Predictive History - The Story of "Civilization", "Secret History", "Game Theory" and more - Secret History #12: Heaven on Earth

Episode Date: February 5, 2026

Secret History #12: Heaven on Earth

So we continue our run through human history today. So last class we did cave paintings. And what I will do from now on is I will highlight some YouTube comments for us to review what we learned last class, but also as a chance for us to better engage the YouTube audience. Okay, so this comment comes to us from Gary Zoroa Kiski and he talks about the cave paintings. he says that it is possible they create art everywhere,

the paintings only survived in the caves. And the answer is absolutely. So back then, during the Ice Age, they made these cave paintings as a ritual, as a celebration of their religion to express their imagination. They didn't really care about leaving a legacy that comes later, okay? So that's a very important comment.

So thank you. This man says that when I was talking about Beethoven, He points out that Beethoven wasn't born deaf, he became deaf much later as an adult. And that is true. So, but one thing about Beethoven that people don't really discuss is that he probably had synapsiscia, okay? And this is just a fancy word meaning the mixing of senses. So some people are born or a special talent, and so what happens is that their senses get mixed up.

So when people hear things, they actually see things. So the classic example is that they have pitch perfect. So there are some people, musicians, when they hear something, they can tell you exactly what the pitch is. Is it C minor, D major? And the reason why is when they hear something, they see a color. So they mix the audio sense with a visual sense. And that's probably the situation with Beethoven as well.

So a lot of really talented people in life, what happens is. that they mix up their senses. Okay? Another person is Leonard Euler, who is a mathematician, and this YouTuber says that the Pirate Bay, he says that he probably did his best work after he went blind. And the reason why is that when you go blind, you're able to imagine much more strongly and much more deeply.

So he's able to see the math in his head. in his head. Okay? This man says that I also learn from Indian people that they don't produce trash and garbage. And that's something that's very true for most of human history. For most of human history, we saw ourselves as part of nature. And so when you go to someone's house, you don't leave trash. Same thing for print of people, okay? They saw themselves as interconnected with nature and so they have to respect nature and therefore they had to clean clean okay all right so from now on we'll just highlight some YouTube comments okay so let's talk about heaven on earth so we did the ice age and now what's happening is

that the planet it's warming up and it allows for agriculture and that allows for settlements okay so now we will discuss what happens during this time as the population grows and as we settle down to form cities okay so let's review what we learned last class because in this class we don't learn facts or places we learn about ideas and concepts so if you want to understand human history you need to internalize certain concepts so in history class in our culture you're taught certain myths about who we are okay so I'm gonna go over some of these myths and show you they're wrong explain why we have these myths okay

so the first myth is that we are materialistic we like money sex and power the truth of the matter is that throughout most of human history we had three goals or three concerns the first is that we have a religious impulse and we want to express this religion through art, through music, through dance. And what I mean by religion, I mean that we have three questions in our heads. The first question is, where do we come from? Second question is, why are we here? And the third question is, where are we going?

That's why we had religion to answer these three questions. And that's why we still have religion today. Second thing about us is that we're all diverse and we want to differentiate ourselves. We want to stand out. The last thing is we are curious and we want to explore. That's fundamentally who we are. Then the question then is, why are we telling you that we're materialistic? And the answer is, it's better to control you, okay?

So in a society, there's a hierarchy, and the people are in charge, they want you to work hard, they want you to be obedient. But if you believe that you want to explore, then you're not going to be obedient enough, okay? Does that make sense? Okay, second myth is, and this is going to be hard for you understand. What you're taught is that the nuclear family, father, mother, children, that's the most natural human unit. And it's not true.

Actually, if you look at most ancient societies, the most natural organization is that women are usually in control. Why? Because women have complete autonomy. over their bodies. So they can choose who to have sex with. And that's where the power comes from. They control access to sex, which gives men pleasure.

And with this power, they often choose to sleep with as many men as possible. And there are three reasons why they choose this strategy. The first is it's fun, okay? It gives them pleasure to have sex with his main. any man as possible. That's number one. Number two is women are really good at negotiating politics and they use sex as a political strategy.

