Oneness vs. Twoness

Jordan Peterson's metaphysical conversation with John Vervaeke accidentally highlights modern paganism sneaking into everything

What you missed…

• Recently Jordan Peterson sat down with John Vervaeke to have a long nerdy conversation about the source of meaning, how to frame anything properly, how our psychology connects to the real world, and religion. It’s a whopping 2 hours long. Here’s the video:

• Peter Jones explicitly wrote about the big question that comes up accidentally several times in the Peterson-Vervaeke discussion. You can read about in an article called One or Two? here.

Jungian paganism

Speaking of the mystic 1960s, Peter Jones wrote:

Bob Dylan sang, “The Times They Are A’Changin,” and we heard for the first time of the “dawning of the Age of Aquarius,” an age of pagan utopian spirituality. This was the age when many became aware of the ancient heresy of Gnosticism through the discovery of ancient Gnostic texts and the psychological theories of the modern, very spiritual Gnostic Carl Jung, who called Christian orthodoxy “systematic blindness.” Jung followed the ancient Gnostic god Abraxas, half man, half beast, as a deity higher than both the Christian God and the Devil. His secular biographer recently stated that Jung, like the Roman Emperor Julian in the fourth century AD, succeeded in turning the Western world back to paganism. [emphasis mine]

In the Daily Wire video, as he has so many times before, Jordan Peterson cites Carl Jung as a highly respectable leader in psychology. Peterson never openly talks about the pagan, anti-Christian, Gnostic side of Carl Jung, but does enjoy his breakdown of mythology and psychology into archetypes. To Jung, there was a shadow world of mystical figures and suppressed archetypes lurking in every human subconscious, waiting to manifest itself. This sounds pretty accurate, except that he takes it to the religious level of declaring these archetypes real and metaphysically substantial. He hates Christianity because it reduces the shadow world to a problem waiting to be solved by the light of God.

Peterson is proud to be accepted into the flock of Christianity without actually having entered through the narrow gate of spiritual rebirth through Jesus Christ, to the exclusion of all other entities and ideologies. He’s a faux-Christian, a mystic, welcome in the culture war by the Eastern Orthodox especially, since they are the same as him. Peterson loves Orthodox icon-carver Jonathan Pageau, and even relies on him for elaborate Jungian transformation of the Bible into archetypes and symbols. (And if you think it’s dangerous for me to say Peterson is not a Christian, remember that publicly confessing and defending your loyalty and devotion to Jesus openly is one of the essential qualities of a real Christian. Peterson refuses to fully identify as a Christian and is happy to also court Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, and Gnostics without standing up for Christ and declaring that he is above them all.)

Neoplatonism as Oneness

Vervaeke is a self-described Neoplatonist. What does that mean? Since it wasn’t the focus of the discussion it’s not totally clear, but generally, Neoplatonism is the evolution of Platonism, which said that every kind of being had an ideal form up in heaven somewhere, in the abstract, and that everything on the ground in reality is a poor imitation of it. Therefore, there would be an ideal cup, an ideal tree, and an ideal triangle in the metaphysical world, but no such thing as ideal cups, trees, or triangles in the actual world, although each of them was produced through a process of trying to be ideal. A few centuries after Jesus, this idea had evolved into an argument that everything is corrupt on earth, but everything also derives the same being, not many others. This singular source of all ideal things is the One, or the Good. We might say, the Ideal. Wikipedia summarizes Neoplatonism like this:

Among the common ideas it does maintain is that of monism, the doctrine that all of reality can be derived from a single principle, "the One"

For Plotinus, the first principle of reality is "the One", an utterly simple, ineffable, unknowable subsistence which is both the creative source of the Universe and the teleological end [ie. ultimate purpose] of all existing things. Although, properly speaking, there is no name appropriate for the first principle, the most adequate names are "the One" or "the Good". The One is so simple that it cannot even be said to exist or to be a being. Rather, the creative principle of all things is beyond being

I hope you can see that this does not describe God.

God is not simple subsistence. He is a definite being, to the point where He describes Himself as the “I AM”. If anything exists as a being, it is God, which is fundamentally “Other” or apart from Creation. He is the “Two” in the Twoness model. He is completely distinguished from Creation, able to exist outside of it, and able to destroy it all without affecting Himself in any way.

Oneness says that everything which exists is being actively emanated from this generic, unthinking goodness principle, with decreasing levels of idealism, and everything returns to it when destroyed, recycling back into the One to be redeployed or reincarnated.

Jacob’s ladder abused

Crucially, Peterson keeps associating Buddhist enlightenment and Oneness religious goals with mystified, paganized, Jungian corruptions of Bible stories. Vervaeke sometimes plays along and adds to this interpretation, explaining how the paradoxes of Bible stories highlight the same phenomena psychologists encounter when dealing with patients, and which we all must confront to be healthy people.

John Vervaeke keeps trying to push the idea of Oneness enlightenment during the conversation, but Peterson either doesn’t get the implication, or covers up what’s being said. He authoritatively states over and over that Bible stories are trying to describe the same thing another way. Vervaeke is talking about killing the ego, the sense of self, melting the framework of there being any such thing as the “other”, and taking everything back to a grand holistic integration. That’s Buddhism/Neoplatonism. Peterson agrees with him, and then seamlessly swaps those Buddhist lessons for the mystified version of the Bible stories.

Jacob’s Ladder is not a metaphor for enlightenment. It’s not about our brain connecting to the higher unified principles of a chaotic world. It’s about real spiritual powers in the invisible realm outside of us, interacting with the affairs of mankind unbeknownst to us. God is the Almighty “Other” outside of us, interfering with the Created world with His own 100% sovereign and distinct agenda.

But Peterson also insists on the question of the great “Spirit” (of God) which invigorates and works through the world and people to the greater good. Peterson seems to accept that there is no actual God, just a part of our mind that is transcendent and very hard to access, and which constantly challenges us with paradoxes for our own benefit. But I also sense an unwillingness to let go of the idea altogether, because for Peterson the incomprehensible “Other” is appealing, not just as an abstract force buried somewhere in our evolutionary biology, but as a real force that people have encountered the hard way. I say “real”, but then again the whole conversation revolves around how our consciousness defines reality so much that there isn’t a real reality to be had. Lots of Christians are praying for Peterson, and I can see why. He’s so close to the truth, but he isn’t willing to let go of the Gnostic Carl Jung and become truly dangerous by going full Christian.

I hope this short comment on Peterson’s discussion has given you insight. Let me know in the comments if you found this useful, and any questions you have.