Is technology a god? Can artificial intelligence become sentient?  What do the masses worship in modern culture? Jonathan Pageau is an orthodox Christian icon carver and public speaker who seeks to understand the symbolic patterns that underlie our experience of the world. Including but not limited to how these patterns emerge and come together, manifesting in religion, art and in popular culture. Coming from vastly different backgrounds, Jonathan and I differ in some of the ways we see the world, making this conversation richly enjoyable.Connect with Jonathan PageauWebsite |https://thesymbolicworld.com/Twitter |https://twitter.com/PageauJonathanYouTube |https://www.youtube.com/user/pageaujonathan

AUBREY: Jonathan, great to have you on the podcast, man. 

JONATHAN: It's great to meet you. 

AUBREY: Yeah, likewise, likewise. So I wanted to dive right into this. And one of the things that's become illuminated as I've dove into your work is that the meaning and power of symbols increases exponentially when I actually understand what the symbol means. And now, I'm curious as to what your thoughts are as to whether these symbols are actually working on a subconscious layer and what the potency is of working on the subconscious versus when you can actually make it conscious and understand the power of the symbols that are ubiquitous. I mean, they're everywhere. 

JONATHAN: Well, I think that this is true, let's say the consciousness of it is true, especially today. I think that in an ancient world, it might not have mattered so much because let's say the world was seeped into these symbolic structures and the world kind of functions with these symbolic structures. So we've been through a loop where we've tried to reduce everything to material causes. We've tried to focus on science and technology. So because of it, a lot of the intuition that the ancient people would have just been bathing in has been distorted or lost. And so that's why it feels today when people can perceive the structure, like even just with their rational mind, they can see the patterns, they can see the symbolism, then it's like a little illumination that they have. And so it's an interesting moment because of it, because in some ways, it's a way to reconnect people to these ancient universal structures.

AUBREY: It seems related in some ways to the myths that we've, that kind of form the story structure of society as well and culture. And I've interviewed Michael Mead and we've dove into the power of myths. And there's also a factor in which the more you understand about the myth and the symbolism contained within the myth, the more that the myth can actually inform. And I think Jordan Peterson does a good job of this as he kind of tells the story of Pinocchio and you're like, “whoa, I didn't know it really meant that”, but at some level it was really working, but it seems like with myth and story, there's still a place in our society where that's impacting our belief structure. Like Star Wars as a modern myth. Seems to, at least for my generation and probably others, been like a fundamental foundational myth that's helped us organize this feeling of there's the good and the evil, and it's easy to turn from good to evil. Just one factor of this kind of complicated myth that Star Wars presents. But it seems to me that in mythology that's still somewhat intact, even if symbolism has become less potent with our materialist reductionist thinking. 

JONATHAN: No, you're right. I think, in some ways the symbolism is still there, but it's as if there are certain aspects of symbolism that we're more connected with, and it's more of the peripheral aspects of symbolism. So, for example, the structure that leads to the material world, the story of technician technicality, let's say, is already there in the myths. What's harder for us is to kind of understand the foundational myth, the idea of center, of foundation of these primordial things that bind us together. Those are more difficult to understand, and you're right, that there are many fictional universes right now, like, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, Harry Potter, these types of stories. In some ways they're awakening in people something. They're awakening this sense of something more. And what's crazy about it is that the stories are ridiculous. If you look at the first level of them, they deal with things which we don't deal with in our everyday life. Wizards and wands and lightsabers and all these kinds of silly things. But nonetheless, because they are participating in a kind of universal story pattern, they nonetheless are able to grab our attention and to make us feel like we're, let's say, peering into something more, something which is revealing to us how reality works, right? Not in a scientific way, but in a narrative way, it's revealing to us how it is that we can exist in the world. 

AUBREY: Yeah, when you start to pay attention to both symbol and myth, and I would suppose it's my thesis that we really ought to pay more attention to both of those. We start to see how they've actually influenced so much of our thinking in the world. I remember, I think it was Charles Eisenstein who was talking about the myth that's told in Popeye, for example, and it's the myth of redemptive violence. It's Bruno continues to try and rape Olive oil and Popeye powers up on spinach and then goes beats up Bruno. And this repeats at Infinitum. And it's like, as long as you power up and get stronger, well, of course, in reality, that just means that Bruno would get some spinach and it would be a spinach arms race and it wouldn't actually work, but we've kind of been born and bred into this, which has then fed into this big war machine, that said like power up more spinach. Let's go get them boys. 

JONATHAN: Yeah, definitely. No, you're right. And you can understand symbolism. It's not arbitrary. This is what maybe modern people find difficult to understand the best way to understand symbolism. It's something like a contraction of reality. So it's something that we experience in everyday life. Let's say if you think of your own story, you fall in love with somebody, you get married, you have a romantic relationship and that lasts a year, let's say, or two years, or three years, or ten years, or twenty years. What stories do is that they take the salient points in a thread and they contract them together in a very short duration. So, it's like you get a hyper experience. So you're watching something which usually is intermingled with a bunch of boring parts, a bunch of parts that have nothing to do with the love story, you still go to work every day. You still do all these things, but you don't show that in the story. The story takes all these elements, contracts them together, and then presents to you a kind of rarefied or densified version of human experience. And the word symbol itself means two things thrown together. And usually the Greeks would talk about symbols as the place where two rivers meet. It's like this joining point. Where multiplicity gets joined into one. So we can understand that, our stories and the symbols, that's what they are. All the symbols that attract our attention with the reason why is because they seem to contract a lot of information and a lot of our experience to very simple forms. So you have images like a cross, for example, it's just a geometric symbol, or it's a stick with a, with a wave around it. Like these are very very simple geometric figures, but they seem to contract a lot of information in simple form. And that's why they end up being in some ways a shorthand of reality. So we sometimes think that symbolism is just like, okay well, like I don't know the author writes a story and he's got a rose and this rose signifies his nostalgia for his mother, some kind of almost arbitrary relationship with symbolism, but true symbolism is that contraction. And so you take the story of Popeye as a great example. Simple story, a man who loves a woman, somebody who wants to get in between, this big brute is trying to constantly take the woman from him, and Popeye has to supplement his strength or something. And that's how he gets the girl. And so you can imagine that that's a story of a knight who has the right sword. It's the story of all these, there are all these other versions of a man who will train like all those training scenes in movies. Like it's basically a training montage. So that's like Popeye contracts that into one thing. It just takes spinach and then he gets the strength, but you can imagine that in reality, it would be like, okay, I need to get more fit. I need to get stronger to get the girl. So that's what symbolism does, is it takes something and contracts it into a simple image so it's like you get it almost intuitively. 

AUBREY: Yeah. You mentioned the symbol of the cross, and I didn't grow up with any religion, actually any religion at all. And have subsequently, dove pretty deep into kind of the mystical Kabbalist teachings and also had a great friend by the name of Ted Decker, who's deep into kind of the more mystical understandings of the teachings of Yeshua. So great admiration for at least the interpretations that have flowed through me that seem to resonate anthroontologically with me, like feeling in my body, like, oh yeah, that's fucking incredibly wise and true. But the symbol of the cross, for me, has always been a confusing symbol and it's confusing because it was, and I know there may be older versions of the cross, but it's confusing because it was a symbol of torture. Right? And so it's supposed to mean all of these good things. And also, has been used subsequently as an oppressive force as, Knights or warriors, kind of the armed militia of the church has burned and attacked and killed. And so it's a very complex symbol to me, and I was hoping that, I know this is an area of expertise for you to kind of explore, I was hoping you could actually really give us a bit of a deep dive into the symbolism of the cross and how it can be interpreted by so many different people. 

