Great Books #3: Poets and Prophets

So, the Iliad is the foundation of Greek civilization, which is the greatest civilization in human history, the most creative. It gave us Plato, Thucydides, Herodotus, Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles. Greek civilization is essentially the foundation for Western civilization. So, the question we will look at today is, how is it possible that one epic poem can give birth to a civilization? So, the thing to understand about Greek civilization is that there are two important concepts. The first is erite. The second is eudaimonia. So, erite means virtue, excellence, or character. It's something that makes you special, what you excel at. And traditionally, there are two types of erite. There's war fighting, and there is speech making. In Greek civilization, the paragon of the warrior is, of course, Achilles. And the paragon of the great orator, the great speaker, is Odysseus. So, we are reading the Iliad right now. And then, after we finish the Iliad, we will read the Odyssey.

Okay? So, these are the two great characters in Greek civilization. Achilles, the great warrior, and Odysseus, the great orator. Okay? Eudaimonia means flourishing. And the idea of eudaimonia is that you can only be happy, you can only be yourself, when you are achieving your erite, when you are expressing your erite. So, for example, Achilles. In the Iliad, he did this. Achilles says that, before he came to Troy, he was given a prophecy. He could either die old at home or die young, but a hero on the shores of Troy. And he said, well, duh, of course, I'm going to die young in Troy, because only by fighting, only by winning glory, can I achieve eudaimonia. Okay? And that's why he's so unhappy when he gets in a fight with Agamemnon. And he has to sit out the war. And he thinks of different ways of getting back into the battle. Because without fighting, he can't be Achilles.

He is the paragon of the warrior. Okay? So, that's the idea of eudaimonia. I can only be happy when I am being my creative best, when I'm achieving my true potential. Okay? Now, for the Greeks, war fighting and speech making are really the same thing. But for different means. Okay? So, when you fight a war, what you're trying to do is you're trying to impose your reality onto the world. And make others believe what you believe. Right? You do that through force. By brute strength, you show that you're superior. And therefore, others must obey you. But speech making is actually trying to achieve the same thing. Okay? But through words. Okay? So, rather than through force, through beauty and through truth, you're trying to create a new reality that others submit to. An example, of course, is the speeches between Odysseus and Achilles. Okay? Odysseus and Achilles. Alright, so remember the context.

Achilles gets in a fight with Agamemnon. He refuses to fight. And the Trojans, led by Hector, are destroying the Greeks. So, Agamemnon and Odysseus and the others, Nestor, have a war council. And they agree that they'll go and beg Achilles to come back. Okay? And Odysseus and Nestor and others, they go to Achilles. And they present an argument to Achilles. And Odysseus gives a very long speech. Now, the question for us is, why are the speeches in the Iliad so goddamn long? Right? Because Odysseus can simply say, Hey, Achilles, we'll give you a million dollars. Will you fight for us, please? He can also say, Hey, Achilles, we're losing the war. Stop being an asshole. Come fight for us. Okay? He can make it very, very short. Why is it so long? Right? And then Achilles, his response can be like, no. Okay? But he also offers a very long speech. And the answer is, they're not trying to respond to each other.

They're trying to create their own reality. Okay? So with speech, what you're really trying to do is you're trying to project a movie onto the world. You're trying to create a new reality that others must inhabit. Okay? That's why speech making is like war fighting. You're trying to create your own reality and impose it on others. Right? So remember what Odysseus is doing. He knows that Achilles, for him, it's really about face. Right? He's lost face in front of Achilles. He's lost the others. And that's why he won't back down. That's why he insists on Agamemnon apologizing. Okay? But Odysseus also knows that Agamemnon himself won't apologize. So for Odysseus, because he is the great orator, that is his arete, what he's going to try to do is try to create a new reality that Achilles inhabits. And which will convince him to... To join Odysseus in the war.

Okay? So how does he do that? What he does is he expands the imagination of Achilles. Alright? That's why the speech is so long. Because he's trying to create a new emotional reality for Achilles. Right now, Achilles is selfish. Right? So what does Odysseus say to Achilles? The first thing he says is, Achilles, I want you to imagine this. Before us is a great feast. We can see this feast. Now I want you to imagine what's the opposite of this feast. A great desert. Where we're all dying. We're all starving. And that's the war we're fighting right now against the Trojans. That's why we need you back. Okay? So it's a powerful image. And then he uses imagery to take Achilles to the present. Where Hector is this giant, this god, running around killing all Greeks before him. Okay? And then he takes Achilles back to the past and says, remember your father, Peleus.

