The two are the male and the female. And the male and the female are wisdom and understanding. Hokma and Bina. Wisdom and understanding. And these, the first unity, when things take shape, and then the polarities, like the yin-yang, in turn give rise to seven other levels of the tree of life. And those constitute the world as we can know it, on any level. This is beyond knowledge. Only spiritual insight can take one here.

[01:07]

But here is Melchizedek, the kingdom. The kingdom, the power, and the glory. The kingdom, the power, and the glory. manifestations of Kether, which in the New Testament are early hearkenings of a great tree of light. And there is awareness here that a primordial unity gives rise to opposites, but in turn the opposites give rise to harmony. This is the heart, and this is yesad, yesad, the heart. This is the core of reality. Malkuth is the earth, the kingdom as we know it, the realm that we stand on.

[02:13]

And within all of us are macrocosms of the tree of life and all of its distinctions. So the Kabbalah says that the masculine and the feminine, or the male and the female, are necessary separations that move towards a higher fusion. the lieci, the yin-yang, says that the dynamic life is an interpenetration of the forces of the masculine and the feminine in terms of what is suitable at any given time. And so where it lies, as it's whirling about, you know, whether it's like in the

[03:15]

the I Ching, here we have Yang, and here we have Yin. Well, almost all of reality, and in fact in the full text it's six lines, six unbroken, six broken. Well, you could rapidly see how many combinations of broken and unbroken lines you could have if there are six. This sounds like a dovish torrent, too easy to have too many or too few layers. OK, well, here is one. Here is another. Is this predominantly yin heading towards yang? predominantly yang heading towards yin. Well, in this case, because of the way in which it's drawn, it's predominantly yin heading towards more yin.

[04:23]

But all of these are dynamic changes. And as with the I Ching, if you toss the stick to the coins, whatever comes up assuming that there's credibility to it, I'm not saying there is, would be what is appropriate then, not what is appropriate forever. Because balance, harmony, isn't an absolute state. It's a state of using the Chinese and Japanese figure of speech of the unwobbly pivot that bends, that sways, and is not static. Its stability consists precisely in not being static.

[05:25]

Traditionally, in religions especially, peace, tranquility, joy is the peace that passes understanding, that exists forever in a never-never land far beyond this veil of tears, permanent, fixed, certain. But balance, from this point of view, is what would be lopsided at one moment and totally out of harmony and out of kilter at another. Because this is a world of dynamic flux. And the un-wobbly pivot is the bamboo that sways in the breeze and not the rigid oak tree that cannot move.

[06:31]

So when a strong wind or hurricane comes along, the oak tree is uprooted. And the frail-looking bamboo, having an adaptable and resilient equanimity, survives. So the whole concept here of flux, of interpenetration and change, is one which would say that stability and balance are situational, are appropriate. You know the line goes somewhat, what is the line of, They say, peace, peace, and there is no peace. Where's that line from? I don't even know the line. Something like that. To be in total equanimity when the house is on fire is most unsuitable.

[07:39]

No doubt you've read any number of Islam texts that use the image of the house on fire. That isn't exactly the time to sit and meditate for eight hours. It's time to lift your ass up and get. And that's what's appropriate. And likewise, what is appropriate in terms of the masculine and the feminine are in what, in Gestalt terms, we call a playground relationship. At different times and in different ways, some components stand out in the forefront, and others are the background. If, for example, we were looking at, let us imagine, here is the Mona Lisa, La Gioconda.

[08:44]

And I said, hey, look at her eyes. Her eyes would be figure. It would be the focus of attention. It would be of importance. The rest would be background. If I say, look at the perspective of the fields, look at the perspective of the little castle remote and afar, her face, her body would all be background. Her eyes would be ground. The figure would be what would normally be a detail. And so the figure-ground relationship states that in a given situation, in a given gestalt, in a given configuration, some element will stand predominant and other elements will not be conspicuous. Imagine, as on the cover of the book The Assertive Woman, that Laja Kanga had bright red lipstick.