So if two guys are fighting each other, she has sex with both and then voila, they're best friends now. Okay? So women are very good at managing emotions for sex. And then number three is the most important. If you're a woman, you want to make sure that all you have to do. children grow up successfully, they don't die, okay, and they're happy and they're healthy. So from your perspective, it's in your advantage to hide paternity, to hide the fact who the

father is. Why? Because now all the men in the village in the community are responsible for raising a child, because no one knows who the real father is, so everyone assumes that I could be the father. Okay? And this is historically, how societies are usually organized with a woman in charge and as such societies tend to be very egalitarian because women don't really care about status and power they care about harmony and balance and the question then is why did we change that's actually a very simple reason the simple explanation is in order to have to produce more children because if you're a woman you don't want to have too many children. You want to make sure that all your children have access to resources, but you

also want to stay healthy, right? If you have too many children, it's possible you could die in childbirth. It's also possible that your children die in childbirth as well. So women have always practiced population control. But when we switch to a patriarchy, now we can have as many children as possible, okay? Because now women are basically become slaves and their main duty is to have as many children as possible and that's why after this transition from matriarchy to patriarchy a lot of women start to die okay so that's number two number three is humans believe in survival of the fittish and that's not true historically if you look at how society are organized we tend to be compassionate we look after the ill we look after the

elderly we look after the week okay that's who we are we have empathy we care about other people so why do we believe in survival of the fittest it should create fear and anxiety okay if you have fear and anxiety you work harder but also you're easier it's easier to control you any questions so far okay all right let's continue number four humans have gone smarter over the centuries and when One thing that you will learn in this class is that's not true. Humans have always been smart, but we've expressed our intelligence in different ways. So print of cultures, they express themselves through art.

They had better memories, they were more sensitive, and they were more resilient than we are. So why are we taught that we're smarter? The answer is confirmation bias, because everyone likes to believe that we're smarter than the people who came before us. So now let me give an example of how smart they were. So let's just say that you have a boat and you want to navigate the Pacific. That's very hard to do and usually you need a computer. Why because there's so much information that you need to process in order to navigate the ocean.

So let's go over some of the information. All right, so these are the Polynesian people. What's amazing about them is they set up the entire Pacific. Wherever there's an island, they had a settlement. And this is a testament to our desire to explore the world. What is fascinating is how they did this, because if I would put you in a boat in the Pacific, you probably die, okay?

And that's true for most people. So the question then is how they navigate the Pacific. Well, what they did was this. They built boats that allow them to navigate Pacific. But as you can see, these are not large boats. Okay, so they had to get to an island fairly quickly. So what they needed to do was read the stars. So in their heads, they were able to map up the stars,

and from the stars figure out exactly where they were. They also had to memorize oceanic currents, how the oceans were moving in order to better navigate the ocean. Also, every island has its own distinct oceanic ecosystem. Okay? So there's so much information that they have to take in. They have to look at the wind. they have to look at the ocean currents,

they have to look at the stars. And that's why we have computers to do this for us today. But back then, they didn't have computers. So they had to do this all in their heads. And they had some maps that helped them. So this is a map of the stars, and this is a map of the ocean currents. But they were all doing this in their head. And what's really amazing is, while they were out in sea,

they couldn't sleep. They have to keep track of all this information to know exactly where they were. They fell asleep, the navigator fell asleep, they got lost, and then they died. That's the power of the human imagination. Okay, last myth. We evolved from apes.

And the truth is that we are imaginative and we can choose our own evolution. So you're taught in school about the theory of evolution how we evolve from apes. And maybe our bodies evolve from apes, but our minds did not. Our minds come from somewhere else, okay? So why are you taught we evolved from apes?

It should justify the power hierarchy, okay? Right, the people in charge are just stronger and better and more fit than we are. All right, so having revealed last class, let's now talk about the religious imagination, okay? So this is the pyramids. It was built 2400,000. BCE and today it's the same pyramids. This is one of the most yes.

Yeah, go ahead. You said that the previous people are like smarter than today's because they can navigate the Pacific like just with the boat and and don't sleep but nowadays we use computer, right? But I think that nowadays we use computer It's not because we cannot navigate the ocean That's just by a boat and human is because this matter is We could get more precise and accurate information Okay, that's not true, okay? If I put you on a similar period, you would die It's that simple, okay? The computer's not going to help you

Navigate the ocean Okay, all right All right, so So these are the pyramids, okay? And there's a great mystery as to how these pyramids were built. And you might have on the internet heard silly explanations like, aliens came and built the pyramids, okay? Or maybe the law civilization of Atlantis

gave the technology to the Egyptians to build the pyramids. And this is an example of confirmation bias. We think that we're smart and everyone before stupid okay and what and what you learn this class is that these people had an imagination that allowed them to build the pyramids okay so I'm going to show you how they built the pyramids all right so as you can see the pyramids are extremely complex structures okay and first of all there's debate as to what the pyramid is what are you taught in school what the parents are what is it

Come on, you guys are taught all this in school, right? The two pyramids is what? It's a tomb, right? Okay, guys, it's not a tomb. It looks like a tomb, but it's not a tomb. It's a temple, right? Okay? So how do they build the pyramids?