Before you came to the war, you promised him that you would win glory for him. You promised that you would win glory for the Greeks. Okay? Then he takes Achilles to the future. Which is, let's imagine what happens when we win this war. When we win this war, all the riches of Troy, all the treasures, will belong to you, Achilles. Again, Manon will give you his daughter for money. And you will be our bride. And you will be the glory of all of Greece. You have treasures and treasures. Think about the present. Think about the present. Think about the past. Think about the future. Okay? Expand your mind, Achilles. Right? That's what Odysseus is doing. He's trying to expand Achilles' imagination. And once you enter this world that Odysseus has created, then you will be convinced to join him. Okay? So that's what speech making is. Speech making is projecting a movie onto the world that everyone can observe and then absorb this new reality.

Okay? Internalize this new reality. Right? And Achilles knows this. And Achilles refuses to be beaten. Right? So Achilles, through his speech, counters Odysseus with his own reality, which is a very self -absorbed reality. Okay? Right? So rather than expanding outwards, like Odysseus wants, Achilles continues to expand, to contract inwards. Right? He uses the word I, I, I a lot. Right? Me, me, me. Odysseus never uses I or we. He's always like we. Okay? So Achilles says, hey, I understand that Nephthagor to you is a god, but when I saw him, he ran away from me. Right? Oh, Peleus, my dad, I should go home to see him. So goodbye guys. And like Agamemnon's daughter, for my wife, I spit on her. I don't want any of this crap. Okay? So it's like, so he contracts inwards. Okay? So, and that's why the speech is too long, is so long.

Because in speech making, it's a war of realities. It's a war of narratives. And you create narratives through speeches. Okay? But not only that, but there's certain techniques to speeches. Because the goal of speeches is not just to paint a reality, but you want to paint a reality in which it is internalized by others. And therefore, you must make it memorable. Okay? So remember, in the beginning of class, I had you do an assignment, which is write down the speech. Right? And even though you didn't force yourself to memorize it, you're able to memorize a lot. Okay? And that shows you the power of the speech. The question then is, what makes the speech so powerful? And the answer is, because it's poetry, guys. Okay? Poetry. And the elements of poetry, of course, are imagery. And this is what Odysseus does well. This is what he specializes in. Okay?

Drawing pictures for you to see. Okay? Metaphors. Connections. Okay? Metaphors is what we call connections. And connections are things. They're things that help you clarify reality. Okay? And which shows you things that you couldn't see before. So for example, if I say, the sky is like the sea, that doesn't really surprise you. Okay? If I say, the sky is like a snail, well, that surprises you. And because it surprises you, you remember it. Okay? And because you remember it, it reorders the way you see reality. All right? You also have diction, choice of words, syntax. Okay? And these are things that both Odysseus and Achilles specialize in, especially Odysseus. Okay? Does it make sense? All right? So they're trying to create these narratives through their speeches. And they have these techniques. And guess what? The Greeks. Their education system was very simple. All they had to do was memorize the Iliad. Okay?

Because when you memorize the Iliad, you learn how to make a great speech. All right? And you understood that for me to make a great speech, I have impact. I need people to remember what I say. I need to put myself on others. All right? And this becomes, this system becomes the very basis of ritualization. All right? Speech making. Where if you have anything done, you have to go in front of people and make a speech and create a reality for people to accept. All right? And this is what leads to democracy. Okay? Are we clear? Okay. Now I want to talk about how, in fact, Homer creates civilization. Okay? All right. So, Immanuel Kant. Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher. And he's primarily concerned with how we understand reality. Why do we see the things that we do? Why do we think the thoughts that we have? And he wrote a very good book called The Critique of Pure Reason, in which he outlines this theory.

