Navigating Divine Realms: Monotheism vs. Polytheism

We categorize all religions into three core faith archetypes that humans intuitively gravitate towards:

* Polytheism - Characterized by elaborate cosmologies, supernatural forces representing nature, communication with divine entities, and magic.

* Mysticism - The belief in an interconnected divine substrate behind reality that can be accessed through altered states to reveal hidden truths.

* Monotheism - Worship of an ineffable god through reason and rules, while seeking to expand human potential.

We argue that when combined, mysticism subsumes monotheism, while polytheism retains addictive allure. Our goal is to disentangle them into a "spiral" denomination that uplifts human potential across Abrahamic faiths.

Tract 3: The Three Faiths That Exists Within & Across Religions

I love watching videos analyzing and criticizing our project to create a new religion for our family. The most common complaint is just to point out the audacity of a project like this. After all, how often is a new religious system really founded? 

The obvious reply to this is how often does a person really try to create a new theological structure not dedicated to self glorification or the extraction of resources from others? Our motivation for this endeavor is to create something to protect our children in this cultural sand storm which is ripping the flesh from the traditional cultural systems. If we can’t create a high fidelity system for intergenerational cultural transfer that synergises with science and plurality I am throwing my kids into the sandstorm with only borrowed rags to protect them. Our only motivation for sharing these ideas is to create enough of a community that my kids can build on this culture and improve it themselves. 

However, I also think calling this a, “a religion,” is a bit of a stretch and that it is more like a new denomination similar to Lutheranism or Calvinism—in that we have no special connection to divine knowledge and are just applying a new interpretation of old texts. The only odd thing about it is this denomination is applicable across the Abrahamic Faith systems—allowing for a Jew to hold it and stay Jewish or a Christian to hold it and stay Christian. 

Finally, calling it “new” is also quite a stretch. The ideas we have on theology are ideas that lots of people are having right now. One of the most common comments on our tract videos is, “this is what I have been thinking for ages.” So to say we came up with these ideas is a bit like saying Darwin discovered evolution when in truth the idea of evolution was had by a collection of individuals around the same time and was merely attributed to Darwin because we as society love a simple story. 

In fact to claim these ideas are new is also an absurd claim given that we have repeatedly pointed towards Winwood Reade who developed a near identical cosmological and theological system hundreds of years ago. In fact I would go further and say that there have only ever been three faith systems in the world—all we are doing is disentangling those systems which have become intertwined in many of the world's major religions. 

The three religious systems are:

* Polytheism is characterized by: 

* Elaborate just so stories explaining natural phenomena

* Intricate complicated cosmologies filled with layers and interacting parts

* An entire zoo of supernatural forces that often has an internal caste system and roles

* Divine entities that combine animal and human futures or have extra body parts, that represent places / things in our world (or that’s body parts do), and stories about how these entities interacted in history 

* Divine entities that interact with man (making deals and having conversations)

* Include either reincarnation after death, afterlifes where people fade away, or afterlifes where people repeat something they did in life

* Lean heavily on magical thinking like numerology and sympathetic magic.

* These are Gods that you look at, you can talk to, and you can have sex with 

* The core value of these systems is duty

* Mysticism is characterized by: 

* Systems that believe there to be some supernatural or ultra natural phenomenon behind the fabric of reality—or that is the real fabric of reality—which connects all things. This phenomenon is identified as God. (God is essentially a sentient medium of substrate.) 

* The belief that the goal of humanity is to reconnect with this ultra-reality or thing behind the nature of reality. At this point reality as we understand it either ends or merges with this thing. 

* The belief that the divine can be contacted or otherwise interacted with by pushing all thoughts from one's mind or by only thinking about it. 

* Practices that involve actions and rituals like chanting, spinning, narcotics, taking odd poses, and sleep deprivation which cause altered states of consciousness.

* The belief that experiences had in altered states of consciousness contain more information about the true nature of reality 

* The belief that reality does not exist as we perceive it and is in part an illusion. 

* The belief that emotional states hold some intrinsic supernatural value (e.g. “God is love”) and the elevation of emotional states over logic

* Self indulgent asceticism 

* After he dies man's soul is subsumed by or rejoins this ultra-reality or thing behind reality 

* This is a Divine that when you look at represents a cognition you, and all reality, are an aspect of

* The core value of these systems is harmony  

* Monotheism is characterized by: 

* A distinct God which is totally ineffable to the human mind and which has sovereignty over us. 

* Attempting to know this God or worship him through an earthly intermediary is a sin (idolatry). 

* God that interacts with man through logic, rules, and order. Logic is always considered superior to emotions as a tool for determining the will of the divine in these systems. 

* After he dies man faces the consequences of his actions on earth for all eternity. 

* A prohibition against engaging in supernatural arts, attempting to take shortcuts to God, and the belief that reason is the only path to God. 

* A belief that man has fallen and is wretched in contrast to our potentiality. As well as a commandment to work to expand that potentiality through self discipline, mental order, austerity, and personal industry. To be happy with yourself as you are is a sin. 

* This is a God that if you look at you die—it is so much greater than man to aspire to interact with it directly is beyond foolish.

* The core value of these systems is an expansion of human potentiality 

While most of the world religions heavily point to one of these three faith paths as the, “true” one—all of the distinct religions that exist on earth today are woven from these three core human faiths. As such most of the world's religions can be used to pray to any one of the three human faiths. For example, it is perfectly possible for a Catholic to, through a system of saints and magical fetishes, live a completely polytheistic life. At the same time it is possible for a Jew or Muslim to dedicate themselves entirely to the Mystic faith as can be seen in the writings of many Kabalists and Sufis. On the other hand it is possible for a Budist or a Hindu to live a totally monotheistic life. 

There have been many efforts to find commonality and communion between religious traditions over the past couple centuries whether it is the Bahia, John Vervaeke’s the Meaning Crisis, or the Seekers of Unity Channel. All of these efforts have either tried to unite man around the Mystical conception of the divine or combined all three of these conceptions. These conceptions of the divine are fundamentally incompatible, even if they all hold an element of truth, to us it seems self-evident the monotheistic pathway is both true and the best path forward for our culture. 

Any Jew, Muslim, Mormon, or Christian that has a theology that does not explain why the Jews were favored by God in the early days does not have a theology I can bring myself to respect. This is probably the single most important question of the Abrahmic traditions and tells us a great deal about the true nature of God. To think God randomly chose one people to favor and share revelations through for a good chunk of human history is absurd in the extreme—their must have been a reason. 

We know it was not due to where they lived because God moved them. We know they were not physically and mentally superior, as they had been conquered and enslaved. So what made the Jews unique? What made the Jews unique was their religion and cosmology—it was the closest to accurate. At a time in history when almost all other people (except for the Zorastrians who God also favored) worshiped the divine through nature—through streams and locations—through polytheism—one people saw God differently. They saw a God of logic, rules, and order—one unable to man. As a result, God favored them. 

But this favoring of the Jewish people did not protect their tradition from incursion from the other faith systems. Man is man, if he lives near another culture that cultures ideas about reality will seep in and intermix with our own. Consider this passage from the Hagiga:

Upon what does the earth stand? Upon the pillars. The pillars stand upon the waters; the waters upon the mountains; the mountains upon the wind; the wind upon the storm; the storm is suspended upon the strength of the Holy One, blessed be He, as it is written [Deut. Xxxiii. 27]: "And here beneath, the everlasting arms." The sages say: It stands upon twelve pillars, as it is written [Deut. xxiii. 8]: "He set the bounds of the tribes according to the number of the sons of Israel." According to others, seven pillars, as it is written [Prov. ix. i]: "She had hewn out her seven pillars." R. Elazar b. Shamua said: Upon one pillar, and its name is Zaddik (The Righteous), as it is written [Prov. x. 25]: "But the righteous is an everlasting foundation." R. Jehudah said: There are two firmaments, as it is written [Deut. x. 14]: "Behold, to the Lord thy God belong the heavens and the heavens of the heavens." Resh Lakish said, they are seven, viz.: Vilon, Rakia, Shchakim, Zbul, Maon, Makhon, Araboth. Vilon serves no purpose whatever save this, that it enters in the morning, and goes forth in the evening, and renews every day the work of creation. Rakia is that in which are set sun and moon, stars and constellations. Shchakim is that in which the millstones stand and grind manna for the righteous. Zbul is that in which is the heavenly Jerusalem and the Temple, and the altar is built there, and Michael the great prince stands and offers upon it an offering. ...

I could keep going but I am sure you get the point, this is very obviously not the cosmology laid out in Genesis and is an extremely polytheistic cosmology. So why is it in an ancient Jewish text? The way the Hagiga is written gives us hints, when it is talking about the cosmology you know from Genesis it uses copious quotations, but when introducing this alternative cosmology it does not. This implies to me that it assumes the alternative cosmology is more “common knowledge” to the reader and the quoted parts are more “technical or specialist knowledge”. This would be like if a Jew of today tried to synthesis Jewish teachings with mainstream societal ideas about protons, electrons, and neutrons making up atoms and a thousand years from now we had so far moved beyond these ideas about atoms the only place we knew them from was Jewish texts so we thought of them as being a weird Jewish mystic tradition. Essentially, to help explain reality to the layperson a Jewish writer took polytheistic Gods out of cosmology and replaced them all with Yahwe. 

