Predictive History - The Story of "Civilization", "Secret History", "Game Theory" and more - Great Books #3: Poets And Prophets

Episode Date: April 8, 2026

Great Books #3: Poets And Prophets ...

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Starting point is 00:00:00 When West Jet first took flight in 1996, the vibes were a bit different. People thought denim on denim was peak fashion, inline skates were everywhere, and two out of three women rocked, the Rachel. While those things stayed in the 90s, one thing that hasn't is that fuzzy feeling you get when WestJet welcomes you on board. Here's to Westjetting since 96. Travel back in time with us and actually travel with us at westjet.com slash 30 years. So the Iliad is the foundation of Greek civilization, which is the greatest civilization in human history, the most creative.
Starting point is 00:00:35 It gave us Plato, Facilities, Herodotus, Ischelis, Eurbitis, 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? Okay? So the thing that I understand about quick civilization is that there are two important concepts. The first is erete. Sorry, erete. The second is eudaimonia.
Starting point is 00:01:20 Ah, where are my gloves? Come on, heat. Winter is hard, but your groceries don't have to be. This winter, stay warm. Tap the banner to order your groceries online at voila.ca. Enjoy in-store prices without leaving. your home. You'll find the same regular prices online as in store. Many promotions are available both in store and online, though some may vary. So, Eritay means virtue, accent, or character.
Starting point is 00:02:00 It's something that makes you special, what you excel at. Okay? And traditionally, there are two types of Eritay. There's war fighting and there is speech making. In Greek civilization, the paragon of the warrior is of course Achilles and the peregon 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 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 eriate when you are expressing
Starting point is 00:03:13 your eret so for example Achilles in the unit he tells us that before he came to Troy he was given a prophecy he could either die old as home or die young but a hero on the source of Troy and he said well duh of course I'm gonna 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 Eggmanon and he has to sit up the war and he thinks of different ways of getting back into the battle because without fighting he can He can't be Achilles.
Starting point is 00:03:59 He is the paragon of the warrior. 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. 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.
Starting point is 00:04:30 You do that for 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, but for words. So rather than through force, for beauty and through truth, you're trying to create a new reality that others submit to.
Starting point is 00:04:56 And the example, of course, is the speeches between Odysseus and Achilles. Okay? Odysseus and Achilles. All right, so remember the context. Achilles gets a fight with Eghamnon, he refused to fight, and the Trojans led by Hector are destroying the Greeks. So Agamannon and Odysseus and the others, the Nester have a war council, and they agree that they'll go and beg Achilles to come back.
Starting point is 00:05:27 come back. Okay? And Odysseus and Nestor and others they go to Achilles and they present an argument to Achilles and audience gives a very long speech. Now the question for us is why are the speeches in the Iliad so goddamn long, right? Because ideas can simply say hey Achilles we'll give you a million dollars. Will you fight for us please? He could also say hey Achilles we're losing a war, stop being an asshole, come 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. 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 his speech,
Starting point is 00:06:23 what you're really trying to do is you're trying to project a movie on to 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 then post it on others. Right, so remember what Odysseus is doing.
Starting point is 00:06:44 He knows that Achilles, for him it's really about face, right? He's lost face in front of the others, and that's why he won't back down. That's why he insists on Agamon apologizing. Okay, but Adidas also knows that Agamem himself won't apologize. So for Odysseus, because he is the great orator, that is his Eritre, what he's going to do to try to do is try to create a new reality that Achilles inhabits and which will convince him to join Odysseus in the war, okay?
Starting point is 00:07:23 So how does he do that? What he does is he expands the imagination of Achilles. 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 this say to Achilles? The first thing he says is, Achilles, I want you to imagine this.
Starting point is 00:07:46 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,
Starting point is 00:08:10 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 say, Remember your father, Pileus, 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. 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.
Starting point is 00:08:46 Again, Manon will give you his daughter for a 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. Expand your mind, Achilles. Right?
Starting point is 00:09:06 That's what Adi's is doing. He's trying to expand Achilles' imagination. And once you enter this world, the Odysse has created, then you will be convinced to join him. Okay? So that's what speech making is. Speech making is projecting a movement. onto the world that everyone can observe
Starting point is 00:09:25 and then absorb this new reality. Internalize this new reality. And Achilles knows this. And Achilles refuses to be beaten. So Achilles, through his speech, counters Adidas with his own reality, which is a very self-absorbed reality, okay? Okay, right?
Starting point is 00:09:51 So rather than expanding outwards, like Odysse's ones, Achilles continues to contract inwards, right? He used the word I, I, I, I a lot, right? Me, me, me, me. Adidas never uses I or we. He's always like, we, okay? So Achilles says, hey, I understand that Neft Hector to you as a god, but when I saw him, he ran away from me. All right? O Pelius, my dad, I should go home to sea.