JONATHAN: So a cross is basically just the meaning of a horizontal and a vertical at the outset, if you want to get down to the geometric aspect of it, but that is actually what makes it important, right? It's a meeting of two things. First of all, it's a meeting of a vertical and a horizontal, which means that it's something like the meeting of heaven and earth is maybe the best way to understand it. So you have vertical relationships. You can understand that as hierarchies or different types of vertical relationships, our relationship to God, relationship to the gods in general, whatever it is you imagine as a vertical relationship or your relationship to your general. If you're in the army, it's like they're vertical relationships and then they're horizontal reality, which is, let's say your particular reality as a person who's dealing with all this stuff in the world. And the cross is the place where those two meet. And so you can imagine that the cross is every place where the vertical and the horizontal meet. And you can imagine that, for example, being represented in something like a sacred space, a sacred temple, where there's a theophany in the holiest place of the temple. And then you encounter that, and then you have this contact between me as a person and then a vertical relationship. So that's just the basics symbolism of the cross 

AUBREY: Well then, if we just pause there for a moment, double click on it. It would seem that then the placement of the intersecting horizontal line is significant. And then also the length of the intersecting horizontal line that changes it from a cross to a plus sign, perhaps, which would show equality between those two energetic kinds of symbols right? Like in the Christian cross, from a purely geometric, and I think there's some other versions of that that makes it a cross and not a plus, like what is the symbolism of actually moving that horizontal line higher and shortening it? 

JONATHAN: Well, first of all, it's important to understand that the Christian cross is, there are many versions of the christian cross, and so the square cross is a christian cross. It's probably one of the earliest versions of the christian cross would have been a square cross, actually. And you can see that if you've ever seen an image of, it says I see X ‘see’ Nika like jesus christ conqueror. These were the images that were used in early christianity as an image of the cross. And so I think there is specificity to the different types of crosses. There is also a way in which to join the symbolism of the cross with the historical cross, that is to understand that it is a symbol that represents the union of heaven and earth, but the Christian contention is that, highest version of that is the cross on which Christ was crucified. And like you said, it seems like a very strange thing. So the meeting of heaven and earth is the place where someone's cruise is tortured by Romans. Like that's where the meeting of heaven and earth is like, what the hell's going on there? But it's not that complicated to kind of understand. And the world was built, in the ancient world, was built on sacrifice. There was a sense in which, in order to reach that vertical relationship, you had to give something up. You had to give something up, and then if you give something up, then you get the protection, you get the strength, you get the relationship with that vertical. We still do that now, it's called paying taxes, right? So you pay taxes up, towards the government and then the government offers you an identity protection, a connection, an interconnectivity between each other, right? And so, it's not a silly thing. Of course, people, because they don't understand ancient sacrifice anymore. They just think it's superstitious nonsense, but think about it as paying taxes, right? You pay taxes on breaks. And so what the Christian revelation shows is that the ultimate version of that sacrifice is actually self sacrifice. That in the ancient world, you had the sense in which you would sacrifice other things, right? You would sacrifice your children or whatever. Like, you'd sacrifice the animals, the children, you'd sacrifice things that are precious to you up towards the gods, and then you would get some kind of protection or some kind of cohesion in exchange, and what the Christian mystery shows is that the ultimate version of that is self sacrifice. And that's why the cross of Christ becomes like a revelation about how this relationship between the vertical and the horizontal meet. So then you can actually start to apply it in different things. And you think, well, actually you're right. It is self sacrifice, which is the real way, which heaven and earth bind. So think about anything that you participate in vertically, right? I don't know, you're a basketball player. You're playing for a basketball team. And so you realize that, wait a minute, like the way for the basketball team to function is I have to give myself to the purpose, to the higher purpose. So there's a higher purpose in this game. Obviously it's not a super high spiritual purpose, but it is a higher purpose, right? Cause it's what's binding us together. That's why we exist as a team. And so I give myself up. And if I do that, then I get the most out of the world. I get the most out of the team. And then it's like, “Oh, wait a minute.” So I could bind my family together with a scapegoat and it'll work. Like I can, if I have four kids. One of my kids could be the black sheep and we could just pile all our problems on that black sheep. Blame them for everything, say they're the reason for all our problems. And what it'll do is it'll bind your family together. It'll work like it'll actually work. But it's not the best way to do it. The best way to do it would be something like as a father I give myself to my family, and if I do that, then the binding is real. Like it has more weight. So it ends up being, the whole image of love becomes the cross. It's like it's an image of love at the center. 

AUBREY: So this, and that makes perfect sense. And I would say that actually there are alternate stories about the way to actually, beyond sacrifice as a way to both bind together and to offer yourself in service in a way. And the other side would be pleasure, right? Like the way to offer yourself in your sexuality is not service. So let's take the act of sexing. It's actually to go find your rapture and share your rapture and share your bliss and share your pleasure. Same with many games that we play, in which play, it's actually your joy, it's actually your enthusiastic, ecstatic experience, which is the antithesis of sacrifice, which implies pain or a cross, which is pies torture, but it's actually pleasure itself, which then facilitates more pleasure. And in many cases in basketball, I was a basketball player. So in many cases there are periods where sacrifice is necessary. You gotta take that charge. You got to dive for that loose ball. You got to fucking go, you got to go for it. But also that kind of the lightness of spirit, that little quick, you imagine the Jordan wink where he's just smiling and he's like really in the joy of that flow state is also contagious. And this is something that the Hebrew mysticism points to, they talk about Shekinah, which is an embodiment of what could be called Eros, which is like kind of the pleasure of creation, the creative pleasure of all of life and God. And so I guess I would just say that this story and the symbol makes sense for a worldview. But there's also alternate worldviews that are not mutually exclusive, but that can be kind of taken into consideration. 

JONATHAN: Yeah, well, I would say the way to see it is that the story of the cross, like the story of the crucifixion, is a limited story. It's a story of the most compressed version of what self sacrifice is. And then it also has in its story, especially in the crucifixion, it has resurrection as its result and the resurrection is a glorious resurrection, right? It's no longer a resurrection in pain. And so if you understand the crucifixion and the resurrection together as a single story, then you will find What it is you're talking about. So think about a lover, for example. It's a great example that you brought up. It's like the lover who only thinks of his own pleasure will actually have less pleasure in the long run. But the lover who will, let's say abstain to a certain extent or will, how can I say, will delay their pleasure in order to discover the pleasure of the other will find the surprise, that in that little self sacrifice there's more pleasure on the other side. And it's kind of like that with your family too. It's like if you at first it's kind of like “oh, okay so instead of, I don't know, like if instead of playing video games, I have to spend time with my kids” It's like, this is tough, I'm changing diapers, dude. This stinks like this is rough. But then it's like that moment gives way to something like a resurrection where all of a sudden it's like you discover this joy of having children that is beyond anything that you could have seen at the outset. So I think that if you understand the crucifixion and the resurrection together, it contains both of the elements you talk about this kind of rapture, because there is the description even of, Christ is also described as a lover right as there is this this whole relationship between christ and the soul of christ and the person as ultimately being this erotic relationship too. 

AUBREY: Yeah, I think I think that is a good way to kind of expand it and also show how both of those ideas can actually work together. And now one symbol isn't actually sufficient to explain the entire world, but it does illustrate one key thread to the story. And it almost reminds me of the marshmallow experiment, the thing that you just talked about, right? Like you tell a kid, you can eat this one marshmallow now. But if you hold on for five minutes, you'll get like five fucking marshmallows, the kid's like, ah, what do I do? And that ability to abstain for periods of time or make a sacrifice or not go for that quick hit of whatever dopamine or whatever chemical induced pleasure or whatever antithetical to your own life story and Dharma pleasure that you might get, if you can hold off from that, then the higher pleasures become available to you. And so it does tell, and I think one of the reasons why the story is so enduring is it does tell a truth that we actually know, like, “yeah, yeah, that's right.” 

JONATHAN: And it's funny because if you think about even in terms of a monk, for example, it's kind of funny if you ask yourself, who enjoys his meal more, right? A millionaire sitting at a banquet eating caviar. Or a monk who hasn't eaten in three days and eats a piece of bread. Who has more pleasure? 

AUBREY: True, true. 