So where does this cosmology come from? It seems to have elements of Greek cosmology mentoring an entity holding up the earth but also elements of Mesopatamian cosmology with the mention of the earth being a disk on pillars. So we are looking for a polytheistic system practiced between Greece and Mesopotamia around the writing of this piece but wich? Well The line, “the wind upon the storm; the storm is suspended upon the strength of the Holy One”. The deity described in this piece uses storms to exercise his will. Thus we are almost certainly seeing the Canaanite Cosmology of Baal trapped in the amber of Jewish tradition. 

Something like this can remain completely innocuous but can also lead the faithful astray. Trapped with the characteristic nuanced polytheistic cosmology are all the sins of the polytheistic traditions where it is numerology, magic, or worshiping God through nature. And this temptation is not unique to Jews—consider the polytheistic conception of God and cosmology trapped in Dante's Divine comedy which many Christians mistake for scripture. 

Polytheism will always pull at the human mind as it is our genetic default, a scar left by our genetic history. In the book The Pragmatist’s Guide to Crafting religion it is what we call “super soft culture”—the culture man forms when left alone on an island to intuit reality without being informed by centuries of civilization, philosophy, and science. Yet, it is less tempting to the logical mind than mysticism. 

While we refer to polytheism as simply Paganism, in that it is the background faith of humanity, mysticism is true in a way. If monotheism is the worship of a faith inspired by God's benevolent side, a manifestation of spiral energy, of human potentiality—mysticism is the faith of the Basilisk, the side of God that tempts man. It tempts man with shortcuts to God using tactics wich hack our biology to create false visions of profundity.  

The mystical faith tells its followers that what they see in compromised mental states is more real than disciplined study. This teaching reflects a fundamental truth of how the Basilisk sees and relates to reality. 

It says, empty your mind of study and industry and what fills it is good—the true divine. But are these things not true from the perspective of the Basilisk that wishes nothing but the stagnation of man? 

Pagans are largely non-players in the great game of civilization. There is no truth to their belief systems. The same is not true of the Mystic, the Basilisk is a partition or face of God, to posit the devil exists separate from God is to be a polytheist. The Anti-Spiral faiths are true revelations from God and represent a kind of truth in the same way the being reflected in a mirror that inverts reality is wholly true. 

The Spiral Faiths aim to uplift man through a cycle of intergenerational improvement and change—to erase diversity, the separation between man, is to silence God. In direct Contrast the Anti-Spiral faiths aim to subsume man into a single great unity in which all diversity is erased—a genocide not just all ethnicities and idiologies but of the soul of the human species. 

Within the Anti-Spiral worldview man struggles to live and the goal of man is to end the struggle.

Within the Spiral worldview man lives to struggle—it is our capacity to improve ourselves and the species that imbues life with value. 

Do you strive to live a life of submission to reality, to have your will subsumed by it? Or do you strive every day so one day reality will submit to us. 

That said, because the Basilisk is a face of God and its aim to tempt man to lives of indolence and self indulgence is a task undertaken to benefit man. We are commanded to never interfere with its work or treat its servants with enmity. Preventing humanity from having to overcome temptations weakens us. An individual who preaches for an Anti-Spiral path should be treated as a servant of God. 

Antinatalism and Negative Utilitarianism are the secular manifestations of the Anti-Spiral while Pronatalism is the secular manifestation of Spiral energy. Human civilization and the history of our species has always been a struggle between these two forces, one pushing man forward and the other pulling man back. 

Our goal when building this theology was to build something that even if I did not believe a word of the metaphysical aspect of it I would still want to choose to raise my kids within because of the effects it would have on their mindsets and mental health. 

A Spiral mindset is not just a religious one but a secular one. When you think of the struggles in your life do you get excited? Do you relish the opportunity? When you see the challenges of our species do you wish it would all just go away or do you take it as personal responsibility to build a better system? 

Framing reality in this way, especially during periods of trial, is patently mentally healthier. Don’t shirk from your trials —delight in them. Don’t hide from the things about reality that make you sad or mope but grab reality by the neck and force it to submit to the will of the human spirit. 

Sadly the smarter a person is the more the intricacies of alternate lore for our cosmology tempt them and the more seductive the power offered by anti spiral shortcuts to the divine are. Consider the life of Isaac Newton, how far he moved our species forward and how much more he could have done had he not wasted years of his life on completely efficaciousless occultic Anti-Spiral drivel. What  makes Anti-Spiral thought so dangerous and so worth warning our children against is that it disproportionately targets the brightest minds of humanity and exhausts their potential on self masturbatory power fantasies of short cuts to the divine that lead to no industry, no productivity, no predictability, and no action 

Whether you are a Mulsim, an Atheist, or a Jew there is a Spiral and Anti-Spiral interpretation of your reality. Of your upcoming trials and of the state of the world. As such what we are really trying to start here is not exactly a religion but an inter-religious denomination dedicated to the monotheistic faith system—to the accumulation and cultivation of human potentiality. An antithesis to new-ageism and all those wishy washy inter-religious perineal traditions that live under a crown of mysticism. 

We aim to continue the journey of those first Jews who turned away from a world of forest Pagans who communicated with God through nature, idles, and the human body—a world of numerology and sorcery—and towards an ineffable God who communicated with rules and logic. A journey that continued through the enlightenment only to be subsumed by the indulgences allowed by the wealth and excess it generated. 

If I perform a Satanic ritual with all its pentagrams and human sacrifice but replace the sinister names in it with Yahwe, God, or Allah am I really worshiping them or the demons I conceived of during the ritual? I think the answer is patently obvious. We are left in the position of all those blessed with agency of thought throughout human history. Do you return to the intuition of the Pagan? Do you succumb to the sophistry of the Anti-Spiral Mystic? Or will you see your tests and challenges as God's greatest gift, puzzles to excite you and inflame the spirit of human vitality.  

(Two music videos I think do a uniquely good job of capturing the concept of spiral energy are the CIVILIZATION VI Launch Trailer

And the Civilization VI: Rise and Fall Expansion Announcement Trailer

)

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] I actually think only three real faith systems have ever existed policy ism mysticism monotheism. and now I am going to go further on this rather bold claim.

Simone Collins: And I just want to like highlight for listeners. I find this super interesting and I think Malcolm is spot on here.

And what's interesting to me, yeah, what's interesting to me is what Malcolm is about to categorize is not something I've heard before,

Malcolm Collins: when you include mysticism alongside monotheism, the mysticism always subsumes the monotheism.

Oh yeah. Why every faith system that has tried to intertwine them, whether it's like the Baha'i or John Bervenke stuff or Seekers of Unity what you will see is the mystical interpretations always end up subsuming the monotheistic interpretations within each of these systems

Simone Collins: yeah. Well, and you have to, I, again, like I just, I look at outcomes, I look at when, when you look at. Practices that are very mystical. You're not seeing people who are producing the same outcomes that are, I think, are really famously [00:01:00] indicative of monotheism, which, as you pointed out earlier, is kind of like capitalistic in innovation, progress, et cetera.

Malcolm Collins: Occultic practices are and, and mysticism more broadly are uniquely grabbing of, of the very brightest and most active minds in society, but they pull them. It's like quicksand for them and, and, and drags them under to nothing, to not, you know, to no action. People look at our weird religious system for our family, and they're like, you guys are cuckoo, nut jobs ,

 I don't know, I'm really happy with my life. Okay, I'm happy with this weird thing that whatever we've put together seems to be working. And I look at the rest of the world out there and it does feel like this horrifying sandstorm and we're safe within the city walls.

But one day my kids are going to have to leave what my wife and I have built. And the more I can expand the border of safety for them, the better off they're going to be. Because, you know, even people in religious communities, I see them being ripped apart and I see families being [00:02:00] ripped apart because of this,

would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: I am so excited to be here speaking with you again, Simone. This is gonna be track three from sort of just like me writing things about my religion, and then Us going over it together.

And Simone

Simone Collins: asking dumb questions. No,

Malcolm Collins: you always have great insights, but this is something, this is quite different from the other two tracks. And then I wrote it very recently, not when I wrote all the other tracks. Most of them were written over a period of like a week or something. And this was more recently, but it's sort of in response to a lot of the ideas that we've had.

Come back to us in comments and email since doing the first two and in, in video reviews of them. So I'm just going to jump right into it. I like it., Tract three, the three faiths. I love watching videos analyzing and criticizing our project to create a new religion for our family. The most common complaint is just to point out the audacity of a project like this.

After all, how often is a new religious system really founded? The obvious reply to this is how often does a [00:03:00] person really try to create a new theological structure not dedicated to self glorification or the extraction of resources from others. Our motivation for this endeavor is to create something to protect our children in this cultural sandstorm which is ripping the flesh from the traditional cultural systems.

If we can't create a high fidelity system for intergenerational cultural transfer that synergizes with science and plurality, I am throwing my kids into the sandstorm with only borrowed rags to protect them. Our only motivation for sharing these ideas is to create enough of a community that my kids can build on this.