[09:53]

Or imagine that she had a great big pockmark right over here. or a mustache. Now, a mustache wouldn't be adding very much or changing much in the entire painting, but if we gave her a nice curved mustache, the entire configuration, the entire gestalt would be changed because the figure-ground relationship would be altered. While much of what is considered sex-coded behavior has exactly that, a figure-ground relationship. And a lot of conflict occurs when that which conforms to the norms of the figure-ground relationship of one group occurs in another context where the figure-ground relationships are different

[10:57]

Right, for me, I'm very, very dressed up today. You know, this is very, very dressed up. I've been known to wear a suit. I've also been known to wear a dark collar and all the rest. But for the most part, I go around looking very much like a shellac. And I went to Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fair, and Smith to see my stockbroker a while ago. And I was just about thrown out of... the building. And it was really funny. It was really funny. It was figure-ground relationship. Now, they didn't figure that I had in the ground, I guess, as much as I did when I was dressed. But the figure-ground relationship. I was out of sync. with their expectations and their norms. And I came in looking like what they would consider a kind handler, a degenerate, and even worse, someone who takes toilet paper from the dispenser with its right hand or something like that.

[12:19]

So I would violate their figure-ground norms very acutely. Well, at any rate, I've given you a mighty quick synopsis of a metallurgical conception in philosophy of the Gestalt theory of perception in psychology. and a couple of other things that relate to physics and how we think as points of departure that at times might have looked as though they were very remote from what we were talking about. But I hope that as our first half of today's session comes to an end,

[13:20]

It's coming together. And you can see where a certain view of the universe, a certain conception of what makes sense, a commitment to thinking and speaking in ways that make sense, and taking things as they are, their is and not their oughts, is right on when it comes to this utterly misunderstood subject. And I think what we move on to next would be different ways in which the masculine and feminine have been understood. And then On the 24th of February, I'll bring in some Stone Age sculptures and all sorts of things like that. And I'll do some ritual magic with them as well.

[14:26]

all sorts of things, and go into the actual imagery of the masculine and feminine, especially the feminine and its various meanings in art and especially in history and especially in the spiritual experience. I've enjoyed the last several nights so much. I broke my watch. I was trying to replace the battery and from how the watch and I didn't get along too well. So fortunately it broke and it took me until a few days ago to bring it to a repair shop. But for a long time now, even though I have some other watches that I put away in the bank, I haven't gotten them out. It's been so liberating. But the old professor says, time has no meaning.

[15:33]

Oop, class is over. But it's so liberating. How do we stand time-wise? About 10 after 5. Does anyone have any thought to share before we break or wrap up and be done? I'm just thinking back and forth through the talk about I know for myself that the roles are changing so much now. My own idea of what I find attractive in a man. When I think of myself, there's just that definition. I mean, for men and women today, at least in the Bay Area, it just is really evolving. And it's a really confusing time. There doesn't seem to be that much brand. I feel that most people are open to groping for a different understanding.

[16:35]

Yeah, and I think, too, if I may say, we'll get into this in the next session when we talk about exactly how these terms operate and how they're defined, and especially more along the psychological and sociological levels of planning we'll bring in. Good old James Anima and Animas and all the rest. But it's a fiction that the past was always stable and static. There have always been fads and fashions, hysterias, revivals. The great age of faith, the 13th century, was a time that the north of Italy and half of France was... been involved with the Cathari movement, where people spoke in tongues, had visions, didn't go to church, had sacraments of their own at home, and all the rest. And that was the great age of faith of St.

[17:37]

Thomas Aquinas. So, you know, the past never had the stability that it was all cracked up to have had for either the privilege classes or the... working classes or whatever. There have been prolonged periods of rather rigidly enforced superficial conformity, but the perfect example of that is Victorian prudery when pornography reached levels of popularity that were never surpassed. There has always been confusion, and that's why there have always been people around to tell you what's right and what's wrong. People don't do things like that if there aren't confused and changing standards and multiple confusions.

[18:46]

But for the most part, but I literally was being told that when I look back, I don't find much encouragement. I find encouragement in looking ahead. I find encouragement in saying, hey, we can knock off so much bullshit. We can knock off. so much hardware and artillery of the past that sounded so profound. And it was unmitigated bull. So we have a job to do. And maybe in little and humble ways, not in gigantic ways where we legislate like Charlton Heston with the tablets in hand for all of humanity, but in much humbler, lesser ways.

[19:49]

But we become our own self-legislators. So I find the hope and the encouragement not in the golden age of the past, lousy. The present isn't very good either. Then I hope to do something tomorrow, today or tomorrow. I did find periods of great agents of faith, of great political and civil leaders, of men who were men, women who were women, and heroes who were heroes, and this that were this, and that that was that. When I look back at the other people, the much nicer things, when they look back, Having been an art dealer for many years, I tend to believe that most of the what we call antique that have come down is the junk that didn't get demolished years ago that somehow escaped the garbage heap.