So what happened was that they didn't have blueprints. They didn't have computers, but they had the imagination. So they could see the building of the pyramids. the building of the pyramid in their heads. And what they did was, they actually built it from the inside out. Okay? All right?

So, again, it's hard for us to imagine that they would do this because it's like, wait, you don't have a pen, so you can write it down. You don't have a computer so you can process all the information. They did it all in their heads. And that's the power of the human imagination.

Okay? All right. And as you can see, it was a massive undertaking. huge organization it took about 20 years and lots and lots of people and then the question then is how were they able to organize in such a manner and the answer again is empathy the imagination someone had a vision and this vision was so compelling that everyone knew exactly what part to play okay also what's really important

is that in school you're taught that the pyramids were built because the Pharaoh is God and there's a tomb for the Pharaoh, okay? That's really insulting to the Egyptian people. Like all cultures, the Pharaoh wanted what's best for his people. So the Pharaoh would, in his lifetime, undertake a lot of public works projects, including canals. So the pyramids were just a public works project, a temple. What's amazing about the pyramids is that we could not do the pyramids today.

Okay? Back to your point. We have computers. Guess what? We have all these machines, okay? And guess what? We cannot build the pyramids. Why?

Well, because the way we work is different from the way they worked before. Let's go over the differences, okay? Ancient times, people had religious devotion. When they worked on a project like the pyramids or whatever, the point was to bring heaven to earth, to bring God to earth, to create eternal peace. they felt that my dedication, my sacrifice, would make my children, my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren

all more prosperous. Okay? That's why they worked so hard. Today, it's make more money. Okay? Second thing, vision. People back then had bigger brains, okay? Not bigger brains, but like stronger imagination.

So in their heads, they were able to see the entire vision in their heads. And this vision was able to pass on to other people as well. It was almost like they had tapathy. It was almost like they could see the same thing. The structure of the pyramid was designed in a way that people saw the same image and they worked towards that image. Today we focus on something called top-down process-oriented management. The idea here is rather than work together, you just go and work a particular part.

And then once you do that part, you go away, okay? So an example is maybe art class. Now, I'm not sure if you take art class, but you guys know, like, to produce a great piece of art, you stay in a room and you work really hard at it, okay? But in school, what do we do? Well, first we do is, first thing we do is make you write a plan, right? And you do the plan well, I give you 10%. Then after you do the plan, what do you do? You write the outline.

Then you do a draft. Then you do an iteration, okay? You understand. We bring it down into a process. And you think that this would lead to better. results it actually leads to worse results okay because you're no longer focus on the vision you just focus on the process and that's why today everything we do sucks okay I can give you the greatest computers in the world

and you really couldn't do the pyramids okay I can give you the best machines the best computers it wouldn't matter because you lack that vision the last thing and this is most important is you have vision when you have religious purpose everything you do is careful okay you put your best effort into doing it because you're trying to create eternity today you try to do the least amount of work for the most amount of pay right so the idea today is to do it as fast as possible as cheap as possible to maintain the budget yeah so do you understand it's not about how smart you are it's about your purpose in working it's about how

you work and that's why we do today it's just crappy okay all right um let's go for some examples of tremendous human achievement okay this is the Hagia sophia um and this was built in 532 in constanta pole it's still in Istanbul you can actually take a plane get on a plane and fly and it's still there guys okay this is a modern picture so you can see the amount of attention and care put into architecture back there because it's about being heaven to earth creating heaven on earth this and you can see inside how beautiful it is okay and so every inch every piece of the church is just beautifully constructed everyone who worked on it

was working with the same vision and working with the same dedication this is the actin cathedral built in 7090 okay and guys this is what it looks like today no different from what it looked like when it was first built and guys no one said this was built by aliens okay No one said this was built by the Atlanteans. So the idea that the Egyptians couldn't build the pyramids by themselves and had to rely on aliens, that's just a racist comment. Also, Charlemagne, the first Holy Roman emperor, he was buried inside this cathedral. But no one's saying this is a tomb, okay? We all know it's a church.