JONATHAN: Yeah, it's crazy to think about it, but it's like there's something about like this idea of asceticism, how it actually surprises, the surprise that it actually yields more pleasure. I mean, that's why a lot of people have this kind of fasting, they have these fasting regimes or whatever. Or people who even in terms of sexuality will abstinence fast and do all this kind of stuff because they know that there's a sense in which there's a kind of compression that happens in sacrifice, which then yields to this, yeah, more, let's say, this more expansion after. Let's say, 

AUBREY: Yeah, I think it was either Buddha in one of his texts or at least reported to say, have few desires, but have great ones, so it's not like you're constantly seeking that quick hit, but you're patiently waiting. And it reminds me of the Epicurean teachings, teachings of Epicurus and the followers in antiquity. And my understanding from studying is that their life was largely about eating very simply, reading in the garden, enjoying a little bit of wine, but not never enough to get a hangover, except for rare occasions where they would go full dionysian. And then, it would be like almost aesthetic or just mild pleasures, simple foods, talking, playing, having time in the garden. And their whole goal was to maximize pleasure. And then occasional blowouts that were spaced out long enough that they could really, really enjoy it. And I think it's made kind of a profound influence on my own life. I've always kind of believed that where it was like, all right, keep it calm, keep it, work hard, do things and then every once in a while, and sometimes fast, every once in a while, just let loose and go to grab all the pleasure you possibly can. 

JONATHAN: Yeah, well, I think that even within, let's say, the church, you have this feasting, which always comes after the fast. So you have that even during the time of Easter, where people will fast rigorously for 30 days, the last week, sometimes some people go, even on dry fast for several days without water, even. And then comes the feast, after it, where it's like this, yeah, jubilation, let's say so and you can understand. So you can actually understand because people talk about how Christians have this idea of the afterlife, like you have to be ascetic now in order to have this fullness of joy in the afterlife. And if you see it as a pattern rather than just seeing it as a simple thing, as a pattern where it's like, I live in this pattern where I understand that I have to somewhat reserve myself in order to retain more pleasure later than men fractally, you can see it as something which will feed your everyday practice, you know? So it's not just that you're just holding yourself in order you went for when you die, but it becomes like a kind of overarching pattern for your life where it's like, okay, I understand that. It's not about immediate gratification, but that it is this, yeah, it's a balanced interaction with these things.

AUBREY: I suppose that there are other ways that you could look at it just to stay on this topic. I imagine, and I don't know because I wasn't there, but I imagine the Sufi mystics like Rumi and Hafiz. It seemed like they were able to kind of, in some ways, transcend may not be the right word, but transcend the hedonic tolerance effect of living in this kind of rapturous state. And I've only encountered one. Well, really one person who I'd call a mystic felt like a mystic to me. It was Don Miguel Ruiz. He comes from the Toltec tradition, wrote the book for agreements, mastery of love. And I watched him and every time, every night, we were there for seven days, every night at sunset, he would drink a glass of wine, and it looked to me like that was the greatest glass of wine he'd ever drunk in his whole life. And he would gaze at the sunset, and it would be like, he would be filled with wonder and awe, and just the joy of it. And it was the same sunset every night. It was actually remarkably consistent. And I thought to myself, like, “wow.” Like that seems like he almost broke through to another level of, cause I think what we're talking about is generally the reality, but it seems to me that there's a kind of different transcendent level in which you can be in a almost perpetual state of enjoyment. And I guess maybe this is what. Enlightenment is pointing to to some degree But I saw it in a much more sensual way and when I read Rumi and Hafiz I feel it in this more sensual erotic way of the transcendence of some of these self limiting hedonic forces 

JONATHAN: Well, for sure in the Sufi mystics, people read their poetry and they often think it's a great kind of erotic or essential poetry, but most of the time they're talking about God, like most of the time that's what they're talking about. And you see that in Dante as well. And this is the idea of sublimating. I mean, people degrade the idea of sublimating, but I think it's actually an interesting possibility, which is that we have in us this erotic power, this erotic energy. And that if it's directed, then it reaches its full potential. And there are different levels of direction. So it's like the idea that if you direct your love towards one person, then it concentrates and it becomes deeper and it actually yields greater goods, but that ultimately that. Ends up bringing you into something transcendent and it and the possibility that the highest form of Eros is directed towards towards God himself, you see that in the in the mystics, both in Dante and in the Sufi mystics where they actually transform their energy into into something higher and it's something like for a lot of the young guys. It feels like nobody's talking about that with them, and even I tell a lot of these young guys like this sexual energy that you have it can be directed. It's like the sexual energy you have, it's actually that which you can use to do good in the world that you can even accomplish your career. They used to say, the salesmen used to, the way that they were trained, they used to say, like, don't have sex the night before you close because you need that sexual energy to be directed towards something else. It's like, they don't say that anymore, but there's something about understanding that, which is that this energy that we have, it is ultimately sacred if it's directed properly.

AUBREY: Yeah, I think Rabbi Gaffney, who I study with, says that when the erotic is reduced to the sexual, it collapses. The sexual collapse under a weight that it cannot bear because the erotic is designed to be directed towards all of life. And the understanding of the divine in that sense is that, yes, it is in, kind of symbolized by Shekinah, which in that lineage is the goddess, but same thing, God having a gender, I think is a little bit silly, even though it can be helpful to understand it in certain ways. If you understand the symbolism of gender in general, and then applied to every bird, every flower, every bite of food, every conversation you have with somebody, and that's what Rumi was talking about when he was talking about the great beloved. But if you don't know that you think he's talking about a lover. Like a human lover, right? You think he's talking to his girlfriend, but yeah, no, he's talking to God and God as his girlfriend in every gust of wind and every flap of his robe and every glass of wine and so he's actually found a way to channel this, erotic impulse into the whole world. And that's allowed him the apparent transcendence and of course we didn't know him. He could have been a curmudgeon who was just great at poetry. But I imagine that it was authentic through and through. 

JONATHAN: Yeah, definitely I mean, I mentioned Dante before but you see that expect explicitly in Dante because he starts with, well, he starts with poetry, right? He starts with Virgil. It's like Virgil is the thing that draws him into the language of love. It's as if he perceived the possibility of love and arrows in Virgil and Virgil's poetry, but then that leads him to an actual person, right? Beatrice. But his love for Beatrice is not fulfilled like it's stunted. He doesn't get anywhere like with her and so that love gets carried up into higher virgins until he encounters the virgin as, let's say, the ultimate vision of the feminine. And the ultimate thing that his love of beatrice was driving him towards and then that opens the door up into the trinity itself and so, yeah, definitely. I think that this is something that many of the mystics have talked about. 

AUBREY: So you mentioned a little bit about the feminine and this brings me to a symbol that's very prescient and very alive right now. And it's the symbol of the hijab, the veil. And this is actually a symbol that's, in some ways, the centerpiece of a revolution that's happening right now. And it's one symbol. So I wanted to just hear your thoughts on this symbol and kind of how it's playing out in the world right now.

JONATHAN: Yeah, this is a touchy subject. So I think that understanding the veil as being related to the feminine is very important if you want to understand what the feminine is and what the veil is. And so you can understand, the mystery of the feminine is something which hides itself like that's what it does. And we also understand that the seduction or the seduction that the feminine like all symbols. The way that the feminine seduces is by this play of veiling and unveiling because the symbol shows itself, but it's not all of itself, right? And so it's always hiding and showing. And so it's true of all phenomena. So it's like the way in which God manifests himself in the world through instantiations, right? It's always availing and unveiling. So you see something and you glimpse through it. You glimpse something which is pulling but then it's always hiding itself. And so, this is actually the imagery of the feminine, which is why in most Western cultures, the moon is represented as feminine, because that's what the moon does, right? So the moon veils itself and unveils itself. It waxes and wanes, right? It moves between showing and hiding, and that's actually the mystery of the holy place. So you can understand that, like you talked about in mystical Judaism, the notion of the Shekinah, which is hidden behind veils. Behind these veils in the temple, which kind of show and hide at the same time. Because there's a manner in which the stark nakedness of the feminine is like, it's almost improper. It's improper because it's like a stark, you have to be prepared. Let's say it this way. If you're going to continue to use erotic language, there has to be preparation in order to come into the feminine space. If you encountering the stark feminine is more like a rape than it is this play of preparation in order to be able to encounter the feminine mystery and that 

AUBREY: And also, you can't see, if you're exposed to it constantly, you'll cease to see it. Like if you saw, from the masculine perspective, the heteronormative masculine perspective, if you continually had a woman with her legs spread in front of you for four hours straight, at hour, well, I don't know, it probably wouldn't even take that long at hour 45, you'd be like, all right, fucking over it. It'd be like, you'd be like a gynecologist. Who's no longer aroused. 

