Jordan Peterson quotes that echo The C's, Gurdjieff, Forum etc.

T.C.

T.C.

The Living Force
FOTCM Member
In the following video, J.P. talks about attitude towards life. We would talk about it in terms of objectivity vs. subjectivity, contraction vs. expansion/collapse, STO vs. STS, criminal mindedness.

"Jordan Peterson: Tragedy vs Evil" – 26:24


“Abel. He’s a trusting character. He believes in the nature of experience and nature of existence, and when he’s called on to make a sacrifice, he gives the best that he has to offer. And that makes God happy as a consequence. Everything that Abel touches turns to gold; everyone likes him, they respect him; his crops multiply; he’s successful with women. Plus, he’s a wonderful guy. So you could hardly imagine a more annoying creature if you possibly attempted to do it.

“Whereas Cain… You see, Cain has reacted to his self-consciousness by withdrawing from the infinite and there’s a tremendous danger in that because it starts to mean that he relies purely on his own, devious devices to sail his ship through the shoals of life.”
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A self-absorbed, STS downward spiral. A consequence and danger of a lack of a network. Also reminds me of something from Political Ponerology.

PP said:
“Our existence only assumes meaning as a function of societal bonds; hedonistic isolation causes us to lose our selves.”
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Back to J.P:

“He believes, as his arrogance develops, as a consequence of his withdrawal from the infinite - a contact that he can’t tolerate because he can’t tolerate his own vulnerability - that he is able to deceive the structure of reality itself: to offer second-rate sacrifices to God himself who can see absolutely everything because the infinite IS absolutely everything, and to prevail nonetheless.”
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Wishful thinking, black magic; believing you can exert your will from below in order to change what is above; trying to bend reality to your own desires. The hallmarks of STS:

Session: 22/10/94 said:
Q: (L) Well, if we are sources of food and labor for them,
why don't they just breed us in pens on their own planet?
A: They do.
Q: (L) Well, since there is so many of us here, why don't
they just move in and take over?
A: That is their intention. That has been their intention for
quite some time. They have been traveling back and forth
through time as you know it, to set things up so that they can
absorb a maximum amount of negative energy with the
transference from third level to fourth level that this planet is
going to experience, in the hopes that they can overtake you
on the fourth level and thereby accomplish several things. 1:
retaining their race as a viable species; 2: increasing their
numbers; 3: increasing their power; 4: expanding their race
throughout the realm of fourth density. To do all of this they
have been interfering with events for what you would
measure on your calendar as approximately 74 thousand
years. And they have been doing so in a completely still state
of space time traveling backward and forward at will during
this work. Interestingly enough, though, all of this will fail.
Q: (L) How can you be so sure it will fail?
A: Because we see it. We are able to see all, not just what
we want to see. Their failing is that they see only what they
want to see. In other words, it's the highest manifestation
possible of that which you would refer to as wishful thinking.
And, wishful thinking represented on the fourth level of
density becomes reality for that level. You know how you
wishfully think? Well, it isn't quite reality for you because you
are on the third level, but if you are on the fourth level and
you were to perform the same function, it would indeed be
your awareness of reality. Therefore they cannot see what
we can see since we serve others as opposed to self, and
since we are on sixth level, we can see all that is at all points
as is, not as we would want it to be.
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J.P. continued:

“Well, needless to say, this does not work. And it doesn’t work in an obvious way, if you talk to people, and they reveal to you their unnecessary suffering. It’s very straight forward to look behind what it is that they have to say.

“They’ll tell you the poor decisions they made in their lives […] and the sacrifices they failed to make. There’s nothing mysterious about it, and their own experiences teach them full well that they pathologise the relationship they have with the nature of reality.”
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Session: 28/09/2002 said:
Life is religion. Life experiences reflect how one interacts with
God. Those who are asleep are those of little faith in
terms of their interaction with the creation. Some
people think that the world exists for them to
overcome or ignore or shut out. For those individuals,
the worlds will cease. They will become exactly what
they give to life. They will become merely a dream in
the "past." People who pay strict attention to
objective reality right and left, become the reality of
the "Future."
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J.P. continued:

“Well, and Cain is dreadfully unhappy. He’s unhappy because nothing he ever wants happens [Hallmark of the criminal mind] – and that’s partly because he doesn’t really want it, because if he really wanted it he’d make the right sacrifices – and the salt is rubbed into his wounds by the existence of his brother, for whom everything seems simple, but of course, really isn’t.

“Cain goes to complain to God.

“Now, I had to read three or four different translations of these particular verses to figure out what this meant.