Okay? So what he tells us is this. Traditionally, we've understood ourselves as passive observers of reality. Okay? This thing is before us. We stand before it and we try to understand it. Okay? What Kant teaches us is that, no, we are, in fact, active participants in reality. And we shape and form the reality before us. Okay? So Kant divides the world into two. The first world is the world of objective reality. The things in themselves. Or the nomina. Okay? And what's a nomina? They're just vibrations. Okay? We talked about this, right? The entire world is sound, vibrations, frequencies. So we can actually see these things. So what we do is we filter the world around us and turn them into things that we can understand, called the phenomena. Which are the things to us. Okay? Things to us. Or the things that seem to us. All right?

And we do so through a filter called time and space. So time and space do not exist outside of us. They exist inside of us in order for us to understand reality. Okay? So time, what does time mean? Time just means sequence. All right? Sequence is just like one, two, three, four, five. We put things in sequence, we create time. Space is the idea of sensation. Okay? Sensation is just basically the five senses. Right? All right? Now, time and space do not exist outside of us because everything outside of us is just pure energy. Okay? But our minds can't perceive pure energy, therefore we use time and space, sequence and sensation to understand the world around us, to order the world around us. Okay? All right. So. But what this means is that if we're able to control time and space, we can control reality onto itself. Okay? Does that make sense? And what is this thing that controls time and space?

This thing is called language. Before, we would just each perceive our own time and space. With language, okay, we're now able to come to a collective understanding of reality. Right? And who creates language? Poets create language. And therefore, poets, through their poetry, create reality onto itself. That's what Odysseus is trying to do. He's trying to, through his poetry, create a new reality for everyone to live in. All right? A reality in which people get along. A reality in which people, like Achilles, are able to forget their hatred against Agamemnon and fight for the common good. Okay? All right? So, even though each of us has our own understanding of reality, a poet is able to create a language that is so beautiful that it comes into us and we internalize the language, we absorb the language, and we, together, create a new reality with the language as the building blocks.

Okay? Does that make sense, guys? All right. All right. So, let me explain now how Homer is able to do this. Okay? Let's talk about how Homer is able to do this. Homer. How is a poet able to create reality? Okay. So, a poet is unique in the world. Poets are really prophets. Okay? So, if you look at all these great religious figures of the past, including Jesus, including Zarathustra. They weren't religious figures. They were really poets. Okay? And how they're able to work is they have a divine connection to the universe. Okay? What we call... Okay? So, there are different names for the universe. Okay? So, Hegel, the German philosopher, used the term Geist. Geist. Okay? What is Geist? Well, Geist, it's hard to translate because it's German. Okay? But think of it as three English words. And in fact, actually, Geist will give us three English words. These three English words are Ghost, Gist, Gist, and Geiser.

Okay? Geiser is an eruption. Okay? Ghost is the underlying thing. And the Gist, the essence. Okay? Okay? And that's what the Geist is. The Geist is all around us. It's like the Ghost. It's always changing. It's always becoming. It's always erupting like a geiser. And it's really the essence of things. The Gist. Okay? All right? Carl Jung, the word he uses is Eclectic Unconscious. Eclectic Unconscious. Plato will use the realm of the forms and ideals. Okay? Christians will say Heaven. Whatever. Okay? All right? But these are the universe. All right? And remember how we said before our memories are stored in the universe. The universe is almost like a divine psychic internet, right? So, every single memory is stored inside the universe. And what poets do is they're able to access this universe. and as a result they're able to summon the memories of the universe and they

do and when they do that they create epics of poetry okay all right the Iliad now as I keep on discussing when we read the Iliad each character is a real person okay each character has a living present and future by reading the speech of Patroclus you understand his memories you understand where he came from what he wants and where he's going okay so everyone in the Iliad is a living breathing character and how is Homer able to do that he's able to do that because he's able to summon these people from the universe okay even though you're dead your consciousness is still alive in the universe even though Homer is longer with us his consciousness is still within the universe so it's possible through intense meditation to actually connect with Homer Dante Shakespeare whoever okay they're all there and that's what Homer is doing he's able to connect with these people and bring them

into the Iliad okay but because these people are living in the universe they're still alive in the universe okay so it's impossible that the IL is destroyed its life was preserved by the și and by Homer for his entire life the Iliad itself is a living memory okay what I mean by that is okay the purpose of the Iliad is to create a memory a living keeping memory for people to observe. So remember, Homer, he is a bard. At this time, people don't read and write. So what he's doing is, he's doing what Odysseus is doing, which is he's going from town to town, people are surrounding him, there's a hundred people, and then for the entire evening, he recites his poetry. And he's doing what Odysseus is doing, he's painting a movie for everyone to observe together. And it's the same thing when you go to a movie theater, where, yes, it's the same movie, but everyone's experience is gonna be different, okay?

