in and he comes to life and he becomes human, he says, I can be anything I want.
They say, you can leave, of course, but if you stay, you have to choose your shape.
You are free to go, of course, but you are brought here so that you can choose your own form.
If you stay, you must choose a form.
Now, that's interesting. That's interesting.
Maybe I won't have time to do that.
There's a lot in that. And it's not necessarily when you...
You stay in the zoo, right?
I mean, you stay to help other people.
You stay to help other people.
And you don't... You don't run off and live in the woods, or you don't just retreat into your own soul.
That virtue is social in nature, and doesn't mean it's dependent on people's opinions or anything like that.
Virtue is social in nature.
Virtue is helping others in a positive and productive and real way, not just sort of feeding their illusions or giving them money.
Um... So, if you stay, you must choose a form.
I think that's wonderful, the form that he chooses.
To be human.
To stay and to be fully human.
To stay in society and to be fully human is a very difficult thing.
To stay in society, to not withdraw from society, to not go and live on a cloud planet of your own reality.
And I don't mean that like it's just your own reality because everyone else is in a fantasy.
And so, sorry, let me adjust the metaphor.
To... To leave everyone in their cloud fantasy of culture and religion and politics and fantasies like that and to go to Earth on your own, I don't think that's necessarily a very good thing.
And certainly it's not going to help you in the long run as a philosopher because the bad people will overrun the world and ugly things will happen, particularly to philosophers.
So to stay, there's a great deal of tension in staying in society, staying among crazy people.
And being fully human and sane.
That's quite a ripple in the social pond, as we can see for these podcasts and the board and everything that people are doing as a result of expanding their depth of humanity through this and through lots of other ways that people are doing it.
To stay...
And to stay in the zoo and be free is, I think, the best thing you can do.
I mean, obviously that's what I'm doing, right?
So, I mean, I think it's the best thing you can do.
I'm not going to try and make a case for it objectively, but everyone can do what they want.
But I think that...
That this is the challenge, that this guy can leave, but if he stays, he has to choose a form.
And the form that he chooses, of course, is a rich, deep, and large humanity.
Very healthy, very powerful.
Deep, sonorous voice. Warm, tank pink hue.
Thick brown hair, right?
And thick hair is an indication of health, right?
I mean, it's always the weenies on TV, except for the guy on...
David de Cosme show.
I can't remember what it was. But he was considered to be kind of cool, that...
But, I mean, thick hair is considered to be healthy and attractive, and the pink hue of his skin and the deep, sonorous voice, this is a being of great power, which, of course, is Greg, right?
Greg is becoming, right?
I mean, and he is detaching from his family.
His family scurries away. His family are terrified by this, as this is naturally the case for stuff that's going on outside of what he's posted on the board.
But... He is making the choice to stay in society, to stay in communication with people, and to be fully and deeply human and rational and philosophical.
And that is a beautiful, wonderful, fantastic thing, you know, tip of the hat of near infinite size.
It's a wonderful journey that Greg's been on for the past year, I guess.
Not quite a year, I think, but...
And this is something that I think should give people hope that there is challenge and there is depression and there is unhappiness in prying this monkey off your back.
But you go beyond the art of beauty to beauty itself when you make that transition.
▲
Export Selection