[20:59]

So, you know, just because something is old doesn't make good. Just because it's hallowed doesn't make it right, just because it's enunciated in a very pompous tone of voice doesn't make it sacred or profound. I'd say, though our knees may knock and we have immense uncertainty and less knowledge, what we have is something to work with. And that's it. And let's get to it. Anybody else have a comment to talk us out? Okay.

[22:10]

Thank you very much. What's he saying?

[23:29]

Go on. Okay. You know, we were talking before about the distinction between terms like male and female, which refer to biological, organic distinction, and culturally defined terms like masculine and feminine, such that types of dress, behavior, and all the rest that are defined as one in one culture or subcultural group may in another period be defined exactly the opposite way in another time, such that fancy hairstyles are very masculine for men. In the age of the pompadour and all, you watch the rerun movies and So in the 40s, women had simple hair, a bit of both.

[24:34]

Madame Pompadour, when pompadours were worn by females in the age of literally 14, women had fancy hair and so on. Now, I would like to pursue some of these distinctions a bit further and clarify them as well, both for a point of departure to going into the psychology and sociology, what it meant, especially about feminine, and also to give a bit of clarification for those who are here at the video session. Now, we know both from empirical biology that male organisms contain what are called vestiges, and they may not be actually vestiges, but counterparts to female organisms, female organs, and have hormones that are feminine.

[25:40]

Likewise, females have testosterone, the torus, which is a counterpart, probably medically to the penis, and so on. So that... In terms of empirical biology, the line of demarcation, not in terms of what is culturally defined, but what is biologically defined between male and female, is a matter of preponderance and not a matter of an either-or, especially in the species like man, the distinction is much more blurring than when one is talking about male and female plants, in which the male, as the producer of the boar or sperm equivalent, had very little, if any, chronogenetic connection to the female plant.

[26:46]

But this was something that the early Chinese were aware of to a very large extent. That was the Naviachi, the yin-yang, in which the microcosm of the universe and the person, or macrocosmically in nature, the world, or what was commonly called, for want of a better term to translate it, providence. Providence. Macrocosmically, there was an interchange, not of polar opposite forces. This let me begin with a blunt statement. It's an utter distortion. of the yin-yang distinction. No polarity in the sense of opposition, contradictory.

[27:55]

Rather, what in logic you would call contraries, polar contraries. So that, for example, in a given day, your tummy may say not malt-o-meal, but bland food, Another day, loads and loads of salsa on the burrito. And so the rigor or intensity of one day is the natural harmonious balance of that day. And the blandness, mildness of the noto meal day when you have a New Year's hangover or something of that sort, it's very appropriate and in balance for that day. And so the whole perspective here is that balance is not an absolute immovable point.

[29:05]

But as I said before, balance is an unwavering pivot. It is a centering in terms of the appropriate dynamic for that point, for that day, for that time, for that experience. If someone were to die in front of your eyes, unfortunately that just happened to me recently, and I was acutely upset by it, I would think it would have been peculiar not to have been upset by it, even though the Buddha said, you know, walking on the road, if you see a corpse, that and that. Those were metaphorical and hyperboles. They're not intended for everyday behavior. It is in balance, in harmony, and full of human heartiness.

[30:11]

to be off-kilter when an off-kilter experience occurs. There is a core of constancy that is there, that is expressed in a manifestation that is a different manifestation from another time. So the core harmony has an external expression that may vary in this intensity of yin or yang, let us say, depending upon the situation. So if you're on the firing line on a battlefield, certainly it would be appropriate to have a lot of adrenaline going. If you are doing your sitting meditation, then it would be appropriate

[31:13]

for there to be a minimal adrenaline flow, both would be in balance and in harmony because the core would be well centered to the reality of the experience of life as it's lived. Though the wholeness, the balance, is not a fixed state, The only thing that is fixed about it is that it's balanced, is that it's centeredness. But the form in which the centeredness is expressed is utterly varying in a world of constant change. And in a world, people that we will soon see when we talk about Jung's psychological types, are very different yous and mes. And so the appropriateness of what is an appropriate balance for one person and another may be quite different.