So the pyramids are a church, a temple to their gods. And once you understand that, then we can better understand. how they built the pyramids okay does that make sense okay and this is what it looks like inside okay again this is today you can actually get a plane go to Germany and go walk inside this church and see for yourself how beautiful it is back then they put care and love into everything they did because because they believe that what they did was to make a more godly spiritual world okay mena the Manhattan Project okay this is probably the greatest achievement of humans in a

20th century. And there were 100,000 of scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project to build the nuclear bomb. Same concept where they believe that they were creating eternal peace on earth, heaven on earth, and that's why they worked so hard. And guess what? They were right, because now with the atomic bomb, nations are afraid to go to war. Before the atomic bomb, World Number one, World War II killed tens of millions of people. And even though there's still wars, they're not as devastating as before. Okay? All right.

So this idea of bringing heaven to earth, it goes way back to the beginning of humanity. This is Goblete-Tepae. It was first built in 9,600, 9,600 BC. And this is considered the world's first temple. It's the first temple that we discovered. that wherever humans go they will build temples because as I mentioned last class humans are first and foremost religious they express themselves through their especially a religion through art architecture music dance okay and it's an

amazing achievement because these pillars okay they're really tall so we don't know how they were able to move these pillars into place okay you can see how small people are how big this is But if you think about what we said about having a vision and then working together to achieve this vision, then it makes more sense. So let's discuss how they were able to build Koppao Ptepe. And this process is important for us to understand because it repeats itself throughout human history, okay?

So let's go over the process. The first is that there's always a charismatic leader. It could be a man, it could be a woman, but he or she has a vision for creating a a temple, a place of God. That's what a temple is. It's a place for God to live on Earth. And he shares this vision with everyone, and everyone works hard to achieve this vision.

But then the leader dies, and now you have different people competing to be the new leader. Why? Because a temple, and it's really important for you guys to remember, a temple is always the most valuable real estate on earth. Okay? If you are in a temple, people come to pray to you, right? So they have to give you gifts, that they give you tribute.

So what's happening in this time is that they would organize a religious festival once or twice a year. And people would have to bring gazelle, have to bring food as a tribute to the priest. And then they would celebrate it together and then they would feast. So if you're able to control this temple, you lived a very good life, you were a very powerful person. Okay? And so there was, so when the first leader died, you would have a successor in crisis and

they would vote who the next leader would be. And so what happened is they would have these trials where they prove to each other who the gods favored. Okay? So it's possible. Maybe there are two hills. You stand on one hill, I stand on another hill and we'll see where the bird lands. bird lands on my hill then the gods favor me okay because at this time

humanity believed that the mother goddess ruled overall because because as humans at this time you're concerned about two things right you're first concerned about farming agriculture fertility and then you're concerned about having babies okay so that's why the mother goddess was important because the mother goddess provided fertility for everyone okay but then over time what they realized is you know what we just cheat okay and how do you cheat you cheat by forming secret societies okay by getting people to follow you and then you swear blood oaths to each other and you also maybe have sex with each other and you become a faction okay and this led to la pocautal conflict

and the way they say they often settle this uh dispute or debate is for human sacrifice okay so if your faction lost you'd all be sacrificed and we know this because under goblay tepe there are tombs of human remains so we assume that these people lost a power struggle and as such they were all sacrificed together okay so in other words power struggle political conflict uh religious dispute human sacrifice secret society they go all the way back to human society okay all right so this is go go play tepe today again you can you can get on a plane fight a turkey and they go visit go bei tepe now one thing that's really important for us to understand is that with our architecture, there's mythology in place, okay?

And here we assume that mythology is the mother goddess, with a bird in the sky, and this might be a human skull. So there's a very complex, diverse mythology in place. We don't know why it is, okay, but they had a sophisticated mythology. And also, remember, humans are diverse. So once the mythology becomes established, new people come to a sophisticated. establish a competing mythology okay so um this place is called karan tepe and as you can see the mythology of this place it's different but these places are very close to each other okay so this

is maybe the cult of the skull the idea here is when people die you can still communicate with them in the spirit world if you have their skull okay almost the skull becomes a portal into the afterworld okay so you can draw on their wisdom you can draw on their spirit with the skull and this called the skull we see this in many ancient cultures including in China okay it's what we call ancestors worship and as you can see this is a cult of skull okay the Tower of Jericho the Tower of Jericho is another settlement and we just assume that okay if it's a tower it's for defensive purposes okay it's to ward off invaders but there's actually a better much

better explanation for the Tao Jericho it's a religious temple why because during the solar equinox the sun hovers above the of the temple and it causes the temple to flood this area with shadow okay so if you are a religious person you feel as though heaven is coming to you directly okay so you have a ritual you have a celebration when the solar eclipse happens and you can feel as though you're setting to heaven or heaven is coming down to you that's a of Howard Jericho. Kadaq Khoiak is one of the first settlements that we found. Remember, Gubei Tepe is just a temple.