“And he says, “What in the world is going on here? I’m working myself to the bone. I’m sacrificing things left, right and centre. Everything I touch turns to dirt. Everything turns against me. Like, WHAT’S UP WITH THE NATURE OF REALITY!?”

“Cain’s essential vulnerability is revealed and exacerbated by his pathological attitude towards his own actions."
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There was a CNN piece recently that talked about how radical left-wing professors who had made quite disgusting comments along the lines of, "All I want for Christmas is white genocide," and paraphrasing, "If a paramedic turns up to someone who's been shot and the victim is white, they should just let them die."

These professors were crying victim because they received a backlash of hate mail, death threats, etc.

That's an extreme example. But how many times have we cursed the universe for the problems we are having, that turn out to be problems we've created for ourselves, if only we knew? How many times did the C's exacerbate Laura during sessions when things were crumbling around her that she had to figure out and fix for herself?

But a mirror needs to be held up, doesn't it? And mirrors are painful:

“God says to him, essentially, “Sin is a predatory cat that crouches at your doorway and leaps on you at will. But if you only wanted to, you could master it.”

“And that is absolutely the last thing Cain wants to hear. Because if things are going from bad to worse, for you, and you're playing a causal role in it, there’s nothing more horrible that someone can do to you but reveal to you, in a way you can’t deny, that you’re entirely complicit in your own demise. And that’s exactly what God does to Cain.

“And so, what does Cain do? Well, the logical thing would be to listen, because if the structure of reality itself tells you something, it’s best to listen, since there’s no way out of it.

“But that’s not what Cain does.

“He’s so incensed by his essential vulnerability, compromised and exacerbated by his failure to make the appropriate sacrifices and to conduct himself appropriately, that he decides then and there, number one: to destroy his ideal to reduce the tension that he feels when that ideal exists as a contrast point; and number two: to destroy the favoured son of God. And so he goes out into the field and kills Abel.

“And so God comes along and says, “Where’s my favourite son?” And Cain says, “I killed him.”

“And it’s so interesting to me that that story is placed… really, it’s the third story in the Old Testament: it’s with the archaic stories, and it’s a story that reveals, as far as I can tell, that there are two essential patterns of reaction to the self-conscious, vulnerable conditions of existence.

“One is, humble approach to infinity with determined attempts to make the appropriate sacrifices.

“The other is arrogance, resentment, the keeping of everything good for oneself, and the degeneration of the soul into something that’s homicidally murderous."
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Open, creative and objective mode oriented towards the service of others. And the closed, contractile, subjective mode oriented towards service of the self.
 
I had the same feeling when watching Jordan with Joe Rogan on pod cast #1070. So many common themse......
 
On the topic of Work on the self.

J.P. is obviously all about advocating Work on the self. In this clip, he explains why, and how he arrived at his personal understanding of the importance of self-Work.

We can interpret it in a Gurdjieffian and Mouravieffian way, in the sense that we have our programmes, our beliefs. These buffers are in place because they protect us from the painful truth and the horror of reality. The way I always like to think of them is that they ‘got us to where we are now; they got us this far’. They’re functional, but they’re not optimal – at least, not if you have an aim that they prevent you from achieving, like objectivity which enables you to understand reality so that you increase your chances of survival and helping others.

"Jordan Peterson: Tragedy vs Evil" - 36:29


"When I finished my first provisional examination of the sorts of motivations that drove people to set up concentration camps, and to torture people terribly in those camps, I came to a terrible conclusion. It was a conclusion that I think in some ways was the worst thing that had ever happened to me maybe intellectually and morally.

“I came to understand why it is that people depended on their group identity and their cultural identification: because that helped themselves to protect themselves from their vulnerability.

“You HAVE to believe things, because you just don’t know everything; so you have to believe things – they fill in the gaps. The beliefs fill in the gaps.

"If the beliefs are stripped from you, then your defences against the infinite are stripped. And it’s no wonder that people will defend their beliefs.

“I thought, well, if you’re too involved in defending your beliefs, you’re going to be willing to kill other people in their defence, and we’re so technologically powerful now that we can no longer be willing to kill other people in the defence of our own beliefs because the time for that has passed.

“Well, then I realised that if you don’t stand up for your beliefs, you leave yourself bereft, you’re open to the depredations of the infinite. That’s equally intolerable. It seems to leave no way out.

"But there is a way out, you know. And I think it's the way out that genuinely religious people have tried to offer humanity for thousands and thousands of years.