[32:29]

The quality may be the same, but the expression is quite different. Now, we saw that although the diagram shows the lieci very static, a light side, a dark side, and a yin component within the yang, and a yang component within the yin, that in actuality, especially it developed in the chain in Neo-Confucianism and in Taoism, is that this is a very dynamic process. The passive is active, actively going into the active. The active is very passive, actively going into the passive.

[33:35]

There is constant motion, constant change. And again, to review, as we saw, the hexagram, Well, the yang and the yin, the six unbroken lines, the six broken lines are merely the extreme. And most of life is experienced as something in between. Or whatever. I looked at a heptagram. And at any rate, that is balance. That is balance. That is balance at the appropriate time, according to this perspective. And so it's rather ironic and unusual, isn't it, that in ancient China,

[34:44]

There was an awareness that came into the West only in the 1920s when the psychological and sociocultural implications of Heisenberg's indeterminacy became widely known. namely that we do not live in a static universe or even in a process universe aimed to an end, to a goal. We live in a universe in which a lot goes on, and a lot goes on that we even in theory can never know, not to say in practice. And there is a spectacular adventure of ignorance, ignorant groping, having a ball, and doing what traditions have said the gods did for us, namely creating universes.

[36:00]

Now, here we are. Here's the world, whether it began with a big bang as it is now. Whether the world as it is now began doesn't matter anyway because it began with a big bang. It began because it was compressed from a previous exploded world that contracted. So it's all fairly immaterial except that we know for sure the universe is a mighty chaotic place so-called iron laws of science, only archaic, fossilized people of the 19th century believe in anymore. I talked earlier today about Marxist iron laws of history, determinism, and all the rest, and the inevitable this and the inevitable that, the inevitable contradictions of capitalism.

[37:06]

and the inevitable type of working class, and to me it sounds like a lot of Jehovah's Witnesses' inevitables, that inevitably the good guys and the bad guys are going to be on each side and literally have one hell of a battle. But we're not that smart. And Heisenberg, as I rightly pointed out, we can't be that smart. So here we are in a stuck predicament. Now, let's look at us in a stuffed predicament. Man in, using a popular word today, alienation. The word goes back to Hegel in 1804, so it's not so new. But, um, alienation. Hegel Now, Hegel is famous for being unreadable.

[38:07]

And if there's one thing about apocryphal things that people are famous for, it's that they're usually right. And Hegel is impossible to read in German, as well as in English translation. But one thing that is very readable is the introduction to his Phenomenology of Mind. Some translations it's called Phenomenology of Mind, some translations it's called Phenomenology of the Spirit. The German word is Geist, and if you know the word Geist, you'll know it can be translated either way. But the Spirit is probably a better term. Hegel, way back then, in 1804, in Germany, not in England, when the Industrial Revolution was going on, said one of the characteristics of modern man is that there is an increased separation of man from roots, an increased separation of man from marketplace, from finished goods.

[39:24]

There is not an organic link between producer, consumer, or people in between. produce is transported, manufactured goods are imported, and the traditional ties to the soil, to the town, to the family, to the extended community, to the national tradition are exploding away, and man is cut off or made an alien from his society, economically, socially, politically, his infrasociety, his family, his acquaintanceships, and himself. Because with the death of traditional faith, a man no longer feels a sense of

[40:31]

linkage with upstairs. So he doesn't feel a sense of linkage here, doesn't feel a sense of linkage there. Now, Hegel was supposed to have been extremely reactionary impression. Well, there was Hegel. Marx just lifted it. Wax, stock, and barrel. then-American sociologists who, of course, couldn't use Mark's name unless they lose their ten-year jobs and their sixth-array teaching assistant. Professor, you know, the most precious commodity to a research professor is to have to let a teaching assistant do all your unpleasant tasks. And, you know, lest anything like that happen, American social science adopted universally the word alienation without giving credit to where it was popularized.

[41:43]

But this is the phenomenon. Now, alienation, when it first appeared, of course, was addressed to males Because the radicals of the early 19th century, for example, indeed very much like the radicals of today, were purely sexist. Name one female political leader in the Soviet Union. Yugoslavia. Red China. Vietnam. So, um, the powerful core. But one manifestation of alienation that has come to consciousness today is the problem of sexism.

[42:50]

And left upon is something new. It's as new as alienation. There was alienation for thousands of years before there was the word. But when George Sand went around in many's clothing, she got away with it because she was a great writer and had friends in powerful places and films. He was accustomed to that. When Jane Austen wrote five of the greatest novels in the English language. She wrote them in the living room of her home on little folded eighths of paper. And on these eighths of paper in the super bourgeois home are the manuscripts of five of the great novels of the English language.