And how it becomes different is that you implant your own consciousness, your own understanding, into the Iliad. So it becomes a shared creation. And when you do that, what happens is that, and this is really important, guys, you connect directly to the universe, okay? So in other words, the Iliad was created because of inspiration from the universe, but it's also a portal into the universe itself. And this is what allows for new creations, okay? Okay? So as you are observing the Iliad, because your own experience is different, because your own connection to the universe is unique, by interpreting the Iliad, you create a new universe onto itself, okay? And this is what we call, together, a process we call civilization, all right? This is what happened. This is why one poem, the Iliad, was able to give birth to an entire civilization, because it was so

alive, so powerful, so connected to the universe itself, to the monad, that when you observed it, you created into yourself, a portal into the monad, the universe, the heavens, that allow you to create your own universe, that then connected back to the monad, okay? So it's just one, all right? Any questions? Are you guys clear about this? All right. Think about this, all right? This is what the Greeks did, and how do we know it's true? Because even today, the Iliad speaks to us. Right? The Iliad, when we read it, we can identify with Odysseus. We can understand Achilles. We can relate Achilles to ourselves. We can predict how Achilles will behave, okay? And that's proof that this Iliad is eternal and immortal, because it connects us to the monad. But knowing that, and this is most important, is that you may not know this, but the more you read the Iliad, the more it's opening your mind, okay?

Your mind is an antenna, okay? Your mind is an antenna to the universe, right? So when you read the Iliad, it's as though your download speed is now increasing. You have a fast connection, strong connection now to the internet, and so they're able to absorb more, okay? When you're able to absorb more, you're able to absorb, okay? create new realities in which you're able to observe which you're able to analyze deeper all right and that's why we read the great books because it is literally it allows us to connect and talk to god itself okay doesn't make sense guys all right so um yeah any questions we might move on okay so what i'm gonna do now is we're gonna read together uh we're not gonna read together an essay by persia shelley it's called the defense of poetry and he explains how this happens okay all right so now i'm

giving you the theory um we'll see how persia shelley was a very famous british romantic poet how he how he explains this okay okay sorry so this is from his essay the defense defense of poetry okay it's a very long essay but i'll just highlight for you certain aspects okay so he's talking about how homer created greek civilization and um homer was a bard poet but then heavy influence on the playwrights okay the play the three big players of course are israeli sophocles and eubates and the theater will become the very essence of athenian life okay so what you do what you did for fun was you would go to a theater but the theater was more than just entertainment it was about education it was about enlightenment and a vacation okay so um he talks about the theater in athens okay the drama in athens or who wheresoever else it may have approached to

its perfection ever courses courses with a moral intellectual greatness of the age all right so the theater at athens provoked these tremendous feelings in people that made them into moral people with ambition with creativity all right the tragedies of athenian poets are as mirrors in which a spectator beholds himself under a thin disguise of circumstance should of all but that ideal perfection energy which everyone feels to be the internal type of all that he loves admires and would become all right okay so again the idea of poetry the idea of truth is that it's a mirror in which you can look at yourself and you look at the world around you achilles odysseus are in you and you are in them and by observing them objectively you can better understand yourself the imagination is enlarged by sympathy with pains and passions so mighty that they stand in their conception the capacity of that by which

they are conceived the good affections are strengthened by pity indignation terror and sorrow and the exact calm is prolonged from the satiety of this high exercise of them into the tumult of familiar life okay so the idea of greek tragedy is um epiphany and catharsis so if you look at uh greek tragedy there's a very common pattern okay so there's a tragic character and he's undone by hubris and that's a great tragic flaw his hubris he's arrogant achilles has hubris he thinks he's better than everyone else every man has hubris he's better than everyone else okay but troglos will die because of hubris hector will die because of hubris so it's hubris that is the great uh killer of people okay no matter how great you are you will suffer from hubris the greater you are the more you suffer from hubris which can only lead to tragedy and you're observing this and you recognize

