this is a story that the ancient
Egyptians predicated their society on
and to understand this story the first
thing you have to know is what the
characters were and these characters
were gods there's four of them
although the Egyptians had far more than
four gods you might think of these as
the central gods and you might think
what is a central god and then you might
think well imagine that the gods compete
for dominance across time in people's
imaginations and some gods win and they
occupy the primary position of dominance
in the hierarchy in the dominant
hierarchy of gods and those are ideals
and ideals compete across time for
dominance and they're embodied and so
when diverse tribal people come together
they throw all their gods into the ring
and they fight across time and something
emerges as a victor and that's the
emergence of monotheism out of
polytheism and it paralyzed the
development of a unified morality in
within each of us as we develop across
time and the the God that emerges as
dominant across time bears a substantial
represents a substantial resemblance
imagine you have a set of gods in this
locale that are competing across time
and something emerges as dominant and
then over here you have another set of
gods that compete across time for
dominance and something emerges you'll
see major commonalities across the two
things that emerge and the reason for
that is because the emergent the process
of emergence that gives rise to both of
them is similar in both situations and
that's part of what accounts for the
cross-cultural similarity of high order
religious ideas all right anyways you
need to know the characters Osiris mo
Cyrus is the old king he is Dumbledore
for all intents and purposes he's the
old king he's the he's the spirit that
established the Egyptian state when he
was young he was a great hero but now
he's old and he's will archaic and he's
willfully blind
that's Cyrus he has a brother Seth
seth is set and set is Satan because the
word Satan comes from the word set and
set via the Coptic Christians so so so
he's a precursor to the Western idea of
Satan you have Isis Isis is queen of the
underworld and Isis was the goddess of a
religious structure that prevailed
across thousands and thousands of years
Isis and you have Horus Horus is a
falcon and the Egyptian AI everyone
knows that I write the eye with the open
pupil
that's Horus and Horus is a falcon
because Falcons can see way better they
can see better than us they can see
better than anything else except for
perhaps Eagles and they fly above
everything Zazu in Lion King is Horus
right and Mufasa is Osiris and scar is
Seth and there's no specific
representation of Isis but the closest
there is in that story is probably the
queen of the hyenas that's played by a
actress hmm yes what the Goldbergs
that's right that's right because she
they inhabit she's like the queen of the
underworld right she's the queen of the
hyenas that live out among the death but
ok anyways Seth Osiris says Isis and
Horus here's how the story goes
so Cirrus is a great king he established
the Egyptian state you could think about
him as the embodiment of the Egyptian
custom and tradition you could think
about him as the thing that the pyramid
represents all right but he was great
when he was young but he's not young
anymore he's old and he's willfully
blind and what that means is that he
doesn't see what he could see he refuses
to see what he could see why is so
serous old and willfully blind because
that's what culture is it's a paternal
spirit that's old and willfully blind
and it's always that way always that way
and the reason for that is because it's
a construction of the dead the dead
aren't alive they can't so they're out
of date
and they can't update themselves anymore
and you inhabit their corpse and that's
actually what happens in an earlier
story that I'll tell you next week the
early Mesopotamian gods inhabited the
corpse of their father roughly speaking
anyway so Osiris was great and and when
he was young but he isn't young anymore
he's old and he's willfully blind he
won't look where he knows he should look
he doesn't have the energy or maybe he
doesn't have the spirit his brother Seth
is not a good guy and Osiris knows it
but he underestimates his malevolence
and power and so Seth wants to rule the
kingdom so what does that mean it's easy
every stable society is is threatened by
willful blindness and malevolence always
every bureaucracy has that proclivity to
stagnate and to become blind
that's why corporations die all the time
that's why a fortune 500 company only
lasts 30 years it's why we have to have
elections it's to stop the dead from
staying in control for too long
says Osiris turns a blind eye to Seth
Seth is happy about that the same thing
happens in the Lion King roughly
speaking Seth one day waits for Osiris
to make a mistaken to be weak and he
attacks them and he chops him up into
pieces and he distributes the pieces
across the entire Egyptian state in fact
the Egyptians regarded their provinces
as pieces of Osiris body okay so now you
can't kill Oh a Cyrus because he's a god
and why is he god a god because he
represents the spirit of structure and
there's always structure it can't be
destroyed it always reconstitutes itself
it can be hurt and broken into pieces
which is exactly what happens to a Cyrus
things fall apart why because they get
old and because malevolence undermines
them that's what the Egyptians were
trying to sort out
okay so set distributes his Osiris all
over Egypt so he can't get himself back
together right things fall apart and
they can't be brought back together but
the spirit of Oh Sarah still lives in
the pieces so what happens order is
demolished what would you expect chaos
emerges doubts Isis Isis is queen of the
underworld she's
irises wife order and chaos just like
the yin and the yang order collapses up
comes the queen of the underworld
she's looking for order chaos cries out
for order she's looking for order she
goes all around Egypt trying to put our
soul Osiris back together it's a state
of chaos she finds his phallus she makes
herself pregnant with it and what does
that mean well it means it's like it's
like Geppetto in the belly of the whale
that thing has the potential to realises
into its pieces is still alive it can
unite with the chaos and produce