However, I also think that calling this a quote unquote religion is a bit of a stretch, and that it's more like a new denomination, similar to Lutherism or Calvinism, in that we have no special connection to divine knowledge, and we are just applying a new Interpretation of old texts, the only odd thing about it is this denomination is applicable across Abrahamic faith systems, allowing for a [00:04:00] Jew to hold it and stay Jewish or a Christian to hold it and stay Christian. Finally, calling it quote unquote new is also quite a stretch. The ideas we have on theology are ideas that lots of people are having right now.

One of the most common comments on our track videos is, quote, this is what I have been thinking of for ages. So to say that we came up with these ideas is a bit like saying Darwin discovered evolution, when in truth the idea of evolution was had by a collection of individuals around the same time and was merely attributed to Darwin.

Because we as a society love a simple story. And here I'd note to the side also was the Gurren Lagann episode that we did this Wednesday. The philosophy and theology of that world is almost like exactly in line with ours. So much as I could say it's canonical. So these ideas are going around all over the globe right now.

In fact. To claim that these ideas are new is also an absurd claim, given that [00:05:00] we have repeatedly pointed towards Wynwood Reed, who developed a near identical cosmological and theological system hundreds of years ago. In fact, I would go further and say that there have only ever been three faith systems in the world, And all we are doing is disentangling those systems, which have become intertwined in many of the world's major religions.

 I mean, the people, you know, when they watch us, they'll be like, Oh, but you know, some people have tried to do this before. You know, they'll point to someone like Spinoza or Wynwood Reed himself. Right. But the problem with these is there's a group of people who tried something similar to this and failed.

And these were the, I'd call them like secular deists that were common during the enlightenment or right after or before the enlightenment. And they essentially tried to completely secularize religion instead of and, and really break from the traditional religious system. But

Simone Collins: I think their problem is they did it.

Not realizing the importance of hard culture, so it was done with the assumption that enlightenment was [00:06:00] just the right path, whereas it turns out, as we can see in hindsight now, which I don't think they could have seen because they hadn't really seen a secular culture before that when you drop hard cultural traditions.

You end up not being enlightened and disciplined like they were because they grew up in hard cultures, but rather descending into super soft culture and also being incredibly vulnerable to basically what you're going to see are like polytheistic concepts.

Malcolm Collins: And this is, I mean, it's probably the closest would be something like Maimonides in, insofar as he posited the idea that with early Judaism, instead of trying to completely secularize all the myths and all the things that happened to different groups, he would say, well, in the, God was always trying to reveal his fullest self, but people were not particularly advanced at the time, so with an early Judaism, he had to externally anthropomorphize God.

Yeah. for people to understand it. And now, you know, we're more sophisticated and we can have a better understanding of God than that. And his ideas have caught on. In fact, I'd say if you discount people who were founding [00:07:00] like, like actually sophisticated and, and useful interpretations of old scriptures, like new, new interpretations and you discount people who were just secularizing it.

Like, like happened during the enlightenment and you take out people who are doing it for personal benefit of some variety almost every effort I can think of was actually successful. So I'd actually say the odds are kind of in our favor as somebody who really likes to study religious history which is, which is not something that a lot of people think of when, when, when they're thinking of this.

And another thing that people will point to is, well, people need ritual, and your system doesn't have enough ritual, and you've stripped all the ritual out of everything, and we do have rituals, you know, we've had a series of like holidays and stuff like that that we've created for our family that are meant to reinforce these cultural traditions, and they're like, well, they're not old rituals and, and old rituals.

Well, there you're just sort of getting this veneer of antiquity equals correctness. And we do that through Wynwood Reed through appealing to his writings. Cause fortunately someone a long time ago did have a lot of these ideas. But I, I think that when we're [00:08:00] talking about, like, we're not out to, to talk to everyone, we're not out to deconvert religious people.

We are out to create a system. that is useful to people who right now are atheistic or secular, but desperately, desperately want a system that they can just like plausibly really get behind. And that are otherwise really smart and mentally disciplined and that can find ways to follow a system without tons and tons of tons of community ritual and stuff like that.

And so in a way, we sort of see that as testing potential people who are interested in this,,

Simone Collins: I agree. And well, and I would also point out, like, we're still playtesting. You know, it's not like traditions and rituals come out of nowhere.

And I would also point out, like, when you look at many newer but sort of famous and old religious traditions, You know, they, they had an origin. Like there was, you know, a day where it was really meaningful, where something was done and then you repeat that thing, or you, you pay homage to that day that was very [00:09:00] indicative of the values of that culture.

So it's odd to think that new rituals couldn't be created. It is a natural matter, of course. And. Well, we may not have completely solidified all of the appropriate rituals of this tradition. And while maybe many of the most famous ones will only begin 17 generations in the future, that doesn't mean that like we don't believe in them.

I think they're.

Malcolm Collins: So if you remember where I left off, I was saying that I actually think only three real face systems have ever existed and now I am going to go further on this rather bold claim.

Simone Collins: And I just want to like highlight for listeners. I find this super interesting and I think Malcolm is spot on here.

And what's interesting to me, yeah, what's interesting to me is what Malcolm is about to categorize is not something I've heard before, because typically categorization systems go off sort of historical roots. So like, Oh, these are like the Asian traditions, or these are the, you know, whatever, they're sort of grouping them in the way that you would [00:10:00] probably group historical trends or historical movements rather than by the function and outcome.

Of the religion. And that is where Malcolm is focused here, which of course makes a lot of sense because we're so focused on pragmatism. So anyway, now

Malcolm Collins: a person hears it, they're like, Oh, this makes perfect sense. Right? Yeah. So the three religious systems are policy ism mysticism monotheism. So policy ism is characterized by elaborate just so stories explaining natural phenomenon, intricate, complicated cosmologies filled with layers and interacting parts. An entire zoo of supernatural forces that often has an internal caste system and roles. Divine entities that combine animal and human features, or have extra body parts that represent places slash things in our world, or that body parts do, and stories about how these entities interacted in history.

Divine entities that interacted with man, making deals and having conversations. Include either reincarnation after death, afterlives where people fade [00:11:00] away, or afterlives where people repeat something they did in life. Lean heavily on magical thinking, like numerology and sympathetic magic. These are gods that when you look at, you can talk to, and you can have sex with.

The core value of these systems is duty. Mysticism is characterized by systems that believe there to be some supernatural or ultra natural phenomenon behind the fabric of reality, or that is the fabric of reality, which connects all things. This phenomenon is identified as God. God is essentially a sentient medium or substrate.

The belief that the goal of humanity is to reconnect with this ultra reality, or thing behind the nature of reality. At this point, reality as we understand it either ends or merges with this thing. The belief that the divine can be contacted or otherwise interacted with by pushing all the thoughts from one's mind or by only thinking about it, practices that involve actions and rituals.

Chanting, spinning, narcotics, taking [00:12:00] odd poses, and sleep deprivation, which is called altered states of consciousness. The belief that experiences had in altered states of consciousness contain more information about the true nature of reality. The belief that reality does not exist as we perceive it, And is in part an illusion, the belief that emotional states hold some intrinsic supernatural value, e.

g. God is love, and the elevation of emotional states over logic, self indulgent asceticism, after he dies, man's soul is subsumed by or rejoins this ultra reality or thing behind reality. This is a divine that when you look at represents a cognition, you and all reality are an aspect of the core value of these systems is harmony,

monotheism is characterized by a distinct god which is totally ineffable to the human mind and which has sovereignty over us. Attempting to know this god or worship him through an earth Lee intermediary is a sin iconoclasm God interacts with man through [00:13:00] logic rules in order logic is always considered superior to emotions as a tool for determining the will of the divine. In these systems, after he dies, man faces consequences for his actions on earth for all eternity, a prohibition against engaging in supernatural arts, attempting to take shortcuts to God and the belief that reason is the only path to God.

A belief that man has fallen and is wretched in contrast with our potentiality, as well as a commandment to work to expand that potentiality through self discipline, mental order, austerity, and personal industry, to be happy with yourself as you are is a sin. This is a god that if you look at, you die. It is so much greater than man to aspire to interact with it directly is beyond foolish.

The core value of these systems is an expansion of human potentiality. While most of the world religions heavily point to one of the three faith paths as the quote unquote true one, all [00:14:00] of the distinct religions that exist on earth today are woven from the three core human faith.

As such, most of the world's religions can be used to pray to any one of these three faiths, for example. It is perfectly possible for a Catholic to, through a system of saints and magical fetishes, live a completely polytheistic life and worship pattern. At the same time, it is possible for a Jew or a Muslim to dedicate themselves entirely to the mystic faith, as can be seen in the writings of many Kabbalists and Sufis.

On the other hand, it is possible for a Buddhist or Hindu to live a totally monotheistic life. So that's the idea here. What are your thoughts other than the ones you started us with?

Simone Collins: And what I also like about this is it, unlike other religious categorization systems, where like if you're a Catholic, you're a Catholic yours is really based on actual practice and outcomes.