"And the way out of the conundrum posed to you by your reliance on ideological beliefs and your vulnerability in the face of the unknown [Your reliance on your programmes] is the development of a truly integrated and powerful character. And that's individual development. And it means constant confrontation with things that you don't understand, and constant attempts to ensure that your character is composed of truth and solidity, rather than deceit, and to make of yourself something that's built on a rock and not predicated on sand."
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We can see here that the reason for doing the Work is out of necessity. That anyone can just go through life, willy nilly, and maybe they’ll have a good life, and maybe they’ll have a bad life. But they’re running off of their beliefs. Beliefs don’t explain anomalies, though. Sometimes we run up against something we haven’t encountered before, and we can’t fit it into our schema.

Laura and the group studied narcissism, and then psychopathy, because they ran up against an anomaly that didn’t fit their schema – they were victimised. And they were victimised because a belief was in the slot where a truth should have been: That not all people are created equal, and not everyone has decent, benevolent motivations.

The Work as Peterson defines it here, is the process of unbiased thinking with a hammer and facing the unknown in order to replace beliefs that aren’t adequate for navigating reality with solid truth that, while maybe not the ‘whole’ truth, is at least ‘good enough’ pragmatically.

On a more Cassiopaean theme, Peterson then goes on to explain how “Nobody is a nobody.” How, in a very real sense, we are all a microcosm of the macrocosm, and every choice you make doesn’t just affect you, but it affects everything:

"And it's one thing to tell people that (they should work on themselves) because maybe they should take care of themselves, but I don't know if that's enough to tell people, because they don't take care of themselves that well. But it's a completely other thing to say, "Look, every time you make a pathological moral decision, you move the world one step closer to complete annihilation.

"And I absolutely believe that. I think the historical evidence is crystal clear. And I also think that every time you make an appropriate moral decision, and you manifest moral courage in the face of your own vulnerability, that you move the world one step farther from the brink. And that's the case for every single person."
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Hi TC thanks a lot for putting this together,

There was one I have in mind of a recent interview where he discusses the value of having a network, I’ll find it and post it here.

He also talks about the highest possible ideal one can conceive of and the sacrifices to be made in the way to move in its direction, that reminds me of work on the self and having an aim that informs your actions
 
T.C. said:
On a more Cassiopaean theme, Peterson then goes on to explain how “Nobody is a nobody.” How, in a very real sense, we are all a microcosm of the macrocosm, and every choice you make doesn’t just affect you, but it affects everything:

"And it's one thing to tell people that (they should work on themselves) because maybe they should take care of themselves, but I don't know if that's enough to tell people, because they don't take care of themselves that well. But it's a completely other thing to say, "Look, every time you make a pathological moral decision, you move the world one step closer to complete annihilation.

"And I absolutely believe that. I think the historical evidence is crystal clear. And I also think that every time you make an appropriate moral decision, and you manifest moral courage in the face of your own vulnerability, that you move the world one step farther from the brink. And that's the case for every single person."
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Thank you for starting this thread T.C.

Peterson recently restated that quote in this interview:


So what does it mean to the human soul to have dignity? Part of the idea is it is that you are participating in creation itself, and you do that with your actions and your language. And you get to decide whether you're tilting the world a bit more towards heaven or a bit more towards hell. And that is actually what you're doing. So that's a place where the literal and the metaphorical truth come together. And people are terrified of that idea, as they should be. Because it's a massive realization of responsibility to understand that all the decisions that you make during the day are decisions between hell and heaven, essentially. But I think there is no truer way of saying that.
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And that reminds me of this quote from the Cs:

[quote author=Session 11 March 1995]
Q: (T) Okay, we were STO at that point. You have said before that on this density we have the choice of being STS or STO.

A: Oh Terry, the battle is always there, it's "when" you choose that counts!
[/quote]
 
See here, it looks like Peterson started to Channel at some point after a deep longing and asking for the truth.
 
I finished reading JBP's 12 rules of life book and felt that there so many WOW moments - mainly related to the way he explains and clarifies. there is lot that can be quoted.

I will quote from the last chapter called "WHAT SHALL I DO WITH MY NEWFOUND PEN OF LIGHT?". As he writes, he got a pen with a light so that one can be used to write in dark. he got inspired by the event asks himself some questions and gets answers. Whether it is channeling or conversation between different parts of his own mind or recollections from what he read before comes out as messages, the answers are interesting and they resemble esoteric explanations. His impressions of the process as follows.
It was in that spirit, with some paper in front of me, that I asked my question: What shall I do with my newfound pen of light? I asked as if I truly wanted the answer. I waited for a reply. I was holding a conversation between two different elements of myself. I was genuinely thinking—or listening, in the sense described in Rule 9 (Assume that the person you are listening to might know something you don’t). That rule can apply as much to yourself as to others. It was me, of course, who asked the question—and it was me, of course, who replied. But those two me’s were not the same. I did not know what the answer would be. I was waiting for it to appear in the theatre of my imagination. I was waiting for the words to spring out of the void. How can a person think up something that surprises him? How can he already not know what he thinks? Where do new thoughts come from? Who or what thinks them?