So they would go there maybe once or twice a year for a religious celebration, but then they would leave. Kadaq Hoyak is where they decided to settle down permanently for decades. Now, in school, you're taught that we started farming because it allowed us to access more food. And so we could go to the population, we can become healthier and stronger, okay? But if you actually take up bodies of hunter-gatherers as opposed to farmers, what you will realize is, one, a hundred-gatherers are taller, a lot taller than farmers. Hundred-gatherers are stronger, live longer, healthier. They have better teeth. Why? Because if you're a farmer, you, sorry, if you're a kind of gatherer,

you have access to lots of different food, right? Meets. And getting the food is actually pretty easy okay you can just pick food off a tree as a as a farmer you're doing really hard to grow food that's not very nutritious and often the food is just similar okay you're just eating one vegetable one crop okay it's very limited diet and also because of starch your food your teeth gets really rotten really fast okay also because you're living together in a close quarters it's really easy for diseases to spread So it's hard for us to appreciate this, but being a hunter-gatherer, it's an easy, happy, healthy life.

Being a farmer sucks. So the question then is why they become farmers? For religious purposes, right? So that they could settle down and be with their religion, be with a charismatic leader. Does that make sense? Right. So this is the religion of the mother goddess, okay? Accompanied the mother goddess is the bull, okay?

Because if you think about it, a woman cannot give birth by herself. She needs a male. And this male god is the bull who represents virility, energy, strength, okay? So they worship both. And you can see how people are worshipping the bull. This is an image of Cadai Khoia. It's a very sophisticated community.

It's also very egalitarian. And each house is a temple onto itself. So they have these paintings in order to bring in the energy of their gods that they worship. And that's why they want to stay here because they want to be with their gods, even though it meant a harder life for them. This is Katicoia. As you see, it's beautiful. This is what it looks like today.

All right. This is another image rendition of Kata Koriak. As you can see, each house is a temple onto itself. And they bury the dead underneath. So they're trying to practice a religion, like here. Okay, as I mentioned, each house is a temple onto itself. And as you can see how each house is elaborated with, you know, the bowl, with ornaments to their gods and to the religion.

This is a gazelle, so they hunt gazelle for food. But as you can see, it's really a dance, right? So they're hunting the gazelle, but they see it more as a dance, as a celebration. The reason why is at this time in history, we feel an obligation to the animals we killed. We have to thank the animals that we killed, we have to celebrate the animals we killed, in order to maintain balance and harmony in the world. It's almost like a contract. Before you can kill animals, you need to pray to the gods and ask for permission.

After you kill the animals, you must thank the animals for sacrificing their body to you so you can eat. Okay? All right, guys got it? All right, so let's go over the pattern of human settlements. And I need you guys to remember how this process works. So let's look at how kind of your came together and I'll explain to you. why it fell apart. Again, you have a charismatic leader who has a

messenic vision. He takes us to this place and says, this is where the gods are. This is divine place. And let's settle down here, and as such, we can bring heaven to earth. And then they become a creative artistic community. Okay? And they often choose a place where the climate is very nice. And that allows them to farm, to supplement their hunting gatherer, okay? And over time, as a the population grows, they become much more dependent on farming.

So it's a gradual process. It doesn't happen overnight. In the early days, there's lots of social mobility in that all leaders are elected. And also, it's very egalitarian. Okay? Doesn't make sense. But over time, the system breaks down. What happens?

Well, first thing that happens is because of overpopulation, there's too much stress on the environment and so you have the land you're not able to grow as much on the land then you have climate change happening as well okay another big issue is that the hierarchy becomes hereditary before the leaders were elected now they are just inherited okay and this leads to corruption where the elite bully and exploit everyone else and people forget the memories of the first days and so what do people do people just get up and they leave okay you understand you can always choose to leave and so if you don't like the community anymore you and your family just

get up and you go to another place to build a new community based on your principles okay all right so based on today's lecture I want to remember three things about how we humans come together in a community okay and these three basic principles almost like laws I want you to remember them and then these laws will help you better understand how societies rise and fall okay the first important principle I want to remember is societies are fluid and dynamic they're always changing over time okay they're never still second thing is that firstly within societies is greater than across societies so

Another way of saying this is, yes, there's a conflict between the United States and China. But if you actually look at differences in diversity, the difference of diversity within China is greater than the difference between China and the United States. Does that make sense? The third law is communities exist in opposition to each other. So think about the cities in China, okay? Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Xi'an, they're all different. Why?