Starting point is 00:10:20 So goodbye guys and like I got on his daughter for my wife I spit on her I don't want him 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 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 the others.
Starting point is 00:11:01 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.
Starting point is 00:11:20 The question in it is, what makes this 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.
Starting point is 00:11:42 Okay, metaphors is what we're called connections. And connections are things that help you clarify reality. reality, okay? And which shows you, 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 surprised you. And because it surprises you, you remember it, okay? Because you remember it, it reorders the way you see reality.
Starting point is 00:12:13 All right. You also have diction, choice of words, syntax. And these are things that both Odysseus and Achilles specialize in, especially Odysseus. Okay? Doesn't make sense. All right. So they're trying to create these narratives through their speeches and they have these techniques. And guess what?
Starting point is 00:12:44 The Greeks, their education system was very simple. All they had to do was memorize the Iliad. the Iliad, okay? Because when you memorize the Iliad, you learn how to make a great speech, 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.
Starting point is 00:13:06 And this becomes, this system becomes the very basis of virtualization, speech making, where you're having done, you have to go in front of people make a speech and create a reality for people to accept. And this is what leads to democracy. Are we clear? Now I want to talk about how in fact Homer creates civilization, okay?
Starting point is 00:13:39 All right, so Immanuel Kant. Emil Kant was a German philosopher, and he's primarily concerned with how we understand reality. Why do we see the things that we do? What do we think the thoughts that we have? 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.
Starting point is 00:14:11 Traditionally, we've understood ourselves, 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.
Starting point is 00:14:48 The first world is the world of objective reality. The things in themselves, or the nomana. And once in nomana, they're just vibrations. 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 into things that we can understand,
Starting point is 00:15:20 called the phenomenon, 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 call 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. So time, what does time mean?
Starting point is 00:15:51 Time just means sequence. Right, sequence is just like one, two, three, four, three, four, five. If we put things in sequence, we create time. Space is the idea of sensation. Sensation is just basically the five senses, right? All right. Now, time and space generally exists outside of us
Starting point is 00:16:14 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? So, but what this means is that able to control time and space,
Starting point is 00:16:43 we can control reality onto itself. Okay, that doesn't make sense. And what does this feel like control 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?
Starting point is 00:17:12 And who creates language? Poets create language. And therefore, poets, for their poetry, create reality onto itself. That's what Diss is trying to do. He's trying to, for his poetry, create a new reality for everyone to live in. A reality in which people get along,
Starting point is 00:17:35 a reality in which people, like Achilles, are able to forget their hatred against Agam and Non, against Aga and Manon 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,
Starting point is 00:18:03 and we together create a new reality with the language as the building block. Okay, doesn't 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.
Starting point is 00:18:34 Poets are really profits, okay? So if you look at all these great, really religious, just figures of the past including Jesus, including Zoroastra. They weren't really just figures. They were really poets, okay? And how they're able to work is they have a divine connection to the universe.
Starting point is 00:19:00 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, Geis will give us three English words.
Starting point is 00:19:32 These three English words are ghost, gist, gist, and geyser, okay? Geyser is an eruption, okay? Ghost is the underlying thing. and the gist, the essence, okay? And that's what the guise is. The guise is all around us, it's like the ghost, it's always changes, it's always becoming,
Starting point is 00:19:53 it's always erupting like a geyser, and it's really the essence of things, the gist, okay? All right. Carl Jung, the word he uses, an collective unconscious, the collective unconscious. Plato will use the realm of the forms and ideals.
Starting point is 00:20:17 Christians will say ever, okay? 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.
Starting point is 00:21:04 And when they do that, they create epics of poetry, okay? 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 past, present, and future. By reading the speech of Patroclus, you understand his memories, you understand where he came from,
Starting point is 00:21:38 what he wants, and where he's going. Okay, so everyone in the Elia 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, you're close, consciousness is still alive in the universe. Even though Homer is longer with us, his consciousness is still within the universe.
Starting point is 00:22:02 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, the Iliad itself is a living memory. What I mean by that is, okay,
Starting point is 00:22:35 the purpose of the Iliad is to create a memory, a living 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 this is doing, which is he's going from town to town, people are surrounding him, There's 100 people, and then for the entire evening, he recites his poetry.
Starting point is 00:23:04 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 going to 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.
Starting point is 00:23:32 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.
Starting point is 00:23:53 And this is what allows for new creation. 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. Alright? This is what happened.
Starting point is 00:24:32 This is why one poem, the Iliad, was able to give birth to him 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 yourself a portal into the monad, the universe, the heavens, that allowed you to create your own universe that then connected back to the monad. Okay? So it's just one... Any questions?
Starting point is 00:25:14 Are you guys clear about this? All right? And think about this. 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, we read it, we can identify with Odysseus. We can understand Achilles.