Since I had just been given, of all things, a Pen of Light, which could write Illuminated Words in the darkness, I wanted to do the best thing I could with it. So, I asked the appropriate question—and, almost immediately, an answer revealed itself: Write down the words you want inscribed on your soul. I wrote that down. That seemed pretty good— a little on the romantic side, granted—but that was in keeping with the game.
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Here the questions and answers and most had his comments linking to the contents in different chapters in the book. In some cases, I pasted his explanation. I bolded the question as a sort of separation

What shall I do tomorrow? The answer came: The most good possible in the shortest period of time.
What shall I do next year? Try to ensure that the good I do then will be exceeded only by the good I do the year after that.
What shall I do with my life? Aim for Paradise, and concentrate on today.
What shall I do with my wife? Treat her as if she is the Holy Mother of God, so that she may give birth to the world redeeming hero.
What shall I do with my daughter? Stand behind her, listen to her, guard her, train her mind, and let her know it’s OK if she wants to be a mother.
What shall I do with my parents? Act such that your actions justify the suffering they endured.
What shall I do with my son? Encourage him to be a true Son of God.
What shall I do with a fallen soul? Offer a genuine and cautious hand, but do not join it in the mire
What shall I do with the world? Conduct myself as if Being is more valuable than Non-Being.
How shall I educate my people? Share with them those things I regard as truly important.
What shall I do with a torn nation? Stitch it back together with careful words of truth.

The importance of this injunction has, if anything, become clearer over the past few years: we are dividing, and polarizing, and drifting toward chaos. It is necessary, under such conditions, if we are to avoid catastrophe, for each of us to bring forward the truth, as we see it: not the arguments that justify our ideologies, not the machinations that further our ambitions, but the stark pure facts of our existence, revealed for others to see and contemplate, so that we can find common ground and proceed together.

What shall I do for God my Father? Sacrifice everything I hold dear to yet greater perfection

What shall I do with a lying man? Let him speak so that he may reveal himself.

How shall I deal with the enlightened one? Replace him with the true seeker of enlightenment.

There is no enlightened one. There is only the one who is seeking further enlightenment. Proper Being is process, not a state; a journey, not a destination. It’s the continual transformation of what you know, through encounter with what you don’t know, rather than the desperate clinging to the certainty that is eternally insufficient in any case. That accounts for the importance of Rule 4 (Compare yourself…). Always place your becoming above your current being. That means it is necessary to recognize and accept your insufficiency, so that it can be continually rectified. That’s painful, ertainly—but it’s a good deal.

What shall I do when I despise what I have? Remember those who have nothing and strive to be grateful.

What shall I do when greed consumes me? Remember that it is truly better to give than to receive.

What shall I do when my enemy succeeds? Aim a little higher and be grateful for the lesson

What shall I do when I’m tired and impatient? Gratefully accept an outstretched helping hand.

What shall I do with the fact of aging? Replace the potential of my youth with the accomplishments of my maturity.

This hearkens back to the discussion of friendship surrounding Rule 3, and the story of Socrates’ trial and death—which might be summarized, as follows: A life lived thoroughly justifies its own limitations. The young man with nothing has his possibilities to set against the accomplishments of his elders. It’s not clear that it’s necessarily a bad deal, for either. “An aged man is but a paltry thing,” wrote William Butler Yeats, “A tattered coat upon a stick, unless/Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing/For every tatter in its mortal dress….”220

What shall I do in the next dire moment? Focus my attention on the next right move.

The flood is coming. The flood is always coming. The apocalypse is always upon us. That’s why the story of Noah is archetypal. Things fall apart—we stressed that in the discussion surrounding Rule 10 (Be precise in your speech)—and the centre cannot hold. When everything has become chaotic and uncertain, all that remains to guide you might be the character you constructed, previously, by aiming up and concentrating on the moment at hand. If you have failed in that, you will fail in the moment of crisis, and then God help you.

What shall I do to strengthen my spirit? Do not tell lies, or do what you despise.
What shall I do to ennoble my body? Use it only in the service of my soul.
What shall I do with the most difficult of questions? Consider them the gateway to the path of life.
What shall I do with the poor man’s plight? Strive through right example to lift his broken heart.
What shall I do when the great crowd beckons? Stand tall and utter my broken truths.
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Peterson's latest video, The Death and Resurrection of Christ: A Commentary in Five Parts, goes into what he calls axioms of the Christian Revolutionary Story.