Because they want to be different from each other. But also within Beijing, you have Haidien, Chow Yang, different districts, right? They're all different from each other because they want to be different. Okay? So these three laws will help us better understand how societies form, thrive, and ultimately die. Okay.

All right. So I'm going to go over some books to highlight certain issues that we discuss in this class. This is the thought of everything by different Graber and David Wengro who are both anthropologists okay and they've looked at different societies and what they emphasize is diversity in the dinism of different societies okay so let's look at one particular society which is the native people of the Canadian Northwest Coast okay is other native people and what

happens what's really interesting is throughout the year that different social structures so during the winter everyone comes together And they form a hierarchy where there are palaces, where there's an aristocracy, and where they're divided into different classes. Okay? But then what's really interesting is that during a summer, people will just go away and start new societies. Okay?

This is like really interesting how in different times of the year, when the needs are different, people will choose different social organizations. People actually adopted different names in summer and winter, literally becoming someone else depending on the time of year. So a metaphor that you can think of is think about how when you play War of Warcraft or a different video game, you adopt a different identity, you adopt a different persona. And that's fun for you. So what's common in the ancient past is for people to adopt different social structures.

they can choose what social structure to go to. And certain communities still practice it today. Okay, this is the Wayfinders by Wade Davis, one of the best books I've ever written, sorry, I've ever read. He is looking at also print of communities, native tribes throughout the world, okay? And he's looking at specifically the Amazon people. If you go to the Amazon, you would have many different indigenous tribes. So let's look at the religion.

And as you can understand, and one thing that I will show you is that even though these people look simple, like, you know, they wear the same clothes and their lives looks very simple. Spiritually, they're very complex people, and they're very complex and sophisticated mythology. Okay? So these are called people of the Anacana, okay? In the beginning, before the creation of seasons, before the ancestral mother, Rumi Kuma, woman shaman, open a womb before her blood and breast milk gave rise to rivers and her ribs and her ribs and her ribs. to the mountain ridges of the world. There was only chaos in the universe, okay? So there's this very complex mythology.

I'm not going to go through all of it, okay? But I will show you the picture of it. This is a universe that they've created from themselves. It is complete, is unified, it's very complicated. And that's true for all mythologies. One thing that's really important for them is to maintain balance and harmony in the world. Okay?

So like most printed people, they believe there are different dimensions. And their role is to maintain harmony across these dimensions because that was what guaranteed a happy and prosperous life. So let's read this together. The people living today in the forest of the Parapaganaia, which is the Amazon, the entire natural world is saturated with meaning and cosmological significance. Every rock and waterfall embodies the story. Plants and animals are but distinct physical manifestations of the same essential.

spiritual essence. So every plant, every rock, has a life force. And they appreciate the diversity, the complexity, the sophistication of different life forces, okay? So even though they can express themselves, they don't have a written language, their minds are extremely vibrant and dynamic and energetic. At the same time, everything is more than it appears for the visible world is only one level of perception.

Behind every tangible form, every plant and animal is a shadow. dimension, a place invisible to ordinary people, but visible to the shaman. This is the realm of the He Spirits, a world of dilified ancestors where rocks and rivers are alive, plants and animals are human beings, sap and blood, the bodily fluids off the primarmonic river of the Anacona. Hidden in cataracts behind the physical veil of waterfalls in the very center of stones are the great mulocles of the Heard spirit where everything is beautiful, the shining feathers, the coca, the calabas of tobacco powdered, which itself the skulls, the skulls, and brain of the sun. You can see how the mythology is very complex and how they

imbued it, embedded into their everyday life. Every day when they wake up and they see the world, they see a world of color, of energy, of change. All right, he continues. Among the Barasana, such renewal is the fundamental obligation of the living. In practice, this implies the Braasana see the Earth as potent, the force as being alive with spiritual beings and ancestral powers. To live The world of the land is to embrace both its creative and destructive potential. Human beings, plants, and animals share the same cosmic origins and a profound sense are seen as essentially identical, responsive to the same principles obligate by the same duties responsible for the collective well-being of creation.

There's no separation between nature and culture. While the forests and rivers, humans would perish, but without people, the natural world would have no order or meaning. All would be chaos. Thus the norms that drive social behavior also define the manner in which human beings interact the wild, the plants and animals, the multiple phenomenon of the natural world, lightning and thunder, the sun and the moon, the scent of a blossom, the sour order of death. Everything is related, everything connected, a single integrated whole.

Mythology infuses land and life of meaning, encoding expectations, and behaviors essential to survival in the forest, anchoring each community, each Malacca, to a profound spirit of place. Okay? So you can see how sophisticated their imagination is. Okay, so one thing that I discuss continuously, because it's a very important concept, is how effing is a harmonious whole. And so when you kill something, you first need permission. You need a contract, okay? This is true through most of human history. So these people are no different.