[44:05]

But Joan of Arc, at any point, you can just close your eyes and take a chronological chart and go zap. If you look at the transcript of the heresy trial of Joan of Arc, then the entire transcript exists. The worst offense that she committed was blaspheming God and God's creation by wearing the clothes of a man. Secondly, claiming to hear voices and oracles unauthorized by the church. But the first was the most important charge. And if she would recant the first, she would have been let off on the second. That's the whole transcript.

[45:07]

But he said, again, not thy will be done, but well done, thou good and faithful servant. And that was the end of Jonah's ark. Well done. Well, it is whammy involved, which is so utterly ignored. Now, I'll go sort of by a back door, like Freud. Yeah, Freudian sloth. Now, Gilroyd, in one of the last books that he wrote, Civilization and Its Discontents, in the opening chapter, in the second page, no, second paragraph, the first page, says, Within the bosom of every human being,

[46:19]

is cannibalism, incest, and murder. You are inside a person who can commit incest. You inside can love thy neighbor so much that you'll have him for dinner broiled or basted. and you can go bang, bang, you rat. Good riddance, and I'm glad. So said Freud. Okay? Now, the funny thing about it is that, darn it, I don't think it was a Freudian slip. We are, as the whole universe is, utterly incomplete beings. with a whole jumble of instincts, anxieties, fears, and joys, and love, and lust, all sorts of jumbled together things that

[47:42]

don't make much sense to us, and so we spend most of our waking hours putting immense amounts of energy keeping the lid on all that and denying that it exists. A large portion of the investment of life energy of anybody. Me? Maybe there's someone in this room who doesn't. I don't know. I'd like to get your autograph for posterity, or if there is, you'd be the first person ever to have no, as Freud called it, id, no instinctual irrational core to your personality. Well, if you ain't done it, you'd be quite surprised One of the roots of alienation which Hegel and Marx never talked about is the inner complex.

[48:50]

of a thousand and one contradictory desires, drives, and impulses within the person, within each one of us. And so our alienation is first and foremost an alienation from self. He talked about society, culture, religion, family. Marks and angles added, especially angles, the means of production. But first and foremost is the alienation from self. That his old hat, some of the wise guys of foregone years, but in terms of the modern West, took some very far-out people like Freud and Jung to point out.

[50:04]

And of course, like so many people with new or good ideas, they ran hard wild with them and went into so many complicated theories about it all, that nobody believed any of it because it was all, in the long run, such a fabrication of fantasy. So the core that were on the beam were easy to ignore because there was so much gobbledygook connected with it. But alienation from self is the core of that. Alienation from a sense of well-being and centeredness within one's own entity, one's own self. I'm not talking about a metaphysical entity or something invisible in us. I'm talking about a well-being, a tranquility.

[51:08]

means that there is constant warfare and strife going on. And this warfare and strife take place within the varying components within oneself, which we'll get to right at the end of tonight's session, but also with other people. And the so-called battle of the sexes is a good manifestation of that. People rarely need to show power, authority, or supremacy if they don't fear its absence within them. How can we be certain, for example, that the ancient Israelites very rarely went to the Hebrew temple but practiced the Canaanite fertility cults, had sexual intercourse on the threshing floors, at the hilltops, at full moon and all the rest, if the prophets and the others didn't scream bloody murder about it all the time?

[52:25]

People don't yell and howl and protest about things if nothing's going on. And there are no prohibitory laws if people aren't breaking the law right and left. So one measure of how our society functions is to look at its legal prohibition. And if you look at the no-no's, you get pretty much a darn good idea of what's going on beneath it all. The Battle of the Sexes. There's been so much speculation and hogwash about this that it's incredible. But one person who early feminists seized hold on very much was a German writer, Bachofen. It's an early, I guess we call him a sociologist. He wrote a book. I don't know if it's in English or not.