Starting point is 00:25:40 We can relate Achilles to our self. Achilles to ourselves. We can predict how Achilles will behave. Okay? And that's proof that this is eternal and immortal, because it connects us to the monad. But knowing that, and this is the most important, is that you may not know this, but the more you read the Iliad,
Starting point is 00:26:09 the more it's opening your mind. 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.
Starting point is 00:26:29 Okay, when you're able to absorb more, you're able to 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 a, it allows us to connect and talk to God itself.
Starting point is 00:26:51 Okay? Doesn't make sense guys. All right. So, yeah. Any questions before I move on? Okay, so what we're gonna do now is, we're gonna read together, we're not gonna read together an essay
Starting point is 00:27:14 by Persia Shelley. It's called the Defense of Poetry. and he explains how this happens, okay? All right, so now like giving you the theory, we'll see how Percy Shelley was a very famous British Romantic poet, how he explains this, okay? Okay, sorry. So this is from his essay,
Starting point is 00:28:03 The 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 racialization. And Homer was a bard poet, but they had an heavy influence on the playwrights. Okay, the three big playwrights, of course,
Starting point is 00:28:26 are Ischli, Sophocles and Eubides. And the theater will become the very essence of Athenian life, okay? So 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?
Starting point is 00:28:47 So he talks about the theater in Athens, okay? The drama at Athens, or who wears over else it may have approach to its perfection, ever co-sits with a moral intellectual greatness of the age. All right. So the theater at Athens provoked these tremendous feelings
Starting point is 00:29:11 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 have all but that ideal perfection of energy which everyone feels to be the internal type
Starting point is 00:29:32 of all that he loves, admires, and will 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 can 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.
Starting point is 00:29:56 The imagination is enlarged by sympathy with pains and passion so mighty that they extend 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 exactal calm is prolonged from the satiety of this high exercise of them into the term mode of familiar life. Okay. So the idea of Greek tragedy is epithony Cartharsis. So if you look at 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.
Starting point is 00:30:45 Every man has hubris. He's better than everyone else, okay? But Trotless will die because of hubris. Hector will die because of hubris. So it's hubris that is the great killer of people, okay? No matter how great you are, you will suffer from hubris. The greater you are, the more you will 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,
Starting point is 00:31:12 and therefore it will make you a much more humble person, okay? This is what we call epithony. 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. Petroclus, no matter how innocent he is, he's still going to die, okay? And this will lead, and so what happens is you feel a connection with that person, you cry.
Starting point is 00:31:44 And this leads to Cartharsis, okay? Cartharsis, okay? Cartharsis is basically purge. Whatever feelings that you have, you cry, you purge your feelings, you perch your hubris, you purge your hatred, okay? And this will make you a whole person. But when you commit cartharsus,
Starting point is 00:32:02 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. Doesn't make sense, guys? All right. Even crime is this arm of habit horror and all its contagion by being represented as a fatal consequence
Starting point is 00:32:25 of the unfathomable agency of nature. Errorist does diversity of its willfulness. Men can no longer cherish in it as a creation of their choice. In the drama, the highest order, there is little food for censor or hatred. It teaches rather than self-knowledge and self-respect.
Starting point is 00:32:40 Nearly I know the mind can see itself unless reflected upon that which it resembles. The drama, solo. as it continues to express poetry, is as a prismatic and many-sided mirror, which collects the brightness rays of human nature and divides and reproduces them from the simplicity of these elementary forms
Starting point is 00:32:56 and touches them with majesty and beauty and multiplies all that it reflects and endows it with the power of propagating it's like wherever it may fall. Okay? So this is very long, but it's a very simple idea. The idea is that when you watch a tragedy, when you observe a tragedy,
Starting point is 00:33:15 you're observing a fundamental truth about human nature, which is that we're all going to be tragic. The classic, that classic case is Oedipus. Eidipus 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.
Starting point is 00:33:43 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 Eritay, that's what you don't, eudaimony is. To recognize your limitations, to recognize the universe may have a grudge against you,
Starting point is 00:34:12 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 that's create wisdom, that's creates empathy, this creates morality. Okay?
Starting point is 00:34:33 And that's why Greek drama is so important. Okay, now let's look at another passage. Poets are not only subject to the experiences our spirits are the most refined organization, but they can color all that they combine with the evidence and fuse of this ethereal role. Okay, all right, this is really important idea. Remember how he said that poets have a connection
Starting point is 00:34:53 to the vine, right? So they are absorbing the guise. They are absorbing the monad, okay? But at the same time, they're absorbing the world around us, the material, okay? They're observing human nature. They're observing nature, like life itself. And what they do is they combine these two together, okay?