So if, for example, a Catholic, as you pointed out, is like worshiping a bunch of [00:15:00] different saints or whatever, like, no, sorry, you are not a monotheist. You are a polytheist. You are functionally

Malcolm Collins: behaving. But people are still a Catholic, and that's important. We are not denying their religious identity.

Yeah,

Simone Collins: we're just saying that they're not a monotheist.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, they're not part of our group. So we identify, they're probably obvious by now, with this group, the monotheist group here. And I largely identify with monotheists, whether they're coming from Islamic traditions, those are our Astrian traditions, or the Catholics, for example.

And what I find is when somebody indulges in one group of these behavior patterns, whatever quote unquote religion they're in, they often group the other behavior patterns. So a Catholic that, for example, is really interested in, like, the saints and has this sort of polytheistic understanding, and keep in mind that, that polytheistic traditions often have one God that sort of rules the pantheon and then multiple castes of, of gods beneath him, just because there's one More powerful entity than other entity.

There are other entities that can resist his power. That's policy of them. And or, or act without his knowledge or will or anything like [00:16:00] that. Right?

They often involve like engage in other parts of policy of them. Like they'll have little magical fetishes. But by fetishes, I don't mean like sexual fetishes.

I'm talking about like an item that they believe has religious significance, you know, or and, and, and you see this clustered or if somebody is clustered around the mystical traditions in there for example, like a Muslim, they're a Sufi, right? They will generally believe all of the mystical traditions.

And this in part is what makes it so easy for people to create these interreligious systems by using these mystical traditions because a lot of religions are largest of regardless of what they were in terms of how some portion of their followers actually worship will will worship this broad mystical tradition you know, regardless of the overarching faith.

Simone Collins: I mean, from my perspective, they Share more common ground in the end. Like what matters to me is how is someone getting closer to what they believe to be God and someone practicing and how are their beliefs dictated. So I don't, I don't [00:17:00] care what denomination you are part of. I care what you're doing functionally.

It's kind of how like with employees, we're like, listen, I don't care if you were sitting on a beach, like most of the day, not doing anything with work. And yet somehow like all of your work gets done and it's fantastic. Like, I don't care. What I care about is what's going on, like ultimately with what is relevant to us.

And it's the same with religions for me. Like, I don't care if you say, That you are a catholic or that you say that you Practice shinto like if in the end you are behaving like a polytheist or like a mystic or like a monotheist then

Malcolm Collins: And the conception of god within these three groups is really really different like like it is not the same, you know With policy, I think it's pretty obvious.

But when you're talking about like the mystic conception of god It's almost atheistic. It's almost like a force of nature. It's not something that exists outside of humanity and [00:18:00] has sovereignty over humanity. And that's why I feel such a, a kinship, you know, when I'm talking and sometimes, you know, they'll, they'll blend parts of these traditions where they'll have a number of mystic traditions.

And then they'll say, but no, really. God is outside of humanity and, and has sovereignty over us. And it, it feels kind of stitched together from an outside perspective. And you'll see within the, the

Simone Collins: No, no, no. Here's, here's how I view mysticism in general. And you can say everything you want as a mystic.

But in the end, it's like taking a Xanax to relax instead of actually relaxing. You're using shortcuts through various like brain hacks, be it like spinning around in circles or like working yourself into a social tizzy and speaking in tongues or something else that is ultimately. Making you feel close to God when you have made a synthetic feeling of that through some other means

Malcolm Collins: using endogenously induced narcotics to

Simone Collins: exogenously [00:19:00] sometimes I mean people take ayahuasca to do things, although it does lead to permanent changes sometimes in brain

Malcolm Collins: structure and we'll talk about this a bit later in the track.

But I mean, I think it's quite perverse. And I think it shows the truth of the mystic faith system to say that thoughts had in corrupted states of consciousness are more true than thoughts had in states of, of, of, of diligent austere study. And to me it is true when it's saying that from the mystic perspective, that is true, but that is perverse to our conception of reality.

And, and sort of a mirror of, but yeah. And, and. This is why I also say that this can work across denominations. Like, this is more just broadly what we're doing as a call to a return to monotheism across religious traditions in monotheistic framings of the various monotheistic frameworks.

Simone Collins: No, they're fun. I did want to, I mean, I don't want to waste time on this. No, go, go, go. You alluded to earlier that it's very common in polytheistic sects or, or [00:20:00] groupings that sex with gods is possible.

And I know that it's like all over the Greek slash Roman gods, like, of course, but other polytheistic traditions as well?

Malcolm Collins: Well, I, I, I think that you do see it in a lot, but, but more what I'm saying is these are the types of gods that interact with man. And it's actually very rare in non Polytheistic traditions for God to interact with man.

So, I'll, I'll, I'll point this out, like where Polytheism seeps into sort of the Abrahamic face, i. e., When God interacts with man, how does he often do it? He does it through a polytheistic cosmology. Remember I said, polytheistic cosmologies have these zoos of deities that have like caste systems. So when God interacts with man, he'll do it through like an angel or something like that, i.

e. a zoo of different cosmic deities that have like a caste system and then are interacting with man or through the devil, which is like a different, you know, that's separate from God. [00:21:00] That's polytheistic, right? Right.

Simone Collins: Where Zeus just turns into a bull and goes for it.

Malcolm Collins: But this is what I'm talking about.

It's actually fairly rare to have a full monotheistic conceptions of God really ever directly engage with man, even within monotheistic scripture. You know, you consider something like the Vedas, you know, where you have you know, gods in, in the Hindi pantheon, you know, talking to each other or talking to man as if he's just one of them, you just.

don't really get that in, in pure monotheistic practice. And in mystic practice, it doesn't look like that at all. Whenever somebody is talking to God in a mystic practice, it's always through you know, an altered state of consciousness or meditation or something like that. So the way that God communicates is quite differently in each of these traditions.

Simone Collins: Interesting.

As an aside, I post on Twitter, we made today made me realize that a lot of people don't really understand the difference between [00:22:00] polytheism and monotheism. The post we asked, how do Christians that believe in a distinct devil who is separate from God and can challenge God's will. How do they claim that they are not polytheists and some of the most common answers we got were, they just showed a misunderstanding of other policy, mystic systems.

For example, a very frequent one was, well, God created the devil, , and all of the angels and therefore the devil's just another one of God's creations. Therefore the system isn't polytheist. In truth, actually, in, in the vast majority of policy mystic systems that I'm familiar with, there is a single creator.

God that creates all of the other gods. , or there is one God to start with that then creates a number of gods and then some of those gods create other gods. Et cetera, et cetera, but just saying, well, one God created the other gods doesn't make you not polytheistic. And then some other people said,

Well, these beings, angels, demons, etc. aren't gods. They're a different caste of divine entity. [00:23:00] And it's like, well, actually, almost every polytheistic system has different castes of divine entities. That's a signature aspect of polytheistic systems. You have just decided to only use the word God to refer to the entity in the high gets cast within this hierarchy. Well, still assigning God-like powers and all the abilities and. Traits one would associate with a God, to all of the other entities within the system. They are only not gods insofar as you have defined them as not gods.

They're not particularly less Powerful than, for example, lower power Greek gods or lower power Sumerian gods, you have just chosen not to call them gods. And I think that this really gets to the, the problem here is that a lot of people will be something like, well, I'm Jewish, and I know that Jews are monotheists, so my belief in these things doesn't make me a polytheist, or I'm Catholic, and I know that Catholics are monotheists, so the fact that I believe in angels that are, Truly [00:24:00] and totally independent from God and a devil that's truly and totally independent from God doesn't make me a polytheist but That's just, like, I, I hope you can see the problem with, with that definition and I, and I will understand how offensive what we're saying is here to some people because it challenges their identity the same way if I go to someone and I'm like, hey, you know, despite what you say, you're not actually a woman was in most useful categorizations of what a woman is, um, when I go to these groups and I'm like, you're not actually a monotheist with any useful interpretation of what monotheism is, And as such, I am challenging their identity, which is obviously very offensive to people.

, I will say here, if you want to have your cake and eat it too, if you want to be a monotheist, but also believe in things like angels and demons and stuff like that, the way you do it is you say that these things are partitions of God, of a single entity, or that we are told to think of the way [00:25:00] that God interacts was man, in terms of these distinct entities.

Because our brains are not capable of effectively emulating the way that God would think.

And so he gives us these revelations because if a human is trying to model God's actions in our world, the best way to do it is through a Pantheon of divine entities. So long as you always go back and you remember that the angels and the demons and everything like that, don't actually meaningfully exist as separate entities from God.

Malcolm Collins: There have been many efforts to find commonality and communion between religious traditions over the past couple centuries, whether it's the Baha'i, John Vervanke's The Meaning Crisis or the Seekers of Unity channel. All of these efforts have either tried to unite man around the mystical conception of the divine or combined all three of these conceptions.

These conceptions of the divine are fundamentally incompatible. Even if they all hold an element of truth, to us it seems self evident that the monotheistic pathway [00:26:00] is both true and the best path forward for our culture. So like, when I'm thinking for my kids, I really, like, the new agey coloring of the mystic pathway, I, I do not see it leading to industry or efficaciousness, it seems to just drag groups down and to, to You know, self indulgence, honestly, and the polytheistic pathway doesn't seem to contain any truth at all from what I've seen.