[53:28]

Just look at it. And it's The Mother Rule, Law, or Right, by all three in German, in which Buckhoven suggests that In antiquity, well, there is a considerable indication of many early peoples having female tribal leadership and all the rest, and family name for the mother and not the father, and so on and so on. But the source of the power of women was in the ability to do what men didn't know anything about, and that was to give birth. Only a German would think along these lines. And that when the mystery of how birth occurred

[54:35]

namely that it took two to tangle, and there's a relationship between the development in size of the uterus and what took place a little bit before on the part of the man, and men suddenly discovered that they had a part to play in the reproductive cycle that then men seized power from women. And then the matriarchy was supplanted by patriarchy. Well, that's just too pat. It should be true. And only a German can do that number, because there is enough to go on that gives a certain degree of plausibility and credibility to several of its points. if many other species of life know the connection, there's little doubt that Uga Uga and Naga Naga in the Neolithic caves didn't know the distinction between the act of sex and the act of reproductive life.

[56:01]

So, but, More to the point, more to the point, going back to the H.E., the woman in the sense of the feminine has had a historic, psychological, symbolic connection with the earth, mother earth, if you will. And in February, in our second session, I will bring in from Neolithic female sculptors, and you will see for yourself. But undoubtedly, in food gathering times, life lived close to the earth required everyone's effort to survive.

[57:10]

And so just to survive in a Neolithic era would certainly have required little social distinction among the sexes. And then in the early agrarian society, as well, the woman, fertility. And the symbolism shows itself even in the sexual rite that I alluded to among the Canaanites and the Hebrews who followed suit. And as you see in Japan, in the field of phalluses, a vagina symbol that promoted fertility in the field. that the necessities of early pre-commercial agrarian life may well have been such that there was a very high degree of equality.

[58:20]

The studies that have come down of early tribal leadership in ancient peoples and literatures and then an area where I had studied it in mid-eastern cultures. It is incredible. The further back you go, the more tribal leaders and so on you find within that. But right off back, with a ship to come in, division of labor and the inability to have collective care of children and things of that sort, one can assume, again, a measure of credibility to the extreme exaggeration of his work and point of view, that the division of labor made the woman not only the child bearer, but then the child

[59:28]

Razor. Especially as there was a further move from hunting and gathering, as well as planting, to commerce. In hunting and gathering, the children, especially the sons and daughters, were close to the fathers. And so the division of labor over the ages produced this battle of sexes. And it's rather interesting, the word woman, in early Arabic writing, in early forms of Semitic writing, is never used as a scornful term. But from the age of Commurus on, if you called a man a woman, you were cursing him.

[60:40]

Or if you said to a woman, well, you are just a woman, that meant that you were a subordinate-like form. And so the change in economic society, the beginnings of commerce, agrarian commerce, produced a division of labor that resulted in subordination of role. Just quite interesting, since there had been priestesses well before they were priests. And so on. And the woman as the healer goes back incredibly far into prehistory, not that there weren't men who were shamans and so on. But division of labor, division of labor, division of labor, subordination.

[61:44]

Well, the spiritual role of the woman was defined in terms of new law codes in which the woman's job was to serve her Lord in heaven and her Lord on earth, and in both cases, her master. And so I think this is some of the historic socioeconomic ideology of the subordination of women. And it's interesting because ever since then, women have sought incessantly over the centuries in offbeat ways, counter-cultural ways, to express spiritual interest in cults in illicit movements, in secret society, the so-called wenches of the 17th and 18th century, and all the rest, for the most part, were not gals going around with black peat hats flying around on broom, but secret cults that went way back in their origin

[63:10]

to rites of immense antiquity that were recapitulated through the ages. But essentially, the very definition of woman was as chattel, as property. In the Genesis account of the creation of Eve, She was created out of Adam to be a servant. The job of woman is to rejoice in good service and perpetuate the tribe, the faith, the nation, the right, and things of that sort. And yet, with all of that, as the official line, In as male-dominated period as the 16th century, there was Queen Elizabeth as an almost absolute dictator in the rule of England.

[64:29]

A rival for power of the throne of Scotland was another woman in Mother Russia, where Women have been more subordinate than in most places in the West. Many times the Russian rulers were female. In China, the last significant ruler was the Empress Dowager. And Great Britain had a wonderful Maggie Thatcher today. And who knows, we may have, who knows, some people have said Mrs. Black. And who Mrs. Black is, who? Gertrude LaHollipa Shirley Temple Glass as our future president.

[65:35]

Who knows? But it's interesting that the significance of women is in very select periods and select areas. When there is a vacuum and not much is known what to do, a woman has put up bread. She usually will roll like a tyrant, fading the thing out. Catherine, Elizabeth, and so on. Now, But these are always regarded as special people. And they either never married, or they married a multiple number of times and had yet more lovers. And if you know anything about Catherine, she didn't stop with beginning race. She was a lover of horses, not at the track. But at any rate, why, take, for example, religion.