JONATHAN: You’re right.

AUBREY: It loses it. So you actually go blind. It'll actually blind you if you stare at it constantly. 

JONATHAN: And so that is, I mean, that is of course that's the symbol of the veil and the relationship between the veil and the feminine. And so the veil and the feminine is not just there in Islam. It's there in Christianity as well. The mother of God is always veiled in the way we represent her. And women in church, in traditional churches, would have been veiled in traditional Christian countries. And that veil would have more or less existed in different aspects of reality. So there's a sense in which it's like a treasure. That's the basic, maybe one of the best ways to understand it. It's like a treasure that has to be, how can I say this? You have to see it enough to know that it's valuable. But it has to be hidden enough also for you to know that it's valuable. So it's those two things. They'll say the seduction of the feminine. 

AUBREY: So yeah, it's like the best thing that's ever happened to eroticize breasts is shirts, like for real, I can't imagine that in those indigenous first nations tribes and cultures where women don't wear shirts that they find breasts so erotic. Or if they see one like they did in the Super Bowl when, who was it? Janet Jackson's nipple slipped out or whatever like that. It creates a historic 

JONATHAN: Everybody locked their mind

AUBREY: When you see 'em all the time, it's not there. So it's interesting to, of course, think about that. And I guess the reason that the symbol has become such a firebrand is, and I think it's important to explore this, but it's that there's a patriarchal, theocratic structure that's actually forcing women to be veiled. And I think that's what the symbol has now become, right? It's become like a symbol of, okay, maybe this makes sense in some ways, but let it be our choice.

JONATHAN: So, for sure the modern world has made it very complicated and like you said, the fact that it's a political tool in the world has made it very complicated. So I can understand what's going on in terms of that. So the idea that you could be beaten or that you could be mistreated because you're not wearing your veil. It's like, okay, so then what is this veil for, right? Is it this play with the mysterious feminine? Is it this revealing of the power and mystery of the feminine or is it just a tool for control? And so, yeah, I can have sympathy for what's going on in Iran, let's say. But I think that we also have to not let that shield from us, because one of the problems of the modern world, let's say, is actually the destruction of the feminine. It's actually the destruction of the true feminine in its power. And that in some place has to do with removal of veils. And so, the elimination of the private sphere, right? The cameras everywhere, the idea that everything has to be documented and everything has to be named, everything has to be filmed. Everything has to be accounted for is actually an affront on what the feminine has always offered the world which is a space of the hidden, a space of the private right a space. Where interactions are not public and where mysterious relationships, let's say, will reveal themselves in private. And so, the image, for example, the image of the politician who has an idea, and then the next morning, for some reason, has changed his mind. These are real things. Like, these are real transformations that happen in secret. And you see that in, what is it, I don't know if you saw that movie, ‘My Big Fat Greek Wedding’. Like, there's a really wonderful saying, where the lady tells her daughter, she says “the man is the head of the household, but the woman is the neck and she makes the man look wherever she wants.” So there's a sense in which the relationship of power in the private space is very different and it has always been very different in every society in the world. But now it's like this weird place where we want to put everything, make everything public. We want to make everything legislated. So even the idea of legislating the veil, it's a crazy thing, which will lead to what we're seeing now. It's not. Yeah. It's a situation of extremes, we could say. 

AUBREY: And I think this is a global reclamation of sovereignty in which those with less physical force, one of the reasons why women were actually subjugated for so long and oppressed for so long was actually because of, originally, physical strength. And then the discrepancy in physical strength and that whole paradigm is actually now ready to be shifted where physical might does not determine dominance and all beings are treated sovereignly and equally and have equal power. And so I think this is a very important reclamation of sovereignty and power of the feminine to bring the power of the feminine back into equality with the power of the masculine, to bring the circle and the line into harmony. Circle representing the feminine, line representing the masculine. Consciousness brings that all together or two wings, the left and right wing of the bird or the merger of the masculine and feminine into healthy balance. And I think people sense that there's more to be done globally and I believe they're very right. There's more to be done globally to actually empower the feminine. And so this one symbol is now being burned. And in some ways, I guess in the seventies and sixties bras were getting burned for a very similar reason. They felt like it was a symbol of oppression that was kind of culturally, not theoretically or not legislated, but it was culturally kind of indoctrinated and everybody burned them. And now, women wear bras because they don't want their breasts to bounce around when they're working out. You know what I mean? It's not like they burden their sports bra. They're like, ah, fuck this oppression. They're like, no, it's actually helpful when I'm running, you know? And so I think this actually gives the space potentially for the voluntary choice of, oh yeah, actually the veil's kind of cool. The veil's kind of sexy, but it has to be my choice as a woman to choose that. 

JONATHAN: Yeah. We'll see. It's hard. Like everything is so radicalized into opposites that it's very difficult. And so it's as if we have to choose between an autocratically imposed way of dressing that goes as crazy as the burka or the niqab where it's like the woman just doesn't exist and then burning these veils. I can understand the feeling and I can understand the problem. I often say that feminism in the 20th century was a reaction to hyper masculine industrial revolution and hyper masculine vision of what the world was. But the idea that women will free themselves from the oppression of men, we'll see. It's a difficult thing because if we look at our situation right now, that leads to women just not having kids anymore. Like that's the situation we're in. We're in a situation where we're actually in demographic decline. And part of it is because we've had this public thing, like this public situation where we feel like we have to. So, let's say a good example would be the idea of equality. Like there's a difference between equality and sameness. 

AUBREY: Of course. 

JONATHAN: So there's a sense in which you could be equal under the law, let's say, but that doesn't mean that you're equal in every respect. There's a difference between masculine and feminine, which has to be embodied in the world. And if it's not, it leads to the end of society. It leads to people not having kids anymore. And then if no one has kids, then humanity stops. It's like just a pretty simple thing. And so I don't know, like in Iran, what the resolution will be, but I know that for us, at least what happened in the sixties has really led to a demographic collapse. Even if I can understand, sympathize with the frustration of watching the feminine be devalued in the modern age more and more. And where the role of the feminine became almost nothing. And the only thing that mattered was making money and being a good businessman and everything. That's all the only thing that mattered. The modern age doesn't have reverence for the feminine as you would see in the ancient world or in the Middle Ages, but sadly I feel like what happened in the sixties has led to a serious problem that I don't know how we're going to solve. 

AUBREY: Isn't it just a kind of a natural phenomenon? And if you go to the hermetic principle of rhythm, in some ways that when there's something that's out of balance one way, the pendulum doesn't swing to stasis. It doesn't swing, that's the hardest thing for it to go. It can't go from balanced oppression to. Actually now everything's in perfect balance. It actually has to swing a little bit too far to the other side and maybe hopefully not quite as far to the other side. And then it swings back the other way. Not quite as far as it was before. And eventually the pendulum over time slows down to an actual place of stasis and balance. So it seems to me like this may actually be necessary, just look. According to the law of the principle of rhythm, like it's going to swing a little far one way and it needs to, and then it'll swing back the other way. And hopefully not as far. And then eventually over time, overcorrection after over correction, finally, there'll be a stasis and balance, but that may not even be a balance that we see in our lifetime. But if we look at this as part of the historical evolution of something, it's just kind of the way of things. 

