Seminar: Big Sur; What does it mean, to know thyself?, part two

But it has not been through a TD. But he insists on knowing who he is and where he came from. He must know the reality of his reality and his own fate. I will not hire can he cried. Not true nor the whole breakout of what will not hesitate. And very inspiring. I hope this is what you carry away. That one's whole life with the. Central meaning of life is that to keep sharpen. Your. Determination to know what you are who you are what you feel. And what to experience what you believe to be the great and the own the real details of how to give up one's own consciousness in that sense. This won't give it up. And then he finally brings the old shepherd that's him but his head was on that hill for you was left. And the shepherd. Is in and cries and in horror to speak. But Oedipus answers

and I do hear. But I must know that. And then he turned the final tragic truth about himself. That he was the man. That little baby picked up taken and he did kill his father and the father. And then what does he do to castrate himself on the side. Because. Of. The organ the seeing. And the tendency to call the symbolic castration I think is an odious form of the Procrustean bed you've got to fit everything into it. Sexual symbolism the much more significant in this whole drama of the organ of seeing this seeing the truth. Of seeing oneself. And that's what the whole dramas about to us are the same issue as in King Lear that drama Shakespeare is your friend so many not only of the seers blind but in. Ones own blindness is present in the struggle to find out about oneself. And the

punishment then is. The tragedy has come full circle. He was originally egg by his father's orders and the hero of when he was an infant. And as I said less and again an exile at least it begins and. The ex is a. But they don't then the important symbol. Because I think modern man is afraid of castration but it. Is afraid of exile. Victorian men most afraid of castration. But modern man will often permit himself to be castrated. Say in his university or his beliefs or his work on Madison Avenue that you are permitted to be castrated that is originality to be given up his belief to be given up. Rather than accept I asked namely to be thrown out of the group to be made alone. To be dropped from the organization.

The tragedy of. The death of the right to be asked is the great threat in. The middle twentieth century to be the one thing we can't stand. And this is because of the arsenal on the set. We do have an S word of tremendous mass communication words all the time figures of all sorts coming into our living rooms on TV never a personal relationship. The amount of words increases tremendously by geometric progression and the amount of personal relationships with those who are the speakers. And I think in matches the timbre of the care of modern and that you know Don is lonely and I think they did among all the people he lives with all these words here but he is deathly afraid

of being made more alone. If you're very lonely to chat with you can stand being asked. And this is what happened to that. She is actually driven out of this community is that. And he works across the part of Greece. And it only companion those daughters and to give me and me is an overbearing the man getting old. With him there and his daughter to be him. And now we arrive at the new part with the terms you want and it is a drama that is never slow down your maintenance cycle and if that chair very interesting it did not. This is the drama that is the third drama of this trilogy. Oedipus at Colonus. It is a drama that was written by Sophocles in his order it with his left drama repeated then and then of a day and you can expect that it will be the

wisdom to know what I did in life. What are we talking about this yesterday. Then growing or to prove it I can look back and I can be reconciled with my life. Now that is a reconciliation. And the drama of Oedipus going to in his exile walk to grow outside Athens a growth that I have gone through with a good deal of feeling. Grove of trees it still stands on the side of the mountain there is a grove of coal on it and the drama opens with Oedipus coming into this growth with his daughters. Oedipus a very old man to do the reconciliation and with him with his fellow man in the person in the pieces and the Athenians who come out. And his

reconciliation with the argument the meaning of life and his reconciliation with the God His daughter is mean you put it there for the God who threw you down. Now I know out there to you what he says. The drama is very real a performative anybody ever seen it performed. I've performed by one of the universities I think of around 10 to just kill one but if you ever get a chance to see it see it. It's not refined often because it is no cops and robbers and nobody shoot the Korean comes in here and runs off with the daughter and taken it to her and pieces arise with the group and refuse it but there are that are states nobody is much concerned about it lead to drama of meditation and and this is very hard to make successful TV viewing on a

repertory theatre. Pay the bill anyway when you get home next week. I think if you were to read it. I know that the first thing Oedipus Medicaid as you stand there and the goal. The first thing that it kind of peeled when he pleaded guilty and slaying this father. Here is the problem. It is another form of the problem we discussed yesterday. The relation between responsibility. Responsibility and self-consciousness. It in the NBL day if he performed an act without premeditation. If he did something unknowingly and in the course of his meditation Oedipus comes to terms with this. When the encore cream arrives creo how the dictator of the Korean arrives

and he wants to take all the Oedipus back now to the US because the oracle there said that the country the city that has the body of Ed if it will be our with the peace. We get that the beautiful symbolism we get to you in a minute. That's kind of him. And Oedipus is very angry with Korea and Korea and accuses edifice of being guilty that he murdered his father and the other answers and they get paid to create it. Then I came into the world as I did in wretchedness and met my father in a fight and knocked him down not knowing that I killed him whom I killed. How could you find guilt in that I meditated act. And when my mother damn you you have no shame though you are her own brother. Neither of us knew the truth and she bore my children ourselves.