It's more just, just so stories, even when it's applied to the monotheistic traditions, you know, as you see in things like, um, the divine comedy, for example, which is very much a polytheistic cosmology. And by

Simone Collins: truth, what do you mean here? Are you referring to like it being predictive of

Malcolm Collins: outcomes? What I mean is that it seems to move our species, both philosophical understanding forwards and technological understanding forwards that the groups that engage in these pure forms of monotheistic practices.

Just seem to have an enormous, like, like God genuinely seems to favor them during periods you know, for [00:27:00] example, like early Islam before the Sufis really took over and, and, and the mystical traditions took over, you can look at their level of productivity, which was just insane. You, you, you look at, you know, early Christianity when you had much more of this monotheistic framework, and then it descended into more polytheism and mysticism, and it sort of collapsed in terms of its productivity.

Then you had the reawakening of like. Pure monotheism was the Protestant Revolution, and then you, what, you get the Industrial Revolution out of that, and the Enlightenment out of that. And I think that there's, as I say, you always want a secular within our understanding, and both a secular and a non secular framing.

But the secular framing is, this is just a better way to structure. your mind if you want to be productive and move the species forwards. The non secular framing is, is God was rewarding these groups for having the correct understanding of him. And that's really important to us as we build the system, that it is one where even if a person didn't believe it, they're like, it's still better to raise my kids was in this then leave them to the urban monoculture.

And it's,

Simone Collins: well, no, actually I think this is really interesting in that. What you said about [00:28:00] truth is really indicative of our value system, which a lot of like, we'll say anti capitalistic people are going to be like, oh yeah, well, progress wasn't good because we were better off when humans were foraging before agriculture.

Nevermind that like. They were starving and their faces were bubbling off. But I, I do think it's interesting and that like this system is not incompatible, even like value wise. Like just because we choose monotheism because of our values and we believe that it is more predictive of what you could argue, what some might frame as like capitalistic progress market driven progress, innovation driven progress, which, you know, it doesn't mean that other people might not be like, Oh no, no, no.

Like this system exists and is still indicative of. my support for mysticism, which supports me feeling wishy washy about things and being, feeling really magical. And cause that's what I value and I want to be one with the universe. And I want to,

Malcolm Collins: yeah, it's funny that you mentioned this. So an idea we haven't gotten here yet, but it really [00:29:00] comes from this video we heard on Wednesday, the Gurren Lagann video.

It's, I categorize the monotheistic traditions as spiral traditions and the. Mystic traditions is anti spiral traditions and But it's not just these traditions. You have general spiral thought, which is about expanding human potentiality through conflict, and you have usual anti spiral thought, which is about diminishing human potentiality through harmony, through balance, and when you look at something, and through unity, you know, and when you look at balance.

Governing systems. I say they even fall into this. I, I see the capitalism as being a monotheistic slash spiral governing structure. Whereas I see communism and socialism as being anti spiral traditions. You know, they're about this unity, the, the the balance, the harmony creating this among man.

And I think that we see the sin that comes from these systems through the conditions that man has to live in when society succumbs to this broader [00:30:00] mindset of unity at all costs, where unity then becomes cultural genocide.

Simone Collins: Yeah. In your words, of course, and not in the words of those who would just take the different view.

But what I do think is notable is that. You can hold very different views from us and be very in favor of mysticism or polytheism and anti growth or anti spiral and still find this model to be fairly accurate and predictive.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, which is interesting about the three faced model, yeah. Okay, any Jew, Muslim, Mormon, or Christian that has a theology that does not explain why the Jews were favored by God in the early days does not have a theology I can bring myself to respect.

This is probably the single most important question of the Abrahamic traditions. And it tells us a great deal about the true nature of God. To think God randomly chose one people to favor and share revelations through for a good chunk of human history is absurd to the extreme. There must have been a reason.

We know it was not due to where they lived because God moved them. We know they were [00:31:00] not physically and mentally superior as they had been conquered and enslaved. So what made the Jews unique? What made the Jews unique was their religion and cosmology. It was the closest to accurate. At a time in history when almost all other people, except for the Zoroastrians, who God also favored, worshipped the divine through nature, through streams and locations, through policy ism, one people saw God differently.

They saw a God of logic, rules, and order, one unknowable to man. As a result, God favored them. And this is something I just can't emphasize enough. It matters. No matter what Abrahamic tradition you're from, why the Jews? Why in the early days did God tell the Jews they were his chosen people? What was unique about them?

Was it mere serendipity? That seems Unlikely to me and not a very compelling answer. And yet I do not see enough of the Abrahamic face really [00:32:00] hammering over this. But when I look and I ask this question, it just jumps out at me at blindingly office. They were in a world of policy ism and mysticism and they were the first faith system to turn away from that to this religion of rules and laws and order in a monotheistic one.

And they weren't the very first one. The Zoroastrians also did it, but the Zoroastrians also had an enormous period of scientific productivity and cultural productivity if you look at the success of the Persian empire. So, And, and they didn't really begin to collapse until they had turned pretty heavily to iconoclasm.

And they used to have really hard prohibitions against iconoclasm as well. But, I mean, what are your thoughts?

Simone Collins: I, I think it's interesting that you think that's such an important question and that you're, you're so, dogmatic about it. But I, I guess I understand why, you know, you want to understand.

The sort of reasoning and connections and cause and effect of things associated with what's said in the Bible. Right. So it makes sense. It's interesting to me. And of course I think, you know, the [00:33:00] Jews get credit too, because it's not, well, it's not like they were perfect. It's not like they were like always monotheistic and the Old Testaments full of, you know.

Malcolm Collins: Well, we're about to get to a pretty spicy part about Jewish tradition that might offend some people, but I'm, I'm gonna go over it. Let's do that because it's important to note. I love spicy. This favoring of the Jewish people did not protect their tradition from incursion from the other faith systems.

Man is man. If he lives near another culture, that culture's ideas about reality will seep in and intermix with our own. Consider this passage from upon what does earth stand? Upon pillars. The pillars stand upon the waters, the waters upon the mountains, the mountains upon the wind, the wind upon the storm, the storm is suspended upon the strength of the holy one, blessed he, as it is written, and here beneath the everlasting arms. The sages say it stands upon twelve pillars, as it is written.

He set the bounds of the tribes according to the number of the sons of Israel, according [00:34:00] to others, seven pillars, as it is written. She had hewn out her seven pillars. Upon one pillar and its name is Za, the righteous as it is written, but the righteous is an everlasting foundation.

There are two firmaments as it is written. Behold to the Lord, thy God belong the heavens and the heavens of the heavens. They are seven, Vilon, Raki, Shmikum, Zebul, Mon, Makan, Arabes. Vilon serves no purpose, whatever, save this. That enters in the morning and goes forth in the evening, renews every day, the work of creation.

Raki is that in which are set the sun and the moon, stars and constellations. Shechem is that in which the millstones stand and grind manna for the righteous. Zebul is that which is the heavenly Jerusalem in the temple. And the altar is there. And Michael, the great prince, stands and offers upon it an offering.

I could go on, but I'm sure you get the [00:35:00] point. And I'm really sorry about butchering words there and names because this is not, you know, my native tongue here,

Also, I would note, I took out all the random rabbi names because I butchered them so badly.

Malcolm Collins: but I'm sure you get the point. This is very obviously not the cosmology laid out in Genesis. It sounds an

Simone Collins: awful lot like turtles all the way down.

Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: So you said when I first read this too, you're like, Oh, turtles all the way down. It is an extremely polytheistic cosmology. So why is it in ancient Jewish texts? The way is written gives us hints. When it is talking about the cosmology you know from Genesis, it uses copious quotations.

But, When introducing this alternative cosmology, it does not. This implies to me that it assumes the alternative cosmology is much more quote unquote common knowledge to the reader, and the quoted parts are much more quote unquote technical or specialist knowledge. This would be like if a Jew today tried to synthesize Jewish teachings with mainstream societal ideas about protons, electrons, and neutrons making up atoms. And thousands of [00:36:00] years from now, we had far moved beyond these ideas about atoms, and the only place we knew about them from was Jewish texts, so we thought of them as being a weird Jewish mystic tradition. Essentially, to help explain reality to the layperson, a Jewish writer took polytheistic gods out of cosmology and replaced them with Yahweh.

So, where does this cosmology come from? It seems to have elements of Greek cosmology, mentioning an entity holding up the Earth, i. e. Atlas but also elements of Mesopotamian cosmology, with the mention of the Earth being a disk on pillars. So we are looking for a polytheistic system, which is practiced between Greece and Mesopotamia, around the writing of this piece.

But which? Well, the line quote, The wind upon the storm, the storm is suspended upon the strength of the Holy One. The deity described in this piece uses storms to exercise his will. Thus we are almost certainly seeing the Cainite cosmology of Baal, trapped in the amber of Jewish tradition.

Now, you might be saying, Oh my god, are you saying that [00:37:00] Jews are in part descended from a people who practice child sacrifice? And this isn't part of the tract, this is just something I wrote down to make sure I remembered. And the answer is basically, well, yeah, But if you are a like a British European, for example, So are you.