When man to the forest to hunt or fish, it is never a trivial passage. First, a shaman must travel in trance to negotiate with the masters of the animals, forcing a mystical contract with the spirit guardians and exchange based always on reciprocity. Okay? Data of reciprocity. If you kill an animal, you need permission. Now, if you kill the animal, you must thank the animal

through ritual sacrifice, okay? The Brazana compared to marriage for hunting towards a form of courtship in which one seeks the blessings of a great authority for the honor of taking into one's family of precious being. Meat is not the right of a hunter, but a gift from the spirit world. To kill without permission is to risk death by a spirit guardian. Buy it in the form of a jaguar, anacona, tapar, or harpy eagle.

So the concept here is karma, right? If you do evil, evil will come to you. So it's important to maintain harmony. All right, and this is no different from the cave paintings. So you go back to the dawn. humanity we believe the same thing okay we believe that these animals came from the spirit world and that's why you paint it that's where you express art to thank the animals for coming from the spirit world to feed and nourish us now if we kill them then um we pray that they

return to us okay and this goes back you know tens of thousands of years all right let's go to africa so so we were in the amazon now let's go to africa And in Africa, there's some people called the forest people, okay? This is a book by Colin Trumbull, who spent a few years with them. And these are the pygmies. They live in the forest. And guess what? Even though the mythology is a bit different, they have different names, they have different structures, it's still the same essence.

Okay? So let's go over. This is a model mole, which is a mutual instrument that they used to communicate with the spirits of the forest okay all right so one thing that's really important for these peoples is the idea of ritual you are a member of the community if you participate in all their rituals if you believe in mythologies if you honor their ancestors and the and their traditions okay if you're not if you refuse to honor their traditions then they will ostracize you or they may even kill you okay so um the pygmies are having a religious festival

And Colin Trumbull says this. I was told however that everyone had to eat just as no adult male was allowed to sleep but had to sing while Malamo singing was in progress. Apparently, one of the greatest crimes that Pygmy can commit, if not the greatest, is to be found asleep when the Maloble is singing. Okay? If you refuse to participate in the ritual or if you break the seriousness of the ritual, then you are a threat to community and they will kill you.

And they will forget about you, okay? So once they kill you, the woman would be told that the Malamo itself, the great animal of the forest had carried off one of their number, but like the men, they would ask no questions and would never again mention the missing man. So if you disrespect them, they would not only kill you, but they would forget about you forever. So this is how they explain why they do what they do. Why do they practice these rituals?

Why these rituals such an important part of their lives? Normally everything goes well in our world, but at night when we are sleeping, sometimes things go wrong because we are not awake to stop them from going wrong. Army ants invade the camp, leopards may come in and steal a hunting dog or even a child. If we were awake, these things would not happen. So when something big goes wrong, like illness or bad hunting or death, it must be because the forest is sleeping and not looking after. its children. So what do we do? We wake it up. We wake it up by singing to it and we do this because we want it to awaken happy. And everything will be well and good again. So when our world is going well, then also we sing the force because we want it to share our happiness. Okay?

So their idea of God is heaven on earth, where you're connected to the environment around you. Everything that you do impacts the environment. The environment also impacts you as well. So you practice rituals in order to maintain balance and harmony in the world. The world is a script. Living, you must follow certain practices in order to respect the traditions of the world. And that's what brings harmony and heaven to the world. And it's something that we've, for most of our history,

something that we've understood and we've appreciated. Then the question then is, what do we change? Okay, and we'll be discussing this as the semester progresses. Okay, so that's it. Are there any questions before we end? Yeah. So before you said that people nowadays, okay, so first of all, I totally agree that people nowadays are lack of vision and imaginations, you know, contrast to people.

back in the days because of multiple reasons. And so my question is that I agree that people nowadays are lack of vision, but I kind of are a little bit confused about your argument that we cannot rebuild the pyramid. Because from my point of view, nowadays we have the ability to build skyscrapers or metropolitans. And so why, what is the factor that kind of stops us to build, you know, structure-type pyramid? Okay. So the question is, why can we build the pyramids? Okay.