Where I would not have married her willing they were willing they would I ever speak of it. And again about his father he cries out that he has a just extenuation that I did not know him and he wished to murder me before the law and before God I am innocent. Man what's going on here is that a man accept his responsibility if he there's no saying here that he didn't do it. And very importantly doesn't try to blame then and you think that's a no no technique no good conditioning no unconscious no nothing. I'm the one who did it. But the interplay of the depth of consciousness as he entered into unconsciousness sub conscious all of these things are such that even know he is guilty.

In fact he is going to be at the heart. This is where the issue really lies within the heart rather than simply what one happened to do. It's the reaching the moral problem from the eye for an eye. More or less to what Jesus described. The inside of the platter and the attitude in the heart as a man thinketh in his heart so is a. And this is what I hope I think of therapy demonstrated every point. The really important thing about me for a fuel is not that we may have a particular Blender's of these particular destructive acts of these particular trails but rather the attitude the intention that we can take in the depths of ourselves toward life and the

people that matter to us. And furthermore Oedipus goes on the say in this I love. The meanness of creamy on is the worst sin then I committed in killing my part there and also part of the scent of it that has been a traitor to his father and is lined up with Korea and that with Korea and editor very enraged with this and he says that the sins of avarice. You are right. More serious are these. They're no less serious than the sins of passion for which Oedipus himself is guilty and has a way of saying that resentment is worse and he could be the way I'd put it put forth that selfie thing is as bad as hatred. But I think that it is worse that the way you to deal with the direct strong passionate in

emotions by covering them up into a sewer. Wally mean that superiority where it's used to be said. Gossip is the lowest form of communion of the saints. That is you know that rather than fight. It may well be that a fight is infinitely help there and has more of an outcome better outcome in any case here this is the moral problem here that is coming up. And then an angry word Oedipus fuses the tricky proposal of Korea. I think getting back to feed and Korean intakes and taken as a hostage. Oedipus refuses the treaties of the sandpile the need to come back to PV even though he knows DD is going to be destroyed. He didn't mind playing libelers. There was an issue at stake here for Oedipus. He wouldn't go back even though he knew the

city that existed but I believe differently. Perhaps he was in the central city would be destroyed if it lost the spirit of Oedipus as a whole. Spirit your blood had lasted already and there was no regaining in the spirit of Oedipus that they hadn't given up their deeds as you know in the later dramas became a dictatorship and the dramas that were played there. To show this for the pic in a Korean has to be the dictator type of the suppressed area of freedom that the betrayal of consciousness. Now Oedipus does not believe in forgiveness and the later Christian approach show that he is so for I will have none of you don't forgive Korean and part of me. But he does point in the drama to a kind of forgiveness and then is that we're all in

the same boat. It's a kind of acceptance of the universal human situation for goodness a kind of thin as a statement we are all part of the human comedy and human tragedy were on the same boat. And this is what the existentialist mean by the participation of everybody and everybody has appealed. THE BRITISH INVASION OF or of a man's inhumanity to man. Now you may note that maybe one of the things I could I was saying yesterday if you don't want to believe that you're not guilty after I do lead a good life and you come through and then you do your best for your story. So do I but we are you and I are part of the guilt in Vietnam and you and I were cleared of the guilt that I never shot him nor yet I suppose I know I have been very much on the side

of reconciliation understanding of races and groups and I have really been proven not to over the great work I've done. But we are going to dissipate and the inhumanity of man to man and this this is the human guilt that one cannot escape or one can escape. You can escape it only at the price of a self-righteous surrender depth of your own to your fellow man. No matter how much I hate the what goes on in Vietnam and I also know that there's another inside of a problem. I mean is it inside the apartment the sentimental but it can find a nice easy solution there become pacifist and withdraw doesn't solve anything either. I must participate and I participate not by going around telling ash is in fact part of my head. I participate by opening my

imagination to what may be possible in the relation of races of late Merry and yellow man and the white man and the and the black man at an early races into then they that may well be more powerful than the white race and fifty or a hundred years. Now this is the you know what coming out of the value that comes out of this is the extension of kind. Comes out of the participation in the human guilt go to show you it is a very constructive word. It's a it's a word like going to that possibility. Anxiety is the subject of experience of the past and of a conflict with the possibility of a higher solution and Bure is the subjective experience of a conflict in which I have not been made and you know I can give you out of the chance to move toward a

imaginative solution on the higher level of consciousness higher level of Love a higher level of understanding. Now what I love in this drama at this point of the human heart is even more than what Oedipus what King pieces said. OK if you can die from Athens. Here are the people standing. People who live around Columbus talking to in the name of this meditation they are nobodies and other build the old brain and the Blues meditation thesis and comes out the king of Athens to Cologne and part of that and he says in the course of the talk when Oedipus is saying you know he did these terrible things. Thesis is the non neurotic man he's the hero he's run for. Where did Oedipus and all the rest of the search twice for the still partly one of the gods