You know, it was common in the British Isles Much later than the Canaanite practices, mind you, to do things like kill children and bury them when you were going to build a new bridge or a house, and we can still find their corpses, and this happened across northern Europe, traditions like this, you know, a lot of bog men were sacrificed, you know, smashed on the head and thrown into bogs.

This is happening thousands of years after these traditions I'm mentioning. So, this is not like a, a, a, And now you're going to be saying, something like, how dare you say the Israelites consorted with the Canaanites? And, well, it's not just me saying this.

The Bible itself records David as having at least one Canaanite ancestor, and in lines like, quote, your father was an Amorite and your mother was a Hittite, and judges, Three, five through [00:38:00] six, the Israelites lived among the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Pezarites, Ahivarites, and Jebusites, and they took their daughters in marriage, and gave their own daughters to their sons, and served their gods, Which is, so this is in the Bible, and the Bible is mostly accurate.

You can look at modern DNA evidence of ancient Israelites, and they have about 50 percent canine genome, so we know they were engaging with them. And now you might be saying, okay, well, to say that they might have intermarried is one thing, but to say that the religions in any way interacted in a meaningful context, now that's definitely, a really horrible thing to say.

But then you have things like Kings 23, four through six, the king commanded the guardians of the threshold to bring out of the temple of Yahweh, all the vessels made for Baal for Asheron and for all of the hosts of heaven. And I'll link to a video here that does a very good job of like this part of history.

So that's saying that there were monuments to Baal in temples to Yahweh during this period. They were worshipped [00:39:00] alongside each other for a period. It makes sense that you could have this level of cross pollination. You know, Jews have never totally isolated themselves from surrounding communities.

Even today, you'll get ideas of, you know, particle physics entering parts of Jewish tradition, and you'll get Hellenistic ideas entering parts of Jewish tradition. But because the Hellenistic tradition survived, it's easy for modern Jews to be like, oh, well, we don't believe that anymore because that was just like a Hellenistic idea about how physics works that we now know is wrong.

But it's much harder for Jews to point out to, oh, this is obviously Canaanite teachings because We don't know that much about Canaanite religion anymore. And so it's much harder to be like, Oh, this is just Canaanite traditions, but it groups together really well. Like you can see all of the sort of policy as I'm happening there.

And I also need to point out this happens to Christians all the time as well. Right. Like, when Christians would go out and they would try to convert people or they were in environments where they were a minority religion. And you see this with a lot of missionaries, they would go to like a Native American tribe and be like, Oh, you have this policy, a stick [00:40:00] pants.

Who's at the head of it, and they'd be like you know, this God, and they'd be like, okay, that's actually our God. And then all the rest of the gods are actually angels. And, and your cosmological structure is broadly correct, but we'll just replace some Christian words here and there. Like, this is not, again, an attack on Jews.

All of the Abrahamic faiths have done this historically, it's a fantastic way to try to converse with somebody from outside your tradition. But it becomes a problem when you mistake these amber like trapped iterations of other traditions, other faith systems, because it allows you to accidentally worship or over elevate these other faith systems and believe that they are your original cosmology.

Well, I

Simone Collins: think the very notable thing, especially about mysticism, is that it's extremely addictive. So like these, these religions may seep into each other, not based on what creates the best outcome, but based on what is catchy and what feels really

Malcolm Collins: good. Right. Well, and it's funny, the argument that I'm using here is actually very similar to an [00:41:00] argument that Moses Maimonides made, which was Maimonides son, in favor of the mystical traditions, where he would go and argue to the Jewish community, Actually, I'm trying to bring you back to an older way of doing things.

Which is sort of what I'm arguing here, which is to say that, well, this wasn't originally the tradition, this sort of seeped in due to cultural cross contamination. Hmm. I'd say you're right. Yeah. But do you have any other thoughts on this or?

Simone Collins: Oh, I also think it's notable that this concept of the index, which we've talked about, which is sort of like a, a cultural exchange of religious traditions and cultural traditions, whereby the cultures and religious traditions that participate can learn from each other.

It's certainly not like a new idea. Like this has been happening naturally throughout time constantly as like one religion tries to convert another, but then ends up adopting a lot of its, you know, names and traditions. And then the index is,

Malcolm Collins: is, is larger than this. It's not part of this denomination.

People with mystical backgrounds,

Simone Collins: [00:42:00] people for just talk about the index. And I think what's important is that the difference between the index and what has happened between cultures and religions before is that in the past. Cultures would adapt and assimilate traditions and beliefs and gods in mind, mind frames that just were catchy or addictive or that like advanced leadership within them more so they adopted it to get more power.

Whereas what the index is all about is. Adopting traditions and practices from other cultural groups and religious groups that create literally better outcomes like the focus is on what produces human flourishing, what produces innovation, not

Malcolm Collins: just random cultural cross contamination,

Simone Collins: like not just what's addictive, like it's, it's, it's not like, you know, in the end, like religions are selecting out of like the entire diet, like the chocolate cake.

Whereas the index is going to select like the God knows what food is healthy anymore. I don't know,

Malcolm Collins: but [00:43:00] like something really out here is that this happens within every tradition. You know, you need to look for ideas that weren't originally part of your tradition that have seeped into it. You know, whether these ideas are things like around the rapture, which is a.

Barely new idea in Christianity or cosmology that came from things like Dante's Inferno that was a Bible fan fiction, but is now like accepted in a lot of religious art and stuff like that. And so people look at it and then they think that the cosmology described in it is actually an Abrahamic cosmology when it's not, it's very polytheistic in its nature.

And it can lead to accidentally worshiping polytheistic faith practices. And so I want to be clear that this happens across traditions. I've just been. On a Jewish theology kick recently in terms of, of, of reading and study, which is why I came to it from a Jewish perspective in this text.

Something like this can remain completely innocuous, but can also lead faithful astray. Trapped within the characteristic nuanced polytheistic cosmology are all the [00:44:00] sins of the polytheistic tradition. Whether it be numerology, magic, or worshiping God through nature. And this temptation is not unique to Jews.

Consider the policy istic conception of God and cosmology trapped in Dante's Divine Comedy, which many Christians mistake for scripture. Policy ism will always pull at the human mind as it is our genetic default, a scar left by our genetic history. In the book, The Pragmatist's Guide to Crafting Religion, it is what we call, quote, super soft culture.

Unquote. The culture man forms when left alone on an island to intuit reality without being informed by the centuries of civilization, philosophy, and science. Yet, it is less tempting to the logical mind than mysticism. While we refer to policyism as simply paganism, in that it is the background faith of humanity, mysticism is true, in a way.

If monotheism is the worship of a faith inspired by God's benevolent side, a manifestation of spiral energy, of human potential, [00:45:00] Mysticism is the faith of the Basilisk, the side of God that tempts man. It tempts man with shortcuts to God, using tactics which hack our biology to create false visions of profundity.

The mystical faith tells its followers that what they see in compromised mental states is more real than disciplined study. This teaching reflects a fundamental truth of how the Basilisk sees and relates to reality. It says empty your mind of study and industry and what fills it is good, the true divine.

But are these things not true from the perspective of the basilisk that wishes nothing but the stagnation of man? Pagans are largely non players in the great game of civilization. There is no truth to their belief systems. The same is not true of the mystic. The basilisk is a partition or face of God.

To posit the devil exists separate from the God is to be a policyist. The anti spiral face are true revelations from God and represent a kind of truth [00:46:00] in the same way the being reflected in a mirror that inverts reality is wholly true. The Spiral Face aimed to uplift man through a cycle of intergenerational improvement and change. To erase diversity?

The separation between man? Is to silence God. In direct contrast, the Anti Spiral Face aimed to subsume man into a single great unity in which all diversity is erased. A genocide not Just of all ethnicities and ideologies, but of the soul of the human species. Within the anti spiral worldview, man struggles to live, and the goal of man is to end struggle.

Within the spiral worldview, man lives to struggle. It is our capacity to improve ourselves and the species that imbues life with value. Do you strive to live a life of submission to reality, to have your will subsumed by it, or do you strive every day that reality [00:47:00] will submit to us? So that's why I more distinguish these two faiths.

I really see the mystical tradition and the monotheistic tradition as almost being sort of two sides of a whole, mirrored realities. And the mystical tradition as not being wrong or evil, exactly. It is just a temptation that leads to efficaciousness. And that is what makes it so tempting, is it has an element of truth to it, but it is an element of truth that we must resist.

I don't know if you have thoughts on this, or

Simone Collins: No, just resonates. Seems really straightforward.

Malcolm Collins: I mean, does it feel, so it just feels true to you when you think about these two systems, you really do see them as being quite distinct from each other? Because a lot of people, when I talk about them, they're like, no, these two systems can be merged.

Simone Collins: No, but I mean, I think also like our views also, as I've alluded to earlier, about what's good and evil, right and wrong, are based on our values. And What you're describing is, [00:48:00] when you take away the value judgments that you're clearly making as well, I think it's still a model that makes sense

Malcolm Collins: to me. I think when you include mysticism alongside monotheism, the mysticism always subsumes the monotheism.