that oh it's hubris that leads to tragedy and therefore it will make you a much more humble person okay this is what we call epiphany but regardless of your epiphany you're still going to face tragedy okay the person is still going to fall so hector no matter how great he is he's still going to die patroclus no matter how innocent he is he's still going to die and this will lead and so what happens is you feel a connection with that person you cry and this leads to catharsis okay catharsis is basically purge whatever feelings that you have you cry you purge your feelings you purge your hubris you purge your hatred okay and this will make you a whole person but when you commit catharsis what happens is that you now connect with the character itself so the character now lives in you and you live in the character okay and that will make

you a much better person does it make sense guys all right even crime is this arm of habits horror and all its contagion by being represented as a fatal consequence of the unfathomable agency of nature eras does diversity of its wilfulness men can no longer cherish in it as a creation of their choice in a drama of the highest order there is little food for censor or hatred it teaches rather than self -knowledge and self -respect nearly i know the life of nature is a okay so this is very long but it's a very simple idea the idea is that when you watch a tragedy okay when you observe a tragedy you're observing a fundamental truth about human nature okay which is that we're all going to be tragic the classic that classic case is Oedipus okay Oedipus is a man who killed his father and married his mother and when he discovers the truth

he blinds himself and then he goes into exile okay and if you actually read the tragedy by Sophocles he did nothing wrong it was it was just fate it was just an accident but unfortunately that's what life is about okay so the you are a great person when you're able to acknowledge your limitations you're able to acknowledge fate and destiny but you struggle regardless okay that's what Erette that's what eudaimonia is to recognize your limitations to recognize the universe may have a grudge against you but you struggle on regardless okay and that story when you watch it yourself it brings sorrow to you it brings pity but it makes you also much more wise and reflective about the world that we live in okay and let's create wisdom let's create empathy let's create morality and that's why Greek drama is so important okay now let's look at another passage But tense or tension or reducing

varsa. You are only a spirit of protecting you, the explanation, the power, your gift, or what you call wisdom and neglected your humanity. Erette is only a spirit of protecting you by into a sense of justice. But this is an interesting force to decide whether or not a終 prioritizing God as an okay? The present with the eternal. The here with the forever. And they turn it into words that are able to express both the material and the spiritual. The here and the forever, the present and the eternal, okay? A word, a trait, and a representation of a scene or a passion will touch the enchanted cord, okay? Diction or metaphor. Enchanted cord. Enchanted cord is just your connection to the divine, okay? So this word, because it's so beautiful, this sentence will be so beautiful, will reawaken your memory, okay? This is a really important idea where we are always in a process of reincarnation, all right?

So why are we here in this world? Because there are things that we can experience that we cannot experience in the spiritual. When we're in the spiritual, we are formless. We don't have any bodies. Therefore, we cannot have sex, we cannot have pain, we cannot have love, okay? But in this world, we can. But what's important to understand is that when we reincarnate into this world, our memories of our former selves and of the spiritual are lost to us. Otherwise, we can't actually live the life that we live, okay? But poetry, because it connects both to the divine and to the present, certain words will spark your soul. And your soul is the forever memory of all your lives and your connection to the spiritual, okay? That's what poetry does. Poetry is a gateway into your soul. And we enaminate, okay? In those who have ever experienced these emotions, the sleeping, the cold, the buried image of the past, all right?

So you have all these past lives in you that you don't remember. But a certain word, a certain poem will reignite, re -enaminate, all these past lives in you, and they will say, hey, re -remember, okay? And this will elevate you. Poetry does, makes immortal, all that is best and most beautiful on the world. It arrests the vanishing aberrations which haunt the inter Texas notifications of life. Enveiling them, or in language or in form, sends them forth among mankind, bearing sweet news of kindred joy to those who, of whom the sisters by abide, because there is no more portal of expression from the caverns of the spirit, which they inhabit into the universe of fire. of things, poetry redeems from decay the visitations of the divinity in man, okay? There's God in us, and poetry reminds us there is God in us. There's God everywhere, and poetry reminds us there's God everywhere.