something new that's the story of the
dissolution of structure into chaos and
it's reciprocation Isis makes herself
pregnant she goes back down to the
underworld she gives birth to Horus
Horus is the Egyptian eyes he's the son
of the great father and the great mother
he's a he's a messianic figure and in
fact much of the mythology that
described Horus was extracted without
much modification and then attributed to
Christ very much maybe and you you can
read about the parallels he read about
it online if you want there's any number
of parallels and of course there is a
mythology that the Jews came out of
Egypt and of course the Christians
emerged from the Jews and so there was a
tremendous influence of Egyptian
thinking on the development of these
later ideas and you see pictures of Isis
with Horus on her lap that are virtually
identical in content and form to the
later pictures of Mary with the infant
Christ but that's the Holy Mother of God
in the hero it's not a Christian motif
it's far deeper than a Christian motif
it's a human motif so Isis queen of the
underworld gives birth to Horus and
Horus grows up outside the kingdom why
in underworld because that's what human
beings do you're alienated from your
culture always why it's old and dead and
corrupt and so that leaves you growing
up in chaos what would you call
alienated from your fundamental culture
that's the story of adolescence Horus
grows up he can see that's what
differentiates them from Osiris that's
why he's a Falken he goes and has a
fight with Seth and now the difference
between Osiris and Horus is that Horus
does not underestimate Seth he knows
exactly what he's up against he goes and
has a terrible battle with him trying to
get his kingdom back something else
that's echoed in the Lion King story and
well horison and oh sorry RSS are
fighting SEF tears out one of his eyes
now why the assess is the embodiment of
destruction and malevolence and no
matter how conscious you are if you
encounter that even voluntarily the
probability that it's going to damage
your consciousness is extraordinarily
high that's why people don't do it so
the eye is torn out but Seth is defeated
and Horus banishes them to the nether
regions of the kingdom you can't kill
them why because the malevolent
destructive force the threatened States
never dies
it's always there you can only remove it
temporarily
now Horus is King Pharaoh king god he's
got his eye and so you think well he's
going to just pop that back in his head
and then he's going to be able to lead
he's going to be able to take his place
at the uppermost pantheon a pantheon of
gods properly but that isn't what he
does
hates his eye and he goes back to the
underworld just like Pinocchio going
into the depths to rescue Geppetto and
down there is the spirit of Osiris who's
whose extent as a kind of half-dead
ghost
it gives Osiris his I now Osiris can see
so what does that mean you go down into
the chaotic
wind threatened by malevolent even to
the point of damage to your
consciousness you go down into the chaos
and you find the dead spirit of your
tradition and you give it vision and so
provided with vision Osiris regenerates
and then Osiris and Horus go back up to
- to the world linked together and rule
jointly and the Egyptians believed that
the Pharaoh who had an immortal spirit
was the embodiment of the conjunction of
Horace and Osiris and that's what gave
him sovereignty and so you think about
how brilliant that is the Egyptians are
trying to puzzle out who should lead who
should be feral and what you have to be
if you're going to be fairly in order
for things to work you have to be awake
to malevolence and chaos and you have to
embody your tradition and that puts you
at the highest pinnacle of the dominant
structure
it's and that's the same as it's the
same thing it's the same thing as the
battle between the gods across centuries
or eons and the emergence of the highest
possible moral virtue as a consequence
of that competition it's the eye on the
top of the pyramid right it's you know
in the Washington Monument there's a cap
on the Washington Monument the Potala
the Washington Monument is a pyramid at
the top of the pyramid is a cap it's
made out of aluminum and the reason it's
made out of aluminum is because when
they made the Washington Monument it was
the most valuable metal known and so
what does it mean it means there's a
pyramid and there's something at the top
of it but the thing that's are taught at
the top of the pyramid isn't the same as
the left of the pyramid that's the same
the pyramid exists there's a dominance
hierarchy something climbs up to the top
but it's not just at the top of one
pyramid it's at the top of all of them
the thing that rises to the top of any
given pyramid is the same thing that can
dominate all pyramids it isn't good
enough to be the best at a dominance
hierarchy what you want to be is the
best at the set of all possible
dominance hierarchies right and that's
the thing that's gold at the top of the
pyramid and that's the eye that's what
the Egyptians figured out and what does
that mean it means the thing that puts
you at the top is attention pay
attention
keep your eyes open it's not the same as
thinking it's not the same thing
it's like watching and the thing about
human beings is we can see we can see
better than any other creature except
birds of prey
and so our capacity to see is in fact
what we use in the world our brains are
actually organized around vision unlike
most animals their brains are organized
around smell not us we can see we stand
upright so we can see a long distance
and in our ability to see is what saves
us and what saves our communities and
that's what these stories are trying to
portray you might say well why didn't
people just say so and the answer to
that is because they didn't know it took
a long time to figure it out forever
it's taken forever to figure it out it's
it's part of what I hoped when I wrote
this book and and part of the reason
that I'm teaching it is because it seems
to me that it would be useful for
everyone to actually understand this
instead of just having it told as a
story it's like that's great man yes you
need the story but why not also just
understand it so well so that's what
we're trying to do we're trying to
understand this so that's good enough
for today