JONATHAN: Yeah. I agree with you. I agree that in some ways that's what's going on. I do feel though that, at least now, the pendulum seems to be swinging further, let's say further rather than closer to the center in both directions. But you're right that ultimately it can't hold, like the pendulum at some point, maybe the pendulum falls off, it's completely off, it's anchor and then a new pendulum will have to appear, something like that. But for sure it can't, it has to move ultimately in the big, let's say, big picture. It does have to kind of find its balance. You're right. There's no way around that one 

AUBREY: For sure. One of the things that I'm super eager to talk to you about, just to jump into something else is you wrote a really, I thought, brilliant and illuminating article about technology and the return of the old gods. And I had never really explored that correlation. So I was hoping instead of me trying to summarize some of the different aspects of that, I was hoping you could kind of give a bit of the thesis that you shared in that essay, and we could dive into it together.

JONATHAN: Did I write that? I don't think I wrote that though. I think it’s someone else.

AUBREY: Is that not in the summary?

JONATHAN: It's on the Symbolic World website, but I don't think it was a contributor on this website, but I can tell you what 

AUBREY: That's my bad. 

JONATHAN: No worries, but it's fine 

AUBREY: Because it's your website, right? 

JONATHAN: Yes, it is my website. But the website has participation from different people on the website, but it's fine. So it's written by Robin Phillips and it's a wonderful article. For sure, people need to check it out. But the reason why it's on the website is because it is also, let's say, reflecting on thoughts that I've had, like thoughts that I've talked about. That's why we published that article. So definitely encourage everybody to go read it, but I can tell you a little bit about, at least the relationship between technology and the gods or technology and the old gods, if you want. So at least a way to kind of understand technification, it's that it's something which has happened before, and it's something which we don't, maybe not to the same extent as it's happening now, but it's something that has happened before. And it's written in different myths and in different The Bible, and in different legends about how that happens. And the one that is the most known, let's say, in terms of the Christian worldview is this idea of the book of Enoch. Or the way in which Genesis leads all the way to the flood. And so the way to understand it is that Cain, Cain kills his brother and then finds a city. And you see that reflected in other myths like Romulus and Remus, where Romulus kills his brother and finds a city. And you see it in Cain where he gets, he kills his brother and then he gets exiled. So because of that, he has to found a city. He creates a walled city in order to protect himself from the dangers of the world. So what he does is he increases his power. And that is seen at least in the tradition. Also at the same time this idea that his descendants have a relationship with angels. So you can see that as a relationship with the ancient gods or principalities you could say that's the way to understand it. And so the way to understand it is that there are patterns in the world. And that there are true patterns, just things that manage reality. You can understand it scientifically if you want. You have these patterns that exist in the world that are kind of legislating reality. And the way that the ancients, many of the ancients saw it is that you can grab those patterns in order to make yourself stronger. So you grab patterns in the world that you see, and then you use it to increase your power. But there's a sense in which once you've done that. Then, those patterns have a will of their own, you could say. And they have a reality which is beyond your own personal will for why it is you did that in the first place. One of the best examples of that is the genie story. The genie story is actually a beautiful example of that, where you encounter a spirit, which is contained in a lamp, right in a container, like a technical thing. And then the spirit says, what do you want? I'll give you what you want. And so you answer, you say, well, I want this, but what you don't realize, because you're actually submitted to your own desires, is that the thing you want has corollaries, which you didn't think about because you're blind to your desire. So I want this and then that plays itself out and then you get all the side effects of what you wanted, right? The story of king Midas is another example. Where it's like, “what do you want king Midas?” “Well, I want everything I touch to turn to gold”, but he doesn't realize that that has a side effect, which is part of the actual desire that he asked for and then it lays itself out. So that sounds a lot really abstract, but it's not abstract at all. So think about cars, cars are a great example. So we find this power in the world, this pattern, the motor, we invent a combustion motor and it's like this powerful thing. And we're like “Oh, we can increase our power in the world to go faster, to move, to different places.” So we created the automobile. And we want the automobile because it makes us go faster and makes us more powerful, but then we don't realize that it actually will ultimately destroy the community. Because at some point you start to now act in relationship to the automobile. You start to create city planning in relationship to the automobile. So your whole city planning is based on highways and roads. And instead of having a town center with people in a community that know each other, that work together towards a common goal with one church in the middle and the fields around. Then you start to specialize the world. And then you have the suburbs with all these people that don't know each other that live together. You have the shopping center where all the stores are. So then you live in a place where you don't know anybody. And you have no community. Community is over and it's like that was all contained secretly in the automobile. So a good way to understand is that it really is like a little god, that has a will. And then it plays itself out. And once it starts to set its feet in the world, you can understand them as giants. That's the way that the old ancient people understood it. It gives birth to giants. And then these giants, they actually invert their relationship at some point. And at some point they start to actually devour people. So now instead of the car serving us, we serve the car. And our whole society is actually serving the need of the automobile and it's inverted the relationship. So you can see that in many types of techno technological beings. And we're seeing it, especially now with AI. AI is the ultimate version of that, where it's like, imagine what we did with the car, but now we're doing that with intelligence and knowledge. And we're increasing our intelligence and knowledge through Google, through all these intelligent systems. And we think that it's there to serve us. But ultimately what we're noticing, and I think most people are starting to see it now, is that the causality is inverting and AI is going to play itself out. You can't stop it anymore. Nobody can stop AI from happening. People can scream and warn that AI is dangerous, that it can get out of control, all these things. But once the giant has its boots in the world,iIt's almost impossible to stop it. So if someone says, “well, I don't want to participate in AI”, well, fine. Someone else will, because you make money, they'll make a lot of money doing it. So it's going to happen. And then that it's something like, especially for the AI part, because it's dealing with intelligence. At some point, it's going to start to act like a God, whether it is or not, it doesn't matter. Cause people ask me like, will AI be conscious? Who cares? It doesn't matter if it's conscious. It only matters how we act with it. If we act as if it's conscious, it'll do enough damage. If we act as if it's intelligent, more intelligent than us and that it can manage us, it'll do all the damage it would do whether it's conscious or not.

AUBREY: So I want to bracket that topic. Cause I'd love to dive in a little deeper with you on it, but I want to talk about an intermediary place that we're in right now. And I think one of the points that the article makes was, right now, part of the old God is, part of these old Gods, that are being resurrected is there's these social media algorithms and social media have become integrated deeply into our lives. And is also a pattern that is used to generate power. I mean, one of the ways that people listen to a podcast or that you actually can sell products or offer the world, your ideas and your worldview and everything is through actually harnessing the power of social media, which is subject to these algorithms. And so you have to appease the God of basically meta or Facebook or whoever, whatever, Twitter or whatever thing you're playing. But there's a lot of opacity. There's a lot of misunderstanding about, all right, well, what are the algorithms actually want and what is actually a community guideline and what is not a community guideline. If the article talks about the difference between the word vaccination and inoculation, how one of them, you can get censored for. If you use that word, you'll get a warning label on it. But if you use a different word, like inoculation, which is a synonym in many ways, obviously, it has two meanings. Slightly different meanings, but you can avoid this kind of punishment from the system of the old God. So in many ways, they're capricious, like the stories of the old gods were. You could get on Zeus's bad side, or you could get on Hera's bad side, even if you didn't really deserve it. But they were just, you were on their bad side, and you got punished. And this is why

JONATHAN: And there's no single person controlling them. And that's also important for people to understand. It's like a weird distributed decision making and distributed cognition, which is why you could also understand that the best way to describe it would be something like a principality or a God that is managing it because there's no one person you can appeal to. It's very difficult to think about. And there's not even one human will, which is part of it. It's like a weird conjoining of attention and human will and social fashions and ideological possession, all these things kind of coming together in these strange means.

AUBREY: But isn't the problem though, when there is human interview, like I understand that the general energy of it is to maximize time on platform. It's to maximize attention. And actually that makes perfect sense. And I'm like, fair game. All right. The old gods are playing by the rules, but at some point, programmers, whoever's dictating what the programmers program are programming that certain content with certain words violates community guidelines, which are completely obscure and opaque, and there's no real appeal system, but there's a way in which human will is interfering with kind of the natural evolution of these algorithmic gods. And that's where I think people find like, “no, no, no, this is not fair play anymore.”