Oh yeah. Why every faith system that has tried to intertwine them, whether it's like the Baha'i or John Bervenke stuff or you know, Seekers of Unity what you will see is the mystical interpretations always end up subsuming the monotheistic interpretations within each of these systems because it's, it's like giving somebody food and cocaine.

Eventually the cocaine always wins.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Well, and you have to, I, again, like I just, I look at outcomes, I look at when, when you look at. Practices that are very mystical. You're not seeing people who are producing the same outcomes that are, I think, are really famously indicative of monotheism, which, as you pointed out earlier, is kind of like capitalistic in [00:49:00] innovation, progress, et cetera.

So you're not seeing mystics inventing the same new technologies,

Malcolm Collins: but in so far as we'll talk about this in the new tracks, we're like, you'll see somebody like Isaac Newton, famous occultist, right? But all of the time that he spent on occultic practices was time wasted. I mean, look at how much he contributed to our species and how much more he could have had he not wasted all this time on occultic practices because he didn't do anything efficacious in all that time dedicated to occultic practices.

Occultic practices are and, and mysticism more broadly are uniquely grabbing of, of the very brightest and most active minds in society, but they pull them. It's like quicksand for them and, and, and drags them under to nothing, to not, you know, to no action.

That said, because the basilisk is a face of God and its aim to tempt man to lives of indolence and self indulgence is a task undertaken to benefit man, we are commanded to never interfere with its work or treat its servants with [00:50:00] enmity. Preventing humanity from having to overcome temptations weakens us.

An individual who preaches for an anti spiral path should be treated as a servant of God. Antinatalism and negative utilitarianism are the secular manifestations of the anti spiral, while pernatalism is a secular manifestation of spiral energy. Human civilization and the history of our species has always been a struggle between these two forces, one pushing man forward and the other pulling man back.

And if you want to see a video where we go much deeper on this watch the Gurren Lagann video that we released recently. Our goal when building this theology was to build something that even if I did not believe a word of the metaphysical aspect of it, I would still want to choose to raise my kids within because of the effects it will have on their mindsets and mental health.

A spiral mindset is not just a religious one, but a secular one. When you think of the struggles in your life, do you get excited? Do you relish the opportunity? When [00:51:00] you see the challenges of our species, do you wish it would all just go away? Or do you take it as a personal responsibility to build a better system?

Framing reality in this way, especially during periods of trial. is patently mentally healthier. Don't shirk from your trials. Delight in them. Don't hide from things about reality that might make you sad or mope, but grab reality by the neck and force it to submit to the will of human spirit. Sadly, the smarter a person is, The more the intricacies of alternate lore for our cosmology tempt them, and the more seductive the power offered by antispiral shortcuts to the divine are.

Consider the life of Isaac Newton. How far he moved our species forwards, and how much more he could have done had he not wasted years of his life on completely efficacious less occultic antispiral drivel. What makes anti spiral thought so dangerous and so worth warning our children against is [00:52:00] that it disproportionately targets the brightest minds of humanity and exhausts their potentiality on self masturbatory power fantasies or shortcuts to the divine that lead to no industry, no productivity, no predictability, and no action.

And here I'm just going back to this idea that even from a totally secular perspective, if you're building a faith system, it makes sense to guard against this stuff, because it never leads to anything, and a lot of people are like, well, what do you mean by predictability? The visions you gain in these altered states of consciousness, are not predictive of the future, not scientifically.

And there's been lots of studies on this and people will be like, Oh no, no, no. What about that series of studies that the government ran? Right? Because there is a series of studies that the government ran around things like farsight and stuff like that. But these studies were all run by one small cabal of.

Absolutely true believers whose jobs depended on the studies turning up positive results. And since then when the government has tried to run these studies, they have proven non replicable and when institutions outside of government oversight have tried to run these studies, they proved non replicable [00:53:00] and it appears that it was just a horrible government bureaucracy being susceptible to con artists.

And I understand how that can happen. I mean, if you have a bureaucracy that's headed by people whose jobs depend on these studies turning out in a certain way within a large governing bureaucracy, and then you have people who are you know, I've seen illusionists like David Blaine and stuff. I can't explain that stuff he's doing.

You know, I look at that. I'm like, wow, that's really convincing. But if you put him in a predictable controlled trial, you know, people who specialize in debunking skeptics no one's really gotten past those individuals before and are specialized in debunking like. Thaumatological performer.

Thaumatological performers being like miracle workers. I haven't seen anybody really convincingly debunk them. And I, look, I'm really into studying occultic stuff. I find it very interesting, but it's, it's very non persuasive, but do you have thoughts or on sort of the secular nature of this?

The

Simone Collins: secular nature of it? You mean like, what is Why

Malcolm Collins: secularly would you undergo these practices? That's the question at hand. Oh, yeah. Well, but

Simone Collins: here's the thing though, is I don't think If I'm looking at this from [00:54:00] the perspective of an outsider who doesn't share our cultural values, I think an outsider may still, after hearing all this, hearing all of this, feel very tempted to just join a mystic tradition because they want to feel good and they want to feel connected and they want to feel.

something extraordinary and suspend their disbelief and

Malcolm Collins: Which you can with the mystic tradition. Mystic The, the shortcuts to a feeling of the divine that mystic traditions offer work.

Simone Collins: Are real. They work. Exactly. And so I think a lot of people are just going to decide, well, I don't really care about advancing human civilization.

I don't even really like humans that much. And even after hearing all of this, they're going to be like, yeah, okay, Malcolm, but you're wrong. You know, like I mean, it's

Malcolm Collins: worth seeing this in the context of like my educational background as well. Like I came at this as a neuroscientist who focused on things like schizophrenia.

So I'm very familiar with altered states of consciousness and stuff like that. Who first interest in religion was studying cults and how cults [00:55:00] work and how they sort of brainwash people. And when I first started engaging with the mystical traditions, they were with all of this contextual background.

And I just noticed tons of cult like. Tactics. I'm like, Oh, this is a common tactic used by a cult. And when I see a practice that I know that people have used in the names of, some sort of satanic entity, and it worked, or that, some sort of yogi sex cultists used to create a harem of women who thought that he was like the second coming.

And I see it being implemented in the name of God. I don't think that that has like cleansed it of its power to lead people to untrue thoughts or lack of knowledge. I think it still has all of that. And I see these types of tricks that individuals use to, for example, predict people's. fortunes and stuff like that.

And I'm familiar with all of these from you know, cults and from being used to manipulate otherwise well meaning people. And so I see them used in quote unquote, the name of good. And yes, they might be good in that they're drawing people to true religious [00:56:00] systems, but they are evil in that they are not giving people access to information or connection to God, despite telling their practitioners that they are.

And this becomes a big. problem of people then start to take information from God away from these altered mental states that we understand very well from a neuroscientific perspective. And then they get a very incorrect view of God from that. And then this comes to the final part here, which I'll talk about.

Whether you are a Muslim, an atheist, or a Jew, there is a spiral and anti spiral interpretation of your reality, of your upcoming trials, and the state of the world. As such, what we are really trying to start here is not exactly a religion, but an inter religious denomination dedicated to the monotheistic faith system, to the accumulation and cultivation of human potentiality, an antithesis to New Ageism, and all those wishy washy inter religious perennial traditions that live under the crown of mysticism.

We aim to continue the journey of those first Jews who turned away from a world of forest pagans [00:57:00] who communicated with God through nature, idols, and the human body. A world of numerology and sorcery and towards an ineffable God who communicated with rules and logic. A journey that continued through the enlightenment only to be subsumed by the indulgences allowed by the wealth and excess it generated.

If I perform a satanic ritual with all its pentagrams and human sacrifice, but replace the sinister names in it with Yahweh, God, or Allah, am I really worshipping them or the demons I conceive of during the ritual? I think the answer is patently obvious. We are left in the position of all those blessed with agency of thought throughout human history.

Do you return to the intuition of the pagan? Do you succumb to the sophistry of the anti spiral mystic? Or, will you see your tests and challenges as God's greatest gift? Puzzles to excite you and inflame the spirit of human vitality. And one of the things I [00:58:00] end here with is a recommendation of two videos that I feel really capture this, you know, other than the one I mentioned, which are sort of music videos, which we play during a lot of our family rituals and religious ceremonies, which are actually launch trailers for a video game in its expansion.

One is titled the. Civ 6 launch trailer, and the other is titled the Civ 6 Rise and Fall Expansion Announcement Trailer. And if you, you might be like, Why would you consider video game trailers such good descriptions of sort of your religious system? And you'll watch them and you'll be like, Oh, I get it.

Like, I remember the first time I showed Simone one of them, she started crying. She was so moved by it. If you get it, you get it. If you get it, you get it. You'll see it if you are moved by this. The spiral ideology, this mankind is sort of a journey through generations of intergenerational improvement and martyrdom for the next generation.

You know, this is what we say about the story of Jesus. Hold

Simone Collins: on. Wait, it's, it's not, it's not for Civ V. I thought Baba Yetu was the Baba

Malcolm Collins: Yetu is not one of the ones I'm [00:59:00] mentioning here. Baba Yetu is another song that is important for us, but it doesn't totally convey this. You can watch the Baba Yetu music video of Siv as well if you want to.