[66:45]

Mary Baker Eddy. Look at her newspaper. Spiritualistic and theosophical group. Most of them are led by women. Astrology, mostly women. And women have had to go to the fringes and the edges for their spiritual self-expression in a leadership way. Otherwise, it's do good, keep your nose clean, and stay on the sidelines. I have to say that being a an Anglo-Catholic Episcopalian Buddhist, the ordination of women that had recently been approved by the Episcopal Church in the United States means that bishops that don't like it can refuse to have female priests perform with them their diocese.

[67:53]

And in the Church of England and the Income Church elsewhere, uh-huh, No, never. So, um... And only one of the women who have been ordained to the priesthood have been put in full charge of the parish. Of the many that have been. That's fine. So, um... It's idiocy to me that they want to do it. If they could recognize that the wrong... It's the wrong time. It's the wrong place. It's the wrong place. Well, maybe. Well, actually, in point of fact, there are so few jobs available, it's just moving out so much that it's hardly great. But in a power struggle, it's said that there is a dynamic involved that when most people, in order to feel good about oneself, you have to put down the other person.

[68:58]

Well, whether it's a race, whether it's a nationality, or whether it's a sexual group, there's a tremendous investment in one's own well-being in putting down someone else. So if you're a Swiss, well, he's an Italian. And if you're an Italian... Why, he's a Swiss! It's part of feeling good. The more people that you've been despised, the better you feel about yourself. You know, if you're here, and they're here, and you're not feeling so great, that's not very pleasant. So, you can't go up. You just push them down. Then you feel great. And they're all way down there. So there is a tremendous psychological investment in the put-down on whatever level.

[70:09]

It's a race, color, creed, sex, international origin. There's a tremendous investment in the put-down. Now, as Uncle Sigmund pointed out, there's a tremendous investment in being put down. In defining yourself as a poor woman, let's say. Or as whatever the case may be. and assuming and accepting all the miserable things that are said about the group, because it gives you a definition in this chaotic world. And a definition as being a rather low-grade type of human being is still a definition.

[71:14]

It is a place in the order of things. And especially if part of one's conditioning is non-competitiveness, that being a woman you accept only this and only that and only that, then there is a vested interest in opposing or even hating other women who was striving for equality or self-expression or have achieved something. In fact, I've noticed it's very rare that a woman will praise another woman who has a position of high responsibility. Men will praise her

[72:19]

men will pray men. But it's part of the oppressed mentality to resent those of one's own group who have attained any form. They must be resented, they must be despised. Same phenomenon exists in other oppressed communities. Among gays, very rare that a gay who has attained something will be praised by other gays. Quite the contrary. Quite the contrary. Much more likely to be a puke negativity. because so many oppressed people have a fantastic investment in their oppression.

[73:26]

And this is right smack at that irrational core in man that Freud called cannibalism, incest, and murder. And I think one can add Self-hatred, hatred of others, feeling lousy about oneself, about the world, about opportunities, about all the rest. And so it's part of the mentality of oppression that the oppressed person not only feel oppressed, but perpetuate the oppression himself or herself. Now here we have us and the world and we experience it. You talk about mood turns.

[74:32]

It's active, it's passive, it's everything in between. It's light, it's dark, it's everything in between. It's not all of us. It's male, it's female, it's everything in between. And I don't know particularly of anything other than Jung's distinction of anima and animus that is a clear-cut psychological differentiation between men and women. Only in the symbolic life Is there this tendency? And Jung, near the end of his life, acknowledged that he overstated it and that it is not as universal and total and complete and applicable to everybody as he initially claimed was the case.

[75:34]

Now, Jung, in parting, fired Fabian Yang and in which you notice the core of yin within yang and yang within yin, indicated that there is a psychological feminine component within males, which he called the anima, note the feminine ending. And the counterpart of that is a masculine component in females, the animus, the male ending. There is a tendency in the dream and fantasy life of men to project as the ideal image of fulfillment a female, like Dante's Beatrice. There is a tendency in the dream life, symbolic life, art and literature of females to project the hero, the ideal, even the image of the cell, as a male.