JONATHAN: Yeah, no, you're right. But the problem is that this is the crux, is that you can't avoid it. So this is the problem of attention. So one of the issues with these social media platforms and Google and pretty much everything that is related to information is that information is indefinite. It's indefinite. You have to classify it. There's no way around it. And you can only classify based on hierarchies of meaning and hierarchies of goods. There's just no way around it. I don't know if you remember, like, in the early days of search engines, you were always like two clicks away from porn, no matter what it is, you typed in the thing, you would type anything. And because there was so much of it that it was just overwhelming the system. So they had to create hierarchies of attention in order to avoid the, say, the flood of all the dark stuff. And so it's right there at the outset. Now I think that a lot of the people that started didn't know that that's what was going to happen. They didn't realize that they were actually going to have to create something like a spiritual hierarchy in order to organize their information and in order to manage attention. Now, like you said, the problem with that is that they, these platforms, it's not like they're oriented towards God, oriented towards the truly transcendent or oriented towards the love that is the source of wellbeing. Like they were ultimately at the outset oriented towards making money, which is already a problem. And now they're being infected with politics. And politics is becoming the highest point that they're able to master. And so these platforms are becoming ideologically possessed and they're acting in that way, but they're doing it in a very dark way. Because like you said it's almost like the best way to get you, it really is like 1984. It's like the best way to get you to manage your behavior based on what I want is to actually have you guessing all the time what it is that I want. It's way better, I can manage you way better if I'm capricious, and I'm making you always guess at what it is, what the rules exactly are. Because then you almost end up in a state of a worshiper that is constantly, like jumping on one leg and the other, trying to appease the God. Not sure exactly what will appease the God, but it's like someone like you said, like some animistic culture of people like trying to sacrifice different things in order to appease these gods, it's much better. They can control you way more that way by saying, it's like, why is it that and then once in a while having someone appear with like they're totally canceled, the YouTube account is deleted. And they never know, they never know why they're never told why it doesn't matter. 

AUBREY: It's like excommunication, it's excommunication from this ideology, from the church in some ways. That's what canceling is or getting de platformed. It's excommunication. And then there's heretical ideas. When we saw this during COVID, if you were propagating what they deemed as heresy, you would get excommunicated. But ultimately, the idea was actually coming from a top down source of some kind of what it could be, technocratic, theocratic, science, they were pretending that it was all science based, but the science was also very confusing and conflicting, and it seemed very much more political. So, it was like, okay, this is heresy, and therefore, if you commit the sin of heresy, you will get excommunicated. I mean, didn't Jordan Peterson just get kicked off fucking Twitter? 

JONATHAN: Yeah. He got banned from Twitter. 

AUBREY: That's insane. I mean, from my understanding, I don't always agree with everything he says, but his arguments are extraordinarily cogent, like extraordinary.

JONATHAN: He basically got banned from Twitter because he dead-named someone. That's what it is. 

AUBREY: And explain what that is. 

JONATHAN: What Deadnaming is, is that if someone is transitions to another gender, then if you use their old name, it's called Deadnaming and it's extremely destructive and it can lead someone to suicide supposedly. So if you do that, you have to fully accept their new identity and new name. And if you dead name them, then you can get banned from these platforms. 

AUBREY: Wow. And without warning or recourse, you do this one time. 

JONATHAN: And they don't tell you that's why they're doing it. They just say, we've come to the conclusion that you've broken our community guidelines. So this is the thing, Aubrey, is that religion is inevitable. This is one of the things I try to help people understand is that you need hierarchies of attention. You need to organize the world in hierarchies of goods, of values, of virtues. This is something which you cannot avoid. And if we try to avoid it, it's going to come back to us in very strange and disturbing ways. And that's what we're seeing now. We're seeing the religious flood back in, but in a very dark and strange manner. And so the question is, what is it that we worship, is what we have to start asking ourselves. Because we do, we end up having to worship something. You end up having to have something which is the supreme good to which you submit the other goods. And that can happen at smaller levels, right? It's like, what is the good that binds your family together? You have to be able to at least intuitively grasp it so that you will continue to exist. But it's like that for everything. And sadly right now we have these very strange goods that are taking over the ideological space. And we have to worship it. If you don't worship certain things then you're excommunicated 

AUBREY: Yeah, it's very difficult to get along if you don't have any understanding of shared value of the good

JONATHAN: That's right

AUBREY: The beautiful. And it seems like this is one of those cases where actually, what you were mentioning before, where actually the pendulum is actually just tilting, farther and farther towards more extremism in certain cases is actually the difference of opinion of values itself. That's actually creating an increase in polarity. So it's almost like the pendulum is being drawn higher and higher and higher on one side and also at the same time higher on the other side at least in what is being portrayed. And I often question whether the actuality of this divisiveness is real, or whether it's just exaggerated by those forces that actually feel that divisiveness and increased polarity is beneficial to their political or corporate design.

JONATHAN: Yeah, or even just corporate. I think, it's like, I actually give Twitter and Facebook the benefit of the doubt. I think Zuckerberg is just a naive techie. Like that's my take. But what they didn't realize is that they're playing with attention and attention is actually the thing which constitutes the world, it's actually the thing which constitutes reality. And they've subjugated attention to money. The purpose of their companies is to make money. And basically, at first it was like, all we need to do is keep people on our platforms as much as possible. That's all we need. And so we'll let the algorithm run and just play it out. So that whatever can get people to stay on our platform as long as possible, that's what makes us the most money and that's true for Facebook and it's true for Twitter. But what slowly started happening is that actually rage and division hatred? That's the quickest fix to attention. The quickest fix to attention is rage. And so, then they realize that and they're like, Oh, well, we can't have that. We can't have this. So then it starts to get strangely ideologically possessed where it's only in one direction, I guess, that you're allowed to be angry because they can't handle the monster they've created. They don't know what to do with it. So it becomes a political tool, but there isn't an easy way out of this problem. Like Twitter, especially. Twitter is the worst. Like, Twitter is horrible. It's a monstrous thing. The things you can do on Twitter, the fact that you can drag anybody into any conversation is a crazy, crazy thing.

AUBREY: Yeah, it's a very interesting and complex situation that we find ourselves in for sure. 

JONATHAN: But I'm on Twitter, by the way. So, I use Twitter. 

AUBREY: Of course, and therein lies the dilemma. It's like in order to function, we have to use these tools that are provided to us at the same time. Oftentimes using the same platform to talk about the challenges with that platform, because that's the way that we actually can convey our messages. It's an interesting situation we find ourselves in for sure. And I want to open up that bracket that we talked about with a supreme AI. And I'm often curious about this, right? Because right now we have, kind of intermediary AI where it's almost there, but it's not the full Monty, so to speak. It's not like complete supreme artificial intelligence that continues to maximize its intelligence, exponentially over and over. And I wonder if that could actually be. And I don't know, I haven't thought this through fully, nor I don't know if anybody could, I wonder if that could actually find a real understanding and be able to offer a actual shared system of value, that it would come to that conclusion naturally by based on all of the different data points that it could actually be like not only one of the old gods that are capricious, but actually like one of the great God, like, be like God itself. And understand that love is what actually animates life and is what is necessary and communitas and all of these things and all of these virtues are what is needed to sustain human life and life on the planet and be shepherds for life. I'm curious, I mean, a lot of people have a lot of fear around supreme AI, and I understand that, because it could certainly go dark as well. I could see that potentially, but if it really was gathering all of the intelligence of the cosmos, would it not come to the truth? Or could it not come to the truth?

JONATHAN: Okay, so let's look at that. Let's look at that. Is it gathering intelligence? What is it gathering? It's gathering information. It's a quantitative process. And so it gathers information. The quality that the AI can access is always given to it by humans, even like the little AI's that we deal with. Like if you look at the algorithms that the social media platforms use, they have to farm intelligence so they can gather data, but they have to farm intelligence with people because people are the ones that provide intelligence. And so, I just see it. So even look at how the AI systems are developing images right now. Cause everybody's posting these images. It's all a gathering infusion of all this quantity into just these chimeras, these kind of weird mixed images that are not quite. And because the AI doesn't know what a face is. It doesn't have that qualitative aspect, and what it has is humans telling it, this is a better image. This is a better image. Base it on that. And so actually, the quality of the AI is always brought in by humans. And so I think that AI will always be a kind of fake intelligence ultimately. 