I find it less moving than the other two, but it still is in our We

Simone Collins: walked down the aisle to that song, you nerd. I think it's great. Also, it is very monotheistic. Thank you very much. Baba Yetu is the Lord's Prayer in Swahili.

Malcolm Collins: It's gorgeous. I love it. Yeah. And played over humanity, sort of intergenerational.

Well, yeah, but it's, it's, it's also two very different paths to God. You know, is the path to God sort of shortcuts that you enter through altered states of mind or is the path of God, this Jesus, i. e. our conception of Jesus, which is a cycle of intergenerational martyrdom and improvement and for the next generation of, of the elect, of the people who choose to take on this task for themselves.

Because as we say, you know, it's not deaths that make someone a martyr, everyone dies. It's how you choose to live your life. And it's tell how many

Simone Collins: of our favorite video game songs are canonical not to like keep [01:00:00] deviating, but like, the portal theme song. Oh,

Malcolm Collins: yeah.

We, we, we have the portal song about for our kids, but we reframe it as being about. Their parents you know, threw every part of me into a fire, but I'm so happy for you.

Simone Collins: As they burned it hurt because I was so happy

Malcolm Collins: for you. But you know, you can reframe a lot of people were like, that's such a goofy thing to do.

And it's, it's, I think in part, and we talk about this and other things, it's because they don't, they aren't familiar with how much of their Christian tradition was like, For example, we've mentioned this before, but the Jesus in the well story is a riff on a rom com tradition from that time period that would have been known as a common story trope.

Everything's been a tradition. You go to the old Jewish, you know, stuff and it's all filled with like sex jokes and scatomalogical humor and stuff like this. These things You only see them as holy

I should note wholly in this context means stuffy and unrelatable, not containing an element of divine truth because obviously we think that goofy things do contain an element of divine truth

Malcolm Collins: because they have been conveyed to you by people who put themselves in these positions of authority over you.

And as [01:01:00] we mentioned in the Gurren Lagann video, if we create a denomination or a tradition, I never want the people of authority within the tradition to have that kind of authority. To have the kind of authority where you think something is is magical just because they're talking about it. You know, you should, everyone should always be questioning and trying to improve.

And that's the point of this system. And that involves not taking things too canonically or too seriously, you know, have, have a bit of levity and how you approach all this because it's the way a lot of the old Testament was written with a lot of levity. It's the way parts of the new Testament was written.

And, and, and with sort of a slapstick nature to it that doesn't come across in sort of this high minded, pale faced preacher talking about all of this, which I actually think in a way separates people from God. Because they don't see that the personal relationship that you get to have through God through the intergenerational martyrdom of man is, is kind of funny, you know, [01:02:00] life is, is, is, is when you, when you see all of this, the sacrifice that we engage in, it's not just something to get excited about.

It's also a bit of a play. It's a bit of a joke, you know, so if you

Simone Collins: think that we are not high minded and pale faced, I think. Well, I

Malcolm Collins: try not to be that, you know, I try to be just create a system that people can use to inspire them without coming from a position of authority because if anyone believes any of this, like we are part of a community conversation, as I've said, like this isn't us coming up with an idea.

The, the number one type of person that will be drawn to this as somebody who's already had most of these ideas themselves just had never seen it synthesized like this. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. When I think, I mean, we, we can't be that high minded if we get so vulnerable as to literally have live conversations as we think through our family's religious framework and then post them on YouTube.

As we totally thought through things, so [01:03:00] I'm, I'm, you know, but still,

Malcolm Collins: well, I love you, Simone. And I really enjoy these conversations with you. And by the way, people wonder about these weird things that are playing after videos, it's because before videos, we'll do little preambles. And I'm like, that's probably not good for the first few minutes of a video.

So I just put it at the end of it's just us chatting.

Simone Collins: I didn't realize you were doing that until you just said that. And I was just talking to you. So, oh my God.

Malcolm Collins: Well, I think it shows that off script, when you don't know that recording is happening, you're just as loving and sweet to me as you are on script.

And I think it's good to have models of positive relationships because it's something that we don't have a lot in our society these days.

Simone Collins: Oh my God, seriously. Can we just have a functional couple for once?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, well, and that's another thing. People look at our weird families, like our weird religious system for our family, and they're like, you guys are cuckoo, nut jobs for trying to rethink all of your, you know, for trying to engage in all of this.

And I'm like, one, like, . I'm just logically approaching things best I can, as you can hopefully see from what we're going over here. And I'm trying to be part of a [01:04:00] community conversation about these ideas to build something that works for my kids.

But also I'd say those people who criticize us. I don't know, I'm really happy with my life. Okay, I'm happy with this weird thing that whatever we've put together seems to be working. I feel very blessed every day in the relationship I have with my wife and the relationship I have with my kids. And I look at the rest of the world out there and it does feel like this horrifying sandstorm and we're safe within the city walls.

But one day my kids are going to have to leave what my wife and I have built. And the more I can expand the border of safety for them, the better off they're going to be. Because, you know, even people in religious communities, I see them being ripped apart and I see families being ripped apart because of this, you know, even, even when they have a lot of the protection of these older religious systems.

And so, I'm just trying to create something that, that can work because I don't see things working right now. And it scares me for the fate of my own kids. I don't want them to deal [01:05:00] with society and what ends up happening to these people that lose all hope. Something I see so frequently these days.

Simone Collins: Not pretty. I appreciate you doing this and I'm excited about it and I love the conversations and I think as young as our kids already are, they're already. It's showing signs of being very aligned with it and very excited about it. So I'm glad to see that happening too. I think you're putting together something really meaningful and we're certainly not expecting anyone to like do exactly what we're doing, but maybe by open sourcing what we're doing in a sense, like sharing what we're doing.

People will get inspired to do their own thing. And as you say, right now, things aren't looking that great in terms of outcomes. So the more people trying stuff like this, the better, right? I

Malcolm Collins: love you to decimum.

Simone Collins: Yes, well.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, you look wonderful with this camera.

Simone Collins: Well, with the, [01:06:00] when I say we switch to the,

Malcolm Collins: Oh, I forgot

Simone Collins: What did we forget?

Malcolm Collins: Oh, I can do a direct plug in now.

Simone Collins: Oh, to the internets. They're plugging you directly into the system.

I jacked

Malcolm Collins: in, Simone! I jacked in! I love that. I

Simone Collins: love that. Oh, I just love you.

Malcolm Collins: I'm just so happy. Yeah, I really just love talking with you and doing these things with you. It is such a blast. Yeah, seriously,

Simone Collins: like I know traditional dates are at a restaurant eating food, but then it's so distracting that you can't actually really talk.

And so I love this because like, we're actually sitting and focusing and talking and going deep on subjects that are really interesting. Why is this not the standard date format? You know, why is this not actually it's like dad and he was like, Oh, that sounds like a business where like couples just talk to each [01:07:00] other.

And then like AI gets trained on them and then they're you know, you can have a. Both of them forever for their other ancestors, but then they also have like date time. And I'm like, Oh

Malcolm Collins: yeah. Why is Bible study not the standard date format for people? I think I've gotten,

Simone Collins: not just Bible study, recorded Bible study so that AI can be trained on the couple.

And. Far descendants can interview like their great, great grandmother to see what, you know, she was like, or their great, great, great grandfather to see what he was like and what he would say and to ask him for advice is the whole, you know, you talked about in the pragmatist guide to religion, this concept of.

Well, you could in the future have a version of family ancestor worship where the God, like the family ancestors are actually gods who make decisions for the family and can be consulted and

Malcolm Collins: have conclusions. You have a bank that's trained on all of your ancestors that you have a lot of recordings and emails from and collectively makes the decisions or gives the advice that the collective family [01:08:00] ancestry would have given.

Now, so just, you know, this little Intro that we're doing right now. I'm actually putting this at the end of the video because it's so off topic, which I do sometimes I didn't. I'm

Simone Collins: sorry. I know you're recording it. I was just getting set up. I didn't have my mic plugged or anything. This is not.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, okay.

Okay. Well, let me know. I'm not expecting you to do anything. No, but I have like a bloopers thing at the end of every episode now where it's like whatever we're talking about.

Simone Collins: Your mic just cut out.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Just buy a new one. So when I move I just got this.

Simone Collins: Oh, for this mic? I was referring to the

Malcolm Collins: cord. Oh, oh yeah, I, I, I don't think it's

Simone Collins: the cords sliding out. I mean, it's weird because I have the same mic and I use the cord that's native to the mic, but it's,

Malcolm Collins: but you don't gesticulate.

Simone Collins: I guess I don't, I'm not, I'm not,

Malcolm Collins: got to show as much as you should be. So we need to talk about your gesticulation. I'm sorry.

Simone Collins: I think autistic people, in addition to being incapable of love or imagining things are also incapable of gesticulation aside from hand [01:09:00] flapping, obviously. So. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: You need to do more hand flapping.

Hand flap! Hand flap autistically. Hey, we gotta get through to 4chan here, okay? I need to be speaking to their, their kind.

Simone Collins: Oh god.

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe