In this lecture excerpt, Jordan Peterson recounts a vivid dream in which the graves of an ancient cathedral open and armed kings of the past rise, only to begin fighting each other. The dream resolves when the kings collectively bow to the figure of Christ. Peterson interprets this vision through a Jungian lens, arguing that the image of Christ functions as a transcendent archetype that unites disparate, even tyrannical, heroic figures into a single embodiment of good. He posits that such a unifying transcendent image is both a psychological and sociological necessity, enabling individuals to recognize a shared spark of divinity and cooperate peacefully. Peterson further discusses the instinct of awe that arises in the presence of something truly admirable, describing it as an irrational, phenomenological response that hints at a deeper truth beyond rational explanation. He acknowledges the difficulty of reducing these experiences to purely biological terms, suggesting that the reality of religious awe resists straightforward reductionist accounts.
Chapters
Precisely that call to what you could be rather than what you are. That's a good call to meaning. I also had an answer to your question. I had a dream. I had a dream once, and I'm speaking psychologically here, not not theologically. I had a dream once. I was in the cemetery of an old. Church, an old cathedral surrounded by the graves. And there were indentations in the grounds where all the graves were. And all of a sudden, the graves started to open. And it was a graveyard where great people, great men of the past had been buried. And so a grave opened and an armed king stood up. Then another grave opened and another armed king stood up. And this happened all around me. And these were very formidable figures, right? They were the great heroes of the past. And after a number of them appeared on the scene, they looked around and saw each other. And being warrior types, they immediately started to fight. And the question is, What stops the great kings of the past from fighting? And I had a revelation after the dream. I can't remember if it was part of it, but yes, it was part of the dream. They all bowed down to the figure of Christ. And then I woke up and I thought, what in the world does that dream mean? What in the world could that possibly mean? And then I, I I understood it. I understood that if you have 20 kings, let's say, and you took the thing that was most king-like about each of them and then you combined it into a single figure, then you'd get a single figure of transcendent heroism, of transcendent good. And it's a tenet of the Jungian school of psychology, let's say, that that figure of transcendent good is symbolized by the image of Christ. And the purpose of that image is so that even the tyrannical king has someone to bend his knee to. And that's absolutely vital. I mean, it does— you don't have to approach it from a religious perspective, although you inevitably do, because when you speak of things at this level, that's what happens. But you need an image of the transcendent embodied good To serve as something that unites the great tyrants of the past, something like that. It's an emergent vision of embodied unity, and it's a psychological necessity. It's a sociological necessity, and I think it bears very strongly on your question about why is it that people matter. It's the classic Western attitude. Answer to that, the Judeo-Christian answer to that, is because you have a spark of divinity within you, and that divinity is a reflection of this transcendent good. And it's obligatory for me to recognize that in you, and vice versa, if we're going to inhabit the same territory without mayhem, peacefully, and with the ability to cooperate. Now you might say, well, the mere fact that a transcendent image is necessary as a uniting figure doesn't prove the reality of that image. But I would say, well, yes, but it doesn't disprove it, and it strongly hints at something more profound, especially when you also ally it with the observation that the encounter with something truly admirable produces the instinct of of awe, and that's not a rational instinct, it's an irrational instinct, but it's a marker that you're in the presence of something greater than yourself. And it's not something that you have voluntary control over, it's something that overtakes you, and it could easily be a reflection of the truth. Now you can make a biological— you can make a biologically reductionistic argument about that, but it starts to become extraordinarily difficult. Because you enter into the realm where these transcendent experiences of religious significance and awe are a phenomenological and psychological reality, and it's not easy to explain why that's the case. So...