AUBREY: So based on what you're saying, it makes me believe that it'll be a reflection of the current state of consciousness in the macro, right? Because if humans are continually informing it, it will be a God that is the aggregation of all human thought, which is fucking terrifying, actually. 

JONATHAN: That’s really terrifying. I hope you understand that that's terrifying. You can imagine like if let's say you had, I don't know, you had the AI quality being given by a monastery somewhere on the top of a mountain, you could imagine that maybe it would give something better, but the fact that it's just an it just aggregates, it's plugged into the Internet and just aggregates the Internet. And then humans will tell it like what's the good thing and what's the bad thing? Like it's not telling it that, but because the humans are selecting, then they end up selecting the things which humans will think is good. But it's also selecting the things that humans “want”, and what humans want, and especially if it happens at large, is very dark. If there's no hierarchy, it's very dark. 

AUBREY: I also understand that for me personally, I wouldn't understand nor believe in God if I hadn't gone on my own psychedelic medicine path, which I started at the Vision Quest when I was 18. It's been 23 years working with the great medicines of the world, and I've had direct, unmediated experience with God. So if somebody asked me, and I don't expect anybody to believe me, but if somebody asked me, do you believe in God? It's a laughable question. It's like, I know God. I've felt God move through me. And I and it contacted and felt that experience, which is indescribable and ineffable, and there's no question in my mind, is God exists? Now, if you want me to describe it, well, that's a much more difficult task. But to know it, is actually to know at least, from my own limited perspective, what I can know about the infinite presence, then I have at least some understanding, at least the understanding that I could filter through my senses and my cognition and my story making abilities, but without machine learning able to contact the numinous at all. Or have any felt sense. Cause I think we're always at some level in contact with the divine, in contact with something that cannot be reduced to binary code. Like we always are. And all of their spiritual experiences are influenced to some degree by that. And I think in my opinion, psychedelics can just open a window where you can get a much larger aperture to actually experience what is always present and is always there. Without that, that's also scary. Because I think you do, to understand God, which is to understand value, which is to understand truth, which is to understand love and beauty and all of that, which is contained in my understanding, contained in the divine and without any ability to access that unmediated, that's also a serious detriment to the potential goodness of AI.

JONATHAN: I mean, I agree with you in principle. I'm not the psychedelic guy myself. I agree with you in principle in terms of the idea of the qualitative and the numinous and accessing that direct experience. I totally agree. My understanding is that there seems to be a relationship actually, like between AI and psychedelics, like in the sense that this image of the, what are they? The clockwork elves or this image of the technical being that some people encounter during their psychedelic experiences. There seems to be a relationship between that and what people want or imagining AI to be. So I don't know if you have any thoughts on that. 

AUBREY: Yeah. The legendary DMT elves, I don't know. I've done more DMT than most and never encountered any elves, but I think really what you're seeing is a bit of the hermetic principle of as within, so without, as above, so below. I think you're also seeing what you're projecting onto the outer worlds and what, as much as what the outer worlds are projecting onto you. So if you have, if part of your pantheon, let's say is inherently, kind of associated with a kind of more technocratic understanding and mechanistic understanding of things. I think you're probably more likely to experience those types of beings. It's a very complicated relationship where it's both what's inside you and potentially also what's outside of you, but those are also the same thing. It's like the paradox of multiplicity and oneness, how they can both be looked, simultaneously, or that you're not a drop in the ocean, you're the ocean in a drop. But you're also both, a drop in the ocean and an ocean and the ocean in a drop. So I would say, probably to answer that riddle, it has a bit more to do with the type of person that encounters it. Cause I'm in a lot of circles where through ayahuasca or through smoked mimosa or other different types of DMT experiences, I haven't actually talked to anybody who's encountered, well, actually I have, I've encountered, I had one friend who's encountered some DMT elves. It's very interesting. It seems both cultural and also internal, depending on what you might experience from a certain thing. But potentially that is potentially this technocracy, this technology as a God is actually playing in our psyche like a God. And actually, Psychedelics will start to open up a pathway to see the world through that lens because it's actually what we see, subconsciously in our own psyche.

JONATHAN: Yeah, like I said, I'm not the psychedelic guy, but we'll see. Let me say it this way, like in terms of there seems to be, the notion of psychedelics, there's this idea of supplementarity, right? This idea is like, I take this substance, I encounter God. So it's like, I take this mushroom and then I have a spiritual experience. The day, the more traditional Christian manner to have a traditional spiritual experience would be like deny your sins, fast pray. Do vigils all night and then for months and then at some point through that kind of let's say spiritual effort and spiritual work, then you will have mystical experiences, but the mystical experiences are actually not the point. Like for monks, they actually tell you to ignore your mystical experiences as much as possible. That the point is to become, let's say ontologically go up the ladder, be transformed to something else. And so the AI thing is also something like that. Like, it's like, we're going to build a machine. We're going to make this thing. We're going to have this material thing. We don't take it, but we're going to build it. And then it'll be our vehicle towards the transcendent, let's say. And so in that sense, that's why I see there's also a relationship even beyond the elves, which I think are part of, actually somewhat part of it, but that there's an idea of like this physical shortcut towards the divine maybe is the way to kind of understand it's like we're going to build this machine and it's going to become a God for us. I don't know if you see the connection. Maybe you don't. 

AUBREY: Yeah. I mean,  I don't know. I think it is interesting. I see how in many ways, I do think that psychedelics can be a shortcut. But the question is, is it a shortcut to the actual divine, or is it a shortcut to your own ideas that are actually misleading you in a way that's not helpful? And certainly for my life, it's been nothing but helpful, beautiful, and increased my capacity. Like, you shall know a tree by its fruits. What are the fruits? I'd love people more. I care for people more. I see myself in them, like love your neighbor as thyself. Like, okay, well, what's helped me to do that? Well, my path, my prayer has been these medicine journeys. So the fruits of these labors has led me to more virtue in my life unequivocally. There's just no denying that. But it's not only psychedelics, it's breath work, it's ecstatic dance. I mean, you think of the whirling dervishes, they didn't take anything. They just danced for a while. You think of the Sundance rituals, the fasting, the dancing, the piercing, you think of these many rituals, which can lead you to an ecstatic communion with the divine. There's many different ways and differences of opinion about the virtue of both of those things. But I think you have to come back to, like, you shall know a tree by its fruits. What is this actually bringing to your life? Are you more loving, compassionate, kind? Does laughter fall from your lips more easily? Or less easily? Is it leading to inflation because it's not like psychedelics or panacea, right? Oftentimes I've seen them lead to massive levels of dysregulation and inflation of ego. And the fruits of these have not have not been beneficial. And I think that's because the soil was not prepared for that particular type of seed. And that's really the way to look at it. So it is to me, it's a complicated issue because of the relationship of the individual and the medicine itself. And really like in that example, the soil and the water and the sunlight leading to the seed, which may be the medicine, the psychedelic and then the tree. And then that leads to the fruits. What are the fruits? Well, if the water's poisoned, which is the inputs of your community and the sunlight, which is the ideas you have of the divine. And if your soil was actually with pesticides that were washed through because your body was unhealthy in a variety of ways. There's ways in which the fruits can become toxic as well. And so that's kind of how I would look at that path as it pertains to what's happening. And I think for many people, it is. The fruits are leading to a revolution of consciousness, which I think gives me great hope in potentially steering this new AI monster that seems fucking inevitable that somehow through one way or another, we have to become more conscious, more loving, more kind, and less egocentric and selfish and less ethnocentric also, we can't just consistently focus on the tribe, we have to be more cosmocentric, or global centric, where we're looking at the whole world, the whole cosmos in our picture, and that's going to be necessary and probably even more necessary given the fact that we're going to be building our God based upon our own level of consciousness, which is something that just illuminated to me. It's like the pressure's on right now. Like we got to show up. We got to get better

