I find it a little difficult to say
what the subject matter of this seminar is going to be,
because it’s too fundamental to give it a title.
I’m going to talk about what there is.
Now, the first thing though, that we have to do,
is to get our perspectives with some background.
about the basic ideas,
which as westerners living today in the unites states,
influence our every day common sense,
our fundamental notions about what life is about.
And there are historical origins for this,
which influence us more strongly than most people realise.
Ideas of the world,
which are built into the very nature of the language we use,
and of our ideas of logic and what makes sense all together.
And these basic ideas I call “myths”.
Not using the word “myth” to mean something untrue,
but to use the word “myth” in a more powerful sense.
A myth is an image.

So, basic to this image of the world, is the notion, you see,
that the world consists of stuff, basically.
Primordial matter.
Substance, stuff, as pots are made of clay.
And the potter imposes his will on it,
and makes it become whatever he wants.
And so in the book of genesis,
The lord, God, creates Adam out of the dust of the earth
In other words,
he makes a clay figurine.
And then breathes into it,
and it becomes alive.
Because the clay becomes informed.
By itself it is formless,
it has no intelligence.
And therefor it requires an external intelligence
and an external energy to bring it to life
and to put some sense into it.
So in this way we inherit a conception of ourselves
as being artefacts,
as being made,
and it is perfectly natural in our culture for a child to ask its mother,
“How was I made?”
A myth is an image.

We are playing a game,
and the game runs like this.
The only thing you really know,
is what you can put into words.
Let’s suppose I love some girl,
rapturously.
And somebody says to me,
“Do you really love her?”
Well how am I going to prove this?
Let’s say I write poetry.
“Tell us all how much you love her!”
“Then we’ll believe you”
So if I’m an artist and I can put this into words
and convince everybody that I’ve written
the most ecstatic love letter ever written
they say,
“Alright, okay, we’ll admit it, you really do love her”
But supposing you’re not very articulate,
are we going to tell you,
you don’t love her?
Surely not.
A myth is an image.

Once you start thinking about things,
you worry as to wether you thought enough.
Did you really take all the details into consideration,
was every fact properly reviewed.
And by jove
the more you think about it,
the more you realise,
that uh,
you really couldn’t take everything into consideration
because all the variables in any human decision are
incalculable.