Starting point is 00:35:12 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 in the representation of a seeing or a passion will touch the enchanted chord,
Starting point is 00:35:37 okay, a diction or metaphor. Enchernicourt. Eternal court is just your connection to the vine, okay? So this word, because it's so beautiful, this sentence is so beautiful, will reawaken your memory, okay? This is a really important idea where we are always in a process of reincarnation.
Starting point is 00:36:01 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 can have sex, we can't have pain, we can't love. Okay, but in this world, we can't.
Starting point is 00:36:18 But what's important to understand is that when we reincarnate into this world, our memories of our former selves and of the spiritual world are lost to us. Otherwise, we can't actually live the life that we live, okay? But poetry, because it connects both to the vine and to the present, certain words will spark your soul. 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 re-enaminate, okay, in those who have ever experienced these emotions, the sleeping, the cold, the buried image of the past.
Starting point is 00:37:03 All right? So you have all these past lives in you that you don't remember, but a certain word, a certain post. will reenact, reenaminate all these past lives in you, and they will someone like them says, hey, we remember, okay? And this will elevate you. Poetry does, makes immortal, all that is best and most beautiful in the world.
Starting point is 00:37:26 It arrests the vanishing aberrations, which haunt the interlunations of life, unveiling them, or in language, or in form, sends them forth among mankind, bearing sweet news of kindred joy to those with whom the sisters abide, Because there is no more portal of expression from the caverns of the spirit which they inhabit
Starting point is 00:37:44 into the universe of things. Poetry deems from the cave, the visitations of the divinity in man, 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?
Starting point is 00:38:04 We're not able to see this because of how our minds work, because we're only able to see full time space. But poetry is 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.
Starting point is 00:38:50 The mind is in its own place and of itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. 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 acid of surrounding impressions. Do you understand this idea? The idea is poetry activates our imagination. Before we're in a prison of our own making. Before we could only see what we could see.
Starting point is 00:39:22 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 equates for us a being within our beings. a being within our being, okay? All right.
Starting point is 00:39:48 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 precipitants and approaches from our insight, inward insight, the film of familiarity
Starting point is 00:40:05 with 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 or impressions blunted by reiteration, it justifies the bold and true words of Tassau. None but God and the poet deserve the name of creator. The poet is the creator of our world because the poet has the imagination to see things
Starting point is 00:40:33 beyond time and space, beyond this reality. And the poet then distills these emotions into words that help us ourselves. connect to the divine. 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
Starting point is 00:41:01 to work, a benefit of change, an opinion, or institution, is poetry. Poetry is the basis of all civilization. It is from poetry that everything must come from. At such periods, there's an accumulation of the power of communicating and receiving intent and impassioned conceptions respecting man in nature. The person whom this power reside may often, as far as regards, many portions of their
Starting point is 00:41:25 nature have little apparent correspondence with that spirit of good of which they are the ministers. But even while they deny and abjured, they are yet compelled to serve that power which is seated on the throne of their own soul. So poets don't actually know their prophets. Poets don't know they're connected to the Monad or the divine. They just do what they do because they have no choice. There's a fire burning in you.
Starting point is 00:41:47 You have to let it out. Otherwise, you can't sleep, you can't eat. Poets are prophets who must speak the truth. Otherwise, they will just suffocate. They'll just drown in their own misery. It is impossible to read the compositions and we'll celebrate writers of the present day while being startled with the electric life
Starting point is 00:42:09 which burns well within their words. Poets are the flame itself. Poets are not human. They are the messengers of the divine flame. They just burn. And when you read their words, you can see the flame in them, okay? So even though Homer,
Starting point is 00:42:27 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 of death of human nature
Starting point is 00:42:42 with a comprehensive and operative and operating spirit and they are themselves perhaps the most sincerely astonished at its manifestations. It's all inspiration. When Homer is speaking, he doesn't know what he's speaking. He doesn't. Are you telling me that this guy who's just blah blah blah blah, blah,
Starting point is 00:42:58 he's able to understand, oh, this is what Odysseus is doing. Or this 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, blah, okay? He's a divine fire. He's a chat. He's just channeling God, okay?
Starting point is 00:43:14 He's just a portal for God to speak with the universe, with us. Poets are the herophants of an unprecedented inspiration, okay? The mirrors of the gigantic shadows which future cast upon the present. They are prophets because of future is speaking to us today, okay? Right? 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,
Starting point is 00:43:49 The trophids which sing to battle and feel not what they inspire. The influence which is move not, but moves. Poets are the unknowledge legislators of the world. Poets are prophets, and their words create our reality. Every thing that we know, everything that we do, it's because of language, of the language that the poets create. Okay? Doesn't make sense, guys. That's how Homer created civilization.
Starting point is 00:44:14 Because God willed it that Homer speak true. And will that this truth will spread across the world for its poetry? Okay, it's all by design. Does it make sense? All right, any questions? Okay, all right, so I'll see you guys next class, okay?

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