Poetry lets us see the divine everywhere, okay? We're not able to see this because of how our minds work, because we're only able to see through time and space, but poetry helps us go beyond time and space and connect immediately to the eternal, okay, to the divine, to the spiritual. All things exist as they are perceived, okay? So again, the idea of Kant, where we can only see things through time and space, okay? These are things we can see, but you know what? There are things that we can feel that we can't see. It's the feelings that matter, at least in relation to the percipient. The mind is its own place and of itself can make a heaven of hell a hell of hell. Of heaven, okay? But what this tells us is that if we learn how to control our minds, we can control reality itself, okay?

But poetry defeats a curse which binds us to be subjected to the asinine of surrounding impressions, okay? Do you understand this idea? The idea is poetry activates our imagination. Before, we were in a prison of our own making. Before, we could only see what we could see, but the poetry gives us a higher sight. It allows us to see the things beyond just time and space. The eternal, the past, the future. And wherever it spreads its own figure curtain or withdraws life's dark veil from before the scene of things, it equally creates for us a being within our being. Okay? All right? So each time we use our imagination, we create our new reality for ourselves. It makes us the inhabitants of a world to which the familiar world is a chaos. It reproduces a common universe of which we are portions and percipients, and it purges from our inward insight the film of familiarity which obscures from us the wonder of our being.

It compels us to feel that which we perceive and to imagine that which we know. It creates a new universe after it has been annihilated in our minds by the recreation of impressions blunted by reiteration. It justifies the bold and true words of Tasso. None but God and the poet deserve the name of creator. The poet is the creator of our heart. The poet is the creator of our world because the poet has the imagination to see things beyond time and space, beyond this reality. And the poet then distills these emotions into words that help us ourselves connect to the divine. Okay? Poetry is a portal to the divine. This is clear, right, guys? All right, so we'll conclude. The most unfailing hero, companion, and follower of the awakening of a great people to work a benefit of change in opinion or institution is poetry. Poetry is the basis of all civilization.

Okay? It is from poetry that everything must come from. At such periods, there is an accumulation of the power of communicating and receiving intent and passion, conceptions respecting man and nature. The person whom this power resides may often, as far as regards, many portions of their nature have little apparent correspondence with that spirit of good of which they are the ministers. But even while they deny and abjure, they are yet compelled to serve that power which is seated on the throne of their own soul. Okay? So poets don't actually know their prophet. Poets don't know they're connected to the monad or the divine. They just do what they do because they have no choice. Okay? There's a fire burning in you. You have to let it out. Otherwise, you can't sleep. You can't eat. Okay? Poets are prophets who must speak the truth. Otherwise, they will just suffocate. Okay? They'll destroy.

They'll just drown in their own misery. It is impossible to read the compositions nor celebrate writers of the present day while being startled with the electric life which burns, well, within their words. Okay? Poets are the flame itself. Poets are not human. They are the messengers of the divine flame. Okay? They just burn. And when you read their words, you can see the flame in them. Okay? So even though Homer, we don't even know who this guy is. We don't know. We don't have his picture. But you can see when we read him, he's alive still. Okay? His words still burn. They measure the circumference and sound the depths of human nature with a comprehensive and opportunity spirit, and they are themselves perhaps the most sincerely astonished at its manifestations. Okay? It's all inspiration. When Homer is speaking, he doesn't know he's speaking. He doesn't. Are you telling me that this guy who just blah, blah, blah, blah, he's able to understand, oh, this is what Odysseus is doing.

Odysseus is trying to create a reality and he's using imagery, he's using diction. No, no, he doesn't understand anything. He's just blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, okay? He's a divine fire. He's a chat. He's just channeling God, okay? He's just a portal for God to speak with the universe, with us. Poets are the hierophants of an apprehended inspiration, okay? The mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurely cast upon the present. They are prophets because the future is speaking to us today, okay? God is past, future, present. And so when God speaks, he's also speaking to the future. The words which express what they understand not. The trumpets which sing to battle and feel not what they inspire. The influence which is moved not but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, okay? Poets are prophets and their words create our reality.

Every night. Everything that we know, everything that we do, it's because of language. Of the language that the poets create, okay? Does it make sense, guys? That's how Homer created civilization. Because God willed it that Homer speak truth. And willed that this truth will spread across the world through his poetry. Okay? It's all by design. Does it make sense? All right. Any questions? Okay. All right. All right. So I'll see you guys next class. Okay?

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