pieces for I too was an exile I know I am on the man I have no more to hope for in the and then you have a beautiful statement of the courage to be simply a man a good turn then to the second thing Oedipus to meditate and there it is. The capacity of suffering to impart grace he says to the leaders who come out there to Colonus cry come here and when and with grace by those who are over in nature and I bring advantage to your grace and pieces. Read all the dispatches on the news from the prophet has heard this before Oedipus comes and he says to the censors. Your

president as you say is a great blessing and the capacity to impart grace here is a symbol of that other person the one who has lived through these struggles. Emotional and Spiritual maturing. And therefore I are this courageous contriving of his own shattering experiences. Oedipus can impart grace as efficient as one will I think often can make atonement for many others. If it be devoted. Now I think with that to work with people is that it is not but necessary to make a good therapist it may very much get in the way or to be bright doesn't want to nor the dynamics doesn't love got to know them. What makes a great therapist is even a good therapist is what Oedipus is talking about. Having had the courage to confront one's own and have the courage know to confront one's own emotional and spiritual

sufferings and work them through will be in the process of working until this is what's important if you have that already you've lost it. Now this is what makes a therapist who can then create a world of translucent world of clarity for a patient who in this world the patient then can find out who he is and what he stands for. The atonement that we get that out of a brilliant moral superiority or our divine new priesthood of psychoanalysis determent. The devotion of a courage to face these things. Now the last person in the drama I should say out of there. There are what I was saying earlier that this this great that Oedipus had he brought it

but it is been predicted by the Oracle whichever city and his brother they were always have peace and in saying that the present Oedipus will bring peace and you could meditate for hours and it's significant to press me as a therapist what can I give my patients will most of what I can given that my presence my presence now there's somebody sitting there sleeping collecting as we do all right rather than at present other human beings who have to experience to the suffering. Hope he has the courage to face the conflicts that I have but I also am on the in there and this mere presence have tremendous effect. I had my knowledge yesterday which we did never got to. The phenomenon that you present. The effect of present on one another I happen to believe very much in men of their

faith and I think that what goes on quite apart from the Houdini aspect of it is that there is a human being be on top of beyond even gesture and an emanation of who we are we are a being in the presence of this being that I am or you are it with the intensity of the presence of the intensity of conscience. I am alert awake open to you. I am fully here. The present is of I think the central importance. I think this also Internet is one of the very serious meanings of. The myth of Sleeping Beauty the trait of Sleeping Beauty and I can be to kiss the town but it can be wished somebody out. No this is symbolized in the drama.

I hope you take body down out of the inert body but body as the fact that the concrete cries I wanted to try to make your body as little dead as possible when you're with somebody and to appear otherwise. But no there is no mere theoretical hocus pocus. In other words now the next emphasis here in this drama is the reconciliation is the problem of the law the method the outworking law where no the Bush goes to die at the end of this. It really goes back into the moment and the messenger come back and report the mine over this manner of death and the third edit certain that words

to his daughter. If you the daughters go with him partway. And the then you have to go the rest of the way and go over who is actually there alone and when he does then say something to the daughter. I was put out to tell you that I think I can go another better if I do all. Of that to do with the death of Paul Kelly. I go to the Internet a month ago or think. Of the similarity with that.

It was very great indeed and I used this last part in the internment speech I think we agree that I hope that many of us would be burdened with it. But. I think what what we the way we need to take it is that it is the death of every human being who can see his death his own daughters go part way with him and then the messenger comes back and says that the these were the words to his daughter to his daughters. You have one word from all the weight and pain of life. A loaded word is love. And then he goes on and he

dies by himself with her. There's another way of saying that every man has a dual and a messenger. The daughters have to wait in the messenger and then comes back and report what he says to what he says. What happens at the moment of death. The thing that is important here and this love. Is that. It's not a love it separated from aggression. You see Oedipus at no point take back using At no point does he say it would have been better if I hadn't killed my father. No it would have been better if I hadn't married my mother. If your love is not the opposite of hatred or anger. And it's not the opposite of that. Well instead now the opposite of passion of love is held or with

a dialectical power. That has to do with passion and anger and the sexual passion the same time. If he it isn't that he is psychoanalyzing gets over these things. A very beautiful thing about the drama. So if you don't have in get over it has the sex with all you sexy a man at 80 as he was with none of that taken back and he is angry and at that age he has no truck with you or create a bad time to. It's probably a mental thing but these things are the aggression is not to be separated from the love. And this is of course you got what I was trying to say yesterday. This is not a living in accord with the requirements of civilization. How the Pacific God help us I will believe with I believe what comes and Michael are to guide us of what they so sick I think

to have brought it to a reconciliation with him over the people he loved and with the religious meaning of it right. This has been seminar big surgery featuring this week the fourth in a series of discussions from a seminar led by Dr. Rollo May next week. Our speaker will be Dr. B.F. Skinner professor of psychology at Harvard University who lectured in a seminar on the general theme of programming nonverbal behavior. You will hear highlights of a discussion on the subject of human freedom and dignity in education. This series is presented and produced by the x K x FM in San Francisco in cooperation with the Aslan Institute of Big Sur California. This program was distributed by national educational radio. This is the national educational radio network.