[76:53]

The dominant character in all but two of the writings of America's greatest female novelist, Willa Cather, is a male. The archbishop in Death Comes to the Archbishop is her working out of the masculine component within herself. Or in the poetry of Christina Rossetti in many, many places. And In American Literature, there's an excellent anime novel, She, by Ritter Haggard, in which the goal of one's whole being, one's whole idealization is personified for the male as the female, for the female as the male.

[78:07]

And so these components of masculine and feminine imagery are in polar expression within each person. Jung observed that a person who is a male, who cannot deal with its anima, with its feminine component, will either be acutely effeminate or acutely brutal. In either case, the person will be denying the feminine component by either submerging into it or utterly repudiating it.

[79:10]

Likewise, the female who does not deal with her masculine component will either be a really silly thing or a brutalized, vicious person. In neither case is there the use of the respective feminine and masculine component, which in the male is utilized in terms of sensitivity that combines with strength. And in the female is strength that combines with sensitivity. is the proper uses of these respective components, and they wind up making people, people.

[80:19]

So even where there are these wholer distinctions, their most creative use is in bringing wholeness, inclusion, a larger, broader dimension to the person and not a narrowing of perspective, of role identity, or anything of the sort. That's the odd thing about the net result of it all. it means that the wholesomely integrated male psyche produces a wholesome, integrated person.

[81:24]

The wholesome, integrated female psyche produces a wholesome, integrated person. And we just spoke Stop what it boiled down to. Now, to be untrue to the component that make up one's being, to be untrue to oneself, means that one pays a price. The price is being off the center, off the balance of being condemned to a perennially, perpetually exaggerated state for one's entire life.

[82:37]

And so to be out of touch with these components and not utilize them for every horizon that their self-expression can bring you to, whether it's to poetry, to music, to the beauty of the sunset, to jogging, to bouncing around on a punching bag in a gym, to anything and everything that is an expression of one's life and one's being to be crippled and have a crippled psyche. And the spiritual life is the projection from ourselves of our yearnings beyond ourselves and responding back to that transcendent experience, if we do it with part of our being only, we are doing it utterly and completely.

[83:59]

To have a spiritual life For example, in which all of the images and media that have personified form are all male or all female, it's sort of like reading a book in which every other word is blanked out. It doesn't make much sense, and it has no unity and wholeness. The whole of us being projected through media that represent who one is requires projecting through a multitude of media so that the components within us are all deeply encountered

[85:09]

and developed. I've often suggested to people, saying, well, I raised a little portion of the Kabbalistic view of life, but remembering that they crowned Kepler the golden radiance, not the sun, but the golden radiance at the top. I've often suggested to people that we meditate with a breast-top contact on the wall. That masculine from the limit. But it's glorious, bright, it's illuminating. It brings us to the highest dimension of illumination. but in personal imagery, since we include all people, and certainly those sexes in each of ourselves, it is a denial of our own being to not utilize the expression and the enjoyment of these components.

[86:32]

The expression and the enjoyment like, well, I'm doing it next week and next month, but, you know, community enjoyment is so important. When we go to meditation, you sort of say, hi, Tara, hi, Buddha, you know, how are you doing, kid? And kind of have a good plus vibe about it because it's all here, you know. That stuff, it's all components of us. And the more significantly true to us these external components are, the more all of us transform and come back, and in fact, redemptive, which is the old purpose of meditation from Farad Nirvana.

[87:42]

But sunflower includes the male, the female, animal, vegetable, mineral, the hills, the waters, the sky, the sun, the moon, everything. So everything is a vehicle and an expression, including for enjoyment. So to me, it's easy enough, though, talk about what you or I can do as individuals and overlook the extreme investment that people have in their oppression and being oppressed. And very frankly, you know, I'm politically highly if there's an active political new thing I like.

[88:46]

And I'm just amazed that a lot of opportunistic vehicles of political expression are changing attitudes and involvement that I haven't given up until it wasn't until the rainbow, I guess. But I know for sure that individually, No matter what. That wholeness of enjoying one's full sexuality and all of its components and lifting it to transcendent level to bring it right back to you and now. can be done if we are in an oppressive society, a society more oppressive than our own, less oppressive, or whatever.

[89:53]

In the Eastern Orthodox liturgy, the beautiful passage in which the priest asks God to take these offerings of the bread and wine from the altar on earth to the altar in heaven and exalt them and bring them back with celestial majesty for the enjoyment and youth of his people. Now, I'm not devoutly Christian enough to take any of that literally, but I think there's a heck of a wannabe to the celebration.

[90:53]

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