All right. So there are different factors in place. The first is the resources that are required to build the pyramids. it is tremendous, okay? Okay, so to give an example, the stone that, sorry, let me just bring this up, okay? The stone that they used to build the pyramids is enough to build a wall around France. Okay, so this is the size, okay, is beyond our imagination. That's number one, okay?

where we find the resource to do this second is the question of will why would why would want to do this like do you want to rebuild the pyramids like okay well yeah that's another problem okay and the third problem is this organization which is how would we organize the people in a way as to build the pyramids because back then it was a massive undertaking but again people were united by a similar vision which is like we're bringing heaven to earth once we build a pyramids the gods can rest in peace the gods can come down and shine the divine light all over us so that's the end of history we're done okay just do just

work hard for 20 years and then to be heaven on earth okay that's what drove them what inspires people today there's nothing there's nothing that inspires people today okay like oh make a billion dollars make a trillion That's what inspires people. But you know what, to make a billion dollars, it doesn't mean you have to work hard. It just means you have to cheat and lie and steal. Okay? So, does that make sense?

Yeah, it makes sense. But, well, nowadays, people still have religions, right? Let's say Christian is still one of the most powerful religions and people share. And so are they capable to, you know, build another. very tremendous or imaginary structural buildings okay okay so this is hard okay if we understand it's a different world and the brains work differently back in this age religion was the end on be all okay you live for your religion okay doesn't make sense today our religion is capitalism

Okay, so and capitalism is just make as much money as you possibly can. And the difference is back during the time of the Egyptians, it was a spiritual age. So you sought inspiration from the heavens and people's imaginations could expand because they would wake up with ideas. Okay. Today we live in a materialistic age. We just say we don't believe in God. We don't believe in divinity. We just believe in numbers, in computers, in process. Okay? Does that make sense to you? Okay? It's hard to understand because you live in a time of complete materialism.

So you don't understand what it means to live a life of spirituality, of divinity, of trying to bring heaven to earth, okay? But if you did do that, then you'd be a very different person. There were things that you could do that would be unimaginable to you. For example, if you go visit a temple or a monk, they could meditate for months and months and months. They could walk beer feet in the cold for years and years and years. We can't do that, okay? Because the moment I say, hey, meditate for a whole month, just don't eat. You can't do that.

And you're like, what's the point? And the new answer is because I want to be with God. Because I want to feel as though it's heaven on earth. So it's not just a question of how smart you are. It's a question of faith and purpose and meaning as well. The reality is that not only do we live a life of purpose and meaning and spirit, we also think these things don't matter. Does that make sense?

All right. Any more questions? So I do agree that we cannot build pyramids nowadays and I'll definitely die if you just put me on a pathetic. But so but like for more than people, we also can do like a lot of things that previous people cannot. So how does the building of pyramid these things demonstrate that the previous people are small? Can you tell me what we do today that is so wonderful and spectacular? What what? What do we do today that's so wonderful and spectacular and you think it's amazing?

What? What? Give an example of something that we do today that is spectacular and wonderful. Um, okay, yeah. I mean, you have an example. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Yeah. So give an example. Any more questions? Doesn't matter for the first person who have the vision to build it and the second person have the same vision or it doesn't really matter. They just build. They just want to brain having to. Look, that's a great question. Okay. And this is hard for us to understand. But there's no sense of individual propriety. Okay. It's like, this is my idea, you can't have it. It's always like, we're in this together.

Okay? We don't know who built the pyramids. Why? Because it doesn't matter who built the pyramids. All that matter is, it was built. That's the spirit that they had. Nowadays, it's like, if I have this idea, how do I patent it? How do I get credit for it?

How do I make money out of it? Okay? And that's where our ideas suck. Back then, it was just like, it doesn't matter what my idea is. What matters is this idea is expressed to other people. Okay? When you have that spirit, when you have that spirit, when you have that heart when you are when you share who you are then god comes into you and gives you

ideas you understand but if you're like nope all i want to do is make money god leaves you okay and that's hard for us to understand that's so back then there must have been a genius a charismatic leader and god gave him this not god but like the spirit world okay the universe gave him this vision for the pyramids and he knew exactly how to do it and then he goes to the pharaoh and says listen i have this vision the Pharaoh says let's just do it okay so the Pharaoh got credit but it didn't matter who got credit it just doesn't matter what mattered is it was built you understand there's no sense of individualism there's no sense of capitalism there's no sense of like private property it's all like let's this make let's just work together to build a better world okay and yes the people who worked on it were getting

paid but that was that's not what mattered to them what mattered was achieving this vision together okay so it's hard for us to understand But when you have this mentality of common sacrifice, you are able to do tremendous things together. Okay? And I'm sorry, but I can't think of an example of things that we do wonderful today, like chat GPT. Give me a break, okay? All right? Any more questions?

All right, great. So I'll see you guys next week.