Some axioms of the Christian Revolutionary Story

1. To decide that and then enact the proposition that Being is good, despite its tragedy and malevolence

2. To work, in consequence, for the continual and eternal improvement of that Being, and to know that as Love

3. To do such work in Truth

4. To let everything inadequate burn off in that pursuit, and to welcome its replacement by what is better

5. To know that as the sacred Imitation of Christ

6. To understand that although Christ's sacrifice redeemed us all the work still has to be done

7. To accept that work as the sacred Meaning of Life

8. To strive toward the Heavenly City on the Hill in that manner
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There are many possible parallels with what has been discussed here over the years.

Item 1 is pretty close to this quote: "Q: (L) ... So, maybe the belief that one needs to cultivate - if any - is the belief in unlimited possibilities AND also in the benevolence of the universe and the process. Maybe that's what it is? A: Yes yes yes!" (Session 10 February 2018). It's interesting that Peterson doesn't say "Being is good" but "to decide that and then enact the proposition that Being is good". Perhaps this idea is equivalent to choosing "to side with" the Beautiful faces of God while acknowleding the Wrathful faces, as in Ibn al-Arabi.

Item 2 is particularly reminiscent of the self-debugging universe idea.

Item 3 seems simple but turns into a rabbit hole when one considers the intricate discussions Peterson has had about what is Truth, such as with Sam Harris.

Items 4, 5 and 7 remind me of the Work as in Gurdjieff and Mouravieff, which is not surprising as both dealt with "esoteric Christianity".

Item 6 I can only begin to understand through the idea of Christ as Logos, which leads me to something like redemption would be eternally recurring or at least the possibility of redemption through the imitation of Christ is eternally present and thus redemption is/can be a recurring phenomenon. Still trying to wrap my head around this one.

Item 8 is still obscure to me. I suppose I'm lacking some basic Biblical knowledge.

 
Not sure where to put this but it seemed the most appropriate place. In 1985, Jordan created a piece of very personal art called the Meaning of Music. Much later on (2017) he posted a video explaining it. What is fascinating is the resemblance it has to a crop circle formed almost 35 years later. Don't know if it means anything, but it's still sort of cool.
Meaning-of-Music.jpg2010.06.22_09.44.46_-_Olivier_Morel.jpg

The video is here:
 
Interesting. Out of curiosity, I layered them on top of one another and played around a little - ended up flipping JP's image and rotating it (see attachment). Not a perfect match by any stretch, but still? Or pattern recognition run amok? Speaking of patterns, JP's birthday is June 12, the crop circle dates June 21.

Peterson_Crop.png
 
There are some other cropcircles I was reminded of by his artwork.

the 'skyscrapers' cropcircle, Uffington, Oxfordshire, 8th Jul 2006
Lucy Pringle Crop Circle Photography
uk2006as.jpg


various 'cube' cropcircles like
Hackpen Hill (2), nr Broad Hinton. Wiltshire. Reported 26th August 2012
Lucy Pringle Crop Circle Photography
hackpen-hill2c.jpg


Not really matching, but just similar patterns like cube/hexagon, 3d/perspective and box-like shapes.
 
what I feel, for the first, radiation and partitioning; for the second, a "spherical knowledge of a cubic consciousness"
 
mrtn said:
There are some other cropcircles I was reminded of by his artwork.

the 'skyscrapers' cropcircle, Uffington, Oxfordshire, 8th Jul 2006
Lucy Pringle Crop Circle Photography
uk2006as.jpg


various 'cube' cropcircles like
Hackpen Hill (2), nr Broad Hinton. Wiltshire. Reported 26th August 2012
Lucy Pringle Crop Circle Photography

Not really matching, but just similar patterns like cube/hexagon, 3d/perspective and box-like shapes.
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I agree it's pattern recognition run amok (never post late at night :nuts:). I even got the time span wrong. It was 25 years later, not 35. But the 'Skyscraper' one does have a similar feel. Maybe Jordan was simply tapping into some forms that might be possible in 4D, which to him were a representation the manifestation of music. He mentions that in his talk on the image.
 
"spherical knowledge of a cubic consciousness"

I interpret this as the idea of being imprisoned in a "square" consciousness, and trying to reproduce it internally... so good and bad surprise, we would be totally free to escape indefinitely.
:lol:
a link with a perpendicular reality ?
 
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