JONATHAN: Well, it's the ancient world the way that they would do it is it's interesting because it's very similar to what's going on now. That if you think of the way that they would build the statue and then they would open its nostrils, right? And they would blow into, like the idea that the god would enter into the statue, and then the statue would become the center of the temple. And people would come and circumambulate and worship and offer sacrifices to this thing. And so sometimes it feels that way, like we're building the body of a god, in a way that is way more than what happened in the ancient times. There's a story in the book of Revelation, which seems to point to something like this. I'm not saying that it's AI, I'm just saying the structure of the story seemed to be pointing like that. Where there is this story of the dragon who makes war in heaven and then with its tail it wipes a certain amount of the stars which fall down into earth. And then you have to imagine that it's the angels or the gods that fall onto the earth. And then this dragon comes out of the sea, this beast, which is the, let's say, the coming from the dragon comes out of the sea. And then it makes the level, these different beasts that are related to this and one of them makes an image of the beast. And it makes a statue basically of the beast. And then the beast, the statue speaks and because the statue speaks and everybody worships the statue. And that leads basically to the, let's say the kingdom of antichrist, something like that. And so in a way that it feels like there's something like that going on, because when you say we have to be more globally conscious and more cosmically conscious, I think that that's something a lot of people are talking about. And in some ways I think that actually worries me because I think that the symbolic structure is a fractal structure. It's one which doesn't deny the Tribal, let's say. The tribal is allowed to exist in communion with higher participations, right? So it's not like we deny these levels in order to get to the top one. It embodies itself at all these levels. So it's like you're a person in a family, in a community, in a tribe, in a group, in a religion, all these things kind of lay themselves out. And I'm worried that in a way what exactly what you're saying, is what AI will be, it'll be like a global thing, something which will be so smart and so impressive that it will impose itself as a God over, but I don't see that as being good, to be honest with you. 

AUBREY: Yeah. If in this case the beast or a beast creates an idol in its image and it speaks through that and is worshiped as a God, then we're worshiping a beast. And that's 

JONATHAN:  Well, especially if the Beast, the thing that's driving the birth of the beast, is money. Like the thing that's driving AI is financial gain. It's like, whoever it edges that out, whoever comes on the edge of that is going to reap massive, massive rewards. And everybody knows that and people are willing. So it's like Elon Musk, who says basically, I've been warning you forever. And now because I'm noticing everybody's going in this direction, then I have to play along, at least to a certain extent, because I don't wanna fall behind. And there's gonna be a lot of that. So I don't see the motivation behind AI. Honestly, I don't see the motivation behind Google. And the things that are going to lead to AI as being benevolent. 

AUBREY: Yeah. What you were mentioning about the necessity to both include and transcend different levels of consciousness from the self to the community to all people and then in Cosmocentric, there's a beautiful song from the songs of Solomon, the fourfold song of Solomon. And if you don't mind me spending three minutes reading, it actually talks about this in probably the most eloquent way that I've ever heard. “There is a one who sings the song of his soul and in his soul, he finds it all. Full, complete spiritual satisfaction. And there is a one who sings the song of her people. She leaves the zone of her personal soul, which she doesn't find wide enough and not settled in ideal serenity, and attaches herself with tender love to the totality of her tribe. And together with her people, she sings. She suffers their pains, and she takes delight in their hopes. She ponders high and pure ideas about their past and their future, and she investigates with love and the wisdom of the heart. The inner content of their soul. And there is a one who widens his soul even further until it expands and spreads beyond the boundary of tribe to sing the song of humanity. His soul is continuously enlarged by the genius of humankind and the glory of this divine image. He aspires towards man's universal purpose and participates in his higher wholification. And from this living source does he draw the entirety of his thoughts and explorations, his aspirations and his visions. And there is a one who rises even further than this in expansion until she joins herself in unity with all of existence in its totality, with all creatures and with all worlds. And together with all of them she gives forth a song. And this is the one who engages daily in a chapter of song, who is promised that she lives in the emergent world. And there is a one who rises with all these songs. Together, in one unity, and all of them send forth their voices. All together they play their melodies, and each pour vigor and life into the other. The sound of jubilance and the sound of joy. The sound of celebration and the sound of exultance. The sound of rejoicing and the sound of holiness. The song of the soul, the song of the tribe, the song of humankind, the song of the cosmos, all float together within him, all the time, at every moment. And this completeness in its fullness rises to become the song of holiness. A simple song, a double song, a threefold song, a fourfold song. The song of songs of Solomon, to the king to whom wholeness belongs.” 

JONATHAN: Yeah, that's a nice image of how the world kind of fits together like a series of embedded dolls, I'd say. 

AUBREY: Yeah, and you run into trouble if you try to skip a stage. Then you really can't. And it's also not true. It's that idea that if you don't love yourself, you won't have the love to actually love other people. You'll be in constant deficit. It's the same idea. You have to sing the song of your own soul, sing the song of your family, your tribe, sing the song of all people, sing the song of the world. And when you get those out of order, you get very strange behavior that's out of alignment with actually a system of values that really makes sense. 

JONATHAN: No, you're right. Let's say, the right way to understand. And I think that that's something that we can do today. It's like a lot of people are wondering, like, what can we do? What can we do? And I think that aligning those things together is definitely something that we can do. Aligning yourself with your family and aligning your family with your community. And just fitting all that together is something that we can do. Without thinking that we can change the world and we can change these large narratives that are huge or like the environment or the economy or whatever, we can't fix those things, but we can definitely, like you said, you can fix ourselves. And then scale that up slowly towards. And then the reverberations of that, you'd be surprised at how much they can be, they can reverberate more than you think. Because we all know that communities hold together through saints to people that embody that right. And therefore people congregate around them and the world actually gets built around people that have that figured out. And so just becoming more yourself might be enough to save the world, maybe not completely, but at least play your part in saving the world, let's say.

AUBREY: As we come to a close here, what's a symbol that is something that you use to remind yourself of some values, some truth, some beauty? Is there something that you're particularly drawn to just personally? 

JONATHAN: Yeah, well, I mean, I'm definitely, I would say the thing that I'm most drawn to is definitely the image of Christ. I make icons for people who don't know. One of the things I do is I actually make religious images for churches. It's one of my jobs. And that image I think is one that I love to gaze upon and to contemplate as an image of that place where heaven and earth meet but also in some ways, it's the reflection of a man as well. Like it's actually a human face looking back at me. And when I say that the image of Christ is a symbol, of course, I'm not saying that Jesus didn't exist, I'm not saying any of that. I believe symbols are instantiated in real things, like they actually find a body in the real world. And so that image for me is kind of, I would say, the one that I like to gaze upon to remind myself of what's important. 

AUBREY: Yeah, everything can only be understood in paradox, in the paradox of Jesus Christ. Jesus, Yeshua, the guy, and the Christ, which is the energy that is accessible, that all of us have at least the potential to access within ourselves, and how he was the first symbol of the one who joined Jesus, the man, with the Christ, and that is, of course, one of the most powerful symbols I think the world has ever the world has ever come upon.

JONATHAN: Yeah. Well, thanks for the opportunity to talk to you. In some ways, in many, in very different worlds. And so I was curious to know, like, what does he want to talk to you about? But it was an interesting conversation. 

AUBREY: No doubt. As it was destined to be, I think so. I really really enjoyed it. So where can people find you and dive in? Of course, I mentioned the website where I misattributed the author. My apologies to, I believe his name was Robert. 

JONATHAN: No worries. But that is the best place to find me, so you can look at thesymbolicworld.com and there, like most of the stuff related to my YouTube channel or the different people that are thinking about symbolism, that's where you can, you can find you can find the stuff. And if you're interested in my art, you can follow me on Instagram, or you can look at pageaucarvings.com as well, where I have my own iconography there. 

AUBREY: Beautiful. Well, thank you so much, brother. It was a real pleasure. 

JONATHAN: Yeah. It's great to meet you.

AUBREY: Likewise. Take care, everybody.